The Barn
Lamia diets are one of those things people prefer not to discuss at dinner.
The human half of a lamia gives people the wrong impression. They see shoulders, arms, a human face, someone drinking coffee or arguing about television, and assume the rest of the digestive system must operate according to roughly human rules. It does not. Lamia conversions were built from constrictor mixted with other variation lines, and the deeper the integration, the more completely their metabolism depended on them. They could eat ordinary meals for pleasure, and most did, but their bodies required periodic large feedings of whole prey. Bone, organs, connective tissue, fat, mineral content, everything. Supplements could delay the need, synthetic foods existed, and rich lamias in cities sometimes used expensive formulated alternatives, but in rural Texas the practical answer was much simpler.
You fed the snake.
There were entire agricultural industries devoted to it. Ordinary livestock still provided most of the supply, but Domestic hybrids had entered that market generations earlier. Rabbit lines were particularly common because they were efficient to raise and biologically compatible with almost every predatory hybrid digestive system. Some had been bred so extensively for food production that people spoke about them the way previous centuries had spoken about cattle breeds.
One of the common rural lines was the Broadback White.
The name was unpleasantly accurate. They were compact rabbit hybrids, generally between a meter and a meter and a half tall, heavily built through the thighs and torso, with dense muscle, clean organ development and very little tendency toward hereditary disease. Nutrition boards considered them one of the healthiest Domestic meat lines available to large reptilian hybrids. They also had a reputation for being catastrophically stupid.
That wasn't prejudice. There had been studies.
Generations of selective breeding for docility, appetite and rapid maturation had done very little for abstract reasoning. Broadback girls could learn routines, recognize handlers, understand simple speech and perform basic tasks, but asking one to exercise judgment was optimistic. Farmers joked that if you left them alone beside a pile of mineral stones long enough, eventually one would try eating them. That joke existed because it happened often enough for warning labels to be printed on feed troughs.
The old world could take something horrifying and make it boring through repetition.
By the time I became a rabbit hybrid myself, I had been helping feed lamias for ten years.
I remembered the first time very clearly.
Mom and Kira had only recently come home from rehabilitation. I was eleven. Kira was ten. Mom was grieving Dad so badly that some mornings she seemed to exist entirely because the doctors had given her instructions and she hadn't yet reached the bottom of the list.
Wake up.
Take medication.
Stretch new musculature.
Clean scales.
Eat.
Keep children alive.
Repeat.
The doctors had warned us about the first whole-prey feeding. Mom and Kira's new digestive systems had been running on hospital nutrient solutions, but eventually their bodies needed solid material. We received a refrigerated box containing four ordinary rabbits from a licensed feed supplier. Not hybrids. Animals. Small farm rabbits, humanely killed and packaged whole because removing anything defeated the nutritional purpose.
Kira cried.
People who met the adult Kira sometimes had trouble believing that.
She sat in the converted downstairs bedroom with her orange tail twisted into knots behind her and refused to touch the rabbit on the tray.
Kira: "I'm not eating that."
Mom was beside her, pale and exhausted, her own green coils occupying most of the floor.
Elara: "The doctor said we need to, sweetie."
Kira: "I don't care."
Elara: "Neither do I."
That frightened me. Mom wasn't supposed to say things like that.
I stood in the doorway holding the hospital feeding guide because apparently eleven-year-old Leona had become the member of the household most capable of reading instructions without crying.
Leona: "It says you can take your time."
Kira looked at me as if I had personally written the document.
Kira: "Then you eat it."
Leona: "I physically can't."
Kira: "Lucky you."
Mom closed her eyes.
Dad had been dead for less than a month.
Or so we believed.
Everything in that room carried his absence. The chair he'd fixed. The cabinet he'd built. The section of wall where his shoulder had left a faint grease mark years earlier because nobody had ever bothered repainting it.
Mom picked up her rabbit.
Her hands shook.
Elara: "We do what we have to do."
That became one of Mom's sentences after Dad died.
Not because she was weak.
Because she was broken in a way that turned rules into handrails.
The government said John Voss was dead, so he was dead. The doctors said she needed a lamia conversion, so she became a lamia. The dietitian said she needed whole prey, so she would eat whole prey. There was relief in obedience when thinking about choices hurt too much.
I helped.
I read the instructions. I brought water. I learned how to identify when their jaw joints were moving correctly, when swallowing was taking too long, what abdominal distension was normal and what required a doctor. I kept Kira's hair out of the way because she refused to let Mom do it. I sat beside her afterward while she complained that she could still feel the weight moving downward through her body.
The first feeding took almost two hours.
The second took forty minutes.
By the tenth, Kira no longer cried.
Within a year, feeding had become another farm chore.
That first year after Dad's death, I did a lot of growing up quietly. Mom could function, but grief made her absent in strange little ways. Kira was angry at the world and ten years old besides. I ordered feed. Checked invoices. Modified doors so their tails wouldn't jam against the frames. Built low cabinets. Reworked the downstairs bathroom. Helped Dad's old tools become mine.
I never resented them for needing me.
Not then.
Maybe that's why seeing Kira in the barn that night hurt as much as it did.
Stolen story; please report.
Because none of this was new.
Only my position in it was.
I couldn't leave through my bedroom window.
The spiders could.
I couldn't.
At barely a meter tall, with a body still recovering from reconstruction and a backpack that felt as though someone had filled it with engine blocks, climbing down the farmhouse wall would have been an excellent way to end my escape with two broken ankles beneath Mom's hydrangeas.
So I sent the spiders outside first and used them as scouts.
Their camera feeds appeared across my tablet in six small windows. Porch. Driveway. East side of the house. Workshop. Barn approach. Western field.
Clear.
I put on the armor beneath the poncho, tightened my backpack and folded my ears under the oversized hood. The mirror beside my bedroom door caught me before I left.
I stopped.
The woman in it was Leona Voss only after several seconds of negotiation.
White hair framed a face that had become too delicate. The conversion had turned my eyes a deep red, bright enough that they caught light strangely in the dark. Beneath the poncho was a body barely one meter tall, narrow shoulders carrying homemade metal plates and a ridiculous collection of spikes. My hands looked too small around Dad's old walking staff.
I looked like somebody's child trying to cosplay as a dangerous person.
That irritated me enough to help.
Leona: "Fuck it."
I opened the door.
The house was mostly dark.
Mom had left the kitchen light above the stove on, as she always did. I descended the stairs painfully slowly, keeping one hand on the railing. Every creak sounded enormous through my new ears. At the bottom, I stopped and listened.
Nothing from Mom's room.
The spiders confirmed the kitchen was empty.
I crossed it.
There was pie beneath a cover on the counter.
Of course there was.
Mom had left a note beside it.
For Leona. Please eat something, sweetie. We can talk tomorrow. Love you.
I stood there longer than was sensible.
Then I took two slices.
Running away did not require starving dramatically.
I wrapped them, put them into the bag and slipped through the mudroom door.
Night surrounded me.
The farm was different after midnight. Bigger. Empty fields became black oceans. Fence posts stood like little markers against the sky. The temperature had fallen enough for mist to gather close to the ground.
I could hear everything.
Crickets.
A distant pump.
Something moving through dry grass.
The barn ventilation fan.
My own breathing.
That last one annoyed me most.
I sent two spiders ahead toward the western field. Another crawled along the barn wall. Its thermal camera picked up a large warm shape inside.
Kira.
I almost changed route.
The west pasture could be reached around the south side of the property, but it meant crossing open ground visible from Mom's bedroom windows. The barn provided cover all the way to the machinery shed, then a drainage ditch ran almost directly toward the western fence.
If Kira was asleep inside, I could pass.
The spider entered through a gap beneath the barn door.
Its video feed changed.
I stopped walking.
Kira wasn't asleep.
The main barn lights were off, but a single yellow work lamp illuminated one of the feeding areas. My sister sat in a broad coil near the rear wall, her orange tail looping across the concrete in several thick turns. Blonde hair fell over one shoulder, untied for once. From a distance, if you ignored the several meters of serpent below her waist, she looked almost peaceful.
She was eating.
The Broadback White had already disappeared past the shoulders.
I recognized the breed immediately.
Everyone in rural counties did.
Female. Maybe one-twenty in height before feeding. White fur, dense frame. The girl's arms were pressed close to her sides by the natural mechanics of swallowing, only the lower torso and legs still visible. A licensed farm tag was clipped around one ankle.
Kira's jaw had expanded far beyond anything human. Lamias didn't dislocate their jaws despite the popular phrase. Their joints simply weren't built like ours. Flexible connective tissue and segmented lower structures allowed the mouth to widen gradually around prey that looked physically impossible to consume.
I'd seen it hundreds of times.
Tonight was different.
Kira paused between swallowing contractions, one hand braced against the floor. Her throat and upper torso were visibly expanded. Another slow muscular movement pulled the Broadback deeper.
The girl's feet twitched once.
I looked away from the tablet.
My stomach turned.
Not because I had suddenly discovered what Kira ate.
Because the rabbit girl was wearing a collar.
Gray polymer. Different model.
Same idea.
I touched the bare skin around my own neck.
Twenty-four hours earlier, legally speaking, there had been very little separating us.
Education?
No.
Intelligence didn't change classification.
Family?
Only as long as Mom remained my registered household custodian.
Money?
I had some, plenty in crypto actually.
Rights?
Fewer than I'd possessed before the truck.
Species?
Rabbit.
Domestic.
Food-production compatible.
I forced myself to look at the tablet again.
Kira finished swallowing.
The Broadback's feet disappeared last. Kira closed her mouth, breathed slowly through her nose and rested one hand against the huge new weight beneath her ribs.
For a second she looked uncomfortable.
Then satisfied.
Normal.
That was the worst part.
This wasn't Kira committing some secret atrocity.
It was dinner.
There would be paperwork for the rabbit girl.
A feed invoice.
A registration transfer.
A health certificate confirming she had been free of transmissible disease.
Possibly a tax deduction.
The old world was thorough.
Kira leaned her head back against a support post and closed her eyes.
Perfect.
A lamia after a large feeding became slower while the prey settled into the digestive tract. Not helpless, not remotely, but sluggish enough that rapid movement became unpleasant.
I had helped her often enough to know exactly how long that window lasted.
I almost laughed.
Ten years of helping my sister eat had finally produced a practical escape skill.
Dad would have appreciated the absurdity.
I moved.
The barn had two side doors. The first was close to Kira. The second opened behind the tool storage area and gave direct access to the drainage ditch.
Locked.
Of course.
I could pick it.
Too noisy.
I sent Spider Four beneath the shelving, across the wall and up to the old manual latch. I'd modified that drone years earlier with a tiny manipulator for retrieving bolts from machinery.
Its claw closed around the latch.
Lift.
Slowly.
The metal moved.
Kira shifted.
I froze outside.
Through the drone camera, I watched her open one red eye.
My own heart attempted to escape through my throat.
Kira looked toward the barn door.
Not the side door but the main one.
She listened.
My rabbit body made the decision for me.
Every muscle wanted to run.
My ears pressed flat beneath the hood.
Adrenaline flooded my limbs.
I hated it.
But for once, prey instinct and common sense agreed.
Don't move.
Kira waited several seconds.
Then grumbled.
Kira: "Fucking rats."
Her eye closed again.
Spider drone Four lifted the latch the rest of the way.
I approached.
The side door opened perhaps ten centimeters before one hinge complained.
I stopped.
Kira didn't react.
Another centimeter.
Then another.
I turned sideways.
Backpack caught.
Of course it did.
I nearly swore aloud.
I removed one strap, compressed the pack against my chest and squeezed through. One of the armor spikes scraped wood lightly.
Kira shifted again.
I dropped immediately behind a feed bin.
The smell inside the barn was overwhelming through rabbit senses. Hay. Dust. machine oil. reptile musk. disinfectant. Old blood from the feeding area. The warm animal smell of Kira herself.
And rabbit.
That scent hit some primitive part of my new brain hard enough that nausea rolled through me.
I knew what rabbit smelled like now.
Worse, some part of me knew what predator smelled like.
My body trembled.
Leona:Stop.
I didn't say it aloud.
I concentrated on numbers.
Distance to door: eight meters.
Kira: approximately twelve meters away.
Obstacle: feed bins, tractor attachment, workbench.
Time to cross at controlled walking speed: twelve seconds.
If detected?
Don't think about that.
I moved.
One spider crawled ahead.
Another watched Kira.
She remained where she was, blonde head resting against the post, eyes shut while her body dealt with dinner.
Four meters.
Five.
My staff nearly clipped a bucket.
I caught it.
Six.
Kira spoke.
Kira: "Leona?"
Every cell in my body stopped.
I couldn't breathe.
The camera showed her eyes still closed.
Then:
Kira: "...better not have eaten all the pie."
A pause.
She was talking to herself or imagining tomorrow.
I don't know but i continued.
Seven meters.
The side door.
Outside.
I pulled it shut without letting the latch catch loudly.
Then I ran but not far.
My body couldn't.
Twenty meters into the drainage ditch, my lungs were burning and my legs shaking hard enough that I had to grab the bank.
Pathetic.
I laughed anyway. Quietly.
I'd made it past Kira.
That counted.
The six spiders regrouped around me. Two carried auxiliary bags beneath their bodies. Their red optics glowed faintly in the dark like tiny mechanical fireflies.
I followed the ditch west.
The house disappeared behind the barn first.
Then the barn disappeared behind trees.
At the western fence, I stopped.
This boundary had never meant much before. I'd crossed it hundreds of times repairing posts, inspecting water lines, chasing equipment or walking because I needed to think.
Tonight it was the edge of my world.
Beyond it were ranch roads, scrubland, abandoned properties and eventually enormous parts of Texas I knew mostly through maps. Somewhere farther west might be a laboratory. Somewhere might be technology capable of changing me.
Or nothing.
Behind me was a warm house.
My mother. My sister. More Pie. A bed. Tools. Home.
I put one hand on the fence.
For a moment I considered going back.
Then I remembered the Broadback girl's feet disappearing into Kira's mouth.
I remembered the collar around her ankle.
I remembered mine lying beside the family photograph upstairs.
The decision didn't become easier.
It became final.
I climbed beneath the lowest fence wire because climbing over it was beyond my current dignity, crawled through wet grass and stood on the other side.
One meter tall. White hair. Red eyes.
F-Rank.
Six spiders drones.
A backpack full of stolen knowledge and badly selected survival equipment.
Twenty-one years old. Terrified. Free, if only because nobody had noticed yet.
I looked west.
There was a storm far away. I could see lightning inside the clouds, silent at that distance.
That helped.
Leona: "All right."
The spiders waited.
I tightened my grip on Dad's staff and started walking.
I left the Voss farm that night as something the law considered Domestic property.
I had no idea where I was going, how long I would be gone, or whether there was anything waiting in the dark except a more efficient way to die.
I only knew one thing that If I ever came home again, I would not come home as food.