



Chapter Three


Monster in the Dark



                                                                                       Imagine a fox that’s gotten hold of a straight-razor                 
                                                                                       
And knows how to use it.
                                                                                       Creeping around the chicken house at midnight,              
                                                                                       Slitting throats.
                                                                                                                                          Peragrine Harker          



 The trip is a small black tour of hell that ends up taking hours. There seems to be some sort of riot happening because they landed on the street at one point. He could hear lots of people yelling and screaming and shots being fired and a lot more bagged prisoners were loaded into the police van, till' it became very crowded and he was crushed against the back wall of the transport by the passenger's side of the cab. His eyes watered at the seeping reek of tear gas and other noxious crowd suppressant chemicals as they penetrated the tight weave of the canvas and leather transport sacks.

 He'd seen enough news footage of the frequent food and work riots that broke out in the lower parts of the huge city, to picture exactly what was going on. He could see in his mind, the riot squads in their dull black body armor and shiny green lensed gas masks. 

 They would be advancing in tight ranks, forcing the rioters to slowly retreat into huddled masses, where they could round them up using stun gasses and sticky nets. All very humanitarian considering that rioters were tacitly considered to be in revolt and so it was up to the discretion of the squad captains whether or not to use deadly force. The ones that managed to escape the herds were usually pulled down by packs of free roaming cops using dogs and clubs.

 When he'd seen it on the television it seemed like just another entertainment show, violent and exciting, but it had never seemed very real. Nobody does things like that where he lives, people behave sensibly. Happy to be obedient to their Liege Lord and serve him to the best of their ability, even if it means leaving their children in the hands of servants and slaves for weeks on end.   

 His attention is brought back to the present when he hears the heavy iron doors slam closed and the iron bolt thrown home. He can hear a girl crying in one of the nearby sacks, can feel the vibration of her sobs traveling through the tightly packed prisoners like ripples through a pond. 

 Further down the opposite row he can here a man with a booming voice howling obscenity's against the Baron, clearly desperate to the point of being suicidal. This man will likely end up as five minutes of footage on the execution channel.

 He can hear something else as well, something strange, something snuffling amongst the packed double row of sacked prisoners in the transport unit. He hopes that maybe it’s the barchuk detective, but somehow he knows it isn't. There is something else in the transport van, something very, very bad, and it isn't in a bag.

 He knows, even as he feels the transport start warming up to take off again. that something awful has snuck aboard when the doors were open. Now it is loose among the prisoners, all of them helpless in their shackles and sacks, including himself.

 Peragrine's body is still taken by that same lassitude which has held him since the Barchuk roared at him, it feels like he’s floating in warm honey, paralyzed in a cloying sweetness.

 His body will obey none of his commands and even his mind, sharp as it remains in comprehension of his situation, will not allow him to become overly fearful of what happens around him. This calm acceptance is as alien to him as the circumstance that surrounds him, but there it is. Nothing he can do about it now.

 He feels the vehicle begin its lift-off, then lurch sharply to the right. There is a loud thud and a series of violent shudders, then they’re off. It seemed that the rioters were providing some pretty heavy resistance, he could hear a series of muffled explosions growing ever fainter as they gained altitude.

 Peragrine’s attention is drawn by a soft lunatic chuckling no more than a hand span from him, and a sound like a dog snuffling under a door, a sharp nose pushed at him through the rough canvas.

 Peragrine cannot even make a whimper as it pokes its angular snout at him again and again, smelling every inch of him through the sides of the canvas and leather sack, drinking him in through his scent.

 There’s a loud crackling sound in the transport cab as the p.a.system snaps on. "WELL KIDDIES! IT WOULD SEEM THAT SOME OF YOUR FELLOW REVOLUTIONARIES ARE GETTING A LITTLE FRISKY!" The voice of Detective Baylor booms out of the speakers, the volume so loud it makes everyone's teeth rattle.   

 "THEREFORE IT IS WITH GREAT ANNOYANCE THAT I INFORM YOU THAT THERE WILL BE A SMALL DELAY IN OUR ARRIVAL OF NO MORE THAN SIX OR SEVEN HOURS AS WE WAIT IN THIS FUCKING HOLDING PATTERN! OH YEAH, HAVE A NICE DAY!" There is a loud pop and crackle as the p.a.sytem is snapped off and a universal groan runs through the holding sacks, twenty minutes in the stinking darkness of the transport is intolerable, those additional hours will seem an eternity.

 Peragrine strains his ears, the snuffling thing seems to have moved on. Several others are weeping now, their tears making a soft chorus with that of the first girl. The ranter has fallen silent, perhaps he is just now realizing that he is doomed to a public death by his own ill considered tongue.

 "Mark! Is that you, how did you get loose." The voice is youngish, male, a sharp whisper full of hope. "C'mon, unzip this thing!" There is a low murmuring whisper in answer and a soft quavering giggle followed by the slow rippling sound of the heavy steel zipper being drawn downward.

 "Hey dude, thanks man, hey you’re not Mark!" Another soft murmur in response, and a soft chuckle like a hyena on the hunt. "Hey, ow, hey stop! Fuck, that hurts, quit it -----uh, oh god, ------oh god, it hurts..........." The boy's voice fades out on a choked whisper, becoming a soft wet sobbing as muscle and tendon are audibly torn apart.

 His shuddering breath is still rasping out as bones are cracked open and a horribly loud and satisfied slobbering and licking sound fills the cramped cabin. The sweet redness of his marrow chewed and suckled out.

 The rest of the prisoners have grown utterly silent, frozen in horror at the terrible sounds of murder and devouring.

 "Oh no, no, please no. Oh Goddess, oh Veda, oh please don't hurt me!" This time the voice is a woman's, her cries sharp and breaking with terror.

 This bag’s zipper is not used, there is instead a terrible low ripping sound as the canvas of the woman's transport bag is torn open. Her voice is an ululating howl, her agonized shrieks seeming to go on forever as she too is torn slowly apart.

 Suddenly the silent terror of the other prisoners explodes into a chorus of panic, all of them screaming and struggling at once, shrieking to be let out, to be saved, crying for their mothers or lovers, uselessly, hopelessly, doomed.

 On and on it goes, alternating between the howls of the living and the shrieks of the dying, till' the voices grow less and less and the dying grows closer and closer. Peragrine feels rather than hears the death of the one next to him, it comes as a warm wash of stickiness than seeps through the weft of the canvas.

 His shrunken empty stomach growls at the thick copper scent that fills his nostrils, the reek of blood inexplicably making his mouth fill with cold water and he finds that he can just shift his head a bit to rub his cheek against it.

 It’s only the most distant portion of his mind that shrinks and cries out at the horror that should rightly be felt at the thought of how good the blood and fear smells, how it pricks his appetite with sharp little rat teeth like nothing else ever has.

 He closes his eyes and moans softly in self-disgust, slowly realizing that his body is becoming his own again. He curls his thin legs a bit tighter against his chest and without even meaning to, turns his head so that his tongue can creep out and just touch the stickiness. Then his mouth is filled with the electric richness of it, and he finds it very good to taste. 

 "Good, isn't it?" The voice is a graveyard whisper next to his ear. "Once you get a taste for it you can never seem to get enough." Peragrine grows perfectly still, except for the soft pulsing of the great artery in his throat.

 Then he twitches away, crying softly as a razor claw splits the canvas next to his lips and tears downward, he can still hear someone's bubbling breath in the far corner of the transport and suddenly it chills him to the bone. 

 "Wh, what.... Who are you?" His voice is surprisingly clear to his own ears. He’s trying as hard as he can to sound as if he has nothing to fear from the monster in the darkness.

 "I, young master, am no one of consequence. Merely your Father's humble wolf, a loyal servant of his house." The speaker sounds very proud to speak those words, and not very humble at all.

 “My father, did you say you come from my father?" Peragrine's voice is suddenly thick with hope that his father has sent this thing to save him, but even as he asks he knows the answer. It came from the terrible father-thing of his dream. It’s a creature of that awful world of bloody cannibalism, incest and deathly dark magics.

 "Yes, little master, little princeling, I come from your true father. He from whom you were stolen on the night of your birth." The speaker’s coppery hot breath blasts furnace-like across his cheeks, a wide hot tongue lapping out, tasting the salt of his fluttering eyelids. 

"You are shivering little master and you smell hungry, are you hungry little master?" The hot slime of the tongue laves away the blood from his cheek; he feels a stiff whiskered muzzle brush his jaw, the words breathed against his ear. The thing’s breath is icy, its muzzle feels wet and cold where it touches his cheek and jaw.

 "Show yourself to me Wolf, if truly you come from the house of my father." Despite the racing of his heart, his voice is as steady as stone. 

"Very well, little master, if my face you wish to see then so you shall." Again that awful lunatic chuckle bursts out, filling the small space, drawing away from him, it sounds perhaps four or five feet away now. "Heh, heh, you did not answer my question, are you hungry little master?"

 There is a soft clicking, and a bursting phosphorescence which grows to become a bowl of searing greenish light in the saber-claws of a wolfish awfulness that would be difficult to describe in all its dreadful glory.

 The thing is a head and a half taller than him and rack thin despite its recent gluttony, it is a dead-thing, a ghoul. It looks like a half transformed man-wolf that had been drowned a week before and was only just now surfacing. The slick gore that coats it from tip to tail gleams oily black in the sickly green light, and though it is quite naked it seems to possess no genitalia.

 Its mouth holds an impossible number of thin fishlike teeth, transparent and sharp as needles, all clotted with bits of blood and flesh and hair. Golden lantern eyes shed their own mad light on the beast's bony matted cheeks as it grins and capers before him, shedding bits of gore as it dances from foot to foot, twirling its bowl of burning phosphorus haze.

 Slowly Peragrine takes his eyes from the obscene thing and casts his gaze about the holding cabin, the steel box has become a charnel house, the stench of it coming at him all at once.

 The carry bags are all hung in tatters and shreds, their former occupants spilled out across the floor, an ankle deep sea of shimmering gore. There is little left that resembles a body, only in the far corner is there a complete head and torso, The thing is gutted and skinned naked as a market rabbit, but somehow it’s still breathing though it has no lower jaw and its breath makes bloody bubbles rise and pop at the back of its gaping throat.

 The rest is an unidentifiable mix of chunks and shreds and shards. Bone, skin, hair and flesh all mixed together with bits of canvas and leather, the reek of blood and burst bowels filling the cramped space like a fog.

 Peragrine chokes and doubles over gagging as stomach acid spills into his mouth, searing into his raw throat with its bitter fire. He spits the yellow nastiness from his mouth and gasps for breath, using the time to gather his racing thoughts into some semblance of order.

 If that distant monster that has supposedly fathered him sent this creature, a detail he is still not entirely convinced of, though if true it might go a far way to explaining a number of things, it was likely for one of two reasons. Either it’s here to protect him or it was sent here to kill him, he can only pray that it's mission is the former.

 Peragrine rolls forward, tumbling out through the great rent in his carry sack and landing on his hands and knees in the slippery muck, still tightly shackled. "If I am your 'little master' then would you please undo my bindings, good Wolf?" Peragrine speaks softly, bringing the full weight of his desire for freedom into his voice and his eyes as he lifts his shackled wrists to the monster before him.

 The capering horror stops its dancing and gazes at him, cocking its long pointed ears back and forth, the Halloween orange of its glowing eyes leaking golden light like mist as it considers his request. Then, like a marionette with its top string cut. The Wolf-ghoul drops into a low crouch, peering directly into his face.

 "In so far, little master, as it does not compromise my service to thy Father, our mutual Master, and so far as it pleases me to do so, I shall obey."  It is a tribute to sheer nerve that Peragrine does not flinch as the thing flicks out a dagger like talon and plunges its tip into the lemur-stone on the boy's forehead. Peragrine feels a brief flash of heat and a distant tug in the back of his mind and then a blessed coolness. 

  The Wolf leans forward toward the boy, his eyes are closed and a small smile touches just the very corners of his small pink mouth. The boy's sweetly curved lips seem as if they are made for kissing, as if they are designed to swallow a legion of drooling cocks. He can feel his own prick stiffen slightly at the thought of invading those sweet lips, shoving his spit slimed shaft down that white columned throat.

 Once the magik suppressant limpet has died, removing the boy's shackles will be the simplest of acts. Such mundane things are as nothing to his ilk, these idiot police-men rely far too heavily on these stupid 'lemur-stones'. Piddling trash brought to them by the gibbering ape peoples of Simia. 

 The Wolf takes the prince's bony wrists in one blood-caked paw and using the other, he implements a single thick claw to shear away the iron shackles from them. It is pleasant to lick and nuzzle the bruises that mark his little wrists, his bones are as light and fragile as those of a nestling bird.

 It might be interesting to see what sort of prey-bird this little falcon might grow to be, especially if he has a good teacher. But of course, all that will depend on the commands of the Master, of course it will, of course.

 The Wolf is a newcomer to this backwater of the Demono-Corporate States, it had been only a few dozen centuries since the Imperium swallowed up this petty corporate empire of demons in its relentless pursuit of bringing every spiral arm of the galaxy under direct Imperial control.

 A hundred and a half star systems of demonic aristocracy feeding off the prayers and energies of trillions of human slaves. The veneer of the place is a modern one, full with all the distractions and drama that any peasant-sheep could hope for.

 It is a paradise for their infernal masters, a massive swarming herd of cattle, fattened on modern living and medical care, made sharp and lean by the ancient law of 'Keeping Up With The Jones' and drugged insensible by five hundred channels of cable television. Heaven for the Hunters.

 Peragrine opens his crocus-blue eyes when TheWolf stands him up, lifting him with one slimy haired paw, raising him free of the floor by his now unshackled wrists. "You are a fine looking boy, my little master." Peragrine feels a razor claw catch the throat of his sticky sodden hospital gown and rip slowly downward. It falls away with hardly a sound, exposing his full nakedness to the steaming orange glare of the wolf-ghoul's gaze.

 "A fine fledgling indeed." It grins its shark-like grin and runs a tongue of darkest vermilion across its glassy needle teeth. Peragrine's attention is caught by a pinkish purple movement at the thing's midriff and he realizes with a sick chill that The Wolf-thing is indeed not a neuter. 

 Out of a narrow slit in the sheath at its belly, a sharp, shiny-wet prick head is peeping. He watches in fascinated horror as the glistening point swells and extends, rising and thickening out of its sheath.

 It is very long and almost as thick as Peragrine's bony wrist, bright rouge pink with purple veins and splotches, the narrow mouth at its tip seeping a steady stream of thick clear fluid.

 Almost as if it senses his presence, the shaft-head seems to orient on the curve of Peragrine's flat belly, swelling and growing until its mouth seeps wetness into the shallow dish of his navel.

 "This wolf is very happy to be so close to his little master when he has such a full belly, so that he is not hungry at all. This wolf is very happy to release his little master from these terrible chains." Still suspending the boy by his thin wrists, The Wolf uses his free paw to snip away the thick iron bands which clasp the fledgling's narrow ankles.

 It is a great pleasure to caress the little red welts that encircle each delicate ankle and wrist, to draw his claws lightly over the sharp definition of the boy's taught ribcage, to leave tiny blood beaded scratches on the little whore slut's cream smooth skin.

 It is an even greater pleasure to watch the boy shudder with helpless revulsion at the stroking of TheWolf's prick against his shivering stomach and loins, to slide his shaft between the boy's dangling leg's and nudge up against his hairless balls.

 "If I am indeed your little master, then friend Wolf, you should not take such liberties with me. I think that you should put me down, now if you please." Peragrine's voice grows thin and reedy at times but he speaks calmly, steadily, and the wolf-ghoul smiles at his masterful attempt at outward calm.

 "When a wolf has served him well, it is customary that the Master give him a reward. What sort of reward do you plan to give me, little master? I am not hungry, so you must not offer me food, but perhaps there is another hunger you might satisfy." This last bit is said with an obscene leer of such naked lust it makes Peragrine shudder.

 Peragrine's eyes clench shut, his head shifting back and forth as he prays aloud, struggling against The Wolf's gore slimed grip. "Ahh Gods, this is too much, too terrible, let me wake from this nightmare at last. Let my father and sister be by my side. Let this all be some awful fever dream, Gods let it end!"

 The exhausted boy's nerve has finally broken, his self-possession finally fled at this new obscenity assaulting his reality. His prayers cut short when he feels the hot slime of its tongue flick against his mouth, his lips writhing back as the needle sharp teeth nip lightly at them.

 "It will not end little master, it will never end until you die and even then you will live on if this wolf may set any example. The man you call your father will not come and the Master, thy true sire, is not to be bothered with such trivial things as errant children. He will send for you if he wishes to meet you. As for your sisters, they are legion, of which one do you speak?”

  Peragrine's heart feels as if it is frozen in his chest, he understands then, dangling from black fate's claws, that once again this is a matter of no choices. Live or die, he cannot stop this madness, he must only endure and survive. But perhaps, a spark of reason might yet be kindled.

 Desperately suppressing the horror and disgust that threatens to overwhelm him, Peragrine forces his mouth to smile upon the horror that holds and caresses him. "You are right, good Wolf, none of this will end. Besides, why should it, the Father's will is greater than either of us and you are correct in another thing as well." He shifts his pelvis so that it meets The Wolf-ghoul's with a small slap, making it easier for the beast's slick cockshaft to slide between his clenched thighs.

 "I do owe you a reward don't I?" He lifts his hyacinthine eyes to meet the monster's glowing orange ones in what he prays passes for a look of  invitation. "But I don't think that we have time to indulge ourselves just now, the police will be landing this transport any minute and you still haven't told me how you plan to get us away safely."

 The Wolf pauses a moment, enjoying the whore-child's pathetic struggle at sexiness, he had spoke truth to the boy, it is very good indeed to be so close to the him with such a full belly that he is not tempted to take a bite out of his tender flesh.

 It’s been a very long time since the Master has allowed him to play with one of his witch-whore daughters, decades and decades, yet the memory of that translucent white skin still haunts him.

 All cold and lofty was her little highness, she'd never expected her childish defiance to lead to such a fate as being handed over to TheWolf.

 Cold she'd been on the surface, but hot as a honeyed furnace when she was busted open and he'd got deep inside of her, pushed past her cervix and into her womb. She was a fine screamer too, a regular pipe organ of howls, sobs and murmurs, very pleasant to perform for the Master and his court of the damned.

 "You are correct, my little master, our time does indeed grow short. When I fuck you, I want to have the time to make it very interesting for both of us." The mixed expression of hope and horror that springs into the little slut's eyes is utterly laughable.

 In all the many endless centuries that TheWolf has served his most terrible and exquisite Master, TheWolf has learned the truth of that ancient saying, that where there is life, there is hope. And where there is hope there is still a spark to be used, and crushed.

 "You have no idea how I anticipate making you scream as I fuck into you, my little Peragrine, make you moan for my cock up your sleek ass." He presses the boy back against the steel wall, it has grown hot from the unseen sun beating against the transport as it maintains it's holding pattern and the boy hisses with pain as his back and buttocks are flattened against the searing metal.

 Growling wordless into the pink-white shell of an ear, burying his muzzle into the thick tangle of cobweb pale locks, inhaling deeply the fragrance of it, like incense it is, all musk and amber, hypnotic scent, intoxicating.

 The Wolf releases the boy's wrists, his thin arms fall as if boneless to hang limp at his heaving sides, his eyes are closed again, lips parted, panting, a slick of transparent spittle in one corner of his pink mouth.

 With both paws, The Wolf runs his talons, light as little cat feet, down the boy's sides, across his ribs, around the gentle curve of his narrow hips. His talons draw faint blood trails across the silken hide, from the rosy milk of his fragile shoulders to the reddening white mounds of his heat-blushed buttocks.

 The boy shivers and moans as these razor claws play across his hypersensitive nerves, he is like a harp being plucked and stroked, responsive to every touch.

 Using just the very tips of his talons, TheWolf guides the boy to part his thighs and wrap them about his narrow hips. Peragrine does so reluctantly and with a moan of such eloquent hopelessness it makes TheWolf's tail curl in delight. 

 TheWolf concentrates a moment, withdrawing his talons back into their bony sockets until only the very tips remain exposed. The soft pads of his fingers he digs into the tender pucker of the boy's anus, forcing the muscled ring to yield to his probing fingers. 

 Still slick with clotted blood, TheWolf forces his two index fingers into the boy's fluttering bottom, he can feel the slut-child's outraged muscles clench again and again in a vain attempt to expel the invading digits.

 With patient force The Wolf stretches the little ring of muscles until it will accept another pair of fingers that probe, seek, force surrender. The boy is moaning steadily now, his small pizzle stiffening into a narrow shaft of palest ivory crowned with a little coral cap, the round plums at his loins tight against his groin. 

 TheWolf suspects that the boy is not even aware that his  pale hands are rising to knead like a kitten at TheWolf's gore streaked shoulders as he begins to grind against the invasion of his tender bottom.

 We cannot help the blood of our birth, TheWolf reminds himself, I was born to be a wolf and he was born to be a witch-whore, it is our natures we follow. 

 Peragrine's mind is not among the stars this time, it is firmly seated in the here and now, firmly seated in the body that now betrays him.

 His penis, a physical accessory that he had until recently virtually ignored except for its more obvious uses in elimination, is now more painfully erect than he can ever remember it being. The agonizing cramps of pain that rise from the horribly stretched muscles of his entry are somehow becoming like a deep seated itch that needs to be scratched and scratched even if you should bloody yourself.

 It feels horribly, wonderfully good, even the nightmarish appearance of the undead wolf-ghoul, this devourer of the living and eater of the dead, this dweller among the tombs and tunnels of sepulcher, the thing seems now somehow unbearably attractive to him.

 His body has become some obscene and treacherous stranger, it wants this bestial monstrosity inside of him, wants to suckle at the dead wolf's seeping cock like a milky teat, to be torn apart, eaten alive, his body wants more.

 Peragrine feels the thick sharp point of The Wolf's slippery shaft stab upward and howls aloud as it stretches him far wider than the six thin fingertips that now pull him open.

The Wolf thrusts into the boy once, twice, three times, just enough to force the full thickness of his slimy cock into that tight sweet passage, enough to tear him a little bit, to make him really howl as his slender cock spurts across his white belly untouched. For now it is enough to always be the first one to have entered him.

 He takes his paws from the boy's hips, letting Peragrine’s slight weight carry him down the shaft to it's thick base, the nestling's eyes are glazed over with pain and glory, as TheWolf basks in the unbearable heat his cold flesh finds in that painfully tight passage.

 Suddenly the boy's mouth is on his, small pointed pink tongue darting against the sharpness of The Wolf's many teeth, finding The Wolf's own vermilion tongue and dancing against it, light and sweet as honeyed cream.

 The temptation to stay like this, rocking slowly within the boy, feasting on his small white toothed mouth for hours on end, feeding him the blood of his own tender pink lips, is difficult to resist, but time is growing short. 

 Spanning easily the boy's narrow waist with paws both long and powerful, The Wolf lifts Peragrine off of his throbbing shaft, making the boy groan and grind his teeth with frustration as he tries to force his way back downward, to draw The Wolf back into him. Soon enough, he thinks, soon enough.

 "There is no point to a thing not done well, my little master, and we have no time to do this thing well. Patience my Prince, patience my sweet, now take me into your mouth."  

 The Wolf allows his little prince to slip through his fingers, downward slow and smooth till' the boy is on his knees. Taking the Peragrine's cheeks lightly in his claw tips, he guides his cockhead to the lad's pink lips and growls softly as he feels them part and a hot tongue begins laving the seeping moisture from its sensitive tip.

 The Wolf knows in his heart that the boy has not ever done this before, the very thought is likely offensive to his prudish sensitivities, but he takes to it as if it were his very nature, which in fact it is.

 Peragrine's fingers can barely span the base of the pulsing shaft, he mouth runs over with the acrid juices that flow into it from the dead-wolf's cockslit, it is full of the sharp bitter sweetness of it's musky taste and a taste far deeper than that, the cold clay of ancient earth and the must of cool mosses.

 His mind still cries in protest, but quietly now, he is far too deep in this well of sensation to care much for pre-conceived notions of social propriety. He only knows that he is desperately empty and wants to be filled and if his dead thing lover will not fill his belly through his nether passage then he will take him into his throat instead. It is all one and the same, this battle for sustenance and survival.
 
 It is a dangerous way to travel, in the hidden chambers of another's heart, it is easy to become too enamored of that heart which shelters us, but it is an excellent way to travel undiscovered and unsuspected.

  "Oh sweet, oh angelic heaven, thou that does swallow the very root of me, fear not the beast nor the shadow, for I will be to thee as close as thy very heart." The Wolf's sudden rushing orgasm is like nova's behind his clenched eyelids, his hips buck sharply as he grasps the boy's small tousled head in his paws and forces his full length into Peragrine's tight throat. 

 The cock's shaft is so thick in his mouth that Peragrine cannot even move his tongue against it, his jaw is stretched till' it feels as if it must separate like a snake's if he is to take any more, and yet he tries as hard as he can to swallow more and more. He can feel a spasming flood of cool liquid running down his throat, swelling and soothing his fevered, empty belly.

 Swallowing, swallowing, the silken coolness flowing endlessly into him. He is not breathing, only swallowing and yet there is no distress, only the satisfaction of being filled with this acrid sweetness like the bitterness of burnt honey.

 Strangely, he feels no great shock as he watches TheWolf becoming transparent as glass, The Wolf-glass begins to flow, it's contours softening, becoming undefined and now he is swallowing the water cool wolf as well, and then he is alone in the velvet blackness, the phosphorous green light is gone, extinguished with TheWolf's going.

 His belly is full unto bursting and his limbs seem heavy as lead, he is fully naked in the sticky blackness, but it is warm and he feels no shame in his nakedness at this moment, he only wants to curl up and rest, to sleep and to consider, to digest, quite literally, the madness of this day, of these past few hours.

 Sliding down to the blood sodden floor in the warm sticky darkness. Peragrine curls into a gentle fetal fold, arms wrapped lightly about his knees, lulled by the steady hum of the prisoner transport’s fusion plant, he sleeps.



                                                 









