MonsterVille
Eleven

Mellie descended into the dark of the basement, she was at ground level before she reached the light switch, which did little more than cast shadows across the bedroom. Of course calling it a bedroom was like calling a BDSM room a playroom.

There were macabre leather braces, toys and implements spread across half the room, whips on one wall and an orgy sized bed spread out behind a rack. An honest to god rack designed to break human, or monster, bodies. It was Katie-Cam’s version of a room when she stayed at the house, and it had been designed to meet every physical pleasure one could imagine. Usually the more sadistic pleasures at that. Katie-Cam was spread out on the bed, her arms hanging over the bed head as she watched Mellie descend into the basement.

Despite being naked, sweaty and blood soaked she looked utterly at ease, that ravenous look in her eyes was a constant. She looked happy as an upturned piranha.

“Heya,” Mellie greeted as she slid into the bed beside Katie-Cam and tucked herself into the nook of the other woman’s arm. An arm that wrapped around her shoulders comfortingly. Their relationship occasionally bordered on the sensual, but it had never and probably would never, be sexual.

Mellie had known Katie-Cam since she was four years old and Katie was three hundred and fifty. Katie-Cam had watched her grow up, had played with her as a child, had advised her as a teen, had comforted her in her raging adolescent years and had killed for her. That last part was incidental. It was an unusual relationship given what Katie-Cam was, but then she was unusual for one of her kind, a vicious monster yes, an unrelenting predator, absolutely, a Wendigo, and an Apex.

Amongst the monsters of the world the Wendigo tended to be solitary creatures for a number of reasons, first and foremost they had limited social desires. They didn’t particularly care for anything beyond eating, and second they were amongst a very limited number of monsters that made a habit of eating other monsters. Generally speaking monsters stuck to eating humans, they might rip another monster apart over territory, food or just boredom, but eating one another was a bit of a faux par.

The other reason that they tended to stick to themselves was the fact that unlike most monsters the Wendigo were not born, they were made. They were humans who for whatever reason had resorted to cannibalism and in doing so had invited the spirit of the Wendigo into their bodies. It changed them, made them ravenous monsters with an insatiable appetite, but there was always that glimmer of who they were left behind. Memories, emotions, an instinctive revulsion of other monsters despite the fact they were apex and top of the food chain.

Mellie didn’t know all the details, she probably never would, but more than three hundred years ago Katie-Cam had been travelling with her family through the remote wilderness when they became snowed it. They were days from the Fort they were heading to, their food ran out and Katie-Cam survived. It was all Mellie needed to know.

“Penny for your thoughts honey?” Katie-Cam purred.

“Thank you for protecting my human,” Mellie said softly. Her head was pressed into Katie’s chest and she could feel the soft rhythmic beating of her friend’s heart, it was just that her heart only beat once or twice a minute when she was resting. She was the perfectly designed killing machine and a rapid heartbeat just served to give away her position while she hunted. Not that she needed to stalk prey, Mellie had never so much as heard of a monster or human in the wild who had survived an encounter with a Wendigo unless it was what the Wendigo wanted… and usually that was because the hunt was part of the fun, inducing fear, stalking their prey back to their friends and family before they moved in for the kill, before they ripped everything to bloody shreds.

“A challenge to him is a challenge to you,” Katie-Cam remarked, “and in your own house?”

“If they’d taken him it would have been open season on me,” Mellie agreed while Katie slowly stroked fingers down through her hair, “it’s been a day since Analyn cut me off and my human has been attacked twice.”

“And you?” Katie-Cam prompted.

“What about me?”

“You’re exhausted, you’re burning up and your heart is racing.”

“I’m just a little under the weather,” Mellie protested.

“I also saw those berserkers on the street.”

“Oh, right, them.” Mellie said in a non-committal, “I handled them.”

Katie-Cam made a sound that was difficult to decipher, Mellie wasn’t sure whether it was meant to be a sigh of frustration, of relief or just a ‘why are you so damn stubborn?’

“I monstered up,” Mellie said defensively.

“No. You lost control and the second it was over you lost it as well. I can’t tell you what to do Mellie, I can only guide you, but if you don’t take the next step you are going to die. Likely soon and I—”

Mellie propped herself up on her elbows so she could stare into those ravenous eyes, “And you?” she prompted, “You… don’t want to lose me?”

The Wendigo didn’t do emotional well; she neither confirmed nor denied which was as good as a yes where Mellie was concerned. They had known each other since Mellie was a child; she could read her friend like an open book which was one of the reasons Katie-Cam spent so little time in town.

She spent most of her time across the Canadian border and in the vast wilderness where she could simply be with no emotional attachments. Mellie suspected Katie couldn’t tolerate so many monsters for long, couldn’t bear to be within a town limits for more than a few days without those ravenous needs kicking in and a massacre ensuing.

That was the curse of the Wendigo, the reason the old Native American tribes had believed them to be the worst of the worst, the most evil of the monsters that stalked human kind because no matter how much they ate, no matter how many they killed their hunger never abated. That ravenous appetite was always just beneath the surface craving another bite of human flesh, for them feeding was more addiction than necessity since they were more than capable of physically surviving for decades without food. Some of them even preferred it that way, they would hunt, kill and hibernate for years before they killed again.

It was very possible Mellie was curled up beside the most dangerous apex in the entire town, one with an insatiable hunger for human or monster alike, and yet she felt it was the safest place in the world. It wasn’t that she believed Katie-Cam would never kill her, it was entirely possible she would one day, that the hunger would best her… but likely she would slaughter the entire town first. It would give Mellie fair warning to run for her life.

She snuggled into Katie-Cam and sighed contentedly.

“So how was he?” she asked.

“Mmm,” Katie-Cam purred, “Your human is delicious. He likes a little bit of monster even if he doesn’t know it.”

“You cut him up pretty badly.”

“Tempted?” Katie-Cam solicited. Mellie lightly slapped her.

“Mmm,” Katie-Cam writhed beneath her suggestively, “Sounds fun but maybe later honey, I need a nap and your human needs medical attention.” With that Katie-Cam curled in on herself and fell into the restful sleep of a woman who knows she’s the top of the food chain and nobody is going to mess with her, and for the time being that protection extended to Mellie too.

Now that Katie-Cam had killed three monsters in Mellie’s house it would send a message that for the time being Mellie was protected, not overtly, but no one would be attacking her or her human in her house.

She sighed wistfully. Life would be so much easier if Katie-Cam was there all the time, if she could extend apex protection to Mellie permanently, but Katie-Cam physically couldn’t stay there for more than a few days. She was gone too often for her protection to mean much when she wasn’t around and there was every possibility she might take a nap in the woods one day and wake up a decade later. She couldn’t offer protection simply because they both knew she didn’t have the attention span to enforce it.

Oh well, that wasn’t Katie’s problem, it was Mellie’s and she would figure it out. Brannagh’s offer entered her mind again and she wondered if he would be willing to settle for renting her human. Mellie could keep him at her home and Brannagh could take advantage of his studding services but the idea reeked of prostitution to her and she was human enough to find that concept indigestible.

She supposed she should go tend to her human before anything else became infected.

“Christ,” Mellie muttered as she slathered ointment all over River’s chest. He winced away from her stinging touch and the lancing pain of the betadine as the antiseptic seeped into his wounds, not to mention the lovely pungent aroma of it filling his nostrils.

“Hold still,” Mellie demanded. River went rigid even as she scraped along the inside of a deep cut with the wad of betadine. He gritted his teeth against the discomfort and he was sure from the gleeful look in her eyes she was enjoying herself.

As if she read his mind she said, “All pleasure comes at a price River, don’t indulge if you’re not willing to pay it.”

“In my defence…” he trailed off at her sharp look. He supposed she was right. What could he say in his defence? That he hadn’t wanted to be thrown to the couch and straddled within an inch of his life by a beautifully terrifying woman that had just saved his life… twice…?

“So do you believe in him?” River asked to change the subject.

“Believe in who?” Mellie asked absently as she applied another round of betadine to his chest before picking up some adhesive bandages.

“God.” River said, “I mean you said Christ before, was that just a figure of speech?”

“I believe,” Mellie muttered as she tried to fix the bandage on straight, “stop flexing your muscles.”

“I’m not flexing,” River protested, “I’m breathing.” And wincing, but it didn’t seem manly to say that part.

“Then stop.”

River held his breath while she taped the bandage down, he felt the edges of the adhesive sticking down to an open cut and it took everything he had not to jerk back as she pulled it free and reset it. Again he could have sworn she had done it on purpose. That wry smile of hers just promised she was up to something unpleasant.

“So God,” River said.

“What about him?”

“Well I mean I just thought that was kind of a human thing.”

“Why would belief in a higher power be exclusive to humans?” Mellie asked. She shoved a glass of water at him and he took it by reflex, “Swallow.” She pushed a couple of pills into his mouth and he gulped them down with the water. “We all came from somewhere, why wouldn’t the god that made you make us as well? Or do you think monsters are the work of the devil?”

“No, I mean, I hadn’t thought about it like that.”

“Even if,” she hedged, “monsters were made by the devil, the devil was made by God, so I would still have to believe in him.”

“I didn’t mean to offend you.” River apologised. She sighed.

“You didn’t, I’m just tired. I think I’m going to go to bed.” Her tone was short and clipped and River was pretty sure that was code for she was angry but didn’t want to talk about it.

“Nobody will be attacking us again, not tonight anyway so if you could do something about the bodies I’d appreciate it.”

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