Luckily the ceilings were way high.
On the second story up, Rutger swapped with Vargr so she rode his neck instead. His wings poked up to either side at times, and she was tempted to run her fingers down them. She wasn’t sure how this had come about, had seen no hand signals, but her beasters had swapped and Rutger handed her over like a piece of goods, delivered and signed for.
Now Vargr had his hands wrapped over her lower legs. Well, one riding beaster was as good as another.
On the third story, the males decided to each explore a different half of a long roadway that led past apartments and shops. She, of course, ended up with Vargr. It felt unfair to be sitting on his shoulders for so long even if he wasn’t looking even vaguely fatigued. If he ended up ill, she’d never forgive herself.
A certain need to disturb the status quo made her tap him on the head and ask to be lowered so she could walk.
“No,” he said. “This looks interesting.” He stepped through the shattered front window of a store and she ducked to miss the top frame. The roadway had an exit leading into the righthand side of the store, with a big car-sized opening, and he could’ve used that rather than crunching over loose glass.
Spread out from wall to wall, so that customers could browse, was a showroom of boutique cars in the best gloss paint. Sleek low creatures these. Luxurious interiors. Price tags to match. Blues, reds, grays, black, chrome and glass. Some of the cars displayed at the front were dusty, but the rest were nearly pristine.
“For the rich and famous.” Vargr smoothed a hand over the hood of one near the rear of the showroom, a low red dragon of a car with yellow-and-blue flames up the side, headlights that looked like big poppy eyes, and twin rising tailfins. “Let’s check the back room.”
“Let’s give a shout to Rutger first?” she suggested.
“Why? You afraid?”
“Of?” she asked idly, as he prodded the unlatched left wing of a pair of gray doors with the toe of his boot and pushed it open. It swung fully open and clicked into a holding catch on the wall.
“Me.”
Said so dryly, she wasn’t sure what he meant. Then again, maybe she did. She narrowed her eyes.
“Of you? Never.”
“Hmmm.”
This was a workshop area. Against the wall shared with the showroom was a long bench covered with spanners, wrenches, pieces of engines and other repair-related gear. Five vehicles were in various states of disarray—doors off, dashboards pulled out and left next to them, engines with the hood up.
He wandered past a dismantled car raised on a hoist, with the hood up and the tires off. The engine lay on the floor with chains hooked to a hoist ready to crank it higher to where the empty engine bay waited. Another engine on an overhead chain, hook, and pulley system had long ago fallen onto a car, crushing part of it. Someone’s lunch box lay on the bench and nearby a metal fitting sat locked in a vice.
Vargr reached up and grabbed her by the waist then brought her over his head. With a sudden twist, he flipped her in a circle and caught her again, then deposited her butt-down on the bench.
Her one gasped swear word as he tossed her was soon forgotten, along with her shock, though she hankered to call him a bastard. He’d distracted her by reaching and snagging the collar she still wore. In a deadly serious tone he said, “I think, you should be.”
Using a finger or two he twisted the collar tighter until she must lift her neck. His other hand was on her thigh, squeezing her muscles through the gray leggings. Leggings, jeans, and T-shirts with odd slogans—the required fashion for the apocalypse.
“Should bewhat?” She knew, even though the words he was following up on were ages ago, she remembered them. Smiling, she waited to hear him say it.
“You should fear me.” A red tide sifted higher in his irises. “You should fear what your nanites are doing. I can feel them pouring through me, eating up the man I was.”
It was a bald statement, but she doubted Vargr’s true self was vanishing, though fearing him was tempting her.
The muscles and veins of his recently demolished arm—the one he used to hold her collar—it pulsed a shifting red. It glinted with brilliances here and there, like the motes that fell from Rutger, yet these were trapped within his blood.
She’d seen his arm before, but not in such detail. How much was he changing?
“But you’re not a man. You’re a beaster,” she suggested quietly and in awe.
“Is this how you feel? How you felt when you shot me?” He bared his teeth, and she saw the tips of them, even and white.
“How is that?” she asked, lifting her hand to trace a thick vein down his arm. A subtle thrill met her fingertips.
“I want to fuck you until you scream. I want to fuck you and hurt you.”
Ohhh myyy.Her eyes had surely widened.
