Chapter 2

“Later,”Brance conceded.

Behind him Caleb stretched again.Brance risked a quick glance up and saw a glorious sight—his lover’s balls nestled in fuzzy hair,and the tip of his dick pointing down at Brance like a single sightless eye winking in temptation.If it weren’t so late,and the change so imminent…if only they had world enough and time…

A foot nudged the small of Brance’s back.“I see you looking,”Caleb said again.“Two minutes,I’m telling you…”

Sudden discomfort flickered across Caleb’s face as one hand clutched his lower belly.“God,”he gasped,a look of sickness on his young face.Turning on his heel,he raced for a low thicket nearby.Brance heard him retchas he disappeared into the underbrush.

It was nothing more than the moon on the rise,but when Caleb cried out in pain,Brance stood and half-turned to follow his lover into the trees before a cramp in his own stomach doubled him over.Clutching his abdomen,Brance fell,breathless,to the ground.His skin began to burn,as if flames lapped his body—pain slashed through him,radiating from his belly up through his chest,shooting down both legs,crippling his arms.In the cataclysm of change,his joints popped as his bones crunched down,reshaping themselves into a familiar feline form.Burnished hair erupted over the back of his hands,along his legs.As he writhed on the ground,his fingers fumbled to unbutton his shirt.His breath came hoarse and close,ragged to his own ears.Over the sound he heard the brook muttering to itself and,beyond that,Caleb’s quiet sobs.

With nerveless fingers,Brance managed to extract himself from the shirt.Hishands changed as he struggled to undress—his nails lengthening,curving,sharpening,his fingers retreating into padded paws.The last vestiges of humanity fell away as he kicked off his underpants—the legs that slipped from the shorts drew up to Brance’s body,feet dissolving into paws,ankles straightening,knees bending back as his thighs reformed into haunches.

Around him,the night came alive with sights and smells and sounds the human he had been could not appreciate.Brance lay on his side,panting,as he allowed himself to remember the feel of this body,its weight and power,the strength now flowing through his veins.The thrashing in Caleb’s thicket hadstopped,as well.The stench of man filled the clearing but Brance recognizedit as his own scent,mingled so heavily with his lover’s that the two became one.

A sudden roar split the night.It flashed like lightning through Brance,igniting his blood.As he rolled into a sitting position,the trees nearby shook—he watched a bobcat trot from the thicket,amber eyes trained on Brance’s face.Before he could react,the cat came right for him without hesitation.Its cold nose wrinkled as it sniffed over Brance’s forehead—he closed his eyes,waiting.

Then a choppy purr filled the night air,and the bobcat butted its head against Brance’s.::What about now?::the other cat mused.It turned,raising its short tail into the air to expose its anus.A heady scent blossomed between them,a randy,wild smell that eclipsed all others and madeBrance’s claws knead the soft dirt beneath him,eager.Caleb’s voice spoke into Brance’s feline brain.::Will you fuck me now?::

Brance’s answer was a flashing cry as he rose to his feet,barbed penis already extended in anticipation.

****

Brance was a nickname—while growing up in Lancaster County,Pennsylvania,the son of an Amish minister,he was known as Remembrance Brenneman.The eldest of seven children,his name came from the family Bible,which his father alone could handle.Amos Brenneman would take up the worn,leather-bound volume,sit in the sole chair by the fireplace,and wait for the family to gather around before opening the book to read the Scriptures aloud.It was the only time Brance ever saw gentleness in his father’s weathered hands,or heard kindness in his hard voice.

Theirs was a harsh life,eked from the land.Brance learned early on to keep to himself—his father didn’t condone idle chatter or gossip.He was a sternman,unsmiling,as strong as an oak tree and as unyielding.In his eyes,the children were little more than slaves,laboring in the fields or among the livestock,cooking and cleaning without complaint.Brance’s memories of hischildhood were silent;his father was a taciturn man who never spoke unless quoting the Bible and did not let his family do so,either.

By the time he was ten,Brance had grown into a quiet boy,brooding,with a shock of reddish-blonde hair that he kept hidden beneath a black straw hat.His father hated his mop of hair;he claimed it was a mark of the devil,and for years Brance harbored the unspoken fear that one day,Satan himself wouldcome for him.At times this thought both thrilled and terrified him—he dreaded the devil’s arrival because the Bible told him to,but at the same time he couldn’t help but wonder what would lie ahead for him if he took that path.Would it be as damning as his father decreed?Or would it fill him with the same decadence he felt whenever he hid in the darkness of the barn,pants down,to masturbate?That was a heavenly feeling,the pleasure that soared through him as his fingers danced over his own genitals.How could anything that felt so good be wrong?

According to his father,it was.Brance was caught at the deed only once—he was so lost in the moment,squatting amid the hay with his pants around his knees,fist pumping his hard dick as his thumb rimmed his own quivering asshole,that he didn’t hear his father enter the barn.When he ejaculated in a glorious rush of thick,white cum,his father snatched his elbow and dragged him half-naked from the barn.Stumbling over his fallen pants,Brancestruggled to free himself,but his father kept a firm grip on his arm as he pulled his son into the bright sunlight.

Embarrassment replaced his lust when Amos forced him to stand,pants down,inthe middle of the back yard.Raising his voice,he called for the rest of the family;one by one Brance’s siblings joined them,his sisters giggling at his nakedness,his brothers staring at the ground,ashamed to look as if afraid of being called out next.With his family watching,Amos whipped Brance’s bare buttocks with a paddle until the crack of wood on skin brought beads of blood to the already pinked flesh.Then he took the board to Brance’s hands,still sticky with cum.He broke two fingers that day,which Brance’s mother couldn’t mend until after the children were all in bed,their father asleep.As she bound his fingers together,she whispered,“Thouhast learned thy lesson.”

Brance glared at the wall in the darkness,hot tears he refused to cry stinging his eyes.The lesson was not to be caught again.His father be damned.

****

Later that same year,Brance became other.

His father’s duties as a minister often kept him out past nightfall.As the oldest son,Brance had to wait up for his father’s return—he was expected to wipe down the horses,feed them,and clean off the buggy while his father relaxed by the fire.There was no greeting when Amos arrived,and no assistance or words of thanks,either.It was a duty Brance had to do.Only once the horses were tended to and the buggy put away could he clean up himself and slink off to bed.

By late November,the wind had turned cold and the first hint of snow tinted the air.The night’s heavy rainfall chilled the darkness and muddied the dirt roads;Brance’s breath rose like a mist before him as he dried off the horses with an old blanket,his mind back in the house where the rest of the family slept.He could imagine his father all too well,seated in his chair asif it were a throne,warming by the fire while he read from the Bible.The thought rankled in Brance’s young mind.The rest of the district saw Amos Brenneman as a strong,upstanding man of moral character but Brance thought him cruel and lazy.He made his children work while he pored over the pages of a crumbling book Brance suspected held no more truth than anything else ever written,and he lorded over his family with a tyrannical rule beneath which Brance refused to bow.