Lacmere University – Chapter 9 – Hunting by Moonlight [4.7k Words]

There's claw, fang, and blood.

The black dog barks and growls, and Bobbi yelps as she leaps back for a single moment, her back paws digging a dark furrow through scattering round river pebbles before amber eyes dart my way for an instant.

Glowing, warm light looks at me through raised hackles, and there's fear in there, but I don't know who she fears for before—

She leaps right back in.

Jaws snap in the air vacated by necks pulled out of the way at the last instant, claws fail to find purchase in flesh, but black fur still flies away from both of them, the mane around Bobbi's nape and shoulders seeming to shield her from the very worst of the black dog's attack until… until I realize that, in this light, blood's also black.

A single droplet of black shoots away from her pointed claw when she swipes it past the hound's muzzle, but her white top is streaked with more and more dark wetness dripping from her shoulder.

Only the Moon and the stars show me this part of the forest by the small stream Bobbi was so mesmerized by just moments ago. Only gray and silver light show me two shapes of muscle and sinew facing one another, with Bobbi refusing to let the dog pass toward where I'm still standing by the trunk of the tree she just shoved me against and—

And I need to move.

I can't run. No matter what, I promised I would stay with her tonight. That I would see the sun rise by the side of the annoyingly cheerful girl. I won't—focus.

Unarmed. Not in immediate danger. Liability. I'm diverting Bobbi's attention, and she wants to shield me.

I'm carrying… keys, wallet, phone.

Can't call for help; this will be over too fast. Can't punch the dog with the keys thrust between my knuckles; it will tear my arm off. Can't—

End him rightly.

Or, according to the correct translation, end him quickly.

A stupid thing that became a meme in the corners of YouTube frequented by amateur swordsmen and historians. A technique depicted in a dueling manual, with somebody unscrewing the pommel of their sword to throw it at the head of their opponent. Many thought it was a joke because who would have the time to do so in the middle of combat, or who would risk crippling their weapon before the actual clash of blades.

Except it's a manual for judicial dueling. Armed combat regulated as part of legal proceedings. Where every combatant was assigned their equipment, the number and kind of weapons they were supposed to carry, and from a time long before the threading in sword pommels was as tight and narrow as it is today.

So, in a field cleared of any debris, without any stones that you could grab for a quick, underhanded attack, you just had to quickly turn your wrist a couple of times, and suddenly you had nearly a pound of brass or iron in your hand that could really ruin somebody's day.

As long as you were quick about it. Because nobody would just stand around at the right distance for you to throw that hunk of metal at their head when there was a duel to be fought.

So. End him quickly.

I drop on all fours, my hands sweeping the ground in front of me for something bigger than round river pebbles, and I only lift my eyes from the dark ground when Bobbi lets out a yelp of pain, and she briefly gets upright, clutching her shoulder as the black dog stalks around her, its tail eerily still, synched with its movements so it remains a black line of shadow that not even moonlight glints off.

Mild pain shoots up from the side of my right hand, and I immediately close my fingers around the edges of a stone half-buried in the wet loam. I pull, and the jagged thing comes loose, with clods of earth splattering away from the hole in the ground.

The dog tenses. Bobbi crouches lower, claws spread by her sides in a threat display that is terrible as a guard or a stance, but—

The dog's head twitches.

I throw.

I'm not trained in this. I asked Dad once to help me learn how to throw knives, and I only ended up with a lecture about how incredibly inefficient of a weapon a throwing knife is and that ninjas only got away with using shurikens because they were meant to distract, not kill—not to mention that having so many pointy ends really helped with that.

The stone still flies true.

I can feel the trajectory before I even see it, how the dog won't have the time to react before it hits it right between its eyes, and Bobbi can take advantage of it to—

It reaches the dog. Right to the point I envisioned.

It flies through.

Through the black dog's head.

Its red eyes blaze with what could be fury or amusement, and it tilts its intact head just slightly aside to look straight at me.

Bobbi jumps.

She throws her whole body into it, her shoulder hitting the dog's flank before her arms wrap around it and her feet dig into the earth, trying to push the giant thing off balance as it squirms in her grasp, jaws bigger than my face snapping near her neck, almost taking off her ear as threads of silver saliva break apart and splatter her with glimmering droplets.

"Brian! Run! Please!" she says, asking me to be smart, to leave the supernatural threat to the supernatural combatant. To let a monster fight another one.

But she's not a monster.

She's Bobbi.

And the black dog…

A part of me wants to take out my phone and look up black dogs on Wikipedia. See if there are any common weaknesses or depictions that would clue me to the best way to fight this thing off. A part of me doesn't realize that this is not the time.

Though that part of me notes that, if Roberta insists on further study sessions, at least now I have something to actually study for rather than stupid tests that are months away.

"Brian!" she yells again, and I can only watch impotently as the muscles on the dog's neck tense and pulse against its coat as it slowly turns, pushing Bobbi back through the path now empty of river pebbles that she's been fighting in. How its head nears her neck more and more, snapping fangs coming closer to grey skin as amber eyes blaze in desperation when she meets my gaze once more and—

My hand closes around my phone, and a hysterical part of me wants to ask the dog what's in my pocket. It will even give it three tries.

Because it's not a proper riddle.

But…

Bobbi growls then roars, and she rakes her claws past the thing's spine, drawing a fan of surging blood from its back that has it recoil for an instant before it readies itself to surge right back in, to bite at my—at Bobbi.

I won't let it.

Because I finally understand this riddle.

"Bobbi! Here!" I yell with the voice I've already trained her in for an entire night in a library we shouldn't have left today.

A ripple of tension goes through her, but it barely lasts before she turns toward me and leaps, her trust in me not letting her disobey the stupid, nonsensical order that has a black hound nip at her heels, the enormous paws drumming on the ground as it gains on her for the single instant it takes for me to lift my phone and take a goddamn picture.

My eyes fill with sparkles of color at the aggressive flash, and both Bobbi and the dog yelp at the painful assault. Both of them slow down, stumbling and losing their balance, and that's just as planned.

Because now, finally, it's my time to move.

I charge down the slight slope from the tree I am on all fours by, in what is very much like a sprinter's starting position, and I manage not to let go of my phone as my shoulder hits Bobbi's belly and pushes her away and further out of balance. She yelps once again in confused pain, but my arms are already wrapped around her waist, and when we hit the ground, it's my back that takes the worst of it as a very well-muscled werewolf reflexively clings to me.

And we roll.

The black dog shakes its head, red eyes blazing almost as bright as my phone's camera's flash, and it readies to jump after us, to chase its prey now that we're unable to fight back.

Except I don't plan on fighting back.

Bobbi and I turn around once more, sped up by my frantically kicking the ground to take us away from the monster, and I fall on my back once again with a heavy, tall, fit woman on top of me.

Except it's not round pebbles stabbing through my tattered shirt that make me gasp in pain, but the cold water of a mountain stream.

Droplets rain up all around us, glittering with moonlight and a sea of stars. I keep rolling, only catching glimpses of the beautiful sight of a clear sky shining down on us in a way that it never does in the suburbs I grew up in, in the way a night sky only does when you're away, surrounded by nature, with only your father's voice to teach you about the names of the stars.

I tighten my arms around Bobbi, and we keep rolling, both of us going under and spluttering when we reach the deepest part of the stream, but we don't let go to swim away; we just keep clinging to one another until… until we reach the other shore.

I don't dare look away from her amber eyes. I don't… let go.

I cling to her as she lies beneath me, her wet, white blouse torn in places, marred by dark blood, sticking to her gray skin.

I hug her as tightly as I can, afraid to let go and find her… not here. Too wounded beneath the slavering jaws of the black dog, the light in her eyes fading one last time without it being replaced by Roberta's sharp wit. Just…

Fading.

My heart thunders in my chest, and I finally notice it. It, my ragged gasps, and the sweat dripping down my forehead despite the cool water still flowing around us, swirling near the floating locks of Bobbi's wild hair.

I… I just combed through them. With my fingers. I just untangled as much of her mane as I could reach, feeling the warmth and softness of the woman beneath me, holding her against me, having her…

"You're… alive," I say. Stupidly. Clinging to the word. Treasuring it.

The black dog growls.

I look to my right, and twin streaks of red flicker over the stream as the dog struggles, its front paws scratching at the river pebbles without ever going from the shore into the water.

Because it's a ghost.

And it can't cross running water.

I laugh, finally, something incongruous and irregular that almost devolves into sobbing when strong arms cling tighter to me, and her soft body takes all of my weight when I allow myself to let go of all the hysterical strength I no longer need.

Cold washes down my body as the crash of adrenalin fades, and I find it stupidly funny how the sensation inside of me fits the one outside as the stream keeps flowing down, around Bobbi and me.

"You didn't run…" she says reproachfully, her face buried in the crook of my neck.

"I promised," I say as if that makes any sense outside of a fairytale. As if I was something other than a fencer, something older and nobler.

The water sings around us a song of peace and quiet, and the hound… fades.

But I only notice because there no longer are paws scratching at pebbles nor red lights flashing over swirls and eddies. I only notice that it leaves because it no longer intrudes.

Because there are no traces of it distracting me from the woman in my arms.

━❖━

"It stings," she says with her lips twisted in something too adorable for me not to laugh at.

So I do, relishing in my laughter not being something brittle, about to crumble into sobbing as I cup more of the cold water of the clear stream in my hands before I let it wash down the wound on her right shoulder.

She looks at me full of reproach, and I get only a moment of instinctive warning before—

"Gah!" I protest as I get a spray of water right in my mouth from the werewolf shaking herself on all fours in a way I would appreciate under any circumstances that didn't involve me getting a very unhygienic and frigid shower.

I had a dog once. I really should have seen this coming.

Particularly when it comes to the smug look of mischief on the girl on all fours who's now marginally dryer than a moment ago. Not like I am any better, seeing as it's autumn, and I just decided to get a little skinny dipping in the middle of the mountains sans for the skinny part.

… Okay, seeing as I am skinny, that doesn't quite work. What I meant to cleverly imply is that I was wearing my clothes when we took our impromptu bath, and that means that my constant fussing around the wounded Bobbi is about my only source of heat and the only reason for my teeth not chattering to a worrying degree.

Also, that wet clothes, no matter what has been promised to me by smiling girls on the other side of my computer screen, are not the peak of comfort.

At all.

Something that may have to do with Bobbi—

"What the Hell are you doing?" I say as I wave my hands in an uncertain way that goes from half-covering my pure, virginal eyes to trying and failing to stop the stripper werewolf.

"They are cold!" she says right before a white, torn, bloodied blouse loudly splats against my face, at least contributing to the shielding of my virginal eyes.

"I know they are cold!" The blouse isn't, as it quite clearly contains a lot of the body heat of a certain part of Bobbi's body, but that is a fact I'm willing to omit from my ensuing argument. "You still can't just strip in the middle of the mountains—"

"Why?" she asks with a curious head-tilt that is only revealed by the opportune fall of a blouse's sleeve away from my right eye and into my impotently spread arms.

"I… Because… I'm here?" I offer with a shrug that dislodges the rest of my impromptu blindfold.

Bobbi blinks at me.

I blink back.

She tilts her head. Again.

I most definitely don't, but only through a non-insignificant expenditure of willpower.

She smiles.

I don't, but only because I'm too busy trying not to swallow my own tongue as Bobbi takes off her bra and immediately cups together gray, round, expansive flesh that all but spills between and over her fingers even as her palms do an enviable job of hiding away the briefly revealed dark areolas that there's not even a hint of in what Bobbi is now showing off to me as she moves her hands up and down, pushing them together and apart, creating a deep line of shadowed cleavage that suddenly turns into an open, inviting cleft of skin that I could see myself licking up and down—

"Stop," I say, trying and failing to find that commanding note that would get Bobbi on her knees, head bowed, amber eyes upturned to look up at me, and this is definitely not helping in the slightest.

"Why?" she asks in coquettish, fake confusion.

"Because… because we just went through a life-or-death struggle, and my head's not clear enough to make any decisions?"

"You don't have to cum inside," she offers with a wide, white grin that not even her fangs make any more predatory than it already is.

"Bobbi!"

"But you can…" she says, taking a hip-swinging step toward me and only stopping when the back of her hands almost brushes against my wet shirt. "Roberta takes the pill, remember? You can fill me up, Brian. You can do everything you want to me. You can take me, and let me take you. You can… You can make me do everything. Everything," she says, her hands rising, her breasts pushing up against one another, the line between them and the skin below her collarbone creasing as warmth wafts off the offered flesh, and I'm hit with the scent of Bobbi mingled with fresh, mountain water.

"E… Everything?" I ask with a trembling voice.

Her smile brightens and she leans down so that the tip of her nose brushes against mine as amber light takes my whole world.

"Everything," she purrs, yet again reminding me that she's not a catgirl but very well could pass as one when she wants to.

So I grab her nape, my fingers clasping at the protective mane that may have saved her from something worse than pierced holes in her shoulder, and I pull, her mouth opening in a gasp that I take advantage of as I push my lips against her black ones and my tongue into a mouth lined by sharp teeth and glimmering fangs.

She… she tastes wild. Intense. It takes her a moment to react to my tongue being inside of her, to lick back with eager, welcoming enthusiasm as her eyes close and her hands abandon her breasts to grab at my back and pull us close together so that soft flesh warms my chest.

My right hand remains buried in her mane, but my left roams. It explores the shifting muscles on her back, the texture of her skin, the slight peach fuzz that stands out now that she's dried under her black locks. I trace the dip along her spine with the pad of my thumb, and she squirms against me with the sensations I send through her with a touch guided more by instinct and curiosity than experience.

She's new.

I'm not a kissless virgin. Not quite.

But Bobbi is…

I step against her, pushing my body harder against hers, the wet leg of my pants pressing against her pushed-up skirt and black panties, and Bobbi moves back while remaining as close as she can to me until a tree blocks her retreat and I just push harder, making her moan against our twinned tongues, making her feel the rough bark on her skin as I dare reach further down and finally grope the supple, toned cheeks she's flashed my way too many times for me to process.

"Brian!" she gasps when I pull away from her lips only to immediately dive down to the side of her neck, licking and sucking at the spot beneath where a human ear should be, right under her clenching jaw, over the point where her pulse blooms, darkening already gray skin.

"Bobbi," I growl, opening my mouth and pressing down with my teeth, and, no matter how inadequate they may be compared to her own fangs, she immediately goes limp in my arms, slumping against the tree behind her as her knees buckle.

"Oh… Oh, please, Brian," she says, her hands on my head, the points of her claws tracing thin lines of fire under my cheekbones and across my scalp as I move side to side, digging the tip of my tongue between the muscles on the side of her neck, making her squirm and relishing in every second of it.

I squeeze her right cheek with my left hand, shaking the soft flesh twice in my grasp before I let go, and I crawl my way past her bunched, wet skirt and up her back, along the expanses of skin that aren't trapped by me pushing her against the tree behind her.

My fingers untangle from her mane, no longer pulling her hair or hackles, and I circle the twin tendons framing her nape, massaging them in soothing circles that only make her mewl against me, the vibrations of her voice rumbling across my lips on her neck.

Across my tongue on her skin.

I'm so hard it hurts. So hard I would fear a sudden, abrupt end to this whole thing if she were to even graze me with her fingers, but she's too busy to think about that when her entire body seems to sing against mine as her plush thigh wraps around my hips and demands more closeness from me, more warmth and touch.

More… me.

"Bobbi…" I whisper heatedly over the wet patch of skin I've kissed, licked, and suckled, uncaring that her ears are higher in this form of hers, yet still missing the chance to nibble on an absent earlobe as I content myself with pinching the sensitive skin lining the underside of her jaw with my lips as I massage her back and nape, relaxing and enticing her at once while her bare breasts against my no longer wet shirt drive me higher and higher to the point of excitement where thoughts become muddled and only hunger remains.

"Brian… Oh, God, Brian, this… this is what I…"

"You will do anything, won't you, Bobbi?" I ask, this time going to the twitching, black ear standing straight past jagged locks.

"Everything," she answers as her arms close around me and her satin black panties once more rub along my length like when she was trying to entice me before we got interrupted by a monster of myth.

Before she got hurt defending me.

I stop massaging her nape and pull once again, the surprised gasp that I tear from her throat making something dark and warm surge inside of me as I stare down into amber irises that have a hint of a starburst. That have so much in common with Roberta's yet are still so different in the way that pure joy, delight, and anticipation shine through.

"Then…" I lick my lips before I continue, and she whines when she sees it, her eyes locked on my tongue, her hips suddenly pressed harder against mine. "Then, Bobbi… let's cuddle."

She freezes, and it takes her a moment to slowly look up from my wet lips into my eyes.

"You're not serious," she says.

"I'm serious. And don't call me Shirley," I answer.

She groans.

"Airplane? Really?" she says, her pointed claws seemingly slightly more threatening on my scalp.

"Hey, Roberta complained that I didn't quote it properly earlier. I just had to take the chance."

She looks up at me as if she's trying to solve something complex and mystifying before she leans forward to rest her forehead on my chest.

"It's still not the right quote…" she mumbles.

"I know," I answer.

And then, slowly, I sink down to the forest floor and turn us around so that my back rests against the bark of the tree and Bobbi's against my chest, filling an empty spot I never noticed until this very moment.

━❖━

"Brian?" she murmurs after a while of looking up at the silver stars and the sparse, purple clouds melting under the light of the Moon.

"Yes, Bobbi?" I answer while kissing her hair.

"Why don't you… why don't you want me? It's… I know you do. I can smell it on you. I can feel you on my back," she says, briefly adjusting to make sure that my trapped erection is indeed still pressed more or less along the dip between the muscles surrounding her spine. "So… why?"

I take the tip of her ear past my lips. The fur is soft, but it's still an unfamiliar sensation to have it inside my mouth, and I prod it with the tip of my tongue with more of an experimental mindset than anything else.

She whines, her tail, pressed sideways between the two of us, slapping on top of my thigh as she undulates against me without quite trying to free her ear from my curious examination.

So long as she doesn't shed… I could get used to this.

"Brian…" she protests, her hands clutching at my arms wrapped around her waist.

"I don't want to hurt you," I finally answer.

"Just how big are you?" she asks, suddenly looking up at me with wide, curious eyes that—

"Not like that," I answer as I finally process how she has processed my earnest, heartfelt—

"Like… I think I'm pretty tough? But I could practice! Oh, you could spread me wide open and I would just heal when I changed back, so that's no problem! Roberta wouldn't even have to walk funny! Come on, Brian, show me—"

"For fuck's sake—"

"Yes! That! For fuck's—"

"Bobbi. Sit!"

Her tail mercifully stills in the midst of bruising my thigh, and her behind settles in front of, rather than on, my crotch.

Immediately, just to make sure no further events occur, I tighten my hold on her and hug her closer to my chest. And this, of course, is just a way to immobilize the unstable bundle of energy rather than a way for me to express nonverbal relief at the assurance that she'll be healed come morning, and Roberta won't ever show the scar of a black dog's bite on her shoulder.

"Brian? Are you… sad?" she says.

"No. No, I'm just… relieved."

She rubs the top of her head against the underside of my jaw, and her fingers dance across the back of my hands.

"Why?" she finally asks as I relax my hold on her minutely.

"I… I was worried. About your wound," I say.

"Ah. It's not the first time," she says with a mild shrug.

"The black dog?" I say.

"Sometimes," she says, her tone drifting off as she reclines against my chest and looks up at the same stars I paid attention to when not too busy staring at the girl in my arms. "Sometimes it's other things. Things that hurt and hunt in the night. They can be weak or strong, tricky or straightforward. The black dog… I usually run. I can't kill it, not for real, but today…"

She trails off.

Today, I was here.

And so, she couldn't run from the thing that she can't kill.

"Bobbi?" I say, my voice breaking the silence of a cool forest on an autumn night.

"Yes, Brian?" she says, her eyes going from the Moon up above to her rippling reflection on Lacmere's lake.

"I won't let you be hurt. Not by yourself. I won't let you be alone and hurt anymore," I say with what would be an oath if the castle on the other side of the lake held something other than the staff of an aggressively eccentric university.

She shifts against me, the underside of her breasts brushing on top of my bare arms, and I resist the urge to hold her even closer. To kiss her all through the night just to make sure she's still with me.

Amber light shines up on me, and I turn down from the sky above to witness the look of wonder and acceptance in her eyes, the soft opening of her mouth, the—

"Does that mean puppies?" she whispers.

And I do my very best not to push her off me and run to the other side of the stream.

━❖━⧫━❖━

So… Remember when I tried to keep to biweekly updates for this whole thing? Good times, good times…

…

Yeah, sorry about that.

I haven't really felt capable of writing at my best for quite some time now, but, hopefully, the latest chapter (10k words about whether Brian or Roberta were right about a certain librarian (https://www.patreon.com/posts/lacmere-chapter-120739818?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link)) will be up to par when it reaches you in, this time around, the 4th of February, assuming I manage to stick to a sensible release schedule that stops involving random all-nighters.

Anyway! Tell me your thoughts on how the Black Dog thing went, and just how utterly pompous it was of Brian to go off on a long-winded tangent about judicial dueling just to end up doing… this.

See ya soon!

As always, I'd like to thank my credited supporters on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/Agrippa?fan_landing=true): aj0413, LearningDiscord, Niklarus, Tinkerware, Varosch, Vergil1989 Crossover King, and Xanah. If you feel like maybe giving them a hand with keeping me in the writing business (and getting an early peek at my chapters before they go public, among other perks), consider joining them or buying one of my books on https://www.amazon.com/stores/Terry-Lavere/author/B0BL7LSX2S. Thank you for reading!