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The following is a work of fiction copyright Radical Gopher. The story contains adult situations and is not intended to be read by anyone under the age of 18. All characters depected herein are 18 years of age or older. This story is copyright Radical Gopher and may not be used or duplicated in whole or in part without the permission of the author.

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MIND GAMES: LYCANTHROPE - CHAPTER 1

The air was crisp and cold enough to freeze one's nose pad off. It was the kind of weather that made walking through the park late at night reasonably safe. Even muggers preferred warmth to freezing their balls off for the measly pickings a waitress carried. That, at least, was the theory. Rita, unfortunately was too young and naïve to see the weaknesses to this kind of thinking. A country girl newly transplanted to the big city, she had led the kind of sheltered life that inevitably led to rude awakenings.

The park provided a shortcut between her apartment and the late night cafe where she worked waiting tables. She could save fifteen minutes of walking. It would only cost the young girl her life.

* * * *

Pepper breathed into her hands sending a white mist drifting onto the morning breeze. The red-furred vixen quietly wondered how her quadruped cousins could tolerate the cold with little more than a layer of fat and a thick winter coat. Here she was, wearing not only her fur, but a thick jacket, a sweater, gloves, two pairs of pants, a scarf, a watch cap and snow boots, and she was still freezing her ass off. It was just one more piece of evidence that the geneticists who had evolved her species had screwed up somewhere in the design.

The sound of a nearby car horn pulled her out of her introspection. She turned in time to see a beat up old Nissan-Ford glide to a stop. The door popped open and a massive human climbed out, causing the car to raise about five inches off the suspension. He waved to Pepper and made his across the snowy glade to join her. The only addition he'd made to his normal wardrobe of jeans, football jersey and tweed jacket were a pair of gloves, a scarf and a thick, wool, trapper's hat with the ear flaps hanging loose. Pepper just shook her head and wondered if Saul was more closely related to his genetic ancestors than she was hers. She greeted him with her normal sense of the esthetic.

"You're going to catch a cold, dressing like that."

"Good morning to you too," the human responded cheerfully, watching her as she blew another puff of air into her hands. "Coffee?" She nodded, smiling as Saul pulled a small metal thermos out of his jacket. He unscrewed the lid and poured her a cup, then proceeded to sip the rest of the contents directly from the container.

"So what have we got?" he asked.

"Some crazy-assed jogger found the body about five-thirty this morning. Her hands were taped behind her back, her clothes pulled open or cut apart, her mouth was taped shut and a plastic bag was tied over her head.

"Rape-Murder?"

"Looks like it. There are two possible causes of death. Suffocation, or the single knife wound to her chest. The coroner will have to make that call."

Saul took a swig on his coffee and looked over at the vixen. "Which way are you leaning?"

"Suffocation," she replied matter-of-factly. "The blue mottling on her face and extremities can't be from anything else. The knife thrust appears to be post-mortem. It was powerful enough to punch straight through the breastbone and into the heart. If it had still been beating, the crime scene would be a whole lot messier."

"Which means the bastard was raping her as she suffocated."

"Maybe," Pepper said, "but let's not jump to any conclusions just yet."

"Any I.D. on the body?"

"None, but we do know her first name was Rita," she replied, holding up a oval name badge.

Saul took the badge and looked at it, turning it over in his hands. "This is pretty generic. Half the restaurants in town use something similar." He tossed it back to the vixen. "Did you put in a call for Chrystal?"

She shook her head. "Wouldn't do any good."

"Why not? She's got the best nose in the department."

"What am I? Chopped liver?"

"No offense," Saul replied, "but your petite proboscis is simply too cute for sniffing out clues the way Chrystal can."

"My nose may be small, but it's sensitive enough to know our murderer doused the crime scene with pepper spray. Once sniff and Chrys will be sneezing for a week."

The human grunted in disgust. "Is it my imagination or are the criminals getting smarter these days."

"I hope it's your imagination," she smiled wickedly. "There's little enough there to make it much of a threat."

"Well ha, ha, ha! See if I serve you breakfast in bed anytime soon."

"Promise?" she replied, chuckling. They continued to watch as the forensics crew worked the crime scene. Several minutes later one of the officers assigned perimeter duty called them over. Pepper and Saul made the short walk over to him and he pointed to a spot on the ground. They looked. There, partially hidden by a bush lay a long, thin, double-edged dagger with an ornately filigreed hilt.

The vixen called one of the forensics team over then spent several minutes jotting down notes in her report book describing the weapon and its immediate location. While she did this the lab rat, a young, human female actually, took pictures of the object from several angles before carefully lifting it with a pair of tongs and placing it into an evidence bag. Frozen blood encrusted the blade and spattered the snow around its imprint. The footpath adjacent to where the knife was found had been roped off and was heavily scored by a mix of both human and animal tracks.

"It almost looks like there was some kind of struggle right here. Do you see any footprints near the knife?" Saul asked."

Pepper looked around quickly, "No, nothing except ours and the lab coat's. What are you thinking?"

"This bush is a good six feet from the path. If our suspect had dropped the knife accidentally, it would have been closer. Also, the imprint seems wider than it should be, almost like it was knocked aside and not dropped."

"A fight, perhaps... between our murder and someone else," the vixen observed. She shivered against the cold then stuck her paws under her arms.

Saul nodded. "That someone may have witnessed the murder." He bent down and examined the scuffed earth. "Prints are pretty badly jumbled here. I'm guessing there was one, perhaps two humans and a very large, non-anthrop dog. Look at the size of the footpads. Definitely quadruped,"

"It looks like it might even be lupine and not canine," Pepper observed, blowing into her hands and rubbing them together even as she shivered heavily.

Noticing the vixen's obvious discomfort, Saul nodded his head in the direction of his car. "Come on, fuzz-ball. Let's go back to the station. We've got what we need for a preliminary report. The lab rats can finish up here."

* * * *

The squad room was toasty warm and Pepper quickly divested herself of most of her outer garments. To her surprise, she watched as Saul stripped off his jacket and shirt, revealing a military style pair of electrically heated, arctic long johns.

"No wonder you were able to stride around outside like Nanook of the North," she laughed. "Where on earth did you get those?"

"I found a company on-line that made them for me specially. They weren't cheap. Not many places have 6XXXLT in stock."

Reaching across his desk he picked up the phone and dialed a department extension. There was a short series of rings then someone picked-up on the other end. "Hi, Rick? It's Saul; from robbery homicide. Listen, did you get any prelim missing person reports this morning... Yeah, I know, 48 hours, but you know how friends and family can be when someone's gone over night. Uh huh... Yeah. Human... blonde hair, about five six, 115 pounds, first name Rita..."

Pepper watched as Saul picked up a pencil and jotted something down. In his massive hand it didn't look like much more than a toothpick. He thanked the person on the other end and hung up. "Any luck?" she asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes" he replied grabbing his shirt and jacket. "Grab your things."

"I just finished getting all that stuff off," grumbled Pepper as she once more climbed into her winter clothes. Fifteen minutes later the two detectives were standing in front of a small apartment building about five blocks from the crime scene. Their knock was answered by a short, black-furred Feli or anthrop cat.

"Can I help you?" she asked, eyeing the vulpine nervously.

"Detective Sergeant Fields, Sheriff's Department. This is my partner, Detective Blackthorne. We'd like to ask you some questions."

"Is this about my roommate, Rita?"

"Rita?" asked Saul, playing out the dumb cop routine.

"Yes... Rita Hollingsworth. She didn't come home last night, but when I tried telling the police, I was informed I had to wait 48 hours. They don't understand. Rita never stays out all night."

"Do you have a picture of this Rita?"

The girl nodded, reaching across to a small table next to the door. She handed Pepper a framed photo of herself and Rita, taken at some amusement park. The vixen looked at it, than passed it over to Saul. It was the same girl from the park, even down to the freckles.

Pepper handed the photo back to the girl. "I'm sorry, " she said. "Your friend was attacked last night in the park."

"Is... is she... alright?" whispered the Feli, fearfully.

Pepper merely shook her head. "I'm sorry," she repeated. The black-furred anthrop stared at the two detectives for a moment, and then suddenly folded up, keeling over in a dead faint.

"Nice technique, Sergeant," Saul observed

"Oh shut-up and help me get her over on the couch," Muttered the vixen

* * * *

It took several minutes before the Feli came to. When she did Saul handed her a glass of water and a small shot of rum from her liquor cabinet.

"I can't imagine why anyone would want to kill Rita," sobbed the feline. "She was so upbeat, so full of life. People who met her always liked her. She didn't have an enemy in the world."

"We don't know who's responsible yet," replied Pepper, "but I promise you, we will find out, miss uh...."

"Oh! Yeah... Cloie... Cloie Alexandra."

"Cloie?" asked Saul.

"It's short for Cleopatra. My parents were into rather exotic names." She downed what was left of the rum in one quick gulp, then set the glass on the table.

"Did she have anyone she was seeing on a regular basis? A boyfriend perhaps?" the vixen asked.

Cloie shook her head. "No. She and I moved in only a month ago. We both came up from a small town just north of Taos, New Mexico. We met in high school and been kinda planning to spend a year or two together before heading off to college."

The two detectives questioned the Feli for about twenty minutes, but there was little she had to offer that shed any light on the murder, motive or method. Rita Hollingsworth had led an irritatingly normal life. Nothing in it stood out that might make her a target for murder other than the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Returning to the sheriff's station, Saul began working up a case board while Pepper made the routine phone calls needed to solicit the victim's personal records. This was always the mundane part of detective work, yet more often than not a case could turn on some small, unobtrusive detail dug up through routine grunt work. The vixen was interrupted in her work by a phone call. She listened for quite some time scribbling down several pages of notes before hanging up and going over to Saul's desk.

"Got something?" he asked.

"The lab boys were able to lift a partial print off the knife found at the murder scene. They're running it through both police and military data bases to see if they can find a match."

"How soon until they know?"

"Three to four hours," the vixen replied. "The corner also has a preliminary cause of death."

"And...?"

"Heart failure, induced by asphyxia... and you were right. The bastard did rape her while she was being suffocated. The lab was able to recover some DNA samples, which they're tagging now. Trouble is, they won't have any results on that for at least forty-eight hours."

"What about the knife wound?" Saul asked.

"Post-mortem. The wound and knife match, as does the blood sample on the blade," Pepper reported. "The question now is, why stab the victim through the heart if she was already dead?"

The human shrugged. "Some kind of ritual?"

"Might be..." the vixen replied, sitting down at Saul's computer and pulling up the case board and transferring it over to the display screen that occupied half of one wall. She clicked on one photo in particular, zooming in on it. "Look here," she said. Saul looked over her shoulder at the board. It was a close up of the knife.

"What are those... letters? Symbols?"

"I don't know. They do look ancient though, like some kind of Celtic runes."

"The dagger looks like something out of a museum," he observed. "Whoever left it behind more than likely didn't intend to. Do the lab boys have anything on the scuffle prints?"

"They're a wash," Pepper responded. "Several joggers passed through the area before and after the body was found and before we could set up a cordon."

"Not surprising," Saul responded. "Crime scenes in public locals tend to be quite messy. I much prefer it when perpetrators find nice, secluded places to do their dirty work. It makes it that much easier to catch them."

"I'll put out a memo for you," the vixen replied sarcastically. She stared at the photo for a moment or two then began typing.

"Who are you e-mailing, fuzz-ball?"

"My cousin, Victor. You're right about this looking like it belongs in a museum. I figure if anyone would know about it, he might." She finished the message, then cut and pasted the photo as an attachment before sending it off.

The two detectives spent the remainder of the day collecting data and building a case board. When their shift ended the watch captain stuck his head into the squad room to remind them that they were not authorized overtime and to get their tails home. Neither felt like cooking, so Saul dropped the vixen off at their bungalow, then went out and bought three orders of take-out lasagna with salad from a local restaurant. By the time he returned Pepper had a nice fire going in the hearth and was seated on the couch wrapped muzzle to tail in her favorite snuggie. A bottle of red wine and two glasses sat on the coffee table patiently awaiting a suitable meal.

Saul disappeared into the bedroom, returning several minutes later dressed in a thick, warm pair of sweat pants and an equally thick bathrobe and slippers. They sat back on the couch, relaxing over dinner. The vixen turned on the vid system so they could watch one of the movies Saul had in his collection. By the end of the film, the vixen was cuddled tight against her partner. The human's right arm was wrapped around behind her and she had slid one paw out through a slit in the snuggie and was gently massaging it.

"I still don't get why a story as good as this hasn't been remade or updated with a more contemporary cast," observed Pepper.

"They've tried once or twice," the human explained. "The problem is the elements that made this film such a classic can't be duplicated. Almost everyone who likes old movies has seen it and no one could picture anyone else in the roles."

"I don't know... If you cast Rick and Elsa as Zorrs and the French police captain as, oh perhaps a Feli, it would make for a more interesting story."

Saul chuckled. "You do that and you loose the historical relevance. After all, there were no anthropoid foxes or cats living in Morocco in the 1940's"

"You're being too literal. You think historical relevance is important to either Hollywood or Bollywood when profit is involved?"

"Most of the time, no," Saul responded. "But in this case it's one of those elements that make this a classic"

"Maybe... but why make a movie that you'd have to be a history major to appreciate?"

"Ask your cousin."

Pepper barked a quick laugh. "If I did I'd have to spend the next half-hour listening to a dissertation on the merits of historical integrity." She gently pulled Saul's hand into the snuggie with her, grinning as he discovered she was completely naked under the blanket. Placing his hand on her breast she sighed contentedly as he began lightly running his fingers around her nipple. "You're so good at that," she almost purred. "I can see where this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship."

The vixen slowly moved her hand down her snuggie, unbuttoning it then pulling it open and draping it across Saul as she gently rolled over on top of him, kissing and nibbling at his lips as she did.

Her partner brought both his hands up and gently cupped her head between them, skritching along and just behind her ears.

"MMMMM... oh, that feels so nice," the vixen muttered.

Saul continued massaging the back of her head before slowly working his way down her neck, shoulders and back. Pepper's whole body seemed to soften like butter as muscles relaxed and she lay against the human's massive chest. She began flicking her tongue across his face, nipping lightly at his nose and nuzzling her head under his chin.

Massive hands reached downward and began massaging her hindquarters, running thick fingers under the base of the vixen's bushy tail. She shuddered and her butt cheeks clenched. Laying against him Saul could feel the dampness that was spreading outward from her clit. His own maleness stiffened, tenting his sweat pants even as her tail instinctively raised itself and started flicking against it.

Gripping the elastic of his pants, Pepper pulled them down to his knees in one swift movement. His shaft sprang free and lifted itself to full attention. "Oh my," she whirred. "I didn't know you were going commando."

Saul chuckled. "Since when have I ever worn boxers to bed?" He then grunted softly as she took his maleness in both hands and began licking the tip until it was dappled with pre-cum which she gently lapped away. For his part, Saul continued to massage her hindquarters, periodically running a think finger tantalizing up and down her nether lips.

Smiling playfully, the vixen released his shaft and lifted her snuggie until it was bunch up above her tail. She then reached down and grabbed the waistband of Saul's sweat pants. She slipped her feet into them, pulling them up around both herself and her partner. Unbuttoning his fly, she was able to thread her tail through the hole so it remained free. She then slowly squirmed her way up along Saul until she was positioned above his shaft, her legs spread atop his. The massive human continued to brush his fingers along her sex until she was literally dripping in anticipation.

Slowly, delicately, she eased herself onto Saul's shaft, impaling herself inch by inch. Both human and zorr hissed in pleasure as they filled and gripped each other. Once they were hilted, Saul firmly gripped the vixen by her hips and began pushing her up and down along his shaft. Unable to reach up as far as his head, Pepper began licking and sucking at Saul's nipples while she reached up and gripped him tightly by the shoulders. After several minutes she began moaning softly.

"Oh, yes... yes. Just like that... Ooohhh that feels soooo good. " Her panting became more rapid and shallow. Her body shuddered and her tail flicked uncontrollably as she felt herself building towards an orgasm. Saul remained quiet throughout, though Pepper could feel his heartbeat becoming more and more rapid. He began sweating, giving off a scent that seemed to drive the vixen wild.

Bracing against his shoulders she began lifting herself and driving down on his shaft more rapidly, her moans becoming loud yips and yowls of want and need. She was close, oh so close. Knowing this, Saul instinctively took one of his fingers and pushed it firmly into the vixen's anus. Pepper's cries suddenly turned into an explosive howl as she climaxed, drenching her partner with her juices. Her passage clenched tight against Saul's manhood, gripping and fluttering along his entire length for several long, volatile moments. That was more than enough to cause the human's sack to tighten and release a long succession of ropy streams of semen into her. The heat of his seed combined with the sensation of being filled triggered yet another long orgasm and Pepper wailed and tremored violently against her partner. When she finished, she propped herself up on his chest.

"You cheated," she accused, panting and grinning happily at Saul.

"I thought everything was fair in love and war?"

Pepper opened her mouth to reply when both their cell-phones beeped. Reaching for the phones on the nearby table they both almost fell off the couch. When they examined the caller I.D. they discovered the call back numbers were identical.

"I guess the watch commander wants to make sure we get his message," the vixen observed.

The human chucked. "That or he wants us to pick up his laundry on the way in tomorrow." He pulled a quarter out of his bathrobe pocket. "Heads or tails?"

"Too late," Pepper responded clicking on her phone, "I've already got it."

Thirty minutes later the two detectives, freshly showered and dressed, were on their way downtown.

TO BE CONTINUED...