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“Naw, don’t think so” he said. “Little pretty kitty fag-boy you? Be serious.” Leaning closer, showing me his: Bigger, whiter, sharper. “Believe that when I—”

—see it?

(Well . . . okay.)

And then, with a growl, I was on him—had him on his back, struggling, before he even had time to count his losses. We went at it hand to hand, no holds barred. I kneed him hard in the groin; he roared but sucked it up, cracking me across the jaw so hard I bit my own lip. Finally, as I hissed blood, he got his knees between mine and spread them hard, pinning me. I raked his face, so he flipped me, bit into my nape, and gave a flesh-smothered crow of surprise and delight. Rumbling, while I thrashed beneath him—

“Ah, now—that’s better.”

I bucked up like a hard-rode horse, made it to my knees—then froze as he slipped into position, humping me higher, drawing a helpless moan. So quick, for all his bulk. And the touch of him, raising hairs where I barely knew I had them—so raw, so rank, so right. So utterly, unnaturally Goddamn . . . natural.

“This,” he told me, firmly, “this’s how it should be. Way you’re feelin’, that ain’t something you manage—that’s an ancestor-gift, Lee, pure and simple. The very best part of your heritage.”

Trying to unseat him, and failing miserably. I gave one last half-hearted flail, one last hoarse groan, then managed:

“This’s me getting pissed, that’s all. Nothing more, nothing—”

A snort. “That’s your bear, Lee, lookin’ out through those baby blues. Sayin’ ‘hi’ to mine . . . ”

( . . . the way bears do.)

All hot breath and hunger, carrion-rank, honey-sweet. Grappling and snuffling. All claws and jaws and blood in every part of me, pumping me hard enough to pop on contact. Making me feel alive in a way I’ve never felt since: Not then, not now. Not before. And sure as hell not—

(after)

“Oh, shit,” I hissed, finally. “Just . . . shut the fuck up and fuck me, you fucking freak.”

Another grin, into my spine. “Whatever you say—”

(shield-)

“—brother.”

Karl didn’t just accept my unsociably low tolerance for annoyance, he encouraged it; we’d fist-fight as foreplay, go straight from making bruises to licking them. While all the men around him had been trained to try and keep their tempers—keep them on a leash, keep them in check—if Karl felt it, you knew it. It was like breathing to him, like sex. Like prayer. For Karl, rage was a means to its own end, its own energy and its own purpose: A negative rush, infinitely destructive and potent. It was meditation, masturbation, sex and drugs and rock and roll, all rolled up into one. An in-body out-of-body experience. Losing yourself.

Or, maybe—

—finding yourself.

“These guys I run with,” he said, “they’re weekend warriors, mostly. Talk big, sure, but ain’t nothin’ under their skin worth the lettin’ out. You, though . . . ” He paused. “You could go all the way, you wanted to.”

“All the way where?”

Well . . .

. . . that’d be the question.

(Wouldn’t it?)

Wherever Karl went, I suppose, all those years ago. Wherever he left me for, after I—finally—

—left him.

I try not to think much about that last night we spent together, if I can help it. That time we went up alone, just the two of us, with no disciples invited—when we built a fire so big it felt like we were cooking in our own sweat and fucked in every splintery corner of the house Karl’s Grampaw built, ‘till we were both so hot and tender we could barely move. And then, when everything was at its peak . . . when Karl, who never drank, had already downed what seemed like a potentially fatal load of fermented honey-mead he’d bought from some fellow Viking-obsessed freak in the Society for Creative Anachronisms, and made me match him slug for slug from a couple of dirty steins . . .

. . . then, if I force myself, I can just about barely remember what it felt like to find him pulling me outside by my hair, holding me upright against the wind and pointing me towards the trees. Crooning so low I could hear it move through his chest and into mine, like some subsonic earthquake-warning; pressing a knife—a Goddamn *knife*, serrated blade long as my femur—into my limp right hand, and telling me:

C’mon, Lee—tonight’s the night. Can’t you feel it comin’? My—