James Axler – Way of the Wolf

Ryan waited, giving the woman time to gather her thoughts.

“Soon as he was finished with my mouth, he turned me over on my desk and started hauling my skirt up.” The woman licked her lips.

Jocelyn stepped up behind her and patted her shoulders, tears flowing freely down the woman’s cheeks.

The hosteler continued. “I was desperate that he not see me. I knocked the lantern from the desk, and it caught the rug on fire. The rest of the room was concrete blocks at that time. I hadn’t had time to recondition and remodel in there yet, and business then wasn’t what it became as Kirkland built up the population of Hazard. The kerosene burned the carpet.”

“Laid flat across the desk, I was brutally sodomized. Kirkland told me he was saving the best for last. When he finished that time, he flipped me over. I tried to get to my razor, but he knocked it away. Then he saw my—my male member staring back up at him instead of what he was expecting.”

Ryan had no comment for that. He glanced briefly at Krysty while Jocelyn tried to comfort “Aunt” Maim.

“You see,” Aunt Maim said, wiping at her eyes, “I was stuck. Do you know what it’s like to be trapped in a body, in a gender, that you know can’t be your own?”

“No.” Ryan’s voice was tighter than he wanted it to be, but the story had caught him completely by surprise.

“I found a healer back east who had access to some predark meds. I talked him into going this far with me.” She waved her hand at her chest. “But he didn’t have the skill to make the final changes. I heard there was an enclave out in the west, somewhere along the Cific, that still handled operations like this. Have you ever heard of such a thing?” She looked up through her tears hopefully.

Ryan shook his head.

“No,” Krysty said gently.

Aunt Maim used her napkin to wipe at her face. “It would be funny, don’t you think, that I came out all this way and endured what I’ve endured only to find that I was chasing a lie?”

“I wouldn’t think so,” Krysty said sympathetically.

“We all have to chase dreams in there somewhere,” Ryan told her.

“I’m going to be a lot slower these days,” the hosteler replied, slapping the wheel of her chair.

“Kirkland cut her in a fit of rage,” Jocelyn said. “Knocked her out and took her back to his office. He cut off her arm and her leg, then her ear and her breast, took out her eye, then—then he cut off her penis. He vowed that he’d make her half the man she’d hidden from him. He spent weeks taking care of her, making sure she was going to live, before he returned her to us.”

“You see,” Aunt Maim said, “I was still the best hosteler he could put into this place.” She glanced around the dark room with pride. “He couldn’t take that from me, and he would only have been hurting himself by trying to put someone else in here. But I have to wonder how many days I’ve got left now that Kirkland’s tightened his control over Hazard. Not many people come to the hotel these days.”

“Well,” Ryan said, “I’m here to tell you that you still set a fine table.”

“Thank you.” Aunt Maim fixed her single eye on Krysty. “Your lover is a man, Miss Wroth, so he’s probably already got his mind made up as to how he’s going to handle the situation with Kirkland. But I’d like you to persuade him, if you can, to kill this monster before you quit this place.”

“Ryan usually can’t be talked into anything,” Krysty said.

“Please try. Strangely one of the things that hurts me the most is the fact that Kirkland denies everything that happened that night. When I tried to tell the original settlers in this ville all those years ago what happened to me, he stated that his vengeance was only an example to let them know what would happen to anyone who tried to steal from him. That if they weren’t willing to give him his half, he’d take his half out of them.” Her voice cracked, but she made herself go on. “He denied that he’d ever desired me or taken advantage of me.”