Chapter 2

"Damien." Perra called softly.

"Damien!" More urgently and louder when he didn't come.

"Damien!!!" She finally heard a response from behind the door.

It opened a little and Perra saw the familiar visage, or one side at least around the edge.

"Damien!" The joy in her voice was obvious to Damien regardless of who she was or what she was doing there in the middle of the night. She was young enough that she didn't seem threatening and her outfit looked familiar enough. Was she someone from the estate? Was there a problem? Or was she a stalker he hadn't been aware of? He couldn't think of anyone like her that he had noticed.

"Yes?"

"Damien!" The girl had calmed down at least. He wasn't about to get thrown out for causing a disturbance while still on probation with his landlady. He hoped.

"Wait." That was a word Perra knew and she obediently waited while the door closed and the chain was removed.

When Damien swung it open with the words "Who are you and what do you want" on his lips he was not expecting to be knocked back into the room by the attractive young woman who threw her arms around him and began licking his neck and face.

Any pleasure faded when he managed to get his hands on her shoulders to push her away so he could see her properly. Her face was still a little bloody, as was a sleeve and her collar where the fabric had wiped the fresh blood from her neck the previous morning. Her hair looked a fright and she was also a little high! Had his eyes been functional when he first went to the door he would have thought twice about opening it. Now he asked the question that had been aborted.

"Who are you?"

"Perra."

"Perra? I'm sorry, the only Perra I know is a wolf."

"Is me. I am Perra. I am wolf. I am your wolf. Your Perra."

Damien was seriously worried now. This girl must have been at the estate without his knowledge and when he had been dismissed must have heard about the role Perra played. Was she just some psycho who had a crush on him? If so she had done well to find him; he hadn't contacted anyone at the estate since his dismissal and he doubted that the person who had interviewed him would have given his details out to the girl before him.

Damien thought again. "No but he would be very likely to pass them on to someone as powerful as my former employer. This girl must have found out from him. Damn. They're just as likely to come looking for her and I'll be in even more shit!"

Still, even in her bedraggled state, she was something to look at. Damien decided it was a pity she hadn't made contact with him while he still worked there; some of the nights had been rather lonely.

"Come over here and have a seat." He led Perra to a couch and got her to sit. "Are you thirsty?"

Perra had a sense of déjà vu. The last time she had sat in a sofa someone else had given her an unpleasant drink. She trusted Damien however. "Yes Damien"

"What would you like?"

"Water, Damien"

"Okay. I'll be back."

That was another sentence she understood and every time Damien had said it in the past he had spoken the truth. Perra relaxed.

Damien closed the door and went to the kitchen, returning with a glass of water and his cell phone. He found the girl had discarded her work boots and was spread over the sofa, trying to find an accustomed position that was comfortable with the awkward limbs she now had.

"Here you are. I just have to make a call."

Perra sat up again and took the glass. She tilted it slightly so the water was closer to the edge and lapped at the surface. Damien grimaced as he turned away and pressed the familiar digits into the phone.

"Hi Damien here. Yeah, sorry it's so late Doug. No I found a place and I think I have another job lined up. Not as glamorous that's for sure. Listen, the reason I called. Has there been anyone from the estate reported missing? A teenage girl for instance? No? No, I just met someone I thought might have been from there. I don't really have any reason to think she is it was just a funny feeling. What! Really? I can't believe it. Maybe he's just lost it in the enclosure -- it's a big area after all - or maybe one of the others killed it. I lost one of the hyena's that way once, one of the old ones who got too weak. Okay then. Thanks and sorry again about bothering you."

Damien pressed the lock button and put the phone down. If Miss Crazy had only been reported missing he could have expected her to have been responsible for a missing animal. But Doug only knew the count of the wolves had come up one short. There was no suggestion that it was Perra and the new keeper probably couldn't distinguish between them anyway.

That still left him with a crazy, but most attractive, young woman in his apartment. The woman was looking a little distressed. Was she upset he had been asking about her?

"What's wrong?"

"Need quick piss." She recalled Damien's comment that he was " ... only going to have a quick piss and I'll be right back." It had been accompanied by a clear smell of urination when he had returned and Perra had learned a new phrase.

"Oh. Sorry. It's this way." Damien took her hand and helped her from the sofa and then led the way to the bathroom. Shower over the tub behind a cheap green plastic curtain (with white seaweed and sea horses for some reason) and the toilet down one end of the room, hidden from casual view behind the door when it was open.

He turned on the light and ushered her inside. "I'll be out in the lounge. You might want to wash up as well."

He closed the door and walked away wondering who he should call. Something bothered him though. The girl's strange eyes certainly reminded him of a wolf's, and her hair had the same quality and shade of his favourite. He wished her story could only be true.

Perra had ignored the strange seat at the end of the bath. In fact none of the features, other than the taps, were at all familiar. She had an urgency that would not have worried her in the enclosure, she would simply have squatted wherever was most appropriate. She couldn't understand why Damien had closed her in here, he had seen her piss and shit on many occasions without drawing attention to it.

She stripped off the coveralls, finally feeling free of the enclosing fabric, and threw them over the handy toilet seat before squatting on the tiled floor. She noticed the circular drain in the centre of the greyish tiles; it reminded her of the sluice channel at the zoo and the smell told her that wastes drained there so she moved reasonably close and a good part of the stream of urine went down it. The rest puddled on the tiles between her arched feet.

"Oh that felt good." Perra must have held her bladder closed for almost two minutes -- a record for her. She had never needed to hold on for that long before!

"What was it Damien said? Wash up?"

She had watched him clean up at the trough outside the store room so the concept wasn't foreign though it wasn't something she had done herself, at least as the humans did.

She stepped to the basin and noticed the other female naked there before her. He lips automatically drew back in a challenge and the human bitch did the same. "Who is she? Why is she here with my Damien?"

Perra didn't know how to react -- friend or foe, flight or fight. Her heart was pounding just in case. She needed assistance.

"Damien!"

She heard his feet hurrying in response to her urgent call. There was a tapping against the door.

"Is everything okay?"

"Not okay! Who is she?"

Perra turned back from the door to catch the other woman sneaking a look that way too.

"She? Look I'm coming in, okay?"

"Okay."

The other woman mouthed the same response but Perra heard only her own words.

"What the?" Damien opened the door to find the girl naked staring at the mirror with a familiar rictus on her face. The scent of fresh urine was noticeable even to his poor nose and he looked down at the mess on the floor.

"At least she hadn't needed to shit", he thought.

None of that mattered when she turned towards him. The rest could all have been strange coincidences and a warped mind but when Damien's eyes jumped down level after level of exposed breasts he began to wonder if it wasn't his mind that was warped.

He seriously considered her physical structure; perhaps that was why she thought herself a wolf. He had heard of supernumerary nipples but never actual breasts. He wouldn't put it past his former employer to have "collected" some human oddities.

Damien grew angry when he realised it would have also amused him to have told her she was a wolf and given her the name of one of his other pets. Had she been kept isolated? Was that why her speech was hard to follow at times and her social skills most inadequate. Should he call the Police or would they be in his employ too? He might only be sending the girl back into a life of misery.

"Who is she?" Perra repeated, breaking into his reverie as she stabbed her finger at the mirror.

Damien looked at the reflection.

"It's only you." He came up to stand beside her, avoiding the puddle, and a man looking just like him moved to stand beside the other woman.

"Look" he said and began to wave his hand about. His double did the same.

"Put your hand here." Damien took Perra's warm hand in his and stretched it over the basin to touch the cold glass surface.

Perra had been wary when the other girl put her hand out as well but when she found it was a cold hard surface she was touching and not someone's warm soft fingers she started to understand a little.

"Like in water?"

"Yes" said Damien, "like looking into your reflection in the water. It is you." He pointed at her and then at her reflection and Perra noticeably calmed, breaking out into a most human smile.

"And now I think we should clean you up. But first..."

Damien got a plastic jug that had come with the bathroom and part filled it with water.

"Excuse me." He pulled Perra over to one side and washed the remaining piss down the drain.

"Oh!" she said. "Wash ground after piss. Okay."

Perra was willing to learn the right way to behave as a human. Damien wasn't quite ready to give her all those lessons. He still didn't know what to make of her.

He had to admit that she was beautiful behind the grubby face, and body now he could see it. The extra breasts were simply unbelievable to see and his mouth watered with a Pavlovian response that had nothing to do with ringing bells.

Damien considered his options. She wasn't concerned with her own nudity before him and she really did need more than just a face washer.

"How about I run you a bath?"

That confused her. Hadn't she done enough running? Where did Damien want to run? Did he want her to run with him? And what was a bath? It showed on her face.

"I'll put water in the bath", he patted the side, "so you can wash. Okay?"

If Damien said so, Perra would do it. "Okay"

She watched with interest as he put a plug into the round hole, it's redness contrasting against the shiny white enamel of the bath and it's rubber smell noticeable through the mingled scents when she focussed on it.

Damien let the water rise, testing the temperature occasionally.

"There, I think that should be okay. Do you want me to leave you alone?"

"Alone! Not effin likely." Perra used the expletive just as Damien had used it in front of her. She did not want to be alone after taking all this trouble to find her Damien.

Damien was shocked, not by the language but by the force of the girl's emotion. She quite clearly wanted his company and he just wondered what he was getting himself into.

"Okay. Why don't you just pop into the tub then. Er, sit in the bath please." He wondered why she could understand some sentences and then seemed totally bewildered by others. He watched as she climbed in, gingerly testing the water, before turning to get both soap and flannel. Damien was aware of the erection in his shorts, hidden only by his robe, and he hoped it subsided before the girl noticed.

His interest changed from prurience to concern when he got a clear view of the dark bruise and the wound on her arm.

"What happened here?"

He pointed and Perra looked. She couldn't remember the work Al had used -- it had only been said once and she had been rather involved in other matters at the time.

"Was not knife."

Perra had not even associated the bang with the weapon. Her description wasn't helpful and she couldn't add anything extra. Damien wasn't familiar with gunshot wounds either. She could have been skewered with something round; perhaps a point on top of a fence. It looked clean and wasn't bleeding. If she had been shot it must have been a small calibre bullet as it had passed right through without chewing things up. Regardless of the cause, if Perra had suffered any serious damage Damien was sure she would be doing more than holding that arm still by her side most of the time.

Unless he planned on hauling her to the nearest hospital it was going to be better to ignore it for now. After all there was the same likelihood that anyone important there would be under the thumb of the "benefactor" (Damien sneered at the label now) as the Police. It was easy to become paranoid and start seeing conspiracies once you started.

He took a deep breath and decided to return to more mundane matters. Damien extended his hand.

"Here you are." Once again the girl seemed ignorant of the purpose of the two items, sniffing them and almost about to bite the soap before Damien gently stopped her.

"Would you like me to wash you?" "Perhaps at least start her off so she can take over", he added to himself.

Perra relinquished them and Damien soaped up the flannel then carefully wiped it over the girl's grubby chin and cheek.

He did her chest, where the blood had crusted, and her back, and then got her to raise her arms one at a time while he washed the sweat from her armpits. Then he chickened out. It would be bad enough soaping and then rinsing ONE pair of firm young breasts but if he had to work his way through eight perfectly formed, though shallow, mounds he would not be able to control his own throbbing protrusion.

Perra had appeared in the middle of the night looking rather abandoned. Damien decided to try to avoid a confrontation he wasn't yet ready for.

"Are you hungry? Perhaps I can get you something to eat while you finish off?"

He had looked at her hair and decided it could get by with just a brush for now. If he did need to call in the Police a clean body might not be worth commenting about but wet hair might raise some questions that may be harder to answer.

"What would you like?"

"Goat or sheep is okay. Anything."

"Hmm. I don't think I have any goat or sheep so it might have to be anything. I'll leave the door open so call me when you're ready to get out."

Shaking his head at the girl's insistence in staying in a character he was half convinced was real, Damien took a detour into his bedroom to get an oversize t-shirt he sometimes sat around in during the evenings when he wasn't comfortable being naked and yet didn't want to get dressed again. The overalls looked like they needed a wash so she might as well wear his clothes for now.

He threw it over a chair and raided the refrigerator.

Perra called as he was still getting the ingredients assembled and he took the "nightgown" into the bathroom.

Once again, having been helped out of the bath, Perra watched closely as her Damien pulled out the plug and the now soapy water spiralled away.

Damien used his own towel to dry his guest, willing this time to pat down each mammary in addition to drying her pert behind and each pale thigh. Like Al before him he observed the fine coating of straight grey-black hair over her pubes as he worked on her knees and calves. Perra could scent his growing arousal and smiled as she looked down on his head.

He was her Damien. She would be his Perra.

Perra accepted the garment; it was certainly softer than the discarded overalls and the carpet in the lounge was much nicer underfoot than having to wear those heavy boots.

As he stood looking at her, and the way the t-shirt rippled all the way down her front Perra stepped closer and once again licked his cheek. She inhaled his maleness and noticed his shivered response. Why then did he back away?

"Come on. Let's get you some food. When did you last eat?"

Perra thought back. She had no concept of hours though she recognised the short time period of "just be a minute". She did understand the parts of the day though.

"Last night." Gabe's member hadn't been all that nourishing and Al's throat had been gristly. Perra had spent a lot of time and energy tracking Damien down and she was hungry.

"Bacon and eggs on toast okay?" It was simple and quick and not usually objectionable.

"I don't know. What is bacon-and-eggs-on-toast?"

The more Perra spoke the easier it was for Damien to understand her speech. She didn't seem quite as incapacitated as he had first suspected but then she would come out with a comment like that. He wondered once again what the girl's story really was.

"This is bacon, these are eggs, and this will become toast." He held up each item in turn.

Perra wasn't interested in the toast. The eggs were unfamiliar but smelt somehow okay. She took the bacon and peeled back the plastic. It was just like the overalls she had worn.

"Clothes for food!" she thought with amusement.

She bent her head over the package and sniffed audibly. It seemed okay though the animal must have been terribly unfit; it was full of fat. Before Damien could stop her Perra had taken a bite of the raw stack of rashers.

Or at least she had tried to. Her human jaws could not slice through the tough rind and she had to pull the meat off of the string-like strands. It was saltier than she had expected and she chewed quickly. Swallowing she turned to Damien.

"More water Damien."

"Holy cow! You're supposed to cook it first."

He put her glass under the tap and half-filled it again.

"Here you are. Let me have that, I think you might prefer how I make it."

Perra watched as Damien separated the rashers and dropped them into a hot frying pan. A couple of minutes later he cracked the eggs and dropped them into the grease that had been released from the bacon. Perra had to admit the smells that were issuing from Damien's cooking were enticing.

A pop behind her had her turning quickly to face the unexpected danger. Damien looked up to see the snarl disappearing from his guest's face as she realised it was the toaster.

"Careful!" Perra had been reaching out her hand.

"It is hot, see." He carefully held her hand above the toaster. Perra drew it back quickly then watched as Damien lifted out the two slices of toast and dropped them onto a plate before waving his hands about.

"Ouch. I guess I'm the one who should be careful."

Perra took his hand in hers and ran her tongue over the tips of his fingers. Though she hadn't intended it that way Damien found her action highly erotic.