Chapter 12

Brown sat motionless at the center of room, feet flat on the floor, hands resting on the tabletop. Kat thought that the Lincoln statue in DC might have moved more in the last decade than brown had since they came in the doors. The stillness seemed to slow their movement. Then it was gone.

"I am glad you are both safe. Come in and sit down, some disturbing events have happened while you went dancing. Though the unexpected trip may have saved you."

"Sorry, if going out caused you trouble Mr Brown. It's my fault I didn't want to be inside anymore." Kat ad-libbed.

"No, just sit for a moment, let me think, and don't lie to me you aren't very good at it."

It was the first time Kat could remember seeing her mentor agitated, even when he raised his voice earlier after she told him of her encounter, he only raised it to emphasize his point. It was eerie how quiet it was in here with no other patrons around and no Bea hustling drinks about the place. Alone except for a television and tape player on a neighboring table.

"OK, there is no good way to say this Katherine, your body was destroyed tonight and Beatrice kidnapped."

"My body ... gone ... Bea ... how?," she mumbled shocked for a minute. Till Celina butted into the conversation and brought her back to the here and now.

"Destroyed, how? And how do you know Bea was taken and didn't just go somewhere?" Celina wanted to know.

"They left a VHS tape on the bar. After finding someone who still had a working player we had most of the answers,"

"Why'd they take her? It doesn't make sense." Kat asked the shock started to were off.

"They took her because next to your Uncle she's the one you seem to care most about. Rats are trying to catch the Kat, burning down my lab was just one more way to cut your choices. I have some acquaintances on the shore, who can hide you till this is settled. Then we can-" but Kat interrupted Brown before he could finish.

"They burned down your lab?! We need to call the police, the army or my Uncle!"

"Katherine, listen to me, this isn't one, two or even ten wererats. This is the whole colony of unborn, the police can't win. Just take my advice, stay away until this can be negotiated,"

"I'm tired of doing everything you and anyone else tells me to do. I'm not hiding from them. And what the hell are 'unborn'?"

"I swear even angry you are such a school girl, but I am with you girl," Celina chimed leaning in on her elbows.

"Whatever happens Celina, it will not involve you taking part, so be quiet or we are done with each other. Unborn are what we call the musoanthropes created by fluid transfer, either bite or sex. They are almost a whole different race than those born to be rats, hence the distinction. Katherine before you decide what you want to do, watch the video. I hadn't intended to show this to you, but it seems necessary now." With that pushed play on the old machine.

It started off like a bad rerun of cops, shaky camera action, low lighting and a running commentary by someone mostly off camera. They came in Browns personal entrance and skirted along buildings until they made it to his residence. The girls had only used the thumb lock on the doorknob, nothing heavier to secure the living space. One of the rats made short work of the lock and then it was rush inside, swat style. When they came upon Kat's body, a furious whispered debate about what to do with it happened. They decided to leave a pair to guard it while the rest continued. A look around the place showed no one home, and then the vandalism began. In the end they decided it might send a message if they ripped the body apart before setting the firebombs.

More nauseating camera work led to them entering Bea's tavern. She was putting down her market purchases, when the intruders came at her. Bea didn't have a chance to resist the swarm of bodies. Wrapped up tight, in rough rope, they carried her out of view while the one holding the camcorder turned it around to talk into the lens.

"Listen little vamp, if you don't want your girlfriend hurt then come alone to the steel plant, dock 328. Bring whatever you need to live, you're gonna be with us for a long time. If you don't show up by midnight, we'll start taking turns with the bar slut!" then the tape went black.

"Stay with them? What the heck? I'm not a pet! And they're going to rape her till I show?" Anger and helplessness battled within Kat as she tried to figure out what to do. "What about Uncle George? He could stop them right?"

"This has gotten out of control, it's going to take the council calling together clans and guilds to stop them now."

"Clans, guilds? Fuck this isn't the middle ages, we need the police!" Kat was getting angrier by the moment.

"We aren't that far from the dark ages, Kat. There are quite a few in this building who still remember them with fondness. We don't have police or laws codified instead, its the feudal system with the strongest at the top and treaties with the most numerous races to stop warring. Nothing the council decides is done quickly, and when the laws need to be enforced for an individual, your Uncle does the job. There could be hundreds of them, we've never known their numbers. Even he wouldn't be able to go right away."

"And in the meantime she is raped or killed, by those bastards? I'll go myself if I have to, Brown."

"They will probably only have sex with her once, even if they get lucky that first time she couldn't be killed for nine months. We have time Kat."

"Once is more than enough, and why would they stop? Nine months to kill her? You aren't making sense."

"I would have thought you'd gotten closer than that. If not for the circumstances ... It is really her story to tell but, long ago one of her ancestors was cursed when she stole a powerful woman's husband. Since then any man that loves them dies. That's love the emotion or love in the carnal sense, either will kill the man. So that the curse can be passed on to the next girl, they stop aging at thirty and can't be killed until they have a baby. Beatrice Volos is over sixty, and she won't get older until she has a child. She can be beaten and tortured in every way, but they'll can't kill her."

"Whoa, how didn't I know this before? So, if one of them rapes her, he'll die right then and there? I guess no one else would want to risk it, but if she gets pregnant, she'll grow old like a regular person? What about an abortion?"

"Well as far as I know, the last few generations of her family have all been from rape, live a couple of hundred years and its hard to never end up in a bad situation. I'm reasonably sure that its been tried but the kids can't be killed either. So, at worst she is recovered with child."