Epilogue

Ten Years Later.

"You didn't exactly converse with the gods," said Trixie testily, angrily chopping the cocaine on a mirrored coffee table with a razor blade. "More they commanded you and you had nothing to say back. If you did, I'm sure they'd have ignored it."

Kat sighed. Removing her coat, she sat beside her true love and grabbed the chopping hand, holding it still with a power few could resist. Trixie had achieved quite a lot of strength in her ten years as a werecat but hadn't gotten nearly as strong as her alpha, best friend and true love. She fought for a moment but let go of reiistance.

"This is the sweetness and the rot Yashaw warned us about," Kat spoke gently. "It's what's seeping through the cracking wall, the purest form decadence takes, the kind the proselytizers warned us about in the regime and weren't overstating. It's what Wolf and Maria focused on these past few years to circumvent capturing rebels. Why do you need this?"

"Oh Kat," Trixie sobbed, dropping the razor blade and embracing her lover. Her mouth ending up beside Kat's ear, she choked out whispers, "When they exiled me for being too much trouble to the Democratic Republic of Germany, I thought I'd achieved success. My plan finally worked. But I left everyone behind, even myself in a way, becoming 'Beatrix' the punk rock diva. No longer 'Pussycat' with her three bitches. Gretch and Nina and Linda let me be the outrageous one as I intended. I made records here in West Berlin with stray talent. A major label promoted me enough for substantial though rarely chart entering let alone topping success. I fucked around as I toured the world, fucking my bandmates and some of my more outrageous fans. But every night I found myself alone wishing you were here. So I needed to fill the emptiness. Cocaine made me forget, made me numb, made me wilder than ever. But it became more of a focus than even my music. I stopped thinking except thinking of getting high. I stopped trying except trying to get more cocaine. Only those full moon nights when I crossed the border and joined you and Leo and Jag and became a beast of true nature did I have any joy."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Kat asked.

"And bum you out? I could see the joy in your eyes when I came home. The fun we had tying each other up and making each other crazy with lust made my unhappiness unimportant. And seeing our kittens grow in those monthly increments..." The sobs racked her body. "Why did I give you a key to my apartment?"

"Because you loved it when I came to visit," smiled Kat. "And maybe because I was meant to discover your illness, your addiction, and save you."

Trixie chuckled roughly through her choked throat, "You're always right."

"Not always."

"Yes always, my brilliant and wise doctor. But ... why are you here?"

Kat chuckled and moved Trixie's head so their eyes could meet. "Haven't you heard? They're tearing down the wall! No more sneaking through borders. No more worries about the placement of our own as border guards. No more stupid puppet government. We won!"

"Gods I must have disappeared from the world not knowing that!" said Trixie, annoyed with herself. She grabbed the mirrored table and flung it against the wall, the powder a dust cloud raining onto the floor.

Kat said nothing, but her smile beamed.

The phone rang. Trixie picked it up. "Michael! I heard! We'll meet you at the Gates. Kat's here. They must have come over together. About time. Then you can meet my kittens! Of course I'll take your virginity! Are you sure?" Trixie laughed. "So that's why you insisted I blow you. No, I only resisted because I thought it played to your game. If I had truly resisted I could have thrown you out the window without any effort. I love your sweet cum and your pretty dagger. I can understand Jag's and Leo's love of it. I can't wait to feel it thrusting and cumming in my slutty cunt. Half hour? We'll be there. We love you."

During the triumphant chaos of the demolishing of the Berlin wall, Kat received a call on her fancy new cellular phone. "We'll be there as soon as we can. The traffic's a bitch," she said into the small receiver.

"Who's that?" asked Trixie.

"Wolf wants us to help them pack."

What with their success combined and their appreciation of services to the regime, though it had all been on their terms and sneaky, Wolf and Gretchen and Maria lived together in one of the more opulent apartments in the drab city of East Berlin. Nina remained in the Black Forest mothering their offspring.

Gretchen had become a star, leading the Courage Players in several productions she penned with the collaboration of the troupe. After the ridiculous propaganda of the Merchant of Venice, though it gained them their stature, she kept to amusing and witty comedies and musicals lightening the dark shadows of life behind the Berlin Wall. Even the serious dramas never failed to uplift at the end. Audiences appreciated them wherever they performed, whether in cities or in the countryside. The regime even let the troupe tour Western Europe and America as well as Eastern block nations and Russia. Their trust in her allowed her and her fellow thespians chances to meet with western artists and intellectuals, learning the truth of the free world and communicating their own situation.

The only concern they had during these tours was full moons on the road. Their bodyguards/keepers/official East German watchdogs (so to speak) found safe woods or wilderness unoccupied by humans in which their wolves and cats could frolic. By the time they began touring the world, everyone of the troupe had been mated and become weres. Humans that hadn't fallen in love with a were found themselves gently forced out of the troupe.

Having two Stasi watchdogs accompanying the troupe helped the regime with trust issues. Maria and Wolf, free from the prying eyes of the ever vigilant spies of their own Stasi agency, managed to communicate intelligence with their equals in various western countries. The contacts and assurances they gained during the tour allowed the current transition from puppet regime to joining their western brethren in restoring Germany to wholeness to happen without acrimony towards them as Stasi enforcers. They knew about the collapse of the wall and the regime before most everyone else and in a small but significant way helped smooth the pavement for its inevitability. Interpol offered them positions as investigators. The united Germany didn't quite trust them to take similar positions in the government. Maria accepted the offer. Wolf requested a less involved position as technical and computer consultant, allowing him to tinker with gadgets and create new spy gear which he intended to patent along with contraptions he had already designed and used but kept to himself before.

In the former East Berlin, now a whole Berlin, the werecats greeted the werewolves with open arms, hugs and kisses, none more so than between Trixie and Gretchen. Though they converged near each other once a month, Trixie had kept her distance from her friend for years.

"Why have you been a stranger?" Gretchen finally asked.

Trixie sighed and confessed, "Remember Yashaw's message ten years ago? I succumbed to that rotten sugar. Kat never noticed because our love blinded her, but I knew you'd see through it and ... yell at me or scold me or something."

Gretchen saw the unhealthy skin of her pale friend and nodded. "Cocaine?" With Trixie's troubled nod, Gretchen did scold her. "We used our position as a rock band to capture the fuckers that pushed that shit. You knew it was poison!"

"I got ... weak. Lonely and weak. But ... no more. I'm staying home with my love, maybe help with her clinic."

"Come join the troupe then!" Gretchen exclaimed. "We need a spark of creativity!"

"I'd like that," smiled Trixie and embraced her friend. "No more Beatrix," she sighed into Gretchen's nearby ear. "She's dead and buried. What a relief."

"But I've got all your albums!" Gretchen shouted when they parted their embrace. They laughed.

Michael looked dismayed at the werecats and werewolves. Seeing Jag and Leo nearly unchanged had been kind of thrilling, but seeing all of these ageless beauties together made him curse his choice. "I could have stayed young. Who wants an aging faggot?" he remarked.

"I don't know," Leo smiled. "You look quite distinguished in your old age. I rather like the look."

"And nary a wrinkle on your pretty face," Jag added, caressing Michael's smooth, pale, early thirties cheek.

"Okay, I'm not quite at the old fart stage," Michael admitted.

"And it took me fucking ten years to fucking seduce you!" shouted Trixie with mock annoyance, her hip cocked sexily. Everyone laughed, delighting in Trixie's wicked and infectious humor.

It took a little over an hour to fill the rented truck with Wolf's and his mates' possessions. The time would have been double without the weres' super human strength. They had left much of the furniture, especially the obscenely large bed custom made by a skilled werewolf carpenter. A matching one, even larger, filled the enlarged bedroom in the cabin in the hamlet in the forest. Linen to fit it had been constructed by an expert seamstress of the werecat kin, sister to Leo and crafter of the Courage Troupe's costumes.

The bulk of the possessions belonged to Wolf. Emptying his always necessary locked room full of technological gadgets, his overcrowded workshop had helped to fill the rented truck to near capacity. "Such a geek," Gretchen shook her head, gazing at the truck full of Wolf's inventions, using a western word relatively new to Eastern Block vocabulary. She hugged the rugged man and kissed him. "But you're my geek."

He returned the kiss just as fondly, "And you're my diva."

Before they drove off for their true home, Kat spoke up. "Let's gather in the empty living room and talk." Once gathered, sitting on the bare wooden floor, she leaned against Wolf. "I think it's time to meet with the gods. It will enable Trixie's and Maria's eggs to be more receptive to conception. You're ready, aren't you Maria?"

"More than ready," Maria agreed. "I love my mates' pups, but I can't help feeling left out somehow not having my own. And maybe a little jealous?" she confessed.

Kat nodded and Wolf squeezed Maria's hand and kissed her gently and with utter affection.

"Trixie?" Kat inquired.

"Fuck yeah!" Trixie shouted, jumping on Michael, smothering him in kisses and rubbing her groin against his. Except the two of them, everyone laughed.

The divisiveness of the meeting of weres was palatable. Mostly Bobbie created the division. "I'm the CEO of the vitamin and the sausage companies. You're a fucking clinician of some out of the way rural fucking clinic," she shouted at Kat standing angrily on the stage facing her. "I'm the business leader here. I should be the alpha, too."

Murmurs of agreement revealed her more popular status amongst her kin compared to her late brother ten years before.

Kat seethed. She knew such a change would be destructive to her clan. Bobbie had proven leadership qualities which weakened her own place as alpha, but lacked the necessary compassion. She also realized Bobbie had been working for years to hone her fighting ability just for this moment, and the challenger's intelligence in sussing out Kat's strategy easily equaled her own. The fragility of her dominance scared her and removed her usual cool bearing.

Wolf restrained her and leaned into her ear and shushed her. Turning her angry face to Wolf, his confident smile somehow calmed her.

"The stupid puppet regime is finally dead," Bobbie continued. "Change is everywhere. Why not here? Why not now?" Her supporters murmured assent.

"Is that all?" asked Wolf calmly. Bobbie looked at him grimly but baffled. She nodded. "Then please take a seat." She sat in a huff, Heinrich rubbing her back to calm her. "I know it's been a rule of law to challenge an alpha to a fight to show dominance or whatever. But it's been millennia since we accepted this rule. Don't you think we're more civilized by now? Yes, it's the animal in us that makes such fights seemingly necessary. But think about it. How much are we truly animals and how much are we more human? How often are we ruled by our feral nature? One thirtieth of our lives. Just two nights a month. What about the rest of the time? Haven't we scholars amongst us that have spent centuries improving on the knowledge of mankind? Haven't we doctors who have added to man's curative powers despite our own kind's lack of need for it? Haven't we writers and composers and architects and artists and craftsmen who have wrought great things, spending years in their craft, centuries in fact to create beautiful things equal and greater than any human has achieved? Yes there's joy in becoming wolves and cats, more fun than anything else we experience. But as far as joy goes, what about the joy of loving your mate to the full extent of your heart? And seeing the puppies and kittens as newborns and youths and mature adults, proud and thrilled by their every discovery and development. That's us being human.

"You mentioned the change of government. Let's examine that. We all know the Democratic part of the name of the former East Germany was ludicrous as much as socialism in National Socialism or Russia's socialist republic was ludicrous. Rulers rule and peasants submit in these dictatorships. We're now a part of representative democracy for good or bad, but it sure tastes more like freedom when the people actually have votes that basically count and a chance to speak their minds without imminent threat from my own Stasi agents. There are concerns of course, mostly economic with market capitalism threatening to distance the haves and have nots to perhaps a dangerous degree. Luckily we're small enough here to spread the wealth to both the weres and our human brethren we have managed to coexist with for many centuries."

"What are you getting at?" shouted Bobbie impatiently gaining more murmurs of support.

"Simple. We now actually live in a democracy. Why not celebrate it? Why not vote for your alpha instead of some silly fight?"

"What?' murmured through the weres.

Bobbie stood, smiling smugly. "If she doesn't wish to accept the challenge than I win."

"I believe the gods feel otherwise," Wolf argued.

"How convenient," Bobbie responded.

"Okay then," Wolf smiled. "Let's test it. Let's vote on our alphas, both of us. Just for shits and giggles fellow weres, but vote like you mean it. It can't hurt and it might just evolve us to more civilized creatures. If as you say Kat does not submit to your challenge in a fight but only in an election, she would seemingly forfeit her alpha status unless the gods have agreed to move us out of the dark ages. Are we agreed?"

"How will you test this?" asked Bobbie.

"Only the alphas and those they mate with can present themselves to the gods and communicate with them," Wolf explained.

"So you say," Bobbie replied smugly.

"Oh I have proof. After this meeting we will see if you pass muster and have claimed alpha status. I'm afraid if you don't, it's going to be a rather painful message."

"What do you mean" asked Bobbie, her arms crossed defiantly.

"You'll find out. So let's vote. Oh, are there any challengers to my status?" No one challenged. "Let's vote anyway for me. It's good for the ego. Only werewolves please. All in favor of my retaining alpha status say aye." A resounding aye filled the underground hall. "Nays?" Silence. Then chuckling and laughter. "I guess I'm still alpha. Okay werecats..."

"Wait!" Bobbie stood. "Don't we need to speak our agenda?"

"More profits. More wealth. More protection. Less human interaction. Expansion of research and distribution to benefit the companies. Contraction of stipends for weres to study frivolous things or pursue frivolous, non were activities. Have I covered your speech?" Wolf offered.

"Well ... Yes," Bobbie admitted. "We are weres after all and not humans. We must add to our coffers and concentrate more on improving our clans." She sat, smiling.

"Very good," Wolf nodded. "And Kat ... she's been our alpha for awhile and we know her ways. Do you wish to add anything to that, Kat?"

"I agree, Wolf," Kat smiled. "You all know me."

"Good. All those in favor, and cats only please, of Bobbie taking over as your alpha?" The ayes were disturbingly loud, but nowhere near the loudness of Wolf's ayes.

"Opposed?" The nays resounded at least a decibel or two louder.

"The nays have it, but let's be sure. Say aye if you wish Kat to retain alpha status. One, two, three..." If anything the noise of affirmation increased. "Nays?" The nays sounded quieter than the earlier ayes. "Everyone agrees then that Kat has won the vote? Good. Now Moira of the werecats and Glen of the werewolves, you are our elders. Would you join us in proof of the gods' approval of our new alpha election?"