Chapter 285: Bonus Quest: The Claw

Day 0

There was nowhere to hide from the sun.

Sweat poured down John’s face and neck as he clamored through the sand dunes of…

Where the hell am I?

He lived in Vermont. There wasn’t any sand in Vermont.

The last thing he remembered was the long drive home from the office. It’d been another late night with his boss out of town. There were only two days left to meet their project deadline, and Mark had decided it was the best time to take a trip to Cancun with the wife. Typical.

John ran a hand over his face, then brushed the sweat off on his thigh. He was still in his button-up shirt and tie. His loafers weren’t fit for trekking through sand, and the grains trickled between the gaps of leather and his socks. Heat beat against his back and soaked through his dark hair.

Am I dreaming?

He had to be. He had to have stumbled from his car to his bed and just didn’t remember. Stress from work was obviously getting to him.

An engine revved in the distance. John turned to see a cloud of dust swell in the air around the silhouette of four dark figures on what appeared to be motorcycles. Dirt bikes? It was impossible to tell.

But without water or shelter, he would die in the heat. Even if it was a dream, that sounded like an awful way to go.

“Hey!” John raised his arms over his head and waved a panicked signal. “Over here!”

The bikes turned toward him, the cloud of dust masking their riders’ appearances. John covered his mouth with one arm and closed his eyes, feeling the torrent of sand-soaked wind slam into him as the engines roared their approach.

When the sound died and the dust settled, John rubbed his face and opened his eyes. He blinked and opened his mouth. Then blinked again.

“They always this quiet?” A woman with fiery red hair that seemed to defy gravity popped the stand on her bike with one leather boot and dismounted. Feline ears protruded near her forehead, and a thin tail swayed behind her.

“Hell if I know. This is my first time finding one.” The second rider with similarly teased blonde hair stayed on her bike. She straightened her spiked gauntlets and adjusted the bandoleer over her enormous chest. Her cat ears flicked forward, then rotated to the sides. They looked…real.

“W-who… W-what—?” John stammered. Where did he even begin? “Is this supposed to be Burning Man or something?”

A tan, dark-eyed woman at the opposite end of the red-head smiled, her teeth sharp. “Why would we burn you? You’re too important for that.”

The last woman, a dark-skinned beauty with a shock of white hair and yellow eyes smeared with black, snarled and clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Get on the damn bike, new guy. Before the others find us.”

“The others?” John managed. He shook his head. Pinched his arm. What the hell was going on? “Alright. Seriously. Who are you?”

“We’ll explain at the base. The rest of the Vixens’ll want to see you,” the redhead said.

John gaped. “Wait, Vixen? Like the band?”

“Look. You can either get on the damn bike, or I can tie you to it,” the blonde snapped.

“Er, right.” John padded through the sand toward the white-haired woman and slid onto the seat behind her.

“Hey! Watch the tail!”

John froze, then carefully maneuvered so that he didn’t touch the fluffy white tail poking above her black leather g-string.

Their engines revved, and John wrapped his arms around the woman’s waist.

A sinking feeling in his stomach warned that he wasn’t in Vermont anymore.

---

Day 3

It wasn’t a dream. This was all very, very real. It had taken John a full day to absorb the shock of his death and apparent rebirth. A second day to restore his fluids and this new [Energy] thing. Today, two of the four riders that had found him were showing him around the Vixens’ base.

It was partially built into a cliff side; a land feature John was positive didn’t exist until the mountain was almost on top of them. There was a small, natural spring that ran through the cliff, offering the clan of thirty or so catgirls—their term for themselves—enough clean water to live.

“There are six other clans like ours. Some bigger, some smaller,” Jewel, the blonde, explained as they walked. She raised one hand and ticked the names off on her fingers. “Twisted Sisters, Queens, Gypsies, Poison, Scorpions, and Rush.”

John laughed.

“Oh? Is something funny, Johnny?” Stevie, the sharp-tongued white-haired woman, poked a long finger into his chest. John hadn’t told her to call him that, but it’d stuck from day one.

“No. I’m sorry. It’s nothing.” They were armed to the teeth. John did his best to control his reactions—offending them could mean dying. Again. “And you said that this was an island?”

“That’s right. The Claw,” Jewel continued. “Branches just off of Ichi. But no one comes here, and no one leaves.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because we have our own ways here, and the rest of Nyarlea can eat shit.” Stevie narrowed her coal-drenched eyes. Black streaks decorated her cheeks and throat, curving down to her chest and across her bared abdomen. From what John had gathered, Stevie was the leader of these Vixens. “They come on our turf, and we shoot them dead. They don’t fuck with us.”

Nyarlea. The Claw. Ichi. Clans. There was so much information to remember.

But that wasn’t the most pressing thing on his mind. “Your friend said I was important here. Why?”

Stevie grinned. “So you can give us kittens, Johnny.” She dragged her sharpened nails down John’s back, and a tiny moan escaped her lips.

John flushed and shivered. He was an unmarried man, sure, but this still felt…sudden. Courting a woman was supposed to take time and respect. These women all stared at him like he was a piece of meat.

“Only the strongest clans get to breed,” Jewel added, her tone cautious. “We’re not allowed to touch him yet, Stevie.”

“Take all of the fun out of it, why don’t you?” Stevie spat and dropped her arm. “I already sent a rider to the Summit. We’ll see in a few days.”

“We’ll see what?” John asked, looking between them.

---

Day 7

Oh.

All six clans had gathered at the Summit. Hundreds of catgirls surrounded an enormous metal cage that reminded John a lot of the Thunderdome. John stood beside Stevie and six other women who served as the respective leaders of each clan at the center of the cage. 

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The only man.  

A dozen women swung from the bars in various states of undress. More raised their guns in the air and beat them against the metal. Some carried torches, some made provocative hand gestures and licked their lips. The whoops, hollers, screams, and engines revving deafened him.

This makes Altamont look like a picnic.

A single bullet fired behind him, and John nearly jumped out of his skin. The crowd immediately fell silent.

“Our new man has arrived, delivered to The Claw in the hands of Clan Vixen!” Stevie cried. “It is time to determine who has earned the right to breed!”

A wild cheer erupted as the girls slammed their weapons against the bars.

Stevie raised her arms, and the cheers died down. “As Clan Vixen found him, we will battle first in this contest! Who will challenge Roxy?”

The redhead he’d met on the first day swung down from high on the dome, landing deftly on her feet and slowly straightening her back. The thick leather armor that wrapped around her chest, arms, and waist was marred with deep scratches and marks that suggested the woman had been in a lot of fights. But she kept her legs bare, save for the calf-high boots. She held a long blade in each hand and clanged them together over her head, her expression starved.

They’re seriously fighting over me? It should have been any man’s wet dream. But the knots in his throat and stomach weighed him down. 

“Clan Scorpion calls for Lenita!” a woman in blue leathers near Stevie called. “Come forward!”

Lenita slithered through the bars. Her purple and black-streaked mullet was tied back with an animal-print headband. The armor fitted to her chest looked more like the carapace of an insect than the tightly sewn leathers of the other girls. She carried a sickle-shaped sword and a menacing smile.

“To safety!” someone called.

Stevie grabbed John’s arm and dragged him away from the center of the arena to a space that was sectioned off from the jeering crowd. She put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down into a chair shaped like a large throne.

“Enjoy the show,” Stevie whispered into his ear.

“They’re not going to kill each other over this, are they?” John shouted over the crowd.

“Of course not.” Stevie looked surprised. “That’d be barbaric.”

“...I see.”

Another woman appeared at John’s side with a canteen of water and a plate of food. “Hey there, babe. Name’s Jackie. If you want anything else, you just let me know.”

John nervously accepted both with a nod. “Thank you, Jackie.”

Jackie giggled. “What a sweetie.” She took a seat on the arm of the throne. “I hope Clan Gypsy gets to take you home.”

What do I say to that? “I-I guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

“To first blood!” A woman acting as a referee raised a flag in the center of the dome. “Fight!”

Roxy and Lenita crashed together like lightning. They moved so quickly that John had a hard time telling them apart. Red blurred into purple. Blades glittered in the firelight from the surrounding torches. The atmosphere was electric with excitement.

A blinding light coated Roxy’s blades as she took another swing, breaking straight through Lenita’s weapon and slicing two bright red streaks into the Scorpion girl’s arms.

It was over almost as quickly as it had begun.

“One win to Roxy!”

Another purple-haired girl rushed from the edge of the dome to Lenita’s side. She laid her hands over the wounds and closed her eyes. John watched as a warm glow washed over the girl’s body and into Lenita’s arms. When she dropped her hands, Lenita’s wounds were healed without a trace of blood.

“Magic…?” John whispered in disbelief.

The fighting continued. One by one, Roxy felled her opponents with terrifying speed. Besides the short breaks she took for water, Roxy’s stamina—her [Energy], apparently—seemed endless. She didn’t look the least bit winded.

“We’ve been training her for years,” Stevie murmured in John’s ear as if reading his thoughts. “Clan Vixen will not fall this age.”

As Roxy defeated the last girl from Clan Rush, Stevie wrapped her fingers in John’s hair, scraping her nails along his scalp.

“It has been witnessed!” The referee raised Roxy’s arm with a brilliant smile. “The new man goes to Clan Vixen!”

The onlookers cheered and screamed. Carnal howls sounded from Vixen’s corner.

Stevie leaned forward and nibbled John’s ear. “You’re mine tonight, Johnny.”

---

Day 372

John stopped questioning most of the ways of life on The Claw. 

The clans made their own food and bullets. Their technology was a combination of magic and what they had available. They took care of him and each other. They’d armed and armored him, and he found that he enjoyed learning how to repair and maintain their weapons and motorcycles—he preferred it over the spreadsheets and work emails. 

In time, he discovered that it wasn’t the other clans or the catgirls he had to worry about. It was the Encroachers and the Defiled. Fearsome beasts the likes of which he’d only ever seen in horror movies.

John lay quietly beside Jackie, watching as she slept. Every three hundred days, they handed him to the clan that won the battle of the Summit. Gypsy had been the second clan to win the breeding privilege.

But Jackie felt like a friend. He found himself in her bed almost every night.

When he left Clan Vixen, Stevie’s parting words to him were a warning. Even after two months, they still rang loud in John’s ears.

No man has ever survived more than eight hundred days on The Claw.

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