Page 48 of Condemned

Chapter Eighteen

At least this placewas better than a barn. Something had woken her. The light coming in through the shuttered window was only moonlight. The fire in the central heater had died down though the circular chimney still radiated heat. The four mauleons were snoring, having drunk too much.

She wasn’t sure what they’d been celebrating. The end of the war, again? Being nearer to their homes? It might be anything.

They’d brought several bottles back with them to this lodging house, pulled all the mattresses off the beds and thrown them in this one large room before they collapsed into sleep. They still didn’t trust her, much, judging by the manacles and the long chain fastening her to a bed frame. A pity. She could’ve told them this would not stop her from escaping. Only the mountains between her and the border did that.

For the first time ever, she’d masturbated with them surrounding her, reasoning that they weren’t going to relieve her needs so she may as well. Plus they weren’t going to wake. Probably...

They didn’t.

So now she slept in messy panties. Being warm was the main thing, and safe.

She dragged her blanket closer to her body and realized what had woken her as Nibbles mounted a peak of the bunched-up blanket then ran down it toward her face. From the intensity of his golden eyes and the waving of paws, from the ducking away and running a small distance then the running back, he wanted her to do something.

She raised her eyebrows at him and lifted her hand, to say I’m stuck here. Hopefully it was a language the bot understood. Instead he ran to the lock on the manacles, tinkered for a few seconds with his back to her. There was a series of clicks and he jumped away.

He’d unlocked them.

Okaaaay.She held up her freed hands, squinted at them for a while to be sure, and sighed.

What do you want? she mouthed.

It scampered over the perimeter of snoring mauleons and away.

Slowly, carefully, she crept to her feet then crawled to the ring of her so-called guards. She picked Kondio to crawl over as he seemed the most inebriated.

He didn’t stir and she followed Nibbles across the floor, the creaking floor—some soldiers these guys were. She could’ve slaughtered them all. Been there, tried that. Never again.

The door wasn’t even locked. Nibbles had already run beneath it and she continued following him. Thank goodness she had on the new fur coat they’d bought her. She’d just forgotten boots and her feet were freezing.

Down the hallway, past other rooms, praying nobody came out and surprised her.

At the front door, with wind whining against the outside, battering it and making it rattle now and then, the mouse-bot deviated to the left, zipping beneath another door to a closet.

On opening it, she saw a rusted vacuum cleaner, brooms, buckets, folded cloths, shelves to the right, a couple of coats hooked on the back of the door, and to the left was...

Gia, and a little horde of red and gray scythefox babies.

“Oh, my,” she whispered. “You are all so cute!”

They were squirming about her swollen teats, some feeding, some asleep snuggled into her. Gia looked up at her, ears pricked, then returned to nuzzling her newborns.

“It’s too cold in here, Gia. What are you doing here?” She guessed the roaring, snoring, tumble of drunken males had disturbed Gia. A cupboard was less noisy.

Kondio would be aghast. Well, he would be once he saw them, sobered up.

“I’m the only one not pissed out of her skull, right?”

The mouse-bot had stopped near Gia and sat up on his hind legs.

“What to do? I can’t move you easily. You’d be okay in here if it were warmer, least until morning.” There’d been flakes of snow falling outside.

How to get this closet warmer? Well, she realized the answer after thinking for all of a minute. There was herself.

“Should I go wake Kondio? But then, you are happy here, and I guess I’m a portable heater.”

She sighed and lowered herself to her knees, shrugged off the new fur coat she wore over the tunic and tucked it around Gia. With all the birthing fluids, she was messy, but it seemed a better choice than using someone else’s coat. With some cloths wedged under the door, the wind was kept out. She lay down after grabbing the two thinner coats from the door and made a moderately comfortable area next to Gia.