The Artifact of Foex by James L. Wolf Page A

enraged. “Yes, good Flame.”
    Journey slowly sat back on her heels. “You
don’t
get
to be as old as I am without learning where the
boundaries lie. I don’t like being raped.”
    Fenimore looked as if he’d like nothing more
than to slam out the door and leave, except he was bound here
through the Raptus. They all were. Chet could almost see him
thinking about it as his eyes lit from Journey to the Raptus,
sitting innocuously on the bedside table. Fenimore grabbed his
dusty pants and stalked out to the balcony. Chet realized Knife now
faced them, watching everything through the sheer curtains, his
arms resting easily on the wrought-iron balcony. Knife nodded at
Fenimore and murmured something that Chet couldn’t hear.
    Chet regarded Journey on the bed beside him.
He’d thought that she would have scrambled to get dressed like
Fenimore, but she was breathing deep, her eyes closed. Regaining
her composure? She glanced at Chet apologetically. “Excuse me, I
don’t mean to startle you.”
    Chet opened his mouth to reply, his confusion
palpable, then froze. Journey was changing. Her body rippled as fat
and musculature morphed under her skin. Her tits receded to a flat
chest, and a penis and scrotum blossomed between her legs. Between
his
legs. Chet barely restrained himself from crying out,
jumping out of bed and scrambling out the door. Journey was
definitely male now. Even his face was different. Journey was still
of the flaxen race, but he had a thicker jaw, flat cheekbones, his
nose a different shape. She—he—still appeared young. A little older
than Chet’s age, maybe his late twenties.
    Journey opened his eyes and smiled at Chet,
his expression tinged with irony. “Are you freaking out?”
    Chet discovered that he was frozen in a
protective crouch. He deliberately forced himself to sink back to
the bed. Journey seemed to take it as an invitation to cuddle up
beside him. Chet paused, aghast. There was something viscerally
wrong about the situation, but Journey was warm and familiar.
    Chet took a deep breath and tried to relax
with the man—Flame—in his arms. “A little.” His voice was
shaking.
    They lay quietly together. Feeling calmer as
each minute passed, Chet’s scholarly curiosity perked up like a
dium—a reptilian rodent which couldn't resist getting into
everything. “Do you do this often? Change sex?”
    Journey chuckled. His voice had changed too.
Did he have a wider throat now? Chet leaned back and decided that
Journey really had changed the external width of his throat. If he
could do that, it probably meant he could change the internal
larynx structure as well.
    “Yes, I am most decidedly bi-sexed. Not every
Flame is. Knife doesn’t like being female, though he’ll do it when
there’s need.”
    Chet glanced over his shoulder to the balcony
where Knife and Fenimore were chatting. Though Knife was not
technically in the room, he supposed Knife was still in eyesight,
which was why Journey hadn’t changed pronouns to the ubiquitous
female. “This is why people are scared of Flame," Chet grumbled.
“It’s because we never know what you’re going to do. Or be.”
    “Are
you
scared of me?”
    Chet chewed it over a minute. “I’m not sure.
I don’t
think
I’m frightened anymore.” In fact, the
thought of fucking—or being fucked by—Journey in male form was
rather... arousing. Chet found himself growing hard again.
    Journey knew it, too. He eyed Chet
speculatively, then deliberately reached over and brushed Chet’s
dick with the back of his hand.
    “Oh, Pantheon," Chet gasped, his cock rising
to fully erect at Journey’s touch.
    “Fenimore’s forcefulness aside, it seems to
me that you enjoy both men and women. Yes?”
    “I—I’ve never...” Chet swallowed. He wanted
to grab Journey’s exposed cock. To, to suckle it, to have Journey
come in his mouth. This was insane. He squirmed under pressure of
having to produce an answer to a question he’d never