CITY OF NORTH HELIX, THE XYZ BAR, MIDDAY
 
“You ready for this?”
The wolf glanced up from her trance, turning from idly watching the city drift past her window to look at the rat in the lab coat driving the van. She blinked a few times as she slowly remembered what “this” was.
“Ah…yes. Yeah. I am,” she replied.
“Stay in reality, Natalia” the rat warned. “I don’t want you losing control, not while I’m driving, or while I’m in a hundred meters of you for that matter.”
“I’m in control, Doctor Caldwell,” Natalia reassured him.
“Uh huh. Right,” the rat doctor nodded sarcastically. “I told you to call me Dr. Kain. Anyway, we’re here.”
The rat veered the van off the main road and into the lot in front of the freestanding building that was the local watering hole. Popular joint, they had heard, but the lot was completely vacant, probably because it was just past noon. The place was technically open, but no movement could be seen through the windows.
“You’ve got your picture, right?”
The wolf dropped her hand into her purse and pulled out the picture, looking over it yet again. The quality was grainy, evidence of the cheap security camera it had been taken from. Its subject was a single person, a male jaguar, his expression unreadable, his hands pocketed, his head bowed.
“Of course you do. Why did I even ask,” Dr. Kain said. Reaching into his own pocket, he pulled out a cigarette and lighter. “Alright, then, Miss in-control, do your stuff.”
“Do you really have to smoke in here?” she asked. “It’ll reek when I get back.”
The rat rolled his eyes. “I’ll lower my window.”
Natalia felt her eyes focus and her head tilt ever so slightly down. The rat glanced at her in the rearview mirror and paused with the lighter right below his mouth. “Alright, alright,” he reluctantly opened the door and stepped out. Natalia followed suit, heading in the other direction.
Inside, the bar was ghostly empty. Most of the chairs were turned upside down on the tables, apparently they had been cleaning. She glanced around, unsure of what exactly to do, when she heard footsteps in the back. Soon, a door swung open behind the bar, and a stack of boxes moved out. The boxes were set down on the bar, and the pug who had been carrying them stepped out from behind them and noticed Natalia. His expression dropped as he saw her, clearly not excited to have company.
“Little early in the day for a lady to start drinking, isn’t it?” he asked, gruffly.
“I’m not here for a drink,” she said. With a quick breath, she stepped forward to the bar and held out the picture to the pug. “I was hoping that you might know this man?”
The pug gave a quick glance down at the picture. Natalia noticed his eyebrows raise up in recognition. However, the pug scowled, glanced back up to Natalia, and said, “I see a lot of people in here.”
“But you know this man, don’t you? I heard he might be a regular…”
“And if he were, I wouldn’t be too keen on losing his business, now, would I?”
Natalia’s eyes focused again, and her head lowered. The room seemed to get brighter. Natalia realized that her eyes were dilating to take in light, so she blinked a few times and took a deep breath. The room slowly darkened again. “Please, sir. I have reason to believe this man might be connected to the disappearance of my husband and son. If you know anything-”
“Blah blah blah” Frank interrupted. “Look, lady, the only reason I didn’t kick you out when you didn’t order anything is because I thought you might be good for some entertainment. But this is a bar, I get a hundred sob stories a night, and I don’t need to start early. Order a beer, show your tits, or get your ass out of my bar. I got to set up.”
The room got brighter as Natalia glared again. Her head lowered, and she did not try to stop it this time. She took a step closer to the bar, locking eye contact with the pug. “Look. I know you know him. Tell me what I need to know, or shit’s about to get real painful for you.”
The pug smirked. “Ooh, the puppy knows some grown-up words. Scary. Really, what’s a cute little puppy like you gonna do?” The pug crossed his arms and twisted his face into a sarcastic, threatening grin.
The next instant, that grin was slammed flat against the bar.
The bartender barely had time to groan in pain before Natalia grabbed his shoulders and yanked him over the bar, letting his hefty body come crashing down on the floor. Natalia crouched down grabbing the pug by the collar of his dirty shirt and yanking him up from the floor bringing the two face to face.
  “Listen here you creep. I had to go through a lot of shit to get here. Now you’re either gonna tell me what I want to know or else I’ll be the only one walking out of here today.” The wolf spoke through clenched teeth, her hot breath washing over him.
The pug shot his arms up, smacking her hands off his collar, and prepared to strike. Natalia was faster, dodging his punch and slamming the base of her hand into his nose, making him howl. He brought a hand up to his nose, and Natalia used the opportunity to grab his other hand, twist it to turn him around, and then charged him forward, slamming him against the far wall. A framed photo fell to the ground. The pug groaned.
“Last chance,” Natalia growled.
  “Fine! He’s one of those security guards for Biodynamics south facility. Comes in here after his shifts. I overheard him say he lives by the canals, he was bragging about getting a corner apartment. Real son of a bitch that guy. Always trying to start fights, not that anyone would have the balls to go up against that monster” The pug fidgeted in her grasp. Her grip held firm.
  “What do you mean?”
  “They did something to him over at Dynamics. I think he called it Predsplice. Kept bragging about how strong he was now. Said that’s what they do to all their guards these days. Doesn’t seem natural to me. That look in his eyes was just so… feral…” the bartender’s voice trailed off as he strained his neck around, getting one eye just far enough over to look into her own. She saw his pupil contract, and smelled the fear coming off of him.
It made her mouth water.
The pug had barely a moment to yell before he was yanked backwards, his head falling into the wolf’s open mouth. She closed her lips around him, muffling his struggles, enjoying the feeling of his struggles. The taste wasn’t anything to write home about, but feeling of having something alive and moving in her mouth was intoxicating, and she began to swallow.
The pug was fairly heavy set, but Natalia’s strength was more than a match to start lifting him up and bending his torso backwards into her waiting mouth. His legs kicked furiously, causing her to take a step backwards, lest he manage to get a foot on the wall and knock her off balance. His struggles were of no threat otherwise.
The arm she had grabbed and turned behind his back was still stuck there as he was swallowed. She realized that must be uncomfortable for him, but it didn’t matter at this point, he was nothing but food to her. As his waist neared her lips, she pulled a chair of one of the tables and sat on it, lifting his legs into the air, watching them flail about uselessly as she eagerly gulped them down.
The only article of his clothing she bothered to remove were his shoes, right before his feet entered her mouth. His socks tasted surprisingly clean, he must have worn fresh ones before coming into work.
With one final gulp the last evidence of him was gone, and his fate was sealed. Natalia moaned in pleasure, and leaned back in her chair, her hands resting on her overstretched gut. She stayed there for a while, losing track of time, enjoying the feeling of the doomed mut trapped within her belly. If it weren’t for Dr. Kains intrusion she might have stayed there until the evening rush came in.
She didn’t notice him at first. The rat looked her over, smirked, then inhaled a drag on his cigarette. Then, leaning in, he blew a cloud of smoke into the entranced wolf’s face, and interrupting her daydreaming.
“Hey! What the hell,” Natalia snapped back into reality, coughing. “You could have just tapped my shoulder, doc.”
“I could have, yes,” Dr. Kain said. “So, looks like you had fun. Nice being in control, right?”
“Ah…” Natalia stammered, unable to form a reply. Suddenly, the gravity of what had just happened fell down on her like a ton of bricks. She had only meant to get information from the pug. But something powerful, something feral had come over her when he’d insulted her, and she just could control herself. He’d struggled for a while, but sometime before the doc had come in, his movements had stopped. She wondered if the rat had specifically waited for that before waking her.
“Oh, Fenrir, I...I didn’t mean to let it go that far...” Natalia looked down at her engorged stomach.
“Relax, relax,” Dr. Kain said, walking over to pick up the fallen picture. “Of course you didn’t. But there’s the cost, isn’t there?”
“Cost? What cost?”
Dr. Kain turned the picture over, pulled out a pen, and began scribbling something on the back. “For thousands of years, we’ve evolved safeguards to let us live next to one another without seeing each other as competition or as food. And you’ve just had those safeguards torn out of you, and in return you’ve gained the strength to avenge your family.” He finished his scribble, held out the frame, and let it fall back to the floor. For a moment, the abstract fanged maw symbol he had drawn was visible as it bounced on its edge, then it was hidden as the picture flopped onto its back. “Speaking of, did you manage to get any information from him before you ate him?”
“You say it so casually…” Natalia said.
“You ate him. Statement of fact. Accept it and move on, ideally before someone walks in to start drinking early. Information?”
Natalia shook herself back into focus. “Right. He worked security with Biodynamics. He has a corner apartment by the canal.”
“Hmm. Not bad for your first interrogation. All right, get a move on.”
Natalia pulled herself up and walked to the van. Dr. Kain left his cigarette in his mouth as he turned the ignition.
“I thought you weren’t going to smoke in the van?” Natalia asked.
“I wasn’t,” he replied. “Or rather, I wasn’t going to risk pissing you off when you were still hungry.”
Natalia casually reached over and flicked the cigarette, sending it flying out the window as he pulled out. He turned to glare at her. She glared right back, smiling.
“I can already tell that helping you is going to prove to be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“It’s a pleasure working with you, too,” Natalia said.