Panthera Spelaea

“Ask Marat here if there is another road he can access by boat without using the entry road.”

Lana talked with him. “There is a boat launch to the southwest, about six kilometers on a river. It’s shallow, but his boat can get through.”

“Ask Marat if he and a friend would like to make some easy money.” I didn’t need a translation. “I’ll give them both twenty thousand rubles,” about $270, “for this, plus five thousand rubles for every police tracker or bug they remove and put somewhere else.” I explained the rest of the plan, and Svetlana grinned and passed it on.

We would still have our second night of camping, but we would be leaving the campsite first thing in the morning. Marat and his younger brother would drive our SUV out of the village tonight after dark and leave it at the boat launch. With trackers gone and the police not expecting us to move until ten, he could pick us up after sunrise and take us upriver to our waiting car. When he finally returned to the village without us, it would be too late for the cops to catch up.

Would it solve anything? Not really. It wasn’t like our faces weren’t all over the newspapers, or our vehicle and license plate weren’t known.

Viktor fucked with us, and now I was going to fuck with him. It was just that simple.

Anna ran up to the campsite and brought back ten thousand rubles as a down payment. He was thrilled with the chance to get back at the cops AND make good cash on the side. He waved to us as he disappeared back into the lake.

We’d had enough sun for an afternoon, so we packed up everything and went back to the campsite to take a nap. In the warm afternoon, we slept on top of the sleeping bag, the tent keeping the bugs away.

I woke a few hours later and quietly dressed to go outside. I got the fire going for dinner and started cooking. The baked potatoes went into the coals while I prepped the green beans and steaks. I also flavored our purified water with lemonade mix. Forty minutes later, I started to cook the meat. The sizzle and smell of the first steak hitting the pan woke the girls. “How much time do we have?”

“Go wash up, and I’ll put your steaks on next. My four can cook anytime.” Yes, there was that appetite thing, especially for meat. I had six to cook, each T-bone over a pound. “How do you like your steaks?”

“Medium rare,” Lana answered for them both. She turned the cooler into a table as I plated the first steak for me and tossed the next in the pan. “How long until sides are ready?”

“Five minutes.” Anna poured glasses of lemonade as I dug into the first of my steaks. I’d always eaten them medium rare, but now I was eating them rare to blue. ‘Dehorn it, show it the fire, and put it on the plate,’ as the joke goes. My cat didn’t understand why I’d cook it at all, but I wasn’t up for cold, raw meat.

I served Lana her steak as Anna doled out the sides. The steak covered most of the plate. “I can’t believe I’ll eat all this and come back for more. Before meeting you, this steak would last me a week.”

I rubbed my hand over her slim belly. “And you haven’t gained a pound.”

“I’ve been working out a lot more,” she giggled. I put Anna’s steak on and got back to eating. We had a relaxing meal, trading ideas on where to go next and what to do. The consensus was to keep heading north towards the White Sea, maybe as far as Murmansk, before coming back south to St. Petersburg.

Despite starting early, I was still cooking slabs of beef when the girls finished up. We cleaned up after dinner and had maybe an hour of daylight left. “What should we do tonight?”

“Lion riding,” Anna said quickly. “We were so rudely interrupted last time.”

I could sense my lion was all for it. I stripped off my clothes, storing them in the tent, then got on my hands and knees, my ass NOT facing the fire this time. Letting my mind settle, I called my lion forward. The touch of the alien mind to mine was gentle and loving, and I felt my body shift as my lion took control. No pain, just a handoff from one consciousness to the other.

There was no hesitation from the girls this time as they climbed on my back. “Giddyup,” Anna said as she tugged at the fur behind my ears and squeezed her legs on my shoulders.

I reared up on my back legs, making the girls scream as they held on, then rushed forward into the woods.

Anna leaned forward, pressing her ample chest to my neck as her hands reached down to grip the short mane underneath. Svetlana held on for dear life, letting out a scream of exhilaration as I ran through the trees. I had to slow down as we reached the end of the island, moving downhill to the shoreline. Once on the sand and rock, I picked up speed again, running through the waves crashing onto the beach. Anna was screaming now, hiding her face from the water splashing up at us. I jumped over a piece of driftwood, landing smoothly as the girls gripped me tight with their legs. “Slow down, PLEASE,” Svetlana said as we got to the end of the beach. “I’m barely hanging on.”

My cat slowed to a stop, letting the girls slide off onto the sand. I laughed a little inside, as they looked like drowned rats after the run through the shallow water. To make it worse, my lion decided to dry off, shaking his body and sending droplets of water flying.

The girls eventually got back on, and my cat picked his way up the hill to the trees and walked back to camp. Anna laid the clothes out to dry as Svetlana fed the fire, and we all sat on the blanket and dried off. “We can’t go to bed wet, and wet lion smell isn’t fun,” Anna teased.

We sat by the fire for an hour as my fur and their hair dried, watching the moon rise and the stars come out. When they were satisfied I’d be a good pillow again, we went back to the tent and fell asleep.