Found

Finally I'm giving you the last of Lilli's story. I had hoped to get it to you all sooner, and edited, but my editor has been taking so long that I decided to post it mostly unedited. I figure if you made it through the first couple and lasted this long that maybe you'd suffer through the last one. Sorry for it's somewhat raw form and I hope you enjoy.

*

"Keith!" Lilli shot up, dizziness and pain shooting through her; the memories of a bullet hitting Keith, of him falling to the ground echoing through her head. Her eyes darted around, expecting to find Keith's body, but all she saw was four bare walls, a door, and a mousy girl.

"Where is Keith?!"

Pushing the dizziness and pain aside, Lilli stood and closed in on the girl.

"Wh....What?!" The stunned girl let herself be backed against the wall.

"Where is Keith?!!" Lilli screamed. "Where did you take his body?! Where am I?"

"Wh... what?!" the infuriating girl repeated.

"GAH!" Terror and rage crashed through Lilli. Feeling powerless but knowing the girl had to know something, she physically felt something angry and hard rolling through her. At first she fought it, but when she realized that it had to be her beast, Lilli gave the girl an evil grin.

Lilli gritted her teeth. Struggling to know what to do, she'd never changed but the once and then not by choice. When she fought to bring it forth it simply slipped through her mental fingers, hiding and running like a skittish cat.

Body shaking, Lilli cried out in frustration. Unbidden thoughts of the bullet ripping though Keith made the cat in her move again, brushing against the inside of her. She closed her eyes and let those emotions wash over her; all of the terror, pain and grief. As the unfamiliar sensations grew she relaxed and embraced them, calling them, coaxing them, welcoming them in instead of trying to force them away.

All at once the feeling of her cat swallowed her, the pressure of it filling her completely. She screamed as it ripped through her, the pressure exploding in agony as her body, bones, muscles and viscera reshaped themselves.

The scream turned to into something not human, and quickly Lilli's new body was crouched on the ground, shuddering in exhaustion. But she had done it, and this time she was still aware. Oddly-headed, her brain working differently, but aware. She gave herself a moment to feel pride then turned her altered gaze on the girl who was gibbering in fear.

With an animal scream Lilli leapt at the girl, thoughts fuzzy on what she meant to do. At the height of her leap a large hand snagged her by the scruff of the neck, halting her.

She screamed again in frustration, her claws out to fight as she was turned toward the man who'd kept her from her goal. The beefy, dark-haired man laughed cruelly at her as she struggled.

"Any time you dare change, I'm going to be all to happy to do this." Unbelievable agony exploded in Lilli, multiple times worse than the pain when she had changed herself. Her bones ground against each other, her tendons snapped, her muscles tore. He pulled her human form out of her slowly, letting her suffer every last part of it.

Finally the agony got too much to bear and she blacked out.

For the second time Lilli woke with a start, and again her first thoughts were of Keith. Her eyes flew about in panic and anger.

She was in another small white room; this one with a few dark-colored guards, including the man from before whom she now thought of as 'Dick', who had a smug smile on his face.

There were a trio of chairs, including her own. Just as she readied herself for round two with Dick, the occupant of the other chair spoke.

"Lilli?"

At that voice her eyes truly focused on that person for the first time.

"Andre?!" She turned the spring she had been aiming toward Dick toward the somewhat bedraggled-looking Andre. Then, in another second for the day, Dick snatched her up before she'd done much more than come an inch off her chair.

"Uh huh, you scratch my back.... and I won't scratch his." He made no sense, so she simply blinked at him. "Tell me what we want to know and everyone stays safe."

Anger blazed through Lilli but she held herself still, knowing he had her back against the wall. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything about you and your past."

She let how she felt about that question show on her face. "There really isn't anything to tell."

There really wasn't, not anything that anyone could want to know.

With not one change in his expression, Dick pulled out a gun and shot Andre in the arm. Andre only groaned and clutched at his arm, but Lilli couldn't hold back a scream of denial and pain and tried leaping for him again only to find herself stopped yet again.

"Next time I won't be as generous," he said, and pointed the gun at Andre's chest.

She said it all in a rush: everything she knew, to protect Andre. "My name is Lilli Ann Fischer, I'm about 28 years old. I don't know for sure because they think I was a couple of weeks old when I was found abandoned at the Lady of the Sacred Heart hospital, but they gave me the birthday of 3/15. My name won't help you because I was left with no note or identifying clothing. I was named by June and Paul Fischer when they adopted me shortly after I was found. I lived with them until I was 7 when they both died in a crash. After that I bounced around from distant family member to foster, to vague family member, but never in one place for long. I never changed before, so I had no idea what I was until my first heat. Which was recently, and I was told it was seriously late. I honestly know nothing else."

She saw something dark in Dick's eyes the moment she stopped talking, and it scared her.

"Please," she slowly reached out a hand that trembled ever so slightly, and touched Dick's chest. "Don't hurt him." When nothing on his face changed she tossed in all she had. "I'll do anything," she whispered.

"You'll regret that," he told her quietly, but the gun came down, and he relaxed his grip so she was able to go to Andre. In that moment she could not care less what he had in mind, she just didn't want to lose the only other person in her life that she cared for.

Lilli had far too short a time to try to stem Andre's blood flow before Dick snatched her back.

"Time to go in with the other whores," he said as he hauled her out into the hallway. "Time to start paying up, bitch." Then, with heavy hands, he shoved her down to her knees.

Stunned, Lilli didn't know what to do, and didn't know how to get out of this jam. If she fought him or turned him away, she was fairly certain he'd go back in the other room and shoot Andre. Everything in her screamed in denial; she wanted to fight, to claw and bite, but just as strong was the need to keep Andre safe.

Dick had his fly unbuttoned and had dipped his hand in when one of the other guards came out of the room.

"Mateo, this is not the time," Dick growled, hand frozen in his pants. Was the big asshole afraid to show what he had around the other guards?

Mateo half turned away. "I just came out to tell you - I heard Emilio talking about installing hallway cameras."

"Damn it!" Dick glared down at Lilli's down-turned head. She obviously couldn't see him, but she felt the weight of his gaze. "He's been talking about that for forever."

The other man shrugged. "Who knows if he meant it this time or not, but I figured you'd rather know."

With jerky, angry motions, Dick fastened himself back up. "You aren't off the hook," he growled down at her. "You can take her to her pod!" he shouted at the other guard, and stomped away down the hall.

The guard named Mateo held out a hand and helped her to her feet.

"You'll want to watch yourself with Carlos from now on. Come on, I'll take you to your new home."

Alarm jumped through Lilli and she would have stumbled if Mateo hadn't grabbed her arm.

"Home?" She whispered. "W...what do you mean?" It seemed that Mateo looked at everything in the plain hallway but her.

"Now that they've found you, they aren't going to let you go again."

"So...I'm a prisoner?"

Why? Why in the hell would anyone want to keep her? She had no family, no one to pay any sort of ransom, and she didn't have any special skills or knowledge.

"Call it whatever you want, but you'll not be leaving."

All rational thought fled from her mind. Simply too much had happened to her in too a short time, and her brain couldn't cope. She continued to walk forward without another word. Her eyes registered nothing, she stopped when he stopped, and she obediently walked through the door he opened.

Her numbness was shattered when the door shut and a rising wave of female voices and bodies pressed against her.

Something like panic crashed through her and she backed away into a wall. Twenty or more girls of varying ages were circling her like hungry wolves, their faces curious and their voices loud. She'd always been a loner and this influx, loaded on top of everything else, threatened to destroy her. She fought back unwanted tears.

"Come on girls, she's not going anywhere. You can ask her questions later." A girl with near-black irises pushed her way through the crowd, shoving other girls away from Lilli when they refused to budge. "Go on, go! Can't you see you're overwhelming the poor thing?"

When it was just the two of them, the dark-eyed woman took her hand and led her to a corner, where one of the thick pads that seemed to serve as beds lay on the ground.

"This one is yours now."

Lilli started down at the patchwork quilt, her mind once again numb. Hers?

"Here sweety, drink this."

Her thoughts as thick as molasses, Lilli could only stare at the offered glass, barely registering as it was pressed into her hand.

"It won't hurt you. It's something we take when we desperately need to sleep but the day won't let us go." Very lightly she cupped Lilli's cheek, her eyes kind. "You look like you need to sleep."

Encouraged by the look on the other woman's face, Lilli brought the cup up and drained it without pausing to taste it, then handed it back and let herself be coaxed into the bed and under the quilt.

Waiting for whatever she'd drank to kick in, Lilli focused only on the quilt, running her fingers over the stitching and patches. Quilts had always spoken of love to her, something people spent a lot of time on; stitch after stitch placed to keep someone comfortable and warm. She still had one that her mom, June, had made for her. She wondered if the same could be said of this quilt. Did someone make it out of love, or was it simply out of need? Were the patches on it strictly necessary or did someone patch this blanket to keep it in use for someone who loved it? She forced herself to focus only on the quilt until her eyes blurred out and finally slid closed.

Something brought Lilli up from a deep murky sleep and she forced her eyes open.

A young child of maybe six sat on the ground next to Lilli's mat holding a small clearly handmade doll and regarding her with very earnest green eyes. A cinnamon colored froth of hair so very like her own curled around her pixie face.

"I don't know you," the young girl finally spoke, her voice sweet.

"You don't."

"Your hair is like mine."

"It is." So very like hers.

"No one else has hair like mine." She played with her doll silently for a bit and Lilli's eyes started to droop. "I'm an orphan," she finally whispered.

"Me too." Lilli whispered back.

That got the little girl's attention. "Really?"

"Really."

The little girl hugged the doll tight, and Lilli added it to her mental list of things people made out of love. Then the child seemed to make a decision.

"Can I sleep with you?"

After a moment of thought Lilli lifted her blanket of love and the little girl crawled in, snuggling into Lilli. Both quickly fell asleep.

When Lilli woke some unknown time later she cuddled with the girl for a short while, preferring to hide under the quilt over facing whatever madness lay ahead. With a deep sigh Lilli wrapped the blanket around the child and got out of bed.

Somewhat less foggy-headed and panicked, she took stock of the room. It was large and open with only two doors, and held very little happiness or sense of home. The majority of the room was taken up by the floor mats, but diagonal from the entrance was what seemed to be a communal work and play space. The floor in that area was covered with pillows, piles of sewing and crafts, and a handful of women and girls. A chunky older TV sat in the corner. Next to the other door that looked to lead to a bathroom was a small kitchen. Fridge, sink and what looked to be a tiny stove from an old trailer. In the kitchen, she spotted the woman who had saved her from the mob making something.

At a loss as to what else to do, Lilli silently crossed the kitchen and claimed one of the few stools.

"My name is Jasmine, by the way," the woman finally spoke.

"Lilli," she answered back.

The two stayed in silence, and eventually Lilli stood up to round the counter and help Jasmine cut veggies with a knife that was chained to the counter.

"You seem to have made an impression on Ember," Jasmine pointed at the orphan with her chin.

Lilli glanced over at the still sleeping child. "How so?"

"She really hasn't interacted with anyone since her mom got Processed Out."

"Processed Out?" A chill went through Lilli, imagining that whatever that meant she wasn't going to like it. Very carefully she put the knife down.

"Did you call it something else? You know, that's when they decide they don't want one of the girls working any more for whatever reason."

"Working?"

The strain evident in Lilli's voice finally alerted the other woman to something wrong and she turned toward her. "Servicing the customers."

"What do you mean by servicing?" Her voice had fallen to nearly a whisper.

Jasmine gave her a hard look. "Whatever sex act they ask for! What did you do at your last house?" She had to grab Lilli's elbow when her knees went weak.

"You're saying you're all prostitutes?" A hard shudder raced through her.

"I don't know what that word means. What house are you from?"

Lilli's throat was so dry it took her a while before she could say anything. "Prostitutes have sex for money," She had to work to keep from falling on her ass. "And I don't know what you mean by 'house.' I was attacked at a friend's place and brought here."

Now Jasmine went a little pale. "I don't really know anything about money, we just do as we're told to. Friend's place? You..." her fingers clenched a little. "...you weren't transferred from another house?"

Finally Lilli went to the floor. They weren't prostitutes, they were sex slaves! "No," she mouthed.

"Shit," Jasmine whispered back. Not ever had a girl been brought in from the outside, not to work.

"I have to..." Lilli scrambled to her feet and rushed for the bathroom which turned out to be a bank of stalls and a wall of shower heads. She stumbled her way to the farthest corner and collapsed, her body shuddering, sobs wracking her body. What the hell was happening to her?

An untold time later Ember wandered in and clambered onto Lilli's lap. No questions, no comments, just unconditional comfort.

"Oh Mateo no, she can't, she's not in heat and I JUST got her out of the bathroom."

Mateo took Jasmine's elbow and shut them both in the bathroom. "What do you mean?"

"Did you know she wasn't from one of the houses? She completely panicked when I told her what we do. What's happening?!"

With a deep sigh, Mateo roughly scrubbed his hands over his face.

"Yeah, I knew. I don't know all the details, but Emilio sent a couple of us out to pick her up."

"From the outside? I don't think she can do this when she's not in heat. She was completely freaked out, and most of the day she spent crying in the bathroom. Is Emilio going to start forcing more people to work out of heat?"

"No, not any more than normal."

"Then why now? Why pick up someone from the outside and force them to work?" It just made no sense to her. Girls were Processed In when their heat first kicked started, usually shortly after hitting puberty, and were worked until they were no longer wanted. Generally most girls rebelled or freaked out if made to work when not in heat.

"I think it's Carlos. I don't know why, but he really seems to have it out for this girl."

"Oh, Mateo, how can we do this to her?" Her eyes were liquid darkness when she turned them to Mateo.

With a quick look to make sure they were alone, he pulled her into his arms. "I don't know, I'm powerless here."

"Her first time can't be with him, it just can't," Jasmine shook her head against Mateo's chest. "I'll do it."

"Jasmine..."

"No, no, Mateo, I can't let him play with her her first time and out of heat. I can handle it. We have to give her to one of the gentle ones."

He sighed. "I'll do my best, but I'll only be able to keep Carlos from figuring it out for a short time. It just depends on who comes in."

"I know," she sighed. "I know."

She couldn't do this, how could she do this? Every time she thought about screaming or fighting she remembered Andre. Remembered that if she acted out he would probably be killed. Lilli knew that she was powerless here, the house was locked down and all the guards openly carried guns, but she still wanted to fight.

Jasmine had told her that the girls almost all worked while in heat, and she couldn't tell her why she was being forced to do otherwise. In heat she could handle it, all she'd care about was having that need met, but this...

Lilli sat on the bed, back straight. No, she couldn't think that way. If she did they'd break her and she refused to let that happen. There had to be a way out.

Once her brain cleared, sometime the day after Jasmine had revealed the situation to her, Lilli had given a lot of thought to why she was here. Why this was happening to her. Clearly all the girls here were changers, even if they seemed shocked that she could also change. The people who'd brought her here seemed to have hunted her down. Why would they bother? Why not grab from the other changers out there, if they needed to bring in a outside girl? It seemed unlikely to be a coincidence. She put together all the snippets of information she had; from what had happened and what Keith and Andre had said. What she came up with was that somehow her mother had once snuck her out of one of these 'houses.' She'd spent so long being angry and resentful of her mother for abandoning her that it was strange to realize her mom had done the very best thing she could have done for her child. That she'd abandoned her daughter to protect her.

That meant it was possible to get out of here, and she'd find that way, somehow. As long as she was working toward that end she could handle anything.

Her first client was an older man who mostly just wanted to make her cum. It took a long time for Lilli to relax enough to allow herself to be turned on, but she knew if she displeased the clients she'd be forced to pay in some way, and most likely that way was to lose Andre.

Eventually the gentleman's easy and gentle ways and surprising skill coaxed pleasure out of her body. He treated her like a treasure, and in the end she found it fairly easy to return that pleasure, to view him as a lover instead of a violator. It was the kindest introduction to her new position in life possible.

It was all in the timing. Having not eaten yet, Lilli arrived to her room early only to find Andre prepping it still.

They both cried out and ran into one another's arms, clinging for all they were worth. That tight hold quickly turned into frantic kissing and pawing. They both needed the touch of someone who cared about them, and needed to be taken away from the situation they found themselves in.