Binding Foxgirls

  Binding Foxgirls

  Book 1

  Simon Archer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  8. Elias Berg

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  19. Elias Berg

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  29. Achilles Tibor

  A Note from the Author

  1

  “Good afternoon, I’m Nic Joch. I’ll be your binder for this case,” I said as I sat down across from the man I’d be binding to the foxgirl of his dreams in a few days' time. We were in one of the slick offices on the tenth floor of the TelCorp building reserved for meeting with clients prior to bindings. I’d always felt it was a nice venue for the meetings because it was covered from wall to wall in windows that overlooked the flying aircar traffic and bustling magenta, green, and blue lights of the city of Termina below. It was one of my favorite views in the city and almost made the meeting worth my time.

  Almost.

  “Hey,” my client replied, not meeting my eyes. “I’m Bayram Wright. But you already know that. Sorry.”

  “It’s not a problem. I know lots of things,” I said as I shook his hand. My glove came back slick with some of his sweat. A first-timer, clearly. I’d learned there are two sorts of clients in the binding business: those who adopt a confident, engaging persona to cover up their strange proclivities, and those who make an effort but fall well short of that goal, with the result that they come off as an odd combination of meek and sleazy. This guy was the latter. He had the appearance of trying to be well put together but failing miserably. And that wasn’t just because his hair was full of some kind of slimy gel that did not look good.

  Oh well, who was I to judge? I got paid because of guys like him, after all.

  “Alright, so, uhm… how does this work exactly?” he asked, drying off his hands on his mismatched charcoal slacks while still refusing to look directly at me.

  “So, I’ll come in and perform the binding,” I explained, starting with my usual intro speech for newcomers. “All you have to do is show up and wait outside. That’s it. TelCorp will make sure the other client is in the binding chair before I show up, and I’ll do the rest. When I’m done, your two spirits will be bound together. Forever.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s sort of what I mean,” the guy said, a little too eager. “How does that work? I mean, like, how do you put two souls together?”

  “Well,” I began, sighing despite myself. I was hoping this would be a short meeting. “I can’t say I know exactly. No one does, really. All we know is that the spirit world is a whole other place. There are souls or spirits for every living being, and some of us have the ability, if we develop it, to tap into that spirit world by using our intuition to look into a person’s soul. Using this ability, we can bind two or more spirits to one another, but only in an uneven way. No one’s figured out how to do it evenly yet, so one spirit always has to be dominant, and the other always has to be subservient. That’s just how it works.” Not that guys like this would ever have it any other way. “So, basically, you’ll be the master in the relationship. Is that something you’re okay with?”

  “Yes, of course,” he said, a little too eager now. “What will it feel like?”

  “Well, it depends.” I shrugged. “You’ll always feel something right at the beginning, like a falling sensation, but after that, it really tends to vary. Some people who are really intuitive, really in tune with themselves, and others, like us binders, feel really connected to the other person right away. Others don’t feel much at all for a while. It just depends. Binders feel it the most I’m told, though I’ve never done it myself before.”

  “Yeah, I tried to be one of you guys when I was fresh out of school,” the client said, staring straight down at the table now to avoid looking at me. “A binder, I mean. I guess I didn’t really have a talent for it.”

  I had to stop myself from laughing out loud. This guy? A binder? Give me a break.

  “Yeah, well, we’re an elite group,” I said, allowing myself to reveal just a hint of pride. “Especially here at TelCorp. We’re the best binding corporation in the world. Always have been, always will be. We do other stuff too, of course, but binding’s our specialty.”

  “You have a ton of training then?” the guy asked, sneaking a glance up at me. I could tell he was more than just nervous by nature. He was nervous about the binding. “I mean, I’ve heard that sometimes these things can go bad….”

  “Yep.” I puffed out my chest a bit as I swelled with pride. “No one has better training than us at TelCorp, and no one at TelCorp’s better than me. So you can be assured that your soul… and your friend’s… is in excellent hands, if you will.”

  I flexed my fingers under my binding gloves. Sometimes spirits could be extra sensitive, and our hands could be burned if something went awry. So we had to wear heavy leather gloves to prevent any damage. Our hands were our main money-makers, after all. They were our main conduit to the spirit world, other than our good old intuition, that is.

  “Okay, so even if things do go wrong, you’ll be there to stop it,” he said, still half looking at me, half looking at the table.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “We get all kinds of training just for these scenarios, not just basic binding stuff to do with the spirit world. As you probably know, based on your question, sometimes things… go a bit haywire with these things. If the binding doesn’t take, sometimes the bound client… that’s what we call the subservient spirit if you didn’t already know… goes a little… well… psycho. That’s really the only way to put it. I’m sure you’ve heard of a couple of bad cases. But anyway, I’ve never had that happen personally. In fact, I’ve never performed a single binding that didn’t take right away.”

  “Really?” he asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “I’ve never heard of that before. I mean about the flawless record. I thought something like only thirty percent of bindings took?”

  “Usually, that’s true, but not for me,” I boasted. “Only perfect record in TelCorp’s history. The only perfect record in any corporation’s history, actually. But even so, we’ve got all kinds of training in case something goes wrong. We carry special holo knives made just for us and are trained in all kinds of historical and modern street fighting techniques in case things go wrong. We even have pretty good hacking training, though that’s not really relevant to you or your question. It would be helpful in tracking down a psycho bound client, I suppose, but it’s never come to that before. We always find ‘em quick.”

  “Really? Hacking?” he asked, surprised yet again. “Why’s that?”

  “Well, you know, there’s a pretty big secondary market here in Termina for cybernetic implants,” I said. Sure enough, you couldn’t go to a night club here on the north side of the city without running into some kind of crazy cyborg. I was a fan of being all-natural myself, scientifically and spiritually. No implants and no bindings for me. Never saw a need for it.

  “Oh yeah, I don’t get that at all,” the guy said, shaking his head. Well, at least we had one thing in common. Ironic that he was judging cyborgs for their proclivities when he got off on making foxgirls s
ubservient to him. Oh well, if they wanted to be bound to him, who was I to judge? My not getting it didn’t really matter. I just got paid.

  “Right,” I said, working hard not to roll my eyes. “Basically, sometimes people with these cybernetic implants want a binding, so I need to know how to work around them for the purposes of accessing the spirit world. Magic and tech don’t always mix, you see. So we get some good hacking training. Not top-notch like some of the guys who do just hacking for business since we only need it for a very specific purpose, but pretty damn good for non-professionals.”

  “Okay,” the guy said, looking a little less nervous. Still slimy, though. “So even if something went wrong, you’re telling me I’ll be good?”

  Typical. Only cared about himself and not the foxgirls. Whatever, to each their own.

  “Yep,” I assured him, “but nothing will go wrong. As I said, I’ve never had it happen with one of my clients, not even when I was just starting out. And with each binding, I grow stronger and stronger. So, even if a foxgirl did go psycho on me, she wouldn’t be any match for me. Your soul’s in excellent hands, Mister… Wright, was it? Right. Nothing for you to worry about, I assure you. TelCorp will take good care of you and the bound, like we always do.”

  2

  I entered the sleek, antiseptic little room where I performed most of my bindings, weary and tired from another long day of work but excited to use my powers to their fullest.

  The room was small and dark, like most of Termina, my home city. There were dim lights up above the binding chair with a greenish-blue tint to them, also characteristic of Termina. There wasn’t anything in the room other than the chair, a long, steel appliance much like ones in a dentist’s office but without the cushions. Sure, that seemed needlessly cruel, but I’d been told that the space allowed by the cushions could cause unforeseen complications in the binding. I wasn’t sure if that was true, though, since it’d been that way since long before I became a binder. In fact, it was one of the first things Elias Berg, the CEO of TelCorp, instituted when he took charge.

  Satisfied that everything was in order, I turned my attention to the woman strapped tightly to the chair with metallic restraints. The foxgirl was incredibly beautiful, like all of them were. That’s what made her kind so desirable. She had long auburn hair and pointy little ears sticking up from beneath her curls. Other than that and her long, equally auburn tail, she looked mostly human.

  She looked up at me with wide eyes, no doubt afraid of what was about to come. She couldn’t say anything, though, because a metallic restraint was also strapped across her mouth, necessary to hold her head down and ensure that the binding took properly. The more movement a client had, the more likely everything would get all fucked up, and sometimes, the foxgirls just couldn’t help but squirm and thrash during the procedure.

  I glanced over the forms one last time on my clunky gray tablet, as I always did, to make sure that everything was in order. The TelCorp logo, a sharply slanted T surrounded by a half-circle, was etched into the back of the device. I smiled at the sight of it, as I often did, proud of the company that my father had built before his untimely death when I was young. Everything looked correct, so I turned off the device and slipped it underneath my long leather jacket. Unlike most, which were black, mine was gray, which signified that I was one of TelCorp’s elite binders.

  It was a heart attack that did my dad in, which was a little odd because he’d only been forty. I’d only been four at the time, so most everything from that time was pretty blurry. My mom died when she was giving birth to me, so my dad was all I’d had. I remember thinking how strange it was that the rich and powerful Mak Joch was killed by something as mundane as a heart attack, and there was nothing anything could do to save him, no matter how much money he had.

  He’d been a binder, too, and a damn good one at that. I always thought about him right before performing a binding. It made me feel closer to him somehow. One day, maybe I’d get to be CEO of TelCorp just like he was from when he founded it until his untimely death. I’d been on track for an executive position for a while now, but for the time being, I relished doing my bindings.

  I stood over the woman in the steel chair which was pushed down so that it was almost as flat as a bed. A very uncomfortable bed, anyway. I smiled down at her, trying to make her feel as comfortable as possible for the procedure.

  “It’s alright,” I assured her. “It’ll be over soon. It might hurt for a few minutes, but you’ll be glad you did it, though. Foxgirls always are.”

  For whatever reason, my clients were always terrified even though they consented to the procedure. No amount of reassurance ever seemed to soothe them. I liked to try, anyway. I hated seeing people so upset. Sometimes, I wished I knew what it was like to be bound instead of just being the binder, but I would never consent to tie myself to another like that. Too much of a hassle.

  I held my gloved hands up over the woman’s body, which was bare except for where the straps held her down. Her clothing sat in the corner, waiting for her, while my other client, Mr. Wright, waited outside. I’d met with him first, not just to explain the procedure, but also so that I knew who to think of during the binding to ensure that it took.

  I closed my eyes and focused clearly on the other client with my mind and with my soul. I focused on his appearance, his slicked-back dark hair, square jaw, and mismatched dark suit. But I also thought of his cool demeanor and weird look, and the certainty he had that this was what he wanted. It was important for binders to pick up on emotions as well as appearances, given that we deal in spirits, not the physical world.

  It was easier to perform the procedure since he was so near, the energy of his spirit resonating through the doorway. It would be even easier were he in the room with us, but that tended to add other complications to the procedure. Much like fathers growing weak and anxious when their partners give birth, the binding clients tended to react similarly during the procedure. Most binding companies like TelCorp stopped letting them watch years ago for just that reason.

  Once I had a grasp on his spirit and could feel it there in the room with us, I turned my attention to the foxgirl. She struck me as a warm and inviting person with a loving spirit. Of course, I had never interacted with her, but I had a knack for picking up on these things. Most binders do, but I even more so than most. I wasn’t sure why. I’d just always been that way. I think my dad was like that, too, from what I remember. There was just a warmth about him that was difficult to miss.

  This woman seemed that way, too, on the inside, even though she was scared right then.

  Apparently, I was right about her because her spirit came to me easily enough. I could feel it rise in the air above me, where my hands were spread out. As the two spirits met in the air, green streams of smoke appeared around them, illuminating their presence in the form of two bright flickers of light, almost like stars down on earth.

  The green smoke swirled around both of the lights, and one end of each swirl of smoke latched on to each of the spirits, pulling them tightly together until they were one, a single larger, brighter star now. I smiled, feeling the two spirits combine. I really did love my work. I was bringing people together in the most literal way possible.

  Then something unusual happened.

  Somehow, the foxgirl seemed to dislocate her shoulders and managed to wriggle out of her restraints before shifting her shoulders back into her sockets. Now free, she snapped the rest of the restraints binding her to the chair.

  “What the hell?” I said in surprise as I stepped back. It took an incredible amount of strength to break those things. Though the restraints were made of a mesh-like material, that mesh was laced with steel. I knew that the foxgirls were strong, but I’d never seen one this strong.

  The foxgirl’s biceps bulged as she broke the last of the restraints. Then she leapt off the table and darted over to the corner of the dark room, her hands held high in a defensive position. She spat out the restrai
nt that still lingered in her mouth and growled at me.

  “It’s okay,” I said, holding out my hands to show her I meant her no harm. “It’s over. The procedure’s done. Nothing to worry about now.”

  “Nothing to worry about?” she spat, her voice low and raspy. “You just enslaved me, binder!” My mouth dropped open.

  “Well, yeah…?” I started to ask, but she cut me off.

  “You bound my soul to another. Now, I’m indebted to him for life,” she hissed, and I noticed that her fingernails were long and pointed, like claws. Given her strength, I certainly didn’t want to be on her bad side.

  “Isn’t that what you wanted?” I said, shaking my head in confusion. I reached into my jacket to retrieve my pad, and she growled again, louder and harsher this time.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she warned as she arched her claws in my direction.

  “I’m not going for a weapon,” I said, quickly pulling out my pad and holding it up to show her. “I wouldn’t need one, anyway.”

  Sure, she may be strong and have claws and all, but I was a binder, and a damned capable one at that. She didn’t represent much of a threat to me. Even so, I didn’t want to hurt her. She seemed confused and disoriented, though. Had something gone wrong with the binding?

  “Look.” I pulled up the contract on the pad and showed it to her. “This is your consent form. You signed it, remember? You consented.”

  “I did no such thing,” she said, swiping at my pad with her claws. I quickly pulled it back and returned it to the inside of my jacket. I didn’t want to break another pad if I could help it.