Panthera Spelaea
Fountain of Youth

What the actual FUCK did he just say? “Marina Federov, my lawyer, is your great-granddaughter? How? You’re MY age!”

Art chuckled a little at that. “I suppose there is no way you could have known, since no one was around to teach you. What have you noticed about your healing abilities?”

I noticed they were freaking FAST. “When my lion went on the Moscow rampage, I was shot three times. The girls removed the bullets and dressed the wounds, and they were healed a few hours later.”

“The healing rates will only improve as you and your lion integrate fully. The healing makes you immune to disease, and able to withstand much physical damage and keep going. It does not make you immortal in the true sense, but it helps.”

“How old are you,” Anna asked.

“The nature of the Switcher gift, and I do consider my bear a gift, stops the aging process completely. I still look and feel the same as I did at the age of twenty-four, when I received the gift from my Grandfather after his death. The year was 1487, in the Ural Mountains near the village of Solikamsk. We were felling trees when one went the wrong way and killed him. I was the first to touch him, so I received his Bear.”

“What happened then?”

“I woke up five days later in bed. My family had tracked the bear into the woods, and when I shifted back, they brought me home. As you found out, the first switch is a bitch. Everything hurt for two weeks.”

I grimaced, thinking back to my time in the hospital. “Did you kill anyone?”

“No. The bear in me recognized the scents of my family and left them alone. I imagine your cat had a far different experience when it burst forth.”

A far bloodier one. “I guess. I don’t know what happened on the boat after I blacked out. My expedition mates probably jumped out and drowned, but the boatsman could have pulled a gun or something.”

“You cannot feel guilty about it, John. You didn’t know what was happening, and you couldn’t have stopped it. A wild animal was scared and alone, and reacted accordingly.”

The girls pressed in on my sides, holding my arms. It was a lot to take in, the biggest shock since we all realized I was a Cave Lion in the Moscow park. “If I’m following you, I can be killed if the injury goes beyond the capability of my healing power. Until then, I’m healthy and never age.”

“Correct. True immortality is both the absence of aging and the impossibility of death. If your Cave Lion had been a true immortal, after you freed it from the permafrost and let it thaw, it would have gotten up and walked away. You could hack it to pieces and scatter the remains, and it would somehow come back together. That is not our gift. We have what scientists refer to as biological immortality.”

“We live until we are killed,” I replied.

“That is our experience. Your ladies are both nurses, and are familiar with the biological effects of aging?”

Anna answered first. “Cellular reproduction eventually succumbs to degradation and stops due to damage to the DNA or shortened telomeres.”

“Correct. We call that the Hayflick Limit, the number of cellular divisions beyond which the cell cannot continue to divide because it is too damaged to function. A human body ages because it can no longer repair all the damage due to the aging process. The healing you see at a high level, like repairing damage from a gunshot wound, also occurs in you on the cellular level. Instead of your DNA degrading with age, it continually repairs itself. You are continually being restored to perfect health, never aging from the point you received your spirit animal into yourself.”

“No grey hair? No aching joints?”

He laughed. “I’m five and a half centuries old, yet we’re the same biological age. Both of us are at our physical peaks and will remain that way until we die.”

It was a lot to take in. “I’ve noticed the girls had gained some characteristics during our time together,” I said as I looked at them. “Strength, endurance, sensory perception. Are they?” I couldn’t even say it.

“Not quite,” he told me. “The benefits they gain from you are temporary, not permanent. It will be interesting for you, as you have two females bonded to your cat. The rest of us only have one.”

“You are married?” Svetlana was looking around for clues.

“I was, but she died thirty years ago.” I saw the sorrow in his eyes, and then it was gone. “I hold hope I will find our match again. Mates are very important to us, because the life of an immortal is not easy. Everyone around you ages and fades away except for her. You watch your children and friends die, and there is nothing you can do about it. A mate stabilizes your spirit and your animal, and I miss Elizabeth every day.”

“How does the bonding work?”

“It’s not a bite like those fictional works. Your mate is the one both your human and your beast recognize as theirs. You form a deep emotional bond with the woman, and your ejaculate acts like a healing medicine for them when ingested. As long as they remain with you and receive regular doses, they will be healthy and never age. If they are gone long enough, they can begin to age again. We’ve learned over the centuries to keep them nearby, both for protection, and to ensure they ingest our essence often enough.”

Svetlana started to laugh. “Magic Blowjobs? This might be fun. Is twice a day each often enough?”

Anna laughed as well. “And with two of us demanding treatments? Our poor husband, forced to make such sacrifices for our health.”

“Two hummers a day keeps the doctor away?” I had to say it.

Svetlana was thinking ahead. “What if he allows another woman to swallow his semen? Will she get the same benefit?”

“We don’t know why, but we haven’t seen it. The benefit only extends to the one the animal is bonded with. Other girls could live on his cum and never heal, despite testing showing no difference between the ejaculate if it is a mate or a stranger. We think it might be a catalyst for the spiritual energy, but we can’t rule out other ideas. There are some things about switchers we can’t explain, and we didn’t come with an instruction manual. What we know is from what our ancestors passed on, plus what we’ve studied ourselves.”

A thought came to me. “What about Ekatarina? Is she married? How does it work with her husband?”

“We don’t know, John. Ekatarina is only a hundred and twelve years old, and she’s never found her life mate.”

There was a knock, then a female voice. “Breakfast is ready, sir.”

I was hungry. I took a girl with each hand and followed Art to the outside dining area.

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