In the Midnight Hour

by Katrina VanBuskirk

  Remy shot straight up, clutching Sarae tightly in his arms as Heather screamed up at his heels. The ceiling loomed up, so he merely shut his eyes.

  A moment later, he opened his eyes, and found he was through the ceiling and still rising fast into the air as swiftly as a helium balloon.

  Sarae lay silent in his arms, though she was still breathing. Her head was thrown back, her eyelashes trembling.

  Jesus. He held her tighter, burning with hatred toward Heather.

  And here she came, screaming at him. “You can’t get away from me so fast!” she shrieked, her eyes bugging out. Blood dripped from her dress and feet in thick, viscous drops. With another shriek, she shot toward Remy almost faster than the eye could see.

  Remy flung himself back, opening a gap between them, and swung his hand that held the powder, creating a deep blue shield like a bubble all around him and Sarae.

  Heather smashed against the shield, pressing her face to it, gibbering. Then she forced her hands through the light, though it sparked blue sparks all around, and she began to slowly pull the shield open. Blood ran down her face like sweat.

  He hauled off and punched her in the face. The blow flung her back, and the shield closed.

  He couldn’t fight Heather with Sarae lying in his arms.

  Remy lay Sarae in the bottom of the bubble-shield. He leaped through its side, closed a second shield around her to keep her safe from Heather. The bubble-shields floated there in the air, Sarae’s body lying limp inside.

  Remy turned at once toward Heather and flew at her.

  They collided with a stunning blow that slammed his jaws together so hard that he felt as if all his teeth had broken.

  At once they were grappling as they fell through the air, Heather clutching savagely at him, trying to work her hands past his to choke him to death. He grabbed her hands, shoving a knee into her stomach. Heather lunged in, her teeth suddenly on his neck, trying to bite through.

  A host of other spirits came screaming in with her, biting at Remy with their teeth, ripping at him with their claws. He had a shield on him that kept their bites off, mostly, but he arched with pain when one set of teeth got through. He ripped a hand free from Heather and smacked the being, whatever it was, with powder. It squealed and gibbered away.

  Something got into him from that bite, though – an infection that made his blood run cold.

  Then Heather scrambled on top of Remy as he fell. Her hands laced around his neck.

  The ground came racing up below them, too fast too fast too fast

  And with a horrible thud he slammed into the ground

  And their bodies sank down into the dirt as if it were water

  Heather leaning forward, her bloody face inches from his

  As her hands gripped Remy’s neck and squeezed,

  And a red scrim appeared over his vision from the pain.

  Remy struggled to free himself but failed. He pushed his fingers up into Heather’s face, trying to gouge out her eyes, pressing his thumbs in.

  She squealed and released him as they sank into the dirt and the light faded until they were completely in darkness.

  Remy tried to light up the darkness with a wave of his hand.

  Suddenly a pair of legs scissored around his waist. Heather’s body pressed against his, crotch to crotch.

  They wrestled there, under the ground, Remy’s arms trembling with exertion as Heather ripped his skin with her sharp nails, clawing at him, biting through his defenses.

  Remy ground his teeth together as he grabbed her around the neck, throttling her.

  He flipped her over and climbed on top of Heather, crushing her throat underneath his hands. He was going to destroy her right here ….

  Heather immediately morphed into Sarae.

  Sarae, lying naked and helpless under him, choked under his grip, her eyes rolling back in her head as he crushed her windpipe with the heels of his hands ….

  Remy instantly let go, shocked.

  Sarae – or Heather – smiled at him wickedly.

  Go at it with me, she said. I’ll give you what you want. Everything you want.

  “No,” Remy said, wrinkling his lip in scorn.

  But those eyes captivated him. Held him in their spell. Something muttered.

  Sarae’s fingers tightened on his arms. Her nails bit into his skin.

  And from her nails a poison seeped into him.

  Oh Christ, she’s spelling me!

  But as soon as the realization blazed through Remy, Heather’s spell was already unwinding. He was tangled in her magic, bound tight in a thousand tiny spell threads.

  And her spell, the poison from her touch, suddenly filled him with lust that he couldn’t control.

  Fake Sarae’s fingernails bit harder into his skin as she pulled him down.

  “No, no, no ….” Remy whispered, trying to resist, to pull back.

  But all his disgust was drowned in a flood of lust.

  Sarae’s teeth bit into his shoulder, and savage bliss went straight to his sex. She sucked his blood, and that hot pull, that pain made him instantly hard. He jerked in pleasure against her.

  “No, please,” he muttered, even as his mouth covered hers. Intense pleasure washed through him. She bit his lip. The sharp tang of blood filled his mouth, and he licked frantically for the taste.

  He knew he was drinking from a poisoned well. But he couldn’t stop himself.

  She gripped him, her nails biting into his back, and her legs opened beneath his body, inviting him in.

  His clothes were gone. So were hers. His cock, now painfully hard, felt the heat of her pussy. He knew she was wet. He wanted to ….

  “I can’t. I can’t do this,” he said.

  Sarae smirked. Your begging only makes me hotter, she whispered. She threw her head back, exposing her neck, tantalizing.

  Remy bit her neck as her body writhed under his. The touch of her skin against his skin was driving him to madness, and he bit and sucked. His need was overwhelming him. He wanted her.

  He knew who she was, he knew what she was doing to him, and some part of him was disgusted.

  But he was inflamed by that sick lust.

  Before he could stop himself, he straddled her. He pushed her thighs apart.

  With one great thrust, he pushed hard into her.

  The most intense pleasure he’d ever experienced overwhelmed him as he speared her. His eyes rolled back in his head. He began plunging into her, harder than he ever would have done with the real Sarae.

  He was brutal, slamming into her again and again, going deeper and deeper with every hard stroke. Her body arched against his, pushed back, her breasts rolling with his exertions.

  He pushed himself with a particularly satisfying thrust so deep inside her that she screamed with pleasure. The sound went right through him, making him even meaner.

  Oh, God, this was wrong. He had to stop.

  But that only made his lust worse, made him want this more.

  He slammed his cock home again and again, and her body pushed back just as hard. He grabbed her hips, his fingernails biting into her body, smacking into her. He’d never been this deep into a woman before. With each thrust, he felt the orgasm building beyond anything he’d ever experienced before.

  She screamed again, arching against him. He finally broke loose inside her, shoving his final thrust home in what felt like an endless flood. She came with him as well, both of them shaking with spasms. She was so tight, so tight ….

  He gasped for breath, looking down at Sarae’s face.

  She smirked.

  Dear God, what had he done?

  She reached up and with her thumb, slid the sweat off from over his eyebrow. She smiled slowly, arching her body under him.

  To Remy’s dismay, his cock still filled her. God help him, he already wanted more. Sarae, with a wicked smile, tightened her pussy around his cock and thrust against him again, gently, as if to see how he’d respond.

  Remy
breathed deeply, beginning to stroke her a second time, still just as hard as before, as if he had never come at all.

  “You want this,” she purred.

  He didn’t reply. Because he did want this. God help him, he did.

  He’d left the real Sarae behind for this….

  Disgusted with himself, he wanted to push her away.

  Instead, he pulled her close and kissed her. Their mouths bit at each other, the blood only heightening his pleasure. He began to rock against her once more, sliding in and out of that wet hole. He couldn’t – didn’t want to stop. He was insatiable.

  But then she pushed him away. Pulled her body back so he was no longer inside her.

  And she laughed in his face.

  “Now you will long for me, and only for me,” she said.

  She grabbed Remy. With superhuman strength, she flung him up into the air.

  “No!” he screamed.

  He shot up through the dirt like a bubble, bursting into the air, and he flew up as if gravity had let him loose.

  Somehow, as he flew up through the air, the world getting smaller below him, he realized that he was clothed again. How nice.

  Remy’s upward flight slowed. He came to a stop next to Sarae’s bubble, still floating gently where he’d left it.

  And he didn’t want her.

  He’d never been sicker of himself than he was now.

  Because even now his body was lusting for … for that ghost. Burning with that unholy fire, unable to get that hot episode out of his head. Even now, he was painfully hard with want yet again.

  Disgusted, dismayed, he lay a hand on the first bubble and it vanished. Then he touched the second.

  Sarae fell into his arms.

  He cradled her unconscious body, and he didn’t even feel a thing for her.

  Stealing Souls

  Remy reached his hand to her forehead and touched her, singing quietly in French for her to be healed.

  Sarae gasped. Her eyes fluttered open—and she struck out blindly with her arms, accidentally clipping Remy in the jaw. “Where is she! Where is that bitch!”

  “I got you away from her,” he said dully, flying faster across the wide world.

  Sarae, looking down at the ground so far away, screamed and jumped in his arms and immediately grabbed his neck with a tight hold—though nothing would choke him. He almost wished she could.

  “What the hell is going on!” she screamed, and buried her face against his neck. “Get me down!”

  Suddenly the scene shifted, as it does in dreams.

  They were once again in Sarae’s bed, kissing, and he was once again deep inside of her, penetrating her as if he’d never left. Remy groaned. It wasn’t the same as it had been, the feeling wasn’t as intense ….

  He’d been poisoned, body and soul, by that ghost. And he’d willfully let her do this to him.

  “Hey, whoa,” Sarae said, her body rising to him. “Oh, God, this feels good. But we’re still being pursued, right? Wake up. Wake up before ….” She gasped in pleasure.

  She was right. She was absolutely right. Remy sighed and withdrew. “Get dressed,” he said, grabbing his jeans.

  Sarae sat up. “This is a dream, right?” she said.

  She snapped her fingers.

  Suddenly they were both dressed.

  “Wow. You’re getting good at this,” Remy said, looking down at his outfit.

  “I’m glad, but we gotta go,” Sarae cried. “What’s our objective here? Can we go find the girls now?”

  She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out the bunch of Chloe’s hair that she’d pulled out of her hairbrush just a short while ago. “We’re in a dream,” she said. “No need to use finding spells, right?”

  “Shit, that’s a great idea.” Remy said.

  “Hair, show me where Chloe is at,” she asked the hairball.

  Just at that moment, the front door banged open.

  “Avon calling!” shrieked Heather from the front room.

  Heather made a hissing and gurgling noise. Her footsteps came running through Sarae’s house toward the bedroom.

  Oh, dear God.

  But before Remy could respond inappropriately, Sarae grabbed him around the waist.

  “Disapparate!” she cried.

  They reappeared next to the cabin.

  “So is this where Chloe’s hair brought us? I should have guessed,” Sarae said. “Hair, please lead us to where Chloe is.”

  Sarae lifted the hairball into the air, then opened her hand.

  The blonde hairball floated straight up like a messy blonde cloud. It paused for a moment, hanging lightly in the air, then it drifted straight into the cabin, through the wall, the way a ghost would.

  Sarae immediately released Remy and headed to the front door. “We’re going inside! And this is a dream so I’m going to walk through the wall!” she said, shutting her eyes.

  Then she crashed into the wall next to the door and bounced off. “Dammit!”

  “Jesus, girl,” Remy remarked.

  At least her antics were helping to get that ghost out of his mind. For the moment.

  He smiled thinly. “You don’t need doors.” Remy snapped his fingers.

  The next moment, they stood inside the cabin, as one does in dreams.

  “Show-off,” Sarae muttered.

  It was a cozy lodge, with deer pictures on the wall, a rough-looking couch and chairs, and conservation magazines on the coffee table. The place smelled faintly like coffee and cigarette smoke.

  “Girls!” Sarae cried. “Girls, are you here?”

  There was the little blonde hairball in the air, floating blithely through the rooms of the house just ahead of them. They followed it.

  They walked through a tiny kitchen with barely room to pass the fridge, a short counter, and a stove and sink. Sarae opened one door that led to a mudroom. Remy found a bedroom with room enough for a bed and a small table. He looked into the closet and a tiny bathroom in mustard yellow.

  They hurried through the house, peering each room they came across.

  And suddenly the hairball stopped in the air in the back mudroom.

  Then it sank to the floor – and through the floor – and it was gone.

  But there was no access to a downstairs in that room.

  “Let’s go outside,” Sarae said. “Maybe they have a storm cellar, but you can’t get to those from inside the house.”

  “Why?” Remy asked, but she shrugged.

  The next thing he knew, the dream-scene changed again.

  They were standing outside the mudroom now. Lo and behold, a cellar door was set against the side of the house.

  So there is a cellar under the mudroom, Remy thought. That’s where the hair went.

  But the cellar door was padlocked shut.

  “This is a dream,” Sarae said again. “Here’s a bolt cutters.”

  She stuck her hand out to Remy, but the dream, apparently being evil, had her holding a fish instead.

  “Ugh!” She dropped it.

  The scene changed again.

  Now they were inside the cellar, standing on concrete stairs in a dark passageway, lit only by the faint lines of light that shown through the cracks in the cellar door above them. The place smelled musty. Sarae sneezed.

  They walked down the steps. Remy felt his way. There were no railings here to put his hand. Now he smelled root vegetables, the strong smell of rotting potatoes.

  And a quiet rustle ahead, from out of the dark.

  “Too big to be a mouse,” Sarae whispered in his ear.

  They walked step by step into darkness. Remy called up a dim white ball of light to see by and tossed it up the ceiling. Now he could see the door at the bottom of the steps where the cellar was – the room under the house, basically.

  The door had an old fashioned latch, which Sarae lifted, then she pushed the oak door open. It swung quietly on its hinges with a small squeak from the upper hinge.

  As soon as the
door was opening, Remy flicked a light from his fingertips up to the concrete ceiling that arched overhead.

  There were shelves on each side on which a few mason jars, long abandoned, gleamed in the soft light. The smell of potatoes was stronger here, though they must have rotted to dirt by now.

  But another smell hit Remy hard, right between the eyes.

  The place smelled of unwashed bodies and sewage from a bucket that sat in the corner.

  “Oh, my God,” Remy said.

  Two girls sat against the back wall, very pale in the light. They were thin and looked exhausted from the way they lay.

  Chloe and Lauren.

  The hairball floated in the air above them.

  “It’s the girls. They’re still alive,” Sarae breathed.

  “No!” Chloe gasped when Sarae stepped forward. “Don’t hurt us!” She began crying hysterically.

  “I’m a friend,” Sarae said softly. “I swear we’re going to get you out of here. How long have you been here?”

  “I don’t know,” Chloe gasped, still sobbing. “That ghost keeps hurting us … I want to go home ….”

  “You mean Heather?” Remy asked, frowning deeply. Even that loathsome name affected him.

  “Yeah,” said Lauren. “She keeps taking part of our souls. It hurts so bad ….”

  “Why’s she doing that for?”

  Chloe shook her head, a tear flashing from her eyes. “I don’t know. We just want the pain to stop. We want our … our souls back.”

  Sarae was baffled. “Stealing souls? That’s the devil’s work.”

  Remy’s face went very tired all of a sudden, but he faced Sarae. “We’re going to build a sphere of protection around these girls, now.” He quickly blew powder over the girls. Then he began chanting, Sarae joining him, and they raised their arms to cast protection over the girls.

  A deep-blue sphere like a bubble sprang into being over the girls, with soft lights like stars dancing in its surface. The girls relaxed, looking up at the beautiful glimmers. Lauren touched the bubble over her head, and a rainbow rippled across its surface.

  “We need to leave the dream world and return to the real world now,” Remy said. He seemed sad for some reason. Sarae wasn’t sure what had happened to him, but there was no time to ask.