She stopped once more and glanced down at her notes before regaining eye contact with the camera. “We’re about twenty to thirty minutes away from Leeds Point, the supposed birthplace of the creature and the site of one of the most recent encounters with the cryptid. Tomorrow we will begin our search at the ruins of the fabled birthplace. We had to obtain special permits to visit and film there, as it is not open to the public. Later in the week, we’ll be placing camera traps in various sections of the Pine Barrens where locals have heard strange shrieking and where sightings have occurred. Who knows, maybe the Jersey Devil will even allow us a fleeting glimpse to prove he is alive and well so many years after his mysterious birth.”
Oh, yeah. This was going to be a long two weeks.
***
The clamor of nearby voices woke Pan from a most relaxing slumber. Morning sunlight glared through the canopy of trees above, mocking him. Because the times he managed to sleep dreamlessly were few and far between, the disruption grated his nerves. He gritted his teeth at the sounds and held up a hand to shield his eyes from the bright onslaught. After adjusting, he yawned and supposed it was time to get up and occupy himself somehow. Finding a method to distract from his eternal boredom hadn’t gone very well lately.
There wasn’t much to do aside from playing tricks on the hapless humans. He supposed he could fall back on old habits and allow himself to be ruled by his lust as he had three thousand years ago, but he worried he wouldn’t be able to stop if he did. He’d been close to mindless, living for the pleasure of it. Something he’d been able to control enough around others like him, but not entirely.
And now... Pan lived for a nice, leisurely nap. But at least he did eventually rouse, unlike so many of the other gods of olden times. Last he’d heard, most of them were just shy of comatose within their fortified realm of Mount Olympus, hoping to wake the day they had followers once more. Idiots. They were long forgotten, enjoyed as bedtime stories and fanciful movie characters. It amused him beyond words.
The gods had become lessons in morality, gender, religion, sexuality, and culture. Reduced to a fictional existence because the humans who told their stories had long since died. Those who remained couldn’t wrap their minds around anything other than science and what their own two eyes could perceive as reality. Sure, there were several religions that believed in a higher power capable of defying the laws of science, but even those individuals would scoff when confronted with the idea of an extraordinary being and turn the other cheek. Unfortunately, those who were open-minded feared the worst from the unexplained, considering anything unheard of as unholy monsters. Demons.
Pan stretched before reaching his hand behind him to brush the moss and grass from his denim-encased backside. He’d gone through a period of nudity while living in seclusion at one point, a few centuries back. Wearing clothes served him no purpose or comfort, but rolling over on a pinecone was even less wonderful than the freedom being naked provided. In the old days, he covered himself in animal furs or even the light fabrics of the Greek and Roman civilizations of long past. But since arriving in North America, he’d had to adapt to new cultural trends should he wish to go among society without drawing attention to himself. The clothing over the decades changed rapidly, but he found jeans agreeable. Luckily, he could manifest his clothes, as he needed them tailor-made, so to speak. It was difficult to shop for pants that worked with hooves rather than feet. Too much length could trip him, and balance was still an issue—even for a god.
Not that anyone could see him under his cloaking glamour, but if they could, they’d see a tall man in denim and a T-shirt. If they glanced at his head or his feet they’d believe he’d escaped from a circus sideshow. Unlike the common depiction of satyrs, his legs hadn’t become scrawny appendages that could barely support his weight. Where his calves would have met with ankles and heels, they curved in the opposite direction of his knee and into thick cloven hooves. Curling along the sides of his head were two horns, like those of a ram. They were bulky and hard, the ends blunted.
Mythology painted satyrs in various different forms, but he didn’t have a goatee or elongated ears. His legs were hairier than a normal man’s past his knees, but looked like any other man’s above mid-thigh. He didn’t have a tail or any other animal-like features. In truth, he was not part animal at all, though the horns, hooves, and hairy legs might seem that way. He had been cursed into this form, and his body had grown, reshaped, and mutated into the beastly appearance. An appearance was all it was; he didn’t take on animal behavioral characteristics or anything crazy like that. He was just malformed and horny. Eternally horny. The punishment for a crime he’d not meant to commit. A crime that hadn’t been truly a crime. A misunderstanding really...
Fortunately for him, he was a god. He had powers at his disposal which allowed him refuge from his fate, but he always reverted to satyr form when he wasn’t focused on cloaking himself in one illusion or another. He could appear as a he did once, like a human, although he never was one. If scientists had been able to study the ancients, they would have categorized gods and humans in the same family in their taxonomy charts, perhaps even the same genus. The species, however, was where things would definitely differ. Gods were immortal, for the most part, and had special gifts—powers, like magic. Humans were mortal. Mundane.
The duet of yammering voices reminded Pan he had trespassers to elude. He debated wandering off in the opposite direction in order to continue enjoying the blissful solitude that was his life. Most days. He pondered if it wasn’t time to find a new home as he wasn’t in the mood to expel the energy it took to avoid people who hiked so far into the Pine Barrens. For them to do so meant they were looking for something. About eight times out of ten they were hunting him.
There was never a truer word of advice than, “Be careful what you wish for.” Those who hunted monsters would either go home empty handed or would find way more than they were equipped to handle. Oh, and making grown men scream like little girls... So amusing. He became particularly proud of himself if he could make them piss their pants, but even that had started to lose its appeal.
As he turned north, intending to head deeper into the wilds, a female’s whimsical laughter halted him, and his cock twitched in response. Pan rotated toward the mortals. It had taken him centuries to fight the impulse to stalk anything female until he’d seduced them and sated the limitless lust of his Satyros nature. In recent years, he’d even bypassed women without so much as turning his head to appreciate their voluptuous curves. He’d become so efficient at resisting that he’d been celibate for nearly three decades. He was proud of himself for mastering the desire, the arousal that ruled him. He knew the others had not been as fortunate.
But that laugh...
It was a melody of carefree wickedness, and it spoke to his soul. A temptation which beckoned him more than anything had in a very long time. The woman it belonged to could very well be his undoing.
Then again, there was also that pesky little curse which made him an insatiable, rutting sex fiend, so mostly anything about a female could, in theory, spark a reaction from him. And thirty years was a long time, especially one with his condition. He wondered if he was experiencing a moment of weakness.
Pan strolled toward the voices, coming across a dark-haired man holding a video camera. The man was filming a redheaded woman as she attached a video-recording device to a tree. Many people ventured into the Pine Barrens to do the same. These people were tracking wildlife, hoping to catch a photograph of something in its natural habitat. They camouflaged the camera enough so animals would move close to it and not realize they were being observed.
The woman turned and searched the area, her gaze brushing across the cluster of trees where he stood. Pan wondered if she felt him watching her and concentrated on maintaining his glamour to shield himself from view. The female was beautiful. Her hair, the perfect combination of copper and gold, as though someone had poured a chest of ancient treasures
down her back where it had softened into loose, lazy ringlets. She dressed for comfort in a pair of dark blue jeans which were tucked into a pair of brown hiking boots. Her yellow flannel shirt was unbuttoned with a lacy, white shirt beneath to softly accentuate her ample breasts. The sleeves covered her upper arms down to her elbows, leaving the rest bare except for a silver watch on her wrist.
He found himself gawking at her, entranced. Maybe he just wanted to hear her laugh again, and he imagined she did so because she was amused by something he had said. She’d later make wicked little sounds in the throes of passion, laughing in victory as she orgasmed astride him. All he knew was the sound of her laugh had grabbed him by his dick and pulled him toward her like a divining rod. Pan was tempted to march out into the open, drop every illusion he held in place, and proclaim himself the one she was looking for. And he might...if only she were alone.
Pan had a weakness for redheads, but he’d learned his lesson in that regard. He needed to turn around and walk away, avoid looking back. Unfortunately, he’d never been very good at doing what was right. It was why he always ended up in the situations he found himself. He was pretty much doomed the moment he heard her beautiful laughter.
The woman turned to her male companion and proclaimed, “That’s the last of them.” The man with her lowered his camera and hit a button on it while the woman spoke, “We spent the last two days talking to the locals and filming random spurts of narration. The birthplace ruins were great visual footage, but we really don’t have anything to wow the viewers.” She sighed. “We deserve an afternoon off. We’ll check the camera traps in twenty-four hours, doing some walkthrough recording on the way to retrieve them.”
The man mumbled in agreement. Pan hadn’t paid him much attention before, but he studied him then. The man was of a good, solid build. What most females would find attractive. He had a Spanish look to him, but his accent was southern. Pan speculated if the male was in a relationship with the female and decided the thought didn’t please him at all. He didn’t know why it mattered if these two people were together or not.
Hell, scores of couples came into the Pine Barrens to fornicate. Though most of the time it was because Pan had compelled them to do so as entertainment. Sometimes watching was just as good as participating, and though he’d been celibate for so long, it didn’t make him a saint. In some cases, voyeurism was much healthier considering the care, or lack thereof, humans took with their bodies in this century. Shudder. Luckily he couldn’t catch any human diseases.
He wondered if these two would be the down and dirty, sweet and slow, or wild and acrobatic kind. With that redhead? Pan would ride her so hard into the ground there would be a crater when they were done. She’d be down and dirty, he was sure.
Curiosity getting the best of him, Pan followed behind them as they headed in the direction they had come from. Under his cloaking glamour, he could run circles around them while shrieking like a banshee, and they wouldn’t bat an eye. They wouldn’t see, hear, or smell him. They could stroll right through him like he was a ghost and not feel him. They damn sure couldn’t taste him, though he wished the fiery-haired woman would do so.
“It’s a shame we haven’t found anything we can use. Cindy doesn’t think we have enough to work with to stay the whole two to three weeks,” the male was saying. They had another woman with them? Pan’s mind went briefly into a vision of two beautiful redheads. While it was a pleasant thought, he knew the one in front of him would be enough as he studied her nicely shaped ass through the trees. He’d done the multiple partner acts, and the thrill was gone. He preferred a single partner as he could give her his undivided attention. Nevertheless, it would serve him best if he stopped thinking about all the ways he could take her. He adjusted the crotch of his pants.
She made an unladylike snort, but Pan found even that attractive. “Well, what did you expect? A bat-winged horse walking on two legs to step out and beg you to film it before showing you the location of his secret bat-horse-goat-cave?”
He halted in his tracks. There was no further question as to what they were hunting in the woods. They were looking for proof of his existence, but they didn’t believe they’d find him. Yet he was close enough he could pounce on them. Pan loved messing with skeptics. He tried, he really did, not to do it very often, but he was never one to let such a prime opportunity pass him by. Besides, it would give him a reason to focus his energy on something other than his arousal.
All traces of his former boredom vanished. He’d put on a demonstration for her to give her a reason to continue her hunt for him. She’d have some interesting footage to show for it, but it wouldn’t be enough to prove she actually found anything.
Pan mentally adjusted his cloaking glamour so he could be heard while remaining invisible. The camera would pick up the sounds, but neither it nor the two humans present would see him. Half the viewers of their footage would claim it was tampered with; the other half would come to this location seeking a repeat performance. They’d find nothing. He was never one to willingly repeat history. There was a reason he hadn’t been found in several centuries.
And it would be a damned good reason not to have too much fun with the redhead.
He galloped to their left through the underbrush. He tried desperately not to laugh when the humans’ eyes widened and their heads whipped around at the sound of hooves thumping as they fell heavily, hitting dirt and roots, kicking up dried leaves. His legs shook the low bushes as he tore through them with vigor.
“What the hell?” the male shouted.
Birds scattered overhead, feeling the pull of Pan’s power.
“Look at those plants. It looks like a boulder tore through them. Turn your camera on!” The female pivoted and stood on tiptoes to glance behind her. Probably thinking another human was out here, not the very creature she sought.
“Cindy, is that you?” She turned back to the man. “Would she actually leave the van to pull a dumb prank like this after the attack last year?”
Pan pondered what she meant by “the attack,” and experienced an urge to find the source of this aforementioned assault and harm it. The foolish male played with his toy, muttering in Spanish. Pan summoned the pair of dark wings from his alternate form, letting the leathery whoosh, whoosh startle his captive audience as he glided over them and into the treetops, kicking up dirt as he ascended.
He was showing off, and he found it exhilarating. A rush of warm pleasure fired through his veins, making his lips split into a grin. The need to draw attention was a trait Pan had gotten from his father. Hermes had a knack for disappearing mid-conversation or running people over upon his arrival to deliver Zeus’ messages. He grimaced at the thought of his father, glad Hermes was slumbering the years away on Mount Olympus rather than being a giant pain in the ass still.
Below, the mortals frantically searched for the cause of the phantom noise, but of course they found nothing. They would flee soon, and he wasn’t quite ready to lose his audience. For the finale, Pan grabbed hold of neighboring branches and shook them, bouncing lightly where he stood. Leaves rained down upon the two as they all but trembled with fear. Ah, yeah. I still have my talent for the dramatic.
“Tell me you’re getting this on tape,” the female hissed.
“I am, but I can’t tell what it is. I see the branches moving, but there is nothing there.”
Pan fully cloaked himself once more and fluttered down, landing directly in front of them on his hoofed feet with a soft thud. His wings faded into nonexistence.
Damn, the woman was stunning even when she was afraid. Pan leaned in and inhaled her scent. Her shampoo had left her hair smelling citrusy and tropical. She glanced around, eyes wide. They were pale blue, like a cloudless morning sky. Earlier, before he scared her, they had been slanted like a—
“Kat, I think it’s gone,” the male said. How apropos that her name was feline in nature. Pan assumed it was short for something longer. He noticed humans had the tendency to
minimize their names into single syllables. Some of the satyrs who were formerly human had done so themselves. Pan reached out a hand and brushed his fingers lightly against Kat’s delicate pale cheek.
She shuddered and rubbed at her face like she had felt it, even though it was impossible. Her hand went through his, but the contact sent sparks down his spine, straight to his groin.
I have to have her.
At least once.
“Let’s head back to the van and make sure Cindy is okay.” The male shut off his camera before making the sign of the cross over his chest.
Pan continued to admire his new female. Kat didn’t wear a wedding ring, and the only jewelry she wore aside from the watch he noted earlier was a gold chain with a dainty heart hanging from it.
Pan peeked toward the man’s hand and noted he was wearing a wedding band. So were they, or were they not, currently warming the same bed? He found he had to know. Perhaps Cindy, the woman purportedly sitting in the van, was his wife. It didn’t matter; after noticing the ring and Kat’s lack thereof, the man she traveled with became even less of a concern.
Not that he’d ever been one to begin with. Definitely not a saint.
“I’m not gonna argue. I feel like I’m being watched. Maybe I’m paranoid, but that was really damn weird.”
“Do you think it was the creature?” The male asked as their steps became swifter while they hurried to exit the woods. Pan watched the sway of Kat’s hips and ass as he followed in their wake.
“The Jersey Devil? Seriously? You just went there?”
“Well, what else could it have been?”
“A bird.” She shrugged.
“An invisible bird?” The male sounded unconvinced.
“An invisible thunder bird.” Her emphasis couldn’t sound any less convincing. Pan had heard of the giant birds of prey the Native American people told tales about. Unfortunately, the only giant eagles left in existence lived on a hidden island off the coast of New Zealand, so her theory of explaining him as such was moot. He admired her effort though.
The Cursed Satyroi: Volume One Collection Page 3
