No foreplay was needed. She was as ready as she had ever been.
She spread her legs, and as Cary entered her, Serena had a passing thought. Aren’t we supposed to be doing something else?
Then Cary was kissing her breasts, and the question vanished from her mind.
Chapter 35
Serena awoke to the sound of the shower. Cary wasn’t in bed, and the bed felt empty. The room felt empty, the world felt empty. She couldn’t stand to be separated from him for even a moment. She got out of the bed, which was a sticky mess.
Her midsection and lower places were sore from the vigorous pounding Cary had given her. Despite the pain, she almost went to him for another go at it.
It was her fault—she’d urged him on. Now she could barely walk. What had gotten into her? Usually she didn’t like rough sex. She searched her heart for guilt, but it wasn’t there. She had told herself she would never again have a relationship until her son’s murderer was brought to justice. But it had felt so good that the moment she’d succumbed, she known it was right.
She decided to join him in the shower after all.
He was leaning into the shower to test the spray, and she admired his backside for a moment. He turned with a smile and a full erection.
“Want to join me?” he asked.
Serena peeled off the long T-shirt she’d worn to sleep in. Cary soaped up first, and she washed him off slowly, touching every part of his body. Then he returned the favor, and they both rinsed off together, clutched in each other’s arms under the showerhead.
In the middle of it, Cary put his hand under her chin and turned her head until he was certain he had her attention. “What about the Succubus?”
“What about her?” Serena asked, then felt vaguely annoyed that he’d brought the subject up, though until this evening it had been something she had never stopped thinking about.
“Shouldn’t we be doing something?”
Should we? With relief, Serena remembered what Rick had told her. “Rick said to stay put.”
Cary looked into her eyes and smiled, accepting her explanation. Then the smile vanished and he frowned as if he’d just thought of something. “You don’t suppose that we…I mean, that we are…”
“In love because of her?” Serena finished. She laughed. “I don’t think it makes the slightest difference, do you?”
“No, I suppose not. I mean, how could we tell?”
It was her turn to be serious. “Don’t doubt this, Cary. Never doubt this.”
She felt him growing between them. She reached down and put her hand around his cock, then raised her leg, propping it on the edge of the shower stall.
“A little awkward,” she murmured.
“When we’re an old couple, we won’t be doing this anymore,” Cary said. “We’ll be properly in bed, but for now…”
He slipped into her, and she closed her eyes, feeling him move slowly against her. Then he stopped.
“Hey, don’t stop!” Serena said, laughing. She slipped on the wet floor, and he caught her before she toppled over.
“How do I know you’re you?” he asked, teasingly.
She looked back into his eyes. “Because I’m a klutz. I bet she wasn’t a klutz.”
“No,” Cary admitted.
She could feel him drawing away, and she grabbed his head in her hands. “Look at me, Cary. I’m Serena. I’m…I’m yours.”
They made love, taking their time, completely unaware of what was happening in the world outside.
***
Outside the hotel, the media was descending on the town. The massacre at Howard’s Bar was the headline story. Twenty-eight men and nine women had been killed in a horrible way.
It wasn’t your run-of-the-mill American mass shooting. The experts were stymied by the oddities of the case. Whoever had torn the victims apart had used a weapon that was sharp and deadly, and it had taken time to kill them all, enough time for most of the victims to know what was happening and to try to escape.
The town was rife with speculation. Howard’s Bar was the base for a local motorcycle club, the Hawks. Was this the work of a rival gang? But as far as anyone knew, the Hawks were mostly wannabe biker types, with the leather jackets and the tattoos but without the bellicosity and criminal history. The bar was a dive, and the police found illegal drugs on many of the corpses. Half the men were naked and had been emasculated. Used condoms filled the trash cans in the bathrooms and littered the floor around the pool table.
There was speculation about jealous lovers, but that seemed unlikely. Both men and women had been killed. Some experts suggested it was the work of a mentally unbalanced moral crusader of some kind, or simply a lunatic. Why else would a killer decapitate thirty-seven bodies and line them up on the bar?
Into this already boiling sexual maelstrom came Naamah and Agrat Bat, and the night exploded into a sexual frenzy.
***
As the other two Daughters of Lilith converged on Bend, Oregon, they became stronger with every mile. Old men who hadn’t approached their wives in years were suddenly frisky. Grandmothers were stalking the outnumbered men in their retirement homes. Teenagers who had vowed to wait until marriage gave in to carnal temptation at last. Casual first dates became torrid one-night stands.
At first, it wasn’t so bad. Wives and girlfriends watched their men with worry, either because the men were being uncharacteristically amorous or because they seemed to be trying to get away. Then women began to be affected too. Stay-at-home moms headed for the bars, still wearing their everyday clothes.
“I’m going to the…” It didn’t matter what they used as an excuse—the tavern, the bowling alley, the theater, the concert—it was obvious some men and women wanted to go out, and both men and women knew why, if not consciously.
Porn sites lit up with traffic from this small section of the country, and Web administrators tried to make sense of it. The few stores in town selling pornography, even the relatively tame Playboy, were sold out. Erotica sections were cleaned out in every bookstore. In locked rooms, men and boys masturbated to visions of Goddesses.
Each person felt the change individually, unaware what was happening. The authorities could tell something was going on, but it was too early to gather statistics, and each department thought that it was just because of a strong confluence of factors. “A full moon,” one dispatcher commented. “The crazies are out.”
His two coworkers, who were making out in the next cubicle, ignored the statement.
As night fell, men and women stopped asking for permission. They didn’t bother to seduce their partners, but forced themselves on the first vulnerable man or woman they found. The police were inundated with reports of rape; the hospital emergency rooms ran out of rape kits.
Whether they succeeded in their goal or not, the affected men and women fell into a deep lassitude soon afterward. When morning came, they could not be awakened, no matter how vigorously shaken or how loud their alarms were. In many cases, the women of the household were content to let the men sleep, the aggressive advances of the night before still a fresh and often traumatic memory. People who never missed a day of work, students who never missed a day of school, slept on.
By midafternoon, some of the spouses and significant others became concerned, and once again the hospital emergency rooms were packed. Cars spilled out of the parking lot and into the highway as people slept in passenger seats and backseats. The phone lines were jammed.
It didn’t matter. The doctors and nurses who made it to work had no idea what was happening, or how to revive the comatose people.
The affected men and women, meanwhile, weren’t aware of being asleep. Their dreams were so vivid and real that it seemed they were carrying on with their lives. The closer the Daughters of Lilith came, the more the bacchanalia expanded. Men and women dreamed of partners so perfect, so alluring, that they seemed bigger than the biggest movie stars, flawless and enthralling. The Succubae offered carnal satisfact
ion more desirable than any porn star, more than any masturbatory dream the dreamers had ever concocted.
For the men especially, the temptation was too great. In their minds, Goddesses were available, to them and them alone, or so it seemed. No questions, no rejection, only open arms, and, no matter how faithful the man had been to his significant other in the days before, they all gave into temptation eventually. The Goddesses took them and fulfilled their every desire, no matter how strange or perverted, no matter how long or short, how nasty or prim. It was as if these Goddesses read their minds, their every impulse.
Some men chose the blonde one, the statuesque beauty who in real life was unattainable, a myth; the kind of woman who married kings or bedded presidents. Some men chose the slinky, slutty brunette, who wrapped herself around them like a snake. Some men chose the wholesome one, the girl next door, the manic pixie dream girl who always seemed just out of reach, but who could conceivably be captured by personality or humor, who loved the nerdy, dorky, geeky boy-men for what they were.
Some chose them all, or combinations thereof.
Whatever they wanted, in these dreams, was granted, fulfilled to a glorious climax. With unbelievable speed, the men recovered their vigor. The dreams played out again and again, and none wanted to willingly awaken from them.
The women watching these slumbering men couldn’t help but notice their hardness and their orgasms, and stood back from the beds and couches and car seats, half repelled, half drawn by the sight. What was clear to all the female partners was that it wasn’t them that the men were dreaming about. They muttered names aloud, strange names that made no sense.
“Agrat Bat!” some men cried as they came. “Naamah!’ shouted others. “Eisheth!” groaned still others.
And then the men awoke, and it was worse. Again, there was no asking and no coaxing, much less seduction. The men demanded sex then and there, using the most foul and offensive language, no matter how measured and controlled they were in normal life. “Bitch, get on your knees,” snarled mild-mannered men who normally gave in to their wives’ every demand. “Spread your legs, whore.”
Some of the women gave in, others fought back, and some tried to flee. But the sexual tension and violence rose and rose as the Daughters of Lilith grew ever nearer.
By then, some of the women had armed themselves, and the overtaxed emergency rooms started seeing an influx of wounded men, shot or stabbed or bludgeoned.
“It’s a modern Sodom and Gomorrah,” said the mayor on that night’s newscast, but then he was accustomed to a politician’s hypocrisy and was already planning a visit to his mistress as soon as he could get out of there. The broadcast was cut off abruptly when the weatherman and the anchorwoman started making out on the air.
Cameras were everywhere, and reporters interviewed anyone who stopped screwing long enough to talk to them. Every time the reporters turned around, someone was getting it on in the backseat of a car or a broom closet, or even in a booth in the local coffee shop.
They tried to be professional and ignore it at first, but the drive was so strong that soon they had great difficulty focusing on anything else. Finally, they turned the cameras on what they were seeing. The national newscasts were filled with blurred footage of couples copulating.
The national anchors were shocked and irritated at first, not recognizing the scope of the horniness problem in Bend, Oregon, but as they witnessed the progressive decline in their associates’ professional focus, they sent in backup sexperts and quit showing footage live, as they couldn’t trust their Bend counterparts to blur all the necessary body parts or keep the broadcast on the subject at hand.
On the top floor of the Cambridge Hotel, the three couples who were ensconced there didn’t notice anything different, for they were already deeply in love, already sexually fulfilled. They fell asleep, still horny but knowing their loved one would be there in the morning.
Chapter 36
The town was theirs for the taking.
Naamah showed up first, arriving at Redmond airport by commercial jet. She looked tan and rested, with long black hair, wearing little green short shorts and a tight black T-shirt: Angelina Jolie, only sexier. “I hope this is worth it,” she said by way of response when Eisheth, who’d met her at the airport, asked about luggage. “I’ve been living in paradise. I spend most of my time naked.”
Naamah gave Eisheth a hug with a look of distaste. Eisheth was healing faster in the proximity of her sisters—merely having them turn their conscious attention in her direction was enough to get her started—but she was still a long way from the way she wanted to look.
Naamah radiated sex, available and free, and arbitrarily so, giving every man a chance, or so they thought. The airport lobby seemed to constrict around the two of them as they sat near the big windows and men gathered closer and closer while women stared from outside the masculine circle.
“Are they movie stars?” a little girl asked loudly, and was shushed by her mother.
Agrat Bat arrived at the Redmond Airport in a private jet. Two men came down the steps before her and nearly bowed to the ground as she descended. She was blonde and refined: Grace Kelly, only sexier.
Agrat Bat had reserved the best limousine in Central Oregon, and they rode the twenty miles to Bend behind tinted glass, measuring each other. Men turned their heads as the long car passed, even though they couldn’t see inside. They left the limo parked outside an upscale restaurant, the driver still sitting with his pants undone, drained by Naamah’s blowjob.
“You really do need our help,” Agrat Bat said to Eisheth once they were seated at their table. “Who are you supposed to be?”
Zooey Deschanel, Eisheth thought with a smile.
“If you’re trying for a Zooey Deschanel look, you’re not quite getting there,” Agrat Bat said.
Eisheth’s smile disappeared. Damn her! Not for the first time, she wondered if her older sister had read her mind.
“Zooey Deschanel?” Eisheth scoffed. “Is she even an ingénue anymore?”
“Since when are we bound by history?” Agrat Bat said.
“Would you prefer Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and Princess Diana?” Eisheth asked.
“As long as I’m Helen of Troy,” Agrat Bat said, laughing.
“And I’m Cleopatra,” Naamah joined in.
“So that would make you poor doomed Diana,” Agrat Bat said to Eisheth. “Don’t worry, darling, we’ll get you up to speed in no time. In fact, we’ll bring back a couple of men primed and ready to fall in love with you at first sight. They’ll think they’re screwing me and Naamah, of course, but you’ll still take their life force.”
Eisheth did not argue. It was what she wanted, after all. Let her sisters do the seducing and she the reaping. As soon as she was stronger, they could leave.
Although…now that her sisters were actually here, she found she was enjoying the sybaritic festival their presence provoked. She didn’t have to do all the work herself; indeed, she didn’t have to do anything. The entire town awaited them, waiting for release.
They left the restaurant and managed to revive the driver enough to take them to an expensive B & B, which they completely commandeered. Within minutes, the male owner was prostrate on the bed, nearly paralyzed by the ecstasy of being pleasured by three impossibly beautiful women…at least, in his dreams.
The Daughters of Lilith had the run of the place. It was theirs, and they intended to make the rest of the town theirs as well. The sisters’ first order of business was to restore Eisheth to her full powers, and then the three of them could do as they pleased, for as long as they pleased.
Inevitably, there would be a fight between the sisters over some man two of them wanted, or over the fact that one of them would eventually want to slow down while the others wanted more. But until that happened, it would be as in days of old, when Roman senators groveled at their feet, and 1920s gangsters stole for them, and 1960s revolutionaries bombed buildings for them. They coul
d and would do anything they pleased to men.
As Naamah said to Agrat Bat later, “You take them high, I’ll take them low, and Eisheth can have the middle.”
Agrat Bat didn’t turn away from the mirror, though not one hair was out of place. Her skin was flawless, without a single wrinkle. Her clothing also was without a wrinkle, despite just coming out of a suitcase. Her nails were perfect, her teeth blindingly white.
Eisheth suddenly remembered why she hated her.
Meanwhile, Naamah looked as though she resented having to get dressed at all. She wore a pullover dress with no bra and no panties, and was barefoot: instantly available.
A horny whore, Eisheth thought derisively, despite having had sex with and then savaging an entire bar full of men herself a few nights earlier.
“I don’t know,” Agrat Bat answered. “I feel like slumming. Care to switch, Naamah? I’ll let you borrow some clothes.”
Naamah considered it. “No. I don’t feel like being the highborn bitch tonight.”
“You never do,” Agrat Bat grumbled.
“Let’s slum together,” Naamah proposed.
Slumming? Eisheth thought. To hell with both of them. They have no idea.
“What do you think, Eisheth?” Naamah asked.
It was the first time they had asked her opinion about anything since they’d arrived.
“I’m staying this way, if you don’t mind,” she said. “I’ve had enough of this rotten town.” She didn’t have quite the appetite that her sisters did, though she felt stronger with every hour that went by. With every sexual coupling, with every erotic dream, her powers grew. The Three Daughters of Lilith were suffusing the town with their sexual energies. Adult humans in their proximity were paralyzed by lust, able to accomplish little aside from fornication.
Blood of the Succubus Page 25
