When a young woman wound up exsanguinated in a ditch, it was a serial killer who bled his victims out, kept the blood as a trophy, and dumped the body. When cults committed mass suicide, or fought federal authorities with rakes and shovels, while the feds were armed with automatic weapons; everyone dismissed them as bible-thumping wackos. No one considered the mental invasion and reprogramming of an Anima mage.
If there was a single way that humans impressed Venus, it was their ability to delude themselves. Even after the Revelation, they clung to normal explanations rather than consider the alternative. They’d rather live in their comfortable little world than admit something big, bad, and ugly was about to pop their well-constructed view of reality. Of course, supernaturals were susceptible to the same thought process, especially the young ones.
“Am I the pot calling the kettle black?” Venus wondered as Dani shut the door behind her.
A very reliable someone had just popped by to say that Venus was doing something stupid that wasn’t going to work out. “But I’m not some decades old human with no concept of what really makes the world go round,” she answered her own question.
She was an immortal being, the first succubus, with eons of experience under her belt. She ran an international conglomerate that battled with human authorities, supernatural power structures, and multinational corporations. In those fights, she almost always came out on top. She was feared, respected, loved, and hated; you name it, and she’d done it. A warning from anyone, even an older sister, was to be taken with a grain of salt. After all, she wasn’t the only one with plans for this realm.
Chapter 7
The tiles had a level of grime on them that you just couldn’t get clean. It didn’t matter that hundreds of people showered here a day. All the soap and shampoo in the world couldn’t clean the thousands of dirty feet that trudged through this place. She didn’t even want to think about the types of other fluids that had been on this floor.
Lilith leaned against a wall and took a deep breath, saying a silent prayer that the prison issued flipflops. Shower time had become her least favorite time, but it wasn’t something you could skip. Unlike some places, Victorville had a pretty good reputation. They didn’t let people wallow in their own filth like some county jails on cable television. Their prisoners got three hots, a cot, and a warm shower every day.
“Group B, two-minute warning,” the guard was dressed like all the others, but her eyes were more alert.
Afterall, everyone knew what happened when you dropped the soap in the shower. Lilith could say from experience, having done just that on multiple occasions, that no one snuck up and stuck something up her ass. Not only because she would snap it off and shove it down the offender’s throat, but because it was an all-girls shower time. That might sound like the beginning of an award-winning porn, but it wasn’t. It was mostly people avoiding eye contact and trying to get clean as quickly as possible. If anything, you might get some bean flicking when someone distracted the guard, but that was about it.
Most people would think a half-starved succubus would love shower time. People like, say, her mother, would find it an excellent opportunity to drink in the sexual frustration in the room. One cock of the hip. A raised eyebrow, or slowly running a soap-covered hand up her thigh could produce an outpouring of lust from people who hadn’t seen a dick in gods knew how long. It was a potential smorgasbord.
Not for Lilith. Sure, if two other prisoners were eye fucking the shit out of each other, she’d take in the excess lust in the air. Normally, there was an element of distance involved in that type of feeding, so she had to be close. The guards didn’t like it when a prisoner left their little nook, so the chance of getting a free snack was limited unless the eye fucking was happening right next to her.
The reason Lilith was starting to detest shower time was her body. It seems like a stupid reason. After all, she was a literal sex machine. She’d never been body conscious a day in her life. She’d walk down the Vegas strip naked as the day she was born if she was able to. But that was old Lilith. That was a healthy and vibrant young succubus who had all the high-school dick she could eat; not the creature wasting away in Victorville.
“It’s all your fault,” her mind told her. “All you have to do is take a little dick, any dick, or even some pussy. Maybe that guard over there. Can you imagine her dripping wet, our slits sliding against each other’s . . .?” she shivered in ecstasy at the thought?
The impossibility of it didn’t seem to stop the fantasy. If she came within three feet of that guard, she’d take a magic baton up the ass, and she wouldn’t be getting out early for good behavior. The last thing on earth she wanted to do was spend a full six months starving here, so she shut down her overactive imagination before it got her into trouble.
All this could be avoided if she just ate the men her mother provided. At this point, that wasn’t even an option. Not only because of what she had with Cam, but because of what a feeding in her current state would do to the poor bastard. She was so hungry she might go too far.
PR for the cabal, and the succubus race in general, had been working hard since supernaturals came out of the closet to laugh off the rumor that a succubus could suck a man’s life out through his dick.
“That’s absurd,” Venus, was on record in front of Congress denying the ability.
The truth was, a succubus with proper training could do any number of things to the natural power, chi, life essence, or whatever you wanted to call the energy that flowed through the human body. If Lilith were to give into the hunger burning inside her, she might just fuck a guy dry; and not in a good way. He’d be a lifeless sack of meat and bones when she was done with him. In fact, the only person who might survive her next true feeding was Cam.
That made her laugh, and caused the nearest women to shuffle away from her. They could tell she was losing her shit, but what else was new.
“Lock it up, Prisoner 9839,” the guard snapped out Lilith’s number. They didn’t have names in here. It was part of the way the system broke them down and punished them for their crimes.
On the surface, it didn’t seem like much, but a person’s name had power. It was who they were. It connected them to family, friends, and the world at large. Stripping that away was surprisingly debilitating. Lilith was only in here for a few months, but people who had harsher sentences would start to think of themselves as nothing but a number. That was some psychological punishment if she’d ever seen it.
“Okay, Group B, let’s go,” the guard snapped and started waving people into the steam-filled room.
Prison showers were not regular showers, and they sure as shit were nothing like the showers back in Caesar’s penthouse, or the spa in Reno. There were a dozen showerheads lining each wall, and six metal poles interspaced throughout the room; each complete with four more heads. The goal was one of the wall showers. It offered a modicum of privacy, but it all depended on where you were in line. Prisoners couldn’t just run and grab whatever shower they wanted, they filed into the room in an orderly fashion and occupied the next available shower.
Today was a good day. You wanted to be in the first dozen, or last dozen so you could get one of the wall showers. Lilith hit the jackpot and found herself at the wall shower at the far corner of the room. It offered the most privacy from the guard and other prisoners. With her current body issues, this was the best-case scenario.
She placed her towel on the hook, took off her orange jumpsuit, and turned on the water. Surprisingly, the water pressure was excellent. In prison, you’d think it would be like a geriatric dude with an inflamed prostate trying to take a piss. Instead, her stream of near-scalding water smashed into her, and she felt the relief course through her aching body as the room slowly started to fill back up with steam.
“Good,” she didn’t want people to see her like this.
Holding out for her man was taking its toll. Her eyes had sunken so much she looked like she had perpetual black eye
s. Her cheek bones were so sharp she could probably cut into a T-bone with her face. Her nature would not allow her tits or ass to sag, that would come last. Instead, she could see and feel her ribs as she ran the soap down her sides.
She was still hot. A solid nine or ten on the human-fuckability scale, but any supernatural worthy of the name could tell she was hurting. That was the reason for her body issues and growing dislike of shower time. Venus had one thing right; it was bad to come off as weak. Victorville was full of predators. They came in all shapes and sizes, but they were all here because they’d flipped the bird at the system and went outside societal norms. None of them had gotten away with it, which spoke to the power of the system, but that only made some more determined. Not everyone was in here for just a few months.
Predators looked for the weak link, and at the moment, that was Lilith. Despite that, and her own instincts screaming for her to keep her back to the wall, and her head on a swivel, she put her face under the torrent of water and closed her eyes. She didn’t envision a sultry shower scene with dream Cam where he did stick something up her ass when she dropped the soap. She didn’t test the bond to try and find where the real Cam was for the billionth time, and she sure as shit didn’t think about why her mother had been yelling at her when she stormed out weeks ago. Right now, she welcomed peaceful nothingness. She didn’t want to think about anyone, or anything. She just wanted the feel of the warm water working its way down her body. She was living completely in the moment. So, of course, it cost her.
She totally missed the guard rushing the rest of the prisoners out. Group B was the last group of the day, so no one was coming in after them. If you thought it was weird for a guard to not chew out a prisoner for failing to follow orders, you’d be right. The only explanation was that they wanted the prisoner alone and isolated.
Basically, everything in a prison is watched through physical or magical means. The only exceptions, by law, are the prisoner’s cells; because they sleep and shit there, and the showers. Prisoners don’t have much privacy, but one too many leaked prison shower scenes on the internet changed things in D.C. back in the 90s.
When Lilith opened her eyes and saw nothing but steam surrounded her, she’d gladly take some teenage human beating off to her in his parent’s basement over what was about to happen.
“Venitas,” someone growled through the steam.
“I’ve waited weeks for this you little bitch,” a second voice echoed, from the opposite side of the room.
If Lilith was being honest with herself, she’d expected this on day one. The Venetian cabal had its fair share of enemies, and those enemies tended to end up in prison. It was the same as with various human gangs, and she knew her mother had paid the appropriate people the appropriate sums for protection. Still, nothing was airtight in this world.
Apparently, someone had paid off the guard. It was harder to pay off corrections officers than Hollywood made it seem. When bad shit happened to someone, there was an investigation; no matter how bad that prisoner was. Just look at that fucking pedo Epstein. Gods only know how much money was spend looking into that piece of shit’s death.
If a guard got paid off, there was always a paper trail. Fifty grand might look good up front to just look the other way, but when the forensic accountants tracked down the money and nailed the asshole; well, they became the one who was getting shower fucked in the ass. So, the guard leaving with the rest of Lilith’s shower group came as a bit of a surprise, but not the attack.
It just would have been better if it happened on day one. She still had more power then. She wasn’t starved, and she was a lot more observant of her surroundings. All of those shortcomings made the fist that came out of the steam, and slammed into her gaunt face, that much more surprising.
It was not a human fist. She felt her jaw pop as something broke and her head smashed into the tile wall. A normal human’s head would rebound off the tile; maybe leaving a smear of blood. Not Lilith’s. Force, velocity, and other little symbols in a physics equation calculated that her head went through the tiles and stayed there. She coughed as she inhaled drywall and insulation. Again, not what a person really expected to contend with in a shower brawl.
She didn’t have to endure it long. Someone grabbed her legs and yanked her out, before spinning her in a circle and letting her fly. She was airborne for a moment before the wind got knocked out of her. She hit the other wall . . . hard, but kept on going. Her shoulder screamed in pain, followed by her ribs, hip, and thigh as she carved a path across the shower room; leaving a fatal scar in her wake. Her momentum kept her going until she hit the last showerhead before the exit. She took it on her already bruised face, and it basically clotheslined her. She flopped to the ground with a moan.
Training told her to get off her ass, and her body instinctually tried to haul her to her feet to face the threat. Some things weren’t working correctly, so she stumbled. The stumble meant she took the kick in the shoulder instead of the chin. It might have even saved her life. Still, one second she was on one side of the room, and the next, the other. It was the worst game of pinball ever.
“Get up!” she screamed at herself as two silhouettes advanced out of the steam.
Two women appeared and sauntered cockily toward her. Water droplets gleamed on their naked flesh.
“Of course they’re naked,” her oversized libido took over her rational mind for a second, and all she could focus on was their thigh gaps.
The woman closest to Lilith used both hands to pull back her soaked hair, which was plastered to her head like a dark curtain. She made the girl from The Ring look like Abby Cadabby.
Lilith vaguely recognized them. They’d been in a threat assessment packet the cabal had put together when they learned she was being transferred to Victorville. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember names, but that might be because she was seeing six of them right now. It was probably better to figure out which one of them was the real one before yelling, “Fuck you, Bridget!” Neither’s name was Bridget by the way.
Lilith tried to get to her feet, but her legs wouldn’t support her weight. She didn’t stand a chance when ring girl grabbed her by the scalp and lifted her off the ground. They were about the same height, so it just showed off the tan woman’s supernatural strength.
“Look at that titty bounce,” her libido didn’t give a shit she was getting her ass kicked. This was the most action she’d gotten in weeks.
“Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this?” ring girl opened her mouth, and then kept opening it far past what was biologically possible. Her maw gapped as her flesh mask pulled away and a thick tongue slithered out.
It didn’t touch Lilith. If it had, she’d be royally fucked. For whatever the reason, the Nosferatu wasn’t licking her into a drunken stupor.
“A couple days?” Lilith answered, her words slurred from the concussion and broken jaw.
A horrible aching feeling gnawed at her gut. Her body was trying to pull power that didn’t exist to heal her injuries. All it led to was more pain. “What else is new,” she spit a glob of blood in the second attacker’s face as she approached.
This woman was big. She had half a foot on Lilith, and looked like she spent way too much time in a gym. Instead of recoiling at the bloody loogie, the woman’s normal-sized tongue flicked out and gulped down the blood. It was disgusting, but Lilith didn’t even have time to gag before the second woman slammed her fist into Lilith’s gut. That helped with the gnawing, power-drawing pain by redirecting her focus to her newly fractured ribs.
Ring girl couldn’t stop the momentum of the punch while holding Lilith by the scalp, so her spine smashed into the wall. It shattered more tile, and maybe even a few vertebrae.
“We’ve been waiting for this since your miserable ass showed up here. They told us to wait. That there was peace, and attacking you would hurt profits. Then, you and your pathetic cabal of interlopers send someone into our territory. Gods, I knew you
were stupid, but not this stupid,” the Nosferatu’s tongue continued to wind around Lilith like she was about to star in her own tentacle porn feature.
“I’m happy we didn’t disappoint,” Lilith’s vision was narrowing, and she was dangerously close to backing out. “So, how’s this going to play out?” She wasn’t feeling the pants-shitting terror she knew she should be.
“We slit your throat and leave you to bleed out on the floor,” the second woman stated, her hand slowly changing into a pair of claws.
“Shifter, great,” Lilith was so out of it, survival was the least of her worries. She couldn’t even lift her arms at the moment, and she wasn’t sure if it was just exhaustion or paralysis.
“Just don’t mess up my hair,” she laugh/hacked.
The shifter smiled wide enough Lilith could see her bloodstained teeth. “Don’t worry, Chica, I’ll make sure your corpse is all nice and pretty.”
“Good, we’re on the same page,” Lilith closed her eyes and waited for the end.
Her feelings for Cam, her friends, her family, and her own survival were very far down the list from just wanting to slip into oblivion. She was just so tired and drained. When Venus heard about this, she’d be pissed. Sure, her daughter had been killed, or damn-near killed, but what would irk the matriarch the most was an extremely poor showing from someone of Lilith’s caliber. She was supposed to be a badass, and she let herself get jumped in the shower by a couple of Tikal thugs that got pinched for possession with intent to distribute; that’s just sad.
She felt the cool sensation of claws against her throat when the most surprising thing happened. She felt warmth blossom in the center of her chest, like someone had just poured a warm cup of soup down there.
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