Beast

After leaning against the wall for quite a while and spending about twenty bucks too many on drinks, I thought I spied the one I had been waiting for. She was tall and had long, curly, auburn hair. She wasn't overweight, but neither was she bony and thin - she looked soft, and healthy, though her skin seemed pale in contrast to her black satin dress. She was as goth as anyone else in the room, but elegant goth instead of punk-rock goth, if that makes sense. She was Death, not it's groupie. Most importantly, she had that aura of selfhood - that self-confidence and assurance that people admire in movie characters. It seemed to me that when she looked around the room, her attention was directed toward determining how the people in the room would suit her, rather than if she fit in.

She came gliding down the stairs into the room, and I lost her for a few moments in the crowd. I pushed away from the wall and through the crowd until I saw her again at the other bar. She glided as she moved, buying some expensive drink; grace dripped from her fingers. In her wake all the other women seemed cheap and fraudulent in their dangerous seduction.

I watched her for a long time, shelling out the money when she began to move from club to club to bar. My lower arm was a galaxy of stamps. I usually stayed about a dozen inconspicuous steps to her side, sometimes passing in front of her or casually glancing over when I thought she was looking my way. I wanted desperately to capture her interest without looking like I was trying to. I needed to be where she could notice me, be that magic place where her heavy-lidded eyes would fall on me and she would decided I was the one. But if she saw me she never made a sign; perhaps she hid her notice of me, or perhaps I was to her as I was to everyone else in the room: scenery - something to move around when walking by.

The drinks and the early morning hour had slowed my thoughts when she finally made her way out of a last bar and climbed into a limousine, which was waiting just on the other side of the barriers.

She left alone. She could not be the one - I had watched her get drunk on something blue, I had seen her careful grace slip away, her aura fade to a quiet haughtiness - she was just another woman.

I sat down next to a planter on the island divider and dropped my chin onto my fists. There were several hours of full dark left, but the crowd in the streets had begun to thin. There was nothing for me here. The women were no less alluring now, but that was not what I had come for. Why spoil a life-long career of virginity after all these years, or, even if they were to notice me, what was more likely: why embarrass myself with a pointless effort that would yield only mockery? The idea of casual sex is a much less frightening thing in the comfort of your own lonely room.

I decided I would spend another hour or so there, make a night of it, then head home to resume the same tragic routine which had brought me here in the first place.

And then two hands, strong but feminine, took hold of my shoulders, and a face pressed up to the side of my neck. "Do not turn," whispered a low, breathy woman's voice. "Do not see me."

There was a momentary urge to pull away and turn around, but my instinct to obey commands won out. She spoke again. "I have watched you watch others; I have seen your thoughts... I know what you desire, to sacrifice yourself to me, like a lamb on the altar . . ." Her voice was sultry now; she brought her face closer and her lips brushed my earlobe. As she spoke, her hands, cool like a rock in the morning, came up to my neck and felt for my pulse. A cold electric thrill ran through me as I realized what was happening - I couldn't believe it even as I was living it.

She pulled her thick, black velvet cloak around us both, and we stood. She pressed herself to me; she was naked beneath the cloak, and even through my clothes I could I could tell the rest of her body was as cold as her hands. Her body was soft and curvy - as she began walking me forward her hips sidled against me and her legs slipped between mine. Every sense but vision was directed behind me, reaching out for any nuance of her.

We headed for a shadowy walkway between two buildings - she pushed me onward until we were enveloped in darkness, and the din of the clubs and the street became a background murmur. I came to a dead end, a stone wall; she turned me and pushed me back against it. Her dark shadow loomed over me, and for a brief moment, fear took me.

But then she enveloped me in her cloak and her lips closed over mine and her hands grabbed my chest and pulled my shirt down and I was naked, down to the bare feet, and I had no time to figure out that impossibility as everything was happening as I had imagined it, as I had dreamed, except even more because it was real. I could do nothing but submit as her kisses became frantic and noisy and hungry, her teeth nipping at my ears and chin, and she pushed me down and straddled me, her cloak settling over us so we became one black lump on the ground, squirming as she covered me with her hands and her lips.

After I don't know how long, she sat up, wiping her lip with the back of a finger, smudging away a bit of my blood. She relaxed, and looked me over. I would have expected her to be panting for breath after that salvo of long kisses, but she was still. Her long, dark hair disappeared into the shadow of her cloak, and I could imagine where her full lips might fit into the outline of her face. She was tall, and not thin, soft, and strong - if I had tried to wrestle out from under her I knew there would have been no escape for me, unless she wanted it. But I did not want to fight her, or run away; I wanted to be hers, I wanted to give myself to her - that was why I came.

Then she placed her hand on my face, her thumb on my lips, and she spoke. It was in some other language, completely unfamiliar, but from her mouth it was dark and beautiful. They were words of possession - my life was hers now - and my blood burned within me, eager to be done with my body and sate hers.

With a hawk-like swoop she was on me, biting into my neck. Her full weight held me down, trapped me as she took numb flesh with blood, biting again, sinking her teeth deeper into me. She crouched over me, and the cloak fell closed around us — she was a pitch-black night on me, drawing the heat from my body; her teeth and tongue pillaged me, reaching further in for even more. I was hers, I was inside her, she had my life, and she wanted my soul.

But then she was gone.

The loss of her ripped into me like a cannonball in the stomach, and I sobbed with the enormity of it.

Someone came running up and knelt over me, pinning my shoulders against the convulsions of my tears. Fingers pressed into my neck, where blood still somehow managed to gush out. It hurt like the devil's pitchfork, but my eyes didn't much feel like opening, and I couldn't seem to move my arms or my mouth to tell them to bugger off. A bright light flashed around and passed over my eyes and made my head hurt, and there were a lot of noisy voices, but that didn't matter. The body wracking sobs were over, but I felt wrong, alone... I was a soul without life... I was hers, I needed to be with her, to be in her, but it was dark and she was gone and I was cold and alone and stranded.

I was being jostled, but that faded away.

At last I looked up and I saw her, her deep dark eyes intense in the moonlight. She had been there, always, and was laughing at me... but I needed her. I stretched out my hand to her, pleadingly, and she took it, lifting me up. She was huge, and growing bigger, or it was I who was smaller. She seemed pleased with me as she opened her lips, showed her teeth, and swallowed me. They closed behind me, sealing me into the endless, empty night which savored my soul.

I was finally, fully, hers.

And I was nothing.

Fury

She called it upon herself.

11:18pm, Thursday the 3rd. Four miles outside the city line on N. Charles Road. Subject's residence.

The woods had provided ample coverage for unnoticed surveillance of the estate. Only two guards remained on the premises - one at the gate, one in the manor. She had left at nightfall, and the maids two hours before. Two more guards were due in less than an hour. They didn't use dogs, which was good; dogs make better guards than men. She wouldn't have abided dogs anyway, and they would have been useless around her.

She would kill again tonight. She had left earlier than expected, and it would be impossible to try to find her in the city. There was nothing to do but wait.

Waiting becomes routine.

I had warded the periphery of her estate, except for the gate. That's a lot of rice. Once she arrived back, the last ward would be placed, and she would be trapped inside, with no escape. Even if she lived and I did not, she would be confined to Her grounds indefinitely, likely to starve. After tonight, she wouldn't kill again.

It was 12:00am, and the third shift arrived. The two new guards had only just come in the gate when she drove up, early. Many of them - her kind - prefer to be chauffeured, but she was more independent, somewhat roguish. She parked her fancy, black European car and disappeared into the house. I completed the ward and hopped the fence.

There were no theatrics, and no violence. They are too messy and noisy, and far too risky. A small gas pill lobbed between them while they were talking, and the two guards outside were safely unconscious for eight hours or so. They were professional, but unprepared.

Many had died here, on these grounds - my apprentice among them. He had been prepared for the job - it wasn't his first - but he was not ready for her, or for her power.

She had been ready for him. She would have broken him, remade him for Her own amusement before finishing him; she would have seen him coming. I should have seen it coming. It was not my fault, but I could have prevented it.

The door guards were dispatched in the same way as their colleagues, and the house was gained. I marked the entryway with a cross - it was mostly habit, but occasionally it was effective. She was not hard to find, in a drawing room upstairs, sitting in an over-stuffed armchair, watching a large picture hang in a heavy, gilded frame on the wall across from Her. She looked up when I stepped into the room, possibly surprised, but hiding it well. "Hello," she said. Her voice was easy and carefree, somewhat inviting. Her voice was less certain when she waited a moment but got no response. She looked me over. "So they sent a woman, this time..."

She stood from the chair and raised herself to her full height, which was impressive. She stood, then finally approached. Her cloak swept back, and beneath she was nude, and perfect. She was strong, but supple; had there been life in her flesh, she would have been the model of health. Her face was both beautiful and pretty, and her hair was clean and straight and long. Her lips were full and seductive, and her eyes were dark, and deep enough to fall into.

She looked on me with desire, though I was homely, and short, and scrawny.

She looked on me with eyes that wanted to devour me, eyes that were gateways to a void. Her eyes caught to mine, pulled me into her, poured me into the bottomless pit. She was empty, and could never be filled.

But I was full, and could never be emptied. She grasped for an ego, and found the endless river of Purpose. She held me, and drained me, but it cost me nothing and gained her less. She shied away, cowering back against the wall. Her eyes were no longer devouring, but defensive of the emptiness behind - she clung to it like a talisman, like treasure. The world closed in around her. "You've trapped me here, haven't you?"

The fear of reality, not as she would have it, but as it inescapably was, took her, and the animal came out. Her nails were claws and her teeth, weapons; "I could kill you now - before you could even move..." It was an empty threat, and we both knew it.

It cost her much, but at last she threw herself before me. "I beg you to spare me - show me the mercy which I have lacked... Please!" The last word was ripped from her lips in a wail. Her old accent was strong - she had been broken and reduced. If she was released now, she would flee. It would be years before she'd be bold enough to return to the city, to kill in my precinct.

But she'd had her chance for mercy long ago, in another time and place. No one becomes what she was without choosing it. She had never shown mercy to anyone - not to my apprentice, not to the young man behind the club at the strip, and not to whomever's blood was on Her lips tonight. She deserved no mercy. I had no desire to give it to her. But she got it.

I spoke: "Release those souls you hold within you. They aren't yours, and that's why they'll never satisfy you. Do this and repent, and nothing will keep you here."

There was no moment of hesitation, no time to consider; "No!" she snarled. "It cannot be done! They are mine!"

And it was over. Whatever half-life she had vanished when her head left her body. There was no mess. Even her corpse would not survive the night. I opened the window, so a breeze could catch the dust and scatter it. I can't know what happened to the souls she stole, or even her own soul she bartered. I hope they're free now.

She had called it upon herself. It was what she had really wanted all along.