Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 35

Ann Vandooren was afraid to leave the room.

The reason she was afraid was because she wanted to leave the room. Ever since Duncan had brought the two SSI guys to the room, the paranoia had grown. They knew about the rigged images she’d broadcast. She’d be ridiculed and probably reported to the departmental dean at Westridge University. And she really didn’t give a damn.

Because now she understood. The supernatural wasn’t some bit of monkey business concocted by scared primitives; it was the overt manipulation of the dark gods. Give the people something invisible to fear so they didn’t see the demons in their midst.

“What should we do about it?” she asked Duncan, who had shut down the computer and was packing away the cables.

“Consider the experiment a failure.”

“I don’t like to fail. Is the halo still there?”

Duncan nodded. “There has to be some sort of simple explan—”

“Yeah. It’s a halo.”

“I need to get the cameras and projectors.”

“Don’t leave me alone.”

“You’ll be fine.”

Despite what the silly boys in their black jumpsuits had said, Duncan was happy to leave her in this condition. Maybe after sixteen hours observing the black halo, he’d grown accustomed to it.

“You know about succubi, right?” she said, moving from the window toward the bed. “Women believed to be demons or witches who draw power by having sex with their victims?”

“I know the mythology.”

She peeled her Dale Earnhardt T-shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor. The cool air of the room drew her nipples into taut purple points. “Want to see what that’s all about?”

“You’re not a demon, Ann.”

“Right. I am a fucking angel.” She laughed, and the sound trailed off into a muted shriek that frightened her. “Get it? A fucking angel.”

“This isn’t the time to—”

“Test the theory?” She unbuttoned her jeans. “Afraid you might learn something?”

Duncan tossed the coils of cables on the bed. “Damn you.”

“I’m already damned.”

He pushed his crotch against her, the fabric of his pants gently chafing her skin.

“Shit, baby, what’s going on?” He was hoarse.

Raw, pulsing possession. The science of seduction. The age-old dance of the devil. “Shut up and worship.”

He brushed her hair with his fingers, then clutched a handful of strands and lifted her face from the bed. His other hand reached for the nearest coil of cable. Bitch Mode allowed her to smile and let her lips grant permission.

“Yessssss....”

Lilith, harpy, siren, witch, eventually it all came to this. No folklore, no religion, no rigorous adherence to scientific method. Just women taking it. Women loving it. And men dying for it.

Ann slammed back to meet his thrust and he was fully inside, reaching deep into the poisonous pit of her womb. He yanked one of her hands back and looped the cable around her wrist, then pressed her harder into the bed, her breasts squeezing into the mattress. She gave him her other hand and he bound her without missing a stroke, the crude knots straining her shoulders. He grabbed the bond and used it for leverage, banging himself deeply into her. The room was thick with the odor of their rutting.

The electric freeze jolted her brain and she screamed into the blankets. Her urgency carried him along on its tide, and her scream turned into a sibilant hiss of satisfaction. He swelled and exploded, and she felt his energy gushing into her.

He groaned and collapsed on top of her, pinning her bound arms between them. “My God, baby....”

God. How strange he’d invoke the thing he couldn’t believe in, the one thing she’d now come to understand and despise. God was the reason she was trapped here in the hotel, exiled among these pathetic humans, when she could have been tasting all the delights of heaven and hell.

The pleasures and pains of the flesh had their attractions, but even those extremes served the will of that oppressive entity that hid behind the clouds. God needed her kind, their kind, on Earth because God didn’t like to get His hands dirty. If only He knew how much fun it was.

“Ann,” Duncan whispered in her ear, and she barely recognized the name. With his life force now added to hers, she was closer to fully possessing this body.

“Ann, I....”

She was afraid he’d let slip that last pathetic lie, that utter excuse for every mortal failing. “Shut up and die already,” she said.

He obliged.

Before he could say “I love you.”

She rolled him off, flexed her potent limbs, and snapped the cable. Sitting and shaking the circulation back into her hands, she looked between her legs at the blood.

Outside, the late-autumn shadows stretched as the sun slipped low. The approaching night offered many chances to offend and rebel and, perhaps, gain a foothold in which the real war could begin.