Mildred knew immediately what he was as soon as she had seen him for the first time. He was perfect, too perfect, with tanned skin, long, flowing black hair and the body of an Olympian athlete. In the darkness of the club, amid the pounding synth and flashing lights, he moved with such a fluid ease that it was impossible to take her eyes off him, like a coiling snake.
She waited until he made eye contact with her, and the small tingle down her spine made her sure of what he was. He smelled her lust for him, and smoothly, he made his way over. His eyes had locked on hers and when he came over and put touched her hand, the slightest whiff of a putrescent sweetness, like rotting meat passed over her nose. When you knew what to look for, like she did, they could not stand out any more obviously. She took his hand without a word, and led him to the dance floor. She was small and light, and as she danced energetically, she filled the air with her pheromones.
It was midnight when she finally stumbled with him to her apartment. The alcohol in her veins had dulled her inhibitions, an important step, because they could smell her emotions and knew when a human was hiding something. It was a rare thing to be able to string one along, but soon they were on the bed, pressing against each other, as he drank the smell of her sweat and want.
She stopped suddenly, and pulled herself back as he gave a surprised grunt, to gather herself and sit back on a chair in the corner of the room. Her lover looked up, and as he steadied himself, he tried to sit up on the bed. The magical bindings she had painstakingly etched into the mattress, christened with blood, both hers and others, did their job, and the man stopped at the edge of the mattress. He looked confused for a second, before meeting Mildred's gaze.
'What's happening? What have you done to me?' he asked, with a frantic look on his face.
'Drop the act,' said Mildred, as she pulled out a cigarette and lit it up next to the open window to gather her thoughts. 'I know what you are, demon. Save the theatrics for other girls.'
The man's face held up with an expression of surprise and panic for a few seconds, just long enough for Mildred to wonder if she'd made a mistake, before finally, he cracked a wide grin. 'You are good,' he said, his voice now becoming an echoing, husky whisper. 'Tell me, how did you know?'
'I said drop the act, incubus,' snarled Mildred. 'We don't make idle chit-chat until I see what you really look like.'
The man, gorgeous, bronzed and sweaty, melted away like a shape in the mist. The form that replaced it was gaunt, tall and lithe, almost nubile in shape. Skin melted into skin, stitched together by lines of scar tissue, making the creature look like it was wrapped in plastic, with red veins pulsing languidly just beneath the surface. Its body changed slightly whenever Mildred looked away from it. One minute, two delicate, perky breasts rose from its chest, the next, a penis hung between its legs, then small, toothy openings blossomed across its body, poking delicate, wet fingers into the cool air. It had no eyes, nor nose, just a wide mouth, filled with sharp, black teeth like needles, and between them, dozens of long, delicate tongues peeked out.
Mildred found, despite the grotesqueness of what sat before her, she couldn't look away from the creature, indeed, she wanted to join it on the bed, let it....play with her until it was spent. She shook her head as a musky aroma filled the room and she felt a cold sweat go down her back. She breathed in more smoke and blew it out the window.
The creature was watching her with its eyeless face, licking itself across the chest and neck with snaking, meaty tongues. It's voice was a hissing, molten whisper, halfway between a woman's gasp and a man's groan of pleasure. 'Is this the form you want, human? You are a rarity to prefer truth over a succulent lie, but I will love you all the same.'
Mildred shuddered and shook her head. She had read about the demon sitting before her, but all the reading in the world could not prepare her for the thing she was seeing. Her hands were shaking, even as she fixed the demon with a stern look. 'Son of Lilith,' she began, trying to remember the invocation. 'The Circle of the Art has trapped you, and I rebuke you in the name of Christ the Father...'
The creature gave a bored sigh and held up a clawed hand, a small, central mouth opening and closing in the palm. 'Please, spare me, mortal. I am trapped by your Art. Do not waste my time with impotent prayers while my hunger only grows.'
'You are an incubus, and I would use your power,' she continued.
'But what do you know of my power?' purred the demon as it slid across the mattress and lay on its chest. 'You, who call me incubus. You, who tries to label me with your....limited human ideas. Ardat and Irdu Lili....succubi and incubi, these are just mantles we assume. Our nature transcends such childish definitions.'
'Does 'child' of Lilith satisfy you?' asked Mildred, with a glare on her face.
'No,' purred the demon, as it ran its tongues through its clawed fingers. 'Your mythology lies to you. We haunted the ancient lands you know as Sumeria. Those mortals who knew of our talents and experienced our pleasures called us Lilitu, a sacred name, profaned in the holy book of the new era. Your Lilith is but one being, but one sex, but one race. Ours is a legacy of longing and rapture, written across a thousand eras and a thousand shapes.' The demon turned and lay on its back, exposing its muscled, chiseled body, its penis standing erect. 'Come to me, mortal, and share what they shared. See what your foolish faith has denied you.'
Mildred wanted the repugnant being desperately, wanted in her guts to feel those tongues play across her skin, and she knew that the demon knew it. Its effortless deconstruction of her research had shaken her faith in herself, a dangerous thing when dealing with the Art. She noticed the tips of one of the snaking tongues move beyond the mattress, and she focused her will, binding the demon down once more. It gave a hiss and exposed a mouthful of needle-teeth.
'You want food, mortal souls and lust right?' Mildred said. The demon paused, its head crooked as if listening. 'I can give you what you want. Easy targets.'
She got up and went over to the dresser in the corner of the room, never taking her eyes off the demon who watched her impassively. Despite how sedate it was now, Mildred knew the first rule of the Art. A weak spell, neglected, was easily broken, and she knew that the demon waited for the barrier of her will to drop. Opening the top drawer, she pulled forth a small, plastic bag, containing a few hairs.
'These belong to a man. A man who has done me great harm. I'm offering him to you,' she said, throwing the bag onto the mattress. The demon crawled over and sniffed it.
'I care nothing for the dramatics of humanity,' sneered the creature. It breathed deeply over the bag though, and appeared lost in the scent for a moment. 'What he has done to you is nothing. I can make the memory of this man's brutality but a footnote in your experience,' it said, staring at Mildred with its eyeless face, making her skin crawl. 'I can teach your nerves new ways to scream.'
'You will,' said Mildred, finally tipping her hand. 'For the deal I propose, I offer both him and myself, body and soul.'
The demon crawled very close to the edge of the bed, the mane of waving tongues swirling in mesmeric patterns. 'And what would you have me do for such a prize? Souls like yours, and his,' it breathed deeply, 'Are more fulfilling for their experiences.'
Mildred's face had hardened, and for the first time, she stared back at the demon defiantly. 'He took my child. I want him back.'
The demon chuckled, the rippling motion going through its entire body. 'We produce no seed that can take root in your empty womb. Our blood cannot mingle.'
'It's not yours I want, demon,' she snarled. 'What I want is my child back. He stole our baby when he hurt me. I intend to steal our boy back, regardless of what I have to rip out of him. Let me bring my child into this world and let him be free, that is all I ask.'
The demon's smile grew even bigger and more unpleasant. 'I can give you what you desire. We always can. It is our nature.'
Mildred smiled, and wordlessly, she stopped concentrating on the circle. The demon sat up, its body now slim and muscular, and wordlessly, it stepped toward her. Mildred made no move to resist as those probing tongues wrapped around her. She felt her skin press against the demon's body, and felt herself drown in a miasma of sickly perfume. She floated for what felt like years in a narcotic haze before those tongues entered her, and her world flashed into brilliant white, so intense that rapture and agony became indistinguishable in the dance.
The sensation did not stop once as the demon pulled her finally in a direction that did not exist in her world. The intensity tripled as they left Earth, and joined the rapture of a thousand more souls, fused at the nerves and bound into the superstructure of one, immense being.
Male and female, everything in between, intermingling, mixing, copulating into one another. One endless Father impregnating an infinite Mother. Nerves pulsed delicately in the flowers. Hair grew like grass across a goose-pimpled plain, brushed by sighing breeze. Trees made of fingers, with blossoms of skin grew from the fertile earth. Mildred was flayed, spread across this ecosystem, her veins and nerves melting into a garden of meat and flesh.
A garden that grew, pulsed and bled. Where the Lilitu lived.
It kept its promise. It was one of the few bits of truth that had filtered down into the earthly texts. It had kept its word, once given. It had taken Damian, Mildred's ex-husband in the form of a beautiful, slender redhead, and bound him in the pulsing, red world outside reality when it had drunk its fill of his withered soul. Lilitu enjoyed meat already seasoned, and in the centuries they spent playing with him, peeling and weaving him into the land, into her, Mildred never once regretted her decision.
A tree grew in the fleshy meat of the earth, where Mildred and Damian had long forgotten their human lives. Their mingled essence had grown first as a tumorous cyst, before it blossomed, ripening into a tree of hands and misaligned fingers, grasping together like a horrid knot.
Lilitu had no seed of their own to sow among the throng of humanity, but when it was stolen from a victim, ripened and resown by the demon, sometimes it could take root. The children of the Garden used every part of the base primates, body, soul and essence. It didn't matter why humans chose it, or indeed if they did choose it. When they were had already ripened like fruit, they couldn't stand out more obviously, and the Lilitu flitted among them like bees, ready to fertilize the flowers and drink the sweet nectar.
The tree was rent apart as a birth-scream filled the air, and amniotic fluid and blood poured like sap as Mildred's child pulled itself from its ruptured womb.
