Bloodbath

by Stephanie Ahn

  I get a tall mason jar out of the cupboard, my hand curling around about two-thirds of its circumference. I fold the brown paper napkin into a little packet the size of my thumb, then wrap it around and around in twine. The candle I find is so fat that I barely manage to stuff it into the jar’s opening. Then I get out a match, bloody the end, and strike a flame.

  The life in my blood gives life to the flame, turning it into the tiny, amorphous, snot-nosed fire sprite that I like to call Tinkerbell. Tinkerbell is grumpy about being woken up today; it flickers low along the length of the match, refusing to rise taller while drowsily munching on the tasty wood of the match.

  It’s alright, I tell it, go back to sleep. Here, go back to sleep.

  I dip the match into the jar, letting Tinkerbell transfer onto the candle wick and dwindle to barely a spark. I try not to disturb its smoldering as I lower the twine-wrapped napkin into the jar, then screw shut the lid with the free end of the twine hanging out, allowing the napkin to dangle just above Tinkerbell’s slumbering form.

  In that hibernating state, Tinkerbell can remain alive in the sealed jar for, say, maybe another six hours. In theory, here’s what happens: Lilith opens the jar, reawakening Tinkerbell with a rush of oxygen, and the ravenous flame instantly devours the twine-wrapped napkin. Which means that, if interplanar laws require Lilith to protect the contract receipt, she shouldn’t be able to open the jar at all.

  “I dub thee… Pandora’s Jar,” I whisper to my new creation, cupping it in my hands. Then I remember another contraption, built with string and a grenade in a tin can, a strike lever safely held down until I rolled open the van door, fire furling out to swallow a wide-eyed face—

  I grip the edge of my desk. My heart is pounding in my stomach. Fuck. Fuck, I didn’t mean to—wasn’t going to think about that. Wasn’t going to think about how I killed Dick.

  I stare at the glass jar, now with more with trepidation than enthusiasm. There has to be a way to make it look less like a deathtrap. I root around in my desk drawer until I find leftover gift-wrapping paper from my birthday in September, two months ago. The paper is yellow with a pattern of green and pink wiener dogs wearing party hats; I haphazardly wind it around the jar and secure its crinkled edges with duct tape, even scribbling the words For Lilith on the jar’s lid with Sharpie. There, that’s less trauma-inducing. I’m still trying to peel duct tape off my palm when I hear an obnoxious, artificial roar on the street down below.

  I peep out the window. In the dawning light, I see two motorcycles parking on the street outside my apartment, each with an impossibly massive cooler strapped to the back and riders’ faces hidden by black visors. One of the riders is burlier with an impressive gut, built like a wrestler, while the other is whipcord lean.

  Steps thumpthumpthump down the hallway outside my front door. My door slams open. The Enforcer in the baseball cap stands there, panting, three bright yellow exclamation points yelling at me from her hat.

  “Vampire motorcycle delivery? Really?” she complains. “You know the whole bloody point of my covering for you is to stay low-profile, right?”

  I shrug from my place at the window. “Hey, if your colleagues make a stink, tell them that being on house arrest doesn’t mean I can’t have visitors.”

  Her face screws up. “No, that’s—that’s not what house arrest means, that is the literal opposite of what house arrest means. You aren’t supposed to have any outside communication at all.”

  “Oh. Oops. You can still cover me, right?”

  She sighs. “Yes, of course. Bautista owes me for this.”

  The logo on her baseball cap is the face of a kitten making a grumpy face. As she exits into the hallway, the two motorcycle riders enter, tugging a wheeled platform behind them holding both coolers. One of them says something, but the sound is muffled under the helmet.

  “Oh, crap,” I say, rushing to the windows and shutting the blinds. “So sorry guys, I completely forgot.”

  “It’s no problem,” Tommaso, the bigger one, says in the same Italian accent as Messalina. He twists his helmet off to reveal laughing eyes and a gray-brown complexion still mostly hidden by a bandana, then lowers the bandana to free a gloriously bushy beard.

  The other one, Felix, flips up the visor of his helmet to reveal a strip of sallow skin and forest green eyes. “Where do you need these?” His accent is a weird mix of French and German, which basically means that he hits his H’s like a sledgehammer.

  “The bathroom—it’s the door to your right. Don’t worry about blocking the entrance, there’s another door leading out into the bedroom.”

  Felix starts wheeling the wagon into the bathroom. “You can take your time to pay us back,” Tommaso says, turning to me. “We know you’d only ask for this in an emergency. Anything for a friend, yes?”

  “Aw man, you guys are so nice. Thank you.”

  Tommaso grins; his teeth are as blunt as a regular human’s.

  “Is this for kinky sex?” Felix pipes up, emerging from the bathroom with his helmet tucked under his arm. Unlike Tommaso’s, his teeth are filed to points, groomed as meticulously as acrylic nails.

  “What? Jesus, you and your wife have the exact same brain.”

  “Of course we do, how else would we have fallen for the same man?” He catches Tommaso around the waist and peppers his face with kisses. Tommaso flails in protest, laughingly pushing him off.

  I wave them goodbye with a “Happy cooking!” and close the front door. There’s a quiet shuffling outside as the baseball capped Enforcer readjusts the barrier, concealing the opening that’s already had way too many people pass through. I enter the bathroom and open the coolers.

  Oh, dear gods. That is a lot of blood. Some of it is in jugs, so those are convenient for emptying out into the bathtub. But then there’s about thirty plastic packs buried in ice cubes; those I have to slice open one by one until my hands are getting clumsy from the spilled slick and repeated motions. By the time I tear through the last one with a quickly-dulled scissor blade, the tub is barely half-full. I mop up the spills on the floor with towels, then leave them there as a precautionary measure.

  Well, here goes nothing. I strip naked, set a cooking timer, put my leg cautiously over the lip of the tub—and nearly scream. Fuck, that’s cold! But my foot and ankle are already submerged, I can’t back out now—so I shut off my brain and dunk myself in.

  Cold! Cold cold cold cold cold—! I have to grip the edges of the tub and force myself not to haul my body out. Oh gods, this is terrible, I hate this. See, if I’d drained a bunch of living people this wouldn’t be a problem, but no, I just have to be the good guy in this equation.

  My teeth are already chattering. I think my hands are shaking, but the fact that my eyeballs are also shaking kind of cancels out the movement. Oooohh my gods. I’m so busy shivering in a miserable ball that I don’t notice Lilith standing in the bathroom doorway until she says, “Oh wow, blood bath. Always wanted to try that. How is it?”

  “C-c-c-cold,” I respond.

  Lilith is still in her charred denim jacket, but she’s exchanged the dirt-stained floral dress for her original white shift. She’s got her head tilted in curiosity, her nostrils flaring slightly at what I can only imagine is a smell that reminds her of home. “I can actually help with that. Demon body temperature and all. Is there room for two in there?”

  “Y-yes, f-f-fuck, abso-lutely.”

  She turns around, shrugging off her jacket. As she disappears into the bedroom, I see she’s trimmed the singed ends off her hair, shortening its length up to her shoulder blades instead of the small of her back. When she comes back, she’s fully naked, and her hair is tied up in a floofy bun.

  “Come on, scooch your cooch.”

  There’s nowhere for me to go, but I press my back up against the wall as she leans over the edge of the tub. She dips one foot into the blood, then makes a little squeaky noise and withdraws instantly. She tries again gingerly, an inch at a time, an
d then submerges herself fully with barely a splash.

  There’s some relocating to be done, and the blood sloshes dangerously as Lilith tucks herself into the space between the tub and my back. She lets me lean back into her, wrapping her arms around my torso so that her warmth envelops me fully. I sigh quietly in relief and sink back into her, my hands gently perched on her warm, thick thighs.

  “Fuck, that’s so much better.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  We stay like that for a bit. I twist to check the clock on the sink: twenty-six out of thirty-three minutes left. The blood isn’t freezing anymore, just lukewarm, which is comfortable enough. I close my eyes.

  Lilith’s hand wanders up my chest. Tweaks a nipple.

  “Lilith, no,” I mumble.

  “What, not in the mood?” Her fingertips rub little circles in the valley between my breasts.

  “This is a really bad time. People are dead.”

  “People have been dying since the dawn of people. It’s not a new development.” But she slides her hands around my waist and leaves them there.

  Another silence. Then, I say, “I’m still mad at you for letting that kid die.”

  The arms around my waist tighten. “…The ginger one that got shot,” she says with no apparent emotion in her voice.

  “Yeah. Him.”

  Her fingers dig into my sides. “…He didn’t die in that parking garage.”

  I have to pause to make sure I’ve heard her right. Then I twist around in her arms, my heart thumping to life. “He didn’t?”

  “I carried him to the hospital. He died on the way.”

  “Oh.” I sink back down, the inside of my chest cold. Then—“You carried him to the hospital? When did you do that?”

  “While you were hijacking that taxi. The kid, I didn’t even know he was in the garage until he got shot. I knew you’d be mad if I just left him there, but you were going to be mad no matter what, so I figured I’d do some damage control. But I didn’t realize how unstable he was until I was halfway to the hospital…he wasn’t breathing when I arrived. I dropped his body off in front of the doors.”

  I process the information slowly, trying to understand, scared that I’m completely failing. “So you… you did try to save him. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “The end result was the same, wasn’t it? Doesn’t matter when or where he died, he’s still a goner. I told you before; I’m a demon, not your personal Supergirl. I’m in this to protect my own interests. Don’t count on me to do anything else.”

  Normally, she’d say this kind of thing with an airy nonchalance. Right now, her voice is just hollow. Her body is tense against my back, and I’m haunted by shadows of the words she’s not saying. Or is that just the famous Hellish manipulation? She sounds genuine, but… I can’t be sure. You can never be sure with a demon.

  My brain hurts from thinking about it. So I do what I always do in situations like this.

  “There’s still twenty minutes left on the timer. Quickie?”

  Her whole body relaxes.

  “Oh thank fuck, yes.”

  Her left hand immediately closes around my breast and squeezes. Her other hand dives between my legs, shocking me with how sensitive I already am. She slips two fingers down between my folds, just exploring, pointedly avoiding my clit. I bite my lip and tilt my hips up—she digs her nails into my chest in warning.

  “What did I say last time about being impatient?”

  I sigh. “I get off when you say I get off.”

  “Good girl.”

  The praise starts a little tingle at the top of my head that frizzes down my spine. I shudder, breath quickening, and she takes advantage of the moment to trap my clit between two fingers and squeeze—I spasm, gasping, my hands tightening around her thighs. Her touch feels strange under the surface of the blood, gentle, but not slippery like I thought it would be. She strokes the length of my cunt, teases my clit again. I whine in the back of my throat, trying to spread my legs further apart in the cramped tub.

  Finally, she presses down right where I need her to. She uses her whole hand, rubbing with three cupped fingers, lighting me up from the inside out. It’s slower than anything we’ve done so far, but effective, and I’m writhing against her within moments. Her other hand grips my lower jaw, forcing my head to the side, and her lips descend on mine. My lips and tongue stutter helplessly against her own; she makes up for my lack of focus with a sharp-toothed hunger that splits open my lip and leaves me gulping for air. I fall further and further, the spasming of my body accompanied by my desperate moans and the splashing of liquid against the walls of the tub.

  “If you keep—keep doing that—I’m gonna come—” I manage to gasp.

  “Oh, really?”

  She barely breaks the rhythm as she plunges her middle finger into me. She curls up to hit that spot that makes my stomach clench and my toes curl, the heel of her hand bearing down on my clit at the same time—I have to grip the lip of the tub with both hands just to keep from sliding everywhere, pleading for her to keep going, I’m so close so close please don’t stop—

  She nips my ear with a sharp fang. “Come on my fingers, sweetcheeks.”

  I have just enough time to babble “Oh shit fuck hold me down hold me down” before my whole head goes white. She pretzels her legs in mine, keeping me from making too much of a mess as I convulse in her grip. She maintains steady pressure on my clit so that I just keep bouncing back over the edge, again and again, and I don’t, can’t stop until she lets me. I groan and slump back into her, feeling my inner walls flutter as she slips out of my pussy.

  She offers her bloody, cum-stained fingers up to my face; I feel myself blush all the way down to my chest. Not that it’s visible under all the red splatter. But I open my mouth to let her place them on my tongue, and I suck the copper and sour clean.

  “Good girl,” she croons. “Your turn now.”

  She rises from the tub like a model in an infernal bikini commercial, perching herself on the narrow shelf where the corner of the tub meets two bathroom walls. She spreads her legs and, boy, she looks tasty in red. I clamber onto my knees and grab the edge of the tub to pull myself forward. I press the flat of my tongue against her and draw up, slowly, savoring the first stroke. Her hips undulate and I lick again, and again, then circle delicately around her clit, just barely pushing the hood back—

  Lilith’s feet thump onto my back, and I feel asphalt-sharpened claws graze my shoulder blades. “You can’t play me the way I play you, sweetheart. Quit the teasing and get on with it.” One of the claws emphasizes her point by dragging a bloodless, hair-raising line down my skin.

  “Okay, okay,” I say, but with my face full of pussy it comes out more like “Mmkmf, mmkmf.” I mouth at her clit, wrapping my lips around it and applying just the lightest suction. I feel Lilith’s back arch and her hips push forward to meet me, and I don’t have to hear the hitch in her breath to know I’m on the right track. I press deeper, seeing if she’ll let me hook my arms around her thighs for leverage; she doesn’t stop me. She’s breathing harshly but quietly, the sounds too breathy to be called whimpers just yet. I guess she’s always quiet at the outset, and it wasn’t just a fluke last time. I nestle in deeper, then close my lips around her clit again, this time with just a bit of stiff tongue against the underside where it doesn’t have the protection of the hood—

  Lilith’s whole body jerks, and she yells out a string of syllables that sound like Hellish cusswords. I instantly pull away, an apology on the tip of my tongue—but Lilith fists her hands in my hair so brutally that her nails leave gouges in my scalp. She shoves me face first into her cunt and locks her legs around my head, making my forehead squish up against her belly.

  “Don’t you dare fucking stop,” she gasps, the smallest hint of demon creeping into her voice, making it break like an ominous record. I comply, doing what I just did before, tonguing the most sensitive part of her clit while sucking around it at the same t
ime—she throws her head back and it hits the wall with a THUNK as she lets loose a long groan.

  I keep doing the thing, and the movement of Lilith’s hips becomes more and more erratic, her grinding forcing me to chase her down with my mouth. Her moans are getting louder and louder, to my delight, and she keeps interrupting herself with the shudders I send through her body. She’s not smothering me in between her thighs anymore, mostly because her calves are clenching and flexing in ways that make it clear she’s completely forgotten about threatening me with her claws.

  As she comes, I ease up on direct contact with her clit, rolling and massaging it through the hood instead. I’m just kind of mouthing at her now, enjoying the way her moans coincide with the stinging pulse in my split lip. I glance up—stray hairs from her bun are bouncing around her face, and from this angle her long lashes and round, upturned nose look real cute.

  She frees me from the vise of her legs, and I pull back, licking my lips. I’ve left a clean patch between her legs with all the tongue-work, as well as handprints on her thighs. They’re not as permanent as the marks she left on me last time, but still, I claim them as a win. She pants down at me, an adoring sort of attention in her eyes. I know how meaningless that post-orgasm look is; I’ve been on the giving and receiving ends of it too many times to count, and you don’t have to be a blood mage to recognize the impermanence of certain chemical reactions. But it still makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

  She reaches into the tub and splashes blood onto my face.

  I yelp, squeezing my eyes shut with my hands flying up. I try to rub the stinging out, but my hands are wet too, and my vision is completely gunked over. “Whyyyyy?” I manage to wail.

  I hear Lilith laughing. “That’s what you get for pointing those gooey puppy eyes at me, Witchy. Hold still.”

  I feel her grip the sides of my head and I go limp, whimpering. Something warm and slimy drags across my left eyelid—tongue, the two forks of her tongue. It feels gross as Hell but weirdly intimate, and when I crack open that eye it’s functioning with marginally less pain. She does the same to my other eye, and I shudder.