by David Wood
Her lips were warm and smooth against his. The way their tongues tentatively explored each other made him think of eating a sun-warmed peach. She tasted sweet in his mouth, and her breath gave him new life. He worried his desire to drink her in made him too aggressive, but she gave as good as she got. Her fingers slid into his hair and her chin rubbed against his urgently. It was the longest kiss he'd ever experienced in his life, and without doubt the hottest. When they eventually parted it was with deep regret.
“I want you,” she said, her eyes half closed. “Now.”
He hated looking a miracle in the mouth, but he didn't want to feel like he was taking advantage of anyone. “Are you sure? I—”
She shushed him with a quick kiss and started pulling off her clothes. First went the sweatpants, and then went the red panties underneath. He felt like a little boy peeking at his birthday present as he gazed at the light brown cleft between her legs and the trimmed thatch of hair above it. When she removed her shirt and revealed her breasts he wanted to faint. They looked ripe and full, the right breast just slightly larger than the left, and his hands ached to hold them.
Giving himself over, his hands shook as he pulled off his shirt. As he tugged it over his head he got caught up and had to struggle to clear the neck hole. Embarrassment made his face feel like it was on fire, but Maya only smiled.
“Let me.” She pressed against him.
Her nipples were like hard chocolate candies, and the feel of them made his head swim. He barely knew what was happening as she took his shoes and socks off, and it wasn't until he felt cold air blow past his groin that he realized he was naked as a jay bird. When she took him in her hand, he trembled.
Within seconds they were on the bed, their hands ranging over each other's bodies, their mouths consuming everything they could reach. She felt like velvet in his hands, her body soft and warm and endlessly curved. She was a bundle of desire, both to give and receive, and he did everything he could to match her, though she didn't make it easy. When she eventually pulled away, the space between their bodies felt cavernous.
“Do you have any protection?” she asked, her voice breathy and deep.
A sinking sensation hit his stomach. “No, I don't. I...uh...wasn't planning on this.”
The corners of her lips turned down in a frown, but then she got up from the bed and walked to her collection of bags. He loved watching her move, seeing her body from every angle possible. Her hands moved quickly as she opened one of the bags and rooted through it. Several seconds later she pulled out a box of condoms. The scuffed, bent cardboard container looked like it had been there awhile, but when she shook it three small plastic wrappers fell into her hand.
“I got it.” He reached for one of the wrappers, but she shook her head and tore one open with her teeth as she tossed the other two on the nightstand. Just watching and feeling her hands on him made him want to climax there and then, but he bit his lower lip and held on. The true test came when she straddled his hips and guided him inside her.
His brain slipped into a place without language as he entered her. She rode him in long, slow motions, and all either of them could utter were grunts and half words. Her hands were on his chest, and he held her hips, holding her right where she was. He couldn't say how long they lasted – it could have been seconds or hours – but eventually his eyes rolled up in his head and he crested the mountain.
Maya lowered her head and rested it beneath his chin. He slid his hands from her hips to encircle her back. Her skin was slick with sweat. Her chest moved in the same frantic motions as his.
“That was...that was perfect,” she said with barely enough breath to voice the words.
He kissed the top of head and hugged her close. “Yeah, I'd say that just about describes it.”
She looked up at him, her gray eyes and brown face so strange and yet so perfect. When she smiled, he smiled too.
“Do it again,” she said, sliding her hand down to take hold of him.
And so they made love again. He knew little more than her name, yet when he looked at her he saw something he recognized, something that pulled at him and made him feel like she had always been there. He'd never felt anything like it, not with any other girl he'd been with, and the feeling gave the act of loving her body that much more meaning and passion. By the time they were both spent and the sheets were a sweaty tangle, he felt a connection to her that seemed almost magical, even if it scared him.
“Sleep here tonight.” She spooned against him and drew his arm around her. “If that's okay, I mean.”
“There's nowhere else I'd rather be,” he told her, pulling her close and kissing the back of her neck.
She murmured something in return, but he didn't hear it, and that was okay. He stayed right where he was, holding Maya close and letting the warmth of her lull him into a deep sleep. He barely felt it when Maya grumbled and shifted her body around as dark dreams slipped inside her head. His sleep was deep and unbroken.
Interlude- Children of Shadows
Standing in the lightless cavern, Ash dreamed of an ancient world. It was the dark world of those who came first, colossal beasts of great power rising from the muck of a planet just beginning to cool, when raw magic and power were free for the taking. And take it, they did. With strength that made mountains crumble and appetites that drained oceans, the First Ones ravaged the world and each other, created armies from dust, sired foul children out of the ooze. There were no stars in that world, just a black sky and a moon that looked down on it like a blood-filled eye. For millions of years they warred and tortured and killed. But then came the light, and then the rain.
Ash saw only darkness in his dreams after that. He wanted more blood, wanted to see the ancients tremble the world and shape it to all the dark purposes that boiled in their minds like burning pitch, wanted to see them drunk on their power, but he didn't. He saw only what became of his god after the water fell. It was tragic for a being as mighty as he that slept in the flooded cavern below, but it wasn't the end of the story. The sound of rumbling pumps and the increased stirring in his head promised more was to come, and Ash would be there when the greatest of the First rose again, returning the world to what it should have been.
Rocks scattered in the tunnel behind him, followed by the sound of several beating hearts. One was calm, its pulses slow and steady, but the other was frantic, like a rabbit caught in a snare. The erratic beat of it stirred Ash's appetite, and jagged teeth pushed through his gums, ruining the pink meat and dislodging old teeth to fall useless to the ground in a spatter of bloody gore.
“Sir, we've got a problem,” Gus said as he stopped outside the cavern's entrance.
Casting a glance over his bony left shoulder, Ash looked at his underling and was amused by the way he held his hat in his hands and twisted it. There wasn't a single ray of light to be had in the mine, but Ash saw everything as though in the brightness of day. It was just one of the many gifts his god had bestowed upon him. Gus couldn't see as well, but even so when he looked at Ash he flinched and looked away quickly.
“We're standing at the dawn of a new age for humanity,” Ash said, his voice deeper than ever before, with a rumble in it like the earth grinding against itself. “How can there be a problem with that?”
Gus wrung his hat and kicked at small stones next to his boots. “It's my son. He's...uh...come back to town. Could be trouble.”
Laughing, Ash ran his tongue over the new fangs populating his mouth. The sharp teeth cut his tongue and sent small steams of brackish blood running into his throat. The taste was wonderful, but the cuts closed a moment later, staunching the flow.
“You're son's no trouble to the darkness that rises below us. Nothing can stop what's coming.”
It was Gus's turn to laugh, the sound of it mirthless and pitiful. “No, and praise be.”
Ash sighed and ground his teeth together so hard they shredded the insides of his gray cheeks. Gouts of blood and torn meat poured dow
n his throat before the wounds healed, and the taste of it hit his body like a drug, sending his blackened heart into a gallop.
“Indeed. Praise be. Soon our Lord will be risen, and all the sons and daughters of Stillwater will meet the fate that has been written for them. Our Lord's will cannot be denied.”
Gus nodded and put it through another round of twists.
Ash's patience with those who were among the first of the awoken was great, but Gus's hemming and hawing stretched it. “Now what plagues your mind?”
“Kyle ain't the only new face in town,” the old man finally said. “Some bitch rolled in 'round the same time. People think she might be a reporter or something. All she done so far is ask a few questions, but I don't like it.”
“Do you think she and your son came together for some purpose?”
Gus shook his head and crushed the bill of his hat in his hands. “Naw, don't seem to. They came in different vehicles, and they're staying in different rooms over at the motel.”
Sighing, Ash turned and looked back down at the lowering waters. There lay his future, his destiny. “It don't matter. The time of awakening is at hand, and in another day or so the whole world is gonna change. Hallelujah.”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Gus replied, a light shining from his eyes and a smile on his face. “I also wanted to let you know I brung my girl like I said I would.”
Stepping to the side, Gus cleared the passageway to reveal his daughter. A piece of thick black tape covered her mouth, and one of the night crew held her in place, his grip so tight on her arms the skin around his fingers bruised. The young girl's cheeks puffed in and out, and tears streamed from her eyes as she cried into a darkness so deep it blinded her.
“She's pretty,” Ash said, his teeth aching at the thought of tearing her head off and eating the bloody stump until all that was left was to suck the marrow out of her spine.
“She's trouble is what she is. Never been anything but. Least now she'll do something worthwhile.”
Ash pushed his lust to kill and feed to the back of his mind. His god would be hungry when he rose, and it would be a sin to deny him such a tasty treat as Gus's daughter. He would feed when all of civilization lay in ruin, and the cattle of humanity lain at his feet.
“Go put her with the others, then.” Ash licked the gray flaps of skin that were his lips, he noted a small change in the noise rolling off of the equipment outside the cavern. “And get someone to take a look at the pumps. I don't want anything delaying the glory to come.”
“Will do, sir.” Gus shoved his hat into his pocket and turned away. His daughter stumbled after him, her muted cries and sniffling filling Ash's body with so much pleasure that what remained of his cock hardened in his pants.
There was great glory to come, oh yes, and when his god awoke the whole world would fall to their knees. Ash ached to see that day come as quickly as possible. Blood and spit oozed down his gleaming teeth, coating his chin in gore.
In the darkness below, the water stirred.
Chapter 8
A loud thump and violent vibrations yanked Darius from the pull of sleep hours of night driving had induced. His hands shook as he clamped down on the steering wheel of his car and pulled off the gravel shoulder he’d drifted onto. His eyes felt gummy, and after eating nothing but chips and microwave burritos his mouth could have easily been mistaken for the floor of a convenience store. To wake himself up and clear some of the gunk from his mouth he lifted a bottle of water and sucked out what little remained. He glanced around for another bottle, but a quick glance around the interior of his Ford Taurus came up fruitless.
A flash of white and green in his headlights caught his eye. When he looked up, a sign reading ENTERING STILLWATER went by on the right. A few hours ago he wouldn't have thought he'd be relieved to see a sign like that, but now he was ecstatic. He'd been driving for ten hours, and playlists full of Jay-Z or Flo Rida pumping through his speakers hadn’t made it easy or fun.
His cell phone was clipped to his dash, and he glanced at it with an angry eye. He knew Alan had told Maya he was coming, yet she hadn’t bothered calling or texting to let him know where she was staying, where to meet, anything. He was up and driving deep into the asshole of night, and she was ignoring him. Typical.
Reason 1, he thought, for why I dumped your ass. Reason 2? You’re scary as hell.
For both those reasons Darius was glad this was his last job to work with Maya. Whenever any sort of spookiness reared its head she lost sight of everything and everyone else, which might not have been the worst thing in the world, but with her, spookiness was never just some strange knocking sounds and the occasional cold spot. No, with her it was always screaming and running and swearing the next day he’d never do it again. She said she had a gift, but to him it was more like a curse. He’d managed to escape relatively unscathed, and he planned on keeping it that way once this investigation was done and she was finally out of his life. He felt bad for the next guy who got caught up in her weird wake
The LOW FUEL alarm dinged, shocking him back to the real world rolling by.
“Ah fuck. Great. Just great. And what do you wanna bet there ain't a gas station for miles.”
The universe surprised him when a lit-up sign rose into view as he crested a hill. It read VANCE’S GAS-N-GO, and beneath it were prices for different grades of gas. Darius exhaled a thankful gust of wind.
The gas station was small, comprised of a tiny cashier's station flanked by four sets of pumps. As Darius pulled in he saw the pump closest to the entrance was being used by three big guys fueling a beat-up old Dodge pickup. Judging by the dark stains on their plaid shirts and the dirty baseball caps on their heads, he felt safe in profiling them as rednecks. Something about them didn’t look right though. Maybe it was the fluorescent lights, or maybe they were just tired from a long night of working, but all three of them looked sick. They were each hunched over, their movements sluggish, and their skin was the sickly gray color of dirty snow. Not wanting any trouble, he stopped at the pump on the opposite side of the station.
As he stepped out of his car, the moist, crisp air slapped him in the face. From the corner of his eyes he saw the ashen rednecks turn and look at his car. A shiny purple Taurus was probably something these backwoods hicks didn't see every day. In any other time or place he would have stared back and given them a “What the fuck you looking at?” but this wasn’t any other time or place, so he ignored them and pulled his wallet from his back pocket. His credit card slipped into his fingers as he saw a sign on the pump's card reader. “Card Machine Down.”
“Shit.” He looked around at the other pumps, and all of them had the same sign. He then looked in the cash pocket of his wallet, but he already knew what he'd find there – nothing. “Shit.”
Hoping the attendant might be able to help, he walked over to the booth. Inside the small cinderblock building sat a kid so dreadful looking the three hicks down the way seemed fresh as daisies. Pasty flesh stretched across bones so sharp they stuck out in odd angles, and lesions covered his greasy face like a shotgun blast. He sat on a stool reading a magazine behind a Plexiglas window, oblivious to the world. On the magazine's cover were two naked Asian women kissing and grabbing each other’s tits. The kid licked his cracked lips with a thick, dark, dry tongue.
When the kid didn't acknowledge his presence, Darius reached up to tap the clear plastic window, but something held him back. He couldn’t explain it, couldn’t understand it, but a tingle in the back of his mind told him to stop. Stop and run.
“You’re gonna die, coon.” the kid sounded as if he were commenting on the weather, his eyes still glued to the magazine.
A chill hit Darius’s chest like an icy spike plunging through his heart. “Um, what did you say?”
The kid, still without glancing up, licked his chapped lips and flipped to the next page. “I think ya heard me just fine.”
“Listen, I don’t want any trouble.” And that was the truth. D
arius was no coward, but nothing about this situation felt right. “I just need–”
The kid finally put his porn down and looked up at Darius. His eyes were dead fish staring out from an ashen face, and pockmarks on his cheeks oozed blood and pus. “You don’t want trouble, coon, but you’re about to get a heaping fuckin’ load of it.”
Fury rose up in Darius's chest, and he hammered the Plexiglas with both fists. “You better shut the fuck up or I'll get a tire iron and beat the shit out of you with it!”
The kid wiped his leaking face with his right hand. Reddish ooze smeared his fingers, but then he licked them clean with his swollen black tongue. In spite of his anger, Darius wanted to vomit.
“Bye now.” The kid cast his eyes back down at his porn.
Angry and sickened and frightened all at the same time, Darius didn’t understand how the early morning had gone so wrong so quickly. Fearing what was coming, he tried to run back to his car. When he turned he found the three rednecks surrounding him like gray Neanderthal statues.
“Hey.” The fires of his emotion dampened at the sight of their wide, hunched bodies. “Like I said, I don’t want any trouble.”
The redneck directly in front of him sneered with the lips of a drowning victim, puffy and almost black, and rolled his shoulders. Thick ropes of muscle bunched against his filthy work shirt. In the harsh lights hanging overhead Darius noticed the redneck's hands were stained with dark powder. His fingernails were black crescent moons.
“You shouldn’t have come here, nigger,” the redneck said in a voice created by decades of cigarettes and hard drinking.
In a flash, Darius's fury rose up again, and before he knew what he was doing he punched the redneck square in the jaw. A loud, meaty pop filled the air, followed by Darius swearing loudly as he yanked his bruised hand back and cradled it next to his chest. He felt like he busted one of his knuckles, maybe two, but he was okay with that when he saw the redneck's jaw hang at a broken angle. His victory was short lived, though, when the redneck didn't react or cry out. The guy looked like he didn't even realize he'd been hurt. Darius panicked, thinking the men around him might be high on drugs as well as sick, but then a shadow pass over the redneck's eyes, turning them black as midnight. Darius looked at the men on either side of him, and their eyes were the same pitiless voids.