Girls Who Bite

by Delilah Devlin

  “I do not know this place,” I said.

  “Do not use your mind but your senses; you must try to feel this place, this time. Hold my hand, close your eyes and search your heart.”

  I did as she asked.

  “We lived here once, you and I. This house belonged to us. We had many parties like this where we danced and fell, continually, in love. We walked along the bayous at night and made love during the day. I held you in my arms, felt the flood of your desire and fed you when you were too tired to feed. We’d spent centuries together here. We were happy and in love. You must try to remember, Lilith. I’ve come to you in many places, many regions, many moments in time wanting to extend our love through the centuries and each time you must be made to remember. I wish you would not forget.”

  As she spoke I imagined her words. I saw us as we swept across the dance floor—me in a purple velvet gown folded into Impundulu’s arms. I saw us in a huge room, on a huge bed with an elaborately draped canopy. There were many shadows on the walls. I was naked, on all fours, and calling out. Impundulu was positioned behind me; there was a woman under me and another on the bed beside her. There was a warm metallic smell. Iron, I believe. I was drawn to it. I needed it. Then…I saw it…blood. My mouth was filled with its slippery warmth. It spilled out and spattered on the collarbone of the woman below me, creating a large array of freckles. The woman’s mouth was twisted and grotesque, but it didn’t matter. It was the blood that was important.

  Impundulu stopped talking and I was ripped from my reverie. Tears marked my cheeks.

  “Is it true? Are you, we, the monsters that you’ve shown me?”

  “I have only shown you your true nature, Lilith.”

  “No! That is not me! Was not me!”

  “It is who I am. It is who you are, and it was you who summoned me. I am but one thing, Lilith, but you…you are much more and so when you have called me through the years, I came.”

  “I don’t believe you!” A sob so great it shook me escaped from my chest. I covered my face with my hands as if to block out the shame.

  “Why do you cry, Lilith?” She stroked my hair like a child. I let her.

  “The blood…the blood…was everywhere. And that woman…”

  “She had given herself freely. She knew her role.”

  “I don’t care! That is not me! That is not who I am!”

  “Oh, but it is. Come, let’s go back farther.” She took my hand gently in hers, pulled my head into her chest and kissed the hair on top of it.

  There is tenderness in abomination, I thought.

  A flute trilled a high ghostly command as Impundulu pulled at her cape and threw it over us like the great lid of a coffin.

  When she released me, we stepped carefully into the night as if it were alive, stalking us. Unseen eyes and claws scurried about the darkness filling the wind with their desires. I shivered. She pulled me closer.

  A great darkness loomed before us like the shoulder of hell. “Where are we now? And what is this deep void before me?”

  “Feel it, Lilith. Open yourself up to it. Listen to the sounds around you; hear, taste and smell the beauty of the night as it is in this place.”

  I tried, but the darkness was like an evil pressing down upon me. It bruised me to simply stand before it.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I can’t.”

  Impundulu lifted her hand and we rose up toward the stars. I clung to her while looking down to where we once had been. We landed on a jagged rock that jutted out from a cliff.

  “This is Drakensberg or the great Dragon’s Mountain. We are in South Africa where you and I began.”

  There was a clap of thunder and nearby a lion roared. The valley seemed to swell with fog. Impundulu lifted her hand again. We plunged through the swell of the milky whiteness and landed in a village. A great darkness crouched about us; its shoulders hunched angrily about its ears. Women, their faces covered by masks but their breasts bare, danced about in a circle close to a fire kicking up dust with their feet. The children held sticks that, when shaken, rattled and hissed at the night. Farthest from the fire, playing drums, were men, covered in dark mud to match their dark skin.

  They blended so thoroughly with the night that it was as if the drums beat out a rhythm on their own.

  In the center, surrounded by the village and closest to the flame, stood a woman with glowing eyes. On her head she wore a crown of feathers. Her arms, too, were covered in feathers that caught the firelight. I saw colors ripple across them. Reds, blues, purples, greens—they were all injected and punctuated by the light. The woman danced out the beat from the drums while flapping her wings, which fanned the flames that grew higher. She yelled some words in a language that pierced me, and the villagers responded. She yelled more words, moved her feet in a staggering fashion, and the villagers answered back. The men beat their drums faster, clouds of dust hovered above the women’s feet, and the children shook their sticks with vigor. The air grew thick around us. It darted and moved about like a blind man. I held on tightly to Impundulu’s hand while ducking my head.

  “What is it? What has happened to the air?”

  “It has sent forth bats to do what it cannot—dance to the rhythm of the diviner, the witch. It is she who commands the sky. Look upon her, Lilith. Does she not seem familiar?”

  The woman’s body shook and her feathers ruffled and fell, ruffled and fell, like a wave. The drummers sped up, the women’s legs moved faster, the children threw their bodies around because their arms were no longer enough.

  This new speed moved me. It unlocked something inside; I dropped Impundulu’s hand.

  The diviner slowly turned her back to the night and toward me. Her eyes were flames that burned into mine and through the heat I indeed saw something familiar…an essence, a spirit, a glimpse of my soul. I knew then that this witch was me many centuries ago when I first sought out Impundulu, when I first called her to my side.

  I warmed to the heat of her dancing and felt engulfed in the flames from the fire before me. She strutted around the fire toward me, then she came closer still. I readied myself to move, but Impundulu held me.

  “Stay and remember. Know thyself.”

  My soul was before me. She spread her wings and with this movement came a metallic dust siphoned from planets and thrown into the air. It swirled about then settled on me.

  Instantly, I became lightheaded. I moved to fall but it was as if the sound of the drums pulled me up. I leaned on and into the beat. My feet began to move first in the intricate patterns of the circled women, then more like the staggered strut of the diviner. She danced toward the fire and I followed. It was the remembering that connected us. Her arms swayed, her hips bucked, as did mine. We were reflections or moments within the same beat. I felt a freedom, a knowing that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time.

  One by one the women came up to us and flung themselves on the ground. Now I knew what to do.

  The witch stood behind me calling out and fanning the flames while I lay upon each woman who writhed and moaned along with me. I sucked their breasts, inserted fingers between their legs, feeling the sea that lay within; the sea that held the golden egg. I put my lips to their fountains and drank. They opened up for me, offering their divine elixir, and I ate from every one of them. My face glistened. My tongue was numb, but I remembered.

  I turned and walked to Impundulu. “You have united me with my soul.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have shown me memories of you and I.”

  “Yes.”

  “Once, I had given you life and now you repay me.”

  “We give birth to each other, Lilith, over and over again.”

  “Yes.” I looked into her eyes. I longed to touch her. Her smooth, dark skin caught and played with the firelight. I ran my fingers over her sharp cheekbones hoping to be cut.

  She grabbed my hand, kissed the wrist until the flesh singed and flaked away. I was filled with a great desire for h
er. I pulled her mouth to mine and our tongues met creating small sparks that blazed. The beat of the drum grew faster still, but it was farther away now.

  Impundulu tore at my dress revealing my nakedness beneath. I slipped her cape to the ground and pulled at the buttons on her shirt. They popped and squealed when they met with the flames. I was presented with her breasts. They were small but full and sharp like her lips and cheeks. Her nipples were large dark moons cast over a black night. I licked them; they seemed to sparkle, and Impundulu pulled me closer.

  Breast upon breast she held me, tracing the small of my back with her soft hands, following the curve of my ass as it reached out into the night. I shivered and lowered her pants in a single movement. She stepped out of them. Her legs were long like slender trees with a silky bush between. She pulled me down onto her cape, laid me flat and looked upon me as I looked upon her.

  “I am so glad to have you with me again…fully, Lilith. So glad.”

  “Yes, Impundulu.” I pulled her mouth onto mine; deeper and deeper our tongues searched. I felt as if I could not breathe.

  She lay on top of me, parted my legs, and pushed her hips between. I felt her bush hot, wet and dripping into mine. I pushed down on her ass. Her lower lips spread and I felt her clit as it pushed against mine. Like puffed-up swords they battered against each other causing me to rock and moan with immense pleasure.

  The drums beat faster still; Impundulu knew the rhythm. She pushed and ground her hips into mine, and I did the same to her. A great volcano was being built between us. I wrapped my legs around her waist; with three fingers she entered me. My back arched. I bit her neck. She growled and entered me with increased pressure. I met each thrust with my hips lifted far from the ground. She was so deep inside of me, it was as if she were grabbing at my heart.

  I bit her again. She growled louder, then bit me; her teeth and hands sank into softness. I thrust higher into the air both wanting more and wanting to explode into a million stars, wanting to fill that black hole with the results of desire.

  “Oh, Impundulu!” I yelled into the night. “I’m going to explode!”

  “Then we will do so together.”

  Her hand pressed deeper into the surrounding walls and I spread my legs wider, reaching them higher onto her back. Her hips moved against mine with such wanting, such desire, I couldn’t hold back any longer, neither could she.

  “I am yours forever,” I said.

  “As you have been, my love, as long as one of us remembers.”

  NIGHT AT THE WAX MUSEUM

  Delilah Devlin

  12:02 A.M.—Remind V. H. to call the exterminators. Rats, again, in the vicinity of the freak show exhibit!

  Krista Pike clicked the end of her ballpoint pen, slid the small spiral notebook into her pocket and clipped the pen in her uniform lapel. Then she slipped her Mag light from its holster, picked up a sturdy broom and went in search of the rodent.

  For the third night in a row her nerves were wired tighter than an M-16’s recoil spring. They shouldn’t have been. The security company that’d hired her told her that other than some minor vandalism to the museum’s windows and door, this shift should be a cakewalk.

  “Tell that to the fucking rats.”

  A skittering sounded behind her. She spun and aimed her light toward the floor. Nothing. As she raised the beam, it caught the exhibit. Light flickered in the eyes of the wax figure lying in the open coffin—a scene straight out of a horror movie, created especially for the Halloween crowd.

  She shivered at the tableau: a raven-haired vampire with red glassy eyes and milky-white skin; the tops of her breasts exposed above the black, corseted gown; not a hint of color in her or the white-satin-lined coffin other than blood-red paint on her full lips. Above her, the vampire hunter stood with arms raised, a hammer and a wooden stake in his hands, ready to puncture her chest. The setting surrounding the two figures was straight Hollywood kitsch—a gnarled tree, an open pit readied for the coffin and a tall Celtic cross knocked at an angle.

  The overhead track light beamed directly on the vampire’s face, and her glass eyes appeared to be fixed right on Krista.

  She shivered, and aimed the beam back to the ground, unsure which creeped her out more now, the rats or the red glowing lights the artist had placed behind the wax figure’s eye sockets.

  She moved along, scuffing her feet to make enough noise to scare away any critters looking for discarded scraps of popcorn or candy bars that patrons of the wax museum had tossed.

  Damn nerves. She needed to make an appointment with her VA shrink to up her meds. Problem solved.

  It was a total pisser she still needed those damn happy pills. Until she had a clean bill of health, the PD wouldn’t clear her for duty again. And there was no way she wanted to return full-time to the force without being whole. Eighteen months in Afghanistan had left her in little broken bits. Shattered hip. Shattered mind.

  A year of therapy—for the bones and her mushed brain—and she still wasn’t one hundred percent. Not when a goddamn rat could spook her like this.

  She was tempted to hit the utility closet and turn on all the lights just as she had last night, but the manager had chewed her ass for wasting electricity. She was stuck with the thin beams illuminating the exhibits, making the surrounding darkness feel dense and alive.

  Another shiver shook her. “Fuck this,” she bit out, pissed at herself for letting the place get to her. Maybe she should move on to the presidents. Nothing scary there other than the looming height and craggy face of Honest Abe.

  The skittering sounded again, behind her. She spun and crouched, flashlight held like a nightstick, the broom like a sword, blood pumping every bit as hard as when her squad had come under fire in Kandahar. She’d shimmied under a burned-out van only to discover she didn’t have enough room between the road and the vehicle’s undercarriage to effectively return fire. She’d scooted back the way she’d come, but the battle was already over. Or so she’d thought. Kneeling beside Randy Hays’s body, she’d caught a round in her ass, another in her torso, which the Kevlar ate, but the impact had still been strong enough to knock the breath out of her.

  “Fuck this,” she repeated, her voice sounding every bit as hollow as her resolve. Her beam caught the edge of the coffin, glared on the white lining of the lid. She moved on—then swung her light back to the bed of the casket. It was empty.

  Not a goddamn rat. Someone else was inside the museum and playing a nasty trick.

  “Not fucking funny,” she said, straightening and aiming her voice around the room.

  Soft laughter came from right behind her, and Krista punched her elbow backward and whirled, but again saw nothing except for a blur of gray.

  Her breath caught. Nothing moved that fast.

  Straightening, she tossed down the broom. “I know you’re here,” she said, deepening her voice, hoping whoever or whatever it was couldn’t tell how freaked she was.

  “I’ve been watching you,” came a feminine, singsong voice.

  Krista jerked, then cursed herself for giving away her fear. “Come out of the shadows. I’ll walk you to the door and let you leave. I won’t call it in.”

  “How sweet.” The voice was girlish, almost childlike, but with an undertone of menace that chilled Krista to the bone. “Why do you limp?”

  Krista breathed deeply, calming her heart. The voice had come from near the door leading to the Marilyn exhibit. Krista didn’t know if the woman had a weapon or was just a thrill seeker. There wasn’t anything of value inside the museum other than big wax dolls. Nothing irreplaceable. The cash box was cleaned out every night after closing. “Why’d you move the vampire?”

  Another laugh. This one so close the hairs on the back of her neck stirred.

  “Pretty boy, I didn’t take it.”

  “I’m not a boy,” Krista said, more to keep the conversation going than because she’d been offended.

  “But you act like one. Even walk like one.
”

  “I was a soldier.”

  “And they made you walk that way?”

  “I don’t have girly hips.”

  A hand cupped one notch of her uninjured hip from behind. A citrusy-floral scent tickled her nose. Something wet slid down the side of her neck. A tongue. Panic shivered down her spine.

  “Not boy’s hips.” A hand trailed down the front of her pants, and fingers traced her split. “Not a boy’s anything at all.”

  Krista didn’t know why she stayed so still. She wasn’t a superstitious person; didn’t believe in ghosts or God. But she knew in her gut whatever was behind her wasn’t human. As fast as the thing had moved, she couldn’t outrun it. “You’re that woman in the coffin, aren’t you?”

  “Not stupid like a boy either. Not like the last one.”

  “The last guard?”

  “They didn’t tell you?”

  Krista shook her head. “I wasn’t told why he had to be replaced.” Fingers walked across the top of her shoulder and up her neck, pads skimming over her thudding pulse. Krista swayed, her eyelids dipped.

  “Poor thing couldn’t hold his bladder. All I had to do was blow in his ear and he’d shriek—”

  “Like a girl?”

  The laugh this time sounded more natural. Hands drew away.

  She blinked and the raven-haired creature stood in front of her, her gaze studying Krista’s face. “You’re different.”

  “Than what? There are other female guards employed by Security Systems.”

  “Not what I meant. You’re not frightened of me.”

  “Sure I am, but the rats creeped me out more.”

  “Rats won’t kill you.”

  “I’m not afraid of dying.”

  The woman stepped closer, tilting her head to gaze up into Krista’s eyes. “I can see that. But why?”

  Krista felt her throat close up and cleared it. “Dying’s easy.”

  The woman lifted her lips in a snarl, exposing the twin points of her upper canines. “For some, perhaps.” She turned toward the windows at the front of the museum. “It’s morning.”