“Hello?” Mina half-whispered, half-shouted into the library. The lights were on but she could see no one at the front desk. She pushed open one of the glass doors, entered carefully, and was greeted by nothing but perfect silence. She took a couple of steps toward the librarian’s desk, looking around but still seeing no one. Her right hand rested on the grip of her service weapon as she surveyed the interior of the library. She never left the house without it. Thank fuck.

“Hello? This is Detective Mina Park. I heard screaming. Is anyone there?”

At least I thought that I heard screaming, she thought. The longer the silence stretched the more she doubted herself. Even in the moment it had happened it had felt strangely as if she’d been hearing the scream with more than just her ears alone – as if it had been in her head, too. She pushed the strangeness of that observation aside for now and walked deeper into the library. She was vaguely familiar with the space and she knew that it was unusual for there to be no one here at all, even this late at night.

The library was a huge open room with a high vaulted ceiling painted with figures of angelic beauty. All the way up to the expansive ceiling fresco, the walls were lined with shelves of books high enough to warrant two rows of balconies, each again having ladders to access the top shelves. Around the edge of the room was a belt of study desks which in turn surrounded even more shelves in the center of the hall. Those shelves were more modern, made from metal and light wood where the shelves in the wall were made from dark oak. They occluded Mina’s view to the back of the room. From what she could see, though, there was no one present.

“Hello? Anyone here?” she repeated. Her voice echoed garishly through the hall and she found herself inwardly wincing, feeling weirdly ashamed to have broken the sacred quiet of this space. She didn’t call out again.

The back of the large study hall was more of the same except for a large wooden door that she knew led into the library’s archive in the basement. She’d been there one or two times when she’d needed access to the newspaper archive. It was one of the few things she could get from the library that she couldn’t get from the internet.

The door was ajar. Behind it there was only darkness, and some part of her lizard brain was very comfortable with the idea of turning back and not entering the ominous dark cave.

I definitely heard a scream, she had to remind herself.

She made herself take a step forward and pulled a small LED flashlight from her belt. Never leave the house without your belt, she thought automatically. Because of shit like this. She took another step forward. The door loomed ahead of her like the open mouth of a large beast, and Mina felt weirdly vulnerable in the large open space of the study hall. It was like being in a forest. Her brain didn’t really register it as indoors. Another step, listening closely now. Whatever she had heard would have come from down there – was still down there.

She thought she heard something. Like... someone moaning. The dusty air around her felt oppressive and heavy. There was too much of it and not enough at the same time. The sound of her footsteps on antique floorboards lost itself in the space beneath the painted clouds above.

A loud noise, and Mina almost jumped.

“Fuck!” she hissed, breathing heavily. It was her phone. Katie was calling. She didn't call her often, and never at work. This wasn't working hours, though.

“Yes,” she said, picking up in a hurry.

“Honey, where are you? Why are you whispering?” Katie said over the line, She sounded sleepy.

“I’m in the library,” Mina whispered.

“Why? ...Actually, never mind. I know why. Please come home, hon’. The case can wait.”

“It’s not for a case,” Mina protested.

“Then what are you doing there?”

“Listen, Katie, I can’t get into it right now. There was a scream, and I’m investigating. It’s fine. I’m armed.”

There was an instantaneous change in Katie’s voice. It wasn’t even worry. It was professionalism. It was the part of her that told her to tell her nurse what medication to give someone being wheeled into the ER.

“Call backup,” Katie said, and the hard, cold determination in her voice made Mina know that Katie was right. Mina should do exactly that.

Some part of Mina protested. Pride. For a moment, she didn’t want to. But she knew better than to listen to the impulse. Katie was right, of course.

“I will. I’ll have to use the phone though. I’ll be fine. Love you.” She hung up and was just about to call the emergency line when there was a loud moan coming from the darkness beyond the basement door. She pocketed the phone, drew her gun and took three steps back, bringing a study desk between her and the door. The guttural moan still seemed to echo in the large hall.

“Hello? This is the police! Come out with your hands up!”

There was another moan, louder this time. “This. Is. The. Police!” she yelled, more slowly this time, letting the grating echo fade between each word. “Come out!” She steeled herself for another frightening noise. What the fuck was going on? Was this some drugged-out junkie? It sounded human enough. It had actually sounded very human, in a way that had reminded Mina uncomfortably of the noise Katie made when Mina was between her legs.

The noise that came in reply wasn’t another scream. “Yes,” a woman’s frightened voice called out instead, echoing up the stairs. “I’ll come out, please don’t shoot.”

“Hands where I can see them!”

“Yes!” answered the voice, and a couple of seconds later, two trembling raised hands emerged from the door, followed by a thin, middle-aged woman wearing a beige tweed jacket, a brown pencil skirt, and a librarian’s ID.

Mina didn’t need to see the ID to know who it was.

“Miss Kent?”

The head librarian looked slightly dishevelled and deeply embarrassed. Her long auburn curls had several strands frizzing out, making her look like a very motherly scarecrow. Her eyes were wildly apologetic, almost frantically so.

“Mrs Park! I’m sorry for the confusion, I was in the basement. Oh dammit, I forgot to put up the sign at the desk. I’m so sorry. Do you need research material for an investigation again?”

Mira lowered her gun and holstered it, and Miss Kent lowered her spindly arms. “What was that noise you were making?” Mina asked her. Miss Kent adjusted her skirt, looking very embarrassed, and for a moment Mina actually wondered if the librarian was about to confess to masturbating in the rare book section. Miss Kent took a deep breath and something in her expression seemed to change rather suddenly. “I... dropped an antique and very valuable book, and the spine broke, and I... reacted emotionally. Embarrassingly so.”

She was breathing rather heavily now, staring at Mina with wide eyes like she was disturbed by her own words. It was a little bit unsettling. “There might have been some screaming and cursing and self-pitying,” Miss Kent admitted. “It was invaluable. I – I’ll show you where it happened, and you can make sure that there’s no one else around down there.”

“I... wasn’t wondering about that,” Mina said, furrowing her brow. Something was suddenly giving her very weird vibes.

“Come down there with me,” Miss Kent said rather firmly. “I was looking up seismic activity records and I thought just now that maybe you’d be interested.”

The hair on Mina’s neck stood up. How the fuck would she even guess that?

“I know you’re interested,” Miss Kent said, taking a step towards Mina – and Mina’s stomach tightened with both trepidation and inexplicable excitement. Yes. She was interested. She knew that it was important and somehow Miss Kent knew it, too. Something was going on and that something was pulling her towards this.

She knew that all her alarm bells should be ringing.

She knew this was strange.

But it felt right. It felt important. Like there was some ancient primal part of her that knew to want it -- that knew to follow that road without questioning it. It felt like that part of her had always been inside of her and something had woken it up today. Not something. The earthquake. The handshake. It had taken her here, walking her toward the place where she needed to be without even realizing it.

“Yes,” she said flatly. “Let’s go.”

“Good. Follow—”

“–excuse me?!” came a woman’s voice from behind them, and the both of them spun around. Twenty feet away from them stood a young woman, no older than twenty, carrying a small leather suitcase and wearing both leather gloves and a dark-grey ankle-length cloak. Her straight dirt-blond hair was cut rather short with straight bangs and shoulder length hair framing her head like a helmet. She wore round dark-rimmed glasses and looked like a library was exactly the place she belonged.

“This is a library,” Miss Kent hushed her in a harsh cold whisper. “Please lower your voice.” She looked suddenly very grim and irritated and was paying no attention to Mina at all anymore.

“I apologize,” said the newcomer, her voice now the same stage-whisper as the librarian’s. “I was looking for the custodian.”

As the cloaked woman spoke she was nervously clutching a pendant hanging around her neck by a leather band. She looked rather antsy. If not nervous she was in a hurry to be somewhere and not very good at hiding it either way. Miss Kent eyed her critically. Her upper lip seemed to twitch almost imperceptibly, as if the presence of the young woman was upsetting her somehow. For a moment the librarian's eyes darted back and forth betwen Mina and the young blonde woman as if she was making a decision.

Finally, she spoke: “That would be me, I suppose. I’ll be just a minute, I was just thanking Detective Park here and sending her on her way. I think you should leave now, Detective.”

Mina blinked in surprise at the utter change of Miss Kent’s behavior, and the sheer rudeness of it. But then, she couldn’t find a good reason to stay either. The compulsion she’d felt to go to the basement had evaporated into nothing. She actually felt quite tired now. She knew she’d have to come back soon.

“Be more careful next time,” Mina managed to say, still feeling slightly in a daze. “And please remember to tell someone where you are... or at least put up a sign.”

“Of course,” Miss Kent said through tight lips and Mina walked out the library feeling slightly dazed.

It was only much later, when she was back in bed lying next to her wife drifting into sleep, that she started realizing how strange this encounter had been. But by the, she was way too tired, and she drifted off into sleep between strange half-thoughts of doors, and forests of shelves and the ground shaking at just the right time, and how she had to do the right things to make something whole.

As she slept, she dreamed of deep places and ancient things.

It was all a rush in Jordan’s mind. The world seemed to spin around the both of them as if they were riding a rollercoaster together, and it made her feel dizzy and exhilarated and overwhelmed. And yet, at the same time, it also felt as if the exact opposite was happening—as if Sam had suddenly become the one constant in Jordan’s life that felt steady -- and everything else around them had become a raging ocean that broke against the rocks that were the both of them, embracing, kissing, holding each other. Every touch filled her with an exhilarating sense of excitement and anticipation.

They were back in their dorm, in Jordan’s new bedroom. There were still unopened boxes stacked up against the walls, and all the shelves were still empty. The bed didn’t even have sheets on, yet. Sam pushed her down on it, and Jordan fell and bounced and let herself sink into the softness beneath her as she watched Sam stand above her, deeply, deeply in the private space of Jordan’s quarters.

Jordan wanted her. They wanted each other. The air felt like it was saturated with static electricity pulling at her clothes, zapping her chest, making her heart ache and race, tickling between her legs. She was nervous, but only because she wanted this so much. She was so terrified that it was too good to be true. But Sam was still there, looking at her adoringly—and then she was pulling her sweater and her tee-shirt over her head, tossing them on an untouched stack of boxes.

Jordan’s breath caught for a moment. Sam’s nipples were pierced with two small studs, and the sight of it sent jolts of arousal through Jordan’s pussy. It was so hot. Sam had small pert breasts, and because of that she hadn’t felt the need to wear a bra. To Jordan, in that moment, they were perfect. They were just large enough to be cupped and just small enough to defy gravity in two perfectly symmetrical curves. But the most important thing wasn’t how sexy or firm or round they were. The wonderful thing about them was the fact that they were something private and intimate that Sam had decided to let her see. Jordan wanted to hold them, to hold the girl they belonged to.

“Oh God, you’re so beautiful,” Jordan said softly, and Sam visibly blushed. Jordan took the moment to pull off her own sweater, and pull down her pants as Sam watched her hungrily. Jordan was wearing a black tank top and dark blue panties, and she felt Sam’s eyes crawl deliciously over her body. Sam’s look made her feel more desired than she had ever felt. She wanted to be naked for her, with her.

“Come here,” she said, and Sam knelt down on the bed, crawling up next to her, leaning forward into a deep kiss. Jordan’s hands embraced her, wandering up Sam’s side, up her back, cradling the back of her head, stroking through her hair as their lips parted and Sam’s tongue gingerly touched her own. She shivered with arousal. Eager hands crept under Jordan’s tank top, lifting it up, pulling it over her head and pulling her forward into a sitting position as the fabric broke their kiss out of necessity. Unlike Sam, Jordan was wearing a bra. She had more ass and tits than the petite girl currently undressing her. Right now, all she could think of how Sam was about to touch all of her and how good it would feel. It was already feeling so good.

Sam undid Jordan’s bra. Her eyes lit up, and she giggled. “Oh my God, samesies!” she said, her face lighting up in a wide smile. “You’ve got piercings, too!”

Jordan smiled, feeling the fresh air against her tits, feeling the excitement of having them exposed and looked at. She could feel her nipples stiffen, and she cupped her right breast, playing with the tip of it, gently twisting the steel stud that pierced it. She saw Sam’s hungry eyes, and another shiver went through her.

“Do you like them?” Jordan asked, smiling from ear to ear.

“I love them,” Sam whispered, and all that Jordan could imagine was Sam sucking on them.

And suddenly, Sam was doing exactly that. Jordan moaned when she felt Sam’s lips cup her tits, and felt the hotness of her wet tongue on her nipple, pushing against it, and catching on the steel, twisting it around. Sam’s lips tightened around them and pulled them gently, and Jordan arched her back, feeling herself being pulled along as pleasure radiated outward from the tingling, sensitive tip of her breast. With a wet noise, Sam’s lips disconnected, and for a moment, the only sound was both of their shivering breaths. Jordan looked at Sam, and the expression in her eyes made Jordan moisten. She wanted her. She wanted her so bad. She pushed Sam over and pulled off her panties. She made an adorable high-pitched noise of joy as Jordan exposed her pussy. Jordan took the sight in hungrily. Sam was stubbly down there and visibly wet for Jordan’s touch. Oh God, yes! Jordan thought. Her heart was beating hard as she descended into Sam’s folds, and her sharp, curt moan of pleasure was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard.

And as she dove into the hot, beautiful pleasure, for a moment, she could have sworn that the earth had moved.

The Scholar furrowed her brow. She could have sworn that she had just felt a subtle aftershock beneath her feet, and a miniscule shift in the way the Amulet around her neck whispered. She watched the two women before her intently as they spoke. The younger one, Detective Park, was of Asian descent, probably Korean judging by the name. She looked around thirty years old, probably ten or fifteen years younger than the librarian. It was important to keep track of important people like the both of them. Police. Politicians. Teachers. People that knew a lot of people and had positions of power could be powerful allies if they could be coaxed into helping the cause. Of course, they couldn’t know what was actually going on. No one must know. The Order had effective ways to make correct things if they got found out, but they were deeply blasphemous, and the Brothers and Sisters of the Order would never use them unless they absolutely had to. It was better to make sure their secrets remained hidden in the first place.

The Scholar eyed the librarian carefully. She seemed to hold authority as well; the young police Detective hardly protested as she was being sent away. The Scholar made a note to visit her and ask her some questions if the library didn’t turn up any useful leads. The officer probably knew more, but books had no habit of asking uncomfortable counter questions. And the library’s archive would give her a good place to start looking.

As the detective walked past her toward the exit, it briefly felt as if the demonic fragment around her neck was throbbing. She didn't knwo how to interpret it. It had happened before. She had been feeling so many strange sensations since she had arrived in town, caused by the amulet being so close to the source of demonic power. Here in the library, it felt even stronger than before. It was almost overhelming – and yet almost impossible to grasp. If only there had been any useful notes on how to let oneself be guided by the amulet. But all sources had agreed that its effect manifested differently in each individual, and the bearer would have to quickly attune themselves and learn how to interpret what they felt. She was shamefully struggling to do that.

“How can I help you,” asked the Librarian, looking distinctly annoyed. “Do you want anything that’s not up here?”

“As a matter of fact, I do,” the Scholar said.

“I thought you might,” the librarian replied, and one of her eyes twitched. The Scholar suddenly noticed that there was sweat glistening on the woman's brow, and that her neck seemed to constrict slightly. She seemed sickly, and her eyes were downcast, avoiding those of the Scholar.

“It’s an important matter,” said the Scholar. “I’m with the Bureau,” she said, rattling off her cover story and producing the facsimile FBI badge that the Order had provided her with.

“Special Agent Cara Waters,” she lied. “I’m investigating a case in Delaware, and I found a lead concerning an alumnus of this university. I need access to your newspaper archives.”

“Interesting,” said the librarian through clenched teeth, and the Scholar suddenly noticed that the woman wasn't avoiding her gaze, but looking squarely at the amulet on her chest – and the amulet’s aura swirled acidly through her mind under the librarian’s gaze. Something about the woman’s eyes felt... off. They looked strangely empty. There was another throbbing in the amulet – a fast, prickling feeling like a carpet of rain running across a formerly still lake. Something was wrong.

Her eyes wandered down between the slender woman’s legs as she mustered her closer – and then she saw it: There was a dark liquid seeping from between her legs, saturating her panty hose.

It is here! It has already happened!

The Scholar’s eyes darted back up at the woman’s eyes, and her heart seemed to miss a beat when she saw the expression of utter hatred in the unassuming face.

The fear that suddenly took her was like prickling electricity all over her body. And then the she heard the sound of a thousand tapping feet.

“You wear the dead,” hissed the librarian, nodding at the demon amulet around the Scholar's neck. Her voice was terrifying in its blood-curdling hatred. The Scholar instinctively stumbled back a step – and drew the weapon of her ancestor from her cloak. A half-dagger the length of a large man’s forearm, forged from silver. Its curved blade was engraved with the names of the ones that had borne it. Thomas, Joseph, Isaac, Peter, Marcus, Leopold, Oleg, Gregori—her grandfather—and finally her own name: Ana.

“Step back,” she said firmly. “Demon!”

The librarian smiled – too widely. It was grotesque. Her eyes were wide-open, and Ana could see the white on all sides of her pupils.

“Not a Demon, you filthy whore. We are merely flesh that serv—”

Ana didn't hesitate. She sprang forward as the corrupted woman spoke, and drove the blade through her heart – and the creature let out a sharp, dry wheeze, and clasped her fingers around Ana’s hand. Ana expected her fingers to be cold, but they were hot instead, as if she was suffering from a raging fever. Ana tried to pull back the dagger, but the woman held onto her with unbelievable strength. A growing noise was building behind Ana, of a thousand feet, crawling, clattering. She tried to yank herself free once more, but the shivering woman held on, holding the both of them in place.

“All shall serve,” said the librarian, still smiling wide, her mouth red with blood. “You will serve, too.”

Then, she collapsed – and the knife slid from her chest as she crumpled to the floor at Ana’s feet. And spun frantically. The skittering noise was frighteningly close, now. She turned around just in time to see three, then five, then eight grotesquely large millipedes skitter from the half-open cellar door – each of them as with a chitinous body as long as Ana's dagger and the diameter of a chicken egg. Their myriads of legs flowed in counterpoint as they undulated sickeningly and terribly fast toward her, and she could clearly see sharp pincers the size of pocket knife blades snapping at her. They were bound to be venomous.

In that moment, Ana knew that there were two choices. She could run, and hope for help, and let the foul creatures escape, to hunt innocent people, and possibly corrupt them like they had that poor librarian woman.

Or, she could fight them now to end this threat before it started—and very possibly die, or worse, fall under the demonic corruption, with no one knowing that there was a threat.

She made her choice.