The darkness crawls out through dirt and water and winding pipes, and into a dark room. The smell of the Ancient Blood lingers weakly, intermixed with the sickening smell of flowers, and the smell of another human. The smell of intimacy. The smell of love, and happiness. The darkness tries to escape the room, but finds the door closed. Its claws are sharp and nimble, but cannot grip the knob to escape. The Gifts are made to hunt and burrow into flesh. They are predators, and deadly, but their forms are limited.

It retreats into shadow, waiting, listening, smelling. Time passes, and there is a noise.

“Mina, you there? I’m home,” calls the voice of a woman, and the scent of Ancient Blood grows stronger, if only by a little. The other scent is dominant. She is the lover. She will suffice.

It makes a noise to attract its prey.

Ana took the girl to a small park near the outskirts of town. It was well secluded, had more than one point of exit, and would be an adequate place to plan their next steps.

The cursed girl sat waiting on a park benc, looking equal parts thoughtful and overwhelmed. Ana meanwhile tried to make some calls and reach her Brothers, but reached only voicemail after voicemail. They had to be travelling by plane which meant that at least they were on their way. For now, however, she was still alone. Alone with a girl that had the ancient blood of a malicious and truly evil demon running through her veins that might turn her against Ana at any moment!

Ana took a deep breath, feeling very much out of her depth. None of her books had prepared her for this and she was quite certain indeed that she was the first Scholar to be confronted with this particular scenario. There had only been a handful of times when the Order had to step outside of purely academic efforts into actual practiseand it was quickly becoming apparent to her just how small the sample size of the Order’s findings had been. For one thing, no Scholar had ever found themselves in contact with a latent, still-uncorrupted Herald. In the past, the demonic Heralds of Lilith had either been swiftly slain after they had been corrupted, or the outbreak had been contained before it had started.

Again, some part of her wished that she could simply kill her—it would have been easier. No small part of her would regret it of course since she held no ill will against the girl. She seemed bright and ultimately good-natured, even if she was understandably belligerent right now. But even ignoring any moral qualms she might have, killing her would accomplish nothing. Her blood wasn’t literally demonic. Lilith’s blood ran through the veins of every human on earth. The bloodline was much too ancient not to include everyone through generations of crossover between populations. Jordan was simply unlucky enough to have become a vessel for a demonic resonance—like a rogue wave towering high above the ones around it, arising seemingly from nothing. If Ana killed her, that resonance would erupt and make her the one that carried it. When that happened, she might have enough time and enough will to slit her own wrists. But she might not. It was a risk that she might still need to take before it was over. But until then, there were other ways to proceed, to fix this mess.

“I have already failed,” she said to the girl, her voice heavy and dry, “I had the chance to end this threat, but I wasn’t strong enough. But now you are here, and I need your help.”

The young black woman looked at her suspiciously. “How am I going to help you?” she asked.

Ana lifted the chain around her neck to show Jordan the fragment of demon horn. “This is an Amulet of Jordan,” she said, and the girl snorted and shook her head. “Of course, that’s what it’s fucking called,” the girl said quietly, as if only to herself.

Ana cleared her throat and continued. “It helps me sense the presence of anything demonic, but it is severely limited. By the time I am able to tell, I am already close enough to touch.”

She put it back beneath her blouse. “But you... you are deeply connected to Lilith. You can guide me, direct me, warn me. With your help, I can draw out the demonic carriers that eluded me, and quell them.”

Jordan looked surprised. “I thought you… made that go away.”

“Alas, no. It is in your blood. It is part of you, and it can never be removed. Not without killing you.”

“Oh,” Jordan said, wide-eyed. “Yeah… please don’t do that.”

“I shan’t unless I absolutely have to,” Ana said.

Her newfound companion made a surprised and disgusted noise. “Bedside manners! What the fuck? Do you want me to run away from you?! Because you’re not making me trust you at all!”

“I just wanted to avoid any false pretense. I am not your friend. You are tainted, and dangerous. You are a weapon of the enemy, and until this is over, you are as much of a threat as you are an asset.”

The girl tilted her head. “So if we kill those things you fought, I’m going to be good?”

“Lilith will never be truly gone. Part of her ever dwells in the unseen realm adjacent to ours, and that part can never be killed. It has been tried.”

She looked gravely at the girl. “But she will not regain her strength within our lifetime.”

“Yay,” Jordan said flatly.

Ana stepped forward toward Jordan. “I must touch you regularly, to keep your blood at bay,” she said. Asking for permission seemed better, even if there was no discussing the matter. It took an effort to keep up useless pleasantries when the stake of the world was at hand, but the girl probably deserved a break.

To her surprise, the girl simply nodded without protest. “Yeah,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“This might hurt.”

“Better than turning into the Hulk.”

Ana didn’t understand what the girl meant, but proceeded anyway. She laid her hand on the girl’s neck, and channelled the words of power. It was much easier on both of them this time. Cleansing her when she had been fully under Lilith’s thrall had been like picking up an unconscious body. This was like holding someone up that had been about to trip over.

“Ouch,” the girl hissed, and winced. “My whole body just got hot and cold at the same time.”

Ana nodded. “We are far from Lilith’s influence. It will be harder and more painful once we encounter her creatures.”

The girl looked pensive and serious. “I still can’t believe this is happening. One moment, I was just doing normal stuff, and suddenly… all of this! Like, everything else has just become so much less important.”

Ana had to chuckle. Yes. It would feel like that to someone outside of the Order. Very sudden and incredible.

“I… cannot know what you are going through,” Ana said. “I have only ever known this life. But I think you are dealing with this quite well.”

“Thanks. By the way, do you have a name?”

“Ana,” she said after a moment of slight hesitation. It wasn’t often she got to tell the truth like that.

“I’m Jordan, but you already knew that somehow.”

Ana nodded. There was a drawn-out pause.

“So…” the girl said, dragging her feet. “How do I know where to go?”

“I cannot know. I have studied many books, but there are few accounts to draw from. According to the ancient texts, it is a unique experience for everyone.”

“Damn, you talk like a book, too.” the girl mumbled. Ana ignored the jab.

“The amulet makes my skin prickle and burn with unnatural heat whenever it is close to the power that birthed it. You might feel a burning sensation, a sense of inevitability, or an... irresistible carnal craving.”

“Yep,” the girl said, her lips pressed tightly together. “Something like that.”

“You would feel an unnatural attraction to the other Heralds. You would be drawn to them without realizing it, crossing their paths without meaning to.”

“Hold the fuck up!”

“What is it?”

“There are others?!”

Ana was taken aback. Had she not told her? She swallowed. She hadn’t. It had been hard to keep track of what only she knew and what she had told the girl. She wasn’t good at conversation like that.

“Yes,” she stammered, still recovering from the girl’s sudden outburst. For a moment she had worried that it was her cursed blood, but this seemed to be just… her.

“There are always three.”

The girl looked like she had just realized something terrible. She was panting, and there were tears glistening in her eyes.

“Oh God,” she said. “Sam.”

Somehow, Ana knew at once what the girl meant. Sam was another Herald. They had already met, and bonded.

“We have to find her!” Ana said, panic rising in her chest. “Before it is too late.”

Mina was... driving. Just... driving.

She wasn’t sure where to or even why. Maybe just driving to clear her head? Maybe driving to give herself a sense of progression? Maybe just driving because it felt like the right thing to do. She didn’t know. Her thoughts felt heavy and dense. Had felt that way all day. She hated it. Nothing seemed to make sense. First the quake, then the library, and now this inexplicable feeling of aimlessness.

The window was rolled down, and the cold air was hitting her face like a thousand knives. The cold pain felt good and seemed to clear away the fog in her mind. She really hadn’t been feeling right today. She was obsessing and her gut felt tight with the uncomfortable certainty that she had missed something. She needed it to make sense. She felt like she already knew some profound answer but was somehow unable to retrieve it. I’ll know it when I see it was what kept going through her head over and over and over. But the thought was formless and heavy and sluggish and she couldn’t get a grip on it like she usually did when she was trying to catch a suspect.

…

Wait, was she looking for the murderer?! Was that what that aimless feeling was?! That didn’t make any sense. She wouldn’t just stumble upon someone holding a sign that read ‘library killer’.

But she suddenly had a hunch. What the hell. If she was driving aimlessly anyway without really knowing why she might as well follow that. She drove to the Hillsborogh Hotel. It was the only hotel in town that was worth staying at.

She was lucky. The receptionist was a reedy boy with acne scars. “Anyone check in here last night?” she asked him, flashing her badge without giving him much time to think. “I’m investigating the murder of Lorraine Kent.” She wasn’t and she had no permit.

The boy swallowed hard, blood visibly draining from his face. “I wasn’t working, but I can check the system.”

“Please do.”

The boy tapped a series of keys and swivelled the monitor behind the counter so that Mina could see it. They had copies of Picture ID for every guest.

“Those are the guests that checked in yesterday.”

He flipped through pages. Mina immediately recognized the second one. “Stop. Who is that?”

“ID says Cara Waters. Room 313. No reservation, booked for two weeks. No breakfast.”

“I’ll need to see her room,” Mina said. She had no authority to do so. Unfortunately the boy seemed to be getting wise.

“Errr… don’t you guys need to have a permit for that? I’ll call the manager.”

Suddenly something primal in Mina reared its head. Something hot with rage and purpose and something that felt shockingly like enjoyment.

“No, you won’t,” she said, snatching the phone from his hand.

“Ma’am?”

“You’ll give me the keys to her room, and you’ll do it now!” she growled. She was losing control. She didn’t care. She had to get behind this. This was important!

“Ma’am, I can’t—”

She slammed her gun on the table, and the boy screamed. “You’ll give me the fucking—,” she shouted, then stopped.

Her phone. It was ringing. It was Katie’s ringtone!

A sudden coldness descended on her, warring with the burning rage that she had been so close to enjoying.

Fuck.

She picked up. She had to. It was Katie. Katie never, ever, called her during work. Something had happened.

“Katie?”, Mina answered, a lump in her throat.

“Mina! I need your help!” Katie’s voice on the other end whimpered, and Mina’s blood turned to ice. Any and all of the confusion and strangeness she’d been feeling was gone, replaced by one primal, human need: Protect the woman she loved.

She was out of the lobby before she even realized that she’d started running.

“Where are you?!”, she shouted into the phone.

“I’m home. I’m locked in the bedroom. There’s… there’s a giant fucking centipede in our apartment! I called animal control, but they need someone to open the door. I locked myself in the bedroom. Oh fuck. I can hear it scratching on the door! It bit me, and I think it’s venomous! It hurts!”

Mina was reeling. She was already behind the wheel of her car, wedging her phone between her ear and her shoulder.

“Keep calm. I’ll be there in ten minutes,” she said and slammed the transmission into drive.

Eight minutes later she was sprinting up the stairs, already fumbling with her keys. Two men from animal control were waiting for her in front of their apartment.

“Are you the landlord?” They asked her as she approached.

“I’m the wife,” she spat, hustling past them. The men had a cattle prod and a net. Useless. She pulled her gun.

“Holy shit, lady, calm down,” said the one holding the net. “We’ve got this!”

“You’re going to catch a giant centipede with your little net?” she growled. Her heart was hammering.

“Ma’am, there’s no such thing. What your wife saw was probably either a regular centipede or a particularly dirty raccoon or squirrel. Either way, we— wait, is that blood on your wrists?”

“I don’t have time for this,” Mina said, and turned the key.

When she entered her home, the heat in her chest bloomed in a sudden explosion of purpose and exhilaration. Time seemed to slow down as the men walked in behind her and closed the door. Suddenly, Mina knew that this was the most important moment of her life. The very air was thick with significance. She had found exactly where she had to be.

She lowered her gun and heard the wonderful noise of claws skittering across the floor in the kitchen. The men at her side flinched in shock but all she felt was a jolt of pleasure and purpose. The Ancient Blood within her roiled and swelled and she ripped the cattle prod from the left man’s hands and rammed it into his balls. He went down like a ton of bricks. Before he had hit the ground she had already turned around and elbowed the other man in the face. As he recoiled she prodded him in the side of the torso, and he collapsed, with a groan of pain.

“Stay down,” she said coldly. She walked past their prone bodies into the kitchen and the Mother’s Gift was already  there, black and chitinous. It crawled up her leg and held onto her shoulder as she grabbed a knife from the wooden block on the counter top. When she returned with it to the living room, the men were still lying flat on the floor, groaning and paralysed with pain.

When Mina stepped back into the living room she saw Katie peeking in through a thin gap in the bedroom door, her face pale and shiny with cold sweat. She was barely able to stand. She had to lean against the door frame to remain upright. The Gift had paralyzed her with its bite.

“Mina,” she said weakly, stumbling out. “What is going on? What’s— Oh, God it’s on you! Get it off! Get it off!”

Mina ignored her, leaned down over the men and stabbed them in the throat so that they couldn’t scream as they died.

Katie did scream—but her voice was weak and not much than a whimper came out of her. Mina quickly approached her and she crumpled in her arms like a house of cards, feverish with the venom coursing through her. If her body wasn’t taken soon, she would die of it.

Mina knew exactly what to do with her.

She laid the flesh on the couch. It mumbled weakly, saying nothing of consequence. The darkness was so close to her Mina could taste it, feel its pull, feel how it called out for other gifts to converge now that they had found Ancient Blood. Mina felt its tendrils stretch across the unseen dimensions of reality. It had weakened. There was not much time left. All the more reason to offer another body than her own. As long as there were Gifts to spare, there was no reason to waste ripe flesh. She stripped the clothes off Katie. The woman was slurring almost unintelligibly.

“Plllleassssse, donnnn’… Minnnnaaaa…. whyyyyyy?”

When the sacrificial flesh was nude, the Gift undulated down Mina’s body, onto the couch, between Katie’s legs, and struck.

The naked woman would have been screaming if she’d been able to. Mina watched her convulse as the Gift violently entered her, biting and clawing, infecting her with a different venom. The Gift’s teeth and claws were now giving her the Dark Blessing of Lilith’s Pleasure, and she was losing herself to it.

Reflex overcame the paralysis as her first venom-induced orgasm made her tremble. Tears streamed down her face and her mouth stood open in a silent scream of incomprehension and overwhelmed, toxic pleasure. She no longer felt the pain of a hundred claws digging into her flesh, biting and burrowing deeper and deeper into her, impaling her like a living spear, until the whole of the foot-long creature had entered her. It was becoming part of her, and so was its darkness. It would happen quickly, now.

Katie gasped, eyes wide in fear. She was still afraid of what was happening. She was close. The demonic energy already resonated through her, corrupting her, taking control of her. Minutes later, when it was almost over, Katie was moaning and whimpering like a rutting bitch, oblivious to anything around her. Her cunt was oozing red-black liquid, and her lips and nipples had grown visibly darker. Her whole skin was flushed red. Her blood had been tainted.

Another orgasm shook her, and she arched her back, raising it off the couch almost a foot. She let out a deep, guttural scream. It was cut short by a sickening croak, and the scream died in her throat. She made a rasping sound, and she collapsed, and was still. Her eyes lost all focus. Her pupils dilated. Her breathing ceased.

Katie was dead – but not for long.

When the her heart started beating again moments later, everything pure and good about Katie remained dead. The darkness had taken her soul. Everything that was left of her now belonged to it. Her body. Her mind. Her loyalty. Her greed. Her anger. Her lust.

Katie slid her hand down between her legs, dipping into the dark, demon-tainted blood seeping from her molested opening. She raised herself upright, and sucked it off her fingers with a wanton smile. Her nipples were hard with arousal, and her eyes were narrow with an expression of callous joy.

“Yesss,” hissed the soulless monster that had once been Mina's wife. “I am Hers.”

Katie looked up into the passive, bloodshot eyes of her wife Mina. Her eyes were burning with dark knowledge granted by her corruption. “Sacred blood,” she said, finally understanding the glorious work that she had become part of. “Destined to serve,” Mina completed. Her mind was red hot. The Mother’s will resonated in her ancient blood. The blood of the Mother. She was utterly under the Mother’s thrall. Katie watched her hungrily, licking her lips as her newfound understanding of Mina’s purpose licked her throbbing, serving mind. Mina wasn't thinking anymore. Her mind had been swallowed up by an incandescent haze. She was under absolute control, unable to think anything but what the Mother’s blood told her. But somewhere in the dark recesses of her subdued thoughts, she managed to realize that she was merely enthralled by the darkness – and that Katie was now entirely owned by it. Katie lived only to serve it. Katie’s flesh served. Mina’s did not.

Not yet.

As if prompted by that thought, there was a noise from the bathroom, and another Gift emerged on undulating legs. Katie hissed with delight, and Mina could feel the burning darkness in her veins throb with excitement. She knew that it was time for her to take the first step towards fulfilling her purpose, and become a flesh-servant like Katie.

She discarded her clothes. She knew that she must. Ancient Blood was commanding her, and she must obey. She was surrounded by its resonance now. Her mind was completely overwhelmed by it. She was a puppet. But she would become so much more.

When Mina was standing naked and ready to be claimed by the darkness, Katie confidently rose to her feet, leaving behind a dark stain on the couch that marked the place where she’d been claimed and corrupted. She walked past Mina, into the kitchen, and opened the trash can. She dug in, and pulled out the Anchors of her Mistress that she had thrown away this morning. Two nipple rings, to brand Mina as the Mother’s herald. Mina watched it happen without conscious thought. Katie rinsed the piercings off, got a large sewing needle from a drawer, and returned to the living room, where her Mina was still standing, mindlessly enthralled.

“These are yours,” she said, and a smile crept across her lips. “Had you worn them, they would have led you to the source much quicker. But you were without them.”

“Yes,” Mina said, voice resonant with the Mother’s blood and will. She sat down on the bloody stain on their couch, then looked up at Katie with burning eyes. “This flesh is Hers. Mark it, then claim it.”

Katie licked her lips, and knelt down. Mina felt the pain when Katie pierced her nipples, but it meant nothing – she knew only the sizzling throb of the blood in her veins. Droplets of that same blood were now running down Mina’s chest now, and Katie hungrily lapped them up. The liquid was hot enough to burn Katie's tongue, but her moans weren't moans of pain.

Katie licked her lips and discarded the needle, and picked up the Mother’s symbols of ownership. She threaded the rings through Mina’s freshly penetrated nipples with a sense of cruel delight written on her face and cupped Mina's breasts with her mouth – licking across them, pushing her tongue under the piercing, flipping it up and finally closing her mouth down to suck on them. Mina let it happen – but she knew that soon she would need follow the red hot urge in her mind again. She could feel it in her nipples, and between her legs, and in her burning chest. The Mother owns me, she knew.

"I hated them so much," Katie said with a wicked grin. "But now I understand, Mina! You are marked! You are chosen! We are the Mother's flesh, and you shall be her Herald!" Mina knew that Kate was right. She felt it. She also knew that she was not yet complete. Her mind was still her own. She was merely controlled and enraptured. She needed to become like Katie. Her flesh must serve. Her soul needed to die.

Kate pulled back from Mina's nipples, licking her lips.

”You’re Hers!” she whispered, her voice slick with cruel delight. She took hold of both her Anchors, and pulled on them. "And I will give you to Her!"

The simmering heat in Mina's veins flared up. “I am Hers,” she echoed, and her nipple rings became suddenly too hot to touch. Katie withdrew her fingers out of reflex, moaning with pleasure nonetheless – but Mina did not feel the searing heat. Her thoughts were burning even more intensely. She had to offer herself. She had to offer her flesh.

“My flesh will serve,” Mina said, and laid herself down in the very spot in which Katie had lost her soul, spreading her legs wide. For a moment, Katie looked like she wanted nothing more than to violently fuck her – but the skittering noise behind her made it clear that Mina had offered herself not to Katie but to the Mother’s Gift, and Katie stepped aside.

Mina's mind was incandescent. She was ready.

The Gift climbed the sofa and positioned itself between Mina’s wide open legs, claws skittering and twitching with anticipation – and there was no hesitation. No moment of hanging suspense. No pause. The creature shot forward and forced itself into Mina’s vagina like a knife into someone’s heart, and even through the red-hot pleasure of boiling blood, she felt the pain and the agony of a hundred sharp fangs and claws forcing themselves into her flesh, and she screamed – but the Gift's poison turned her pain to pleasure, and then she felt only an exhilarating feeling of blinding, overwhelming correctness. She came instantly.

She screamed and moaned, and Katie was next to her, finger-fucking herself as the Gift penetrated Mina’s flesh. Mina's thoughts were thick with foggy pleasure. She heard Katie scream with cruel joy, and her ancient, tainted blood pulsated with the wonderful knowledge that Katie's soul was dead. She served the Mother. Her flesh. Her will. There was no pity in Katie's expression, no warmth. Where compassion and empathy had been within her, there was now only the famished, desperate desire of seeing the Mother’s will being done. She came again.

Mina’s soul was dying, too, and with its death, the Mother would be one step closer to returning. Soon, everyone’s flesh would serve. She was next. She had to be. She had to serve. She had to become willing flesh. She came again, and convulsed and shivered on the sofa, waiting for the glorious moment when her soul would finally die.

And then, that moment came.

She woke, and she had become what she was meant to be.

“Yesss,” said the first Herald of the Mother Mina Park—and  wicked lust burned in her soulless eyes. She was reborn as willing flesh. Her soul was dead. She served the Mother. A cruel, knowing smile spread across her face, and in a flash she imagined a billion flesh-servants at her feet – a billion screams of pain and ecstasy, and a jolt of sizzling pleasure went through her.

“I am Hers,” Mina said, locking eyes with Katie, and Katie gasped as she beheld her Mistress, beheld the vessel of the Mother, beheld the beautifully ravaged and corrupted body of her wife, beheld the burning evil in her eyes—purpose and lust and cruelty. Katie’s body seemed to scream with arousal and need and submission and dark joy, and she smiled hungrily and almost lovingly. For a moment, Mina saw some emotion in Katie’s eyes that reminded her of the love that they had shared—the tenderness, the care, the respect. But it wasn’t love. No. Katie was better now. It was greed. It was lust. It was the selfish desire that owned their corrupted hearts. Katie was willing flesh. Katie was purpose. Katie was Hers!

"Yesss," Katie moaned and crawled twoards Mina, pulled forward by the irresistible attraction of her willing, serving flesh. Under Mina’s lustful gaze, she entered the space between the Herald’s spread thighs and returned to her knees, shivering with the need to serve her. She looked up into the eyes of the woman who would become her Goddess, and she saw only cruel joy and selfish pleasure where Mina’s love and compassion used to be, and let out a soft moan of arousal.

“We are Hers,” she said and dove lips-first into the desecrated temple of Mina’s serving flesh. Mina hissed with pleasure. Yes! She was the Mother's Herald! Katie existed to serve her now, and Mina felt no more delusions of love or compassion.All must serve! All must become the Mother's flesh!

"Yes!" she hissed as Katie tongue pushed between her torn and bloody folds. "Serve me as you would serve her! Make me cum, flesh servant!" Katie's face was caked with blood, and Mina grabbed her scalp and pushed her even harder into the boiling pleasure of her defiled body. Katie obeyed and fucked her hard, barely able to breathe but no less ravenous and zealous to obey and serve. Mina quivered and screamed as her deliciously corrupted wife debased herself between her legs, serving and obeying in the name of the Mother, the one that owned them, and the one who would claim the whole world.

When Mina came, it was like the very foundations of the Earth were trembling beneath them.

Sam wasn’t feeling right. When was the last time she’d eaten? It must have been yesterday at least. She should really eat something once she got home. Maybe Jordan and her could cook something together. That would be nice.

That still felt strange, too—being with Jordan. She hadn’t even known her twenty-four hours ago, and now they were an item. It felt good, but Sam couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something deeply strange about it.

She arrived back at their dorm in Renford hall. Even this familiar place had somehow shifted in her perception. It felt somehow less meaningful than it had been, and more meaningful at the same time. It felt like it had become less of a home, and simply become the place where she was with Jordan. She opened the door and called for her, and it wasn’t until she said her name out loud that she realized how desperately she needed her touch, how much she needed to feel her lips against her own. It was like a great hunger gnawing at her.

“Jordan!” she shouted. There was no answer, and the silence felt like hard vacuum—incapable of sustaining any life, sucking the air from her, making her blood boil. She pulled out her mobile phone, wanting to find Jordan’s contact on it—but she had never asked her number. Her gut was a knot of anxiety.

She sobbed. She felt like an emotional wreck. She needed her! Why was this happening?! Why was she feeling this way?! She’d never been fragile like this!

She felt feverish. She wasn’t thinking clearly. It took her almost ten seconds to realize that the phone was ringing in her hands. She’d put it on silent.

“Jordan?!” she answered, and the word escaped her in a wet sob.

“Ancient blood,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

Sam straightened, and the wonderful warmth of her sacred blood filled her mind.

“Made to serve,” she said.

“Good,” said the cold voice of Detective Mina Park. “Any luck finding your girlfriend?”

“No,” Sam said emotionlessly. “She is not home. I have not asked her number. I do not know how to contact her.”

“Do you have a picture of her? Instagram or twitter profile?”

“There is a photo on her night stand.”

It was the first thing Jordan had unpacked. A picture of her and what looked like her sisters and father in a park.

“Take a picture of it and send it to me,” Mina said. Sam obeyed. Her body tingled pleasantly as she did. Mina’s voice had changed. She sounded… harder. Better. There was a deep resonant quality to it. Sam calmly sent the photo to the number that was calling her.

“I will make sure the force is looking for her.”

“Yes,” Sam said. “We will find her and she will serve her purpose. What about the Interloper? Has she been killed?”

“Not yet,” Mina said with a smirk in her voice. She didn’t have the dreamlike cadence Sam had. She spoke with confidence. “I found her, but my thralldom was broken. I’m Hers now. The gifts found me and consumed my soul. I am willing flesh. It’s more important now for you to become one with the Mother. There will be a new sanctum. Join us there. We’ll hunt the Interloper together. ”

Sam bucked involuntarily. Even through her enthralled haze, the notion made her feel excited and exhilarated. Arousal bloomed between her legs, and she gasped softly. The Mother’s Anchors in her nipples glowed with incandescent heat, and she felt them already pulling her, guiding her mind and body.

“Yes,” she said. “I will serve. Tell me where to go and I will come. My flesh shall become canvas. My soul shall become kindling.”

“Yesss,” Mina moaned on the other end like Sam had just licked along the length of her pussy. Mina told her where to go, and the enthralled Herald carelessly dropped the framed picture of Jordan, and it shattered against the floor. Sam never heard it, and left without another look back.