The darkness rejoices. Finally it has found a home. Already it feels this realm’s cruel, bitter influence waning, and its own power solidifying. But it knows that its withering decline is only slowed, not halted. It still needs to keep acting. But it has a Herald now, and her resonance is strong. Enough to sustain it longer than before. It has bought itself time.

Through its resonance it feels the flesh-servants ritually fornicate in dark celebration of their corruption. They are waiting for the second Herald to arrive. With every wilful piece of flesh that falls to their influence, the Mother’s hold onto this world will grow stronger. Once the third Herald joins the rank of flesh-servants, the resonance will be strong enough to easily corrupt by touch and look.

The darkness feels a lingering anger and disappointment. It had craved a quicker and richer meal than this. For over a century it had dreamed of bursting forth into this world, consuming it like a flood wave. What it had gotten had been pain and near defeat, and a bare diet of only that what was necessary to survive.

But it knows how to persevere, how to crawl its way out of a hole. It has done so before. It has tasted defeat, again and again. It will not be stopped. The remaining gifts are on their way, converging from far-scattered holes and crevices. The flesh will serve. The world will bow.

“Where is your roommate now?”

“She wasn’t at the library. I have no idea where she went.”

“Did the police know anything? I saw you talking to them, but I had to keep my distance.”

Something in Jordan made a mental lurch, and she felt like she should remember, but everything after she’d woken up felt like a hazy blur. Ana’s exorcism seemed to have also flushed most of what happened today from Jordan’s mind. Her thoughts had been so overwhelmed by the cursed blood that it felt like remembering an evening of way too much booze. The answer was on the tip of her tongue, but still maddeningly out of reach.

“I… don’t remember.”

Fuck. This was just perfect. The only thing that she still dimly remembered was that she’d been looking for Sam already—that’s why she’d gone to the library. But she hadn’t found her there. She remembered the feeling of knowing where to go after that, but it was all hidden behind a red mist of hot blood and feverish thoughts. She hadn’t noticed how clouded her mind had been at the time, which was a scary prospect in and of itself.

“I remember… They told me to go home. Yeah. That was it. She must be back at Renford Hall.”

Jordan frowned. Something about that didn’t feel quite right, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. The more she thought about it however, the more she was convinced that she was meant to go back to Renford Hall. Somehow she knew that Sam was going there too.

Yes. They had to find Sam. They had to go back, so Jordan and Sam could be together.

When Jordan and Ana arrived at Renford hall twenty minutes later, Ana ushered Jordan to follow behind her, with Ana leading. One hand was on the hilt of her sword-dagger-knife-whatever, the other—rather absurdly—was holding Jordan’s hand. It was a safety measure they had discussed on the way there. If Jordan went demon rage-mode again, Ana would feel it coming. At least that was what they hoped.

Jordan wasn’t entirely sure that the woman knew what she was doing. She seemed mostly book-smart, and didn’t really carry herself like someone who knew how to fight with a blade. Still, she was the foremost authority as far as Jordan was concerned. She wondered what was taking the rest of the Order so goddamn long. Ana had told her that they were scattered across the world, and that they were on their way. She had tried to call them multiple times, and the few times that she managed to reach anyone at all the conversations had sounded frustrating.

Some cynical and entirely unhelpful part of Jordan suspected that it was taking them so long to get here because they needed so much time to dress in all these layers and saddle their horses. Another part of her just wanted to run and let just anyone else deal with this—just run away and get as far away as possible from this terrifying hell. That part seemed to be growing.

Jordan realized that she had never been truly afraid in her life, up until now. No skeezy stalker or dark alley or unprepared exam had ever come even close. She was learning that anxiety and worry weren’t fear. The fear in her chest was like a physical thing. It was like running farther than you could run, and feeling your lungs shrink and your chest and muscles burn, and your heartbeat drumming against your temples. It was like a phantom gravity that instead of pulling her down was trying to pull her away as far as possible from whatever was happening.

Ana’s hand in hers, strangely, was a thing that was helping.

The halls were mostly empty. Students were at home for the weekends, or in their dorms, studying or watching TV or… doing whatever you did on a Saturday afternoon if your life hadn’t turned into a horror movie. They walked up the stairs, around the corner, and Jordan expected that, at any moment, something terrible would happen. She didn’t even know how those demonic creatures—the idea still tasted ridiculous in the back of her throat—looked like. Were they little men with bat wings and horns? Big demonic dogs? Succubi?

The mental picture of lithe, buxom demon girls made her uncomfortable by how comfortable it made her feel. She felt a sense of sudden, inexplicable excitement and exhil—

Her entire body stung with a ripple of hot ice, exploding from her hand. She winced, and let out a small yelp.

“You felt the resonance,” Ana said. “Describe it. Could you sense the direction it came from? Like a source of heat, or a gradient, a flow?”

Jordan swallowed. Did she really have to describe now how the image of sexy demon girls had turned her on enough to awaken the demonic energy in her blood? Come on.

She was just about to fess up when she saw the end of the hallway.

Her dorm room door stood wide open.

She let out a surprised noise of shock and concern, and Ana followed her gaze until she saw it, too. Jordan could feel her hand tighten around hers.

“Quiet,” Ana whispered, and Jordan swallowed down her fear as they slowly approached the door.

Katie’s lips were hot and wet against Mina’s as she fucked her flesh-servant wife in their Mother’s name. Mina moaned with lust as Katie's fingers pushed deeper between her pussy lips. For a moment, Katie pulled back, and Mina saw her soulless eyes – and Mina bathed in the beauty of her satisfied, selfish smile. Fucking her now was so much better than it had ever been. There was no more pathetic love or care in Mina’s heart that kept her from shamelessly using Katie’s body like Katie wanted it to be used.

They were no longer in their apartment. After they had been corrupted, they had left it behind the scene of Mina’s double murder and driven to Katie’s old medical practice – where Katie had worked before she’d started at the county hospital. It was just next to a quiet residential area, off the main road. Doctor Ericsson still kept the backup key hidden in a small plastic box in the bushes next to the parking lot, so they didn’t have to break any windows. The practice was closed on weekends, but even then – if Doctor Ericsson had decided to do any work today, there would have been plenty of scalpels and scissors to take care of him.

But there had been no need for any of that. They had found the practise empty, and begun their work.

When they were done, Mina had called Samantha Collins and commanded her to join them. That had been forty minutes ago. Katie and her lay on the linoleum floor now, fucking. They had changed positions again, and Mina was fingering herself as she licked the tainted fluids off Katie’s cunt with a smile.

“Yesss,” moaned the eager flesh-servant that her wife had become. Mina's tainted body shivered with shameless arousal. This was so much better. No more love. No more compassion. Only lust and greed and hatred. The Call of the Mother sung in her mind like a constant soft vibration against her clit. Soon, all would bow before her. She would feed on their souls and drink their blood! All must serve!

The Gifts were approaching – but only slowly and laboriously. Mina could sense them through the resonance. It would still be some time for them to find their way through the underground passages of the town’s sewers, and there were only three of them left. The cursed Interloper had taken the rest from them. Mina’s guts knotted with seething hatred and anger, but also bitter, uneasy gratefulness. They had been lucky that even as many as that had survived the encounter with the filthy interloper. They existed to strike from the shadows, or find their victims already enthralled and vulnerable—not to face an armed and prepared enemy.

What was done was done. They would make due with what they had. There were already more demons growing in Katie’s and Mina’s wombs. Their flesh was fertile and deeply saturated with the Mother’s power. They would mature swiftly, and soon they would birth more. Katie would be the first to birth a Gift, if probably only by a matter of half an hour or less.

Mina felt Katie tremble against her mouth as the servant orgasmed in turn, and she pressed her tongue hard against the nub of her clit in the way that Katie had always said felt too intense. She heard Katie’s pained moan and enjoyed the sense of power it gave her to make her cum so hard that it hurt. It didn’t take Mina long after that to come, too.

When she had finished, she pushed herself up and looked at the time. Samantha would be here soon. Mina felt the anticipation in her groin, like a pleasant aftershock of the orgasm she’d just experienced. Behind her, she Katie sat up. Her hands wrapped around Mina and cradled her breasts. Mina didn’t look back. In front of her, hung up on the wall, was a medical diagram of a woman, half of her torso cut open to reveal her internal organs.

She had to imagine her own insides, shot through and kept alive by the evil demonic creature that had merged with her flesh. Willing flesh. She knew that was what she’d become, even though she didn’t understand how. She’d never believed in the supernatural, until now.

Demonic Power. Dark Magic. Gods and Devils. It was real. And beyond comprehension. But it didn’t matter how it worked. What mattered was that there was nothing left of her that didn’t want this. Her flesh served. Willingly. Unquestioningly.

Her cell phone chimed. She checked it. It was a message from Samantha Collins’s number:

I am here.

Yesss!

Jordan’s gut felt like someone had emptied a bucket of ice into it. Sam was missing. She had to have been here, and now the door stood wide open, and on the floor of the living space lay the shattered picture of Jordan’s family.

They had her!

Jordan was crying, for more than one reason. She was crying because of the terrible thing that was happening, because Sam had been abducted, and they didn’t know where to, and the things that would happen to her were too horrible to imagine. She was also crying out of guilt—because in that moment, she realized that she had lost the love for her.

She still cared. She still liked her. She still understood everything that had made her fall in love with her. But the love itself—the overwhelming, all-consuming need to be with her—was gone. It had been exorcised out of her, and she felt dirty and terrible about it. She wanted it to have been real and pure. She wanted to still feel it because Sam was wonderful , and none of it would have been misplaced.

But she didn’t. It had all been the demonic blood in her veins.

“We have to find her,” she said. Find her and save her, so that Jordan might find that love again, on real terms, without being mind-controlled into it.

Ana looked at her. “It is probably too late already,” she said, and it was like she’d just spit into Jordan’s face. Jordan grabbed her by the collar of her stupid fucking traveller’s cloak. Ana didn’t even see it coming, because this rage was all her own.

“We’re going to fucking try!” she yelled into Ana’s face, pushing her against the fridge. Some magnets came raining down.

Ana looked grim. “She will be where we need to go. You must take us there.”

“How? I can’t feel anything with you holding my hand.”

Ana nodded as if she’d already drawn this conclusion a long time ago. She swallowed hard. When she spoke, her voice was almost soft. “You will have to lose control.”

Jordan scoffed. “What? I would attack you.”

“Undoubtedly. That is why I must make you forget, and follow you in secret.”

Jordan blinked twice, then three times. “First of all: What? You can do that?! Second of all: Hell no!”

“Jordan, listen to me,” Ana said. “This is more important that Sam, or you, or me. If we do not stop this, the whole world will fall into chaos. We cannot afford the luxury of assuming that Sam is the first of the Heralds to succumb. There might already be another that has been defiled by Lilith’s demon spawn. With two Heralds, Lilith’s power will grow stronger than it has been in a millenium.”

“What about your Order?” Jordan said, “Haven’t they stopped this before?”

Ana looked crestfallen. “The Order has grown weak. The world wars killed many our leaders, and destroyed much of our wealth and knowledge. We had hoped there would be more time to recover.”

“It’s been seventy-five fucking years!” Jordan shouted angrily.

“There are rules,” Ana said lamely “Rules more ancient than…”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Jordan said. “Fuck your traditions and secrecy! Look where they— you know what? We don’t have time for this discussion.”

Ana was unreadable.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” Jordan said. She let go of Ana and took a step back, sighing heavily in frustration. She looked at her feet. Fuck this. Fuck all of this. Why did this have to happen to her? She raised her hand, pointing it into Ana’s face. “If you let me down, I swear to God, I…” she said, and her voice broke.

Fuck. She was so afraid.

“Please,” she said. “Promise you won’t just sacrifice me. Promise you’ll get me back! I don’t want to… fuck—how is this real? Don’t let me become a demon or whatever this fucking thing will do to me.”

Ana’s brow furrowed. “I promise.”

Jordan could feel her heart hammering in her chest like war drums. She felt like her mind had trouble grasping the full gravity of the situation. It felt like she was standing on a cliff, about to jump.

“Fuck me,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

Ana looked at her for a moment, then stretched out her hand, and put it on Jordan’s forehead. She started chanting in a language that didn’t even sound close to anything Jordan had ever heard.

Jordan thought of Sam, hoping that she was still alive, and then, suddenly, she felt a surge of energy erupting from Ana and—

Mina quickly got up and opened the door for the enthralled Herald that was waiting outside. Samantha stood there like a statue, her eyes empty and unseeing in a face full of determination. Her skin was flushed red. She was enthralled by the Mother’s power.

When she noticed Mina opening up for her, she walked in without a word of acknowledgement. Only when they were safely inside and out of view did she speak.

“Have we news of the third Herald?“, she asked with parched lips.

“No,” Mina said, feeling the frustration tighten her chest. “I told my colleagues that I’m with you, looking for her. Dispatch has notified patrol cars to watch out for her, but there is no active search. I couldn’t come up with a plausible lie to convince them that she’s done anything wrong.”

“She must become one of us.”

“She will,” Mina said. “The Call of the Mother will only grow stronger in her. Sooner or later, no matter how strong, she'll give in. And now that there is a new Sanctum, the Call of her blood will lead her here. She will serve.”

“Yesss,” Samantha said with an empty smile.

She was very pretty. Mina hadn’t been able to appreciate in her previous enthralled state just how firm and smooth her skin was, how cute her face looked. Her petite curves made Mina want to rip off her clothes and stick her fingers up that pretty little cunt.

But first, the Gift would have her.

As if prompted by Mina’s thought, the girl looked at her. “The gifts will be here soon,” she said and walked past Mina to the treatment room. Mina followed after her.

The room was a mess of red. They had desecrated it with the blood of the mother. Their own blood. They had filled the floor and the walls with Her unholy symbols. It had become a place of power and safety for all that served Her. Sitting with spread legs in the middle of it sat Katie, sowly masturbating. When Sam entered, Katie made a delightfully wicked sound of arousal. “Yesss,” she said, getting to her feet, taking in the arousing sight of willing flesh ready to be claimed. Samantha looked at Katie without saying anything, then started stripping naked.

Fuck yes. Mina could feel her own excitement swelling between her legs. She felt the resonance in Samantha’s mind like she felt the growing presence of the approaching gifts. It was a hot feeling, and it tasted of sex and purpose.

“I really want to fuck her,” Katie said, smiling at the mindless young woman standing between them. She took a step closer, and dragged her fingers over Samantha’s body. The girl’s skin was red and sweaty. She was burning hot.

“My flesh awaits communion with Mother’s gift,” Samantha said, “You will not spoil it unduly. Once I am a flesh-servant, you may have me.”

Katie smiled at Mina, and Mina returned the smile. She felt the Resonance swell, and Katie trembled with arousal. “I’m so lucky to be here for this,” Katie said, “I may not have the honor of being her Herald, but I’ll get to witness the birth of Mother. Billions will envy me for it. Billions will be made to serve by the progeny of my corrupted womb. You have the highest honor of becoming her vessel, but I am the first of her spawn.”

“Yesss,” Mina said, approaching her. “It will start with us. We will command you and you will become our whore.”

Katie moaned softly as Mina stepped up to her and started caressing her body again. Her nipples had taken a deep red tint, just as her lips had. Mina hungrily pressed her lips against Katie’s and stuck her tongue down her throat. Katie accepted it greedily and let herself be used like the filthy, soulless whore that she was.

Samantha watched impassively as the flesh-servants engaged in communion once more.

Jordan blinked.

She’d lost her train of thought. What had she wanted to do here again? This seemed to happen every time she walked into the kitchen. She opened the fridge, stared at its contents for ten solid seconds, and closed it again. That hadn’t been it. She had no appetite at all. She knelt down and picked up some fridge magnets that had fallen down.

What was it that I wanted to do?

Oh, right. She’d wanted to call the police station and ask when Sam was able to come home. That seemed like a strange thing to forget. What was even weirder was that she could have sworn that she’d forgotten to go somewhere else. Hadn’t she wanted to go to the police station to do something? Fill out some forms? But that didn’t make sense. How could she just forget to—

Suddenly, something welled up in her as she remembered how she’d felt when she’d talked to the police in front of the library. She remembered the panic and tumbling emotions in her chest.

How could she have become so calm? Sam had… oh God, poor Sam.

Sam. She wanted to be with her and hold her. She wanted to be close to her and hold her and support her. She wanted to kiss her and whisper to her that it was going to be okay, because they had each other, because she loved her. She loved her so much!

She gasped involuntarily. Wow, where did all of this suddenly come from? She felt like she was about to hyperventilate. She’d never been this emotional, had she? Her heart was beating hard in her chest when she remembered the night they had spent together. It had been magical. Wonderful. Exhilarating and exciting. She loved her so much that it stung in her chest and burned under her skin. She was sweaty.

Sam. She wanted her so much. She needed her. She needed her body. She needed to fuck her. She needed to lick her cunt and finger her ass hole and make her cum and make her scream and make her serve and —

The building heat inside of her erupted in a burst of purpose and joy. It enveloped her and filled her and she felt a last moment of overwhelmed confusion before the fog of pleasure swallowed her.

She stood in the kitchen, looking at nothing.

She felt the Call, pulling at her like the gravity of a second Earth to her left. The sense of excitement and significance was overwhelming. She knew that she needed to follow that sense of purpose with a certainty so absolute that it seemed more real than her own existence. Her nipples prickled hotly, and she felt her anchors pull at them, urging her, guiding her, towards the place where she needed to be—the place where all her urges lived.

Without another thought about why, she followed it. She didn’t even close the door.

Sam. Far in the back of her mind, she felt an abstract sense of concern—both for herself and for the girl she had fallen in love with. She wanted to be with her, and keep her safe. Something told her that she was in danger. She wanted her to be safe. Something half-remembered told her that going there might save Sam from… something. She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She had to follow this urge, and find Sam, and be with Sam, and Sam would be safe.