The internet is a wonderful thing. Library, information superhighway, but most of all, the greatest marketplace the world has ever seen. I have often marveled at how modern humankind has embraced this medium of communication, but the reason is very simple: everyone wants something. The internet is a meeting place of gargantuan proportions...the crossroads of an entire species, if you will. I am 1 of billions of beings bringing my wants to this ethereal hub to find those who want to fulfill them.
I have become very good at spotting those who will fulfill their needs by fulfilling mine. In addition to providing a global "common ground", the internet offers a degree of anonymity not seen in thousands of years, if ever. This has created a rich environment for predators of various descriptions. I am one such, and the image on my glowing monitor is of another. Her prey is the human male, and her beguiling beauty is both her bait and her trap.
It's late...almost 1 a.m., but no matter. Most human women searching for companionship online prefer to meet someone new in a public place...a restaurant perhaps, or a nightclub. They don't want to be picked up at home. This caution is automatic, a reflex designed to protect them from human predators with the perceived safety of observing eyes. Not this one. My suggestion to meet for a nocturnal stroll along the harbour breakwater sparks immediate excitement. Isolation favours the hunter, and she has nothing to fear from me. I am the prey, after all. I smile for the webcam.
Fifteen minutes later, I am leaning on the concrete wall that separates the breakwater from the 10' drop to the beach. She is walking towards me from the shadows, but I pretend not to have seen her yet. The onshore breeze plays with her long dark hair as she strolls purposefully past a row of cheery trees, the fallen blossoms swirling in the wake of her low-heeled shoes. Her shapely legs are displayed pleasantly by a pair of tight shorts. A snug fitting short sleeved blouse baring her narrow midriff completes the ensemble. Sexual presentation designed to excite, and flawlessly suited to my purposes.
I turn at the sound of her steps, and straighten up, making no effort to hide a cursory appraisal. "Desirée?" I make it a question, my voice easily carrying the 40' or so which separates us.
The motion of her hips increases exponentially as my gaze falls on her, and her response to my greeting is to toss an imaginary lock of hair back from her enchantingly lovely face. So readily she comes to me. Spurred by her hunger, and confident in her power. I let myself drink in enough of her glamour and physical charm that my own libido responds to her. I want her to smell my lust. Just enough to make her sure that I am the human moth, drawn inexorably to her monstrous flame. I see her smile. From a dozen paces, she can smell me. I can see it in her eyes even in this low light. The anticipation. I suppress the sense of loathing, lest she sense it even in the heat of her attack. The want, no, the need in her large emerald eyes a sick perversion of the feeling I've longed all my life to see in the eyes of a human woman. She needs what I have to offer and fulfilling my desires is just part of the deal. Making me feel special, coveted, is what she does. I get something an overweight middle-aged man with bad skin and no job can only fantasize about getting from a woman as alluring as she is, and in return she gets the very energy that keeps my heart beating. Small wonder generations past considered consorting with the succubus demon to be a satanic pact.
She reaches me and our first contact is a light peck on my cheek, the sparkle in her eyes and the soft warmth of her moist lips filled with promises she'll willingly fulfill. I consider what she's offering, letting the musky scent of my desire intoxicate the creature. When I place my hand in the small of her back and lead her towards the inviting shadows past the duckpond in the park, there is no resistance. Why would there be? She's in complete control. She can sense my want. Refusing her now would be like tearing off my own arm.
In moments, we are standing by a painted bench adorned with a small brass memorial plaque. We're sheltered from the street lamps by a stand of alders, my companion's hair shining in the diffused glow. She lets me take her face in my hands and kiss her, responding to me with growing passion until she is crushing her full breasts against me, and a soft moan escapes her lips. I sit on the bench, drawing her down with me, and she makes no effort to sit. Kneeling between my feet, she goes to work with an urgent hunger meant to be mistaken for lust. She makes no protest as I gather her silken hair in my fingers and pull her closer. As she fulfills her end of our unspoken transaction, her magical mouth suppressing my awareness of everything but her, drinking the energy of my life like blood from a severed artery, the shadows slowly come alive behind her.
They are the size of a grown man's fist, moving across the dew-covered grass like flowing water, closing the gap between the hive and their demonic prey without so much as a whisper. The swarm becomes indistinct as my vision blurs, the succubus' ministrations bringing me to the brink of ecstasy. Then they're airborne, the sound of thousands of wings filling the air as they strike their victim, the vicious stingers piercing virtually every inch of exposed skin. Her mouth convulses around me as her body reacts to the unimaginable agony inflicted by the paralytic toxin, and her muffled scream of pain and fear spills me over the edge of orgasm. By the time I pull myself out of her mouth and shift away from her, her voice is all but gone. She's still on her knees, flight utterly impossible. Her hands hang limply at her sides, unable to defend her from the swarm of bees still stabbing her with venom-filled stingers the size of pencil tips.
Her human facade is gone, shattered along with her demonic glamour. The huge leathery wings twitching in time to the spasms still at work in my own body as I finally manage to get my pants done up. Not trusting myself to stand, I reach out to her, enjoying the feel of her firm flesh. She couldn't resist if she wanted to, the bees toxin having already robbed her of all muscle control. I look into her eyes, wide now with agony and mortal terror, and know she sees me as my hands knead her voluptuous breasts. I wonder what it feels like. Can she feel this last quasi-sexual touch? Then, with what must be excruciating pain, the tips of her nipples split open oozing the thick nectar out onto my fingers. The digestive enzymes the bees have injected into the demoness' body along with the paralytic toxins is doing it's job, and as the bees mass around her body to carry her back to the hive, the last thing she sees is me licking honey off my fingertips.
I watch until the last signs of movement have vanished, hoping to catch a glimpse of the queen, but tonight the prey hasn't warranted an appearance.
It's been well over a month since I last brought prey to the hive, and the local personals and internet chatrooms have yielded nothing more interesting than the usual lonely widows, horny teenagers, and supposedly neglected wives. My monthly stipend from the government arrived today, so I'm going to try the nightclub circuit. My best set of clothes, handouts from the self-righteous Jesus freaks at the Goodwill shelter, is laid out on the bed before I climb into the shower. As always, the water's barely better than lukewarm, forcing me to soap down and rinse in a hurry before it goes completely cold. You'd think the taxpayers could spring for a bigger hot water tank.
Two hours and 3 clubs later, and the only female attention I've managed to attract is a very time worn hooker down on Government St. She responds to my sneer with her middle finger and turns away. The law may protect her from my kind, but from the looks of her, she doesn't need my help dying young. Drug addiction and God-only-knows-what diseases, showing clearly on her prematurely aged face, will see to it soon enough. Mother Nature has a way of taking care of Her own housecleaning.
Standing outside the strip club, I debate entering. If I go inside, I'll actually have to buy a drink to keep from being ejected, and the taxpayers' lousy nickel doesn't go far these days. Finally, I shrug...if I blow the wad, I can always grovel at the social services office for some grocery vouchers. Those condescending ^&+s always act like there's some kind of shortage of government funds, and you have to make up some pathetic sob story about having to spend the pogey cheque on a sick friend's chicken soup, but in the end, they put out. You'd think the money was coming out of their own pockets.
Smoking indoors has been banned for years now, and recently the local gestapo have actually been cracking down about it, so there's no haze in the air. But the visibility is still poor enough that I bump into some sassy young thing with a drink tray and a push-up bra on my way to an open table. She's bucking for tips and it's obvious that I've just arrived, so she flashes me an apologetic smile. I direct my unspoken response to said bra, and note that its Herculean efforts to give her a bustline are failing miserably. Within seconds of sitting down, she's back, perkily taking my order for the watered-down swill that passes for house brew.
Shouts and whistles draw my attention to the stage, where the stripper is twirling her thong on her fingertip, offering it to the patrons. A quick flick lands the garment in the hands of a buff young man with a bill in his hand. Then she shimmies across the stage towards him on hands and knees. Thrusting her very expensive double Ds towards him, she accepts the bill with her cleavage.
The show finally ends with me tenderly nursing my faintly piss-coloured water, and the 2 barmaids take the opportunity to further fleece the horny mob of patrons. Then the music starts again, and I nearly drop my glass.
The peppy beat of Chely Wright's "Jezebel" accompanies the drop dead gorgeous woman onto the stage. She has a curvy and quite real-looking figure, with a flat, athletic stomach, and long lean legs. Her hair is a flaxen mane that fans out behind her shoulders as she walks. She's possibly the most beautiful human woman I have ever seen....and of course she has eyes only for the front row around the stage. Her bright eyes flirt, her smiles flirt and her luscious body flirts, but as always, only with the men who have what she wants. Here, she's all about the money. After her shows are over, she'll be picked up some rich punk in a new Lexus and taken to his posh house on Beach Drive. Acid rises in my throat as I watch her fluid movements timed with the music. So focused am I on my loathing of the woman on the stage that when the barmaid touches my arm, it takes me several seconds to realize that she is the one I came to find.
It's not the girl I bumped into earlier. How I failed to spot her before I can't imagine. Perhaps her glamour is stronger than most of her kind.
"Mind if I join you?" she asks me over the sound of Chely Wright vowing to keep her man. Her breath is hot and moist on my cheek and it takes me a moment to respond. I nod and gesture towards the chair opposite with my nearly empty glass. She nods her thanks and sits down in the chair next to me. Bending to remove her stiletto-heeled sandals, she gives me a view of her spectacular butt sheathed in a tight lycra mini skirt. I cast a final glance at the stripper and return my attention to the Hellspawn scant inches from me.
The noise level makes conversation impossible, but this creature doesn't need words. I revel in her heat, and breath deeply of her scent. Her pale skin shines whenever a stray beam of light from the swirling stage spotlights touches her, and I can't take my eyes away. It's all I can do not to touch her.
After perhaps 10 minutes, the succubus bends over and puts her shoes back on, treating me to another display. Standing up, she turns back to me. "Thanks hon," she shouts to be heard, and offers a grateful smile. Leaning over the edge of the table, she nudges my empty beer glass and raises one thin eyebrow. "Walk with me?" she asks. I stand without hesitation.
She hooks a finger in a belt loop of my pants and lets me lead her to the doors, then takes up a half-pace behind me as we step out into the late evening. In the pause as we take in the street lighting and the relative quiet, my companion takes my hand. "Thank you for the escort, Mr......"
"Andy," I reply, giving her small hand a gentle squeeze.
"Morrigan," she reciprocates, letting her fingers linger in mine.
'So beautiful,' I think silently. 'And if not for your hunger, you couldn't care less to give me the time of day.'
Nightfall has brought a faint drizzle to the harbour city, and tiny droplets of moisture have already accumulated on the demoness' bare shoulders and in her hair like diamond dust. She glistens in the glare of passing headlights, as the cars cruise past, their tires hissing over wet asphalt.
Mistaking my thoughts for rapture, the succubus edges almost imperceptibly closer to me, brushing my arm with one lycra clad breast. "Mind being a gentleman and seeing a lady home?" she asks, the mist from her breath hanging in the air between us.
"Only if you let me take you for a stroll by the ocean first," I reply with a lopsided grin.
"It's a deal," she says, smiling and squeezing herself against me again, more firmly this time. "A girl really shouldn't be out alone at night. It just isn't safe."
If she finds my agreement too hasty, she gives no sign of it.
I hail a cab on the pretense of letting my companion rest her feet, despite the fact that she could run a marathon in those stiletto heels without batting an eye. But I'm not supposed to know such things. We share the back seat on the ride down to the breakwater and she's not as amorous as I have come to expect from her kind.
The cabbie's bill is $7.85. I give him a $10 and ask for $2 back. "Rest is yours," I say, ignoring his sarcastic thanks.
My inhuman companion and I walk along the breakwater and I find my pace slowing as we approach the park. Her company is nothing more than a dangerous illusion, but I'm finding myself enjoying it. She pauses, pointing to something unseen out across the night-black sea. Stalling. She too, knows our time is drawing to a close and seems vaguely reluctant. The shadows of the park are where she will take her meal, she thinks, having no way to know it will be her last. But her quiet has changed. She is in no hurry to feed, as though there is something in this moment she doesn't want to see end either. Suddenly I know that she will let me lead her past the park; past the hive. I don't have to kill her.
I look her over once more, taking in her physical perfection. The drizzle has coated her skin now, and she shines like the supernatural being she is. The halter top she wears is damp now, and the fabric is revealing her own arousal. Her form is the embodiment of eroticism and for the very first time since I began luring succubi to feed the hive, I think she may be almost as exciting alive as she will be dying. Almost.
Angrily, I force my thoughts back to the stripper in Monty's. Any difference between her and this parasitic being is purely a product of the beasts' manipulation. I slip my arm around her narrow waist until my fingertips find the pucker of her belly button, and I feel her shudder in response. She nudges her hip against my thigh and I feel my own control slipping. I call up my anger and envision her writhing in agony as the bees do their grisly work to provide the will to guide her to the park bench.
I sense the bees lurking unseen in the shrubbery and undergrowth. They scented their pray some time ago, and we have been delaying. The swarm grows impatient.
Once in the shadows, the demoness gives up her reluctance, her appetite for the lust she has stirred in me taking over from the higher thought-based desires. The opportunity to turn back has passed, and as the succubus nudges me back onto the bench, she leans her head forward to lift her silken mane of hair and straddles my lap. A glance at her dew-soaked top betrays her excitement, as I see the swarm stir behind her. The bees aren't waiting! A quick surge of resentment and I hastily direct it towards the beast whose hungry mouth is seeking mine. I grab a handful of her hair and jerk her head backward hard, forcing her to look behind her as the swarm takes flight, the mass of wings making the very air about us vibrate. She sees the swarm a half-second before they hit her and she screams. I hold her hair an instant longer, watching her great breasts heave with the force of her cry before the bees envelop her completely and I shove her off my lap to fall writhing in the grass on her back, her scream cut short abruptly as dozens of stingers pierce her throat, her lips, and the unprotected flesh of her open mouth.
I have seen succubi struggle before, frantically fighting for their lives before the paralyzing toxin takes hold and immobilizes them. But nothing like this one. She fights like a wildcat. Her hands lash out desperately, and I hear a wet crunching sound as her fingers close on one of her attackers. Naked energy arcs around her hands and bees explode like mosquitoes on the grid of an electric fly zapper. Still they strike at her, their stingers stabbing her exposed flesh relentlessly and tearing her skimpy clothes. She rolls over in the wet grass, crushing more of the giant insects beneath her. The pitch of the swarms' hum changes suddenly and the bees attack with renewed fury before pulling back.
As the swarm retreats to give the toxin and venom time to do it's work, I get a clear look at the ravaged demoness. She is utterly ruined, struggling just to get her knees beneath her in the wet grass with a body nearly incapacitated by the paralytic toxin. Her once pretty face is now marred by swelling and contorted into a mask of agony, only one eye barely open. Her butt length minty green hair is a mass of tangles and dead leaves. The lycra halter top is shredded by punctures, revealing her bare breasts hideously misshapen by swelling, heaving with each raspy breath, and her ruptured nipples already oozing honey. The narrow band of fabric that used to be her mini skirt is bunched up around her waist, leaving her lower body exposed and covered with angry welts. Even her wings are tattered, punched through by hundreds of stingers and rendered useless. The swelling on her legs is so bad she can't bring her knees together, and she collapses again, awkwardly like a wounded animal.
The bees stand off, leaving the suffering succubus to succumb to the toxin and the venom that slowly liquefies her body from the inside. The respite seems to only be prolonging the demoness' pain, but still she is struggling. The venom is working and honey is seeping from her. She raises her head and it looks like she's weeping viscous golden tears. But something impossible is happening. Both eyes are open, and she has managed to pull herself to her hands and knees. Incredibly, the succubus is healing. She looks in my direction and I see a mute plea for help as our eyes lock. Even with her glamour shattered and her beauty ruined, her charm and pheromones are nearly strong enough to enthrall me. This succubus' power is like nothing I have ever encountered.
All at once, I see the beast look towards the hive. Her eyes widen again as she realizes what is about to happen to her. The hum of the bees changes and the swarm comes at her once again. Forewarned this time, she tries to ready herself, but her body is still stiff and awkward from the toxin and her attempt to fan the attacking insects away with her wings fails and they are upon her for the second time, mercilessly stabbing her over and over, their stingers injecting her with still more toxin and venom until the succubus falls once more.
Defying belief, the bees no sooner rise from her prone form than she begins to move again, this time not bothering to try to rise, but rather dragging herself down the grassy slope towards Dallas Rd. and the ocean. Keeping herself pressed protectively into the grass and her legs squeezed tightly together, the demoness squirms along, propelling herself with her fingers digging into the sod. She has moved perhaps 10' when the queen finally emerges from the hive. This marvel of unnatural evolution walks swiftly towards her prey, while the swarm buzzes overhead menacingly, waiting on their queens' call to strike again.
Reaching the virtually defenseless succubus, the insect straddles her victim, thrusting the stinger on her massive thorax into her thighs, buttocks and lower back in rapid succession. As the demoness rears up on her elbows, her mouth open in a mute scream, Queen Bee steps over her, grabs the tangled mass of her hair, and spears her several more times in her upper arms, chest and abdomen before throwing her naked and grotesquely disfigured body back onto the grass.
Within seconds, the succubus' twitching gives way to intermittent quivering as the queen's powerful venom takes the last of the fight out of her. Once again, the swarm closes in, this time to bear their prey into the hive. As her nearly inert body passes me and her still sentient eyes lock on mine, I can see her swollen and misshapen mouth form the single word, "Why?"
For long moments after the grisly scene has passed from view into the hive, I sit alone on the park bench, listening to the mad hammering of my heartbeat. So fierce is its adrenaline-fired rhythm that I almost miss the muffled sounds from beneath my feet. I've never heard sounds accompany the swarm's feeding before. Can it be that this succubus has found some last desperate reserve of strength to struggle? It hardly seems possible....and yet....
Long minutes later the sounds fall silent, and I imagine the bees devouring the vaguely humanoid puddle of rich nectar that the demoness has become. Suddenly, there is movement in the shadows, and a rustling. Since the insects come and go from their hive in near-perfect silence, a sickening dread fills the pit of my stomach. Seconds later, the succubus rises from the shrubbery. As impossible as it seems, this creature has escaped the swarm yet again. But no buzz heralds a renewed attack, and the demoness no longer bears the welts from the stingers. Her face is soft and lovely, and her body is the impossibly perfect physique that once again invites a man's touch. Her hair is still a tangled mess, and she is covered in sticky greenish blood. A warm sensation tells me I have pissed myself.
Then, impossibly, she smiles at me. Her pale emerald eyes capture my gaze, and she walks towards me, her voluptuous hips swaying with each step. She's completely naked now, I realize. Ever her shoes are gone. But the tender vulnerability of her has melted away my apprehension and I touch her as she reaches me. She's soft and she comes willingly into my arms, and I am suddenly glad she survived because there's nothing in this world I want more than to fall asleep with the warm press of her skin against me and the taste of her on my lips. And I will, because her mouth is on mine, and I am growing very tired.
The last thing I hear is the slowed beating of my own heart.