Welcome back Besties! This week our Dangerotic Spooky Season rolls on with the reposting of what turned out to be a pretty pivotal Perilverse project. It began just with the thought to write a fun little SHIP homage to Nightmare on Elm Street (still probably my favorite slasher franchise). I had already written Krampusnacht, so Starling was “back”, but I was still thinking of these stories as sort of mutually isolated one-offs, quick little stories to get a peek at what the Scarlet Dove was getting up to in her retirement.

However, this story then ballooned (as often happens when I start writing) and did things like introduce Mackenzie, who was just suppose to be a “mysterious stranger” type for a horror story, but who I then fell just a little in love with. It also really solidified my ideas for Starling’s PTSD fractured mind, and how the hallucinations of Dominion and the Scarlet Dove could be played with. And I fucking loved seeing the Stewarts family dynamic in action. And suddenly Auburn Hills became this little world I could see and feel and the Scarlet Dove wasn’t just “back” she was back!

And it would become the story that led to my wanting to “go harder” in my SHIP generally…but that is a digression for another day.

Today, it’s Spooky Season and you’ve got another full novella worth of Halloween themed Lady Jane heroine peril to read, so…Let’s begin…

1

Lacey’s fingers thread gently into Starling’s silky scarlet hair, sending sweet tingles over her scalp.  Starling shivered and kissed her wife.  Their soft lips locked together, a perfect and familiar fit.  Their mouths opened demurely, and their tongues slid together, soft and velvety.  The familiar taste of Lacey’s sweet saliva sent a loving shiver through Starling.  Feeling that, Lacey clutched her tighter, kissed her a little more firmly, and they reveled in belonging to each other.

Then Lacey coiled her grip around that thick red mane and yanked back hard!

Starling gasped as the strain shot across her scalp. 

Lacey looked over her with a stern gaze, letting lust flood her rich brown eyes.

The redhead’s thick curves were draped in a flimsy white teddy.  A matching G-string slung around her curvaceous hips.

Lacey seemed to loom over her wife, her lean figure, firm and taut.  She was wearing a skintight tank top, showing off the firm, subtle curves of her petite breasts, and a pair of loose pajama shorts.

While Starling had let herself soften and fill-out in their new life, Lacey had taken up going to the gym.  “Nothing else to do in this one-horse town,” she would complain.

To which Starling would always respond, “I can think of at least one other…thing…to….do.”  Usually accompanied by a tempting waggle of her big, round booty.

Lacey pulled that lush red hair even further, forcing Starling’s plump body to arch beneath her, large round breasts heaving upward.  Starling’s mouth gaped open and her nipples tingled then stood up, perky and visible under the sheer white satin.

“You know who you look like in this,” Lacey whispered.

Starling tried to nod, which earned her another sharp yank.  Tension rippled down her spine, she let out another sharp gasp and arched a little further.

“Have you been out trying to protect this little town?”  There was a little growl in Lacey’s tone and it made Starling instantly wet.

“M-maybe-” Starling began to murmur but Lacey silenced her with another kiss, hungry and possessive this time.

Lacey’s free hand slid over the slick material covering her soft belly, reaching up to clutch one of the big heavy breasts.  Starling moaned into Lacey’s mouth as she squeezed and teased the sensitive bulb.

Lacey broke the kiss, but stayed close, continuing to knead the big soft breast.

“I bet you were,” Lacey went on, something in her voice stirring butterflies in Starling’s stomach.  “The heroic Scarlet Dove flies again!”

She pinched Starling’s nipple over the nighty and the redhead moaned.  Lacey rolled the hard nub back and forth, sending bright sparks through Starling’s chest.

Starling reached for her wife, needing to touch her back.  Lacey grabbed both of her wrists, pushed them back down, pinning them to the bed in an X over Starling’s head.  Starling flexed and squirmed but her wife kept her in place as anxious shivers rolled down her salacious curves.

“Probably chasing one of those redneck meth-cookers, hoping to make the streets a little safer for our Nikki.”  Here Lacey leaned down, putting her lips right next to Starling’s ear, her breath hot and humid.  “But secretly hoping they’d catch you…”

Starling hesitated, her stomach twisting.  “Huh?”

“And tie you up…”

“Lace…”

“And fuck you…hard…” Lacey enunciated each word sharply, harshly, “like a dirty.  Little.  Fucking.  Slut.”

The words ran through Starling like ice, making her physically shudder.

Lacey had never said anything like that to her before.  Hated the very idea of the perils Starling had faced during her time as a superheroine.  To hear her say it now, to accuse her of wanting it, hit Starling like a slap in the face.  Made her nervous, anxious, a little afraid.

And left her soaking fucking wet.

“I’m not sure I like this,” Starling whispered with a slight tremor.

“Oh no?” Lacey’s voice had a mean lilt to it, then she kissed her so brief and hard it left Starling’s lips tingling.

Those big green eyes blinked up at her wife in bewilderment.

“We both know you liked it…”  Lacey began moving one hand down Starling’s stretched arm, caressing her curvy side, moving over her wide round hip, then heading between her thighs…

“It was never –oh- never li-like that…” Starling whimpered, trying to keep her lips from trembling.

“No?” Lacey scoffed, sliding her fingers firmly over Starling’s soaked panties.  “Then why are you so wet?”

“Be- because I’m so in love with you…” her tone wavered.

“Awe, how sweet…” Lacey’s voice was mocking, almost cold.  “But you shouldn’t lie to your wife!”

She pushed the sodden nylon aside and slid her fingers into Starling’s dripping snatch.  Starling moaned and lifted her hips to meet Lacey’s touch.  She stroked the slippery folds, sending a warm charge through Starling’s hips.

“Are you going to tell me the truth?”

“Of course,” a hoarse moan.

“You used to get captured by the bad guys, right?”

“S-sometimes…You know that…”

“And when you were their prisoner, did they ever use this hot, wet little pussy?”  Lacey gripped Starling’s mound pointedly, her thumb finding and prodding Starling’s clit with practiced ease.

Heat and arousal surged through Starling, intensified by her nerves and growing embarrassment.

“You… you know that too,” she admitted.

Lacey nodded, her eyes hard.  “Mm hmm, now spread your legs for me, like you did for those bastards.”

A cold pit crept into Starling’s stomach, but she did as she was told, lifting her knees to spread open her creamy thighs.  Even though she was with her wife, Starling began to feel vulnerable in that splayed positioning.  A nervous prickle crawled up the back of her neck, as if she could feel eyes on her.  Other eyes… Someone watching, even as Lacey continued kneading the redhead’s supple petals, thoroughly working over that juicy little cunt. 

“Yeah, just like that,” Lacey grunted.  “I bet you took their evil fucking cocks sooo fucking deep like this.”  To punctuate the accusation, she plunged two fingers into Starling’s tight, slick vagina.

Starling writhed as the sensation sent a rush through her torso.  Lacey began pumping in and out, continuing to work her thumb over Starling’s swelling clit.

“And when you were laying there, getting fucked by the same men you were supposed to be bringing to justice-“

“Lace, please!” Starling gasped as her shame became a white hot spike in her chest.  “I didn’t… I was…I couldn’t stop them!”

“Did you even want to?”  Lacey barked immediately, working her needy little pussy even harder.

This time Starling’s only response was a shrill moan as her humiliation crashed into a wave of pre-orgasmic energy.  She soaked Lacey’s hand and warm, sticky juices dripped down her round ass, soaking into their bed sheets.

“I- I’m not sure I like this…”

“Did you like it when they were fucking this little cunt,” Lacey slapped her pussy, a hard wet smack that made Starling jump and squeal.

“OW! Oh fuck…” The pleasurable pain shuddered through her.

Lacey went on, urgent and demanding now, “When they were using you like their own personal whore…did you ever cum for them?”

“Lace?”

“Don’t lie to me, bitch.”  Another sopping pussy SLAP!! made Starling buck in agonized ecstasy.

“FUCK! Fuck…” She screeched, then moaned. “Y-yes!”

Her pale, shapely legs were shaking.  Orgasmic tension was already coiling tightly around her spine, the pressure building through her torso, making her big breasts ache.  Lacey jammed her fingers back inside, working hard and fast to keep Starling spiraling towards climax.

“And did you like it?  Did you enjoy getting raped and cumming for those –ugh- men… like the cheap little slut you are!”

“YES, okay! Muh-maybe part of me fucking did like it!”

It hurt to admit.  Humiliation throbbed deep in Starling’s chest, intensifying the building pressure.  Her rock-hard nipples prickled and twinged.  She hated hearing Lacey talk this way, the very real shame it dredged up still hurt… but it made every sensation so intense!  The hard, almost icy edge to Lacey voice scared Starling more than a little, but it also triggered every thrilling, submissive instinct within the redhead.

From the corner of the room a man’s voice groaned approvingly, but the two women were too lost in each other to pay him any mind.

“Show me,” Lacey groaned.  “Cum for me, like you did for all those wicked men who used to beat you, and rape you…and make you fucking like it!”

And Starling did.  She let out a sharp cry, tossing her head back and bucking up on their bed.  Her gushing cunt clenched tight around Lacey’s thrumming fingers.  She continued working Starling’s swollen clit, bringing the already intense orgasm to a boil. 

And Starling came again!  This time screaming as that orgasmic pressure swelled to bursting, then turned to pure scintillating energy which shone in her fluttering eyes and radiated out from her beautiful buoyant breasts and finally erupted through her wet, pulsating pussy.

When that orgasm passed, Starling collapsed onto the bed feeling content but drained.  She felt weak and nervous.  Something had happened that she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Maybe it was just the intensity of the situation?  Lacey had been growing more and more confident in her role as Starling’s Domme, but she hadn’t been mean like this before.  Playfully demeaning, yes, but never humiliating and cold.  Maybe it just caught Starling off guard…even if it had gotten her off harder than she had in a long while.

Batting her green eyes open, Starling found Lacey leaning over her, gently caressing her still trembling sex.

“Goddam, ladies,” grunted the man.  “Well, done.”

Now Starling looked over with a start.  There was a dark figure seated in the shadowy corner.  His rugged features were difficult to make out in the dark room, but he seemed to have ratty salt and pepper hair, and a thick mustache.

“Danvers,” hissed a familiar voice from the doorway.

The man and Starling looked over to see the Scarlet Dove standing there.

She looked resplendent in her white and gold bustier, and matching bikini bottoms.  Her figure was tight and statuesque, as Starling’s had been in those days.  Her bare legs, long and shapely, and clad in the gold calf-high boots.  Her fists were clenched, and planted firmly on the swell of her hips, sporting those dangerous golden bracelets.  Lustrous, candy apple red hair fell in thick waves about her shoulders, framing the familiar white feathered mask, behind which emerald eyes blazed with such a fury, they were almost glowing.

“You,” the man growled.

“You’ve got to wake up, Starling,” the Scarlet Dove said, looking at her urgently.  “Starling, wake up!”

2

“Starling, wake up!  Babe?  Wake up!”

Starling jerked back to consciousness and sat up so suddenly she almost headbutted her wife.  She immediately scanned the room for the shadowy intruder, for…

No…that -that’s impossible… she thought in a total panic, her head aching!  It couldn’t be him! Can’t be, he’s… He was…But…

“Hey! It’s okay!  Babe, it’s okay.”  Lacey’s arms enfolded her, tight, warm, urgent.  “You’re safe.  I got you.  You’re safe.  I got you.  It’s just a dream.”

Starling was shaking, and Lacey held her tightly.

They were alone in their bedroom.  Moonlight shone through the windows casting eerie shadows.  But there was no one else there, just them, no man sitting in the corner. 

No Danvers. 

And no Scarlet Dove in the doorway…which would be just as impossible because I’m the…I mean, I was… Starling dug the heels of her palms into her eyes, rubbing hard and shuddering.

Lacey squeezed a little tighter and gently repeated, “You’re safe.  I got you.”

It had become their soothing mantra anytime Starling had one of her trauma induced nightmares.

Starling leaned into her, murmuring, “I’m okay.  I… I’m s-sorry…”

Lacey shushed her.  “Just a dream.  I’ve got you, love.”

Starling was still trembling.  She buried her face in Lacey’s neck and tried to shake off the lingering dread.

Lacey clutched her patiently, cooing softly, comforting her wife as she regained her bearings.

Unfortunately, Starling’s nightmares had been a regular part of their life together in the early days.  She often had dreams that she was back in Dominion’s dungeon, still enslaved by him.  Or that he was still alive, and had found them, and had come to take back his pathetic little sex slave… and to lay claim to his daughter…

Although, it had actually been a while since she’d had one of those.  Long enough she couldn’t even recall the last one at that moment.

And this had been different.  She’d never dreamed of Tom Danvers before.  The way it had felt was completely different too.  Gawd, it had seemed so real.  Beyond even the trauma reenactment of a Dominion nightmare.  When she awoke from a dream about Dominion, it was with a frightening mix of panic, utter terror, and a bit of longing.  But at least once she was awake in Lacey’s arms (“You’re safe. I got you.”) Starling knew it wasn’t real and shook it off, more or less.

This dream had left her with a deep-seated dread, and the sense that it wasn’t over… even now it was like…like he’s still in the room!  Of course he was not, but she scanned the shadowy corners again just to be sure.  I swear I can still feel him…or his… presence?  

“Do you want to talk about it?” Lacey asked, her voice already taking on a groggy slur.

Starling kissed her neck and pulled her back down into the bed.  “It was just a dream.  I’m fine.”

“You’re safe.  I got you,” Lacey murmured again, “and I’m never letting go.”

Starling snuggled even closer, their curvy figures entwining tightly.  “I know.  I love you.”

“Love you, babe.”

Lacey was asleep in moments.  Starling listened to her rhythmic breathing and the thump of her heart, letting it lull her back to a sense of safety.  She smiled, snuggling a little closer… and stared out the window until the sun came up.

3

“Nikki, quit playing with your cereal, and just eat it,” Lacey said, stirring entirely too much cream and sugar into a cup of coffee for her wife.

The little girl looked at her with big, annoyed, hazel eyes, and very slowly took a big bite, and chomped it obnoxiously.

“Don’t you look at me that way,” Lacey said.  “Any minute now your mother will be coming down those stairs, you guys are already late, as usual, and you know she’s gotta go meet with the Burger King this morning because of what happened yesterday…”

Nikki scowled, but then shoveled in three more bites rapidly.  “It wuddn’t even my fault!” she insisted through a half-chewed mouthful of fruit loops.

“I know, Li’l Bit,” Lacey said moving over to tousle that unruly mop of fiery red hair.  “I know…”

A moment later, Starling came trotting down the stairs in a huff.  As usual she’d been getting ready for the last two hours, while Lacey got Nikki up, dressed, tried to brush that wild mop of hair but then gave up, before making sure she was at least fed and ready to go. 

Lacey’s brown eyes bulged at the sight of her wife.

Her own bright red hair was smoothed into thick, silky locks with lush, bouncy curls hanging around her shoulders.  Starling was wearing a snug burgundy blouse, with a cross-wrapped neckline that wasn’t particularly low cut, but enticingly highlighted her voluptuous bosom.  A pleated beige maxi skirt hugged the curves of her hips, swishing about her calves, teasing a glimpse of black hose and showing off a pair of classy, black ankle boots.

She came into the kitchen, still clipping in earrings and stopped, looking at her daughter with an irritated expression.

“Lace, you gotta brush out those tangles or else-“

“Good morning momma!” Nikki beamed with a wide, cheerful smile…that melted Starling immediately. 

“I’m sorry, good morning honey.”

She swept across the kitchen to hug and kiss her daughter, missing the subtle fist bump exchanged by Lacey and Nikki as she did.

“Hurry and finish eating now, we’re late,” she said, then turned to Lacey.

The brunette put the warm mug of coffee in her hands, then leaned in for a quick…well, maybe not too quick, kiss.  When she pulled away, Starling sipped her coffee, it was rich and super sweet, just the way she liked it, just the way Lacey made it for her every morning.

“Thanks, babe,” Starling said, taking another drink.

“Of course,” Lacey replied, though she couldn’t keep the concern from her face when she noticed how much makeup Starling had on.  Beautiful as she looked, she only did that to conceal the bags under her eyes when she hadn’t slept.

“What?” Starling asked, sheepishly, taking a banana from the hanger on the little island in the center of the kitchen.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Lacey sipped her own coffee.

Starling looked down, picking at her fruit with a French tipped nail.  “Fine.”

“You sure?  I know it’s been a while but-”

“I’m fine,” Starling looked up at her with a smile that was only slightly forced.  “It was just a bad dream, Master wasn’t even-”  She winced and bit her lip, looking down again.  “He… wasn’t even in it.”

Why do I still think of him as…I don’t have as many dreams…I shook off the paranoia…why can’t I stop calling him that?

Lacey’s hand gripped her shoulder.  “It’s just…you’ll tell me if it starts getting bad again, right?”

Still chewing her bottom lip, Starling gave her wife a resolute nod.

“Momma had a scary dream?” Nikki cut in, dumping her empty bowl and spoon noisily into the sink.

“Yes, honey, but I’m okay.”

Nikki rushed forward, wrapping her little arms around Starling’s thighs in a tight hug.  “When I have a scary dream, I just kill them monsters.”

Lacey and Starling exchanged a dubious look.

“Want me to kill your monsters, momma?”

Starling leaned down to return the girl’s hug.  “You already have, honey.”

“Alright, killer,” Lacey said.  “Go get your coat and backpack, momma doesn’t want keep Principal Buerger waiting.”

“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiine…” the little girl groaned, stomping into the other room.

“He’s not even a principal,” Starling groaned as well.  “Preschools don’t have principals, they have a director…which you’d know if I wasn’t the one to always have to deal with that horrid little man.”   She huffed, returning to peeling her banana.

“I would love nothing more than to go tell that little troll exactly where he can stick his ‘concerns’ for our daughter,” Lacey snipped, then grinned.  “Unfortunately, I have that appointment with Lieutenant Ambrose this morning.  He’s so busy, I don’t know when he’d be able to reschedule.”

“Oh puh-lease!” Starling rolled her pretty green eyes.  “Bill’s our fricken neighbor, you could literally talk to him any time.”  She chomped off the end of her banana.

“Well, not exactly, cuz he’s actually going to show me the outreach center for their new meth task force,” Lacey said.  “Which is not in his living room… you’re going to eat more than that, aren’t you?”

Starling rolled her eyes again and took another bite.  “Not unless you want me to get big and fat like some of these-”

“You’re starting to sound like your mother.”

Starling’s mouth dropped open and she let out a shrill gasp.  “I hope I look as good as she does at her age!  Besides you should want me to too, since you’ll be the one making-”

“Healthy,” Lacey said, grabbing Starling and pulling her close.  “I want you to look and be healthy… and if that includes some thick milfy curves, and this…” She slid her hands down to grab a big handful of Starling’s full round booty.  “Mmm!”

The redhead burst into giggles and nuzzled into Lacey’s neck, kissing her tender throat and making her shiver.

“Come on momma,” Nikki declared stomping back through the kitchen.  “Gotta go see the Burger King.”

“Dominique Rose!” Starling snapped, pulling away from Lacey.  “You don’t have to like Mr. Buerger but you do have to be respectful.”

“But that’s what mommy calls him!” the child said, pointing at Lacey.

Starling glared at her.  “Is it…”

“Okay Stewarts, we all got appointments to keep!” Lacey said, grabbing Starling’s brown suede jacket where it hung by the door.  She held it open with a sheepish smile.  “Here beautiful let me help you.” 

Starling rolled her eyes but couldn’t help smiling… and she let Lacey help her into the jacket.

“Here we come Burger King!” Nikki said, heading out the door.

4

“I got to be honest, Bill, when you said ‘outreach center,’ I did picture something a little more…” Lacey gestured vaguely around the sparsely furnished room.  “…more…”

They were standing in one of the unused shops on the downtown square of Auburn Hills.  The midday sun was pouring in through the all-glass storefront.

Lieutenant Ambrose smiled easily.  “It is a work in progress, I’ll give you that.” 

He was a tall man, with broad shoulders that filled out his blue uniform nicely.  He had probably been in good shape once; football player in high school, a standout in the police academy, but now he was softening around the edges.  He kept his dark hair trimmed and combed, trying determinedly, but failing, to hide how it was thinning on top.

“But you just gotta picture it in action!” 

“Okay, Lieutenant, tell me how it all works.”  She fished her phone out of the pocket of her brown leather jacket, and held it out activating the voice recorder.

Bill grinned and walked to the folding table near the front of the shop.  “Here is the reception desk, we’ll have a form where you can share as much or as little personal information as you’re comfortable with.  It’ll also have a list of the services we offer so you can just circle whatever you’re interested in.”  Then he came back over to the middle area where there was a ratty used couch and two folding chairs.  “This is our waiting area, which I plan to call ‘the safe space’, you can grab you a water bottle or a coffee, maybe somedays there’ll be donuts…but whoever needs to can just chill.  Or come down, if that’s what’s happening.”  There were drug awareness posters on the wall over the couch.  “This is also where we’ll hold support groups… but I need to get some blinds installed on the front windows for privacy first.”  He moved to where a narrow hallway ran to the back of the building.  “There’s a restroom obviously, and once the kits come in, we can do free drug testing, like for jobs or parole and stuff… And once the old storeroom is cleaned out, we’re going to convert it into a sound-proof room for counseling.  Natty Walshe has offered to volunteer a few hours a week, pro bono.”

“I know Dr. Walshe, she does good work,” Lacey felt a little sheepish for poking fun at him.  “I think this is really great, Bill…”

“Thanks, I’ve been trying to get it approved for a while now, but,” he heaved a sigh, “y’know, budgetary constraints ­blah blah blah… That’s why I asked you to do this article, I’m kinda hoping to get some more volunteers and support to help get it up and running.”

“No pressure to write an amazing, engaging call-to-action then, great,” Lacey chuckled.  “So, are you hoping the center will bring in tips on who’s cooking and supplying the meth in Auburn Hills… Lieutenant?”  She pointedly held up the phone, still recording.

“No!  Gosh no,” Bill replied without hesitation.  “Auburn Hills PD already has an anonymous tip line for that kind of thing.  This is a place to help people get clean, not to find new snitches, errr– I mean, CI’s.”

 “Hello?” A voice called from the front of the shop.

They both turned.  Lacey hurriedly switched off her phone and stuffed it back into her pocket.

There was an African-American woman standing in the doorway.  Her black hair was cornrowed, with braids tucked that were neatly into twin buns on the back of her head.  She had smooth features, highlighted by a pair of light grey eyes.  A suede burgundy top hugged her hourglass figure, over black leather pants.  Three silvery wallet chains looped around the curve of her hip on the right side.

“Hey!  Hi! Good morning!” Bill said, rushing forward.  “Welcome to the Auburn Hills Addiction Outreach Center, come in, please!”

The woman smiled and stepped inside.  “I’m not – I mean, I don’t need…I mean, I’m your neighbor?” She thrust a thumb towards the east wall.  “Well, I will be.  I was just coming over to introduce myself.”

Lacey scowled reflexively.  The shop next to this one had been called “Other Worldly – New Age / Metaphysics / Dispensary.”  She’d been held there against her will by the previous owner, a man known only as Typhon.  Fortunately, Starling had been able to rescue her.  Typhon had been arrested following that, but then escaped, or as Bill had put it “vanished” from lockup under very mysterious circumstances.

“Oh great!” Bill blurted.  “I heard someone had rented that place, I’m Lieutenant Ambrose of the Auburn Hills PD, but you can call me Bill…most people do.”

“Bill it is,” the woman extended her hand.  “I’m Mackenzie.”

“Great to meet you, Mackenzie,” he said shaking her hand.  “And this is Lacey Stewart, Auburn Hills’s most preeminent journalist and…”

“Stop,” Lacey groaned.  “I’m just a reporter.  A quiet, smalltown reporter.”  She walked over and stuck out her hand.  “I’m Lacey.”

“Nice to meet you.  Mackenzie.”

“So, you rented out Other Worldly?” Lacey asked quickly.  “I haven’t seen you around though, are you new to town?  What are you planning to put in there?”

Mackenzie’s sharp grey eyes narrowed slightly.  “I am new… just moved here to open the store actually.  I found the entire inventory being auctioned off online, and then I found out it was in an actual store font that was still available…so, well, I decided to make a change and take a chance.”

“Ahh, so you’re a new agey kinda gal?” Bill said.

“Something like that,” Mackenzie chuckled.  “Actually, I’m wiccan.”

Bill’s eyebrows went up.  “You’re a witch?”

Lacey punched him in the arm.  “Don’t be a jerk!”

“I’m sorry,” he stammered immediately.  “I didn’t mean any offense, I just thought- well, isn’t that…?”

“It’s okay, Bill,” Mackenzie chuckled.  “I know there are a lot of misconceptions about my religion out there.  I’d be happy to tell you more about it sometime…”

“You should talk to my wife, Pattie,” Bill laughed.  “I’m sure she’d love to learn about spells and curses, not sure how well that’d work out for me though!”

Lacey punched him again.  “Don’t pay attention to him, the rest of Auburn Hills is actually surprisingly open-minded.”

“Yeah?” Mackenzie said with a smirk. “I was a little curious what with it being so small and rural.”

“They have welcomed me and my wife with pretty much open arms.”

“Open arms?” Bill scoffed.  “Hell, you and Beth barged into our little community like you wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer!  Lucky thing they also happened to be the coolest couple on the planet,” he added, turning back to wink at Mackenzie.

“Beth must be your wife?” she asked.

Lacey smiled and nodded.  “I take no credit, but she really is the coolest.” 

Beth was the name Starling had gone by since leaving Warden City.  During her time as a superheroine some of her enemies had learned her true identity of Starling Chase.  They didn’t think any of them would be coming after her at this point, but better safe than sorry.

“Well hopefully I can meet her soon!”

“Oh, you can’t miss her,” Bill grunted.  “Red hair like a fire engine, curves like some of these old country roads…”  That earned him another punch.

“So I’m not sure about the new agey crystals and stuff,” Lacey changed the subject, “But I’m pretty sure that place did well with the dispensary.  Will you be keeping the same name?”

“Well, I do like the way Other Worldly sounds,” Mackenzie said.  “And the landlord assured me that the store had been abandoned, and not that it had gone under due to poor business.  So I’m thinking keeping that familiarity might be worth a shot.” 

Bill was frowning.  “Will it be like a conflict of interest or something having addiction outreach right next to a dispensary?”

They all considered it for a moment, then Lacey said, “Seems kind of appropriate to me, actually.”

“Make sure everyone knows their options?” Mackenzie smirked.

“I doubt we’ll be catering to the same clientele much anyway,” Bill added.  “Meth’s our main focus.”

“So when are you planning to reopen?” Lacey asked. 

Mackenzie shrugged.  “That place is a hot mess, it’s like Typhon just threw everything in there with no rhyme or reason…so I’ve got a lot of cleaning and reorganizing to do.  But I’d really like to have the grand reopening for Halloween weekend.”

“Seems appropriate,” Bill said.

“I see,” Lacey said.  Hearing her say his stupid name out loud triggered a rush of suspicions, even though Lacey knew there were plenty of places she could have heard it.

“That’ll be a quick turn around for you,” Bill went on.

“No kidding, which means I should probably get back to work,” Mackenzie said. “I just saw you guys in here and wanted to introduce myself.”

“Glad you did!” Bill beamed.  “I’ll look forward to seeing you around town, Mackenzie.”

“Likewise,” Lacey said.

Mackenzie gave a wave and turned to leave. 

“She seemed nice,” Bill murmured, once she was outside.

“Mmm hmm…” Lacey agreed.

Both of them were craning their necks to watch her go, neither of them able to resist checking out roll and switch of the woman’s well-formed backside in the tight black leather.

5

Mr. Buerger was short, and not overly fat but it was hard to describe his physique without using the words “egg shaped.”  Which wasn’t helped by his bald head, and thick neck.  He had beady eyes over a thin sand-colored mustache, and while he did smile often enough, there was always something about that smile that seemed condescending.  That day, as with basically every day, he was wearing a royal blue, collared shirt with loose fitting khakis.

After getting Nikki to her classroom, he led Starling to his office.

“I will take your jacket,” he said, seeming impatient.

“Oh, thank you.”  Starling slipped out of the brown suede and handed it over.

“Sit there.”  There was a surprisingly stern edge in his voice and he pointed to one of the chairs in front of his desk.

I wasn’t that late was I? she thought, hurrying to take the seat.  Class hadn’t even started…

Director Buerger hung up her coat and shut the door, hard enough it slammed and made Starling jump.  When she looked back, he merely smiled as if everything was normal.  The office air was chilly, and she already regretted giving over her jacket.  A little shiver was creeping up her spine.

“Thank you for meeting with me today,” he said, walking around the desk to his own chair.  “I know you’re probably busy with Halloween this weekend, and the holidays just around the corner.”

“Yes, I actually volunteered to help out with the costume parade this Friday-”

“Yes, yes, much appreciated,” he cut her off.  “But we’re here to talk about my concerns for that little terror of yours.”

Starling blinked in surprise.  “Excuse me?”

“Your daughter, you had to know that’s what this would be about.”

“Well, I know she can be a bit…rambunctious, but, a terror?” Starling was trying not to stammer.  “When I talk to Ms. Hoagland and Ms. Boggs, they say she’s handling the academics very well, Ms. Boggs even used the word ‘advanced.’  And socially they say she seems to be a natural leader…”

“Yes, well, isn’t that the problem?” Mr. Buerger went on.

“What do you mean?”

“Advanced, highly intelligent for her age, and a natural leader…but she’s also stubborn, defiant and aggressive.”

“I thought she was only aggressive with the kids who try to bully her or her friends?”

“Then I guess that makes it okay?” his gaze hardened, not quite a glare.

Starling shrank back in her seat, “That’s not what I meant…”

“It’s a fine line Miss Stewart,” he went on, “and I won’t let Nikki establish that classroom as her own little dominion?”

Starling’s mouth went instantly dry and a chill ran down her spine.  She repressed a shiver, but her nipples hardened visibly under her burgundy top.  Buerger’s beady eyes dropped straight to her chest.

Oh geez, why didn’t I wear bra today? She admonished herself, crossing her arms over her unbound breasts.  I could’ve sworn I put one on this morning…

“I’m sorry Mr. Buerger, what exactly are you implying?  Her own…?”

“Dominion, domain, her own little kingdom,” he said.  “Do we really want the other kids looking up to her, and following her lead, when she exhibits that kind of evil.”

“Evil?” Starling gasped.

“Behavior.  If you would stop interrupting me,” he said.  “She fights, she yells, she stands up for herself.  Don’t you want her to be a good little girl?”

“What?” Starling balked.  “I want my daughter to grow up into a strong woman, who will stand up for herself, and others, when it’s needed.”

The director frowned and nodded.  “I guess I should have expected as much, coming from you.”

“Me?  What does that mean?”

“At the very least I would hope you would see how dangerous her behavior could become, knowing what genes she carries…”

“Her genes? Excuse me but I’m not sure what you’re implying…”

“Oh, Mrs. Stewart, you don’t think it was really that hard to figure out, do you?”  His beady eyes dropped back to her chest, and she saw the lust flood into them.  “Did you think no one would recognize your scarlet hair this far out in the booneys?  Although for me it was those tits,” he went on, licking his thin lips and ogling her chest.  “I used to drool over those naked pictures of you with that Ashton prick.  Now here they are, sitting right in front of me.”  He reached out, pantomiming squeezing her breasts.

Starling jumped to her feet, the motion making her boobs bounce wildly, as her cheeks flushed bright pink.

“How dare you!” she squeaked.  “And I don’t know what you think you’re talking about and-“

“Silence!” he barked and Starling’s mouth snapped shut reflexively.

He locked her gaze with his own, those beady eyes now boring into her.  Starling’s anger went flaccid.  He rose behind the desk and she felt the air in the office shift.  “Sit.” He ordered and she immediately dropped back into her chair.

She dropped her eyes, unable to meet his stern gaze and her hands began to fidget in her lap.  She felt suddenly nervous, she knew he had somehow tapped into her submissive instincts…but she didn’t know what to do about it.

I guess I haven’t given him enough credit…it doesn’t matter how egg-shaped a man is when he’s an ALPHA…

Never taking his glare off her, Director Buerger came around the desk until he was standing directly in front of her.

“There, and isn’t that better?” he said.  “Quiet.  Obedient.”  He took her chin, tilting her green eyes back up to his.  “Being a good girl.”

The thrill of his affirmation ran through her, making her blush and smile.

She hated it, knew this wasn’t right, but couldn’t help it.  Even her nipples hardened a little more under the burgundy top.  His corresponding smirk was deservedly patronizing.  She felt foolish, and small, and weak in front of him now.

“And don’t you want your daughter to be a good girl like her mother?”

Starling nodded.

Her stomach lurched.  She knew she was responding to what he wanted not what she actually thought.  No! I want Nikki to be strong, and independent and to punch the jerks who deserve it!

…But what if he’s right?  What if her behavior is indicative of something worse, something she inherited from her father?

“Stand up.”

Starling did as she was told without thinking about it.  She was taller than he was, especially in her heeled boots.  And they were so close, her boobs were practically rubbing his face, nipples hard and prominent.  He was ogling them intently, as she stood there quietly awaiting his next command…

How is this happening?  Can anyone trigger this damn submissiveness?

“Hold still, while I get a better look at these,” Buerger groaned, already slipping his fingers into the cross wrapped neckline of her blouse.

Her skin prickled at his touch but Starling didn’t move as he peeled the burgundy material open, revealing her big creamy globes, pink nipples standing point.

“Everyone says you got the best tits in town,” he said, tucking her neckline behind their plump curves.  “I gotta say they’re right!”

“Thank you,” she murmured, again without really thinking.  Oh gawd, why would I say that?  Obviously I want him to like them but…I mean, I don’t want or care…oh gawd what is happening to me?

“Thank you, what?”

“Thank you…umm…Director?”

“That’s better.”

He was already cupping her boobs in both stubby hands.  Squeezing and lifting the soft heavy bulbs, stroking his thumbs across her dark areolas.  Starling shivered but didn’t move.

“Let me tell you what we’re going to do,” Director Buerger said, his eyes and hands still fixated on her breasts.  “Since you’ve been so negligent in raising your little terror, you’re going to receive her punishment today.”

“I… wait, what?”

“You’re going to bend over my desk and I’m going to spank you,” he went on calmly, still fondling her.  “Ten times, I think?”

“No…You can’t,” Starling pleaded meekly.

“Oh, no?”  He gripped her tits so tight she trembled, as he glared up at her.  “Twenty then.  Ten for your failings as a mother, and ten so you’ll remember never to say ‘no’ to me again.”

“I- I’m sorry, Director,” Starling whimpered as her boobs tingled in his hands.

“Not yet but you will be,” he sniffed, releasing her chest.  “Now assume your position.”  He pointed to the desk.

I should break his jaw!  Starling thought rubbing her sensitive breasts.  I should get Nikki and run out of here! I should- I should…do what he says before he adds another ten…

She stepped up to the desk and leaned over it, bracing her hands on the top. 

“Further,” Buerger instructed.

Starling bent all the way over, resting on her elbows now.  The director groaned, running his hands over her wide round ass, which was now stretching out the pleats out of her maxiskirt.  He stroked and squeezed her plump cheeks, sending nervous chills down her long legs.

SLAP!  Firm, solid, nothing like how her Master used to hit her.

SLAP!  A little harder.  He was measuring her then, testing to see how soft and jiggly her ass was.

SLAP!  “How many is that?”

“Three,” Starling replied.

“Good, now I want you to keep count.”

“Yes, Director.”  SLAP!  “Four…” SLAP!  “Five…”

SLAP!  They were starting to sting now.  Starling winced and sucked in a breath.  “S-six…”

SLAP!   His stubby hand came down hard, making her voluptuous cheeks jiggle and ache.  “Seven…”

SLAP!  “Eight! Ohh…”

“And why are you getting these?”

“For my d-daughter-“ SLAP!   “Oh! Nine…”

“You’re what?” he asked, caressing the trembling of her ass.

Cringing at his touch, she forced the words, knowing what he wanted to hear.  “My…little…terror…”

“You haven’t been a very good mother, have you?”

“I- I guess not…” SLAP!  Starling couldn’t believe the short egg-shaped man could spank her so hard.  SLAP! 

“Say it!”

“I’m not a good mom…” SLAP!  His stubby little hand came down so hard the pain rippled through her whole body.

“Again!” SLAP! 

“I’m a bad mom!” she sobbed, knees wobbling as she cringed over the desk.  Tears flooded her eyes, whether from the physical pain or the pain of speaking her worst fear…she wasn’t sure.

“And that’s ten,” he said, caressing her sensitive backside.

Starling knew better than to correct him.  She bit her lip, writhing and aching.  Her plump cheeks were starting to burn.

“Ten more to go,” he said. 

“Y-yes, Director.”

She felt his hands on her calves, pushing up her skirt.  Her nerves tingled but she held still, obediently, as he slid it up over the full curves of her ass.  Underneath she was wearing black hose but nothing else.

I could have sworn I put on panties today!

Buerger groaned at the sight of her fat naked ass in the sheer nylon, and the soaking wet material clinging to her bare pussy.  Embarrassment rushed through her as his rough hand slid over her backside.  She quivered slightly, long legs trembling.

SLAP!  “And why are you getting these ten?”

Starling swallowed, forcing her voice to steady.  “Because I said ‘no’ to you…” SLAP!  “OW! Eleven…”

“Gooooooood, and do you deserve them?” SLAP!

“Fuck!  Twelve…” She took a few breaths to steady her voice.  “Yes, Director, I deserve them.”

“Of course you do!” SLAP!  SLAP!  SLAP! 

Starling writhed over the desk, mewling in anguish.  Her knees started to buckle, but she forced herself to resume position.  She’d been punished by Dominion enough to know that disobedience, however unintentional always resulted in additional punishment.  She lifted her burning nylon covered ass, presenting for more and quickly forced herself to gasp, “Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen…”

“Good, very good,” the Director chuckled.  He reached between her legs and rubbed her pussy.

Starling let out a moan.  Then she squeaked in embarrassment, she’d been caught off guard by the sudden intimate touch.  She clapped both hands over her mouth and flushed red hot with humiliation.

“You’re soaking wet, Mrs. Steward,” Buerger gloated, stroking his fingers over her slit in the dark sopping nylons once more.  “Do you like being spanked like this?”

No! Not by you… she didn’t say that of course.  She’d been trained too well to be caught by such obvious baiting.  That, and obviously she did like it.  Even by him.  She’d even gotten Lacey into spanking her with a riding crop, although her loving wife only had the stomach for maybe six or seven good lashes.

If fact, Starling hadn’t been brought to tears by a spanking since she escaped her Master.  Now, even as she writhed in anguish on top of the desk, she couldn’t believe how turned on she was… She hated it, but could not deny it.

“I asked you a question.”  SLAP!

“Sixteen…” Starling whimpered.  “And yes, I like it…want it…deserve it…”  She looked at him over her shoulder, face flushed and tear streaked, green eyes smoldering with lust.

Director Buerger grinned hungrily, his own beady eyes flashing.  SLAP! 

“Seventeen!” Starling moaned, her voice turning husky with the delicious agony of it.  SLAP!  “Eighteen!”

His hand made her big booty bounce, and pain sizzled through every lush curve.  SLAP!  “Nineteen…”

“You want more, don’t you?”

“Yes! Oh fuck, yes!” No hesitation now, remembering how she’d come to love the pain in Master’s dungeon.

Director Buerger seized her tender curves, peeling up the dark nylon then tearing it open!  Starling gasped as her round, luscious cheeks and dripping sex were fully exposed.  Then the Director spanked her plump naked ass the hardest he had yet.

SLAP!  SLAP!  SLAP! SLAP!  SLAP!

“Fuck! Fuck!  Oh Ow! Fuck!”

She didn’t know how he managed, but the force thrust her onto the desk, sprawled and writhing.  Before she could recover, his weight laid down on her.  He grabbed a thick handful of her scarlet locks, then wrenched back hard, craning her neck and pulling her body into a strained arch.

Starling clenched her teeth and groaned.  She never would have guessed he was so strong, so…powerful…so dominant.

“You want even more don’t you?” he hissed into her ear.  His free hand snaked up her side, once again grabbing a handful of her soft, sensitive breast.

Starling relaxed into the uncomfortable tension and moaned, “Yes, Director.”

“And what more do you want?” he growled demandingly.

Starling quivered against him.  She reached back with one nylon clad leg, curling it against his baggy khakis.  “I want you to fuck me…please, Director.  Take me and make me yours!”

The words spilled past her trembling lips almost on their own.  She knew they were wrong, even felt the stab of guilt for betraying Lacey…but her mind was too far gone.  Somehow, whether by accident or on purpose, Director Buerger had brought all her slave training and submissive urges right to the surface, and now she was his…all his.

He unbuckled, unbuttoned and unzipped in a hurry, then shoved down his pants and underwear.  He ripped her soaked nylons a little further to make sure he had full access, then swabbed the head of his cock through her slippery slit, sending a pulse of anticipation through her.  Starling scootched back a little further, so she could arch her back and present her pretty pussy for penetration.

“Oh, good girl…” SLAP! 

Starling arched and moaned, and wiggled eagerly.  Director Buerger slid into her pussy, hot and hard and Starling thrust back on him.

“Ohhhh fuuuuuck,” she hissed as he filled her out quite nicely.

He wasn’t the biggest by any means, but she hadn’t been with a man in some time.  Her body coiled around the penetration.  Shivers of pleasure raced through her hips and down her legs.  Her pussy gripped him tightly, supple lips clinging to his rigid shaft as she began rocking back and forth, working her pussy up and down his taut shaft.

“Oh, you are a needy little slut, aren’t you, Mrs. Stewart?”

“Yes! Oh yes, Director!”  It came out as a sharp cry feeling his hard cock stabbing into her tight little cunt.

His hands slithered up her back and side, once more grabbing her breast and hair.  Starling arched back for him, the new position sending a scintillating surge through her.  He kneaded her heavy globe, sending anxious flutters through her chest.  He yanked her scarlet mane, causing a sharp gasp as pain rippled over her scalp.  He started bucking against her soft round ass, plunging into her with that hot hard dick.

“Yes! Yes! Oh fuck yes!” Starling screamed.  She did her best to rock back and meet his thrust.  Each one triggered a wave of heat that left her thick curves tingling.  He gripped one of her tits tightly, squeezing, kneading, while the other bounced and quivered wildly.  Her whole body felt wrapped in sensuous pleasure.

Her skin began to glow.  A beautiful radiance pouring over her smooth creamy flesh.

She didn’t notice.  Her head was spinning.  The sensation of having a cock inside her, thrusting, plunging, swelling, so familiar and yet so unfamiliar to her now.  She was so close to cumming already…could feel the orgasm building, intensified by the tension of his grip in her hair…her pussy was pulsating around every ridge and vein of his hard shaft, every deep plunge making her quiver and…

“Yesssss….hear how she screams for you?” Danvers’s voice was throaty and eager.  “Have you ever had such an exquisite creature wrapped around your cock?”
Starling barely registered it, lost in the intense throb of Buerger’s manhood.  The near orgasmic tremors rolling over every curve on her body.

“No!” the director gasped.  “She’s so beautiful…so perfect…”

Now Starling looked back…the authority and dominance in his voice were gone.  Now it quavered slightly.  She saw him over her shoulder, sweating, panting, bucking hard and for the life of him seeming to barely be hanging on.  And he was glowing.  Like her, there was a dim light flickering under his chest and behind his flushed doughy cheeks.  His beady eyes were wide, fixated on her and seeming almost hypnotized.

Tom Danvers loomed behind him, both hands planted on the director’s shoulders.  The ratty salt and pepper hair, the thick walrusy mustache.  The sharp cruel gaze.

Her own green eyes widened in shock and confusion, she opened her mouth to shout or curse or call out for help…but only a hoarse moan came out and she shuddered in pleasure.

Danvers winked at her, then leaned closer to the huffing, pumping director.  “Listen to her moan, look at how much she loves your dick!  The hottest MILF in this two-bit town begging for your fuck stick…”

“I kn- kn- knew she wanted it,” Buerger wheezed.  “Sexy fuckin’ dyke…just needed some good dick!”

Indignance flared in Starling, maybe even anger.  She wanted to protest, to shout him down, but only screamed in ecstasy as he pounded her pussy.

“Yesssss!” Danvers hissed in glee.  “Now make her cum!  Show her what she’s been missing!”

“Ohhhhh yeah!” Buerger grunted and wrenched on her luscious red mane.

Starling arched a little further, crying out and climaxing immediately!  Pure bliss washed through her body, her pussy clenched his throbbing, thrusting cock, and warm sticky juices gushed down her thighs.

Buerger let out a hoarse moan.

“Feel her squeezing your cock,” Danvers moaned.  “Feel her slutty body begging for your cum…now it’s your turn.  Fill her up!  Give it to ussss!”

A hot thick rush burst inside Starling, making her head swim.  She heard the two men moaning together and even though she had just orgasmed, her own need, her hunger became unbearable.  Despite the tension of his tight grip, she wiggled down, popping her pussy to milk his twitching shaft.  She craved every drop of cum in the Director’s balls.

“Yes! Fuck yes….” Danvers groaned.

Starling glanced back at him now.  His hands, clamped so tight around the director’s shoulders, were glowing.  More they seemed to be absorbing the light pulsing from within the other man.  Buerger’s head was tilted back, his eyelids fluttering.  His arms dropped to his pudgy sides.  As she watched one of Danvers’s hands began to bulge, the fingers elongated, curling into sharp, inhuman claws.  His bushy mustache lifted in a grin, revealing a row of pointed fangs beneath his lips.

Starling recoiled in fear, screaming and trying to pull away across the desk.

Danvers caught her with that monstrous claw, gripping and gouging into her curvaceous hip!  Starling screamed again, as he pulled her back.

“Not yet! Not yet…” he snarled.

Starling shuddered in terror and revulsion, Buerger’s cock was still twitching inside her.

“Let me go!” she cried and kicked away from the two men in sheer desperation.

Danvers let her go, cackling. 

Starling scrabbled across the desk, rolling off the side of the couch as she tumbled over the director’s chair and hit the floor beside the coffee table with a painful groan.  She immediately scrambled back to her feet and found herself staring blearily around her own living room.

6

“What is this?  Where are you?” Starling demanded, fists clenched at her side.  “Tom! I know you’re here, I can sense you…”

She scanned the living room.  It was quiet.  The midafternoon sun shone through the windows.  Memories of laying down on the couch for a quick nap began to surface, but Starling ignored them.  She could still feel Danvers’s presence, just like the night before or maybe even stronger now.  She was groggy but buzzing, post orgasmic.  She even felt tender and over-sensitive between her legs, just as if she’d actually been getting fucked.

It couldn’t just be a sex dream, could it?  For a moment she ran her hands over her body.  She was still wearing the burgundy blouse and pleated maxiskirt, with the bra and panties she remembered putting on that morning.  The panties were now soaked though, but at least her nylons weren’t ripped.

…A very vivid and creepy sex dream?  Because some sad, broken part of me still craves more pain and dominance than Lacey can give?  The thought sickened her more than a little.

“No,” she hissed to herself.  “I know you’re here!  I can feel you.”

Starling scanned the living room again: couch, coffee table, reading chair, television, fireplace, the emerald-eyed dove statue on the mantel.  Nothing was even out of place.

She took one step and a sharp pain throbbed up her side.  Starling gasped and doubled over, clutching her hip where the pain emanated from. 

Where he grabbed me with that claw…  It was aching and tender to the touch.  She glanced back at the couch though.  It’s also exactly where I would have hit the coffee table when I fell off the couch…what is happening??

Gritting her teeth, she set off through the house checking every shaded corner of every room.  In the kitchen she tore open every cabinet, even though a full-grown man like Danvers could never fit in most of them.  In the office she checked behind Lacey’s desk and under her own.

The sense of him followed every step she took…somehow.  She could feel a presence prickling up the back of her neck.  Watching.

By the time Starling limped up the stairs, part of her was frantic.  Needing to find Tom Danvers hiding in her home.  She opened every closet in the bedrooms, pulled the clothes out and looked under the beds.  In the spare room that had become her own makeshift walk-in closet, she ripped every piece of clothing down from the racks to make sure there was nowhere he could be hiding.

Finally, she stood in the middle of a colossal mess, breathing hard and trying to figure out where she hadn’t checked yet… where was he hiding!?

“Can’t say this is a very heroic look,” said the Scarlet Dove, or the apparition of her, or the delusion of her.

“I’m not a superheroine anymore,” Starling huffed, refusing to look at the redhaired figure leaning in the doorway.  “I’m a mother, and a wife…”

“And possibly in the middle of a nervous breakdown…”

Starling looked down at the green dress in her hands, she’d been about to throw it on the floor.

“You were there, in my dream last night,” she said, hanging the dress back up.  “You saw him!”

“I saw something.  But whatever that was, it’s not in here hiding behind your soccer-mom wardrobe.”  There was a disdain in some of those words from the masked figure.

“Nikki doesn’t play soccer,” Starling grumbled.  “So he’s in my head then, another post-traumatic ghost like you and Mast- and Dominion?”

“No.  It’s something else.”

“What then!?” Starling snapped, looking at the doorway.

But it was empty.  The Scarlet Dove, or whatever she was, was gone.

“Nervous breakdown, you say?” Starling sighed.  I think I’ve been in a prolonged one of those ever since I escaped from…

“UGH!” she growled, pushing those thoughts from her head and set about cleaning up her mess.  She didn’t want to have to explain what was going on to Lacey, not yet.

Not that I even could explain it…

She hurriedly gathered up all the clothes she’d thrown on the floor, and hung them back up.  Then she rushed through the bedrooms doing the same, trying her best to put them back in the order they’d been in that morning.

As she worked Starling replayed the dream.  It was so vivid still, like a real memory and not the fading vagaries of recalling a dream.

Her actual meeting with Director Buerger had been much more innocuous.  His so-called “concerns” had just been a ploy to rook her into more volunteer work; “…and hopefully, having her mother, or mothers, around will help her to acclimate socially a bit more, and curb some of her more aggressive social tendencies.”

Good luck with that, Starling thought remembering her daughter’s assertion that morning:  “When I have a scary dream, I just kill them monsters.”

After stuffing all the clothes back into their closets, she came downstairs. When she saw all the cabinets still standing open in the kitchen, a laugh clawed up the back of her throat.

Maybe this is just a new symptom of my PTSD, she thought, rolling those pretty green eyes at herself.  A new manifestation of my paranoia…

She started closing the doors and it was about then her cell phone began to ring.

7

“Look, normally nobody would care, I certainly wouldn’t…but there’s an active investigation around this body so I could get in real trouble, legal trouble.”

“Come on, Carl,” Lacey sighed.  “You don’t think we’re going to do something to the body or anything, do you?”

Carl shook his balding head and shrugged his broad shoulders.  He was heavyset, nearly seven feet tall and wearing brown orderlies’ scrubs.  He was Lacey’s regular contact at the hospital in Auburn Hills.  Usually though, the information she needed was a lot more innocuous than letting her into the morgue to inspect a corpse.

“I don’t know why y’all wanna see that dead body anyway,” he chuckled.  “This is some weird kinda date night…”

“I got a story to write, and this one,” Lacey said hugging Starling’s ample curves against her side, “has been getting a little too into her true crime podcasts lately.” 

The redhead looked down sheepishly, chewing her bottom lip.

“We just want a peek,” Lacey pressed.  “Come on, help me out.”

“I really shouldn’t let you in…”

“So don’t let us in,” Lacey took out a few folded bills, “but maybe you could head up to the break room and grab us some sodas…for the next ten minutes or so..?”

“I am terribly thirsty,” Starling added.

Carl pursed his lips, but took the cash.  “Cokes all around then…” he mumbled, shaking his head.  “Be back in five.”

“You’re the best, Carl,” Lacey said, as the orderly headed off down the hallway.

“No I’m not, just grabbing a drink.”

Starling pulled away immediately and pushed through the door into the morgue.  Her stomach was churning nervously.  It was deathly quiet, and somehow the stark hospital lighting made it more eerie than if it’d been dark.  She approached the cooler, a grid of square silver doors taking up the entire back wall.

Lacey was following.  She picked up a chart from the nearby counter and scanned it before asking, “You sure you want to do this?”

Staring at the coolers, Starling combed a hand through her thick red hair.  “No.”

“Then why are we?”

Starling hung her head.  “I told you, I need you to do this for me, with no questions asked.”

“Star, I’m your wife,” Lacey sighed.  “If you told me you killed this guy, then I’d just-”  Starling looked at her with near panic in those beautiful green eyes.  Lacey had to take a deep breath before continuing, “I just mean, you know that I’ll have your back no matter what, right?”

Starling looked down again, nodding.  “Yes…and it’s probably nothing, but,” she sighed and turned back, “but I need to see for myself…”

“And if it is something?”

“Then I promise I’ll explain everything… or, at least, I’ll try.”

Lacey frowned, but walked past her to the coolers.  “Chart says he’s in six.”

Together they opened the cooler and pulled out the sliding rack.  It bore a rotund, egg-shaped figure under a pristine white sheet.  Starling’s stomach twisted, but she forced herself to reach out and pull back the sheet. 

The corpse of Director Buerger was pallid and gray.  The face and cheeks were sunken, twisted and frozen in a ghastly expression.  Starling couldn’t help but think it seemed stuck somewhere between orgasm and gruesome terror.

A scream scrabbled at the back of her throat but she swallowed it.

Then she noticed that all along the shoulders were burns and bruises. Further, there were four ragged holes punctured on the right side of the clavicle.

“Gawd, they’re right where his hands were,” Starling blurted, shoving the sheet back over the body’s head.  “Where that claw…Oh gawd!”

Starling turned away, cupping both hands over her mouth and refusing to panic.  No no, this is good, she told herself, heaving a few steadying breaths.  Well, it’s not good but it means I’m not crazy…something is happening, and if it’s something, and not just me going crazy…then I can stop it!

Lacey was watching her wife closely, giving her a moment to steady herself before saying, “I guess it is something then?”

“I didn’t sleep last night,” Starling began without turning around.  “After the nightmare? I couldn’t get back to sleep, I just had this horrible feeling like there was someone in the room…watching us.  So, after I met with Director Buerger this morning, I came home to take a nap.  I had another dream, a nightmare, and I think he was killed in it…”

“Star,” Lacey said, not meaning to sound as patronizing as she did. “this man was not killed in your dream, that’s impossible.”

“I know it should be but,” she turned now, moving back to the gurney.  “It was Tom Danvers, he was the one I dreamed about last night…and he came back this afternoon and I think he killed Mr. Buerger.” 

She reached for the sheet again, hands trembling slightly.  Lacey tried to stop her, but Starling pushed her hands away and pulled the sheet back again.

“Look at his shoulders,” Starling said.  “In the dream, he had his hands on Mr. Buerger’s shoulders and I think he was draining his lifeforce…he must have taken it all.” 

Lacey watched her wife, worrying more than she wanted to.  Starling was leaning in closer to the corpse now, and spreading her fingertips out over the holes gouged in the body’s upper chest.  Measuring them, confirming their fingerlike configuration.

“Tom Danvers was the man who worked with Dominion, right?  The one who betrayed your father?”

“He wasn’t a man,” Starling said without looking up.  “He was a demon, or half anyway…half incubus.”

“Right.  I thought his powers only worked on women?”

“I always assumed that, but maybe just because I only know about him using them on me and my mother.”  Starling sighed and covered the body once more. 

Lacey glanced at the clock.  Carl would be back any minute, but if anyone else came by and found them in here, it’d look pretty bad.  Starling had been one of the last people to see the director alive.  Fortunately, not the last, and there had been a few hours between their meeting and when his secretary had found him dead in his office.  Still it could only bring more suspicion if they were caught examining, or as it’d probably end up being called; “tampering” with the body.

“We should get out of here,” Lacey said.

Starling looked up and nodded.  Now that look in her green eyes wasn’t panicked, it was thoughtful, calculating even.  Lacey had seen that look before.  Those weren’t the eyes of her wife at that moment, they were the eyes of the Scarlet Dove.

8

A crisp wind blew through her crimson hair and sent a chill down her spine.  It carried autumn scents and a few drying leaves.  The trees at the cemetery were turning various browns and golds.  The one Starling was standing under was a particularly rich shade of orange.  She was wearing a thick black sweater, over a gray denim skirt with black tights.

Not far off, though hopefully far enough she would not be conspicuous, was the funeral for Director Buerger.  It was small, friends and family only, and she recognized a few of the faculty from the preschool.  Apparently, they wanted to keep the services private due to the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death.

Starling respected that but felt like she should be there.  Like she owed it to him.

“It makes no sense,” she mumbled to the figure leaning against the back side of that tree.  A delusion in a white bustier and feathered mask.  “How could this have even happened?”

“You’ve seen stranger,” replied the Scarlet Dove.

“You saw him in my dream, in my head,” Starling went on.  “You said he wasn’t like you, so what is he?”

“Something different.  Something powerful.”

“How do I stop him?”

“Someone’s coming.”

Starling heard the crunch of leaves behind her.  She turned to go, not wanting to disturb any actual mourners.  “Good afternoon,” she murmured politely as they passed.

“You must be Beth!”

Starling stopped and looked up at the woman.  She had deep brown skin and an easy smile.  Her black hair was cornrowed and tucked into two neatly braided buns.  She was wearing opaque wrap-around sunglasses, and a long black coat over a burgundy top.

“Excuse me?” Starling blinked.

“Hair like a fire engine, curves like a country road,” the woman said.  “Who else… could you…” she began trailing off, looking more and more intently at Starling. “…be? Oh, my, wow…”

Is she hitting on me? The redhead wondered.  In a cemetery? A hundred feet from an actual funeral?  Who is this weirdo?

“I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“You do not, no,” the woman replied, scanning blatantly down Starling’s body.

“And how exactly do you know me?”

The woman’s hidden eyes snapped back up to Starling’s face.  “Sorry!  I met your wife… Lacey, right?”

Starling arched one coppery eyebrow.  “Oh?  Where did you meet Lacey?”

“Downtown, it was a few days ago.”

“And she described me as having-”

“Flame red hair and a slammin’ bod?” the woman chuckled, though her stare did not waver.  “No, actually that was the cop she was with, Lieutenant…umm…”

“Ohhh, Bill,” Starling said, then blushed.  “Lieutenant Ambrose…Yeah, that sounds like him.”

“Right!  They were next door to my shop, so I went and introduced myself.”

“Oh, you’re opening a shop on the square?”

“Well, I’m re-opening the dispensary, Other Worldly.”

She was still staring at Starling with an intensity that made the redhead a little nervous.  “Well, as you know, I’m Beth so you are…” she stuck out her hand.

“Of course, I’m Mackenzie….”  She reached out slowly, as if she were hesitant to touch Starling, but eventually shook her hand.

“Well, it’s been nice to meet you, Mackenzie but I need to get going.”

Starling pulled her hand away and Mackenzie rubbed her own palm as if something oily had come off on it. 

“Can I just ask, I’m sorry, this is going to seem incredibly forward but,” the woman said, “but your aura is crazy!  What are you?”

Starling just blinked at her, taking an unconscious step backwards.  What in the world could that even mean?  “My…aura…is crazy?”

“Yes, I have a talent for seeing –err, reading people’s auras,” Mackenzie explained.  “And yours is like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

“I don’t really know anything about auras,” Starling said.  “What do you mean it’s ‘crazy’?”

“Well, it’s bold, bright even, which is good,” she explained.  “But it’s also tangled up in something…else…”

“Tangled?”

“Almost like…vines growing around it.”

Is she seeing whatever Danvers is doing to me? Starling wondered instantly.  She began to fidget with her French-tipped fingernails.

“I have kind of a dark past,” Starling muttered.

Mackenzie smiled warmly.  “Maybe you should come by my shop sometime, we can try to do a cleansing for you…”

Wait, isn’t Other Worldly like a new age shop, energy crystals and stuff…maybe she’s just trying to drum up new business…

“I don’t know,” Starling muttered.  “I don’t really believe in that kind of stuff…”

Mackenzie shrugged.  “Might be fun, anyway…”

“I’ll think about it,” Starling said, “but I should probably get going.  It was nice to meet you.”

“You too…Beth.”

Starling turned and hurried off through the cemetery.

9

Lieutenant Bill Ambrose knocked on the door, then stepped back and shoved his hands into the pockets of his uniform.  He hated this part of the job.  When he’d gotten into the police department, he’d done it to protect his family and neighbors.  It hadn’t occurred to him that most of the time that meant protecting them from his other neighbors.  Auburn Hills was a small, more or less close-nit community, so most of the crime came from within that same community.  It often put him in awkward situations with people he knew and liked.

The door opened and one of his more attractive neighbors was standing there.

“Hey, Bill,” she purred, shaking slinky brunette hair back from a fine-featured face.  “Isn’t it a little late for you to be on duty?”

She was lean, with an alluringly subtle figure, and was wearing only a loose white button up.  Her bare legs were long, thin and toned, disappearing under the lower edge of that shirt.  He was pretty sure he could see the hint of dark circles under the shirt where her nipples would be.  She did not appear to be wearing any panties, but he shouldn’t have been noticing that.

“Good evening, Lacey,” he replied, in a stern and formal tone.  “Sorry to bother you so late, but I am here on official business.”  He tapped his badge.

“Oh my,” Lacey gasped.  “Well, please come in, of course!”

He stepped inside and she immediately shut the door behind him, and locked it.  He glanced back at her as she leaned against the door and gave him a sultry grin.

“However can I help, lieutenant?”

The look in her deep brown eyes sent a rush of warmth through him.  His uniform slacks began to tighten pleasantly.  Childish as it made him feel, he’d had a crush on Lacey since she and her wife moved in across the street from him and his family.  On both of them honestly.  They were cool and trendy, everything he’d always imagined about city girls while growing up in the small rural town.  Talking to Lacey was just like talking to one of the guys, and Beth was so hot…much hotter than his frumpy wife, Pattie.  They both were.

Bill cleared his throat, and turned his attention back to the matter at hand.  “Is Beth here?  I need to speak with her in regards to the situation with the director of the preschool.”

Lacey frowned slightly but nodded, “She’s right over there, of course.”  She gestured towards the living room, and Bill came inside.

Beth was standing beside the blazing fireplace.  Her luxuriant candy-apple curls sparkled in the warm glow.  She was wearing a sheer nightgown, made nearly transparent by the firelight illuminating every dramatic curve of her luscious figure.  He could tell she wasn’t wearing any bra or panties, with the swell of her voluptuous breasts clearly outlined and her rosy areolas visible under the flimsy material.  And with her shapely thighs backlit by the fire, he could easily make out the shape of the supple cleft between them.

Bill had always been closer with Lacey, but now the sight of Beth made his heart speed up and sent warm butterflies tickling around his stomach.  His pants got even tighter.

“Lieutenant Ambrose?  Isn’t it late for you to be here?” Beth’s voice tinkled.

“Beth, I’m afraid you’re under arrest,” he said, walking further into their living room.

“Oh no!” Both women gasped.

“You were the last one to see Mr. Buerger alive today,” he explained, “so I have to take you downtown.”

“Downtown!” the women echoed, giggling.

“So official,” Lacey teased, running her hand up his arm.  “Do you really have to Bill?”

“I’m sorry Lacey,” he replied, suppressing the shivers her touch triggered.  “She has to be questioned!”

“Oh my,” Beth sighed.

“But, couldn’t you question her right here?”  Lacey’s arms curled around his broad shoulders, and she began to unbutton his uniform.  “Where we can at least make you more comfortable.”

“And I promise to be completely honest!” Beth offered.

“I- uhh- I dunno,” he stammered as Lacey’s hands slid under his shirt to caress his chest.  “This is not proper procedure.”

“Oh! I know,” Lacey squeaked.  She moved around in front of him, leaning up close enough he could feel the warmth of her breath on his cheek and neck.  Her smooth lips smirked and she unbuckled his belt.  “I’ll handcuff her for you…”

“That would make it more official,” he breathed, sorely tempted to kiss the alluring brunette.

She backed away before he could, taking the belt with her.  Lacey removed his handcuffs and turned to her wife.  Beth looked nervous.

“Turn around criminal!” Lacey snapped at her wife, then shot him a wink and a grin.

Beth turned slowly, looking towards Bill with a sultry pout, then putting her hands on the mantel and spreading her legs.  Now the firelight outlined every vivacious curve of her lush body in amber radiance.  Her hourglass hips, the thick thighs, the prim tempting pussy lips tucked between them.  Bill licked his lips and couldn’t help but stare.

“Lieutenant Ambrose, I think you’d better come frisk the suspect,” Lacey said.

Bill nodded, drinking in the salacious figure of the nearly naked redhead as he crossed the living room.

“I’ll handle this,” he said, glancing at Lacey.

She bit her lip and nodded.  “I’ll watch…”

His cock was already hard and straining his uniform pants as he stepped up behind the voluptuous woman.  He started by sliding his hands onto her hips, fondling the smooth, wide curves.  Then he stroked down those thick, creamy thighs.  Beth shivered as his hands ran up the inner sides, and cupped her full, round ass over the slick nylon of her nightgown.

“Make sure I don’t have anything concealed down there,” she purred, waggling into his hands and spreading her legs little further.

“Exercise your right to remain silent, perp!” he barked, squeezing the firm cheeks.  “I know how to do my job…”  He smirked at Lacey and both women tittered like schoolgirls.

When he ran his hand over Beth’s naked pussy, she let out a moan that made his cock jump in his pants.  His fingers slipped through her soft lips, they were already wet, and he made sure to spread them open inspecting each dewy fold.

“Anything in here I should know about?” he asked, pushing two fingers into her tight, warm vagina.

Beth gasped, and rocked down on his hand. “N-n-no officer!”

“Good.”  Bill pulled back then moved his hands to her ribcage.  He clutched and caressed her lush curves, then reached around to cup her breasts.  They were big, heavy and soft and he squeezed them with a groan.  Beth leaned back, rubbing her big MILF booty against his pelvis.

“Oh my, Lieutenant!” Beth moaned.  “I- I have a confession!”

“Yeah, what’s that?” Bill grunted, kneading her fleshy bulbs and grinding his eager hardon between her plump round cheeks.

“I was sleeping with Director Buerger!”

“Oh you were?” Bill asked, leaning in to bury his face against her neck.  Her silky red hair tickled his face, and smelled like ripe strawberries.

“Yes!  But only because I didn’t know how much bigger your dick is!”

She pushed her ass even tighter against him and began twerking up and down over his pelvis.  He groaned as heat flushed through his hips and belly, making his cock throb.  It flexed and pressed against her from inside his pants.

Beth let out a needy moan and spun around.  Bill pushed her down onto her knees, then looked over at Lacey.

“Did you know about this?” he asked.

Beth was immediately tugging open the front of his pants.  His cock sprang out at her, rock hard and aching.

“Oh wow!” both women gasped in unison.

“I- I did not know,” Lacey admitted, “that your cock was so big!!”

Beth’s fingers wrapped around his shaft, stroking back and forth as she leaned in and swirled her tongue around the tip. Bill groaned, relaxing back on his heels.

“You’re accomplices then,” he said to Lacey.  “You’d better cuff her so I can frisk you as well!”

The brunette gave him a guilty nod and rushed forward.  Beth was lapping along the bottom of his shaft, sending pulses of pleasure through his hips.  As Lacey pulled both arms behind her back and snapped the cuffs on, the redhead opened wide to take him all the way in.  Once she was restrained, she lifted up a little higher on her knees and began sucking him hard and tight.

Lacey straightened and came around to him.  As soon as she was within reach, he grabbed her and pulled her close against his side.  She gasped as he spun her around and began frisking up her slender sides.

“Are you sure you have to do this, Bill?” she asked, trembling in his clutches.

Beth only moaned with his shaft in her mouth, handcuffs rattling as she bobbed and sucked eagerly.

“I’m sorry, it’s procedure,” he declared, reaching around to her chest. 

Grabbing the front of her button-up shirt, he tore it open!  Lacey yelped in surprise as her petite breasts heaved into the open.  Bill drank in the sight of her pert fleshy orbs, so much smaller than her wife’s, but perky and firm.  He clutched them with a moan and her dark nipples hardened, immediately responsive.

Lacey fell back against him, letting her brunette head fall onto his shoulder.  Bill continued fondling her perfect breasts, feeling her shiver as he teased her nipples, then running his fingers down her toned abdomen.  He found a downy strip of hair leading to her tight, wet cunt.  Her hips quivered, bucking against his hand as he stroked her damp cleft.

“You’re both already wet,” he growled.  “Tell me the truth, did you get off on killing Mr. Buerger together?”

“NOH!!” Beth cried around his cock, big green eyes peering up at him.

“Yes we did,” Lacey moaned, clutching his wrists and turning to look up at him.  “But not nearly as much as we’ll get off killing you!”

“Wha- ?” Bill started to question but Lacey leaned up to kiss him.

Beth moaned hungrily around his cock, sucking him even tighter.

Bill couldn’t resist kissing Lacey deeply with one hand now mauling her pert little boobs.  She moaned into his mouth as their tongues squirmed together.  She arched and writhed against him as he stroked her hot little cunt.  She spread her legs for him and slippery juices dripped over his fingers.

Now both women were moaning into him.  Lacey at his mouth, her wife wrapped around his cock.  The vibration of their lust rolled through him, making his blood boil.  His heart was racing his lust growing with every moment.  He didn’t notice the glow emanating from within his belly. 

Beth’s velvety tongue continued massaging his shaft as her plump lips slid up and down his rigid length.  She drooled and slurped, and when she pushed down far enough to gag, her warm wet throat pulsated around his member.

Lacey’s tight, supple body was everything he’d hoped it would be.  Every time she and her wife had starred in his spank-bank, every time he’d fantasized it was her while fucking his wife.  She was firm in the right places, yet soft in all the important ways…

His orgasm surged up from within, his cock twitched and swelled in Beth’s mouth.  She swallowed him as deep as possible, sucking and begging wordlessly for his cum.

Lacey kissed him even deeper, her pussy seeming to vibrate around his fingers.  She squealed, cumming with him.

Scintillating tingles exploded through Bill.  His balls squeezed tight, spraying hot jizz down Beth’s throat.   She gulped it greedily.  And Lacey sucked his lips and his tongue so intently they began to prickle with orgasmic energy…both women slurped and sucked and Bill kept cumming.  It was almost like they were feeding on his orgasm, pulling it through him and out of him…  His heart was racing.  He felt like he should be panicking.  It ached…it hurt…but it felt so damn good…too good…he wanted to scream in pleasure…

But Lacey had an iron grip on the back of his head, holding him in place as she kept kissing him, sucking that orgasmic energy through him, and moaning with a spinetingling hunger as if she wanted to devour him whole!

And in that moment he wanted nothing more than to be devoured by her…

10

Starling came back to herself as the feeding began.  Whatever hold she’d been under weakened now, and she spit out Lietenant Ambrose’s delicious cock.

“NO!” she cried out immediately.  “Bill- !”

Lacey kicked her before she could finish -or, no, it wasn’t Lacey, she knew that now, but this other thing kicked her viciously, sending Starling tumbling across the floor.

She groaned in pain, arms still cuffed behind her back making it difficult to move. 

The thing that looked like Lacey was holding Bill up now.  His arms and legs had gone limp, although his cock was as big and hard as ever, throbbing and spurting thick white jizz onto the floor.  His flesh and body were glowing, shimmering like the fire behind her…but the thing was sucking it away.  With their lips locked it chuckled excitedly, gulping away that radiance.

“BILL!  You’ve got to wake up!” Starling screamed frantically.  “PLEASE! Bill wake up before-“

It was too late.  The thing that looked like Lacey slurped away his glow, leaving him a gray, lifeless husk.  And as it licked its lips and groaned in satisfaction, it didn’t look like Lacey any more…

“Danvers!”

“Hello, Starling,” he grinned at her, still holding the limp body by its neck and chin.

She squirmed into a seated position, straining furiously at her bound wrists.  “What did you do? Is he- ?  Oh gawd, how could you??”

“Yesssss, he was very tasty wasn’t he?” Danvers groaned, giving the body an affectionate shake.  “You must have enjoyed it too, I could hear you moaning around his dick like a hungry little whore… you sounded so like your mother…”

Tears flooded her green eyes.  “It’s not true!  I wasn’t…you made me!”

Danvers chuckled, “Well, that is true…but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy yourself.”  Now he tossed the body away and it crumpled onto her couch.

“No!  Bill…” Starling sobbed.

Danvers grunted, looking down at his hands and flexing them.  “Blast it, he was weaker than I expected…”

With tears streaking down her cheeks, Starling turned her glare towards him.  “You can’t be Tom Danvers…he’s dead!”

He grinned at her, showing a mouthful of fangs.  “I’ve always been a man of two worlds, haven’t I?”

“No, the Tom Danvers I knew wouldn’t kill innocent people!”

“Is that what you think?”

“The last time I saw you, you were sacrificing yourself to save me…”

“You know, I thought that as well,” he said.  “When I poured my energy and power into you, I thought I was giving up my life to save yours…but it turns out being half incubus, only my human half can die.  So the demon half of me has been trapped inside you ever since…incomplete, barely sentient…slowly syphoning off your sexual energy a little bit at a time…then last Christmas, there was a massive influx of sexual energy, something powerful, demonic in nature, and suddenly I began to feel whole again…”

“Oh gawd…the Krampus…”

“Yessss, it’s been torture, being trapped in your vapid bitch mind, but now I’m almost out.”

Starling scowled, and wriggled up onto her feet.  “If you’re trapped in my mind, how are you doing these things?  How did you get to Mr. Buerger? …And Bill?”

“As my powers have grown and returned, I found I could access the dream dimension while you were asleep… at first, I thought I’d be able to escape through it but, I wasn’t powerful enough.  Then I realized I could reach out to the men who lusted after you…who dreamed of you…and feed off of their sexual energy.”

Suddenly they were back in Mr. Buerger’s office.  The short egg-shaped man was telling his secretary to make sure nobody disturbed him while he ate his lunch, then shut and locked the door.

“After you left that day this one came back to his desk to crank one out,” Danvers said as the Buerger apparition hurried to his desk.  “Thinking of you…”

He sat down and took out his dick.  He laid back with his eyes closed, excitedly beginning to stroke.  “Why Miss Stewart,” he murmured, “didn’t expect to see you back today…”  He groaned and Danvers cackled.

“I was able to draw his fantasy into your dreams,” the incubus explained.  “And drink him dry.  He was a pathetic little snack of a man, but the cop… He fantasizes about you and your wife almost every night.  I thought he might give me enough power to finally, fully remanifest myself…”

“But he didn’t,” Starling realized.  “Which means you still need me to feed!  Well I’ll never let you reform yourself, you monster!”

“Remind me again how Officer Bill’s cock tasted,” Danvers hissed.  He snapped his fingers, and Starling’s body went rigid.  “I can make you help me whether you want to or not,” he growled walking towards her.  His hand formed into the inhuman claw it hand been when he killed Director Buerger.  He seized her by the throat, lifting her up off the floor and snarled.  “This may be your mind but I’m the one in control!”

A black gloved fist smashed into the side of Danvers’s face!  He released Starling and pitched sideways across the room with a growl.  She dropped to the floor, kicking and scrambling backwards as a tall caped figure stepped between her and the incubus.

“You’ve always overestimated yourself, Danvers,” Dominion said condescendingly.  “I imagine purging your humanity has only deepened your hubris.”

“You!” hissed the demon, lunging up to his feet.

Dominion, or the memory of him, or the delusion of him, thrust forth both hands, the gloves of his power armor unleashing a blast of energy that sent Danvers crashing backwards through the wall!  The whole room shook and the hole he’d fallen through seemed to be cracked into reality itself…

Dominion turned on Starling, hazel eyes blazing through his horn-rimmed mask.  “It’s time you woke up, slave!”

11

Starling came awake screaming! 

Thrashing wildly, she kicked out of the covers and scrambled off the bed.

Lacey was awake and right behind her, shouting to try and calm her wife.  “Star! Star! It’s okay, you’re home! You’re safe…Come here!”

Starling turned on her, green eyes wide and frantic.  “It’s not me!  It’s Bill…I have to – he needs our -!!”   She was at their bedroom window, wrenching it open.  “Nikki,” she said urgently, “Go check on Nikki…”

“Starling wait! You need to take a breath!”

But the redhead was already diving out through the window.  “And call 911!”

Starling took flight, immediately banking around towards their neighbor’s house.  Part of her knew it was already too late.  Part of her couldn’t accept that.  And none of her could just do nothing.

She tore around their house, then rocketed across the street.  “Bill!” she shouted, swooping down onto the front porch.  “Bill!  Pattie!” She tried to open the door, but it was locked, of course, it was still the middle of the night.  “Bill! Pattie!!”  Starling began pounding on the door and shouting. “Are you guys okay?”

Upstairs a light came on.  Then a moment later Pattie, Lieutenant Ambrose’s wife let out a blood curdling scream.

Starling stopped pounding.  She backed away from the door, arms falling limp at her sides, tears flooding her eyes.

“It’s not your fault,” said the Scarlet Dove, standing behind and just in Starling’s periphery.

“He used me, my brain, somehow…”

The heroine put a hand that wasn’t real on Starling’s shoulder.  “Danvers did this, not you…but we have to figure out how to stop him before he can do it to –“

As if on cue the porch light came on back at Starling’s home, and she whirled around to see Lacey coming out the front door.  She was carrying Nikki, both of them looked concerned, peering at Starling across the quiet street.

“I won’t let him do it to anyone else,” she promised, then flew back to her wife and daughter.

12

“Well, this is fittingly macabre,” Lacey whispered to her wife.  “A funeral so close to Halloween…”

Starling nodded and cast a forlorn glance up at the appropriately overcast autumn sky.  They were both wearing black, but the redhead’s long-sleeved, turtleneck dress covered her from chin, clear down to her ankles.  She was wearing a long black coat over it as well, to hide her figure.

“What’s muh-kob?” Nikki asked, looking up at her brunette mommy.

“Oh, well, it means…sad, I guess,” Lacey stammered, “and a little scary.”

“But Halloween’s fun!” the little girl squeaked.  “I get candy and wear a costume…this is all boring and stuff.”

“Ssssshhhh…” Starling leaned down to her daughter, gripping her shoulders gently. 

Several nearby mourners shot the trio disapproving glances.

“It’s sad today because Mr. Ambrose has passed away,” she explained to Nikki.

“Oh yeah, I’m a miss him,” Nikki nodded, her little face twisting in thought.  “He gave me candy even not on Halloween…”

“He was always very nice to you wasn’t he,” Starling said, scooping her daughter up and clutching her so tight.

Nikki curled around her momma, and they both rested their heads against one another.

Lacey’s heart thumped watching them, her wife and daughter holding each other, their thick scarlet manes perfectly matched.  She moved closer, putting an arm around them.  Starling glanced over, her red lips tight to keep from quivering, and the promise of tears glittering in her glassy green eyes.  No amount of makeup could cover the bags under them.  She had refused to sleep since Lieutenant Ambrose was killed and it was beginning to show.

Lacey was of course just as broken up, maybe more so, she had been closer to Bill.  With the truth of what seemed to be happening to her wife though, she was forcing herself to hold it together for Starling.

It seemed like most of Auburn Hills had come out for the funeral.  Lieutenant Bill Ambrose had been known and well respected.   However, Starling couldn’t help but wonder if it wasn’t at least in part due to the mysterious nature of his death.  And the fact it was the second like it.  And so close to Halloween.

Everyone was of course reverent, and appropriately melancholic…but there were an awful lot of murmurs beginning with “you know they’re saying…” or “well, I heard that he…”

And after the funeral more than a few curious, bordering-on-accusatory glances turned Starling’s way.  Of course, no one could know what was really going on, or even guess.  But it was a small town, and everyone did know that she had been among the last to see Mr. Buerger…and that she had been the one screaming in the middle of the night outside of Bill’s house and beating on the door to wake up Pattie Ambrose, at which point she had discovered her husband dead in the bed next to her.

Starling had been questioned thoroughly in regards to both incidents, and subsequently ruled out as an official suspect.  But that would not stop her name, or rather her alias, from being linked to the growing rumors, and no doubt inevitable urban legends that would spring up surrounding the two mysterious deaths.

“You’re going to have to sleep eventually,” Lacey said, as they crossed the cemetery after the services.

Nikki had run far enough ahead not to hear, weaving through the tombstones and crunching the dry colorful leaves beneath her boots, which were adorably two sizes too big.

 Starling looked down, kicking a few leaves with her own black Pradas.  “I think you should take Nikki and go to my mother’s for a few days.”

“What?”

“You’re right,” Starling’s voice quavered.  “I’m starting to feel like I’ll pass out every time I blink.  But I still have no idea how to stop Danvers.”

“Star, no way I’m just abandoning you!”

“I’m doing my best to make sure nobody lusts after me.”  She gestured down at her concealing and slightly dowdy outfit.  Then despite feeling on the verge of hysterics, Starling had to smirk at her wife.  “But we both know you can’t help it…”

Lacey rolled her brown eyes, but then she grabbed Starling and pulled her close, copping a sneaky feel of her big breasts under the loose coat she was wearing.  “Well now, that is true…”

Starling blushed, melting into the embrace for just long enough to think about how sweet and blissful and relaxing and needed it would be to fall asleep right there in the arms of her wife… She jerked her head up and squirmed out of the embrace, wrapping her coat around her lush figure and holding it in place. 

“See…I can’t risk you, Lace.  Maybe if you’re far enough away he won’t be able to reach you when I do…”  She trailed off, noticing a familiar figure standing not too far away, watching them intently.  “I think we have an audience?”

Lacey followed her eyeline and frowned.  “Oh…that’s the new owner of Other Worldly…”

“I know.”

“You do?”

Seeing them see her, the dark-skinned woman approached cautiously.  “Hello again, Stewarts.”

The long black coat Mackenzie was wearing hugged her figure, making her seem long and tall.  Her raven hair was still arranged into those two braided buns and neat cornrows.  Despite the dreary overcast day, she was once again wearing those opaque black sunglasses. 

“She was here the day they buried Mr. Buerger,” Starling said under her breath.

Even though they couldn’t see her eyes, it was pretty obvious she was checking Starling out.  Jealousy flared in Lacey’s chest, along with the returning suspicion she felt upon their first meeting. 

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” the brunette said sharply.  “Y’know, since you didn’t actually know Bill at all.”

The woman nodded deferentially towards Lacey.  “Yeah, well, I guess I wasn’t sure if it’d be weirder for the town newbie to come, or not to come…I am sorry for your loss, you two seemed close.”

“We were.”

“Bill was our neighbor,” Starling interjected, picking up on Lacey’s uneasy vibe. “It is nice that you came.  Our daughter Nikki is around here somewhere…watch for a wild little carrottop playing amongst the tombstones.”

They all made appropriately somber chuckles.

“I noticed her before, so cute,” Mackenzie said obligingly.  She was once again blatantly looking Starling up and down.

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” Lacey added, pointedly snaking an arm around Starling’s waist.  “I’m a little out of sorts with everything.”

“No, yeah, of course, I understand,” Mackenzie said.  “I’m probably the rude one and…well, because I’m actually here on business, sort of.”

“What business?”

“With us?”

Mackenzie nodded towards Starling.  “With you.”

“What do you mean?” the redhead asked.

Mackenzie tilted her head forward, then eased down the sunglasses.  Beneath them, her eyes were gleaming silver, like two swirling pools of mercury.  Flashing and almost glowing.  “I know what’s happening to you.”

Both Lacey and Starling were stunned, staring at the unnerving eyes.

“What is this,” Starling asked, moving protectively in front of Lacey.

“I mean, I know about Tom Danvers.”

Starling clenched her fists and Lacey took a step backwards. 

“Lace, I think you should get Nikki and get-“

“I am just here to help,” Mackenzie pushed her glasses back up and took her own step back.

“How exactly can you help?” Lacey asked.

“Well, as you know…I’m a witch.”

“A witch?” Starling questioned.

Lacey snorted dismissively.  “She told Bill and me she was a Wiccan.  So what happened to all that ‘a lot of misconceptions surround your religion’ stuff?”

“Well, that is true,” Mackenzie said.  “But also,” she shrugged, “I am a witch.”

“So how can you help?” Starling asked.

“I don’t know exactly what he’s doing to you, but,” she reached up and tapped the black glasses, “I can see it’s getting worse.  My coven has been chasing Tom Danvers for a long time. I think I may have a way for you to untangle yourself from him.”

“Yeah, right,” Lacey snapped.  “We know how he can hold thrall over women, like we’re going to trust you!”

“Lacey,” Starling said hesitantly.  “I think you should get Nikki and head home.”

“What?” the brunette balked immediately.

“I’m going to hear her out.”

Lacey took Starling by the arm, turning her a few steps away.  “What are you thinking?  We can’t trust her!”

Starling glanced back at the supposed witch, she was watching them, still smiling.  “I’m not saying I do, but I can’t stay awake forever and we’ve got nothing.  The minute I fall asleep Danvers could kill again.”

 “And what if it’s her, what if she’s the one actually doing this? Or helping him or-”

“You mean like Typhon with Krampus?”

“Yeah!”

“Then I’ll be able to figure that out,” Starling said.  “Whether she helps me stop him, or I have to stop her…this has to end before anyone else gets hurt.”

Lacey saw the Scarlet Dove in her wife’s face again and looked down, knowing she was right.  And knowing there was no arguing with the superheroine.  “I don’t like this.”

“I know,” Starling put a hand on her shoulder.  “But I don’t have many other options…I want you to take Nikki home, while I-“

“No!” Lacey gasped, eyes going wide.  “I know you’re used to doing the superheroine thing by yourself, but you have me now, you don’t have to.”

“I can’t do the ‘superheroine thing’ if I’m worried about my daughter,” Starling said, her voice hushed and low.  “As long as she’s with you, I know I don’t have to worry and I can focus on stopping Danvers…whatever that takes.”

They both looked back at Mackenzie.  Starling was pretty sure she could hear Lacey’s teeth grinding.

“Fine,” the brunette hissed.  She started to turn away, then grabbed Starling and pulled her into a deep, urgent kiss.  When she pulled back, she fixed her wife with angry brown eyes.  “Come.  Home.”

Starling, who was a little breathless, nodded.  “As soon as I can.”

Then Lacey marched away from Starling back to the other woman, getting right in Mackenzie’s face.  “If you do anything to hurt her, I swear to gawd, I’ll turn Auburn Hills into the new Salem.”

“Wow.”

“Lace!”

“Nikki!”  The brunette stomped away, collecting their precious bundle of oversized boots and red hair.  “Time to go, li’l bit.”

Starling watched them leave, nerves creeping through her chest.  She waved at her daughter as her wife led her away explaining that “Momma’s just making a new friend, we’ll see her soon.”

Starling turned back to the supposed witch.  “I don’t know you.  I don’t trust you.  But I do need your help.” 

Mackenzie nodded, her grin widening.  “We’re on the same page then…”

“So where do we begin?”

13

“Cunning folk, shamans, voodoo, hoodoo, mediums, you name it, according to my granny the women of my family have always had some sort of supernatural sensitivity,” Mackenzie was saying as she led Starling into the cluttered new age shop and dispensary.   

Starling remembered coming here to rescue Lacey from the previous owner.  It still smelled like incense and patchouli, muted now by nearly a year-thick layer of dust.  The same rickety shelving lined the walls, laden with multi-colored crystals, aroma therapy candles, and tarot card decks.  In the center was the sales counter where a glass display case had housed the various cannabis products.  That was currently empty.  It was obvious the new owner had been cleaning and reorganizing but there was still a lot of work to be done.

“I didn’t honestly know what to make of it all,” Mackenzie went on, “and my mom didn’t like talking about it, I was pretty young then.  But when my granny died, I got to meet my Great Auntie Mel…”

“Let me guess,” Starling interjected.  “She told you the truth about your heritage and taught you the witching ways?”

Mackenzie smirked, removing her sunglasses.  Her eyes had returned to normal now, if a slightly unusual shade of grey.  “Heard it all before, have you?”

“I’ve got family shit too, it wasn’t hard to connect the dots,” Starling shrugged.  “It looks like you’ve been cleaning this place up, do you really plan to re-open the shop?”

“I am, I was, I guess I thought it’d be a good cover…to be honest, I thought it’d take a lot longer to find Tom Danvers.”

“I see, so why are you trying to find Tom?”

“So, once Auntie Mel brought me into the coven, that’s when I started learning about him.  We call him a ‘cambion’.”

“I came across that term in the very meager research I’ve been able to do,” Starling said.  “That refers the offspring of an incubus or a succubus, right?”

“Yup,” Mackenzie confirmed.  “And he’s the offspring of a particularly nasty incubus…which me and my coven have sworn to send back to hell.  Or wherever plane of origin.”

Starling blinked in bewilderment.  “You know…I guess it never occurred to me that even if Tom was half-incubus that meant he had a full-demon father out there.”

Mackenzie gave her a sympathetic look.  “This stuff can be scary, I know…”

Starling smirked and nodded.  She had ridden back with Mackenzie, doing her best to explain the situation, but had not told the woman about her entire past being the Scarlet Dove.  Instead, she had more vaguely explained that she had been involved with Tom Danvers for a time.  As to the nature of their energy exchanges, Mackenzie had been able to surmise enough; “Sex demon, I follow…”  However, Starling had been very clear on how the dreams and deaths had played out.  Including what she had found when her and Lacey had snuck a peek at Mr. Buerger’s corpse.

“So how is Tom able to do this to me now?”

“I’m not actually sure, I’ve never even heard of anything like this before,” Mackenzie said, now beginning to move around the shop, collecting various items.  “I suppose it makes a certain sense though.  Incubi have always been known to come at night and prey on sleeping women, right?  Maybe they’ve always had some kind of power to access our dreams and take advantage of us that way.”

“And what about the way he reaches out,” Starling asked.  “How is he able to hurt, even kill other people.”

“I don’t know!  And men, no less!  Completely unprecedented!  At least as far as I know!” It almost seemed like she was starting to gush over it.  Her enthusiasm made Starling uneasy.  Mackenzie went on though, now gathering the things she’d picked up on the sales counter.  “That must be why he’s so tightly entangled with your aura…he’s not just feeding off you, or those men, he must be feeding through you somehow.  It’s like he’s turned you into some kind of unwitting succubus!”

“He’s turning me into a demon??” Starling gasped, horrified.

“Nah, I don’t think he can do that,” Mackenzie blinked thoughtfully.  “I think it’s more like you’re possessed, or like…half possessed?  He can only control you in the dreams, right? Maybe it’s because he was only half-incubus?”

There was an assortment of bottles and herbs on the counter in front of her.  She began putting portions of them into a mortar and pestle which she had also picked up.

“Great So, if I’m half possessed,” Starling interjected.  “Are you going to do a, what, I guess a half exorcism?”

The other woman laughed.  “Oh gosh no, I can’t do exorcisms.”

“I’m just going to be honest and say you seem a little too excited about this,” Starling said, eyeing the witch warily.

“You’re probably right,” Mackenzie continued mixing, but chuckled.  “It’s just I find this all fascinating.  I’ve spent years studying demonology, spirits and witchcraft…and yet, I still come across things I can’t explain.  And in podunk Auburn Hills no less…does stuff like this happen often around here?”

“Let’s hope not,” Starling rolled her eyes, then sighed under her breath, “Although we seem to be on a bit of a roll…”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.  So, what is the plan then?”

Mackenzie looked up at Starling as she began grinding the mortar pestle.  “I do have a theory…but you’re really going to have to go out on a limb and trust me.”

14

The Scarlet Dove soared over the city, her slinky red hair whipping wildly in the cool autumn air.  A slight chill ran up her back, goosebumps rippling under the white bustier and skimpy bikini bottoms.  She couldn’t remember why the costume was so scant, but it was worth it.  She felt so free up here, above it all, gliding, diving and banking, completely untethered.  The city lights twinkled below her, the stars shone above, nothing but the sound of the wind in her ears.  Peaceful.

Until she heard something below… a half-muted shriek of fear.  A woman in danger.  A job for the Scarlet Dove!

She rolled over and pitched into a dive, racing down to the streets below.  It didn’t take long to spot the problem, a woman being accosted by two punks. Common thugs.  No match for the Scarlet Dove!

The superheroine reached them before they knew what was happening.  The woman, a vision of lovely curves and lush brown hair was struggling and kicking as the two men carried her bodily towards a white panel van with no windows.

“Not on my watch!” shouted the Scarlet Dove as she barreled into one of the thugs with her well-practiced torpedo strike maneuver!

Her fists crashed into his chest and he released the woman’s legs, flying backwards to slam against the brick wall of a nearby building.  He slumped into a heap, certainly unconscious.

The woman, to her credit, immediately began fighting to get free now that her feet were back on the ground.  Unfortunately, she was outmatched by the hardened criminal, who spun her to face him then clocked the poor thing viciously.  She went down easily, letting out a sharp cry that struck the heroine a litter harder than she expected.  Anger flared!

“Now it’s your turn, Scarlet Bitch!” the thug growled, turning towards her.

“Bring it on, scumbag!” she said, smirking below her white feathered mask.

He charged at her with a wide looping punch.  The heroine blocked that easily, slugging him in the stomach.  He recoiled and she followed up with a hard kick to his ribs.  Hearing the air rush from his lungs, seeing his knees wobble, she knew she had him.  The Scarlet Dove lifted one of her golden bracelets, it housed a compact high-tech electrolaser and she activated it without hesitation.

The thug barely had time to register the two red dots which appeared on his chest, before the stunning voltage surged through him!  He let out a jittery croak, then crumpled to the pavement.

Now the Scarlet Dove approached the distressed damsel, reaching down to help her up.  “Just take it slow and easy, you’re alright now…”

“Yeah, right,” the brunette groaned, taking her hand.  “What took you so- wait!  LACEY??”

Everything had seemed far away and dreamy until that moment, but hearing that voice penetrated into the heroine’s head.  She blinked, remembering who she was and who she was not, and recognizing the beautiful face looking up at her through those thick brown tresses.  “S- St- …Star?”

Lacey’s wife got back to her feet, shoving the unfamiliar brunette hair out of her face.  “Ohhh no no no no no!” she groaned.

“But you’re… your hair…why are you a brunette?” Lacey asked, trying to make sense of it.  She knew things weren’t right, even felt like she should have a sense of why but… She ran both hands through her own hair trying to think, but when she noticed crimson in her periphery pulled a lock forward where she could see it. “Is my hair red??”  Then she felt something on her face, the mask and feathers, and as everything began to coalesce she looked down…her body was barely covered, breasts tucked into a tight white bustier, below that nothing but a pair of bikini bottoms and gold boots, and a lot of bare skin.  Embarrassment rushed through Lacey as she gasped, “Holy shit!  Why am I dressed like you?”

“Because,” Starling sighed.  “We’re in a friggin’ dream.”

It hit Lacey all at once, Of course we are!  This is a dream, yes I’ve had it before.  Getting to fly, getting to know how it felt…

But unlike usual, when she realized she was dreaming…she did not wake up.

“You’re supposed to be at home,” Starling was saying.  “Awake? With Nikki…what happened? Do you remember?”

“Right!” Lacey replied.  “Right, I- I remember…” She thought back, she hadn’t gone to bed, had she even made it home?  She reached up, rubbing her temples and trying to pull details from a groggy mind.  “I remember sitting down on the couch…Li’l bit wanted to watch…something…”

“So you’re passed out on the couch right now?” Starling groaned.  “Shocker.”

“Wait, what happened to you?” Lacey suddenly remembered her wife going off with the supposed witch.  “What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for Danvers,” Starling said, taking a step back and looking around.

Lacey followed her glance, taking in the suddenly bizarre proportions of a dreamlike cityscape. 

“Mackenzie gave me some potion that’s supposed to keep me lucid, so I can-“

Suddenly she was interrupted by a loud CLANK and the metallic hiss of the door sliding open on that white panel van.  Three figures began to climb out.  The first was wearing a plain gray suit, with rugged hair and long thick sideburns.

“Well, well, look like dis petty li’l birdie done fell right into our trap, gentlemen,” he said in a thick cajun accent.

“She always was a dumb bimbo, and always fell for all my tricks,” the next replied.  He was tall, exceptionally handsome and wearing a slick back tuxedo.  “Heya, Dovey…long time no fuck.”

Lacey recognized Pierce Ashton immediately, but the not third…

“Don’t get cute with her you two,” rumbled a hulking figure, “or she’ll get you killed.”  This one was wearing a green hazmat suit, its head encased in a creepy bug-like gasmask.

Instinctively the usually-not-a-redhead stepped in front of her oddly brunette wife.  “This isn’t usually how my Scarlet Dove dream goes…”

“No,” Starling sighed.  “This is more like mine…”

15

After drinking Mackenzie’s positively fowl tasting concoction, Starling found herself on the streets of…well, it certainly wasn’t Auburn Hills, but it didn’t seem quite like Warden City either.  Or any city she had been to, it was more like the memory of a city.  That weird bright darkness of a city night.  Long orderly sidewalks stretched away under the yellow glow of streetlights.  Tall brick and concrete buildings rising up into the sky on all sides, each one so different, all of them exactly the same.  And between them were sinister alleyways overrun by skittering vermin, and lurking, watching eyes.

It was just like the witch had said it would be.  Surreal.  Dreamlike, yet so vivid.  Tangible, but unreal.  The potion she’d given Starling…

Jeez, am I really drinking magic potions now?  I’m supposed to be retired…

…The potion was supposed to allow her body and mind to fall into a deep sleep, while keeping her consciousness alert, isolated in a way.  This would –should- (“I have this theory…”) allow Starling to traverse the dream realm and confront Danvers with all of her mental faculties intact. 

“It’s a step beyond lucid dreaming,” Machenzie had explained.  “You’ll be in control, at least of yourself…”

Although maybe not entirely, Starling thought looking down at herself and wondering where her outfit had come from.

She was wearing a snug dark green blouse, and a brown skirt that didn’t quite reach her knees.  Matching brown leather boots came almost to her knees, with high heels that clicked and clacked too loudly on the sidewalk, seeming to reverberate throughout the entire dreamy city.

“DANVERS!” Starling screamed.  “TOM DANVERS, WHERE ARE YOU?”

Her voice echoed off the buildings surrounding her, shouting back at her, growing more shrill, and then growling deeply, before falling eerily silent.

Starling looked around.

Suddenly there were hands on her and she screamed as they dragged her into one of those alleys.  Darkness enveloped her.  The city disappeared.  There were so many hands.  Grabbing.  Groping.  Seizing her breasts and mashing the soft orbs.  Pulling at her arms.  Caressing her sides.  They were so strong she couldn’t resist.  Starling tried to scream again but a hand clamped tightly over her mouth.  More hands pulled at her clothes.  Fingertips danced and pawed along her inner thighs.  Her ass was gripped tightly, then slapped hard.  Each cheek was groped and spanked over and over in no specific pattern.  Her curvaceous hips were squeezed and tickled.  Starling thrashed helplessly, panic twisting her stomach.  Her wrists and ankles were being tightly held.  More fingers combed and raked through her thick hair, then grabbed and yanked.  Every inch of her was prickling from the unwelcome mauling when she felt a hand stroking her pussy.  Her labia were spread open, her sensitive folds stroked and teased.  Despite herself a rush flowed through her making her heart throb and her nipples tingle.

No!  No…this isn’t…isn’t even possible… she suddenly reminded herself.  This is a dream, THE Dream…

Right away the hands pulled back and she lurched into motion.  Two leering faces flashed out of the darkness.  Neither of them were Danvers.  Neither of them were anybody.  Two entirely nondescript men carried her bodily out of the alley and back into the yellow light of the endless city street.

Starling tried to buck free, but she felt sluggish.  The men held her up by the arms and legs, hurrying towards a white panel van.

Then a red and white blur swooped down out of the sky, blasting away the man holding her legs.

Was that the Scarlet Dove? Starling realized.  Or my delusion of her, I guess…Maybe that’s good, she seems to know my head better than I do at times…

Starling scrabbled for footing, but before she could get free of the other man, he spun her around and hit her, so hard!  She cried out in pain and hit the ground, squirming and dazed.  Her face and jaw were instantly aching.  The entire dream-city seemed to spin around her. 

Luckily, the Dove took care of that man too while Starling struggled to clear her head.

“Just take it slow and easy, you’re alright now,” the heroine said, her voice familiar in the wrong way.

“Yeah, right,” Starling groaned, rolling over to see those familiar golden heels.  She took the hand offered to help her up.  “What took you so-“

Starling’s eyes scanned up the superheroine, long, slim legs and narrow hips in the skimpy white bikini bottoms.  So sexy…  A toned abdomen was wrapped in the skintight bustier, with the golden outline of a dove on it.  And the breasts tucked under that were perky and modest, and Starling felt a rush of possessive attraction.  It was not her body, not even the fit younger body she was used to when seeing the apparition…in fact Starling knew every subtle curve instantly.

“-Wait!  LACEY??”

Big brown eyes blinked behind the familiar white feathered mask.  “S- St- …Star?”

“Ohhh no no no no no!”  Starling got up, frustratedly pushing thick brown tresses back from her face.  I guess now I get why I’m the brunette this time…but how is this even possible?

“But you’re… your hair…why are you a brunette?” Lacey sounded slurred and groggy, like whenever she was just waking up.  She combed both hands through her own slinky bob, then paused, pulling a few strands forward.  “Is my hair red??”  Then, feeling the mask, she looked down at her skimpily attired body.  “Holy shit!  Why am I dressed like you?”

“Because we’re in a friggin’ dream,” Starling said.  “You’re supposed to be at home,” she took a step towards her confused wife.  “Awake? With Nikki…what happened? Do you remember?”

“Right!” Lacey gasped.  “Right, I- I remember…” she was rubbing her temples.  “I remember sitting down on the couch…Li’l bit wanted to watch…something…”

“So you’re passed out on the couch right now?” Starling said.  “Shocker.”

“Wait, what happened to you!  What are you doing here?” Lacey asked.

“I’m looking for Danvers,” Starling explained as they both looked around the city dreamscape.  “Mackenzie gave me some potion that’s supposed to keep me lucid, so I can-“

Suddenly they were interrupted by a loud CLANK and the metallic hiss of the door sliding open on that white panel van.  Three figures climbed out and Starling’s heart dropped seeing them. 

The first was Creole Creed, the deadly Cajun assassin, sporting his long thick sideburns.  “Well, well, look like dis petty li’l birdie done fell right into our trap, gentlemen.”

“She always was a dumb bimbo, and always fell for all my tricks,” replied Pierce Ashton, the next.  He looked as good as ever, tall, classy and razor-fine, and for some reason wearing a full tuxedo.  “Heya, Dovey…long time no fuck.”

“Don’t get cute with her you two,” rumbled the third, Ozone, “or she’ll get you killed.”  The hulking mutant looked even bigger than she remembered, wearing that ragged green jumpsuit and his creepy gasmask.

Starling’s heart was racing but she fought down the panic, even as Lacey stepped between her and the unlikely trio.

“This isn’t usually how my Scarlet Dove dream goes,” said her unusually redhaired wife.

“No, this is more like mine…”

16

Starling grabbed Lacey’s gold braceleted wrist.  “We should run!”

“Hey! Wait, I must stop these heinous men!” she shouted as Starling dragged her away from the encroaching villains.

“What? Lace!”

“Right, dream, sorry!” They turned and dashed back into the alleyway. 

“Is that really how you really see me in your dreams,” Starling grumbled as the darkness enveloped them completely.

“No… I don’t- I… I dunno what that was…” 

Starling held onto Lacey as tightly as she could as they both ran on.  The darkness before them parted like a curtain, and they were running out of the alleyway and right back into the waiting hands of the three villains!

“No!” Starling hissed, pulling up short.

“How the fuck- ?” Lacey cried, glancing back in confusion.

The villains were already grabbing them. 

“I hate this dream crap!” Starling snapped and looked towards the ominous sky.  “Danvers!” she shouted frantically.  “I know this is you!  Stop this!  Don’t you dare hurt her!”

Pierce snagged a handful of Starling’s brown hair, then wrestled both arms behind her back.  Creole Creed seized Lacey, trapping her in the same position.  Both women thrashed and hissed but they were manhandled easily and turned towards Ozone.  The mutant lifted a hand towards each of them and the sores on his skin opened to spray thick gouts of his green Biomist into their furious faces.  Pierce and Creed yanked back on the women’s hair making them both cry out in pain, and ensuring they gasped full doses of the toxin. 

Overpowered and helpless, Starling and Lacey coughed and choked as their heads were engulfed in the putrid clouds.  They continued to struggle but already their strength was draining.  As their heads began to swim they looked at each other dejectedly, their vision blurred, then their bodies slumped into the cruel clutches of their attackers.  The dreamscape city spun around them.  The leering laughing faces of the three villains closed in and fear clutched the hapless women… Or it would have if they hadn’t both been so out of it by then.

Pierce scooped Starling up off the ground, her head lolling backwards as her luscious curves sprawled senselessly across his arms.

Creole Creed slung Lacey over one shoulder, her body limp and unresponsive as he groped her pert ass in those skimpy white bottoms.

Though not completely unconscious the woozy women could offer no further resistance as they were carried to that white panel van and loaded inside.

“Sheee-oot, y’all’re taking long enough!” hooted the driver, a skinny blond with sloppy tattoos and a dirty wife-beater.

“Buh – Baker?” Starling grunted groggily as she was deposited onto the cold metal floor.

He didn’t reply, just honked the horn and revved the engine.

Lacey flopped down beside her with a painful sigh.  Starling’s heart thumped in worry, and she squirmed towards her wife.

“Lace,” she murmured weakly.

Lacey looked over and they reached clumsily for each other.  Their eyes met, though both their vision was still blurry and dim, and neither could think clearly enough to even be panicking.

“Get a move on, mon ami,” Creed barked as the three villains climbed into the van.

Him, Pierce and Ozone were all chortling lustily over the hapless women, and wringing their hands as they moved in to surround them.

Baker howled and gunned the engine.  The van lurched into motion, rumbling and bouncing the two groggy girls across the metal floor.

Starling whimpered in alarm and tried to hang onto Lacey, but they both slid in opposite directions… each into the waiting hands of one of those evil men.  Pierce Ashton dragged Lacey into his lap, while Creole Creed’s gruff hands were already pawing at Starling’s soft naked curves.

Wait! What happened to our clothes?? Starling wondered blearily as the Cajun grabbed her fleshy globes, squeezing tightly and rolling her nipples between rough fingertips.  She shuddered against him, feeling the heat of his skin and coarseness of his body hair.  He was naked too.

She looked over at Lacey and Pierce, who were both nude as well.  Lacey still had the unusual red hair, but the white feathered mask and skimpy two piece were gone.  Her slim, toned body looked so weak and delicate against Pierce’s powerful muscular build.  Her modest breasts were heaving, her long legs squirming to give tawdry glimpses of her vulnerable slit as he manhandled her.  

His eyes darted towards Starling and he licked his lips as his hands slid over her wife’s firm, subtle curves.  “At least one of you kept it tight,” he smarmed.

The two naked women squirmed helplessly as they were molested by the vile men.  Still groggy and disoriented by the Biomist, they could do little more than whimper in protest as their sensitive breasts were mauled.  Or whine in disgust as gruff hands toyed with, then violated their exposed vaginas.  Starling squeezed her knees together, but Creed shoved them apart with ease.  Lacey tried to push Peirce’s hand away, but he only captured her wrists and pinned them behind her back. 

With both Starling and Lacey trapped, the leering villains began to finger them roughly.  The women writhed desperately but could not get away, grunting and groaning as those cruel digits pushed in and out of their pussies.  Their legs shook and trembled as the men worked them over, more fingers were inserted, their defenseless holes were stretched.  Pulses of heat and unwanted tingles flooded their hips and bellies.  Both women tossed their heads back in dismay as they were pushed, pulled and jammed…until their bodies unwittingly responded to the rugged stimulation.

Pierce and Creed chuckled in unison feeling hot juices seeping around their invading knuckles.  They pumped the women a few more times before pulling their fingers out, slick and glistening.  The men licked them clean with eager grunts.  Flushed and breathing heavy, Starling and Lacey each looked up at their respective assailant, watching in abject humiliation as the villains savored their taste.  Then before either of them knew what was happening, the men forced them down onto all fours.

The wives looked at each other with bleary eyes and weary sighs.  They reached out to hold hands but before their fingers could entwine…they both cried out, sharp and shrill, as big hard cocks were forced inside them!

Even though they were both wet, their pussies stretched and twinged at the girthy penetrations!  The women squirmed and whimpered as Peirce and Creed grabbed onto their hips, pulling them backwards to fill them up completely.

Lacey’s eyes bulged and her mouth gaped open breathlessly.  She shuddered feeling herself stretched and aching around Pierce’s massive manhood, a wholly unfamiliar feeling for her.

Lacey hadn’t been with a man since that night she’d “interviewed” the captain of her high school’s cheerleading squad for the school paper…well, except the one other time she’d tried to help with one of Starling’s investigations.

Starling’s eyelids were fluttering as Creole Creed slid in easily, warm and swollen.  He’d had her so many times in the past it was almost like hooking up with an old fling, and her body instantly molded itself around the all too familiar shape of that Cajun Cock. 

“St- Star?” Lacey grunted. “Are- are you- …oh fuck!”

“It’s just a- just a dream, baby,” Starling moaned with a deep gulp.

“A very good dream, mes cheries!”

And then they were getting fucked.  Hard! 

The men’s fingers dug into their curvy hips, forcing them ruggedly back and forth.  Those rock-hard dicks pumped in and out, sending anxious heat through their feminine bodies.  Hot juices were already running down the backs of their thighs.  Despite themselves, Starling and Lacey immediately began to moan and squeal.  They couldn’t help it.  A chorus of “Oh”s, “uhh”s and “Ah!”s pealed through their trembling lips as those villains plowed into their dripping cunts.

Starling’s tits were swinging back and forth between her arms, and her big round ass was bouncing with every thrust.  Creed rocked her curvaceous body relentlessly.  That lush brown hair whipped around her head, and she cried out for each hard, deep stroke.  She was already shaking.  She could feel the sticky juices spurt down the insides of her thighs every time he plunged into her.  Starling couldn’t resist spreading her knees and arching her back to take him even deeper.

Lacey’s eyes were rolled back, her tongue even starting to loll over her lips.  The sensation of Pierce’s perfect cock was unbelievable!  Sliding, pumping, throbbing inside of her trembling and suddenly very needy body. 

Starling had told her how amazing he was, once or maybe twice, before they were married…and to be honest, it had always lingered in the back of Lacey’s mind.  Couldn’t be possible, right? He was just a pretty boy billionaire…only now here he was proving it!

A man, and of all men, Pierce Ashton had Lacey screaming!  Pierce Ashton had her throwing her tight little ass back desperately to meet every buck of his hips.  To take each quick hard stroke even deeper.  Had her ready to beg for more, harder- Oh gawd! Ke-ke-ke-keep going!!

Then nearly in unison, Starling and Lacey shuddered as lightning flashed up their spines.  They hung their heads and began to go tense as an irresistible pressure built through their violated bodies.  Pierce and Creed both sensed this and yanked them back hard, burying their cocks all the way inside both women and holding them there.  The intense deep pressure made Starling and Lacey cum, whipping their heads back and crying out.  Their pussies clenched tight around those hot hard shafts, as sticky juices gushed down their trembling thighs.

And an iridescent light pulse over their sweat-slick skin as a hungry incubus devoured the energy of their orgasms.

Both women slumped, gasping for breath as the villains pulled their cocks out.  Both their vaginas trembled, feeling stretched and loose.

Creed spanked Starling’s big round ass, making her whine and jump as it quivered. “I think it’s time for de switch, no?”

“Sure,” Pierce replied, wiping his hard dripping cock across Lacey’s peachy butt cheek.  “Gettin’ kinda bored with this piece anyway.”

Starling and Lacey were too weak to resist as they were passed between the vicious men, but they managed to catch each other’s eyes.

“Did you feel that?” Lacey whispered, wincing as Creed ran a hand over her ribs and grabbed her breast.

“Danvers,” Starling confirmed. 

Then Pierce seized her by the chin, turning her away from Lacey and kissing her deeply, hungrily, possessively.  Starling tried to pull away but he gripped her tightly, one hand reaching up to maul her big soft breast.  The sensation rippled through her chest, his hot tongue squirmed into her mouth and flooded her head with memories of when she had fallen for him…fallen so hard…and she melted against him.  Her own hands crawled over his hard chest. She moaned into his mouth as her fingers fondled the sharp cuts of his perfect muscles, his hot smooth skin making her palms tingle.

Jealousy twisted inside of Lacey watching her wife suck-face with Pierce fucking Ashton.  But she couldn’t dwell on it.  Creole Creed was dragging her onto his lap and guiding her to straddle him.  His body was so different from Pierce’s, blocky and covered in coarse dark hair.  She tried to squirm out of his grasp but he was too strong, even if she hadn’t still been weak from an orgasm and being drained by the incubus.  Creed laughed as they grappled, as if it was fun, then he forced her into position, face to face with her legs spread over his lap…and he shoved his hard cock inside her.

In the back of Starling’s mind she knew this was just another trick, Danvers playing with her mind and emotions and body…but the rest of her mind seemed to buy it, because when Pierce broke the kiss, she was left dazed and stared up at him dreamily.  He pulled her onto his lap and Starling willingly wrapped her legs around him.  She could already feel his hardon between her thighs, pressing against her dripping seam.  Starling licked her lips and rolled her hips into him.  He groaned as his cock twitched along her slit, then slipped inside without having to be guided.  Starling sucked in a breath as her body engulfed him, hard, hot, and filling her perfectly.  Another rush of lust and memories made her head spin.

Both women threw their heads back and moaned as they were pulled down onto the long hard rods.  Their hot little cunts gushed around the already slick shafts.  Heat rushed up both their bodies making their nipples twinge and ache.  The villains both began to swat and slap the women to get them riding.  Starling and Lacey let out startled yelps and began to move up and down.  Pierce and Creed reclined beneath them, both wearing insufferably smug grins.  They grabbed the girls by the hips to force them into rhythm.

Lacey gasped and moaned, Creed’s cock stretched her differently than Pierce’s had, making her wince and wiggle awkwardly.  The Cajun didn’t seem to mind, guiding her up and down his rigid pole. 

Starling reached over and took Lacey’s hand, entwining their fingers.  She was already riding Pierce smoothly, her pussy drooling all over his magnificent shaft as his tight grip guided her hips, back, forth, up, down, rock and grind…He spanked her and Starling let out whimpery moan, gushing around his tool as every curve trembled with need! 

Then the wives looked at each other.  Still so strange to see the wrong hair colors, whipping and swishing as they bounced up and down, being forced to ride the evil men.  Lacey’s perky boobs bouncing rhythmically with every buck and roll, Starling’s big soft breasts bounding wildly.  They could see the temptation flooding each other’s bleary eyes, their faces were flush with unwanted arousal…and neither liked hearing the other moaning and gasping every time they drove down on the hard dicks inside them.

But the wives kept hold of each other…fleetingly, but determinedly and it began to ground them.  Through the nearly orgasmic haze of unwanted pleasure, and despite the hard, driving force plunging inside their bodies… a clarity began returning to their gaze and their connection.

“St-Star…w-w-we n-need to -oh fuuuck-AHHH!”

“I kno – OH! Oh oh oh oh oh oh oooohhhhh!”

Creed and Pierce began fucking up into them now!  Bouncing the women up and down wildly.  Harder.  Faster.  Thrusting up, then yanking down, forcing those long hard poles deep deep inside them!

Lacey and Starling were both screaming, and shaking, but they kept hold of each other’s hand. 

The rigid cocks slammed in and out, faster, deeper, scrambling their brains.  Their violated cunts gushed sticky fluids in thick, stingy spurts and pulsated around the invading members then they came again!  They couldn’t help it.  Pierce and Creed held them down, cocks buried to the hilt, throbbing inside them.  Lacey and Starling groaned as both their pussies squeezed those burning shafts like their bodies were trying to milk them.

The scintillating orgasms rushed up their spines, flooding their heads and necks with heat.  Then that energy poured out of them…and demonic laughter crackled through the van… not Pierce’s nor Creed’s, not Ozone’s, or even Baker’s… it was Danvers.  Wherever he was.

Their hands slipped apart as the women slumped forward, gasping for breath, heads spinning from the climax…and weakened even more by the incubus’s feeding.

That’s when Ozone stepped in between them.  The hulking mutant was naked, except for that bug-eyed gasmask.  His body was mishappen but powerfully built.  His grayish flesh was covered in heinous sores.  As was the massive, discolored cock hanging between his legs. 

Both Starling and Lacey recoiled meekly at the sight, but the men between their legs held them in place.  Creed and Pierce still clutched onto the curves of their hips, their cocks were still hard and lodged inside the two women. 

Ozone reached down, cupping each woman’s chin in one hand.  They could not pull away or resist as he tilted their fearful faces up towards his looming mask.  Then the sores around his wrist pulsated and opened, emitting fresh clouds of Biomist.  Starling and Lacey whimpered in dread as the toxin flowed around their heads. 

That’s when Creed and Pierce began to fuck them again, bucking those hard cocks inside their worn-out cunts.  The two women both gasped and moaned, sucking in rancid lungful’s as they were forced to resume riding the villains.

Starling and Lacey instantly went woozy once more.  Their vision blurred, their bodies drooped limply.  Even with the villains fucking them, they might have collapsed… but Ozone kept hold of their chins.  He guided them closer, bringing both of their faces to that huge, mishappen member.  It began to swell as he pressed their faces against it.

His hands moved around to cup the backs of their foggy heads, his grotesque but powerful fingers tangled into their red and brown hair.  Both women were disoriented and supplicant.  Ozone controlled them easily.  He rubbed his rough dick over their lips, Lacey then Starling, then back.  In this hapless state, they both let their lips part and their tongues instinctively lapped at the hideous shaft.

He forced his cock into Lacey’s mouth first.  She whined as it slid over her tongue, knobby and bitter tasting.  Her trembling lips clung around his shaft.  He moved her head up and down a few times, letting her drool and coat him in spit.  Then he popped wetly out and shoved his cock down Starling’s throat.  Her glassy green eyes widened but she took him in with a hoarse gulp.  He pulled out and she gagged, then in again, deeper.

Lacey’s heart thumped seeing her wife’s throat bulge around that mutated member.

Starling took him in again and again, slurping around the pocked leathery shaft, seeming to run deeper each time.  Tears flooded her eyes as she gagged, streaming down her flushed red cheeks.  When he finally pulled all the way out, she sputtered ropey streams of saliva over her lips.  Then it was Lacey’s turn again.  And Starling had to watch in dazed dismay as her wife was forced suck that corrupted cock.  Lacey sputtered and gulped as he yanked her head back and forth, until spit and precum were oozing between her lips and stringing off her chin as well.  Then it was time to fuck Starling’s throat some more.

As they woozily serviced Ozone’s mutanthood, Starling and Lacey were continuing to ride Creole Creed and Pierce Ashton. Straddling over the reclined villains both women obediently bounced up and down on their throbbing cocks.

Periodically Creed would slap Lacey’s tight little ass to get her riding faster, and she would yelp then comply, grinding her hips with urgency. 

Pierce kept a firm hold of Starling’s salacious hips, guiding her up and down on an achingly steady pace.

Already both women could feel another orgasm building.  In the back of their muddled brains, they both wondered if they would survive another feeding…

All while Ozone continued to pass his twisted dick back and forth between their drooling, gasping mouths.  Until he finally pulled Starling all the way down and held her there.  She gagged and groaned miserably as the mutant filled her mouth with thick venomous sperm.  Her cheeks bulged and miscolored jizz spurt between her lips.  Then he pulled out, letting her cough and sputter on the rancid mouthful.

Stroking the hideous shaft, Ozone quickly turned and grabbed Lacey by the chin.  She tried to pull away but jizz spurt across her face, splattering her cheek and eye.  Then he pried down her jaw and shoved the tip of his dick into her mouth, giving her a mouthful of the toxic sperm as well.

“Don’t swallow!” Starling coughed hoarsely, greenish slime dripping from her lips and tongue.

A metallic groan issued from within Ozone’s mask as he milked gobs of the putrid cum into Lacey’s mouth.  When he finally backed away, she lurched forward coughing and retching the disgusting stuff onto Creed’s chest.

“Merde!  Pour l’armour de Dieu!” the Cajun hissed in disgust and shoved Lacey away.

Pierce began to cackle laughter…and stopped fucking Starling.

Creed stood up, trying to wipe the revolting greenish slime from his hairy chest, but it only smeared.  He glared at Lacey and snarled, “You think dis is funny, no?”

Dripping with the fetid spunk, still tasting it even, Lacey shook her head, scooting away fearfully.

“Yes, dis a big laugh?” Creed growled, lunging at her.  “Let’s see if you laughin’ when-“

“Get away from her you piece of shit!” snarled Starling’s voice.

Then Creole Creed lurched backwards!  The Scarlet Dove had him by the back of his dark hair.  He let out a surprised shout, but before he could react, she wheeled into a high roundhouse, her golden boot catching him right in the sideburn.  The Cajun tumbled backwards, falling out of the van door which had apparently been open the entire time.  He disappeared as they raced along with the city dreamscape flying by outside.

Lacey looked up at the superheroine in awe.  She was not Lacey’s soft, voluptuous wife but the tight, vivacious women she’d met back in Warden City.  She was wearing the white bustier and the sexy bikini bottoms, and that mysterious white feathered mask with the same thick lustrous waves framing it.

The heroine reached down to help Lacey up.  “You’re safe! I got you,” she said.

Lacey threw arms around the neck of the Scarlet Dove and buried her face in that lush crimson mane.

“I knew you would get us out of this!” Lacey gasped.  “I knew you would save me!” 

17

“Unhand my slave!”

A black armored combat boot thumped the metal floor just behind Pierce’s head.  Both him and Starling looked up in shock and fear, then uncoupled and scrambled away from the looming Dominion.

Before they got far his black gloved hands seized the naked billionaire, hauling him up off the floor.

“What the fuck!” Pierce shouted.  “Do you know who I am?”

“I do, and you were never worth even the paper all your money was printed on.”  Picking Pierce up by the scruff of the neck, Dominion turned and shoved him towards the door of the van, which was still wide open. 

Pierce screamed, tumbling out into the city streets which were rushing by at impossible speeds.  He was gone just that quick.

Then Dominion turned back to Starling, who was staring up at him, trembling and gasping for breath. 

“It was so pathetic of you to let him toy with your emotions, slave.”

“Y-yes, Master.” 

It was one thing to hallucinate an apparition of him in the real world, and another to be naked and helpless on the floor before him.  Starling stared up at Dominion in his glossy black power armor with the billowing cloak, gripped by the abject terror he’d instilled in her, trained into her.  And yet, part of her still yearned for him as well.  With those cruel hazel eyes looking straight through her, blazing from within that black cowl and mask, she instinctively began to assume a kneeling position…

Which was more frightening to her now than even the actual fear of him; that fact that part of her still craved the broken solace she’d found in utter submission to her Master.

“You!” came an enraged metallic hiss.

And Dominion turned to face Ozone. 

“You’re the one who killed me!” the mutant roared.  “Now I’ll return the favor!”

Dominion actually smirked within his shadowed cowl.  “Come and do it then.”

Ozone roared and charged. 

Starling scrambled away from the fight still shaking.  Pull it together, she told herself, it’s not real, he’s not here…that’s just the delusion, a hallucination, a memory… And her breathing began to slow.

Behind her Dominion was using his cloak to disperse a cloud of Biomist, and battering the hulking mutant with his armored fists.

Lacey is real, she’s yours and she needs you…So Starling forced herself stand, using the van wall for support.  Her pussy gave an achy twinge and her knees wobbled, still feeling weak from her orgasms.

There was a flash of light as Dominion’s power-glove blasted Ozone.

“You- you son-of -a…” the naked mutant growled, staggering and clutching his smoking chest.

Starling lunged forward before Ozone could recover and shoved him out the door.  The mutant howled, disappearing into the rushing cityscape just like Creed and Pierce had.

Then she staggered back leaning against the wall of the van.  She was still brunette and her naked body was still dripping with green cum.  Looking warily towards her Master, he crossed his arms and glowered.

“You’re lucid in here,” he said, hazel eyes blazing behind his horn-rimmed mask, “but Danvers’s is still using your own mind against you, slave.”

“I- I know, Master,” Starling murmured.  Then she shook her head, green eyes lit with alarm.  She scanned the back of the van.  “Wait!  Where’s Lacey?  Lace!”

Her wife was hugging the Scarlet Dove, but hearing Starling’s voice again she pulled away, looking back and forth between them in confusion. 

“What the… who are you?”

The Scarlet Dove just smiled and took a step back as the naked brunette-Starling rushed into her redhaired wife’s arms.  Touching each other, feeling each other’s familiar curves and skin, even if they were both wet and sticky, they instinctively knew the truth and Lacey held her wife.

“This dream shit is trippy-“ but then Lacey noticed the man in black power armor.  She recognized the hooded mask with the white horned design.

“Star, get back!” Lacey growled, stepping between them.

Dominion merely crossed his arms and smirked.

“Don’t you dare come near her!”

“Lace,” Starling put a hand on her shoulder.  “It’s okay,  he’s- they’re, here to help.  I think.”

“Help?” Lacey glanced at her wife, then Dominion, then the Scarlet Dove, then back to her wife again.  “He…They… they’re…he’s??  What?”

“We’re here to help,” the Scarlet Dove reiterated.  “Danvers is powerful but this is still her mind.”

“And we’re the more powerful parts of her psyche,” Dominion interjected.  “She tries to keep us walled off, so she can be the perky normal boring housewife and mother…for you.”  His voice dripped with disdain.

Lacey turned to her wife, who looked down and hugged her naked chest.   “Is this… what your nightmares are like?”

Starling pushed back a brown lock, searching for the right words. 

“Oh, it’s not just her dreams,” Dominion chuckled.

“You shut the fuck up!” Lacey snapped, shooting him a fearless glare.

“It’s true,” said the Scarlet Dove.  “She sees us, she talks to us, usually when she’s stressed, or worried. Or angry.”

“Starling, what are they…that’s not true…is it?”

Swallowing hard.  “Yeah…kinda…”

“Wait wait wait!!  Are telling me you hallucinate the Scarlet Dove and your… and… him?”

“I didn’t want to tell you because I knew you’d freak out…”

“That my wife is having full-on hallucinations?” Lacey snapped.  “Yeah, maybe a little…”

“It’s not exactly like that,” Starling replied.  “Like Master said-“

“Don’t you dare call him that,” Lacey hissed.

“But part of her will always belong to me,” Dominion said.

Lacey whirled towards him.  “Not if I rip you out of her right fucking now…”

“Lace!” Starling grabbed her arm.  “They are parts of me, is what I meant…”

Lacey turned back to glare at her wife.  Starling looked up now and their eyes met.

“I don’t know if it’s healthy, actually I know it’s probably not, but they aren’t just hallucinations,” she said.  “And they come when I need them.  And they’re here to help now.”

Lacey softened, then eyed the two delusions again.  “Well, I doubt anything that manifests as this scumbag can be healthy,” she snarled towards Dominion, “or even helpful.  But I don’t know what’s really going on in this dream, so assuming we survive it-”

“THAT IS A BOLD ASSUMPTION!” Cackled an all too familiar voice.

All four of them turned to see Tom Danvers was now driving the van. 

“Hope you’re all wearing your seatbelts!” he howled, spinning the wheel wildly and causing the van to roll out from under them.

Lacey, Starling and the Scarlet Dove screamed as they pitched, fell and bounced like they were in a tumble dryer.  Dominion shouted angry curses and was the first to fall out of the open door.

Starling managed to find her footing for a split second, and immediately kicked into flight.  She caught her wife in mid tumble, hugged her tight and Lacey instinctively clung to her… then Starling flew them both through the door and out of the van.

18

The Scarlet Dove found a handhold and managed to brace herself in a back corner of the van.  From there she was able to focus on the driver, on Tom Danvers or whatever he was now.  He was still laughing, spinning the steering wheel and with his salt and pepper hair swishing as the van rolled over and over. 

Outside the cityscape seemed to spin as well.  It was dizzying, but the Scarlet Dove saw through his tricks.

In the real world she was little more than a delusion, or maybe even just a figment of Starling’s imagination.  An aspect of the woman she tried to keep hidden…but in here, in her mind, in this nightmare world she could be more!  She could be – was a superheroine!

Using her brief purchase the Scarlet Dove kicked forward, taking flight and aiming right for the demon Danvers.  She raced through the spinning van and grabbed him by the head and shoulders, yanking him out of the driver’s seat.

“This is your final destination, Danvers!” she shouted and slugged him right in the bushy mustache.

He only cackled and grinned, showing a mouthful of fangs.  “Then it’s last stop, everybody off!”

Before she could react, he lunged at her and they both tumbled over the dashboard, smashing through the front windshield. They flew out of the van, with broken glass swirling around them.  The Dove punched at him as they spiraled through the air.  She jammed her knees into his midsection, but the demon ignored her attacks. 

The Dove screamed as he grabbed her by the shoulder with a vicious demonic talon, the claws gouged into her flesh.  She looked at him in shock, his arm having turned grotesque and mishappen.  She tried to pry his grip loose but he was too strong. 

They were still falling, or whatever, with the heroine squirming helplessly in his grasp.  Danvers reached up with his free hand and grabbed her bustier. 

“No! Don’t,” she gasped even as he ripped off the skintight garment.  Her firm young breasts bounced free, and humiliation rushed through the heroine.

“How dare you!” she cried, covering her sweet pink nipples with one hand, and still trying to pry loose that powerful talon with the other.

The demon merely cackled, then slammed her down on the asphalt as they finally landed in the middle of the road. 

The heroine cried out with the impact and sprawled out limply.

The dreamscape had stopped spinning.  The van veered away and wrecked into the side of one of those impossible skyscrapers.

The Scarlet Dove tried to sit up, but the demon had her pinned down with that monstrous claw.  She bucked and squirmed, but could not get free.  Blood was beginning to drip over her shoulder and down her arm, pooling on the street.

Danvers loomed over her, leering and running his eyes over her naked torso.  Her firm breasts quivered as she gulped nervous breaths.

“Let me up…”

“You were so much hotter like this,” he growled, reaching out to grope her squirming curves with a hand still mostly human.  “Tight, firm…young…”

“Don’t touch me you slime!” the heroine hissed, but when his vicious grip tightened, she only mewled in anguish.

“I’m going to do a lot more than touch you,” Danvers said.

Keeping her pinned, he snagged the waistband of her bikini bottoms and began to tug them down.  The Scarlet Dove writhed and whined in protest.

“No!  You can’t do this! I- I’m the Scarlet Dove…”

“That you are!” the demon cackled.

The skimpy white garment slipped off her curvaceous hips, exposing her prim hairless slit.  Humiliation crashed through the helpless heroine, not just at being stripped…but she was supposed to be the strong, heroic aspect of Starling…wasn’t she?

“Or you were,” Danvers went on, dragging the bottoms all the way down her squirming legs.  “The brash cocky bitch she needed to face the danger, to take the risks, and endure the…” Here he forced her sexy stems apart, spreading her vulnerable sex wide open.  “…abuses.”

The Scarlet Dove whimpered in fear and dismay, splayed out and defenseless.  She held onto his demonic wrist with both hands even though she knew it would not be budged.

“Please… let me go…” 

Danvers chuckled and shook his head.  He was nude as well now, but his body had become a half-twisted monstrosity.  The demonic arm sprouting from his shoulder, the flesh of his chest turning rough and red.  The fangs under his mustache were growing longer and sharper as he leered down at her soft feminine form beneath him. 

Delusion or not, in here she was real enough, and woman enough to bring out his incubus hunger.

He growled hungrily and his cock grew hard…hard and gnarled and long, sprouting into a true demon’s cock!

“No!  No don’t, please don’t!” The Scarlet Dove screamed, seeing the scaled and spiny phallus poised before her defenseless vagina.

“But the truth is, you were never the strongest part of her,” Danvers growled.  “That’s why she hid you behind a mask…”

The Scarlet Dove hesitantly touched her mask with one trembling hand, as he leaned down and began guiding that heinous cock into her body. 

The helpless heroine bucked and kicked but could not stop the demon from penetrating her!   She cried out and shuddered as he bored into her.  His cock felt huge, splitting her open. 

“No! Stop! Please, don’t do this to me!”  The Scarlet Dove writhed and whimpered as he began to saw in and out.  A hellish heat seared through her as he bucked hard and plunged deep.

“Oh what a mind-fuck!” the demon-Danvers groaned, plowing her tight young cunt.

Terror gripped the Scarlet Dove, but something else clawed at the back of her mind.  Even as he defiled her body, his incubus powers were attacking her female nature…and she was utterly powerless against that.

First he made her surrender, then participate.  Her body relaxed under him and she began to want the pain torturing her soft cunt.  Her legs hooked over his hips, and she began lifting up to meet his cruel thrusts.  She could feel him throbbing deep inside, feel the spines digging into her flesh.  His demonic heat threatened to boil her from the inside out.  Then the incubus made her like it.

Looking up at him as he fucked her, she began to moan and plead for more.  Her firm young body quivered around his hellish cock as it began to devour from within.

Danvers growled in excitement feeling her succumb to him, feeling this aspect of Starling surrender so utterly.  He began to fuck her even more viciously.  He began to feed. 

The Scarlet Dove couldn’t help but give herself up to him.  All of her, eagerly, willing to be devoured by the incubus.  Every wicked thrust in ripped through her body like a wave of exquisite agony, and when he pulled back, she felt energy flow into him.  Felt herself flow into him.

For she was only part of Starling, a form of mental energy that manifested as this younger, idealized and hopefully heroic version of her…and hopefully the demon-Danvers was right, that she was not the strongest aspect of Starling…because the demon was swallowing this aspect whole, devouring her in a rush of heated lust.

19

Dizzy and shaken, Starling and Lacey managed to land safely on the sidewalk of that unnatural dream-city.  Still feeling weak and drained, they both sank to their knees and watched as the van flipped and tumbled away down the impossibly long street.  They were both still naked, and spattered with sticky green cum but when Starling looked back over to check on her wife, Lacey was smiling.

“Are you okay?” Starling asked.

Lacey nodded, reaching out to run a hand through Starling’s thick, damp, tangled, red hair.  “Starting to feel better, yeah…”

Realizing that Lacey’s trim bob was once again the proper rich brown, Starling couldn’t resist stroking her fingers into the slinky locks.  “Me too…”

They pulled each other into a tender affectionate kiss…that tasted like Ozone’s toxic jizz.  They both turned away coughing and spitting out remnants of the mouthfuls they’d gotten from the mutant.

“Lace…about the hallucinations,” Starling began after a moment, “I’m sorry, I-“

“You don’t have to apologize, I just…” Lacey hugged her close again, kissing her forehead.  “I thought you were getting better, and I wish you would have told me so I could help.”

“I am better!” Starling insisted, curling into her wife’s arms.  “And it’s because of you and Nikki and our life…but there are things I still and maybe will always have to deal with…maybe in my own way…”

They pulled back to look into each other’s eyes, then Lacey nodded.  “I…I guess I know that, I just worry.”

Starling smiled, “I know.  And I promise I would never shut you out, or not come to you if I needed help.”

The wives helped each other back to their feet, pussies twinging a bit and knees still wobbly.

“I trust you, Star,” Lacey said.  “But we are so calling Dr. Walshe when we wake up.”

“If we wake up,” Starling grumbled.  “Which, Lace, you have to try and do now.”

“Look, I’m here already,” she replied, turning to look around the ominously empty city.  “Might as well let me help.”

“No!”

“Nikki is safe, we’re just –”

“But you’re not,” Starling said.  “Look what just happened to us, and Danvers was feeding on us, on you!”  Tears brimmed her pretty green eyes.  “I told you, I won’t risk you, and if you’re here I don’t know if I can- if I’ll be able to-“  Suddenly Starling let out a shrill moan and staggered back, her knees buckling.

“Star!” Lacey caught her and lowered her to the ground, kneeling with her.

Starling trembled and whined in her arms.  A nearly orgasmic rush swelled through her, it was wonderful and horrible, and familiar.  When it passed, she felt herself lessened even more.  Somehow, Danvers had just peeled away another piece of her.

“Starling, what is happening?” Lacey gasped.

Starling panted a breath, looking up at her wife.  “I’m okay…I…I’m sorry.”  She leaned up and hugged Lacey tightly. 

“You don’t have to apologize,” Lacey said, returning the embrace.  “We’re going to figure this out together…”

Starling whispered into her wife’s ear, “Banana muffins.”

Lacey jerked away so suddenly it startled Nikki beside her, who spilled the giant mixing bowl of cereal and no less than half a gallon of milk all over the couch.  She looked at her mommy with gigantic round green eyes.

“You were so sleepy mommy, so I got my own snack…”

“Goddammit Starling Elizabeth!” Lacey hissed and stood up. 

Banana muffins was their safe word.  Once it had snapped Lacey out of a magically induced lust-frenzy, and apparently it was strong enough to wake her up from an evil demon’s murder dream as well.

“Mommy?”

Lacey immediately scooped Nikki up and carried her towards the back door.

“I’m sorry about the mess mommy!”

“It’s okay, li’l bit, it’s okay,” Lacey said almost completely oblivious.  “We’re gonna go see Tommy for a little while, okay?  You wanna go play with Tommy?”

“But my cereal…”

“You can have as much cereal you want, kiddo, I promise…as soon as I bring your momma home!”

20

Dominion prowled the deserted street under the nightmare sky.  His hazel eyes darted from alley to alley, wondering how they could all be so different and yet exactly the same.  He had to find the way back to his slave…

The heavy boots of his power armor thumped on the concrete, the sound echoing all around him.  When he thought he sensed someone behind him, he stopped…but the sound of his bootsteps continued on down the street.

His eyes narrowed behind that horn-rimmed mask.  “Danvers?” he called.  “No more games, come out and face me!”

“Face you?” came Danvers’s voice from the closest alley.

Dominion turned that way, readying his energy blaster.

“Face you?” this time shouted from an alley across the street.

Dominion glanced over his shoulder, lips curling in a snarl.  Then from every alleyway came the voice, “Face you?”  It echoed and repeated, loudly, softly, whispered, derisive, then laughing.  “Face you?”

Dominion backed into the middle of the road.  “Silence!”

But the Danvers voices persisted, getting louder and louder.

“I said silence!” Dominion roared.  He clamped one hand over one ear, then thrust the other out and fired a blast of energy down one of the alleyways.  It flashed and illuminated the brick work as it rushed away down the infinite alley.

The voices switched to laughter now.  Harsh and bracing, bouncy and jovial, nasally snickers and deep belly laughs.

Dominion spun around, one arm still extended, looking for a target.

“You dare laugh at me!?  Show yourself!”

“Laughing is what you do at a joke…” came a whisper that silenced the rest of the voices.

It was behind him, and Dominion spun back to see a shaded figure walking towards him down one of the alleys.

“Is that you Danvers?” he demanded, aiming his arm blaster.

In answer the figure stretched out a long, misshapen arm with a huge, wicked talon on the end.  The claws of that talon dragged along the wall of the alley, gouging deep furrows into the brick work.

“Who else?”

Dominion fired, obliterating the shadowy figure. 

Then the scraping, rending sound of the those claws on brick came from behind him.  Dominion whirled around to find Danvers coming at him down that alley now.  Dominion thrust out his arm and fired again, and again he destroyed the Danvers.

That splitting grind of claws on stone came from another alley.  Then another.  Dominion turned, then wheeled about.  A Danvers was emerging from an alley up the street and Dominion blasted him!  Then he saw another the next block over, and fired at that one.  The grating sound grew to a bone-rattling din as Danverses began to emerge from every alley.

Dominion roared in fury, spinning this way and that firing energy blasts with both hands at every Danvers he saw!  Walls shattered as the blasts ripped through them.  Shards of brick rained down and skittered about.  And the Danverses began to laugh again even as he eradicated them. 

“Goddammit you coward, face me!” Dominion demanded.

“Face you?” the Danverses responded in an unnerving cacophony.  “Which face would you like?”  Then they began pointing to each other and asking.  “This one?” “That one?” “Him?”  “That one over there?” “Him?” “Him?” “Me?” “Him?” “HIM!?”

Dominion roared in wordless fury and lifted his arms to begin firing.

Then one of those horrid talons exploded up from the street beneath him.  It seized his leg, the demonic claws easily sheering through the boot of his power armor.

Dominion howled in pain and anger, then the talon pulled him down through the asphalt.  He fell through darkness, then landed in a dim chamber with a thud and a growl.

“Will this face do?” Danvers asked from a dark corner.  He was tapping that hideous claw against the wall.  His mustache lifted in a crooked smirk, cruel fangs glinted in the meager light.

Dominion glared at him, then glanced around.  There was a small table against one wall, lined with gags and sex toys and whips.  A single light hung from the ceiling, alongside a pair of shackles.  Of course, Dominion immediately recognized the torture chamber in which his slave had been trained.

“This is finally the real you then?” Dominion growled, starting to push himself to his feet.

“Let me help you up,” Danvers hissed.

The shackles whipped down from the ceiling of their own volition!  Dominion started to crawl away but they snared both his wrists, then yanked him up from the floor.  He snarled angrily but hung helplessly in the center of the room.

“Of course, you won’t fight me fair,” Dominion said.  “You’re a coward.  Always have been.”

“Perhaps you’re right that I was,” Danvers looked down and chuckled. “But now that I’ve shed my human frailties…”

Dominion snorted.  “Human or demon, you will always fear me.  Just as when you betrayed my slave’s father rather than stand with him-”

“Let’s get one thing straight,” Danvers snarled, lifting his talon to wag a gnarled, pointed claw.  “I never feared you.  Never.”  He stepped into the meager light then, the skin of his face was reddening, rugged and twisted in a fury.  His fangs were bared under that thick mustache.  “It was Jack Kane that scared me.  You, I should have gutted the first time I looked at you…”  Suddenly, Danvers shook his demonic head and chuckled. “What am I doing?”

“What’s funny,” Dominion growled, rattling the shackles, trying to break them.

“You!  You’re not even him,” Danvers laughed.  “I’m talking to the shadow of Dominion, to the pathetic little sad scared piece of Starling that she let him break…”

The wretched memory of Dominion glowered at the demon, with nothing to say.

“Oh well,” Danvers shrugged. “I suppose there’s no reason not to take a bit of my own catharsis then.”

He lunged forward slashing that vicious talon across his hooded face, mask and skin splitting open with grotesque ease.  The shade of Dominion howled in agony.  The demon cackled and tore through the armored breastplate as if it were spandex.  Then he ripped open Dominion’s chest in a shower of bone and gore.  Dominion kept screaming…and Danvers kept tearing, deeper, bloodier, shredding organs and rending bones…just as he had wanted to do for all those long years in Warden City.

21

Starling screamed as sudden pain clawed through her guts and chest.  She crumpled onto her knees, dizzy with anguish.  It was different this time, there was no pleasure mixed in, just the pain of Danvers carving up her mind.  Slicing away another piece and leaving her lessened.  She combed both hands into her crimson mane and looked up at the nightmare sky.

“Just you and me now, isn’t it?” she murmured, assuming Danvers, wherever he was, would hear.

As the pain subsided, Starling forced herself to stand and continue walking.  Alone in the twisted dreamscape, she took some comfort in the fact that at least Lacey was safe now.  Despite being a dream, the sidewalk felt rough under her bare feet.  And despite knowing she was only inside her own head, she felt self-conscious and exposed walking the dream-city streets naked.

Maybe it’s because I know Danvers is watching…somewhere, somehow, he sees me…

“Starling…” whispered in her ear.

She whirled around but there was no one.  Nothing but the infinite street stretching away behind her.

Then a hand grabbed her ass.  Letting out a little yelp, Starling spun back, expecting nobody again but seeing a shadow disappearing into the nearest alleyway.

She ran to it, stopping short at the mouth.  There was nothing there but silence and darkness.  Just the idea of a filthy alley in the dark shadow of the impossible buildings rising up on either side.

“I’m getting real sick of this crap,” she muttered, backing away.

Her nerves tingling as a low chuckle filled her ears, like a chill crawling up her spine.  Starling shivered.  Now she could definitely feel his eyes on her, ogling every soft curve, devouring the sight of her breasts, the swell of her ample booty.  She hugged herself tightly and turned, peering around at the dream-scape surrounding her.

“Where are you, you bastard?”

“Where do you want me to be?” a voice whispered back.

Then before she could answer a grating, scraping sound made her jump, and set her teeth on edge.  Starling whirled around to find a shadowy figure moving towards her from within the depths of the alley across the street.

“Here?” the figure asked, dragging a misshapen claw across the brick wall.

“Danvers!”  Starling set her feet and clenched her fists, only to be grabbed from behind. 

A hand clutched her by the chin and jaw, tilting her head back so that his tongue could slather warm slime up her neck.  Starling squirmed and moaned in disgust. 

“I can be here,” hot breath groaned into her ear, as his mishappen talon cupped her breast, the claws pricking her rosy nipple.

“Get off of me!”  Starling cocked her elbow and threw it backwards, but there was no one there and she only staggered off balance.

“I can be wherever you want me to be,” his disembodied voice cackled.

“Dammit Tom!” she snapped.  “I want you right here where I can punch your stupid face!”

“But I am!”

Suddenly that hideous claw appeared between her feet, scraping and gouging deep furrows into the concrete.  Starling leaped away and spun around, even as the sound of rending stone made her cringe.  There was nothing behind her of course but the four slash marks in the sidewalk.

“It’s time to end this, Tom,” Starling shouted in exasperation. “One way or another, so come out and let’s do this!”

Laughter echoed through the air, bouncing off the eerie skyscrapers all around her.  Starling clenched her teeth at the sound.

“Have it your way,” Danvers’s voice was low, underneath the laughter.  “I’m right behind you…”

Starling turned grudgingly, expecting nothing but more games. 

Instead, Tom Danvers was there, leaning against the side of the building, one foot kicked casually back.  He was fully human now, no misshapen claw, no fangs under his thick mustache.  He was wearing tight blue jeans and a black tee shirt, with what seemed to be a pack of cigarettes rolled up in one sleeve.

“Now ‘let’s do’ what, exactly?” he asked without looking at her.

“You fed on my wife, Tom.  I’m going to kill you for that.”

The icy threat in her tone made him look at her.  “You sound so very much like your mother whenever you call me ‘Tom’,” he said with a smirk.

Starling’s stomach clenched, as it did anytime she thought of her mom with this demon.  “Leave her out of this.”

“But if we’re at the end,” Danvers chuckled, “you should know that my only regret, will be never having had all three of you at once…” 

“You’re disgusting.”

“I’ve been here for months, years, Star…trapped in your vapid, moody, damaged head,” he went on.  “Watching you with Lacey was my only joy, feeding off the little morsels of your wifely couplings, mmmm, yes…exquisite.”

Starling clenched her teeth and snarled at the thought. At the realization…

“But I always imagined Sara joining the fun, and the three of you then servicing me, feeding me!”  He tilted his head back with a lusty growl and licked his lips with a forked tongue.  “That would have been a feast worthy of my ascension!”

Starling huffed a moment, then asked, “Your what?”

Now he stepped away from the wall, one arm beginning to jerk and stretch, the muscles bugled, twisting, the flesh became reddened and scaly.  

“My ascension from half-human to true incubus,” he growled, and as he turned to look at her, half of his face twisted into an inhuman sneer, as fangs sprouted once again beneath his lips. 

Starling gulped and fell back a step at the sight.  Her resolve wavered as fear clutched her.

“I thought I could use you,” he went on.  “Drain enough energy through you, build my power and escape this hellish prison of your bitchy mind…” His voice was becoming more guttural and grating with every word.  “But now I realize, I’m simply going to have to devour you whole, tear my way out, and ascend to my destiny as a pure incubus, a true demon!”

“Oh brother, can we just fight already?”  Starling snarled and clenched her fists.

But before she could make a move, he thrust out his still mostly human hand, and her nude body went rigid.  She could feel his power coil around her like unseen bindings.

“What!?” Starling gasped.  “How?”

The demon-Danvers chuckled, raising his hand and she lifted up off the ground.  She wanted to struggle, to thrash and fight, but she couldn’t move…more than just mystical bindings, he had control of her body.

“I am incubus!” he spat the words.  “And you’re a woman, my powers were forged in hell specifically to dominate you…”

He waved his hand and a charge crept up her spine.  Starling’s green eyes widened at the sensation.  Heat and arousal flooded her chest, a nervous quiver making her big breasts jiggle.

“…To toy and feed on all you delectable, feminine morsels.”

A fanged grin was splitting Danvers’s face as he watched pink flush across her sternum and up her neck.  That forked tongue slithered between the needlelike teeth.  He waggled two fingers and it was just like he was teasing her nipples.

Starling clenched her teeth as the rosy nubs stiffened and tingled, then began to ache.  She had to gulp back a moan as both of her heavy breasts seemed to pulse and prickle with arousal.  Warm shivers ran up and down the soft curves of her naked body, until every inch of her felt sensitive and needy.

“…To rule your helpless nubile bodies…”

Danvers turned his hand over, making a hooking motion with two fingers and Starling’s pussy throbbed with urgent desire.  She gasped and yelped in surprise!

The incubus began to make stroking, fingering motions and Starling shuddered.  Right away a scintillating orgasmic pressure twisted through her body, even as she hung in midair.  She began whining and moaning as her pussy pulsated between her legs.  Warm juices were already spilling down her thighs, as waves of irresistible, if unwelcome, pleasure crashed through her.

“…and devour you voluptuous female souls!”

“Please stop! Let me go!” Starling whimpered, trembling and trapped as the demon coaxed her to a mystical climax.  “Fuuhh-uuck! I’M CUUUUUMMMMMING!!”

She bucked desperately as that erotic pressure burst through her!  Her boobs quivered and ached.  Her pussy spasmed and squirted sticky cum down both shapely stems.  Her head spun blissfully.

And Danvers devoured a little more of her.  Mixed in with the ecstasy, Starling could feel him feeding on her very essence, the draining pull on her lifeforce as he savored her.

“What is it about you fucking Kane women!?” Danvers howled in perverse euphoria.  “It’s like there’s something, just…just more…” He seemed to struggle for the word, his forked tongue flicking and writhing in excitement.  “You and you mother, your sexual energies and just more potent than any of the women I’ve fed on throughout my years.”

Starling could do little more than let out a meek disgusted groan as she hung helplessly in midair.

“It’s a shame I’ll have to consume you entirely rather than keep you enthralled and feed on you for years, as I did with Sara…”  Then a sly and vile look came across his demonic face.  “But wait, there is another, isn’t there?”

Instantly Starling’s green eyes bulged at the thought and frigid terror froze her insides.

“Yessssss, dear Nikki…and so young, OH!”  He howled almost gleefully, “The thought of a succulent virgin Kane girl… it makes the stomach growl even with a feast such as yourself at hand!”

Then as if the anticipation were too much for him, Danvers made a beckoning motion and Starling flew through the air towards him.  Laughter once more echoed in her ears as he licked his garish fangs with that slimy forked tongue.

And Starling hit him as hard as she could right in that twisted face! 

Danvers howled in surprise and pain, sharpened teeth cracked and went flying as he toppled backwards from the force of the blow.

Starling flew past and landed behind him, her golden heels skidding to a stop on the sidewalk.

The demon rolled around to look up at her and she glared down at him from behind the white feathered mask of the Scarlet Dove.  Her curvaceous figure was now clad in the white and gold busier, voluptuous hips wrapped in the white bikini bottoms.

Danvers scowled at the sight of the superheroine standing before him.

“You will never touch my daughter!” Starling snarled with such fury it made even the incubus recoil in hesitation. 

A mother’s rage.

“Powerful as you are, this is still my mind,” she declared, defiantly tossing her lustrous crimson locks.  “And I’m not going to let you hurt anyone else, ever!”

The demon-Danvers scrabbled back to his feet and lunged at her, roaring, “We’ll see about that!”

Starling too dove forward, ducking under a swipe of that demonic arm.  She retaliated by jamming her knee up into his chin, halting his momentum. 

“Oh, and Nikki’s not a Kane, she’s a Stewart!”  Starling slugged him again with all her might.  “We both are!”

The demon recoiled from the blow, grunting in pain.  Starling flew backwards, not wanting to give him a chance to recover and already taking aim with one of the gold bracelets adorning her wrists.

With a growl Danvers dove forward onto his knees and thrust that clawed talon into the sidewalk, which splashed as if it were wet cement.

Then the concrete below Starling exploded upwards!  Several demonic hands shot up out of the bursting rubble, reaching for her at the end of squirming red tentacles.

Starling gasped in alarm and flew straight up!  Or tried to…one of the hands snagged her golden-clad ankle, while another caught her by the wrist.  A third tentacle coiled around her leg and the hand grabbed onto the waistband of her skimpy bottoms, yanking them just off her hips, exposing part of her pert smooth mound.  

Starling squeaked in embarrassment and alarm, but managed to blast one of the hands with her electrolaser.  It fell limp on the sidewalk.  Still two more now reached up to seize hold of her breasts, their tentacles wrapped crisscross around her ribs.  She squirmed as their grubby fingers eagerly began mashing and fondling the fleshy globes. 

“Stop it! Get off me!” Starling groaned as she was molested and her bottoms were pulled further down, fully revealing her tight creamy slit. 

Another hand immediately reached between her legs, kneading her sensitive supple pussy lips so firmly an urgent moan scrabbled up the back of her throat.  Starling gulped it back, even as she shuddered from the unwelcome stimulation.

Enjoying the show, Danvers cackled below her.

Scowling behind her mask, Starling swung her freehand back towards the demon.  Two red targeting dots appeared right on his forehead and she fired.  He jerked upright, rigid and gnashing those ugly fangs.

The hands and tentacles released her all at once, falling limp on the sidewalk.  Starling quickly pulled up her bottoms and then launched into a dive.  She thrust both fists forward and slammed into the demon with her patented torpedo strike maneuver! 

Danvers howled in pain and pitched backwards from the blow…but then he melted into the sidewalk, letting Starling crash onto the hard concrete with a painful groan.  The demonic howl became laughter as he exploded up through the ground behind her, so fast Starling barely had a chance to roll over.

He was more demonic than ever now.  The reddening flesh of his taloned arm had turned scaly.  His face grew less and less human behind the Danvers’s mustache.  The fangs were growing so numerous, she wasn’t sure how they even fit in his mouth, and that forked tongue wriggling out between them seemed to grow even longer. 

Starling couldn’t help but scream in terror as he swarmed down on top her.

She tried to aim her bracelet once more, but that wicked talon slashed across her forearm, destroying the bracelet and tearing at her wrist.  She recoiled, crying out and clutching the torn flesh.  She couldn’t seem to resist as he slapped her arms apart and grabbed her around the throat with his now only slightly-more-human hand.  She bucked desperately to try and get away, “Danvers, wait-ulk-” but his grip tightened cutting off her voice. 

“Enough talk,” the incubus growled, straddling her hips.  “I am incubus you silly succulent whore.”

As his weight settled over her, so too did his demonic powers.  Starling could feel them pinning her down, an incredible irresistible force pressing down on her feminine body, trapping her hopelessly beneath him.  The grotesque smile he turned down at her left no question that the demon knew it too.  She was his favorite prey and there would be no escape this time.

Starling squirmed and trembled helplessly with Danvers leering down at her.  That tendril-like tongue licked his grotesque lips, as he brought the huge garish talon towards her chest.  It began to tug and claw at her bustier, scraping over her collarbone, and teasing her nipples over the skintight material, until they stood up visibly. 

Then, with a hungry snarl the demon-Danvers shredded the garment off her helpless body!  Starling writhed, squealing in fear as those vicious claws tore at the flimsy white top, headless of scratching and cutting her tender flesh beneath.

When he was finished, she felt trickles of warmth running over her exposed globes.  There was a cruel delight in the demon’s eyes that stole whatever hope she had left.

Even when he released her throat, she only sucked in a deep breath and let out a terrified sob.  Starling was once again just a helpless female, trapped beneath a hungry incubus.  She could not fight back, she could not even move as the demon-Danvers reached down to fondle her voluptuous breasts.  That vile talon and his not-quite-human hand clutched her fleshy orbs, mashing and kneading them roughly.  

She covered her masked eyes with both hands and began to cry.  Frozen in place, she had no choice but to let the incubus do whatever he liked. 

His clutches were repulsive, the hot, scaled palms sent tremors of revulsion all through her chest.  Despite this, her rosy nipples stiffened even more for him.  To which he took no small delight in pricking and nicking them with those vicious claws.  He even split one of the sensitive nubs down the middle and Starling screamed in pain! 

“OW! Oh gawd, please stop!” she bawled, whipping her head back and forth.  “No more! Please!  No more!”

And the demon just laughed as she shook and sobbed beneath him.  Then those cruel claws moved down her ribs, tracing the soft curve of her figure.  She jumped and winced every time a sharp point grazed her creamy skin now.

“No…no…no…please stop,” Starling begged, sniffling and crying. 

When his body shifted back off her hips, she peeked out from behind her fingers.  He was reaching for her hips with those awful claws.  His eyes were now glowing a sickly yellow, and even though he was no longer physically holding her in place, Starling could not move.  The weight of his incubus powers laid heavily upon her…not unlike sleep paralysis…

 Those awful claws snagged and began to tug at the waistband of her white bikini bottoms.  He tore them off of her curvaceous hips with an eager ferocity.

“No! No please stop this!” Starling wailed pathetically.  She couldn’t help herself.

The power of the incubus wasn’t just a physical control.  It was sapping her will, her resolve, her bravery, determination, anger, anything she could use to resist him…gone, to leave her a mewling, fearful, aroused woman, waiting to be devoured.  Wanting to be devoured.

That familiar urge was a strange attraction, not so much to the demon as much as to his hunger…  Despite herself, Starling remembered it well from when Tom Danvers would feed on her back in Warden City.  This wasn’t just some man who only wanted her for sex, or who coveted her attractive body…this was a being that needed her to survive, that craved her very essence…and there was something dangerously alluring in that…an illicit submissive thrill drawn out of her feminine nature by the power of the incubus.

So when he leaned forward to taste her, stroking that slimy tongue over her mouth and using the forked appendage to part her lips, Starling only moaned out loud and opened wide. 

“Yesssss, give in one last time…”  His voice whispered in her ears, while the demonic form looming over her shuddered with laughter. 

Starling gagged as the tongue slithered down her throat, her stomach twisting with revulsion…still she closed her lips and sucked, wriggling her own tongue against the tendril like some perverse kiss.  It began to slide back and forth, in and out, such a strange sensation not quite like sucking a dick.  She could taste his saliva, viscous and acrid, and as the tongue pumped between her lips it dripped and drooled back over her masked face.  She grunted and gagged as it pushed deeper, creating a throbbing bulging sensation through her neck and shoulders.

Stranger still was how arousing it became.  Her blood-streaked breasts heaved and tingled in rhythm with the pumping slide.  Her abused and bleeding nipples were stiff and achy as ever.

Her throat convulsed as the tongue withdrew, and he cackled, “Delicious!”

“Pl-uhh– please, St- stop…” Starling coughed and sputtered.

“It’ll all be over soon,” Danvers promised, moving back down her naked body.  “Try to enjoy yourself!”

Her pushed her legs apart and Starling moaned in dread and arousal, tilting her hips to present her primly shaven pussy to the demon.  She looked down at him as his now glowing yellow eyes devoured the sight of her splayed wide open, utterly vulnerable.  He reached out to stroke her soft labium with that vicious claw, and Starling shuddered at his touch.  The roughness of his scaled palm on her tenderest flesh, the sharp points pricking and teasing the sensitive petals.  Already wet.  Already his.

She was now fully under the demon’s thrall, her female psyche was no match for the incubus.

That forked tongue slithered over her slit, slippery and warm, sending dreadful chills up her spine and hot tingles all across her skin.  Starling’s stomach tightened, but her pussy opened like a flower, soft, pink and quivering.  She mewled in a confusion of terror and excitement as that forked tentacle wriggled inside her.  It slithered and slid deep into Starling’s vagina, which squeezed reflexively around the slimy tendril.

Danvers’s hand and claw gripped her legs, spreading them even further as his terrible fanged maw engulfed her tender mound.  The wicked teeth pierced and pricked her porcelain flesh, seeming barely resistant of an urge to bite down, to take a real taste of her. 

The tongue writhed inside her, tantalizing her slick inner walls, the forked tip tickled her cervix, then pushed through to coil and pulsate in her womb, causing dizzying waves of deep and dreadful pleasure to crash through Starling.  Behind the feathered mask her green eyes rolled all the way back as she came, moaning and gasping…and glowing. 

A beautiful iridescence washed over her voluptuous figure but as the wave crested Danvers growled and sucked, drawing that erotic energy back down through her squirming body and out of her bubbling pussy, swallowing another delectable mouthful of her lifeforce.

There was supposed to be a plan! Didn’t we have a plan?? But Starling could no longer remember what she’d even come here for… Other than to give herself to the incubus.  Her mind was blank and submitted and lost in the horrid temptation.  Give herself, all of herself to Tom Danvers… 

As she’d done before. 

As her mother had done.

As was their mortal purpose as women to be consumed in ecstasy by the incubus… What a shame I never got to serve him with my mother and my wife…

Tasting her final surrender, the Danvers-demon groaned in triumph.  He savored the succulent submission and gorged on her lifeforce as Starling moaned and squirmed and all but poured herself into him.

She nearly climaxed again as his tongue slithered back out, felt every inch of it sliding through her and out of her…the forked tip even flicking at her taut, trembling clit.  Making her jump.  Leaving her to moan and plead wordlessly.

He rose up on his knees, now completely demonic.  All his flesh was red scales.  His eyes pulsed with yellow light.  Both arms were twisted and taloned now.  His gaping mouth was a chaotic mass of fangs, that long forked tongue still dripping with her pussy juices seemed to writhe and wriggle with a mind of its own.  In fact, the only human characteristic left was the bushy mustache perched over that horrid maw.

As he leaned forward, Starling’s glazed green eyes fell on perhaps the most demonic part of him.  Sprouting between his legs was a long red shaft covered in knobs and scales…and spines!  It looked more like some medieval weapon than a cock.  She trembled in fear at the sight, at the thought of it penetrating her body…and yet, she was his now, and only lifted her hips to receive his throbbing demonhood.

She screamed as the demon-Danvers bored into her defenseless cunt, ripping into her so deeply her curvaceous body convulsed.  A wave of ecstasy and agony crashed over her so intensely she nearly fainted.  His horrid talons seized her soft shoulders, their wicked claws gripping and tearing her flesh.  Starling barely noticed, by that point pleasure and plain had become but an orgasmic miasma in her helpless female brain.  She wrapped her legs around his waist, his scaly flesh grating her soft creamy thighs.  His cock was searing heat inside her.  The knobbed shaft pumped back and forth, hitting all her most sensitive spots, even while the spines hooked into her flesh ensuring there was no escape.

She cried out in misery and bliss, urgently pumping her hips to meet every malignant thrust.

Danvers growled and hissed above her, stabbing deep and hard, stretching her, splitting her…and yet Starling mewled and whimpered for more.  Her salacious body was glowing beneath him, brightening with every plunge as he drew more and more of her essence to the surface…he could already taste it…was already savoring it…and as the final scintillating climax gripped her delicious female body, the demon who had been Tom Danvers truly FEASTED.

22

Lacey kicked open the door of Other Worldly, the glass cracking as she stormed into the cramped shop. 

Mackenzie was on the far side of the sales counter, pacing nervously and watching the floor.  She looked up as Lacey barged in…and then apparent relief washed over her.  Her eyes were once again glowing sliver.

“Ah, good, you are here, come quickly,” Mackenzie beckoned Lacey forward. 

“Where is my wife!?” the brunette demanded, approaching cautiously.

Then she saw Starling laying on the floor.  She was completely naked, her eyes were shut and she writhing on the dingy carpet.  There were strange symbols painted on her breasts and just above her bare sex.  Her porcelain skin was cut and gouged in several places, trickling blood over trembling curves, including a particularly nasty gash over one nipple.

And she was making noises Lacey recognized instantly: deep, urgent moans… the sounds of her cumming.

“Wha- what’s happening?” Lacey gasped, nearly a panicked sob.  She sank to her knees beside her bloody wife.  “What did you do to her?”

“Not me, Danvers!  I fear she is losing the battle,” Mackenzie said, kneeling on the other side, “but it may not be too late to help…”  She was holding a book and extended a knife towards Lacey, handle first.  “Take this.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“What choice do you have?”

Lacey snatched the knife.

“Now cut your palm,” Mackenzie said, flipping frantically through the book.  “And in your own blood draw this symbol over her heart.”  She turned the tome around, showing Lacey the illustration of another arcane symbol.

Lacey quickly sliced her palm deep enough that blood immediately oozed down her fingers.  She did not even notice the pain and began to copy the symbol onto Starling’s heaving sternum.  As she did, she noticed her wife also wearing a strange necklace with an obsidian jewel.  She wanted to ask about it but Mackenzie was already giving her more instructions.

“When you have finished, press your hand with the cut onto the symbol… then hang on.”

The severity in her tone drew a brief glance from Lacey, the witch nodded surely, though Lacey felt no reassurance. 

She leaned down to her wife’s ear and whispered, “Time to come home, Star…Banana muffins.” 

Then she pressed her bloody hand down on the magical rune.

23

Starling screamed as Lacey’s voice sliced through her mind, severing the incubus’s thrall. 

That scream was so shrill and so loud, the Danvers-demon recoiled, clamping his grotesque talons over the sides of his own head.  The impossible skyscrapers shook around them.

An arcane rune appeared over Starling’s sternum, glowing, and pulsing like a heartbeat.  Then renewed power and energy surged through her and the light of her lifeforce flared with blinding intensity.  So much so that the incubus tried to pull away from her in confusion.

Starling coiled her legs around his scaly waist though, not letting him escape. 

“No, no!  Where are you going?” she moaned, then bucked and twisted dragging him down into the rubble of the sidewalk. 

“What is this?” the demon demanded, flopping onto his back.  “What’s happening?”

Starling lurched up on top of him, dizzied by the sensation of having that monstrous cock lodged so deep inside that it dragged her whole body along.  Her spinning head drooped, crimson locks spilling around her face and shoulders…but she instinctively began to ride the demon.

Letting out a deep sensuous moan, her pussy clenched tightly as slick juices, mingled with trickles of blood, dripped down his shaft and over his scaled pubis.  She rose up over him, hands braced on his massive inhuman chest as her curvaceous hips began bucking and grinding.  Her plump bloody tits bounced with the motion. 

Despite the places where he’d slashed her undulating curves, despite the dark red smears streaking her porcelain flesh, Starling sank into the preternatural coupling.  She relished the pain of his demonic member, accepted the horror of his inhuman visage, she gave into the scintillating temptations and willingly fucked the demon.

This was the plan!  Mackenzie’s spell would turn the incubus’s own sexual vortex against him, but Starling had to fuck him to do it.  Now the symbols began to glow under her flesh.  Two more bright runes appeared on her buxom breasts.  Another just above her cunt, sizzling and shining!  And both her and Danvers could feel the pull of their power as she rode him.

The demon wanted to fight, but he could not.  She was too irresistible, all voluptuous blood-stained curves, and bouncing tits, and flowing fiery hair.  Starling had become utterly resplendent!

Her pussy pulsated around him, gripping his cock with a torrid heat.  She slid up and down, clinging to every inch of him, her carnal juices gushed over the scaly shaft, even the spines began to jitter enticingly within her undulating flesh. 

The incubus had always enjoyed feeding on his hapless damsels, but this was different.  This was ecstasy of his own, this was bliss.  He threw his mishappen head back and let out a guttural moan.

“MMMM, yes, Tom!  Yassss, give in!” Starling groaned, rocking her salacious hips even faster, harder, back and forth.

She ran her hands over the knotted muscles, felt his scales burning beneath her palms.  She leaned forward to lift her ass, twerking to pop her pussy up and down that wicked member between her legs.  It hurt, it burned within, but it also felt so good, so wickedly indulgent…that she bit her lips and pumped even faster.

The Danvers-demon bucked beneath her and growled…he could not ever remember a feeling like the quick, slurping strokes of her tight human cunt in that position with that motion.

“How- how are you doing this?” he demanded, reaching back to grip the sidewalk so tensely his claws cut into the cement for purchase.

“A gentleman never asks,” Starling smiled down at him, behind the feathered mask her emerald eyes began to flicker and glow.  “A lady never tells!”

“Oh fuck!” he growled.  Now his demonic hips began to rise and fall, matching her rhythm.  And his own flesh began to glow, motes of light shining out around the creases of each red scale.  “No… No! You can’t… I won’t…”

He reached up as if to shove her away, to grab her, or attack her somehow, but Starling merely snagged his demonic arm.  She even giggled, hugging the twisted appendage between her big bouncing breasts, and continued riding his vile member. 

“Exhilirating isn’t in,” she purred, holding that gruesome talon and slowly licking each of the garish claws.  “It feels so good, so enticing, so tempting…”  She spread her thighs, grinding down to take him even deeper, circling her vivacious hips.  “…even though you know it’s the end.”

The demon’s sunken yellow eyes fluttered, he trembled as his throbbing demonhood rolled within her hot, squishy depths.  The glow of his demonic lifeforce brightened. 

The rune above her cunt blazed furiously.

“That’s it, now cum for me, Tom!” Starling moaned, her voice trembling as orgasmic energy surged up her own spine.  “Cum for me and with me one last time!” 

“Wait…what are you – oh fuck oh yes– just like that!”

Starling threw back her head, radiant crimson hair whipping and swirling as if there was a great gust of wind.

“I’m taking back every bit of energy you stole!” she cried.

The demon could not hold it back.  He growled and roared.  Starling felt the piercing spines on his cock twitch and quiver in her flesh, and she shivered with the sensation.  His scaly shaft throbbed and swelled, then exploded deep inside her.  Starling whined and mewled feeling the scalding hot flood of demonic cum.  Her pussy seized around it, every curve on her body trembling as a mystical orgasm swirled through her.

The symbols over her breasts and on her pussy blazed with light and then began to draw in the glow emanating from the demon.

He whimpered and writhed between her legs, but he did not resist.  Could not resist.  Starling squeezed her thighs, holding on.  His thick cruel demonhood pulsed and throbbed inside her, sending orgasmic waves rushing through her hips and torso.

She screamed and came again as his light poured into her!  

Then demon-Danvers began to shrivel.  His scales grew wrinkled and leathery.  His twisted muscles smoothed and uncoiled.  He went limp beneath her, twitching and gurgling. 

Starling watched his eyes go dim.  Her knees came slowly to rest on the rough concrete of the dream-city street as he shrank to nothing but a shriveled husk between her legs.  She stood up and backed away, staggering slightly. 

The runes on her body continued flashing, still pulling the last sparks of light as Danvers’s demonic form crumbled to dust before her eyes.

24

Starling opened her eyes.  Calmly.  Peacefully.  With a smile touching her lips.

“Oh, thank gawd!” Lacey gasped, her bleeding hand still pressed between her wife’s bloody boobs.

Starling gripped her wrist and sat up, only somewhat oblivious to the concern still weighing on her wife.  The cuts and wounds covering her naked body were glowing, and healing before their very eyes.

“Are you…is it…how…?” Lacey was stammering.

“The nightmare is over.”

The two women fell into a tight embrace as relief washed over them together.  Until they felt a sharp burning squeezed between their breasts.

“Ow!” Starling squeaked.  “Oh right,” she said, pushing Lacey back and quickly removed the necklace with that small piece of obsidian.  “That’s hot,” she said, holding it out to Mackenzie.

The witch had been watching them with those glowing silver eyes, not quite smiling.  Now she took the necklace and studied it closely.

“He’s in there alright,” she said, tapping the small black gem.  Orange sparks danced around it.

“Who?” Lacey asked.

“Danvers,” Mackenzie explained, “or whatever he is now.”

“We couldn’t destroy him without killing me,” Starling said.  “But thanks to Mackenzie’s spell,” she gestured to the symbols scrawled over her naked body, “I was able to pull him out of my mind and we trapped him in that necklace.”

“Wait! You didn’t kill him?” Lacey said.

“Demons, even half-breeds like him, are nearly impossible to destroy,” Mackenize added, her eyes now returned to their normal grey.  “But if you have the proper means, they can be bound and indefinitely imprisoned.”

“Where’s Nikki?” Starling suddenly gasped.  “You were supposed to… I mean, she’s not here is she?”

“She’s with Tommy, I wouldn’t bring her to a demon fight,” Lacey said, patting the air calmingly, though one hand was still dripping blood.  “Not another one, anyway…”

“OH MY! Lace!?” Starling gasped, grabbing her wife’s gashed hand.  “What happened?”

Lacey winced, but let her wife inspect the wound.  “I had to cut myself so we could…” she hesitated, glancing towards Mackenzie.  “What exactly did we do?”

Mackenize was bringing over her long black coat and draped it over Starling’s bare shoulders.

“The spell essentially joined your lifeforce to hers,” the witch said, offering the brunette a bandana.  “The binding ritual hadn’t activated, I assume because Danvers had already drained her a little too much.  So, you gave it an extra kick.”

“And what were you waiting for?” Lacey snatched the cloth and wound it around her hand.  “How did you even know I was coming?  What if she had been-“

“I couldn’t do it myself,” Mackenzie cut her off, “or I would have.  The spell requires a stronger bond though, something pure, like love.”

Starling and Lacey shared an intimate, appreciative look, though concern quickly etched the redhead’s face once more. 

“We need to go get that looked at.”  She gestured to Lacey’s hand and began slipping into the coat.  “You may need stitches.” 

“I’m fine,” Lacey grumbled as Starling stood and pulling her to her feet. 

“We’ll let a proper doctor decide that,” Starling said, barely noting how refreshed and energetic she felt.

“Well, we’re not going to the hospital with you wearing only a coat…and covered in blood…and magic writing…”

Mackenzie smiled as they bickered and moved over to the sales counter.  She laid the obsidian necklace into a small iron box, then shut and locked it with a small padlock made of sterling silver.

“What are you going to do with him?” Starling asked.  She was buttoning up the front of the coat.

Mackenzie looked up at her, seeming hesitant to answer.  “My coven thinks his essence can be used to locate the true incubus who created him, his father, if you will.”

“That sounds dangerous,” Lacey said, flatly.

“We’ll take the needed precautions,” Mackenzie replied.

“That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s enough, Lace,” Starling said, in a stern tone she rarely used with her wife.  “We appreciate your help,” she said to Mackenzie. “Truly.  And I assume you won’t mind if I bring this back in a couple days?”  She popped the collar of the jacket, which was tight on her thick milfy curves.

“Take your time,” said the witch.

Then over her shoulder, Starling noticed two figures standing in the shadows of the narrow hallway leading to the back of the building.

The delusion of the Scarlet Dove smiled at her from behind a white feathered mask.

The memory of Dominion crossed his arms and nodded.

“Let’s get home,” Starling turned back to her wife, and led her out of the shop.  “But if that hasn’t stopped bleeding by the time I’m out of a shower…we’re going to the emergency room.”

“So I’ve got a couple hours then…oh…I sort of promised li’l bit she could have as much cereal as she wanted when we got back home.  So we may have to deal with that.”

“Oooo, I could go for a bowl of…” the door shut behind them.

Mackenzie immediately turned around, her eyes flashing silver.  She had sensed another presence in the room, two of them actually, just a moment before.  She had not wanted to further alarm the two small town women, but now she scoured the shop with her mystical sight.

Nothing.

She checked down the back hallway, but it was empty.  The rear door was still securely locked even.

Perhaps it was only nothing.

Epilogue

Auburn Hills had been a bit more watchful over their children this past year, after that strange occurrence of the previous Christmas.

Rather than regular trick-or-treating this Halloween the majority of folks gathered at the town square for a massive, town-wide trunk-or-treat.  The streets were blocked off to traffic and overrun with kids in costumes, ranging from cheap and cheesy to inappropriately scary for their age…and some inappropriately sexy for their age, with the older kids. 

Cars and trucks lined the curbs with spooky, or at least festive displays in the backs of the vehicles, while the owners handed out candy of all kinds, flavors and sizes. 

All of the shops and offices on the square had opened their doors to the trick-or-treaters as well.  Including the grandly re-opening Other Worldly (New Age / Metaphysics / Dispensary) and the new community outreach center for addiction and recovery.

Mackenzie was standing at the doorway of her shop handing out fun-sized Snickers to the kids, and 25% off coupons to the adults.

“TRICK OR TREEEEEAT!” chorused the next group of rowdy kids, one of which in particular caught Mackenzie’s attention.

The little girl had bright red hair, spiked straight out on all sides.  She was wearing a pair of googly-eye glasses, and what seemed to be an unfastened straight jacket.  But then Mackenzie noticed the adult minding the group, and her jaw nearly hit the sidewalk.

The woman was wearing a skintight red dress, covered in sparkling sequins and slit nearly up to her waist.  The strapless top was struggling to contain her huge rack, and her lustrous crimson hair was done up in voluminous curls and thick waves, and styled provocatively to hide one of her bright green eyes.

Mackenzie quickly recovered herself, and began handing out the sweets.  “Don’t you all look scary!” she teased the kids.

“Alright guys, what do you say?” reminded the chaperone.

“Thank you!” they all chimed.

“You’re all welcome,” Mackenzie replied.

“Good, now run on to see miss Lacey and I’ll be along in a minute.”

The kids all swarmed towards the next doorway and the promise of more candy.

“So you decided to stay?” Beth Stewart asked, turning back to Mackenzie.

“Well, I did buy the shop and the inventory,” she said with a shrug.  “And Auburn Hills seems like a quiet place to research and prepare for the bigger hunt.”

Beth frowned, “So you’re really going through with that?”

“There’s a demon out there right now,” the witch said certainly.  “Feeding on innocent women who have no way to resist him.  So, yes.  I am. I have to.”

Mackenzie’s words, and more than that the determination, the conviction in her tone stirred something deep within, not “Beth” but Starling.  Something she’d all but promised her wife wasn’t there anymore.  The redhead took a step back, fidgeting with her manicured nails.

“I- I understand,” Starling murmured.  “I better catch back up though…good luck in your mission.”

“Thank you,” Mackenzie nodded.  She quickly flicked out a coupon and held it out as the other woman started to turn away.  “25% off if you ever want to come by for an aura cleansing,” she smirked, “assuming you’re a bit more of a believer now?”

The redhead’s smile seemed a bit sad.  “Thanks, but I think anything left in my aura is the kind of things that can’t be cleansed.”

She turned and trotted on down the square.  Mackenzie wasn’t normally attracted to women, but it was impossible not to ogle the red sequined sashay of Beth Stewart’s salacious curves and dump-truck booty.

The gaggle of kids was already hurrying onto the next shop, and the redhead only stopped briefly to kiss her wife before following.  As she did, Lacey turned and looked down the way at Mackenzie.  Then she headed over, carrying a black bundle.

“Here is your coat,” the brunette said.  “We had it cleaned.  Professionally.”

“Thank you.  That wasn’t necessary.”

“No costume?”

Mackenzie was wearing her usual black leather pants, with a corseted black velvet top.  She grinned extra wide and pointed to a pair of false fangs.

“I’m vampire, bleh!” she hissed.  “And you’re a rabbit? Very cute.”

Lacey rolled her eyes, “I don’t pick the costumes in our house.”

She was wearing a red tee shirt, with a clip-on bow tie that was blue with yellow polka dots.  And a headband supporting tall white rabbit ears.

“I’m not surprised,” Mackenzie chuckled.  “And how are things going at the outreach center?”

“Slow,” Lacey admitted.  “Most people come in and ask questions, then leave without getting any help… but if we’re able to help even one person, then I know we’ll make Bill proud.  So, I’m trying to be patient.”

“Once people know you’re here,” Mackenzie said, “and that you’re legit.  They’ll come soon enough.  And I know you’ll do well by the lieutenant.”

“I hope so…but look, I know I’ve been kind of rude to you before,” Lacey said, “but I also know that whatever happened, well, you held up your end.  So, thank you.”

“No biggie,” Mackenzie replied.  “My line of work, I get not trusting strangers.  Though I am sensing there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

Lacey looked down.  “Not a ‘but’, an ask.”

The witch smiled.  “Go ahead.”

“I need you to do that eye-thingy and read Beth’s aura again,” Lacey said.

Mackenzie regarded her curiously for a moment.  “You don’t need to worry.  I know Danvers is gone, your wife is-”

“It’s not about him,” Lacey said.  “I need to know if there’s anything else…” she struggled for the right word a moment.  “Anything else Tangling her up.”

“What else would there be?”

Lacey turned away and ran hands through her slinky brown bob.  “I don’t know…I can’t…I just…”

Mackenzie chanced touching her shoulder.  Lacey didn’t pull away.

“She’s been through a lot,” the witch said.  Lacey glanced at her, but Mackenzie went on before she could reply.  “As have you, it’s scary learning there’s worse out there than just cops and robbers.”

The brunette chuckled darkly and nodded.  “Something like that…”

“I read Beth’s aura several times with and without Danvers corrupting it,” Mackenzie went on.  “You really don’t need to worry, she’s strong.  Actually, she has one of the strongest aura’s I’ve ever seen, and that’s including the members of my coven.”

Lacey looked at her sharply, “What does that mean?”

“Who can say?”  Mackenzie shrugged.  “She’s got a strong spirit, a strong heart, an important destiny…aura reading isn’t a science.  I assume it’s why Danvers picked her to begin with, but it’s also why I can say with certainty, no matter what she’s been through…she’ll be alright.  You both will.”

Lacey didn’t say anything for a long moment, then began to laugh.  “You’re right, you know,” she looked at Mackenzie earnestly.  “She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever met, and for some reason, that just makes me worry about her even more…”

The End.