Chapter 8: The Imp's Bargain
The villa held its breath. Downstairs, Aliandra sat motionless at the kitchen table, the world narrowed to the silent conference within her skull. The Crow Spirit was no longer a passenger; it was a co-pilot, its perceptions layering over her own. She could feel the weight of the house, the slow turn of the earth, the desperate ache pulsing from the room above. It was a cold, vast awareness.
Upstairs, Jenny’s tears were a hot, private failure soaking into the rough cotton of Simon’s borrowed trousers. His hand on her head was a monument to his exhaustion. The hollow she felt under her cheek, the utter lack of response in his flesh, was a verdict. She had broken her god. The addiction twisted, becoming a nauseating shame.
“It’s not you,” Simon whispered again, the words scraping. “It’s just… empty.”
The air in the corner of the room, by the dark walnut wardrobe, shimmered. It was a subtle thing, a heat-haze ripple that smelled suddenly of hot copper and wet fur. Jenny, her face buried, didn’t notice. Simon, his gaze fixed on the ceiling, did. His bloodshot eyes focused, a flicker of weary recognition in them.
The ripple coalesced. A form unraveled from the air itself, three feet of knotty, leathery menace. Sperum Nator perched on the wardrobe’s top, his bat-like wings giving a single, dry rustle before folding tight against his spine. His goatish yellow eyes glinted in the gloom, fixed on Simon’s depleted form. A thin, black tongue darted out, tasting the despair in the room.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” the imp sighed, his voice like gravel grinding in a tin can. “Look at the state of you. Pathetic.”
Jenny jerked upright, scrambling back on the bed with a gasp. She fumbled for her glasses, shoved them on, her heart a frantic bird against her ribs. “W-what…”
“It's me, Sperum Nator, sweetcheeks. The silent partner.” He hopped down, landing on the floor with a soft thump, ignoring her completely. He stalked to the bedside, peering at Simon with clinical disdain. “I felt the drain. Like a fucking cataract in the link. You let some stone cunts drink the well dry?”
Simon managed a weak nod. “Price of passage.”
“Passage.” Sperum spat, a glob of iridescent phlegm sizzling on the tiles. “Amateur hour. That vitality wasn’t just yours to squander, boy. It’s the capital. My capital. The engine that fuels our little arrangement.” He cocked his head, his gaze sliding to Jenny’s terrified face. “And you. Stop your blubbering. I’ve no intention of losing my nice new investment. Not when he’s got a fucking estate to run and promises to keep.”
He turned back to Simon. “You need a jump. A direct infusion. The good stuff, straight from the tap.”
Before Simon could protest, Sperum moved. He was a blur of leather and spite. He clambered onto the bed, his clawed feet indenting the mattress. He stood over Simon’s hips, yanking the blanket fully away. Simon’s limp cock lay exposed, a stark symbol of absence.
“This won’t be dignified,” Sperum said, almost cheerfully.
With one knotted hand, he grabbed the base of Simon’s soft shaft, squeezing rudely. With the other, he fished out his own cock from a slit in his leathery hide. It was a thick, dark, barbed thing, already swelling to a glistening, angry rigidity, the head an engorged purple. It smelled of ozone and burnt hair.
“Open up, master,” Sperum crooned, the title a vicious parody. “Medicine time.”
He didn’t wait. He shoved the barbed head against Simon’s lips. Simon gagged, tried to turn his head, but the imp’s strength was inhuman. Clawed fingers pinched Simon’s nose shut. Desperate for air, Simon’s mouth opened on a choking inhale.
Sperum shoved forward.
Jenny watched, paralyzed, hand clamped over her own mouth. Simon’s eyes bulged, a strangled gagging sound tearing from his throat as the imp’s grotesque cock plunged deep, the barbs catching soft tissue on the way down. Sperum fucked his mouth with short, brutal pistons, his narrow hips slapping against Simon’s lips.
“That’s it… take it… fucking swallow,” Sperum grunted, peering down at his handiwork with intense concentration. His balls, tight and hairy, drew up. “Almost there… gotta get it right to the gut…”
Simon’s body convulsed, his heels digging into the mattress. Tears of pain and humiliation streamed from the corners of his eyes. The sound was wet, obscene, a violent violation. Sperum’s rhythm grew frantic, his little body tensing.
With a final, shuddering thrust, he buried himself to the root and held. A deep, rattling groan escaped him. Simon felt the hot, sudden flood erupting into his throat—a torrent of thick, viscous cum that tasted of lightning and rotten honey. It was too much. He choked, spluttered, but Sperum held him fast, sealing his mouth, his nose, forcing him to swallow convulsively as spunk spilled from his nostrils.
Sperum pulled out with a slick, barbed pop. Simon collapsed onto his side, heaving, coughing up strings of pearlescent come, his body wracked with spasms.
The effect was instantaneous.
Colour rushed back into Simon’s skin not as a blush, but as a surge, a tide of life returning under the pallor. The sunken hollows of his cheeks filled out. The tremor in his hands stilled, replaced by a faint, buzzing energy visible under his skin. He drew a deep, clear breath—his first in hours—and pushed himself up onto his elbows.
And his cock, still wet from Jenny’s tears and spit, gave a violent twitch. It thickened, rising from his thigh in a swift, arrogant arc, flushing a deep, healthy red. It was fully, impressively erect in moments, veins standing in sharp relief, the head glistening with a bead of fresh pre-cum. Vitality, raw and potent, radiated from him like heat from a furnace.
Sperum wiped his cock on the bedsheet, leaving a glistening smear. He looked terribly pleased with himself. “See? Good as new. Better, even. That’s premium stock. Don’t go wasting it on landscape features again.”
He glanced at Jenny, who was staring, mesmerized and horrified, at Simon’s transformed body, at the proud, jutting proof of the imp’s foul magic. Sperum winked one sulphurous eye. “He’s all charged up, darling. Knock yourself out.”
With another ripple of hot air and the scent of a struck match, the imp was gone.
Silence, thick and loaded, flooded back into the room. It was broken by Simon’s breathing, now deep and strong. He looked down at his own erection with a kind of bewildered awe. The crushing weakness was gone. In its place was a humming, boundless strength, a restless energy that made his fingers curl. The memory of the imp’s violation was a sharp, ugly knot in his gut, but his body sang a different, primal song.
Jenny’s shame evaporated, burned away by the sheer gravitational pull of that cock. The hollow in her soul had an answer again, throbbing right before her. Her mouth watered. The failed, pathetic act of minutes ago was forgotten. This was the Simon she needed. The source.
She moved without thought, crawling across the bed to him. Her glasses were fogged. She pushed them up. “Simon…” she breathed, her voice husky.
He looked at her, his eyes clear now, but shadowed with complex shame. “Jenny, wait… that was…”
She didn’t let him finish. She wrapped her hand around his shaft. It was hot, almost feverish, pulsing with a fierce, unfamiliar rhythm under her palm. She squeezed, a moan escaping her as she felt the undeniable, life-giving power contained there. She leaned down, her strawberry-blonde hair curtaining their faces, and took him into her mouth in one deep, worshipful glide.
“Oh, god,” Simon gasped, his head falling back. The sensation was overwhelming. After the numbness, the void, the brutal invasion, this was paradise—wet, willing, adoring heat. His hips jerked involuntarily.
Jenny fucked her mouth on him with a frantic, hungry pace. She slurped and deep-throated him, her fingers digging into his thighs. She was claiming what was hers, erasing the imp’s touch with her own devotion, trying to drink down this new, supercharged essence. She could taste the difference—a sharper tang, a metallic edge beneath his familiar musk. Sperum’s “premium stock.” It made her dizzy.
“Suck it,” Simon groaned, his hands tangling in her hair. The submissive boy was gone, submerged by a wave of restorative arrogance. “Suck my fucking cock clean, Jenny. Take it all.”
She redoubled her efforts, bobbing furiously, gagging herself on his thickness, her nose pressed into his pubic hair. The obscene, slick sounds filled the room. She brought one hand down to rub furiously at her own clit through her shorts, her hips bucking against the mattress.
She felt him swell further, the tension coiling in his balls against her chin. “I’m gonna come,” he warned, his voice a guttural growl. “Gonna pump that throat full.”
That was all she wanted. She took him deeper, holding herself there, her throat fluttering wildly around the head. With a shout that was half pain, half triumph, Simon erupted.
The cum hit her throat in hot, relentless spurts. It was more than before—thicker, more voluminous, a cascading flood that she struggled to swallow. It overflowed, spilling from her stretched lips, dripping down his shaft onto the sheets. It tasted electric, alive, a shocking jolt to her system that made her own orgasm rip through her silently, her body seizing as she milked him dry with frantic swallows.
When he was spent, she slid off, collapsing beside him, breathless, her face glazed with spit and come. She panted, her whole body humming, the addictive void within her temporarily, gloriously filled.
Simon lay back, staring at the ceiling, his chest rising and falling steadily. The vitality thrummed within him, undeniable. But his eyes were dark. The price of it sat foul in his memory. He was restored, but he felt indelibly marked.
Downstairs, Aliandra finally opened her eyes. A single black feather, real this time, drifted from her hair and landed on the kitchen table. She had seen none of it, but through the Crow’s senses, she had felt the violent surge of alien magic, the warp in the house’s energy, and then the resonant, hungry crash of Jenny’s feeding.
She knew Sperum had intervened. She knew Simon was “fixed.” But the balance had shifted. Something had been sold, or reinforced, in that ugly transaction. She picked up the feather, twirling it between her fingers, her fractured silver eyes looking toward the window and the darkening sea beyond. The path was getting darker, and they were all digging the trench.