Chapter 9: Desperate Hungers
The air in the Sylvan Retreat’s healing chamber was never truly still. It moved with the breath of the forest outside, carrying the scent of damp earth, night-blooming jasmine, and beneath it all, the faint, sweet-rot smell of magic gone terribly wrong.
Russel’s lanky frame was hunched on a stool beside the low, silk-draped futon. His dark eyes, usually sparkling with playful energy, were hollow with exhaustion. On the futon, Ginny and Molly lay side by side, looking like dolls arranged by a careless child. Ginny’s strawberry blonde hair was fanned out, her face slack. Molly’s glasses were folded neatly on a side table, her large breasts rising and falling with shallow, mechanical breaths. They were empty. Houses with the lights off.
Across from him, Akuma sat cross-legged on a woven mat, his stillness profound. The flickering candlelight caught the planes of his face, highlighting his quiet intensity. He watched Molly’s chest rise and fall, his brow furrowed.
“It’s like a stain,” Russel muttered, running a hand through his messy hair. “Jan’s curse on him, and his curse on them. It’s all just… grey paint over everything.”
Akuma nodded slowly. “The color is gone. Not hidden. Erased.”
They’d been taking shifts for days. Wiping brows. Spooning broth. Talking to them, even though no one was home. The other novices—Britney, Sydney, others—had been rotated out, or called to The Lodge in distant Chicago for the gathering storm. Only the two of them remained, the most recently assigned, the ones with the freshest connection to the Retreat’s energy flows.
Hank Powers stood in the arched doorway, a mug of coffee cooling in his mechanic’s grip. He’d come with Fatima, following some instinct he couldn’t name. He didn’t understand the magic, the orders, the cosmic shit. He understood broken things. Engines that wouldn’t turn over. And the look on his fiancée’s face when she’d left him here, a look that said fix this if you can. He felt useless.
“Anything?” Hank asked, his voice too loud in the hushed room.
“Nothing,” Russel sighed. “It’s a wall. We push a little joy in, a little warmth, and it just… gets soaked up by the grey. Doesn’t even make a dent.”
Akuma closed his eyes. “We are pushing at the symptom. Not the source. The source is…” He trailed off, his head tilting as if listening to a distant sound.
A vibration, subtle at first, trembled through the floorboards. It wasn’t physical. It was a harmonic in the magical field, a discordant note that made the candles gutter. Russel gasped, gripping the edge of the futon. Akuma’s eyes flew open.
“What was that?” Hank asked, stepping into the room.
“Pressure,” Akuma whispered. “Somewhere, a great pressure was just… released.”
On the futon, Ginny Minerva’s finger twitched.
It was a tiny, spasmodic jerk. Then her hand clenched into a fist. A sharp, ragged inhale tore through her lips. Her eyes didn’t just open; they flew wide, pupils dilating in the candlelight, but they weren’t seeing the ceiling. They were seeing something else, something desperate and hungry.
“Ginny?” Russel leaned forward, hope and fear warring in his voice.
She turned her head. The movement was jerky, animal. Her gaze locked onto him. It wasn’t recognition. It was need. Primal, ravenous need.
“I can… feel,” she croaked, her voice rusty from disuse. “It’s a crack. A hot crack.” Her hand shot out, fingers scrabbling at the front of his novice’s tunic. “Give me more.”
Her strength was shocking. She yanked him off the stool and onto the futon beside her. Her mouth found his, not in a kiss but in a collision. Her tongue thrust past his lips, tasting of salt and oblivion. She was a drowning woman and he was oxygen. Her hands tore at the laces of his tunic, her nails scraping his chest.
“Whoa, hey, Ginny, wait—” Russel mumbled against her mouth, but his own magic, his Green Moon essence, was responding to her frantic pull. It leapt from him unbidden, a golden-green surge of pure, amplifying life-force. It wasn’t a gentle seduction. It was a jump-start.
“Fuck waiting,” she snarled, pulling back. Her eyes were wild, gleaming. “I was gone. I was nothing. Now I’m here and I need to feel everything.” She shoved his tunic off his shoulders, her hands going to the drawstring of his pants. “Your cock. I need it inside me. Now.”
Beside them, Molly Carmichael let out a low, guttural moan. Her back arched, her nipples hardening visibly against the thin fabric of her shift. Her head thrashed side to side. “It’s… cold… no, it’s hot…” Her hand flopped out, grabbing Akuma’s wrist. Her grip was like iron. “Don’t let it fade. Please. Put something in me. Fill the hole.”
Akuma, ever serene, didn’t hesitate. He understood. The curse had fractured for a moment, a direct result of Oliver’s redirected fury at the O’Connors. This was a window. Not to heal, but to remind them what they were fighting for. To plant an anchor of sensation in the grey void.
He leaned into Molly’s grasp, his free hand coming to her cheek. “I will give you a sun,” he said softly, and sent a stream of his power into her—not the gentle warmth of the sun on leaves, but the fierce, blazing heat of noon at the equator.
Molly cried out, a sound of pure relief. Her glasses forgotten, her vision was blurry but her body was alight. She scrambled, wrestling him down onto the mats beside the futon, her clumsiness made frantic by hunger. She straddled his hips, yanking his loose trousers down with frantic urgency. His cock, already swelling from the rush of shared magic, sprang free. Molly didn’t pause. She shoved the thin linen of her shift up around her waist, positioned herself, and sank down onto him with one brutal, impaling motion.
“Christ!” Hank blurted, taking an involuntary step back. This wasn’t sex. This was exorcism.
Molly’s head fell back, her blonde hair cascading down her back. A sob of pure, unadulterated pleasure ripped from her throat. “Yes! Oh god, yes, I feel it!” She began to ride him, not with rhythm but with a frantic, piston-like desperation, slamming her hips down onto his again and again, taking his full length deep into her clutching, desperate cunt. “More! Don’t stop! Don’t you fucking stop!”
Akuma’s composure broke into a groan. He thrust upward to meet her, his hands gripping her ample hips, fingers digging into her soft flesh as he drove into her from below. The sound was obscenely wet, a loud, slapping rhythm of skin on skin that echoed in the chamber. Molly’s breasts bounced with each jarring impact.
On the futon, Russel had succumbed. Ginny had his pants around his ankles. She was on her back, her legs spread wide and hooked over his hips, her own soaked underwear torn and discarded. “Now, Russ, now!” she commanded, her voice a hoarse shriek.
He drove into her. There was no finesse, no teasing. It was one hard, deep, reclaiming thrust that buried him to the hilt in her tight, gripping heat. Ginny’s scream was one of triumph and agony. “YES! THAT! FUCK ME! FUCK THE EMPTY AWAY!”
Russel obeyed. He fucked her with hard, deep, punishing strokes, each one a hammer blow against the walls of her numbness. His balls slapped against her ass. She met him thrust for thrust, her hips bucking wildly, her fingers clawing red lines down his back. “Harder! God, your cock is so good, it’s so real!”
The room filled with the sounds of their raw, voracious coupling: the harsh panting, the wet, meaty sounds of penetration, the slapping of flesh, the broken, filthy words tumbling from Ginny and Molly’s lips—words they’d never use on stage, words of sheer, base need.
“Come in me,” Ginny demanded, locking her ankles behind Russel’s back, pulling him deeper. “Fill my fucking pussy up, I want to feel it, I want to feel you claim this!”
Russel, lost in the storm of her and his own magic, grunted. “Ginny… I’m gonna…”
“DO IT!”
With a final, shuddering roar, he slammed into her and let go. His cock pulsed violently inside her, jetting spurt after spurt of hot come deep into her womb. Ginny’s own orgasm tore through her a second later. Her cunt clenched around him in rhythmic, vice-like spasms, milking him dry as she let out a continuous, wordless wail of release.
On the floor, Molly was reaching her peak. “I’m gonna come! I’m gonna come on your cock, Akuma!” she shrieked, her riding becoming erratic, wild. Her inner muscles fluttered and gripped him, and then she froze, her body bowstring-tight. A flood of her release gushed around Akuma’s shaft as she cried out, the sound echoing off the wooden walls. Akuma followed her over, his own quiet groan deepening into a shout as he emptied himself into her with several sharp, pumping thrusts.
For a moment, there was silence, broken only by the ragged, sobbing breaths of the four of them. The air was thick with the smells of sex, sweat, and spent magic.
Ginny’s hand, trembling, came up to Russel’s sweat-slicked face. A true smile, weary but real, touched her lips. Her eyes were clear. “Hey, kid,” she whispered.
“Hey,” Russel panted, a tear mixing with the sweat on his cheek.
Molly slumped forward onto Akuma’s chest, her body limp. She nuzzled his neck. “Thank you,” she murmured, her voice her own again, soft and grateful.
Hank let out a long, shaky breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “Holy shit. You did it.”
But Akuma’s face, buried in Molly’s hair, had gone still. His eyes were open, looking past her at the candle flame. “No,” he said softly.
The change was visible. It was like watching color drain from a painting in fast motion. The warmth, the life, the satisfaction in Ginny’s eyes… it just faded. The softness in Molly’s body turned back into limpness. The connection snapped.
Ginny’s hand fell from Russel’s face. The light behind her eyes shut off. Her body went slack beneath him.
Molly became a dead weight on Akuma’s chest.
The crack had sealed. The grey flood had returned, colder and deeper than before, swallowing the temporary island of feeling they’d built.
“No, no, no,” Russel pleaded, pulling out of Ginny, shaking her shoulder. “Ginny? Come back!”
But she was gone. The empty doll was back.
The doorway darkened. Feng and Ilya stood there, having entered without a sound. Feng’s expression was one of profound sorrow. Ilya’s shifting eyes were hard as flint.
“You rallied them,” Ilya said, her voice lacking its usual musical lilt. “For a moment. You gave them a memory to cling to in the dark. It was all that could be done.”
Hank stared, his mechanic’s mind trying to process the brutal mechanics of it. “It didn’t work? After all that… it didn’t fucking work?”
“It worked as a symptom,” Feng said, gliding into the room. He placed a gentle hand on Russel’s heaving shoulder. “The disease lies elsewhere. The curse on them is a tributary. The river is Oliver Stansworth, and the dam he built with a stolen ghost’s love is breaking. What you felt was the pressure shift when he turned his full malice upon the curse’s creator.”
“Jan,” Hank breathed, his blood going cold. “He attacked Jan.”
“And through her, all who share her blood,” Ilya confirmed. She looked at the two catatonic women, then at the two devastated novices. “The backlash created a temporary weakness here. But he has reforged his walls. He is preparing for the final confrontation.”
Feng’s piercing eyes met Hank’s. “Your friends are gathering at The Lodge. The storm is no longer approaching.” He turned his gaze back to the futon, his face a mask of grim certainty.
“It is here.”
“It is here.”
Hank heard the words, but their meaning took a second to land. All who share her blood. Jan. Johnny. His mind, a practical engine, connected the wires. Brigid had gone off to call Jan. To give an update.
“Brigid,” he gasped.
He turned and ran, his work boots slamming against the polished wooden floors of the Sylvan Retreat’s hallways. He didn’t know where her room was. He followed the sound of frantic voices, of Sarah’s pleading, of Will’s shouting. He threw open a door to a small sunroom.
Brigid O’Connor was on the floor. Her long red braid was a messy rope against the rug. She was curled on her side, knees to her chest, shuddering. Silent, horrible tremors wracked her frame. Her eyes were squeezed shut, but tears streamed down her temples into her hairline. Will was holding her, his face pale with panic, whispering, “Breathe, Brigid, just breathe, we’re here,” but his words had no anchor. Sarah was rubbing her back, her own cheeks wet, chanting, “It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s just an echo,” but the lie was thin and brittle.
She wasn’t screaming. The pain was too deep for sound. It was the agony of a soul being scoured, of every happy memory—studying with Will, laughing with Sarah, holding baby Rick—being held up and systematically erased of all warmth, leaving only the frozen, factual skeleton of the event. Jan’s curse, reflected through their shared blood, was doing its work.
Hank’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He fumbled for it, his eyes stuck on Brigid’s trembling form. The screen said FATIMA. He answered, bringing it to his ear.
“Hank?” Her voice was a shattered thing. It was Fatima, but stripped of all its elegant composure, its sharp wit. It was pure, undiluted fear. He had never heard her sound like this. Not when facing down rogue magic, not when dealing with Jan’s wildest plans. This was different.
“Fati? What’s happening?”
“He attacked them. Oliver. He used Marty’s ghost… he sent out a wave. Jan and Johnny are down. They’re conscious but they’re… hollow. It’s like the curse but focused, a targeted missile.” She was talking fast, the words tumbling out between shaky breaths. “Brigid?”
“Yeah,” Hank said, his throat tight. “She’s on the floor. She’s not… she’s not good.”
A sob escaped Fatima. “God. Hank, I have faced down a lot. You’ve been right there with me for most of it. But this… I have never been this scared. Not for me. For everyone. We’re all here at The Lodge. Bethany’s reinforcing the wards. Rainbor’s setting traps. Aaron and Annie are coming. Everyone.”
He heard the unsaid but. “But Shiv,” he said.
“But Shiv,” Fatima confirmed, her voice dropping to a terrified whisper. “She’s just standing in the middle of the room with that knife. She’s waiting. The second Lady Eleanor or anyone pinpoints Oliver’s location, she’s going to walk out that door. And she won’t be looking to capture him. Stacy’s with her, and with that curse, she has no brakes. They’ll go through anyone between them and him. Innocent people, Hank. And Oliver… he has power from Those Who Watch. It’s a suicide run. It’s all a fucking suicide run.”
Hank leaned against the doorframe, the weight of his own uselessness crushing him. “What can I do? Tell me what to do.”
“Nothing.” The word was final. “You don’t have magic. You can’t open a portal. You can’t get here. I just… I needed to hear your voice. In case. I love you, Hank. I needed you to know that.”
The words, meant as an anchor, felt like a goodbye. A cold dread pooled in his gut. “I love you too, Fati. So much. You gotta be smart. You gotta… fucking live, okay?”
“I’ll call you when it’s settled. If I can.” The line went dead.
Hank stood there, the phone a dead weight in his hand. The silence was punctuated by Brigid’s ragged inhalations, by Will’s helpless murmurs. He couldn’t fix this. He was a mechanic in a world of shattered souls.
He turned and walked away, leaving the sunroom, moving blindly down a different hallway. He pushed through a heavy wooden door and emerged into a small, secluded glade behind the Retreat. The evening air was cool, smelling of pine and clean dirt. Fireflies blinked in the deepening twilight.
He heard a low, happy murmur. Mike Williamson was sitting on a checkered blanket, his arm around Casey. They were both looking at their son. Rick, six months old, was sitting propped between Casey’s legs, his chubby face tilted up in utter wonder. The forest canopy above was a tapestry of dark green and gold.
“Hey, man,” Mike said softly, spotting Hank’s approach. His face was calm, but his eyes held the familiar, settled understanding of someone who’d seen the weirdness and decided to just roll with it. “Come sit. It’s… quieter out here.”
Hank sank onto the edge of the blanket, his body heavy.
Casey glanced at him, her artist’s eyes missing nothing about his shell-shocked expression. “We heard some yelling. Felt that… cold pulse thing earlier,” she said, her voice matter-of-fact. “Something big’s going down. We don’t get it. We never really do. And we definitely can’t do anything about it.”
Mike nodded, his hand resting on Rick’s back. “We kinda lost the plot for a day there. Couldn’t feel a damn thing for each other, for him.” He looked down at his son, his goofy grin softening into something profound. “It was like living in a black and white movie. So now… we just want to let him see the color.”
As if on cue, Rick let out a delighted gurgle. He was staring, utterly captivated, at his own outstretched hand. Hank followed his gaze. A creature, no larger than a monarch butterfly, had landed on Rick’s thumb. Its wings shimmered with a light that wasn’t reflected but emitted—a soft, cobalt blue. As it shifted, Hank saw the faint, graceful outline of a humanoid form, a tiny, curious face peering at the giant baby.
It wasn’t a butterfly. It was a fairy. A real, honest-to-gods fairy, drawn to the pure, uncomplicated wonder radiating from the child.
Rick giggled, a sound of perfect, unfettered joy. The fairy danced on his hand, wings buzzing, sprinkling tiny motes of light like glitter.
Hank stared. The fear, the helplessness, the image of Brigid seizing on the floor and the terror in Fatima’s voice… it all receded, just for a moment. This tiny, impossible moment. A baby laughing at magic in a protected glade, while a war of nullity and rage gathered force miles away.
This was it. This was the exact, fragile thing the grey curse sought to erase. This wonder. This connection. This simple, color-soaked joy.
This was what Fatima fought for. What Jan, in her messy, horny, glorious way, fought for. What they all, in their own strange lanes, were trying to protect.
He didn’t have magic. He couldn’t throw a spell or ward a door. But sitting there on the blanket, watching a fairy dance on a baby’s hand, Hank Powers finally understood exactly what he was fighting for, too.