Chapter 6: The Consolation Prize
The side exit door sighed shut behind them, cutting the club’s throb to a dull, mechanical heartbeat. They were in a service corridor, concrete and sterile under buzzing fluorescents. The sudden quiet was a physical relief, but Megan’s ragged breathing now filled the space, loud and wet with held-back sobs.
“This way,” Artemis murmured, her voice smooth against the harsh walls. She kept a guiding hand on Megan’s back, feeling the tremors that racked her frame. The sharp scent of Megan’s grief was clearer here, untainted by crowd-stink: salt, fading floral perfume, and the sour edge of shock.
They didn’t go far. A discreet elevator at the corridor’s end required a keycard. Artemis produced one, a sleek black rectangle that felt cool against her fingertips. The elevator ascended in silent, swift motion.
“Where are we going?” Megan asked, her voice small. She wiped at her cheeks, smearing the ruined makeup further.
“Somewhere safe,” Artemis said, watching the floor numbers blink upward. “A friend’s place. It’s quiet. You can… breathe.”
The elevator opened directly into the foyer of Lilith’s apartment. The contrast was jarring. After the club’s assault and the corridor’s indifference, this space was a velvet-lined cocoon. The air was warm, thick with sandalwood incense and the faint, dusty sweetness of old paper. Low, ambient jazz curled from hidden speakers—a slow, mournful saxophone line that seemed to physically slow Megan’s breathing as she stepped inside.
“Oh,” Megan exhaled, her eyes widening slightly as she took in the dim room. The walls, lined with obscure artwork and symbols, the plush rugs, the deep crimson of the velvet chaise. It felt outside of time, a place where ordinary rules might not apply.
Artemis led her past the chaise, toward a curtained archway. “In here.”
Lilith’s bedroom was an extension of the lounge’s aesthetic, but more intimate. The lighting was even lower, pooled from a single brass lamp on a cluttered side table. The bed was vast, a landscape of charcoal silk sheets and a heap of textured pillows. More books were stacked precariously on the floor. The scent of incense was stronger here, mixed with Lilith’s particular fragrance—jasmine and something metallic, like ozone after a lightning strike.
Megan hovered near the doorway, her arms wrapped around herself. The vulnerability on her face was a live wire. Artemis could taste the cocktail of her emotions on her own tongue: the bitter pill of betrayal, the aching hollow of abandonment, and now, a fragile, desperate hope for distraction. It was a perfect vintage.
“You can sit,” Artemis said, her voice softening further. She moved to the bed and smoothed a hand over the silk. The fabric was cool and whisper-soft.
Megan walked forward on unsteady legs and perched on the very edge of the mattress, as if afraid to commit her weight. She looked up at Artemis, her shattered blue eyes searching. “Why are you being so nice to me? You don’t even know me.”
Artemis sat beside her, leaving a careful space between them. The gold lycra of her top gleamed dully in the lamplight. “I know what it feels like to have the world you built crack right down the middle,” she said, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. Arthur’s world had cracked into a thousand unrecognizable pieces. “You don’t need to be alone in it tonight.”
A fresh tear tracked down Megan’s cheek. “He said he loved my smile. That’s what he said when he proposed.” She gave a choked laugh. “And she… she was my maid of honor. I picked the dress with her.”
The story spilled out in fractured pieces. The planned wedding. The house viewings. The inside jokes that now felt like lies. Artemis listened, nodding, making small sounds of understanding. She let the pain flow, a stream of psychic energy that fed the quiet, growing warmth in her own center. This was different from Chloe. That had been a frantic, stolen gluttony. This was a slow, deliberate drawing of poison from a wound.
As Megan spoke, Artemis reached out and gently took her hand. Megan’s fingers were icy. Artemis chafed them softly, transmitting a deliberate, soothing heat from her own skin. It was a subtle trick, a gentle manipulation of energy, but Megan felt it instantly. She stopped mid-sentence, her breath catching.
“Your hands are so warm,” she whispered.
“Let me help,” Artemis murmured. She leaned in slowly, giving Megan every chance to pull away. Their faces were inches apart. Artemis could see the delicate fractal patterns in her irises, the pulsing vein in her temple. She could smell the champagne on Megan’s breath, undercut by the salt of tears.
Megan didn’t pull away. She was adrift, and Artemis was an anchor. She closed the distance.
The kiss was not passionate. It was tentative, questioning. Megan’s lips were chapped and tasted of salt. Artemis met her with a soft, persistent pressure, an offer of warmth. She poured a careful thread of sensation into it—not the overwhelming blaze she’d used on Chloe, but a diffuse, golden comfort that seeped into Megan’s misery. She felt the exact moment Megan’s rigid posture began to melt. A small sigh escaped her, misting against Artemis’s cheek.
Artemis pulled back just enough to speak, her lips brushing Megan’s as she did. “You deserve to feel something else.”
She stood, drawing Megan up with her. They kissed again, deeper this time. Megan’s hands came up, trembling, to rest on Artemis’s waist, fingers tentative against the slick spandex. Artemis guided them backward, through the curtained archway and into the bedroom proper, their footsteps a slow shuffle on the deep pile rug.
When the backs of Megan’s knees hit the bed, she sank down, and Artemis followed, lowering her onto the silk. The saxophone on the record curled around them, a smoky third presence in the room.
“This is…” Megan started, looking up at Artemis straddling her, a flicker of confusion warring with the need for oblivion.
“Shhh,” Artemis whispered, placing a finger on Megan’s lips. “Don’t think. Just feel.”
She began with the tear-stained dress, a simple black thing now speckled with salt lines. The zipper hissed down its back. Artemis peeled the fabric away with a reverence that felt foreign to her, a performance mined from some deep, forgotten well of Arthur’s awkward tenderness. She revealed Megan’s skin inch by inch—pale, dotted with goosebumps, the vulnerable curve of her collarbone, the plain white cotton of her bra.
Megan shivered, but not from cold. The energy in the room was changing, thickening. Artemis trailed her fingertips, her lips, along the paths she uncovered. Each touch was calibrated, a precisely delivered volt of pleasure designed to short-circuit grief. She found the places where heartbreak lived as tension: the tight cords of Megan’s neck, the fluttering pulse at her wrist, the defensive hunch of her shoulders.
She worked in silence, her movements fluid and assured. This was her new grammar. She could read the subtle, sub-vocal cues of Megan’s body—the hitch in her breath, the minute arch of her back—and respond, building a wordless narrative of sensation. When she finally removed Megan’s last articles of clothing, it felt less like an undressing and more like an unveiling.
Megan was crying again, but the tears were different now. Silent, releasing. Her hands, which had been limp at her sides, rose to touch Artemis’s face, then the impossible, satin-clad curves of her breasts. The touch was awed, curious.
“You’re so beautiful,” Megan breathed. “It doesn’t feel real.”
Artemis captured her hand, brought her fingertips to her own lips. “This is real. This feeling. Let it be the only thing that is.”
She continued her demonstration. She used her mouth, her hands, the sheer, maddening friction of her own clothed body against Megan’s bare skin. She found she could do more than transmit generic pleasure; she could shape it. She could craft a slow, warm wave that washed from the crown of Megan’s head to her toes, leaving liquefied relaxation in its wake. She could focus it to a sharp, pinpoint intensity that made Megan gasp and dig her fingers into the silk sheets. She orchestrated it, building rhythms and then breaking them, leading Megan’s nervous system away from the memory of pain and into a labyrinth of present, physical truth.
Megan was soon beyond words, moving in a languid, desperate daze. Her earlier sadness was not gone, but it was being transmuted, burned as fuel for this newfound, overwhelming sensitivity. The hollow ache inside Artemis sang in harmony. She was not just taking; she was converting. The raw, negative energy of betrayal was being purified into something usable, a vibrant, if borrowed, vitality.
When Artemis finally entered her, it was with a slow, inevitable pressure that felt less like penetration and more like a homecoming for them both. Megan cried out, a sound of shattering release that had nothing to do with physical climax alone. It was the sound of a dam breaking.
Artemis moved above her, a graceful, relentless pendulum. The slick heat between them was a conduit. She watched Megan’s face, watched the landscape of anguish be rewritten, line by line, into one of stunned, gathering ecstasy. The spark within Megan—that bright, painful core of her love and her hurt—flickered, blazing one final, glorious time as her body arched off the bed.
And then, as the peak hit her, Artemis opened the hollow place wide.
It was not a violent rip. It was a siphon. As Megan fractured into sensation, the essential energy of her—the passionate, loyal, wounded heart of her—flowed out in a radiant silver-gold stream. It poured into Artemis, warm and sweet as honeyed light, filling the void, threading through her limbs with a potent, singing electricity. It was richer than Chloe’s frenetic energy, more complex, layered with the very depth of feeling that had caused the pain.
Megan’s climax subsided into a series of deep, trembling aftershocks. Then, blessedly, into a profound and empty calm. Her eyes, which had been squeezed shut, fluttered open. They were clear. Serene. The shattered look was gone, replaced by a soft, distant focus. She smiled, a faint, sleepy thing.
“I feel… light,” she slurred, her voice thick. “What did you…?” But the question drifted away, unfinished. Her eyelids grew heavy.
Artemis held her as the final tremors passed, feeling the new energy settle within her own bones, a satisfying, resonant hum. She watched as the last vestiges of acute memory and emotional charge faded from Megan’s aura, leaving behind a gentle, neutral beige. The wound was not healed; it was gently, thoroughly erased.
Megan was asleep within minutes, breathing deep and even. Artemis extracted herself from the tangle of limbs and silk, and stood looking down at the sleeping woman. There was no guilt. There was a profound, operational satisfaction. The job was done. The hunger was sated, for now.
She walked naked to a mirrored wardrobe. The reflection showed Artemis, flushed, powerful, the lines of her body taut with stolen life. But deep within the eyes, if one knew to look, a faint, bewildered distress shimmered—Arthur’s silent, bearable horror at the efficiency of it all.
She found a black silk robe and slipped it on. The energy from Megan was still integrating, a warm, soothing hum that made her own skin feel hyper-alive. She padded back out to the lounge.
Lilith was there, curled on the chaise with a crystal glass of something clear. She didn’t look up from the old book in her lap. “Cleaner?”
“Quieter,” Artemis said, her voice low. She sank into a wingback chair, the silk of the robe whispering.
“Good. She’ll wake up with a vague, pleasant memory of a kind stranger and a fundamental lack of interest in her fiancé. The emotional scar tissue will remain, but the nerve endings will be dead. She’ll move on, efficiently and without much fuss.” Lilith finally glanced over. “You’re learning control. That was elegantly done. No theatrics.”
Artemis nodded, staring at her own hands. They looked the same. They didn’t feel the same. “It feels different. Than with Chloe.”
“Because you were in control. You weren’t a starved animal lunging at a steak. You were a connoisseur appreciating a complex vintage.” Lilith took a sip. “The feed will last longer this way, too. Quality over brute quantity.”
The door to the bedroom was slightly ajar. Artemis could hear Megan’s steady, untroubled breathing. She had gone into that room a heartbroken woman. She would leave a neutered one. The transaction was complete.
Lilith marked her page and closed the book. “Isaac texted. He has a potential lead on someone with a… brighter spark. A chronic one. A painter who’s been channeling a lifetime of visionary mania into his work. It’s made him quite famous. And quite deliciously unstable.”
Artemis felt a jolt, not of hunger, but of sharp interest. A painter. Not a weeping woman in a bar, but someone burning from the inside out with a creative fire. The image of Leo’s quiet, steady glow flashed again, and she pushed it down. This was different. This was a bonfire, not a pilot light. It was a sanctioned target.
“When?” Artemis asked, her voice assuming a new casualness.
“Tomorrow night. His studio. It will be a more involved hunt. You’ll need to be… persuasive in a different way.” Lilith’s smile was a razor in the dim light. “But for now, rest. Let that new energy settle. You’ve earned a night off.”
Artemis leaned her head back against the chair, closing her eyes. The jazz record had reached its end. In the silent groove before the auto-return clicked, she could hear it: the faint, steady hum of the city below, a vast reservoir of sparks waiting to be sampled or snuffed. And within her, the borrowed warmth of Megan’s extinguished heart kept the hollowness at bay, a temporary, glowing coal in the dark.
And within her, the borrowed warmth of Megan’s extinguished heart kept the hollowness at bay, a temporary, glowing coal in the dark.
Artemis went back to the bedroom, the satin robe dropping to her feet revealing her naked beauty. The cool air raised goosebumps on her skin, a sharp counterpoint to the internal heat radiating from her core. She slid under the satin covers and spooned her body against Megan, feeling her warmth, the smooth, placid heat of a banked fire.
Her hand stroked Megan’s breast, eliciting a deep, sleepy moan from Megan. The nipple pebbled instantly under her palm, a responsive hardness in the dark. Slowly Artemis traced her hand down Megan’s torso, over the soft swell of her belly, a landscape now unfamiliar to its owner. She found the thatch of curly hair at the apex of Megan’s thighs, coarse and damp.
She started to lightly touch and stroke her, feeding the fire again within Megan, who responded to Artemis’s touch with a lethargic, instinctive roll of her hips. She was still half in a dream, pliant and open, every guard dismantled by the earlier feeding. This wasn't for energy. This was something else.A test. A indulgence. A claiming of what was left.
"Please," Megan murmured into the pillow, the word thick and vague.
Artemis didn't answer with words. Her fingers delved, finding Megan’s entrance already slick, a ready welcome. She slid two inside with a smooth, twisting motion. Megan gasped, her back arching against Artemis's front. The warmth was snug, yielding.
Artemis began a steady rhythm, her fingers curling, pumping. She used her thumb to circle Megan’s clit with a firm, insistent pressure that was less about teasing and more about demanding a specific, physical result. She wanted to feel the empty vessel spasm around her intrusion, one last time. She wanted to own the echo.
“Oh, god,” Megan choked out, her hand fumbling back to grip Artemis’s thigh, nails digging in. Her breaths came in sharp, ragged hitches. “Right there. Don’t stop. Please don’t fucking stop.”
Artemis complied, her own breath hot against the nape of Megan’s neck. She could smell the clean, post-coital scent of her, mixed with the faint, decaying aroma of the spent perfume. She drove her fingers harder, deeper, the heel of her hand grinding against Megan’s ass. The squelching sound was loud in the quiet room, a wet, rhythmic punctuation to Megan’s escalating moans.
Megan came abruptly, a silent, seizing tension that locked her body for three full seconds before a guttural cry was torn from her throat. Her cunt clenched in a series of violent, fluttering pulses around Artemis’s fingers. Artemis held them there, feeling the internal tremors, a final, bio-mechanical shrug.
As the contractions subsided, Artemis withdrew her glistening fingers. She brought them to her own mouth, tasting Megan—salt, musk, the faint, metallic ghost of lost tears. It was the taste of completion, of a job thoroughly finished.
Megan was already sinking back into a stupor, her body loose and heavy. Within a minute, her breathing evened out into the deep, untroubled rhythm of true sleep.
Artemis lay beside her, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. The glowing coal inside her pulsed with stolen warmth. It felt good.Solid. Yet, beneath it, a new, more disturbing sensation gnawed: a low-grade craving, not for raw power, but for the process itself. For the moment of conquest. For the tangible proof of her own potency, written in another person’s surrender.
She closed her eyes, but Leo’s calm, steady face surfaced behind her lids. He’d said something about seeing things.Little things.
She pushed the memory away, burying it under the sensual afterimage of Megan’s climax, the vivid, wet sound of it. The hollowness was gone, yes. But something more complicated, and perhaps more hungry, had begun to grow in its place.
But something more complicated, and perhaps more hungry, had begun to grow in its place. Sleep, when it finally came, was a black and dreamless sinkhole.
Arthur woke to the familiar, depressing geometry of his own ceiling. The faint crack in the plaster above his bed, shaped like a lopsided ‘Y’, greeted him as it had for fifteen years. He was male again, the soft weight of his own stomach pressing against the sheets, the dull throb of a phantom hangover behind his eyes that had nothing to do with drink. The silken memory of Megan’s skin was a distant, illicit echo in nerves that now felt bland and insulated.
He lay there for a long time, listening to the traffic. The psychic static of the city was muted, back to a distant hum he could almost ignore. The hollow ache was absent, replaced by a satiated, leaden fullness. He felt… good. Rested. Then the memory of how he’d earned that rest unspooled behind his eyes, and a slick nausea coated his gut.
The scent of jasmine and ozone reached him a second before her voice. “She left an hour ago. Took a cab. She seemed… peaceful.”
Lilith stood in the doorway of his bedroom, leaning against the jamb. She was back in her modern guise, wearing tailored trousers and a simple black sweater. She looked like a very expensive gallery owner.
Arthur pushed himself up on his elbows. The clock on his nightstand read 11:47 AM. Panic, pure and professional, sliced through the fog. “Shit. Work.”
“I assumed,” Lilith said, a trace of amusement in her tone. “Your phone has been buzzing. Quietly, now.”
He fumbled for the device. Three missed calls from the office, two texts from Janice asking if he was okay. His fingers, thick and clumsy, typed out a reply. Terrible stomach bug. Won’t be in. Sorry. He hit send, the lie settling in him like a cold stone.
“So it begins,” Lilith said softly, pushing off the doorframe. “The rearranging of a life. It gets easier. The excuses become automatic.”
Arthur grunted, swinging his legs out of bed. His body felt used, not from passion but from the profound metabolic shift of the transformation. He caught a glimpse of himself in the dresser mirror: middle-aged, soft, ordinary. The man in the reflection seemed like a lie. “You said she was peaceful.”
“She was. She’ll order a salad for lunch, call her mother, maybe browse furniture websites for a new apartment. The fiancé will be a vague concept, like a movie she didn’t particularly enjoy.” Lilith turned to go. “But I will bet you’ll see her again.”
He froze, one sock in his hand. “What?”
“On the street. In a coffee shop. Years from now, maybe. She won’t recognize you, of course. But you’ll feel it. A little tug. Like scenting a room you once slept in.” She disappeared down the hall, her voice trailing back. “Shower. Then come eat. You need fuel.”
Thirty minutes later, clean and dressed in yesterday’s slightly rumpled clothes, Arthur found her in a sun-drenched kitchen he’d never seen. It was in her apartment, a space of warm oak and marble that felt centuries removed from the cluttered, incense-heavy study. Light streamed through enormous windows, painting geometric shapes on the floor.
Lilith stood at a professional range, a sizzle and a phenomenal aroma rising from a cast-iron skillet. “I’ve become quite a chef over the centuries,” she said without turning, wielding a spatula with practiced ease. “When you have forever, you pick things up. Or you go utterly mad. Cooking is preferable.”
She slid a plate onto the granite island. On it rested a steak, seared a perfect dark brown, glistening with butter and herbs. It was accompanied by crispy potatoes and something that looked like seared asparagus but smelled of woodlands and something far more ancient. “Eat.”
Arthur sat, his stomach growling audibly. He cut into the meat. It yielded like soft butter, a deep ruby red at its center. The flavor that exploded in his mouth was profound, a complexity that made his eyes water. It was the best thing he had ever tasted, not just for its preparation but for the sheer, visceral vitality it imparted. He felt the bite hit his system like a shot of adrenaline, clarifying his thoughts, firming the shake in his hands.
“This is… incredible,” he managed, his mouth full.
“Bison. From a very special preserve. The herbs are mine.” She sat across from him with a cup of black tea, watching him devour the food. “The transformation burns energy at a catastrophic rate. You need to replenish with intention. No more frozen dinners, Arthur. Your body is a tool now. Maintain it.”
He finished every bite, the plate clean. The heavy satiation was now a vibrant, humming energy. For the first time since the change, he felt clear-headed, alert. The guilt was still there, but it was compartmentalized, a box on a high shelf he could choose not to look at.
“When we are done I want to share with you some of my journals,” Lilith said, sipping her tea. “This will help you on your journey. Context is a kind of sustenance, too.”
They went into the study, the familiar chamber of shadows and strange artifacts. She went to a shelf that seemed to hold first editions of mundane classics, but her fingers found a hidden latch. A section of the bookcase swung inwards with a soft sigh, revealing a narrow, climate-controlled space.
Inside, on simple metal shelves, rested hundreds of volumes. Their bindings were of every description: cracked leather, vellum, wood, even what looked like hammered copper. The air smelled of time and careful preservation.
Lilith selected three volumes, their leather covers worn soft as skin. She handed them to Arthur. They were heavier than they looked. “These are from the early years. The first century. It’s… raw. The confusion. The horror. The discoveries.” She gestured to a deep leather armchair. “Read. Ask questions.”
He opened the first one. The script was an elegant, archaic hand, the ink faded to a sepia brown. The language was formally structured, but the emotion bled through the careful pen strokes.
I have awoken again as myself, the soldier Marcus. The woman is gone. The tavern wench, Elara, she is gone too. They found her body in the alley. They say her heart gave out. Her eyes were empty, like polished stones. I remember the feeling of her life, how it poured into me, a hot sweet wine. I feel strong. I feel sick. What God would make such a devil? What devil would leave such pity in its wake?
Arthur’s own throat tightened. He read on, the entries detailing a brutal, stumbling education. Trial and catastrophic error. The dawning understanding that the spark he sought was not mere vitality, but the very essence of a person’s passion—love, yes, but also artistic obsession, fervent belief, even all-consuming hatred. The more focused and potent the emotion, the richer the feed, and the longer the grayness was held at bay.
He read for hours. Lilith occasionally clarified a point, her voice a low murmur in the quiet room. She spoke of the first time she identified a “chronic” source—a monk whose faith was so fiercely bright it burned for decades, a renewable feast. She described the “vessels”—people like Megan, whose acute trauma made for a single, potent harvest that left them hollowed but functional.
“It is a curse of perception as much as appetite,” she said, leaning forward, her eyes capturing the lamplight. “You see the truth of people now. The hidden colors of their souls. The curse makes you a connoisseur of human experience, Arthur. You don’t just see their pain or joy. You smell it. You taste it. It turns every crowd into a marketplace. Every intimate moment into a potential menu.”
Arthur looked down at the journal in his lap, at a sketch—startlingly accurate—of a man’s aura, a swirling vortex of dark and light lines. “And the… the transformation? Is there a way to control it? To stop it?”
Lilith’s expression became opaque. “The moon calls. You will answer. The hunger calls. You will feed. Control lies in the how, not the if. You can choose your targets with care, as you did with Megan. You can feed with elegance, leaving no visible wound. Or you can be a tornado, as I was in my first decades. You can leave a trail of inexplicable corpses and shattered minds. The choice defines what you become, not whether you are.”
She pulled another, slimmer volume from the shelf. This one was bound in what looked like pale grey suede. “This,” she said, placing it gently on top of the others, “is the closest I have to a theory. The curse of the werewoman. It is not lycanthropy. It is not possession. It is a… a parasitic symbiosis. A second consciousness, born of the moon’s frequency and your own deepest hunger. Artemis is not a separate being. She is you. The you that is free of fear, of hesitation, of morality. She is your id, gifted with cosmic power and a biological imperative.”
Arthur stared at the grey cover. “She feels separate.”
“She is and she isn’t. Think of a river. Arthur is the banks—the shape, the history, the sediment. Artemis is the water—the power, the flow, the inevitable current. The banks guide the water, but the water defines the river’s course. Deny the water, and you have a barren ditch. Surrender to it completely, and you have a flood that obliterates the banks.” She tapped the journal. “Your journey is about learning to be the riverbed. Strong enough to contain the flood, shaped enough to give it direction.”
The afternoon light slanted through the high windows, motes of dust dancing in the beams. The heavy meal, the profound exhaustion, the weight of the histories in his lap—it all coalesced into a thick, mental saturation.
He thought of Megan’s peaceful departure. He thought of the painter, waiting unknowingly for his visit. He thought of the office, its beige misery now a potential hunting ground he could navigate with terrifying new senses.
Arthur closed the journal. The hum inside him was no longer just Megan’s borrowed energy. It was the low, resonant thrill of understanding. The horror was still there, yes, woven through everything. But it was now part of a pattern, a logic. It had a history. And he was part of its future.
He looked at Lilith, this ancient, impossible woman who was now his anchor. “The painter,” he said, his voice steady. “Tell me more about him.”