Chapter 12: Possession Protocol
The rain started as they crossed the river, fat drops smacking the windshield like thrown pebbles. The city on the other side was a different beast—older, denser, a canyon of soot-stained brick and fire escapes. Chloe had been driving for twenty minutes in tense silence, her eyes constantly flicking to the mirrors.
SexiWoman sat perfectly still in the passenger seat, a statue of improbable curves and quiet power. Inside, John was a ricocheting pinball of panic and a bizarre, humming awareness of the seatbelt cutting across her chest. He could feel every seam of the leather, every vibration of the car. It was horribly vivid.
Chloe finally couldn’t take it anymore. She slammed her palm against the steering wheel. “Okay. Enough. Who am I speaking to right now?” She glanced over, her eyes hard. “Is John in there? Or are you just… the suit?”
‘She thinks you’re a meat puppet,’ Amy mused internally. ‘Charming.’
John tried to scream, to say I’m here!, but his will was a mouse scratching at a stone door. SexiWoman’s head turned, a smooth, unnerving motion. The lips, glossy and perfect, parted.
But no sound came out.
John was pushing, a mental battering ram against the calm that held him. He felt a tremor in a finger. A twitch in the knee.
Chloe saw it. “John? Can you hear me?”
He focused everything, a screaming knot of intention in the dark behind his own eyes. MY MOUTH. OPEN MY MOUTH.
SexiWoman’s jaw tightened. The elegant hands clenched on the leather skirt. A low, guttural sound, like rocks grinding, emerged from her throat. It was fight, pure and raw.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ Amy sighed, a sound like rustling silk in a tomb. ‘Let’s not make this undignified.’
A new pressure flooded in, cold and vast as a tide. It wasn’t John’s. It wasn’t the transformation’s. It was something older, a will that slid into the pathways of the borrowed form like a master key. John felt himself shoved aside, not into nothingness, but into a corner—a silent, screaming spectator in his own skull.
SexiWoman’s features shifted. The calm mask of detached power melted into an expression of ancient, wicked amusement. The posture changed, a lazy relaxation spreading through the shoulders, one hand coming up to examine flawless nails.
The voice that finally spoke was still SexiWoman’s instrument, but the melody was entirely different. It was a husky, melodic contralto, dripping with playful contempt and a wisdom that tasted of dust and myrrh.
“Darling,” it purred, and the word seemed to linger in the air, coated in honey and ground glass. “You’re speaking to two thousand years of divine mischief trapped in lingerie. The boy is… taking a nap. He’s had a trying evening.”
Chloe’s breath hitched. The car swerved, tires skidding on the wet asphalt for one heart-stopping second before she wrenched it straight, horns blaring around them. “What the hell?”
“Several, actually,” Amy said, using SexiWoman’s mouth to smirk. She lifted the heart necklace, letting it catch the passing streetlights. “This is my current vacation home. John’ my… reluctant landlord.