Chapter 3: Feeding Frenzy
The trip out to the suburb where Vivian grew up was long and uneventful. Abbie, buzzing with a thousand questions, rode with Yukio in Katie’s van, the vehicle rattling with every pothole, its explosion-themed bumper stickers a chaotic manifesto. Jason drove Vivian and Amy in his sensible sedan, the quiet hum of the engine a stark contrast to the storm in Vivian’s chest.
“It looks cozy,” Amy said softly as they pulled up to the neat, two-story colonial with its trim lawn and dormant flower beds. The evening sun painted the siding a warm gold. “Inviting.”
Vivian stared at the front door, her hands cold in her lap. “I haven’t been here in a while,” she confessed, her voice barely above a whisper. “I pay the taxes, pay a guy to cut the grass. It doesn’t feel like home anymore. Just… a bad memory. The place where I lost my mom.”
Jason reached over, giving her shoulder a brief, clumsy squeeze. “We’re here now.”
Katie’s van rumbled to a halt behind them. The group assembled on the front walk, a mismatched squad. Abbie was practically vibrating, her eyes huge as she took in the ordinary house of her half-demon boss.
Vivian found the key under the same fake rock. The lock turned with a heavy, reluctant clunk.
Inside, it was neat, sterile, the air still and flat with disuse. The furniture was draped in white sheets, ghostly shapes in the fading light. But underneath the dust, another smell crept in, thin and metallic.
“What is that?” Yukio asked, her nose wrinkling. “Like… old pennies and rotten eggs?”
“Chicken blood,” Vivian said, the recognition turning her stomach. “It’s coming from the basement.”
The door to the basement was off the kitchen. The smell intensified there, coppery and foul, mixed with something else—ozone, sweat, and the cloying aftermath of sex. Vivian’s senses, always tuned to the frequencies of want and release, buzzed with a warning shiver.
“Stay behind me,” she whispered, pulling the door open.
The wooden stairs groaned under their weight. The air grew thick, pressing down on them. At the bottom, in the flickering remnants of candle stubs stuck in their own wax, the scene was illuminated.
A perfect circle, about eight feet across, was etched into the concrete floor. The lines were a rough, brownish-black—chicken blood and graveyard dirt. Inside it, the concrete was stained with other, less identifiable fluids. The circle pulsed with a faint, sickly green light, a dying ember of significant power. A book lay tossed just outside the circle’s edge, its pages splayed open. The handwriting was cramped, frantic, the diagrams precise and horrifying. Vivian’s eyes scanned a paragraph: “…the orb, once charged with the target’s essence via a personal article, becomes a permeable prison. The succubus’s consciousness can be drawn in and bound, its physical form discorpo—”
“Holy shit,” Katie breathed, her demolitionist’s eye assessing the magical damage. “Someone did a number down here.”
Abbie leaned in, trying to read the book. “Is that… a recipe?”
“It’s a trap,” Vivian said, the words leaving her lips a second too late.
The residual magic in the circle, perhaps triggered by their living presence, perhaps left as a malicious security system, flared.
A wave of energy, visible as a distorting shimmer in the air, rolled out from the circle’s center. It didn’t hit like a force; it seeped in through the pores, a psychic toxin of amplified, directionless lust.
Amy gasped, a sharp, sudden intake of breath. Her knees buckled and she clutched the stair rail, her other hand pressing hard against the junction of her thighs. A deep, rosy blush flooded her neck and face. “Oh… oh, god,” she whimpered, her eyes glazing over.
Katie and Yukio, standing closest to each other, reacted with instantaneous, violent need. There was no thought, no hesitation. Katie grabbed a fistful of Yukio’s shirt and yanked her close, their mouths colliding in a savage, biting kiss. Yukio moaned into it, her hands flying to Katie’s breasts, kneading roughly through the black lace of her dress.
“Fuck me,” Katie growled against Yukio’s lips, tearing at the button of her jeans. “Right now, you bitch, fuck me hard.”
Yukio spun her around, shoved her against the basement wall with a thud. She yanked Katie’s dress up around her waist, revealing black panties already dark with moisture. Yukio’s fingers hooked into the side and pulled, the fabric ripping. She didn’t bother with her own pants, just unzipped them and shoved them down her thighs. Her fingers, slick with her own arousal, pushed into Katie from behind without any preamble.
Katie screamed, a raw sound of pleasure-pain, her head thudding back against the concrete. “Yes! More!”
Jason stumbled, dropping to his knees as if poleaxed. His cock was already a rigid tent in his jeans, straining painfully. He fumbled with his belt, his breathing ragged. His eyes, wide and unfocused, locked onto Abbie.
Abbie was leaning against the washing machine, her face a mask of stunned, overwhelming ecstasy. Her fingers were already under her skirt, moving in frantic circles. “Vivian… oh, Vivian, it feels… I need…” she babbled, her hips rocking against her own hand.
Jason crawled to her. He pushed her skirt up, his hands clumsy and urgent. He pulled her plain cotton panties aside, revealing her slick, swollen folds. He positioned himself, the head of his cock nudging against her entrance.
“Please,” Abbie whined, back arching. “Please, yes, put it in, put it in now!”
Jason drove himself into her with a single, brutal thrust. Abbie shrieked, her nails scraping down the side of the washing machine. He set a punishing, mindless rhythm immediately, fucking into her with deep, grinding strokes, the wet slap of skin on skin joining the cacophony of moans and grunts.
Vivian’s own body resonated with the explosive release of energy, a dizzying buffet of power that threatened to sweep her own control away. Shadows erupted from her, a living cloak of darkness that coiled around her, insulating her from the worst of the psychic barrage. She could feel it—the hungry, desperate pulls from four different sources. It was like standing in the center of a starved, roaring fire.
She had to stop this. They’d fuck themselves into exhaustion, or worse, injury, driven by this magical poison.
The Green Moon techniques came to her, not as rigid steps, but as instinct. She couldn’t repress the energy. She had to redirect it. To gently siphon the excess, to take the edge off the frenzy before it burned them out.
She let the shadows recede slightly, opening herself up. She didn’t attack their energy; she made herself a harbor for the storm surge.
From Amy, a sweet, sharp stream of frantic desire, flavored with guilt and shock. Vivian drew it in, soothing the frantic edges, leaving behind a subdued, breathless ache.
From the tangle of Katie and Yukio against the wall, she took the aggressive, fiery blast of their coupling. Yukio was pounding into Katie, their curses and cries echoing. Vivian pulled the violent peak from them, leaving a slowing, grinding heat.
From the washing machine, the most direct line. Jason was hammering into Abbie, his balls slapping against her, her squeals rising with each thrust. Abbie’s eyes were rolled back, her mouth slack. Vivian drew deeply from their raw, straightforward union, the simple hungry mechanics of it. She felt Jason’s climax building, a tightening coil, and she gently pulled it taut and then eased it, softening the eruption into a warm, spreading throb instead of a crashing wave.
One by one, the frenetic movements slowed. The screams softened into moans, then into heavy, panting breaths.
Katie slid down the wall, Yukio collapsing on top of her, both of them sweaty and disheveled, their clothes in disarray. Yukio pulled her fingers free, glistening, and let her head drop onto Katie’s shoulder.
Jason shuddered, his hips stuttering to a stop, buried deep inside Abbie. He pulled out slowly, a strand of fluid connecting them. He blinked, looking down at himself, then at Abbie, with dawning, horrified comprehension.
Amy was curled on the bottom step, her face hidden in her arms, her shoulders shaking silently.
Abbie, however, slid off the washing machine, her legs wobbly. She pulled her skirt down, a dreamy, dazzled expression on her face. “Whoa,” she breathed. She looked at Jason, then at Vivian. “That was… that was insane. I’ve never felt anything like that. It was like my brain turned off and my body just… took over. That was so cool!”
Jason flushed a deep crimson, hastily tucking himself back into his jeans. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—I don’t know what—”
“Price of doing magic, pretty boy,” Katie croaked from the floor, waving a weak hand. She winced as she adjusted herself. “Ambient horniness fields. Gets ya every time. Fuck, I think I bruised my tailbone.”
Yukio sat up, nonchalantly pulling her jeans up. “Happens to us all the time,” she said to Abbie with a tired smirk. “Jan’s place is basically a biohazard zone of horny. You get used to it.”
“Really?” Abbie’s eyes shone with excitement. “This is all so… wild. I’m on a magical adventure!” She beamed at Vivian, completely unconcerned with the fact that her employer had just watched her get railed against a Maytag.
Vivian felt a wave of profound, weary guilt. I’ve ruined her. I’ve corrupted my best and only employee. But Abbie’s radiant, thrilled face didn’t look corrupted. It looked awakened.
“Is everyone… okay?” Vivian asked softly, her shadows fully receding.
Amy nodded into her arms, too embarrassed to look up. Jason just muttered, “I need a minute,” and headed for the stairs, his steps heavy with shame.
Vivian moved carefully to the edge of the cursed circle. She knelt, avoiding the stained center, and picked up the discarded spellbook. The pages were cold. She closed it gently. The instructions for constructing an orb to hold a succubus were here. This was the hedge wizard's workshop. This was where he had taken her mother.
But first, this was her home.
“We need to get this to Jan,” Vivian said, her voice hollow. “Or Fatima. Preferably Fatima. She’ll be able to make sense of this.” She stood, cradling the book like a live bomb. “We should go. The meeting at Aaron and Annie’s is soon.”
As they filed back up the stairs, leaving the pulsating dark of the basement behind, Abbie chattered excitedly to Yukio about the different types of magic. Katie limped slightly, complaining about the quality of concrete walls these days. Amy slipped her hand into Jason’s, a silent, forgiving gesture that made him hang his head lower.
Vivian locked the front door, the cozy house once again becoming a tomb of bad memories. But now it held a new secret, a map to her mother’s prison, written in chicken blood and desperation. The weight of the book in her hands felt like the only solid thing in a world tilting violently towards chaos.
The weight of the book in her hands felt like the only solid thing in a world tilting violently towards chaos. Outside, the suburban street was impossibly quiet, the normalcy of sprinklers hitting lawns a surreal contrast to the stained concrete and frenzied moans still echoing in her mind. Vivian stuffed the grimoire into her leather jacket, the zipper catching on a page corner with a sound like a tearing nail.
Nobody spoke in the cars. Katie drove, her knuckles white on the steering wheel, the radio off. In the backseat, Yukio stared out the window, her expression unreadable while Abbie traced patterns on the fogged glass, humming a tuneless song. In the sedan behind them, Amy leaned her head against the window, Jason’s profile rigid and ashamed in the driver’s seat.
Vivian watched her childhood home shrink in the side mirror. That sterile, sheet-draped tomb. Someone had violated it. They had etched their foul magic into its foundation, used its familiar walls to cage her mother. Her stomach churned, a hot slick of rage and grief. She wasn’t just looking for her mother anymore. She was hunting the thief who’d stolen her.
“So,” Katie said, the word slicing through the silence like a knife. “Your mom’s manual-for-idiots summoning circle. We go find this hedge wizard next, right?” Her voice was raw, scraped clean of its usual sarcasm.
“Yes,” Vivian answered, the word a dull stone dropped into the quiet. “Jan and Fatima will know how to trace the residual signature. It’ll lead right to him.”
“Good,” Yukio said, still looking out at the passing strip malls. “I want to meet the little shit who thinks he can play with those kinds of matches.”
Abbie turned from the window, her eyes alight. “Can I come? When you find him? I have some… ideas.” She flexed her fingers as if imagining them around a throat.
Vivian almost said no. The protective instinct, the desire to bundle Abbie away from all this, was fierce. But Abbie’s face, glowing with a liberated, terrifying curiosity, stopped her. She’d already been pulled in, baptized in basement magic and her own unrestrained pleasure. There was no putting that genie back in the bottle. “We’ll see,” Vivian murmured, which wasn’t a no.
The silence seeped back in, thicker this time. The after-shock of the hex was wearing off, leaving behind a gritty, uncomfortable awareness. Katie shifted in her seat, the black leather creaking. Her thigh brushed against Yukio’s.
A spark jumped, a live wire reconnected.
Katie glanced over, a quick, feral look. Yukio met it, her earlier nonchalance evaporating. The raw, magical compulsion was gone, but the memory of it wasn’t. The memory of being shoved against a cold wall, of fingers and teeth and frantic, mindless friction, was a physical heat between them now.
“Pull over,” Yukio said, her voice low.
“What?” Katie’s grip tightened on the wheel.
“You heard me. Now. The next lot.”
Katie didn’t argue. She signaled, a mechanical click in the heavy quiet, and swung the van into a deserted church parking lot. The engine cut out, leaving only the sound of their breathing.
In the back, Abbie sat up straighter, her curious gaze flicking between them. Vivian felt it too—a fresh, building pressure in the van’s close air, not magical but fiercely, undeniably human.
Katie unbuckled her seatbelt with a sharp snap. “Abbie. Out. Take a walk.”
Abbie blinked, then a slow, understanding grin spread across her face. “Ooh. Okay. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” She scrambled over the console, flung the sliding door open, and hopped out into the night, closing it with a solid thunk.
Vivian remained frozen in the passenger seat. She was a conduit, a tuning fork for this kind of energy. She could feel their wanting like a physical press against her skin.
Yukio was moving before the door latch finished clicking. She grabbed the collar of Katie’s dress and hauled her across the console, into the back. They fell into the space Abbie had vacated, a tangle of limbs and urgent hands.
There were no sweet words, no gentle teasing. This was a continuation. Yukio pinned Katie’s shoulders to the cold metal floor of the van, her knees straddling her hips. She kissed her, a deep, devouring kiss that was all tongue and teeth. Katie bit back, her hands yanking Yukio’s shirt up, nails scraping over the ink of the rose tattoo on her shoulder blade.
“You’re such a fucking bitch,” Katie gasped, arching her hips up to grind against Yukio’s thigh.
“You love it,” Yukio snarled, ripping at the front of Katie’s dress. Buttons flew, pinging off the van walls. She shoved the fabric aside, exposing Katie’s small, pale breasts, and ducked her head to take a nipple into her mouth, sucking hard, biting just enough to make Katie cry out.
Katie’s hands fumbled with Yukio’s jeans, popping the button, dragging the zipper down. She shoved her hand inside, past the waistband of Yukio’s underwear, her fingers finding her wet and swollen. Yukio groaned, a rough, desperate sound, her hips pumping against Katie’s palm.
“Fuck me properly,” Katie demanded, her voice ragged. “Don’t just tease.”
Yukio pulled back, her lips slick and swollen. She shoved Katie’s dress up around her waist, revealing the dark thatch of hair between her legs. She didn’t bother with foreplay. She spat into her own hand, slicked her fingers, and pushed two inside Katie in one brutal thrust.
Katie’s back arched off the floor, a guttural shout torn from her throat. “Yes! God, yes! Fuck me!”
Yukio fucked her with her hand, a relentless, punishing rhythm, her other hand pinning Katie’s hip to the floor. The van rocked slightly with their movement. The sounds were obscene: the wet, rhythmic slap of skin, their ragged breaths, the creak of the van’s suspension. Katie wrapped her legs around Yukio’s waist, heels digging into her ass, pulling her deeper.
“Come on, you Goth psycho, make me come,” Katie taunted, her head thrashing side to side.
Yukio leaned down, captured Katie’s mouth again to swallow her screams. She curled her fingers inside her, hitting a spot that made Katie’s entire body seize. Katie came with a shattered cry, her muscles clamping tight around Yukio’s hand, her orgasm wracking through her in violent waves.
Yukio didn’t stop. She rode Katie through it, her own movements becoming frantic, chasing her own release. She pulled her fingers out, shiny and slick, and brought them to her own mouth, tasting Katie as she frantically worked the button on her own jeans.
Katie, panting, pushed herself up on her elbows. “My turn,” she growled. She pushed Yukio onto her back, yanked her jeans and underwear down her thighs, and buried her face between Yukio’s legs without ceremony.
Yukio’s head slammed back against the van floor, a choked-off moan escaping her. Katie’s tongue was ruthless, lapping at her clit, fucking into her with sharp, precise strokes. She hooked Yukio’s legs over her shoulders, holding her open, devouring her. Yukio’s hands tangled in Katie’s black hair, pulling, guiding her rhythm, her hips bucking wildly.
“Right there, fuck, right there,” Yukio chanted, her voice rising to a sharp, broken peak. She came with a strangled shout, her body convulsing under Katie’s mouth.
They collapsed together in the gloom, a sweaty, breathing heap of disheveled clothes and spent energy. The only sound was their panting and the distant buzz of a streetlight.
Vivian sat perfectly still in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead through the windshield. The energy from their coupling washed over her, warm and thick, and she let herself absorb the dregs of it, a manageable, steadying flow. It quieted the howling void her mother’s absence had left, just for a moment.
After a minute, the sliding door rumbled open. Cool night air flooded the van, a welcome relief. Abbie peered in, her eyebrows raised. “All good?” she asked, her tone falsely bright.
“Peachy,” Katie rasped from the floor, not moving.
Yukio sat up, pulling her clothes back into some semblance of order. “Let’s go. We’re gonna be late.”
As Katie climbed back into the driver’s seat, not meeting Vivian’s eyes, and started the van, Vivian’s phone buzzed. A text from Jan: At A&A’s. Found some things. Hurry. The kid’s getting braver.
Across town, in a dingy apartment that smelled of instant noodles and stale ambition, Ambrose Fettuccine held the orb up to the light of his computer monitor. It pulsed in his hand, a warm, crimson heartbeat. He could feel it, the being inside, a coiled, intelligent disgust that seeped through the glass like radiation.
He smirked. His power. His control. The basement ritual had been messy, terrifying, but it worked. The two econ girls had been proof of concept. Now he wanted to see the range.
He focused on the orb, on the connection he felt humming between it and his own frustrated desires. He didn’t chant from a book this time. He simply pushed his will into the artifact, a command woven from loneliness and spite. Come.
The summons bled out through the walls of his apartment, a silent, psychic siren call tuned to a specific frequency: female, between twenty-one and thirty-five, within the building’s footprint. It wasn’t a forceful drag. It was a suggestion, a gentle, unshakeable notion that visiting apartment 3B was the most important idea they’d ever had.
Ten minutes later, a soft knock sounded at his door.
He opened it to find three of his neighbors standing there. Lisa from 2C, the graduate student who always wore headphones. Maria from 4A, the bartender with the tired eyes. Jen from 1D, the quiet woman who worked at the copy shop. They blinked at him, their expressions pleasantly blank.
“Hi, Ambrose,” Lisa said, a smile touching her lips. “I was just… thinking I should come see you.”
“Me too,” Maria echoed. Jen just nodded.
“Come in,” Ambrose said, stepping back, his heart hammering against his ribs. They filed in, moving with a serene, dreamlike gait. They stood in the center of his cluttered living room, looking at him expectantly.
“You should get comfortable,” Ambrose whispered to the orb, then projected the thought.
As one, their hands went to their clothes. Lisa pulled her sweater over her head. Maria unhooked her bra, letting it fall to the floor. Jen stepped out of her jeans, kicking them aside. There was no seduction, no shyness. It was a serene, procedural stripping. Within a minute, three nude women stood in his apartment, their bodies illuminated by the blue glow of his gaming rig.
“Dance,” Ambrose breathed.
They began to move. Not with professional skill, but with a languid, honest sensuality. Lisa swayed her hips, her hands running over her own breasts. Maria rolled her shoulders, her eyes half-closed. Jen turned in a slow circle, her arms raised. Ambrose sank into his desk chair, his mouth dry. He watched them, the pale curves of their bodies, the neat triangles of pubic hair, the way their skin gleamed in the dim light.
He could take pictures. They wouldn’t mind. They’d probably smile for the camera. The thought sent a jolt of electric power through him. He was a god. A puppet master. He reached for his phone on the desk.
As his fingers brushed the plastic case, a sharp, cold spike lanced from the orb into his palm, so sudden it made him gasp and drop the phone. It was a feeling, not a pain. A feeling of profound, ancient contempt, so dense it felt solid.
He glared at the orb, cradling his hand. The women continued their silent, beautiful dance, unaware.
A new sensation bloomed in his mind, not his own. It was an image, fleeting but vivid: a flash of red hair, a green-eyed glance, a shadow that moved on its own. It came from the orb, from her. It was a memory, or a thought, pushed to the surface by his own arrogant display.
He squeezed the orb tighter, a fresh thrill mixing with his anger. “You have a daughter?” he whispered, the words dripping with malicious discovery.
Inside the orb, Cordelia’s essence recoiled, then went perfectly, terrifyingly still. The game had just changed.