Chapter 1: The Rake of Humiliation
The last thing Morrigan Aensland felt was the burn of cold air on her exposed skin.The first thing she felt was the rake of five knife points across her chest.
It wasn’t a killing blow.It was something far worse.
“Tag!” Felicia’s voice, a singsong chirp, cut through the howl of the wind. Her fluffy blue tail vanished behind the thick trunk of a pine, her white fur blending into the snowdrifts. “You’re it, Morgy! But you’re gonna be a pretty rotten ‘it,’ I think.”
Morrigan stumbled back, a gasp catching in her throat. It wasn’t pain.Not yet.It was shock.The indignity of it. One moment she’d been the predator, a centuries-old succubus of the Aensland line corralling a playful nuisance, the next… this.She looked down. Four parallel furrows, deep and ugly, scored the pale swell of her breasts.They beaded with blood, dark and too thin. Then they began to weep.A yellowish, viscous fluid seeped from the wounds, mixing with the blood. The skin around the gashes puckered, its usual alabaster smoothness curdling, turning a sickly beige.
“What did you do?” Morrigan whispered, her voice lost in the wind.From the treeline, a laugh echoed, light and cruel. “A little parting gift!Cat scratch fever, with a twist. Think of it as… bad cream on a pretty scone.You’ll curdle. It’s gonna smell awful.”
Morrigan’s knees buckled.She hit the snow, the impact jarring up her spine. The cold was nothing.The fire was inside her now.
It started as a tingling, a wrongness crawling under her skin. She watched, helpless, as the beige discoloration spread from the wounds like spilled ink in milk.Her skin, once supple and perfect, tightened. Then it changed texture.It became granular.Spongy.She brought a trembling hand to her arm. Her fingertips sank slightly into the flesh, which yielded like wet oatmeal.A choked sob escaped her. She pulled her hand back. Her fingerprints remained impressed in the doughy skin for a second before slowly swelling back, leaving blackened trails of broken capillaries beneath the surface.The veins themselves were the worst. They weren’t blue anymore. They were black, a network of rotten roots rising to the surface of her curdling flesh, pulsing with a sluggish, infected rhythm. A smell rose with them—the cloying, metallic scent of spoiled meat left in the sun. It wafted up from her own body, making her gag.Power.She tried to summon it. A simple glamour, a basic seductive pull.Nothing.The well was dry, clogged with this… this sickness. Her energy wasn’t being drained; it was being corrupted, turned into this vile, seeping mass.She was a statue of lard and rot.
Terror, pure and liquid, replaced her pride.She was going to die here. Not in battle, not in some grand conquest, but melting into a puddle of putrid slush in a nameless Canadian forest. A snack for scavengers.No.The thought was a spike of clarity. Survival was the only dignity left.She hauled herself onto her hands and knees.The movement was agonizing. Her oatmeal flesh quivered, threatening to slough off. Black ichor dribbled from the wounds on her chest, sizzling faintly where it hit the snow.She crawled.
The world narrowed to the next handhold, the next drag of her knees through the ice. The wind carved knives into her exposed back. The glittering snow, the skeletal pines, the endless white—it was all a beautiful, frozen hell.Time blurred into pain and the rhythm of her desperate, shuffling progress.
Then, a flicker.Orange. Through a screen of frosted branches, a weak, warm glow.A campfire.Hope was a painful, sharp thing. It hurt more than the wounds.She pushed toward the light, her breath coming in ragged, misty plumes. She emerged into a smaller clearing.A sagging olive-green tent was half-buried in a drift. Before it, a small fire fought valiantly against the encroaching night, its embers pulsing like a heartbeat.
A man sat on a folded log, his back to her, hunched over a metal cup. He was middle-aged, his jacket practical and worn, his posture weary from a day in the cold.Just a human.A mundane, mortal man.
Everything in her rebelled.The pride of the Aensland clan screamed. She was a succubus, a ruler of desires, a predator of life force.She did not beg.She did not crawl.
Another wave of nausea rolled through her. She felt a chunk of something soft detach from her thigh and plop into the snow.The smell of rot intensified.She had no weapons.No power.No beauty. All she had was her voice, and her agony.
She drew the last shreds of her strength, shaping the submissive, vulnerable tone she had spent centuries despising.
“Help me.” The words scraped out, raw and quiet.The man flinched, spilling his drink. He turned, his flashlight clicking on and sweeping across the snow until it found her.He froze. The beam shook in his hand, illuminating the horror in the tree line.
Morrigan huddled there, a grotesque parody of a woman.Her mint-green hair was matted with filth and ice. Her revealing attire was torn, barely clinging to the dissolving landscape of her body. The firelight caught the oozing black veins, the doughy, corrupted flesh, the weeping wounds that reeked of an open grave.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, the words a white cloud in the freezing air.He didn’t run.He was transfixed by the tragedy of it.
Morrigan let her head bow, a gesture of utter submission.She forced her cracking voice to soften, to plead. “Please… I’m… infected. I’m scared.” She looked up, meeting his horrified eyes, letting him see the terrified creature within the monster. “Don’t let me die out here.”
The man stared, his face a mask of conflict—fear, disgust, and a dawning, helpless compassion. The fire crackled between them, the only warm thing in a vast, frozen dark.He hadn’t said yes.
But he hadn’t said no.
But he hadn’t said no.
The silence stretched, broken only by the fire’s crackle and Morrigan’s shallow, rattling breaths. The man—his name was Eric, a fact that seemed absurdly trivial now—swallowed hard. His instincts screamed at him to grab his gear and run. The thing in the snow was wrong, a violation of nature that stank of death and open graves. But the sound of its voice… the raw, human terror in those two words…
“Help me.”
It wasn’t a monster’s growl. It was the sound of a wounded animal.“Stay there,” Eric said, his own voice strange to him. He set his cup down slowly, as if sudden movements might trigger an attack. He rifled through his pack, his hands trembling, and pulled out a steel water bottle and his first aid kit, a tiny green box suddenly seeming laughably inadequate.
He approached her the way one might approach a trapped wolf, stopping a few feet away. The smell hit him fully then—sweet, gamy decay, like forgotten chicken in a hot dumpster.He fought down a gag.Up close, it was worse. Her skin wasn't just pale; it was textured, like spoiled custard. Black lines pulsed beneath the surface.The wounds on her chest wept a thin, yellowish-black fluid.
“What happened?” he asked, kneeling in the snow, keeping his distance.
“Claws,” she whispered, her head lolling.“A cat… a blue cat.Poison.”
Eric almost laughed. A blue cat.Hallucination.Hypothermia.That explained it. This poor, sick woman, naked and delusional, needed a hospital. But they were a two-day hike from the trailhead, and the snow was coming down harder.He unscrewed the water bottle.“Here. You need fluids.”
Her hand, when she reached for it, was almost unrecognizable as one. The fingers were swollen, the skin blotchy and soft.She fumbled, nearly dropping it. He steadied it for her, his fingers brushing against hers.The contact was a shock. Her flesh was fever-hot and unsettlingly malleable.She drank, the water trickling down her chin. A low, pitiful moan escaped her as she moved.“It’s everywhere,” she choked out. “The cold… it makes it harder. But the fire… the pain is inside.”
“I need to clean those… those scratches,” Eric said, opening the flimsy plastic kit.
“Won’t help,” she said, but her eyes locked onto his, desperate and pleading.“The touch… your touch.Warmth. It’s the only thing that… quiets it.Please.”
He stared at the gauze pads in his hand. They were useless.He knew it.She knew it.This was beyond antiseptic and bandages.
Compassion warred with revulsion.She was so utterly, terribly helpless. The grandeur of her suffering dwarfed his fear. He took a deep breath, the frigid air searing his lungs, and reached out.
He laid his bare palm flat against the side of her neck, above the worst of the black veins.Morrigan gasped.It was a sharp, shattered sound. Her eyes fluttered shut.“Yes,” she breathed. “Oh… yes.”
Her skin was hot and lumpy under his touch, but as he held it there, he felt something. A slight lessening of her tremors.Her breath evened, just a fraction.
Eric’s own pulse was racing.He expected to feel disgust, but a different, quieter feeling bloomed underneath. A sense of potency.Her reaction was so profound, so utterly grateful for the simple press of a human hand. Her agony hinged on his willingness to touch the untouchable.And he was doing it. He was the one providing this scant relief.“More,” she begged, her voice a ragged thread. “The heat… it draws the cold out.Here. It’s worst here.”
She took his wrist.Her grip was weak, spongy. She guided his hand down from her neck, across her collarbone, toward the ruin of her chest.Eric’s mind went blank. The rational part shut down entirely.He let her move him. She pressed his palm firmly against the swollen curve of her breast. The flesh there was grotesquely misshapen, hot and boggy, the wounds sticky and weeping.It should have been repulsive.And it was.
But her reaction…
Her back arched slightly in the snow, a low, throaty sigh of utter relief escaping her cracked lips.Her head fell back, exposing the terrible vulnerability of her throat. “Don’t stop,” she whimpered.“The warmth… it’s so good.”
He didn’t stop. A strange warmth was spreading up his own arm, too.Not the heat of her fever. A deeper, draining warmth, like energy slowly sipping from his core, through his veins, out through his fingertips.It was faint, almost pleasant—a drowsy, comfortable weakness.
He watched, fascinated, as the black veins under his palm seemed to darken further, drinking in the contact. Her oatmeal flesh quivered. She pressed herself more firmly into his hand, her need absolute, her gratitude humiliating and complete.Eric found he was breathing in time with her. His disgust was still there, but it was now woven through with a powerful, undeniable thrill.Her survival was literally in his hands. And she needed it so badly.
His life force, thin and human and mundane, was seeping into her, and he was enjoying it.
His life force, thin and human and mundane, was seeping into her, and he was enjoying it.The draining warmth was a lazy river pulling him downstream. His fear had burned off, leaving behind a potent, heady mixture of pity and control.
“Just there,” she sighed, her voice less ragged now. “The cold is deepest there.”
Her own hand came up to cover his, pressing his palm more firmly against the ruined curve of her breast. Her flesh yielded under his touch, a spongy, fever-hot terrain. He let his fingers explore the awful texture, tentatively at first, then with a growing, morbid curiosity. He traced the raised, pulsing lines of the black veins.He circled the weeping wounds, feeling the heat radiate from them.
Then, he squeezed.It wasn’t harsh.It was a tender, testing pressure. The oatmeal consistency gave way, then pushed back against his palm.Morrigan’s breath hitched. A low, ragged moan vibrated against his chest.“Yes.Oh, please. More.”
Encouraged, Eric massaged the sickened flesh. His thumb swept over her nipple, and he felt it—a faint, stiffening peak pressing back through the corrupted softness. The contrast was obscene and electrifying.He did it again, deliberately now, circling the tightening bud.
“It… it helps,” she gasped, her head tilting back, exposing the column of her throat. “The warmth spreads.It fights the poison.” Her eyes fluttered open, finding his. The desperation there was a live wire.“You’re so strong. Your heat… it’s waking me up.”
Her words fed the strange fire in his gut. He cupped her other breast, weighing it in his hand, tenderly kneading the sodden weight of it. Each grateful sound she made was a drug.Her gratitude was absolute, her submission total. She was melting against him, not just from the disease, but from his touch.
But the energy trickling into her was a meager stream. It was soothing the surface pain, but the deep, gnawing hollow inside her—the void left by her stolen power—yawned wider. The subtle sip wasn't enough.She needed a flood.A jolt.She needed a climax.
The knowledge was an instinct buried under centuries of practice. Feeding was one thing; a true gush of vital strength, the kind that could scald this infection from her veins, required eruption.Required him to lose control. She had to make him need to be inside her.
“Your hands,” she whispered, shifting subtly in the snow. She guided his hand lower, from her breast, down the quivering plane of her stomach.The doughy flesh trembled under his touch. “The cold… it’s everywhere.I’m so empty inside. So cold.”
Her fingers intertwined with his, weakly pulling.“Please.Share your warmth.Properly. Fill this… this hollow.”
She arched her back, a gesture that was once an invitation to paradise, now a pitiful display of crumbling flesh and aching need. She was using the last dregs of her ancient art, weaving suggestion into every pained gasp, every tremble.It wasn't glamour. It was something cruder, more direct: the raw spectacle of a beautiful creature in absolute, degrading distress, offering the only thing she had left.
“I’m dying,” she breathed, the words a hot, pained sigh against his neck.“But you… you could make me feel alive. Just for a moment.Be the fire.Please.Take me. Save me.”
Her hand, soft and insistent, tugged at the waistband of his pants.
Her hand, soft and insistent, tugged at the waistband of his pants. Eric’s breath caught, a sharp contradiction tearing through him. The rational part, the part that smelled the rotting meat and saw the black veins, screamed retreat.But another part, deeper and darker, was transfixed by her absolute dependence. Her need was a bottomless pit, and he was the only thing that could fill it. That power was a drug.
“It’s the only way,” Morrigan whispered, her moss-green eyes holding his, wide with a terror that wasn’t entirely feigned. “The heat… it needs to be inside.To burn the cold out.”
He didn’t speak. His fingers, clumsy with cold and adrenaline, fumbled with his belt buckle. The click of the release was deafening in the frozen silence.He pushed his pants and underwear down just past his hips. The cold air was a shock against his skin.Morrigan didn’t wait for an invitation. She moved with a desperate, hungry grace, pushing herself forward in the snow, her corrupted body dragging through the drift.She took him into her mouth.The heat was astounding. It was the only part of her that felt truly, vitalistically alive. Her technique was not skilled seduction; it was voracious consumption. She worked him with a frantic, grateful intensity, her hands clutching at his thighs, her eyes squeezed shut in concentration.Each sound she made was a muffled, desperate plea. She was not giving pleasure; she was taking life. And Eric, head thrown back to the icy stars, felt it—a sharper, more potent drain than before. It was a syphoning, a river of warmth and vitality pulling from his core, down through his groin, into that aching, feverish heat.It left him lightheaded, weak-kneed, and utterly, devastatingly aroused.
When she leaned back, a string of saliva and his own urgency connecting them for a moment in the frigid air, she looked different.The greyish tinge had lessened, just a shade. The black veins seemed a fraction less raised.“Please,” she said again, her voice less ragged. She fell back into the snow, arms splayed, legs parting. The position was one of utter vulnerability, of offering.The snow melted slightly beneath the fever-heat of her skin. “It’s working.The cold is receding.Fill me. Burn it out of me.”
Eric knelt between her legs.The sight was surreal, obscene. The once-perfect curve of her hip was softened, blurred by the sickness, but the core of her was swollen, glistening, and desperately inviting. He positioned himself and pushed inside.Her inner heat was an inferno. She cried out—a raw, shattered sound of relief and pain that echoed in the small clearing. Her body clutched at him, a tight, convulsive grip that pulled another gush of energy from him. He started to move, a slow, deep rhythm fueled by her grateful sobs and his own dizzying exertion.
“Yes,” she chanted, her hands scrabbling at his back, her legs wrapping around his waist with a strength that surprised him. “Your fire… I can feel it… melting the frost inside me…”
The sensations were a confusing whirlpool. The physical act was intense, her internal heat unbelievable.The drain on his energy was palpable, a growing fatigue at the edges of his pleasure. But her gratitude, her total, abject dependency, was the most potent aphrodisiac of all. He drove into her, chasing his own climax, spurred on by her moans which grew louder, less pained, more sheerly animal.His release, when it came, was explosive. A white-hot rush that seemed to leave his body entirely and surge into hers. Morrigan arched violently beneath him, a sharp cry torn from her throat that sounded like victory and agony fused into one.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing steaming in the air.
Eric collapsed beside her, spent, the cold of the snow finally seeping through the sweat on his back. He turned his head to look at her.The change was subtle, but undeniable. The foul, sweet-rotten stench had dampened, pushed back by the warmer, muskier scent of sex and sweat. Her skin, where he had touched her most, looked less like wet oatmeal and more like overly-soft, but intact, flesh. The black veins had receded, fading back beneath the surface like bad memories. She was still sick, still marked, but no longer actively decaying before his eyes.“It worked,” she breathed, wonder in her voice. She touched her own stomach, her fingers exploring the firmer texture. A tear, clean and clear, tracked through the grime on her cheek.Without a word, Eric pulled his clothes back on, his movements stiff. Then he bent, slid his arms under her back and knees, and lifted her. She was lighter than he expected, her body settling against his chest with a trust that felt monumental. He carried her the short distance to the camper van, fumbled with the latch, and shouldered the door open.
The interior was dark, cluttered with gear, but it was shelter. It held the residual warmth of his small heater and blocked the biting wind. He laid her gently on the narrow bed, her mint-green hair fanning out on his sleeping bag.
She lay there for a moment, just breathing in the relative stillness.Then she turned her head to look at him, her eyes luminescent in the gloom. “You saved me,” she said, her voice a low, thrumming thing. “This… this warmth.This safety.I have nothing to give. But let me show you.”
Her hand, which now looked more like a hand and less like a melted wax model, moved down her body. Her fingers slipped through the thatch of pale hair, parted herself, and began to stroke. Her eyes never left his.It was a performance, but one laced with genuine, weary gratitude. She touched herself with a slow, exploratory reverence, as if rediscovering her own body, showing him the effect he’d had.The soft, slick sounds filled the small space.
Eric watched, mesmerized. The fatigue from the energy drain was still there, but it was mixed now with a resonant, deep satisfaction.He shed his coat, his boots, and crawled onto the bed beside her. He didn’t take over.He simply joined. His fingers found hers, nudged them aside, and took their place. He teased her, circling the swollen nub of her clit, feeling her hips lift off the thin mattress.She gasped, her head falling back. “You’re not finished with me,” she murmured, not a question, but a hopeful statement.
“No,” Eric said, his own voice rough.He wasn’t. The camper was quiet, save for their breathing and the soft, wet rhythm of his touch. The wind howled outside, a distant beast now, locked away from this fragile, warm, shared secret.