Chapter Two: Strange Magic
He wasn't entirely certain at which point he felt the tug to appear before her. It was as though he'd shut his eyes to sleep and awoken to her voice. He opened his eyes and saw her, petite and curvaceous. He rifled through her thoughts as she focused on her task of summoning the elements and found a reference in her mind as to how he should appear... he was amused to see her vision of how he appeared flickered between an actor and a comic book character.
He watched her silently for a moment, and finally, as she faced the same direction as he, Lucifer ran his eyes from the smooth pale flesh of her shoulders, graced by long straight dark red tresses that fell almost to her waist. He regarded the generous curve of her hips, took note of the three inches of long healed scar tissue that hinted at some sort of damage or surgery to the base of her spine with moderate interest, the silvery-pale line of stitched skin telling him a great deal, as he continued to examine her. Full of figure but not obese by any current standard. Fair, soft... so innocent of her own power and beauty.
What mostly caught him was her voice. It was feminine, but husky, as though she'd already been aroused before he appeared, and had already seen to it at least once. He took a slow, deep breath and he scented sex in the air. His own body reacted almost immediately to that scent. It startled him that her scent alone could move him.
"You do know you're rather quite fetching in absolutely nothing at all, don't you?" It rolled off his tongue softly, but she jumped like a scalded cat, and whirled where she stood, the back of her bare knees skimming the edge of her large bed.
He played with her, teased her about her foolishness. He could see her whole life if he wanted to, but looked only so far as he needed to convince her she couldn't merely send him away. Gullible little witch. Whatever he did to her had to be by her consent. Damned free will.
When she did make a compact, he was already so hard, it was all he could do not to ravage her where she sat on the bed. And when he asked her to open her mind to him, to let him see her darkest and most humiliating fantasies, he was staggered by the sheer depravity of her deceptively innocent appearing mind.
He had intended to break her swiftly. He didn't much care for being summoned anywhere, even by accident. You let one person escape unscathed and suddenly others will try...
But...
This one interested him too much to break her little mind. He pushed her as far as he dared... to the precipice of admitting one of her darkest fantasies that made her curl in shame and horror.
But he couldn't do it. He expected her to lie about it, deny it, or just a blush and silence at best. He did not expect for a moment the words that fell from her, nor their brazen honesty. He fucked her until she drained more than the cum from his body. He saw something flicker inside of her, like something buried in the shadows of her mind, looking at him from the abyss, in a place even she wasn't aware she possessed.
He left her sleeping in her bed. He was already looking forward to the next full moon. He watched the silvery shaft of moonlight across her face as the moon shone through her window and smiled to himself. She probably hadn't even remembered that it was a full moon, the night he took her. That little awareness would creep in eventually, and he wondered if she'd see the small joke he had played, chosing that form to take her in... if she would long for the same... or something darker. Or would she crave other temptations? There had been *so* many...
Twenty eight days. He already had a few ideas... and
Twenty eight days in which to plan...
~~~~~~~~
"I knew it was all a dream," her voice sounded worried... and grateful.
"No, little witch... *this* is all a dream." He gestured to the scenery, a familiar glade in her mind, her dream-scape where he met and communed with her gods. "The 'it' you speak of... that was in your bedroom in the waking world. But I thought I would be polite and ask your Patron for permission to date his 'daughter'."
Her green eyes grew wide and she parted her pink lips to speak, but no sound emerged. He found her charming. Her sheer innocence mixed with such a fiery, passionate soul was an intoxicating mix he found very hard to look away from.
"And if I refuse?" Lucifer winked at the witch... he had discovered her name was Gwendolyn but she preferred her nick name of "Gwen" ... and turned with a charming smile to the hard, unamused voice behind him and found himself only five feet from a tall, muscular figure clad in hunting leathers and crowned with deer-like antlers on either side of his chestnut hair that fell just past his shoulders and framed his face as surely as the horns did. He looked less than amused.
"I would only point out she entered into a binding compact of her own free will," Lucifer told him simply.
The other God's honey-colored eyes fell on the woman, clad only in a sheer black wisp of a garment that did nothing to hide or protect the visibly naked body underneath. She reminded the fallen angel of ecstatic priestesses of old. So naive yet so incredibly skilled and intelligent... so endlessly orgasmic, their cum merely one of the many fluids they used in casting their sex-fueled prayers.
He didn't have the gift to know where her soul had been before this body. But he wouldn't be at all surprised to learn this soul was once housed in a body that gave itself in worship. It seemed so... foreign in this modern world... yet this woman embodied and owned that comparison as a form of power. It wasn't merely that she worshipped with her body in this incarnation... rather that she wore it like a second skin, underneath her daily life as wife, mother, homemaker; like it was her true soul to be that wonton wild thing in bed, and the mask was her mundane life... it was that she simply *shone* when she gave into that part of herself, like a fallen star herself. He would be lying if he didn't admit to craving her already.
"Priestess? Is it as The Fallen One says?" Lucifer struggled not to roll his eyes at the title.
"Really, Herne?" He muttered. The golden eyes shifted back to Lucifer. "This isn't being recorded by some British bard. And for the record, I am *not* addressing you as 'The Hunter, leader of the Wild Hunt, God of blahblah blahblah blah.' Your realm or not."
"Why didn't you just banish him, little one?" The other god asked of the startled looking woman by his side, looking mildly annoyed.
"Um... he said..." and the look of stark horror that filled her eyes as she realized her mistake almost tickled him to his toes until it didn't fade. And that he *cared* that it didn't lessen after a moment, when she remembered how much she had loved what he'd done to her body... to her mind... he felt distinctly unsettled. Some might even say "concerned". She... did remember that part, didn't she? How she gave herself and the bliss she had discovered in his arms?
"I didn't think I could..." was all she finally managed to say. "I am an idiot." She looked ashamed and aggrieved and it actually... hurt?
"Well, he is right, in this instance... you already made a compact. But that doesn't mean I have to leave you alone to him."
Lucifer would swear that surge of annoyance was only because his plans for her did not include a chaperone, if anyone asked him. He would be lying. And he, despite misconceptions, did not lie. He didn't like the gratitude on her face. He didn't like the way she gazed up at her mental image of her patron god, with complete love and trust, as if she... well, worshipped him.
He had never wanted to be anyone's personal god so much before. If should have shaken him to the core. He brushed it aside and decided to pull a different fantasy from the little witch's mental rolodex of lust, deciding he could still have fun with this and cement his claim on her for certain... for one night a month, at least...
"Well, if you're going to accompany us, Herne, make yourself useful and get your girl naked for me," Lucifer quipped, and turned to head down a hill into the valley where a massive stone altar lay. He had seen in her mind how many of her lusts were tied to his place. It would suit, he thought to himself.
He didn't bother to look to see if he was being followed. He knew he was. He didn't bother to try to overhear what the old Celtic deity whispered to her as he gently pulled the ties that held her sheer garment in place. You didn't need to be omniscient to know he was offering to protect her from the big bad devil. Telling her it was only every full moon, that she was his every other day of the month. To trust him not to allow her to be hurt in his domain... it was almost as tedious as his penchant to speak as though he were auditioning to play himself on "American Gods".
Lucifer was just passed the standing stones that surrounded the massive altar when he heard her sharp intake of breath. Pausing in his tracks, he looked back and saw Herne teasing the pretty little witch's clit with his fingers while he held her clenched to the front of his body, baring her deepest feminine secrets to any and slipping his fingers into the warm, wet core of her. Her head was thrown back against his shoulder, her pink lips parted in a tiny gasp of sheer ecstasy.