A cool autumn breeze greeted Kat as she exited the isolated century farmhouse that she shared with Damian. It lifted her coat and caressed her bare legs as she locked the door. Here, far from the city's lights, a swarm of stars populated the heavens. Silence reigned. The farmers who resided miles down the road were enjoying their last few hours of sleep before beginning their daily labors.
Damian's Porsche still sat in the inky darkness by the barn. It hadn't moved since they'd returned from the city on Monday. Damian had been uncharacteristically listless and silent on the drive home. Something had gone terribly wrong, and the foreign blood on his tongue only confused matters. It was human but bore unmistakable traces of the demonic. Damian could shed no light on whether he had somehow infused the blood with his own energy, or whether it was inherently so. The fact remained that this represented an unprecedented synthesis. Neither Kat nor Damian knew what to make of it.
Kat started her Range Rover and rolled slowly down the drive, gravel crunching loudly beneath the tires. The headlights illuminated the trees that stood like sentinels between the house and the dirt road.
Damian hadn't fed since that Monday, and in the intervening days he'd grown increasingly pale and lethargic, sleeping by day and pacing the house and grounds by night.
At first, Kat hadn't been unduly worried. There had been periods in the past during which Damian had exhibited similar symptoms. Periods during which he had failed to heed the essential difference between himself and his quarry and had developed an imprudent fondness for those he fed upon. Kat would berate him for his foolishness, for believing that the eagerness with which people surrendered to him was love and that it could blossom into something more. It could not.
You're a demon, she would remind him, not some horny adolescent.
And then he would huff and roll his eyes, just like an adolescent.
Eventually Damian would relearn that the quarry's relationship to the incubus was fuelled by lust. Nothing more. The incubus had a unique power to lowered inhibitions, imbued the victim with the permission to fulfill any carnal desire, the courage to cross the line, and the desire to embrace fear. The result in the end was lust, a hunger to sin and to sacrifice.
Eventually Damian would grow hungry and would once again distil that lust and fear into that which sustained him.
He would learn anew that any sentiment that polluted the relationship between demon and quarry invited trouble.
And there would pass a long period of stability -- years or even decades -- until he happened upon that one victim who would banish these lessons like leaves in a cool autumn breeze.
Earlier in the evening, Kat had asked Damian to accompany her on this run. They normally hunted alone because their tastes and methods differed and because they had no desire to see the other engaged in the very activity that was denied them as a couple. But tonight, Kat had wanted to keep an eye on him, to ensure that he received sustenance.
His response had given her a chill: "I don't hear the tone anymore."
It was the first inkling that Damian's moroseness stemmed from a cause more serious than unrequited love.
Not hearing the tone was not unlike a bat being unable to receive sonar signals. For a demon, the tone meant the ability to navigate, to find a suitable prey, and to feed. Its absence was unthinkable and suggested to Kat that this was beyond time's ability to heal and her ability to help. This was new and unknown. This was sickness.
She drove past a darkened farmhouse and projected herself into the rooms where people slept. There was no inkling of a meal there. Not that she wanted to feed in her own backyard, but it might have spared her a long drive.
She would feed at the university, about an hour's drive south. Over the time they'd been together, Kat and Damian had gravitated to university towns. More than any institution -- perhaps with the exception of convents and monasteries -- universities were reliable sources of nourishment. A large percentage of the students graduated each year, ensuring a healthy turnover. More importantly, young people responded well to their projections and returned strong tones, for their emotions were fresh, vibrant, and never too far from the surface. The promise of sin, they found, was often wasted on the old. Around a university, one modest projection could leave a demon awash in the ubiquitous feelings of youth: hostility, desperation, desire, and arousal.
Kat stopped at an intersection and turned onto an empty two-lane highway that led through some sleepy villages and eventually to one of the two universities in town. She was hungry. The clock on the dashboard showed three o'clock, late enough for the drunken undergrads to have fallen asleep, early enough for her to feed and return to Damian.
If Damian could no longer hear the tone, he would starve. He would be unable to locate anyone whose response to him combined the necessary susceptibility with longing.
***
Bryan Dueck was a large, strapping farm boy, away from home for the first time. Caught between his parents' religion, his own barely-suppressed desire, and thousands of young female undergrads who flaunted their youthful sexuality with carefree abandon, Bryan's tone had drawn Kat like a magnet.
When she first met him, he'd been about ready to explode.
She was happy to help him reach his potential.
On the first night, Kat dispensed with the usual demonic foreplay -- the teasing, leering, and taunting. Instead, she straddled his chest, facing his feet, lowered herself, and took him into her mouth. Just like that.
He was hard almost immediately. He thrashed around, as though dreaming of drowning or of being crushed, while simultaneously raising his hips in an effort to impale her face. A true multi-tasker. Kat drew him into her, enjoying the sleepy confusion and savoring his agitation.
He ejaculated before he awoke fully, hot, expansive geysers typical of the young. Kat lapped it up, absorbing the contradiction between his bodily pleasure and his subconscious fear.
When he was spent, Kat curled up next to him, with her head on his shoulder and his cock in her hand.
He took a shallow breath, as though afraid that anything deeper would disperse the illusion. "You're real."
"Mmm." Kat pinched one of his nipples between her fingernails.
"Who... who are you?"
"Kat."
She stroked him, enjoying his confusion. She could feel the stirrings of life beneath her fingers. She loved the young.
"I don't know you, do I?"
"No."
"Okay."
His hand tentatively stoked her back. She smiled and snuggled a little closer.
"Do you know what I want to do?" she asked.
"What?"
"I'd like to fuck you now."
She thrilled at the jolt of apprehension and desire that suffused him. She found that she was hungry again. Calling the preamble an appetizer, she eagerly tucked into the main course.
On the second meeting, he asked if he could take her out to dinner.
So cute, thought Kat, his wanting to be a gentleman.
"You don't have to. Besides, I'm not hungry."
"Oh." He sounded disappointed.
"For food, I mean."
What she meant and what he thought she meant were different, but amounted to the same thing. Bryan smiled shyly.
"Besides, I'd prefer to fuck you."
"Okay." Bryan blushed.
