I backed up against the wall. Back at the door, Derek was still pounding away. But there was no way he would make it back in time to save me.

“What did you do to Blueboy?” I said. Blueboy was still alive, but his tiny body was just standing there, wavering, as if nothing was left inside.

“I consumed his aspect,” said Thermock. “It just so happens that the aspect I consumed was the main part of his soul.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Thermock put a finger to her mouth, thrust her hips to one side, and pouted. “No,” she said, “you wouldn’t.” Then, suddenly, a sliver of a grin, full of mischief and self-serving, crossed her little lips. “But maybe I can help you with that.”

Thermock hovered in the air in front of my face. Then, slowly, she inched forward. I backed up, kept backing up, then backed up against the wall. Thermock kept coming on until she was inches in front of my trunk. Her bright yellow glow blinded me to the rest of the room.

“You know what I took from Blueboy?” she said. “He was a shape changer. Too bad, you didn’t even get to see him transform. How about me? Would you like to see me transform?” Before I could answer, Thermock morphed into a cup full of yellow liquid. She poured herself out, dribbling into a puddle, which pooled at my leather boots. Suddenly, the pool erupted into an army of killer bees, which swarmed and roiled into a circulating column of stingers and wings and compound eyes, with a buzzing sound so deafening that I folded my ears over themselves, squeezed my eyes shut in terror, and screamed. Then, as suddenly as it began, the roaring din ceased, and I ventured to crack my eyes open again. There, in front of me, in its place, was the most beautiful female. She had a heart-shaped face and unblemished skin. Her lips were thick and her neck was graceful. She had raven hair and black lacquer eyes. Her bosom was full and her hips were wide. She was neither clothed nor unclothed; she was Thermock, and she was all yellow and shade.

If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

She spoke into my ear. “I am going to do you a favor,” she said, the puffs of breath from her mouth hot with her words against my skin, “I am going to set you free, slave. I am going to consume your naivete.”

Then there was a massive sensation of ripping as if my soul were being torn asunder. I watched as Thermock reached into my face, and I felt her penetrate my soul as her arm, which she was using to reach and prod around inside of my field of personal energy, which is to say my aura, which is to say my personal magick, radiated into me an energy so warm and bright and ecstatic that I could only stand still, gasping, marveling in bewilderment my own dumb ecstasy. This is how a bug must feel when it is paralyzed by a spider’s bite, I thought, and that was all. After that, my consciousness became one with bliss, and my mind went blank.

I remember seeing–but not really registering, as though the events I witnessed through my own eyes were actually seen through someone else’s, as though I were an intruder in my own body–Thermock playing with a sticky wad of some kind. She shaped it, giggling, rolling it into a ball, then thinning it out into a tube between her palms. I remember seeing her holding it up to her nose and letting it dangle down like a trunk, and then she plodded exaggeratedly around the room, her green trunk swinging, in a crude imitation of me.

And I remember she said, “Oh, I like this, I feel so wholesome!”

Then I heard–distantly, as if it were all happening far away–the double-locked door at the end of the room burst open. Derek was back, but it was much too late. At least, for me.