Miami Beach

March 26, 1985

Sid felt the sharp edge of his hangover as soon as his eyes cracked open in the dark room.   He was nestled in a pile of hotel pillows covered in rough cotton.  At some point, he had thought to close the thick curtains to block out the blazing Miami sun that would rise and set over the pristine white beach.  The wide, salt spattered windows had been pulled shut, but the sound of the crashing waves could still be heard over the white noise of the air conditioning.  He had been living out of this room at the Monte Carlo for a week now, paying the daily rates with the change he picked from the wallets of his johns.  Johns.  Could he even really call them that?  After all, it was him seeking them out, not the other way around.  And unlike his previous occupation, he was the one with the bottomless hunger.  Last night, he’d gone out like he had every night to find a suitable option. 

He remembered choosing Club Fiasco because despite its overwhelmingly straight clientele, it catered to a more affluent crowd.  Sometimes, if you knew what to look for, you could even catch a glimpse of Miami royalty mingling amongst the glittering throngs.  Smelling of luxury, their toned bodies relaxed and supple, they appeared almost as ageless as his kind.    But years of hunting both for sustenance and for cash had taught Sid to spot them.  Unlike him, they were still very human, and a good catch with a flush wallet could pay the rent for a long time. 

His eyes had closed again, and he was deep in his booze fogged memories, trying to piece together the night before.  He remembered a man flashing him an ice white smile from a sculpted and tanned face, one hand on Sid’s thigh, the other clutching a highball glass.  His hungry eyes moved over Sid, taking in every inch of his body.  The familiar dance had started.  After a few more words of booze-fueled conversation, they would leave together for a slow walk along the moon-silvered beach.  Sid’s hotel was a mile down the strip, and under the inky canopy of stars, away from the distractions and noise of the swaying human masses, Sid would be free to work the magic he needed.  His handsome friend had almost finished his gin fizz, and Sid opened his mouth, his lips preparing to form the invitation. Then, she had appeared.

A woman’s moan muffled by the sounds of shifting satin sheets brought him painfully back to the cold, tiled floor beneath him.  Someone was asleep in his bed.  This isn’t right.  None of this is right.  He heaved himself off of the floor, feeling the aches and twinges in his joints like he never would on a full stomach.  God, he needed to eat.  Why the fuck didn’t he-?

His thoughts came to a halting reroute as he saw the raven-haired beauty in his bed, his sheets shrouding her long, slender form like an ivory gown.  Tucked between two corpses, her sleeping face was a mask of peace and innocence, calling to his mind the image of Boticelli’s Venus rising from the sea.  As he watched, entranced by the delicate bow of her parted lips and the smooth skin of her high, uncreased brow, she stirred, pulling the hand of the corpse to her left, a woman, over her bosom.  She held it close to her heart, her white fingers interlocking with the limp, graying hand. 

It’s rude to stare, said a voice like honeyed wine.  It was clear and distinct in his head, the sound of it soothing the tight vice around his skull like a pleasant anesthetic.  But the woman’s eyes remained closed, her perfect lips, though parted, hadn’t moved to form the words. 

“I… can’t help it,” he whispered.  “I’ve never seen anyone like you.”

You haven’t, the voice said matter- of-factly.  I am alone in this country.  Alone in the world.  Now.

“How did you…  Why?” Sid stuttered, finding that his words came with some difficulty in her presence. 

Don’t you remember, Sid?  You invited me.  I only ever go where I’m invited.

“I… invited you?”  Images of the bodies dancing in the beach front club flashed before him like the strobing lights of the dance floor, only this time it was not his eyes he was seeing through.  A young woman with long, teased out blonde hair was dancing before him, her hot pink dress hugging the curves of her youthful body.  Every so often, she would smile coyly in his direction, her eyes communicating a secret that didn’t need to be said.  I am yours, she whispered in the fluttering of her false lashes, the sway of her nubile hips.

The vision shifted suddenly as something caught his attention at the bar:  two men, both tall and well built, one slender, the other wider in the shoulders.  He was seeing himself and his companion from the night before.  See me, whispered a voice that was not his own, and the eyes of Sid’s companion shifted to stare in his direction.

“That was you,” Sid said, blinking as the vision she had implanted began to dissipate.  Now he remembered. 

She had appeared like a mirage to the inebriated crowd, a ghostly white flower on the ocean floor, swaying gently as she was moved by the passing currents.  The world around her seemed bent by a strange gravity she invoked, and it hadn’t taken long for all eyes to move to her, including those of Sid’s companion.  Fuck, he thought as his prey set his empty glass down on the bar. 

“I need another,” said the man, and he motioned to the bartender without looking away from the startling woman on the dance floor.  “And I need to talk to her.”

“Her?” Sid protested.  “Am I reading this wrong?  I thought…”

“Relax babe,” the man said, affecting a patronizing tone that Sid would have found utterly unbearable had he not been so hungry.  “I’m what you might call, ‘open-minded.’  Kind of looks like she might be too.”

Across the floor, the woman whispered in the ear of her own companion, leaning in and tenderly brushing back locks of flaxen hair from a tanned cheek.  Her dark eyes flashed in their direction, and the pair began to move slowly and sensuously through the crowd towards them.

“Shit,” Sid had muttered as the woman in his bed approached the bar, her companion following dutifully in her footsteps.  Despite her otherworldly beauty, it had taken him a moment to comprehend what he was looking at.  Afterall, this was Miami, where even the most stunning faces could be tweaked and augmented to an almost surreal state of perfection.  She was a model, he thought, or perhaps the wife of some rich drug-lord, slumming it here with the proletariat.  It wasn’t until she spoke to him, her eyes flashing a feline green, her lips frozen in a sly, flirtatious smile, that he realized what she was.  A goddess.

What a lovely find, baby-bat, she had said.  Why don’t you fly off and find another?

 She spoke with that melodious voice directly into his booze addled brain, and for a moment, he almost obeyed.  Yes, he thought.  Of course, Goddess.  Who was he to hunt in the same vicinity that she had deigned to visit that night?  How dare he?

Then, his hunger kicked in.

No, he said, finding a voice somewhere deep in the recesses of his subconscious.  It was like flexing a muscle he had never used before.  No, he repeated in his mind, affirming to himself more than anything that he would not be driven away.  Even by her.

If she heard him, the goddess did not seem put off in the least.  She brushed her long, silken hair away from her perfect face as her friend draped herself across the shoulders of Sid’s companion. 

“Come with us,” said the human woman after a few words of meaningless small-talk had been exchanged between them.  “It’ll be rad.  I promise.”

Sid rolled his eyes as an idiotic grin bloomed across the face of his prey.  “Right on,” the man slurred drunkenly, and his hand groped along the bar behind him for his fresh drink.  Sid’s hands moved faster than he could think, and the little pellet was out of his pocket and between his fingers, poised over the glass of his spellbound prey before even he knew what he was doing.  He felt the capsule crush and the powder sprinkle like grains of the finest sand into the gin fizz.  He would never taste what Sid had done, but gradually, his interest in the goddess would wane.  Soon, his attentions would be drawn back to Sid.  All would be as it was, and this greedy huntress would have no choice but to leave him to his meal, as he would hers.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Lead the way, babe,” said their disputed victim, and he downed his drink in one long swig, slamming the empty glass down on the marble bar with a clink loud enough to be heard over the bright, electronic rhythm.  The goddess watched expectantly, waiting for him to rise. 

Despite himself, the beginnings of a smile materialized on Sid’s face as his prey shook his head and blinked.

“Wait, what was I…?” he started, his eyes glued to the floor as the enchantment began to fade.

“You were going to come party with us,” said the Goddess. 

“I… I was?”  He looked to her and then back to Sid.  “No,” he said, shaking his head.  “No, I don’t think I was.”

The Goddess’s smile never waned, but her nostrils flared almost imperceptibly.  YOU, she said to Sid, the sweetness of her voice transmuting to cold steel.  What did you do, baby-bat?

He’s mine, Sid answered defiantly.  I was here first.

Their eyes locked then, and he was trapped in the green, preternatural glow of her gaze.  Do you know who I am? she said.

No, he said, and for a brief, fleeting instant, fear flared up in him, eclipsing his need to feed.  Maybe he should reconsider and leave this territory to the superior predator, he thought.  But something about that green light inspired a curiosity in him.  What kind of creature was she, he wondered, and how did she become like this?  If he left now, he would never know.  I don’t know you, he said.  Please.  Tell me.

At his request, the Goddess showed herself to him, revealing it in a series of images and seemingly disconnected revelations.   In an instant, he understood the extent of her power.  She was old, the oldest of their kind he had ever encountered; one of the first, made by the very same demon who had fathered them all.  In her blood, the elements of flame, salt, aether, and water were condensed, and the memories of his making and the creation of all those who came before him resided in her.  Strength, beauty, and ruthless lethality flowed from her like a wellspring.  He knew then that he was hers.  He would forever be hers, grateful to sit at her feet and feast upon the drops of blood that dripped down from her hungry mouth.  She had only to ask, and he would follow her always, even unto the ends of the earth. 

Take me with you, he begged.  Please, Goddess.  Don’t leave me.

Very well then, she said.  Sid felt the world around him return to focus as the green light faded from her eyes.  Invite me.

Goddess, Sid said, finding his voice once again in the dark hotel room.  What…  What did, he stammered, still finding it difficult to speak even in this new language she was teaching him.

Say it, she commanded, and his tongue was loosed.

“What the fuck did we do last night?”  The words spilled out of him like water through a broken damn, and as it did, the absurdity of the previous night hit him like a deluge.  He remembered the three of them, himself and two spellbound and drunken humans, traipsing along the beach, trailing after faint glimmers of her in the distance.  Was she there?  Had she left them?  No.  They could still hear the quiet echoes of her musical laughter, see the moon shining off of her white, ghost-like shoulders in the distance, smell her strange and exotic scent: night blooming Jasmine.  The hotel room still reeked of this perfume, only now it mingled with the scent of sex and the stale, sour note of death.

The goddess’s eyes opened then, flashing green before settling back to deep brown.    “Isn’t it obvious,” she said, her mouth finally moving to form audible words.  “We partied, babe.  Take a chill pill.”

With those words, Sid felt a shift in his perception of the woman before him.  Instead of a goddess, she transformed into a Miami club-vixen: still beautiful, mysterious, and thrilling to be sure, but wholly of this earth.  Still, the memory of what she was stuck in his brain.  As she sat up, clutching his sheets to her naked chest and rubbing her sleep filled eyes, a question began to eat at the edges of his thoughts.

“You say we partied,” he said carefully.  “But I think you mean you.”

She smiled and shrugged, acknowledging his words with a casualness that might have been offensive had she been any less lovely.  “Sorry about that,” she said as she looked down at the corpses of the man and woman who had followed her here.  “I guess I was hungrier than I thought.”

She certainly had been, he thought, recalling the eager way she had pulled the man into her, allowing his hands to run all along the curves of her naked skin.  She gasped as his lips caressed her neck, his hand moving to work between her thighs.  Her fangs, descended, and green light burned like a flame behind her eyes.  She took him quickly, her hand wrapping around the shaft of his erect cock, expertly working him until he came to a sharp, immobilizing climax.  Sid watched as the man, who was a full foot taller than her, collapsed in the arms of the goddess.  As his limbs were rendered useless, his face turned gray and his eyes rolled back in his skull.

Next, she fixed her attentions on the woman, who had been watching, waiting patiently by the window next to Sid.  With this one, the Goddess was unhurried, pushing her down on the bed and kissing her way slowly down.  She took her time, allowing the woman’s pleasure to build, ebbing and flowing until at last the tides were about to crash over the goddess’s control.  Then and only then did she allow her prey to reach her peak.  As she came, Sid could swear he saw the goddess flex, the muscles in her back tensing as two coal black wings unfurled above her.  This, she said to him.  This is how monsters feed, baby-bat.  

Sid stared, transfixed by the demoness’s true form for a long while, losing track of time as he watched the life drain from the willing victim on the bed.  Her back arched and she released a final cry filled with both pleasure and pain as the last of her soul poured from her body and into the ravenous creature kneeling between her legs. 

Draw the curtains, commanded the Demoness.  She wiped her mouth with the back of her delicate hand, and the wings were gone. 

Yes, Goddess, Sid had said to the hauntingly beautiful, naked woman in his bed, and he obeyed, all the while wondering if she had somehow enchanted him as she had the poor dead humans beside her.

The question returned to Sid’s cloudy mind as he surveyed the damage she had wrought the following evening. 

“I guess I could have saved a little for you,” the Goddess said. “I usually only need one.  The second is…  Shit!” She had been toying with the woman’s limp hand, tracing along the slack tendons and deflated veins.  She let it fall to the bed with a dull thump as she exclaimed.  “That’s right.  The second was to help me get rid of the goddam body.  Fuck.  I never seem to remember…”

She flopped back in the bed, turning away from the man, who had died flashing his ice-white teeth in a wide, rictus grin.  At her request, Sid had pulled him from the floor and into the bed beside her before they’d passed out.  She faced the woman, and pulling the dead hand close to her heart, she pushed flaxen hair away from the lifeless, blind eyes of her favored victim. 

“This one had beautiful fingers,” she said, her lips brushing tenderly against the back of the gray hand.  “She could have been a musician.  Or an artist.  But she wasn’t any of those things, was she?”

“I don’t know,” said Sid.  “She could have been.”

“She could have been,” agreed the Goddess.  “But she wasn’t.  Is there anything as tragic as wasted potential?”

Sid remained silent as she continued to fawn over her leavings.  “Do you remember them all?” he said after a while.

“Many of them,” she said.  “The pretty ones.”  She opened the long, slender fingers and held her palm to the dead woman’s.  “It was lovely, the way she passed, wasn’t it?  Grasping the sheets in her last moments, almost like she could hold time still.  Did you see it?”

Sid shook his head.  No.  He had never given much thought to those final, subtle gestures, but as the Goddess described them, her misty eyes like two murky pools of eternity, he found himself wishing he had.

“I can teach you, baby-bat.  I can show you more magic than you could ever rend from your little herb garden.”

“From my-” he started, remembering blearily that he had tried to combat her spell with one of his own.  A capsule of Persian bark and a touch of violet to break her hex and ignite lust.  “I was just, I needed to-” he sputtered. 

“You needed to eat,” she said as she sat up and extended a long, white arm towards him.  “Like all creatures do.  Come.”

Sid moved towards her automatically, his body obeying her command before his brain could react.  As her fingers brushed his forehead, he felt a warm, calm energy spread through him like melted butter, soothing and healing as it traveled down his spine and along his limbs. 

“For you, Sid,” she whispered.  “This and so much more.”

“Thank you, Goddess,” he said as he felt his hunger lifted from him like a heavy burden he’d been carrying for miles. 

“Call me Lacrima,” she said.  “Lacrima Zepesh.” 

The name fell from her lips and hung in the darkness between them, evoking in Sid a sense of timeless wonder and fear.  Zepesh, he repeated in his thoughts, the scent of Jasmine grew stronger to eclipse the mortal world around them. 

“Now Sid,” Lacrima said, her voice like a soft song to him.  “I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything,” he said, feeling in his heart the truth of this promise.

“Take these bodies far away from here.  Get rid of them.”

Yes, he said with the voice she had taught him to use.  As you wish, Goddess.