Shifters, Beasts, and Monsters (50 page)

Chapter Seven

All Artemis could hear as she entered Budd’s sweltering
house was the sound of her poor heart hammering her ribs.  God, why was it so
hot in here?  Why was it always so hot… except when it was unliveably cold?

Artemis kicked off her shoes and sped toward the
stairs.  The moment her bare foot met that hard wood, she felt a strange
sensation, like someone was watching her.  She froze right there on the
staircase.

“Is somebody home?” she called.  “Is someone there?”

No answer.

She listened, intently, but all she could hear was the
racing of her heart and the heaviness of her breath.  Wait, was that her
breath?  It seemed to be coming from behind her.  Oh god, she could feel it on
her shoulder, a cold hiss to counteract the house’s humid heat. Her skin
erupted in goosebumps, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up.  The
world felt like a different place, all of a sudden.  Like if she moved the
wrong way, she’d fall off the edge of eternity and tumble into nothingness.

“Get away from me!” Artemis screamed, turning around so
fast her hair whipped the wall.

Nobody there.  Nobody.  Nothing.  Even the cold air had
dispersed.

“Goddamn.”  Letting out a relieved chuckle, Artemis
hopped quickly up the stairs.  “Now my mind’s playing tricks on me.  That’s
just what I need.”

She was still laughing at herself when her hand met the
brass knob on the bedroom door.  Strange that Budd had closed it.  Stranger
still that it felt so brutally hot she let go the moment she heard the little
latch click.

That being-watched feeling came back full force when
she stepped inside the room that ought to be her refuge.  Standing close to the
door, she looked around. How had moving in with Budd gone so wrong? It wasn’t
his fault. Wasn’t hers, either.  Something didn’t want her here… or, rather, it
wanted her too much.

How long had Budd owned this bed?  Did he get a new one
after Vincent’s mother left?  Or had the décor of this master suite remained
unchanged in all those years?  It was everything Artemis ever wanted, and now
she was leaving it, abandoning house and home.  Just look at that blocked fireplace:
attractive, but functionally useless, a lot like her. And those knick-knacks on
the mantle, motorcycle trinkets and memorabilia, then the strange wooden box
with words carved all around the sides. 

Artemis felt weirdly drawn to it. As she laid a suitcase
on the bed and started packing her clothes, she felt this odd impulse to steal
the box.  She wasn’t that kind of person.  She wasn’t a thief.  But as she
packed, she kept glancing past the bed, and up at the mantle.  It had a hold on
her.  She couldn’t explain it.  The box wasn’t attractive.  It probably wasn’t
worth much.  But she wanted it. Wanted it bad.

“So take it,” a familiar voice whispered.

Artemis froze.  “Go away.  I’m leaving.  You’ll never
hurt me again.”

“Hurt you?” The monster seemed offended that she would
offer such a suggestion. “I would never hurt you, darling.”

His hands found her arms.  She could feel those hot,
sweaty fingers down her skin, leaving invisible traces of nothing.  Her flesh
rose into prickly peaks where he touched her.  Didn’t matter that she couldn’t
see him.  She knew he was right there, touching her.

She swatted the air.  “Get off me.  I mean it.”

His laughter rang through the room, resounding in the
hallway and down the stairs.  She couldn’t feel his presence anymore. Had she
really driven him away?  So easily?  Seemed too good to be true.

When she’d hastily filled one suitcase with clothes,
she pulled another out of the closet.  After this one, she’d have to move on to
tote bags.  Luckily, she hadn’t been living in Budd’s house long enough to
fully unpack in the first place.  All her winter clothes were still bundled in
a duffel bag.

Just as she tossed her second load of zipped-up luggage
on the floor, the door creaked behind her.

“I told you to stay the fuck away!” she called to the
demon, but when she turned, she was faced with monster of a different colour. 
Artemis screamed and jumped onto the bed as Vincent’s prized python slithered
into the room.  “No, no, no…”

If the monster was scary, a loose python was terrifying. 
But Artemis had a sinking feeling this encounter would be worse than anything
she could imagine.

“How did you get up here?” she asked the snake.

She wasn’t the least bit surprised when it cocked its
serpentine head, like it understood, and whipped the air with its forked
tongue.

“Go away.”  She threw a pillow at it, but missed. 
“Get!  Go!”

A familiar laugh rang out from the walls, everywhere at
once, and that’s when she knew she’d never escape unscathed.

“No,” she said, more to the demon than to the snake. 
“I’ve had it with you.  Just leave me alone.  Let me pack my stuff and go.”

The snake shook its head.  “Without saying goodbye?”

Its eyes flashed red, and she said, “Goodbye! There.
Good enough?”

“Don’t I get a kiss?”  The serpent rose from the floor,
and Artemis fell back on the bed while it grew, as Dafoe’s dog had done. It
grew until its head was as big as a man’s, grew until arms sprouted from its
sides and legs from further along its body.

And between those newly-formed legs? Oh god, it couldn’t
be.  His tail became a cross between a soft cock and a slick tentacle. 

He towered at the foot of her bed, his body tall, erect
and motionless but for the slick sway of his cock-tail.  It slid across the
floor, from behind his snakeskin feet to in front. Then it rose off the ground
like a fakir’s levitation. Artemis remained mesmerized as it slapped her ankle,
then wound itself around her lower leg.

The snake man yanked her down the bed, and she
squealed, but she didn’t fight.  She couldn’t.  She was hypnotized by the slick
shimmer of his skin.  And, in truth, the farther his cock-tail rode up her leg,
the more arousal mixed with intense fear.

Her heart raced.  “What are you doing?”

“Call it a parting gift,” the monster hissed.

That tongue… god, was it ever long.

Artemis swallowed hard as his tail wove itself around
her waist.  That smooth-as-silk snakeskin made her gasp.  Why had she always
been so afraid of snakes?

The monster laughed.  It obviously heard her thought,
because it said, “I’ll show you fear, my dear.”

The curtains snapped shut.  The door slammed.  When the
master suite went dark, the ceiling changed texture.  It wasn’t plaster
anymore.  It looked like swirling lava.  Felt like it, too. The heat of that
molten substance blazed against Artemis’s cheeks.  Suddenly, she was sweating
all over, and tearing at the scraps of clothing the snake hadn’t already ripped
off.

“Who are you?” she begged.  “Why can’t you tell me?”

When she looked into the snake’s amorphous face, it
flashed into different forms: a skull, a swamp creature, a vampire, a wolf,
Budd.  In a hissing voice, he said, “I can be anything.”

“But what
are
you?” Artemis asked.

That question seemed to upset the creature.  A desert
wind picked up, sweeping the bedcovers against her feet.  She kicked at them,
and the snake man reacted intensely.  His whole body propelled toward her, his
arms reverting to snake-like tails, which wrapped tightly around her naked top.

“I don’t like this,” she said, though she wasn’t sure
if that was strictly true. 

“Yesss, you do!”

Her heart hammered.  She’d never been so afraid in all
her life, and yet her pussy pumped enough juice to soak her thighs.  Her clit
throbbed as the snake man’s slick body landed on top of her.  She didn’t know
what she wanted, and the hot, howling winds consuming the master bedroom
weren’t exactly helping.

“Stop squirming,” the snake said.

She hadn’t realized she was squirming, but she stopped
on a dime when the creature’s legs wrapped around her thighs.  No, wait, his
legs weren’t legs anymore.  They were tails, or tentacles, just like his arms. 
Just like his cock.

His arm-tails encircled Artemis’s thighs, indenting her
flesh.  The monster yanked them apart, so hard her hipbones made popping
noises.  She shrieked, trying her damnedest to roll off the edge of the bed. 
The snake man pressed his body harder against hers, keeping her flat on the
mattress.  While his legs held hers in place and his arm tails held her torso
down, his thick cock unwrapped itself from around her middle.

“What are you doing?” she asked.  “Are you letting me
go?”

Its laughter rang through her body like a bell.  She
felt it everywhere.  And then she felt the tip of that tail pressing between
her legs, finding her pussy wet and ready, and plunging inside.

Despite everything she’d been through since moving into
this house, Artemis had never experienced a sensation like this.  The
creature’s snakeskin cock opened and filled her pussy in one continuous move. 
Once inside, that strange tentacle wagged, shaking like a child’s rattle.  He
found every forgotten place, explored the deep terrain of her cunt.  It felt so
strange to be infiltrated in this way.  She could barely breathe.

And then another tail slid down the crack of her ass
until it found her second vulnerable aperture.  The slick, satiny snake tail
plugged her up, shoved itself inside, filled her.  Two tails, two holes, no
waiting.

“How do you like that?” the snake hissed in her ear.

She couldn’t think.  She couldn’t speak.

“Tell me the truth, my darling: won’t you miss me when
you’re gone?”

Artemis panted harder as the snake’s tentacle tails
undulated in her pussy and her ass.  “No, I… I can’t live like this, with you
watching me all the time, attacking me…”

“You love it.”  The snake thrashed her neck with that
whip-like tongue, and a bead of blood dripped from the slit in her skin.  “You
love being taken by a beast you can’t see, a beast you’ll never know.”

“No.”  Her voice shivered and shook.  She had no
control over it, no control over anything.  “I love Budd.  I tolerated you
because I didn’t want to hurt him.”

“But you’re willing to hurt him now?” the beast
cackled.  “You’re full of it, darling.”

“I’m not.”  She struggled against him, suppressing the
glowing pleasure inside her body while clutching the fear and revulsion she
ought to feel.  “I don’t want to hurt Budd, or Vincent, but I can’t take this
anymore!”

As she struggled against the snake, the whole house
shook.  It felt like an earthquake, a huge one, when voices rang out beyond the
bedroom door: “Artemis?  What’s going on in there?  Let us in!”

“Budd?” 

The sound of his voice in the hallway gave Artemis
enough strength to arch up from the mattress, though that was probably the
stupidest thing she could do.  When she sat, the motion drove the snake’s
leg-tail deeper inside her ass.  The tentacle in her pussy responded by ramming
her harder, building pressure in her pelvis.  How was it possible to be this
full and not explode?  Explosive: that’s how she felt, as the snake hurled her
down on the bed.

The doorknob jiggled relentlessly.  “Open up!” 
Vincent’s voice, this time.  He was there, too.

“I can’t!” Artemis cried.  “The beast has got me. 
Help!  Please help!”

Lava swirled in the heavens on the ceiling while the
boys banged against the bedroom door.  “We’re coming for you.”

The creature’s tentacles slid across her skin as he
whipped her nipples with his terrible tongue.  Her flesh sizzled.  The more he
lashed her, the more she bled, until the pain of those razor-like incisions
superseded the pleasure of being stretched to her limits.

“Stop it!”  Artemis tried raising her hands enough to
push the creature away, but his arm-tails grew longer.  He wrapped them around
her wrists.  “Stop!  You’re hurting me.”

His arm tentacles lengthened yet more, winding up her
shoulders and around her neck.

“Oh god,” she gasped, choking on her words.  Red storm
clouds swirled above her head as she struggled for breath.  “Stop it.  You’re
killing me!”

“Quiet.”  The snake tightened its hold on her neck, and
there was nothing she could do about it.  “Do you know how many women have left
me?  No more, my darling.  You will not leave.”

“Artie?” Budd called as he banged against the door. 
“Are you okay in there?”

“No!”  She tried to scream, but it came out like a
wheeze.  “Help.  Budd, Vince, help me!”

“Hold tight,” a woman’s voice said from the hallway. 

Artemis recognized that voice… who was it?

“He’s strangling me,” Artemis sputtered, trying her
hardest to fight off the snake. 

As she bled quite badly from her chest, she didn’t get
nearly enough air into her lungs.  And all the while, the snake’s tails pulsed
relentlessly in her pussy and her ass.  He didn’t stop fucking her just because
he was killing her.  No way.