Authors: Miss Merikan
“Fine,” Hunter muttered, but he wouldn’t
shut up. “So … has Ray talked to you lately?”
“What?” Asty sniffled and glanced at him
from behind her shoulder. Hunter had such a good profile, and his dark brown
hair shone in the lamplight, like waves spilling down his shoulders and chest.
“Why would I talk to that sleazebag?”
“I don’t know. You let him fuck you, so
maybe you like him. I’m just saying, for your own good, don’t go out with him
if he asks, okay?” Hunter glanced into her eyes with determination, but she could
sense the jealousy behind his words. As if he had any right to tell her who she
should and shouldn’t be seeing. How did it happen that she went from no one
chasing her to two guys trying to catch her attention at once? Clearly, all
she’d needed to do all along was put out. She should have known already how men
worked.
“My own good, right,” she muttered stiffly
and stuffed her hands into the pocket at the front of her hoodie. “Don’t worry.
This was only a part of the ritual. Any woman who actually likes him should
kill herself.”
Hunter smirked. “Come on … you must have at
least enjoyed
me
a little bit, right?”
This was exactly what no man should ever
ask after sex. Asty groaned. “Why does it matter? It’s not gonna happen again.”
Hunter frowned, but the conversation would
end soon because they were approaching the vet’s. “Because I’ve never been with
a girl like you. I don’t know if it was the ritual, drinking your blood, or
having my cock inside of you, but you can’t fake that kind of shit. We had a
connection.”
Asty wasn’t sure what to say, so she kept
silent for a long time, overwhelmed by the sincerity in his voice. It might
have been a trick, a gamble to make her feel special, but she was falling for
it. “Of course. It was magical,” she snorted in the end, hugging her cheek
against the window and watching as it became matted with her breath. “It’s just
sex. People do it all the time.”
Hunter’s jaw locked and he gritted his
teeth. “Oh, fuck you. You’re such a bitch, you know that?” he hissed and parked
in front of the clinic. He pushed the door open and got out without waiting for
an answer.
For a brief moment, Asty remained frozen to
her seat, and it almost felt as if the slap of the door closing had been meant
for her. She eventually rushed outside and ran to the reception area to get
some sort of bed or stretcher for Beast. They couldn’t just carry him. A few
minutes later, she pulled the little cart to the parking lot, and with each
step she made, the wounds on her stomach ached, reminding her of her purpose.
She might have hurt Hunter, but it was for the best. What if he was developing
feelings for her? She would be gone in nine months, and that was that.
He stood by the open back door of the
trailer, smoking a cigarette, but she couldn’t see his face as he slouched and
his hair hid his features. Great, just what she needed when her pet was in
agony—a sulking man-baby.
“They’re waiting for him already. You can
put him on this,” she uttered, catching her breath as she pushed the cart to
the open door. With Hunter not even making a move toward the trailer, anger
rose in her chest, but words died in her throat when she realized how silent
Beast was. She looked inside, and the handle of the cart fell from her hand.
Beast’s dark eyes were halfway open, and his long tongue was sticking out from
between his teeth, but he didn’t even twitch. He wasn’t crying anymore, but his
side wasn’t moving either. He was so still ...
“Beast?” She stepped closer and slid her
hand into the matted fur on its side, deep enough to feel his ribs, but there
was no movement there. No heartbeat.
Slowly, she sank into a crouch, and her
eyes filled with tears so abruptly, she didn’t even know how to stop them.
“I’m so sorry …” Hunter said and held out
his hand to help her up. “Would you like me to take him inside so we can find
out what happened?”
Asty sniffed and brushed her eyes with her
sleeve, but accepted his hand and stumbled to her feet, emotionally exhausted.
It was as if Death was really chasing her, closing in now that he knew she’d be
gone soon.
“Yes,” she muttered, staring at her dead
pet.
Hunter pulled her in for an unexpected hug.
“There’s nothing you could have done.”
Asty’s whole body turned into wood. He was
hitting on her again? Now? When she was at her weakest? Her thoughts clouded as
she melted into him anyway, sobbing violently, and clutching her fingers on his
jacket. “It’s all my fault ... I should have noticed something odd was going on
with him ... and he died alone in that fucking trailer ...”
“You weren’t much at the club lately. You
couldn’t have noticed.” Hunter hugged her closer and gently stroked the back of
her head. It was calming and infuriating all at the same time.
“That’s the whole point,” she cried out and
pushed at his chest, trying to get away. “Everything I love is dying! It’s like
I’m luring death ...”
“Hey, Asty.” Hunter grabbed her wrists and
looked into her eyes, only making her think about how red they had to be. “What
are you talking about? Was the ritual about the goat?”
“Let go of me! It’s none of your business,
and you don’t really care anyway!” She finally stumbled out of his arms and
grabbed the metal door of the trailer for balance. “Maybe that’s for the
better. You could die too. This will all collapse, and I will be the black hole
that sucks everyone in.”
“What the fuck? You’re nuts, girl! I just
wanted to get to know you better.” Hunter lifted his hands with a scowl. “Do I
want to fuck again? Yes, I suppose I do, but that’s not everything that draws
me to you. So now you’re threatening me with some black magic voodoo? I am so
done with this shit!” He grabbed the cart and pushed it closer to the trailer
to transfer the goat to it. “Just stay away from Ray!” he added.
Asty rubbed her face and leaned against the
side of the trailer. She couldn’t stop crying, but at least she kept it quiet,
watching the cars rush down the highway in front of her. She didn’t want to
look at the dead body of her friend, and guilt ate up her heart as she listened
to Hunter deposit the body on the cart and then take it away. She was shaken to
the core, and only the familiar red car with the advertisement for Lucifer’s
Barber Shop took her out of the stupor.
Lucky parked right next to the trailer and
rushed outside, hugging her firmly. He started talking, but Asty stopped him.
“He died ...”
Lucky stilled, looking into her eyes, but
then pulled her into a hug. “Oh, my God … I’m so sorry, Asty. Beast was the
sweetest. I can’t believe this. Do you know what happened?”
She rubbed her tears on his denim shirt and
sniffed, slowly growing numb inside. “He took the body inside ...”
“Who?”
But before she could answer Lucky, Hunter
came up to them, never once looking into her eyes. “They will examine the body.
Do you want me to take you home?”
Asty shook her head and pushed deeper into
Lucky’s arms.
“I’ll take her,” Lucky whispered over her
head, and not long after, the car engine next to them rumbled.
Asty pushed harder, but Lucky’s arms
weren’t as big and steady around her as she’d have wished. They were nothing
like Hunter’s.
“I know you sent me two of them so I
wouldn’t fixate on the father. He’s just a donor, I know, but I still hope it’s
Hunter,” Asty said as she dipped another batch of candles in hot wax and added
a few drops of blood from the Astaroth seal to the mixture. She knew her mother
wouldn’t answer her from beyond the grave. All her knowledge was trapped in the
notebooks Asty was still figuring out despite having read them over a dozen
times.
It had been two weeks since Beast’s death,
two weeks from creating the seal, and a month of being pregnant. Strangely
enough, Asty’s body didn’t feel different just yet. Maybe Death came for Beast
because the goat would be lonely once she died. It wouldn’t understand what was
about to happen. Asty could only hope her cat would be spared. Lucky and Tooth
had three, so they’d surely take Behemoth in.
She was making candles that she intended to
use in the final ritual. They would contain blood from the several months of
pregnancy, creating a continuity that was to ensure little Beelzebub’s safety.
But as she was making them, she couldn’t help but add her own spell, one only
loosely based on her mother’s notes. She added a few of Hunter’s hairs she’d
found on her T-shirt to one of the candles. It was more for good luck than
anything else. She believed he was the father, so his protection was just as
crucial.
The shed always smelled of wax and the
various ingredients Asty kept in little wooden drawers. There were also stacks
of books—on candlemaking, herbology, and symbolism—in a block of shelves by the
wall. The space inside was small, but there was just enough of it to store
Asty’s works, and the orange and dark green picture a friend of hers had painted
on one of the walls gave it personality. The work depicted a naked woman with greyish
skin, praying within a pentagram of chalk and candles. The ceiling was tall
enough to let Asty work in peace, but only if she didn’t wear platform boots.
Dad could only enter while leaning down, not to hit himself on the head, so it
felt like a space that was dedicated to her only.
And in the intimate space of the shed, her
mind always drifted to that night when Hunter and Ray had had sex with her. It
was only supposed to be about the ritual. She had seen them as tools and
bearers of seed, but the truth was that when Hunter had looked into her eyes, while
buried deep inside her and pushing in so intensely, there had been a connection
between them that went beyond sex. His gaze consumed her, his touch had
purpose, and even the corpsepaint on his face couldn’t hide the person
underneath.
She swallowed hard and dipped the cantle
again, watching wax dry almost instantly. She couldn’t help but think of the
next step toward her ultimate goal. She needed to obtain more seed from the
father and ingest it this time to inspire masculine potency in the future
child. She was very surprised to uncover this detail within her mother’s later
notes and scolded herself for not reading everything through carefully before
she had done the initial ritual. But the more she read, doing mind maps of what
was required, the more small inconsistencies emerged to her attention. The gaps
in her mother’s writing were probably due to the assumption that Asty would
know how to fill them. It was an embarrassment, but Asty spent hours over
occult books from Mom’s collection to find the necessary, if vague, answers.
One way or another, it made sense, that the two men who had sex with her, came
back into her life so that she could ingest their life energy.
Hunter’s cock had been so thick when she
held it. How would he taste? She brushed her fingers over her neckline, above her
breasts, and dipped the candle again. It had been a long time since Hunter had
spoken to her. His initial cockiness was gone, or at least no longer directed
at her. She was pretty sure he wasn’t wasting any time behind her back,
especially after he’d seen her bare-faced. He was now probably sorry he had
chased her in the first place. Maybe coaxing him into the blowjob wouldn’t be
all that easy anymore? Being so handsome, he probably had female hangarounds
crawling into his bed constantly. She knew how Bell and his friends had been.
That was why she had never wanted to be with a biker in the first place.
When the candle was thick enough, Asty
stopped the fire underneath her pot and hung her creation on a hook in the back
of the shed. It was high time for her to prepare for a distraction, just a drop
of normal life that would never be hers again.
*
Music pounded in Asty’s ears as if she were
fourteen again, sneaking out to her first-ever black metal concert. It was
halfway through the encore, and Cries of Decay seemed in top form even after
playing a whole set. The vocals were deep, menacing, and she shouted them along
with the band, drenched in sweat that could be both hers and the people’s
around her. She jumped, she chanted, and she moved with the crowd who carried
her back and forth as they all jumped up high. Here, she could forget her daily
life and worries. The ragged black clothes of the band floated with their every
move, and the corpsepaint transformed them into demons that took over this
gathering, feeding it harsh truths, beating reality into their heads with every
bass.
Her eyes drifted to the longhaired guys
headbanging in front of the stage, and she couldn’t help but think of Hunter.
When the song ended, the men pushed their hair back, and Hunter’s face emerged
from the crowd, his heavily tattooed chest on show, sweaty and heaving for air.
He wasn’t wearing a T-shirt but had wide, studded bracers on his wrists.
Asty stalled, pushed back and forth by the
sweaty crowd. How dare he follow her here? Hunter turned around and headed for
the bar as soon as Cries of Decay left the stage for the last time, but she was
sure it was just a way to hide and pretend he didn’t see her, when in fact, he
was stalking her. So he wouldn’t even say a word to her for two weeks, but came
here on the one night she decided to have some fun? She was not about to let
this go.
“Hey there. Would you like a drink?” A guy
she didn’t even want to look at stopped her as she was heading toward the bar.
She didn’t care to answer, just looked him straight in the eye, and hissed,
sticking out her split tongue.
“Oh, fuck! Never mind!” The guy raised his
hands defensively and quickly disappeared in the crowd.
“Wuss,” she muttered to herself as she
pushed straight for the tall figure she didn’t know nearly well enough and yet
recognized. Venom was filling her veins and spilling on her tongue by the time
she pulled Hunter back by the arm.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Hunter acted perfectly shocked, but he
wasn’t fooling her. “I’m … at a concert.” He squinted slightly and leaned
against the counter.
“Yeah, right,” Asty muttered and crossed
her arms on her chest. “I just wanted to have one night off. Is that too much
to ask? Why do you keep following me?”
“I could ask you the same thing.” His frown
deepened, and infuriatingly, it only made him look more handsome. “You told me
to piss off, so I did. I work here.”
Asty burst out laughing and looked at his
big sweaty chest, at the tattoos shining in the faint light, and at the long
tousled hair that she remembered caressing her skin when they fucked. “Of
course, you are. You’re the accountant.”
Hunter’s lips didn’t even budge. “I rent
out speakers to bands. Help them set up. And what do you need a night off from
anyway? It’s not like you have a job.”
Asty shut her mouth. She had stopped
working on her mobile styling business in the two months preceding her mother’s
death and didn’t start again since. She was selling her candles still, but it
didn’t bring nearly enough income to call it a job. It was humiliating. “How do
you know?”
“I asked around.” He raised his eyebrows,
and there was that smug smirk.
“So you
are
stalking me!” hissed
Asty and backed away slightly. “I have no reason to believe anything you say.”
Hunter shrugged, and as he leaned against
the bar counter, Asty couldn’t help but glance at the thick veins on his arms
disappearing into the studded bracers. She remembered how strong those arms
were and wouldn’t be surprised if he did in fact spend a lot of time lugging
around heavy speakers.
“You can go ask the band. I helped them do
sound checks and all that.”
Asty took a deep breath, and her mind came
to a standstill. “You know Cries of Decay?”
“I just told you. Why? Do I look like a
loser to you?”
Asty gritted her teeth, angry she couldn’t
shake off the insistent attraction. “I don’t really know you.”
“Maybe if you actually gave me five minutes
and got to know me, you’d be surprised by what you find.” Hunter pushed some of
his damp hair back in a casual gesture that made his stomach muscles slightly
twitch.
Asty’s gaze strayed there, but the moment
she remembered she shouldn’t, her eyes rose to Hunter’s face. She cleared her
throat. “Okay. Five minutes,” she muttered. He was actually civil this time, so
she could indulge him.
“You want a drink?” He took a step closer,
and a whole pack of butterflies fluttered their wings in her stomach.
She wanted to say
yes
and make use
of him being over twenty-one, but the moment she remembered the baby, initial
enthusiasm fizzled out. “Just Coke.”
Hunter ordered one for her, got himself a
beer, and led her away from the bar. “Let’s go somewhere quieter.” The after-party
was kicking in, and it made hearing each other much more difficult.
Like what? The bathroom? Asty tried to find
balance between not touching him and not straying from him too much, but as the
crowd kept pushing her away from him, she ended up grabbing his arm after all.
“Can I meet the band?”
Hunter tensed up for a split second, but
then he pulled his arm away and put it over her shoulders. “Sure, I thought we
could go behind the scenes anyway. You a fan? Who’s your favorite?”
He must have not been lying about his job
because the bouncer let them in through the back door at one nod from Hunter.
Asty stilled, looking around the narrow
corridor with walls painted a matte black. Would she really get to talk to
Cries of Decay? Would she even be able to utter a word in their presence?
Hunter’s arm burning into her skin wasn’t helping, but she didn’t want it gone
either.
“Cobra.”
“Oh, yeah? What do you like about him?”
Hunter led her down the corridor, and despite his size, she didn’t feel
threatened. Being around a Coffin Nail actually made her feel safe. As Priest’s
daughter, she was sure none of the guys would ever hurt her.
“He ... he writes the lyrics. I think they
are very meaningful. They really speak to me,” she said in a low voice and let
herself lean into him a bit. Cobra was also just her type. Tall with long black
hair and a strong brow line. He did look a bit like Hunter.
“How come?” Hunter asked, and she realized
it was the first time someone had asked her this question without laughing,
without a mocking smirk. Like he
got
what she was saying.
Asty cleared her throat, feeling herself
flush. “You know, for example in
Lost
, they talk about a man who
dedicated his life to God and didn’t follow his instincts, never did what he
really wanted. And then he realizes on his deathbed that he wasted his life. I
think this is very poignant.”
Hunter nodded, watching her with a serious
expression, and even the studs of his bracer digging into her shoulder couldn’t
make her blink. “What’s the point, right? Bad shit happens to religious people
and atheists alike. If you don’t feel it, you know,
the presence
, why
would you pretend you do? To please your family? I mean, you wouldn’t have that
problem, with your dad being a Satanist.” Hunter laughed.
Asty looked up at him, instantly intrigued.
“Was your family so religious?” she asked, feeling sorry for him.
Hunter licked his lips, and Asty instantly
wanted to kiss them. “I ... yeah, it’s a boring topic—”
A door opened into the corridor, right in
front of them, and there he was. Cobra. In all his leather glory. Tall,
tattooed, with his makeup smudged and some of it dripping down his neck.
“Hunter! You came for the after-party?”
Cobra asked with a big grin, and Asty backed away when he moved in for a bear
hug with Hunter.
She stood there, overwhelmed by the
presence of the five men she had followed since her teens. They were all so
tall, and even though the room smelled of sweat, she didn’t really care. This
was amazing. She had never seen them from up close, and now that she had that
chance, she had no idea what to say. When Hunter was leading her here, she
hadn’t thought of any questions, too focused on their conversation.
“Sure, we can stay a while,” Hunter said
once he backed away, and there was no running away now. He pulled Asty close by
the waist. “This is Astaroth. She does tarot readings if you ever want your
future told.”
Asty took a deep breath, and her eyes
strayed to Hunted. So he remembered? Now she had something to talk about,
something she was very proficient at. She quickly pulled out her cards and
smiled as casually as she could. There weren’t many people in the room, but she
was eager to read for them all. She could actually show off her skills and make
an impression on the guys.