Familiar Spirit

The very possibility of resistance seemed to drain out of me, and I went to him and followed him into the center of the chalk circle. I knew then that I had been fooling myself. I was his victim; he would do whatever he chose to me and I could not stop him. My previous experience of his power was as nothing. I realized then that he had never before concentrated more than the smallest fraction of his will upon me. I had been intimidated by his surface; now I was perceiving the power that lay within his depths.

“Disrobe, and cast your gown outside the circle,” he said, and I did so, standing naked in the dawn.

His eyes left mine for a moment as he removed his own gown, and I had time to feel afraid and cold. I shivered, and he caught me, fixed me with his gaze again, stilling me.

He put the jade figure—although it was wrapped in silk, I could feel the living heat of the thing—into my hand. “Unwrap her and gaze upon her,” he said.

I did not want to, but I could not stop my hands from fumbling at the cloth, or stop my eyes from turning down to look. Only in a tiny part of my mind was I screaming and struggling and imagining escape.

The tiny figure throbbed with an evil, unnatural life.

“There is my immortality,” said Jade. “That is what you hold in your hands.”

I stroked it, as if it were a part of him and I his lover.

Jade laughed, a low sound like a purr. “And yours, too, my dear,” he said. “As long as that stone survives, we both shall live. Imagine being stone, my Lilith. Immortal, unfeeling stone.”

Although I struggled to end the repetitive motion, my hands went on caressing the thing. The little green face leered up at me, and the tiny, slanting eyes seemed to sparkle with a hint of the fire I knew from Jade’s. I stared at it, feeling that I was turning to stone while the stone in my hand turned to flesh.

“But, while stone is very useful, and very strong, human bodies were made for pleasure,” Jade said. I realized then that he had moved closer to me and that he was touching me, stroking my body even as I stroked the tiny figure. My body was responding to his touch, and I knew that I was not turning to stone at all. I was flesh, I was alive, and the pleasure I felt beneath his hands frightened me. I felt his breath on my face, and then his tongue in my mouth, flickering like a snake’s. But the venom was so sweet. I was willing to die for it. I closed my eyes.

“No. Look at me. Know me,” he commanded.

I had to obey. I didn’t want to see him, but I had to look. I did not want to feel his mouth or his hands upon my naked body, but at the same time my body cried out in desire. I was torn in two: my body hovering on the brink of ecstasy while my mind was in torment. I stood accepting all his caresses and hardly knew if I obeyed his will or my own.

Then he pulled me to the ground. His hard, naked body pressed the length of mine, and the small stone figure was trapped between us. I could not free my hands. I held the statue and could neither embrace Jade nor try to push him away. Only a small discomfort, feeling the stone pressed against my ribs, but that tiny discomfort was enough to keep me from drowning in his arms. I turned my head slightly and saw Yolanda. She was standing outside the circle watching us, her face a study in mixed passion: desire, fear, hope, jealousy.

Then Jade’s eyes caught mine again. I looked into those brown and golden depths and I could not look away again. I felt as if they were burning into my soul.

“You are my bride, Lilith,” he said. “I have chosen you as my mate. We will be bound together forever, insep­arable.” His tongue moved into my mouth, exploring it lazily. I could no longer differentiate his body from my own, we were so tangled together. I felt that he knew my thoughts as well as his own, as well as he knew my body. And still I wanted to escape.

He answered that thought as I had it, pulling his lips away and murmuring, “No, Lilith. You cannot escape your fate. You cannot escape yourself. They are not your thoughts, not any longer. They are mine. We shall be one mind in two bodies. Soon you will be a part of me, and I a part of you, and there will be no more talk of ‘me’ and ‘you,’ and no more thoughts of escape.”

I was scarcely certain that I had heard his words —they seemed to flow directly into my mind. I felt half-asleep, drugged. Only my body was still alive, demanding, set on fire by the light in his eyes. I didn’t care for thoughts or words. I pressed my lips against his.

His arms tightened around me and with his knee he parted my too-willing legs. I could feel him laughing into my open mouth: a weird, triumphant laughter that filled me up and rattled loose all thoughts. Who was I? I felt breasts soft against my hard chest, knew the feeling of a woman’s body crushed against me, felt her legs part beneath me and then clasp me—