Familiar Spirit

“You want me, Sarah. If you didn’t want me, I wouldn’t be able to come to you like this.” She felt lips on her neck, the grazing nibble of teeth, and jerked away.

“No! I don’t want you! Leave me alone!”

“You want me, Sarah. Your breasts are aching to feel my touch. Undo your blouse and let me suckle.”

Sarah’s empty hand went to her breasts, but it was not to obey Jade but to shield herself. “No.”

“Why do you tremble, if not with desire? You are empty, Sarah, and I can fill you.”

“No!” she cried again. “I won’t let you—you want to destroy me!”

“Ah, no, Sarah,” the voice chided. “Do you think that still? After you have fought me off so bravely, and proved yourself worthy of me? I want more than your body, Sarah. I want more than your shell. I want you. I want you as my bride.”

Her legs were suddenly too weak to hold her. Abruptly, Sarah sat down on the couch. “I don’t want you,” she said stubbornly.

“Your body tells me another story.” He chuckled intimately. “How lovely to feel you respond!”

It was true, she was responding, her body betraying her. Sarah clamped her thighs together and twisted back and forth on the couch. The hands were everywhere, unavoid­able, and her attempts to avoid them seemed useless.

Sarah looked down at the thing in her hand. It was horrible: a naked, ugly organ attached to nothing, out of context, alive when it should not be, like some fat, blind worm. The distaste she felt tempered her body’s excitement. Newly hopeful, Sarah went on staring at it, concentrating. The outlines of it blurred, and suddenly it was only an old, oriental stone carving that she held.

The groping fingers took on more urgency—he must realize he was losing her, Sarah thought—but now she could feel their touch more as a nuisance than as a danger. She had been tempted, but she wasn’t going to fall. She could hold out by thinking of other things. By thinking, for example, of what she meant to do. She held the statue in her hand; the hammer was across the room.

“Don’t, Sarah. Don’t fight me.” Lips at the back of her neck, hands that knew her body. “I won’t hurt you. As my bride, you can have everything you have ever wanted. Power, and strength, and pleasure, and fulfillment. We’ll share such a life—”

“I don’t want to be your bride,” Sarah said. She stood up and looked across the room at the hammer. She could smash the statue—that was what she must do. The deep reluctance she felt was Jade’s inhibition, not her own. This pleasure was too seductive. The sooner she ended it, the safer she would be. Afterwards—

But the thought of afterwards was so bleak and empty and lonely it didn’t bear thinking of. There would be no reward for her then, no pleasure, no one waiting. If she went to Brian he would only reject her again. There would be no fulfillment like the one the stroking, teasing fingers promised, if she would just relax, just give in . . .

“Stop it!” she shouted, and whirled around, trying to pull away from the sensations. She must not think, she must not feel—everywhere there were traps. She had to act. Find the hammer, smash Jade’s statue now.

The room went dark.

I know where the hammer is, Sarah thought. It’s in the same place. The room is the same, everything is the same, even though I can’t see. She took a careful step ahead into blindness.

“Sarah,” said Jade’s soft, caressing voice. “Stop and think. Don’t be hasty. Think of what I’m offering you—think of the power, the passion, the immortality.”

“No.” She took another cautious step forward. In a moment, she knew, she would bump the hammer with her foot.

“At least know what you are giving up. Know me first, and then decide.”

She took another step, and then couldn’t move any more because she had run into someone. A man, who put his arms around her. She gasped, and would have cried out, but his lips met hers. Then she wasn’t afraid anymore. He was real, whoever he was, and she belonged here in his arms. It felt so right that she could only relax against him, almost melt into him as his tongue teased at her lips and his hands moved down to fondle her bottom.

And then she realized who held her, and what this embrace meant, and she began to struggle. She broke away. Tears sprang to her eyes, and her body throbbed with frustration. She had wanted to give in. To let herself be seduced by a ghost.

“You’re not real,” she said bitterly. “It’s a trick.”

“I am real,” said the voice. “You know me. I am Jade.”

Jade. And Jade was not the monster she had thought, but a man, a real man. She had felt his hands, his lips, his breath in her ear . . . his mind in her mind.

Sarah shuddered. Nothing had changed except the tenor of his attacks. He was still the monster she had first thought, even if he had once walked as a man. And he wanted her. He would destroy her if she didn’t destroy him first.