Everything changed the second time she walked through the door to my hotel room. That night, she gave me my name.
I mean, it wasn’t my hotel room, it was really just a convenience.
The first time was just the same as every other woman that had slept in that room. Well, mostly. After I dematerialized into darkness and slipped through the tiny crack under the door (keyholes had made this whole process so much easier, but it was getting harder and harder to find a hotel with honest-to-God keyholes, these days), I could hear her soft breathing.
She was almost asleep.
I took my bodily form again. It was nothing special. I knew that.
But then again, it had always been dark.
I climbed on top of her, feeling her chest compress as she struggled to take a full breath. I could feel her heartbeat drumming inside of her ribs, but it felt different than the other women.
The scent of her was different. With the others, I could always smell the anxiety on their skin, the horror at being unable to move underneath my body. Their stink always invaded my senses, as I fucked my seed into their wombs.
Not that I cared. I really didn’t.
They all lay there under the stifling weight of my form, the whites of their eyes nearly glowing in their own paralysis. Some moistened between their legs, as I pushed myself inside – but most didn’t even do that. Most just lay frozen in terror, as my heavy, icy breath played along their bones.
They were vessels, nothing more.
She, though… except she wasn’t. She was different.
I should have noticed, right away. But after a thousand years of spreading myself over human women just on the cusp of sleep, one gets used to a certain response. Maybe I had just gotten complacent, maybe I was lazy.
No, she was different. It was her. Her heart didn’t beat in panic, she didn’t smell like terror. I could feel the quaver of her heartbeat, just like the others, but it was like she relaxed underneath me. Like she wanted me to hold her down and breed her.
She got wet.
None of the others ever came back. I chalked it up to the airport across the street. Everyone was a one-night stand. So I wasn’t sure what to think, when I saw the familiar sway of her long red hair, as she swiped the keycard the second time.
I had been loitering in the hallway under the sickly fluorescent lights, a shadow in the corner.
At first, I couldn’t believe it was her. I reached out an invisible hand, and she shivered as she walked through it. She stopped for a second and rubbed her arm as the tiny hairs stood on end. I watched her let out a shaky breath, as she regained her composure and unlocked the door.
If I had been less than completely confounded by her presence, I might have noticed the ghost of a smile that graced her lips.
No one ever came back. Yet here she was.
I couldn’t wait; I moved my cold shadow self under the door and paused in the foyer of the room. Curiosity was not an emotion I had ever felt before. To be honest, I didn’t know demons could feel curiosity.
For what it was worth, she, too, seemed a little anxious.
She carried no bags and wore only a long caramel-colored trench coat. Her heels were tall and flashed red with every step. She paused in the middle of the room and chewed her bottom lip. “Are you here?”
No human had ever directly addressed me before. Had I had eyes at that moment, I’m sure I would have blinked them in bewilderment; to be addressed like this was beyond disorienting.
I said nothing, because I could think of nothing to say.
“This is crazy. I am crazy.” She rubbed the space between her eyes. “Maybe I should be institutionalized. Fuck.” Her voice was defeated, dejected.
Listening to her talk to herself, I felt a sliver of something else I had never felt before, but I couldn’t quite get a handle on what it was.
I didn’t want her to talk to herself like that. I didn’t know why this was important to me, though. She had asked me a question, though. Maybe I ought to answer.
What does a demon say to a human female? Sounded like the beginning of a bad joke.
I reached out through the space of the room, and ran a cold air current over her arm again. I heard her gasp and saw her shiver. This time, though, I caught sight of that smile.
“You are here. I knew it.” Where frustration had shaped her tone a moment ago, she allowed a tiny bit of hope to color her words, now. When I made no further response, though, that hope seeped away. “Please, I need to know that I’m not crazy,” she begged. “Please, let me know you’re here.”
I liked the sound of her begging.
Even in my shadow form, I could feel the warmth spread through me, listening to her beg. That should have scared me, I know that now. But I didn’t, and it didn’t. I just knew I liked it. And I wanted her to keep doing it.
A thousand years of paralysis at the edge of sleep, and I wanted to hear this one’s voice.
“Please,” she whispered, as she slipped the coat from her shoulders, letting it pool in a heap at her feet.
The first time, she had gotten into bed in an oversized t-shirt, not that it mattered to me. They all bred the same.
But this… now. This was different. Of course I had seen lingerie before, but on her, it looked like the hunger of a hundred lifetimes, as my vision traced the straps and curves of her body.
It had never mattered to me before.
It mattered to me, now.
She had come back, implored me, wrapped herself in lust and eagerness. I felt myself swell to fill the room, dropping the air temperature enough to raise goosebumps on her arms.
She shivered. “Do you like it?”
I floated around her, circling her body. Tiny frozen air currents tickled along her collar bones, down over the curve of her breasts and flatness of her belly. I watched her nipples harden and the rhythm of her breath quicken; other women might have recoiled in horror – I knew that I gave most a feeling of malevolence – but her responses were anything but typical.
She ran her hands over her skin, following the line of my own vision, even as I remained only a cold shadow in the room.
How she could know exactly where I was looking, I still do not know. She rested her fingers over her womb. “There was a baby. I swear it. They told me it was a ‘phantom pregnancy.’”
I wished she were on the bed, so I could put another one inside of her. I was losing my ability to remain shapeless; already, I could feel the cords of my muscles flex, eager to hold her down.
“Please,” her voice wavered. “Tell me I’m not crazy.”
The profile of my teeth solidified with the shape of my mouth, half an inch from her ear. “You were the vessel for my child, and you will be, again.” My voice sounded like sulfur. I couldn’t remember the last time I had used it.
But even as I said the words, even as ligament and bone formed itself on my person, I knew there was more I wanted from her.
No woman ever came back to me, but she had.
She ignited emotions I had only heard rumors of, among the demonfolk.
I took my first full breath of the night, standing behind her and watching her shake in the icy air. In humanoid form, I towered over her. I knew my height was not unusual, but I liked how small she seemed. Delicate, almost. My fingers wrapped around her upper arms, my bluish black skin contrasting against the warmth of hers. She gasped and began to turn her head.
“Be still.” I wanted to savor her horror, when she finally beheld me, and not a moment sooner.
She stopped. And again, she… relaxed. “I want… please.”
A question bubbled up into my consciousness, one that I had never before had the inclination to ask. “What do you want, spawn bearer? Tell me.”
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