Beneath the New Moon–Part Three

by Matthew Pridham

PART THREE

“Wakey-wakey,” Vav said, tapping him on his forehead. He sat up as far as her body, straddled across his chest, would allow. Her nipples hovered in front of his bleary gaze, one ring threatening to poke him in the eye. After everything he’d seen last night, he hadn’t been able to fall asleep until afternoon. His alarm clock told him it was now ten. Eliora Vav, clearly, wasn’t in the mood to wait out his beauty rest. “Get up, beast,” she said, tugging him into a sitting position. She rubbed her hips against his, bit his lower lip. “Tonight is special.” She patted his cock through the sheets, nodded with approval at its sore but steady growth into a hard-on. “Tonight, we see my home.”

Vav dragged him through the mirror into that weird and wobbling space beyond. “Here in,” she said, and pulled him toward a distorted version of his bathroom door, “need we what have you.” She flung the door open and sprang at his cabinet. Its mirrored surface opened outward and when you positioned it just right, as he did when shaving the back of his neck, when idly wondering what he looked like from behind, you could catch its reflection in the mirror attached to the shower. Vav lined them up and peered into the larger surface of the shower door. They could now see down an endless vista of reflections. She grinned proudly and grabbed him by one ear. “Go we there,” she said, tugging him into that echoed panorama, “in get.”

When they crawled through, he found himself tripping over a series of ledges separated by shorter and shorter spaces, in one mirror and into another, faster and faster, Vav pushing him from behind, her words running backward and forward until they smeared into garble, until nothing was left but a sound like a song. They followed the curve of that vista until it suddenly opened into a monstrous expanse, a vision so terrifying in its immensity that he pinched his eyes shut, stumbled, and fell forward. There was a flapping sound, like canvas unfurling and stretching to the wind, and then Vav’s arms wrapped around him and he felt them both lift into the air. “Sorry, beast,” she said, and nibbled one ear, “I should’ve told you to mind that last step.”

He may never have opened his eyes had Vav not begun prying them open herself. “You are missing it all, my beast,” she said, fumbling with his eyelids, and he gave in. They were flying, as he’d rather worried they might be, soaring over what appeared to be plains of corrugated organic matter, rolling hills and darkened grooves of orange tissue. Vav’s black hair hung down over his sight, but when he shook his head he parted just enough of them to look up. Far, far above them was a canopy, a ceiling from which stalactites the size of mountains drooped. He swallowed, swallowed again, nausea battling with awe in his belly. In the distance, an ocean of shining liquid shimmered, its shores flowing deliriously up the titanic walls on one side. This strange sea was only one of many strong sources of light he was aware of, but everything seemed to bleed its own illumination here, to glow from within.

A flurry of bright green dots burst into motion to his right and he flinched instinctively. This swarm of tiny glowing globules had fluttered up directly in Vav’s flight path, hundreds of them. From directly above his ears, he heard her sigh, felt her nod: a gesture aimed not at him but at these little creatures. With no warning, the swarm burst out in an atonal humming which slowly resolved into strange melody. “Thank you, yes,” Vav said, still flying forward. The melody curled around them, a haunting chorus. There were no words to make out, he was sure of this, but he sensed he was hearing a paean to Eliora Vav, praise and welcome combined. These tiny celebrants followed them for what must have been miles until Vav growled, “Okay, okay, we get the point,” and scattered them with the arm not still gripping him.

“I mean,” she said, wrapping that arm back around his chest, “a little goes a long way, right?” He didn’t answer, his throat having momentarily closed up. To their left, a giant white shape lay embedded in the side of a butte which arose from the floor. As they passed directly over it, he got a close enough look to see it was comprised of millions of skulls crushed together into the shape of a monstrous and broken talon. The sight made him feel more than sick; it hit him with some deep anxiety, like he’d seen a secret too awful for words. Vav swerved aside, erasing this image from his eyesight. “Yes, my little manimal,” she said, “you probably shouldn’t look at that too long. We don’t want to break the mood, do we?”

Vav flew them toward a crack in one of the walls bordering the sea and soon they plunged into a deep, velvet darkness. On either side, the walls grew smooth, weirdly regular for what must have been a natural channel. He couldn’t escape the feeling they were flying through a gargantuan hallway, a vestibule hollowed out for the passage of gods. Vav cried out, the keenest pleasure he’d heard come from her mouth, and she veered downwards. “There, beast,” she whispered, “do you see it?” They were hurtling toward what looked like a valley set in the rocky ground, a clearing around which stood ridged hills. Vav swooped over the canyon, landing on one of these cliffs. She dumped him unceremoniously onto soft white dirt and he heard that flapping canvas sound again. By the time his vision had steadied, she stood by his side, whatever wings she’d possessed once more packed within her body. She rubbed her wrists and grimaced. “You are heavier than you look,” she said. With a sickening crunch, she wrenched both of her hands all the way around as if she was wringing out washcloths. Vav sighed. “Ooo, that’s good.”

He crawled forward to the edge, peered down. To one side, at the mouth of the valley, a bone-white tree fluttered in a wind he could not feel. In the center of the clearing, a black shape, something like a cocoon, stood planted in the dirt. Even from this distance, he could see red lines like veins or roots extending from this tall piece of vegetation, little tendrils which seemed to wriggle with their own animation.

“We are just in time, too,” Vav said, pointing out across the valley.

On every side, he could see bodies falling from the sky, shadowy silhouettes that landed with little puffs in the white soil. They were too far off for him to make out any details, but he got the impression of a variety of shapes and sizes, all of them bearing the same glowing eyes as Vav. Each had another form clasped in their arms, some two. Once on the ground, these bodies began arranging themselves into positions which left no doubt as to what they were doing. He, on his knees before her, turned his eyes up to Vav, who stood there naked and sweating, her mouth stretched in the gentlest smile he’d seen on her sharp face. “My siblings, beast,” she said, and rolled him onto his back. “And their own little pets.”

She sat on his thighs, ran her claws softly across his chest. His cock, stupid, hungry, immune to his reeling senses, sprang up between her legs. Vav bent down and kissed him, rubbing her breasts against his nipples. Her tail sought out his perineum and pressed against it and he groaned helplessly. “There we go,” she said and pushed her clit against his shaft. “Right there.” Minutes of this delirious pleasure passed, their sweating bodies rocking against one another. From across the valley, he could hear the sound of her siblings and their sport, inhuman giggling and moaning and incomprehensible mumbling. Vav shivered, swore, and with one smooth motion lifted her hips and pushed him inside. He ran his tongue over her breasts and their dark rings, hoping she wouldn’t sting him again to ward off the orgasm making its implacable way toward him. Vav sat straight up, rode him like the beast he was, her claws digging all-but painlessly into his sides. In her delirium her mouth opened so wide he feared her head would snap in half.

And then, beyond the outline of her tossing hair, he saw a purple light pour into that hallway through which they’d flown. It illuminated the walls of the narrow cavern like a spotlight wielded by some giant hand. He slapped her ass unconsciously, too caught up in desire to stop, and watched as a titanic orb rolled through the air around the curve of the hall. Its surface was the source of that dark violet light, its glow radiating through the darkness as it spun through the air toward the valley. Vav twisted to look behind them, though her hips did not stop bouncing against his. “The dolorous moon,” she moaned. The light from this strange satellite reached their fucking bodies before those of anyone else on the cliffs surrounding the clearing. The glow burned, filled him with the sense that every one of the cells in his body was being swollen with life, with ecstasy. It, this glowing orb, seemed to slow, to linger. Vav screamed as the moon passed over them, slapped his arms his chest his face, her tail twirling tight around one of his legs. Inside the sweltering inferno of her pussy, her nether-tongue gripped his cock higher than it ever had before, and he had the thought, there one moment and then burnt away by ecstasy the next, that she was going to pull him inside out in the madness of her pleasure.

The purple moon rolled soundlessly over the cliffs, irradiating everything for miles. Down below them, something cracked, something split, and he saw a dark green body burst from the floor of the valley into the air; he heard, mixed with the cacophony of a hundred orgasms, the triumphant cry of an alien newborn. Vav gripped the side of his head with one claw, reaching back to squeeze one thigh with the other. “Come,” she ordered, “come come come,” and he could feel it throbbing its way up from his depths, could feel an annihilating burst building, couldn’t take his eyes off of Vav’s face and her bobbing body, wished she’d engulf his head in her fanged and wet mouth, couldn’t breathe for a pleasure the light from the dolorous moon was edging toward agony, his every cell screaming with a stimulation which he suddenly knew, absolutely knew, would destroy his mind, would wash away his sanity and leave in its wake only a twitching, emptied carcass.

“Vav,” he groaned through a shrinking windpipe.

She rode harder, her violet eyes pressed tight on her own little death, her claws delicately pinching his nipples in that way guaranteed to bring about his own coming.

“Eliora,” he said, and remembered. “Apricot, Eliora, apricot.”

Her eyes flickered open, that ecstatic delirium now tempered, if not altogether erased, by concern. She stopped riding and, with an agile thrust, snaked her tail between his back and the white dirt and stung him in the spine, narrowly arresting his orgasm. Vav was gathering him into her arms, her wings unfurling noisily, her face peering with fear into his own, when everything went black.

#

“Come back to me, pet.”

Her voice, soft, a little amused, coaxed him back to the world. They lay in his bed, Vav leaning over him, one claw smoothing his brow. He blinked up at her, around at his room. She had, he noted, knocked that antique mirror to one side in her hurried exit from its glassy, now cracked surface. One of the candles he’d bought for his spurious rituals burned on the bedside table, drawing little sparkles from her scales. Vav smiled at the look on his face and her tail slapped his ass in pleasure. “Oh, my pet,” she said and kissed him, “a bit intense, yes?”

He laughed, pressed both hands against his face. “Yeah. You could say that.” He reached out to her shoulder and squeezed. “I’m so embarrassed. I don’t know what the hell happened to me back there.”

She licked the side of his neck, rested her face against his chest. “Nothing to be ashamed of, pet. That was,” she searched for the words, “more than what most could have tolerated.”

“You warned me. Last month. But I didn’t expect… That moon. I felt like I was gonna lose my mind.”

Vav stroked his leg with her tail, scratched an itch he’d barely realized had been building there. “You wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you. Never.” She raised her head, nudged it against his cheek. “But yes. A little much for a mammal.” Playfully, she gnawed on his chin, took half his face into her cavernous mouth before drawing back to stare into his eyes. “Aside from that, though, you had… fun?”

“Oh, fuck yes. The last three days,” he sighed, watched the beam from a passing car sweep through his window and across the wall. “It was incredible. As in, nobody would believe me if I told them.” She chuckled and he pinched her twirling tail. “Yuck it up, my friend. Seriously, though. That weird black ocean? That whale thing? Was that really…”

She nodded. “I told you I’d bring you there some day.”

“I thought we’d have a picnic or something. Not that I’m complaining. And that, um, Warpucks, right?” Vav snickered at the mispronunciation. “That was. I don’t even know. I feel like I’ll see it every time I close my eyes.”

“It will fade, pet. I’m sorry, but by the time we see one another again, it will seem a dream you had once, long ago.” She sat up, stretched, pointed at the shape at the foot of the bed. “I am sorry about your new mirror. Such a pretty thing.” She glanced at the chalked symbols on the floor. “I did enjoy the occult paraphernalia. Nice touch. It lent a, how do you say, sense of verisimilitude. A real magus, you.” Vav mused, rubbed her chin with one claw. “It reminded me of a torrid night I spent with Doc Dee. Have I told you this one?”

He grinned. “Yeah, you may have mentioned that story once or twice.”

“Fine then, if you don’t want to hear my stories.” She stuck her tongue out.

“So sore, Eliora, so very sore.” He grinned. “I loved your speech that first night, about being the sentry of the Chaotika and walking with virgins and all that.”

“You hadn’t heard that one in awhile, huh?”

“Not since we met the first time.” He studied her face, asked, “How was your month?”

Vav slumped, her ears turned down. She toyed with one of his pillows.

“Eliora?”

Her voice came as if from far away. “That situation I mentioned last moon. It ended… poorly. I resolved it, all the pieces back where they belonged, but several people, well, expired in much blood and pain.” She bared rows of gleaming fangs in what he’d come to realize was an expression of melancholy. “I couldn’t have done my job any better, and yet still…” His pillow burst under the pressure of her clenched claws, feathers everywhere. “Oh, pet!”

He gripped her arm, massaging the muscles. “No worries, Eliora. Another trip to Bed, Bath, and Beyond won’t kill me.” They sat staring at one another, listening to the candle crackle. “You know, if you ever want to tell me what it is you do, I mean, like, the details. I know you fix things or something like that but …” She tilted her head, her hair spilling across their entwined legs. “Not that I’d really understand. I know that, but if it helped.”

Vav cupped his face. “Maybe. Maybe in a few moons. All you need to know now is that I see horrible things, try to wrestle them back into their place, have to accept that some situations are outside my own considerable control, and after all that, that seeing you gives me,” she hesitated, “peace.” She kissed his cheek and one side of her mouth rose into a smirk. “Not to mention all that libi-dough you feed me.”

“Oh, yeah?”

She tweaked his cock. “Yum-yum.” Watching the thing wake, she raised an eyebrow. “Speaking of which… Just how sore are you?”

He laughed, prodded his slowly rising cock. “Not too sore, it looks like.”

She growled happily, then hopped off the bed, shook tangles from her hair, and loped to the door. “First, though, I must urinate.”

#

She lay curved against his back, one leg thrown back over him, one claw gripping his ass, pulling him deeper inside. He held a breast in one hand, her clit in the other, his face buried in her hair. They fucked to the sound of the rainstorm that had just broken over the city. They fucked lazily, cozily, their games set aside. He’d almost lost himself in the sensation of her wet warmth, the alien yet so familiar smell of her hair and their bodies, the sound of her little grunts, when she twisted her head all the way around to face him. He laughed, a thrill of fear arisen and just as quickly submerged in his desire. “Hey there,” he said and kissed her.

“Hey, yourself, my beast.”

They pushed against one another, closer and closer to a climax neither would have to stop this time, their eyes locked, silent, until he saw the question there. “Something on your mind?”

“Our game this month,” she purred, “my little sex slave. So fun.”

“But?”

She smiled, nipped the corner of his mouth. “But next month, we switch?”

“You’ll be my captive demon,” he said, gripping her hips, “dragged from the underworld to sate my depraved desires?”

“Yes,” she said, bucking against him, “Yes, pet, yes.”

 

Matthew Pridham writes horror fiction. He is a student in CU Boulder’s MFA program and also has a Master’s Degree in English. His novella Renovations was featured in Weird Tales (issue #348), his essays on strange films have found their way onto Weird Fiction Review, and he’s written an essay on polyamory for The Thought Erotic. He is currently working on a mystery novel in which Eliora Vav will return.