When Pike’s hot breath skittered over Marlowe’s hips and her thick tongue writhed, pushing, coaxing, fucking her open, and sharp teeth grazed her clit, colors burst behind her eyelids and the strings of her muscles went taut, shaking.
The Devil Calls
Cunt sore. Hips aching. Marlowe felt everything more sharply as Pike’s venom wore off in slow, warm waves. They’d brought Marlowe back to shore, pushing her up the bank before splashing back into the lake.
Marlowe’s fingers prickled and stung and her mind cleared from the post-sex fog enough to struggle onto her knees and sink back on her heels. A groan left her at the soreness in her body, but the muggy night blanketed her and soothedthe ache.
Marlowe shook off the warmth like breaking a fevered haze. Pike was gone. Pike was gone after calling her here, and distracting her from what mattered: killing Heather.
Anger flushed hot through Marlowe’s cheeks and she spread her trembling hand. The mark was nothing but puckered scars.
Pike drifted offshore, watching her. She seemed disinterested, as if Marlowe was another pond creature, as if she hadn’t taken control and Marlowe hadn’t let her.
Marlowe crawled to Pike. Venom-heavy limbs dug into silt and the jagged edge of a mussel shell carved into her palm. Algae-slick rocks bruised her knees. Still, she crawled.
Dripping blood into the water, Marlowe thrust her hand out. “Get rid of it.”
Pike flicked her tail and eddies of pond scum swirled away.
“Fucking get rid of it! I had to come back, forthis? I had—”
Pike hissed and her hand shot out, gripping Marlowe’s face. She squeezed, and the bones in her jaw grated together. Marlowe stayed perfectly still, words she almost spat dying in her throat.
Leaning in, Pike pinched together the sides of Marlowe’s lips. A high sound piped through her gills. Ittook Marlowe a moment to understand, searching those golden eyes, her jaw aching.
The whistle.
An attempt at mimicry.
Stop.
“I brought you food,” Marlowe rasped. “My deal is done.Get rid of it.”
Her teeth clicked together as Pike released her with a snarl and plunged their hand in the muck, then in the creaking bulrushes, emerging with a snail shell and a fish. Scales flaked away from its decayed body.
Pike shoved the snail shell at Marlowe. Frustration beat in Marlowe’s chest, but she tamped it down. “Me?”
Pike gestured sharply at the fish.
“You,” she said slowly.
Prying open the fish’s mouth, Pike stuffed the snail inside and threw it on the ground between them. She stared at Marlowe.
Marlowe stared back. Her voice pitched low in a growl. “I don’t know what thefuckthat means. You want to kill me? Eat me?”
Pike’s lips peeled back and a faint, familiar sound trilled from her throat.
Yes.
Marlowe was acutely aware of the water lapping at her knees. Of Pike’s needle teeth, bared at her. She swallowed, her throat dry, and didn’t move.
But Pike hadn’t killed her yet. “Is killing me the only way to get rid of it?” She felt her out for a loophole to this absolutely medieval fucking curse she’d gotten tangled in.
Pike’s gaze flicked from the fish back to her.
It could be a bluff. But the itch of her hand as it leaked strings of algae over her bathroom floor was fresh in her mind.
Monthly calls she always answered from Heather, giving her an address Marlowe always found even if she hated herself for it, seemed inconsequential to being summoned by a lake creature.
