Jake looked at the bar.

His heart raced in his chest.

And he thought, Oh God…Moira.

Bridget was having a good time. She liked to mess with people. Get their motors running, build up their expectations, then crush them. The old guy at the bar, for instance. Her new work in progress. She looked forward to seeing him again. Being a guy, he was gullible. It would be easy to lead him on, make him believe she wanted his old ass. The look on his face when he learned the truth would be well worth the effort. Something within her found deception of any type enjoyable. The girl across the table, a petite brunette with a pixie-style haircut, was another good example. Thinking of Bridget as a confidante, she’d tearfully confessed her sexual confusion to her the night before. Bridget fended off the girl’s tentative advances while professing profound respect for her courageous decision to out herself. Which, it turned out, wasn’t what the girl wanted at all. She just wanted to “experiment,” she claimed, and she begged Bridget not to ever tell anyone else about the episode. So Bridget made a solemn vow to take the secret to her grave if need be.

The memory made Bridget feel delightfully wicked.

“You guys want to hear something shocking?”

The women seated around the table looked at her with expressions of expectation. The girl across the table looked troubled. Not quite alarmed. Not yet. Just troubled. Her name was Jordan Harper. She believed Bridget was just about the sweetest girl in the world. Or so she’d told Bridget.

Jordan stared at her. “Bridget-”

Bridget smiled. “Jordan’s a dyke. She came on to me last night.”

The revelation was like a grenade rolled into the conversation. All giggling ceased. There was a long moment of uncomfortable silence. The silence was broken by the ragged sob that tore out of Jordan’s throat. “I can’t believe you. You said you wouldn’t tell.”

Tears streaming down her face, the girl bolted from the table and ran out of the bar.

Bridget laughed.

Angela Brooks gaped at her. “That was so mean.” Then she grinned. “It was fucking beautiful.”

The others laughed.

Jordan Harper had never been fully accepted into Bridget’s circle of friends. She had no way of knowing it in the midst of her current misery, but she was fortunate to have escaped with just this fresh psychological scar. Had Jordan been deemed worthy, she would have been ritually inducted into the Sacred Circle.

A transformation that would strip her of her humanity.

As had already happened to Bridget and the other girls at the table.

Bridget enjoyed a few more drinks with her friends as the evening wore on, strong, high-alcohol drinks. Her girlfriends deferred to her at every point in the conversation. Although they were Sacred Circle members, they had not yet attained the privileges Bridget had been granted.

They were Novices.

And she was Adept.

She had learned some things, special secrets, the simpler aspects of what Lamia, the Dark Mother, called the Mysteries. She craved so much more. One day she would wield the power of a Priestess, become one of Lamia’s chosen ones, and how glorious that would be!

She eyed the Grolsch-drinking man at the bar, so familiar, and she slid a hand up a bare thigh as she imagined possessing the ability to reach into his mind and make him do as she pleased. She pretended not to notice his occasional, surreptitious glances her way, but she knew the man was entranced by her. He clearly desired her body. She could, of course, manipulate him sexually, but that would be too easy. And not nearly so fun as the other thing she could do.

She smiled.

And hoped his “family business,” whatever it was, would keep him around until she was able to fully harness the power Lamia had promised would be hers.

Then she would pull his strings.

Make him dance for her.

Fall down for her.

Like a helpless little puppet.

“Crawl.”

Trey fought a brief mental battle against the command, but it was no use. He was helpless. Always helpless. He might have felt despair had he not already endured so much humiliation, but all he felt now was a deep numbness. His momentary resistance was just the flinch of instinct. He knew he was powerless.

He fell to the concrete floor and crawled toward where Myra, nude, straddled the body of a dead security guard. The guard’s head was a bloody pulp. Staved in with a brick. Trey tried to blot out the image of the man’s head collapsing beneath a flurry of blows, but the mental replay unspooled anyway and Trey saw himself slamming the brick down again and again, the motion of his arm controlled by something else.

By the evil thing, the Dark Mother, that lived inside Myra’s body.

Lamia.

Myra grinned at Trey as he drew near. Her teeth were bloodstained and bits of gleaming viscera were visible on her body. She reached into the dead guard’s body and drew out another loop of intestine.

Trey felt only a slight tickle of nausea.

He’d seen her do too many other awful things, many of them far more depraved, far sicker, than even this. But then her grin became a leer, a horribly knowing expression, as if she could read his mind.

She laughed. “Come to me like a dog, Trey. On all fours.”

Tears welling in his eyes, Trey rose to his hands and knees and did as she said.

“Sit.”

Trey sat, mimicking a dog’s posture.

Myra proffered the length of viscera.

“Feed.”

Trey whimpered.

He drew the dead guard’s guts into his mouth and began to chew, and as he did he retreated to a remote area of his mind, a corner of his consciousness where his essence, the real Trey, went to hide when the really bad things happened. Myra’s laughter sounded dim and far away, like an echo from deep within a dark cavern.

“Do you still love me, Trey?”

Her voice sounded sweeter, a dulcet, almost angelic tone-it brought him back to the here and now. Myra knew when he was shutting things out. Sometimes she allowed it. Not this time. Trey mumbled an affirmative reply around a mouthful of intestine.

Myra stroked his hair. “That’s a good boy, Trey. That’s a good little doggie.”

He really did still love her.

Trey was convinced that the real Myra was the girl he’d always believed her to be, and that her body was being used as a vessel by this thing that called itself Lamia. It was the only way he managed to maintain even a loose grasp on sanity. He refused to believe Myra was some kind of evil incarnate. And he held on to the hope that one day, somehow, he’d be able to cast the thing out of her body.

But it just seemed so fucking hopeless.

He couldn’t even control his own body.

Myra scooped up another handful of dead security guard and pushed it into Trey’s open mouth. “Try some brain soup, baby. It’s good for you.”

Trey gobbled it down.

There was a sound of approaching footsteps behind him.

A male voice said, “That’s all of it. We should get out of here.”

Myra sighed. “Aw…just when I was starting to have fun.”

She stood and stretched, her lean body magnificent in the dim light. She looked to Trey like a warrior goddess of myth, her body bathed in the blood of battle, but he knew the truth was nothing as fanciful as that. A warrior goddess, or just about any other significant source of power, would quake with terror in Myra’s presence.

She donned a cloak, beckoned to Trey with a slap of hand on thigh, and they followed the other members of the Sacred Circle out of the building.

Outside, the wind that came up was like a cold hand closing around Trey’s bare flesh.