One
ARRIVAL
“This is a terrible mistake,” Celia Campbell said aloud to an empty alleyway.
She pressed her fingertips against the iron door before her, its surface warm despite the freezing winter night.
Her breath frosted out in tiny puffs. The alley held no sound except her breathing: sharp, controlled, the kind of measured inhale she’d perfected before delivering lectures on Gothic literature, Occult studies, or Slavic folklore to bored undergraduates.
She’d discovered the address from a footnote in an original copy of Dictionnaire Infernal; Jacques Collin de Plancy’s famous nineteenth-century tome about demons.
The thought that the footnote may have been handwritten by Collin de Plancy himself was tantalizing.
Once she arrived, she was stunned to find a nightclub named Oubliette at the address; the same name of the gentleman’s club referenced in Dictionnaire Infernal.
Exploring the club was academic curiosity, she’d told herself for months. It would serve as good research for her next book on desire and agency in Gothic fiction. Nothing more.
Liar.
She stood shivering as her finger found the doorbell before her rational mind could intervene. The sound that emerged was less of a ring than a purr, vibrating through the door and into her chilled bones.
The door opened smoothly. A figure, androgynous and beautiful in ways that made her forget to categorize, smiled as if they’d been expecting her for years.
“Dr. Campbell. Welcome to Oubliette.”
She hadn’t given her name. “I think there’s been—”
“No mistake.” They stepped aside, revealing warmth that beckoned like an embrace. “I’ve heard you’ve been circling us for months.”
The interior stole her breath. Crimson silk pooled from the ceiling like spilled wine, while the velvet walls invited touch.
Candlelight danced across surfaces that seemed to breathe; the flames reflected in impossible patterns along the polished marble floors.
The air itself hummed with something she couldn’t name but felt in the space between her ribs.
Patrons moved through shadows like beautiful predators.
A woman in midnight lace traced circles on another woman’s wrist while they whispered to one another.
A man in nothing but perfectly tailored leather pants watched the room with eyes that promised careful ruin.
Everyone here looked like they knew exactly what they wanted. What they were.
Celia did not belong.
The bartender appeared as she approached the ebony bar, an impossibly attractive man whose smile held too much hidden knowledge. “What can I pour for you?” He asked. His short, curly hair was the color of wheat, and he had a jawline like a chiseled brick.
“Water,” she said with a touch of desperation. “Just water... please.”
She was too nervous to ask for his name.
Perched on the edge of a barstool, her spine rigid, she catalogued details as if she were taking research notes: the way conversations flowed like honey around her, the textures that begged for the touch of fingers.
Celia was unable to ignore how her body responded to the atmosphere, despite her attempts to maintain academic distance.
Why are you really here?
She knew. God help her, she knew.
“Water is wise.” The accented voice of a man came from everywhere and nowhere, silk wrapped around smoke. “Clarity before choices, palomita.”
Celia turned, and her rational mind, the part that wrote footnotes and cited sources, shut down.
The man stood beside her barstool as if he’d materialized from the shadows themselves: tall and muscular with dark caramel skin, and midnight black hair with tousled waves caressing his ears. His features belonged in a Renaissance painting depicting an angel before his fall.
His suit was immaculate, a matte black trimmed in dark crimson, tailored to perfection to his well-built frame. When he smiled, Celia glimpsed teeth sharp enough to be dangerous. He wore colored contacts that gave his eyes an impossible golden glow.
You are dreaming. Are you dreaming? You must be dreaming. A man like that would only talk to you in a dream.
“Oh, I’m not here to um... make any choices,” she mumbled as she sipped on her water.
“Is that so?” he asked in an amused tone. “Then do tell me, what are you really here for?”
“I am academic research. I am here for academic research.” Flustered and blushing, Celia’s words tumbled out in a breathless rush. “Anthropological study of modern ritual spaces and their psychological impact on contemporary urban populations. Specifically, the intersection of... um, of—”
“Desire and worship?” He slid onto the adjacent stool without invitation, moving with fluid grace.
“Yes,” she answered, surprised. “How did you know?”
He flashed her a sharp-toothed smile as he extended his hand. “It is a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Campbell. I am Asmodeus.”
Of course you are.
Because normal people had names like David or Michael, not the literal Prince of Lust from demonology texts. She took his hand. “Celia Campbell, but you seem to know that already.”
“How could I not, palomita? I loved your book,” he said as he nodded to the bartender.
“You’ve read... Really?” Despite herself, she was shocked and flattered. “Most people would not read an academic examination on the intersection between religious iconography and erotic subtexts in Gothic art and literature... unless I assign it to them.”
The bartender set down a wine glass filled with a red so dark it was black. Asmodeus took a sip before he said, “I am not most people.”
He’s playing you. There’s no way he actually read your book.
Celia didn’t know where the courage came from to say what she said next, as she was not a combative person by nature. “Well, Mister Asmodeus, if you actually read my book, what was your favorite part?”
Another sip of wine. Another flash of that sharp-tooth smile. She could have sworn that his golden eyes brightened.
Sweet mother of God, he is dangerously attractive.
“That is difficult to choose, pequena profesora.” His accent caressed each syllable as he said, “But I suppose it would have to be a tie between... how sacred spaces became vessels for repressed sexual expression, particularly through the veneration of martyred saints, the architecture of confession, and the ritualistic aspects of religious devotion that mirror erotic surrender. Or,” He took another sip of wine before he continued, “the special attention you give to the paradoxical relationship between religious ecstasy and carnal desire as expressed through artistic mediums that ostensibly served to reinforce moral boundaries while simultaneously providing outlets for subversive expression.”
Oh.
She realized she was staring with her mouth agape. “You actually read my book?”
“Si, I actually read your book. I never lie, palomita.”
Embarrassed, Celia drank her water and looked around the club, trying not to stare at any of the barely dressed patrons. She should apologize to the man masquerading as the Prince of Lust. After all, she more or less called him a liar.
She turned to open her mouth, but he spoke first in a low purr. “Again, I ask, why are you really here?”
You were not prepared for this. This man is out of your league. Abort.
“I told you, I am here for academic research.”
“Dr. Campbell, I strongly suspect research is not what truly brought you to my House.”
Celia stared at him for a moment as his words registered. “Your House?”
“Si. I am the proprietor here, among many other things. Now, tell me, why are you here?”
“Academ—”
“No, do not tell me the lie you told yourself that brought you here. You already told me what your mind wants you to believe.” His leisurely tone held the cadence of someone accustomed to being obeyed.
“I don’t—” Her voice cracked. Professional composure scattered like papers in the wind. “I am here for research. For a new book. I was preparing for—”
“Surrender.” His smile was patient, knowing. “Preparing for the chase. Preparing to be caught.”
Heat flooded her cheeks, and she squeezed her legs together. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t understand.”
“I understand more than you allow yourself to.” He gestured to the space around them, to the people who pulsed with permission and pleasure. “Do you see them? They come to me broken by lies. Lies about what they should want. What they should feel. What they should be.”
A woman at a corner table threw her head back in laughter, unashamed joy radiating from every line of her body. A couple at the far end of the bar touched each other with reverence, worshipping each other’s bodies, as if the world would end if they stopped.
“Mortals teach themselves that desire is sin,” Asmodeus continued, taking another sip. “But desire is truth. The most honest thing you possess. Denying it does not make you virtuous. It makes you hungry.”
Celia’s hands shook around her water glass. “I’m not—”
“You dream of running.” His voice dropped to a velvet whisper.
“Through forests that exist only in your mind. Your heart pounds, your legs burn, and something follows behind you. Something not entirely human. Something from those Slavic folktales you love so much. Something that will catch you. Use you. Take from you everything you pretend you do not want to give.”
The glass slipped. Water splashed across the bar, soaking into wood that seemed to absorb it with a thirst.
“But in your dreams,” he leaned closer, “you never truly run fast enough to escape. Do you, palomita?”
Her throat closed. Years of careful control, of professional distance, of pretending she was nothing but intellect and analysis; all of it crumbled under his gaze.
“I want to run.” The confession tore from her chest like a sob. “I want to feel afraid. I want to be caught and…” Her voice broke on the words she’d never spoken aloud. “Used. But I need to know it’s a game. That I’m always in control, even when I’m screaming.”
Asmodeus smiled, slow and approving, as if she’d finally spoken her own name correctly.