Chapter 1 #2
He heard his name in the wind, the wind that carried her whispers through the trees, as well as the aroma of the most alluring scent.
He followed it, and found her standing beneath a large willow tree, waiting for him.
Her long, golden hair cascaded down her back in waves, each strand catching the rare streams of sunlight filtering through the thick canopy above.
Her ears, subtly pointed at their tips, confirmed her otherworldly grace; a delicate sharpness that hinted at a lineage beyond the mortal realm.
And her skin, a perfect porcelain, seemingly lit from within and radiating a soft luminescence, even under the shade of the branches.
She truly was a vision plucked from a dream, an ethereal being that threatened to undermine his disbelief in gods.
With a languid grace that seemed to defy gravity, she slowly peeled off her white dress, letting the thin silk float into the air before it disappeared entirely.
The sight of her tall, naked form, the strong figure she carried so well—it made Xander blush.
He had only ever been in the presence of naked women when he was too drunk to know what to do, leaving him clumsy and unsure.
But Lilith’s confidence, her unashamed beauty, was something else entirely.
A soft giggle escaped her lips as she noticed his flushed face, before she whispered his name once more, instantly soothing the nervousness within him. Her hand reached for his, gently pulling him to join her under the large willow tree into a space that felt both sacred and forbidden.
Even now, reliving the memory, he could still feel her cool, soft lips against his, her hands running over his body underneath his uniform, his hands exploring her pale skin and golden hair in return.
When she pulled away, Xander couldn’t help but groan at the loss of her, but as she sunk her teeth into the inside of her wrist, the sight of her blood made him freeze.
“Calm, Alexander,” she soothed. “Stay calm, my sweet. Don’t you want to taste me? Don’t you want me running through your body? You want this, you know you do.”
His hesitation to drink from her bleeding wrist vanished as the soothing words of encouragement from her angelic voice reached his ears. He could not say no. He did not want to say no. And so he parted his lips as she raised her wrist to his mouth, and drank.
He sucked at her wound as she continued to utter words of praise, the strange sweetness of her blood filling his mouth was unlike anything he had ever tasted.
But as her words died, as her soothing voice fell silent, the sweetness gave way to a sour, bitter taste.
When she sharply tugged at his hair, pulling him away from her wrist, he noticed the blood was not red as he’d believed it to be, but black as endless night.
It was then that he saw the evil that lurked beneath her surface.
The idyllic vision of Lilith twisted into a grotesque nightmare as she shed her disguise.
The soft light that had illuminated her skin now seemed to emanate within her eyes, but with a red hue that bled into the glowing rings around her pupils.
Her delicate fingers elongated, nails sharpening into curved claws that dug into his scalp, as the subtle points of her ears extended higher towards the sky.
Her smile, once gentle and pure, had stretched into a wicked grin with sharp fangs protruding from her lips.
Xander panicked then, snapping out of whatever trance he had previously been in and realising the horrific extent of the situation. Lilith, the sweet angel he followed, was a torturous monster. She was going to kill him, and she was going to make it hurt.
How could he have been so blind? How could he have believed the facade she had presented?
Xander couldn’t help but internally scold himself for being swept up in her beauty as he thrashed against her hold.
He had abandoned his team, his brothers in arms, all to follow this temptress, this malevolent beast that would now destroy him.
She seemed to like his panic, enjoyed watching him struggle against her as she gripped his hair tighter and tore his head back, exposing his throat. She licked up from his collarbone, along his jaw and under his ear. Her tongue felt cold and too long to be human.
“Hush now, don’t move,” she whispered in his ear. "Alexander, you shall be my first Daemon creation in this world. My first Lamia. My dark child."
He wanted to ask her what she meant, but he was unable to speak. His body was useless and limp against the consuming hold her words had over him. She laughed, all sweetness gone and replaced with cruelty, before she licked across his throat again. Then she stilled.
Xander held his breath, waiting for her to let go, or to hear gunshots from his squad, or for his body to regain its ability to move.
He watched the sky begin to darken, the moon slowly beginning to cover the bright light of the sun.
Seconds passed, and then he felt the explosive agony of her sharp teeth tearing through the side of his neck.
He screamed a silent scream and tried to push her away, but it was useless, she was too strong for his sloppy attempts to fight back.
He was completely at her mercy as she drank from his neck, her teeth tearing away at the flesh, her cold tongue prodding deep inside his wound.
Until finally, he was able to find his voice, and he cried out in agony.
He had never been in such pain before. Not even the time when he took a bullet to the shoulder during a training exercise, nor when he was a child and one of the boys at the orphanage beat the holy hell out of him before Nicolai, his closest childhood friend and third in command in battle, had stepped in.
He would endure countless bullets and countless beatings if he could escape the pain Lilith was inflicting.
He wondered if he deserved it, if this was his punishment for planning to desert the fight, for leading a meaningless life. Xander thought he had followed an angel to lead him away from the battlefield, but it had been an illusion, a demon playing tricks on him.
There were stories of death taking various forms, sometimes to make those dying feel at ease.
Xander was not a man of god or any belief, but in that moment he regretted his inability to pray for his soul and believe in a happier afterlife, because all he could see waiting for him was a world of darkness.
His head felt dizzy, his throat on fire, his body convulsed as waves and waves of pain coursed through him.
And all he could do was wait until the darkness closed in, and watch the sun become completely covered by the power of the moon.
As his eyes began to flutter shut and his body fell limp in Lilith’s arms, he felt a soft caress brush against his hand.
The touch was simultaneously cold and warm as fingers wove through his, firm in its grip of his hand yet feather-light at the same time.
He longed to turn his head, to discover the presence settling beside him, but his vision began to fade to nothingness as death came for him, only able to make out a blurry figure cloaked in black.
A hallucination, he guessed, or perhaps an angel—a true angel of death that had come to guide him to somewhere else as the false angel drained his body of every last drop of blood.
But Xander did not find an afterlife, his angel of death did not guide him to oblivion, and when he awoke, he found himself kneeling in front of Lilith, head bowed in submission.
She told him to get the rest of his squad, and once again, he had obliged her order.
He ran to the edge of the trees and called to them, convincing them to follow him as he used his newfound ability to access their minds and bend their will, just as she had done to him.
Xander stood by and watched as she put all seven of his squad under her alluring spell.
It wasn’t the slow, seductive dance she’d performed for him; it wasn't anywhere near as long and painful.
Instead she moved through them like a whirlwind of crimson and shadow, instructing Xander to hold their mouths open as she pierced her finger with one of her fangs and left a single drop of blood in each of their mouths before wrapping her hands around their heads and twisting.
Their short cries of pain were silenced by the snap of their necks, a quick death that only granted them a few moments of peace, before Lilith summoned them back to join Xander.
Once all eight of them were lined up before her, she spoke to them one by one in a low voice, and placed her palm on their backs as she granted them each a further gift to their new bloodbound immortality.
To Deion, she gave the power to heal others; Nicolai, the ability to travel across the world by opening a portal gate; Edward, the gift of putting his victims to sleep.
The remaining four she gifted the power of controlling the world’s elements: Kadeem could control the flow of water; Ieuwan, the very earth they walked; Norman, the heat and fury of fire; and William, the air they breathed.
Xander watched his friends whimper as Lilith’s hand seemed to burn through their clothes and brand their skin.
As Nicolai bent down to the ground in pain from her touch, his torn shirt slipped down, revealing the mark of an eclipse between his shoulder blades, just like the one they had all stared up at as they’d died.
Xander’s skin itched in the same spot, and he knew he bore the same mark too; the mark of a Lamia.
And now, as she bestowed their individual gifts, they carried their own markings across their bodies, each distinct to the powers they were granted.