Page 8

WRATH * VI * WRATH

Strike One

Kiss had two problems really. One, her standard life-suck technique had already
failed to have effect, and two, Randy, or Eliphaz, or both, were always there with him.
The fact that a typical life-suck, like reverse osmosis, wouldn't work on Greggory
meant two things in of itself: One, he really had managed to seal up and otherwise
prevent his body from losing life force; and two, his bodysuit would have to be
punctured or breached in some way before Kiss could kill him. Getting through the suit
would, of course, be easy, once Randy and Eliphaz were away.

What she needed was a distraction.

She needed somebody to try and break in. And only an idiot would try to break
in. Fortunately there was an ample supply of men on hand; they tended not to do too
much thinking with their bigger head. One of them was sure to be stupid enough if
properly coerced.

Joey Price was stupid enough.

She caught him staring.

The limousine was returning to the estate after having been sent to bear Eliphaz'
financial advisor back. He was a man of very dark complexion with a neatly trimmed,
Latin-lover, pencil-thin mustache. She recognized him at once, but, following orders,
she stopped the limo and demanded ID anyway (it's not like there was any danger of
him being the Succubus or anything). It was while she was bending over and leaning in
through the limo's back seat window, checking out Mr. Cladine's papers, that she
caught sight of Joey Price, the guard at the main gate, ogling her ass.

There is a sucker born every minute, she thought. And some minutes, there's
two.

Just before Joey got off duty, Kiss smuggled herself into his room. She knew his
roommate was just going on duty then, so she figured to have about seven hours to
work on convincing Joey he should do a favor for her. She loosened the bulb in the
ceiling light, standing on tip-toe on the nightstand to reach. Then she stripped down to
a black G-string and laid herself out on the lower bunk in the corner of the room.

Joey came in about fifteen minutes later. For a moment, after finding the lights
dysfunctional, he stood, a black man-shape in a rectangle of fluorescent brightness. He
said, "Goddammit!" and then, perched on the threshold of his room, pondered what to
do.

Softly, Kiss said, "Don't just stand there, Joey. Come in."

"Who --?"

"That draft is giving me goosebumps."

He stepped inside and closed the door behind him.

"Kiss?" he whispered.

"What a clever guesser." In the dark, Kiss' voice was like the caress of cashmere.

"What are you doing in here?" His voice was thick from nervous.

"I'm waiting for you, Joey, what do you think I'm doing?"

"W-waiting for me?"

"Waiting for you to please me, Joey."

"Where are you?"

"Over here. On the bottom bunk."

She heard his shoes moving on the carpeting. A groping hand reached out and
brushed against her knee, then ran smoothly up her thigh. Joey's hands, together,
explored the ruffled, lace-edged silk that covered her sex, and the straps that held it in
place, then they roamed further up her body. When his fingertips first touched against
her excitement-stiffened nipples, a gasp escaped him. Joey whispered, "Oh, God."

With one hand, executing a much-practiced maneuver, Kiss unzipped Joey's fly and
slipped her fingers inside.

"Oh, my," she said. She did her best to sound impressed despite the lack of an
impressive subject.

Joey's hands were trembling as they continued to ascend Kiss' body. He touched
her lips, and they were soft like the velvety bed a ring sits on in a jewelry box. She
sucked his fingers. The pleasure of it made him tingle. With his other hand he stroked
her hair; it was like sifting through a tangible dream, so warm and smooth and perfect.

At some point in time, when exactly, Joey was not sure, Kiss abandoned his fingers
and began sucking on another part of his anatomy. She sucked him right through one
orgasm, and the soft period immediately after, and non-stop into another erection. And
when he was as hard as a plank again, she got off the bed and bent over it and told him
to give it to her "doggy-style." And when he had come the second time, she stroked
and tickled and teased him till he was firm yet again. Then she climbed onto him and
rode him like a fireman's pole while he was still standing.

After his third climax he thought for sure the workout was over, but he was wrong.
Kiss tied him down on the lower bunk, using his belt and socks to fashion the restraints.
Facing towards the lower half of his body she straddled his face.

"Kiss me," she said. "Long and wet and deep. Every time you stop, or slow
down, or do it incorrectly, I'm going to slap your balls."

Joey was so eager to please.

Kiss only slapped him once, right in the beginning. "No teeth, more tongue," she
explained. After he had been faithfully working at her for twenty minutes, Kiss faked
multiple orgasms. She watched his flaccid organ slowly grow with every moan she
uttered. Finally, she told him to stop, and then she rode him, like a saddle horn fitted to
a stallion, to his fourth, cataclysmic eruption. It was violent for him, lasting far longer
than the typical five to six seconds. His body convulsed and spasmed and shivered for
almost five solid minutes, and it probably would've gone on longer, but he fainted. His
last conscious thought, before passing out, was that his dick was like dynamite:
exploding, exploding, exploding.

He woke up and Kiss was still on top of him, but on her knees too, so that most of
her weight was off him. She was playing with the hair, sweaty and matted down, on his
forehead. He noticed the room smelled deeply of their sex: Kiss' pussy and his sperm.
The smell made him feel calm. Afterglow.

In the darkness, just inches above his eyes, he saw Kiss' lips move.

"You were fantastic," Kiss whispered. And mostly that was a true statement,
especially considering the size of the tool he had to work with.

"I have never felt that good," Joey said. He kissed her chin; it tasted salty, of
sweat. "Never," he repeated.

"Well, you can have a chance to feel like that again. Tomorrow. I make love even
better the second time. After I've had a chance to experience you, and learn what you
like." She climbed off of him.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to work."

"You're just going to leave? Just like that?"

"Well, your roommate will be coming back in about ten minutes now. You don't
want him to find us like this, do you?"

Ten minutes? Good God! Joey hopped out of bed and scrambled for his clothes.
It was hard to find anything in the dark. It was hard just to stand in fact; his knees were
weak.

Kiss climbed up on the nightstand and screwed the light-bulb back into its socket.

The sudden light made Joey's eyes shrink. He winced and blinked, trying to keep
his eyes open so he could get a good look at the body he so far knew only by touch.

She was pulling her G-string on, her back to him, and he was awestruck by the
curvaceous perfection of her ass. He wished he was that black thong, riding up
between her cheeks.

"Turn around," Joey said.

"Why?"

"I want to look at you."

"Why?"

"Because you're gorgeous," he said.

So she turned for him.

Seeing her was like suddenly knowing what the answers to the mysteries of life
were. Joey thought for sure his eyes would melt, beholding as they were, such
immaculate beauty; such evidence of the active hand of God. Kiss was like the cherry
on top of the woman-kind sundae. Every porno magazine Joey had ever bought was a
let-down compared to Kiss.

"Next time," said Joey, "we leave the lights on."

Kiss smiled. She pulled her pants on, then her shoes. In the meantime, Joey
contented himself with staring at her breasts. When she pulled her shirt on, every
buttoned button filled him with a sad sort of regret. He wanted to just continue there,
basking in her naked glory.

"Same time tomorrow," said Kiss.

Joey nodded.

"Check your inhibitions at the door." And then she was gone.

Joey listened to her footsteps in the hall, receding. Going, going, gone.

* * *

The next day, while he was at his post at the main gate, Kiss walked by and slipped
him a note. It said: When you get off work, go to your room and get naked. Wait for
me. Kiss.

All considerations for being inconspicuous aside, Joey very nearly ran back to his
room when his shift was up. He passed Greggory and Randy on the main steps, going
up as they came down.

Randy said, after Joey had turned the corner of the landing and started up the next
flight, "I've seen a man hurry-walk like that only twice before. Once was a long-at-sea
sailor on his way to keep an appointment with a whore, and the other was a man on his
way to the crapper after a bad egg-salad."

"Huh," said Greggory.

Neither of them really thought anything more of it.

* * *

Kiss got interrupted only once while she was making rounds of all the first floor
doors and windows, setting plastic explosives into all the frames and sills: a guard saw
her at an open window, leaning through it, and said, "What the hell are you doing?"

"Getting some fresh air." She made her statement sound like she was issuing a
challenge, then she topped off her line with a fierce glare and. "What of it?" Threats
and implied threats were second nature to Kiss.

"Oh," the guard said. "Nothing." He left.

Kiss went back to placing detonators.

Good help is hard to find, she thought.

When the last of her six bombs was in place, she went upstairs to meet Joey. He
was naked, just like she'd requested he be.

She wanted to drive him five times, but Joey got all tired out after only the third. A
performance not even matching his previous day's stamina.

While he was slipping off into sex-exhausted sleep, in between soft kisses on the
neck, Kiss suggested that he do her a favor.

"Yeah, sure," he said. "Anything."

"Anything?"

"Anything for you, baby." He gave the buttock he held cupped in his right hand an
affectionate squeeze.

"Remember that," said Kiss.

"Remember what?"

"Remember you promised."

Joey drifted off to slumber.

Kiss lay there, her head pillowed by his chest, regretting that she wouldn't be killing
him personally. Just a little pang of it -- the thought of craftsmanship being sacrificed.
Also, she wished Joey could've gone five times: it would've been a new record. Most
tired out after only two.

* * *

On the day of their third rendezvous, Joey got to his room and found Kiss waiting
for him, just like the first time: in the dark. Except this time she was fully clothed. She
even had her leather security jacket on; Joey made a surprised sound when his
searching fingers first blundered into it.

"Not so fast," Kiss' voice said in the dark. She sounded older, more severe, more
commanding. Joey thought he understood.

He said, "Am I going to be your slave this time?" He began to unfasten the buckle
on his belt. "I think I can go five this time."

"We aren't going even one until you do something for me. A favor. Remember
how you said you'd do anything for me?"

He didn't like the sound of that. It sounded like he might be denied sex -- and he
had a boner the size of the Washington Monument. "What?" he almost added, 'Let's
hurry up and get this over with,' but thought better of it. Kiss never seemed very
patient or tolerant, and the image of her keychain kept flashing in his mind's eye.

"You need to run an errand for me."

"What?!" Again, the temptation to be impatient.

Joey felt Kiss' hand press something into his. It was a small glass tube, about the
size of a shotgun shell. It felt smooth and slippery and cold in his sweaty fingers.
"What's this?" he asked.

"It's poison, Joey."

He laughed, five nervous "ha's" but stopped quick, sensing Kiss' serious nature.
Even without the benefit of sight, he could feel her frowning. "You were kidding right?"

"I never kid, Joey."

"W-what am I supposed to do with this?"

"I want you to pour it into some of the dogs' water dishes."

"You want me to poison the dogs?"

"And then maybe we can see about going five times."

Joey was scared. The furthest thing from his mind at that moment was sex. His
seconds-ago cucumber had shriveled to a pickle at mention of the word 'poison.' Kiss
must've sensed his anxiety and sudden lack of interest. She had his pants down around
his ankles so fast the falling fabric made a draft.

Joey said, "No," but without much conviction. And after six minutes of felatio he
was ready to say 'yes' to anything. In fact, his mind had temporarily forgotten the
meaning of the word no.

Kiss left him right at the edge. She filled him up, like a glass, to the brim with milk,
and then left him right before he overflowed. In such a state, his brain's higher, logical
processes were deactivated; paralyzed by animal desires.

Kiss blew cold air, through pursed lips, across the tip of him. He shivered.
"Now," she said, "I think we probably have our priorities straight. You go run your
errand and then we can finish our business here."

But still Joey whimpered, "Why do you want to poison the dogs?"

"Because one of the trainers really pissed me off."

"That's not a good enough reason," said Joey.

There was no comment offered in return. The silence, however, had a firm,
merciless quality to it; and that was comment enough.

Joey wanted to cry. He felt like the victim in a Fatal Attraction story. He knew he
was in trouble. But he also knew that a lover like Kiss was damn hard to find and
therefore probably worth the trouble.

On his way to the kennel, sneaking stealthily across the moonlit lawn, Joey had only
the vaguest understanding of how incredibly stupid he was.

* * *

Kiss watched him go from the monitors in the Main Security Control Room. The
guard in the control room never watched any of the sensors or monitors; normally he'd
just sit in the chair -- one of the office variety that reclines without its legs ever leaving
the floor -- and read X-Men comic books. He rarely, if ever, looked up from them.

When Kiss entered the room she asked him if he wasn't a little too old for his
reading materials. He said, "Are you kidding? They don't write violence like this with
the intention of having children read it."

Kiss said, "Oh, I see," and that was the end of their conversation. Mr. Monitor
didn't even ask her why she was there.

She scanned the row of monitors before her. They all showed different views of
the grounds outside. She didn't see Joey though, until the cameras switched to thermal
imaging. Then he showed as a brilliant 98.6 yellow-white against the cool blue-green
background of the grass. She looked at Mr. Monitor. He hadn't noticed, not that
she'd expected him to. She saw he was moving his lips slightly as he read.

She thought, Good help is so hard to find.

* * *

Joey got to the fence around the kennel without experiencing any mishap, but that
was where his good luck ran out. He had just pulled the glass vial from his pocket and
removed the stopper from the mouth of the tube...

* * *

When Kiss fingered the button on the detonator...

* * *

...and there was a thunderous clapping noise, followed by the sounds of glass,
broken and raining on stone, as the windows on the ground floor blew out.

* * *

In the kitchen, a casualty was suffered right off as one of the booby-trapped panes,
in an explosion of razor-rimmed fury, broke into daggers and flew, tearing out the
throat and eyes of a coffee-sipping, donut-dipping guard, just as he was about to relate
the punch-line of a traveling salesman joke to his friend across the table.

* * *

...and sirens and alarms everywhere began to wail.

* * *

...and Mr. Monitor looked up from the exploits of Wolverine and Cyclops, and
Kiss was pointing for him, to the monitor that showed Joey's crouched figure by the
kennel fence.

"There's an intruder inside the perimeter," Kiss said, feigning excitement. "What are
you going to do?"

"Geez!" said the guard. He put his comic book down and surveyed the row of
screens. He seemed genuinely surprised that something was happening. "Geez!' he
said again. No decision on his part seemed immediately forthcoming.

So Kiss had to act for him. He watched while she flipped a bank of switches from
'off' to 'on.'

"Shouldn't you be telling someone what you're doing?" he asked.

"No," she said. "That's your job." She left the room.

* * *

A disembodied voice, which rose from the area of his left thigh, informed Joey that
all perimeter securities had been armed, the mine-field had been activated, and all
available security personnel should advance to the northwest grounds' sector. Walkie-
talkie.

Joey thought, Crap! That's right near where I am! and drew his auto-mag from
its holster. It never occurred to him that he was the breach of security. Not until a
spring-action turret popped out of the ground a short distance away and peppered him
with ultraviolet paint pellets. One actually thumped him on his right nipple. It stung like
a bitch. He fell to his knees and cried out, sure he'd been shot.

Through the broken windows and all the available side doors, guards were pouring
out of the castle, like sand bursting from a gunny-sack. They all had machine guns and
twitching trigger fingers. Most of them wore goggles which enabled them to see a
figure laying, sprawled on the ground by the kennel, glowing like a plutonium rod from
ultraviolet paint.

"There he is!" one of the goggles-equipped guards shouted. He pointed an eager
finger. The others in his immediate vicinity were barely able to hear he had said
anything at all, the sound of the sirens was so loud.

"Sounds like a tornado will be comin' right after the bombs fall!" yelled one guard.
His friend, at a range of just three feet, cupped a hand to his ear and screamed back,
"What?!" The only way to tell what he'd said was by reading his lips.

Bullets were hitting the chain-link behind Joey; the whole fence was rattling like a
hail storm. Joey hadn't been hit yet, but the air above him was so thick with bullets he
could see them, and he knew his luck couldn't hold out forever, so he began to shimmy
towards the mansion, moving on his belly like a snake. "Don't shoot!" he yelled. "Don't
shoot!" But of course they kept right on shooting. There was no way they could've
heard his pitiful cries over the sounds of the sirens and gunfire.

He kept crawling. He wondered why none of the guards were moving in closer to
get a better shot -- why they were all just standing within a few feet of the house, like a
human picket fence -- but only momentarily. He figured it best not to question when
things were going favorably; increasing his chances of survival. He was not an unduly
bright young man.

"Don't shoot!" though by then he fully realized the futility of his yelling. "Don't --
ach! Son of a bitch!" A bullet hit Joey in the foot. High impact, explosive, it turned his
heel into fragments like grains of salt. But he grit his teeth -- grit his teeth so hard, in
fact, that several molars cracked -- and continued gamely on. Determination kept him
going: sheer will, self-preservational instinct. Then another bullet, like a manic hornet,
struck him in the side, right under the ribs. And it was like hot, molten agony, but still,
he somehow managed to keep going.

Joey was just beginning to realize he'd been set up -- beginning to understand that
he'd sold his life for sex -- beginning to come to grips with the fact that he would never
get another blow job -- when he crawled into the minefield, and -- rare flash of insight
-- suddenly knew why the guards hadn't bothered to close range on him.

His chin was actually the specific part of him that set off the mine's trigger. The
ensuing explosion lifted his head right off his shoulders and launched it over the
perimeter wall, like a Hank Aaron home run ball. Joey had time to think, Hey look,
I'm flying, before he ceased.

Guards, NRA registered, and eager to shoot, pumped three hundred and forty-two
rounds into his briefly-cartwheeling body before it finally came to rest. Severed limbs
and other flying chunks of body matter set off another three mines.

* * *

The siren had bleated only once before the words, "This is it. The real test," were
out of Eliphaz' mouth. "Greggory, get up on the roof. Tell the pilot to get the rotors
started. Be ready to go." And then Eliphaz was gone, off and running, before
Greggory had really even registered that there was trouble of some sort.

Greggory hit pause on the VCR remote, and Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork
Orange froze where it was on the projected screen of the TV. 68 horizontal inches of
viewing space, filled up with the image of Malcolm McDowell wearing false eyelashes
around his right eye.

"Dammit," he said to himself. He was alone. Randy was an early-to-bed-early-to-
rise sort and had therefore already turned in for the night. Doubtless the sirens had
woken him, but the odds were good he would join up with the action somewhere
beside the roof. Ah well, at least he still had Coldlove. He scratched the brute
affectionately behind the ears.

Greggory laughed at himself: feeling annoyed that a Champion of Death would have
the gall to come for him while he was in the middle of watching one of his favorite
movies. Like Death would wait for a time that was convenient for him. Like Death
would call him ahead of time and tell him not to plan anything else for that evening. The
whole situation seemed so unreal to him.

At a half run pace, he went down the hallway to the elevator, Coldlove following at
his heels. He ignored the posted advice to use stairways in case of emergencies and
pushed the button for up.

The elevator came down for him from the next floor up: floor four. He was thinking
that was unusual, but not giving it so much attention as it deserved, when the doors slid
open. The inside of the car was lit up with flashing red strobe -- that was the first thing
he noticed: red, flashing. The second thing he noticed was that the elevator was already
occupied. The third thing was that the occupying person was Kiss Nekro. Coldlove,
behind his legs, bristled and growled.

"Going down, Greggory?"

On again, the emergency lights lit Kiss' face up so she looked like a demon.
Greggory even fancied for an instant that he saw horns, sprouting from the top of her
head like wicked black spears, and then a sudden premonition told Greggory to run:
the elevator was on its way to Hell.

But before he could back away, she had him. Her hands shot out, so fast they
were a blur, just the way they had been when she'd drawn all the knives on the man
who'd pushed himself on her, and she grabbed him by the arm. She was surprisingly
strong, too. When she pulled, it was not with the strength of the small woman she
appeared to be. Even bracing his legs on both sides of the open door, Greggory was
unable to prevent himself from being pulled in.

Coldlove watched the elevator swallow his master up with a strange mixture of
regret and cowardice. There was, after all, no way he was going into a room that small
with Kiss. He made a resigned, whining noise through timid lips and backed a step
away.

Kiss slammed Greggory against the wall, where the waist-high hand rail punched
into his back. It hurt, but not nearly as much as he had expected it would.

"You're the Succubus," he gasped.

"Good guess." From a place of concealment somewhere on her body, Kiss had
pulled a knife. It was huge; a blade measuring about ten inches in length, ragged with
teeth like an alligator.

The elevator door slid silently shut. For Greggory it was the chance to see the lid
of his own coffin closing, with him inside. He was terrified. Immobile with fear. And
he could see that his condition was only exciting Kiss; amusing her. She laughed. A
sinister, bass laugh.

She stopped laughing when she saw the scatter gun, seeming to appear from
nowhere in between the dark-room flashes, in Greggory's hand. Randy, handing the
scatter gun to Greggory had said (in response to Greggory's "I've never fired a gun
before."), "Point, and pull the trigger. It doesn't take any special practice or talent to hit
a target with this piece." So that's what Greggory did. He pointed. He pulled the
trigger.

The gun sounded like a grenade going off. There was a burst, bright enough to get
a decent picture by, and then Kiss' Covergirl face was the texture of bloody, lumpy
oatmeal. She was thrown back by the blast; back against the elevator's front wall. Her
body slid into a heap on the floor. Her hair trailed out behind her, against the doors,
and painted red, like an artist's brush, all down the shining, brushed-chrome surface of
them.

"Good Lord," said Greggory. He pushed the button for the roof.

Leaning back, his shoulders against the wall, examining his smoking gun, Greggory
saw that he had only fired one of the two barrels. So he pointed in the general direction
of Kiss' perky breasts and shot her again. Her body jumped from the impact, twitched,
and then lay still.

When the elevator opened onto the roof, Joey was, just then, crawling over a land
mine in the yard below.

Greggory stepped onto the tar and gravel roof. Funny, he thought. I would've
expected myself to get a little bit more worked up than I did. He took a quick
pulse rate. 64. Not bad. Maybe my adrenal receptors aren't working properly.
Oh, well, nothing to do about it now. He dismissed the notion. He walked over to
the helicopter, slipping his scatter gun back into the many folds of his robe as he went.
The pilot had already started the rotors at first glimpse of Greggory: he knew the
evacuation drill.

"Are we leaving?" He had to bellow to be heard above the chop-chop-chop.

"Wait a second. I think the crisis might be over now." Greggory shook his head
and at the same time made cancel motions with both hands, in case his words were to
get lost in among all the other noises. It sounded as though a war had erupted on the
back lawn.

Then two things happened at once.

Eliphaz came bursting through the stair-access door, and the elevator reopened.
From the elevator stepped Kiss. Undamaged. Perfect.

"Mother of God," Greggory whispered.

No one heard him.

Kiss and Eliphaz, face to face. Between their locked eyes, tensions seemed to
ignite like a gas flame. Each of them with eyes full of hate and fury. Arch rivals, staring
each other down.

"If you've come to collect him," said Eliphaz, pointing to Greggory, "you've got to
go through me first."

"My pleasure," said Kiss. She had the alligator knife back in her hand; now, she
raised it, like she was a runner bearing the Olympic torch, and rushed at him, crossing
the expanse of roof between them in just six steps. The hand holding the knife went
back, so it was cocked like the hammer on a revolver.

Eliphaz watched her come, a look of concentration lining his brow. Just before
Kiss struck him, he raised both hands as if he were merely going to block the oncoming
blow, and Kiss failed to notice the gleaming ribbon of razor-wire he held between
them. When she struck, her aim seemed suddenly to veer -- the knife, still in a white-
knuckled fist, hooked far and away, spitting a spiral of crimson as it went. Kiss
shrieked, surprised, catching sight of the bloody stump that had materialized in the place
of her hand.

And while her mouth was still open, Eliphaz made his move. His hands were
quickly in position, to either side of her face, the razor-wire crossing Kiss right through
the hinge of her jaw. He pushed her back, forcing her by the line of pain that cut her
lips and tongue. Kiss stumbled back and fell, the razor-wire cutting a neat slice out of
the middle of her face before pulling free: the piece with her upper lip, front teeth, and
the tip of her nose. Her skull, yellow-white, showed where the cut had pulled the flesh
away. She looked like a cross-section plate from a human anatomy diagram.

But she didn't even seem phased by it. In fact, the wounds, if anything, were little
more than an annoyance. Even as Eliphaz was preparing for his coup de grace,
fingers, like the petals of a human flower, were blossoming from the stump of her wrist.

Eliphaz pulled a grenade, a small canister about the size of a shotgun shell, from one
of the pockets of his black 'Head-of-Security' jacket. Using his left hand, as he
straddled Kiss' lower body, he plugged the hole in her face with the explosive,
thumbing the detonator cap off as he thrust it down; right down her throat. Kiss' eyes
got wide. She gagged on the bomb, trying hard not to swallow it, but in it went.
Force-feeding. Rammed right in.

Eliphaz lost his hand in the explosion, and most of what remained of his arm was
nought but bleeding strips, but the damage to Kiss was far, far worse. She was
reduced, from the waist up, to a blood-colored stain.

Eliphaz stood up, dizzy and woozy; reeling.

Greggory, meanwhile, had been beaten beyond words by his witnessing of the
event. His brain was numb; his common sense had been bludgeoned. He stammered
and pointed, eventually managing to convey to Eliphaz a message about his arm.

Eliphaz surveyed the damage. There was really nothing but useless meat and bone
fragments from the elbow down. So with his good hand, he tore it off and discarded it.
"Just a flesh wound," he said. He wiped his remaining hand on his pants. "One down,
hey? Only three more to go." But even though his words were confident, his voice
trailed off at the end.

There was a sound: disturbing. Like bubbles in a cauldron of simmering stew, like
crumpled aluminum cans... a sound like rain, and marsh gas frothing in stagnant water.

They both looked -- heads turning a slow choreograph -- back towards the
carnage that had been Kiss Nekro. Phantom-like wisps, fog and vapors, were swirling
over her remains. And bit by bit, she was reforming. The meaningless jelly-like spread
of tissue and guts that the grenade had turned her into was turning back into her.

Even Eliphaz was shocked. His jaw dropped.

Before even her skin was back into place, she was sitting up, climbing back onto
her feet; her body making noises like creaking wood -- tree branches bending in a wind
-- as she moved. Then her flesh began to reform. Little pink bits and clumps marched
up her, like a parade of ants, and when they reached a spot of open, glistening raw,
they bonded together and smoothed.

It looks just like clay-mation. The thought came to Greggory and made him
laugh despite the seriousness of the situation.

Then: there she was again.

Her clothes were gone. They, being just regular matter, remained as black scraps
and shreds, scattered about the roof and blowing in the wind of the rotor blades. Bare-
chested and beautiful, she was the Death-goddess. The wind of the spinning blades
tossed her hair, an exotic black mane, and it moved in waves, like beckoning fingers.

"I have devoured so many souls during my years," she said, somehow making
herself heard without having to strain or yell. "The power of those lives flows through
me now. Like blood. No mere death can stop me."

Her words came to Greggory like cold, gusting air, and made him chilled. But
suddenly his brain was storming; something she had said had set him off, and, like chain
lightning, a string of ideas and hunches was flashing through his mind, casting illumination
through the darkness of the fear that had gathered there. "Porous vessels," he said.

Eliphaz looked at him.

"What?!"

"Porous vessels," said Greggory. "A man can't live forever because his body is too
porous to contain the power of his life essence. Maybe we could do that to her."

And suddenly Eliphaz understood. A look came to his face, like sunlight breaking
through thick clouds -- burning away the fog. As a character on the comics page, he
would've been adorned with a light-bulb halo.

Kiss was coming for them, crossing the expanse of the roof with easy, graceful
steps. "Surrender to me now, Greggory. Let me cut your life free. My embrace is
kind. It would be just like falling asleep in a ray of summer sunshine."

The voice of the Death-goddess. Greggory, at once, knew the temptation of Eve,
listening to the serpent's seductive lies. He had never thought such an obviously wrong
choice could sound so inviting; but there it was: the promise of the peace that an easy
surrender could bring. And for a second it seemed submission was in him, and the
words of acceptance were very nearly spoken by him. They made it just to the tip of
his tongue (or right to the edge of the speaker grill, as the case may be), but then he
swallowed them back.

"I will rage against you," he said. Kiss was momentarily taken aback by the sound
of his determination; his power. For a moment she seemed frozen. "I will rage against
the dying of the light."

And Eliphaz added, "We fight. If you can claim us, you will have earned us."

Kiss restarted her approach. Her forehead was creased by an intense look of
barely-restrained hatred. "I am inevitable, Greggory. You can only postpone my
victory. Eventually, it will come. You can make this easy or hard."

Once again she invited him to concede. She stopped, just an arm's reach away
from him, and held her hand out to him.

Time seemed suspended. An indefinite moment, like thread unspooling, rolled out
around the three of them. Again the temptation: join in union with Death, so beautiful,
so seducing. Kiss like the lure of a fruit, ripe with forbidden knowledge.

It was broken that time by Eliphaz speaking. "Greggory, go get her knife." And
the calm of the scene was shattered then, like a bullet-riddled window. Quick as a
lightning strike, several things happened; all at once. A series of events played out, so
seemingly slowly that every detail was noticed as though captured in a separate, still
photograph.

Kiss' face contorted with sudden anger. Her lips pulled back from her teeth, and
gone was the alluring face of the Death-goddess; replaced by the look of a feral,
predatory animal. Her fingers, hooked like talons, struck out at Greggory, but he was
already ducked out of her reach and leaning into a run across the roof-top to recover
the knife. Her nails seared the air, but nothing else. Eliphaz, with his remaining hand,
grabbed Kiss under one arm and hoisted her upward, into the path of the rotor blades
spinning overhead. There was a satisfying 'thunk' sound, and then her neck was a
fountain of gore.

Eliphaz dropped the twitching body. "Get me the knife, fast!" he shouted. In just
the time it had taken him to speak, Kiss had already stopped bleeding. Hair, the top of
a new head, began to sprout from the wound. It was nearly paralyzing to watch;
weaving a spell like hypnosis.

Greggory slapped the knife, handle first, into Eliphaz' palm.

"The heart," Greggory said. "The heart is the core of any living thing. We've got to
make her heart too porous to contain soul-force."

Eliphaz dropped to his knees over the body, and began to cut. By then, Kiss was
well on her way to recovering from her beheading, arms and legs flailing frantically; and
from somewhere in her upper chest, her, as yet unseen, mouth was shrieking.

When, finally, Eliphaz wrenched her still-beating heart away from the rest of her
body, the flailing and screaming stopped. But instantaneously, the heart began to
sprout new tissue.

"God!" Eliphaz spat. "Find something, fast!" Lungs were already unfolding, like
balloons and party favors; already they were beginning to respire. Just as fast as that.
And arteries and veins, like tangling vines, were already growing, everywhere, in all
directions, and major organs appearing like fruit: kidneys, liver...

From behind the pilot's seat in the helicopter, Greggory brought the maintenance
box. He hurriedly opened it and found a pair of screwdrivers inside. They would have
to work for now: the two screwdrivers and the knife.

Together, Eliphaz and Greggory impaled the heart, three times, right through, so
that six jagged holes were opened in its walls. And they left the blades there so the
wounds couldn't close over.

And they were there again, the swirling vapors, like a tenebrous fog, for a moment
in orbit around the heart like a planet's atmosphere, but then dissipating. Slowly going,
going: the life force of all the Succubus' many victims, no longer contained -- no longer
bound to the will of their consumer -- swirling off into eternity... free. At last, after
having brought terror and death to so many countless generations, that monstrous heart
quit beating, and the body quit regenerating.

The first of the immortal Champions of Death had finally been stopped; had come
to know Death intimately, in a state of suspended being.

* * *

Greggory replaced the screwdrivers and knife with steel rods; a dozen of them.
When he was done, the heart was a pin-cushion. It looked like the hub of a bicycle
wheel, radiating spokes. He sealed his trophy up in a mayonnaise jar, which he took
down to the basement and buried beneath the floor.

He had just finished pouring new cement over the hole when he thought he heard
the sound of a heartbeat. Greggory felt good knowing she was still down there. He
gave the grave-site the finger in salute and went back upstairs.