Prologue
Caroline stared at Sean. He wasn’t really her type, but beggars can’t be choosers. The bar had been rather empty all evening, except for the usual biker gang members and druggies who wandered in as closing time drew near. She’d lost patience with both of those sorts of men. Sure they could be fun for an evening, but they got boring fast. There was only so much “alpha male” a woman could handle. Bulging muscles, the smell of sweat and booze, and roughness between the sheets weren’t all the male of the species had to offer. Sean was none of those things. He reeked of meekness and was clearly intimidated by her. Caroline knew she was a beautiful woman. Even without her power, she could have had just about any man she wanted. With it, the world was hers for the taking. She was a sexual predator of the highest order and reveled in what she was. Her therapist had actually had the nerve to tell her she was a sex addict. By the end of that session, he’d been undressed, laid, and left passed out on his own couch. Caroline had walked out of his office, grinning like the Cheshire cat. For all his smarts and degrees, he was just a man like any other, and hers to do with as she liked.
Sean swallowed hard as Caroline flicked several rogue strands of long brown hair from her face and smiled at him. She scooted closer to him on the love seat in her apartment. Sean shifted uncomfortably, looking like a baby deer caught in the high beams of a speeding truck coming directly at it.
“Thank you for walking me home, Sean,” Caroline purred, her voice as lusty as she could make it. She hadn’t even bothered to use her power yet, but even so, she could see he was already hers.
Ever since she’d turned fifteen, Caroline had been able to control the emotions and desires of men and women alike. Having such a gift had made her high school days among the best of her life. Who needed to study when your teachers were in love with you, and afraid of the trouble you could get them into at the same time? Popularity had come easy. When she’d first discovered her gift, affecting one person had taken a lot of effort. But within a few months, she’d learned to control small groups. Her limit varied based on the will of the people she was targeting. Her upper limited was slightly over a dozen, unless the crowd had been drinking or there were drugs involved. Using her power had given her a rush back then. As time went on, that rush grew milder and milder. She’d replaced the rush with sex and sadism. Recently, the thrill of those, too, had begun to wane for her, and she’d started to branch out into killing her prey…but never without playing with them first.
When Sean had wandered into the bar, she’d known instantly he was the one for tonight. He’d looked lost and out of place, as if he was on the wrong side of town. She could almost smell his fear and desperation. She could tell he’d tried to dress down to fit in with what he’d thought the crowd in a place like Joe’s would wear, but he hadn’t gotten it quite right. She’d pegged him as being either an IT guy or some type of investment broker. Everything about him screamed geek to her. She’d swept in on him almost as soon as he’d taken a seat at the bar. Someone like him coming to a place like Joe’s was just asking for trouble. She had no desire to watch him get his face bashed in by the regular crowd. She had other uses for him. Turning on her charm, she’d had Sean out of Joe’s and on the way back to her apartment in minutes. They’d both found what they’d been looking for.
He blushed as she drew herself even closer to him on the couch. Her hand slid between his legs, her fingers clutching the inside of his thigh as she leaned in to nibble his ear. Sean moved his head aside, avoiding her lips as his eyes met hers. His timidity only turned her on more. This was really going to be fun.
“Don’t you think I’m beautiful, Sean?” she whispered.
“I do,” he answered, in a voice even lower than hers had been.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of here, Sean,” she assured him. “We’re both adults who find each other attractive. Let’s just let nature take its course, okay?”
Sean nodded as Caroline kneaded the flesh of his inner thigh with the fingers of her left hand. She raised her right arm to lay it around his shoulders and back so she could pull him in for their first kiss. Sean stopped her by reaching out with his right hand to cup the side of her face. As Caroline peered into his green eyes, she could finally see a desire that matched her own, openly burning in them.
As the hand between his legs moved higher, Caroline felt something warm and wet emerge from Sean’s hand where it held her face. She jerked back from his hand, but whatever it was still clung to her, and it spread across her cheek. She reached to swipe at the wetness. Her fingers came away covered in twisting, writhing things. They reminded her of flatworms, pale twisted little creatures, their small bodies rolling over on themselves and curling up then stretching out again on her palm. She managed not to scream, but she did shudder. Her eyes jerked back toward Sean to ask him why in the hell had put such things on her, but he wasn’t there anymore. The monster sitting in his place on the couch wasn’t human at all. It still had his general shape and form, but its clothes were gone, as was its skin. The monster was a mass of worms like those on her hand. Its entire body moved and slithered, while somehow still managing to stay together as a whole. It had no features whatsoever. No eyes, mouth, or nose. It was all worms. Caroline did start to scream then, but the thing that had been Sean lashed out with one of its hands to grab her. The hand closed over her mouth, silencing her, as dozens upon dozens of tiny worms broke away from it and wriggled over her teeth and tongue into her body. She wrenched herself away from its hold on her, falling backward on the couch. Pain flared through the flesh of her cheeks as the worms that hadn’t entered her mouth began to dig into her skin. She could feel them burrowing their way through her flesh as she gagged on the ones crawling down her throat. In a fit of desperation, she struck at the creature with the power of her mind, channeling all of her will into an empathic blast that would have left a human being wailing in tears and horror on the floor. The monster merely flinched, nothing more. It sat above her, completely calm and still, as the worms it had loosed upon her went about their work.
Caroline tried to get up, to run, but found that she couldn’t move anything but her head. Either the monster or the worms inside her were preventing it. The clog of worms in her throat passed through it just as she was about to lose consciousness from lack of air. She sucked in breath and blood rushed into her mouth as she exhaled it. She spat red onto the cloth of the couch. She could feel the worms that had entered through her cheeks digging deeper and deeper into her head. The feeling of their squirming within her was maddening. The tiny things gnawed through arteries and veins alike as they moved through her. Tears of blood formed in the corners of her eyes and glided down over her cheeks. Trickles of red ran from her ears to wash over the sides her neck. She tried again to scream, but all that came out was a sickening, gargling noise and a spray of red-tinted spittle. Her body convulsed as the worms entered her brain. She thrashed about on the couch, suddenly able to move again, even if it wasn’t under her own direction. Her eyes flicked about within their sockets wildly before rolling up to show only whites…and then her nightmare of pain came to an end.
She was dead—and yet she wasn’t. The pain was gone, and her fear transformed into astonishment and confusion. She had become the worms, or perhaps they had become her. Her soul, her essence, was within the worms that burrowed up out of her skin to slink across the couch toward the monster. She could sense its presence through their senses. With every inch that they drew closer to its writhing yet bound together humanoid mass, she could feel herself fading. What remained of her consciousness shrieked in vain, clinging to a world that, in truth, she had already left. By the time the worms rejoined the monster’s body, there was nothing of Caroline’s intelligence and soul inside them, only her power.
The monster shuddered with pleasure as it became whole again…and more than it had been before.
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