Of course, this wasn’t anything like her old treatments. And it really didn’t resemble what little she had seen of the hospital kid’s treatment.
Catherine sat, much like Eva had, as a cloud of blood gathered overhead. Streams of blood descended and entered her wrists. Catherine didn’t scream out. Apart from gritting her teeth and her tail stiffening, her body remained very still.
On the surface, at least. Beneath her skin, Catherine was definitely feeling something. Her heart rate spiked. Her organs–which were, for the most part, remarkably human-like–trembled as her breathing sped up.
Now that Eva wasn’t in agony, she could actually see what the blood was doing. The blood didn’t spear through organs, unlike what she had thought. It hit an organ and started to spread around it. Once an organ was fully enveloped, the blood sunk inside and became indistinguishable from Catherine’s preexisting blood. Then, the tendrils of blood would search around for more organs. All the while, the blood would diffuse throughout her muscles, veins, and other non-organ parts of her body.
Fascinating to watch for the first few minutes, but Eva quickly found herself growing bored. Her own treatment had lasted from noon to nightfall. She had no reason to believe that Catherine’s would go any faster. In case something strange happened, she still wanted to watch.
But first…
Eva went back to the women’s ward and grabbed a tome and a chair–Devon, Serena, and Lucy had not had a chair the entire time for some odd reason–and dragged them back to the basketball court.
The tome was her book on blood rituals. Eva had promised both herself and Nel that she would hunt down Sawyer after her treatment. She had no intention of breaking that promise. There was a particular ritual that she had come across in the past and wanted to refresh herself on before using it.
Settling into her chair, Eva kept the corner of her eye on Catherine and her ritual while she flipped through the pages of her tome.
— — —
Succubi were fools. Incubi as well. Every last one of them.
Obsessed beyond measure with the pleasures of the flesh and other such carnal desires.
And for what? What did sex get any of them?
Momentary pleasure that vanished as quickly as it came, a reputation—not a good one in Catherine’s opinion—and perhaps the largest subset of demons simply due to breeding practices. Though true succubi were far rarer than cambions, lesser succubi, and other such derivatives.
Their population couldn’t even be turned into any sort of real power. Succubi were almost hard-wired to hate and despise other succubi and incubi. They felt threatened by others of their kind. Envy and jealousy ran rampant through their veins.
In other words, nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Much as she couldn’t understand the end goal for what succubi were designed to do, neither could Catherine understand the why.
Why would she ever want to be in such close proximity to filthy and utterly disgusting mortals? Humans, elves, dwarves, mixed races, goblins, trolls, ogres, whatever else existed. All were nothing greater than dirt to Catherine. It would be akin to a human fornicating with a cockroach.
She was above them all.
That wasn’t to say that she hated humans. They could be interesting at times. A decent diversion from the monotony of existence. As long as they kept their distance and left her to do as she willed, Catherine was more apathetic than anything else.
Irene made for a good toy. Pushing her to things that made her uncomfortable brought around interesting reactions. Those she played games with were… stand-able to a mild degree. From a distance. She wouldn’t wish to meet with them in person. They would be just as disgusting as the rest of their filthy race.
By that logic, demons would be more on her level. She should enjoy the company of other demons.
Perhaps she would. It was hard to say, having never tried.
As it was, Catherine feared other demons. In Hell, she kept to herself. Much like most other demons, she visited no other domains and invited no others to hers. Catherine was not a strong demon. Even a pathetic wretch like Arachne would be able to slaughter her effortlessly.
Such was the station of a lesser succubus.
Being lesser succubus wasn’t all bad, however. It made living among mortals incredibly easy. Almost to an absurd degree. Between her body, her natural succubi grace, and maybe a tiny bit of power poured into some mind magic, getting what she wanted from humans wasn’t difficult at all.
At least, that was how it should be. Catherine didn’t often find herself wanting anything from mortals. When she did, she ran into people like Eva’s mentor. People who weren’t enamored with her and who could just blink away if she got too close. People who knew about succubi charms and could either defend themselves or shrug them off.
Given her lesser succubus status, Catherine was willing to bet that he hadn’t even noticed.
But again, having power over mortals was like having power over cockroaches. Not glamorous. Not elegant. Not worth it.
Blinking her eyes open, Catherine sighed. She should have known.
The women’s ward. Only once or twice had she visited in the past, occasions when she had needed Eva for something or other.
She had been feeling something soft at her back for some time now. All the time she had allowed her thoughts to run rampant, the couch had been cradling her. Idle thoughts that were, ultimately, as meaningless as sex. They brought her nothing that she hadn’t already known. She hadn’t made any philosophical discoveries. No sudden enlightenment to how she could gain power over her betters.
Staring up at the brick ceiling dotted with runework lighting of the women’s ward, Catherine had to wonder why she had even tried. Nothing felt different. No surge of power or notion that she could rule the world. If anything, she felt exhausted.
That could just be the aftereffects of the ritual. Maybe she would gain in strength over the next few days as she recovered.
Somehow, she doubted it. Throughout Eva’s ritual, she could feel the girl steadily growing stronger up until its completion. After that, the steady growth dropped off, but still continued for a while longer. Catherine hadn’t been able to pay attention during her own ritual, but it must have stopped at some point afterwards. She could feel Eva now and the girl had felt mostly the same since Catherine had regained consciousness.
Though, thinking about Eva just made Catherine more depressed.
One of her favors had been consumed just to perform a worthless ritual. All because Catherine’s succubi wiles were too weak to get one mortal to even give her the time of day.
Working up the effort to turn her head, Catherine found the girl in question seated in a chair with a book in hand.
Eva glanced up and smiled at her over the top of the book. “The sleeping beauty is finally awake. Didn’t even take a kiss.”
“Don’t you dare,” Catherine said, though the words came out hollow. She was too tired to put more effort into it. That and the action of turning her head caused all kinds of strange prickles in the back of her neck. Trying to lift her arm caused the same to happen there.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Eva said with a snort. “And don’t try to move. I was all kinds of shaky after waking up. Could barely even stand.”
Catherine didn’t speak. She turned her head back to the ceiling and stared.
“It failed,” Catherine said to herself. It wasn’t a question for Eva. Rather, it was a simple statement of a fact.
“I wouldn’t say that.”
Catherine would have started at the new voice, but she had already been aware of Zagan’s presence somewhere nearby. In order to see him, she would have had to tilt her head up and back.
She didn’t bother with that, but couldn’t help the eyebrow that was crawling up her forehead.