End: Circe Is Powerful Enough To Pierce The Illusion

A gesture, a word in a language Lois Lane didn't understand...and the scales fell away from her eyes.

Red lines glowed on walls, floors, and ceiling. Not straight lines, most of them, but like the veins of minerals, that pulsed gently; intersected here and there by more obviously artificial sigils, pentagrams, and mystic devices. The reporter felt a pull at something deep inside of her...like a slight suction that drew her in a particular direction.

Only Circe's hand on her shoulder stopped Lois from moving with that unseen ****.

"She's siphoning sexual energy from her clients, and using part of that—the better part of it—to hide that she's doing so. The enchantments on her workers are even more subtle. We probably spoke to your missing women without realizing it; they no longer know themselves. We are in the midst of a spider's web...and the spider, I think, knows exactly who and where we are."

The sorceress smiled as she touched one of the red veins on the wall. It turned suddenly green. A burning green line that shot down the wall and into the network of sigils and symbols.

It was not long before there was a response. A figure emerged from the manager's office—a door that Lois Lane had not even been aware of. So tall, her dark horns scraped the ceiling. A lanky figure in a black pinstripe business suit, the skin like leather but red like blood, the eyes two glowing orbs of pure white, deep-set in the skull, without pupil or iris. The mouth, too wide to be truly beautiful, was twisted in a Mona Lisa smile. She stalked toward Circe down the hallway, and Lois felt the air between them charged and hazy, like the shimmer above a long black highway at noon.

"Blaze, daughter of seven thunders," Circe acknowledged.

"Circe, bitch-queen of hags," the demon said, her head inclined slightly. The accent was not anything Lois had ever heard before, mellifluous and exotic. The burning eyes turned to regard the reporter. "And Lois Lane, I see. I wondered where you had gone off to. Been having fun?"

"She has," Circe said, and gently squeezed the reporter's shoulder. "Now I think it is time you leave this place. You are found out."

Blaze raised her hands as if to give Circe a hug. "No one escapes. No one leaves. These souls are mine."

Lois Lane noticed the change first. How the tug on her intangible self had shifted. All of the red lines on walls, ceiling, and floors had shifted to an emerald green. In that light, the demon's scarlet skin seemed suddenly sickly.

Blaze was not slow on the uptake. Black lightning crackled between her horns and fingertips...and then the demon staggered and wobbled, dropped to one knee.

"What have you done?" The demon said.

"Re-purposed your little network of spells," Blaze said. "Reversed the polarity. All that energy that was flowing to you is now flowing out of you. A blazing sign for all the champions of light and justice to see...and the longer you stay here, the weaker you'll be."

"Cunt," Blaze muttered. "I will have my **** for this insult!"

Circe smiled. "Thank you for steering Lois into my path. She's proving to be...quite the delight."

There was a crash of thunder. Circe quickly brought her hands away from the wall as black lightning burst from the demon's form...and then Blaze was gone, little more than a scorch mark on the carpet, and all the glowing veins and sigils vanished.

"Her spells will wear off, in time," Circe said. "The women will remember their old lives. Their days of whoring will be as a dark dream."

"What about me, mistress?" Lois asked.

"It's been a long night," Circe said. "Let's sleep."

So they did. In Lois Lane's apartment, in Lois Lane's own bed. The older woman, naked beneath the covers with her, the big spoon to the reporter's little spoon. Long, lithe fingers cupped the reporter's mons and fingered her slit, so that Lois moaned gently and found it difficult to sleep. Lois could still feel the tattoos, the piercings. All the reminders of her night out that would be impossible to hide tomorrow...but beyond all that, she felt the utter compliance to her mistress. The way she just accepted Circe's attentions, the casual and familiar way that the woman played with her body.

As if she belonged to her. And that scared and excited Lois as nothing else had done, the entire night.