End: Lois Wants The Missing Women Returned Safe And Unharmed

"The...women..." Lois Lane managed...and as Blaze carried her away from the bar, seeming to melt through solid stone, stepping through shadows and walking unhurriedly through earth and air, with no more hesitation than a woman might stepping down a long, familiar corridor in the dark, the reporter told her whole reason for why she was there, the women who she had gone missing, the ones she had come to find, to save, to rescue.

Until at last they stepped into what appeared to be an empty loft apartment. An ancient four-poster bed lay in one corner, shrouded in white muslin, like spider-webs, and Blaze laid the reporter down. Dimly, clutching her aching, distended abdomen, the reporter sat up...and realized she was naked, her clothes gone...and Blaze pulled the soft white silk sheet up over her breasts.

"I understand. They come to me, you see. Those lost souls. Drawn to me like moths to a flame," a hand caressed the reporter's face, and Lois saw, without surprised, that the hand and arm were blood-red now. All semblance of human features seemed to melt away, until the creature that sat next to her, long fingers combing through the reporter's dark black hair, was utterly inhuman. Too thin, too tall, the red skin too perfectly smooth and scarless, the flaccid cock between her legs a long tube, the eyes burning pure white without pupil or iris.

"I will release them from my service. They will go back to their lives, and remember their dissipations and freedoms...a little older, a little wiser, but they will bear no scars, physical or mental, carry no disease, no addictions."

The reporter felt a wave of exhaustion roll over her. Eyelids so heavy it took all of her power to hold them open. Her hands fell to her stomach, the hard shapes of the two massive eggs palpable through the flesh.

"Your other boon...think well on it. Something for yourself. Wealth, power, pleasure...ah, I would give much for what you will give me. But do not answer just yet. Your body has been pushed to its extremes, and it must heal. You need rest, and darkness...for some things, like mushrooms, need darkness to grow."

A kiss silenced the questions on Lois Lane's lips. A warm, coppery kiss that tasted of blood...and the reporter's eyelids fluttered once and then closed.

A song wove its way through the reporter's dreams, a low rumble like distant thunder, over and over, with the rhymic crash like the stroke of a drum. She floated naked in a void, and Lois Lane could see herself as though she lay above looking down at her own body. The pale skin turned translucent...violet eyes stared up through invisible eyelids, the pupils like pinpricks. Pale yellow fat marked the mounds of her breasts. Dark red muscle tissue...and Lois could see now the damage that had been done to her there.

Around the great swell of her stomach where the eggs lay, the muscles were stretched and torn. Her vagina was a ragged thing, torn and rent from their passage. Internal injuries she had not guessed at were revealed to her eye...and as the strange thunderous hymn sang, black threads wove themselves into the damaged body. Bundles of splintered muscles rebound themselves, bones were threaded with a dark lattice. All throughout her body the dark web wove, until Lois could see that it was all throughout her...not just repairing the damage that was done, but strengthening her for what was to come.

Then, with a crash like seven thunders, the song ended.

Lois Lane awoke with a gasp to the beep of her phone. The naked reporter looked around at her own apartment, her own bed. She reached out to the bedside table where the phone buzzed, grabbed it...

Messages from the four women she had been looking for. The ones she had tried to contact. Returning her calls and messages, wanting to meet with her, to tell her their stories. Lois sat up, winced...and stared down at the sudden obstacle in her way.

In the light of day, her stomach protruded less than it had seemed to last night. A small, solid dome, peaking just below her navel. Like a pot belly, but too hard, too smooth. She poked it with her finger, as if to reassure herself it was there and she wasn't dreaming...and Lois felt her own skin beneath her probing digit. No pain, just the unaccustomed weight and shift in balance.

"How am I going to explain you to everyone at the Daily Planet?" she said aloud...and shivered, for it was almost as though the wind heard her words. The reporter eased herself out of bed. Her night out was over, and there was much to do...and in the back of her mind, she wondered what other boon she would ask of the demon Blaze whose eggs she carried.