Epilogue: The Devil Her Due

In the dark of night, Lois Lane awoke with a gasp. Diesel beside her snored on, utterly oblivious as the smaller woman's eyes fixed on a shadow that hovered above their bed...and in that state between full wakefulness and sleep, the reporter found herself paralyzed, unable to move as her eyes picked out details.

The darkness took the shape of a woman, lean and willowy, her legs and arms bare as she hung above them as though seated on air, the tip of her big toe just pressed against Lois Lane's breastbone. Dark hair moved of its own accord, and the eye in the thin, strange face were pure white without pupil or iris...like windows into some infinite white space, so that light seemed to shine down, pale and sickly as a shadowed moon.

Yet Lois knew that face, that form. She had seen its like, in the form of the statue in that room beneath the club...where she had found the book.

"Hello, Lois," the voice bypassed the reporter's ears entirely, and sounded in the back of her head. Diesel apparently didn't hear at all, the tall woman snored away unperturbed. "I am Blaze. I came to see how you were using my gifts. I see you have achieved some of your hidden desires..."

The reporter couldn't say anything. She had experienced this before, but no matter how hard she tried, her limbs wouldn't answer her call, she couldn't even warn Diesel.

"...but as you have done this with my power, a part of this happiness is mine. Such gifts do not come without a cost, after all."

The white eyes bored into Lois Lane's own. The mouth of the dark creature above her was twisted into a strange half-smile, like the figure of the Mona Lisa.

The toe tugged down...and silently, Lois Lane's shirt split, the sheet pulled itself out of the way, and the demon did not stop until the shirt was completely bifurcated, and a line of flesh was bare from the reporter's chin to her crotch, where the tattoo heart that Diesel liked so much lay.

"So...how shall you pay me?" Blaze gestured...and Lois felt the weight increase on her chest as her breasts swelled. "Shall I change this body according to my whims while your lover sleeps beside you? She might enjoy what changes I make...or perhaps I should take your form and make love to her, while you are helpless to watch?"

There was a strange cruel twist to those lips, and Lois knew what it was like to be a mouse in the paws of a cat. She would have railed against her helplessness, if she could even move a muscle...and in desperation her mind moved through the words, the thoughts of the spell...

Power flowed through Lois. It was like plugging an alarm clock into a lightning bolt. The reporter's body arched, every muscle tense and contracted at once. Lois couldn't even breathe as she felt the shirt fall away from her breasts, that sagged heavily on either side of her chest.

"Foolish. You cannot use my own power against me, Lois. I will not permit it. Yet since you have invited me in...let us see what hidden desires you possess..."

There was no defense against the presence that suddenly intruded into the paralyzed reporter's mind. Lois could not even breathe as her body quivered in cataleptic shock, utterly frozen in its bow. Memories rose and fell in her brain, as Blaze rifled through the reporter's consciousness. Flashes of whips and chains from when she had long-ago peeked at a BDSM magazine. The dribble of candle wax on flesh. A medieval dungeon where a woman's cunt was sewn shut with thongs. Flickers of more **** body augmentations...split tongues, pierced assholes, finger and toenails removed, nipples cut off so that the breasts were smooth lumps of flesh...and then, deeper and deeper, Blaze brought forth a memory that Lois had almost forgotten.

Her father's shoebox, under the bed. Where he kept the private photos he had taken of Lois Lane's mother during her pregnancy. Lois remembered how she had stuffed a pillow under her shirt and wondered what it would be like to be pregnant...just like mommy...

Blaze's toe touched Lois, just a few inches below the reporter's navel.

The power flowed through Lois. She went limp, held aloft by that point of contact, which burned her, all that energy concentrated at a single point...above her womb...and then it seemed to stab through her, and Lois Lane collapsed back onto the bed, gasped for breath, blinked...

...and the demon Blaze was gone, only the harsh cackle of her laughter echoed in her head.

Diesel turned over in her sleep. A big, strong hand slid across the reporter's body and grasped a breast, her cheek rested on Lois' shoulder. The reporter blinked and lay there, pinned in place. The ache in her body fled, and she lifted her free right arm, just to be sure she could...and shivered, drenched in cold sweat, as she thought about what price she may have paid this night.