Nothing Ever Goes According To Plan

Down the dark stairs. They smelled less like a toilet and more like the aftermath of a porn set: stale sweat and cum...though the reporter knew that might just be her imagination. Just like the stairs felt stickier than they had last time she had come down this way. Lois dug out the bottle so that she was holding it in her left hand as she hit the bottom.

The same light spilled through the open doorway. She could glimpse the shrine beyond it...but there was something else. A figure standing before the altar.

The reporter looked up the stairs...and saw two blondes, floating silently down toward her. Power Girl and Supergirl. Her backup. Lois let out the breath she had been holding...and stepped into the light.

The woman who stood before the altar was dressed in a long orange loincloth, secured by a belt of metal plates bearing leering faces. Two strips of orange cloth rose from the belt and covered her small breasts, tied together behind her neck. From what Lois could see she was slender, with the build of a marathoner...all springs and whalebone, as her father would put it. The ribs stood out on the sides of her chest, and her thin, long arms and legs were lanky but with defined muscles. Black hair cascaded down her back, dark and oily tresses...and dark horns rose from her forehead, a kind of metal tiara behind them that kept the hair out of her face.

She turned to Lois...and the reporter saw pure white eyes with no pupil or iris. The woman's skin was the color of fresh blood on parchment, and when she smiled the teeth were exquisitely white and sharp.

"Hello, Lois. You're right on time."

Something odd about the voice. An accent Lois was unfamiliar with. Mediterranean...maybe Middle Eastern.

"I have the bottle," the reporter said. "Where are the women?"

The demon gave a little half-smile.

"My acolytes are doing my will. As they have done, these past few weeks. Sucking cocks in the men's room upstairs."

Lois swallowed. "What is this? With the bottle...the altar...everything?"

The demon's smile grew wider. "This? Oh, this is a trap, Lois. You're the bait that has brought those two super-bitches to me."

Faster than Lois could see, the demon stepped...and one hand curled around the bottle the reporter grasped, the other grabbed her clavicle. Pain flared through Lois Lane's body.

"Now, be a dear...and scream."