Epilogue: Consequences

Two Weeks Later

They mailed her the results. The clinic was discreet, but a bit old-fashioned. Lois felt fine, now that the bruises and all had healed. The ring that had bougn her labia together had been replaced by two separate rings—there was no point in wasting the holes, after all, and Lois was looking forward to letting Angelica fuck her pussy again. Still, the trip to the clinic was a necessary better-safe-than-sorry. The reporter ran the letter-opener across the envelope, and unfolded the report.

Positive.

There were other words on the page, but they swam past the reporter's eyes. She closed her eyes for a moment, waited for her heart to beat again. Took a deep breath and opened her eyes again. She couldn't focus on the page. Blinked until the tears came. Wiped them away with the back of her hand.

...Human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV). Please contact any sexual partners you have had in the recent past...

Numb inside, Lois sank into a chair. Everyone had used condoms. Everyone. They were all supposed to be clean, Angelica had said they all had paperwork. They had been so careful...

Well, except for the part where you let yourself be locked into stocks and fucked up the ass by over a dozen strangers for four straight hours, Lois told herself. Oh, and then I went home and had Angie...

Angie. Lois Lane's eyes grew wide. She had to tell her. She could have passed it to her.

Or... a moment's suspicion flared in the back of the reporter's brain ...she could have given it to me.

Lois sat at the kitchen table in her small apartment, trying not to hyperventilate. They hadn't used protection that night. Blaze didn't like condoms. Liked to feel Lois raw. The reporter had thought it was all right, because they were exclusive with one another, but...if they...if she...if either of them had been with somebody else that was HIV positive...

The reporter's thoughts were interrupted by the door. No knock, no ring. She'd given Angie a key.

"I've got beer and Thai food!" the dark-haired dickgirl announced with a smile. Lois Lane's lover was dressed in a black sleeveless t-shirt that was several sizes too big, and showed off that she wasn't wearing a bra; and the kind of black jeans that look painted on. She stopped in the kitchen as she saw Lois sitting at the table, mascara-tracks running down the reporter's face. The smile died. "Sweetmeat? What's the matter?"

Lois held up the test results from the lab. "Sit down. You need to read this."

Blaze put the plastic bags of beer and Thai food on the table, and took the white sheet from the reporter's hands.

As she read, Lois cracked a beer.

"Oof." Angelica said after a moment. "We've got to fix this."

"Fix it?" Lois slammed the bottle on the table after taking a swig. "There's no fixing it, Angie! There's no cure for HIV! Just expensive treatments that help you live with it the rest of your life and...and..." Lois began to shake. "...and you have to get tested, I may have given it to you, or..."

She stared at her lover. At that body she knew so well. "...have you been fucking anybody else? You have to tell me. They have to know, if..."

Angelica put the letter down on the table. She knelt down by the sitting woman, so they were eye to eye.

"I haven't had any sexual contact with anyone but you since we got together. I swear on my name. This is just something from your little adventure with the stocks. Things happen sometimes. You roll the dice and take what comes. It's okay. We'll get through this."

"It's not okay!" Lois insisted. "I'm sick! You could be sick. I mean, we've been...and I'm..."

Blaze brushed the hair back from the reporter's head. Her face was very serious.

"I'm fine, love. It's the human immunodeficiency virus, and I'm...not human."

Lois blinked. "What?"

It was like a bad splice in a film. One moment, Angelica was kneeling there...and the next, it was someone Lois had never seen before. Skin the color of fresh blood on parchment. Dark horns that emerged from her broad brow and curled back over her head. Features a little sharper, thinner, muscles more defined, bones more pronounced. The eyes were pure white, without pupil or iris, but the smile...the smile was still Angie's...

"You live in a world of gods and aliens, superhumans and metahumans, Amazon princesses and Atlantean kings," she said, and it was Angelica's voice, with that strange accent of hers. "And I'm a demon, remember?"

Lois blinked. She reached forward and poked that crimson nose. It twitched, just the way that Blaze's did whenever Lois did that. When she found her tongue again, Lois said: "But I mean...are you sure...?"

"Yes," Angelica said, and she reached up and took Lois Lane's hand. The reporter stared down at fingers that were longer and more bird-like than she remembered them, the long, sharp nails that tipped each finger almost like claws. "I am immune to all earthly disease. I can't catch them, and I can't transmit them. And..." She smiled. "...I can share that immunity with you."

For the second time in as many minutes, Lois was utterly speechless.

"You have a cure for HIV?" She felt her heart beat faster. "I mean...why don't you...fuck, give it to everybody? Save lives?"

"I want to save your life," Angie insisted. "And...there's a price."

"I'm guessing we're not talking dollars and cents," Lois said. "So, do I have to give you like...my immortal soul?"

Blaze turned the reporter's hand over. One sharp claw traced the pale blue vein at her wrist.

"Not quite like that. My blood can heal you. Burn the virus right out of your body. But...then you won't be quite human anymore. You'll be a bit demon. Like me."

Lois stared at her...and then looked at her. Really looked. Angelica Blaze had the best poker face of anyone she had ever met, but her body language showed how tense she was. Her whole body seemed poised, waiting for an answer. For...rejection.

She's afraid, Lois realized. She's been afraid this whole time. That's why she never worried about a condom. Angie was scared I'd reject her, that I would leave her. So she's been holding back this whole time, just to stay with me...

"Will I get some bad-ass horns like you?" Lois said, cracking a smile.

Tension seemed to drain out of the demon's body. "Probably not."

"Do it," she whispered. The reporter reached over and stroked her lover's cheek. The skin was still as soft as she remembered.

"It's going to hurt."

Lois thought about life with HIV.

"Do it."

The talon ran down the reporter's wrist again...but this time it pressed harder, and the skin broke. Lois hissed in pain as blood, right and red as her lover's skin, welled up and dripped onto the kitchen floor. Still holding the reporter's hand with her left, the demon brought her right wrist up to her mouth...and Lois flinched a little as she saw those teeth bite down into her own flesh, at the arterial spurt of dark purplish blood...and as she brought that bleeding wrist down to drip into Lois Lane's own wounded arm, the reporter realized what they were doing.

Sharing blood.

The wounds pressed together...and Lois squirmed, tried to rip her arm away, but Angelica held her fast. It burned. Not like a rash, but like a creeping fever, an electric wire that worked its slow way up her arm one pulse at a time, and Lois sat there shuddering in agony as it crept up her bicep...her shoulder...down to her heart...and it didn't stop. She looked at Blaze as if to plead with her...and she realized that the demon was in pain too, the white eyes bright, dark tears sliding down those cheeks...and Lois tightened her hand and determined to endure it as the burning wire seemed to coil around her heart.

Long minutes passed. Lois could smell the Thai food getting cold. The beer bottle beaded with condensation. Moment by moment the heat seemed to build inside of her as the pain spread. Her lungs grew hot, her head felt weirdly feverish, teeth too sharp in her mouth...and then she realized that her left arm didn't hurt at all, and her pussy...her pussy...

The cunt throbbed and seemed to swell inside her pants. Lois shook as a wave of lust washed over her. Her clit was hard and sensitive, scraping against her panties. With her free hand she tore at her pants, and Blaze did nothing to stop her. Cloth ripped and something burst free...

Lois stared down at the hard cock, maybe six inches long, that stood out above her pussy where her clit had been. The pain in her body was fading, though the heat was still there...like a furnace...

Blaze took her hand away. The reporter stared at their wrists, but the scratch where the demon had opened up her vein was already a long scab, quickly becoming a scar. "You're going to have an elevated body temperature. You'll heal faster from injuries. And there's going to be some...swelling. That'll go down in a while."

The reporter looked at her new cock.

"I don't suppose it would go down faster if you...kissed it and made it better?"

Angelica licked her lips. "I thought you'd never ask."

It was the first time that Blaze offered to suck her girlfriend's cock, but not the last.