The rain had been falling for nine straight days, the kind of cold, relentless New York rain that found every hole in cardboard and every crack in a man's spirit. David hadn't eaten anything but half a stale Hot Pocket in four days. His teeth chattered so hard he tasted blood where he'd bitten the inside of his cheek.
He lay on his back in the alley between a shuttered bodega and a dumpster that smelled like spoiled milk and broken dreams. One shoe was gone (stolen while he dozed), the other had filled with rainwater and become a tiny, freezing aquarium. He stared up at the orange smear of light on the low clouds and tried to remember what it felt like to be warm.
Midnight arrived with no church bells, no countdown. Just the sudden, absolute absence of distant traffic noise, as if the city itself had drawn a breath and held it.
A woman stepped out of the darkness the way smoke steps out of a cigarette: all at once, inevitable. Tall, hooded in a crimson coat that looked dry despite the downpour. The hood was thrown back, revealing porcelain skin, cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass, and eyes the color of arterial blood under sodium lights. Rain slid off her like she was oiled.
She crouched beside him. The heels of her boots clicked once on the wet concrete (click, click) like the hammer of a gun being cocked.
"You're cold," she observed. Voice low, amused, ancient as the first lie ever told.
David tried to laugh. It came out a cough that tasted of rust. "Got a spare twenty for a future billionaire?"
She smiled, and the alley lights dimmed. "What do you want most in the world, David?"
He didn't ask how she knew his name. Names were cheap on the street.
He thought about it. Really thought. The cold had stripped away pride, shame, hope. Only truth was left.
"I want to never be cold again," he rasped. "I want to never be hungry. I want to walk into any restaurant and order one of everything. I want a bed so big I get lost in it. I want people to look at me like I matter. I want to be rich. Filthy, stupid, impossible rich."
Her smile widened until he saw the tips of fangs.
"That can be arranged." She leaned closer. Her breath smelled like cinnamon and brimstone. "All it costs is your soul."
He barked a laugh that turned into another cough. "Lady, you can have the whole fucking thing. It's not doing me any good down here."
The woman tilted her head, studying him the way a cat studies a half-dead mouse.
"Done."
She pressed two fingers to the center of his forehead.
The pain was immediate and absolute, like molten metal poured straight into his skull. Black sigils flared across his skin (chest, throat, wrists, the soft skin inside his elbows) burning themselves into him with the smell of scorched meat. He convulsed, spine bowing off the wet cardboard, a sound ripping out of him that wasn't a scream and wasn't a laugh but something rawer.
The last thing he saw before the dark swallowed him was her smile, red lips parting to reveal a tongue the color of fresh blood.
Then nothing.
He woke up in silk.
Not just any silk (Italian, 1200-thread-count, the color of midnight). The bed was the size of a small yacht. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed Manhattan spread beneath him like a circuit board made of gold. A bottle of 1945 Château d'Yquem sat sweating in a silver bucket beside the bed. The price tag still dangled from the neck: $310,000.
David sat up slowly. His body felt… different. Stronger. The ache in his joints was gone. His skin was clean, unmarked except for faint black lines under the surface, like tattoos drawn in smoke.
He stumbled to the bathroom (marble, gold fixtures, a shower big enough for a basketball team) and stared at the stranger in the mirror. Same face, but the hollows under the eyes were gone. Same dark hair, but it shone. Same body, but the ribs no longer showed.
He laughed. The sound echoed off the marble like church bells.
Three days later he owned half the buildings he used to sleep behind. Lawyers appeared like magic, papers signed themselves, money moved in amounts that made CNBC anchors choke on air. He bought suits that cost more than cars, cars that cost more than houses, and a penthouse that took up the entire sixty-sixth floor of a tower on Billionaires' Row. He fucked models in the infinity pool at 3 a.m. and snorted lines off limited-edition Picassos. He laughed until his sides hurt and told himself the faint burning under his skin was just the coke.
On the seventh night he finally slept.
The clock on the nightstand rolled over to 3:00:00 a.m.
The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees in a heartbeat.
The floor-to-ceiling window exploded inward.
Glass hung suspended in the air like a thousand frozen stars. Wind howled through the breach, carrying the scent of ozone and burnt sugar. A woman stepped through the shards barefoot, unhurried, as if gravity had forgotten her name.
She was seven feet tall, naked except for molten-gold jewelry that dripped across collarbones, breasts, hips. Porcelain skin glowed under the blood-red moonlight. Obsidian horns swept back from a torrent of liquid-night hair. Bat wings folded tight against her spine flexed once, scattering glass like diamonds. Scarlet eyes burned with lazy, predatory satisfaction.
David scrambled upright against the headboard, heart jackhammering.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"Language," she purred, voice the exact velvet rasp from the alley. "You sold me your soul, darling. I'm here to start collecting."
She crossed the room in three strides. One clawed hand closed around his throat (not squeezing, just reminding him who owned the airway now). The other seized the waistband of his silk pajama pants and ripped them away like tissue paper. The fabric shredded with a sound like a scream.
His cock (six inches yesterday, maybe six and a half on a good day) was already changing.
He felt it first as heat, then pressure, then a stretching, burning growth that made him gasp. Veins bulged, darkened, thickened beneath the skin. Flesh swelled grotesquely, lengthening, widening. Ten inches. Twelve. Fourteen. The head flushed angry purple-black, slit flaring wide, a single bead of liquid gold weeping from the tip and sizzling where it touched the sheets.
David stared down at the monster jutting from his groin, pulse roaring in his ears.
Lilyth (because that was her name, whispered into his skull like a brand) licked her lips with a tongue too long and too black.
"Much better."
She pushed him flat with one hand between his pecs. Climbed astride in one liquid motion, wings flaring wide for balance. The heat rolling off her cunt was furnace-hot, wet, impossibly slick. When she sank down, the stretch was immediate, obscene, impossible.
Fourteen inches disappeared into infernal flesh like it had always belonged there.
David screamed.
Lilyth laughed, low and delighted, and began to ride.
Slow at first (long, grinding strokes that dragged every burning vein across velvet walls that clenched and rippled like a living thing). Her hands braced on his chest, claws pricking skin without breaking it. Golden jewelry swung between her breasts, catching the moonlight in molten flashes.
Then faster.
Harder.
The bed frame cracked. The marble floor beneath them spider-webbed from the force of her downward slams. Golden precum and black ichor sprayed in arcs, hissing where they landed, eating tiny craters into the stone.
Her tail (long, sinuous, ending in a spade) snaked around his throat, tightening just enough to make the world spark at the edges. Breasts (huge, perfect, capped with golden filigree shields that glinted like eyes) bounced inches from his face. He could feel the claws on her wing joints digging into the headboard for leverage as she slammed down again and again, taking him to the root every time.
Minutes bled into hours. Or maybe seconds. Time liquefied.
He came the first time with a sound that wasn't human (thick, endless ropes of molten gold flooding her so hard her belly distended visibly, the outline of his cock visible beneath porcelain skin). She didn't stop. Kept riding through the aftershocks, milking him until his balls ached and refilled with liquid fire. Second orgasm. Third. Fourth. By the sixth he was sobbing, hips jerking helplessly, cock raw and oversensitive but still iron-hard inside her, still pumping.
Lilyth leaned down, licked a tear from his cheek with that too-long tongue, and whispered against his lips.
"This is only night one, love. Tomorrow another comes. And another. Every midnight until the heat death of the universe… or until you beg me to stop."
She kissed him then (soft, almost tender) while her hips snapped down one final time and she came with a silent scream, wings flaring wide enough to blot out the moon, tail squeezing his throat until stars exploded behind his eyes. Her cunt clamped down so hard he saw white, felt another impossible load tear out of him, painting her insides gold.
When the clock hit 5:59 a.m., she rose off him in a single liquid motion. His cock slapped wetly against his stomach, still fourteen inches, still dripping, still impossibly hard. A thick strand of mixed fluids connected them for a heartbeat before snapping.
Lilyth stepped backward through the broken window. The glass shards fell into place behind her, sealing without a crack, as if nothing had happened.
"Sleep well, David," she called, voice already fading into the wind. "You'll need your strength."
The bedroom was silent except for his ragged breathing and the slow drip-drip-drip of gold-black fluids onto Italian marble that would never quite scrub clean.
David lay there, chest heaving, every muscle trembling, cock throbbing against his abs like a separate heartbeat.
He should have been terrified.
Instead, for one traitorous second (buried under the pain and the aftershocks), he couldn't wait for tomorrow night.