Adase was little more than a rest stop on the holy road to the king’s seat in Saara. A backwater. A boil on the ass of the world. But Kia’na needed somewhere to plant some roots for a while and Adase fit the criteria. Small and off the beaten path enough to be beneath notice but close enough to civilization for the residents to not try and immediately murder travelers who happened upon the place. Kia’na went with an approach that worked: her widow-healer routine.
“My husband was killed in the cloud wars. Poor Buni,” she’d told the hard-eyed people who had confronted her when she passed through the village gate, “And the King paid none of his life's price for his sacrifice.”
They’d stared at her up and down, taking in her womanly curves and lush, dark locs decorated with glass beads, fearing for ways this beautiful newcomer would draw unwanted attention. Kia’na dealt her final hand. “If there’s any way I can work to feed myself, I’ll do it. I’m possessed of a few of the Mother’s healing arts.”
Her luck: their healer, an old woman who they claimed smelled like seaweed had recently passed, and her apprentice had abandoned the village for the city. Young people these days. Kia’na’s gambit had worked. Adase brought her on as their new healer, giving her a cot in a small hut behind the village’s grain storage.
After a season of sleeping in a barn, being paid in meals, and treating everyday accidental wounds and breaks, Adase’s chief, the Nguzo, took ill with the foul-child sickness. In less than a week, Kia’na’s teas and salves had him right and plump again, even taking some of the white out of his hair and beard. After the Nguzo recovered, he ordered the men of the village to build a Kia’na a house at the edge of the city. Just a little one-room, packed floor domicile for a strange widow. Kia’na only had one request: shelves.
In the six and a half years since she’d touched down in Adase, Kia’na had made the space her own, cultivating a garden full of healing herbs and flowers that she could sell. One of the village’s young men, Jayse, had a crush on her and convinced his friends to put a fence up around her garden. She gave him a chaste pat on the head as a reward.
Kia’na asked the people of Adase never to spread word of her, for the King was searching for her for speaking ill against his name and his father’s name in reporting his cowardice in conducting holy crusades against his own people, a story she hoped would endear the townspeople to her. And for a while, it seemed like it worked. Over the years she made her name as the town’s healer, treating their routine injuries and hurts. She worked hard to pay special attention to the needs of the women, hoping to be accepted into the village’s sisterhood. But aside from sympathetic looks and the occasional secret gift, for the most part, the wives and daughters kept themselves separate from her.
Their husbands, however, paid close attention to her movements, and to the inescapable curves beneath the simple robes she wore. Kia’na eventually made one friend: Salim, the city born teacher who brought holy symbols and ancient books to the village every quarter moon to teach the kids the skills they would need as the city spilled over its bounds and overtook small villages like theirs.
For six and a half years, she eked out a good, safe life. And in one day, it all went to shit.
“Six years and doesn’t look any older,” Kia’na heard Mapela whisper to her cronies in the village circle market. “A Witch. Only witches do that.”
Kia’na’s heart dropped. Witch accusations were serious. She’d come to the market with a basket full of yellow flowers and spreaded them out on a blanket, hoping to sell a few. But as she overheard Mapela’s poisonous whisper, she began to quietly gather them up.
“She’s gotten a foothold here,” Mapela continued. “Maybe she even hopes to topple the Nguzo? Make Adase her own, with us slaves to a witch!”
Kia’na lifted her basket and made her way home. She avoided the market for a few days after that. Salim still came by to visit and have coffee but other than him, she had no visitors or patients. Not even the decrepit elders who came by pretending to be hurt so that she would touch their shriveled bodies. This was troubling.
“Salim,” Kia’na said, fanning herself. The two were sitting at the edge of her garden, wishing the spring heat and the insects away and sipping coffee. “How are things in the village?”
Salim glanced at her from the corner of his eye, then looked away. He had never been good at hiding his feelings. That in part is why she had befriended him.
“There’s talk, healer.” He said in his soft voice with its cityborne accent. “Mapela and her clique. They’re talking around the village about you being a witch, not a healer. Said they sent a messenger to ask around about a woman that looked like you who never got older. He’s brought back reports of you from two other villages. They say the woman doesn’t look exactly like you, but close enough.”
“Such a stupid rumor.”
Salim whirled on her. “But is it, Kia’na? Is it a rumor? We’ve been friends for years now. Do you think you’re the only person who is being affected by this?”
“Surely they haven’t…”
“Most have stopped sending their children to me, yes. I still have a couple brave souls attending, but…” he shook his head, let it drop. “You know that the village circle is in a few days. They plan to speak out against you. You need to be there to defend yourself.”
Kia’na rose, offended. “I don’t intend to honor these accusations with a response.”
“Then the Nguzo will have you killed,” Salim said simply. “Witchcraft is a very serious crime, as you know. He doesn’t want to take chances that there is a witch living among them, stealing their babies’ souls and cursing them with only the Prophet knows what else.”
“That is absurd,” Kia’na said, sucking her teeth.
“I used my status to ask the Nguzo to give you a chance to defend yourself,” Salim stood as well, staring into Kia’na’s eyes. “The Nguzo has moved the circle to tomorrow. I am being sent back to the capital the day after. Banished from Adase for
good. Do not waste my sacrifice, my friend. Do not make me have to mourn you…or give me time to wonder that Mapela might be right.”
Salim drained his coffee and left. The exchange had tired Kia’na. She went immediately to a small private pool a short walk away from her small house to wash herself. There she stood naked, under the light of the rising moon, and contemplated, letting the spirits of the night play around her body.
The contemplation put her in a soft, dreamlike state. Her essence diffused out of the top of her head, spreading her awareness out over the village. The tang of anxiety was in the air. There was much energy, much scurrying. Many whispered conversations. Kia’na’s heart thumped in her chest, but not out of fear. The biggest problem that she faced, one that she couldn’t quite figure out how to navigate, was that Mapela and her goons were absolutely right.
The story was nothing special. Her home village had been burned down because of a dispute over gold dust. Kia’na—she’d had a different name before—had escaped the violence while her family died around her. She walked through the bush for days until a little wooden man appeared in front of her. She followed him through the bush, stopping where he pointed to drink water from hidden springs or eat fruit that hung low from the trees. After a full day of walking, she came upon a cave. A bright white dress lay drying on a straw mat. The witch never told Kia’na her name, not for all those years. Nor had she told Kia’na what her given name meant. Or who she originally belonged to.
Witch woman, a lonely, mean soul, taught Kia’na everything she knew of the arts acquired from the worlds within and aside their own.
Healing. Manifestation. Divination. Herbology. Pyromancy. Evocation. Starwalking. Tongues.
And now Kia’na was a witch woman.
Kia’na had no idea how much time had passed when she came back to her body, but she was grateful that it was night when she emerged. She breathed the darkness deeply before settling on a solution. As with all things, the true answers were beyond her understanding. Her one-room house was blue against the moonlight, but a warm yellow light emanated from inside where she’d left her candles lit. Still nude, she went inside, secured the multicolored linen flap that hung over her door, a relic of
privacy for her patients. She brushed and cleared her floor. Rubbed blessed oil over her soft brown skin, smoothing every curve and giving her skin a luster in the gauzy night. Donned a stark white dress, made of a thin, nearly sheer weave. The curve of her hips, her thighs, her luscious breasts and hard nipples were visible through the fabric.
Kia’na drew forth the items she would need for summoning: a white candle on her altar. Seven neat splashes of wine in her ancestral cups. One for the Mother. One for the Widow. One for the Huntress. One for the Lover. One for the Lonely. One for the Girlchild. And one for the Ancestor. She lit her candle and knelt in prayer, calling upon the generational connection of her ancestors to pull a spirit from the esoteric plane to stand before her, bound to her will and unable to harm her or even move, so long as she kept control of herself.
He stepped slowly from the whirling smoke, his skin a perfect dark and depthless mixture of blue, brown, and black. Otherworldly glowing gold patterns dappled and swirled on his elbows, collarbones, and neck. Even though he was from the spiritual plane she couldn’t help but admire his sculpted jaw, full lips, dark eyes flecked with golden fire, and long, white dreadlocks spiraling down his lean, well muscled back. There was an air of divinity to the upturn of his nose. And most compelling of all, a dark, fleshy penis hung heavy between his legs.
“I am Cain,” he said, many voices layered in his greeting. “I have been sought out for a pact.”
“I am the widow Kia’na. You must help me.”
“I have heard of you,” Cain said, smiling. “You remember the price?”
Kia’na licked her lips and nodded. “I’ve never had a problem paying the cost.”
Cain’s smile grew even more wicked. “You are somewhat of a legend among us, Widow. They say your mouth is even more pleasurable than the second heaven above the earth, simply because of how much you enjoy the act.”
Kia’na raised an eyebrow but didn’t rise to the bait. “If I’m a legend then you know not to test me. Surely you all discuss how many of your souls I’ve snatched and kept for my own?”
Cain bowed his head. “I have been called to assist.”
“I have been living among the good people of Adase for many moons,” Kia’na said. She was very aware of Cain’s hungry eyes on her supple brown thighs as she rose to her feet in front of him. “I came here intending to be a healer, but I will not be allowed to live as one without confronting my hidden self. This shows me that the path of humanity isn’t worth the cost.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Cain said, standing stoically. Kia’na let her eyes travel the length of his sex. “I’ve only laid with humans, never lived in their skin. Do you want me to kill these humans that trouble you so?”
“Not kill,” Kia’na said. “Use your power to clear their memories. Make everyone here a clean slate.”
Cain’s perfect eyes glinted with shock. “Widow, the price for that will be much more than your mouth. I will need…all of you for that.”
Kia’na leveled hungry eyes at the spirit. “And you shall have me.”
At the invitation Cain was on her in a blink, his hand hot around her throat. He hovered above her, let his long, black tongue slither over her neck.
“I intend to wring you dry,” the spirit said, and Kia’na, despite herself, shivered.
The spirits’s kisses were not just flesh, not just lips meeting lips. He was devouring her, his mouth as hot as a furnace yet as cool as a calm spring. This part was the most delicious, the sensation of the spiritual plane on his breath, flowing across her skin and spreading waves of her pleasure across realms. As he lifted her up bodily to his mouth and grasped her ass in his otherworldly grip, she opened her eyes and found herself halfway into the next world…everything in her home was covered in hazy gray shadows. His tongue on her throat felt like the most beautiful threat. As his mouth closed on her nipple, he grasped her hips and made her feel the sensation of his long dark tongue licking slick rings around her clit, jolting her.
“Ohhhh,” Kia’na’s moan came from deep in her stomach.
Cain chuckled and ran his hands over her frame, grasped her, clutched her, let his claws pierce her skin.
Everywhere the spirit’s hands touched, Kia’na felt invisible lips devouring her with ravenous kisses.
Cain sat her back on the ground, leaving her prone, and grasped Kia’na’s head, slid his strong demonic length between her lips and began pumping himself not gently into her mouth, filling her throat.
Kia’na, disoriented, grasped the base of the spirit’s iridescent purple-black member, which was nearly as long as her forearm, and slurped her wet tongue over the tip.
The spirit bucked his hips and groaned.
Kia’na leaned into her power, and took the entire length into her mouth. Let it slide down her throat, opening it more to receive him all the way.
“Yessss, widow,” the spirit hissed, betraying its pleasure to her.
With that one moan, Kia’na knew she could take this spirit for her own as well, add it to her collection.
She reached up, squeezed its engorged testicles while she stroked its dick with her throat. Using the techniques of the Lover, she gawked and slurped and using both hands, stroked the spirit until it began to glow from its middle and throw its head back in pleasure.
Outside, she could hear Adase’s criers calling the townsfolk to the circle, calling her her condemnation or worse, exile.
Their haunting chant filled the air: Bring all your worries to the circle, stories go around until we’re whole again.
Thinking about Adase’s judgment, Kia’na allowed her focus to slip, forgetting her entanglement with Cain was more than life or death.
The spirit multiplied his essence, manifesting in five different bodies, ten pairs of gripping hands, five slick and heavy sex organs. Cain’s dopplegangers grasped her arms, her legs, her ankles, opened her legs wide and held her aloft so she couldn’t gain her footing.
Cain, the original, approached, stroking his sex with a dark rhythm.
“You are mine now, Widow. Once this favor is done, I own you.”
Hot desire erupted in Kia’na’s middle at the sight of the muscular spirit, his skin shining deep black, his long tongue exploring between her legs, slipping inside her, tasting between her cheeks, tickling the insides of her thighs.
Cain rubbed the tip of his penis over her throbbing center and Kia’na reacted as if he’d touched her with a white-hot brand, fire rippling all over her body.
In the village, the circle began, and she strained to hear over the rush of pleasure in her ears.
“The witch does not age! Does not wither!” This was one of the market-wives.
“She steals our husbands and drains their seed for wicked experiments!”
She recognized Mapela’s venomous curses. “She should be banished! Sent back to the King and his nest of vipers!”
Salim spoke. “But she has done good for you also. She healed the Nguzo! Surely you wouldn’t cast her out.”
“Be silent, boy.” the Nguzo spoke. “You think it is a difficult thing to heal a man from a sickness delivered by one’s own hand?”
“The witch woman is clever,” Mapela broke in, “but she will not have victory over us, for we are a righteous people.”
Cain slid himself into the very center of Kia’na’s being, and the world around her went dark. He pulled out to the tip and drove in again, searing her.
She couldn’t move because Cain’s doppelgängers held her aloft by wrists and elbows. She could only hang and try to resist the demon riding her body, his claws drawing pinpricks of blood from where he grasped her hips, pumping her, stretching her and making her flood from the length and strength of his stroke.
By the Lover, she felt the wave of pleasure cresting, with each stroke her womanhood gushed and her moans filled the night, and it was so hard not to release all over him as he thrust himself into her with animal ferocity.
Kia’na’s womanhood had tested and bested many a demon, and captured their souls to fuel her arcane power. But Cain was as strong a demon as she had faced, his being positively laden with spiritual power.
While she wrestled on the knife edge of fear and pleasure, the circle went on outside.
But Cain’s grip remained iron on her arms and legs, the tongues lapping her skin, touching the exact correct spots, had her breath hissing from the back of her throat, her body tensing and flexing as she fought back the inevitable release. And if she did release, if she let her feminine energy flow from her womb, Cain would slurp it between those perfect black lips and own her entire being, body, mind and soul.
“Nnnnnn,” Kia’na slurred her tongue, dragging her inexorably toward orgasm, “Nnnn—NO!”
Warm, liquid pleasure flowed through Kia’na’s veins. The greatest pleasure she had ever known in her life, better than any lover’s kiss, better than any soft caress, seeking tongue, or lively fingers. She felt afloat in a still pond of shimmering liquid, and each pulse sent ripples through the pond that vibrated through her entire body. Her eyes washed over, from the outside to the center, in the purest gold.
“NO!” Kia’na shouted, wresting control of her pleasure back to herself, letting her orgasmic fluid squirt out into the world, purifying all before her with the love of the Mother, the lash of the Huntress, and the lust of the Lover.
A pure wave of erotic power flowed from her, releasing her power as pure pulsating waves of gold and white.
Cain duplicates all, spontaneously, ejaculated, blowing hot demonic loads all over Kia’na’s flesh. And as their seed soaked her skin, so too did the fragments of soul that Cain had given them became part of Kia’na, and so too did their power, causing them to vanish.
The blowback of the loss of his soul fragments sent Cain stumbling backward, clutching his chest.
Kia’na, still nude, landed catlike on her feet and pounced on the reeling demon. She locked her arms around his neck, her legs around his middle, and slowly, torturously, slid her hot, creamy sheath down the length of his demonic shaft.
Cain howled, a shuddering, otherworldly noise that announced the eruption of his sensitive penis.
Kia’na gave him no quarter, grinding her hips and squeezing herself around him, gripping all of him and pulling out each droplet of demonic fluid from his heaving balls.
“Agh,” The demon cried as she used her hips and womanhood to draw what remained of his life essence inside of herself. As she used her thumb and forefinger to pinch his nipples, the demon willingly thrust himself into her, seeming to accept his fate.
Kia’na stroked Cain’s face gently as she laid his nearly empty form down on her dirt floor. “You fought well, Demon. Now with your dying breath, make my wish reality.”
“So you say,” Cain wheezed, pouring the last of his will into his dying breath, which took the form of a small puff of sparkling golden dust.
The cloud flew and whirled before Kia’na’s face before exploding outward into a billowing cloud of golden smoke and ash. Kia’na was blown backward by the force of it, and a barely perceptible wave of force from the explosion rippled through Adase, washing over the villagers assembled in the circle.
“Here is what we must do,” The Nguzo said. “We must run this evil from our city. We must gather our courage and our weapons and move quickly to…uh…ahem. What were we talking about again here?
Why are you all gathered around the circle this way? What is going on?”
“Nguzo, what madness is this you speak about?” Mapela cried. “My mind…I cannot think? Oh Gods, what is happening?”
Kia’na, battered and bruised by the last of Cain’s ire, heard the commotion in Adase’s circle, and chuckled to herself. Her work was done. She took some time to sweep the dust that had once been cain into a neat pile, then sprinkle some dust from that pile, along with a few choice ingredients from her shelves, in front of her doorway and along the outside of her house, forming a spiritual barrier that would protect her from interlopers.
A dull pain throbbed in her head. She went to her looking-glass to check the extent of the damage, but when she looked at her reflection, only the walls behind her showed in the mirror. She looked down at her hands, and saw them there, but when she held them in front of the mirror they didn’t show.
“Clever devil,” Kia’na hissed, grateful that her wards had worked all the same and she didn’t end up banished to the spiritual realm, or worse.
Cain had as his last act in carrying out her wish before being banished back to the spiritual plane, had taken her reflection with him, making sure that the witch woman would no longer be bothered by anyone, not even her own vision of herself.
