6. Constance

Constance

Years had passed, but the melancholy remained.

"Don't tell me you miss that fucking brat," Cain growled as he expelled smoke.

Constance waved the tendrils away. She sighed and looked down at her hands, clenching and unclenching before shaking them out. It was a recent habit that drove Cain mad.

He was by her side for centuries, hidden from Lucifer. Recently, he grew ever colder and left her to fend for herself. In the dark recesses of her mind, she took stock of what had become of her life as her ambitions led her to unspeakable acts.

Maternal instinct came naturally to some even though they were childless. Her sister, for example, had a gentle nature and was a nurturer. Though Constance was older, Sadie continually took care of her every need. How much of that was out of love versus being forced into the role because of their birth order? She never thought what might've happened if their roles were reversed and she was the second born.

Constance never wanted children. Each time she saw a pink-cheeked squalling infant, her first instinct was to smother or drown it in the creek, not nurse it. It seemed best that she flowered late, and even then her cycles led the elderly women in the village to call her barren. Meanwhile, they looked at Sadie's curves with approval, saying that her hips were perfect for bearing children.

Envy overwhelmed her in the moments when Sadie was praised over her. She always dressed like a lady born into society, even though she was a peasant. Her lessons lasted for hours while her sister played with other children. She would stand and sit up straight with her hands politely folded. When she spoke, she enunciated perfectly, reciting poetry from memory, even composing her own. She tried so hard to be perfect, her anxiety became crippling.

When Sadie was chosen as the Winter Maiden, everything she'd worked for came crumbling down. Her sister stole her birthright and needed to pay. Constance bargained her soul to Cain to take her sister's place, but Lucifer's curse upon her changed things. The only way for her to seek mortality was through a bloody sacrifice.

When Sadie's womb had ripened, Cain instructed her to cut the baby out. She had to tear its beating heart from its body with a blade forged in Hell and soaked with its mother's blood. Constance's hands moved deftly while her sister cried.

She saw the power of a mother's love as Sadie begged, not for her own life but that of her child while Constance hadn't flinched.

When Lucifer approached, Constance dropped the blade. Her own instincts had kicked in and she immediately ran to the creek with the wailing newborn, intent on drowning it. The vile little creature had a survival instinct that no human baby was capable of.

Constance bore the scar on her wrist from the wretched beast's scalding tail. It cut deep into her skin with its barbed tip, hell-bent on clinging to life as hard as it clung to her aunt.

Those first few days had passed in a blur as Constance wrapped the newborn within her cloak, allowing her to rest her tiny head against her breast.

It wasn't nature, but nurture that turned Constance into a mother. The little demoness suckled at Constance's breast, piercing her with tiny razor-sharp teeth. She was sustained by drinking blood, not milk, as a parasite from a host.

Just thinking of the words of the decrepit old oracle caused a shiver to run down Constance's spine. The woman's cloudy eyes couldn't see, yet she saw that Constance had become a mother.

It pained her to give the child to the oracle. She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to make it bleed as she helplessly watched while the knotty-knuckled woman carved into the baby's back. Cain remained stoic as the scene unfolded.

The old woman summoned a winged creature to take the child away, and with it, the only piece of Constance's heart that was human withered like a husk, leaving a black hole behind.

Her biological clock began ticking and Constance wanted to conceive a child. Not one for sacrifice, but to experience motherhood that was her own. However, her cursed womb would never quicken.

Every time she fucked a man and he spilled his sperm within her, his life force was drained. She became a creature lower than a she-demon. The only way to sustain her life was by taking the life of innocents.

Her need was constant as a sexual being. She had worked for years as a prostitute, selling her body to random men. The clientele she worked with had changed, and she now worked as a highly paid escort.

With a drink in hand, Constance stealthily surveyed those around her. She swept her knife-straight, blonde hair off her shoulder and followed the movement with her eyes. Man or woman didn't matter that night. She had no clients lined up, so she was hunting prey.

The tangible presence of greed and corruption surrounded her, trapped her like a thick pulsing ball. But it was the purity in some which made her sick. A quick fuck to suck the pulsating darkness was the perfect snack, but snuffing out good was orgasmic.

Her eyes narrowed on a young couple canoodling in the corner. Constance carefully raised the glass to her lips and sipped daintily like the other classy women around her. She could drink it down in a single gulp as it was tasteless to her, but perception mattered.

She was stuck in a half life, living like a exploitative organism leeching off the life force of others. Constance would give anything to feel alive again. Unfortunately, Lucifer's blasphemous promise had come to fruition.

As the woman laughed coyly at her date, Constance's grip tightened around the glass, causing it to crack. She gasped and dropped it, watching it shatter on the ground.

"I'm sorry," she said quickly, feigning distress.

Many people around her stared at the shattered glass and pool of liquid below her barstool, but not a single person cared enough to help her. She lifted her eyes to those of the young man, biting her lip and batting her eyelashes.

He unwrapped himself from his date and said something that couldn't be overheard across the distance. The girl frowned but nodded. He hurried over to where Constance sat on her barstool.

"Are you all right?" he asked.

"I don't know what happened. The glass just slipped from my hands. I'm afraid to step down and slip." It sickened her to play the damsel act, but it was the easiest way to lure the pure prey.

He held out his hand, and Constance smiled. She took his hand and slipped off the barstool. She leaned on him with more weight than was necessary, pushing her scantily clad breasts against his arm.

"Would you like to sit with us?"

Constance lifted her blue eyes to his date's. The girl scowled, but it didn't shift her aura.

"I'd like to go home. Would you wait outside with me until my ride arrives?"

The man, whose name Constance didn't retain waved his girlfriend over, and the three of them walked out together. The girl kept giving her side eye, and it was easy enough to discern why. Souls like her were right to be wary. But it didn't matter, neither of them would survive the night.

She wore black leggings and a long tunic top, while Constance was in a metallic fuchsia minidress with strategic cutouts. They both had blonde hair, but Constance's was sleek. She was waxed and polished while the girl looked like the preverbal girl next door.

Constance was used to looking down on those around her, only now she was cognizant of doing so. She saw a piece of her sister in each woman who died at her hand.

Leaning closer to the man, she whispered in his ear, "Take me into the alley."

She kissed his neck with her pheromone-poisoned lips and stroked his chest. It wasn't long before his eyes glazed over while Constance continued whispering in his ear. He led them past the row of ride-shares, alongside the brick exterior.

"Marshall?" his girlfriend asked. "Where are you going?"

The dark alley behind the bar stunk like rotting garbage from the refuse bin. It wasn't a place that anyone would call sexy, but it suited Constance's needs more than any other location.

"Marshall?" The girl's voice wavered as they retreated further away from relative safety. "I think we should go back."

She attempted to yank him free from Constance's grasp, but he just stared blankly ahead, no longer there. The seductress had ensnared him in her deadly web.

"Don't be afraid," Constance purred. "Your death will be quick."

The girl opened her mouth to scream, but Constance pounced on her in an instant, knocking her against the wall hard enough she fell unconscious. A smear of blood was left on the dirty brick where her head hit. Her boyfriend, who would normally run to her aid, just stood with his shoulders slumped.

Constance turned back to him studying his features. His body was toned, like an athlete, not that physique mattered when she chose her prey. Old or young. Fat or fit. Male or female. None of it mattered as much as the corruptness of their souls.

"Marshall? Hmm…" She thought it was a good name. "Undo your pants and pull your cock out."

Constance stepped back as he wordlessly obeyed. His movements were stiff, almost zombie-like. Inside, he could have complete awareness of his situation and screaming for her to stop. But no matter the strength of will, there had never been someone to fight through the poison. Feelings or consent didn't matter to Constance, she stripped them away.

She didn't require romance or foreplay as she was always willing to go. She shimmied her skirt up around her waist and wrapped her leg around Marshall's waist. He was hard in a few strokes of his cock as she whispered naughty scenarios in his ear.

Once he was hard, she guided him to her entrance. He stood motionless like a sex doll—the only part she needed responded, twitching in her hand. Constance moved her hips, fucking herself as she would with a dildo mounted to the wall.

His face became pale and his posture slumped as his life force slowly drained. Constance threw him to the ground and mounted him. Sex was a constant necessity, though orgasms were rare. She rode him with total abandon, grinding her clit against the base of his penis with every twerk of her hips and lowering the top of her slinky dress and played with her nipples.

She was so close to achieving her goal when she heard a sound—part gasp, and part groan—behind her. The girlfriend regained consciousness, and Constance turned to face her. A cloying grin crossed her face as she picked her rhythm.

"Stop," the girl wheezed.

"I can't," Constance replied in all honesty. "But you can keep watching."

Tears streamed down the girl's face when Constance moaned.

"You don't have to like the fact that someone else is riding his cock. It's sex; pure and simple. He has what I need. And soon after he's gone, you will follow. Maybe you'll meet again in Hell someday."

To a certain extent, Constance truly wished that for them. She was living her version of hell on Earth, and it wouldn't change. Once, a man she'd picked up randomly attempted to kill her by strangulation by wrapping piano wire around her neck. She gurgled and spit as her hyoid was broken and he dropped her body on the ground.

Eventually, she came to, unable to speak for a week as her body mended itself. The burn from the wire and broken capillaries in her eyes eventually healed, unlike her wrist. That's when she realized that only those with powers from hell could cause harm to her body.

She asked Cain in desperation to kill her once she realized this fact. But he only laughed at her pain. He would never care about her. She realized that not only had she shunned and killed her sister, Sadie was the only one who showed her unconditional love.

Her mother led her around like a show pony. Look at my daughter, isn't she gorgeous? Look at my daughter, she's worthy of a smart match.

Constance went through a major depressive episode that spanned centuries. There wasn't a vice that could take away her pain longer than a moment. So she took a dagger and began slitting her wrists, watching the blood run down her arms and drip from her fingertips onto the white tile of her bathroom. She continued until every floor in her home was consecrated.

Once, she ran naked and screaming in the middle of a crowd. Women screamed and pulled their children close, covering their eyes.

"Don't you see," she hissed. "Demons are real! They exist around you, ready to steal your souls. Be careful what you wish for or you'll live be cursed for eternity like me."

Of course, they didn't take her seriously. She sounded like some Doomsday loon. A couple of people approached her to grab her, intending to lock her up. That's when she pulled her arm, which had been hidden behind her back. She held a pistol and placed the muzzle against her temple.

"I'm ready," she screamed. "I couldn't save myself. Can HE save me?"

She laughed hysterically as she pulled the trigger.

Constance eventually woke up in the hospital and discovered a year had passed. She was ravenous at that point and killed the nurse in the room, followed by every person on life support in the long-term care unit.

Even if she were doomed to spend eternity in Hell, it seemed like a better fate than living at that point. Constance had thrown herself off a 15-story building and survived without so much as a scratch.

Climax hit as Marshall's life force drained. His girlfriend erupted in mournful sobs and crawled to his lifeless body.

"What did you do to him? Why did you choose him? He was a good person!"

No answer would appease the young woman. Constance could spare her life and take one step toward her redemption. Instead, she picked up a sizable chunk of concrete that had broken beneath the dumpster.

"Say your goodbyes to Marshall."

That was the only comfort she could offer the girl as she struck her in the back of the head.