Chapter 22: Manifest Destiny

Penn awoke in the darkness of the cave. He knew that he had been unconscious for a long time. But how long? There was no natural light in this place. He might have been unconscious for an hour, or a day. Who could know? Maybe a thousand years had passed!

The cave was quiet, and Penn thought it deserted.

"Penn, my love. I am glad you are awake."

It was not Pamela who spoke.

"I have been waiting for a long time to feel you, to really feel you, Penn. It is a memory I shall treasure forever. You are a beautiful boy, Penn, and I am so looking forward to meeting your children."

Penn pulled himself upright, and stretched.

He felt magnificent. He had never felt so strong, so healthy, so happy, in all of his life.

Penn could see now, could see the walls of the alcove in which he found himself. They were adorned with the physical manifestation of Lilith, her pink, ever-changing flesh, and she glowed with an eerie light.

Jane was standing there, in the clothes she wanted to wear for him on that summer afternoon, so many months ago, when she had been taken. It was a summer dress, white, and light, and she wore her open-toed sandals, simple, and elegant.

Penn realised then how much he had missed her.

She simply smiled, and held out her arms.

Penn embraced her, and she still felt like Jane, she still smelled like Jane, and she was still the one true love of his life. He knew that he was finally home. Madeleine, Madeleine ... what was Madeleine to him? He simply did not know, but he could not deny that there was a hint of melancholy in his reunion.

"Come, Penn, let me show you around."

They left the alcove, holding hands, and Penn was in awe at what he saw. They were in a great cathedral of a cave, and Lilith had extended herself in glowing rivers over its walls.

Mighty stalactites descended from the ceiling, and Lilith coiled around them, and had obviously been a part of them since they were formed, as she had trained them into baroque shapes, all twists, and curlicues, and fiery colours.

She flowed in great trails over the floor, and Penn was surprised the first time he stepped on her. She was fleshy, and, as he stooped to examine her, warm, and moist. She throbbed gently, and dark liquids appeared to be contained within her gentle glow, moving sluggishly.

The cave was ragged, and there were many nooks and crannies.

Penn saw his Aunty Helen first.

She was tucked into a depression in the wall. She was standing, leaning against the wall of her enclosure. Pink veins were trailed up her legs, around her waist, up her chest and her back. Their moisture was smeared across her skin, and their tips caressed her face, and pulsed, ever so slightly, with Helen's evident heartbeat, and with every breath she was still, mercifully, taking.

Jane moved beside Penn, and reached down to Helen's hips.

"Look, she's attached".

A cluster of tendrils, wrapped around Helen's hips, disappeared between her legs. Jane stroked them gently, and pulled at them, and they resisted, immediately inching back after each attempt to pull them back. Helen parted her legs, gave a gentle sigh, and her back arched. Her eyes opened in sleepy pleasure, and she smiled as she saw Penn, then they closed as the veins pulsed more strongly, and she slumped, the smile becoming one of relief.

Jane regarded him curiously, then she languidly reached into her shift, and pulled out a pendulous breast.

"She's food now", she stated simply, and, as she held her breast, she began to let down, and white droplets of milk pulsed from her nipple. The veins pulsed more strongly into Helen, and she tilted her head back, arched her back, and the veins supported her as she lifted her feet from the ground.

"Tasty, delicious, flesh, she will last many years, feeding us all, feeling only pleasure",

"Come here, boyfriend."

Jane offered her breast, and pulled Penn to herself. He was forced to suckle.

As he drew the warm milk into his mouth, her hands reached behind him, and stroked his scalp, and stroked his hair.

Along with the rich, warm, milk, images arose, unbidden, into his mind.

Everything that was Helen, her fine intelligence, her knowledge of history, her love for her Penn and Dee, her love of Pamela, her soft skin, her smell, seemed to swirl into Penn along with the milk. It was delicious, feeling this close to someone, and he could feel her pleasure, her joy, her bounteous thrusting against the tentacle which drew from her.

Jane spurted milk into his mouth as Helen cried out, her back arched in orgasm. Penn swallowed, and detached, and gazed at Helen's form. Her muscles were taut, and her mouth stayed open in a rictus of pleasure, unable to move, eyes unseeing, the tentacles which held her pulled taut.

"This is what you are to us, my love. You are food, and pleasure, and we will look after you. Helen is content now, we have taken her, she has her heaven in us."

The veins were still holding her aloft and spread. Their tips were many, and each gently caressed a part of her body, leaving sticky secretions, and her thighs were slippery with her own. A strange feeling passed up his spine. Penn knew that he should be feeling horrified at the state of his beloved aunt, but he could not. Her imprisoned form inspired strong feelings in him, yes, but they were of love, of hunger, of lust. He looked upon his Aunt as Jane had described: she was delicious, and he wanted to taste more of her.

The cave was full of that Lilith's strange radiation. He had felt it before, while he had been protected, in the tiny antechamber of the cave with Tsanja. Without his charm, and with the tonnes of flesh which surrounded him, it was like standing in the sun on a summer's day.

Nobody could resist pleasure here. It shone down from all of the walls, and warmed his body, and it would be so simple just to lean into a wall and let oneself be taken. Penn roused himself from his short reverie.

Who else was in here? He shifted his gaze from Helen's forlorn form, and, leaving Jane, began to work his way around the cavern.

There were many depressions, and other paths leading from this main one. In each there was a figure, covered in those strange veins. All were naked, and all the veins pulsed with that same weird heartbeat.

He recognised many people from the village, and some of the older children from his year.

Jane led Penn into another alcove, and more shapes loomed in the darkness.

"Penn, always remember these poor souls."

"Spare a thought for those that have given up so much for my love. They have died for their loyalty to me, and I could not save them."

Eleven women rested against the walls of the cave, naked, held up by red streams of flesh. Their pale, crippled bodies were quiet now, and their faces at peace, their lips black, no longer vermilion. No heartbeat or breath interrupted their stillness.

"I have given them the only peace that was possible. Their souls, and their memories, reside within me. Only one remains of the Felthings which Hypatia brought to Gynt, and she has all of my tears, enough to save her sisters. It is only a matter of time now. All shall return to me, and I shall give them peace, and they shall live again as part of me. Life is pain, Penn, but love is eternal. My love is true, Penn, it takes all that is given, all that is not, but gives an eternity of pleasure in return.

"It is more than enough."

Jane led Penn by the hand into yet another cavern. Lilith was strong here, the space was twenty feet on a side, but she covered all the walls, all the floor, all the ceiling. Her tendrils rose up, questing, and stroked his flesh. They radiated warmth, they radiated lust. He found himself gazing at the pink, viscous flesh with desire, and felt the stirrings of love within him. So horrible, so ugly, so primitive, but he wanted, so much, just to lie down and become a part of her, to give his flesh to her, to bask in her pleasure and her company, to join his soul to those in Gynt who had already been taken, as he let himself be consumed.

There were dozens of knots against the walls, and Lilith's tendrils moved ceaselessly around them, like eels in a horses head, striking into them, withdrawing, and reforming to entwine them again. Jane reached over, and let the tendrils of flesh twine around her hand, and she let them slide up her arm, leaving trails of moisture on her skin.

Very carefully, she cleared away Lilith's slime from one of the little knots. Some kind of fleshy bag emerged, criss-crossed with veins, and and Lilith's light brightened around it. There was a shadow within, and it moved, startled by the light.

It was a baby, still tiny, but as it moved, its tiny fingers and toes made an impression against the placenta in which it was cradled.

"Your child, Penn, Tsanja's child. She is for the world, Penn, she is one of my gifts to the world above. Tsanja will love her, and feed her, and she will grow strong as she suckles on you, Penn, on you, and your very soul. She will grow into such a beauty, Penn, and you will be so proud of her."

"Sarah Fillis will be her name, although Tsanja does not yet know it."

Jane smoothed away two other knots, to reveal two more babies.

"Your child with Madeleine, Penn, and Dee's with James Beale. They will be called Eleanor Fillis, and Hypatia Beale. Madeleine and Dee gave them up to me just now.

"James is still alive, Penn, I have kept him whole, and he has healed over time.

"Three beautiful girls, Penn, they shall travel the land, they shall proselytise, they shall tell all of my mercy, in my love. They shall show how life should be lived, how one should prepare oneself for my tenderness, how one can avoid being taken by the Trinity."

As she moved her hand away, the tendrils covered the babies again, fondling them, and covering them.

"Be strong, Penn. I shall show you all."

Jane moved to another knot, and caressed it, and pulled it gently away from the wall.

"You must know that Lilith has been hurt very badly. She needed to recuperate, to build herself up again, to replace that which has been lost."

"She needs our flesh to replace her flesh, and virgin souls to replace her lost tears. There is only one left. I have kept her for you."

Jane reached into the knot, and squeezed it with both hands. A young woman's face emerged, angelic, sleepy, and bandaged above the eyes. It was Caley Finn. She had been in Penn's year. Penn liked her a lot, but she had been so very shy, and kept to herself, and her books. Jane stroked her face, and her eyes, clearing Lilith away from her, and bent down to kiss her on the cheek. Caley's eyes opened, and she yawned, and smiled at Jane. Caley turned towards Penn, and lifted her face towards him.

Jane had found the end of the bandages, and commenced removing them from Caley's head.

As the last layer was removed, Penn saw a red gleam.

A red stone was embedded in her forehead, and it was glowing, with a light only just visible in the darkened cavern. Caley stared into him with some intensity, as if she could see within him, as if she knew his soul.

Jane reached up to the wall, and Penn noticed that a red ichor, clear and sticky, like sap, was weeping from a crack. She picked at it, and a small chunk came away into her fingers. Jane rolled it into a ball, and it soon seemed like a passing imitation of one of the stones from the choker charms.

Jane reached up to Penn's forehead.

"Hold still, Penn, this won't hurt. I will show you one of Lilith's tears ... you might want to sit down."

Penn sat, and Jane sat next to him in the darkness. She looked at his face, and held the stone gently against his head.

"Lilith's tears concentrate the soul, Penn. They entrance it, and seduce it, and then gently tease it out of one's body. They suck out one's soul, and hold it in stone."

Penn felt the stone against his forehead, warm against the skin of Jane's fingers. That warmth spread throughout his body, and he felt himself thinking about the stone, directing his thoughts into the stone, focusing all of his energies on it. It was fascinating, he could not see it with his eyes, but he saw it with his mind, and found himself wondering what was inside. He wanted to see inside, to examine its curves, its colour, its warmth, and he tried to project himself inside it, just to know, just to feel what it was like.

He could not gain any purchase, he could only look in from without, and imagine how it would feel, letting himself slide into the stone and enjoy being held, to solve the mystery which it presented him, to fulfil the feelings it engendered in him.

"You won't be able to get in, Penn, only virgins may gain access. It takes a long time to lose oneself in its mysteries, one must solve them, push oneself into its comfort, work out how to fit within the infinity of its nooks and crannies.

"There is almost nothing left of her now, Penn."

Jane gently stroked Caley's face, and stroked the stone. Her eyes closed, and her breathing slowed. Her head tilted back, and she sighed, and the stone began to glow. In that darkened cave, it seemed quite bright, and as the sigh completed, Caley was still.

She breathed no more.

Jane plucked the stone out, and handed it to Penn.

"Penn, your school friends, all of the young virgins in Gynt, this is their fate. They have been given into the tears of Lilith. Lilith holds their souls inside her infinite mystery, and keeps them safe, and they, in turn, keep others safe as well."

"That is the true tragedy of the taking of the Healers, Penn. When the Healers are taken by the Felthings, the choker charms are burned. Those souls which I held in trust, in my tears, they are gone now. The Sisters burned all that they could find, and the poor souls in the tears were released into the air.

"There are things that lie in wait, Penn, to catch free souls, to strip them clean, so they may be reborn, naked, into the world. Souls are shaped by their memories, Penn, but that is all.

"At least the souls and memories of the Felthings are still intact, held inside their ruined bodies by the Felthing's hood, waiting to be returned to me.

"You may think me cruel, Penn, when I take people into myself, when I take them from the bosom of their families, when I imprison their immortal soul. But they never lose who they are, their memories live on, to be shared by all who come to me. I only feed on the flesh, Penn, and on the pleasures of the flesh.

"I have been in this world forever, Penn, living on the meat of the creatures that die in the caves, accumulating their meagre consciousness, their simple pleasures. As I grew larger, I began to lure my prey, to give them something for their flesh, and they would offer themselves to me, giving themselves up for my unique fulfilment. Even then, I was careful, taking only those at the end of their lives, helping the young ones grow strong.

"It was only when I tasted my first human child that my consciousness was able to regard itself. I began to hunger for a higher consciousness, for my own intelligence. Oh, how blissful it was to take a creature with so much potential for pleasure, with so much power to plan, and reason, and take its wonder for my own. But I grew wary. I knew that with this intelligence came so much danger for me.

"Even as I took more souls, I knew that I would have to limit myself, and that I would need to cement my role in the land, gain acceptance. You humans have so much faith in your own wills, in your individuality, in your own self importance, but I let you keep them, Penn. I gave the Healers a great gift so that they could help humanity flourish, and I gave them my tears so they could keep their freedom.