Part 1: Whispers in the Blood

Florida nights had a way of clinging to the skin—humid, electric, like something breathing just beyond the trees. Isabella Green lay stretched across her bed, one bare leg draped over the edge, the thin cotton sheet twisted between her thighs. The ceiling fan spun in lazy circles above her, stirring nothing but the ghosts of thoughts she didn’t understand. It was past midnight, the kind of hour when the world fell quiet, every noise amplified, if she moved too suddenly.

She hadn’t touched herself tonight. Something made her wait, something she didn’t understand.

Isabella blinked up at the ceiling, the sweat between her breasts cooling in the air-conditioned breeze that never quite reached the corners of her old family home. Her fingers hovered at the waistband of her sleep shorts, unsure. Her skin felt alive—but it wasn’t just her own arousal. It was something else. Something other.

That night, the first dream came.

It began with firelight—orange and low, flickering across stone walls. She wasn’t in her bed anymore. She was lying on a thick pile of furs, the scent of animal musk and perfumed oil thick in the air. The walls of the space flickered with torchlight, but it was the woman who held her gaze.

Seraphina.

Isabella didn’t know her name yet, but she knew her. Knew her scent, the shape of her mouth, the weight of her gaze. She was naked except for a thin collar of gold and garnet around her throat. Her breasts were full, nipples dark and tight in the heat. Her hips wide, her thighs powerful. Her skin gleamed with oil, her dark hair swept back and bound in a knot of braids.

She knelt between the spread thighs of a man—olive-skinned, muscled, his body marked in ritual ink. He lay panting, bound at the wrists, his cock hard and glistening with saliva.

Seraphina’s mouth closed around him, slow and deliberate. Isabella moaned aloud from the bed in her real world as the heat bloomed between her legs, her nipples brushing against the soft cotton of her tank top. She felt it, as if it were her lips wrapped around that cock, her tongue teasing the underside, her jaw aching with the stretch.

The dream went deeper.

Seraphina climbed atop him, slow as a cat, and eased herself down on his shaft. Her back arched as she took him inch by inch, eyes fluttering closed. Isabella’s fingers dug into her sheets, thighs clenching. She could feel the stretch, the fullness, the slick friction. Her breath hitched, and she whispered something unintelligible.

A second figure emerged from the shadows—another woman, pale and cloaked in gauze, her breasts exposed, her mouth painted red. She moved behind Seraphina and kissed her shoulders, her spine, before sliding her fingers between Seraphina’s cheeks, adding pressure where the man’s cock met her soaked cunt.

The three of them moved in rhythm. Seraphina rode with power, dominance, her moans rising like spells into the smoky air. Isabella felt every thrust, every breath, every wave of pleasure cresting toward orgasm.

And when it came, it wasn’t quiet.

Isabella cried out, her body arching off the bed as her orgasm tore through her—sharp, overwhelming, ancient. Her thighs trembled. Her tank top clung to her skin. Her mouth was open but no sound came anymore.

When her eyes opened, she was alone again.

Breathless. Slick with sweat. Sheets soaked beneath her.

The next morning she barely remembered getting up. Her legs were sore, her nipples overly sensitive. She winced when she showered, as if she’d been used, filled.

The scent of smoke lingered in her nostrils even though she hadn’t lit anything.

She tried to forget. But by late afternoon, the tension was back. That now-familiar pressure behind her navel. A heat she couldn’t cool with a fan or a cold drink. Something building.

And by midnight, she gave in and let sleep take her.

She woke hours later with her heart racing.

Not from another dream.

From a need.

Something was calling her.

Barefoot and wrapped in her robe, Isabella climbed the creaking stairs to the attic. She hadn’t been up there in months. Maybe longer. But her body moved like it remembered something she didn’t. Dust clung to her calves as she knelt near the oldest boxes. Christmas decorations. Her grandmother’s books. Old furniture.

Then something caught her eye.

A small wooden box, no larger than her palm. Worn and locked with a tiny brass clasp. She opened it with a soft click.

Inside: a delicate oval locket. Hand-carved. On the back, two letters had been etched into the wood: S.V.

And beneath it, folded carefully, a slip of brittle parchment. The writing, in ink faded by centuries, read:

“The blood remembers. When the veil thins, so will you.”

Her breath caught. Her hands trembled.

The air around her felt charged—thick, electric, like a storm about to break.

Isabella clutched the locket to her chest and slowly sank to the dusty floorboards, heart pounding, thighs still damp from a dream she hadn’t fully understood.

Something was coming.

Something old.

The next day passed in a kind of electric fog.

Isabella moved through it on autopilot, sipping coffee without tasting it, showering without pleasure. The soreness from the night before lingered in her muscles, but it was the locket she kept touching. Over and over. She kept it in the pocket of her robe as she paced the house, then laid it on the kitchen table as she opened her laptop.

“S.V. initials. Witch? Florida history? Seraphina?”

Search after search yielded nothing solid. A few names on genealogy pages. Verde family trees that mentioned a Seraphina born in the 1600s but no birth or death records. One obscure blog entry mentioned an “unclaimed daughter of the Devil” who vanished during the Salem hysteria. Another, more recent article suggested the legend of a Caribbean-born witch who seduced European nobles and disappeared after fleeing Spain in the 1600s.

She bookmarked everything. None of it felt like coincidence.

The more she searched, the more a name repeated in her head. Seraphina.

She said it aloud while doing the dishes, and her nipples tingled as if in response.

That night she ate little, paced a lot. Tried to distract herself with a movie but didn’t even hear the dialogue. Her mind was drifting again. Her skin itched to be touched. Her belly felt tight and hot.

It was nearly one a.m. when she finally gave in and slipped beneath the covers. No panties. Just an old tank top and the ceiling fan humming lazily above her. The locket was around her neck now, resting between her breasts.

She let the dark take her.

The dream was colder this time.

Stone under her knees. A draft moving through the cavernous space. Her breath misted in the air as she knelt, bare, her wrists bound above her with soft silks.

Torches lined the walls. Shadows danced around a circle of hooded figures. In the centre, Seraphina stood naked, her body pale against the darkness. Her breasts gleamed with oil, her thighs parted boldly. There was no shame in her. No hesitation.

A man crawled toward her—nude, eyes lowered, arms behind his back in supplication. He kissed her feet. Her calves. Then her thighs.

Isabella’s body trembled. She could feel the silk on her wrists, the cold floor beneath her knees, the air moving over her exposed cunt. She moaned softly into the pillow, shifting her hips.

Seraphina bent and whispered into the man’s ear. He nodded once and positioned himself on his knees between her legs. Tongue out, mouth open.

He licked her slowly, reverently. Up and down, again and again, tracing her folds, sucking her labia between long strokes. Seraphina’s head tipped back. Her fingers threaded through his hair.

Isabella whimpered aloud. Her body arched toward nothing. Her clit ached. Her nipples dragged against the sheets. She was soaked.

Seraphina’s voice rang out:

“Bring the vessel.”

The hooded figures turned toward Isabella—no, not Isabella, but the body she wore in the dream. Two of them moved forward, untying her wrists and guiding her toward Seraphina like a bride to her altar.