Lure of Desire
Copyright© 2026 by Voloken
Chapter 3
Dawn came and went. Alyssa was put to bed in the master bedroom, while Raven retreated to her own room.
I tried to lie down next to an unconscious Alyssa, but I gave up quickly. I wasn’t tired at all, despite a rough day and a rougher night. Dying and then undying probably reset my internal clock.
So I focused on catching up to the research Alyssa and Camilla had already done on the tome. Their translation was very targeted. They skipped a lot of preamble to get to the meat of what they cared about: the rite called The Triumph of Glory, which they proceeded to fuck up.
The book itself was an old manuscript in ancient Aramaic called ‘A History of the Sun’. From what I could put together, given their unfinished translation, the book had been written by some kind of Levantine sun cult, probably in the BCs, but there was no indication of date anywhere I could find.
It seemed to detail a heroic history around a man referred to only as ‘the Aspirant’ who would go on to found their cult, overcome challenges, obtain Glory (capital G, per the translation), and transcend reality, becoming the sun itself. Excuse me, the Sun itself (capital S, per the translation).
The Triumph of Glory was described in a passage detailing the time this Aspirant fellow slew some grand tyrant and gained the attention of the heavens. The ritual itself was mentioned in passing, like a fun fact, rather than as any sort of instruction or guidance.
The book said that the ‘sacrificial lion’ was an allusion to the tyrant, and the spent essence ‘scoured all impurities from the beast’, like the Aspirant scoured the land of the tyrant’s influence. This ‘Triumph of Glory’, though much smaller in scale, would call the attention of ‘glorious angels’ who may choose to ‘manifest Glory’ in the ‘waking world’ through the lion’s corpse.
Very esoteric. The lack of precise instructions was probably a big part of the reason why the girl’s own version of the ritual rather predictably blew up in their faces. The lack of a lion probably didn’t help, but I was somewhat flattered to have been used as a substitute.
The translation notes mentioned that the summoned spirit was called a ‘Trumpeter’. This wasn’t in the body of the translated text anywhere, but also I couldn’t read Aramaic for shit. It might be from some other part of the text, or some other text entirely.
The note about the Trumpeter elucidated that it was a ‘Spirit of Glory’, and that they weren’t particularly powerful. The demoness had mentioned these, though she’d called them ‘shards’ instead. The note didn’t elaborate on what Glory was supposed to be, what the supposed spirit even did, or what it might be useful for.
I felt like I was missing something. There was something of a leap of logic between what was described and what they’d tried to do. Maybe there was an explanation somewhere else in the notes...
I glanced over at the guides to Aramaic. It would be easier if I could read the damn text myself. That’d be a hell of a time investment, and I had no clue how useful it might be. Maybe a machine translator would do the trick?
I saw a Mechanical Turk once, in the Orient. It couldn’t translate text, but it could defeat master chess players. A wonderful contraption.
Those had men inside them who controlled the puppet’s movements.
... Osman’s Empire must be destroyed.
Osman’s...? Oh, the Ottoman Empire, you mean? It’s dead and gone. Has been for more than a century.
Good.
I think it was an Austrian who made the Turk though.
Of course. It would be a scion of the White City who’d make such a treacherous illusion.
But anyway, the translation. How were the girls even doing it? Did one of them speak the language? Somehow I doubted that. Maybe I should just have them keep doing it rather than take it on myself.
I wondered if all these books were going to be in dead or dying languages.
Every language is dying. So yes.
My mind-guest had been very annoying about her answers ever since I teased her about giving one out for free.
You should’ve been gracious about it. She huffed.
Maybe it was time to check out the laptops. There was probably a reason why they were here, after all. Turning the closest one on, I found it to be password protected. Of course. The second one, however, wasn’t.
What it was, though, was a mess. There were loose files all over the desktop, seemingly sorted by date of modification rather than any sane metric. Two browsers were open with over a thousand tabs between them.
I sighed. It was going to be another long day.
Alyssa found herself in a house with no walls. No, not a house ... a hole. No, a wood. A meadow? It was a mountain. Or maybe a valley?
She didn’t know why she was there. It was ... hard to think. She was tired. She was so full. Bloated. She wanted to close her eyes and sleep. But the angles were crooked. She couldn’t sleep unless they were right. Until they were straight.
But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t set the angles straight, because there were chains wound tightly around her. The chains crawled around her body with a hundred thousand legs as their hard, cold bodies clicked and clinked. Black centipedes with sharp, red teeth dripping with poison.
There were three in total, all working together to keep her from moving. One bloomed from a wound just under her ribcage on Alyssa’s right side. Another burst out of her left breast. The last crawled out of her right eye.
It was ... annoying/irritating/infuriating/maddening. She couldn’t move/cry/escape/die. She had no choice/autonomy/will/volition. But she was full of power/dominion/control/authority. How could a queen be a puppet? It made no sense. An oxymoron.
She had to do something with all her power, or it wasn’t power at all.
There was an itch under her skin. She wanted to scratch it, tear it, pierce it, rip it. But she couldn’t. Always reaching, never grasping. Always walking, never arriving. Always conquering, never ruling.
The journey was not enough. It could never be enough. Blue’s tantalizing glow alone would never satisfy her. The Spiral was like a star in the sky. Beautiful, but infinitely far away. No matter how far she walked, she would never reach it. Never possess it. She could never prize it from the firmament.
Not as she was.
The Paths up the mountain were many, but all treacherous. Mortal minds counted seven and one, because their minds were of wheels and metal. They could not comprehend the true shape of the house/hole/wood/meadow/mountain/valley. They could not comprehend that one was all, and all was one.
The King-in-Iron was one such being who walked several Paths. He had been mortal once—a great conqueror. Such was his valor and his might that lesser men stood mesmerized by his mere visage. He had chased the Spiral all his life, and he ran out of worlds to conquer before he reached it.
The instinct to take and hold. To jealously keep and greedily grasp. To chase ever grander heights. These things defined the man, and so they defined the god he carved into the histories.
Above Alyssa’s pitiful form there stood such a King. His cloak was the vivid purple of royalty. His crown, blackened iron charred like the corpses he left in his wake. His breastplate was bejeweled with cobalt and sapphires that gleamed like the open ocean under clear skies.
Reason dictated that yellow added to blue results in green. Red and yellow should become orange. This country with no name eschewed reason for passion. It was a country where black, not red, combined with blue could make purple. It made sense, if one looked at it with the correct lens.
Can you make sense of it? Yes, you. I am talking to you.
It made sense to Alyssa. It would not have before, but all the power roiling within her soul, instead of tearing her apart and stealing away her sanity, had opened her mind to deeper, truer understanding. Her new Path was painted not only blue, but now black and purple also.
The ancient King grinned. It was not a kind smile, but rather a sneer of challenge. Another had taken up his torch. Would she burn herself to cinder and ash like so many others before her, or would she be the one to finally set the sky aflame?
Sitting alone in the bathroom, Camilla stared at the Knife. Before, it consumed all light. The metal was dull, then, taking on only the occasional gleam in moments when it was about to be used for violence.
Now? Now it was immaculately polished, perfectly reflecting every stray ray of light. It remembered her own Glorious light, and pridefully shone every which way. In a way, staining it black had been the hard part, since taking it from that civil war crypt had been surprisingly easy.
Camilla hadn’t ever pictured herself robbing a grave, but a cemetery was probably the best-case scenario for them. It turned out graveyards weren’t all that well guarded, and their locks weren’t all that formidable.
Finding the Knife should’ve been harder, but Alyssa, for all her faults, had pulled through. Her weird friends knew weird things, and after a couple of duds and one ill-prepared rapist who would go unmourned, they managed to buy some information that turned out to be useful.
The Knife wasn’t black then, it was green. A sickly, washed-out green that didn’t seem too impressive. They hadn’t known what green was then. That had been ... a year and some change ago, some six months after they’d met.
She’d come so far in so short a time, and the Knife along with her. Camilla’s first artifact, and one perfect for her. Perfect for her purposes. A small hiccup like summoning the wrong spirit was hardly enough to stop—or even slow—her.
A few trials, many rewards, and one challenge. She turned the Knife in her hand, enjoying how it caught the light. One challenge ... she needed to find a surefire way to kill the spirit or at least sever its connection with the waking world.
She would go along with it for the moment, of course. It was too advantageous not to. But it’d ask for too much eventually, and she’d have to strike swiftly and decisively. She’d need a plan ready to go, and it would be one she’d have to come up with all by herself.
Raven would be useless, as ever, and this time she couldn’t trust Alyssa. Though Alyssa may wish for the same end as Camilla, she was a coward. She wouldn’t dare strike while the spirit might be able to retaliate. She’d probably sell Camilla out given the opportunity, just to save her own skin.
No, she’d have to draw out a plan by herself, and for that, she’d need the spirit’s own help. It would grow her power, and she’d use that power to strike it down. She needed to figure out a way to coax it into teaching her the things she wanted to learn, however. And that meant earning its trust, feigning being under its complete power.
Camilla put the Knife away, into its sheath on her inner thigh. She exited the stall and checked her reflection in the mirror before leaving the restroom. She put on her smile and sauntered back to her client.
She deftly redirected his hand, which wanted to rest on her ass, to her lower back, and closed the distance between them, just briefly teasing him by smooshing the side of her breasts to his chest and giggling like a mindless bimbo.
Men were such simple creatures. A look, a touch, a smell, and they’d forget what they were doing. The spirit, given its demeanor, was just as much a man as this fool next to her. More of a man, probably, and thus more of a fool.
And leading fools by their noses while pretending to be some meek damsel was Camilla’s bread and butter. This ... misadventure would be a footnote in the grand epic they would tell of her life. A short, pithy paragraph, which would end with ‘ ... because tricking a spirit was as easy as dreaming.’
Most of the tabs were related to the translation effort, but mostly tangentially. Essays, in both text and video formats, about myths and legends from the Near East; tales from around the world about the sun, from Egypt to Mesoamerica to Japan; pop history top ten lists about ancient mystery cults; Amazon reviews on books about Greek gods, especially Apollo.
It was a truly enormous amount of information. Just skimming about half of it had taken me into the late afternoon. I only noticed because Raven popped out of her room and asked if I wanted to eat something.
I didn’t, and she went on to the kitchen while leaving me to my reading. She didn’t even question what I was doing, but I might need to be more careful around the others.
Then Raven came back upstairs with a pot in hand.
“No water downstairs,” she said, lugging the unwieldy thing into the bathroom. “Gotta get water from up here for now. We need to fix a lotta things in this place...”
Hmm. The house would have to serve as a headquarters of sorts for what I had in mind. And I could probably fix most things that were wrong with it. I could do simple pipe replacements, easy electrical repairs and some basic carpentry. But did demons do home improvement?
I’ve forgotten more about construction than you will ever learn, little jackal.
Interesting. What about it drew your interest?
There is no other way to rule your lands than to build and take castles. Siege engineering was my passion, many, many histories ago. I remember enough that I could still design an impressive star fortress if the need arose.
That wasn’t ... quite the same, but did the girls even know what a demon was supposed to do anyway? My only example seemed to be very capricious. I could see her installing some pipes if her whims demanded.
I prefer having my pipes cleaned, but I have laid some in my day.
I narrowed my eyes. I thought I had a grasp on when you were last around, but obviously I was wrong.
I am everywhen, little jackal. That is what it means to be one such as I. Before I had been born, I already was. After I die, I will still be. The end is the beginning, and the beginning does not exist.
Fun. I was tired of reading about dead people’s obsessions with sunlight anyway; might as well do inventory for the necessary repairs.
Downstairs, I found Raven quickly. The floorplan was open on the first floor, with the dining room, a larger living room than the one upstairs, a breakfast area and the kitchen open to each other while wrapping around the garage.
While the dining room, located up front opposite the stairs, was sparse with only a large table surrounded by chairs for furniture, the downstairs living room looked pretty fancy. To the north of the stairs and dining room, it was clearly the most lived-in common room in the house, aside maybe from occult research table upstairs.
This room was equipped with a couple big couches in an L shape around a low coffee table with its own sitting cushions. All of that was pointed at a huge flatscreen on the far wall as well as a big brick fireplace. It was all carpeted and nice, with some flowers on the coffee table, good landscape paintings on the walls, and large windows looking out at the backyard.
Now, the backyard was in shambles and looked like it hadn’t been tended to in a century, overgrown and littered as it was. Which was odd, because the front yard was immaculate. Trimmed grass and square hedges, paved and maintained paths. There were even a couple of gnomes as decoration.
The breakfast area was to the east of the living room and consisted of a few stools near a bar of sorts which demarcated where the kitchen proper started. It was quaint, but there wasn’t much to say about it. The kitchen too was very normal and not particularly big. It was, however, fully equipped with anything anyone might need out of a kitchen plus attached pantry.
Raven was boiling her pot of bathroom sink water while stirring. The discarded ramen wrapper told me all I needed to know about her ability in the kitchen. I refused to believe anyone who knew how to cook would eat cheap, pre-fried ramen. In fact, no one should eat that crap. It kind of pissed me off, watching someone do it right in front of me.
“What are you doing?” I asked before remembering I was supposed to be a big bad, detached demon man.
You are right to be outraged. Food is a fundamental pleasure of your people and mine. We need it, desire it. To deprive oneself of delicious food in exchange for utilitarian garbage is equivalent to privation from pleasure. Such a sin demands retribution.
“Master?” Raven turned, surprised and somewhat cowed by the clear disapproval in my voice. She immediately knelt, blocking my view of her behind the counter that separated us. “Did I do something wrong?”
I slowly walked around the counter, trying to figure out why something so insignificant had gotten a rise out of me. I needed to be calm and in control, or this would not work. It was vital that such a thing not happen again.
The demoness only laughed.
“What are you doing?” I asked again, buying time as Raven came back into view, looking up at me like a scolded puppy. Which I supposed she was.
Now that I thought about it, her clothes would also not do. She wore an XXL white T-shirt with what I figured had to be some kind of band logo on it. It was stained and worn to threads in some places, or maybe moth-eaten. Probably both. On Raven, the shirt was almost a dress, so I wasn’t even sure she was wearing bottoms.
Well, if she was so keen on wearing trash, maybe she just shouldn’t wear any—No. Control yourself, Damien.
You’ve been controlling yourself for so long. Why restrain your urges now? You have the power to act on them. You have the authority to demand things be done right.
I took a deep breath. I was ... I was excited. And/or disturbed. And/or disgusted. And/or motivated. I had to keep myself contained. That was the game. I couldn’t slip. For some reason, the image of chains wrapping around me, keeping all those feelings from boiling over, calmed me. Sturdy, heavy chains, ensuring everything stayed in its place.
Raven had started to look truly despondent at my lack of response. I’d been staring right at her while fighting my internal battle. I softened my face and petted her head.
“You’re making ... ramen.”
“Uhm ... yeah?” She looked confused, with a fragile little half-frown on her lips.
“Is there nothing else to eat?”
“Uhm ... we, uh ... we have some stuff in the fridge if you—”
“Not for me,” I interrupted, cupping her cheek. “For you. You like ramen?”
“It’s ... uhm, it’s pretty good.”
The pot had started to boil over. I took the wooden spoon left inside and stirred it a bit until the bubbles went down. It looked done, so I turned off the stove.
“Have you ever had real ramen?”
“I, uh ... I don’t know?”
“You would, if you had. Up, to your feet.”
She quickly pulled herself up. At about a foot shorter than me, she was still looking up.
“Change begins on the outside.” I had no idea if that was true, but I was pretty sure I once read the opposite in some inane self-help book. Meaning, I was probably right. “What you would become, you must embody.”
She nodded along, but the confusion was clear in her eyes. I slung one arm across her waist, pulling her into me, and wrapped the other around her, resting my hand on the back of her head, where I began to massage her scalp.
“What did I tell you about lying to me, little moth?” I asked softly.
“I shouldn’t.” Her voice trembled. She was scared.
“You’re scared of me.”
She said nothing.
“That is fine, little moth. I am not angry with you. So long as you do your best, I will never be angry with you. Now, did you understand what I said before?”
“No...” She sounded on the verge of tears.
“Transformation must begin wherever and whenever you have power to make it so,” I said, soothing her. “You must picture the direction you want to move in and begin your journey, or you will never get anywhere. Can you think of one?”
She buried her face against my chest. I waited for her to respond.
“Camilla.”
“I see. And what about Camilla do you admire?”
“She’s so pretty. Put together. She knows what she wants. She knows how to get there. She’s so smart, and she sounds so nice, and smells so good...”
I nodded. “Some of these things you can help even now. Would Camilla walk around the house in a raggedy shirt?”
“No...” She finally hugged me back, clutching onto my shirt. I probably needed to change myself, actually. And shower.
“And would Camilla eat instant ramen for late lunch?”
“No ... She orders Uber Eats, usually...”
“Does she now? Well, that’s not the best either, is it?”
“I guess...”
“The little lamp is bright, but she’s hardly the sun. She doesn’t have to be a destination, little moth. Just a direction. A milestone. You can go beyond. Be better than even her. Become perfect.”
“I...”
“There’s no reason to aim so low, little moth. I will accept all of you. All of your excesses, all of your sins. Aim to not merely become Camilla, but to surpass her. You can do it, because I am here.”
Her fists balled tighter behind me, and she hugged me harder. “I want that.”
“I know.”
“I want more.”
“I know.”
I could feel her supernatural strength begin to push at me, squeeze me.
“I want it all.”
“And you will have it. Just put your faith in me.”
“Please ... tell me what I have to do...” Her voice was the barest whisper.
I kissed the crown of her head and smiled, all teeth.
“The first step is the easiest...”
Camilla was tired as she got out of her company car in front of her house. Having to satisfy her idiot instead of just letting him paw to his heart’s desire had been easy enough but required constant attention.
“Good night, Cam,” Juan said.
“Night.” Camilla waved him off and he drove on to his next assignment.
She then made her way to the front door, but instead of entering, she stopped for a moment. Closed her eyes. Took a deep breath. She needed all her wits about her to deal with the spirit. It might want to get tricksy or plan the next steps in whatever plan it had.
Camilla had to be at her best. Any less would not be good enough. She needed to dodge whatever the spirit might throw at her and get to sleep, most of all. She needed to dream glorious dreams, and she’d be ready to deal with whatever came her way.
She unlocked the door and opened it. Just one more obstacle, and her day would be—what in the FUCK?
Raven was giggling like an absolute retard, walking back from the kitchen into the living room. That wasn’t the worst part. Raven being a moron was normal. Natural, even. What WAS bad, was that she was wearing one of Camilla’s dresses. One of the EXPENSIVE ones. The deep purple and silver piece with the demi-train and no shoulders.
And then she was out of sight, in the living room, still giggling and gasping theatrically.
Camilla saw red. She marched from the patio toward Raven, slamming the door behind her, which did wonders to shut Raven the fuck up.
Entering the living room, she saw that her moronic peon wasn’t alone. The spirit sat there on the couch, and Raven lay sideways across his legs, hanging off his neck.
“Little lamp!” the spirit said, beckoning her. “Join us, join us! I was just telling Raven how beautiful she looked. Don’t you think so too?”
Camilla’s eye twitched.
Ignoring the fact that Raven had a face even her parents couldn’t love, she looked like a child wearing her mother’s clothing. She was too short, her breasts didn’t begin to fill the space tailored for Camilla’s, and her non-existent ass couldn’t pull off as tight and curvy a dress as that. Her arms were too skinny, and the way she had one over her tits all but confirmed that the whole piece would fall off if she wasn’t holding it up.
Camilla forced a smile onto her face. Smile, nod. You know how to do this. FUCKING SMILE AND NOD.
“Of course...” She lied. “Purple must be your color...”
“See, little moth? I told you she wouldn’t be mad.”
Raven beamed. The spirit winked at Camilla. Camilla just smiled and nodded.
Beneath the smile, Camilla ground her teeth. It was doing this on purpose. It wanted her to stumble. Wanted her to crack. She would not. She would be perfect. She was ALWAYS perfect.
“You’ll of course be going shopping with us tomorrow?” the spirit asked, smiling gormlessly.
It was definitely doing this on purpose. So this was its real challenge. But what did it want her to do? She had ‘chosen wrong’, it had said. What did it mean by that? What did it want from her as ‘repentance’?
It was clearly favoring witless Raven to make Camilla jealous, but how jealous was she supposed to act? Men had different yardsticks for such things, and Camilla had only barely got a handle on the spirit.
“Sure...!” Camilla bit out. “I’d love nothing ... more.”
“Excellent!” It urged Raven off her seat on its lap, getting her back on her feet. “It’s almost nine. Go get yourself dressed for our next activity, little moth. Oh, but leave the dress.”
Raven had started to move, but stopped cold at the last sentence. Her eyes went wide, and she looked apprehensively at Camilla.
What was the spirit planning? What did it mean by this? What was this display about? How was Camilla supposed to interpret it? Or take advantage of it? God, she was too tired for riddles. Too spent to force the truth out from hiding.
“Now, now, little moth. We talked about this. What are you hesitating for?”
Raven took a deep breath and then daintily unzipped the dress. Once she’d stepped out of it, she was naked but for a pair of plain panties and a thin arm hiding her tiny tits.
Was it intent on humiliating Raven? Why? Did it need a reason? But then why did it look and sound so ... encouraging? No, this had nothing to do with Raven. This was for Camilla’s benefit, somehow. Or rather, at her expense. The spirit was enamored with an image of Camilla which she no longer fit, because she’d made a ‘mistake’. This whole song and dance was the spirit’s way of telling her what it wanted from her. Except Camilla had no earthly clue what the hell this was about.
“What did we agree on?” the spirit tutted again.
Raven bit her lip, once again glancing at Camilla before lowering her arm. Why did Raven think Camilla cared about seeing her non-existent breasts? Had the spirit told Raven to act coy?
Then Raven lifted the dress gingerly. At least she was being careful, that fabric wasn’t cheap. Still, Camilla bristled at the thought of having to wash off her stench from the dress. It couldn’t be machine washed, after all. Wait, what was she— No, no don’t—
“Don’t fold it!” Camilla snapped before catching herself. “Just ... just lay it out on the couch,” she continued, trying to sound calm.
Raven nearly jumped out of her skin, holding the dress while frozen in place. Camilla lunged forward and took the dress from the clumsy reject’s hands before she could do real damage. God, people were so incompetent.
“Don’t mind her, little moth. If she wants to deal with cleanup, that’s her choice.” The spirit yawned. “Go along now. Dress as we agreed.” It slapped her ass, eliciting a yelp as Raven scampered away.
But just as she passed Camilla, who’d stepped back to keep her dress safe, she threw a dirty glare. What the fuck was that? Was Raven jealous? Well, of course she was, but what the fuck was she showing it for?
“Little lamp, how was your work?” The spirit spread its arms over the backrest and patted the spot next to itself.
Camilla quickly ensured that the dress was laid out without bad creases. Then she took a seat by her greatest and most difficult client. There was no time for questions. It was time to put her game face back on.
“It was fine.” She snuggled against the spirit, who let its arms rest across her shoulders. “A bit annoying, since someone insisted on adding a few additional stipulations to how I could go about it. I did it, by the way. Nobody touched anything they hadn’t explicitly paid for.”
“Of course you did,” the spirit said, hugging her closer. “I’d expect nothing less. You are a professional, after all.”
It didn’t say anything else, content to wait for Raven to return. Maybe Camilla could ... ask a few questions herself. It might be a deadly mistake, or exactly the right thing to do. The way it had been treating Raven ... It must like women who are stupid, vapid whores. Who barked when they were told, or asked stupid questions so they could be patiently condescended to. Or this had all been a trap to make her think just that and misstep.