The Fourth Whore Read online

  The Fourth Whore

  The Fourth Whore © 2020

  by EV Knight

  Published by Raw Dog Screaming Press

  Bowie, MD

  First Edition

  Cover Image: Daniele Serra

  Book Design: Jennifer Barnes

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019957022

  RawDogScreaming.com

  Acknowledgements

  A few years ago, I decided it was time to take my passion for writing seriously. I stumbled across a little black book called Instigation: Creative Prompts on the Dark Side by Michael Arnzen. It was exactly what I needed. I told myself that if I could write something every day for a year, then I would know that I cared enough to dedicate the sort of time it took to write a novel. So, using his chapter titled “Prompts: 365 Sick Scenarios,” I reached my goal with 365 short fiction pieces to show for it. More importantly, Mike got in touch with me after seeing my blog of short stories inspired by his prompts and cheered me on. He became my unofficial mentor and then, after I applied and began matriculation at Seton Hill’s MFA in Popular Fiction program, he became my official mentor. Mike, this novel wouldn’t exist without your influence and for that, I am forever grateful.

  Seton Hill’s MFA program was the structure I needed to brush up my grammar and creative writing skills and allowed me to meet and interact with so many talented people. Victor, Gwen, Shawn, Chad, Kristin, Virginia, and Vanessa—thank you so much for shaping this novel, for suffering through all the changes I made and the rewrites. Your input was, and still is, invaluable to me. Paul Goat Allen and Scott Johnson—my “unofficial mentors”—your guidance and encouragement kept me going through a tumultuous time in the middle of the residency. Scott, your hugs, your emails, your presence, and your RIGs were my lifeline.

  Katherine Miller Haines, my first mentor at SHU, may have suffered the most for this final tale of Lilith and her whores. I wrote an entirely different novel for a semester. But, in November of 2016, the political climate changed drastically and suddenly, I had something more to say than what my little story at the time could have handled. Kathy, you didn’t have to let me pitch a whole semester’s worth of work and start over from scratch at the last minute, but you did. Lilith’s badassery in this novel is all on you for allowing me to follow my heart. Thank you for that.

  And to those who marched beside me in Washington D.C. on that chilly January 21, 2017. I have never felt such strength or experienced the rush of so many standing together peacefully telling the world, that we would not back down or accept anything less than equality for all human beings. Thank you to every single man, woman, nonbinary, and child who marched either physically beside us or in spirit. You inspired this work, you inspired its message and while Lilith was born in November, Kenzi rose from the ashes in January.

  I cannot forget the the Horror Writer’s Association, and specifically Lee Murray, Stephanie Wytovich, Jodi Lester, Raw Dog Screaming Press (Jennifer Barnes and John Lawson). Before I’d even started the novel, about three quarters of the way through my first year of short story writing to Mike Arnzen’s prompts, I joined and attended my first StokerCon. For some reason, I thought reading one of my shorts alongside the talented Jodi Lester would be a good idea. By the last day, when we were slated to read, I was terrified. Completely over my head. But Jodi, Lee and Jennifer came to hear me—a little nobody—read. They applauded my efforts, encouraged me to keep writing, and have become peers as well as friends. Stephanie, an SHU alum, welcomed me to her Stoker Awards table with open arms. Truly, everyone at the HWA made (and still makes) me feel like family. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  My friends, my family, my husband, my kids—you know I cherish you and your support means the world. Raw Dog Screaming Press—thanks for giving this book a chance, thanks for believing in me, and for being probably the coolest publisher in the world.

  For Kim, who walked beside me and sometimes carried me through the darkness and for Matt, my light at the end of the tunnel. I owe this book and my life to you both.

  Genesis 1

  The bird carried a bolus of half-digested grub in its gullet. Her babies were most certainly waiting. Soon, they would be ready to fly, and she would begin the cycle again, but for now, they relied entirely on her to feed them, protect them, and teach them. The dry desert air offered little resistance to her massive black wings. As she neared the nest, she heard no hungered chirps.

  Swooping downward to gain the momentum needed to reach the steep incline where she’d carefully built the nest, she saw them. Three broken, fuzzy bodies lying dead on the ground below. Dead. Her babies. Without further thought, she swallowed the grub and flew away. Far from the nest, never to return.

  Prologue: Book of Conquest 1

  She was dying. The man had no doubt. Her screams overpowered the water gushing from the gutters while the midnight storm raged outside. Thunder rocked the house and he imagined it was his wife’s tremors shaking the foundation. When she moaned and whimpered he relaxed, hopeful the noise had ceased for a while. Then another contraction struck, and her volume rose like a wave smashing against his eardrums. Labor was not as the videos suggested. There was no calm breathing and soft groans while he caressed her hair. The tub they’d bought sat filled with water gone cold. His wife never used it. Her howls of pain left him feeling helpless and stupid. But, at least in this state, she probably hadn’t realized he’d left her side to go downstairs.

  His emotions swung from pity to anger. Why hadn’t she just seen a doctor like every other pregnant woman they knew? What was so great about a home birth anyway? He certainly couldn’t help her if anything went wrong. He picked up the phone, determined to call an ambulance, because she was no longer in any shape to decide what was best for her or their baby. It was his baby too, wasn’t it? He should have a say.

  A loud knocking startled him, and he dropped the cell. His heart skipped a beat. Suddenly, there came a tapping as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door—Good Lord, I’ve gone ‘stark raven mad’. He giggled nervously and sighed. Help. No matter who it was, they were here and had to help him. Someone needed to talk some sense into his wife. This had gone too far. She wasn’t Ricky Lake, and this wasn’t some celebrity reality show. So what if a B-list has-been had a home birth? She probably had a team of private physicians on the side just in case. His wife couldn’t see that. But now, there was someone else—an unbiased voice of reason.

  The man opened the door enough for the wind to shove it through his sweaty palms and whip it against the wall. The knob left an exclamatory “O” in the drywall. A hooded figure stood motionless on the porch. Black fabric shaded the face and the cape kept the shape of the body androgynous. Just some kid playing a prank in the storm. His heart sank back into a mired beat.

  “I am the midwife. May I come in?” a decidedly female voice asked.

  Did his wife have a midwife? He’d never seen one, but what did he know? Had he paid any attention to what she’d been doing these last nine months? Truth be told, he hadn’t done any research on the risky decisions she was making. No. If this was indeed her midwife, he wouldn’t look a gift-horse in the mouth. He stood aside offering entrance.

  “She’s upstairs. Follow me,” he said.

  The woman accompanied him silently to the laboring mother-to-be. The man knocked at the door gently. It swung open revealing his wife, naked and sweaty, bent over the bed. What once would have been a sexually suggestive pose now disgusted him, although he was embarrassed to admit it even to himself.

  The midwife breezed into the room that smelled vaguely lik
e sweet bleach mixed with copper. The man hesitated at the threshold. He had nothing to offer and found that he felt no guilt for it either. Meanwhile, his guest guided her patient into bed. The crinkling of the plastic liner beneath the sheets protested the weight. His wife, recognizing that help had arrived, assumed a frog-legged position, giving the cloaked stranger access to her nethers.

  “This will help.”

  From beneath her cape, the midwife pulled a golden metal device and held it out for his wife to see. The scene reminded the man of the evil queen offering Snow White a poisoned apple. He feared the function of the fruit-shaped thing, but morbid curiosity kept his attention.

  “It was the apple, after all, that got us into this mess, was it not?” the midwife asked.

  His wife whimpered, and the man thought he heard her whisper something like please help.

  The still-hooded figure worked the rounded contraption into her patient’s vagina. Blood seeped out, staining the sheet. He grimaced. How would that help anything? When she was done, only the tip of the apple’s stem protruded from the swollen, purple hole. His wife moaned. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and her chest rose off the bed as if possessed.

  The midwife began to manipulate the stem, turning it like a wind-up toy. Perhaps it was a sort of vacuum she was attaching to the baby’s head. The man leaned forward anxiously awaiting the appearance of his son or daughter. He wondered how exactly she could see to work properly with her cloak on.

  His wife screamed, and the midwife looked directly at the man. Her green eyes glowed from the darkness of the cape. They were mesmerizing. His instinct to run to his wife faded, and the door slammed in his face. The spell broke as his wife’s cries escalated in volume and intensity.

  “Hey.” He pounded on the door. “Hey!”

  Shrieks turned to gurgling sounds. Wet splashes punctuated cries of pain. The man hurtled against the door again and again. His wife’s protests weakened. A loud crack that the man mistook for thick wood splintering gave him hope. He rammed his shoulder against it as hard as he could expecting it to give. Instead he bounced off it and onto the floor. Guttural mewing came from the other side. It frightened him. He knew the mother of his child made that sound, yet it was like nothing a human could vocalize. A soft, squelchy thud followed this then the room fell silent.

  The lock clicked, and the door swung open. A god-awful smell hit him before his eyes focused on the scene. Shit and piss mingled with vomit, blood, and a hint of ozone. He recoiled and brought his arm up over his nose. There was blood, so much blood everywhere. His wife lay on the bed, her legs dropped off the side at odd angles. A purple cord hung from the cavernous maw between her legs. It looked like a bomb had gone off inside her. He followed the rope of tissue to the other end, which was attached to an equally dusky baby boy, eyes swollen and closed. There was no doubt they were both dead—mother and child, wife and son. Beside the baby—Jacob, we were going to name him Jacob—lay a golden, segmented bowl much larger than the form it took when closed. It wasn’t some internal explosion that killed his wife, it was the apple that had been maliciously cranked open by the woman he’d let in to help her.

  Amidst the deluge, stood the midwife. Her cape gone, she was completely naked. Long, black hair hung to the small of her back, its waves accentuating the curves of her olive-toned body. The only thing marring the perfection of her skin was a snake tattoo that wound its way around her left leg, her torso, and finally ended with the head of the thing lying on her right shoulder, nuzzled against her neck. She stared at the man and lifted the first two fingers of her right hand. They dripped blood. He couldn’t move. She rubbed her fingers over her lips, leaving them a glistening crimson.

  The man had an unrelenting urge to kiss those lips. He wanted to taste her mouth, her breasts. His eyes dropped to the small but perfectly shaped tuft of pubic hair. He wanted to part it with his tongue and lose himself within her musky chasm.

  He stepped into the room. The floor was sticky, so he kicked off his shoes. Socks went next. They dropped on top of his son’s outstretched hand. He didn’t notice. His dick was rock hard, and he could think of nothing else than this goddess standing in front of him, waiting for him to take her. She held out her arms and he stepped into them.

  The kiss was metallic and cold. She tore at his clothes until he was as naked as she. Instinctually, he nudged her, assuming she would ease herself back into the standard missionary position. His cock throbbed—he couldn’t wait any longer. She didn’t take the gentle hint, however. Instead, she shoved him hard, catching him off balance. He tumbled onto his ass, slipped in a pool of bodily fluids, and landed flat on his back.

  In an instant, she was on top of him, lowering herself onto his member. She rode him in that position for some time, her head thrown back in ecstasy. Her breasts, perky and full pushed out as her back extended. He moaned. It had been so long what with his wife being pregnant and uncomfortable.

  Something was knocking again, but this time on the window glass. Gently, as if maybe a light hail. The man’s mind swam in a sea that smelled mostly of death and sewage, but also vaguely like his wife. The sound came again, this time almost frenzied, an S.O.S from a sinking ship. Surely, said I, surely that is something at my window lattice—his wife! His wife was in labor and he had let this woman in to help.

  With that thought, a pang of guilt rolled through him and he softened. His partner, as if in response, dropped forward onto him. Her left hand wrapped around his throat. The inherent danger in this woman compressing his windpipe as they fucked in a pool of his wife’s blood hardened him again, and he bucked his hips up to meet hers.

  The man didn’t feel the subtle change in pressure or the caresses around his torso as he neared orgasm. With his eyes closed tight he didn’t see the snake was no longer tattooed to her body, but instead wrapped around his own. His shallow panting seemed physiologic until he lurched into her. Her muscles squeezed in response until he no longer knew if he was spurting into her or she was somehow pulling it out of him. He had little time to ponder the question as the snake began to compress him. Its own undulations allowed for movement in only one direction. It coiled tighter, and he could no longer breathe. The man felt as if she drew his entire essence into her womb while his body withered away within the deadly embrace of the serpent.

  z

  The Raven watched through the window, its white, infinite eyes unbothered by the heavy rain and steam on the inside of the glass. It watched as the human man died just two feet from his late wife and newborn son—his dried and shriveled corpse a direct opposite of the swollen, bloated bodies beside him. Not a soul was left in the room. The immortal bird saw the demoness, cloaked in black—snake tattoo in its proper place once more—let herself out. She stopped, arms outstretched, letting the rain wash away her sins. Water caressed her belly as if it knew the secret. The raven knew—mothers could always spot other mothers—that within the demoness’s womb, she carried three mortal souls. For what purpose, the bird did not know…yet. Perhaps the demon Lucifer, who also watched her, knew.

  With one last look at the carnage, the raven flew away. Back to its master, back to their punishment.

  Chapter 1: Book of Kenzi 1

  24 hours previous

  Kenzi lay naked on the filthy mattress counting water stains on the ceiling. Yep, still twenty-four, nothing new since last month. Duke’s doughy white ass faced her as he chugged a beer in front of a single, grimy window. Sweat worked its way down his hairy back like a plinko disc from The Price is Right. At least he wasn’t smoking. The air in his apartment already hung heavy with the smell of cigarettes and old grease. If he lit one up now, she might puke.

  “Are you finished?” she asked.

  His scent clung to her like a swamp leech. She wanted to take a hot shower, so hot it would burn off his stench. He swallowed his beer, belched, but couldn’t be bothered to face her.

&nb
sp; “Yeah, I’m done.” He took another swig of PBR. “So, get the fuck out. I gotta get the shop opened back up.”

  “OK, then,” she said, gathering her clothes. “March rent is paid, so don’t come hassling me until next month.”

  Her thighs were slippery. At least it was condom lube and not Duke’s jizz. The deflated prophylactic hung precariously from the edge of the sofa bed. She shivered.

  “You ain’t worth thirty days of rent, ya know.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” she said. “And that dump ain’t worth fucking you for either, but here we are.”

  Shoes were a must before venturing far from the bare mattress. She would shower back home, where she could be sure not to step on any cockroaches in her bare feet. His apartment wasn’t much bigger than the four-room hovel she shared with her mom, but at least at her place the surface of everything wasn’t sticky from a three-and-a-half-pack-a-day habit. God only knew what else added to the layer of dirty yellow gunk clinging to everything. She felt it sucking at her fingers when she grabbed the door knob.

  “Silvio’s lookin’ for you, by the way. You owe him too.” He farted. “And he ain’t as nice as me. He don’t want no pale-ass, skinny, scarred up, freaky-eyed, drug-whore like you. So, you better have his money if you know what’s good for ya.”

  An almost imperceptible tilt of her head allowed her hair to fall over her bright white left eye leaving only the deep blue one exposed.

  “I’m no druggie. I’ve never touched the stuff, and you know it.” Her arms itched beneath the long sleeves of her hoodie. “I’ll find him,” she said and slammed the door.