Conquest

-Gabriel-

I used to be a good woman. They took everything from me. I have been robbed, slandered, abandoned, and beaten up. Then, a savior came along. He took from me what was left of my broken soul. Now I have changed. The light no longer accepts me. I must take it from others. Yes, I must drain the light out of human beings to that I may live. I have the perfect target in mind.

-Outside-

His name was Julian. This beautiful man was married off to the young Gabriel. He grew up in a family of wine merchants. His parents taught him the business right away. They wanted their oldest son to have the brightest future possible. Julian went to the best schools in England. He never had and endless supply of tutors. By age twenty, Julian inherited the family business.

He got married a year later. The bride came from a rival wine merchant business. Their marriage was a decent one. Julian provided for this wife and she in return was faithful to him. However, it wasn’t meant to be. Their marriage wasn’t really built out of love. Julian and his wife didn’t really see a need for and the same was said for their relationship. On July eighteenth, 1925, the couple filed for divorce. Their marriage never produced any offspring. Two years later, Julian got married to the twenty-year-old Gabriel.

As the story goes, the Great Depression brought problems for him and his wife. The rumors and the economic downturn drove him to divorce his wife. Julian decided to go to France to get stabilize his fortune and rebuild his marriage to his ex-wife. From there, the story took a strange and grim turn.

You see, he had no idea what happened to his ex in England. Julian didn’t even expect to see her again. It was easy to imagine his shock when he saw her at his doorstep near the end of World War II. Julian awoke to scratching on his apartment door. Assuming it was a hungry cat looking for scraps, he wandered down to try and shoe it away. His jaw dropped when he opened the door. A curvy woman with strawberry hair stood outside. She wore all black as her golden eyes burned a hole into his soul. Julian grew pale as she backed up, gasping.

“Gabriel?” he asked.

“Yes, my dear,” she purred.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came here to see you.”

“What?”

Gabriel wrapped her arms around him. “You owe me.”

“What do you mean?”

“You abandoned me. So now, I am going to rob you of everything that you have.” She pressed her lips against his.

“But why?” Julian asked. “I have no ill-will towards you.”

“That’s not the point,” his ex-wife said. “I must drain you so that I must live.” She forced another kiss on his lips. He wanted to push her away, but she held his hands by his sides. The succubus pushed him back into the apartment. She ended up back in his bedroom.

“Please don’t do this to me,” Julian pleaded in a weak voice. His ex-wife pressed her finger to her lips.

“But this is what I must do,” she said. “I want to live.” Gabriel climbed on top and shoved her tongue into his mouth. One taste and his head began to swim. His hands inched forward to pull her into his arms. Gabriel smiled into the kiss. She would enjoy draining him dry.

Strangely enough, that didn’t happen. The old sentimental feelings of love took over her thoughts as she embraced her ex-husband. She remembered the good times that they had together before her father’s death. Her violence softened to a rough passion. Meanwhile, Julian surrendered to her when he realized that she wouldn’t let up. He had resigned himself to fate. If he would die, so be it.

To his surprise, Julian lived through the first encounter. Gabriel pulled away from the last kiss. Julian looked at her with lust in his eyes.

“What becomes of me now?” he asked. Her lips were inches away from hers.

“I don’t know,” she said. Gabriel couldn’t understand why she didn’t drain him right away. But it would set off a chain of events.

---------

That night sparked a change in Julian. First, he looked so pale and stayed in his apartment all of the time. His nights were spent with his ex-wife. The more time he spent with Gabriel, the more the wine merchant withdrawn from his friends and work. Within five months, people began to ask questions.

“What’s gotten into Mr. Williamson lately?”

“Is it a woman?”

“I haven’t seen him with one.”

“Do you think he’s gay?”

When Julian did show up for work, the rumors intensified. At or around the same time, young men started disappearing throughout Paris. Most of them turned up in bones in the alley ways. Their clothes always smelt like blood and alcohol. The police couldn’t figure it out. However, they started to notice a pattern.

Julian ended near the crime scenes. He watched as police examined the left over bones and clothes with nothing to grasp at. The wine merchant was never a suspect. Nothing connected him to the crimes. He had no motive nor did he even know these men. However, he had one secret that held the key to the case.

Julian became a guide for his ex-wife to feed in Paris. Ever since that night, he became her dog. He would do anything to keep Gabriel happy. She rewarded him with the pleasures that her body could provide. However, the more she gave, the deeper her ex sank into her poison. Pretty soon, the changes in Julian became too hard to ignore and more whispering followed.

“He’s become possessed.”

“I heard that he’s under a spell of a witch.”

“Maybe he sold his soul to devil.”

As the murders increased and World War II ended, the police had no choice but to turn to an expert on the subject. By now, they had their suspicions about Julian after hearing the whispers on the street. Psychics and the preachers at the church examined the photos they took of him. The lead police chief was skeptical, but he was willing to try anything at this point.

“Well?” he asked. The professionals all came to the same conclusion: Julian had something to do with these murders.

“Okay,” the detective said. “When can we make the arrest?”

“It will do you no good,” one preacher said.

“Why is that?”

“Evil surrounds him. This spirit won’t let him be simply arrested by human hands.”

The detective rolled his eyes. “Are you pulling my leg?”

The preacher shook his head. “This evil is not a joke.”

“If I can’t arrest him, how do we deal with this Julian-guy?”

The preacher’s eyes turned dark as he eyed the skeptical man. “We must burn him like a witch.” Mr. Skeptical gave him a strange look.

“This isn’t the Middle Ages,” he said.

“This is the only way,” the older man told him. Despite the detective’s protests, the preacher gathered together his congregation and circled Julian’s apartment. They broke in and found him asleep in his bed around making love to Gabriel. His drained appearance wasn’t enough to stop the preacher from stabbing the sleeping man in the chest many times and burning his corpse.

-Gabriel-

They robbed me of my revenge. I shall make the preacher and his family suffer.