Untitled - Stella and Audra Price

Blood on the Harvest Moon:
A Southern ghost story
By
STELLA AND AUDRA PRICE
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Blood on the Harvest Moon
Copyright  2006-2008 Stella and Audra Price
Cover Artist: Stella Price
Editor: Tease Publishing
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Louisiana Bayou, Once Upon a Time…
I should have listened when Grammy Banks told me to stay away from the large looming
oak on the property all those years ago, but my inquisitive nature wasn’t going to let me
obey. I was always one that was about breaking the rules, anytime Grammy said no to
anything I went right ahead and did it. “Don’t eat too many sweets, Danica” and “don’t
even think of staying out past eleven” always got me in trouble in the long run, from a
bellyache to a paddling; I was always the problem child.
Still, when she first told me to keep away from the oak, the last tree on the visible and
manicured property of Grammy’s Metairie estate, I did listen, at least for a time. It wasn’t
until I was six that I noticed the boy sitting in the tree, watching me from across the pool,
his silvery eyes boring into me from the distance, always beckoning me from my
slumber. At that age, it frightened me, seeing a boy in a large oak tree, young, like I was,
just watching me.
Asking Grammy about it, she always replied the same way, “You’ll know when you’re
older. Stay away from that tree Poppet.” Which only opened my child’s brain to even
more questions. To this day Grammy Banks still calls me poppet. So as I grew,
seemingly, the boy in the tree grew as well. I didn’t see him all the time, mostly in the
spring, with the first rains, and the fall, around the time of the harvest moon. He grew as I
did, and I still kept my distance. Growing up in an old southern family kept me from
getting wild about seeing a person always in an oak tree, but I guess it was because I
knew all about Grammy banks’ estate.
An old plantation, Gram said it was a place of realm convergence. There were people that
visited her on occasion, scary people, and people that just left the house feeling unsettled.
They would walk into the wilds of the un-kept grounds; into the masses of Kudzu and
most of the time I never saw them again. The one thing that remained constant was they
all kept away from the massive oak, the oak where my watcher lived.
When I was sixteen, things started to change. I would see the youth, Black hair, pale skin,
lush lips and a wiry body, watch me from different places on the tree, often see him
standing at the bottom, leaning against it, his Silver eyes trailing on my balcony. I kept
the windows always open, and had gotten a taste for being watched, something that was
no doubt cultivated in me way before I could remember. He never left the tree, or its
immediate vicinity, and I felt safe. At twilight I would enter my room, and stalk around in
skimpy clothes, tank tops, tight little shorts, thongs, even though Grammy had pulled me
aside and told me countless times to “not tease what you don’t understand.” Well you
know me and my penchant for spitting in the rulebooks. And I loved that he watched me,
could feel it when he would appear, would smirk at me when I was wearing something
particularly fetching. Then suddenly, he was gone. A year he didn’t show, and I forgot,
and got caught up with a local boy, Robby.
Robby was sexy, sweet and Cajun, not from a family as prominent as mine, but he was
sweet. Still I felt nothing sexually for him. We dated, we made out as kids do, but it
wasn’t anything I would call real. But I did love him, for who he was. And he never
pressured me, never made me feel like the way the girls at school did when they talked
after Softball practice or color guard. We were happy. Gram however, did not approve.
She always told me I was meant for something better, that the stars hadn’t aligned for me
yet. Whatever that was, and whenever that was, she never said. Then he showed again,
with the first spring storm. His hair was longer, fell in his eyes and was straight, his silver
eyes held mischief as he watched me. I didn’t expect to see him, but there he was, leaning
at the trunk of the tree, a self-satisfied look on his face. When I saw him, out the corner of
my eye, my heart sped up. My watcher was back, though from where I didn’t know. I had
decided then and there this watching, however erotic it truly was, had to end. My body
felt the first stirrings it ever had of my adult life, and I went to the railing of the balcony
and watched him back, smiling at him finally acknowledging his presence. It was then,
and only then, he moved. He walked away from the tree and came towards the balcony, a
self assured smirk on his face.
Well he’d never moved before, needless to say I was intrigued. His gait was purposeful,
and dead sexy, with a promise of something a bit more sexual. My body clenched as he
moved, in all the low places I have since become accustomed to. He made it to the
balcony faster then I anticipated, and one moment he was on the ground the next he was
climbing up the trellis to stand next to me, his mouth made up in a cruel smile. “Took you
long enough.”
I was dumbfounded. He has a voice like smoke, wispy but potent, ethereal and perfect in
pitch. I licked my lips and smirked. “For? And why the hell have I been seeing you since
I was a child. And where have you been?”
“That’s simple enough. I was waiting for an invitation. And you just gave it to me.”
“Buddy I did no such thing.”
He moved closer to me and breathed me in. “You did. Your body did anyway. It’s ready
for me.”
His words clenched things low in my stomach, like his previous actions to get here, the
walking, and the looks, now, the breathing, and the closeness, sealed my fate. I moved
two steps into him, my eyes on his perfect mouth. He kissed me then, hot and hard and I
didn’t pull away, all thoughts of Robby long forgotten.
When he pulled away, that smirk was back on that gorgeous mouth. I shook off the
feelings of bliss before they became permanent. “So it is you? Al these years?”
He nodded. “Call me Ethan, I have waited a long time for you.”
“Waited? Why?”
He touched my shoulder, the feeling highly erotic. “Don’t you feel it? I do.”
His cryptic words didn’t have time to register as he grabbed me in the tenderest way, and
carried me to my canopy. We made love, he was everything I thought the perfect man
would be, attentive, creative, wild, didn’t even mind that I was a virgin. That first night
was fantastic, far beyond my expectations of sex. Just before dawn he kissed me and
pinched a nipple he’d been feasting on minutes before and got dressed, promising me he
would be back the next night. You would think I would find this bizarre, the man that just
fucked me to hell and back living by night, but I didn’t. Maybe I should have.
Gram saw me that morning and didn’t say anything, though she was not happy. She could
sense a change in me, no doubt her old school voodoo ways had bells ringing left and
right with her otherworldly senses, yet she held her tongue. She didn’t say anything so
neither did I and I started seeing Ethan nightly for a month or so. Every night was bliss;
the two of us becoming more addicted to each other’s bodies. I started to crave seeing
him, till the night he said he had to go. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear.
“You have to go? Where, where do you go?”
“Does it matter? You will have Robby, enjoy him while I’m gone.” He was always
cryptic with answers about himself. I did as he asked that morning, still seeing Robby,
but keeping our relationship friendly and terse. Ethan was all my body craved.
Months rolled by, and fall came, the harvest moon looming above the tree line, in its full
glory. Ethan stepped from the shadows of the tree and came to me, devouring me like a
starving man. We made love six times that night, ending on the balcony; me bent over the
railing as he took me hard and fast from behind. Satisfaction was all it was, for having
him back, for knowing he came back, for me.
We cuddled on the balcony, Ethan asking me what I had been up to. I rambled on about
school, and classes, mostly what I had done to pass the time without him. When I
mentioned the Harvest ball he perked up.
“So? You’ll be going to the ball with Robby then?”
“I had hopped for you baby,” I said and pouted, he dismissed it with a wave and looked
down at me, my head on his stomach.
“No I think you should go with the Cajun. Tell me baby, do you love me?”
The question was one I could answer with a glad heart. “You know I do Ethan, you’re my
life.”
He smiled and pulled me closer. “Good pet. That pleases me greatly. Can you prove to
me that you love me?”
I shuddered, his voice like wet silk across my skin. “Anything, you know that.”
The smile on his face was indeed devilish. “I have just the thing.”
***
Morning found me alone in my bed, the sheets still smelling like him. He always smelled
of sin, and dark promises, if they had a smell. His idea, well, it truly was a way for me to
prove how I felt for him, and I had no issue carrying it out. I would go to the harvest ball
with Robby, and everything, by the end, would be as right as rain.
Grammy Banks had pretty much stopped talking to me in the past months, but now, after
the recent evening, which she no doubt heard, she was chatty and supportive of my plans
for the Ball. I didn’t ask why, and she didn’t need to answer. I knew she knew about
Ethan, about why we did in his nightly visits, and best of all I knew she approved in a
way she never would with Robby. I wasn’t sure what had changed with her, but it didn’t
matter to me really. What mattered was Ethan.
So we got me dressed for the ball, a pretty blue gauzy dress, satin slippers, my hair in an
up-do and my plans for the evening well and set in my mind. Grammy Banks came into
my room minutes before Robby was to show up and held in front of her a choker, the
pendant a large milky stone. “What’s this?” I had asked as she gingerly placed it around
my neck. That close I could tell it was Moonstone and Grammy just smiled. “It’s always
been yours Poppet. Ever since you were born. I though it was appropriate, and it will
bring luck tonight.” It was so beautiful I couldn’t refuse.
Robby picked me up at the house at seven, prompt and on time, the complete southern
gentleman. We went in the limo he had rented, along with friends of ours from school to
the Harvest ball’s venue, an old plantation called Cypress. It had a history of blood, and
tonight was not going to be an exception.
Cypress was beautiful, but didn’t hold a candle to Grammy’s estate. It was privately
owned and rented out for events such as these, the gardens lush and beautiful, a hedge
maze for wayward lovers, and the house itself, the ballroom and the smaller salons were
out of a very American gothic fairy tale. It was so close to the estate I lived on that I felt
strangely at home there, though it was lacking some key elements, namely Ethan, and his
tree.
The night went innocently enough, we drank punch, we ate, and then when the dancing
started, I started to work my magic, just like Ethan instructed. We danced close, I rubbed
against him, and it wasn’t long till Robby was breathing heavily in my ear, asking me
what I was doing. I pulled him away, toward the gardens, for what I hoped looked to him
like a lovers tryst. We kissed when we got there, it was chaste and I felt nothing. Robby
was dead to me; the only thing I felt was Ethan waiting at home. And I could feel him.
Addicted to his kisses, his body, the way he made my senses explode. I needed to get
back to him.
When Robby pulled me into the dark corner at the beginning of the hedge maze, it was
time to make my move. I leaned into him then pulled away brining my hand to my
mouth, giggling, and blushing slightly. I can say I’m a pretty good actress. He moved in,
to kiss me and I struck, the razorblade I slipped into my mouth peaking out, and I moved
quickly, opening his neck from ear to hear. The blood poured down in rivulets, you have
no clue how quick a neck wound can bleed out. The look on his face, the hurt surprised
look…I felt nothing. Robby was nothing. I watched him die, watched him reach out to
me as I moved back, the blood splattering my dress as it soaked into his shirt and suit.
The light died in his eyes as I watched. I stayed till he was dead, I might have had to do
it, to prove my feelings to my Ethan, but the guy was never mean to me, and I wouldn’t
let him die alone.
So now I’m running, running back to the man that is waiting for me, under a large oak
tree. Still I might be being a bit rash; I mean I don’t even know who he is... Or what he
is… but he loves me… he’s got to love me….
He was there waiting for me, under the oak tree, a sexy smile on his handsome face. I
knew I looked like an extra from a slasher flick, but it didn’t matter. The pendant around
my neck heated up, and I went to him, wrapping my arms around him. He was pleased
with me, I could tell, but something was off. Something in the air fizzled as he touched
me, as he kissed my trembling lips.
“Such a good girl Danica.” He murmured against my lips, his hands on the small of my
back. The air was fuzzy, like cotton candy. Something was very wrong. “Is there a storm
coming?” I asked, my voice seemingly far away, in a tunnel underwater. The roar in my
ears was loud, and then it was gone, and I saw him smile.
“Storm? You could say that Pet, come, we should celebrate.” He nibbled on my neck and
my toes curled. He turned me in a tender and swift motion, my back now against the
trunk of the tree. He smiled and he got closer, his body now pressing instantly against my
own. The treacherous body that I called my own welcomed him and he lifted me,
wrapping my legs around his waist. I smiled and wiggled, truly enjoying the feeling of
being between the wild nature behind me, and the potent male before me. We didn’t talk,
but soon my dress was a scrunched mess between my waist and breasts, the straps torn. I
was exposed to him, my lover, the man I killed another man for, and it felt right.
His hands went to the large pendant and he smiled. “So beautiful, and you wear the
pendant.”
“This?” I asked in a partially dreamy voice.
He nodded and kissed her. “It pleases me Danica, pleases me that you are so
accommodating.” His murmured words send shivers through me, making my legs
squeeze him a little tighter. The night grew darker around us, the moon obscured by
clouds.
His eyes showed bright in the darkness, clenching things low in my body.
“Accommodating?” I asked, still not sure what was going on. The world around me was
dark, and slightly different, I felt like I was an interloper in a place I didn’t belong. The
pendant against my skin was still warm, the stone glowing on its own. Nothing felt right.
“Ethan, what’s going on? This doesn’t feel right.” I snapped out of my mood quickly, but
not quick enough.
Ethan changed then, As the moon came back into its full illuminating strength, I saw him
for what he really was for the first time. He was still beautiful, but there were small horns
on his temples, his eyes still the beautiful silver only now they had pure blue pupils. I bit
back the urge to scream as he smiled savagely at me, his teeth partially jagged. It was a
complete parody of the beautiful man my heart belongs to… and then I realized that man
didn’t exist. “What… What are you?” I stammered and put my hand to my mouth. He
ground his erection into me, pushing me harder against the tree.
“I’m the same guy love,” he said, his voice taking on a quite sinister quality. “And now
your mine, to do what I say and when, that collar says so.”
Collar? This was when I freaked out. I could kill a man, wear his blood like a badge…
but being collared wasn’t something I could handle. Not that it mattered, my lover
Smirked at me and kissed me, and as much as I didn’t want him to touch me, my body
responded on its own. I reigned in my emotions long enough to get a few words out.
“Your not human.” My statement gritted out through clenched teeth was a mere whisper.
“No I’m not. And as of midnight tonight, a mere hour from now, neither will you be.” He
whispered in my ear his tongue snaking around the outside of it.
I shuddered against my will. “What did I do to deserve it?”
“You pet? You are mine. Have been since birth, always mine, promised to me, to do with
as I please.” he chanted in a slightly sing song voice, his mouth going to my neck. I could
feel the teeth, the slight points of the jagged ones in front grasping and holding my tender
skin. God help me, it turned me on.
He pulled away and smirked a very male smirk at my face, which I knew was contorted
in defiance. “Now Danica, don’t deny it. I can feel that your body wants me, it always
has, and you won’t say no, you never have and you never will. Not ever. I got lucky with
you love, so many before you had displeased me, but you, you’re the right one.”
My brain was warring with my body. Part of me wanted him to keep speaking in that
smokey voice, no matter how sinister and puzzling and preposterous his words were, the
other was trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. Few things made sense to me
now, aside from the fact that my body was craving him. He was effectively teasing me,
keeping his body close but having that think layer between myself and satisfaction. I
didn’t even know what he was; he had neglected to answer that question. It was all so
surreal. He wasn’t human… so what was he? Demon? Something far more deceiving?
The conscious though I had was working slowly, while my hormones were working in
overtime. The horns, the facial hair, the teeth… I thought back to my class in school on
Myths, legends and the south, hoping to remember something that could help me place
him. He wasn’t any kind of Rumpelstilskin, goblins and fey like that rarely came out of
the Glimmer in modern times.
His sex appeal was appalling, hell even before I knew that’s what I was reacting to I was
guilty. Now well I knew my body was hooked on him. That’s when it hit me, all the
pieces falling into place. The small horns, the sex appeal, the tree…
Wood and bog sprites were no match sexually for the Satyrs that supposedly called this
area of Metairie home, though as far as I knew they were pure legend, and as I hung
there, sandwiched between a large oak tree and a being whispering things to me in such a
voice that my body was quivering, I remembered.
Satyrs that inhabited areas of the woodlands and bogs in North Americas weren’t the
happy go lucky “eat, drink and be merry” types like their Greek cousins. No these guys
dealt in souls and enslavement, usually in a malicious setting. I shook my head, his voice
like velvet, caressing me from the inside out. “Satyr” I said and looked at him with
profound determination. He only nodded and smirked.
The next thing I knew, his mouth was on mine, and I was not saying no in any way. My
brain screamed for me to stop it, but my heart and body were already lost to him. They
both welcomed him against all protests from my mind, and when he entered me, slipped
into my body with a practiced ease, he slipped into my head as well, whispering things
with his mind to my own, obliterating all resistance. Everything he was saying started to
make sense, and as he fucked me with a slow deep rhythm, he told me everything.
“Your Gram, she gave you to me the night you were born. You think its coincidence that
you live here alone with her? That you don’t know your mother? She’s with her own
Satyr, just like you’re with me.”
His words seeped into my head while my body enjoyed the intense pleasure. I wouldn’t
believe it. Not Gram. “Why” I managed to get our between sobs. He only laughed and
held onto me tighter, almost to the point of bruising.
“Why? Cuz the old bitch wants to live forever. One generation is replaced with another
Danica, and she’s lived a long time. You were promised to me, your soul traded for hers,
provided I could get you to spill the blood of an innocent. Now your mine, body and soul,
and the bitch will live another lifetime. I can’t be angry though,” he said in his smokey
voice, his hands holding me, arousing me with the slightest touch. “You wear my collar,
my pendant and your body is mine. So you will be mine forever Danica, mine to fuck,
and let be fucked by anyone I choose. And you’ll bear children, the boys will stay, Satyrs
all, the girls, well the girls will go to Ms. Banks and it starts all over again… they are
human after all, only fit for enslavement.”
His words made sense to me, as my body exploded, the last shreds of my resistance
falling away. I wanted him, didn’t care that he was what he was, didn’t care that I was
property and a slave to the pendant and Ethan. I would do as he asked, and I would love
it, as long as he gave me what my body wanted. With my realization, I felt a snap and
click, the collar fastening around my neck. I cried out, feeling what amounted to a needle
sticking into me under the thick brocade collar, and Ethan Smiled and laughed. “Mine,
the collar never comes off.” I felt something warm run down my chest and I looked down
to see my own blood cascade in rivulets down my exposed breasts. He bent his head and
licked it up, and I shuddered. “So sweet, Blood so sweet and mine. You’ll always bleed
for me, the collar will see to that, anything I want.”
Horror overtook me. Being enslaved was one thing. “Blood?” I asked in a near whisper,
looking at him with wide eyes.
“You think that pain you just endured was because of the collar latching? I need your
blood to live, and you’ll need my attentions to live. Without me, you will not survive pet.
Not now that the Collar is affixed, and the pendant is on you forever. Now enjoy this
pet.” He worked me harder and faster, my body craving the contact more with each
thrust. He latched onto my shoulder, where the blood was flowing, and he suckled and
licked as I moaned for him. He brought me quickly, and I panted for my lover, my new
master. He pulled back and I felt the pain go away in my neck, and he smiled at me those
sharp teeth and a scant amount of my blood pooled at the corner of his mouth. God help
me, I wanted to lick it off. “Such a good girl Danica, and all mine. Lets get you back to
my haven, ok? We have a lot of getting to know each other properly to do.”
I nodded, pliant and weak from the blood loss. I looked back at the house and saw Gram
Banks, the woman I had lived so long with and loved smiling and looking younger by the
minute. I blinked and she was my own age, eighteen, and I felt a piece of me die inside.
Ethan nuzzled me and nibbled on my earlobe. “Yeah I felt it too Danica, your soul is
gone, off to where she keeps them.” He murmured and I felt such loss… and then his
hands on my waist as he grabbed me and smiled.
He kissed me and one second I was in the backyard of the house I grew up in, the next I
was in the dark, candles around lit and glowing weakly. I let my eyes adjust and looked
about. It was a large room, marble from the looks of it, columns in the far corners, like an
old ballroom. There was stairs, and a musty smell coming from around me, like the loam
and peaty smell from the bog just off the tree line at the estate. My master walked from
me and went to each candle in turn, blowing them out. I was immersed in darkness for
minutes, my terror rising, when lights went on, and the beauty of the room hurt my eyes.
It was an old plantation house, still a place of beauty, but you could tell the rot was
creeping in. Ethan smiled at me and came to me, grabbing me and taking me up the large
staircase. We ended up in a large bedroom, pillows and silk everywhere, decadence and
luxury, and all new. He had decorated for his concubine, me. He turned me and ripped
the dress off me and pushed me to my knees, the ring the pendant was on allowing him to
attach a leash. I looked up at him, and he shook his head. “Welcome home Danica.”
I closed my eyes and looked down. This was where I would be from now on, my fate
sealed. Someone should chop down that goddamn oak tree.