2.

Responding to my telepathic signal, the tentacles settled us back on the dock and dissolved into water, which was all they’d ever been anyway. The Mother wasn’t in the lake; She animated the lake, just as She animated everything atop Beck’s Peak. Her glyphs, and the faces of Her followers, whispered to me from the trees. Her will sparkled in the play of sunlight on water. Her pollen gentled my mind a little more with every breath. Now that She’d returned, She controlled all of it.

All of it except four tiny, fleeing women.

I smiled to watch them scrambling up the bank, soaking wet and slithering madly at every step. They couldn’t know that the grass itself had turned against them, that every blade thrummed with hidden power. My ex-sisters were dark, tragic shapes against that eldritch glow. Poor things. I’d give them the gift of slavery soon enough.

Strumming my clit with one finger, I raised the other hand to my breasts, reveling in the new life and purpose I’d found in the Mother. There was no need to hurry, since the humans couldn’t escape. I could take a moment to enjoy my new freedom from doubt and fear, my new power....Well, not my power; but everything I wanted, I could have, because everything I wanted was what She wanted. And She was unstoppable.

The Mother’s will gushed through me and I channeled it like the conduit I’d become. With Her gifts, I could watch the terrified humans through every single eye atop Beck’s Peak. I could smell their sweat and taste their fear. I could even glimpse their babbling thoughts, though not as clearly as the Mother had glimpsed mine. Of course, my thoughts had been especially attuned to Hers from the start.

I reveled in the knowledge of how easily I’d fallen, and how useful I could be to Her now. Then I returned my attention to my ex-sisters. They’d finally crested the bank, and now they were rushing toward the master cabin as if it offered any refuge. Even they, in their pitiful human weakness, must know that was a lie.

Then again, Leslie’s purse was in the cabin, and the keys to the van were in Leslie’s purse.

That could make things interesting. Not problematic, but interesting.

Dianne and Mary Katherine reached the cabin first and flung the door wide. I smiled as they scurried through; then I sent another telepathic command, and the vines around the cabin reddened and swelled. In moments they’d engulfed the building completely, trapping two women inside and two out.

Now, at last, I started back down the dock. Leslie and Angie trailed behind me, and our thoughts pulsed pleasurably as one.

This wouldn’t take long.

3.

Outside the cabin, Tonya and Shannon tore at the vines; but the fibers were too tough to budge, and their efforts only carried them further apart. Now, isn’t that useful, I thought, and the Mother chuckled within me. I commanded the vines again, and this time they erupted from the walls and flailed around Tonya and Shannon until the women fell back screaming.

Shannon fled to the right, just heading for the nearest open space; but Tonya was aiming for the van, and I sensed purpose in her mind. Leslie’s memories gave me all the explanation I needed: Tonya had been the first to arrive in Charlottesville, and she’d ridden with Leslie to pick up the van. There at the rental office, she’d seen Leslie ask for an extra key and place it in a magnetic holder under the vehicle, just in case she locked herself out. She was prone to doing that, she’d explained.

Well, then, Tonya didn’t have to get into the cabin after all; and she actually might have a teensy chance of escape. The Mother’s annoyance flooded my brain, stirring resentments I’d buried two decades ago but had never entirely forgotten. Tonya hadn’t changed, I told myself—or perhaps the Mother told me. It didn’t matter in the end. All that mattered was making Tonya pay for her arrogance.

I sent the others after Shannon with instructions to restrain her; then I raced after Tonya myself. Thanks to my augmented body, I passed her in a matter of seconds, but I didn’t stop running until I reached the van. Then I turned and splayed myself across the doors, thrusting my breasts out proudly.

Tonya skidded to a stop and doubled over, gasping. Her face was slack with despair.

“Out of steam so soon?” I teased, enjoying the throaty new timbre of my voice. “And to think, you used to be on the track team.”

“Allie,” she moaned, but I shook my head.

“There’s no Allie here,” I told her, even though there was. I just enjoyed scaring her that little bit more. “Nope,” I said, stepping away from the van, “Allie’s gone, and soon Tonya will be, too. Aaaaaall gone. Deliciously gone. You’ll love it, I promise.”

Tonya tried to run, but she was exhausted, while my strength was fueled by an entity as ancient and powerful as the universe itself. I caught her arm and yanked her back around, pinning her on my gaze like a bug.

My own eyes stared back at me from Tonya’s: deep-woods green from corner to corner, flat, fathomless, implacable. Gazing into them, she saw not me, but the Mother; and she didn’t like the Mother at all.

Unfortunately for Tonya, there was no escape from power like that. Her pupils widened like black paint spilling into pools of blue.

I grinned and snaked my tongue between my teeth, reveling in the organ’s new length—and in Tonya’s shudder. Since I didn’t want to spoil the fun, I’d only dampened her will a little. She still had enough resistance to want to escape, just not enough to do anything about it.

I raked my tongue along her cheek from ear to mouth, pried her lips apart, and withdrew with a teasing smile.

Tonya whimpered.

“That’s right,” I purred, feeling the tentacles in my hair begin to lift and sway. I curled my fingers inside her swimsuit bottom and yanked it away, baring her snatch to the air.

Tonya’s knees buckled slightly, and her hips swung toward mine. She moaned.

“That’s it, Tonya,” I murmured. “Give in. I promise it’ll all be worth it when you do.” I closed my eyes, remembering, and shuddered. “Every. Single. Fucking. Second. Will be worth it.”

Tonya’s gaze stayed locked on mine even with the link broken, but she recovered enough to try pulling away. Just not very hard. The remembrance of my submission had made me hot, and I was emitting pheromones that affected both of us equally.

Reopening my eyes, I smiled and ripped the cloth from her breasts. “Mmm, nice,” I whispered, leaning down so my hair could caress her nipples. My eyes, meanwhile, stayed fixed on hers.

Very quietly, Tonya sighed.

Pleasure boiled inside me and flowed backwards to the Mother, quenching Her anger even as it inflamed Her lust; for that was another part of what it meant to be Her conduit. Mama Gilman hadn’t come up with the idea for orgies on her own. Oh, no. The Mother enjoyed Her slaves’ passions as much as we did, and She enjoyed the conduit’s passions most of all. She felt whatever I felt, just as I felt whatever She felt.

The Mother took the ecstasy I fed Her and rolled it back to me quadrupled.

Ohh, blessed synergy. The resulting orgasm shook me till I screamed; and cilia sprang from my nipples and nethers, wrapping Tonya like a spider’s feast.

Fortunately for her, most of her fear had been quenched by pheromones; and the anger I’d shared with the Mother had boiled away in bliss. My cilia plunged inside her, and Tonya’s own sex-shrieks quickly joined mine. I stroked every nubbly pleasure node I could find, and thanks to my own new nodes, I shared every bit of that pleasure with her.

Tonya clenched reflexively when the stingers sprang out, and that set me shuddering all over again. Then the venom hit, and her mind opened like a soft pair of legs.

It was beautiful.

But even as I watched the transformation awe, another part of my mind was peering through Leslie and Angie’s eyes, at Shannon. They had pacified her just as I commanded, and her pupils were twice as wide as Tonya’s had been. She had the wit to recognize our shrieks, both whose they were and what they meant; but she didn’t have the will to care.

“Good girl,” I told her through Leslie and Angie’s mouths. “Don’t be afraid. I’m coming for you next.”

I shared the vision with Tonya and she smiled within her cocoon. Then I released her, and when her eyes opened again, I saw the Mother gazing back at me.

4.

Leslie, Angie and Shannon were in the garden. Shannon stood between her captors with her wrists clasped only loosely in their hands: nude, dazed, and entirely lovely. She was waiting just for me.

Not that I alone possessed the power of transformation. No, the Mother was far too wise to arrange matters that way. But She derived more pleasure from my pleasure than from any other slave’s, so it only made sense that I perform as many transformations, myself, as I could.

Tonya floated behind me as I approached the group. I enjoyed the mingling of our minds almost as I enjoyed the twin sway of our hips, the feel of the breeze on our half-extended cilia.

Shannon’s eyes skittered away from the tendrils and locked onto my eyes instead, her shoulders slumping as another chunk of fear dropped away from her mind. “Good girl,” I told her again, and gently caressed her cheek.

At my command, Leslie and Angie settled her onto the bench and sat beside of her, petting her hair and arms. Then I led Tonya to the back of the garden and filled her arms with honeysuckle.

I returned to the bench with a smile. “Hello again,” I murmured.

“Hi, Allie,” Shannon sighed. Her eyelids fluttered, but she kept her gaze fastened resolutely on mine; and I read her thoughts clearly enough to know she was sending herself deeper on purpose. Shannon understood that she had no chance of escape, so she was just trying to quench the horror of the inevitable.

Tenderness welled up inside me and rolled backwards to the Mother. “Sweet Shannon,” I purred. “She’s pleased with you. And very soon now, She’ll please you.”

“Mmmm,” Shannon agreed. A faint line flickered between her eyebrows and disappeared.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle.” I plucked a flower from the mass in Tonya’s arms and bit off the endcap. Then, drawing the nectar into my mouth, I kissed Shannon and slipped my tongue between her lips.

She shuddered at the taste of the nectar, now mixed with my own special fluids.

“That’s right,” I told her through the mouths of the other three. “Good girl.” I pulled back, plucked another bloom, and repeated the process. Then I plucked three blooms, then five.

By now Shannon was too limp to sit upright, even with the others holding her, so we lifted her from the bench and laid her on the glowing grass. She sighed again and squirmed just a little. Even as aroused as she was now, she lacked the will to do anything more.

I sent a new command to the vines in Tonya’s arms, and dying as they were, they obeyed me perfectly. Their blooms swelled and their pistils spilled out of the surrounding petals, waving in a way that had nothing to do with the breeze.

My sisters and I settled around Shannon, taking several sprays of honeysuckle apiece and plucking the tiny cups. One by one we nibbled the endcaps open and drizzled the sweet nectar over Shannon’s body. She whimpered gratefully.

Once she was well coated, I placed my palm flat on Shannon’s breastbone and began to massage the nectar into her skin: first into her breasts, then up her neck and down over her belly. She panted, and her hips lifted slightly off the grass.

“So close,” I whispered, lying down atop her and letting my cilia caress her breasts and slit. Her lips were slack, and her eyes were equally glazed with trance and pleasure. “So close now, to ecstasy. And you’ve been looking to me for ecstasy for two days now, haven’t you, Shannon? Somehow you knew, right from the start. And you wanted.

“But I have so much more to give you now than I did before, because now I have Her. And the ecstasy She offers is greater than anything you’ll ever find in anyone or anything else. May I show you?”

Shannon’s lips quivered, trying to form words. For a moment I thought she wouldn’t be able to manage it, but somehow I felt it was important to wait. To obtain her consent.

“Ehhhhssss,” she finally murmured, and I slipped inside.

5.

All the while I’d been stalking Tonya and seducing Shannon, the captives in the cabin had never left my mind. Mary Katherine meant no more to me than Leslie or Angie had; but Diane, well, she was still Dianne. And I was still Allie, more or less. Maybe more and less.

Was that why I’d left Dianne and Mary Katherine to their own devices while I’d gone after the other two? If I’d wanted, I could have smashed the cabin windows with vines and pinned Dianne and MK to the floor, just to keep them still until I had time to deal with them. Or, if I were afraid the glass might cut them, I could have pinned Tonya and Shannon instead, outside the cabin, then tended to Dianne and Mary Katherine while the other two waited.

But I didn’t choose either of those options, and I still didn’t know why. Not entirely. Had I wanted to make Dianne suffer for rejecting me, or did I just think she’d make the best dessert? I wasn’t sure.

At any rate, I’d given her and MK plenty of time to plot; and they’d done the best they could with it. I knew, because I’d been spying on them through the windows even as I toyed with the other two. Tiny eyes nested inside the creepers’ gills, and I’d watched Dianne and Mary Katherine find Leslie’s purse, then her Book of Summoning. Even if they couldn’t get to the van, they told each other, at least they could try to find Marietta Pickman’s banishing spell.

It was laughable, of course. Yes, Dianne and MK could read the book now, but only in the most literal sense. They’d just learned to pronounce the words last night; it would have taken months of study to understand their meaning.

That didn’t stop them from trying, though. In fact, they’d even ripped the book in half (making my buried bibliophile cringe) just so they could page through it twice as fast. The creepers contained ears as well as eyes, and I’d heard the two of them commenting on pictures and experimenting with snippets of chants. All to no avail.

I parted the vines around the cabin door and stepped inside. “You’ll never get that to work without the sex,” I told them blandly.

MK and Dianne jerked upright. They’d been so engrossed in their efforts that they hadn’t even heard me enter. Reading the Mother’s tongue tends to do that, sex or no sex.

They jumped up, but before they could run, my sisters outside raised the windows and let the creepers in. Such slick, fast creepers. So very eager. Just like me.

“You should have seen Marietta,” I said as the captives screamed and fought. My voice cut through theirs quite easily. “Abject terror isn’t the best state of mind for orgasm, but she managed. Maybe you would have, too, if you’d only thought to try it.” I cocked my head and grinned. “But would you have gone the solo route or the paired? Just so you know, when it comes to supernatural shit, the more the merrier.”

Dianne shot me a look of such revulsion that it stopped me dead in my tracks. I’d been strolling toward them, anticipating the feel of my cilia against all that tender, straining flesh; but Dianne had gathered a mouthful of spit, and I really didn’t want to be on the receiving end of it.

How ironic, I thought, that I’d learned to embrace tentacles and slime, but the threat of a little saliva held me completely at bay.

Not that I couldn’t work just as well from a distance. And I wanted to work now. I wanted to wipe that look of hatred off Dianne’s face, no matter what I had to replace it with. Pleasure or terror, either would do.

Now, though, I really had to save her for last.

6.

I let the creepers undress them almost idly, enjoying their futile struggles. Then I twined smaller vines up their legs, around their inner thighs. Finally, across the backs of the smaller vines, I marched the smallest tendrils of all: spring-green fibers almost as fine as the hairs on my head. I tickled their clits with them, oh so gently, and teased their labia apart.

Dianne clenched her jaw and turned her head, but Mary Katherine squeaked. Yes, squeaked: once, twice, and again.

“Aww,” I cooed, bringing a stray vine to my breasts and caressing it, “MK, that’s just adorable! Is that the sound you make with your rabbit?”

Mary Katherine’s eyes, which had been pinched closed, flew open in surprise.

“It is, isn’t it?” I chuckled. “I can tell.” I lowered my own vine to my nether lips and swirled the tip around my clit.

“N—no,” MK managed, then squeaked again.

Dianne whipped her head around. “Stop it, Mary Katherine!” she snapped. “You are not allowed to enjoy being fucked by a fucking weed! Fight, goddammit!”

Mary Katherine jerked upright, blinking. She tried to struggle, but the moment another tendril found her slit, she squeaked again.

“Damn, MK,” I grinned. “I’d never have guessed you were such a perv!”

“I’m—nnnnoooot,” she moaned as twin feelers vibrated on either side of her clit. A larger vine swirled around the edges of her honey pot, just begging to be let in.

“Ohhh, but you are.” Now that Dianne’s attention was fixed on MK rather than on me, I dared to step closer. “You’re already halfway to orgasm, and I haven’t had to trance you at all.”

Trance. The word echoed in her mind, just as I’d intended, and suddenly I could read her thoughts as clearly as my own. Mary Katherine wasn’t an MC fetishist, but she was incredibly aroused; and she understood that trance would take away her fear and her need to fight.

In other words, it would allow her to do what she most wanted to do; and it would absolve her from any guilt afterwards.

“That’s right,” I murmured, sliding my own vine back and forth across my pussy. “That’s exactly right, Mary Katherine. You understand.”

She shot a glance at Dianne, just to be sure the other woman hadn’t read her thoughts as clearly as I had; but I’d phrased my words carefully. I wanted to give MK all the freedom she needed, to make the choice she wanted.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t hide the fact of her temptation altogether.

“Fight, you stupid bitch!” yelled Dianne.

I slapped a creeper across her mouth, but it was too late. MK began to struggle again, though not as forcefully as before.

Damn. I still wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with Dianne, but Mary Katherine had proven far too adorable for cruelty. I signaled my sisters, still outside the cabin, and they flung themselves against the walls, rubbing the vines across their bodies and between their legs.

They were already wet, for a slave of the Mother is always wet; and the vines responded to their arousal as much as to my commands. In moments the cabin was a writhing mass of pink and red and green, both inside and out. Moans and pheromones rose like mist, and the air grew thick in more ways than one.

Even Dianne felt the Mother’s pull now. Her struggles weakened, and the sounds beneath her gag grew deeper and slower.

MK, meanwhile, gave up trying to keep her feet and just lolled in the vines, squeaking harder and faster by the second. Her eyes widened as I closed in, but I made no attempt to trance her. Not yet.

Instead, I reached beneath the vines and took her breasts in my hands, cupping them gently and massaging the nipples with my thumbs. I breathed deeply of her sex scent, letting her see how much it aroused me. Then I brushed my lips against hers and slid them across her cheek to her ear. “You’re still afraid,” I whispered. “Let me take care of that for you.”

MK’s eyes filled suddenly with tears. “Allie—” she choked, but she could say no more.

“I know, sweetheart,” I soothed. “But don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid to stop being afraid.” I brushed her sweat-slick hair away from her face, then caressed her cheek and smiled. “I can show you how, if you’re ready.”

The gag muffled Dianne’s protests almost completely, but by now MK was beyond the point of noticing. I’d continued to caress her flower even as I spoke, and one by one I’d replaced the vines with my cilia, so that now there was nothing between her legs but me. Her tiny opening was like a warm, fragrant bath just begging to be entered. “I think you know what to do,” I told her, and she nodded.

She fixed her eyes on mine and swan-dived into their depths.

“Good girl,” I whispered.

7.

Mary Katherine’s squeaks became a single drawn-out keen as my cilia swarmed inside her. I felt her cells effervesce with the change, felt her mind open joyously to the bliss of slavery, felt her arms fold around me as the creepers loosened and lowered us to the floor.

Then I gazed into her depthless eyes and returned her slack, ecstatic grin. “Better now?”

“Beeeeetter,” MK purred. Her own cilia extended and coiled around mine, and we chuckled as they wrestled. Then we turned to Dianne and extended a few questing feelers her way.

“Want some?” I teased, jabbing playfully at her exposed clit. She grunted and jerked, and I signaled the vines to free her mouth.

“Fuck you, Allie,” she snarled. “You can’t make me want that!”

Oh, but I could. My eyes met hers, and I knew I could drop just as easily as I’d dropped Tonya. I was the Mother’s conduit, and Her power roared through every cell of my body, every thought in my head. Whatever She willed, I would do. And because She willed it, I would succeed.

But She’d left me a bit of my own will, too, just to make me a better slave; and it was with my own will that I turned away from Dianne and back to Mary Katherine. “Let’s show her what’s she’s missing,” I said.

I didn’t understand why I’d done it, and Mary Katherine couldn’t question the conduit any more than she could question the Mother Herself. She grinned, and our cilia flew wide, then curled back to caress our joined bodies from head to toe. So slick, so tender, so absolutely perfect. Each separate organ vibrated with its own tiny orgasm. I screamed and Mary Katherine keened, and outside the cabin our sisters moaned and yowled.

Dianne screamed, too: from rage and terror and hopeless rejection. Her thoughts jabbed my brain like a lone sour note in the midst of a beautiful symphony. A sour note that kept repeating and repeating and repeating. I wanted it to stop, for the same reason Mary Katherine had wanted her fear to stop. Both of us longed only for pleasure, for swimming and then sinking into infinite, mindless bliss. But there was Dianne, still screaming insistently, right into the hindbrain of the person I used to be.

Suddenly I knew the truth: I loved Dianne, had loved her for more than twenty years.

The moment I saw it, I buried it, tucking the realization deep in the safest, most natural hiding place I could think of: right in the midst of my brain-bursting orgasm. Vines and cilia whirled around me, too excited now to obey any command but pleasure. I felt the bonds loosen around Dianne, and I flung my thoughts desperately back to my pussy, spiraling around that soft, spasming entrance and then plunging inside. Deep, deep inside, hitting every one of those wonderful little rough spots and teasing, rubbing, teasing, rubbing, until it was almost impossible to think of anything else.

Dimly I heard the sounds of footsteps, then the jangle of keys; and I spared a hurried thought for my sisters outside. Angie was close enough to the cabin door, and Shannon close enough to the van, that they might have noticed Dianne’s escape; but I ramped up their pleasure just a little bit more, and they never saw a thing.

I filled my bursting brain with their pleasure, swirling it into my own, then fed the whole pounding torrent back down the line to the Mother. She appreciated it far too much to notice anything as uninteresting as the roar of the van engine.

8.

The best thing about having a Mother-made body is how easily She can remake it. Nothing in human existence comes close to sex through cilia as sensitive as a thousand elongated clits. Or ten thousand clits, depending on how many partners you involve.

But She can do other things with Her slaves, as well. For instance, She can withdraw those cilia completely beneath our skin, restore our original coloring, even camouflage our eyes. Then we can fan out into the world and bring Her still more slaves.

That’s why She forgave me for letting Dianne escape: I really have been the first conduit to carry Her will beyond the Appalachians. Leona Gilman’s thoughts were too small and her knowledge too localized to bring in more than a few dozen slaves; and even in the Mother’s heyday, almost four thousand years ago, Her influence only extended for a couple of hundred square miles.

The conduits weren’t to blame, of course; and it certainly wasn’t the Mother’s fault. Our world is just too alien for Her to grasp without our help. She doesn’t want to obliterate it, just crush it into a pleasantly quivering pulp; and for that She needed a conduit with a very special blend of education, creativity, and perversity. Unfortunately, only Her last four conduits were even homo sapiens, and I’m the first to possess more than a high school education.

Don’t get me wrong. A slave takes pride only in serving her Mistress, and I’m not arrogant enough to think I was the only human who could have delivered the planet to Her. No, I’m just the only one who set foot on Beck’s Peak.

For that, though, I’m almost as grateful as She is.

Today the Internet swarms with the Mother’s slaves, some acting subtly, some not so subtly, to prepare the earth for Her rule. We work through photos, audios, and videos; through fan fiction and role playing games; through social networking tools; and of course through fetish erotica. One victim at a time, we desensitize our prey to horror and enflame their lust for submission. Then we tell them how much fun it would be to meet in person.

Now, I don’t want you to think the Internet is my only hunting ground. It’d be a piss-poor slave who recruited online but neglected her own back yard. On the other hand, the World Wide Web gives me access to recruits who’ve never even heard of the Appalachian Mountains, much less Beck’s Peak. Even better, they come to Her almost willingly.

That’s more important than you might think. You see, the Mother can feed from any human passion, but pleasure is by far Her favorite; and I like to think of myself as a master chef. I prepare the most appetizing dishes I can for Her, sometimes in person, sometimes via sous-chefs; sometimes in bite-sized morsels, sometimes in smorgasbords.

That’s why Internet-spawned conventions make the very best hunting ground of all. Think, for a moment, about the possibilities: huge crowds of like-minded individuals, at least the illusion of security, and plenty of hotel rooms nearby. Even the most ineffective slave will find easy pickings there, and if I’m around to help, we can bring the entire gathering under Her sway in a couple of days.

After all, the only thing you need to coax someone from a public space into a private one is a little bit of trust. And good girl that I am, I inspire a lot of trust.

Yes, I am a good girl again. I’m a very good girl indeed, now that the Mother has seen fit to correct me. She can’t afford to crush me completely since I have so much left to do for Her, but She’s crushed me as far as She can afford. And She’ll crush me completely in the end, along with everyone else. If I behave myself, She might even let me be first.

In the meantime, I have something else to look forward to. Dianne was smart enough to keep her story to herself, and her house was abandoned well before I got there, but I will find her again. As more and more of our planet glows with the Mother’s will, the dark spots show up even more clearly. Eventually someone will find her, and they’ll hold her until I arrive.

Trust me, Dianne, you will be my sister again.