In the hot night she spoke to Jim Fast of things only heard in Hell and he wept to listen. Lips, so soft and full, brushed lightly against his earlobe as she whispered her evil words into his ear, tongue flicking out now and again to dab at the tears that rolled down his cheek. 
 
She liked the taste of his tears. As well as other things.
 
Her hair trembled as it curled and slunk around his throat, his arms, his body, a glossy black serpent coil that seemed to tighten if he tried to move. Which wasn’t often. Her head would move around behind him, speaking into one ear, then the other, as if trying to make the words meet inside his skull, and she licked and tasted and probed, eyes as midnight black as oil trying to catch his. But he wouldn’t look at her. To look at her would be to fall that last fateful step. He contented himself with glances at the mirror across the room, hoping to catch himself where he sat slumped in the wicker chair, bars of sunlight criss-crossing his body between the rotting blinds of the hotel room window, her body wrapped around his, the dusky length of her intertwined around him, a chain of flesh cool against his fevered skin. Hoping to see something. Anything but her.
 
But always she would catch his glance and she would move between him and the mirror just before he could see, her lips curving in a smile, just the barest hint of the tip of the tongue poking through as she hissed in silent mockery. And she would tighten her grip and he would groan and her teeth would brush against his jaw or his neck or chest or lower, a love bite, the smallest of pain. 
 
And then her kiss would burn through him like fire in his blood and Fast would shake and shiver and be unable to do anything else for hours on end as his devil bride held him tight and hissed and spoke hideous words into his brain. 
 
Fast’s weakness, rather say his main weakness, for to do otherwise implies he only had one, was for women. The more exotic the better. The shade of skin, the shape of the eyes, the texture of hair, all caught his eye, as long as it was different from his own. Exotic. New. Strange. He explored the world looking for them. Hunted them in every port and city. A wolf roaming far afield for a taste of different meat. 
 
He loved them, each and every one. And he left them. Some took it badly. The girl in Amsterdam with silver chains running through her pale flesh and her hair plaited in thick dreadlocks threatened to kill herself, the black vinyl of her outfit shining like oil under the streetlight, unless he came back to her. Others, like the almond-eyed young woman in China, her military uniform pressed and starched, buttons so shiny they almost blinded him as he watched her dress from the bed, took it in stride. 
 
But Manasa was different. 
 
Such a beautiful name.
 
In a section of Bombay where anything could be had for the right price he found her in brothel owned by a fat Turk with a jagged scar on one porky jowl. The Turk was a friend of a friend, an obtainer of things for certain prices. She was locked in a room behind a door of stout wood, not a prisoner, but a present for a good friend, the Turk said. A very special present for a special friend. A rare gift in an old land. 
 
As a favor, for favors past, the fat Turk let him see just a glimpse of her, her brown skin, hair like night, eyes like jewels, clad in a sari of colorful silk, because he knew Fast appreciated such things. When their eyes met through the grill at the top of the door, her dark shining ones against his pale bland ones, a bolt of desire swept through him. He hungered for her and in that instant Jim Fast was lost. 
 
He cut the Turk’s throat with the knife he carried on his belt, a curved fang of iron with an amethyst shaped like a skull on the hilt, given to him by a Saudi oil-prince’s wife. As the fat man gagged and bled out, slumped against a peeling wall, he took the rattling ring of rusty keys and opened the door to his prize. She came into his blood-drenched arms with never a word, placing her arms around his shoulders, her face looking up into his own with a naked hunger that mirrored his.
 
He had had no other woman since that time, indeed had not left his hotel room in days. Maybe weeks. Outside his covered window he could hear Bombay, even smell it. But his world was the room now, with its four taupe walls and the wicker furniture and the bed they never slept in. Overhead, a ceiling fan spun lazily, stirring the wet, heavy air like a child sitting on a dock stirring water with his foot. 
 
She liked the heat. She never sweated, entangled as she was with him. Whispering things, tightening her hold on him. Loving him. Killing him.
 
She went out sometimes, bringing him food back like a cat with a mouse. Enough to sustain him, but little more.
 
He wanted to be free, to throw her off of himself, to rise and stumble out of the cloying heat, away from the smell of her, the sickly sweet dry odor, like pressed flowers or decayed meat. But he couldn’t. He hungered for her touch, even as he knew she did for his. He needed her, this lovely creature with her slim dark features and eyes like obsidian pools. Manasa.
 
A beautiful name. Like some hothouse flower, newly discovered. 
 
She rarely spoke, only whispered, her voice low and husky as she told him things in a tongue he could not quite understand. Secret things. Strange things. Words that made no sense and possessed too many syllables. And she would kiss him between each word, teeth nipping his skin as she took a little more from him each time. A little more of his soul, of his life. She was eating him from the inside out, a cancer that attacked from without rather than within. 
 
Sometimes, when he grew too weak to move, she danced for him, her brown skin glistening with his sweat as she moved to a rhythm only she could hear, her hair fanning out around her head like a cloud. 
 
She was dancing now, swaying in the orange light bleeding through the blinds, moving to the sounds of the congested city outside, eyes closed in pleasure. Fast desired to touch her, to hold onto her even as he trembled in his chair, all but lifeless. His red-rimmed eyes slid past her though, his attention caught by the sudden flash of reflected sunlight in the glass of the mirror. And in the mirror, he saw Manasa, still dancing, unaware of his growing horror as he saw her for what she was.
 
Fast screamed then, his voice raw and harsh from little use as he floundered in his chair, falling to the floor in a tangle of unresponsive limbs and wicker. Manasa’s eyes jerked open at this sudden movement, her mouth widening soundlessly as she reached for him, worry on her face. 
 
But for Fast, the illusion was broken. He crawled away from her, shrieking and crying, knocking over things as he blundered towards the knife that hung from its sheath on the bedpost. The knife that had killed the Turk, its fat blade still stained a rusty red. He fell forward, fingers scrabbling at the hilt as his weight pulled it free of the sheath and he hit the floor on his side, Manasa stooping over him, eyes so bright like swirling stars in a field of black, her hair flaring out wildly around her head, a halo of shadow, her long-nailed fingers reaching for him.
 
He swung the knife and it bit into her neck with a meaty sound, hysterical strength carving a path through in a spray of red. Manasa’s beautiful face fell past him, rolling across the floor and away under the bed even as her jerking body fell atop his. Her arms clutched convulsively at him, encircling him as they had done so many times before and Jim Fast gave a hoarse cry of pain as the world went black.

Later in the day, responding to complaints by other guests of the noise from Fast’s room, the hotel staff happened upon a gruesome and strange scene. Jim Fast was quite dead, laying upon the floor, a bloody knife clutched tightly in one rigid fist and, coiled around him, its grip having tightened spasmodically in death and crushed the unfortunate man, was the headless length of a massive dusky scaled serpent...