I Became a Prostitute for the First Time in My Life—But That Same Night, I Walked Into a Hotel Room and Found a Deadly Snake Waiting for Me Instead of the Man Who Paid Me

Chapter 9

That night, we drove there in silence.

Jude parked the car a little way down the road, in the shadow of a big tree, where the streetlight could not reach us. Amara sat in the front seat, holding the small bottle in her hands.

In the back seat sat two policemen. Jude had insisted. We were not going to walk into a monster’s house unarmed.

“Remember,” I said, gripping Amara’s hand. “Pour it at the entrance. Right where he will step. Then get him inside, and keep him talking until we give the signal.”

Amara nodded. Her face was calm, but I could see her pulse beating in her throat.

“God be with you,” my mother whispered from beside me, and she had insisted on coming too, sitting in the back with the officers, her rosary wrapped around her fingers.

Amara got out of the car.

We watched her walk up the road to the high gate. She looked beautiful — composed, elegant, a woman on a date. She pressed the buzzer, and after a moment, the gate opened.

And then I saw him.

The man stepped out into the light of the porch, and my whole body went rigid. It was him. The same face. The same easy smile. The same black shirt — or one like it. Years had passed, and he had not changed at all. He had only grown richer, more powerful, more confident.

My husband squeezed my hand. “Steady,” he whispered.

Amara smiled and let him embrace her. He turned to lead her inside, and that was when she moved — quick, practiced, as if she had been doing this her whole life. The little bottle came out of her bag, and she tipped it, pouring the dark liquid across the threshold of the gate, right where his feet would land.

He stopped.

He looked down at the wet ground. Then up at her.

“What is that?” he asked, his voice suddenly sharp. “What are you pouring? Why is your bag leaking?”

Amara smiled, smooth as silk. “Oh, just leftover water. I was drinking in the taxi and it spilled. Don’t worry about it, handsome. Let’s go inside.”

He stared at her for a moment longer. Then he shrugged, and he stepped over the wet ground, and he led her into the house.

I watched the gate close behind them.

My heart was a drum in my chest. I counted the seconds. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

And then, from inside the mansion, came a scream — a sound so terrible, so inhuman, that the birds in the trees erupted into the sky.

“What have you done?”

Amara’s voice followed, high and fearless: “So this is how you go about using girls’ wombs for ritual, eh? Your end has come! You have eaten enough babies! Today is your last day!”

And then the man’s voice rose again — but it was not his voice anymore. It was deeper, thicker, wrong. It sounded like a thousand snakes hissing at once.

“You think you can stop me?” he roared. “I am the king of the serpents! I have been doing this for years! You think one small bottle can kill me? I will kill you first — and then I will go and find Helen and take the child she is carrying!”

Jude slammed his hand on the car door. “Now!”

We burst out of the car. The policemen moved in front, weapons drawn, and we ran for the gate. It was not locked. We pushed through, crossed the courtyard, and reached the open door of the mansion.

And we saw him.

He was on the floor of the sitting room, writhing. His eyes were green — a sick, burning green. His skin was turning rough and scaly, like the hide of a lizard. His fingernails had grown long and sharp, curved like claws. And around his body, thick green smoke was rising from the floor, curling around him like living vines.

Amara stood over him, her finger pointed, unflinching.

“Freeze! Don’t move!” the policemen shouted, leveling their guns.

The man snarled. He lunged — not at us, but at the wall, at a small crack in the floorboard. I saw his body begin to twist, to stretch, to change. He was trying to become a snake. He was trying to slip away, to escape, to go on feeding on unborn children in the dark.

But the liquid had done its work.

The moment his changing body touched the floor, he screamed — a terrible, shredded sound — and fell to his knees, clawing at his own skin as if it were on fire.

Jude stepped in front of me, shielding my belly with his body.

“It is over, Helen,” he whispered. “He cannot hurt us anymore.”

The policemen hauled him up, still writhing, still screaming, and clapped the handcuffs around his wrists. His eyes were still that sick green. His skin was still rough. But he was human now — human and broken and caught.

We watched them drag him out of the mansion.

I could not stop shaking.