Succubus Rescue (The Accidental Necromancer Book 3)

by JG Jerome

  I seat Carla, Audrey, then Leonore steps up, and I help her into her seat. Chrysilla gasps in surprise. Finally, I seat Lara and take my seat. I make introductions. “Lady Nix, you know my wives Carla and Audrey. Beside you is my new friend Leonore Nessian formerly of House Spirituae and former Chief Healer of House Valeran, now leader of the elven refugees. To my left is Lara James, formerly Ilara’en Vallaye of House Valeran.”

  Lara touches my hand and smiles before bowing gently to Chrysilla.

  I ask Chrysilla, “Would you like some coffee, tea, juice, or water to drink, Lady Nix? We have wine available, but I don’t recommend it when negotiating.”

  “Tea, please,” the elven matron responds, looking a little shell-shocked. She looks at me wide-eyed. “I’m from a good family, but I’m no royal, Lord William. Just call me Chrysilla.”

  I nod to the two elven attendants, “Please serve refreshments.” They begin as I offer my hand to Chrysilla, and she lays hers in it. “I’m honored, Chrysilla. I am no lord either despite how some of my family, friends, and the refugees bandy the title around. I’m just a common guy caught in an uncommon situation.” I indicate the back porch with an expansive gesture. “I understand this is how business is conducted on your home world. It’s not too dissimilar to what we do here. I rather like the elven version.”

  She smiles slightly. “This is how royals negotiate between houses. Sometimes between royals within a house. My lineage doesn’t demand this.”

  I smile gently. “I asked three people I trust who would be the best person to create a network and run it for me. They all three gave me your name. One is my wife, Audrey. One is your niece, Leonore. The other is Lara, the one who was killed by your nephew. Two of those people might have a reason to hold a grudge, but they both readily set it aside to have you as an ally.”

  Chrysilla starts to speak, but I interrupt. “Perhaps you would like a moment to greet your niece and great-niece?”

  I can tell I’ve got her off guard. “Great-niece?”

  I turn to the elven magicians. “Chiara, please raise your hand.” She does. “Make sure you give your mother’s aunt a hug before she leaves.”

  Chiara smiles gently, “Gladly, Lord. Mother has told me tales of growing up playing with her cousins and aunt. I’m honored to meet you, great-aunt.”

  Chrysilla looks startled as she turns to Leonore, “When?”

  “Shortly after being named Chief Healer,” Leonore explains. “Maybe fifty years later? The Duke ordered me to his bedchamber,...” Chiara gasps as Leonore continues, “...and thirty years later my beautiful daughter stands before you as an initiate magician.”

  Leonore hugs her aunt before sitting back to hold her shoulders. “The Lord took Rall for killing Ilara’en, but he saved me and Chiara. I suspect that he would have kept Rall as a valued retainer if he hadn’t betrayed the trust the Lord placed in him.”

  I take the conversation back over. “Chrysilla, can you pass the bounty to Rallent’or Nix’s family?”

  She nods. I pull out the gold plate and set it on the ground between us. I look into her eyes. “They get all of this. He sold his soul for it. His family shouldn’t have to suffer for it. I will ensure you and your granddaughter are taken care of as a part of my deal with you. If you insist on a commission for this, I will pay it separately.”

  “What do you want me to do?” she asks me with a shrewd look returning to her face.

  “A few things,” I tell her. She nods. “Primarily, I want you to be my spy master, or spy mistress if you prefer. Gather information across Prime. I’ll tell you specifically what I’m looking for, and you set agents to find it. As you run across information that you think I might find valuable, you let me know. I may ask you to help me counter-attack, either by setting mercenaries to do the work or by helping me acquire elven weapons of mass destruction and use them.”

  “That was you. 1.2 billion elves dead. That was you,” she says. It’s not a question.

  I nod. “Yes. And I’ll give you more details that you can sell to those ambassadors if you wish. Right now, I need to know where the Valerans have their people. Where is Mal’szak? Who is where in the line of succession after him? What is their military chain of command and where are they? What weapons do they have staged where? What are their timelines?” I take a breath as Chrysilla looks at me in awe. “Do you understand, Chrysilla? The Valerans have declared war on my entire race to colonize my planet. I need to stop them, and I need to make it brutal enough that none of the other houses will try it again.”

  “What’s in it for me?” she asks.

  “You and your granddaughter will never go hungry again. I will pay you in food, and give you gold as you need it for operating capital. I’ll arm you with human weapons. You keep sixty percent of any gold you can separate directly from the houses, and forty percent will go to continue funding your operations. I’ll bank the forty percent here. I can also bank for your personal funds too, if you need it. I understand you get taxed quite heavily.”

  Carla types my terms as Chrysilla scoffs, “Quite heavily is an understatement. I think I’ve personally kept House Spirituae solvent.”

  I can see I have her interest, but she’s not sold yet. “How safe is your granddaughter?”

  She starts at the question, and I see murder in her eyes for a moment. I raise a hand to forestall a violent response before I continue, “How would you like her to be out of reach of the people that would harm her. She could stay with my family, and we would protect her like our own. If you want to visit her, come visit. If things get too dangerous for you, come join her.”

  She says, “I probably only have another seventy-five to one hundred good years left. This won’t be a long-term thing.”

  I shrug. “Normally with human lifespans that wouldn’t be an issue, but with my gifts I and my wives will be around considerably longer.” I look at her with my second sight and notice the entropy around her knees, ankles, and hips - in her spine, shoulders, elbows, and wrists, too. “I can probably heal your arthritis, too.” I start drawing off her entropic energy as we sit there.

  “Can you fix my granddaughter’s eyesight? She’s half human, and has to wear corrective lenses. Every time I get enough to pay a healer for the procedure, the government comes and empties my coffers,” she said.

  I lean forward and look at Leonore. “I think I can only restore the genetic code that is written. Can you do the eye procedure? I’m still learning healing.”

  Leonore nods, “Probably. Unless it’s something highly unusual.”

  Chrysilla says, “The healers at the academy say it’s fairly easy to correct. It’s unusual in pure bloods of our people, but human hybrids tend to get it commonly. They offered to just buy her for meat rather than heal her. I am not giving my granddaughter over to be eaten.”

  “What’s her name,” I ask.

  “Lleandra,” she says. She makes a ‘ye’ sound at the beginning, so I assume it’s two ‘el’s at the beginning.

  “Can Lleandra use glamour well enough to hide her appearance?” I ask. “If so, we can send her to human school here, and she can blend right into our society.”

  Chrysilla looks at me quietly for a moment; I’m assuming she’s assessing my sincerity. “She’s nineteen years old and looks human. Her ear points are so short that her classmates all called her ‘round ears.’ She has had no success so far with glamour, but she’s still young. Sometimes the ability arrives in the early twenties, but I suspect she will never have it. She has no magical aptitude at all.”

  “It won’t matter here, Chrysilla. Some of my family have magical talent. Some don’t. All are loved equally,” I tell her.

  “I don’t want her to be a sex slave,” the broker says quickly.

  “I wouldn’t dream of it, Chrysilla, and I’ll kill anyone that tries to take her that way. You do need to know that as a nineteen-year old young woman, she will be considered an adult here. I’m assuming there are differences between how
our races mature emotionally. However, unless we create an identity for her that is younger than her age, she could choose to have a sexual relationship or even marry if she wishes. However, they will have to deal with me as a foster father. I recently inherited a daughter. I can play the over-protective father easily enough for Lleandra as well, I assure you.”

  Chrysilla explains, “She doesn’t trust men, Lord.”

  “Then I’ll have to earn her trust,” I answer immediately.

  I start pushing healing energy into Chrysilla’s hips and spine. Chrysilla looks at me steadily for a solid minute. Finally she speaks. “Lleandra will live with you for five years, and then you find her a home of her own if she wants it. She has her own bed and at least a small closet of her own from day one.” I nod, and Carla types it into the computer.

  Chrysilla adds, “You will pay me twenty kilograms of food every month. Plant-based foods mostly, but at least a kilogram of meat.”

  “Rice, beans, flour, and two cartons of vegetables twice each month so they don’t spoil,” I clarify. “If you want to change it up, we can do that. However, lentils and brown rice together are a complete protein. We can also send you chicken eggs, a ten-pound bag of onions, some garlic, and spices. If you don’t know what to ask for, you can come visit to see what we have on offer and how we prepare it. Is fresh fish ok? Also we have fish and meat preserved in cans, too.”

  Her mouth is hanging open. I tell her, “Chrysilla, people starve on this planet too, but it’s more an issue of politics, wealth distribution, and logistics than a shortage of food. I will try to keep your granddaughter from getting fat. It is a danger here.” Her hips and spine look much better. I start pushing growth into her knees and ankles.

  “I would like a pistol that can fit in my hand with ammunition,” she says.

  I agree, “You will likely need to come here to test them for fit. I have a friend that is a weapons broker, so I can arrange it. How does your hand compare to Leonore’s?”

  Leonore holds her hand up and her aunt places hers palm to palm. I nod, “Okay, we can have Leonore try some to get candidates in the right size, then you can pick from among them. If you don’t have a place to practice, we can bring you here to train with it. If you don’t know how to use it, it’s as much of a danger to you as it is to your attackers.”

  She nods, “Good plan. I agree. The last thing. I want Liam Blissande dead. He left my daughter out to die on that forsaken moon House Elassaine colonized. I want justice.”

  I nod, “That will be the most difficult part, but I imagine it’s do-able. You’re sure he’s the one?”

  “Yes,” the old matron growls. “He comes by to gloat on the anniversary of her death every year.”

  “When does he come by next?” I ask.

  “In seven weeks, and two days,” she says.

  I think about it for a moment before I agree. “Done. We will provide you with a way to travel here and for us to travel there. I have a couple of ideas how we can turn Mr. Blissande into a corpse.”

  “And a meatlover’s pizza. I’d like to share it with my grand-daughter before she comes here,” she says.

  I look at Audrey, and she nods. “We can have it for you tonight,” I tell her.

  She looks at me carefully. “Can you get the gold cut into five gram ingots?”

  I think for a minute. “I’ll have to find someone that can do that. They cost more to buy than these plates do.”

  T’os speaks up. “Lord, we can do it magically. We’ll need to acquire a scale and do a couple of test runs, but it’s a simple problem to solve.”

  I nod at the old magician. “Okay, I agree,” I tell Chrysilla.

  She says, “Lord James, we have a deal.”

  Carla says, “Give me a minute to clean this up and print it, and it will be ready for you to sign.”

  As Carla walked out, I looked at the elven girls sitting beside the table. “Please ensure everyone has drinks and pass around the snacks.”

  I offered Chrysilla a rolled up pancake like the ones Susan made for me earlier. She took one and put it on her plate with a couple of segments from an orange. I started pushing growth energy into her shoulders, elbows and wrists as we nibbled on snacks. Leonore and Chiara sat close around Chrysilla as they reacquainted themselves until Carla returned with the contract.

  After we both signed both copies of the document, I told Chrysilla everything that has come to pass since I first ran into house Valeran. She shared that the bureaucracy of House Valeran and its military chain of command are nonexistent after the work of the neutron generators. Having the one in the headquarters building explode turned out to be an inspired decision since the building had a variety of magical shields for outside attacks, but nothing for inside attacks. Between the blast and the radiation everyone in the building and in a one Kilometer radius died. Most of the residential and staging area deaths were quick, if not painless. The immediate casualties were 1,230,917,067, but they expect it to get close to two billion by the time the radiation sickness is done. She’s a lot more gleeful about it than I am.

  I learned that Mal’szak Valeran is in Asia, and that he travels between the top ten largest cities in China, plus Singapore, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, and Hong Kong. Pinning him down is going to be difficult. We finished just in time to get her back home for her meeting. Audrey ordered a pizza from Chrysilla’s favorite place. Chrysilla’s niece and great-niece gave her hugs. Audrey gave her a plate of pancake rollups to take home, and Carla banished her.

  17

  Learning things

  Audrey and Clarice take my CR-V back to Prescott, so they can slip through the passages to get the pizza.

  Carla gives me a significant look as we’re picking stuff up. I drag her back into the guestroom we used for the summoning. After a quickie, we both feel much better.

  Josie smirks as we walk by the group in the kitchen with our arms around each other. We get glasses of water and cuddle while Josie and Shryl have an animated discussion with the elven magicians. It sounds like the device on Bernadette’s...er… Alöise’s arm may not be an issue. I’ll let them work it out.

  I lean in and kiss Josie’s cheek before grabbing Carla’s hand and walking out to check on the progress of the skills and interest assessment in the barn. I do a hand-to-hand combat assessment on the seven males from the healer team - three healers and four care assistants. The youngest of the assistants, Migosh, shows pretty good aptitude. With more training, he could become significantly skilled. We use wooden knives and short swords to test their blade skills. Migosh does okay, but the eldest healer is definitely the best at both the knife and sword. I’m guessing it’s just more years of experience making the difference. I have a hard time keeping up with their speed, but I am at a higher skill level. That gave me enough of an advantage to come out on top every time. They’re all on a par with what I would expect from one of Master Hiromatsu’s 1-year students or better - just faster. The elder healer would be in the intermediate class. I hug Erica and tell her, “You’re not far behind them, sweetie. Keep training.”

  Erica hugs me back. “Thank you, Lord.”

  I tickle her ribs, and she giggles. “You are saying that just to mess with me!” She breaks away, giggling.

  Erica gasps, “No!” She holds her hands up to ward me off. I grab her arm and spin her around to hug her from behind. She says, “You saved me, William. You and Josie gave me the ability to connect with Audrey how I always wanted to.” I turn her to face me, and she caresses my face. “Even if I don’t end up in your bed, I will always honor you.” She kisses my cheek. “I need to go check on how Audrey is doing. She was going to try to make amends with Chrysilla when she gives the pizza to her.”

  I release the bottle blond Latina vixen. I tell her, “Okay. Let me know if she needs me.”

  Erica smirks, “She always needs you. I tried to talk her out of seeing you ever since she met you, so I could have her to myself. I’m glad you’re n
ot jealous of me.” She calls out from the barn door. “I may need to take a turn with you out of gratitude!” I frown at her, and she laughs and runs to the house.

  I watch her round motor work as my phone pings. It’s a message from Viktorija on WhatsApp saying ‘HMA.’ I start the HideMyAss app and set my location to Spokane. Then I message back, ‘OK.’ I get an immediate voice call from Viktorija via WhatsApp.

  “Hello, Will.” She sounds exhausted.

  “How are you holding up, Precious?” I ask.

  “I’m looking forward to sleeping tonight. The priest asked about Bernadette. He asked ‘Do you have any other succubae on staff?’ I told him, ‘We don’t have any.’ He asked me to bring all my staff to one of the churches here in town, I told him to fuck off. He said ‘You don’t understand the severity of the situation.’ I told him, ‘We had three of the pointy-eared fuckers murder one of their own on our stage as a form of entertainment for themselves.’ He asked about them having collars. I said, ‘They did, but bullets in the brain pan overcame that pretty well.’ He asked, ‘How do you manage to keep a brothel open in Phoenix?’ I yelled at him, ‘We are not a brothel! We host parties for the rich, and our staff host. I won’t have anyone call me or my colleagues whores. Get your shriveled hateful ass out of our house.’ I might have punctuated my position with a slap across his face and pistol pointed at his liver.”

  I laugh gently. “I wish I had seen that, honey. It sounds like you handled him well.”

  Viktorija sighs, “Luis pulled his pistol at that ‘brothel’ comment, too. If he had ridden a taxi here, his body would be wrapped in plastic in the garden shed. Too bad.” She sighs again. “Is Lara okay? She’s been very emotional since Koree told her about her sister.”

  “That’s understandable; although, I’m surprised at how emotive she is. A zombie shouldn’t do that,” I observe. “Regardless, she’s doing well, and she’s been a godsend. I’ll bring her back tomorrow.”