Supernatural Syndicate: A Limited Edition Collection of Magical Mafia Stories

by Thea Atkinson

  I might have protested what her words might have meant, but in truth, I didn't really care what she thought of me.

  I reached down and pulled her nightgown back down so it fell below her knees. The fabric settled down over her shins and I caught her looking at me with those black eyes.

  "I'll be in the corner," I said, jerking my chin to the shadowed part of the room where the first nun had hooked her robe. I thought it might conceal enough of me that the incubus would feel safe to sneak back out.

  She picked up my Bible from the nightstand and clutched it against her chest. I sighed to myself and tugged it gently by the corner till it slipped free.

  "Bait," I said, explaining again what her role was and why she couldn't have the book. "We want him to come to you." I caught a glimpse of a gold chain in the folds of her neck and hooked a finger beneath the delicate chains. "This too," I said.

  She swallowed but reached around her neck to unclasp the cross from her neck. Her fingers touched my palm like a moth as she dropped the chain onto my outstretched palm.

  "Nothing will happen to it," I said and she nodded. "They aren't particularly susceptible to religious objects but it's best not to take the chance.

  I nodded curtly but reassuringly as I backed up three steps to the corner. "Just lie there," I said. "If you fall asleep, it's fine. You don't have to be awake for this."

  I saw her chin lift defiantly. She wouldn't sleep, I knew. She had enough backbone in her that I wasn't even sure the incubus would find her vulnerable enough to risk seducing her.

  Not that it mattered. I didn't plan to let the thing get within an inch of her body.

  I stood there cloistered in a swath of terry cloth that smelled of incense and soap for another hour or so. My neck spasmed from holding myself so rigidly at attention. The breathing of the Mother Superior never shifted to that lazy regular cadence of sleep. I had the feeling that the shadow of her on the bed was as stiff as I was.

  It was the whisper of the demon that alerted me of its arrival. Surprised as I was that it still hadn't shown itself, I strained to see through the darkness. I was too intent on the nun and the bed, expecting the demon to slip from the shadows closest to her so it could slide over the nun's torso and pin her to the mattress.

  Nothing but shadows showed themselves. I leaned forward, edged the robe to the side for a better view. The clicking, shushing, humming sound intensified, releasing an electric sort of tension into the room. I felt my hairs stand on end even as the nun moaned beneath her breath.

  I felt a touch on my shoulder. The lightest, most teasing of touches.

  Then I realized the demon wasn't tempting the nun on the mattress. And it wasn't one demon but three.

  And all of them had come for me.

  2

  Demon's breath washed over me in a sweet, caramel fragrance that clotted on my palate. It had been two and a half decades since I'd met an incubus, and that encounter had ended with the near-death of a fae-human crossbreed.

  I'd steered away from taking any jobs with incubus demons after that. This was the first in all that time and I only took it because I knew the life of the cloistered. Theirs could be a tough lot even without suffering demon attacks.

  Whatever these demons were doing here, I knew it had nothing to do with devouring the chastity and frustrated carnal desires of a bunch of nuns. No. It was something else entirely. The back of my neck prickled with threat.

  My breath came in short, sharp inhalations as I tried to sharpen my senses to what was going on around me in the semi-dark. I had memorized the room when I'd entered, part of a long-ingrained habit, so I knew the layout even in the dark. The real issue was the distortion that came with darkness, even with my night vision adjusted to the lack of light.

  I knew the bed was along the wall, that a crucifix hung over the headboard, that the closet was nothing more than an open rack where she hung her few items of clothing. I'd noted the room was sparse, as expected, but that the nun had hung a painting behind the door where no one would notice her earthly possession. The rest of the walls were bare.

  That meant when a shadow moved just past the robe and danced on the wall, it wasn't a trick of the light. When another broadened onto the ceiling, and through the gaps between fabric and plaster, I knew there was more than one. If I hadn't been able to tell from the number of moving shadows, the overpowering stench of pheromone was a dead giveaway. I was surrounded.

  Apparently stealth and surprise were out of the question. The nun was unnecessary.

  "Leave the room," I said, loud enough for her to hear even if she was asleep, which I knew she wasn't. "Right now. Get out."

  I barked out the order and got back a low-throated chuckle in return that had not come from the abbess. It wafted around the robe to meet me on my side of the fabric.

  I didn't wait for the nun to touch bare feet to the floor. Instead, I rammed the robe aside and tossed it somewhere on the floor with a single movement. I was left exposed and if the demons cared to take a good look at me as I lunged for them, they'd see the demon in my own eyes, ready to cut through the guts of their power until they were true dead and nothing but a memory.

  "Come on you bastards," I said. I wasn't about to let them slip away before they decided corporeality wasn't a good idea. I couldn't fight a shadow. I needed them whole. "I know you're here for me. Show yourselves."

  I spread my feet wide, planting them to brace myself. I stole a look at the nun, hoping she'd found her feet and was on her way out the door. She wasn't. She perched on the edge of the bed with her knees up beneath her plain night gown.

  "Get the fuck out of here," I said to her. She stared back at me from the bed, all owl-eyed and rigid with nervous energy for all of one second before she shot a scalding look my way. I had the insane thought that she would scold me for swearing.

  I lunged for her, grappling for her wrist in the same motion. I could apologize later if I had to. Right now, I just needed her gone.

  The bones felt fragile beneath my grip. I tightened anyway, using the momentum I'd gained from the movement to heave her off the bed. She shrieked in surprise.

  That was the precise moment the demons chose to show themselves. Three sets of leathery black wings opened like sails to the wind, eating the air. Just out of phase with the light in the room, they had all the ghostly residue of fascia, creating a film that threatened to cling to anything it touched.

  Heat suffused the room as demons slipped through the portal of shadow. The sticky warm fragrance of liquid caramel saturated the air currents. I thought I was losing the ability to breathe from the thickness of it.

  The nun too, it seemed. She swooned beneath me and fell backward on the bed. She would have taken me with her, if not for my reflexes triggering the release of her hand. She collapsed onto the bed and bounced lightly just once as the springs sighed and let go. Her legs jutted out from the edge, spread wide beneath the bleached nightgown.

  The priest in me almost reached to right her posture to afford her some modesty. I resisted. It was too late to do anything for her. I had seconds, moments at best, if I was going to walk away unscathed.

  I took a step backward toward the wall behind me, putting my back to something more solid as two of them stepped into the light of the lamp.

  "It's about fucking time," I muttered and aimed myself at the chest of the nearest one as I doubled over and thundered toward it.

  I collided with its stomach. I expected hard muscle. What I met was more like jello. It sucked me in and blocked off my nose and mouth. For a moment, I struggled to breathe.

  Not fully corporeal, then. Duly noted. I was never too old to learn something new.

  The last incubus I'd fought had taught me well. They are not averse to religious artifacts. They are not repelled by crosses or holy water or bibles. But when they are as corporeal as they can get, they can be hurt. This one hadn't phased all the way in yet, and I'd been too quick. I had to remain calm. I wouldn't smother. Ju
st a second or two more and it would be solid enough to be hurt for real.

  I aimed to hurt them as badly as I could. And I could hurt most things pretty badly. One of the few perks of being tethered to a demon.

  It took a second and no more for the soft underbelly to turn to lean muscle, the kind you'd find in a rabbit, slinky and stringy. I struck out the moment I felt the change. It curled over me as it staggered backward against the door. The sound of its hooves clomping along the old wooden boards made the nun stir, finally. I heard her call out for her God.

  "Don't look at it," I yelled. "Just get out."

  The incubus folded over my back twitched and rolled sideways to escape. I grabbed for my crucifix around my neck and yanked it in two, pulling the dagger out from the sheath of the long line of metal that formed the vertical part of the cross. I stabbed into its belly. Once, twice. Another time for good measure.

  Hot fluid rained onto the back of my head and poured down into my eyes.

  I went blind, and with blindness came the threat of panic. If not for the demon within, I'd have lost it. I knew I would have. No man is immune from the fear of losing his sight. It's far too primal.

  As quickly as the room had gone hot and sweat-soaked when the demons arrived, frigid air clamped down around the room. I heard the nun moan in drowsy pleasure. The demon behind me chuckled low in its throat even as I fought to free myself from the dying body of the one I'd stabbed to death.

  "She's mine, Saint," it said and the voice made my skin crawl as it said my name.

  I sank to my knees, not out of fear but to free myself from the leathered carcass and wings that had netted me.

  Incubus demons are not terribly strong. They have no real magic except to overpower unwitting victims with their potent lure. Humans were their favorite prey because humans were susceptible to the temptations of flesh. It's in our DNA and in our primal survival instinct to procreate.

  So I went slack beneath the weight of the demon that held me. Took a breath, reached out with my other senses. I oriented myself in the room by the sounds the Abbess cooed and moaned out into the darkness.

  I gathered myself as I crouched there. Let the demon within me reach out for its distant kin and project to me their places in the room. I felt each of them, their positions in the chamber. One had curled itself over the nun. The other was waiting for me to intercede, assuming I would be driven to salvage the reputation of an order I revered.

  But I didn't revere anything anymore, least of all the priesthood that had shunned me. Instead, I projected the third's location. I saw it as it lurked at the nun's bedside, waiting for me to go to her, to take out the incubus that was even now dragging its claws down the front of her night gown. The tearing sound it made put a whimper in her throat that slipped from her parted lips like sigh. Some part of her knew she didn't want this and that part would be the one that drove her insane finally if the incubus wasn't stopped.

  I cut through the leather of the wing holding me down, slicing through the membrane from top to bottom until I heard the blade strike the floor. Freed, I brandished the blade still in my hand as I pushed through the folds of skin and made for the incubus who waited for me in the shadows, thinking it was invisible to me.

  It wasn't ready for me. No doubt it thought I would save the nun first. Even so, the blood coating the floor and my hands and face hindered a clean strike. It was sloppy, I knew it was sloppy, but it did what I needed it to do. The blade entered the incubus's eye and went hilt deep. I twisted with both hands as I blinked through the blood coating my vision. With a hard knee upward, I brought the demon down and dropped with him.

  We both fell together, me to a crouch and him onto my lap. I yanked the blade from its eye and ran it sideways across its throat.

  It died without a sound.

  The other one, however, would not. It released the nun with a banshee shriek, almost too high-pitched to hear, and then it leapt on me.

  I twisted beneath it, avoiding its gaze. Incubus could transform to succubus in a heartbeat if it thought the change would give it the best chance to feed. Even in the darkness of the room, lit only by that small light, I'd have a hard time resisting if it caught my eye.

  I held my breath as I pinwheeled with him clinging by his claws to my shoulders. It sang terrible, high-pitched and discordant notes in my ear, trying to take me off guard.

  The blade fell from my grip when the incubus grabbed for my throat. I heard it skitter across the floor at the same moment I felt the chain around my neck holding the crosspiece of the crucifix stretch and pull and dig in.

  I coughed. Gagged. Bucked beneath the demon as I tried to release its hold.

  I couldn't free myself. The claws digging in sent enough pain to break through the adrenaline and I winced as I spun and threw myself backwards. We both struck the wall with the full force of my two hundred ten pounds. It fell off me and rolled onto its belly.

  Its bare and hairy backside mooned me and as it tried to find its feet, I could make out the pendulous drag of balls and the smallest glimpse of its barbed member.

  "Hornier than a goat with three cocks," I muttered through a mouthful of demon blood. "Let's see what if we can turn those blue balls a nice shade of red."

  I kicked as hard as I could at the flesh that showed between its thighs.

  It fell forward onto its forehead, clutching at its crotch as it curled over its lap, wings pulled down and around itself. The moans it let go were pitiful. Any man would empathize with its pain as it rocked back and forth.

  Except it was ruse and I knew it when it started to slip back into shadow because I hadn't followed up the attack with a killing blow.

  "Hell no," I said and jumped on its back.

  It couldn't shadow portal out with me riding along. It had long stopped trying to push out its lure and had turned to instinctive self-preservation, so it wasn't ready for me when I muscled my hands beneath its chin. I wrapped my hands around its neck. Squeezed.

  Panic-stricken, the incubus realized it couldn't survive. It sensed its death and I knew it. My own demon felt its cousin's oncoming peril and sent a shriek of rage up through my subconscious. It did not want me to win.

  I had no more sense of where the nun was anymore. I didn't know where the bed was in relation to the door. I wasn't sure where we were oriented in the room. I wasn't even aware of more than the feel of the demon's throat beneath my hands and the effort that was making my head ache. I almost stopped breathing as I dug my fingers in tighter. I felt it try to swallow.

  The demon within slammed itself back and forth in the cage where I'd imprisoned it a century before. Furious. I sensed its hope die as the demon beneath my hands gasped for life.

  "You picked the wrong fucken monster killer," I said to it. "There's armor in my belly."

  I inhaled one last time to feed my hands enough oxygen to give one final squeeze.

  That did it. The incubus spasmed. In a last eruption of muscle, it reached out. Somehow it found my chain again. The force of its death broke the links. They clattered to the floor like rosary beads and when the cross beam struck the wooden floor, it made a cracking sound.

  That was when I knew I was most royally fucked.

  3

  Lightening struck the wall a full second before the sound of the plaster splitting had the chance to make it back to my ears. The incubus went to a buzz of black insects beneath my hands and body. The cloud whirred around in a black whirlwind and fell like a rash of hail onto the wooden floor.

  I fell backward onto my haunches, spent and aching. My head lolled back on my neck. The other bodies transformed as well, all swirling dirvishes of black. Their bodies became nothing but soot coating the floor.

  Their deaths were not quiet. All Hell mourned their passing and it sent a cacophony of protests that funneled and wormed about the chamber. I caught sight of the nun on the bed with her eyes wide, her chest heaving as she panted her fear and relief.

  The noise was sufficient
to bring the entire convent rushing to the room. The abbess was still on her knees on the bed, but she was holding her nightgown closed over her chest. Her hands trembled as she clutched the rent pieces together. I knew she was in shock. I knew she would need aid and succor.

  But I had my own problems.

  I staggered back to my feet and ran my palms over my chest, checking for the crucifix. Maybe I'd imagined it breaking. Maybe I hadn't lost it to the incubus's grasp.

  My fingers met nothing but cotton and leather and skin. No charmed chain. No spelled crucifix. The stone set in the cross bar did not meet my fingers with a pulsing heat.

  Someone said my name. One of the nuns, maybe. I swung to the direction the voice came from.

  "Mr. Saint?"

  Yes. One of the nuns who had ushered me into the room in the first place. She was the one speaking. Young. She was hugging the abbess against her side as she sat with her on the bed.

  "Mr. Saint, are you alright?" she said.

  Was I alright? Good question. I felt for the demon inside like a man with a toothache touches his gums and finds the pain still a sharp and lancing hurt.

  Someone touched my arm, maybe to check for a pulse or shock or to comfort me. I wasn't sure. I turned on that gentle touch with a growl in my throat. The diminutive novice backed away against the door. Her eyes dropped to her hands but there was no mistaking the fear in her face before she averted her gaze from mine.

  I leveled all my rage at the abbess who seemed to be coming round to a sense of composure.

  "Where the hell is it?" I growled.

  She responded to the panic in my voice by swinging her wide-eyed gaze to mine. If she was struggling to come to terms with what she'd just suffered she showed no signs of it. Her composure just enraged me more. Didn't she know how bad this could get?

  "Jesus Christ," I barked out. "Find it. We need to find it."

  I fell to my knees and dug under the bed. Someone switched on the light overhead as I reached deep beneath the springs and groped amid several dust-bunnies and what I thought was a magazine.