Incubus Hitman

by Jack Porter

  “It is done,” Azrael said.

  I felt a moment of dizziness, but that was all. I except… I felt strong. Much stronger than before. Like, almost unbelievably strong. I wanted to jump up and check myself out in the mirror, but before I could do it, Rachel crossed the threshold between sleep and awake.

  I smiled down at her as she looked at me, and her eyes grew very large. “I can see your demon,” she said.

  She didn’t seem particularly worried about the reality. In fact, her expression immediately changed to one almost of delight. “Cool!” she said. Then, “What happened?”

  My own desire to check myself out momentarily forgotten, I filled her in as quickly as I could, telling her everything. During the conversation, it became apparent that not only could she see my demon, but she could hear Azrael speaking as well.

  When it came to her own demonic form, she immediately climbed out of bed, grabbing her glasses off the nightstand as she stood. “Where is your mirror?” she asked.

  “Bathroom,” I replied. “To your left.”

  That was all she needed. I followed her but stopped at the doorway, giving her the option of privacy if she wished. She left it open.

  “Cool,” she said, looking at herself from every direction. Then she frowned. “How do I get them to work?”

  It was Azrael who answered. “You need to level up.”

  “And how do I do that?”

  Azrael told her the same thing he’d told me, which effectively amounted to, “Infect others.”

  But she didn’t seem that interested in the idea. “Is that the only way?”

  “You are my first of my demonic progeny,” Azrael said. “You will level up as I do, and almost as quickly, gaining powers as you do. When I recover my full strength, you will be at level ninety without having to lift a finger.”

  “Awesome!” she said. Then, “But others can’t see this side of me? This demoness in the mirror?”

  “No. To all those without demonic sight, you will appear to be just as you were.”

  She simply nodded, pleased to have the information.

  I had to admit, if I’d heard that for the first time, I might have been a little more excited. But Rachel took it in stride. She seemed satisfied but a long way from awestruck. In fact, she was so at peace with what had happened, so unperturbed, that she even noticed the changes in me. She tilted her head to the side, just a little, and pursed her lips in an assessing way.

  “You look a little different,” she said.

  I grinned at her. “Azrael has the power to adjust my attributes, within reason. The more he levels up, the more he will be able to do it.”

  Rachel accepted my answer as if it was just another of a thousand impossible things she accepted before noon. Or midnight, as the case may be.

  “I approve,” she said. She eyed me up and down once again and offered a smile. “Although, you could have asked for an improvement in a slightly different area,” she said slyly.

  All at once, I remembered I was still stark naked. This was the first time I’d felt comfortable being so in front of an actual, real live woman for so long, I was surprised to realize it. At the same time, I did wish she hadn’t pointed out that particular lack.

  Forgetting she could now hear Azrael’s comments, I shot him a quick request. “How about it?” I asked silently.

  Once more, I heard him laughing. “I have used all available points,” he replied. “I will have to level up again to make any additional changes.”

  As if sensing my disappointment, Rachel continued to grin.

  “Not to worry,” she said. “You’re fine as you are.”

  With that, she left the bathroom and returned to my bed, completely oblivious to the own nakedness (aside from her glasses and socks), sitting up with her legs crossed in front of her.

  “Speaking of which,” she said. “What’s next? Where do we go from here?”

  There were several different possible meanings behind her question, and while it sounded as if she had just joined my quest for global domination, I thought it best to make sure. Not that I had any objection. Rachel was already showing herself to be about the coolest chick I’d ever known, and I was more than happy with her ongoing company.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “I mean, you started the ball rolling,” she said. “You’ve got your demon. When we first met, you said that it didn’t matter because you weren’t able to do what was necessary to help him unlock his power.” She smiled a lot more than I thought a Goth girl ought to smile, but it suited her. “Now, it seems you’ve got that ball rolling.” As she said it, she seemed to preen a little, and I understood she took full credit for that. As well she should. “So, what’s next?”

  It was a very good question. “My goal is simple. I want as much status as I can get. Which means Azrael needs to be as powerful as possible. And that means binding with more women. Bringing out their inner demons and leveling up. The problem with that, of course, is that I’m not very good at picking women up.”

  Rachel raised an eye. “I don’t know about that. I mean, you did all right with me, didn’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure I see it the same way,” I said. She didn’t argue the point, and I took a deep breath. “The problem is status,” I said. “Mine is simply too low. If it was higher, it would be easier to keep that ball rolling. As it is, it’s like it gets stuck pretty quickly.”

  Rachel nodded, accepting my summary without question. “So,” she said. “What can you do right now to raise your status?”

  Chapter 15

  In the city of El Diablo, a person’s status was made up of a variety of things. It included the obvious, like wealth, power, and career, as well as the less tangible. The amount of respect you gained from your peers was important, which meant that two people in the same job, with the same amount of power and wealth, could have different statuses.

  Positions counted, but not as much as how your community viewed you, and online communities were considered as well, but were given a far lower weighting.

  Married people were given higher status than singles, as were those with kids, but there were limits and conditions associated with everything. Both legal and illegal status was measured by completely impartial–and separate–AIs, and they in turn were adjusted as new indicators gained or lost prominence.

  Overall, they were a very good reflection of the true status of an individual in society, regardless of how much I wished that wasn’t so.

  The only limitation on the accuracy of the status measurements was whether something was known.

  For example, getting a girlfriend, if that’s what Rachel was, could improve my status, but only if it wasn’t secret. Same with killing my roommate. That action wouldn’t impact my legal status one way or another, but if the AI governing illegal statuses were to somehow find out, it might actually raise my status on that metric.

  As for the physical improvements Azrael had made, and the presence of Azrael himself, right at that moment, they made no difference at all. It was only when people started to notice and changed their behaviors accordingly that it would have an impact.

  Which left me with one response to Rachel’s question.

  I stared at her blankly.

  She waited until it became clear I had no answer.

  “Well,” she said. “Let’s come at it from a different direction. What is your status now, and what have you done to get it there?”

  I was embarrassed to answer. Yet I did, even though my cheeks were burning bright red.

  “Status nine legal, twelve illegal. I work as a gaming trainer, helping wealthy kids improve their own status in that part of their lives. I work from home, and I don’t have many clients because I’m not great at marketing myself. So, yeah. Less than minimum wage, and I’m not exactly respected. I don’t have many real-world friends either, and those online friends I have are mostly gamers or part of the Ascenders’ community.” I offered a humiliated shrug
. “Which is why my illegal status is higher.”

  Rachel stared at me. She’d known my status was low, but the look on her face suggested she was surprised by exactly how low it truly was. I mean, most people had a higher status than that straight out of school, with no money, job, or place to call their own.

  It was like I’d done all I could to make sure my status was as low as possible and worked hard to keep it that way.

  Yet she swallowed any judgment she might have made about that. She understood my potential better than anyone and had even hitched her horse to my wagon. As my status improved, so would hers.

  “What other skills do you have? Is there anything else you can do? And do you prefer legal or illegal?”

  “Legal or illegal doesn’t really matter to me,” I said. “But if I knew how to leverage the skills I have, don’t you think I would have done it already?” I couldn’t help but let my exasperation show.

  Surprisingly, especially given that she looked like a female demon to me, Rachel responded with compassion. She reached for me, placing a comforting hand on my knee and offering me a smile.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll figure this out. You have an advantage that not many people have.”

  She was right, but I’d already blown all the points I currently had. In retrospect, perhaps I should have waited until after this conversation before allocating them. But what was done was done, and I couldn’t do much about it after the fact.

  “Maybe I need to go out and try to pick up someone else,” I muttered out loud. “Maybe, if my demon levels up enough, and I could put more points where they matter, I wouldn’t have this trouble.”

  “Isn’t that the very problem we’re trying to fix?” she asked.

  I just nodded my head.

  For a moment, we sat in silence. Both naked, sitting on the bed. Despite my seemingly insoluble problem, it was still a good night.

  “Is there anything you haven’t told me?” Rachel asked. “Anything at all that might help?”

  Before I could stop him, Azrael answered for me. “Simon knows how to kill, and how to dispose of a body.”

  If I’d had some way to strangle the demon in my mind, I would have done so. I panicked, demanding why he had said that out loud, fearing the absolute worst from Rachel. How could she not respond with horror? How could she not turn against me and call the police?

  I wanted to blurt out some sort of reassurance, telling her it was a one-off, or maybe suggest that Azrael’s claim of my knowledge was no more than academic.

  But once more, Rachel surprised me. Instead of the shock I expected, the newly made succubus sitting on my bed simply raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to the side in an expression of interest.

  “Really?” she asked, her tone suggesting no more than fascination. “Do tell.”

  I thought about lying, thought about saying it was just a misunderstanding. But it wasn’t a misunderstanding, and Rachel knew it.

  With a sigh, I deflated, and hung my head in shame. “I killed my roommate,” I admitted. “That’s why he is not likely to come home.”

  “Why?” Rachel’s tone didn’t imply recrimination or horror, merely curiosity.

  “Because he was a prick!” I said. Then I shook my head. “It wasn’t really a conscious choice. You see, I was trying to resurrect Azrael, and Chad kinda spoiled everything.”

  I told her the rest of the story, going into details about what Chad had done and how it had caused him to fit and froth at the mouth.

  “So, really, he was kind of dead already,” I said, before telling her the rest. The knife, the ritual, and even my trips to the crematorium.

  If she wanted to, Rachel could have taken this information to the police and told them everything. But for some reason, I didn’t believe she would. We were connected, the three of us. Me, Azrael, and Rachel. And something told me we always would be.

  If we were modern-day sex vampires, then this was the start of our coven.

  When I was done, I looked back up at Rachel, and still saw no judgment in her expression. In fact, what I saw gave me some hope.

  She looked thoughtful. More than thoughtful. It looked like she had some sort of idea.

  As I watched her, she gave a quiet nod. “What if I told you that this might be your ticket to everything?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, who has the highest status in the world? World leaders, right? They have high legal and illegal status both. Stars of music or film have mostly high legal status. Business people, again, they have a mixture of the two. Religious leaders have high legal status, and maybe some of them might have high illegal status as well.” She paused for a moment to study me. “I’m not sure what steps you might take to reach the peaks of any of those. But there is one option that might suit you nicely.”

  Now that she didn’t seem to be about to run away and call the cops, I was increasingly curious about where she was heading.

  “What is that option?” I asked.

  “Who is at the very top of the illegal status rankings? Apart from the dictators running their countries with an iron fist. Who else?”

  I thought about it. There was only one I could think of. “The heads of the international crime syndicates.”

  “Yes!” Rachel exclaimed. Then her grin came out again. “To rise to the head of an organization like that will take time, effort, and perhaps a demon on your side. But before any of that, you need a way in.”

  I nodded, agreeing with everything that she said. “And?”

  “How do you feel about becoming a hitman?”

  I blinked in surprise. My first thought was to dismiss the idea outright. What did I know about becoming a hitman?

  And yet… maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. Sure, I didn’t have any military training to speak of, unless you counted about nine thousand hours playing games that simulated exactly that. But I had murdered my roommate in relatively cold blood, and doing so had left me largely unmoved, which suggested a certain psychological malleability that might serve me well. And I’d successfully gotten rid of the body.

  Rachel wasn’t finished. “Hitmen have a pretty decent status, and they earn well from right out of the gate. You could do a lot worse.”

  Unbelievably, I found myself nodding my head. It might be worth a go.

  “But how do I break into that kind of thing?” I asked. “I mean, there’s got to be more to it than going around killing strangers on the street, doesn’t there?”

  Rachel hadn’t stopped grinning. “You know, you haven’t asked me what I do for a living,” she said casually.

  The comment took me by surprise. I swallowed, looked at her, and decided to respond. “Okay. I’ll bite. What do you do for a living?”

  She looked away, studying her fingernails in a pose of purest contentment. She may as well have started to purr.

  “I work for the Gambetti Syndicate. It isn’t the biggest crime organization in the world, but it’s a pretty good size. A good place for you to get a foot in the door. My job is with the IT department, managing many of their systems.”

  She looked back at me, as if daring me to ask her to carry on.

  “Go on,” I said, accepting her challenge.

  “You’d be amazed at the things that are systematized these days. All sorts of things that you wouldn’t expect. One of them is their hit list.” She paused for a moment, letting the importance of her words sink in.

  Then she dropped the other shoe. “I can give you all the information you need to pick your targets. I can even put you in the system as a known freelancer.”

  I stared at her. “You can do that?”

  Rachel grinned at me. She looked magnificent as a succubus, I decided. “It’d be easy. The question is, do you want me to?”

  Maybe I was still a little drunk from the quick rum and cokes I had downed. Maybe I was in a state close to giddy delirium because I’d finally managed to get laid for the first time in forever.
Maybe it was because I was feeling strong and capable, courtesy of Azrael’s attribute boost.

  Either way, I couldn’t see any real downside. And anyway, what choice did I have? It was either do something drastic to change my life or keep plodding along with my long-term plan that was no more than wishful thinking.

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  “Excellent!” Azrael said.

  Rachel was more practical. “Right,” she said. “I’ll get onto it first thing in the morning, when I get into work. Hopefully, I’ll be able to give you remote access, and then you’ll see a list of possible targets. But for now, it’s getting pretty late. I know Goth girls are supposed to want to stay up until dawn, but this one has a day job. So, I’m going to sleep.”

  The way she said it left no doubt in my mind that she already considered my bed to be hers as well, and that she fully intended to stay.

  Chapter 16

  Rachel proved to be as good as her word and called in barely an hour after she’d left for work.

  “I’ve set you up in the system and given you remote access. Your username is SimonSaysDie, all one word. The account is linked to your status accounts, but don’t worry. It’s heavily encrypted so the legal authorities can’t ever use it against you. Sorry, gotta go.”

  And then she was gone. Even in that brief message, she sounded excited, as if she was doing something she thought of as fun.

  Personally, I didn’t know quite what to think or feel. Things were moving very swiftly and in a direction I would never have thought possible even a couple of days earlier.

  The status and power I craved may still have been heading my way, but it wouldn’t come without effort.

  If I could get there at all, I would have to work for it.

  “Well?” said Azrael. “Are you going to just sit there? Or are you going to log in and see what we’ll be doing today?”

  Azrael was part of me. I knew this. And we were working toward the same goal. The more he leveled up, the more I would be able to achieve the things that I desired most.