by Cori Vidae
A down-on-his-luck half-angel bouncer and a half-demon stripper looking for love. Dreams are made of such stuff.
* * *
Dr. J. C. G. Goelz grew up on the outskirts of Milwaukee, WI, and currently lives in central Louisiana. Goelz has been a scientist, educator, dog breeder, actor, director, playwright, and a writer of literary and genre fiction. This story represents an attempt to write a tale where the concept of predestined “soul mates” makes sense: magic (or a higher power) is essential.
Lilin and Irdo: Promettre
Jeffrey Armadillo
He found her on her hands and knees, her back to him, sifting through the muck. He wanted to go, but stayed. The sight of her like this was always so offensive to him as to make it hard to think. The street light from above glistened off the skin of her back, shoulders, and wings, highlighting each exquisite curve. She was so intent on the straining net that she wafted back and forth in the excreta before her that she did not sense him. She shifted so her profile was to him, and he felt his heart, or whatever it was inside him that caused such pain, swell at the sight of her in the dim light from above, and from her own incandescent light. Her wet face glistened like sand on the banks of the Styx. Flecks of unmentionable muck clung to her hair and cheeks. Despite his inability, he loved her beyond any hope of redemption.
He steadied himself. “Lost something?”
She snapped a coiled look over at him, started to hiss, then relaxed and smiled. “Oh. Hi, Irdo.”
That smile was what it was all about. That smile made it possible for him to keep going. That smile gave him purpose. Trying not to tremble, he raised the arm holding the flowers.
She laughed. “Always the rebel-romantic. You know how dangerous it is and yet you persist.”
“One of us has to be,” he said, trying not to let his smile break his face.
She stood, slogged through the calf-deep sewage over to him, shook off the filth, and gingerly took the flowers. She lowered her face to the bouquet and inhaled. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” said Irdo.
She lowered her face to the bouquet again, then gazed about the sewer. “So, any new creative inspirations?”
Creativity was more important than ever before in seducing men and women. They could only ply their trade when their subjects were asleep, and finding a human who harbored any shame at all about sex anymore, and abstained from any sort of sex, for any length of time, was next to impossible. Abstinence was key to their finding any loads to harvest.
“None today,” he mumbled, avoiding her eyes.
“No one has wet dreams anymore,” Lilin lamented. “People have become so over-sexed that there is no fuel for wet dreams anymore.”
“So few have any sexual guilt anymore, like in the old days,” Irdo said, nodding. “And if they do, they ignore it. Hell, most priests and pastors get more sex than their flocks.”
They loved to rehash “the old days” more than they liked to eat puppies. Oh, the Middle Ages, the Medieval Period, when business was good and work was back-logged. The landscape was filled with simple peasants. And the nobility! Oh, the nobility, such as they were, were so deliciously corrupt and guilt-ridden.
“If only more people understood that every sperm is sacred,” said Lilin.
Irdo chuckled in a way that sounded like chains over broken glass. “I am afraid that few are as big of Monty Python fans as you, my dear.”
She laughed in that way that always forced him to fight the warm glow that started somewhere deep in him, that threatened to consume him, if only he could let it. “If only we were not restricted to humans and could use other species,” she said, bending back to her business. “The Dictates need updating, especially Chapter MXXIV.”
Both Lilin and Irdo knew the rules, to the letter, inside and out, the evil and divine of each syllable, of the Dictates for Angels and Demons. Chapter MXXIV, sections 312 through 336, covered the restrictions regarding non-human species. Section 311 covered the very tight guidelines involving human adolescents. This was fine with Irdo and Lilin, as their experience had led them to the opinion that it was preferable to try and collect the sperm from a pissed off pachyderm than to mess with a modern human teenager, and neither Lilin nor Irdo had ever met a demon who expressed any interest in harvesting from an elephant. Even demons had their limits. Dogs, however, had long been debated, as their nobility and co-evolution with humans allowed for interesting opportunities.
“True,” said Irdo. “The rules need to be revised. But you know what it takes for the big boys upstairs and down to get around to making any kind of mutual decision, especially if it means amendments to the Dictate.”
Lilin did not answer, bending over again to search the rancid muck, peering intently down at the net as she whisked it slowly back and forth. He knelt down next to her, as if to help. His shoulder lightly touched hers. He slowly swam a hand back and forth in the murk, stirring it up, but did not take his eyes off her.
“Lilin, I hate seeing you like this.”
She attempted something like a laugh. “Yeah, well, if I am to do my job this is what it has come to. Everyone masturbates and that semen has only one place to go. Thus, here I am. Thank Satan for loopholes.”
“Let’s find some sex addiction support groups and go fishing,” said Irdo. “That always cures your boredom, and helps to keep your talons sharp.” But Lilin sighed and shook her head. Support group fishing always left them depleted, since any fluids collected or deposited had no efficacy. Only when subjects were asleep and dreaming could they actually impregnate a woman or collect viable semen from a man. And only when they were dead could they borrow their bodies.
Sometimes they went together as a couple to swinging couples groups. Irdo enjoyed those. Together, they were artisans at messing with the minds of human couples. What Irdo liked best was being able to watch her have sex. It bothered him a little to watch her writhe and groan, even while he was on top of and inside some human woman, making her writhe and groan with demonic abandon (possible, ironically, for women, but not for Lilin). But it was not jealousy. He was not capable of that human emotion. No, it was simply a longing to be the one bringing her such pleasure.
“Ah.”
“Got some?”
“Yes.”
“Is it enough?”
“Barely,” she said. “But, yes, I think so.” Her voice was laden with hope.
He watched her tongue coax and flick the small, white flecks from the fine netting. Her exquisite tongue darted out from her lips, gracefully collecting the flecks of gooey treasure into her mouth to be stored and, hopefully, used to create a new demon, or possibly a cambion. The lines of her cheeks in the dim light, the curve of her clavicle, the sheen of her horns, all made him yearn to be capable of poetry or painting, to be able to express, or even just understand, the boil of chaos within him when he looked upon her at times like these.
“I want you,” he said, “to make love to you.”
She sighed and smiled at him with resignation. “You know that’s not possible. But go ahead and knock yourself out. Have at me. I’m ready for a break, anyway.”
“I want more than that.”
“No one can really have what they want, or be what they really want. But come on. Take me. Mount me. It’ll make you feel better. Afterward, we’ll go top-side and get some barbequed kittens. It’ll soothe your demon heart.”
She laid on her back on a mound of human manure on a concrete slab just above the stream of sewage. He mounted her and they went at it. He slipped into her with the usual ease, lubrication not being an issue for demons. She wrapped her legs around him and dug her spurs into his cheeks. The sharp prick of her heel spurs drove him on, faster and harder. He watched her face as he picked up the pace, loving the way her lips parted. But he knew there was more, that she was not all the way there. He could tell she liked it, how he fucked her. But he also knew his cock felt cold to her, not warm like a man’s. He wanted so much to make love
to her like a man. He wanted more than anything to make love to this succubus, Lilin, his succubus, to see her orgasm, to hear her orgasm, to feel her orgasm. But only a warm-blooded son of Adam could do that, never a cold-cocked spawn of Hell.
Afterward they lay on the pile of filth, wrapped around each other like winged snakes. Both were silent except for heavy sighs. He held her hand with one of his, and with the other he lightly stroked her head, horns, and propatagium where her back and wing merged. Intoxicated by ecstasy and not thinking of what he was saying, Irdo said as he sighed, “Promise me that you will never leave me.”
A dozen or so drips fell from a nearby pipe and echoed throughout the sewer before Lilin said in a soft, pained voice, “You know I can’t do that.”
* * *
She found him triaging a room of unconscious addicts, most sprawled at odd angles on a wood floor covered in bird and rodent droppings. He was, she knew, assessing only the women. Most were in some state of undress. Two naked forms were passed out in mid-coitus, one slumped over the other. Lilin could not tell their ages or their hair color.
“Are any of them dead?” she said.
He scanned the figures at his feet, then pointed. “Just this one. So far.”
The room was strewn with garbage and feces. Lilin stepped on several spent needles as she made her way toward Irdo. The walls allowed more sunlight through holes and cracks than did the filthy, brown windows.
“Will any of these work?” said Lilin, knowing that Irdo was woefully behind, as usual, on his egg collection and fertilization quotas.
He pursed his lips, then shook his head. “No. They are too deeply comatose. I could never reach them. And these two here are nearly dead.”
She watched him move lithely among the figures, all flung about as if by an explosion. His posture and poise were not what they had once been, back before science and secular modernity dispelled their existence. His back and wings were more stooped now. His arms hung at his sides with the weight of futility. His eyes did not burn with the same intensity. Still, he carried himself with a formidable amount of power and pride, grace, and beauty. He was still the same demon she had fallen for so many centuries before.
“So the women in comas didn’t pan out?” said Lilin, trying to lighten the mood.
He shook his head. “It’s hard to impregnate a woman in a coma. And when you do manage to get it done, the hospitals always secretly abort it. They assume some staff member raped her.” He glanced over to her. “Has it ever bothered you, over the centuries, when humans seem to exceed us in demonic talents?”
She laughed. “Humans have always given us a run for our money.”
“What I have always found so annoying and amusing,” he said, “is priests and pastors beating us at our own game.”
“Oh, come on,” said Lilin, “you know that often ‘men of God’ are actually on our team.”
They laughed. Lilin watched Irdo as he continued triaging the prone and splayed figures, searching for a candidate. She tried not to think of him as beautiful or noble, or to remember him back before everything changed, before the War with Heaven, when they were just wayward angels looking for a good time.
“What I would not give to be able to possess a person alive and awake,” said Irdo.
“Oh, I would stay naked with you for weeks,” said Lilin.
“Oooh. Be still my beating heart,” he said.
“You don’t have a heart.”
“Then what’s this fluttering I feel?” he said.
“Don’t know,” she said. “But it ain’t a heart.”
He stopped a moment and stretched, opening his wings halfway and arching his back, throwing his head back. He possesses such noble form, she thought. She had never seen a more beautiful or impressive set of wings, anywhere, not on earth or in Hell. When they flew together, she always marveled at them, their power and grace. Bats and birds often flew along with them just to marvel at his wings. Eagles were often left speechless. Flocks of crows and ravens often brought him bobbles in homage to his spread. His shoulders were nearly as spectacular to see, rippling with musculature and grace. And that face. Oh, that face.
He stooped over a woman and watched her for some moments before he knelt and covered her with his wings. Lilin knew that he was entering her subconscious, trying to get into or start up and control her dreams. Lilin examined her claws and hummed a Wagner tune. A muffled song played over an iPod nearby, a song she liked and reminded her of the 1960s, when business for them really started to take a nosedive, though the drugs made everything so interesting. He startled her when he stood suddenly.
“No luck?” she said.
He shook his head. “No. Heart just stopped. Over-dosed. Damn.”
“Is there another?” she said, hopeful.
He shook his head and sighed. “No.”
She felt his frustration. It matched hers. “This job used to be such a party.”
“You mean the Age of Enlightenment?” he said, switching to French. “Yes, it was. Enlightenment preoccupation with sin was so delicious.”
They had been busy in the Enlightenment, always meeting their quotas and struggling to stay on any sort of set delivery schedule. Often it was difficult for them to meet for a quick ale or wine, just to see each other, to hear the other’s voice.
“I can still see you in those ridiculous hats that you so used to love,” said Lilin. “Even more so in the French courts. Especially that one…”
“Hey, that was a very cool hat,” said Irdo with feigned wounded pride. “And Louis XIV loved it.”
“It was an abomination,” she said, laughing.
“Do you think it would be possible for the church to do it again?” asked Lilin. “Turn things around? Reinstate fear of sin and pervasive sexual guilt?”
He shook his head. “It would have to completely reinvent itself, make itself relevant again, and get rid of online porn. Not even the Vatican has that kind of power.”
“So you think business is only going to get worse?”
He stood, turned his head to crack his neck, opened and stretched his wings, before finally looking at her. “It might.”
“Great,” she said. “So what will become of us?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his arms while looking down at a prone figure. “And I don’t really care. I just want to be with you.”
Sex in their demon bodies was fine, even enjoyable, though not as good as sex in human bodies. But, for them to be able to use a human body, it had to be empty of its soul. They had found certain workarounds over the centuries. The best were fresh corpses, found while they were still warm and able to be reanimated. The just-departed soul was no longer using it, so it was theirs for a short while. This was verboten, of course, punishable at the highest level of prejudice. Incubi and succubi were never to have sex, or any connection whatsoever, especially emotional. But after they discovered this little trick, and had done it a few times, they were hooked, changed. Their love for one another burned hotter, made them ravenous for more, defiant of the rules of Hell and Heaven.
There were problems to contend with. The main problem was that it was very rare to find two freshly dead bodies together, in good enough shape to have sex, and in a setting where they would not be observed. There was also the problem that they both had to be there. Calling and summoning takes time. Bodies grow stiff.
But they had pulled it off numerous times. Some of the more memorable finds were a British nurse and a German soldier in an aid station behind British lines at the Somme that was shelled with gas. The gas kept the Brits out of the area until the next day. Lilin and Irdo went at it most of the night. The gas had some sort of preservative effect that kept the rigor mortis at bay longer than normal. Once they borrowed the bodies of a man and woman, lowly sailor and high-born lady, who had just drowned off a ship lost in the mid-Atlantic in the mid-17th century. They had sex as they descended into darkness, thrashing and clinging to each other into the total obl
ivion of the depths, stopping only when the bodies were torn apart by some behemoth of the deep which they could not see. In the late 19th century they borrowed the bodies of an elderly couple who died together during the winter in a cold apartment in New Jersey. The man froze to death and the woman slit both wrists rather than be without her husband. The apartment was cozy and frigid, with lots of books and pictures of the “old country.” The ice box-like cold retarded the onset of rigor mortis which allowed them more time to make love, tenderly, in consideration to their borrowed, fragile bodies. Lilin always said that was her favorite. They even once used the bodies of two stray dogs who died together of starvation, choosing death rather than to leave each other. Irdo always said that was his favorite, that he liked it doggy style. More and more over the centuries it became harder for them to abstain from it when the opportunity presented itself, in spite of the extreme risk of detection and punishment.
For lack of floor space they did it now standing in that dank, dark, drug den. She wrapped her legs around him and he held her aloft by her ass cheeks. Oh, Satan, how she loved his hands on her ass, how her ass melded to and became part of his hands. Their wings extended high and full and clasped over their heads. They made demonic pleasure sounds as they tried to break the sound barrier with their desperate convulsions.
One of the nearby figures started to moan. She awakened and sat up, looked over at Irdo and Lilin going at it and said, “What the hell?”
Lilin, who had death grips on Irdo’s horns and her head thrown back, paid no mind to the woman. Irdo looked over at her. “Do you mind?” he said between grunts and growls.
The half-conscious woman shook her head and said, “Bobby was wrong. That was some good shit.” Then she dropped back into unconsciousness.
Lilin and Irdo both stopped thrusting and laughed. They locked eyes as a helicopter search light lit up the squalid room like a disco ball. Their laughter subsided. Irdo, with trembling lips, started to say, “Promise me…” But Lilin slammed their faces together and kissed him so hard their fangs clinked. She ran her tongue down his throat, groaning so loud that one of the comatose semi-corpses stirred and mumbled, “Mommy? Is that you?”
