by Gene Gant
His eyes went round. “You’re ten times older than I am. That hasn’t stopped you from chasing the guy.”
“I am not chasing Draven.”
“The hell you aren’t. You like him as much as I do. I can see it. I can see how it burns your butt when I get close to the guy.”
I raised my hands, shaking them as if waving smoke from the air. “Wait. Let’s clear up a few things here. First of all, when I said you’re too old for Draven, I meant you’ve got too much experience and power on him—”
“He’s as strong as I am, probably stronger. And if he ever turns, he’ll definitely be stronger than me.”
“Physical strength is no match for that seductive power of yours, and you know it. Which brings me to my second point. I don’t get upset when I see you with Draven because I’m jealous. I get upset because I’m afraid for the kid. I don’t want to see you make a meal of him.”
Inky sighed, a tired, frustrated sound. “Man, I don’t want to hurt him.”
“I believe you. But that’s what inevitably happens to people who fall for you. It happens just like night follows day. If you really care about Draven, you’ll back off and leave him alone.”
He turned and walked away from me. With a groan, he slumped in the rocker. He rubbed his hands over his head in another show of frustration, leaving his hair sticking out from his head at all kinds of crazy angles. He still looked cute as hell. “Ahmad, I don’t know if I can do that.”
THE DEBATE between Inky and me withered away with the issue of his intentions toward Draven unresolved. We wound up back in the den with Draven, where the three of us sat on the floor around the coffee table and played an unending game of Monopoly in front of the shattered husk of the television, which I planned to magically repair sooner or later. The sound and fury outside made a perversely cozy backdrop as we played, chitchatting and laughing between turns.
Despite my best efforts to fight it, sleep took me over again right in the middle of the game. I yawned and lay back on the floor, telling my companions to nudge me when it was my turn again. I woke later to find I had been abandoned along with the game.
The room had gone dark except for the glow of candlelight somewhere off to the right of my feet. I sat up. Inky and Draven were sitting together on the sofa, holding hands and exchanging whispers. There was a candle burning on the end table, creating an intimate atmosphere around them. The entire apartment seemed quiet; I could sense the storm had passed on to the east. There was a delicious, warm aroma in the air.
“Look who’s back,” Inky said, turning his head toward me.
I raised both arms in a long, slow stretch, yawning loudly and rudely without covering my mouth. “What time is it?”
Inky looked at his watch. “Almost five thirty.”
“You seemed kinda wasted, Ahmad,” Draven said. “You feeling better?”
“I guess so.” I was about to suggest that we pay a visit to Mina, but the scent in the air made me realize how hungry I was. A moment later, Luann appeared in the doorway of the den.
“Boys, dinner’s ready,” she announced.
The three of us trailed her to the kitchen, which was lit by big, battery-powered lanterns that emitted a pale, silvery light. Belatedly, I realized the storm had knocked out the power at some point. By a fortunate happenstance, the kitchen featured a gas range. Luann, who apparently served as cook when needed as well as maid, had prepared a fine evening meal by lantern light. The dim lighting seemed a bit too romantic for my tastes. With a discreet wave of my hand, I sent out a bit of magic that found the blown transformer and repaired it. The overhead light suddenly flared back to life, flooding the room in artificial brightness.
“Thank goodness the power’s back on,” Luann said. As we guys seated ourselves at the table, she went to the stove. With a motherly flair, she brought a platter of spaghetti and meatballs to the table and placed it directly between Draven and me. She returned to the stove and came back with a plate of crisp, fragrant garlic toast. “You boys dig in.”
Draven and I did so eagerly, filling our plates as Luann withdrew from the kitchen to attend to her other duties. She never seemed to react to Inky’s gorgeousness when she was around him, and I wondered yet again how she managed to resist him. But that lasted only for a moment. My mind was on food. This was probably the first home-cooked meal the kid had gotten since his mom was kidnapped. It was the first home-cooked meal to come my way in thirteen years, and I have to say I dove into it like a burning man into a pool.
There were only two plates on the table. Spaghetti and meatballs would do nothing to nourish Inky’s uncanny body. As I ate, I sneaked glances at him. His attention was locked on Draven. He smiled when Draven looked at him, laughed when Draven made a joke. But when Draven looked away, the smile disappeared from Inky’s mouth, and sadness filled his face. He stared at the kid, and I could see the hunger growing in him.
AFTER DINNER was finished, in gratitude for Luann’s deliciously generous culinary efforts, I magicked the kitchen clean to spare her the chore. Then Draven and I retreated to the guest bathroom to brush our teeth. Inky conveniently kept a stash of new toothbrushes there. Having reached the end of her workday, Luann was getting ready to head home. She reminded Inky that today was the day she was due her monthly salary, and Inky hurried off to his room to make out a check for her.
Taking advantage of our moment alone, I dropped an invisible, soundproof veil around Draven and me as he rummaged through the drawer to select a toothbrush that suited him. He seemed fully relaxed now, a stark and strange contrast to the raging kid I’d dealt with most of the day.
“We’re gonna go see this Mina girl now, right?” he asked.
“Yeah. The storm’s done, and we shouldn’t put it off any longer.” That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about, and I quickly changed the subject. “Draven, you really need to be very careful around Inky.”
Annoyance lit up the kid’s eyes as he rolled them at me. “You shouldn’t call him that, Ahmad. He doesn’t like it. Why can’t you just call him Gray or Grayson?”
“You haven’t even known the dude a whole day. Trust me, I know him a lot better than you do.”
“Uh-huh. You know him but not well enough to call him by his name.”
“What’s it to you what I call him?”
A twinge of anger rushed over Draven’s face. “You know, you really piss me off sometimes.”
“But Inky never does.”
“He’s nice to me all the time. Not like you.” Draven picked up the toothpaste and twisted off the cap.
“You have no idea what he is. If you did, you’d be begging me to get your in-need-of-anger-management ass out of here.”
Draven squeezed his fist around the tube so hard, all the toothpaste shot out like one big bullet and hit the wall next to the door in a splatter as wide as a plate. He turned to me with blazing eyes. “I thought he was a friend of yours. That is what you told me, isn’t it? You talk about all your friends behind their backs?”
“I know you like him, Draven. I know you think he’s sexy. I’ll bet you even think you’re starting to fall in love with him after knowing him only half a day.”
The anger gave way to surprise and suspicious unease. Draven froze, saying nothing.
“Yeah, I thought so,” I continued. “You want to know why I call him Inky? It’s to constantly remind myself what he is, because even I can fall victim to his power if I let down my guard. He’s an incubus, Draven. He’s a spirit of lust made flesh, flesh so handsomely packaged that every woman and gay man who sees him can’t help but fall for him. And you know what he does when they do? He feeds on their passion and their love. They latch on to him because they think they can’t live without him, and he eats everything they feel for him. He grows stronger, more powerful, and they grow weaker until they’re empty shells and they drop dead. It’s a long, slow, painful way to die, man. It can take months, months of them loving him and giving him everything in their hearts.”
I paused to let that sink in. And for a moment, there was fear in Draven’s eyes.
But Inky’s influence became evident seconds later. Draven’s expression grew defiant. “I don’t believe you,” he snapped, his voice thick with anger. “Grayson loves me as much as I love him. That’s what I believe in, and nothing you say is gonna change that.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid! That wasn’t a reference to the kid. That one was for me. I’d been a fool to bring Draven here, at least without making sure he was 100 percent heterosexual. And if I didn’t find some way to break Inky’s hold on him, he was as good as dead.
Seven
MINA, WHOEVER she was, possessed some degree of magical talent.
Inky had pinpointed her location with great accuracy: a small brick bungalow on South Jeffrey Boulevard just north of East 93rd Street in Calumet Heights. I tried to transport the three of us right to her front door, but she had surrounded her home with an intricate and extensive network of wards designed to resist magical intrusion. Draven, Inky, and I wound up warping into the alley, about four blocks from Mina’s place, which was as close as her wards would allow magic to get us.
The wards also stopped certain types of supernatural beings from physically walking through them. Fortunately, we three guys apparently weren’t on the list of the prohibited. We walked along the alley, its concrete still trickling a little stream of water down its center from the departed storm. The air smelled of wet leaves and garbage. There was no wind now, and a dense layer of gray clouds covered the sky, deepening the night’s darkness. A pair of beagles in one of the yards we passed ran up to the fence, barking furiously. I wasn’t eager for us to draw any attention, so I flicked a bit of magic at the dogs that temporarily dulled their senses to the point they no longer noticed us. They shook their heads for a moment and pawed at their floppy ears. Then they trotted off to the sanctuary of their owner’s covered patio.
“This is it,” Inky said when we reached the back of Mina’s house.
We paused. Her backyard was fenced, and her gate was secured by a chain and lock.
“I can snap the chain,” Draven suggested.
“Damage her property and piss her off,” I said. “That’s a nice way to start things with somebody you hope will help you out.”
Draven rolled his eyes. “Just fix the chain with magic after we’re through the gate. Hell, what’s the big deal?”
“The ‘big deal,’” I answered testily, “is that I can’t fix the chain with magic now that you’ve ordered me to.”
“Dudes, we don’t need to stand here arguing,” Inky said quietly. “We need to talk to this girl.”
“Well, I think we’re past her wards,” I said. “Maybe I can warp us to her front door now.”
Draven moved away from me. When we warped away from Inky’s place, Draven had insisted on standing on his own, and he managed the landing in the alley with only a slight stumble. He was clearly getting the hang of maintaining his balance during the reentry portion of magical transportation. But he stepped closer to Inky, his anger at me still simmering.
I made a downward slashing motion with my hand. The rift in space-time opened as expected and sucked us in.
It dropped us back in Inky’s den.
I sighed. “Okay. Maybe we didn’t get past all her wards.”
“Hell with it,” Inky said. “We’ll drive.”
WE RODE in Inky’s black Jaguar F-Type S sports coupe convertible, his newest acquisition. The thing cost more than the total I’d paid in property taxes on my house over the past thirty years and barely got twenty-three miles to the gallon on the highway. But its V-8 engine packed 550 horsepower, enough to take it from zero to sixty miles per hour in four seconds flat. Inky was a speed demon on the road, which was undoubtedly the primary reason he’d gotten the car. I believe he chose it for our trip to Mina’s not for its speed, but for the fact that it was a two-seater.
There were three of us. You, like me, probably wondered how the hell three robust guys were going to travel in a two-seater without violating the laws of physics. The most obvious solution, based on my current standing in the group, occurred to me as we stood beside the shiny sports car in the building’s garage, and I immediately rejected it. “I am not riding in the trunk!”
“Who said anything about anybody riding in the trunk?” Inky replied with a smile. He tossed his keys to me. “You’re driving. Draven and I will share the passenger seat.”
Sharing the passenger seat meant Draven had to sit on Inky’s lap. The ride was a lot more fun for the cute, innocent Grendel Kid and the hot, gorgeous incubus than it was for the frustrated, worried djinn-turned-chauffeur.
It was 7:07 p.m., by the digital clock on the Jaguar’s dashboard, when we arrived back at Mina’s. I parked the car at the curb. Vapors rose from the streets in drifts, accumulating to form a low-lying fog. The misty darkness gave the unfamiliar neighborhood an eerie cast. Mina’s house, like all the other houses on the street, was old but well maintained. In the darkness, its bricks appeared to be painted white when seen from the car, but when we stepped onto the little square porch, I could see the color was actually a pale gray.
All the leaded-glass windows were dark, showing no hint of a light within. It seemed no one was home. I knew we were being watched, however. The sense of a presence inside the house was very strong. Something about the place had Draven and Inky unsettled too. I could tell from the tense way they held their bodies, their eyes focused and alert.
Then the ghost appeared before us, and the three of us jumped backward off the porch.
IT HOVERED in front of the door like a guardian, as pale and hazy as the fog. The shape of it, though vague, was that of a slender human female. The spirit waited, implacable, conveying with silent, unmistakable clarity its desire that we take ourselves elsewhere.
That wasn’t about to happen, not until we made contact with Mina. I stepped slowly forward. Although it had no eyes or other facial features, I could feel the spirit’s attention narrow on me.
“Who are you?” the ghost asked. The voice was a physical one, sharp and clear.
That surprised me, so much so that it took a moment for me to respond. “I’m Ahmad Everwas. The guys behind me are Grayson Bentley and Draven Northbrook. We’re here to see Mina.”
“What do you want with me? I don’t like visitors, especially ones who come here uninvited and unannounced.”
Another shock, and that was followed by another moment of stupefied silence on my part. “We need your help. We’re looking for a monster named Malwar.”
The ghost had been projecting hostility like heat, something I didn’t realize until now, when the hostility abruptly and completely dropped away. “Come in,” said the spirit. The deadbolt on the inside of the door slid back with a loud click. At the same time, the ghost floated backward and vanished through the door.
I reached out and turned the doorknob. The door swung open, and we walked into a dark living room. The ghost hovered in the middle of the room, waiting. It nodded, and the door closed quietly behind us. The deadbolt snapped back into place.
“Follow me,” said the ghost. It drifted across the living room and into the hall.
We followed, moving through a sparsely furnished living room. I’d felt a strange, potent rush through my whole body the moment I stepped into the house, and the sensation made me weak with a desire that shamed me. I had to fight to keep control of myself. The ghost led us to the first door on the right and the room beyond. This room was also light on fittings—no chairs or tables, just a pair of thick, dark-colored curtains drawn over the window and a single Chinese character, carved out of wood, hanging on the wall directly opposite the door.
There was a girl in the middle of the room.
She was seated in the full lotus position many humans associate with Indian yogis, her legs crossed, alternate bare feet resting on top of her thighs, hands lying palms up and open on her bent knees. Through undoubtedly magical means, s
he was sitting on thin air approximately three feet above the floor, a smooth and effortless display of levitation. She was dressed in loose-fitting black linen pants and a black hoodie, her dark-colored hair worn in a pixie cut. I would have guessed she was around fifteen years old, but there was a somber maturity about her. She was attractive in an unconventional way. Eyes closed, the serenity in her face imparted a stillness that made her features appear to be composed of porcelain.
The spirit took up a position before the girl, holding itself in such a way that conveyed the impression we should not get too close. Draven, Inky, and I stopped several feet away from both ghost and girl.
“You’re obviously not working for Malwar or my wards would never have let you get near my house,” the ghost said, the voice distinctly coming from the ghost and not the girl. “That does not mean I trust you. Make any attempt to do harm here and I will make you regret it. Understood?”
I looked over my right shoulder at Inky and then over my left at Draven. They each nodded in turn. “Okay, we get it,” I replied. “We didn’t come here to do harm—”
“And yet one of you is Grendelkin, like Malwar, who has repeatedly tried to kill me.”
“Actually, that’s why we’re here,” Draven said before I could respond. “I’m Malwar’s son. I turn fifteen in three days. He’s taken my mom, and he will kill her if I don’t commit a murder before my birthday.”
The ghost hovered closer toward us. “What does that have to do with me?”
“We know you had a recent run-in with Jellicoe, one of Malwar’s errand boys,” Inky said with none of his usual charm.
Hostility began radiating from the ghost again. “The earth sprite,” said the ghost, its voice deep with contempt. “Malwar sent the filthy little thing to my house because he couldn’t get through my protective spells. The sprite pretended a need for spiritual healing, which is a service I have committed myself to provide. Then it tried to incapacitate me. It bragged that it would take me to Malwar.”
