I took a step toward him and let the flail swing like a pendulum directly in front of his eyes. “Who do you take orders from?”
The Incubus let out a long, bitter laugh, and then lunged. I leaped back, but it wasn't me he was reaching for. He gripped the end of the Night Flail in his hand and the smell of sizzling meat filled the air.
I stood, dumbfounded, as the creature tried to pull the flail closer to him. He had almost pulled the end all the way to his chest before he let out a piteous moan and released it, revealing a blackened patch of seared skin on his hand.
Lyanne let out a relieved sigh. “That was close. I never expected him to try and kill himself with your flail. My thrall almost wasn’t enough to stop him. You should hurry, I don’t know how much longer I can hold him.”
The rage that had been building up in me all night finally cooked over, and a chill so intense it made me shiver began to crawl up my spine. This was a new kind of anger—not the type that makes you hot, dizzy, or crazed. This was cold. Frigid, in fact, and it was directed exclusively at the handsome, hollow, evil bastard standing there before me. My voice dropped to a whisper. “Do you really want the Flail’s touch?”
I lashed out with the flail, striking at his arm once, twice. Each hit resounded with a disturbing crack as the bones in the arm shattered from the impact, the skin splitting like rotten fruit with each savage blow. Ragan dropped to his knees and cried out, but I was well past caring about witnesses.
“Who the fuck do you work for?” I asked him, my voice like iron.
“Tandi!” the Incubus spat. “Her name is Tandi. Almost all of us in the city work for her now. She's been recruiting. I don't know—”
I prepared the flail for another strike. “Why is she recruiting? What for?”
“I don't know. I don't—I'm not . . . I'm not . . .”
The Incubus was suddenly silent. His body slowly began to deteriorate, ash falling from the wounds on his hand and arm.
Lyanne gently tapped the body with her foot. “The poor lad couldn't take it. Between my thrall and your attacks, his body seems to have given out. More’s the pity.”
I sighed and watched, disgusted, as Ragan's body gradually turned to ash. “I don't suppose you have heard of this Tandi person?”
She shook her head. “Whoever it is never extended an invitation to me.”
We waited until Ragan's body had completely crumbled away before we spoke again.
Lyanne took me by the arm. “Come on, let's go back to the apartment. We should check on Sara.”
“If she’s hurt too badly, I’m going to reassemble his ashes and kill the bastard again,” I said, looking back where the Incubus had been.
Lyanne stared at me, but then she smiled. “Good. I’m on the right side for once.”
7
We let ourselves into the apartment Sara was using for the weekend, the door having been left unlocked. Sara had somehow made it inside in her half-conscious state, but she hadn’t gotten far. We found her collapsed on the floor in the entryway. Her skin was pale, her body was slick with sweat, and she was shivering. If I didn't know better, I'd think she had the flu.
I carried her to her bed, and Lyanne changed her into fresh clothes. It turned out treating life-force draining was a lot like treating the flu: the victim needed a lot of rest, plenty of hydration, and vitamins to help the body recover the lost energy. Lyanne took charge of her care, leaving me with very little to do other than consider how and when I was going to kill everyone associated with Sara’s attack. It was a good diversion, and it let my mind run wild with scenarios that involved using the Night Flail in new and exciting ways.
For a while, I paced around Sara's apartment. Then, when I became worried that the noise I was making might disturb her rest, I went back to my apartment to pace there. And when I became concerned that leaving Lyanne and Sara alone might put them in danger, I went back.
Sara would drift into consciousness for short periods, but she wasn't lucid. It wasn’t clear whether she understood what had happened to her, or if she even knew where she was. At one point she mumbled something about Ragan, but whether she was accusing him or calling out to him I couldn’t tell. Her words had no context other than fevered pain, and seeing her speak was an exercise in frustration.
Lyanne sent me to the corner store once to pick up an ice pack and some sports drinks. I picked up the morning editions of the local newspapers while I was there, thinking I could use this time to continue looking into missing-person cases. Unfortunately, concentrating proved to be impossible.
I crashed on Sara's couch at some point. I wasn’t sure how long I slept, but the sun was already setting again when I awoke, disoriented and angry.
Lyanne was still wearing the same clothes from last night, somehow still unsoiled and not creased. She could not have possibly slept, yet she didn’t seem tired. “She’s through the worst of it now, I think. I will continue to watch over her for a while longer, just in case.”
There was nothing I could do here, so I set myself to a task I could accomplish. “Stay here with Sara. I'm going to look into our other lead.”
For a moment, Lyanne's composure faltered, hinting that she might be much more tired than she was trying to let on. “What other lead?”
I held up an address written on an index card. “The Dispensary, the place mentioned by that Succubus a couple nights ago? I did some searching online and found a bar just a few miles from the construction site with that name. And get this—the owner's name is Maura.”
Lyanne seemed unconvinced. “It’s not exactly a rare name. Why would the Succubus have called out a random bar owner?”
No good answer came to me. “Look, worst case, I waste a few hours and come back with nothing to show for it. I'm not accomplishing much more here right now, and I could use something to burn off this—whatever it is I’m accumulating.”
She gave a defeated sigh. “Just try to be careful. You are a walking Succubus lure, after all. Life would become more boring if you were no longer around.”
“That sounds an awful lot like you care.”
Lyanne grinned. “Don't push your luck.”
Finding the place was a surprising challenge. The cab driver had never heard of The Dispensary and could only offer to drop me off in the neighborhood without further directions. GPS proved useless, frequently telling me to turn in circles as I walked up and down the street the address supposedly fell on. None of the locals seemed to have heard of the place, either.
I was beginning to think that I had gotten the address wrong when that new instinct of mine began to pick up on something. It wasn't a sense of danger, like when a Succubus was nearby, but more of a sense that something odd was close by—like the echo of a being I should know, but didn’t. I followed that sense down the street to an unmarked stairwell leading down. At the bottom of the steps was a single green door. The sounds of music and laughter echoed from behind it.
While I stood at the top of the stairway contemplating how I should approach, a bespectacled young man came stumbling out of the door, clearly intoxicated.
I caught him by the shoulder as he started to fall and helped him up the stairs. “Hey, is this The Dispensary?”
The drunk young man gave a wild laugh. “You found it, bro. But keep it under wraps, yeah? Don't be one of those losers putting this place online. It's one of the city's hidden treasures.” Or that's what I think he was trying to say, as he was slurring his words. I decided not to mention that I had found this place online.
That sense of the abnormal grew stronger as I pushed open the green door and stepped inside. Visually, the bar was normal. While the steps took me well underground, the ceiling of the bar was high enough that windows along the top of the walls would allow sunlight through in the middle of the day. A long counter across the east wall separated the patrons from well stocked shelves of every kind of booze imaginable. There were a few tables on the opposite end, but most of the floor was standing
space. And considering how empty the tables were it seemed the clientele preferred it that way.
My instincts told me there was something more here than met the eye. A few of the bar's patrons cast me curious glances as I walked past, causing that feeling of wariness to spike. Some of these people were not human. Not Succubi, either. Something else.
I ordered a beer from a busy yet personable bartender and did my best to blend in. Around me people drank, talked about politics and technology, flirted with one another, and lip-synced with the music playing overhead.
As I ordered another drink, I asked the bartender if the owner was here tonight. He pointed to the back end of the bar. Maura.
She had chocolate chip eyes, auburn curls, and an ease as she moved through the crowd, never caught in one place by the tide of patrons. I bided my time by the bar, keeping one eye on the owner and hoping for the opportunity to speak with her.
My chance finally came some time later when Maura stepped up beside me to give some instructions to the bartender. All of my preparation had not given me a good opening line. “This is a nice place you’ve got here.”
She didn’t bother to look at me. “Thanks.” As I was trying to think of how to follow up such brilliant wordplay, Maura added, “So what do you want?”
I pointed stupidly at my drink. “Huh? I'm just here for a beer?” Somehow, I made that sound more like a question than a statement.
Maura sidled up closer to me, still not looking away from the counter. She smelled like menthol cigarettes and perfume. “You've been staring at me all night. I haven't decided whether you're a troublemaker or just creepy.”
Apparently, I hadn’t been as smooth with my surveillance as I thought. “Your name came up during my work and I got curious.”
She finally spared me a glance. “And what kind of work is that?”
“I'm a Hunter.”
Her face showed the smallest reaction. “I take it you don't mean animals.”
I lowered my voice. “Do you know why a Succubus would think you aided me in finding her?”
Maura didn't bother lowering hers. “Secrets are one of my most valuable commodities. I know much of what goes on in the city, which includes where certain beings might be, and what they might be doing. It's not unreasonable to assume I might sell that information to a hunter, for the right price.”
Everything in New York seemed to come down the money. “How much do your secrets usually cost?”
She pointed to a shelf of fine wine behind the counter. “Like our selection here, it depends on the quality and rarity of the secret you are looking for.”
“Do you know of someone recruiting Succubi and Incubi by the name of Tandi?”
Maura's body tensed, and for a moment I feared she was about to call the bouncer to have me thrown out. “Some secrets have too high a price tag. Sorry, I've got other customers waiting.” She gave me the brush-off as she waded back into the crowd.
Well, the night wasn't a total loss. The mystery of Maura was solved, and she might even be a valuable contact if Lyanne was willing to open her purse far enough.
It was also clear that this Succubus recruiter, Tandi, was quite dangerous, if she could cause Maura to freeze up like that. Maura didn’t seem like a flower that wilted under the heat, so I knew I’d be on high alert for—
—well, forever.
I sighed and slipped out into the uncaring night.
Sara finally came to a lucid state two days later. She was understandably confused as to why two perfect strangers were in her apartment caring for her while she was sick and seemed to have very few memories of the past few days. Thankfully, whatever power I had in attracting her was enough to dissuade her from calling the police.
I helped her out of bed and to the dining room table where the overindulgent breakfast Lyanne had ordered in was spread out. Sara lightly picked at the food while she waited for us to explain ourselves.
There was an elaborate lie I had constructed involving long-lost cousins, wrongly addressed mail, and the common cold, but all that went out the window when Lyanne decided to tell the tell the truth in the most direct, plain way possible.
Instead of demanding the crazy people talking about monsters leave her house, Sara just nodded. “Ragan was an Incubus, huh? Yeah, that makes sense.”
One of these days I would cease being surprised by women. Not today. “It does?”
Sara shifted uncomfortably in her seat. “Don't think I'm weird or anything, but I've been kind of . . . researching them. I knew there were a lot of monsters around and I went looking for them. It was only a matter of time before something like this happened.”
Lyanne beat me to the obvious follow-up question. “What were you researching, exactly?”
“Well, all of them, really. The creatures and magical happenings of New York.” She blushed and kept her eyes fixed on the table. “I used to read a lot. Of fiction, that is, mostly fantasy. I loved stories about heroes, and monsters, and magic. I would imagine I saw signs of magical happenings in real life, creatures lurking in the shadows, but I was always told that I was reading so much I was going to lose my grip on reality. For my well-being I stopped reading and started going to therapy, and doing all the things I was told to do, but I kept seeing the signs anyway. So I set out to prove it.”
I had yet to touch any of Lyanne's spread. “And you actually managed to find them? That’s a gift. I know exactly what we’re looking for and I'm still struggling to find them.”
Sara slouched in her seat, as if the weight of the compliment pushed down on her. “It wasn't that easy. At least, at first. I would cross-reference missing persons with 'strange sightings' from tabloid magazines—you know the ones that are always claiming to have new pictures of Bigfoot and UFO's? Usually it wouldn't lead to anything—the person was just a runaway, or the result of mundane foul play. Even the ones I strongly suspected were the results of creatures of the night I could find no solid evidence of. That all changed a few months ago. Suddenly there were signs of the monsters everywhere, around every corner I looked, and every case I looked into had some unexplained phenomenon to it. Ironic I would end up dating one of those creatures, isn't it?”
As she was about to say more, she paused as if a sudden thought had just come to her. “You know, it's strange. I can't remember how Ragan and I became a couple. I don't remember him asking me out, or me agreeing to be his girlfriend. In my earliest memories of him we were already a couple.”
Lyanne was already pouring herself a second cup of wine. “A charm effect, most likely. A brute force one to impact your memory to such an extent. Not surprising. Given how weak he turned out to be, he probably couldn't manage something more subtle.”
I could see a look of despair begin to creep up on Sara's face as she came to terms with what that meant for her and the memories of her most recent relationship, and I decided to take the conversation back a step. “You said your investigations lately have been yielding results? What exactly have you found?”
“Everything!” Sara became animated as went down the list. “Demons and creatures with wings, and tiny things that scurry along under the ground! Portals opening up in broad daylight and snatching people! Undead! Not like Night of the Living Dead style zombies, but real undead! New York City has gone crazy with the supernatural! It's why I've been making so many trips out here.” Her eyes were bright and animated.
I looked to Lyanne to tell me that none of that stuff was real or possible and was just the result of Sara's shocked mind.
Lyanne just nodded as if she was expecting that exact answer. “I thought I sensed an increase in activity, but I was a loner so it didn't affect me. New York City has always been a hotbed of activity for my kind. If something has whipped them into a frenzy, then the city is too dangerous for us to continue using as a base.”
For me, New York City was the home of my quest. The longer I spent here, the more certain I was that this was where Mom wanted me to be, and what she want
ed me to be doing. It was good to have a purpose, and I didn't want to give it up. “You want to run away?”
The former Succubus waited until she had devoured an entire bagel before she responded to me. “Not run. Relocate. You would still hunt in the city, but you would be able to return to a headquarters away from it all. An Incubus showed up unknowingly to your front door. That’s a problem. You need a place to come back to, safe from all the dangers of the city.”
I realized it made no sense to argue with the person paying all the rent and bills. “Where would we go?”
Lyanne pulled a piece of paper out of seemingly nowhere, unfolded it, and slid it across the table to me. On it was a real estate listing for a sizable estate in Vermont. It was an impressive piece of property: sixty acres of land, located along the banks of a river, centered around a three-story turn-of-the-century home. It carried with it an equally impressive seven-figure price tag.
The paper showed signs of having been folded and unfolded many times, and I wondered how long Lyanne had been waiting to breach the subject with me.
I scratched at the stubble on my face as I contemplated the property. It was time for a shave. “This place is expensive. Can you really afford it?”
She dismissively waved her glass at me, sloshing the wine inside. “Don't worry about it.”
Her pockets were even deeper than I imagined. “How much money do you have, exactly?”
“Don't worry about it.”
There was something she was not telling me. “We could always do a little shopping around. We don't have to settle on the first place you found. Unless there is a reason you have your heart set on it?”
Lyanne silently focused on the contents of her glass. “It once belonged to my family, a long time ago. That's all I have to say about it.” She downed the last of the wine and set her glass aside. “I'll put in an offer this afternoon. We'll be ready to move in within a week.”
Succubus Hunter Page 6
