Lyanne touched my shoulder and vanished, like the doe, silent and ghostly as she pierced the underbrush and slipped away unseen. She returned a few minutes later with a rabbit in her hands. It was alive, a bit angry, and watching us with huge dark eyes.
“It’s not only possible, it’s simple. This is about stillness, Kurt. It’s about finding an internal quiet and covering yourself with it so that the forest—and the animals—know nothing of your presence. When I began to complain it was impossible, Lyanne would go into the woods, quietly grab a rabbit with her bare hands, and carry the still-struggling thing back with her by the ears. It was possible, I was just too noisy.
To be fair to me, I was a fairly large guy. My footfalls were louder, and I was just naturally more—well, more of everything than Lyanne, who was slim, lithe, and quiet by nature, unless we were in bed together, but that’s a virtue, not a flaw. Out in nature, and clothed, I had more area to bump into things. But I slowly began to get the hang of it. Sometimes I would get within an inch of my range before my target would detect me and bolt off further into the woods, and I learned not to curse but to let the forest close in over me again like a blanket of silence.
The lessons did not end there.
I've always had a bit of a weakness for damsels in distress, and in a way all Succubi fell into that category, cursed against their will into becoming monsters that hunted men.
Unfortunately, besides Lyanne, all the Succubus I had fought had been beyond saving, their humanity lost beyond years of preying on man's primal urges. I hadn't yet given up the hope that I would be able to help more of them in the future. The idea appealed to me in ways I was still beginning to understand, but it went beyond a compulsion to fix what was broken. It was a desire to undo something that was wrong—something that was a violation, without permission, or the souls of women who had been sisters, wives, mothers. Friends.
Which led to my next lesson about the ways of the undead, at the tail end of winter on a night that was cold and dark. We had come to the city to dine at a fashionable new restaurant that the food reviewer for the Times had raved about, and instead, we got caught in a snowstorm of epic proportions. While we were spending some time in our hotel finding new and creative ways to keep each other warm, my instinct began to pick up on something. It seemed that by complete happenstance we had been given a room right down the hall from where a Succubus was staying, and her aura was seeping into my consciousness like she was radioactive. Her power was impossible to deny, even at a distance, and I knew that something would have to be done. I couldn’t ignore the presence of a Succubus who was so powerful her magic could pierce brick walls.
Lyanne gave one of the bellhops a significant tip in exchange for him leaving us one of his spare uniforms, which she claimed we wanted for roleplaying. She also procured a uniform from one of the maids, but that was at my request. Using the uniform, I was able to get behind the hotel's front desk without attracting any attention and grab a key to the Succubus's room, but not before whispering my thanks to the gods of chanced that the place still used old-fashioned metal keys. With, of course, helpful room numbers on each.
I used my amateur stealth skills—as in, walking up the hallway—to get as close to the Succubus's room as I could without attracting attention, but once I got to the door there wasn't much I could do. There are only so many ways to open a door, and this close the Succubus had to already be aware of my presence. Fortunately, there was only the one door, and we were on a high enough floor that I doubted she was going to jump out a window. She was cornered and had no escape, unless she wanted to try her hand at flying.
The Succubus was waiting for me inside, seated on her bed facing the door. She was not dressed as seductively as the others I had encountered. In fact, she was dressed in a wrinkled gray sweater with the hood pulled up, which gave her a bit of a slovenly look. Her features were certainly attractive enough, her face soft and her exposed legs shapely and smooth, but if she was intending seduce men, it was a poor choice of outfit. Overall, she gave off the vibe of a beautiful suburban mom who hadn’t slept well for two days because of a sick kid or some other maternal demand. The only thing missing was a juice stain on her sweatshirt, and the image would have been complete.
Her eyes were wide as she looked at me. “You're the one everyone's talking about, aren't you? The one that's been going around killing us?”
I stepped just far enough into the room to close the door behind me. “That's right. I'm a hunter.”
Tears started to roll down the woman's cheek, unbidden, and I felt a wave of guilt, like instead of a simple statement I had just given a vicious insult.
“Please.” Her voice was a ragged whisper, so loaded with pain it hurt me to hear. “I didn't choose to be like this. It was—it was done to me. I don't have any choice . . . and now the hunger is like—it’s like a pit, but filled with fire. It grows in me with every minute I try to deny it, and nothing I do can make it go away. I’m a fucking animal.”
The Succubus put her face in her hands and started sobbing, her shoulders heaving so hard it seemed like she would come apart.
I felt awkward, standing there while a woman cried, but also hopeful. Perhaps I had found someone I could save—someone worth saving. They had to want to live, and I could be the way to change. “I don't want to hurt you. In fact, I think I can help you, if you’ll have it.”
She sniffed and looked up at me, her cheeks wet with her tears and her face a mass of red blotches. It was a full-on ugly cry, and snot ran down her nose in an inelegant thread. “You can?”
“Yes, I can. The curse that turned you into a Succubus, I can remove it. I've only ever done it once before, but I think I can replicate it. You won't have to feed on men anymore. You don’t have to live with the hunger, if you don’t want to.”
The Succubus seemed cautious, her eyes somewhere between suspicion and hope. “Do you know how many men have lied to me? The things they said, just to—just to have me? Like a thing? And then I would have them, and the guilt and—bodies. There have been so many bodies, all at my hand.” She wiped her nose like a child, nodding. Her eyes were downcast, and she sneezed violently, then looked up. “Do you mean it? The part about not hurting me?”
I approached her, lifting my arm to deploy the flail. “I promise. Just stay still, I have to be careful with this—it’s not like anything you’ve ever seen before.”
The Night Flail came out, and I slowly approached the Succubus, ready to wrap it around her and cure her curse.
And that was how I got stabbed in the face.
The knife was hidden up one of the sleeves of the sweatshirt. I noticed the snarl appear on the Succubus's face almost too late, and I dodged just fast enough that a knife aimed at my eye slashed my cheek instead. I reflexively punched out using one of the moves Lyanne had taught me and knocked the Succubus away as she grunted from the force of my impact.
She was on me again in an instant. The sting on my face was distracting but I still managed to bring the flail around in time to deflect the knife coming at me. She was a vicious animal now—no longer human, but growling and sneering while attacking wildly with a violence that shifted into mania. I twirled the Night Flail around in rapid arcs, blocking one attack after another, the knife sparking with each clanging impact. The backswings of the flail crashed through the furniture of the room, taking out a lamp, a TV, several wall fixtures, and one of the bedposts.
In this small space it was tough to use the Night Flail effectively, but the Succubus slipped up, backing herself up too close to the bed and getting her leg caught in the sheets. A split second of missed balance and the Night Flail did its work, wrapping around her as she drew in a lungful of air for a howl of rage and frustration.
I cinched the flail tighter, and it ended any chance of her ever making that noise again.
The lesson had been painful, but not without purpose. My cheek required three stitches, and I had to endure a look of worried disgust from Lya
nne when we arrived home.
“Do you understand now, Kurt?” she asked me as we took our coats off and stood in an awkward silence.
“I understood the danger before, but your look of disapproval is a bit of a turn-on.”
She frowned, then reached out to touch the wound. “We can get to that later. For now, I need to know that you’re going to live long enough to fulfill your purpose. Do you see that they can’t be saved? Or at least, trusted?”
“I did, and I do. Present company excluded, of course.” I kissed her, and she kissed me back.
“I’m glad.” She looked over my shoulder to the bedroom. “I’m tired. Let’s go to bed.”
“Couldn’t agree more,” I said, as the beginnings of a vow flared to life in my mind. If I could save any more Succubi, I would.
But only in combat, and only with the flail. On behalf of all their victims, they would either be saved by my weapon, or ended by it.
There would be no middle ground.
9
It took us a few months to really get comfortable in our new home. Lyanne continued to tap into her seemingly endless supply of funds to purchase furnishings for every room, opting for comfortable leather seating and antique wood tables and dressers that really gave the home an old-world feel. Lyanne seemed to feel more comfortable in these surroundings than she ever had in the modern designs of the New York apartment, and she seemed more relaxed and unguarded these days.
The trip to New York City was about an hour by plane or six hours by car. We would make the trip once a week to scope out the latest leads our missing-persons research had given us, but our luck started to dry up after the hotel fight. There were signs of them everywhere, and it seemed they were more active than ever, but we were always one step too late to catch them. I brought up the possibility of paying Maura at The Dispensary for whatever information she could provide, but the usually open-pursed Lyanne was hesitant about using 'purchased' leads.
What she wasn't hesitant about spending money on was dressing me up. Custom fit suits, designer watches, shoes that would cost me a week's salary on my army wages. I was uncomfortable at first, since my upbringing made me accustomed to jeans and t-shirts, but I began to adjust. Or, at the very least, how to pretend I was adjusting.
Our big break would come in the form of a phone call from Sara. She claimed to have been fully recovered from Ragan's draining of her, but that news took the back seat to her excitement about something she wanted to show us.
She spoke so fast that I had to have her repeat herself. “Can you come this weekend? It's really important. It relates to your job. You know—the hunting one.”
I grew concerned. “Are you in danger, Sara?”
I heard the sound of something dropping in the background. “No! I mean, I don't think so. I haven't noticed anything—I don't think anyone's after me, if that's what you're asking. I just really want you to see this. I don't want to talk about it over the phone.”
Failing to extract any more information from her, Lyanne and I were left with no choice but to fly back to New York that weekend.
Sara's home turned out to be a modest single-story brick building in Brookhaven. It was just down the road from a busy shopping district, and the sidewalks were crammed with weekend shoppers, families on their way to the local parks, and tourists taking in historic sites. Winter had been short this year, and the air already carried with it the warm breezes of spring, which the locals were determined to enjoy.
Everyone except for Sara, who, based on the stack of paper shoved in her mailbox, had not left her house in a while. We rang the doorbell once and it immediately swung open.
Sara looked much as she had the first time I met her: bookish and attractive, like the sexy librarian archetype, wearing clothes that were simple, elegant, and curated. What had changed was she was now filled with energy that seemed ready to burst at any moment.
Her eyes lit up when she saw me, then she grabbed me by the arm and dragged me into the house. “Kurt! I'm so glad you're here! You have to see this. I've been working really hard, pretty much non-stop—I didn't want to bother you until I had something I was one-hundred percent sure of. How embarrassing would it have been if I called you for a false alarm? But I have definitely got something!”
I let myself be led past a cozy living room filled with stacks of books and a sparsely decorated dining room. “Working on what? What are you talking about?”
Sara only pulled me harder. “It's better for you to see for yourself. Come on!”
Hoping for some help, I looked back at Lyanne. She only shrugged, but the look on her face suggested she was enjoying every moment of this.
We got to a back room that must have at one point been a walk-in closet but now looked like it was part of the set of a noir-style detective movie. Stacks of newspapers and tabloids lay scattered about a desk and couple of standing tables. A pinboard with articles that were connected by bits of string was hung on one wall, while another was covered with cheap printer-quality pictures of various men and women.
Not for the first time I wondered what I’d gotten myself into. “Uh, Sara? What is all this?”
She stepped up to the pinboard and admired it proudly. “Ever since you left, I’ve found myself thinking how I could repay you for saving me from Ragan. My first thoughts were—well, you have Lyanne, who is very beautiful, so you probably wouldn't have been interested—that's not important! What matters is I decided I wanted to help you with your hunting. I'm pretty good at finding the connections between things like missing-persons cases, unsolved murders, unprovoked assaults, and the paranormal. I decided to narrow my focus to things like Succubi so I could find targets for you to hunt.”
I looked around at the clear signs of madness. “That's really nice of you, Sara, but you really shouldn't have gone through the trouble. Right, Lyanne? . . . Lyanne?”
Lyanne was studying the pinboard with the same intensity she had when looking over a wine tasting menu. “This is the former all-girls school, isn't it, Sara?”
Sara beamed at Lyanne's recognition. “Yes! It was shut down, like, ten years ago after a series of abuse allegations against the administration. The building has been abandoned since. And yet”—she pointed to an article from the Unexplained tabloid—“lights have frequently been seen inside. And look at these!” Her fingers moved over to two linked articles from local papers that warned of a possible flu-epidemic. “Men showing up at local ER's with severe flu-like symptoms, but the doctors couldn't identify any known strain. The one thing that linked them: they all lived or worked in the same five-block radius. A radius that includes the abandoned school.” Her voice rang with triumph.
I had to admit it all made sense. Joining the two women next to the board, I looked over Sara's research, and while her methods might be a little . . . strange, her conclusions were solid. It actually put the research Lyanne and I had been conducting to shame.
Sara was looking at me expectantly. “Well?”
“Well . . . well, shit. Guess I'm checking out the school tonight.”
There was something about deserted schools that made them radiate weirdness. That was why they were so common in horror movies and games. Maybe it had something to do with the loss of innocence. Or maybe that primordial fear of forgetting to study for your math test or wear pants or any number of other visceral fears we associate with school. Regardless, the place was dripping with menace.
Almost immediately after stepping through the doors, I could feel the Succubus's presence. It was a strong one, radiating through the halls like an echo that wouldn’t fade. The aura wasn’t quite as powerful as Lyanne had been, but much stronger than any of the others I had faced. And Lyanne had not really tried to resist me. This might be my first real test against a truly powerful Succubus.
Oh, and I had a time limit, too. Lyanne had finally gotten reservations at a restaurant she had been dying to try for months, and she told me in no uncertain terms how displeased she would
be if my hunt made her miss it. No added pressure.
The chill on the back of my neck let me know I had been detected. I waited as that feeling faded, and the evening took a different tur. The Succubus had apparently sized me up and decided to run. So much for the test. Instead, we began the chase, and I let me senses range free.
I followed my instincts around the school through a creaky hallway of darkened classrooms, around the old gym, and into the remains of the cafeteria. The presence was stronger here, but not quite on me. I slowly crept around tables stacked high with plastic chairs while focusing on my senses, and through an inescapable conclusion, I was led to the kitchen.
There, a decade of sitting water and spoilage of little bits of food had left the ground covered in a thick muck. There were footprints in the foul mess, leading down the stairs into a basement used for cafeteria-supply storage. A pipe had burst at some point so the steps were damp, and they barely held together under my weight, creaking with an ominous vibration that further blew any chance I had of stealth. It was dark, being away from the moonlight that illuminated the school above, so I took out my flashlight as I opened the door at the bottom of the steps.
The Succubus was waiting for me like an expectant lover. She was exotically beautiful, with olive skin and dirty blond hair. Her body was small, but her physique was impressive, all lean muscle around her thighs and arms that curved to a supple bosom and a gymnast’s bum. She wore dark make-up that accentuated the fierce curves of her face.
Her eyes darted left, then right, and in a flicker, she threw a dagger at me so quickly it was little more than a blur. It would have taken anyone in the heart, but I wasn’t anyone.
I was a hunter now, and not just part time. I could feel the shift.
“Fast. And you don’t give up easily. You’re going to be an exceptional feeding,” she purred, but there was a note of fear there, too. Her eyes gleamed red in the dim light. She was hungry, and tired, and fading fast. I knew how to time a stalk. It’s what I did.
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