Correction. It was one of the things I did.
“You seem to be mistaken. I’m not the one in the corner of a shitty basement with my feet wet from running through muck,” I replied, looking at her high heels, now fouled by the gunk that littered the kitchen floor.
Her eyes went wide at that when she looked down. “You prick. These are thousand dollar—”
“I know. One of my girls wears those. Gets them custom fitted in the city when we have a free weekend now and then. Can’t say as I blame you. I’d be pissed, too, but that doesn’t change what’s happening right now. You have a decision to make.” I looked at my watch, a vintage Doxa Sub, and the hands told me it was also time for our dinner reservation. “In fact, you have about a minute. I hate being late.”
“You’re going to be more than just late. You’re not arriving anywhere. Except maybe hell,” she hissed, then her face went blank and she licked her lips. She was not a fighter, and the reality of her situation was sinking in.
I could see her breath. It was cold in the basement, and the air was damp with chill and mold. Her tongue ran over lips that were perfect, full, and red. I knew what came next, but I didn’t like it. I hoped she made the right choice.
“Please don’t,” I said.
“Don’t . . . what?” she asked, stepping closer. Her coat fell to the wet floor, revealing a body sculpted for sex. One heel clicked, then the next. She stood an arm’s length away, and in that instant, I could see a flash of the girl she used to be before a demon made her into something predatory. Something hard-edged and lethal.
“Do you want me?” she asked, using the low notes in her voice, amplified by deadly magic that made her a killer, and I finally could answer her honestly, which I needed to do if I was going to save her. One kill was enough for a hundred lifetimes, and this slip of a girl who was probably centuries old wasn’t gone. Not entirely. Not yet.
I looked nervous, then cleared my throat. “Y-yes. I do.”
Her smile was reptilian, even though it was simmering with lust. “I know you do.” She came closer, lips parting as if to kiss me.
The Night Flail was in my hand and lashing forward before she could move, crossing her wrists together in a magical grip that no Succubus could break, not now or ever. She drew in breath to scream, rage turning her eyes the color of wine, but I lashed the flail over her shoulder, then around her small ribs in a crisscross pattern centered just over the hidden core of her power, deep in her chest between two full breasts.
“Be free,” I said, as the flail bit deep, pulling at the black energy within her like a relentless tide, and then, her lungs full, she began to scream in a high, keening wail that could wake the dead. It went on as she shook in my arms, spittle flying from her perfect mouth, eyes rolling and hair lashing my face. In the middle of it all, she lost a shoe, and when she was done and the spell was broken, I slipped it back on her foot before I carried her up the rotten stairs, her body hanging limp in my arms.
As I left the abandoned building, Lyanne was waiting, looking bored and hungry. Her dark red hair was down, obscuring a perfect face of white skin, red lips, and dark eyes with a hint of the Russian steppes in her past. She tapped a finger on the edge of her leather coat, brow lifting with interest when she saw the Succubus—now a young woman—in my arms.
“What are we going to do with her?” Lyanne asked, sounding seductive. It was in her nature. When she ordered takeout, it sounded like she was narrating a porno.
“She’s out for hours. We could leave in her in the car while we eat,” I offered as Lyanne opened the back door to our black SUV. I slid the girl in, covering her with a light blanket.
Lyanne nodded, smiling. “Good. I’m hungry and we can crack a window for her. Like a puppy.”
“You don’t leave dogs in cars, you barbarian,” I said, getting in and starting the engine. We pulled away from the curb into the night, and the girl didn’t move or make a sound.
Lyanne pouted. “I am not a barbarian. I told you. I am a Magyar. My people were princes and kings.”
“I know. You tell me every time we get naked,” I said, grinning.
“Because it’s true. Now take me to eat. I’m Hungarian,” she said, and I groaned.
“You’re way too hot for dad jokes, okay? Promise me. No more.”
“Fine. But only because you’re buying me a steak,” Lyanne said.
“What about dessert?” I asked her.
She leaned over and kissed me softly, then let her hand trail across my leg before looking in the back seat. “Depends on how long she sleeps.”
10
“She looks so . . . normal.” Sara adjusted her glasses as if repositioning them slightly on her face would somehow make the former Succubus look more monstrous.
I looked down at the target of everyone's attention-- the Succubus I had defeated last night, sleeping soundly in the bed I shared with Lyanne. “Well, she is normal. At least, now she is.”
As with Lyanne, removing the Succubus curse from her changed her appearance ever so slightly, making her seem more natural and real compared to the sexual sculpture from the other night. But where Lyanne had recovered pretty much immediately, this woman had been unconscious since her mortality had been returned. Lyanne told me not to worry about it as this was likely just the natural result of fully removing the curse, instead of simply mostly removing it as I had done with her. Still, I couldn't help but be concerned that she might never wake up.
We couldn't exactly take an unconscious woman onto a plane with us, so we drove the six hours back to our headquarters in Vermont with the former Succubus passed out in the backseat. Sara had insisted on coming for the ride after learning of the mission's success, and since I was exhausted from the chase and Lyanne didn’t like to drive, we agreed on the condition that she drove.
The drive was uneventful, as was the act of carrying the sleeping woman inside our home and putting her in bed. Sara stood, looking down at the Succubus—or rather, at the woman who was now free of the curse, but not yet aware of her new place in life.
Lyanne gave Sara a quizzical look. “You recall I share a similar origin to this woman, Sara? Yet you have never been surprised by my appearance.”
Sara flushed slightly. “Your body—you look closer to what I expect a Succubus to look like.”
Lyanne laughed, a throaty chuckle. “You spend a lot of time examining my body, do you? Oh, don't turn so red. I don’t mind. I’ve taken quite a bit of interest in your body as well.”
I attempted to rush to Sara's rescue, her face now the color of a peach. “Come on, Lyanne. You're making her uncomfortable.”
“Oh, are you trying to claim that you haven't been ogling Sara all day?” Lyanne cocked her head, a familiar gesture of playful curiosity. “You need to learn to share, Kurt.”
Instead of turning even redder, Sara gave me a look full of longing. “I don't mind if he looks at me.”
From the bed, a long, low groan sounded. “I was going to pretend to sleep longer, see if I could find a moment to escape, but this is absolute torture.”
The former Succubus sat up and stretched, then carefully scanned the room and the people surrounding her. “So, I'm not dead. For the moment, anyway. What's your intention? Going to lock me in a dungeon somewhere, use me as your plaything?”
It was not the kind of grateful introduction I was expecting with a woman I had rescued. “What? No, I saved you!”
Her lips twisted up into a seductive smile. “Oh, you did? And you want me to show you my gratitude, is that it? I can play along.”
There was an awkward moment as she sat up taller on the bed, holding out her arms expectantly as the three of us just stared back at her.
Lyanne's laughter broke the silence. “Sorry, dear, but you’re wasting your time. Your charm would struggle to take hold on this one even if you still had your power, but I'm afraid it’s all gone.”
Our guest slumped back against the back of the bed and put a hand
on her chest. Her expression was tough to read, but I could tell for certain it was not a look of joy. “How . . . how's that possible? I don't feel it anymore.” Rage contorted her features, and she flashed me a glare of such pure malice that I couldn't help but take a step back. “What did you do?!”
I knew I had no reason to feel guilty and yet at that moment I felt as if I had committed a terrible wrong. “I cured you. That curse, the one that made you a Succubus? It's gone. You're human again.”
Her glare showed no signs of abating, and for a brief second, I foolishly considered apologizing for saving her.
My only hope was that introductions would help to break the tension. I cleared my throat. “I'm Kurt, by the way. Succubus Hunter and single heterosexual male, in case you’re wondering. That’s Lyanne, another Succubus I saved from her curse. And she's Sara. She's . . . an assistant.”
Nostrils flared, the woman more growled her name than spoke it. “Eve.”
So much for that idea. I looked around the room for support.
Lyanne sat down on the bed next to her and put a hand on Eve’s shoulder, earning a suspicious look from the disoriented woman. Lyanne’s facial expression was gentle, almost maternal—a look that was completely unfamiliar to me.
“Eve, I know exactly what you’re feeling right now, and I know it’s a horror show. I’ve been where you. You’ve spent so much of your life defined by one thing, being one thing that wasn’t—that was no longer human. It became easier to think of yourself as something different, to treat your humanity as a weakness that needed to be eliminated, like a disease, or a flaw. Now suddenly that monstrous part of you is gone, and only your humanity remains. But I swear to you, as a sister who lived in the dark as well, that your humanity is not a weakness. It is a strength, and one you will discover that you’ve missed like an old friend.”
Eve finally seemed to soften a bit. Her shoulders slumped and the scowl vanished from her face. She looked more shell-shocked now than anything, a hollow cast to her features as the anger and lust drained away, leaving her alone with. . .herself. I wanted to help her, but I wasn't sure what I could do that wouldn't make things worse.
Lyanne was a step ahead of me, having lived it all. “I would like to have a few words alone with Eve, sister-to-sister. Would you give us some privacy?”
I stood, took Sara by the arm and led her to the door. “Let’s give them a moment, and anyway, I’d like to introduce you to the wonder that is Handsome Teddy.”
Sara snorted as we closed the door. “Is this a dick joke? Because the mood isn’t quite right for one of those.”
“Not a dick. Well, he has a nose kind of like a dick, but he’s a moose. An actual moose. Right this way, if you please,” I said, as Sara laughed in disbelief. For the next hour or so I gave Sara the full tour of the property, reaching the crescendo at the sugar shack.
“An actual maple syrup factory?” Sara asked.
“I know, right? I’m impressed, too. If there was a distillery on site, we might never leave,” I said, peering around for any sign of our resident moose. Sara brushed up against me at random moments, and the sensation was nearly electric. Home tours are a heluva lot more interesting when the woman you’re with might be susceptible to some unseen attraction brought on by pheromones, magic, or the mention of maple syrup. Lyanne had said that women who spent time around me would develop a tolerance, and Sara and I had been next to each other in the car for hours.
At the very least, she was more subdued than our first meeting, when she’d been under the influence of Ragan, but she was slowly getting braver in her flirtations. She leaned in close, smiling and commenting on the scenes around our property, and there was real pleasure under the tense exterior of flirtation that was unfolding between us. It was impossible to ignore—she was beautiful, close, and interested in me. When she touched my arm, her fingers lingered for a moment longer than they had to, and the sensation was like finding the biggest present under the Christmas tree has your name on the tag. It was electric, and filled with possibility that I knew we would—and could—explore. And soon.
We were around the back of the property to show of the sugar shack, and I was discussing the finer points of syrup production in general when we found a spot that was quiet, private, and made for a moment between two people who were interested in each other. Sara suddenly pressed herself against me and leaned in, her breath sweet and warm, and I felt my body warm to the task of taking her in my arms.
Then, a noise greeted us from behind.
CLOP CLOP CLOP.
I was moose-blocked.
The sound of stomping hoofbeats broke the spell, and there was Handsome Teddy, standing just a few feet from us and looking like a schoolteacher that had just caught his students messing around, but the teacher had a huge head. And antlers. And a thin line of drool.
Sara was smitten was the massive beast at once. “Oh, look at him! You didn't tell me he was so big!” She rushed over to him and stroked him under his chin, which he seemed to enjoy greatly.
I was still trying to calm my rapidly beating heart. “Yeah, he's a big one. This is Handsome Teddy.”
She stroked his antlers and Teddy lowered his head so she could reach them better. “That's a perfect name. He is a handsome beast.”
“He is?”
Teddy snorted at the insult.
Once Teddy had finished showing off and left to go do whatever it was a moose his size does when it’s not stealing the hearts of human women, Sara and I returned to the house. We found Lyanne and Eve waiting for us in the main living room.
Eve looked to have calmed down, thankfully, but she was by no means relaxed. She’d achieved more a mild simmer, with the occasional spark of outright anger in her eyes. Alert would probably be the best way to describe her posture, an animal aware that it was in a predator's den. She was still uncertain about us, which was fair enough. We were still relative strangers. Trust had to be built over time, and she’d been savaged by the power of the flail. For a career predator, it had to have been more than just a violation. It was a galactic shift in her place among us, and it was settling in slowly, if at all.
“I’ve explained the situation to Eve,” Lyanne told me, her voice unusually subdued. “She knows who we are and what we do. She also knows that you run the show around here. It may take her a little time to come to terms with being mortal again, but she understands that you were trying to help her, and she has decided she wants to join us in our fight.”
A cloud of hesitation surrounded Eve, though she offered me a timid smile. She gave a light shrug and looked me in the eye, reaching some kind if internal decision that made a twinge of regret cross her fine features. “It's not like I have anywhere else to go now. I can’t go back to who I was, or even where I was. I’m not even used to—I can’t even remember what it was like to be human, but I know that if you’ll have me, I’d like to stay here. With you, and I’d like to try to recall what it was like to be happy. Or at the very least, not to hurt.”
I gave her a disarming smile. “That was the plan all along, we just didn’t know it. We have plenty of space here, you're welcome to stay. And with your insight into the Succubi of New York City, you could help us, if you will.”
That was apparently the wrong way to phrase it, based on the look on her face. “If I will?”
“Yes, if you will. I don’t control you, Eve. This is about your free will now, not my command. Lyanne is here because she wants to be. Sara, too, and as to you? That’s your decision, not mine, but our mission is clear. We’re going to purge evil, and we’re going to do it in a way that turns people like who you used to be into ashes. There’s no sugar-coating it. That’s who I am, and that’s what we are. Justice.”
What followed was a minute so silent that I thought I might have gone deaf as Eve considered my words. When she spoke, it was after a small nod to herself, as if the concept of self-control had never occurred to her before.
“I accept,” Eve said
simply.
“Can we stop with the awkward pauses and manifestos of doom? I bought organic meats from a deli, and we’re all onboard with killing the undead and getting naked, I guess, so can we eat?” Lyanne asked.
“Do we have to kill the undead while naked?” Sara asked.
“It’s not company policy, but it won’t get your fired,” I said, grinning.
“Noted. Clothing optional Fridays, coming right up. Let’s eat,” Lyanne announced, pointing to bottles of wine as she breezed toward the kitchen. “Kurt, dear? Wine me?”
Sara let out a relieved sigh. “Yes! Booze. Booze makes everything better.”
I decided to grab three, just in case.
Lyanne had spent a considerable amount of money stocking the wine cellar. For my part, I still couldn't tell the difference between a Riesling and a Chardonnay, but I could remember Lyanne's preferences. Things like that go a long way toward success with the women in my life, even if my palate is only suited to telling good beer from bad.
I still struggled with Lyanne's organizational system, though, as it was somewhere between alphabetical and hieroglyphic. While I stood frowning at a pair of bottles, Eve came down to find me.
Her eyes fixed on me with a hungry gleam. “Are you hiding down here, Kurt? Don’t tell me I’ve scared away the brave hunter?”
I finally found the bottle, a Merlot with an unpronounceable French name that I recognized from the little frog wearing an umbrella hat on the label. I placed it carefully next to the other two I picked out. “Not hiding, no. You don't scare me. I was more afraid of what Lyanne would do if I grabbed the wrong bottle.”
Eve sauntered toward me, a stride familiar from our conflict the other night. I knew where this was going.
“She's a fearsome woman, that Lyanne,” Eve purred. “But it is hardly fair that she gets the Succubus Hunter all to herself, isn't it?”
Succubus Hunter Page 9
