Seemed I was right. I decided to play along, to put an end to her doubts once and for all. “That would be tragic, wouldn't it?”
She ran her hands gently along the wine bottles, her fingertips just barely stroking the tips as she walked past. Finally, she stopped inches in front of me, her smile carnivorous. “I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. I never even properly thanked you for saving me.”
I'd admit to being excited about what was going to come next. “And how do you wish to thank me?” It seemed mannerly to ask, but her intentions were clear. She lowered my zipper with two fingers in a motion so smooth I know she’d done it many times before—to victims, who were ready for pleasure, but would find draining or death on the other side of her gift. I could have stopped her at any second, but I didn’t’ want to. I wanted her, and her mouth, and she wanted to drain me.
I was going to let her, just not in the way she expected.
I ran hand through my hair, playing nervous as she reached in my pants and pulled my erection free, her fingers stroking along the underside in an insistent rhythm that made me so erect is verged into pain.
“Can you get off from this?” I asked, knowing she would confuse the meaning of my question.
She lowered her mouth to me, flicking her tongue against the end of my cock with a touch so light it felt ghostly. “Mm-hmm,” she said, and her lips moved down, down, all the way to the base of me, her throat straining for that delicious moment of resistance before I slid into her throat. She was breathing through her nose, lips and tongue working together. Her touch was art. Her intention was lethal. It made my legs begin to shake in a minute, and I didn’t hold back or fight the supernova conclusion as I came hard in her mouth, feeling the constriction of her throat as she swallowed it all, only pulling away from me when I leaned against the wine racks with a sigh of utter contentment.
Her lips curved in a bow, and she licked them, her smile growing wicked in the quiet moment after, then the silence was broken as I lifted my zipper and stroked her cheek.
Eve was frozen in a state of shock, her eyes wide as she looked up at me like some kind of abomination.
“You're . . . you're alive . . .” she finally muttered.
I gave her a smile of confidence and thanks. After what she did to me, it was the least I could do. “That I am.”
“But . . . I should have taken your life-force. Even if you survived, you should be too weak to move by now. Hell, you should be blacked out. Drooling.”
Raising my right arm, I focused on making the Night Flail appear, and I held it out in front of her. “Granted, it was a blowjob like no other, so, yeah, I almost was drooling. But we tried to explain-- you are not a Succubus anymore. This weapon removed the curse from you. All of it. You're human.”
No response. Her face lost its color as she paled at the enormity of my revelation.
“I see you finally believe me. Now maybe we can move on.” I gestured to the wine bottles I had selected, sitting just behind her. “Would you mind grabbing those for me? Lyanne is probably getting impatient for them.”
Her mouth moved, forming words, but no sound came out. Tears formed in her eyes, despite her best attempts to keep herself together. Perhaps I had been too harsh with her, but this was a woman who’d lived as a killer. Hard lessons made for a faster recovery, and we could move on with our work. Our lives. Each other, even, if that was the way things went.
“All these people . . .” she finally managed. “All those people I . . . I didn't want to . . . I never wanted to be . . . the hunger was . . . I never thought it was possible that someone could . . .”
She faltered, and I caught her in my arms, limp and silent, a single tear rolling down her pale cheek. I brushed her hair out of her face and gently lifted her into my arms. “I’m sorry, Eve. You'll see this is for the best, in the end,” I whispered, but she didn’t respond.
Leaving the wine bottles behind, I carried the unconscious woman back up to the living room and set her carefully down on the couch. Sara and Lyanne must have heard me coming up because they were both waiting.
“You have a way with women. What was it this time? Did you show her your comic book collection?” Lyanne asked, laughing.
“I know I’d never do him. Unless he had a Wonder Woman, first issue,” Sara added thoughtfully.
“Woman, get on eBay. Stat. I need that comic here tomorrow,” I said to Lyanne, who rolled her eyes and laughed.
“Save your money. I’ll get around to it,” Sara said, and there was challenge in her voice, along with a slow smile.
“Well don’t wait forever. I’m a hot commodity among women who are, ah, newly freed from ancient curses.”
“Noted,” she said, blowing me a kiss.
Eventually, Lyanne would go back down to the wine cellar to get the bottles herself, since I “no longer could be trusted,” and the three of us enjoyed a pleasant meal together, if the occasional awkward glance between me and Lyanne, who suspected I’d come up the stairs lighter than when I went down. There’s something about a pre-dinner blowjob that makes things touchy, but we powered through with minimal jokes about talking with her mouth full.
Truth be told, I couldn't tell much difference between the fancy deli meats Lyanne had purchased and the stuff I could get at any supermarket deli counter, but apparently I was in the minority as both Lyanne and Sara went on at length about how great it was, and the atmosphere was upbeat as we got wine drunk and more comfortable together in our newest version of a family that fights evil and has conjugal visits in every room of the house.
Eve slept until just before dawn. We had been taking turns watching over her, and it was Sara who came to get me when she was beginning to stir. I made a cup of strong tea and returned to Eve, just as she was sitting up.
“I guess this wasn’t all a dream,” Eve said as she took the tea from me.
I smiled sympathetically. “I'm afraid not.”
“I . . .” She struggled with what she wanted to say. “Those things I said before, when I didn't . . . Just . . . Thank you, for curing me.” Her words were sincere this time, with no hint of motive or carnal drive.
Outwardly I tried to play it off as if it wasn't a big deal, though inside I had the fuzzy feeling of a job well done. “It's what I do now, apparently. And you're very welcome. You’re worth saving.”
She drank deeply from her tea, staring down at the cup instead of looking at me, but I had the feeling she didn't want me to leave yet, so I waited patiently to hear what she wanted to say.
“I never wanted it,” she finally said. “To be a Succubus. I didn't choose it.”
The phrasing caught my interest. “Do you mean some women do choose to be Succubi?”
“Some. Very few. They are taken by the allure of power and make deals for their souls.” Her expression was very distant, the look of someone remembering something painful that had happened long ago. “Not me. I was taken. The curse was forced upon me. I never wanted to . . . I never wanted that life. But once the hunger had its hold on me . . .”
“I understand.”
“No. No, you don’t.” She smiled sadly as she finally looked up at me. “It's not your fault. You mean well, you want to understand. But you can't possibly know what it means to have done the things I’ve done, to hurt so many people to satisfy that hunger. For so long I convinced myself that being a Succubus was my purpose—that I could never be anything else. I was good at it. I loved the sensation of knowing a man wanted me, and the act of stalking, or being stalked right up until the moment he realized he was prey, not predator. I did it because I would have died from hopelessness if I hadn’t thought I was fulfilling some purpose known to someone other than me. I never knew why, only that I had to, and it came easy, and those acts will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“It wasn't your fault.” The words sounded hollow as I said them, yet I still felt they needed to be said. “Dammit, it wasn’t,” I repeated, this time with the force
of conviction.
She shook her head. “I will accept the blame for my part in what has happened, but the true culprit is still out there. The one who turned me, enslaved me, and forced me to act as a Succubus in her employ. You hunt Succubi, Kurt, and I want to help. I mean it. But the fight is pointless if we don't take it to the one responsible for enslaving so many women and bending them to her will.”
“Tell me, and we can do it together, Eve,” I said, taking her hand. It felt good in mine.
When she looked up, there was anger in her eyes like a distant storm.
“Tandi Goren,” she said, and our path was set.
11
For the next three days, Eve was very weak and spent much of the time sleeping. This was a learning experience for all of us. Lyanne, who had been left with a fraction of her power, had recovered from the change almost immediately, but none of us knew the recovery for a full curse-removal. Slowly, Eve began to regain her energy, and she focused that energy single-mindedly on her new goal: finding and stopping Tandi Goren.
Unfortunately, she didn’t have much to go on in terms of usable information. She had only met her in person a handful of times, and her orders, as they were, consisted of instinct rather than direct commands. A Succubus was a monster—true, they were elegant and beautiful, but they operated primarily on hunting instinct, like sharks. I spent a night stalking all of Eve's old haunts, every place that she had been instructed to hunt, but turned up nothing. Not even a single tingle on my own heightened senses, even after nights wasted folded up in the city nights.
Sara went back to her home to conduct research the way she does best: making connections no one else would. Through her, we were able to build a basic profile on the elusive Tandi Goren.
Tandi came from old California money, made in oil, steel, an exploiting land deals with tactics that were just this side of legal. Despite being incredibly wealthy and on the boards of more than a dozen philanthropic organizations, some of which bore her name, she had very little public presence. She had no real occupation besides being rich, her numerous homes were all unlisted, she declined all interviews, and she didn't even have a social media presence. Just finding pictures of her was a challenge.
One thing that was clear was that she moved around a lot. One week she would be spotted in New York, the next London, and the week after that Tokyo. If there was any pattern to her movement, Sara was having a tough time deciphering it, though she insisted enthusiastically over the phone that she was on the right trail.
Eve would devise a different tactic.
She arose early that morning and joined us for breakfast for the first time since arriving at our home. Her face had recovered its color, her posture was straight, and her eyes were focused and energetic. You would have never guessed the weakened condition she had just recovered from. She looked fit enough to take on a triathlon.
“I've been thinking,” she said after Lyanne and I had finished complimenting her healthy appearance, “about how we can get to Tandi. I don't think trying to track her down directly is the way to go. After all, she moves around a lot, we'd spend all our time chasing our own tails. I think we should go after her through the people she controls.”
“You mean other Succubi?” I asked.
“Or Incubi,” she replied. “They're weaker, generally, and might make the easiest targets. If we can question enough of them, learn the areas Tandi has been having them hunt and what they have in common, we might be able to figure out what Tandi's endgame is. Then we'll know how to stop her.”
Lyanne hummed in agreement, quite excited about the idea. “The more information we feed to Sara, the more likely she will make a connection that will lead to this Tandi person. Or maybe we could even get her to come to us. How many servants do you think she could lose before she realizes something is wrong, that someone like Kurt is operating in her territory? She may decide to deal with Kurt herself, and we would be ready for her.”
I saw one big flaw in the plan. “The problem is, we haven't had too much luck tracking down the various creatures of New York City. We only found you because of Sara's research, and that took her a bit of time.”
Eve had a satisfied smile. “That is one thing I can offer you. There’s a club called Oil and Water in the city. It’s popular with the immortals of New York, almost all of whom work for Tandi now. The humans there tend to be easy prey—a bunch of wannabes on the cusp of club society, some goth, some posers, some mid-level money with no common sense.”
My excitement grew to match Lyanne’s. “A whole club just filled with Succubi and Incubi? Well, the Night Flail would never forgive me if I let that opportunity pass. Only one question: what's the drink minimum?”
I expected some dinky little dive in the middle of nowhere, or a hidden trove like The Dispensary, but Oil and Water turned out to be a massive, two-story building located just a few miles out of the city. Halogen spotlights beamed its location into the night sky, and thunderous 80s rock music could be heard all the way at the other end of the street. The exterior had a solid, warehouse feel, made exciting by expertly crafted graffiti murals of ghouls, dark alleys, and figures in cloaks. It didn't so much advertise its presence to the Hot Topic shopping goth crowd as it demanded their attention.
The parking lot was packed to the brim, and Lyanne and I were forced to valet park. The valet wore black leather biker clothes that were probably supposed to be intimidating, but ended up reminding me more of The Fonz from Happy Days. Not that I was in much of a position to judge at the moment.
Eve had insisted that we try to fit in while we were stalking here, so Lyanne and I were forced to dress the part. I was in a black tee with cut-off sleeves, dark jeans with tears at the knees and black armbands that absolutely screamed douchebag at a hundred decibels. “You actually found a way make yourself unattractive,” Lyanne had told me, shaking her head at the armbands. I vowed to burn the damned things when we were done. The jeans I would keep, but only because my Iowa sensibility won’t let me throw clothes away, regardless of the fashion choices they represent.
However uncomfortable I was, Lyanne had it much worse. Eve called the getup that Lyanne had been forced into “gothic Lolita.” For a woman who wouldn't even put on a pair of pajamas if they didn't have a designer tag on them, this was the highest grade of torture.
The plan had been for us to hang out on the sidelines, waiting for my instinct to pick up on an Incubus, then stalk him until I found a moment to strike in private. Interrogate, kill or rescue as the situation called for, then rinse and repeat until we were satisfied with the information we had gathered. That plan went out the window the moment we stepped through the front doors.
My senses went fucking wild and I nearly dropped to a knee, wavering like a drunk until Lyanne caught my elbow to keep me standing.
“The fuck—” I hissed, my skull searing with a violating pain.
“You alright, bro?” A guy nearly seven feet tall and swollen with muscle leaned in, concern on his face as he grabbed my other side, helping Lyanne carry me to a nearby seat. As my focus returned, I pegged him as a bouncer in the sea of thin, lean figures, then his club ID swam into focus and I gave him a wan smile. Even in the midst of my psychic violation, nothing about him seemed of. He was human, but clearly not sensitive to immortal energies.
The pain faded, giving way to dozens of pinprick-like sensations that pointed me in the directions of the creatures who surrounded me. The deep chill I felt informed me that at least a few of them had their attention on me. Not surprising, given the scene I’d made. Fuck.
“Yeah, I'm fine,” I said, waving the bouncer away with a more stable grin and getting back to my feet. “Just a migraine triggered by the music, I think. It'll fade, but thanks for the hand, man.”
The bouncer seemed satisfied, giving me a thumbs up, though Lyanne was looking at me strangely.
It was the bouncer's next words that told me the source of Lyanne's concern. “Sick chain, bro. Where'd you
get it?”
I looked down at my arm and saw that the Night Flail was there, having been called by the danger without my command. This was a feature that I had not been aware of. It was both comforting and terrifying at the same time.
“Oh—ah, it was a gift,” I quickly replied. “From my mother.”
The bouncer nodded understandingly. “You’ve got a badass for a mom. It's sweeter looking than the bike chains everyone else is wearing.”
Taking a glance around the club, I noticed what he was talking about. A superfluous chain was a common accessory to many outfits, particularly among those going for a Lost Boys 80s greaser-vibe. At least the Night Flail would fit in, as long as no one looked too closely at it.
Of course, I might as well be holding a beacon out to all the immortals in a five-mile radius, and staggering around like a drunk didn’t help keep me incognito. After one last check that I was alright, the bouncer returned to his duties, leaving me alone with a displeased looking Lyanne and a dozen sets of eyes upon me.
Lyanne's voice, while still carrying its usual seductive undertones, also had an edge to it. “Why did you pull your flail?”
I held the flail up like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. “Didn't mean to. It reacted to the number of enemies nearby. We’ve got a shit ton of company here, and it isn’t the squishy kind. The vibe I’m getting is old. Powerful. Feels like we might have stepped in it here.”
She didn’t share my concern, dismissing my worry with an elegant flick of her hand. “We'll be fine. None of them are going to risk their easy feeding ground by attacking you in the open. We just have to pick the spot of our battle. With them, it’s always about the ground.”
Lyanne was probably right, but I still didn't feel comfortable being sized up like a piece of meat. The sooner we picked a battleground, the better. I had one suggestion. “How about we go find the bathroom and see who follows us?”
Succubus Hunter Page 10
