Incubus Honeymoon

by August Li

  I rolled my eyes but didn’t waste the effort arguing as I scrolled through the stations. When I stopped on “Africa”—good song—he muttered, “Something else.”

  He finally settled on some public-access channel playing The Magic Flute. We didn’t talk much for the rest of the drive.

  Back in Philadelphia, I dragged Dante up the steps and into his flat. Poor bloke was dead to the world, and I deposited him on the couch, propped his head on the arm, and covered him with the flowery quilt from Ros’s bed. Say what you want, but I was glad his mum was gone when we got back. Old minger made me uncomfortable. Her cravings for the crystal were just too strong, and they almost made me feel like I wanted the shite. Like I would do anything for it. Like I could justify anything.

  But we were alone, only the TV lighting the sad little place. It was cold, and the walls shook when the wind blew too hard. Which it did too fucking often. I yawned and sprawled out on the small sofa, resting my head on Dante’s hip. It was bony, but I was too tired to care. I was even too tired to care what Blossom was up to, sitting cross-legged on the floor and sifting around in the broken bits of the coffee table. I missed Charlene, and I hoped she was okay, not scared, not wondering where I’d gone….

  I awoke to darkness. We’d slept all day and into the night. As I blinked the room into focus, I saw Blossom perched on the edge of the couch by Dante’s knees. The faerie held a paper plate with some miniature carrots, raisins, and strips of mozzarella cheese arranged in a sunburst pattern. I was so famished I could smell the concentrated sweetness of the raisins.

  “Aren’t you a sweetheart.” I picked up a thumb-sized carrot.

  His gossamer hair glowed in the violet light from the TV. “Anything to expedite this endeavor. You cannot imagine how bored I was while the two of you snuggled up and slavered onto your bedclothes.”

  Dante rubbed his eyes with his fists, and then he bolted up. “Ros! How long was I asleep? Why did you let me do that?”

  “You needed it,” I told him, taking the plate and offering it to him. “Eat something.”

  “Coffee,” he grumbled and staggered to his feet. The light came on in the kitchen, and the divine smell wafted over to where I sat. Soon Dante pressed a cup into my hand, and I reveled in both the warmth and the biting, bracing taste. I swore I could feel vitality flowing out from the warm pool in my gut, invigorating my limbs. With my alertness came the hunger, so strong even Blossom looked good.

  “Do you drink coffee?” Dante’s tone said he was afraid of the faerie. I couldn’t blame him.

  “Cream and sugar,” Blossom replied.

  After all of us hunched over our steaming mugs, Dante settled back into the corner of the couch and draped the quilt over his shoulders. “I was sure those Nazi fucks had her. All I did was waste time. It’s been almost two days now—I heard somewhere if a missing kid isn’t found in forty-eight hours….”

  “Shh.” I rubbed his knee, trying to banish the erotic visions conjured by the feel of his muscle and bone. The kid was thin and supple…. “We have to think about it logically. Who else could’ve taken her?”

  “There’s only….” Dante stood up so fast his foot sent remnants of the coffee table sailing across the room. “Son of a bitch. Blaker.”

  “Who’s that?” Blossom asked.

  “My mom’s boyfriend. Fucking tweaker. He could’ve had something to do with this. He’d give Satan a rim job for a few hits of glass.”

  I reached up and put my hand on Dante’s arm, slowly and softly, so I wouldn’t spook him in his acute state. “There’s something else we have to consider, mate. As much as we might not want to.”

  Dante’s dark eyes reflected the cerulean squares of the television screen when he looked down at me. “What?”

  I measured the words in my head before I spoke them. The kid was teetering on the edge of a complete breakdown, and saying the wrong thing could shove him right over. For a fleeting second I wanted to hold him, smooth down the spikes of hair sticking up all over, but I pushed it aside because I couldn’t be sure if he wanted it or if I was so starved for contact that I was imagining things. I wanted to ease some of his tension, relieve some of the pressure pushing him into the ground if I could, so I tried to do it through my tone.

  “So… there’s me and Blossom, right? Magical creatures. Well, there’s also humans what have magic. Mages, sorcerers, wizards, whatever you want to call them.”

  Dante squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “Yeah, right.”

  When I rubbed his shoulder, the globe of muscle felt like a rubber band ball. “Is it really harder to swallow than us?”

  “I…. Fuck. So there’re assholes running around Philly casting spells and waving wands like fucking Gandalf? Harry Potter and shit?”

  “Yes, well, no, not exactly. They’re not so open about it. But some of them are powerful, and they’re dangerous. There are renegades, but most of them belong to a faction or a guild. It’s how they’ve survived over the centuries.”

  “What the hell would they want with my sister?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Blossom asked. “If she is indeed skilled enough to summon me here, she would be a great asset to any one of these organizations.”

  I nodded. “I’m afraid it’s true. Not all of the guilds are on the friendliest terms, so it benefits them to recruit. Bolster their ranks. Especially now.”

  “Why especially now?” Dante asked.

  “There’s…. They think something’s going to happen. Something big. They’re trying to prepare.”

  “The center cannot hold.” Blossom’s voice was thready and ominous.

  I rolled my eyes. “Couldn’t you be any more original? That’s the most cribbed line in all of human poetry.”

  “There’s a mortal poem that contains those words?”

  I was about to explain when Dante interrupted us. “What’s going to happen?”

  “That’s just it.” I kneaded the base of my skull, starting to regret the way I’d slept. “Nobody knows. Some of the guilds have theories, but none of them agree. It’s been right around two thousand years since magic was driven underground, since the split between the mages and everyone else. They seem to believe this shite comes round in cycles. There are prophecies, that kind of nonsense.”

  “Do you think it’s all bullshit?”

  I wanted to say yes, nothing to it, the rantings of some pompous twats to make themselves feel even more important, but…. “It’s hard to ignore Blossom popping up. No mage has been able to summon a faerie in centuries, and not for lack of trying. And then if your sister is some kind of prodigy, well, that’s a lot to call a coincidence.”

  Dante took a sip of his coffee and swallowed audibly. “Uh, so, if that’s true, if these people, these mages, took Ros, how will we find her? How will we fight them?”

  “They’re mortal,” Blossom said. “They can be killed the same as the rest of their kind.”

  “But they are dangerous,” I repeated. The faerie just didn’t get it. “Some more than others. You can’t kill them if they kill you first, and some of them aren’t generous enough to kill you right away.” I regretted what I said as soon as it left my mouth. The last thing I wanted to do was scare the kid worse.

  “Nonsense,” Blossom said with that mad, scary smile full of teeth. “I’m here. I can kill them.”

  There was no more sense in arguing with him, and I was too fucking tired. Bloody hell, I needed a shag. At this point I needed a damned orgy that lasted a weekend to fuel me up. Cocks and fannies everywhere I looked. Fields of skin glistening with sweat and dotted with pink like meadows of dewy flowers. I caught myself running my tongue along the edge of my teeth while I looked at the glare on Blossom’s long bicuspid. I imagined it breaking my skin, my blood on his pale lips. Was that what he was into? I could oblige. In fact, I was starting to really like the idea, and I didn’t want to like it.

  I snapped my mouth shut and focused on Dante instead, but there was n
othing there. Nothing but the compulsion to find his sister and sheer, undiluted rage. He was single-minded, had been for as long as he could remember. He’d pushed every desire, every aspect of his personality aside to take care of Ros. Somewhere, far beyond the edges of that goal, there was something gray and sludgy, like the dirty crust that formed on top of the snow… gritty and sharp but thick… despair, exhaustion, the hope that one day Ros would be okay and he could stop trying, give in… not have to keep going for her.

  Bloody hell.

  Dante stood up and brushed his fringe back with the heel of his hand. “Okay. We’ll try Blaker first, and I guess, I guess we’ll pray he did it. I…. Fuck. Let’s just go.” He went down the hall and came back with the stuffed horse, blushing when he noticed me watching him pet its knotted mane. “In case we find her.”

  “Good idea.” I still had the truck keys in my pocket. “I’ll drive.”

  Dante directed me to a part of North Philly even worse than his neighborhood—the kind of place those who hadn’t lived it would think only existed in movies. We parked in front of a cinderblock building that might’ve once been a house, its windows boarded up and graffiti covering the pitted brick facade. The wooden second story had all but collapsed, and bits of siding and wet plaster clung to the exposed wooden studs like rotting flesh to bone. A single bulb in a broken glass fixture cast a sclerotic light on the green steel door.

  “Wait here.” Dante reached for the lock.

  Blossom stretched his spidery white fingers over Dante’s hand. “I want to come. I haven’t had anything interesting to do in forever.”

  As much as I hated to agree with Blossom, it couldn’t be helped. “He’s right. You shouldn’t go in alone. At least choose one of us. For backup.” I felt very official, saying that.

  “Choose one of us?” Blossom tossed his head back and laughed, high-pitched and piercing, pebbles on glass. “What choice is there? What will you do if there’s a fight? You don’t even like fighting. You’re no good at it.”

  “I might like it now,” I said, and it was true. The idea of people cowering in front of me gave me a weird thrill. It disgusted me less than it should have, less than I wanted it to.

  “Okay,” Dante said. “You can come if you want, Inky. But I really don’t need you. These sorry assholes aren’t dangerous. Half of them will probably shit their pants as soon as I walk in the door. They’re just tweaker scum. Addicts. Not even real fucking criminals—unless you count sucking dicks for a couple of hits.”

  Without waiting to see if I’d follow, he got out of the truck and pushed his shoulders up against the light but bitter wind. I followed because it was better than listening to Blossom whine about not being chosen.

  Inside was as cold as outside, and it fucking stank—puke and piss and stale cigarette smoke. It would’ve strangled us if it’d been a few degrees warmer. A couple broken-down sofas slouched against the wall, and plastic chairs surrounded an old TV in the corner. People sat playing dice and cards at some folding tables, or leaned against the bare wooden supports, or, in a couple instances, lay on the cement floor. There were a lot of people, thirty or maybe forty, but the low light and thick smoke made it hard to distinguish between the shadowed faces. Their desires battered against my perceptions—methamphetamine, crack, heroin—until my skin felt too tight and my stomach crawled up my throat with a searing taste of copper and vinegar. I reached out for Dante and put my hand on his elbow because I couldn’t let these feelings define me; his obsession was better, and I let it infuse me: Ros. Find her. Hurt people to find her. Hurt people who hurt her. It’s all fucking unfair and blaming it on somebody helps it make sense.

  The junkies scrambled out of Dante’s way. Some of them must’ve recognized the kid, and they were scared. He took a little satisfaction from that, wanted more of it. I could get on board, and as we waded through the crowd, I found myself glowering at the skeletal faces just to watch them dart away from my gaze like cockroaches when a light flicked on. The fear in their bloodshot eyes produced a buoyancy in my chest, even a little bit of a swell in my trousers. Here, I mattered. I had some control, and that felt damn good.

  A man sat slumped in a corner clutching a little glass pipe. His fingertips were stained, dirt and tar ground into the creases and lines of his skin. A sweatshirt that might’ve once been white hung from his bony shoulders, exposing a long neck covered in sagging flesh. The crown of his head was bald, but stringy hair stuck out like a fan around the base of his head, his dirty face framed by loose folds of skin that hung from his jaw. He looked to me like a camel’s fanny. Ugliest cunt I’d ever seen.

  When the man first saw us, he smiled, but then Dante scowled, grasped the front of his sweatshirt, and hauled him to his feet. Dante leaned in, even though the bloke smelt like a cartload of sweaty crotches and like he’d quite possibly shit himself at some point in the past week. “We’re going to go outside and talk, motherfucker.”

  “Hey, all right, Dante,” Blaker slurred. “Okay, cool. All right, buddy.”

  Nobody stopped us or stood in our way as Dante pulled Blaker to the door and shoved him out, where he landed on his knees in the fouled snow. He reminded me of an overcooked piece of spaghetti, the way he twisted onto his arse to face us. “Hey, Dante. How’s your pretty mama?”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Shoving both hands in his coat pockets, Dante used the toe of his boot to kick Blaker in the diaphragm. The man fell on his side, wrapped his arms around his middle, and gagged, gasping for air. Dante stood motionless until he recovered.

  “What the hell, man?” Blaker whimpered, the side of his face melting a skull-shaped impression into the rime.

  “Where’s my sister, you piece of shit?”

  “I-I don’t know what you mean, Dante.”

  The heel of Dante’s boot connected with Blaker’s chin, and his head snapped back as a jet of blood shot from his mouth. He lifted his hands to cradle his swollen mouth as he sputtered and choked.

  “I’ll ask one more time.” The squeak of the snow was loud beneath Dante’s foot as he took a single step toward the man. “Tell me something useful or I’ll put a cap in your fucking head. No one will miss you. Now where’s Ros?”

  “I-I had to do it, Dante. The guy was real rich, nice black suit. Gave me five hundred dollars. I-I had to, man. I been looking for work, but you know how it is. It’s hard out here, man.”

  Dante’s expression remained cold, but his hands curled into fists. I felt his desire to drive those hands into the man’s melting skin until his bones cracked and caved in, to smash them to powder. It would feel so, so good, but not as good as seeing Ros safe, eating a pizza from Tony’s and watching The Last Unicorn…. Her smile, the smell of her hair, the way she fell asleep with her little hand holding the hem of his shirt…. Glittery pink fingernails…. Breath scented with bubblegum toothpaste.

  “Where?”

  “At that funny building that used to be a hair salon. I-I waited for you to leave the other night, and then I went in. I told her we were going to meet your mom for pancakes. She waited with me until the next morning, and then I took her there. He picked her up and gave me the money.”

  “Name.”

  “I don’t know, man! I didn’t ask.”

  Dante pulled his pistol and pressed the barrel to the papery skin of Blaker’s forehead. “I should kill you.” He moved the gun down until it was buried between Blaker’s legs. “But not too quick. You deserve to feel every fucking second of it, you son of a bitch.”

  “No, Dante! No, please! Please!”

  Fuck me, but I wanted it, wanted to watch his nuts explode and the blood pool underneath him. I wanted to see the desperation in his eyes and then the despair, and I wanted him to know it was me who put it there…. But that wouldn’t save the little girl, so I stretched out my arm and pried Dante away from Blaker. I looked down at his face, at the skin draped off the bone, the greasy sweat coating the pocked flesh. “What kind of car was he driving?”
>
  “A-an expensive one? Black. A Mercedes. Four-door.”

  I swore I could hear Dante’s teeth grinding. His rage was seismic, rumbling through him—through us—until I thought he’d shatter. The gun in his hand shook, and it took all my strength to maintain my barrier between him and the sorry bloke on the ground. “Look, Dante, I know you’d like to kill him. Can’t say he doesn’t fucking deserve it either. But all it’ll do is draw attention we don’t need. We should get out of here. Talk. All right?”

  He stood for a couple of minutes, every fiber in his being stretched to its absolute limit, years of anger and disgust pooling in his guts until he trembled with the effort to keep it from breaking the surface. Couple that with his ambivalence about his own survival, and I was starting to get worried. I could see Blossom watching us from the truck, his pale profile like a half-moon reflected in the window. I didn’t know if he could do anything to calm Dante down, and I had no way to ask. And no fucking time either.

  “Dante?” I put my hand on the small of his back, but he drove his elbow into my arm to push me away. Then he grabbed Blaker by his collar again, hauled him up, and slammed his back against the metal door.

  “You better pray I find Ros, you asshole. Because if I don’t, I’m coming for you. I’ll make sure it’s the last thing I do in this world to see you dead.” When Dante released the man, he crumpled to the ground like an old rag, whimpering and covering his head with his arms. Dante turned on the ball of his foot, shoved his gun into his coat pocket, and walked back to the truck.

  I got behind the wheel. Blossom’s smell inundated the cab. I could taste dewy maple leaves in the back of my throat, feel the tingle of spice in my sinuses. He was close enough that his hair brushed my cheek, and I wanted to grab a handful of it and pull his head back to expose his neck, clamp my lips down, and suck that rosewater and ginger flavor out of his skin….

  I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated on the cool plastic of the steering wheel against my palms. I was getting desperate, reaching the point where I almost didn’t care what the faerie would make me into. Almost. But no. Fuck that. I wasn’t like those pitiful bastards in that crumbling building. I was more than what I needed. “Do you know anybody who drives a black Mercedes, Dante?”