Incubus Moon

by Andrew Cheney-Feid

  Haemon emerged from the dark breach and strode toward me with cold purpose, his blood-red robe, embellished with gold and black trim, parted in front to reveal dark trousers beneath. The garment had been left open for all to admire his lean, sculpted chest and stomach, which gleamed like fine marble in the firelight. Around his neck hung the protective amulet.

  Kassandra and Mark appeared next, their hooded robes resembling the other henchmen, their self-satisfied expressions mirroring their leader’s.

  When I caught sight of Niko, my entire body tensed. My former human best friend was half-dragging him by a thick metal leash fastened to a wide collar. The weight of it forced Niko’s neck and shoulders to slump forward. They’d also stripped him of all clothing, except for a pair of tattered jeans.

  I applied greater tension to the metal restraints, uncaring if the guard struck me again. I had to reach Niko, had to help him, but the Dark Mother wouldn’t allow it.

  As they drew closer, the fresh bites and bruises on Niko’s face and torso sent my incubus rage into overdrive. The air around me crackled from the intensity of raw emotion. This time, the staff-wielding guard hesitated before stepping forward.

  Haemon gestured for him to stand down, not the least bit intimidated by my supernatural display of temper. Quite the contrary. He halted in front of me and threw back his head to laugh, shattering the eerie silence that had fallen around us.

  His unflinching arrogance only fueled my hatred of him. It burned molten and primed for payback. If my incubus power weren’t being suppressed, I wouldn’t need to break free from these shackles to reduce this son-of-a-bitch to ashes.

  “Temperance, child,” the Dark Mother whispered. “Victory is near…”

  I clenched my jaw and roared in frustration at her silent words. Whose victory? And once again, at what cost? Before the Dark Mother could have her precious triumph, would Niko and I first be offered up as sacrificial lambs?

  Her ambiguous answer came in the form of an instant cooling of my fury.

  The Dark Mother was leaving me no alternative but to obey her and follow Haemon’s gaze skyward to where a third of the moon now peeked over the bottom rim of the oculus. Blacker than the sky around it, its electric-blue halo pulsed in time with a formidable new energy prickling across the surface of my skin. It also heralded the onset of the Ritual of Malum.

  Haemon lowered his gaze to me, pure fanaticism animating his obsidian eyes.

  High on his own lust for power, consumed by the victory he was certain would be his, Haemon shouted to me: “No one will be able to stand against me. Soon, the mortal world will be forced to worship at the feet of a new god.”

  Two guards moved up to flank Kassandra from her position at the foot of the altar. Her hateful stare tempted me to blurt out Haemon’s plan to maroon her and Mark in this barren dimension. Not that they didn’t deserve it, and the chaos such a revelation would create might be just enough of a diversion to screw up Haemon’s ritual.

  Nevertheless, on some intrinsic level, I knew the Ritual of Malum had to begin—whatever the cost, whatever the outcome. So I remained silent.

  With a nod from Haemon, Mark jerked Niko forward.

  Wearing the same thin gloves as the altar vampire, he unfastened the leather collar and tossed the band and heavy length of chain behind the altar. Why would vampires use what I presumed to be silver in their prisoner’s restraints? The alloy clearly didn’t cause the same terrible, debilitating effects in humans.

  I didn’t get a chance to contemplate an answer, because Mark hoisted my lover off his feet and slammed him onto the altar’s granite slab.

  Niko grimaced in pain but didn’t cry out. Instead, he rolled his head to the side and mouthed to me, “I trust you.”

  The weight of those three silent words, the sentiment and conviction behind them, constricted my throat. All I wanted was to reassure Niko that he was right, that I would save him. But how could I do that when I scarcely believed it myself?

  The remaining guards moved behind and to either side of Mark, as he approached the head of the altar and turned to face me—exactly the way he’d done in my dream, and only moments before Haemon murdered Niko. No glimmer of remorse showed on his handsome face. He was just another monster I had to destroy.

  So I assessed the forces aligned against me. Eight vampires stood waiting for their orders at the center of the temple, each face reflecting an eagerness for the ritualistic slaughter Haemon had promised them. I had a fleeting thought for Shayla and Dimitri. For whatever reason, they didn’t make it. Niko and I were on our own.

  “Dispel your fears, child, and behold the heavens,” the Dark Mother whispered to me.

  The chill from the uneven stone beneath my bare feet was growing more intense; the way it had in Haemon’s dungeon. A shiver of dread snaked along my spine when I saw that three-quarters of the full moon was now exposed. The arc of the black sphere with its pulsating blue corona was driving it ever-closer to the heart of the oculus, while that uncanny energy began to vibrate deeper inside me. My skin literally hummed with it.

  “Once this begins,” the Dark Mother cautioned, “once you give yourself to the power of the moon, I can protect you no longer. The battle will be yours alone to fight.”

  So this was my price.

  My sacrifice.

  If I willingly succumbed to the moon, allowed its supernatural force to merge with my own, I’d be accountable for everything that happened as a result of my consent to wield its awesome power. I didn’t have to think twice. “Bring it on!”

  Haemon grinned broadly. No doubt a reaction to the ripple of energy electrifying the air around us and charging me. “Oh, I fully intend to,” he replied.

  The temperature plummeted. With no breeze, no discernible explanation for the unnatural chill, ice began to form beneath the soles of my feet, as an invisible sea of frigid air rose up from the black granite floor. It radiated outwards, crisscrossing the inky surface with icy veins running from beneath my stone prison to the outer walls. The ring of massive columns supporting the structure had developed a fine layer of bluish-white frost at their bases, and the tall flames in the dozen braziers struggled not to sputter out.

  “Impotent beings, indeed.” Dark, feminine laughter echoed throughout the temple. Only this time, it was clear by their startled expressions that the assembled vampires had heard it, too.

  This was of course in reference to Haemon’s earlier comment about what or who dwelled within these venerable walls. I wanted to join in with the laughter, ride the extraordinary high of power suffusing my muscles and bones, but the tolling of a lone bell silenced me. The sound seemed to originate from all directions at once, softly at first, then louder, as the full moon crept ever closer to the eye of the oculus.

  “The Age of the Vampire is past.” the Dark Mother proclaimed in a voice that boomed throughout the chamber. “Behold the Rise of the Incubus!”

  The scent of orange blossom exploded around us, mixing with the unnatural cold and undercut by the same fetid stench of the grave.

  “A hollow threat,” Haemon shouted to his followers. “Ignore it!”

  Ah, there it was! A hint of uncertainty in his words.

  Haemon’s mind and ego might be convinced that he was destined to become the world’s supreme despot, but he had now been forced to recognize that whatever he’d called up from that ancient pit in the earth, looming large and terrifying in the nighttime sky, was powerful beyond even his comprehension.

  Haemon seized the dagger from the niche at the head of the altar and raised the ruby blade in both fists high above Niko’s throat. Again, identical to what happened in my nightmare vision.

  Except this time, the skin around the silver grip began to smolder in his hands, the stench of burning flesh combining with the choking scent of incense, orange blossom, and decay.

  “Ultimate power is my destiny!” he roared, bringing the dagger down with blinding speed.

  “Niko!” I cried out.


  Instead of driving the blade into my lover’s throat, Haemon twisted it at the last instant and plunged it sideways into Mark Gold’s heart, whose shriek of agony rivaled the deafening peals from the ever-increasing gonging bell.

  Mark’s lips formed a perfect “O” as blood spewed from his mouth to spray across Niko’s face and bare torso.

  Haemon faced him now, driving the handle and his entire fist into and through Mark’s chest, until the ruby blade exited his back in an explosion of gore and chromium light.

  Within seconds, the man I’d known since the age of fifteen, the man who’d chosen to become a killer, was gone forever.

  Kassandra let loose a blood-curdling scream, though not over Mark’s dramatic death. The guards flanking her had taken her by surprise. Ripping away her robe to expose her pale, olive nakedness to the frigid night air, the Slavic brothers restrained her while the two vampires flanking the space Mark had once occupied rushed to recover the heavy chains used on Niko, and then descended on her like hungry wolves.

  “Perdonami!” Kassandra’s eyes widened in terror, her breasts quivering as she struggled.

  “You expect mercy in exchange for betrayal?” he raged over the tolling bell, all semblance of sanity erased, the bloody dagger still smoldering in his fist. “Do it!” he commanded his men.

  Kassandra’s pleas turned to agonized wails when her vampire captors bound her naked body with the same silver chain that had been used on Niko. Wherever it touched her the metal instantly ate away her flesh and muscle, sinking deeper to adhere to the bone below.

  The vampires guarding me moved to join their brethren. The one who’d driven his staff into my gut removed an object from his pocket, which I couldn’t see from my position. Whatever he was holding, Kassandra’s terror multiplied. She was shaking her head violently, her long, dark hair flying wildly about the scarred side of her face.

  When the guard stepped back, she was convulsing and choking on the silver gag-ball he’d forced into her mouth. A mesh strap attached to it had been secured around the back of her head and allowed for no slack. It muffled her piteous screams, but blood and bits of raw flesh spewed from the corners of her lips in futile attempts to spit out the scorching orb.

  “Master,” one of the guards called out to Haemon. “The moon!”

  The black sphere, with its electric blue aura, had reached its zenith in the nighttime sky, just as the bell gave a final, thunderous peal.

  In its wake, an icy wind swept the temple, extinguishing the fires in every brazier. This should have cast the interior into complete darkness, except that a phantom glow began to emanate from the wall-embedded crystals.

  The buffets of biting air somehow failed to penetrate the freezing mist rising and coalescing into a luminous, cloudlike mass that snaked up and around my ankles. It pressed in on Haemon and me, climbing now to our knees before stopping to hover at our waists.

  Niko managed to scramble to his feet, his wrists still bound together. The cold, vaporous mantle swelled to engulf the altar, but then abruptly retreated to just below the rim of the granite slab, pulling back rapidly only to slam into the base of the altar again in the same way that storm waves crashed against a breakwater.

  Haemon simply stood there, indifferent.

  In the face of an otherworldly event, when the power for which he’d thirsted for millennia was almost his, the screams of a tortured companion and fear and awe that it inspired in his vampire guards meant little or nothing to him

  In a blur of crimson and flashing silver, he rushed me.

  “Now, child!” the Dark Mother’s voice commanded.

  Fragments of iron links whirred past me from my shattering restraints, and not a second too soon. I blocked Haemon’s arm in time to keep him from driving the jewel blade into my chest. I fought against him with truly awesome strength. But it wasn’t enough.

  Haemon had been immortal for more than two thousand years, with the added advantage of being fueled by pure madness. That flicker of doubt in me was all he needed to sink the tip of that ruby dagger into the flesh above my heart, from which a fount of blood pooled up and around the wound. It ran in a thin line down my chest and onto my stomach.

  In that same instant, something shifted inside me. Or more precisely, two elements collided and merged; the terrifying power of the moon coupled with my own primal, supernatural instinct.

  From this fusion, a furnace-like blast of heat detonated at my core, which I thrust out into the temple. The release generated a visible shockwave that didn’t so much radiate outwards as it sought the cluster of guards surrounding Kassandra. It struck each one of them, flinging them backwards and into the air away from her, as she slipped beneath the turbulent, phosphorescent mass, casting long, misty tentacles up to seize and envelope each of the stunned guards.

  Suspended within their foggy prisons, high-pitched screams rose to form a dreadful chorus above the howling wind as, one by one, the vampires went up in explosions of brilliant copper light, until nothing was left of them.

  One, however, stood untouched by my power.

  Only moments ago, Haemon burned with the boundless conviction that all he desired was within his grasp. Now, he knew it was true. “I will have what is mine!”

  He crushed his other hand around mine on the handle of the dagger and used all his might to sink the ruby blade deeper into my chest.

  Niko shouted my name in the same instant that a jolt of burning pain zapped my power source and blood began to flow profusely from my larger wound.

  Why had the Dark Mother brought me this far, only to see me die at the hands of a crazed vampire with a god complex?

  Her laughter rose above the baying wind, as the weapon slipped in a little deeper, sucking even more of the formidable power out of me and into an exultant Haemon.

  The temple gave a great shudder and groan, followed by a massive column of air that descended from the center of the moon and down through the oculus to form a funnel around us. The same sinister vortex that had obliterated Shayla in my false vision of her and now sealed Haemon and I within a freezing pillar of air whose whirling base spread out to connect with the undulating mist on the temple floor.

  Haemon’s eyes filled with gleeful malice. “Time to die, incubus!”

  Without hesitation, Niko leapt from the altar and into the tumultuous sea of fog. He thrashed against the thick mist and gale force wind, but it held him mired. “Austin!”

  Haemon laughed and drove the length of the dagger into my heart.

  The metal hilt bit into my flesh and muscle and I wailed in agony. A shooting, electric pain spiraled outward from deep within my chest, while the energy from the moon abandoned me in favor of its new victor.

  I’d failed. Now I was going to die.

  The twister swelled around us before drawing in on itself again. The air grew denser, colder, transforming into fine crystals of black ice that cut and abraded my skin and obliterated all view of the ancient temple and Niko still struggling in vain to reach me.

  Pitiless Death was here to rob me of my one chance to kill the monster who would enslave the world. Death, who would now keep me from ever again holding Niko, from feeling the warmth of his touch or the caress of his hair on my face as he kissed me.

  There was something even more painful and devastating than facing Death in this forsaken place. The realization that I was leaving Niko alone and at the mercy of a psychotic fiend.

  I gasped for air, as more energy poured out of me and into Haemon. The handle of the dagger snapped away from its jewel blade and clattered to our feet, where it was whisked up into the icy vortex. The cutting edge, still lodged in my heart, turned to liquid fire.

  Haemon grinned broadly at the jagged ruby shard protruding from the gash in my chest, and then slammed his mouth against my throat. The monster would take everything from me; my incubus power, my very life, and every last drop of blood along with it.

  Coiling powerful arms around me, he gorged himself
on my life-force, sucking and biting and tearing at my flesh. As he did so, the intense pain and heat radiating around and within my heart began to liquefy the ruby blade. I could feel the crystal dissolving, merging with the delicate tissue and flooding the chambers of my heart, until it had permeated the organ, only to re-solidify and prevent the flow of blood from being siphoned out of my body.

  “Vampire!” The Dark Mother’s voice filled the whirling column of air pressing in on us. “Did you truly believe the Power of the Incubus was yours to plunder?”

  Haemon stopped sucking and started to gag. He tried frantically to pull away from my throat, but couldn’t. He was bound to me, his fangs deeply rooted in the flesh of my neck.

  It was in that same instant that a tremendous rush of energy slammed back into me.

  “Take him into you, child!” the Dark Mother hissed. “Do it now!”

  Renewed strength suddenly imbued my hands and arms with movement, which I used to reach inside his crimson robe and entwine around his smooth, marble-like torso. My fingers glided up along his ribcage and over the sculpted firmness his shoulders to his neck, the rich fabric of his robe parting for me, as I reached up for his bald, gleaming head.

  Haemon’s arms fell limp at his sides, making it easier for me to push the robe over his naked shoulders. Sliding it down to his waist, the sleeves snagged in the crooks of his elbows. He sought to raise his arms to stop me, but the leading edge of the heavy fabric began flapping wildly in the cyclonic wind. He was paralyzed, arms locked, while I glided fingers and palms over the smooth, porcelain sides of his head, until my thumbs hooked under his jawbone. My hands locked onto his skull and I jerked his head and mouth away from my neck.

  Haemon’s black eyes widened in dumbstruck disbelief and searched my own. He could see his own terror mirrored in my eyes—eyes that I knew were no longer sapphire blue, but a cold, sinister black. It was as if Haemon were seeing himself in me.

  I offered him a thin smile. “Time to die, vampire.”