by Megan Derr
Castle Rehm is a forgotten corner of the kingdom, where the locals spend most of their time drinking and avoiding the snow that plagues them most of the year. It's quiet, boring, and nothing at all like the bustling city where Kohar grew up.
He has no problem with that, however, and in fact mostly enjoys his job as Mage-in-Residence for the most boring territory in the world. What he does have problems with are the resident Captain of the Guard, who drives him crazy on a daily basis, and Solla, whom Kohar desperately wishes would notice him but has always remained oblivious.
But then people start turning up dead, and all thoughts of aggravating soldiers and oblivious mercenaries must be set aside in the face of demonic attack and a traitor in their midst…
The Succubus
Castle Rehm 1
By Megan Derr
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.
Edited by Samantha M. Derr
Cover designed by Aisha Akeju
This book is a work of fiction and all names, characters, places, and incidents are fictional or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is coincidental.
First Edition November 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Megan Derr
Printed in the United States of America
Kohar cursed softly in annoyance and pinched the bridge of his nose, careful to avoid touching the nose piece of his rune-scribing monocle. He set his quill aside before he accidentally wrote rat instead of robe, mouth twitching at the image that mistake brought to mind.
Madame Karen would not be amused by the slip.
The horrendous shouting and screaming came again, and he wondered irritably what in the Nether Regions the damnable soldiers were up to now, to cause such a ruckus at this time of morning. The sun wouldn't be up for a couple of hours yet. What sort of trouble could they possibly be into already?
He got up this early because of the peace and quiet, damn it.
The ruckus abruptly subsided, broken up by the sharp, commanding tones of Nerek, Captain of the Guard. Finally.
Picking up his quill, Kohar dipped it into a bottle of deep red, faintly shimmery ink and slowly began to write out runes again—properly this time. He would not be adding water-proofing wards to any rats.
He'd just finished one line when the ruckus started up again—this time much closer. A pounding came at his door as he set the quill down yet again. "Come in!" he snapped, long familiar with that particular pounding. He rolled his eyes at the phrasing. As if Nerek was interested in giving him that sort of pounding. Nerek was infinitely more likely to knock him upside the head, probably for one flippant remark or another. Kohar was interested in neither option.
The door flew open, and Kohar did not need to turn around to know he was right. Nerek's steps, the jingle-jangle of his sword belt, were as familiar as his knocking. He was likely as rough-looking as ever, in need of a shave, hair with a rampant dislike of combs, leathers scuffed and dirty from whatever was causing all the chaos. He was handsome the way a storm was beautiful—rough, wild, dangerous. They had not been fond of one another when Kohar had first arrived at the castle, but they'd learned to get along, more or less.
"Whatever in the Regions is going on out there," Kohar snapped, still not bothering to turn around, "you had better be putting an end to it. I can't work in all that racket, and one would think even your soldiers could dredge up a bit of consideration given the hour."
"My soldiers never step so much as a toe out of line and you know it. You're a fine one to talk about consideration," Nerek retorted. "Do you think racket would still be going on if there wasn't a good reason for it?"
Kohar rolled his eyes. "Last week there was a ruckus because the chickens got spooked, and let's not forget about the ghost incident."
"I told you not to bring that up anymore."
"You brought it on yourself." Kohar put away the spell he was writing out for Madame Karen, then capped the ink bottles and cleaned his quills before putting them back in their case. He sensed he would be getting very little work done from here on out. A pity. He had hoped to finish her spells this morning so that he could write a reply to his brother's bizarre letter.
"I do not see how either one of you can be awake at this hour," said another voice. "Even with the current problem."
The voice struck him, sending icy mortification down his spine and hot elation through the rest of him. Damn it all to the Regions, when had Solla arrived, and why had no one told him? Stupid Nerek could have said something! Kohar wasn't remotely dressed for company, still in his bed robe, hair messy, hands and probably his face smudged with ink.
He avoided pitching something heavy at Nerek's head, but only with the greatest of effort. The bastard had done it on purpose, he knew it, and Kohar would make him pay for it.
Kohar finally stood and turned around, forcing back the mortification and annoyance. He loathed that Solla was seeing him at his worst, but he would not compound it by trying to make a fuss or pretend he was something he wasn't. He pushed back a stray curl that had slipped free of the sloppy knot he'd pulled his long hair into while he worked.
Solla was still beautiful. Unlike Nerek, his cousin, who constantly looked rough and unkempt, Solla was always clean and neat. The contrast was all the more notable given that Nerek was Captain of the Guard, and Solla was an aimless mercenary.
Like most natives of Hollar Province, Solla had dark skin, dark hair, and brilliant forest green eyes he had in common with Nerek. Unlike Kohar's long, loose curls and Nerek's shorn, barely-there hair, Solla's hair was shoulder length and held the faintest wave, neatly tied back with a strip of leather. He wore no armor, so he had been there long enough to settle in. From the way he yawned and the somewhat fuzzy look to his eyes, the noise had likely woken him.
Despite that, Solla was fully dressed. Black leggings and a deep red tunic stitched with the moon and cat-head crest of his and Nerek's family. He'd buckled on his sword, and Kohar could see the barest hint of a dagger up his sleeve.
It just made Kohar more painfully aware of his own unkempt state. The same need for perfection that made him so good at magic scribing screamed in fury at being seen in his morning disorder. His fingers twitched with a need to do up the loose fastenings of his bed robe, pull shut the gap that was displaying far too much chest. The only minor consolation he had was that the robe was of deepest midnight blue, matching his eyes exactly. Being from Volane Province, located in roughly the middle of the kingdom, he had white skin, making him and Bedros, the lord of the castle, the odd ones out in the area.
"Why are you bothering me?" he asked again.
Nerek smirked in that way that said he knew exactly what was irking Kohar so much. Well, that was what he got for working with the bastard for so long—they knew entirely too much about each other.
But in the next breath the smirk had faded, Nerek's mouth tightening into a grim line as he fell to business. "Three of my soldiers have been killed by…something…"
"Something?" Kohar asked. He really wished he could get dressed, but that would give away that it bothered him to be seen so, and he refused to make any show of weakness. He quirked a brow instead and used the tone of voice that would make Nerek twitch. "Surely you can muster a better description than 'something', Captain."
Nerek glared. "You want better? Fine. It looks like my soldiers were killed right in the middle of a good session with their hands."
All thoughts of aggravating Nerek and flirting with Solla fled Kohar's mind. "What? Any signs of someone breaking into the castle? Any commonalities between the victims? Any obvious magical traces? There must be something if you're coming
to me about it. What do you know so far?"
"No signs of someone breaking into the castle, but that doesn't mean much," Nerek replied, unruffled as ever by Kohar's tendency to rattle off several questions at once. It annoyed everyone else he'd ever met, but it was one of the few things about him Nerek had no complaints for. "Only thing they had in common was that they work for me. One works the curtain, the second is on bodyguard rotation, and the last is a field scout. Can't be certain it's magical in nature, but there was no sign of anything else, not even another person, despite the awkward way they died."
Kohar frowned, absently doing up the last few fastenings on his robe and smoothing it out. Moving to his wardrobe, he dug out his leather boots and sat to tug them on. Standing, he took off his monocle and forced his hair into submission, swearing softly when he could not locate the comb that held it all together. He stopped when he saw a hand holding it out and smiled at Solla. "Thank you."
Solla nodded, smiling briefly, then stepped back.
Retrieving his monocle, he settled it in place, twitching his nose to get it just right, then motioned for Nerek to lead the way.
The castle halls were cold; it would be some hours yet before the sun was high enough to warm them. He should have grabbed his cloak, but did not waste time on fetching it. Normally at such an hour, everything would be dead silent. On the rare occasion he left his room at this time, Kohar seldom encountered any but one of the watchmen or Nerek. Where Kohar had always enjoyed being awake in the deadest hours of the morning, Nerek had no choice in the matter and was absolutely never happy about it.
Today, however, the castle was already alive—and teeming with fear. Servants stood muttering and whispering about what the problem might be, what was becoming of those damned soldiers, and it was only a matter of time before His Grace woke.
He followed Nerek and Solla across the courtyard to the barracks, where the soldiers stood milling fretfully. Their eyes were filled with terror—and anger. They seemed comforted, though, when they saw him, their whispers subsiding as he stepped past them into the room.
Kohar's eyes immediately fell on the only bed in the room still occupied. The soldier was dead, but his eyes were wide open, as was his mouth, the whole of his face strangely contorted in a grimace of pleasure and pain.
He frowned at the unfortunate state in which the man seemed to have died—his tunic discarded, leggings open, cock lying spent with his hands still wrapped around it, drying semen on his stomach.
"There's two more," Nerek said into the silence. "So far, is my fear."
"Let's hope not," Kohar murmured, focused now on finding any traces of magic that he could.
His monocle was intended primarily for rune scribing. Basic spells were simple enough they could be spoken, even certain moderately complex spells were so familiar that speaking them was safe enough. But everything else had to be written, and writing magic was a skill that took a bare minimum of twenty years of training—ten basic, ten specialized. Kohar had started at nine, finished at thirty. Even now at thirty-five, it remained a difficult, dangerous task.
To the naked eye, runes were no more complicated than ordinary penmanship. Beneath the monocle, however, the special inks came to life, where the slightest variation in a stroke could mean the difference between glorious success and horrific failure. It showed him where to make a mark lighter or darker, where to curve, where to keep it straight, where to wing it sharply, and that didn't even get into the different colors of ink required. There were thousands of nuances, resulting in a craft so challenging that precious few were able to obtain their master marks. The monocle was one of his dearest possessions and had not come cheaply.
And the things that made it crucial for writing magic also made it useful at simply seeing magic, at least some of it—like now, in lingering traces of a rune marked on the unfortunate soldier's neck, right where fingers might caress, rest before drawing someone in for a kiss, or squeeze in a friendly gesture. It was tiny, small enough to fit on a fingertip. Frowning, Kohar moved in close enough to gently touch the mark with one finger.
His finger came away greasy, and he thoughtfully rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, then brought them to his nose to sniff. "Rune wax," he said. Most of the spells he wrote were for other mages; he simply left off the last couple of runes, gave them the incomplete spell, and they finished it when the spell was needed. That was what he did for Madame Karen, the village healer, whose eyesight kept her from being able to be a master scriber. She could always add the last rune or two just fine, but not the full spell.
But on those occasions where it wasn't a mage who needed the spell, they were written in full, transferred into special rune wax, and then activated, essentially putting the spell in stasis. From there, the spell could be transferred to a desired location by anyone, not just a mage. But rune wax was prohibitively expensive, and transferring live spells incredibly dangerous. There were few good reasons to do it when it was safer and cheaper to simply hire a mage to do the spell at the required location but plenty of bad reasons.
"Wonderful," Nerek said. "So whoever the scum is, you can't sniff out their magic."
"Unfortunately not. Show me the other two."
Nerek did so. The second was a woman who'd died with one hand shoved up her shirt and the other into her pants, and the third a man who'd died with one hand on his cock, and two fingers of the other buried in his ass.
"No one deserves to die this way," Nerek said. "It's humiliating, violating. I don't know what sick bastard is responsible, but I'm going to cut out their delicate bits and shove them down their throat."
"I do not usually approve of your crude methods, but in this case I'd be willing to make an exception. In fact, I think you're being too kind."
Worry and even a touch of fear slipped over Nerek's face for a moment. "What in the Regions are we dealing with?"
"I would have to consult my books to be certain, but to judge from the state of them and the faded runes on their skin, I think we have a concubus feeding on your men."
"What's a concubus?" Solla asked, speaking for the first time.
Kohar didn't roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. "You might be more familiar with the term 'succubus.'"
Solla laughed, a touch of derision in it. "You think we're dealing with a demon."
It stung. A lot. Solla had been dropping by to visit Nerek for years, since long before Kohar had arrived. He visited infrequently, only a handful of times a year, and only a day or three at a time, but often enough he should not be so quick to disbelieve what Kohar had to say.
"Yes, I do," Kohar said icily.
Solla looked at him with disappointment, then looked to Nerek. "You can't believe him."
"Of course I do."
The disappointment grew. "You yell at him over everything. You ignore him when he claims rats are getting at his books again, but you believe him about something as impossible as a demon."
"Yes, I do," Nerek said again, voice dropping several degrees.
Kohar ignored the way that unflappable confidence warmed him better than any tea, because honestly, what did he care whether or not Nerek believed him? He was right, that was all that mattered. "It's high magic, not impossible magic, and it's the only thing that fits."
"Why?" Nerek interrupted, giving his cousin a warning look. "That is what I want to know."
"You have to ask?" Kohar said dryly. "After the failed betrothal?"
Nerek sighed, running a hand over his shorn hair and then down his face. "I had hoped that after three months of peace and quiet, we didn't have to worry about revenge from that quarter anymore."
Kohar murmured a soft agreement. He and Nerek were in the employ of the Duke of Rehm, helping to guard the largely ignored and forgotten northeast corner of the kingdom. Three months ago, the Countess of Greesom had arrived to finalize a betrothal with His Grace.
It had come as a shock to all of them when His Grace had abruptly called the whole thing off a
nd thrown her out. Her Ladyship had taken the news neither gracefully nor quietly.
"I cannot see who else would do this," Kohar continued. "Though it lacks refinement. I would have thought Her Ladyship would be less crude. Now I'm really curious as to why he threw her out."
Nerek shrugged. "As mad as she was, I doubt being refined was high on her list of concerns. I suppose we had better confirm it before we go raze her damned palace."
"You? Think?" Kohar asked. "I'm impressed you can manage it this ear—"
A sudden scream cut him off, and at the far end of the long barracks, a wave of men surged toward them, bellowing for Nerek, motioning, bolting away as quickly as they could.
Nerek shut everyone up with a bellow.
"Wake up anyone who might still be asleep," Kohar ordered as they took in the latest victim. "Succubi can only feed on the sleeping. Make certain everyone bathes—thoroughly. Tell them all to be on guard against anyone—anyone—trying to touch their bare skin."
Noise exploded around him as the men took in Kohar's words, more than a few of the soldiers making the motions to ward against demons, and hastily muttered prayers mingled with the chatter.
Leaving Kohar's side, Nerek set to work calming the men down, issuing orders and sending some of them out to spread those orders throughout the castle. In mere minutes, the barracks were empty, and soon the sounds of soldiers at drill and chores filled the castle.
Rubbing his forehead, longing for a cup of tea, Kohar forced himself to focus.
The Countess was not the immediate problem, though she was the likeliest source of the problem. No, the immediate problem was finding and expelling the damned demon.
"How is one demon killing this many people?" Nerek asked as he returned.
"Precisely," Solla said. "How could it possibly be a demon? What's it doing, jumping from dream to dream?"
