by Tim Marquitz
He nodded enthusiastically.
I ground my gun into the back of his seat once more out of spite and slid the door open. I hopped out and looked toward the hotel. I felt my chest grow tight as I thought about seeing Veronica again. There was a Page 162 lot of water that had passed under that bridge and most of it smelled like raw sewage. I wasn’t sure I was up to jumping back into it, however temporary the swim was. Meinie, not waiting to see how things turned out, gunned the van and took off, squealing the wheels as he took the corner way too fast. He was gone in a flash. He was the smart one, apparently. No longer concerned with him, I headed off toward the hotel. I figured Meinie might give Veronica a heads up I was coming, but I didn’t care at that point. If she still wanted me dead, she’d have to do it herself. I slipped around the side of the building and approached her room. Not giving myself time to get nervous, I knocked on the door. I did it lightly to avoid it sounding like a cop knock. It must have worked. The door swung open and Veronica stared out at me, her eyes wide with surprise. She looked even better than I remembered.
She had on a pair of black biker boots that ran to the calves of her painted-on blue jeans, which hugged her in all the right spots. She also wore a tight, wifebeater T-shirt, which barely contained her bra-less chest. The sight of which got my blood to flowin’. My eyes roamed up her body, taking it all in, much to my libido’s delight.
Her taught arms rippled with lean muscle beneath the colored lines of extensive tattooing that covered their entirety. The brilliant colors and
Asian-themed artwork ended at her collarbones where her long neck led up to her shocked face. Her big blue eyes stared at me from above her scrunched button nose, her head framed in a halo of short, wild black hair. The look of surprise quickly vanished to be replaced by the hard lines of her fury.
“Frank. You son of a bitch,” she growled. Before I could open my mouth to defend my mother, she clocked me. Throwing a sneaky uppercut, she caught me flush on the chin. I heard my teeth clack together as my head whipped back, knocking me off balance. I tumbled into the parking lot, fireworks exploding in front of my eyes. Face to the asphalt, I mumbled an incoherent complaint as a thin stream of my blood trickled from my mouth and pooled beneath me. I’d forgotten how hard she could hit. I rolled over to talk just as her boot crashed into my ribs. I felt my breath whoosh from my lungs as I slid back across the lot a few feet, scraping away layers of skin. I instinctively curled up to protect myself from further injury, but kept my eyes on her. I wanted to see the next shot coming.
“I’ll kill you!” she shouted. I’m not sure whether it was a good thing no one was around to witness her kicking my ass. Not that it would matter much. In Old Town, people tended to ignore everything that didn’t involve them, or they couldn’t profit from. I wasn’t gonna get any help from the locals.
A few giggles maybe, but no assistance. Furious, she kicked me again, her boot slamming into my arms. While it stung, it didn’t do much damage. I caught my breath as she kicked again. This time, I grabbed her leg and twisted. She went down, rolling away from me as I jumped to my feet.
“Come on now, can’t we discuss this like adults?”
She growled low in her throat and flung herself at me again. “I guess not.”
She came at me like she intended to tackle me. I let her close, then just as her shoulder connected with my stomach, I wrapped my arms around her waist and lifted. I spun sideways and let her go, using her momentum to throw her into the ice machine. She let out a grunt as she slammed into it, the sound drowned out by the crash of falling ice, knocked free inside. She righted herself and glared at me, her eyes sparkling with rage.
“Look, I don’t want to fight.”
She ignored me and stalked forward, her hands raised like a boxer. I sighed, shifting my own stance, resigned to the fact we weren’t gonna work our differences out peacefully. I really didn’t want to fight her. It’s not like I was all that concerned about hitting a woman, I am part devil after all, but I always had a hard time hurting those I cared for. For all our problems, I couldn’t help but think of the good times we’d shared. Admittedly, most of them involved her face shoved into a pillow, but that’s beside the point. They were good times, for me at least.
She clearly didn’t feel the same way. She closed and threw a left. I moved my right to defend against it and caught a kick to the liver instead. I stumbled back with a hiss, angry at myself for falling for her feint. She’d gotten better. That didn’t bode well. She’d always been a scrapper, but she’d been sloppy, undisciplined. It wasn’t something she really needed to learn considering her feminine charms ensured she had an army of men to do her dirty work for her. The fact she had taken the time to learn how to fight properly meant my task here was going to be harder than I thought. What a surprise. Nothing was ever easy for me. Why should it start being so now?
She didn’t give me any time to recover before she pressed her attack. She came in fast, throwing a nice combination of punches. I blocked the first two, but the third slipped past, catching me in the temple. Once again I saw stars, my legs doing the chicken dance beneath me. She laughed and took advantage. She drove a straight right into my nose. I felt the crack as once again the cartilage in my nose shattered. Ice pick-sharp pains shot through my eyes as they welled up with tears.
“Bitch.” I growled as I stumbled back, getting angry, but she wasn’t finished with me. She charged forward, throwing a flurry of punches and kicks.
I managed to defend against a few, but most of them connected with solid thuds. She drove me back toward the hotel, her fists a blur of violent motion that rocked my head back and forth, blurring my vision even further. My skull rang like a bell.
I felt my back slam into the wall. With nowhere to retreat to, my face a train wreck of swelling contusions and bleeding cuts, I needed to do something to turn the tide. As Veronica closed on me, I dropped down and slipped a punch, causing her fist to crash into the cinder block wall behind me. I heard her grunt, but didn’t wait to see if it slowed her any. I popped back up and headbutted her. My forehead collided with her nose and I heard a loud snap. She shrieked and stumbled back, clutching her face as blood seeped from between her fingers.
Not interested in giving her time to recover, I leaped forward and grabbed her by the arm. With every ounce of strength I had, I spun her about and flung her through the window of her room. The glass shattered, exploding into a million shards of glittering razors that slashed at her as she flew through, landing in a heap on the hotel bed. I waited a second for the shards to clear, then dove in after her, landing on top of her, my weight pressing down.
I knew there was no reasoning with her, especially now that things had gone so far, so I did what I had to get through to her. Crouched on top, I slugged her in the face. I followed that up with another, then another, pinning her beneath me. She squirmed and cursed me as I rained down blows, her hands tearing at me to get me off her. One after another, I punched her until her face looked like a slab of tenderized meat. By about the twentieth shot, her struggling resistance at last gave way to whimpering compliance and I stopped. She looked up at me, her blue eyes filled with pools of crimson, interspersed with tears. Her clawing hands, giving up their useless defense, now gripped me like steel vises. I stared down at her, meeting her sad, beaten gaze with my own. She moaned, part pain part something else, and pulled my head down. With a passion I’d not experienced since our wedding night, she kissed me.
Though I knew her as well as anyone, I had to admit, I hadn’t thought my plan would work considering our history. You see, succubi are not like most women- or more correctly, they aren’t like what any woman would ever admit to being-in that they are drawn not only to power, but to the display of said power. The bigger the display, the better. Able to control men with but the merest sliver of their sensual capabilities, they find themselves bored easily so they seek out those who offer them the most challenge. The harder the pursuit, the more they invest thems
elves in the chase. Due to the nature of succubi, the man who can conquer one physically also conquers the succubus’s heart. Though that didn’t make things perfect, our failed marriage a good example of that, it certainly made things easier in the wooing process.
I reveled in the kiss, letting her tongue run amok inside my mouth. Through the heat, I could taste the intermingled blood of our wounds and as disturbing as it might sound, I found it arousing. I pressed down onto her, leaning hard into the kiss. It’d been a long time since I’d been with a woman. At least, it’d been a long time where the encounter didn’t end with me pulling out my wallet, so I did my best to savor every second.
I felt her grinding her hips into me, setting off rampant sparks in my crotch. I shuddered in pleasure and ground back, working myself into a frenzy. I could feel the warmth, radiating outward from our conjoined crotches, tingling up through my limbs. I tore my mouth from hers and pushed her head to the side, diving into the crook of her neck, kissing and biting. She hissed in pain and pulled away, shattering the moment. I sat up in a rush, taking my weight off her. I looked down at her beautiful face, although it was really hard to call her that at the moment considering the amount of swelling and bruising present. I felt a little bad, I had to admit.
“Uh…hi.” Her voice was raspy and wet sounding, but nothing could hide its sexiness.
“Hi yourself,” I replied, a little at a loss for words, all the blood somewhere besides my brain.
“No hard feelings?”
“For what? Sending assassins after me three times? Trying to kill me?” My mouth went on autopilot. I have foot-in-mouth disease.
“You sent me back to Hell, how’d you think I was going to react?” Her look turned hard as she pushed me away.
I rolled off her and sat on the edge of the bed. I raised my hands in surrender. “You’re right, I probably had it coming, but what did you expect? I came home to find you in bed with the cable guy. You didn’t even have the decency to get us free HBO.”
“Hello. I’m a succubus, that’s what I do. You knew that when you married me.” She sat up, glaring.
“Knowing you use sex to retain your strength is one thing. My walking into the bedroom to see some strange guy’s hairy ass bouncing up and down as he pile-drives my wife is another thing entirely.”
She shook her head. “You always were too damn sensitive, not to mention insecure. That’s one of the reasons I left you, not counting the unexpected, forced visit to Hell. And just so you know, it took me fifteen years to hitch a ride back to Earth thanks to your uncle shutting most of the damn gates down.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “I was with you because I loved you, not because you satisfied my needs as a succubus.”
Ouch. I felt my hard on retreat. “That’s just cruel.”
Veronica laughed. “Get over it. You know damn well I can’t feed off you because of your genetics. Don’t get all butt hurt over it. It just wasn’t going to work. I needed more than you could provide.”
Bah. Women. Can’t live with them, can’t bury them deep enough to avoid prosecution. I tried to act like I was cool with her logic. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want her to know that. I went on auto-redirect. “Anyway, I didn’t come here to stir up old memories.”
“Then why did you come?” She ran her hand over her battered face and winced.
“Meinie told me you tracked me, knew where I was all the time.”
She looked at me with quizzical eyes. I sighed and explained. “You know, one of the longhairs you were sleeping with to get him to kill me?”
“Ah, okay. What about it?”
“I remember your life-sensing abilities were pretty limited, so how’d you do it?”
She snarled. “A lot has changed in the last twenty years, Frank. I’ve gotten better at everything I do.” She licked her swollen lips.
Like an idiot, my thoughts started to wander. I reined them in as flashes of past perversions burned their sinful images into the screen of my mind. “How good is your tracking these days?”
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“Quite good. I tracked you easily enough, didn’t I?” She looked me over like a piece of meat. “Although I have to say, it helped you’ve gone and upped your power a few notches since we last crossed paths.” I thought I heard her purr.
“I’ve seen a bit of action, lately.” Of course, it wasn’t the kind of action I wanted to see. “So, if I were to ask you to track someone for me, could you do it?”
“Depends.” Her eyes grew wary. “Who’s the mark?”
“An angel. He’s no one you know, but I really need to find him.” I didn’t want to tell her too much, but I tried my best to convey the importance of what I was asking of her. She picked up on it pretty fast.
“What’s in it for me?”
I couldn’t help but laugh. Like every other supernatural being in my life, they all wanted their cut. Shit, for that matter, so did all the humans. Veronica was no different. “What do you want?”
She smiled, knowing I’d given in too easily. She’d figured out I needed this favor badly so she was gonna make it worth her while, regardless how it turned out for me. Satisfied she had me by the short and curlies, she decided to drag it out. “I’ll think about it for a bit. Right now, I’d like to get cleaned up and find a way to heal.”
I heard the less-than-subtle hint in her words. She knew about the vials Lucifer had given me and was maneuvering to get one. I kept the fact I had one on me to myself. “I think we can work something out.” I didn’t mind giving her a bit of my uncle’s blood, but I sure wasn’t gonna do it before I got something in return.
“I’m feeling a bit exposed out here in Old Town. Why don’t we go back to my house and finish our discussion there?”
A hint of a smile graced her lips. “Of course. Let me get my things.” She dropped off the bed and started stuffing her belongings into a couple of small suitcases. She was traveling light. I guessed she’d thought her assassins would finish the job quickly. She should have known better. I’d always been pretty good at disappointing people. You’d think she’d remember that, being married to me and all.
I’d called a cab while I watched her pack, my car still at Coffee Hut. I didn’t imagine Meinie would swing back by to give us a ride. Too bad, he seemed like a nice enough fellow. He had good taste in music, at least. Once Veronica was finished, I grabbed her bags and headed outside with her. Much to my surprise, it was only a few minutes until the cab pulled up at the curb. The cabbie must have been desperate for a fare to have arrived so soon. The look on his wrinkled face when he saw us told me he thought he’d made a mistake. I didn’t give him the chance to change his mind. I gave him directions and a healthy cash incentive to get us there fast. Money talks and people listen. He heard me loud and clear. We were on the road in a flash. I glanced at Veronica and despite the bruises and bloodstains marring her face it was still very apparent why I’d been so attracted to her in the first place. Her sharp features lent her a classic beauty that even all the damage couldn’t completely hide. It didn’t hurt I could see down her shirt. She turned and smiled at me, sliding down in the seat to snuggle beside me. I put my arm around her and sighed. It felt like old times. No matter how everything else turned out, no matter how bad things got, no one could take away the happiness I felt. With her boobs pressed into my side and her hand on my lap, the end of the world was a distant memory.
Retribution
For the first time in days I felt relaxed. I held Veronica’s lithe body tight against me, feeling the warmth of her presence. Even though she’d tried to kill me three times, there was a sense of comfort that seemed to override all of that, a feeling of righteousness born of past intimacy. At that moment, it didn’t matter what either of us had done, it was as if we’d never parted. All that mattered was we were together. Or maybe it was that her hand, resting on my crotch, kept twitching. Regardless, I was feeling pretty good. That, of course, meant something had to ruin it. Without warning, R
achelle’s voice exploded inside my head. “Frank!”
I winced, jumping in my seat. Veronica sat up and looked at me like I’d let one rip. I could see the cabbie staring at me from the mirror, his eyes nervous. I tried my best to grin like nothing happened and turned into the seat so my voice would be somewhat muffled. I still didn’t trust trying to think my response, especially not with Veronica there stirring up my libido.
“I’m here.” Veronica raised her eyebrows, her eyes going wide. The cabbie just shook his head, no doubt regretting picking us up. I couldn’t say I blamed him.
“We’ve been attacked.” I could hear Rachelle’s thoughts trembling. “Squads of Dread Fiends have struck at DRAC installations all across the city. Even worse, they’ve gone after our members at their homes.”
I hissed. “Is everyone okay?” I knew when I asked it was a foolish question.
Dread Fiends were the shock troops of the Demonarch. What they lacked in brains, they more than made up for in ferocity. More beast than anything, they were bred to fight, born to kill. They did both quite well.
I could hear the hesitation in her voice. “We’ve yet to assess the damage, but I fear for the worst. There are many of our brethren still out of contact. The fiends attacked in waves, picking targets spread too far apart to allow for quick or organized responses.” She paused, then continued as if having just been given new information. “Rahim has formed a search and repel party, but he is not optimistic he will be in time.”
I turned to look at Veronica. By her reaction, it was clear my face reflected my concern. “What do you need me to do, Rachelle? Should I join up with Rahim?”
Veronica must have realized what I was doing because her eyes narrowed and she sat back, listening and waiting for me to finish. She’d seen me do it before. The cabbie just drove faster. He knew crazy when he saw it and he wanted us out of his cab as fast as possible.
