It’s been a while since I last fed, this case has been keeping me busy. My supply of Umbral energy was still taking its time to fully replenish naturally. Made me miss the old days when I only had fire and water talents to work with, quick bed rest was all I needed to top myself up. But just like a powerfully built car, the stronger it was, the more gas you needed to fill in its tank.
When my gas was low, I started looking at humans like a refueling station, like the cute college couple crossing the road at the first set of lights I stopped at, holding hands, and smiling. I worked up the appetite to have two partners at once. But lucky for them, my rule of only feeding on the scum of the city, and those that try and fail to kill me, still prevailed. Hence why my recent victims have been men, there’s a severe lack of female fixers in the city targeting me.
Then I remembered the pills I shamelessly stole from Charles. They were laced with Umbral energy. I made a quick pit stop at a corner store; Emily was too busy playing games on her phone to care. I bought a small bottle of water and then made way back to my car, while popping two of the pills into my mouth, washing them into my body with the water. Charles was right, I felt the Umbral in the pills release into my body fast. This could come in handy; I just needed to heal myself at night to counter the side effects.
“What was that all about?” Emily asked as I got back in and continued our drive down to Brooklyn.
I held the water bottle up. “Was, thirsty.”
It wasn’t exactly I lie. I was thirsty. Thirsty for dirty sex with a stranger because of my low Umbral levels. This ought to keep my inner succubus calm awhile longer.
The evening skies were starting to fall on the city when we made it down to the Brighton Beach area, the location of the house Belyana shared with her mother. Charles had sat in the backseat of our ride when I picked him up from his apartment. Emily started teasing him as to how silent he has gotten since we picked up him. Guess my snarky comment about this being a date really got him nervous.
My senses were on edge when we pushed deeper into the Russian community of Little Odessa. If the Russian mob was planning a hit, this would be the perfect time to do, assuming they even had anyone left to do it, after the losses they took at the dock, and their demon musclemen getting ripped apart by fae plant zombies. Guess the fae weren’t so bad after all, they killed the people that were trying to kill me. If fae weren’t trying to steamroll the city and my enemies to get to me, I’d offer them a drink.
I pulled up to Belyana’s house. She was sitting on the front porch waiting for us, her long blonde hair draped over the shoulders of her jet-black Neo-Victorian dress, matching with her fishnet stockings. She looked like a woman that could raise the dead, which wasn’t far from the truth. She did summon a Shinigami to bring my ass back.
Her waiting for us outside made the pickup nice and quick as I drove us north to the occult store. Belyana joined Charles in the backseat, neither of them was aware of the stuff I did on that seat the other night. Let’s keep it that way, shall we?
“Charles, you remember Belyana right?” I asked him.
“Been a while,” he said. “It’s a shame we had to cleanse your body of the Rusalka.”
It took Belyana awhile to respond, my guess was that she was looking at him all weird. “What?”
“I would have loved to study her further,” he said.
“Until she charms and kills you with sex,” Emily’s sassy voice cut in.
“Hey, now,” Charles said. “The Rusalka were only deadly during that magical week in June. It’s November.”
“Glad to see you view me as a test subject,” Belyana said. She didn’t sound pleased at all.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” Charles said, backtracking. I let out a mocking laugh. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
“You done fucked up now, Charles,” I snorted.
“Sorry, Belyana,” he said. “It must have been a very traumatic experience for you and your mother.”
Belyana sighed. “She still doesn’t know the whole story.”
“You never told her that?” I asked.
“That I turned into a water succubus and killed men?” Belyana said. “No, the discovery of my room still has her flustered.”
“I can relate,” Charles said. “Telling my family that I became a Wiccan was the hardest decision in my life. It was even harder than informing the NYPD I was one. Though, it did get me the job in the paranormal labs.”
“Your family isn’t Wiccan?” Belyana asked him, the tone of her voice lightened.
“No, friends of mine from collage lured me into their coven,” he said. “I learned a lot about magic, and the demonology of the world, but wasn’t able to use any of the powers myself. Then again most of us couldn’t since we all joined the coven as outsiders.”
“Hey, Belyana,” I chimed in. “If you’re looking for friends, maybe join Charles’ coven? I’m sure a demon summoner like you would fit in.”
“Wow, Reika,” Charles said jubilantly. “That’s a great idea!”
“Wow, Reika,” Emily mimicked. “That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard you say.”
“Her half succubus nature must be making her more sensitive,” Charles said. “Understandable since you need to be, in order to get the sexual feeding required—”
“Charles,” I cut in, there was enough agitation in my voice to make kids paralyzed with fear. “Shut the fuck up!”
I pulled up to the occult store minutes before it was set to close for the night. We had to find that book and fast. The four of us entered, Belyana leading the way, doing her thing with the shopkeeper, getting him to open the super-secret bookshelves door at the back.
Charles gave the items on display in the store long stare, his jaw dropping with excitement. “I didn’t know you could buy these here,” he said. He was like a kid in a candy store browsing through all the potions, powders, Ouija boards, and magical items on sale. “I can’t wait until payday, oh, this is so exciting!”
“I never knew what the purposes for half the things are,” Belyana said as we approached the bookshelves at the back.
“Oh, Belyana, I have much to show you then,” he said.
The secret bookcase entrance swung open, giving us access to the hidden library within. Belyana and Charles rambled on about occult stuff, demonic summoning, magic, potions, making sacrifices, and witchcraft and the like. It all went over my head, Emily’s too, judging by her eye rolls. It was like Belyana and Charles had been close personal friends for years, she finally found a friend that could understand her. Good for her.
Emily took the lead as we ventured into the dark and musky hidden room, walking past rows upon rows of bookshelves that were a mess with dust and cobwebs as books of the occult and other multiple centuries’ old tomes lay idle on the shelves for decades since they were deposited there. Emily was the one that tried to steal the book we came searching for, and it was her senses of a thief lead her backtracking to the missed loot where it was dropped.
“Found it,” Emily said, picking the dust-covered tome off the floor.
Surprisingly, it remained exactly where we left it. Clearly, nobody had been back since we were last here. It made me question the power of the tomes all locked away here, and the fact that nobody seemed to shop here, except Belyana.
We passed the tome off to Belyana since she was the expert on this shit. The tome was bulky and heavy, requiring Belyana to use both her hands to hold and flip through the pages. Belyana, flipping through the pages, came to a stop around twenty percent into the tome. Her fingernails, painted with black nail polish, slid down the page, as she read its contents.
“It says here that the fae comes from a realm known as the Lux,” Belyana said.
“Why am I not surprised?” Emily said.
“They use Lux magic,” Belyana continued. “While demons use Umbral.”
“Yeah that part we kinda knew,” I said, then out of curiosity used my scanning talent, eying the tome in her hands. “That book is full
of Lux power.”
Belyana winced, slightly pulling the tome away from her face. “So that’s why my hands are tingling.” She flipped through more pages all full of diagrams and written in a language I couldn’t understand. “Wow, I can summon forces from the Lux with this.”
“Fascinating,” Charles said, leaning closer to her, reading over her shoulder.
“Just like with demons, fae can possess human hosts,” Belyana said. “And just like with my other tome, I can summon and temporally have a human host possessed with a fae.”
“Off topic question, would that require soul contamination?” I asked. “I mean for fae possession when you’re not summoning one?”
“Doubtful,” Charles said. “Schubert developed the process of using demon blood to infect people’s souls because humans developed a resistance to demonic possession over the years.”
“It’s true,” Emily spoke up. “Five hundred years ago, anyone could have gotten possessed, didn’t matter who you were.”
Charles stroked his chin, narrowing his eyes at the pages Belyana flipped through. “Hmm.”
I snorted. “What are you hmming about Charles?”
“Demonic possession in the past was more common than fae possession,” he said. “If that’s the case, maybe we didn’t develop that resistance when it came to fae possession. And if that’s true, then the fae could freely possess people right now.”
“Then how come we don’t have more walking around?” I asked.
“Maybe there’s a trigger, a spell to be cast, an act to be performed to make it happen,” he said. “Or maybe there are a lot around. Remember that email I sent you?”
That thought back to that email. Gabe had firsthand knowledge that Donovan was a fae before his demonic possession, that he’d been in the city for years, and there were others like him. I couldn’t believe what my head was processing.
“Don’t tell me half the fucking city is possessed by fae and we don’t know it,” I said.
“I doubt it’s that much,” Charles said. “But the missing persons reports might give us a good idea as to how many there are.”
In other words, the people missing might not be missing. Just possessed by the fae, and refusing to return to their host’s home, for whatever reason. The fae could be a worst threat than demons. There were restrictions that limited demonic possession; no such restrictions existed for the fae.
Belyana slammed the book shut, a plume of dust lifted into the air. “We need this,” she said. “But … I can’t afford it.”
“Don’t look at me!” Emily said, extending her hands forward, shaking her head. “You fucking made me buy the last one. And you know how I feel about buying things I don’t have to.”
“Fuck it,” I spat, busting out my fat wallet from my trench coat. “I’ll bill it to the Yakuza.”
“You can do that?” Emily asked.
“I fucking own the group here in the city,” I said. “It’s time they paid the succubus queen of Hell’s Kitchen their tribute for the month.”
Making our way out of the secret room, back into the shop, we picked up additional items Belyana insisted we need, powders, potions, and such. I really hoped we did need it, and this wasn’t her stocking up on these items. I was still convinced they weren’t even needed for summoning. Just some weird drugs nobody knew about that helped make the magic look cool.
Belyana dropped a last-minute bombshell as we returned to my car, strapping ourselves in for the ride back to her place. “I won’t be able to use this in my room, would I?”
I grunted. “You’re asking me now after I spent all that cash?”
“No, you won’t,” Emily said. “There’s probably too much Umbral energy in your bedroom.”
“How about my place?” Charles offered. “I’m Wiccan, but I’m still human. My place should be a good neutral place to use this.”
“Paranormal summoning house party at Charles’ place.” I turned the key to the ignition of my car and proceeded to drive to his apartment. “I can’t wait,” I added unenthusiastically.
“Can we order Chinese food while we summon stuff?” Emily asked.
“I could really go for that,” Charles said.
A meal. Yeah, I could really go for one too, now that those pills got my Umbral levels high enough to quell my inner succubus hunger.
“Chinese food it is.” I concurred when the light turned green.
Emily raised her hands in triumph. “Fuck, yeah!”
Chapter Eighteen
Charles had a decent apartment out in the ass end of lower Manhattan. It was a small unit on the fifth floor featuring wooden floors, brick walls, and a hell of a lot of old pizza boxes and empty soda bottles lying about in the most unorganized manner ever. Most of that junk was stacked up real nice and high next to his computer with posters of half-naked anime girls above it.
If Charles’ intention was to keep his Wiccan beliefs a secret with the layout of his place, then he achieved just that, because I sure as fuck wouldn’t have guessed he had connections to witchcraft and the like. Maybe World of Warcraft witchcraft, but not the real-world shit that made peoples head explode by chanting a few words and dabbling with some magical items.
The aroma of the Chinese food we picked up was let loose when we cracked up the containers it was packed in. We were glad to have it, even me with my change of diet ended up munching on an eggroll and damn near inhaling some noodles. Food didn’t make my succubus half happy, but with the lack of naughty souls to feed on, and the Umbral pills still in my system, she could get fucked.
While we sat and ate, Belyana went ahead, flipping through the pages of the fae tome, reciting the ancient words written in it and learning what she had to do with the magical powders, herbs, and potions we picked up. It took her almost two hours to formulate a game plan, while Emily and Charles pushed the couches and furniture in the living room to the walls, clearing enough space to turn it into a mini shrine for the summoning.
Standing at the walls after the last table was pushed to it, gave me a real nice glance at the pictures Charles had on display. He had an assortment of pictures of his family, the ones that rejected his faith in the Wiccan belief. He was a stronger man than I thought, still holding onto his love for his parents, even though they didn’t return that affection. You wouldn’t have caught me keeping pictures of my folks at my old place.
When Belyana was ready, she asked Charles to lay in the middle of the cleared out living room, with the intention of summoning a fae into his, temporarily, for our interrogation. My hand went for the hilt of my katana. Seemed every time Belyana went to summon something, bad things happened. Do you think it’s a bad time to ask if Charles has good insurance?
The final touches to the summoning ritual were in place, a circle of candles around Charles with the rose Emily stole from Alice placed in his hands folded over his chest. Charles didn’t look spooked at all as his facial expression had twisted into one of those, ‘this is for science’ kind of looks.
The ritual commenced with Belyana speaking in tongue, reciting the words written in the tome that now magically floated in the air ahead of her face. No blood sacrifices needed to be made, that was a thing that made demons get off; this was the fae we were calling.
Summoning circles flashed on the floor, glowing brightly. The small candle flames fluttered about like a gust of wind passed through, I’m surprised none of them blew out. The fabric of Belyana’s neo-Victorian dress became a flurry of ripples, and her blonde hair waved like she was in the ocean taking a swim. The pages of the tome flipped on their own as she read the text, it made the trippy as fuck light show in Charles’ living room intensify.
The last words in the summoning were chanted, and a shock wave erupted from the tome. It was a splash of gold-colored light shooting away from it, making the walls look as if they were made of solid gold for a split second.
There was silence and darkness afterward as the candles blew out. Emily, Belyana and I a
ll approached Charles’ body still lying on the floor holding the rose to his chest, wondering who the new soul was that jumped into his body.
“Uh, was that it?” Charles asked, his voice sounding just like the man we knew.
“Yes,” Belyana said. “So?”
“Yeah, it’s still me,” Charles said, sitting up, and placing the rose the floor.
“Well,” Emily said, reaching for a fortune cookie. “That was anticlimactic.”
If life was like the movies, then the message in the fortune cookie would have contained the answers to what the fuck just happened. And those answers probably wouldn’t have been something good to hear. I left my fortune cookie unopened for that reason.
“I did everything exactly,” Belyana said, lifting the heavy tome off the floor.
“I don’t feel anything,” Charles said. “Want to try again?”
Belyana flipped a couple of pages back in the tome, reading it for a few seconds, shaking her head. “We would have to restart the whole ritual from the start.”
“Oh, no, fuck that, not again,” Emily said.
“If I made a mistake, then it’s the only way,” Belyana said, keeping her eyes on the pages.
“How about you go eat your food,” I said, nodding to the now cold takeout food meant for Belyana. “And study that book while you do it? Before Emily steals it.”
“I’ll do it too,” Emily said. “Reika doesn’t like keeping food in the fridge.”
It was break time, though the whole experience was nothing more than a long break. All we did was eat, push furniture aside, then sat back, waited, and watched the show. Belyana resurrected her food in the microwave then sat at the kitchen table eating and reading the tome. Charles joined her, acting like he might know the answers to what happened. Emily and I were no longer interesting to him, what a fucking relief.
What wasn’t a relief, was knowing shit could still be going down at Central Park, and I chose to check out this sideshow instead, thinking the clues gained might be more valuable. The news feeds on my phone didn’t tell any interesting stories, just the shit we already knew, like the missing people. I guess it was a good sign for now, as nothing changed, not hearing back from Gabe, however, wasn’t. I sent a follow text message to him, one that he had to reply to. If he didn’t, then he might have joined the growing list of disappearing people.
Deception of the Demon Girl Page 10
