I lost count of how many servants were called, but when he finally let me go I was crazed with lust. I was nothing more than a rutting, fucking animal. I attacked anything that moved. Father grabbed me and threw me out the front door so that I wouldn’t hurt any of his servants, and I ran off into the night screaming. I don’t remember much of that night, but when I woke up, it was in a nearby family house. There were bodies everywhere. I still don’t know what I did to them. I have vague memories of bodies writhing together, and sounds, but I don’t know if the sounds I hear are moans of pleasure, or screams of terror. What I do know is that for the next two weeks the locals kept coming after us with torches and pitchforks.
Mother finally sent me a note. It said to go hide in an old cave where she’d taken me when I was a kid. She said to hide there until she came and got me. I stepped into the cave, and was immediately struck in the chest. The next thing I know, it’s 1997 and Elizabeth is staring at me from the other side of a steel cage with a blood pack in hand and a deal she says I’d be crazy to turn down.”
“Wow! So you’re mother betrayed you?” Danika asked.
“My mother would never do that!” Penny hissed. “I tried to keep a low profile at first, just finding some local bloodsuckers and asking a few questions. One day, a woman shows up and hands me a phone number. She says it’s the number to my father’s private phone. That I should call it when I’m ready to hear the truth, and so I ask her what truth is she talking about. The woman’s eyes go red like mine do, and she says that when I want to know about my family, to call this number. Then she tells me not to call until I’m absolutely ready. Well, I panic and beg her to tell me about my mother. She was the only one that I really cared about anymore. The lady just smiled and told me that my mother finally escaped. I never realized what she really meant until today. I just thought that mom had run away. Well, if she ran away, then I wasn’t about to call. Who knew what my father might try to do? I mean, if my mom was free, then the only way he’d catch her is if he had me. So I never called.”
“But why tell us all that “I’m a vampire and this is how vampires do stuff” bullshit? Why would you occasionally talk about your family like you were still keeping tabs on them?” Niki asked.
“You and Danika both have families that love you, so maybe you won’t understand this, and DD had a mother she always bragged about. None of you were ashamed of your family. The only member of my family that I was really close to was my mother, but as a whole, my family wasn’t something kind or loving. It was hell every day. So when all of you guys started talking about your families, I just wanted to try to fit in…at least a little.” Penny sounded so ashamed, but then a thought flickered in the back of my brain.
“Is this why you chose Katy to be your pet?” I asked, but I think it sounded more like an accusation by the way Penny winced.
“To be honest, I’m not sure. I can’t say that her running away didn’t have something to do with it. She ran off because what they wanted wasn’t what she wanted. So it’s not the same circumstances, but I did always think that if the truth ever got out, that Katy would just understand me better than the rest of you. It’s nothing personal, but until you’ve been there you…just can’t understand.” Penny sniffled, “Now you all know. You know what a pathetic freak I am, and you know enough about what my family was like that I won’t blame you if you want to run screaming from the mess that is me.”
We all moved at once towards Penny and gave her a big hug. Everyone started crying. Niki, Danika, and myself were crying for our friend, and someone that we all considered family. Meanwhile, Penny was crying in what we all assumed was relief. She’d held onto this for so long. She’d kept so much bottled in, that now she was letting it all out, and she couldn’t stop now if she wanted. Grim opened the door and stood there, dumbfounded. He just stood there holding the laptop with Janine on it, and stared at us as we kept bawling like babies.
Grim said nervously, “Here’s Janine, I need you all to keep her here. DD, I took those sheets you were on. I needed them for a rope.”
“Rope?” I asked through tears.
“Yeah, I’m going to use Sam as bait, and see what I catch when I toss him into the Black.” Grim said nervously. Few things really rattle the man, but a crying woman sends him into panic mode at supersonic speeds. So a room full of women crying had him ready to run away, even if it meant leaving cartoon style cutouts through the doors as he ran off.
“You’re going to use him as bait? Grim, you know that’s creepy, even for you.” Danika said.
Grim tensed, and then said, “I have to know what those things are. So I may be awhile. I just wanted to tell Penny and DD not to wait up.”
Penny looked panicked, “Please, just leave it alone for a while. I…I really want you here.”
Grim set the computer down and then kissed Penny gently, “I wish I could, but I need to find out if whatever is down there is dangerous to us. The last thing I want to do is open a path into the Black, and walk right into the mouth of something that wants to eat me.”
Penny looked ready to beg him to stay, but I stepped in, “Grim, how about we come with you? That way if something bad happens, you have some backup.”
“Sounds good to me, but it could be pretty boring.”
“Considering how things have been going, a little boredom is a pretty welcome change.” I said.
“Cool, well in that case…Niki, you and Danika take Janine down to your room, please. If nothing else, she can keep an eye on Jes while you’re sleeping.” Grim picked up the computer and handed it to his sister.
“Great, because what I really need right now is another set of eyes watching me trying to get my groove on with my girl.” Niki grumbled. “No offense Janine, but you’re current condition isn’t exactly conducive to two young women trying to get their groove on.”
Janine sighed, “Yeah, I am used to being able to move more freely. Of course, I have gotten better at using the web, so as long as you guys keep your smartphones on,,,then I can just bounce around from one of you to the next.”
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, and I can use the phone’s camera to see. It’s still pretty limiting, but it’s better than nothing.” Leave it to Janine to make the best of a bad situation.
“Okay, well we’ll take the computer, and Niki and I will set our phones around the room so you can keep tabs on Jes for us.” Danika said as she opened the door for her fiancé. Niki walked out carrying the computer.
“Could you please turn me around?” Janine asked.
“Why?” Niki asked.
“Well, I’m getting a little sick of staring at everyone’s chest. I mean, don’t get me wrong. As far at chests go, yours isn’t a bad one to look at. In fact, it’s pretty impressive.”
“Well, thank you.” Niki said with an awkward sort of pride.
“Well the thing is that when you people carry me around, all I see is your chest or up your nose. I think I’m getting a little tired of chests and noses being my only scenery. So turn me around so that I can see where we’re going instead of jiggling boobies.”
Niki laughed, “Okay, well here we go. Swooooosh!” Niki acted like the computer was flying. She swooped it left and right with every step. Really playing up the flight by adding her own sound effects.
“Stop, you’re going to make me sick!” Janine groaned.
“You can’t get sick, you don’t have a stomach.” Niki laughed and proceeded to act like the computer was dive bombing Danika.
“Keep it up Blondie, and when you aren’t looking, I’ll sneak into your TiVo back at your house and erase all your Walking Dead recordings.
“Sheesh, you’d think she could take a joke, but no sense of humor at all!” Niki straightened up and walked the computer carefully back to their room.
“Well, let’s get going. The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we get back to bed and sleep.” I said. Grim shrugged and led us back to Sam’s body. When we
got there he…well she was already tied tightly with the sheet. Grim had shredded my sheet and then tied it to the cubus.
“So, why was she a man?” Grim asked. It was less about curiosity, and more about trying to understand what he was dealing with. “
“Cubus are all initially female. They seduce their prey, and when a man ejaculates, they pull out his life force.” Penny said.
“Oh, I’ve heard this before. The Succubus takes the man’s life force, and they give the soul to an Incubus, who implants it into a woman during sex. The woman gives birth to a cambion.” Hey, even I’ve read my share of mythology over the years.
Penny smirked, “Close, but not quite. A succubus and an incubus are the same thing. When it’s in a female form they are succubus, and when they change to a male form they are incubus. Since their sexuality is so fluid, it’s easier to just call them cubus. Most of what you said is still true, though. They do steal the life energy from a male, and then use it to impregnate a woman. What you end up with is a cambion. The cubus then waits until the cambion is sexually mature, and takes another man’s life force. It then impregnates the cambion, and a couple hours later a brand new baby incubus rips out of its mother’s womb, and the cycle starts all again.
“Freaky, so Sam’s been keeping Jes around to…” Grim was choosing his words carefully.
“Eventually, he’d breed her to have another Incubus. Whatever popped out of DD was probably going to be Jes’ replacement.” Penny seemed pretty certain, and I felt a shiver run through my body.
Grim shuddered, “Hell of a way to go; now I feel kind of bad about spooking her like I did.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter right now, but remind me to go a little easier on her from now on.” Grim said quietly.
“No, what do you mean? What did you do?” I asked. Jes had saved my life. Whatever her reasons, I owed the girl for risking everything to save me.
Grim leaned against the wall, “I have a cambion and two dullahans whose loyalties are dubious at best. Jes is with us because right now we’re her best option. Those two fairies just want to go off and make little faery babies somewhere. Under normal circumstances I’d kick their asses out the front door and be done with them. The problem is that we’re getting attacked from all sides, and as much as I’d like to ditch them, frankly I need the extra manpower. So I have two options. Either I give them carte blanche and let them run with us as equals. The problem with this idea is that they are just as likely to turn on us when loyalty becomes inconvenient. The second option is to scare the living crap out of them, and make sure they are too afraid of what I might do to them if they screw us over. The problem with that is that if they find something scarier then they’ll switch sides faster than you can say Benedict Arnold. So I have to be a walking nightmare to insure their loyalty. Fear is a good motivator.”
“So that whole speech you were giving to Sam was to keep Jes in line?” I asked.
“Yep, and scare the two fairies. I feel pretty shitty about it, but feeling shitty is better than dying. So I can play King Asshole for a little while longer, if need be.” Grim was putting on a brave face, but I could tell it bothered him more than he let on. He might do some really horrendous things from time to time, but contrary to what he’d like to believe, Grim is no monster. In fact, for a man with a body count that would make most slasher movie fans cringe, Grim is a pretty sensitive guy.
Grim closed his eyes, and Black began rolling off of him and surrounding Sam. Sam finally fell through like a trap door had opened. Grim held onto the makeshift rope. Five minutes passed with nothing to show for it, “Maybe whatever it is doesn’t eat cubus’.” Grim said, and almost immediately the sheet rope snapped taut. Whatever had Sam’s body was pulling so hard that Grim was yanked off his feet, and nearly fell in. I grabbed him just before he slipped into the Black. We kept sliding towards the Black. Grim was halfway in when Penny grabbed us and started pulling back.
“Get the fuck off me!” Grim screamed and started flailing his arms. Whatever was down there had stopped going after Sam, and was now trying to get Grim. Penny pulled, and between Grim’s weight, and Penny’s strength I felt like I was almost ripped in half. Grim finally was pulled back out of the Black. His shirt was shredded, and he had scratches all over him. Something was still trying desperately to pull him back in. I saw something reptilian holding onto Grim’s arm. I only caught a glimpse for a second because it let Grim go, and then sank back into the black. We all stared down into the Black.
Then we saw them. Red eyes appeared in the Black. They were glowing, and a wave of nausea struck us all. First, it was two red eyes, and then four, and then sixteen. The longer we watched, the more eyes appeared, and the more the eyes appeared, the more nauseous we felt ourselves getting. Even Penny looked a little green.
There were hundreds, and then thousands of red eyes boring into us from the other side, and still more and more appeared. Finally, they all began hissing and screaming. Thousands became millions, until all we saw was a sea of tiny red eyes. They started moving towards us. A combination of nausea and fear held me frozen in place like a deer caught in the headlights of a car. Finally Grim snapped out of it and closed the Black. I had the distinct impression that another few seconds and they’d have started coming through.
“What the fuck was that?” Grim screamed.
“I have no idea. All I saw were those damn eyes.” Penny said nervously as she continued to stare at the floor. It was like she kept expecting those things to start clawing their way out.
“I saw a hand, or a claw. It was green and scaly. It looked like something you’d see in an old science fiction movie.” I stammered.
Grim thought about it for a moment before turning to Penny, “A green scaly hand? Well, it’s a start at least. Penny, do you know anything with green scaly hands and glowing red eyes?”
“I hate to say it, but it really doesn’t help much. You’d be surprised how many creatures fit that description. DD, how many fingers did it have?”
I thought about it for a while, “Three, maybe five, it happened so fast, and they weren’t like normal hands. They were like a lizard’s hands. Not just scaly but similar in how they are made. They had some pretty big claws though.”
“Yeah, tell me about it.” Grim held up his arms. He looked like he’d been tossed in a sack with two dozen angry cats. His arms, legs, and even face were all scratched up.
“Don’t worry; Penny will make it all better as soon as we get back to the other bedroom.” Penny patted him gently. “At least they weren’t biters.”
“That’s just it. I don’t think they were trying to really hurt me. It was more like I startled them, and they panicked. They could have really hurt me, but it was like they saw me falling and tried to catch me so I didn’t get hurt.” Grim was still looking at his arms. They had ribbons of blood all up and down them. “I’m thinking I might have been better off if I’d just been allowed to fall.”
“So whatever they are, they were trying to help you, but they were…I mean did you see how many of them there were?” I tried to sound calm, but I was still pretty freaked out.
“Yeah, how did they do that anyway? I mean you only made a hole the size of a bed in the floor. So how did we see all those eyes?” Penny asked.
“Well, time doesn’t operate the same way there as it does here. So I guess it stands to reason that space doesn’t work the same way, either. It may have only been a few square foot on this side, but maybe it was football stadium size there, or bigger.” Grim didn’t sound very sure of himself.
“Well, let’s get back to the other room, because this place is giving me the creeps.” Penny said as she turned and made her way back.
“Okay, I’ll join you guys in a few minutes.” Grim said.
Penny wheeled around, “But…I need you with us.”
“I can’t. I need to go, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Grim said.
Pen
ny stomped a foot, “No! What could possibly be so important that you need to leave us?”
“A change of underwear.” Grim said flatly.
“What?” Penny asked.
Grim sighed, “I need a change of underwear. When those things grabbed me it scared me pretty good. It was just those hands grabbing me everywhere, and I couldn’t see them.”
“So you…” I asked.
“Shit myself. Now can you two please let me go back to my room to change because things are starting to get squishy?”
Wow, I just never pictured Grim being afraid of anything. I just stood aside, and watched him semi-waddle out of the room. He was doing his best to avoid moving his legs, but when he did there was a sickening sucking sound as though his clothes were being peeled away from something only semi-solid. Even Penny jumped out of the way. She stared incredulously as he moved out of the room like a cartoon penguin.
Chapter 28
Grim returned wearing silk boxers with Papa Smurf sitting in his rocking chair asking, “Wanna smurf?” His shirt was a tyrannosaurus saying,“Rawr!”Then below the tyrannosaurus it said that rawr is I love you in dinosaur. Such a strange and adorable man, and I suddenly realized that he was mine for the taking. Penny wanted me, and Grim wanted Penny happy. So I could have them both. I felt lust coiling itself between my thighs. I could have them both…the thought was staggering.
Midnight Squad: The Ties That Bind Page 47
