Feeding Frenzy (The Summoner Sisters Book 1)

by Allison Hurd

  “I was not meant to find a mate,” the face-changer says softly.

  “You wanna run that by me again, Slick?” I ask.

  “I was permitted by my lord to visit this realm in order to feed and enjoy a few weeks of feasting as reward for service to him. I cannot go back now, or my offspring will be killed.”

  “Did she—he—I’m sorry,” I pause. “What do we call you?” I ask the succubus.

  “Call me?”

  “I can’t parlay with you and call you ‘it.’ That feels too species-ist. Got a name? A…a preferred pronoun?”

  “You may call me whatever you like.”

  I blink at it. “I don’t know if you’re making a joke right now.”

  “I am not. I am used to being identified as the gender I’ve assumed, if that is what you’re asking.”

  “Okay, good enough. Okay, so, Brittany—did she tell you this?” I ask the succubus’ so-called mate.

  Brittany nods solemnly.

  “Well, Jesus, girl, if ever there was a time to use protection, it’s when a monster wants you to have her forbidden spawn,” Lia scolds.

  “Lia. That’s not how truces work,” I remind her in low, heated tones.

  “Anger is part of my negotiating technique,” she hisses back.

  “Yeah, I realize it was risky,” the pregnant girl answers angrily. “But I’m tired of ‘safe’ and ‘practical.’ This felt right. So, we did it. And, by the way, saved five people.”

  “We saved—”

  “Lia, how about another pitcher, yeah?” I know she’s feistier than usual because Maithe Dweubhal antagonized her, but Lia at redline is sort of akin to She-hulk. No one likes her when she’s angry, either.

  “So. You were seizing the day,” I prompt them again. “What was phase two?”

  “I stay, and raise my offspring with my mate,” the succubus says.

  “Okay, what about Plan B of Phase Two, when Hades comes to call you back home and finds out you’ve disobeyed? Or some other banisher stops by and demands you exit stage left?”

  The monster shifts uncomfortably.

  “H-Hades? Like…god of the underworld?” Brittany asks, looking between the two of us.

  “Oh-ho!” I say softly. “You explained the tragically vulnerable ‘forbidden love’ part of your story, but not the ‘family will come for me’ part? That’s cold, my friend!”

  The succubus drinks some beer. “It is true,” she says finally. “I may have omitted some things to agápimeni.”

  “Well, moment of truth. What was your plan?”

  “To plead for Hades’ mercy.”

  I laugh out loud at that, holding my ribs. “His what? That’s like, the one thing he’s never had. Mercy? All men, so the myth goes, end up with him. Why would he encourage you, your mate, and your offspring to fight the inevitable? Seems to me that most likely he’d just take a few souls and go back on home.”

  Brittany’s eyes get wider and wider as I talk. Can people pop out their own eyes? Should I be worried hers will?

  “It was a risk.”

  “I can see it was well thought out,” I say, as Lia rejoins us. “So, you were going to hope Hades had found some compassion sitting around his vaults in the past month, and if not, watch your self-professed ‘beloved’ die a horrible death and get dragged back down to the underworld by your angry master. Real good planning.”

  Lia chokes on her beer as she listens and understands the full extent of just how screwed this all is.

  I cup my mouth and nose in my hands, thinking hard.

  “Well, I’m sort of new to this, compared to you, and even I can tell you mercy from Hades is right out,” I say at length.

  “So…what then?” Brittany asks, tears in her eyes. “Are we going to die?”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose. “By all rights, you really should. We might be able to pull to get you to Elysium, and not standard underworld hell. I’m told it’s nice.”

  She starts crying. I sigh expansively. “But, I think we can come up with something a little less dire.”

  She looks up at me hopefully.

  “How do you feel about sharing custody of your spawn with someone else?”

  CHAPTER 15

  “What do you mean?” Brittany asks, taken aback.

  “I mean what I said. How would you care to have a godmother for unborn Reynolds junior?”

  “Is this one of your fairytales, mortal?” the succubus sneers.

  “I’ll admit to some inspiration from that corner of the world,” I say. “But no, I am definitely not talking anything faerie related.” Lia clenches her jaw just hearing the word.

  “So then, where are you to find a godmother?”

  “A god, of course,” I reply, though even to myself I sound a little nuts. “Artemis has been known to like little, unwanted babes.”

  “He’s not unwanted!” Brittany exclaims.

  “He is by the pantheon,” Lia says, catching onto my plan.

  “Brittany, I don’t mean this to sound mean. But to most of your partner’s family, you’re nothing. You’re less than nothing. They’d kill you off and then go for a haircut. The being you’ve tied your existence to is so low on the totem pole that if she got fired, no one would even notice the increase in paperwork.”

  She looks at the succubus, who is actively not meeting her gaze.

  “You were all ‘mortal, please’ a second ago,” Lia taunts the succubus. “Why aren’t you telling us to get lost now?”

  We’ve got her on the ropes, so we sip our beer and let it all soak in.

  “How would Artemis be of use?” the creature asks after I’ve downed a third of my drink.

  “Let’s be careful with terminology,” I start gingerly. “You don’t go around ‘using’ gods. Or at least, I sure don’t. I’m not even sure it will work, but if we’re looking for a major power with the juice to tell Hades to go to—well, home for him, I guess, who also sometimes lets kindness enter into the decision, it’s her or Athena, and no offense, but I’m not willing yet to try to go to the mat with Athena.”

  Lia looks horrified at the thought. “You’d be her bitch in no time,” my sister breathes.

  “Yes, thank you, Lia.”

  “How sure are you of this plan, mor—Summer?” the succubus asks.

  I let out a bark of laughter before my broken rib cuts it short. “Oh God, not at all! I’m sort of a god virgin. No wait, let me rephrase. I haven’t had the honor of dealing direct with any of the heavy hitters. This could go way south.”

  “And if it does?”

  “Well, then you’re just as screwed as before, and maybe I’ll get off light, like a hundred years as a deer or something. You like deer, right, Lia?” I turn to my sister.

  “Can I…talk to you for a sec, please?” Lia grabs my good arm and more or less drags me to the far end of the bar. “Are you freakin’ kidding me?”

  “What?” I ask.

  “When exactly did we go from ‘banishing an incubus by any means necessary’ to ‘summoning one of the greater gods to help an incubus’?”

  “When the latter became the best way to do the former.”

  “I don’t buy that. You said there was a way to dispatch it even if the pantheon refused to take it?”

  “Yeah…about that. All my research says that we’d have to break its heart.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “By convincing Brittany to renounce their relationship and commit seppuku, essentially.”

  She mulls over that for a second. “So yeah, Artemis is probably more likely, then.”

  “That’s what I thought, too.”

  “So let’s leave ‘em. Let some other banisher deal with it.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. We’ll leave, let things mosey on, and wait for…let’s see, who’s usually working this area…Beryl, or Joon or Seth to find out about it. Jesus, or Alicia. How much do you think they’ll care about the ‘how’ or the ‘why’ of all this?”

  L
ia winces. “Not so much. They’d get Brittany killed. Well, we could always rat ‘em out, have Hades do his thing. It’d be quick.”

  “We could do that,” I say solemnly. “Is that what you want to do?”

  My sister bites her lip and looks away. Hades would most likely obliterate them and maybe anyone that knew them, just to make a point about how loyalty works.

  “No, you’re right. We started saving her already. Dammit! But do you think we’re ready for this?”

  I look down at the ground and shake my head a little. “Are you ever ready to summon a god? Is that a step you can just build up to?”

  Lia studies me. “No, I guess not. I guess there isn’t like a training camp to prep you for how to handle divine interviews.”

  “It seems that it would be for a very niche market,” I say with a small smile to lessen the tension.

  “Do you think there are people out there who are like ‘today, I’m just going to banish an evil monster!’ And then they do it and go home and make soup?”

  I blink at the sudden change in topic. “That’s…an interesting look at your take on domestic bliss,” I reply, trying not to laugh. “And you know all the people I do. Does it seem likely?”

  “No, not so much. That’s depressing. Think it’s too late for us to get one of those beige desk jobs?”

  “We can discuss career changes later, yeah? You on board with our current job? Ready to meet Clyde’s maker?”

  “I’ll be looking at classifieds starting tomorrow, but fine. Let’s start Operation: Suicide or Deer.”

  “Your naming schema seems a little obvious.”

  “I didn’t have much time to workshop it. It’s the best I got for now, but I’m ready if you are.”

  We return to the table.

  “Everything okay?” Brittany ventures.

  “Oh my, no,” I laugh lightly. “About as far from okay as we could get. But we’re all on the same page.”

  “So…how does this work?”

  “Well, we’ll have to do a little shopping first.”

  “How are we going to do that at four-thirty in the morning?”

  “Creatively.” Lia says with a small smile.

  We’d prepared a ritual of banishment in Zeus’ honor, not a summoning ritual for Artemis, so a few things have to change. Zeus is sort of a meat and potatoes kind of god. Rich food, loose women, wine, and symbols of power are all great Father’s Day gifts for him. Artemis is much more high maintenance. We’ll need to invoke the bear-mother and purity, both things Lia and I could use a little help discovering. The thing with the rituals which we know is that they are not really direct lines to anyone. Basically, we put a call into a receptionist, who may take our message, or who may tell us to go screw ourselves. In the Greek tradition, that would probably involve something like sending a crow to peck out our eyes for a few millennia. No pressure.

  We begin collecting the necessary components. Lia notices a yellow banner of some sport team or other hung over the bar and agrees to be in charge of procuring it. I go back out to the car and begin sifting through our personal effects. We travel pretty light: clothes, the tools of our trade, spells and wards, laptops…there’s just no need for “stuff” in our lives. Alas, it means that our offerings are often very personal—true sacrifices of valuable things. I dig through the bottom of my own duffel, and bring out a small, plush animal stuffed with plastic beads. It’s a dog—I used to collect stuffed dogs as a kid. It was the last present that I got from Lia before Maithe Dweubhal stole her memories, and made her forget things like the fact that I used to collect dogs, because she used to collect cats. It’s the purest object of value that I have; a reminder of happier times, the life we had before we knew what was really out there—before the inexplicable came to our house and tore it apart.

  “It’s just a toy,” I mutter out loud as I force myself to take it, my incense and a lighter out of the car.

  Lia comes out a minute later with the banner held over her head, victorious. She looks at what’s in my hands.

  “Cute dog! Where did you find one of these things? They’re relics,” she teases, obviously not remembering it.

  “You forget, I am a relic,” I say, trying to keep things light, though it causes me another pang of loss as I resolve myself to the inevitable. Sometimes Lia likes hearing about the memories I have of her as a kid, but since this memory is about to burn anyways, it doesn’t seem worth the heartache.

  “Well, then, let’s get all the antiques together to summon our ancient deity.” She turns back to her banner, cutting it in two and making a rough cut out for our heads in each half.

  When she’s done, we each put them on like a tunic. We huddle in the car, heat on full blast against the five a.m. chill of mid-September. When the bartender finally leaves and turns out the lights, we quietly get out and begin setting up the ritual space.

  “Okay, Brittany, just…sit right here. Don’t talk, okay? Things are gonna get a little weird. You may get goat blood on you. But just don’t panic, and don’t talk. Got it?”

  She nods at me, eyes round, from her spot in the middle of a circle we’ve drawn in spray paint.

  “Good. Let’s get this over with.” Lia’s face is paler than normal. We don’t look at each other; it would feel too much like saying goodbye. It’s entirely possible that we won’t walk away from this one, or at least, not as we are now. We’ve only ever heard stories of others in the biz who attempted to get a god on their side—Gregor’s the only one we know who’s succeeded, and look how that turned out. If the fae are tricky, the Greek pantheon are vindictive. This has to go exactly right, or not at all.

  Seeking an audience with a god—especially a major one like Artemis—is a somber event. It must be done with purpose and honor, or you risk offending the deity you’re hoping to ask for help. Which is why we begin cavorting and shaking our butts with extreme energy. Most of the rituals are about sitting or kneeling and chanting things while you prepare the offering. Artemis’ ritual is a little more active. It would be bad enough if we were just wildly dancing, but we also are wearing the vibrant yellow tunics Lia made, as a tribute to Artemis’ earliest known ritual. Then, of course, is the bit where we have to invoke the bear mother. While the succubus beats a small hand drum, we twirl around in the parking lot outside a scuzzy bar and occasionally crawl on all fours and roar. At least when she’s hopping around and howling, Lia doesn’t have time to take pictures of me hopping around and howling.

  The drumming reaches a crescendo. As it stops, my sister and I fall to our knees. I light a match and drop it into a tin bucket with some mulch we found and a mix of potent herbs meant to placate Greek gods. In the flames that spring up, I light incense and supplicate, carefully moving my tunic so that it doesn’t catch fire.

  “Most adored Artemis, protectress, shield your daughters,” Lia chants as I wave the incense around the pregnant girl. This would be much easier if she could do the moving part, and I could do the chanting, but I’m the one with the sacrifice.

  “Purest of women, defend the innocent babe.” As Ophelia says this part of the ritual, I regretfully throw the stuffed toy into the fire, sending up a pocket of fragrant sparks.

  Now’s the saddest part. We bring Clyde to the fire, and each of us pats him once more.

  “Mighty huntress, accept the gift of the chase.” I quickly run my knife over the goat’s neck, allowing his blood to fall into the fire. As it reaches the flames, they become bright white, like the moon, and a fearful sound emanates from it; something unknown, primal.

  “Great Artemis, your devoted call!” Lia screams over the cacophony. The light and noise grow to a painful level, and then begin to fade. We both fall once more to our knees. Clyde’s earthly form is gone, and in the delicate, new portal now hovering over the altar we’ve constructed, I can see him scrambling up a craggy mountainside, where others of his kind seem to be frolicking. He looks younger, and his horns are longer, but it’s unmistakably our compa
nion of the past week. Artemis has accepted our sacrifice.

  Brittany stares above her head at the tableau. It shows the forested foothills of a huge mountain—presumably Mount Olympus. The trees are all foreign looking and old growth. You can hear mysterious birds and beasts rustling in them, and goats dot the mountain sides, only just visible in the glow of the moonlight that floods the landscape. It’s lovely, in the way that the rainforest is lovely—exotic, dangerous, unblemished by human artifice. The succubus looks on nervously. She’s had to keep this form because Artemis absolutely refuses to meet with males present—the poor deity has had more bad break ups than Taylor Swift.

  After a few moments sitting in awe, a woman with willowy grace approaches the barrier between the parking lot and the mystical plane that the Greek gods call home.

  “Who calls?” asks the woman with a voice like branches in a breeze. She must be a nymph. Artemis’ posse are almost entirely women who embody various trees and water sources.

  “Servants of the lady of the moon,” I respond.

  “Trouble in childbirth?” the nymph asks. Then she hisses. “And what is that abomination doing in a temple?”

  I skate past the part where our small, acrylic circle by some dumpsters is now considered a temple.

  “Please, favored of Artemis. She, too, seeks protection from her master who would torment her, and for her beloved who is with child, and scared.”

  The nymph gets closer and we all lean back, as if this is a 3D movie. She peers at us from what feels like just an arm’s length away. I can feel her eyes boring into me like she’s looking for something just on the other side of my skin and is sure she’ll find it if she tries hard enough.

  “You have purity of purpose. Give unto me your tribute, and I will pass it along to my lady.”

  I cast about me. We didn’t really expect to have to give more gifts. What do you get the goddess who has everything?

  “Here,” Brittany says breathlessly. Her hands remove the chain around her neck, to what I see are dog tags. “This is my most valuable possession. Will she…will Artemis like this?” she adds hesitantly. I cringe, waiting to be told that we’ve somehow profaned the sanctity of the ritual. I spend the time enjoying how a human heartbeat sounds—I anticipate not hearing it again for a good, long while.