“What did he want?” Vincent asked. He moved his mouth away from mine, toward more willing flesh elsewhere.
“He wanted me to kill you.”
Chapter 24
Diego Mellado’s compound was set among the manicured hedgerows of the Los Angeles elite, up in the hills of Bel-Air. It was no surprise his criminal empire polluted every strata of society.
For a dash of irony, I drove the cartel’s lost 4Runner to the black iron gate that barred Mellado’s driveway. Let them scan me with their mounted security cameras. I had nothing left to hide except the most important thing, my secret weapon.
As the gate slid open, the first cold stab of worry struck my heart. Men in riot gear and anonymous balaclavas surrounded the car, all of them wielding AK-47s.
I marked time by the ticking engine. With merely a word, the guards could’ve raised their rifles and fired.
But Mellado drew me here for a purpose other than my death. He didn’t yet know what I was. I had to believe this wasn’t just a trap.
The man outside my door made a crank gesture. In response, I slid down the automatic window. With halting English he asked, “Where is you find this car?”
“It was a gift, from my boyfriend Renz,” I said.
The guard narrowed his eyes, shot a glance at his team. I silently cursed my own smart mouth as he stepped away to grunt into the radio unit on his epaulet. The steering wheel groaned beneath my grip.
“Step out,” the guard said.
I complied. There among the paramilitary clones I must’ve made quite a jarring sight in my belted gold-lamé Yves St. Laurent dress and lace-up sandals.
Five men searched the SUV. Another removed his gloves and ran bare hands across the skintight curves of my dress. In all his lewd attentiveness, he missed my decorative hairpin.
Satisfied, they let me back behind the wheel and nodded me onward. I drove at parade speed through the gauntlet of men. There had to be at least a hundred of them patrolling the grounds.
The gate shut behind me and my stomach dropped as well. I was locked inside walls one story high and topped all around with concertina wire.
I parked among the European sports cars on the wide turnaround drive. Mellado’s Federal-style mansion spread its austere wings across a lush green lawn, but even the house couldn’t contain the party inside.
With the doors to the great hall thrown wide, servers weaved trays of champagne and hors d’oeuvres among the sharply dressed men and women lounging on the front steps, chatting on their phones.
Inside, the reflective marble floors and nude statuettes evoked the Parthenon in its glory days. I might’ve guessed Mellado’s tastes would be more Mission-style, but maybe Greco-Roman touches struck an even deeper chord, imperial and Elysian.
“You look like part of the architecture.”
Mellado’s voice froze me at the base of the stairs. He stood above on the midfloor landing, doused in golden sunset through the Palladian windows. I couldn’t look away from his sinister beauty.
“Should I call you Lilly Anna or Athena?” he said, admiring my fashion excesses.
He was somehow beside me then, as if a thread of time had been snipped away. His scent lulled me like an opiate. Every other soul in the room turned ghostlike with insignificance.
That inner voice, urging me to love him…
This was our power over mankind, over each other. We seduced and tempted the world. The incubus destroys while the succubus inspires.
Just think, there among the paintings in the grand hall was a portrait by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a somber woman in a field of posies. Mellado couldn’t have known it, but the model was me. He and I, we permeated history.
“I came alone,” I said.
“I hope he didn’t take it badly.”
“He couldn’t be trusted.” I echoed Mellado’s own words back to him, spoke them in a convincing sleepwalker’s monotone.
He whispered against my ear, “Make yourself at home, Lilly Anna. I have to go play war games for a while, but I want to see you when the sun goes down.”
His lips drifted so invitingly close to mine that a shudder ran through my loins. I lowered my chin, flushed and ashamed. It was all too intense, pining like this for his kiss.
Chapter 25
I caught a glimpse of the dining room before Mellado shut the door behind him. The men gathered around the table were all prize stock, fit and groomed, most in their prime. More than one wore the dress uniform of some foreign military command.
Could this be the inner circle of Deus Inversus, gathered to drink Scotch and smoke cigars while they plotted how they’d burn the world? I feared it was, and I committed their faces to memory.
In a corridor off the main hall I came across a collection of ancient armor and weapons. Medieval Europe, feudal Japan, the Spanish conquistadors. Display lights outlined the telltale fatal blows each warrior had sustained. A dented helmet, a cleaved breastplate, a punctured shield.
Maybe Diego Mellado himself had claimed a few of these trophies from the battlefield. I didn’t know how old he was, or how many identities he’d worn over the ages. What I did know was this: if I didn’t tread wisely, my golden dress would join his collection.
My eyes were drawn to a mounted broadsword. I wondered about its weight, how sharp it might be after centuries of rest. If I took the sword and burst into that meeting room, how many of those Deus Inversus incubi could I cleave in half before their numbers overwhelmed me?
A nearby samurai with a demon-faced mask let out a giggle, just before a dark-haired boy leaped out from behind the armor and growled at me, fingers spread out like claws.
He looked no older than six or seven, wearing nothing but swim trunks and a bathing cap. Even his contorted monster face was fetching. I had no doubt of his parentage.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“You’re supposed to be scared.”
“I’ve never been more scared in my life.”
The boy searched my face, unconvinced.
By all the laws of science, he was exactly what he appeared to be, a normal human child. But with Diego Mellado for a father, he was something stranger. A cambion, the half-human offspring of an incubus.
“Are these your costumes?” I asked the boy.
He admired his armory as if his inheritance had only just occurred to him. “They’re Papa’s,” he said. “And my brothers’. I can touch them when I’m older.”
“Exciting,” I said. “How many brothers do you have?”
The boy thought for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I see them everywhere.” With that he ran off, his bare feet slapping on the marble.
His fate was still undecided. Only the most promising male cambion were transfused with the power of the incubus. The choice belonged to the pater dominus.
At Diego Mellado’s whim, the boy might be made into the monster he was now only pretending to be.
Then he would become my enemy. I felt a hollow pit grow in my stomach, thinking of the innocence we’re all born with.
I followed the boy to the sprawling back patio. A pink sunset fell behind the Santa Monica Mountains, and a trio of violinists serenaded the pockets of guests gathered in conversation.
It was all just as unsettlingly lifelike as a corpse dolled up for a wake. I snatched a champagne flute from a passing server and watched the boy hurry across the yard.
He was headed to an Olympic-sized pool where many more children splashed and laughed. I recognized Roberto among them. Another cambion, one of many brothers. It seemed he’d returned to childish things after a night of swilling tequilas at Sapa Inca.
A gorgeous woman no older than twenty approached me. She beamed with a zealous smile, swirling sangria in an oversized wine glass.
“You must be her. Diego’s guest,” she said. She had a French accent and a pageboy haircut. She was also pregnant, proudly splaying her hand across her taut belly.
“Congra
tulations,” I said, motioning with my glass.
“Thank you! He’s a week overdue. We’re looking forward to the end.”
The girl spoke dreamily and gazed off toward the pool as if imagining her own child among the revelers.
A stir of revulsion passed over me. Down by the pool, yet another young woman lay in a chaise lounge rubbing sunscreen onto her own bulging belly.
I knew now why I’d been brought here. Like so many other women, I was being primed to receive Mellado’s seed. I was to be an incubator. Who knew how many of his cambion were spread across the world, how many were still in utero?
“You must be honored,” I told the French girl.
“I never would’ve dreamed.” Her full-toothed grin was unshakable. “And you. My god, I know exactly how you’re feeling now.”
“You have no idea,” I said.
As night fell, Diego Mellado came for me. I was seated at a candlelit tea table enjoying the Spanish guitarist who’d relieved the violin trio.
“Not a bad way to live, is it?” Mellado asked, taking a seat beside me. My mind reeled with his deadly allure, a sweet-smelling poison you couldn’t help but drink.
“As long as you don’t let your guard down.”
He belted out a laugh. All eyes gave us a glance, then quickly looked away again. “Tell me, Lilly Anna. Why did you come here tonight?”
It was a puzzle box of a question, full of traps.
“You opened my eyes. I came to thank you.” I traced my fingers along his biceps, leaned close enough to breathe against his open shirt collar.
“I hope you weren’t too cruel to Vincent.”
“He never even knew what hit him,” I said.
Mellado smiled. I could charm the sense from any man. Even most incubi, like Mark Norman Harper, had leaped eagerly into the oblivion I delivered to them. But Mellado was another beast altogether. He was the pater dominus, after all.
“You’re like Salome,” he said, “calling for a dance with the head of John the Baptist.”
“You’re offering me another dance?”
“We’ve already danced for the crowd, haven’t we?”
“Then the next one should be private,” I said.
Chapter 26
With a wave of his hand, Mellado released the two guards attending his bedroom door. They pulled back to the main staircase at the head of the eastern wing, out of earshot but still within a few seconds’ reach.
Behind us, the automatic lock on the double doors engaged. A wood fire flickered the shadows of the grand bed on its pedestal. Thick velvet curtains canopied the bed and draped the walls, obscuring any hint of windows.
Firelight gave the illusion of movement to a menagerie of taxidermy. A pouncing Bengal tiger, a mounted polar bear head, a perched bald eagle. With a shudder I imagined my own dried skin stretched on Mellado’s floor, like an area rug.
“You’ve played a dangerous game, Lilly Anna.” He slipped his hands over my shoulders, inhaled the scent from my hair. Gingerly, he pulled away the pin that held my tresses in place.
“Have I won or lost?” I asked.
“You’ve won your place in my bed. But in here, there are no more games, you understand? In here, I’m the law. Please me, and you’ll have your pleasure, too.”
I offered him the length of my neck to kiss. When he looked in my eyes, he’d see obedience, all of my mind at his command. My life depended on it.
In one violent strike he ripped the back of my dress from my shoulders. I gasped like I’d been struck, braced myself against a bedpost. Since I didn’t need to pretend I wasn’t afraid, I let him see me shiver.
As my ruined dress fell away, I spun myself against him, tucked my arms against his chest. The fire reflected in his glowering eyes. Maybe he sensed my deception, maybe this was how I would die, and civilization along with me.
He lifted me onto the bed and poured me across the downy blankets. He lowered his face over mine and grappled my bare breast in his hand. I felt caught in the talons of a bird of prey.
I cupped my hands behind his ears and drew him in for a kiss. With impossible reflexes he snatched my wrists and pinned them down. Fast as a single frame of film.
The pressure tightened my bones to the breaking point. I grit my teeth, desperate to keep calm. Any attempt to struggle free would prove I was more than human.
“I am the law. I take what I want. I decide when.”
“Y—yes…” I panted.
“You enjoy it.” He wedged his knee against my inner thigh, forcing me onto my side. I cried out. He snapped his teeth beside my ear like a rabid dog on the end of its chain.
If I played the helpless damsel any further, he’d crush me, violate me, destroy me. The bed groaned under the sheer force of our struggle. The two of us held too much pent-up power. We were bred to clash among the mountain tops.
Mellado snickered at my efforts until I braced one sandal against the footboard and shoved with all my gathered strength. The bed buckled like an arrow-pierced animal.
Together we rolled across the sudden slope, our bodies tangled in the drapes as they fell from the canopy overhead.
Mellado released my wrists only to clutch my throat. Wrapped in red velvet, my windpipe choked shut, I felt like I was drowning in a sea of blood.
And Mellado laughed with wilder abandon. I sought his face with my fingernails but caught the curtains instead. Black inkblots burst across my vision.
I’d come so close, hunted so long, forged my mind and body into a limitless weapon. But it wasn’t enough. I teetered on the edge of final darkness. Mellado’s face seemed to burst into flames, his true demonic self.
“I know what you are,” he growled.
Chapter 27
My age was the number of days in a year. Five human lifetimes, and how often had I tempted death? How many slain incubi had I climbed across to reach the head of Deus Inversus?
Only to die defeated on the floor of a Bel-Air mansion?
Any second now, my windpipe would be pulverized in his grip. Deep in my sluggish head an instinct screamed out. It refused to end with a whimper.
“I know what you are,” he repeated. “You’re the bitch who leads men on your leash. Yes? You want to control, never submission. Right? Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to you. To discipline you.”
And just like that, he threw his hands wide, laughing again. Oxygen exploded into my lungs. I coughed and gagged and thrashed as that sweet air kept filling me again and again. My head resumed its solid shape. My limbs felt tingling life again.
Mellado still straddled me with his shirt thrown open. He gawked as if drunk with his own power. “I’m the master,” he insisted.
I couldn’t speak, but I nodded vigorously. Yes, yes, of course. Anything you say. Whatever it took to convince him I was dominated, obedient. That I would join his harem and provide my womb for his cambion.
“That’s it. Repent, Lilly Anna. Be at peace.”
“You want—to—kiss me…” I said.
“Of course, and much more.”
“Kiss me…please…master.” I propped my elbows on the floor to raise myself toward him, begging with my eyes. My lips were broken and bleeding, swollen, as if aroused.
“I’ll tell you what I want,” he snapped. Still, he lowered himself to me, held my skull like he’d tear it from my body. But when he shut his eyes, we were lovers, giving in to our passion.
In the end, that was all Diego Mellado wanted to believe. I gave him his illusion. I pressed my open mouth against his, delved with my tongue. I searched for the spirit inside the flesh.
I was the succubus who lies with men to take their souls.
I watched his face for that delicious moment when he realized.
His eyes snapped wide and his pupils narrowed to pinpricks. His scream, trapped in my mouth, was no more than a grunt. He struggled to break away, but there could be no escape. Not even for an incubus.
I cloaked him in my full embrace, two souls
merging into one. I drank his horrified awareness and it tasted of ambrosia, the nectar of the gods that surpassed all other pleasure.
His soul poured into mine. This was my raison d’être, my glory. Every nerve flooded with pleasure. My mind stirred up a dervish of memories, my own and Mellado’s alike, long silenced emotions rising up in chorus again. A universe spun inside me.
Flashes of history. Diego’s mother, whipped and naked and dragged to death behind a horse-drawn carriage. A rifle’s weight in a child’s hand, the surprise recoil of that first shot.
The taste of blood from a golden chalice. The psychotic thrill of crushing a woman’s throat with his hands. So many women, mothers of his offspring who had served their purpose.
We whirled ever deeper into the past, beyond Mellado’s own lifespan. Memory was carried in the incubus blood like a virus, passed down from the pater dominus at the moment of transfusion.
I saw their history in a glimpse, stretching back to ceremonies atop the step pyramids, the constant blood sacrifices, red streams trickling down to the masses who worshiped them as gods.
An eternity in a kiss. Mellado’s spent body dropped to the floor in a stupefied heap, and only then did I wake back into the present. The soul-flight left me heaving, like orgasm intensified a thousandfold.
The husk of Diego Mellado meant nothing to me. An autopsy would find no signs of trauma, no cause of death, but I had stolen his essence.
The Death Kiss. In these ecstatic aftermaths, my memories always lingered on the first time I saw its power. In a Boston church, I watched the priestess kiss a minister who’d been touching young girls in his flock.
He was so eager for her mouth, and when it was done, she let his corpse drop to the floor of the nave, like soil spilled from an opened palm.
“His kind sets men against us,” she said. “So we fight.”
I slumped against Mellado’s broken bed, my body exhausted but my mind euphoric. I’d killed a pater dominus. I’d toppled an empire in one fell kiss. All the minds he imprisoned would be unchained. All his cambion disinherited.
Diary of a Succubus Page 7
