Thick wings stropped overhead, like the crack of a canvas tarp in a windstorm. Above me, they spread to a majestic span, the sharp and wide-slotted feathers defined against the sky.
Three of them. Too large, too elegant, to be scavenger birds. And those smooth-skinned bodies wrapped in leather and cloth. My heart lifted with rapture as I recognized my angels, my Valkyries.
Asmodeus raised the rifle, but two of the winged creatures were already swooping down behind him. In perfect accord, two pairs of human hands snatched him like talons, raised him off the ground. He never made a sound.
I knew the faces of my daughters, my Hester, my Claire. And the third, who circled around to help her sisters ascend with the incubus in tow, my brave Shanti, who would not abandon me, who had refused to let me fight the pater dominus alone.
My head reeled, watching them rise to such dizzying heights. So high, it looked like they might fly their quarry straight into the sun.
The snakes fell into chaos without their Pied Piper. They fought among themselves, fleeing to rocks and crevices. I didn’t have to fear them anymore. Their venom would make me ill, but a few stray bites were hardly enough to kill a succubus.
I rose to my feet, gasping, laughing. I wanted only to sleep, and maybe forever this time, knowing that the gift I gave Shanti in that dark Brooklyn cave would be worth the cost. My lineage would survive, and perhaps the world along with it.
I knew what my daughters meant to do. They broke formation like fighter jets as they let the incubus free. He dropped through the stratosphere, almost pirouetting as he fell, a lonesome final dance like the expulsion of Satan from Heaven.
Asmodeus struck a shelf of rocks so far off, the impact was silent to my ears. A fatal fall, even for an incubus.
Back inside the trailer, I knelt at Hannah’s side. She held eternity in her sights, but a pulse still beat in her neck. There was still a chance, and like the end of so many fairy tales, all I had to do was enchant her with a kiss.
Why had I been so resistant all these years? Before Shanti, I’d offered none of my daughters their inheritance, not since Victoria died in New Orleans in the year of the American centennial.
How often had I been tempted to hex them with the succubus curse, transform them into demons, with some vain hope it would help them survive this war? But always I feared how it might engender in them a dark lust for human souls. They were warriors, not temptresses.
Already Shanti had spread her gift. She’d sought out her Chicago sisters and passed the power onto them, without my knowledge or consent. I should’ve felt betrayed, but they’d come to save my life. For that, I couldn’t muster an ounce of spite, or even disappointment.
Shanti descended from the sky like a novice hang glider, tumbling a bit on her running stop. She fell to her knees and laughed, sifting sand through her fingers. I hadn’t seen her this joyous in years.
“You finally kicked me from the nest,” she said.
Chapter 37
My daughter, you’ve asked me to give you a few details about your father, but I’ve gone and told you everything. I’ve told you about the time before we met, about the impossible battle I was fighting, about your father’s role in saving my life.
I’ll tell you about the day I first sensed your presence. An unusually balmy afternoon in the city of Johannesburg. We were in the Melville district, at an outdoor café where box fans were set up to cool the patrons at their tables.
Shanti sipped a red wine and fanned herself with a menu. Just a glass-bottle Coke for me. Two months since her transformation, the girl was bristling with nervous anticipation, a kind of hunger she’d never known before.
Soon after her desert air strike, she chose to clip her wings, preferring the grit of the earth and people over soaring on the mountaintops. She took after me in that respect.
A white limousine pulled up to the Portuguese restaurant across the street. The place was nothing flashy, but it was only a front. Bodyguards piled out of the car and ushered our target into the building.
Felix Lombard was the name he used here, though he’d been known by others. A suave incubus in an Italian suit, he didn’t so much as glance at us. Two young ladies on holiday, no threat at all. Later, Shanti would find a way to introduce herself.
I kept incognito in my wide-brimmed sun hat and dark glasses. Otherwise, there was a chance Mr. Lombard might recognize me from my fateful visit to the Mellado compound. He was there among the gathered members of Deus Inversus, one of several faces I’d managed to identify since.
Soon a new pater dominus would rise from among their ranks. That was the way of things. But after tonight, after Shanti made her move, Felix Lombard would no longer be among the candidates.
I played a subtler role in this campaign. Chaperone, adviser, overprotective mother. A long time ago, a priestess granted me an extraordinary second life, but she left me to discover it alone, abandoned me to dark desires I could barely control.
I wouldn’t forsake my daughters like that.
As a bus rumbled by, a Vespa darted out from behind it and pulled along the curb outside our meeting spot. The driver removed her mirrored helmet and whipped the sweat from her close-cropped, jet-black hair.
A gorgeous young woman of Eastern European stock, no longer content to stay cloistered in her Mojave Desert hideaway.
For now, Hannah would occupy a table by herself. She’d pretend we were strangers until such time as we needed her help. Still, I couldn’t help stealing glances at my daughter, marveling at what the succubus curse had done to her. The age-reversion had been a surprise even to me.
Yes, I was anxious for my girls, fretful of the humanity they might’ve lost when they took my gift, but this wasn’t the hell I’d feared. I had my girls with me, my family. I rented apartments instead of hotel rooms, I sat in the facing seats on trains, I made reservations.
Maybe I was fooling myself. We were still in the midst of a war. For all I knew, the first hint of loss could trigger a landslide of regret. But today we were alive, we were on the hunt.
I felt the first clutch of nausea just as I threw back the dregs of my Coke. I grunted and slapped the glass bottle on the tabletop.
“Everything all right?” Shanti asked. Even Hannah chanced a look at me from over at her table.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, suppressing a smile. I’d been through this enough times before to know the telltale signs. It was eight weeks since my night with Vincent at the Peninsula Hotel. I knew you were on your way.
So that’s the truth, my daughter. It’s what I owe you. It will be your legacy, your inheritance, no matter what you choose.
All it will take is a kiss.
About the Authors
James Patterson has written more bestsellers and created more enduring fictional characters than any other novelist writing today. He lives in Florida with his family.
Derek Nikitas is the Edgar-nominated author of the thrillers Pyres and The Long Division and the young adult novel Extra Life. He lives outside Providence, Rhode Island.
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Diary of a Succubus Page 10
