Incubus Kingpin (Rise of an Incubus Overlord Book 3)

by Jack Porter

  So I asked her.

  She grinned. “The BDA is powerful, but it isn’t all-knowing. Not quite, anyway. There are people who have managed to rise, as you know. The BDA didn’t realize what they were doing before they grew too powerful to stop.”

  “So, you just hoped to sneak in under their radar?” I asked. At the same time, I couldn’t help but wonder. The BDA knew about Piper, but they didn’t necessarily know who I was, not my human identity. And with Maggie White and the other still there… was it possible to keep them in the dark? Enough to make a difference?

  At the same time, I knew there must be a way to beat them even if they were paying attention. I’d taken Dario’s businesses apart to get the crime boss off my back. Surely I could do something similar with the BDA?

  Surely I could just let my demon loose, and tear them apart piece by piece?

  It was as if Julie was reading my mind. “You can’t take them head on,” she said. “All those who have tried have met the same fate.”

  “And what fate is that?”

  She shrugged. “Imprisonment. If they’ve raised a demon, that demon gets sent back to Hell. That sort of thing.”

  I wondered how that would work in the case of Azrael and me. Did the BDA have the ability to separate us out?

  “But there are people in the world who have demons at their command,” I said. “And angels as well. How did they get where they are?”

  Julie nodded. More in control of her quivering now, she rolled onto her side, resting her head on one hand as she looked at me. With her free hand, she pushed her dark hair away from her eyes, then traced the outline of my pectoral muscle with the tip of her finger.

  “There are established ways, of course. Some of the demons and angels are associated with a family, and have been with them for years. Ownership–or control, whatever you call it–is transferred from generation to generation. Of course, for some of them, the demon master is virtually immortal, so they’ve been around forever. And there are the corporate division divinities as well. Same thing, but instead of families, it’s the new executives who gain all the benefits.”

  I couldn’t help but think of the Syndicate. I’d long thought they had a demon of their own.

  Dario had been given an amulet with divine powers, and I hadn’t given it back. I hadn’t really decided what to do with it, but it was a powerful item. Perhaps I should give it back. Or maybe I should give it to one of the girls, in order to keep them safe.

  “But there are those who have Ascended,” I said, getting back to the point.

  “Yes.”

  “How?” I asked.

  “I don’t really know,” Julie replied, rolling onto her back once again with a satisfied smile.

  We lapsed into silence for a moment. Then I asked a new question, unrelated to the problem of the BDA.

  “Did you ever figure out what happened to Chad?”

  Julie looked at me sideways. “Your roommate?”

  I nodded.

  “Didn’t you say he had gone on some hiking trip or other?” she asked.

  I grinned. “I did say that, yes. I was just wondering if there was any official follow-up about it.”

  Julie’s expression took on a measuring aspect. “You wouldn’t be looking to get some sort of advantage from me, now would you Mr. Kingman? Looking for information you otherwise might not be able to find out?”

  “And what if I was?”

  Julie shrugged. “I’d tell you,” she admitted. “Funny thing about that is we wouldn’t have even bothered to follow up at all. There was no real missing person’s request out on your roommate, not really. Someone from the Gambetti Syndicate put pressure on my boss, so he threw it at us.”

  As I’d thought. Dario Gambetti had set it up. Somehow, he had known about Chad, and what I had done to him. It was in his file, the one he had on me.

  As if it was connected to my earlier statement, I said out loud. “How do you think they knew about that about Chad?” I asked.

  She looked at me and narrowed her eyes. “You know that most demons aren’t like yours, don’t you?” she asked.

  I nodded slowly but didn’t fully understand where she was going.

  She saw my uncertainty and offered a teasing grin. “Most of them aren’t bonded to people. They are their own entity, good for turning invisible, moving through walls, maybe the odd possession. And many of them are used for information gathering. Didn’t you know?”

  I blinked at her, surprised, as a whole bunch of things fell into place. In the back of my head, I may have imagined something along the same lines. But I hadn’t really put two and two together.

  I’d asked Dario during my meetings with him, but he hadn’t known. And anyway, I had been focused much more on the practicalities of rebuilding his empire, with me at its head.

  That file the Syndicate had on me, the one Dario had shared with Megadeath.

  It had been put together by the Syndicate’s demon.

  I could barely believe it.

  I lay there contemplating the possibilities, and eventually, a new thought rose to the surface.

  “The BDA isn’t a government agency,” I said.

  Julie shook her head. “They are associated with government. They have authority over other government agencies. Like us, for example. But no. Not that I’m aware of.”

  “Then who is in charge of them? Who do they report to?”

  “Now you’re getting into the realms of rumor and stories,” Julie answered.

  “Well, let’s hear them. What have you got?”

  “Think of it this way. Go back fifty, maybe a hundred years. More, maybe. Demons and angels, the artifacts associated with them, they’re not new. They have been roaming the earth for centuries, and those who managed to bind them, to control them somehow, gained an advantage. They became the most powerful people on Earth, because who could stop them? They ruled governments, and then, all of a sudden, the BDA turns up. And it just happens to be their job to look after everything divine.”

  Julie looked at me calmly, as if she was talking about something as innocuous as the weather. “Do you think such an organization would have been able to come into being if those who already had such power didn’t want it to?”

  It was an eye-opening thought. “Those who control angels and demons let it happen?”

  “Not quite. The rumor is they actively encouraged it, and are behind it all even now. How else would the BDA have access to the artifacts they have? How else would they have access to the demons and angels they have shown to have access to?”

  I pictured the world, with the peak status people dotted all around. All at once, they didn’t seem to be an assortment of individuals, but rather a network that worked together to achieve common ends.

  And all at once, I imagined them not as individuals, but as a cabal, secretly pulling the strings.

  Julie read my expression, and nodded. “You’re getting it,” she said. “Think of it as a board of directors, with each member being close to the top of the status rankings. With a demon or angel at their side.” She paused for a moment, then tied a ribbon around it all. “To get the BDA off your back, if they’re on it, you’d need to have a seat at that table.”

  A seat at the table.

  Simple.

  What could be easier?

  All through our conversation, I’d been aware of Azrael paying attention. So I thought a question at him. “What do you think? Is that how it is?”

  But he didn’t know. All I got in response was a kind of mental shrug.

  To me, though, it all made a perverse kind of sense. Powerful people wanting to protect their power at all costs, keeping others from gaining that same power.

  It fit with the cold, hard, cynical world we lived in.

  I figured I’d ask Sandy and Rachel to look into it as much as they could, to confirm what Julie had said. But I had another question. One upon which my immediate future would be shaped on.

  “Do you th
ink you could you find out if the Gambetti Syndicate has a seat on that hidden council?” I asked Julie.

  But to my surprise, Julie smiled at me instead of agreeing to do what I asked. “Do you remember when you said you could change me? That you could give me whatever I wanted?” she asked.

  I couldn’t help but smile in return. Julie was clever, and more than willing to wait until circumstances favored her before pushing her case. I figured she would be a tough negotiator.

  “I remember,” I said. “At the time, I was talking about physiological improvements.”

  She accepted the correction without argument, but it didn’t change where she was going. “You already know I am an Ascender,” she paused. “But I’m not sure that you fully understand what I am prepared to do.”

  “Really? Why don’t you tell me, then?” I said.

  Julie’s grin grew broader. “I don’t care about physical attributes so much,” Julie said. “But there is something I want. I will help you in any way I can. I’ll be your spy in the police, if that’s what you want, and I will find out all I can about the BDA. And all I want in return is to be by your side. I don’t want to be just another woman with a succubus inside her. I want to be with you, every step of the way.”

  I looked at her, somewhat incredulous, and even laughed.

  “Why?” I asked. “When you’ve already said that the BDA is dangerous, and powerful. And it might have already set its sights on me. Why would you take such a risk?”

  Julie tried for a casual shrug but didn’t quite manage to pull it off. “Call it intuition, if you like. Or a calculated gamble. I’ve seen the reports of what happened at your place, and helped to bury them for you. I’ve also looked into your past, and know how far you have come in such a short time. And I know the demon inside you, just as I know the succubus inside me. I believe that if anyone can do what you’re attempting to do, you can do it. And I want to be along for the ride.”

  I didn’t know what to say. But I found myself nodding, knowing without even asking that Sandy, Rachel, and Piper would be more than willing to make room for this determined and capable woman.

  11

  Despite my conversation with Julie, and that the BDA had held Piper against her will, I didn’t think of the organization as an immediate threat. Sure, I knew I would have to deal with them at some point, but in my mind, that point was later. I was pretty sure they didn’t know how to find me, and both Piper and I had kept a fairly low profile since her rescue.

  I mean, it wasn’t like we were killing our way through the Syndicates southern holdings anymore, were we?

  I figured the chances of them actually finding us were relatively low.

  So it came as a bit of a surprise when my phone rang just after three in morning, a few days later.

  I was in the middle of a dream when the noise sounded. My subconscious knew what it was right away, but still tried to make it make sense in my dream.

  I was flying over the city of El Diablo, not by flapping my enormous bat wings and bouncing through the sky, but by supermanning my way along without effort, just enjoying the sights.

  But even in my dream, I wasn’t alone. I was with Rachel, the beautiful goth woman who was the first of my harem. Of course, we were flying naked, entangled in each other as the breeze teased our skin.

  So I wasn’t very pleased to be woken from that, but the phone was insistent.

  I’d set it up to sound like a traditional, old-fashioned phone, as if it had a real bell somewhere inside it. My sleepy brain tried to make it sound like a church bell from below, or maybe a car horn, but it was a losing proposition right from the start.

  My dream vanished incrementally. First Rachel vanished, then the city below, leaving me flying all by myself with an increasingly grumpy disposition.

  Then it wasn’t just the phone impinging on my consciousness, but voices as well, muttering in sleepy irritation.

  “What the Hell?” someone murmured. “Who the Hell is calling at this time?” “Someone, for the love of fuck, get that, will you?”

  It was enough to drag me back to consciousness.

  It turned out that reality wasn’t that bad, and could compare favorably with any dream. Even those of flying naked with Rachel. Because I was in bed, surrounded by women. Rachel was there, just as naked as she had been in my dream, but so was Sandy, Piper, and Julie as well. It had become just the way it was, the bunch of us sharing the biggest bed in the mansion.

  Of course, Julie was a new addition, but nobody had complained, and Rachel in particular had responded to her presence with interest.

  The only downside was that I was in the middle, and my phone was on the nightstand as far away from me as it could possibly get.

  “Somebody grab that for me?” I murmured, and I sensed one of the girls move. The phone made its way to me in good time, and was still ringing when I finally answered.

  “This had better be good–” I growled, only to find myself talking to Dario Gambetti.

  “You’re in danger,” he said, and something about his voice suggested incredible pain. “Get out of there. They’re coming for you.”

  “Huh?” I asked, coming to full attention. “Who is coming after us? What’s going on? What happened?”

  “They know,” Dario managed. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. “They know about you. They know what you did. And it isn’t just them. The BDA…”

  Alarm bells went off inside my head “What about the BDA? What happened?”

  Even as I asked the question, I felt a deep sense of foreboding. I’d only just begun the process of figuring out how to deal with the shadow organization. I didn’t have my plan in place. I wasn’t ready!

  “My date,” Dario said. Then, surprisingly, he let out a laugh, which turned into a painful cough at the end. “It couldn’t have gone any worse. It was all a pretense, to catch me off my guard. They captured me, took me to a room. I thought even then I could talk my way out of it, could somehow make them see you aren’t a threat, but an asset. But there were Agents there.” Dario’s voice broke when he said the word, and I could sense his horror even through the phone.

  Without yet knowing the full story, I was growing angry. They had hurt Dario. That much was clear. And while he wasn’t Rachel, Sandy, Piper, or even Julie, Dario was still mine. Still part of the growing, multi-faceted entity that was Azrael.

  How dare anyone treat my people badly?

  “What did they do?” I demanded.

  It seemed that Dario was having problems keeping it together. He took a moment to gather his thoughts. “They did everything. They have these tools. These relics, divine objects.” I heard him shudder through the phone. “It was like I had been transported to Hell itself. It was so hot. So incredibly hot…” The Syndicate man trailed off.

  “Dario?” I said.

  “So hot.”

  “Dario, what did they do?”

  “They made me tell everything. Who you are. What you have been. And they… Hurt me. Hurt me very badly.” Dario started to cough again, but this time, there was no laughter involved. It sounded painful, as if every breath he took was agony.

  I felt for the man and wanted to help him. But there was something I needed to find out first. “Dario Gambetti,” I said. “Did you tell them where we are?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice sounding rough. It was an answer, of a sort, but he wasn’t done. “I told everything. I didn’t have any choice.”

  “Are they coming for us?” I asked.

  “I think so.” Dario seemed almost spent, but then he seemed to find new strength from somewhere. He rallied. “Simon, you have to get out of there. These people, these Agents. They’re not like anything you faced before. You defeated the army I sent against you, and if guns were all these people could bring, I wouldn’t worry. But they have these things. These tools. They’re designed to hold demons. And to send them back to Hell.”

  That sense of foreboding I’d felt grew sud
denly stronger. It was like I could feel the hammer of doom hanging over us, ready to strike.

  I took half a moment to look at the girls. The entire conversation had been on speakerphone, so they already knew the score. Without a word, they each got out of bed, Piper and Julie looking determined, Rachel apparently unconcerned, and Sandy overtly anxious. To my immense disappointment, they began to climb into their clothes.

  “Is there anything else?” I said tersely.

  But Dario just repeated his message. “Get out of there,” he said. “They’re coming for you.”

  The Syndicate man’s burst of strength seemed to be fading, and I grew immediately concerned.

  “Dario? Where are you? Are you okay?”

  At the last, Dario Gambetti offered another laugh, but it was very weak in comparison to his first.

  “Am I okay?” he said, repeating my question, and it was as if it was the funniest thing.

  “Dario?” I asked again.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “They’re working together, you know. The Syndicate and the BDA. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  Then he changed topic again. “If anything happens, take care of my daughters,” he said. And with that, the Syndicate man who had once been my mortal enemy but who had since become the closest thing I had to a real friend, rung off.

  “Dario?” I said. I was sitting upright in the huge bed, stark naked, staring at the phone in my hand. “Dario?”

  Nothing.

  “Azrael? What can you tell me?”

  “I sense… pain. The incubus within him is sorely wounded.”

  With a feeling of dread, I asked the hard question. “Will he live?”

  “What does it matter? He is just one part of our greatness–”

  “Because it matters!” I snarled, grimly aware that the girls could all hear what he was saying, and not liking his lack of loyalty one bit.

  “I do not know how bad he is, but it is bad.”

  “Can we do anything to keep him alive? Throw some points in his direction.”

  “It might not be a good idea to do so. What if he stays alive long enough to allow the BDA to find him again? He could spill even more secrets.”