by Randi Darren
Jes walked out to the sidewalk, then stood there in her beautiful glory and held up a hand toward a taxi.
Swerving hard toward them, the driver practically bounced up the curb in his haste to get to Jes.
“Oh, thank you,” said the Succubus as she leaned down to talk to the driver through the window. She was probably giving him an eyeful as well. “Can you take us to the closest used-car dealership?”
There was a response from the man Sam couldn’t hear, but he imagined it was in the affirmative.
Standing up, Jes gave him a bright smile.
“We’ll just pay him on your credit card but steal a car from the dealership,” Jes said. “The dealership would be much less impacted than a cab driver.”
Sam shrugged at the logic; he didn’t care. He hadn’t been human, and Jes seemed to be recovering her personality along with some of her memories. She wasn’t talking about it, though.
Whatever she had been before, she wasn’t now, and she had to build her new life as she saw fit.
***
A couple hours later, after acquiring a large SUV with very dark windows, Jes and Sam were standing outside of a large, expensive-looking apartment building.
“This area looks rich,” Jes said, peering up at the building’s front.
“Mm. Maybe we can rob him, too,” Sam said, scratching at his shoulder. “Neighborhood is full of upper-class people.”
Feeling strange, and like a strange pressure was building inside his mind, Sam looked around.
Not far away was a young woman with two kids—one boy, one girl. She had each of them by the hand and looked like she was heading toward the apartment Sam and Jes were standing in front of.
The woman was an absolute beauty. She had long, dark red hair that was bound up in a ponytail, and her light brown eyes were like spotlights that demanded Sam come closer, but slowly.
He wanted to eat from her. Immediately. It was an untamed and insatiable desire.
It made Sam afraid. His response wasn’t normal, and he knew it. There was something wrong with him.
The woman’s mouth curled up slightly, the young girl on the woman’s left wearing a similar expression. The boy, on the other hand, looked at Sam with disdain.
The woman’s nostril’s flared slightly, and her eyes grew a bit brighter.
Sam recognized what the woman was in that instant, and he wanted nothing to do with her.
He wanted to run away. Run away as far as he could and as fast as he could, without ever looking back.
He hadn’t seen a Bogey in hundreds of years, and the last time he had, he’d almost lost his very soul. They were one of the few things in existence that could render anyone or anything to nothing.
Except this one was an anomaly, on top of that. She felt incredibly strong to him. Strong to the point that he wasn’t sure he could win without losing an arm or something worse.
Holding up his hands passively, Sam did his best to squish his fear.
“Just working for a client,” Sam said defensively as the woman got closer. “Messy divorce, no violence. Just going to make them be fair.”
The woman eyed him for several seconds even as she walked past him. She said nothing, but Sam felt like she was weighing his words.
“You have one day,” she said softly after she pushed her children in through the revolving door. “You and your partner smell like cinnamon and roses.”
Then the Bogey walked into the apartment and vanished.
Shivering from head to toe, Sam let out a breath.
“What was that? I wanted to run away, and I felt like I was going to tinkle myself,” Jes murmured. “I’ve never seen or felt anything like that.”
“A Bogey. Boogieman. Probably the very last thing a planar lord would want to mess with. She gave us a day, so… we’re going to make this work and then get the hell out of here,” Sam said, shaking his head. He started to walk into the apartment building. “And if we have to take longer than a day, I’m going to have to stand outside the apartment and wait for her to ask permission.”
“She’s that strong?” Jes said.
“They don’t stop. They can hunt and track you anywhere. Even across planes, if the portal is open,” Sam said. “Wish I had one working for me. Maybe when the girl grows up, I could see if she’d be willing to get hired on.”
They quickly found the stairs and went up to the top floor. The man was apparently wealthy enough to afford the penthouse.
Which made it all the stranger that he wanted to take a house out in the middle of nowhere from his ex-wife.
Stepping out of the stairwell after unlocking the door, they found there was only one door and a very small hallway. This couldn’t be anything other than the location they wanted.
“Can I try to get him to open the door?” Jes asked, adjusting her coat and undoing several buttons. Then she pulled down on her blouse a bit, giving herself a massive amount of visible cleavage.
“Sure. Easier than me giving him a dose of Essence when he looks through the peephole,” Sam said, moving to the side of the door and out of view.
Licking her lips, Jes walked up to the door, rang the doorbell, and then stepped back. She folded her hands in front of her, tilted her head, and looked off to one side. The entire pose made her look vulnerable and unsure.
Sam watched quietly, waiting for an opportunity or a need.
From everything he’d heard about Tom, he didn’t seem like a good person. But Sam could very well be biased in favor of Alisa’s descendants.
“What?” asked a voice through the door.
“Uhm, I was told to come up here to see Tom?” Jes said, sounding rather uncertain. “I’m pretty sure this is the right address.”
“And what do you want?” asked the same voice through the door.
“I’m sorry, maybe I have the wrong address,” Jes said, turning around and starting to walk away.
“Wait—no, wait,” said the man behind the door.
Jes didn’t stop until she was outside the peep-hole’s view. Then she leaned up against the wall with a pout on her face. She apparently wasn’t half as confident as she’d appeared to be.
The locks on the door clacked, and then the door swung away. Tom was a middle-aged balding man without any fat on him. He looked far more sinister than Sam had been expecting.
He was also a Were. Nothing could hide from a planar lord.
Holding up a hand, Sam waved when the man’s eyes landed on him. Then he snared him with a solid push into his mind.
“Good job, Jes,” Sam said, moving forward. “That was significantly easier than it could have been.”
“Thanks. I wasn’t sure at first. I thought for sure he’d open the door for me,” Jes said, following Sam into the apartment. She shut the door behind them, and they all walked into what looked like a living room.
“Oh, he’s a Were. That makes me feel better. I thought he didn’t think I was pretty,” Jes said. “You know, I keep meaning to tell you, I’m getting my memories back. The longer I spend on this plane and the more I feed from you, the more they come back.
“I still can’t remember much of this Jenaphila, but I know more of me and what I was. I was an Imp. Mom was an Imp, but she died a long time ago. Never knew my father.”
“Mm. Thank you for sharing. Care to take a look around and see if there’s anything worth stealing?” Sam asked, feeling relieved at her revelation. She trusted him still.
Sam pointed at the couch, making firm eye contact with Tom. “Sit.”
“I think it’s been about… a long time, actually. Since I was on this plane, that is. I have this strange feeling when I look at older things, like that typewriter we saw,” Jes said, vanishing deeper into the apartment.
Hm. If she was floating on her own plane for years without Essence, that means she had to be fed from an external source.
Is Jena just loading them all into planes and then keeping them there like leftovers? Parceling them out as nee
ded?
Sighing, Sam got down at face level with Tom. He didn’t want to deal with his ex-partner’s apparent rapid descent into the kind of depravity that would surely attract the attention of the higher planes.
One could fight the high heavens—and even win—but it often just meant more attention. Then more fighting, and more attention.
It was easier to lie low and not trouble yourself.
Or the high heavens.
Sam would never be a massive leader of people or corporations. He’d never build his own anything beyond what it took to be comfortable.
Too much work.
“Hey, why do you want your ex-wife’s house so bad?” Sam asked.
“Fuck her over,” Tom said.
She was right.
“Right. Any other reason?” Sam asked.
“My pack makes fun of me for having a non-Were mate,” Tom elaborated.
“Huh. Would they let it go if you tried to drop it? Let Alison have her house?” Sam asked.
“No. They want it for a den house now,” Tom said.
“Great. In other words… I’m going to have to go to your pack and hit them, too,” Sam said, shaking his head. This contract was rapidly spinning out of control.
“Where’s your pack? What kind of business are they in?” he asked.
“Dog food factory. We operate the plant for the company. They leave it to us. We maintain, run, and keep everything moving for them. We’re a lot cheaper than humans since we don’t care about the smell. That and dog food isn’t that bad,” Tom said. “We also run guns out of the location. We specialize in battle rifles and explosives.”
Sam grimaced and let his head droop down till he was facing the floor.
“Of course they are. Because the moment I agreed to this, I was in for a storm of never-ending shit from the sky,” Sam muttered.
“Do they ever meet in public? Somewhere I could get the jump on them and catch them all at the same time?” Sam asked Tom.
“No. We’re a pack, but… we’re wolverines. We don’t really meet up often. When we do it’s at the plant because that’s where we’re safe,” Tom said.
“Where’s your pack leader? Do they live separately?” Sam asked.
“Yeah,” Tom said. “She lives in an apartment near the plant. The Hillside building, apartment thirteen.”
Right. So I either go at them one at a time or try my hand at storming into a defended position that is probably loaded with weapons.
We’ll start with the pack leader and go from there.
“Sam?” Jes called from the other room.
“Yeah?”
“There’s… there’s a safe with a lot of money here. A lot of money,” Jes said. “And then this other bedroom is all guns. It’s just wall-to-wall guns.”
Sam nodded. He didn’t even know what to say or do now.
There was a paranoid and suspicious Bogey mother in this building, his client was the ex-wife of a gunrunner, and they were all Weres.
“What’s… what’s your species again?” Sam asked.
“Wolverine,” said the man.
Closing his eyes, Sam groaned. Prickly, aggressive, and fearless. They had a reputation for just attacking people rather than talking.
“Grab a bag, take all the money,” Sam called back to her. “Leave the guns. Not something I want to get into. We’ll call the cops, and that’ll solve Tom pretty easily.”
But will it solve the pack?
Probably not. Not if they’ve got it in their heads they want the house for themselves. They’ll see it as theirs long before they even have it.
Though it does make more sense why they wanted it. Pack property.
Standing up, Sam thought on what to do with Tom.
With a conviction for illegal firearms possession, it was rather unlikely he’d have the time, money, or ability to worry about Alison’s house.
“And we were never here,” Sam said with a smirk, then tapped a fingertip to the middle of the man’s brow.
***
Sitting in their SUV across the street, Sam and Jes watched as a flood of police stormed into the apartment building in what looked like special weapons and tactics gear.
They were armed for a shootout and siege type of scenario.
“It would seem your idea to put him into a drunken coma was the right move,” Sam said. “I do not think the police are going to be very kind to Tom.”
“Alison is going to be upset,” Jes said.
“About what? That he got caught being a criminal? She probably didn’t even know. I bet she didn’t even know he was a Were,” Sam said. “Doesn’t matter. He would have gotten caught eventually. If anything, we might have damn well saved his life doing it this way.”
“Let’s hope she sees it that way,” Jes said.
Sitting there in the SUV, they waited and watched. They needed to know what was happening before they went back to Alison. Giving her only partial information wasn’t going to be enough to get her to keep the contract active. Thankfully, every day they worked on this would be added to the end date of the agreement.
Which means we’ll eventually have to get Jes to work her own clients. She can’t just feed from me forever. She’ll need to get her own Life Essence if she wants any sort of longevity on the plane.
Two black-as-night eyes appeared in Sam’s window.
He was staring into the eyes of the Bogey from earlier.
Sam managed to keep his fear in check.
Barely.
He’d honestly expected this, so it wasn’t as surprising as he was sure she hoped it would be. There was no way she wasn’t going to track him down after an entire police precinct descended on her building.
“Tell me what happened,” said the woman. There was no room for argument or disagreement in her tone.
“Turned out the ex-husband was an illegal arms dealer. A big one,” Sam said honestly. “We didn’t know. It’s the easiest way to get rid of our client’s problem.”
“The penthouse?” the woman asked.
Sam nodded. “Tom… something. I forget his last name.”
“Hm. I had no idea,” said the woman, glancing back at the building behind her. When she turned back to Sam, her eyes were the light brown they’d been previously.
Frowning, the woman looked to be in deep thought. Then she nodded her head.
“I’m Jennifer,” she said, holding out her hand to Sam.
“Sameerixis, but I go by Sam. This is Jezebel, or Jes,” Sam said, shaking her hand.
“Seems like your client got out just in time,” Jennifer said, shaking her head. “Maybe it’s time for me to get out of the city, too. Things seem to be getting worse every day.
“And thank you for not making it hard for me to find you. I appreciate the courtesy.”
Jennifer gave him a pretty smile that didn’t match the monster she was, then walked off back toward the building. She looked like a beautiful housewife and mother, wearing a cute dress that made her seem far more mature.
And she was probably one of the few things that actually gave Sam pause.
“Guess it’s time to head back to Alison and tell her what’s going on,” Sam said. “Though I’m genuinely concerned about the pack side of it. If they really do have it in their heads that her house is their property and should be a den house… it’s unlikely it’ll end with Tom going to jail.”
“That’s fair,” Jes said. “Well, it’s not as if we didn’t profit. That was a lot of money. We should rob the pack.”
Sam raised his eyebrows at that. It wasn’t a bad idea.
Robbing criminals was a rather lucrative endeavor. It wasn’t as if they could go to the cops about it.
Pulling the car into drive, Sam checked his side-view mirror, then eased them out onto the road. It was going to be a long drive back to Alison, but he refused to give up the SUV.
The backseat was incredibly comfortable, and he was sure he and Jes would be utilizing it extensively if they rem
ained in the city.
“I’m hungry,” Jes said. “Can we stop by a coffee shop and see if there’s any cute little barista girls, or a customer you can talk into the car? Preferably one that looks like the Bogey. Jennifer was frightening, but she was pretty and caught your eye. You’d be more likely to taste better with one of those.”
“Sure, why not? We’ll call it lunch and then drive back to Alison,” Sam said.
“Great. Thanks, Sam. You’re a good provider,” Jes said, reaching over to lightly tickle the back of his neck with her fingertips. “I think when we get back home, I should talk to Irma about figuring out how to get a client list for myself.
“Though I think rather than solving problems like you do, I want to get into robbing people. That seems fun, and I’ll be doing good for society.”
Sam only nodded. Everyone had their own preference on what jobs they wanted to take on. His own preference was for solving inter-human issues. When you could hypnotize and convince someone to do something with a look, the job was easy.
“I want to learn to use a gun,” Jes murmured. “I took a bunch of those guns back there as well and put them on my plane. I think… I think that’s the type of contract that appeals to me. I can buy people to join a feed harem for you, then just feed from you as you feed on them. My clients will be to support my feeding indirectly.”
Sam didn’t say anything to that. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea that she would be utterly dependent on him for her meals going forward.
She was constantly pushing further and further into his wants and desires.
Fifteen - Nice Curtain -
Hanging up the phone, Sam looked at Jes and shrugged his shoulders.
In the end, they’d both chickened out. Rather than going back to tell Alison in person, they’d called her about it.
“I could hear her yelling,” Jes said. She had a concerned look on her face.
“Yeah. She wasn’t very happy,” Sam said, looking over to the secretary. The young woman was staring at Jes with a completely blank look. “I mean, it’s just the way it goes though, right? Guy was a criminal, got caught—the end. Her problem is technically solved. We just have to make sure the pack lets it go.”
