Chapter Four
RJ
Somehow, Angelo Stedham looked more like a male model in my castoff sweats and grunge band t-shirt than he had in a three-piece Armani number.
It seemed radically unfair that the overlarge ensemble should suit him, given I had about three inches and fifty pounds of muscle on the guy. But he made it work, probably due to what he was claiming to be.
“An incubus?” I checked again. “I didn’t mishear that part in the bathroom? Or is that some kind of weird kinky name Lydia has for you?”
Angelo propped an elbow on the armrest, glowering out at the passing houses through a gap in the hood of my sweatshirt.
He’d cinched it as tightly as it could go, obscuring his face from any random passerby.
Someone would need to have their nose pressed to the glass to make out the handsome realtor in a ‘Bigfoot Search Team, Haven Hollow, USA,’ t-shirt and the matching unzipped jacket.
As to where we were headed—as I understood it, we were en route to some motel out of town that Lydia seemed to think was safe. At least for the time being.
“You didn’t mishear and, no, it’s not a weird nickname. I’m an incubus.”
I absorbed that. It sounded absurd when he said it offhandedly like that, but when I stopped to think about things, it started to make sense.
Marty, Henner, and I were treated to an absurd number of ghost stories and supernatural phenomena.
Then there were the rumors there was a cult heading up the town Council, and that they’d had the last chief of police bumped off in favor of someone easier to work with.
“You’re an incubus—as in a sex demon?” I checked, making sure I had my facts right. “The kind that preys on sleeping women?”
Angelo’s eyes rolled skyward. “Myth. Every woman I’ve been with has been conscious. A woman might be exhausted by the time I’m through with her, but the night starts with her eyes open. And before you ask the obvious and inane follow-up question, yes, that makes my sister a succubus.”
I shut my mouth and scowled at the pale stripe of road visible by moonlight.
Aspen trees lined either side of the street, casting long shadows over our exit route.
From the way Angelo was watching the treeline, I half-expected something to come charging out of the trees to run us down.
I didn’t know the guy well. I’d basically only seen him at the functions Fifi dragged him to.
For a while, she’d been pursuing Marty, though the big lug had remained oblivious to her interest in him.
Then she’d found Roy and Marty was just a thing of the past.
As to Fifi being a succubus though? I had to admit I was having a hard time trying to put the image of a thoroughly hopeless romantic like Fifi together with the image of a lusty demoness. It just didn’t compute. She was just... too sweet to be a demon.
“It’s just too weird. I mean, I would have guessed Fifi to be an angel before a demoness.” I hesitated, casting a nervous glance in Angelo’s direction. “Is that the wrong thing to say? I don’t want to be offensive or anything.”
I expected to find Angelo snarling at me, but he hadn’t yanked his gaze away from the tree line, which I thought was arguably worse. I didn’t have to know the guy well to realize he wasn’t acting like himself. He let out a small, derisive snort.
“She’s an odd duck. She might think of it as a compliment. I’m too far gone to give a rat’s ass about political correctness at the moment.”
“Can I ask why?”
He spared me a glance. “That bitch Andrea took Lydia. And she’s the only thing I care about. Say or do whatever you want, human. I don’t give a damn. I’m here for her. Nothing else.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that when I’d just seen Lydia, so I was pretty sure she hadn’t been taken anywhere.
Unless something had just happened in the last five minutes?
Had she fallen out of my truck bed? I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw her still sitting there.
So, maybe Angelo was the one who was drunk?
Regardless, there was a note of inarguable menace when he spoke Andrea’s name.
Like the results might be lethal if he got his hands on her.
Call me crazy, but I didn’t like hearing a demon talk about any woman like that, monster girl or not.
“Um,” I started, trying not to sound belligerent. I wasn’t sure I succeeded. “Lydia is back there—in my truck bed. I just helped her and the other women up there, or did you forget the last twenty minutes?”
I’d heard my share of impressive snarls on forums and YouTube videos.
The basso roar of a sasquatch would make any human’s stomach quiver with instinctive fear.
I thought I’d been inoculated against scary sound effects.
But the sound that ripped out of Angelo’s throat had me cringing against the driver’s seat, desperately trying to keep the truck on the road.
It was so close and so savage that the sheer wrath attached to the sound made my bones shake.
There was no possible way for a sound to echo in my head like that, but it did.
Suddenly, the idea that he might be more than human didn’t seem as far-fetched.
There was a moment when the black of his pupils seemed to swallow the entirety of his eyes. Then it was gone, leaving him looking human and even more tired than he’d been a moment before.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, visibly reining himself in. I waited, sucking in short breaths, trying to still the furious beating of my heart.
“Sorry,” Angelo muttered after a moment. “I’m behaving badly. I know better than to flash my true form at a mundane. Even one as odd as you.”
“Um… thanks… I think.” I paused. “And I’m not sure what you just called me.”
“A mundane,” he repeated. “Another word for a human.”
“Oh.”
Angelo chuckled, though it sounded fairly lifeless after the emotion he’d packed into the one warning note. He subsided, staring out the window once more.
“It’s a compliment. Odd ducks react better when they make contact with our reality.
I still don’t understand why the Council decreed that you needed to be kept out of things.
But I’ve only become a member recently. Henner is the grandson of a witch and Marty is a monster hunter now.
It seemed silly to leave you out when they’re both in the know, but again, not really my call.
” He looked over at me. “I’m sorry you got mind-wiped. ”
I blinked, taken off guard by the casual way he’d just dropped that nugget of information.
Was he really implying what I thought he was implying?
That I’d somehow been in this position before but had been Men-In-Black-ed into forgetting it all?
How? Why? And whose ass did I kick for it? That was massively uncool.
But also irrelevant, at this point. The fact my feelings were hurt didn’t change the reality of things.
Whether I believed what they had to say or not, their need for help was real.
Poppy really seemed to think that I could help them, which was what eventually made me okay with piling all the women into the back of the truck like I was trying to smuggle drugs over the border.
I sucked in a deep breath and then muttered, “Later. You’ll explain that bit to me later. Tell me what’s going down right now. I need to know what has your panties in a twist.”
“I don’t wear panties,” Angelo stressed, putting mocking emphasis on the word. “I tear them off, and women are usually begging me to do it.”
I thought about telling him where he could shove the arrogant tone and promise, but decided to behave myself instead. It appeared I could be taught.
“Fine,” I said in a tone of strained patience. “What’s got your demonic and very manly briefs in a bunch? Did you sleep with someone you shouldn’t have? Is that why we’re undergoing this action movie cliché?”
Angelo snorted delicately, eyes flicking over the treeline again.
He was relaxing a little now that we’d passed the town limits.
We hadn’t met a single car on the road yet, which wasn’t odd for this time of night.
People were enjoying the end of another long day, which meant most were either at home or living it up in the Half-Moon Bar and Grill.
I wouldn’t see a lot of other cars on the road until last call, when Roy inevitably called family members or Uber for those he peeled off the bar.
“And why is Maverick tailing my truck like he’s James Bond?”
Angelo crossed his arms stubbornly over his chest. Only now that he was wearing my clothes did I realize he wasn’t exactly a slouch in the muscle department, and he probably had supernatural strength that made him even tougher than he looked.
It was probably a bad idea to cop an attitude with him.
But damn it, they’d sprung all this on me.
If anyone got to bitch about things being confusing, it was Mr. Mind Wiped.
“In order?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He sighed like he was bored. “We’re facing a threat bigger than anything we’ve ever had in the Hollow before.”
“Monsters?”
“Not just monsters. We’re all monsters here. Those of us that count, anyway. This is a Hollow. It’s designed with us in mind. Ley lines running under the earth here anchor enchantments. It amplifies whatever the witches...”
“Right—Poppy explained that already. That you’re supposed to be safe here.”
“Right, but we aren’t. At least, not any longer.
” Angelo paused, gesturing backward at the truck bed.
I felt bad for the women stuffed inside.
Even driving as carefully as possible, the journey couldn’t be pleasant.
“Or warlocks, in Maverick’s case, are able to make strong enchantments even more potent.
Anyway, Maverick won’t be riding your ass much longer—he’s planning to take the next street in about a mile to report to Tally. ”
“Then what?”
“Then he’s going to meet up with us again. Once Tally is in the know. We need to come up with a plan before then.”
I raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have a plan?”
“You’re the plan,” Angelo said with a shrug.
“Then that’s a bad plan,” I said, and couldn’t keep a note of panic out of my voice. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”
Angelo’s shrug was too casual. “I know, but you’re one of the few people we were reasonably sure wasn’t being watched.”
“That’s why I’m involved?”
He nodded. “The monsters after us aren’t friendly. They’re a group of organized and powerful terrorists looking to drive a wedge between your kind and ours. They think humans are all violent, selfish, and cannot be co-existed with.”
“Terrorist monsters?” I checked.
Angelo rolled his eyes at me. Again. At this rate, they’d get stuck in an upright position.
“Yes, keep up.”
“So monsters don’t like humans?”
“No, we don’t all think like these monsters do. We’ve gotten used to living side by side with your kind. You can tell by the fact you’re still alive.”
“Then you like humans?”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he grumbled. “Point is: we’ve fought off threats that have come for the Hollow before, but they don’t usually have as much institutional power as these guys.
Indigo is probably the only one who can tell us how to beat them, and she’s currently in the back with the rest of the witches. ”
“Which one was that?” I asked. “I mean, I knew most of the women back there, but not all. Was she the one standing next to Lydia?”
To my chagrin, I couldn’t really focus in on any of the other women who’d barged into my bathroom.
They were all attractive brunettes, save the one, but I only had eyes for Lydia.
I hadn’t had it down bad for anyone since breaking up with Libby.
It was just my luck that the one I wanted was dating a sex demon I had no chance of competing with.
Or... did I? Angelo had been very unhappy and unpleasant about this whole affair.
He hadn’t looked or spoken like he liked Lydia at all when he’d been helping pack everyone and their supplies into the bed of my truck.
In fact, they’d pretty much been arguing for the entire time I’d seen them together.
Maybe there was a breakup story that I didn’t know about.
And did it make me a terrible person if I was secretly rooting for that to be the case?
His expression darkened, and his arms flexed, straining the seams of my hoodie as his muscles shifted, becoming larger than they appeared at first glance. He had to breathe in evenly through his nose before he could speak, and when his voice came, it came out on a rasp.
“The creature that attacked us took Lydia’s soul.”
“What?” I nearly veered off the road.
“It’s a type of energy vampire, and it can take a person’s entire essence.”
“And this energy vampire lives in Haven Hollow?”
“No. Her name is Andrea Reyes and she works for Murrain—she’s one of the monsters.”
“The terrorist monsters?”
“Right.”
“So, what did she do to Lydia?”
“She calmly and deliberately swallowed Lydia whole.”
“But Lydia’s back there?” I asked, frowning
“That’s not Lydia.”
“Then who—“
“—the thing,” Angelo said, lips lifting from sharp teeth as he flicked a hostile glance in the rearview mirror.
Neither of us could see the women bundled up in blankets back there, but we could hear things shifting as we took a turn at speed.
“—in Lydia’s body is a parasitic spirit named Indigo.
She’s been plastered onto Lydia’s body since you first met Lydia.
Until the vampire came along, Lydia was the one in control of her own body. ”
Ah. So that was why Lydia hadn’t looked like herself in my bathroom. She literally hadn’t been. I was staring at a stranger, not the sexy librarian-type I’d been secretly mooning over for months.
“So... Lydia’s gone?” I asked. “Gone as in like… dead?”
Another snarl. This time I was prepared for Angelo’s shift in mood.
The sound didn’t scramble my brain the way it had only a few minutes ago.
It was still piss-your-pants scary, don’t get me wrong.
I wasn’t claiming to be a bastion of courage.
But the anger didn’t have the same impact when I realized its source.
He wasn’t mad at me. Not really. He was upset with himself.
The world. The situation. I knew that posture well.
Before I’d met the guys and really found my groove in Haven Hollow, I’d felt like that a lot. Lost. Helpless. Lonely.
“No, she’s not dead,” Angelo said, the words coming out from between his teeth. “We’re going to get Lydia back.”
“Okay,” I agreed easily. “How are we going to do that?”
To that, there was no reply.