Caleb
“ S tep away from her, Dr. Lowe,” I growled at the succubus, leveling my gun, cocking it just in case she wanted to know if I was fucking around or not.
The gun contained blessed silver bullets—and while I didn’t have authorization to kill her, firing off a couple rounds into a knee or shoulder would still hurt like hell and keep her occupied until she’d worked the holy metal back out again.
Dr. Lowe didn’t even bother to hide her succubus form—fangs on full display in a sneer, curled horns on her head, huge, sweeping bat-like wings protruding from her back, a long, thin tail with a sharp spike on the edge that would have made a sting ray jealous. She was twitching in irritation at my interruption to her feeding.
“So rude, after everything I did for you,” she spat, tail swishing through the air behind her like an agitated cat. “This was a consensual and legal sex therapy session—and oh! See! Look what you’ve done! She’s out cold, dammit!”
I looked over at the girl passed out on the couch, and though I tried, I couldn’t keep my eyes from sweeping longingly over her bared breasts. There were teeth marks along the side of one of her right nipple; a thin trail of blood leaked out.
“Doesn’t look consensual to me,” I said, forcing my eyes back to the doctor. “Cover her.”
“I’ll admit, I got a little… over excited,” said Dr. Lowe, doing as instructed and pulling the woman’s bra and tank top back down, and then gently ran a finger down the side of her cheek. “Marvelous, isn’t she? Oh, and don’t worry, she’s perfectly fine—check for yourself if you don’t believe me. Honestly thought, I am disappointed in your timing. Just a few more minutes and I would have been able to give her an orgasm or two and she would have been ready to jump your bones the moment she laid eyes on you?—”
“Move away from the girl. Last warning.”
I gestured with the gun, and Dr. Lowe, whose hands had been moving farther down the girl’s chest, snapped back upright, wings flapping with furious little beats as she lifted herself away from the prone woman and went to stand in the corner I’d directed her to with a glare.
“I’m impressed,” she said, her voice soft in comparison to the red-eyed glare she was sending my direction. “I really did think it would take you a teeny bit longer to find us. I would have loved a few more moments with her…” Her voice turned wistful as she stared at the girl, ignoring me completely.
I kept my gun trained on the demon, but moved over to the couch and checked the girl’s pulse at her throat. It was rapid, but Lowe was right: the heartbeat was healthy and strong. I cursed quietly to myself. Without my ordered “irrefutable evidence,” or a witness’s testimony to prove the succubus had been feeding on an unwilling victim, I had no actual proof that Lowe had committed any crimes or violated anyone. I wouldn’t be authorized to do anything except hold her until backup arrived—unless she attacked me directly, that was—and the look in her face seemed to suggest that she knew it, too.
“I’m not leaving an unconscious woman with a succubus,” I said, tucking my gun into the holster under my left arm, but left it unclasped. “Once the backup team gets here, I’m taking her somewhere safe, and you will be remanded to the organization until she can verify your story.”
“I can assure you,” said the doctor, with a low, rumbling growl to her voice, “she is much safer here with me than anywhere near you or that fool of an organization.”
“Excuse me if I take the word of a demon with a heaping pinch of salt,” I muttered, picking the woman’s belongings up and lifting her carefully into my arms, adjusting her weight in my hold. I stared down at her face, passive and peaceful in sleep, tiny, soft breaths panting out of her. I was nearly overcome with the urge to kiss her before I shook myself. “I’m going in the hall to wait for the rest of the team; don’t get any ideas, and don’t try to leave this room.”
The succubus grinned, a knowing smile that held secrets upon secrets. My stomach clenched at her look. “You’re playing a dangerous game here, little Knight. I’ve done nothing wrong, and she will confirm that when she wakes.” She gestured to a purse on the couch. “Have her show you her phone once she’s… settled down a bit. You’ll find a voicemail confirming this very appointment.”
I looked down at the girl in my arms. She looked like such an innocent thing—what could have driven her to seek out a demon? Had she known what the doctor was when she made the appointment? I glared up at the succubus. She might be trying to distract me; I kept my gaze on her. Although I had mentioned leaving, my feet hadn’t yet started moving toward the door.
“I will look at her phone later,” I replied. “Once she’s been cleared by the sisters, of course. If your story checks out, you’ll both be free to go.”
The succubus leaned casually against the wall, though I sensed a shift in her mannerisms. She seemed… less relaxed at the mention of the nuns.
“You can’t take her to the organization,” she told me. The statement was soft; almost pleading in its tone.
“Are you kidding me?” I said, forcing a stiff laugh. “Where the hell else would I go?”
“Listen to me, Knight,” Dr. Lowe said, a wavering entering her voice. “Have you noticed that I haven’t used my power on you, even though you’re in the heart of my aura, holding the woman I was feeding with? That’s because I’m not trying to trick you or seduce you. If I was, you’d be down on your knees begging forgiveness for your insolence. Consider it an act of good faith.”
“Faith!” I spat. “So because you haven’t tried to use your power, I should take your word over that of the archdiocese? No thanks; I’d like to spend the night in my own bed, not down in the cells.” I paused, leveling a warning stare in her direction. “You’ll understand why soon enough.”
“You’ve already disobeyed them, haven’t you?” she said, her hands at her side, red eyes strangely imploring, her voice even and measured. “You’re being far more stubborn than I’d anticipated, considering how well behaved you were before, but… Look. I don’t mean her—or you—any harm, but the Church will harm her,” she said as she locked her gaze on mine. She wasn’t exerting any power except the heavy impact of her words. “They’ll hurt me, too. Perhaps others.”
I narrowed my eyes at that. “How would you know whether or not I’ve disobeyed orders?”
“You’ll learn soon enough,” said the demon, resigned. “If you want that girl to survive, listen to me: A night in the cells is nothing compared to the tortures awaiting the willing partner of a demon.”
I hefted the unconscious woman in my arms. I had to admit that the succubus’s words alarmed me. I glared at her, trying to figure out what game she was playing at.
“You’re wrong,” I insisted, staring at the young woman. “Once she receives a clean bill of health, she’ll be free to go. I’ll drive her home myself—you have my word.”
“And if the diocese decides she has a malady of the soul or some other bullshit? Choosing to lay with a demon its own evil, so what then? How does the Church deal with lost souls, Knight?”
My gut twisted, and I looked down to the unconscious stranger in my arms. She was hot to the touch, yet it was clear it wasn’t sickness… perhaps… pleasure? A lingering effect of engaging with a succubus? I frowned. If she was undergoing any side effects of the demon’s psychic feeding, then it wasn’t inconceivable that…
Though the demoness was hard to read, it seemed even now that she was honestly concerned for this woman’s safety. Yes, there was the real possibility that the Church might hurt this woman if they suspected her of being afflicted by the demon—and yes, she was telling the truth about not using her powers on me. I’d seen what that kind of influence could do to a man. In the organization, the archdiocese had warned every male acolyte about the “dangers of the flesh”—in particular, the horrors of succumbing to succubi—so frequently, it had become a joke amongst my seminary class.
Until my graduating year, that was.
My class got called to a mandatory midnight assembly in the campus sanctuary. We filed into the pews, and Bishop Jax waited at the front while two lectors brought in a woman wearing an almost see-through white dress and thick, ropelike manacles strapped around her forearms. A blindfold had been placed over eyes, and she was led by the wrists to the front of the church to stand nearby Jax. The lectors looked to him; he nodded. They removed the blindfold and stepped back as the succubus’s form swelled to life before our eyes, and she transformed.
She’d looked much the same as the doctor did in this moment as her piercing blue eyes scoured the room, wings outstretched, ample bosom heaving, nipples hardening to tiny, diamond-hard points beneath the thin fabric as she took in the sight of around two dozen horny twenty-year-old men, all burning for her. I felt her gaze sweep over me, and she made a soft noise in her throat, but then another boy—someone I didn’t recognize—gasped and stood. She turned to him, smiling.
The manacles had been meant to strip her of power, but my classmate approached her, his gaze transfixed, as if the world had fallen away and they were the only ones who existed. Jax held up the hand bearing his large, jewel-encrusted ring when the two lectors stepped forward to stop the student from reaching her.
“If he is so weak as to fall prey to a demon, even here in front of God and the Church, he isn’t fit to serve as anything but a lesson,” the bishop stated stoically.
We all watched as the succubus reached for the boy with manacled hands, and he leaned into her touch, moaning and crying out with pleasure as she hungrily smothered him with kisses until he collapsed, quivering in her arms with a shout as a conspicuous stain leaked down the front of his gray trousers. Gingerly, the demon knelt on the floor with him and stroked his hair back, kissed his temple, and stood. If I’d thought she’d been beautiful before, it was nothing compared to the lusciousness of her body, her red mouth, after just a few kisses. She squeezed her breasts between her hands, letting out a gasping, erotic sigh. On the floor at her feet, the boy stood, woozily, at first, and then reached for her again.
She leaned forward, pulling him into a hug, wrapping her wings around him, taking him against her breasts, leaning down and whispering into his ear, her tongue darting out along the lobe. The scene made me feel… voyeuristic, and not in a good way. The looks on my classmates’ faces said they felt roughly the same.
Nodding, the boy turned to face the lectors, and as he started toward them, Jax moved quickly. He slipped the sword within his cane out and took the head from the boy’s shoulders in one fell swoop. His body took several steps on its own before it dropped.
“No!” The succubus had screamed, turning to Jax, agony on her face.
He strode forward, keeping the demon at bay with the cane sword pointed in her direction.
“Never forget,” said Jax, kneeling beside the headless body. “These demons see us as food and useful tools. Once you succumb to a demon, you will commit any number of depraved acts, on friends, family, and even your brothers in faith.” He reached down and lifted a small pistol from the boy’s hand: one of our training weapons. Lethal at short distances; it would have been a convincing enough threat to get the manacle keys from the lectors.
Jax stood, and the lectors sent us out. I’d gazed back before they’d shut the doors in our faces and witnessed as the succubus knelt and picked the boy’s head up in her hands, a strangely empty look on her face as his blood splashed out over the tiles, turning everything at her feet into a puddle of red water.
I shook myself back to the present and took a step closer to the door, alarmed at how easily the memory had consumed my thoughts. It had to be a demon’s trick: Suggesting danger to make me feel such uncertainty. It had to be. I had never been a fan of the organization, but I’d already broken enough rules in the past day to qualify me for some serious time in the cells.
To do as she was suggesting and hide this woman from the Church… I might get beaten as badly as the first time they’d ever caught me sneaking girls around campus. Even though my reasons for hiding a woman now might be considerably more noble, I knew from experience that no one in the organization would bother to see it that way.
As I took another step back, I tried to reach for the door, but the woman’s arm slipped as her weight shifted, and the demon reached out as if to catch her.
“Be careful!” she demanded, before composing herself, carefully crossing her arms underneath her ample chest again and taking on a more casual stance.
I gaped at the monster. She was genuinely concerned for this woman’s safety—the terror I’d seen on her face when she thought I’d been about to drop her had been real. I wouldn’t know for certain what the true nature of their relationship was until the woman woke up, but in the meantime, I just couldn’t leave her here.
In no universe would I take the word of a demon at face value and trust that she had nothing but the girl’s safety in mind. However, I also had to acknowledge that there was something inside of me that simply couldn’t consider putting this woman in danger; even if that meant having to hide her. Even if that meant breaking protocol, as I was already doing.
The Church is going lock me up for the rest of my life before I’ve even finished debriefing Jax, so maybe adding one more tally to my list of sins wouldn’t make a noticeable difference?
“Goddammit,” I muttered. “Goddammit!”
I was forcing myself not to pace. I was already showing weakness in front of the demon by letting her get me this agitated; this off my own game. I knew better than to do this, but with the girl in my arms, I couldn’t think straight. I agreed with the demon on the matter of getting her to safety—but the question was: Where was safety? I didn’t trust the organization as far as I could spit, but if this girl had been afflicted with some kind of demonic influence or possession and later got sick, or died, that would be on me .
“Take her anywhere else—the hospital, a doctor’s office, her home—just don’t take her to the Church,” Dr. Lowe said in a quiet, hushed voice.
I looked down at the girl in my arms.
If I do this, I’m going to get the shit beat out of me.
If I don’t do this, I’m still going to get the shit beat out of me, but maybe with a little less… gusto.
After my long pause, she stepped forward, and in a voice almost too soft to hear said, “… Please .”
There was a command in her tone, but she hadn’t used her power on me; rather, I could sense urgency and fear. I could taste the sour notes of her pleading on my tongue. Succubi didn’t ask favors of those they could command—so why hadn’t she just ordered me to leave the girl and walk away? The longer I stayed, the less I understood. Who was the succubus to the Church—and better still, who was this girl to her?
The thought of this woman being locked in the cells was suddenly sickening to me. I found myself recoiling at the idea of her being there—alone, tormented, beaten… scared, treated like I had been. Like I would be in very short order, probably just for stepping foot inside this building.
“Okay, let’s just say I bring her to her house instead of the Church. Do you at least know where she lives?” I asked.
“It hadn’t really… come up in our conversation,” Dr. Lowe said, “but I know where the café her friend owns is?—”
Dr. Lowe staggered backward, clutching her abdomen and reverting back to her human form—that of the buxom blonde I’d been watching for two weeks.
“What th—are you all right?” I asked, before I could help myself.
She panted and leaned heavily against the wall. “They’re here,” she gasped. “They’ve got… holy water—air conditioning?—”
Outside the doors at the end of the darkened portion of the office came the stomp of boots and the low murmur of voices. Home must have gotten the backup over here—much faster than I’d anticipated. At any other time, I would have been glad of it, but… something was wrong about this. About all of it. Holy water into the AC? My team had never gotten approval for anything as fancy as that, which could only mean one thing—this wasn’t an ordinary assignment. An investigator was definitely involved.
“Fuck this,” I said, extending my hand to the doctor. “C’mon. We’re getting out of here.”
“No—take her and… run,” Lowe growled, and this time, there was an order under her words. I felt my will subjugated; my knees nearly buckled. “Take the stairs at opposite end of this corridor; don’t let your comrades see you. Get her to safety.”
The command washed over me so quickly I had no time to brace for it. I found myself trembling, torn between wanting to follow her command and being unable to leave her side. The conflict must have shown on my face; Lowe’s power faded, just enough that I could breathe on my own; think for myself. She approached me before I could move, however, and pressed her palm against my cheek. I leaned into her hand, closing my eyes as pleasure vibrated from her touch. The sensible part of my brain screamed for me to get away from the demon, but the very male part of me suggested I should put the girl down and take the demon.
“No questions. I’ll find you both later and explain everything then,” she whispered, her breathing beginning to sound wet and shallow. “Now go. I’ll hold them until you’re out of my aural reach. After that, it’s on you. Keep Magda safe.”
I didn’t recall making a conscious choice, but I was practically flying down the steps, following the route I’d been shown: A map in my head of the building along with the sensation of where each of my comrades were inside of it. Fifteen men, largely still in the office section, but they’d find the hidden door soon, just as I had. Whatever prayers and incantations they’d brought with them were stronger than the ancient cross at my neck, and the succubus would need her full attention on them. So, as she’d said, it was on me to protect the girl… To protect Magda.
I was outside and in an alleyway three blocks away before gunfire erupted behind me from the office park. I spun, but the urgency Dr. Lowe implanted into my brain made it impossible for me to do anything else but keep going, far away. I should have been there with my fellow agents, but instead, I was carrying an unconscious woman away at the behest of a demon. My thoughts raced. I couldn’t go back to the rented apartment lookout—that was the first place the organization would go. I couldn’t go back to my own home on campus, either, since they’d be there, too.
“Fuck, fuck,” I muttered. I could look through the girl’s purse for an ID, maybe, but only once we got off the streets. “Where do I go now…?”
The same sensation that had filled my head when Lowe’s power had first pushed itself into my brain shoved me toward a multistory condo building about a block ahead on my left. The route information, much like the building map, came shortly after. It was the doctor, pushing images into my head, orders. Like an idiot, I just blindly followed the path she’d woven into my brain.
I knew the place she was directing me to—it’d been built a few years ago, but sales had tanked, and now something like eighty percent of the units were empty. There’d been a news piece on it last week I’d watched out of sheer boredom while surveilling the doctor. The part I hadn’t known, however, was that there was a model unit for a partially furnished studio condo on the fifth floor in which the outer key lock was broken, and only the internal deadbolt worked when manually turned from within.
I grit my teeth against the intrusive information, feeling the doctor’s distant instructions coming into my head like some kind of bizarre psychic download.
“I don’t like this at all,” I hissed, but headed for the exact spot, regardless, sticking close along the tree line of a nearby wooded lot to keep as far off the streets as possible.
The last thing I needed was to be arrested while carrying an unconscious girl down the street while also carrying a concealed weapon without a permit, a prepaid debit card for “J. Doe,” and absolutely no valid ID. Once they’d run my fingerprints and found out that I wasn’t listed in any system—no birth records, no prints, no name, no identity, I’d get tossed into a dark little prison and have the key thrown away.
Unless someone from the Church found a way to get me out—which would only mean moving from one jail cell to another that was, in all honestly, probably not going to be nearly as nice as the state-owned version.
Without warning, the connection to Dr. Lowe broke; I felt it shatter like glass in my mind. One moment a soft buzz, the next, silence.
“Lowe?” I whispered.
There was no answer. I didn’t know if that meant she had gotten captured, or she was dead, but there was little doubt in my mind that a lone demon with a lungful of holy water mist wouldn’t stand a chance against a team of fifteen trained men that included a special investigator.
If they’re feeling generous, they might opt to just shoot me when they eventually find me rather than take me back to get lectured and beaten and locked away.
I cast the thought aside as I crept through the brush, cursing under my breath. The girl might have been slight, but carrying someone for five or more blocks would tire anyone, and adrenaline was wearing off now that the disorientation from Dr. Lowe’s disconnection was setting in. I was sweating and a light drizzle of rain began to fall. By the time I reached the street in front of the towering condo building, I was breathing heavily, soaked through, and my arms were shaking. I double checked to make sure there was no one around, then ran across the street, keeping hidden in the darkness of a broken streetlamp.
Once inside, I reasoned with myself, I’d make sure the girl was okay, get her safely into a cab home, and then… I’d have to face my superiors. That was a concern for another time. For now, I couldn’t ignore the urging the demon had left me with: Protect Magda.
Letting myself fall under a demon’s spell. How could I?! I cursed the succubus and my own stupidity. As soon as I’d been burned, I should have fled, but instead, I ran straight into her arms, like she’d… known… I was… coming.
Had she said something about me arriving early? I’d taken it as an attempt at banter on her part, and hadn’t given it much thought initially. It was too late to ponder what her reasons for all of this might be—or if it had been a charade. I’d fallen prey to her bullshit… I just couldn’t tell exactly how or why yet. If it did have anything to do with this girl, I was going to find out the moment she woke up. If it didn’t, and she’d just used her as a clever getaway, well…
“Fucking demons,” I muttered as I opened the front door awkwardly with one arm, slipping inside to a cool, modern lobby, thankfully empty, and headed to the elevator banks.
If that was the case, then as soon as I was able, I was going to find out if I would be allowed to hunt the bitch down myself. I’d probably never get the chance though, since I’d probably be spending the next several months in the cells at this rate, just so they could use me to prove a point to the other acolytes and agents about the dangers of disobeying a superiors’ orders.