Caleb
“ N ot a word,” said Jax. “Not a single word.”
We got in the elevator, and that was all he’d said. I remained dutifully silent, staring down at the manacles on my wrists. At least Jax seemed more… himself. Once Harry left, he was back to his usual curmudgeon levels.
I expected Jax to bring me to the cells right away, but the old man surprised me by walking toward the wing that branched off down a hall near the reception room. This was the area the organization reserved for visiting dignitaries, which sometimes included demons, rare as it was. He opened the door with a key from the ring he kept on his belt, then beckoned me inside and shut the door behind us. He unlocked my manacles as I studied the bedroom; well adorned, richly furnished… it looked like it would be better suited for a king than a demon or religious dignitary.
Jax knew as well as I did that I wouldn’t be able to leave even if he let me go wandering around the underground area on my own, so there was no need to keep me locked up. I didn’t have a security pass, so none of the exits—even those for emergencies—would open without one. Mine would have been reissued once I’d gotten back from my mission under normal circumstances, but…
“, I’m sorry,” he said. “Harry Benedict—damn him.”
“Jax, you gotta let me in on whatever the hell is going on here.”
The bishop scrubbed at the scar on his forehead with an agitated hand. “What I told you before is true. We have been hunting Carmilla de Mornay for ages. We don’t quite know how she’s making new demons, though we have our suspicions…” He paused here, staring at me balefully, but then his voice broke unexpectedly as he said, “God, boy, how could you be so stupid ?”
Yep, there it is. Should have bet myself twenty bucks he’d say it.
“C’mon, Jax?—”
“No. There is no ‘c’mon’ anything anymore. I can’t protect you from what comes now that you’ve gone and done this.”
“I don’t need your protection!” I argued. “I don’t need this fucking place! You know as well as I do I’ve been trying to buy my way out of the contract since I was seventeen?—”
“They were never going to let you,” snapped Jax. “You’re a fool to think it. Now they’re certain to never let you leave.”
“Yeah,” I muttered, crossing my arms. “How long will I be in the cells this time?”
“Not just the cells. Do you not remember what happened to those poor souls that night in the chapel before your graduation?”
I paused before answering, “Never forgot. First time I’d seen a man get beheaded. Thanks for that, by the way.”
Jax adjusted his thick glasses, shoulders sagging like they held the weight of the world on them. “, there’s things about this place you don’t know. Secrets… things you can’t possibly…” He drifted off, shook his head. “I have failed you. I should have protected you, and I…”
“Jax,” I said sternly. “What are you saying?”
“The veiled sisters are all succubi—or some twisted, blighted version of the creatures. The one you encountered was Harry’s own personal servant, but each of the special investigators receive their own. She had once been a devotee of our Lord but is now reduced to a lust-filled beast. In trying to exorcise these women before the incubus’s demonic seed finds purchase, they sometimes become…” He sighed. “You saw for yourself.”
“You’re telling me that all the sisters here… are demons?”
“The veiled sisters, yes. Her confirmation that you’ve lain with a succubus is enough to condemn you to a punishment worse than—” Tears choked the old man’s voice. “I never dreamed you were going to be in such danger. Harry didn’t tell me what was going on until you were out on assignment, but I swear to you, , I didn’t know. That boy is such a foul deviant… he thinks because he’s an investigator for the archdiocese that he can come here and throw his weight around, treating my agents like… like lambs for the slaughter.”
That motherfucker .
I could feel the blood draining from my face as I really, truly, took in the old man’s words. “Jax, if I’m hearing you right, you’re saying the Church signed off on Harry using me as bait to lure out a succubus… and it worked… so now they’re going to punish me because the thing they thought would happen… did.”
He nodded miserably. “The ends always justify the means here, . You of all people should know that. The orders on this were so vague, and when Harry came with a handpicked list, signed off on by the archbishop himself, I should have at least suspected?—”
“Hang on a second… how could he possibly have known the succubus would choose me unless…” I froze. “Oh my god.” My legs went numb and I staggered backward, almost lost my footing. “Oh my god?—”
“?” Jax took a step forward, but I gestured to him to stay back.
“Jax… new incubi are made by…”
He looked away, then turned back to me. “, did you sleep with her?”
I couldn’t answer. My mind was racing. It was right there in front of me. Right there the whole time, and I’d missed it. I’d missed it! But how was such a thing possible? How did…
“I didn’t though—not with her—” I caught myself before I gave anything else away, but it was too late. I’d been outted by Harry’s fucked-up succubus, and now I’d just admitted it myself.
Had she… put something in Magda that made me a demon …? Or was I somehow what had caused the change in Magda?
“There are two ways incubi come into being,” Jax said. “One—the method Harry mentioned. This is for normal men.”
The words normal men sent a chill through me. “And the second?”
“Creatures called cambions,” Jax whispered, even knowing that in this room, the org’s spying eyes and ears were forbidden, “are the children born of unions between incubi and succubi, sometimes with humans, and sometimes with each other. They appear, by all outward means, to be human. That is, until they are awakened… at which point, they begin their transition to demons.”
“So which method applies to me, you think?” I asked, terrified to know the answer, but desperate to hear it all the same.
Jax looked downward. “Not the first method.”
My entire body was shaking as I sat hard on the bed behind me.
Dr. Lowe isn’t “making” new demons at all. She’s just finding the ones that already exist. Magda became a demon after meeting me, which means…
“How are they…” I tried to force the words out past my suddenly dry throat, “these cambions, I mean. How are they awakened?”
“Completing the sexual cycle—naturally. Just once can be all it takes.”
“No,” I rasped, terrified at what I was about to admit. Terrified of what it could mean, “you said it yourself, I’ve slept with dozens of women. If I were a demon, wouldn’t I know I by now?”
Jax’s face squeezed together in tight distress. “…You always used condoms, . Did you… without protection this time?”
I couldn’t look into his eyes. Jax had been sneaking me condoms since I was sixteen. He’d preached at me constantly—it was his constant nagging and threatening that had made me so careful. I’d been sexually voracious since I hit puberty, just about. I’d always assumed it was just what happened to boys as they grew up. Every guy I’d ever known had been a horn dog, so I just thought it was normal. But if what he was saying was true…
I nodded.
“I didn’t… I didn’t have a choice, Jax,” I whispered as he pressed a hand to his mouth to stifle a sob. “I can’t explain. I think I was meant to?—”
“Did you at least stop before the end?” he asked, keeping his voice low. “Were you able to keep yourself from… finishing in her?”
I closed my eyes. Magda hadn’t walked in that building a human and walked out a demon… Dr. Lowe had set us up—the missing time, the beer, the hallucinations of Home calling me, if it was indeed true. I’d been under her spell before I’d ever set foot in the office. Her comments about expecting me… Not playful banter at all. She’d intended me to get there, have me find the girl… and finish whatever it was they’d started.
Because she knew something about me that even I didn’t know.
“…If it makes any difference, I did try ,” I said. “At least… initially.”
“Oh ,” he turned and paced in anguish. “Both you and the young lady will become… You’ve no idea—none!”
“That’s because no one fucking told me!” I shot back. I was close to the edge of tears.
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Yeah, well, great fucking job,” I muttered, then flinched at the pained look in his face. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.”
“—” Jax approached me slowly.
“You knew, though, didn’t you?” I asked him, my voice soft. I couldn’t help the pain in my tone. “You knew that was why he selected me. Because I’m…”
I’d expected a vitriolic response, but Jax strode toward me. “A cambion,” he replied. “Yes.”
“Who else knows?”
“All the bishops. And Benedict.”
“Which one?” I asked. “Just Harry? Or the archbishop, too?”
“Both.”
“Are they going to kill me?”
He stopped, breath hitching. “I… don’t know. The archbishop may have additional plans for you now that you’re… awakening.”
“Harry used me as bait to lure out a demon because he suspected that she’d be able to tell I was a—a what is it? A cambion?” I looked up at him. “Then my parents?—”
“Your mother was killed when you were a baby,” he said softly. “She was a succubus, your father an incubus. She had been hiding from the organization since before you were born, but they eventually… hunted her down. It wasn’t until several years later they found you and took you out of the state home.”
My whole life, I’d begged for information about who my parents were. Why I’d been put up for adoption. Why they’d never come back to get me—and now I knew. Because my mother was dead—killed by the very organization that had bought me like chattel later down the line. I’d just learned more about my birth parents in two sentences than I’d known for the past thirty years of my life. I closed my eyes, my chest constricting with pain. Something else snapped into my awareness, though.
“Jax… how does Harry know what I am?”
The bishop shook his head. “There are things I can’t risk?—”
“Jax, goddammit, he used me as bait , which means…”
Which means he was fully aware that she wasn’t ‘creating’ new demons, but rather, awakening cambions.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. She was playing fucking demonic matchmaker.” I squeezed my eyes shut at the realization. The dual manipulation of the organization and the succubus. Somehow, it felt worse knowing that Carmilla de Mornay, or whoever the hell she was, had forced me to play into the organization’s hands without even knowing it. “But how? How did Harry know about me? I didn’t even know about me!”
“, what I am about to tell you cannot leave this room. I mean it.” Jax sat beside me on the bed, staring woefully through those thick lenses.
“Who would I tell?” I griped. “The priests, during bouts of torture confession in the cells?”
“Have you ever wondered why our sect of the Church is quite literally hidden underground?”
“I mean…” I shrugged. “I just assumed it was because we, y’know, murder people… or at least, people-shaped beings.”
“, please,” sighed Jax. “The truth is… there are many demons within the organization. These demons—largely incubi—work in the name of God to eradicate other evils. Harry is also a cambion. The night before graduation, he ah… met those specific conditions that awakened the demonic power within himself.”
I blinked, flashing back to the trip we’d taken to the strip club—not just the two of us, either. The organization had actually driven us there, and then the brothers had stood by, pretending not to notice after letting us draw lots to find out when we’d go into the back, one by one, to have some personal time with the dancers. The shock of it struck like a gong in my head.
“You mean that night… one of those women…?” I gaped at him. “But Harry is the archbishop’s son—” I spun to face Jax, and he put a finger to his lips.
That absolute dickhead—I’m going to tear Harry a new asshole when I get my hands on him again. He knew. He fucking knew and he never told me?
“I’m warning you, boy. Secrets and machinations you could never, ever understand,” Jax whispered. “Tell me, this girl you were with… you had sex with her, correct?”
“Yeah…” I said, struggling to find the words to make this as painless as possible to explain. Talking about sex with a priest was one of my least favorite activities. “It was…”
“.” Jax scowled at me. “I’ve caught you with girls more times than I care to remember. I wish I could forget how many times I walked into your room only to be greeted by the sight of your bare arse pumping into the air. You’ve never exactly been a mastermind at hiding how much of a—what is it they call it now, a man whore?—you are. Don’t be shy now. This is important.”
“Jesus, Jax. Ouch . Did you really just call me a man whore ?”
He slapped me on the back of my head. “Don’t blaspheme. Tell me what happened.”
I rubbed my head, even though it didn’t really hurt. “I wasn’t lying. I thought Dr. Lowe might attempt to hurt her, but… There was also just something about this girl. Made me feel like I had to get to her at all costs…” I went on an explained in extremely limited detail about the events that took place. Didn’t say where we’d hidden, what her name was—not even what she looked like. I told him about the doctor’s insistence that I be the one to take her; that as soon as Magda woke up later, we’d been inseparable… quite literally.
“.” Jax jabbed his cane into the rug below him, his voice resigned one I’d finished. “There is no way out of this for you.”
“Jax, c’mon. Can’t I pray this away or something? Isn’t there a spell? An incantation? None of you padres can do a damn thing? Try and remove the curse or something?—”
“You’re not… human. You never were—you just didn’t know. No amount of prayer or spells would work because you have always been a demon. It was lying dormant until… well, until those certain conditions were met.”
“But that means I’m the one who turned her into a demon,” I whispered. “Not Dr. Lowe.”
The bishop shook his head. “We don’t know for certain. For now, I will leave the young lady’s name out of this, as you clearly want to protect her, but?—”
“Please no ‘but’ Jax,” I whispered, chest constricting in agony. “If they try to hurt her… I don’t know what I’ll do.”
But I did know what I would do: Anything possible, so long as it meant keeping her safe and out of the organization’s hands.
“Very well, my boy.” Jax softly thudded his cane into the carpet—the motion was one of his ways of emphasizing a point. “I will keep it quiet as long as I can.”
I was shocked at the relief that flooded through me.
“However, tomorrow, the archdiocese will likely begin monitoring your progress?—”
“You mean they’re going to poke and prod me while I devolve into some kind of demon,” I corrected. “I’m never going to leave those cells, am I?”
“I simply don’t know, ,” said Jax. “The archdiocese will need to study you. There are… other issues at play here as well. You may well be locked in here the rest of your days, or perhaps… perhaps they may attempt to use you as they do Harry?—”
“This is bullshit,” I spat. “That was a goddamn suicide mission, and you know it. Harry picked me for this knowing how it could end. I won’t accept… I mean, there must be something we can do. Harry’s the archbishop’s son, so he’s probably got immunity. I won’t be so lucky.”
Jax approached me and placed a fatherly hand on my shoulder, his gaze, even hidden behind his lenses, was clearly troubled.
“I’m sorry, son. The decision is not mine to make.”
Although we weren’t related, Jax had been the only actual father figure I’d ever had. True, I spent most of my life either finding new ways to get in trouble or being punished for having found them once he caught me, but it had always been Jax who’d attempted to help me, in his fatherly way. Hearing him say these words now… that tone in his voice… it conveyed to me everything I needed to know about the situation: I was doomed.
“I’m so sorry,” he said again, squeezing my shoulder.
“You can’t mean that,” I said, gutted. “Please, Jax, just?—”
With a strange instinct, suddenly it was like Magda was in the room with me. I could feel her presence flickering sensation at the edge of my awareness. My name, said like a breath on the wind.
“… I need you.”
My spine went rigid. A breath hissed out of me; I closed my eyes, squeezing my fists tightly against the duvet. I had to fight every urge inside of me to run to her—I wouldn’t even be able to get out of this place.
“Come back…”
Real or imagined, the thought of her lying naked in the bed, waiting for me… Needing me…
“Is someone… calling for you?” asked Jax, his voice low.
“Yes,” I gasped. I could scarcely hear anything over the pounding rush of blood in my ears. My breathing was ragged; harsh as I struggled to keep myself from getting up and bull rushing the old man to get his keys.
“…” the old bishop began. “Is it de Mornay, or… your mystery woman?”
Magda’s urging for me to return to her side was all encompassing, but I forced myself to calm down.
“Not the doctor,” I managed. My body was trembling, but the call was easing off, and I felt my body sag. Maybe that meant she was safe. She hadn’t felt frightened, just… concerned? I frowned, scrubbing at my face.
“She’s already turned then,” he said.
“I really was trying to do the right thing when I went over there,” I took a deep, shaky breath, but then before could Jax open his mouth said, “and don’t you come at me with that ‘road to hell being paved with good intentions’ shit, either. Trust me when I say I wanted to get permission to shoot the doctor, all right?”
At that, Jax chuckled weakly. “Such is the weakness of men’s flesh. I appreciate your honesty, and I swear I will do what I can, but… things are out of my hands now, . I’m sorry. I have failed to keep you safe.”
“How long have you known what I was?” I asked quietly. “Is that why you smuggled condoms in for me? To keep me from ever… inside someone?”
He’d only mentioned women, but Jax knew that I had a bit of a tendency toward men and women, and I wasn’t sure if it worked the same way for men, too.
Jax’s lower lip trembled. “I have known for a long time, I’m afraid. It’s why I did everything I did. To protect you from… this.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
The old bishop stood up, smoothed his robes, and shook his head. “Even now, I’m afraid I can’t tell you more. One day, perhaps. One day I will be able to, God willing.”
I envisioned that twisted nun in the interrogation room. Would I be like that? Have my eyes and mouth sewn shut? Perhaps they’d use electric shock therapy to get the demon part out of my brain until I was nothing but a vegetable. Ruining my body to save whatever they perceived of my soul would mean nothing to these people.
“Jax,” I asked. “What actually happens to a man who’s becoming an incubus?”
The old bishop frowned. “You’re in the better position to answer that question.”
I glared at him. “Humor me, would you?”
“Well, the archdiocese is extremely protective of its knowledge on the ancient, more powerful demons such as succubi and incubi, but needless to say, those demons feed energetically from sexual energy. For the powerful demons, eye contact can lure people in, but physical contact alone can give sustenance. However, exchanging fluids, whether saliva or, ah… sexual fluid… is the preferred source of energy for both creatures. Without it, you will weaken. Perhaps die.”
“I can’t believe this,” I said, horror crossing my face.
“It is a hard thing to face, ,” said Jax stoically, “but we must soldier onward?—”
“No,” I snapped at him. “I won’t be a part of this.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean,” I said, standing beside the older man, his hand sliding from my shoulder as I reached my full height, towering over him, “that if I stay here, I get to look forward to being put to death or twisted into some kind of foul monster.”
“There are other things,” insisted Jax, standing beside me. He took the keycard from his belt, yanked it off, and then dropped it on the floor between us. “I strongly suggest you spend your time praying for guidance. After all, tomorrow after mass, Harry and I are meeting with the archdiocese to discuss this… situation. I would recommend adopting a more repentant attitude by then, young man.”
I stared down at the card, then glanced up at him. “Yeah… sure.”
“I mean it, ,” said Jax. “You have never had a strong opinion of the Church. I know that. But your refusal to devote yourself has made you ripe for picking by the Devil. If I let you out right now, I bet you’d run straight to your demonic mistress, wouldn’t you? You’d be back in her arms before daylight. You’d warn her about everything you just learned.”
I sat back down on the bed, resting my chin on my hands, keeping my voice almost too low for either of us to hear it. “Yes… and you know anyone who had helped me would likely face the same punishment I would for doing so.”
“Look, …” Jax paused. “I’m an old man now—but you don’t have to let this destroy your life, you understand? I don’t want to see you in the cells any more than you want to be in them, yet I cannot allow you to leave campus. However, given that you did return to accept responsibility for your actions, I will give you some time to collect yourself here, perhaps to fast and pray. I will send for you tomorrow and give strict orders that you are to remain undisturbed while you seek forgiveness.”
Jax gave a final squeeze to my shoulder before turning and striding out of the room. Once he was gone, I waited for the sound of his clicking cane to recede before I reached down and looked at the keycard he’d left in his wake.
Why, Jax? Why help me escape?
I waited only a few minutes, then checked the door—he’d left it unlocked—and stuck my head out in the hall; empty.
I left the room, locking the door behind me from the outside, and snuck down to the reception area and the hall that led to the garage, where Jax’s keycard would ensure I could slip out without anyone ever seeing me on an ident scanner—and give me access to the vehicles that wouldn’t be tracked. I might not make it out of this alive, but in the very least, well… at least I’d die on my own terms.