Chapter Nine
Why it Sucks To Be A Succubus
When everything swam into focus, I felt good. I mean really good. Until the moment I sat up—and then I felt bad. I mean really bad. My leg felt like maybe it ought to be somebody else’s. When I rumbled out a string of unintelligible syllables, “Ife gottagoto th’bathr’m,” what I meant was “My bladder’s about to explode, and if somebody doesn’t help me to a toilet soon, dire consequences beyond my control will promptly ensue.”
Luckily a pretty blonde wrapped in a comfortable wool cardigan was sitting by my bedside wearing a smile that could have been the distillation of kindness itself. Her shoulder length hair was held back by a bright blue scarf, and her green eyes, soulful and wise, twinkled with an inner decency that made me feel as if I had found a place in this crazy plane of existence where things might make some kind of sense. Startled by the sudden sense of attraction, I closed my eyes tightly and told myself that I was under the influence of some sort of strong pain reliever. I smiled at my unexpected companion and wondered how Angelica was doing.
“Bathroom,” I said again as my bladder gave a final-warning spasm and my smile turned into a grimace.
“Oh my!” she said. “I’m not surprised! You’ve been out of it for several days.”
With a good bit of help, I got unsteadily to my feet and allowed the blonde to guide me into a clean bathroom that smelled of cinnamon-apple potpourri. I cannot tell you how good it felt to relieve myself. A healthy set of body plumbing goes chronically underappreciated until all hell breaks loose with it, and then it becomes priority number one, right up there with dousing flames when you’re on fire and running away from militant vegans sermonizing about the benefits of a meat free diet.
While I had some privacy, I gave my body a good lookover. My face was bruised so badly on one side that it looked like someone had mistakenly printed an inkblot test on it. A long scar ran from my right temple down to my jaw, and little black knot work told me someone had expertly sewn up the wound. My leg looked worse—more like a swollen sausage than a proper appendage. The sight of it made me nauseous and dizzy. Thick sutures kept the skin tightly bound together, and a number of oblong, black adhesive bandages dotted the entire length of the limb.
When I cleaned up a bit, my companion was waiting on the other side of the door, which was a good thing because my knees buckled just before I reached the bed, and she had to catch me before I went all the way down. “You’ve got to watch yourself,” she said in a gentle voice as she helped me back onto the mattress.
“What are you giving me for pain?” I asked. “My leg feels like it’s on fire, but the thing looks so bad I can’t believe I’m not rolling around in agony.”
The girl made a sympathetic tsking sound. “Harpies are disgusting things. I never understood why the council allowed the convent to bring them onto the island.”
“You mean there are more here?” I blurted out.
“They belong to the reformed sisterhood,” she said with a nod. “And I’m sure they would never let anything like that out to terrorize the principality. The poltergeists would never rest quietly for it.”
I remembered Angelica saying that there was a convent on St. Simon’s Island, and that’s when it dawned on me who my kind caretaker was. “You’re Cardigan Calli, aren’t you?”
A small blush painted Calli’s cheeks as she nodded her head. “I really wish people would stop calling me that. It makes the cardigans unhappy.”
Despite the pain in my leg, I nodded my head and pretended as if I knew exactly what she meant by that. “Is there any more medicine for pain? I think the stuff you gave me is wearing off.”
“I haven’t given you anything for pain yet,” she said as she pulled my blanket aside to have a look at my leg. “It’s the leeches that kill most of the pain,” she added. “And it’s about time I changed them for a fresh batch.”
“Leeches!” I exclaimed. “Holy hell you’re not putting something like that on me!”
Calli gave me the politely firm scowl of a nun armed with a solid oak ruler who wasn’t afraid to use it. “You will if you want to keep your leg,” she advised.
I thought of the adhesive strips dotting my leg and put two and two together. “Those better be medical grade or I’m going to be very upset with you. I have a werewolf with me, you know,” I warned her.
“I already know he’s a wereschnauser,” Calli said dryly.
Son of a bitch.
“Fine. I can still have him hide your newspaper,” I grumbled.
“He wouldn’t!”
“And pee on it.”
“Now that’s just cruel.”
When our eyes met, we both started giggling. “These are the best leeches money can buy,” she told me proudly. “They’re not actually leeches at all. We just call them that because it sounds better than what they really are.”
My mouth dried up. “What are they, then?”
“Oh,” her voice was nonchalant. “They’re xenomorphs. They do wonderful things for the body, like reduce swelling, filter out infection, minimize pain . . . unless you leave them on too long.”
I knew there had to be a catch. There always seemed to be a catch here in the Playground. I swallowed deeply and asked, “Oh? And what’s that?”
“They start laying eggs.”
My head went light and my face felt flush. “Can’t you just give me something less deadly, like methamphetamine, or bath salts, maybe?”
Calli laughed at that. “Don’t be a baby, Jack. The last time anyone ever had a bad reaction to the xenomorphs was with medical case LV426, and when the authorities brought doctors Hicks, Newt, and Ripley back from early retirement, the whole mess was fixed. It was a mistake to get rid of Hicks and Newt in the first place,” she said, batting away an annoying thought.
I stared at her like I had no idea what she was talking about. Apparently Calli was a quick study on human nature, because when she figured out I had no idea what she was talking about, she said in a reassuring voice, “You’ll be fine. If you’ll just settle yourself down, I’ll go grab some more larvae from the queen and be back in a jiff with some Percocet.
Now she was talking my language. Calli wasn’t gone long before the pale skinned, dark haired form of Angelica stalked into the room. She unceremoniously pulled up a padded chair that had been sitting against the wall, ignoring the loud screech it made as its legs scraped across the tile floor, and sat down with an aggravated sigh.
“Well hello to you, too,” I said. “I was wondering how you were.”
Angelica scowled deeply. “I figured you’d be too busy talking to Mrs. Perfect to spare a thought for me.” Her lips puckered into a pouty expression, and the voice of my inner robot started screaming all kinds of warnings inside my skull.
“Ummm . . . Angelica, are you okay?” I knew that something had to be amiss because of her behavior during the harpy attack. Now, she was just being downright odd.
“No!” she snapped. “I’m not okay!”
I flinched at the heat and anger in Angelica’s voice. The room suddenly filled with the gunpowder scent of brimstone. “What’s wrong?” I asked, uncertain whether or not I should be worried or frightened by the explosive mood. “Look, if I can help you with anything, I will.”
Angelica’s hands flew up to cover her face. “Stop it,” she growled petulantly.
I sat still in my bed, saying nothing, wearing an expression that said I was confused and had somehow lost the instruction manual that came with her when she rolled off the assembly line.
Angelica looked at me between her fingers. Her eyes were bloodshot ovals surrounding silvery luminous irises. I hadn’t realized how utterly beautiful they were until then. “Stop it,” she sai
d again, but some of the heat seemed to have been dampened with her outburst.
“Stop what?” I cautiously asked.
“Being so nice to me,” she said between clenched teeth. “And looking at me like you did . . .”
“Like I did, when?”
“When the h-harpy was about to k-kill you,” she said in a voice torn with anger and grief.
I couldn’t understand what her problem was, and before I had a chance to respond, she surprised me by letting out a long, mournful wail. “I have my powers back!”
She has her powers back? Now I was really confused.
And worried.
I mean honestly guys, I don’t care what sort of girl is in front of you—demon babe, confused succubus, female-schizophrenic-whatever—seeing a lady in the throes of unspeakable distress is like seeing a wounded newborn dear. Even the most stalwart hunter is going to be moved to help. In the Playground, I would have thought that any sane, rational being would have welcomed an arsenal of innate superpowers, so I reached out with a comforting hand to Angelica. She flinched and nearly crawled onto the backrest of her seat.
“Don’t!” she screeched.
Softly adjusting my voice, I said, “Please help me understand what’s happening to you.”
A movement at the door caused me to pause and look toward the opening, hoping that it was Calli. I needed something strong right at the moment. The odor of sulfur was beginning to make my head and leg throb. Instead of Calli’s perky figure, Mike slowly made his way into the room with Max, who was wearing clothes for a change. He had on a pair of jeans covered by dark leather chaps, and he wore a leather Zombie Davidson jacket overtop an Undead Leppard t-shirt. I had to admit the look suited his scruffy features well.
It wasn’t until Mike pulled two more seats closer to my bed that I realized I was dressed in a clean white cotton sweatshirt and warm pair of flannel pajama pants. I still drew my blankets over my body out of a good Southerner’s sense of modesty. Strange that I didn’t mind sitting there in my bedclothes with only Angelica nearby.
“I’m afraid I can help enlighten you,” Mike said sympathetically. “Dear Angelica has been expelled from her order, and everything that was done to help curb her demonic nature has been stripped away.”
“Oh.”
As usual, I had no idea what that meant. “Well, if there’s anything I can do—” I started to offer but was cut off by Angelica’s piteous mewling.
“Succubi feed off of their ability to tempt men and corrupt their better natures,” Max explained. “I’m a shape changer, so she cannot affect me,” he said with a stoic growl.
“Nor can she affect me,” said Mike. “I am undead, after all.”
I looked at Angelica and couldn’t help feeling bad for her. “So how does this affect your . . . um, condition?” I asked. I thought she was sexually confused or something like that.
Angelica’s response was raspy and tired. “When I came to the sisterhood for help, I agreed to undergo a procedure to change the way my mind worked. The human side of me was sick of the horrible things I did to all the poor men I came in contact with. I needed it to stop. I wanted to find a part of myself that I could live with.”
“I can understand that,” I said.
Angelica’s eyes narrowed. “No. You can’t,” she said. “I was a seductive nightmare, ripe with all the enticements necessary to cause men to cross lines of behavior that most can’t come back from, Jack. My last victim was a little twelve-year-old boy. He was curious about his body and eager to explore the changes he saw going on in the girls around him. He lived in the apartment below mine. He had already been abused by several men, but I didn’t know that at the time.“ Her body shuddered as the memory of it visibly sickened her.
“I felt his curiosity building and his desire and attraction growing. Adolescence is always the easiest feeding time for my kind. For some young men . . . especially the ones who are already disturbed, even proximity to a half-succubus is enough.” Angelica sobbed.
“I did everything I could to stay away from the child, and I thought I had kept him safe, but I woke one night to flashing lights outside. When I opened my door, I saw two poltergeists hauling the kid away. When he looked at me, our eyes only met for a second, but I will never forget the way he smiled at me. He actually thanked me as they took him away. He thanked me. The things he did . . . he did to his sister. I-I-I w-watched the police cars g-g-go. I was so full of power and life that I f-f-felt invincible, like I could take on the whole d-damned Playground,” Angelic sniffled.
When she paused to look up, as if looking away would take away the terrible memories, she only allowed her gaze to fall on one pair of eyes in the room. Mine. And what I saw in her face was a frantic search for forgiveness and absolution.
“I fed off of that poor boy and the things he did to his sister,” Angelica said in a broken voice. “And now I’m afraid of what I will do again,” she said in a hopeless voice.
“Well, it seems like you’re safe with us,” I offered.
“Two of us,” Max said with a grim warning.
“And the effect a half-succubus gives off grows stronger whenever someone like Angelica is attracted to another man,” Mike added.
“Or has chosen a new victim,” Max clarified in a hard but not unkind voice.
“Oh,” I said as her sudden change in behavior, especially her sudden jealously began to add up.
“So . . . I guess that means you’re not confused anymore,” I said hesitantly.
Angie was barely able to look in my direction. “They did good work on me at the convent. I already knew I didn’t want to have a relationship with anyone. They just helped shut off the attractions I felt. Only now I don’t know if I’m me again—”
Everyone in the room went quiet as Calli zoomed back into the room holding a tray loaded with fresh bandages and moist, flat, newly hatched xenomorphs. She deposited two Percocet into my palms, and sat the tray down. “I’ve had time to think about your predicament, Mike,” she said loudly enough to let all of us know that she was addressing the entire room. “I think we need to go to Jekyll Island as soon as possible. There’s somebody there who can help you.”
“I was just hoping for a place to lay low for a while . . . to let some of this blow over,” Mike said.
Angie sat at the foot of my bed glowering. Thankfully, I seemed to be the only one to notice.
Calli shook her head and her voice sank. “I’m afraid this isn’t going to be as simple as relocating the refugees you send my way, Mike. You’re all over the news. All three of you are.” She then picked up a remote control and turned the holovision on in front of my bed. Faces hovered in the center of the holofield on the Jackal News Network where a number of pundits were talking about a barbarous act of terrorism. No footage appeared behind the babbling faces, so Calli quickly changed the channel to LNN—Left News Network—complete with a banner above its own set of talking heads proclaiming, We Know Better Than You—where I did catch an aerial view of a smoking crater amid a ring of collapsed, burning buildings in Apex, somewhere south of Raleigh.
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “That looks like the place where we came up out of the tunnels!” I said to Mike.
“It was,” he said in a heavy voice.
“Turn it off,” Max said in a wolfish snarl.
“They blame us,” Angelica uttered the words like a prisoner condemned to death row.
Calli’s voice was matter-of-fact, “They’re saying you’re some kind of anti-establishment terrorists, supernaturals with an anti-human rights agenda.”
“That’s not true,” I told Calli. “You’ve got to believe me.”
Calli started to pull the soft, cottony leg of my pajamas up o
ver the wounds when Angelica nearly knocked her out of the way. “Don’t touch him. I’ll do that,” she sniffed loudly.
Calli thought it best to move a step sideways when she saw Angelica’s horns poke up a quarter of an inch. I gave her an apologetic smile, and even though I was taken aback by the succubus’s rude behavior, a part of my heart fluttered against my will.
Clearing her throat awkwardly, our hostess said, “If I thought you were guilty of something like that, I promise you that you never would have made it past my cardigans.”
That was the second time she had mentioned her clothing like they had minds of their own. “Can you all give us a second while we take care of this?” I asked, indicating the bandages and alien xenomorphs attached to my leg. I really needed to talk to Angelica, though.
Before leaving, Max surprised me by giving me a good, hard slap on the back. “You saved a lot of lives,” he said gruffly.
I nodded my head. I doubted that was going to show up on the news.
Once Max was out of the room, I took Angelica’s hand in mine as she was tending to my leg. She let out a hissing gasp and tried jerking her hand back. I didn’t let go. She struggled silently to pull away, but I forced my fingers between hers. They were small in my hand and delicate, elegant like a piano player’s. And hot. Feverishly so, almost painful to the touch, but I held on, letting the heat sink into my hands and burn me a little bit. I knew the half-succubus possessed enough strength to rip my fingers right out of their sockets if she wanted to hurt me, but I closed my free hand over hers and sat there quietly until she gave up and looked at me.
“I’ll just hurt you, Jack. Please don’t touch me like that.”
I shook my head. “It’s my turn to ask you why,” I said firmly. “And I’m not letting go until you sit down beside me.”
Angelica’s face grew red. I could tell she wanted to say something rude, but when she looked at me, her expression softened and she sat beside me. Even from a foot away, her body felt as hot as a space heater, which I welcomed because the air in the room was actually chilly.
“Why didn’t you save yourself?” I asked. “When I begged you to run. You had a chance to get away . . . several . . . but you stayed and risked your own life to protect mine.”
“I don’t know,” she said nervously. “I don’t know what’s happening to me.”
There were so many things rolling around inside my head that I wanted to discuss, but without planning my words, I said, “Something passed between us. I know you felt it too. I saw it in your eyes. I felt it, and I know it’s real. I think I understood some of what you go through, the kind of pain you’re damned to suffer.”
Angelica’s mouth clamped shut, and she tried to change the conversation. Her voice became waspish. “Do you like her? You do, don’t you?”
I almost laid a bit Sinatra on her: I only got eyes for you, babe . . . But my inner robot screamed at me that a flippant remark at a moment like this with a demon-lady was liable to end with a pitchfork shoved somewhere only proctologists and round worms dared travel.
Clearing my throat, I decided to be honest. “She was the first person I saw when I came to, and she was kind to me. By the standards of the place I come from, she’s a lovely person. I’m grateful for her kindness.”
Angelica looked like she wanted to puff up until her face popped. “I was a bitch to you in the SUV.” Her voice was self-recriminating.
I felt myself smile despite my better judgment. When she saw my expression, Angelica said, “I know you hate me for that.”
I laughed at that. I couldn’t help it. I had somehow managed to form an instantaneous bond with a minion of darkness that wanted to be anything but, and her reactions to me were so unexpected, so purely selfish, so beautifully genuine, that her rough charm touched me.
She must have misread me, because she said, “Fine! Good for you! I’ll only cause you pain, anyway!”
“But you’ve done nothing of the sort,” I told her.
“You’re attracted to me aren’t you!” she demanded. “That’s all anyone feels toward me. Lust. Lust so strong that they want to violate me to satisfy their pleasure!”
“And?” I asked, knowing there was more to it than that.
“And I will let you do it! I’ll hold you down and make you do it, make you scream in the kind of pleasure only the gods are supposed to feel, and you know what? I’ll feed off of your life while it happens! It’s what I am, Jack. I’m poison. A toxin. And—“
“You seem to think a lot of yourself.”
Angelica didn’t know what to say to that, so she continued on as if I hadn’t said anything. “And you were a fool to try sacrificing your life for a someone like me!”
Momentarily taken aback by the hurt and fear in her words, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she had my heart. I didn’t know what else I felt beyond that. Maybe it was complicated by all the craziness swirling around in her head. And mine. But I was supposed to be there with her. I knew that beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Does that sound crazy to you?
Well, if you ever come here, just step outside and take a look around. You’ll find crazier staring back at you on the front lawn.
“I feel none of those things, Angie,” I told her quietly. “Not a single one.” I ran my hands across the skin of her nearly scalding back, allowed them to trail across the soft ridges of her wings, which fluttered at my touch.
“You’ll burn yourself,” she said defensively, but I also caught within her words notes of regret.
I gently turned Angie’s face toward mine, for she was Angie to me now, not a demonically punned name like Angel-ica. “Her eyes leveled onto mine, and the silver orbs of her irises were flecked by myriad opalescent striations. Nothing evil could ever possess eyes that were like mini raptures. “All I know is that I am supposed to be here, now, with you.”
Angie lowered her head. “This isn’t supposed to be possible,” she murmured. Then she protested again, “I don’t even know how I feel about guys. I’ll hurt you Jack!”
“You think an awful lot of yourself,” I said again.
Gently, I drew Angie toward me. I kissed her. I didn’t care that her lips burned mine. I kissed her until I tasted her pointed tongue. Beyond the sulfurous bite in her mouth, I tasted something else, something soft and clean, and I sank into her thick lips so deeply I wanted to get lost there.
When we finally pulled ourselves apart, she whimpered softly. “I don’t know what to do.”
I held her tightly and said, “We’ll figure it out.”