~*~
Lucian felt like he’d been run over by a truck. More correctly, like he’d been sucked dry by a succubus. He opened his eyes and saw nothing but blackness. He couldn’t move, either, and panic set in, so he did the intelligent thing and screamed bloody murder.
He heard a crash and cursing. Then someone shined a bright white light in his eyes and intoned, “Go toward the light.”
Wait a damn minute. That voice was familiar. More importantly, it didn’t belong to a dead person. Well, not yet. Once he felt better, he planned to fix that little detail.
“Shut up, Andre,” Another, voice, female and sultry, said. “And turn off that light.” He was plunged in darkness again.
“Well, pooh!” the female huffed. Wait, Desi said that, too. “Let there be light. However, let it be ambient and flattering.” The lamp by his head his head flickered on. “That’s much better.”
He blinked to clear his eyes and stared at his guests. A tall woman with long, blonde hair and bright blue eyes smiled at the lamp as if it had preformed a trick. Seeing how it had somehow exchanged its plain 60-watt bulb for a dim, pinkish one when he wasn’t looking, he guessed it had.
She wore a dark green dress that plunged down in the front, exposing an awful lot of white skin. In fact, a blue jewel winked at him from her navel. With a sigh, she smoothed her skirts and held out her hand. “Come along, Lucian, you’ve got to straighten out this mess.”
Lucian sat up and the room immediately spun. He held his head and groaned. “What happened to me? I feel like shit.”
“Crybaby.” Andre smirked at him.
“Andre,” the woman said in a tone of warning.
“Who are you?” Lucian asked, ignoring the woman’s tapping foot.
When he didn’t move, she made an impatient noise. “If you’ll come along, you’ll find out.”
He stood up slowly and the dizziness hit him again, but after a second, it passed. “Okay, fine. But let me get a shirt.”
“No time!” She grabbed his hand and Andre’s and his room simply disappeared.
They reappeared inside the offices of Paranormal and Magical Security. Lucian’s stomach was now in his left foot and his heart was under his right knee. He swallowed thickly. No, it was behind his tonsils and the two of them were about to make an escape attempt.
“Who in the hell are you?” he gurgled at the woman who’d just tried to kill him.
“Aphrodite, darling, how nice of you to visit.” His boss, Dana Morelli, strode from her office with her teeth bared in the scariest excuse for a smile he’d ever seen in his entire life.
Aphrodite? The Aphrodite? No! It couldn’t be. He stared at the woman who’d just moved him through space without so much as batting a long, lush eyelash. She smiled serenely at the werewolf charging across the office at them, her fangs and teeth growing by the minute. Oh, shit, he was holding hands with the goddess of love. Lucian’s heart decided to retreat, and his tonsils tried to follow.
“Dana!” Aphrodite released him and Andre, gliding forward, her hands held out in front of her. “You look…” She paused. “Well, frankly, darling, you like you could use a trip to the salon. I can recommend someone if you’d like.”
“Fuck you,” Dana growled.
Aphrodite threw back her head, let loose a tinkling laugh and then shook her head sadly. “Ooh, sweetie, if I leaned in that direction, you’d be my first choice. But I am, as they say, strictly dickly. Besides, the moon is your mistress, right?”
Dana pulled at her hair and her eyes started to glow. She looked around the room for a likely target for her rage. Unfortunately her golden gaze landed on him. “Lucian!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
After a deep breath, her hair stopped growing, but her eyes stayed yellow. Not a good sign. “We have your attacker in a line up and would like you to identify her.”
He stiffened. “My what?”
“Your attacker.”
“I don’t have an attacker.”
She reached out and he couldn’t contain his flinch, but she just patted his shoulder. “It’s okay. We’re here for you.” With that, she led the way into a room that contained a two-sided mirror. On this side were three chairs and a table, and on the other side was Desi wearing only his shirt. The other occupant was a large, red-skinned demon with long, black horns.
“What the hell is going on?” This seemed to be Lucian’s song choice for the night.
“Hell is about right.”
“Tattletale,” Andre muttered, giving him a dark look.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” Lucian snarled at Andre.
Aphrodite pursed her lips and stared hard at the mirror. “He doesn’t know what he did, son of Pan, so be quiet.”
“Yes, Aunt Aphrodite.”
Lucian walked to the mirror and put his fingers on the glass, watching as the monster circled Desi like a shark. She just stared ahead, a hopeless expression in her eyes. He turned back to the others in the room. “What did I do?”
Dana leaned against the table with her arms folded. “You sent out a psychic alarm so loud that two of our lesser talented psis fainted at their desks. One of the stronger ones was able to stay conscious long enough to write a note.” She shrugged. “We went and got the demon out of your room and brought her here.”
“That monster was in my room?” He shivered. “How did it get there?”
Dana gave him a sad smile. “Lonely men will invite things like that into their rooms, you know.”
He turned and looked just in time to see the demon run his hand down Desi’s arm. Lucian banged his hand on the mirror and both of them jerked towards the sound. “Hey!”
The demon was at the glass instantly, moving so fast that Lucian was unable to track it. His eyes were black and soulless. They had to be the scariest thing in the entire world. Lucian rethought that when the demon opened his mouth and out came a voice horrible and beautiful at the same time. “Meat broke the rules, meat is mine.”
“Meat?” Lucian turned. “She’s not meat.” And she’s mine, he added silently.
Andre had moved to the glass. “Then why tell?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. At least, I don’t think so.” Lucian frowned as he rethought what had happened. “It was pretty intense at the end and I lost control, so maybe I sent out something.” He turned to Dana. “What did the note say?”
She pointed to a folder and he walked to the table. Inside was a copy of a scrawled note.
Oh, God. Stop! I don’t think I can hold on.
His mouth quirked and he bit his lip. “Who wrote this?”
“Sister Madeline.”
“The nun?”
“She’s one of our strongest psychics. Stronger than you. She said the feeling she got from you was of desperation and this needy, breathless sensation, like you wanted to escape but had to stay. She said it was wonderful and terrible at the same time. She thought you’d been drugged.”
“Why did you leave me in my room and just take Desi?”
“You looked so peaceful, and the team doctor said you were physically fine.” Dana paused, tapping her fingers together. “I know it’s hard for you to get a good night’s rest, so we just let you sleep.” With a small smile that let him know she was aware of the psi’s problems, she continued. “One of the tech wizards undid the cuffs. She fought until she figured out that you were all right.”
“I see.” He didn’t but it sounded good to him. “So, what’s up with Big Red?”
“He’s come to take her back to Hell.” This from Aphrodite, who paced back and forth in front of the mirror, with the demon making every step she did on the other side.
“Why?” Lucian asked.
“Because you’re a big baby.” Andre threw his hands in the air. “And to top it off, you squealed to the paranormal po po that she tried to kill you!”
“That’s not what this note says.” He pointed to the paper. “I was,” Lucian’s face heated, “having a moment.”
/>
Aphrodite grinned. “A moment?”
“Yeah, a nice moment.” He refused to elaborate.
Dana snorted and started for the door. “God save me from idiots.”
“That doesn’t get rid of the monster.”
“You said it was a nice moment.” Dana stopped in her tracks.
Lucian pointed. “I meant that big scary guy.”
“Oh.” She paused. “Well, since she’s a succubus, he was summoned automatically once we put her in the room. He’s like a cop.”
Aphrodite cleared her throat. “Desdemona Arnez is under my protection.”
“She’s a succubus. That’s not your jurisdiction,” Dana insisted with a snort.
The sex queen took a deep breath using up most of the oxygen in the room and gifted the werewolf with a bright smile. “She was given to me after a particularly wild party.”
Dana curled her lip. “Ew!”
“Yes, well, I was bored.” Aphrodite shrugged. “His parties are to die for because the bar is open.” She turned to stare at the mirror. “She was one of the servers. I couldn’t help but notice her. She was as beautiful then as she is now and as sad. So, after our little,” she smiled and wiggled her brows, “fun time, he offered me a gift. I asked for Desi. She’s been working for me at various jobs since. Turn Me On is the latest and one of our most lucrative joint ventures.”
Dana shook her head and laughed. “Only you’d ask the devil for a succubus as a parting gift.”
Aphrodite giggled and flicked her hair over her shoulder. “Only I’d get one.” The smile fell off her face and the goddess of love became something very different. “The point is that Desi is mine, and what’s mine, I protect.”
With that, Aphrodite simply walked through the mirror. Lucian refused to be left out, but he had to do it the hard way. He picked up one of the chairs and threw it at the glass with a satisfying, shattering crash. As he leapt over the sill and landed at the demon’s big, shiny black hooves, he remembered something. Unlike Aphrodite, he was all too mortal.
“Um, hi.” He wiggled his fingers at Big Red.
“Human, dare you to interfere?” The demon leaned down and picked him up like he weighed nothing.
Ah, crap, this was gonna hurt so bad. “Yeah, I guess.”
“No!” Desi leapt on the demon’s back, wrapping her arms around his neck. “Don’t you hurt him!”
The demon laughed before ramming Lucian into the wall. Where in the hell was the goddess? She needed to do some divine damage and she needed to do it quick.
“Kick his ass!” Andre yelled from the safety of the interrogation room. Lucian had a second to wonder if Andre was talking to him or the demon before he hurtled through the air and crashed into the wall. He slid to the floor in a heap of pain. Maybe if he just lay there, he’d be ignored.
Desi screeched, vetoing that idea, so he pushed himself up and staggered back towards the fight. The demon’s massive red fist came at him. He ducked. Demon boy’s knuckles grazed his temple and everything went gray and wavy. Dammit, he couldn’t beat this big freak with brawn, so he needed to use his brains.
Lucian concentrated, not an easy feat when there was a heavy metal concert going on in his frontal lobe. However, the spark of weird that had been with him for almost twenty years grew into a flame that burned cold. His lips stretched into a smile as the power flowed to the tips of his fingers.
The demon plucked Desi off his back and threw her toward the broken window. Shards of mirrored glass still edged the opening like so many teeth. Lucian pushed with his mind. The pulse of energy nudged her just enough so wasn’t impaled on the glass, instead flying over the edge to land safely on the other side.
However, while he was distracted, the demon was on him, his hands on his throat. His breath smelled of sulfur and rotted meat. His eyes now glowed red and sparks of yellow pulsed in them. “Since you’re wanting her so much, I’ll take you both back with me.”
Lucian kicked at him futilely. He only had a small reserve of power left. He narrowed it down to a small point, shaping it in his mind to a razor sharpness. Then, he grinned. “Yo, Big Red!” The demon leaned closer, baring his fangs and the inside of his black mouth.
At that moment, he shoved the mental spear into the roof of the demon’s mouth up into his brain, visualizing it going out the top of his head. With a roar, the demon released him, grabbing his head.
Lucian scrambled away on his hands and knees, choking at the mist of blood and sulfur that came out of the demon.
The room shook and thunder boomed all around him. He curled up into a ball in the corner, waiting for it to be over. After what seemed to be an eternity, it died down except for the applause.
Wait. Applause? He lifted his head and stared at Aphrodite slowly fading into sight.
“Well done, Lucian.”
He growled in frustration. “Where in the hell were you?”
She smiled and winked. “Good guess.”
Dana leaned over the sill of the broken mirror, taking in the smoke-filled room and the dead demon on the floor. “Who’s going to pay for all this?”
“Oh, pish. You’re such a spoilsport.” Aphrodite, from whom Desi had apparently learned to curse, snapped her fingers and everything was back the way it was. The mess, including the mirror and Desi, simply disappeared. Then the goddess turned to Lucian and handed him a card with her name and number on it. “You’ve been a wonderful hero so far. Call me when you’re alone.” With that, she vanished.
Lucian stood and brushed himself off and waited for Dana to let him out of the line up room. When she did, he limped out of the office, ignoring the stares of his coworkers.
By the time he reached the elevators, he was running. He hit the button and patted his jeans pockets. “Thank God!” He pulled his phone out and called the number on the card. “Hello, this is Lucian Ballantine from Paranormal…” With a long sigh he gave in. “Yeah, I’m with PMS. Look, what do I need to do?” He listened then leaned against the wall and sighed.