Demon Lovers: Succubi Read online

  DEMON LOVERS:

  SUCCUBI

  Edited by

  Deborah Teramis Christian

  http://www.demonlovers.info

  © 2012 by Storybones Publishing

  and Deborah Teramis Christian

  P.O. Box 290452, Nashville, TN 37229

  Cover art © 2012 by Storybones Publishing

  Cover art and design by Ravven:

  http://ravven78.deviantart.com

  Ebook formatting:

  http://www.WonderlandPress.com

  Book website:

  http://www.demonlovers.info

  Publisher’s website:

  http://www.storybones.net

  ISBN-10: 0615594700

  ISBN-13: 978-0-615-59470-5

  The Publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the original works as follows:

  One Drop © 2011 Laura Antoniou

  First published in The Catalyst and Other Works. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Calling Syn © 2011 Lilly Cain

  Elise’s Gift © 2011 Deborah Teramis Christian

  Hunger Pains © 2011 Diana Pharaoh Francis

  A Different Approach © 2011 Jason Christopher Hosler

  Blood for Bone © 2011 Talitha Kalago

  Succubus Chances © 2011 C.H. Keyes

  Mother Vinegar © 2011 DeAnna Knippling

  Homecoming © 2011 Shariann Lewitt (“Nina Harper”)

  We’ll Always Have 9 A.M. © 2011 Maitha Moon

  In the Manner of His Choosing © 2011 Jennifer Pelland

  Twelve Steps of the Succubus © 2011 Lawrence Scott, retitled here as “Recovery.”

  Lily in Bloom © 2011 Lori Selke

  ~ ~ ~

  Welcome to the World of the Succubus

  She visits your dreams, or she visits your bed. She is sex incarnate: hot, irresistible, and oh so willing. Willing to seduce you, or to destroy you—whatever feeds her needs of the moment.

  Join us in this collection of tales about succubi and their encounters with human lovers. Thirteen authors share their vision of the succubus, the legendary creature who feeds on sexual vitality and energy from her victims. Must an encounter with a succubus always be deadly? No—but it is always memorable, for the person she takes into her embrace has something she wants and cannot live without.

  Read on and be embraced.

  ~ ~ ~

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD—Deborah Teramis Christian

  HOMECOMING—Nina Harper

  LILY IN BLOOM—Lori Selke

  BLOOD FOR BONE—Talitha Kalago

  MOTHER VINEGAR—DeAnna Knippling

  IN THE MANNER OF HIS CHOOSING—Jennifer Pelland

  WE’LL ALWAYS HAVE 9 A.M.—Maitha Moon

  HUNGER PAINS—Diana Pharaoh Francis

  RECOVERY—Lawrence Scott

  A DIFFERENT APPROACH—Jason Christopher Hosler

  SUCCUBUS CHANCES—C.H. Keyes

  CALLING SYN—Lilly Cain

  ONE DROP—Laura Antoniou

  ELISE’S GIFT—Deborah Teramis Christian

  AFTERWORDS

  Authors: How the Sausage Was Made

  An Offer For Our Readers

  Next in Our Demon Lovers Series

  Gratitude

  ~ ~ ~

  FOREWORD

  The succubus is a seductive creature of lust, living on the sexual energy of her victims. In many interpretations she drains not only sexual vitality but pure life force as well. By some accounts succubi are demons, by others simply “spirits”, but by all measures they are sex incarnate. They are irresistible, often deadly, and almost impossible for their human victims to evade.

  Why don’t we read more about succubi in contemporary genre fiction? These darkly tantalizing preternatural beings cry out to have stories told about them, yet they are persistently absent from most contemporary storytelling. This seems like a glaring oversight to me. Beautiful, sexy, supernatural and deadly: there’s a lot of rich territory there to be explored. So, explore it we did. I invited a mix of established authors and newcomers to give me stories that were challenging or provocative in some way. This collection of a baker’s dozen of succubus tales is the result.

  These stories include themes ranging from redemption to sacrifice, from vengeance to support (and support groups), from addiction and death to true love and personal empowerment. Each of these tales will take you on a trip to someplace different. Each succubus you meet will show you a facet of her unique existence.

  And of course, what would a book about succubi be without passion? This is not a collection of erotica, but all stories touch upon sexuality in some manner, because, well, that’s rather in the nature of a succubus, now isn’t it? Many of these stories contain explicit sexual situations or adult language. With the exception of one story containing kinky sex, the explicit tales are not flagged in their introductions in any way, so please consider this a blanket heads up about what you might encounter in these pages.

  Beyond the physicality, though, I hope this collection will introduce you to succubi who entertain, who challenge, and who provoke you in all the right ways.

  Better they do that in this book, than in your bed at night.

  —Teramis

  http://www.demonlovers.info

  ~ ~ ~

  DEMON LOVERS:

  SUCCUBI

  ~ ~ ~

  Homecoming—Nina Harper

  It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

  It was high school.

  Once-in-a-lifetime things happen there, both good and bad, and some of them mark us forever. But what happens when your lifetime is over, and you’re still not done with your old stomping grounds—or the boy who broke your heart?

  Sheriann Lewitt, writing as Nina Harper, explores a succubus’ compulsion to return to the place—and the person—she’d spent some memorable hours with. Only this time, Jez has something to prove, and it will make or break her career as a succubus.

  This story is part of the world Nina Harper created in her Succubus in the City series from Random House. It gives an unexpected glimpse into the earliest orientation succubi have to their earthly existence.

  It also brings a whole new meaning to the word “homecoming.”

  Homecoming

  If she knew where I was right now, Debbie would shit a cow, and not in a good way.

  “Now, girls, remember, this is your very first time solo,” she said when she reviewed Technique and Approach and Wardrobe. “So just concentrate on the delivery. Don’t go after any particular subject or group. You don’t need to leave the City, either. Plenty of prey right here on the Upper East Side. Remember, this is a learning experience.”

  Yeah. Right. A learning experience? For them, to see if we’re good enough to pass on to the next level and maybe become full fledged, if apprentice, succubae. If not, back to the grind trying out other (lower ranking) demon assignments until you find something they think you can really do.

  Either way, at least I’ll be away from Debbie. Debbie is perky, and blonde, and wears pink. I never could figure out how she got to be a succubus and a teacher for sex demon wannabes. We’re all snarky and sultry and she’s a freaking Home Shopping Network hostess from Hell. Quite literally from Hell.

  “Above all, girls, and I know this is hard, but do not go after your old boyfriends. Do not go after some guy who dumped you, or someone you wanted and who wasn’t interested in you when you were alive.” Perky Debbi
e sounded almost sad as she said the last bit. “Every class we have one candidate who seems to think that this operation is about her own personal revenge. It is not about you! This is your job, your calling if you will. This is how you serve Satan.”

  We all looked at her in her pink twin set and pearls and nodded earnestly. “And girls, every class someone flunks. Usually it’s the girl who goes after her ex. Or the guy who never looked twice at her when she was mortal. You’re all such fine candidates I would hate it, I can’t tell you how much, if one of you flunked for a stupid reason.”

  No way I’m going to flunk, but just in case…just…I vowed on my death that I would take him down. Now, tonight, is my best shot. If I pass and make full Succubus (Apprentice, Grade 3) I could be assigned to a Mentor anywhere in the world, and tonight Jason is going to be just across the river in New Jersey. I can’t risk having him slip through my fingers while I go off like a good little schoolgirl (Debbie always treats us like we’re in third grade) and then get shipped out to Hong Kong (“ooooh, great shopping, girls,” Debbie said) or Buenos Aries (“ooooh, great dancing, girls,” Debbie said).

  And the truth is, I don’t have a clue where Jason is most of the time. He had to have graduated and gone off to college somewhere, and I don’t have any idea how I’d find him (there are demons who specialize in that and courses in how to track down specific mortals, but I don’t have the time or the equity to pass around. I need to start earning and pay my way in Hell, or I’m toast.) But tonight, tonight he’ll be back at our old high school to watch Reggie Ridgewood burn in effigy. He went to the damn bonfire and he never missed it, and I didn’t think he was going to miss now. I think he made the damn straw man for the past three years, though the letter jacket of our rival school always came as a mystery. Whatever. It was Sacred Tradition and I’ll bet Ridgewood High was burning a straw man too, with one of our crimson and gray letter jackets. Bonfire night back in the old state.

  “It’s our school and our town, and I like it when you, when people come to cheer me on,” he said last year when we were both seniors. I think he lied when he insisted that he only ran cross country for the athletics that would get him into a top ranked college. I bet he even was wearing his letter jacket tonight for the bonfire. Bet he planned to wear it to the game too…I smiled at the thought that he wasn’t going to get to watch our old high school trounce our traditional rivals at the Homecoming game.

  Come to think about it, our school colors were pretty okay. I like red; at least the really dark deep red and gray is kind of like light black. It all works. Not that I, alive or dead, owned anything that wasn’t black, but that was me. Even when Debbie gushed over Wardrobe (“Sweetie, black is such a cliché for us. How about this lovely peach dress? Or the floral top would be so cute on you.”) I went for the black.

  So I’m on the bus wearing a “cute” (Debbie’s word) biker jacket and black skinny jeans. I haven’t been back to New Jersey since I was buried and no one from Debbie’s class knows that I’m from here, or that I’ve ever even set foot in this state before now. I’ll probably keep it that way. Who I am, where I’m from, is no one’s business. I’m a demon now in the service of Hell, which has got to be better than a bedroom community in the ‘burbs. I closed my eyes and listened to My Chemical Romance on my iPod and tried not to think about what I was going to do.

  Then my phone vibrated and I opened my eyes. Now the street was familiar (too familiar) and I hunched forward. We passed the bank, the drug store, the supermarket in the little shopping strip with the adorable clock tower that passed as the center of town. I stayed on the bus while we bumped over the train tracks to the side where the bus came to a halt. I heaved my messenger bag over my shoulder and got off in the center of my old home town.

  It was full dark and the bonfire would begin soon, but it was November and dark came early. Brown and yellow leaves skittered across the pavement, and I could smell the fries at the McDonald’s where I’d hung out in my unlamented late mortality. I couldn’t go into the McDonald’s or the deli. The bakery where I used to buy black and white cookies and fresh bread for my mother was a Starbuck’s now. I peered cautiously through the plate glass, relieved to find only strangers. I went in and ordered a venti white chocolate Frappuccino because it had the most calories on the menu.

  “If you make it, girls, if you pass the final and qualify,” Debbie said last week in that breathless little voice she got when she was really excited, “you’ll have a perfect body and will always be beautiful. If you’re not considered absolutely ravishing right now, and to have made it into this class you either are or are very, very close, you will get a final makeover when you get your credentials. And this will be courtesy of the program until you start earning for yourself. We’ll fund your first full face and body makeover as program requirement. You’ll never have to diet. In fact, you should always make a point of eating the yummiest, most fattening food you can. After all, you always want to set the very worst example for the mortals that you can under any circumstances.”

  Shanika had raised her gloriously manicured hand. Even after six months in class together I couldn’t get over her nails. That day they were metallic glitter green with a tiny rhinestone skull and crossbones on the first finger of her left hand. “But isn’t that the job of the gluttony demons?” she asked. She couldn’t keep the edge of contempt from her voice. Gluttony counted as a Deadly Sin, but only because it was grandfathered in. Gluttony demons got no respect. I mean, really, compared to a succubus? Cheetos?

  Debbie had sighed and shook her head slightly. Her bouncy blond curls quivered all the way down to her waist as if they had been alive. “Be careful, girls. Those demons are catching up. With the obesity crisis going worldwide, Satan holds them in high regard. They’ve supersized the whole first world. We could look to their example, taking a sin that no one thought was worth much and earning respect at the highest levels.”

  Shanika still made a little face. She certainly wasn’t going to let anyone take her for a gluttony demon—though with her long legs and huge dark eyes no one would ever make that mistake. Shanika wasn’t going to need that first makeover, though the Vanity crew were lobbying hard to win her over from Sex and Shanika was seriously thinking about it.

  My drink, which qualified for Debbie’s super calorific yummy, warmed me as I stepped back into the chilly day after Thanksgiving night. Which was another reason I was sure Jason had to be here. He would have come for the holiday. I wouldn’t have but hey, I had killed myself (thus immediately volunteering for the ranks of Hell) to get away from my mother and my dead-end future. Jason was popular and played at the edges of being a freak. His parents didn’t give him a hard time about the fuschia hair and they paid for his first ink on his eighteenth birthday. He’d bragged about that, showed off the beautifully rendered snake swallowing its own tail at lunch.

  “It’s an ouroboros,” he said. “It means—”

  “Infinity,” I said.

  He gave me a kind of sad look, as if I had somehow gotten it wrong. For a moment I wondered if maybe I had gotten it wrong, if I had managed to screw up again.

  “Yeah, Jess, infinity,” he agreed, and then turned back to his vegetarian chili.

  Jess. I hated that name. There were twenty million Jessicas in school. I’d gone by Jez since tenth grade, short for Jezabel. When I made Succubus (Apprentice, Grade 3) I was going to take Jezabel for my demon name. (Why in Hell had Debbie chosen Debbie? Though come to think of it, a demon named Debbie was pretty scary, especially when she drew a little heart to dot the i in her name with her violet glitter gel pen.)

  And now I was back in this stinking town where people called me Jess and anyone on the street might recognize me. Only they wouldn’t. I hoped. Jessica Irene Andersson was dead and buried. I’d made damn sure of that.

  Still, I hadn’t changed my appearance much. I’d kept dying my hair black (maybe I should have let it go blond?) and, being dead, my pasty white pallor didn’t ne
ed touching up with Manic Panic White Liquid Makeup, which had distressed Debbie no end. “Jez, dear, a little bit of color in your cheeks and maybe some highlights in the hair? Just a bit? You’ll attract more prey that way.”

  Maybe Debbie had been right. I hated to think that, hated to admit that the perky Carrie Underwood lookalike knew what she was talking about. So I did what I always did when I thought that I’d screwed up and whoever had told me to do different had been right. I refused to budge and decided, deep in my heart, that I was going to win my way. I was going to follow it down and that somehow I was going to make it work and throw it in their faces. I’d done it in school and it had felt so good. When gym teacher, the cheerleader, even the vice principle who’d called me to his office for cutting class (which I had done all the time but, too bad for him, not the time he’d called me in to discuss) had had to eat their words were probably the best times of my entire high school career.

  I hated high school. I hated the pep rallies (required) and the cheerleaders who were named Sports Queen. I hated the whole idea of “school spirit” (what is that anyway and why do I care?) There was nothing I would like better than to see the high school humiliated, that brag window full of trophies shattered.

  Even the guidance counselor thought I wasn’t all that bright. When I made third board on the chess team everyone thought it was a fluke; when I’d gotten three fives on AP exams they thought I cheated.

  Just like Jason and the ouroboros. He thought I was just another of the black-clad girl-artist wannabes. Not. I was way better than he was in the calculus class we’d shared, though I kept that quiet.

  And he was going to pay, oh yeah, he was going to pay in the worst way. Because I still couldn’t forget about him, even being dead and all. Jason Fucking Laporte, all sensitive dark eyes with the blackest lashes I’d ever seen (had he used mascara?), who made sure that everyone knew he was a vegetarian (or was it vegan?) and wrote Poetry (that got published in the Crimson Cryer, the school newspaper) and who dated me casually when I stopped eating meat for two months and joined the Drama Club. He was so freaking emo he was a cliché of himself, and I even knew that, but I couldn’t help it. I was a little obsessed with him. Okay, maybe more than a little.