Demon Lovers: Succubi Read online

  At least I’m not doing him at a property on my show list this time. Then, that little voice inside that sounded a bit too much like her “perfect” mother corrected her. No, now you’ve stooped even lower, it accused her angrily. You’re in an abandoned building that’s probably condemned, hiding out with hookers and smack users blowing a lowlife as many times as he has bags of ecstasy to give you. She tried consoling herself with the thought of the money she would make off the X. She knew a lot of people who would buy it without hesitation, most of them teens and twenty-somethings from the university clubs and underground raves she frequented. To them, she was Madam X.

  Then she heard a familiar bellow. Oh, God, no! Please God, no, no, no, no. She pulled away from Derek as he exploded, covering her face. But all she could see was the familiar figure holding back the curtain. Marlin. Please God, let it be someone else. He was shaking. She wasn’t sure if it was anger or grief. Or both. Probably both.

  All at once the full horror of what she had become crashed in on her. She really was a hooker working for a few cases of expensive liquor and enough meth to get up in the morning and make it in to work. And now her husband knew. He had proof instead of suspicions. God, I’ll lose my kids, too.

  “Marlin, no, this isn’t what you think it is,” she begged, unable to think of anything else to say to him. She put on her “Get an extra $100k for the house” smile, getting off the floor quickly. Derek started to sputter, but she cut him off with a hand gesture.

  “Really, Anna, then what is it? Mucilage? Elmer’s Glue? Oh, let me guess, you were helping this scumbag glue his zipper back together,” Marlin spat back at her. “Next time someone catches you with a prick in your mouth, you might want to wipe your john’s cum off your face first before trying to make excuses. A vice detective might believe you then.”

  “I’m not a john,” Derek responded, still failing to notice the dark red hard-on sticking out of his pants, dripping on the floor.

  Marlin rounded on him, “Oh, really? And what do you call that bag on the floor you planned to pay my wife with for tonight’s festivities?”

  Derek looked down at the bag blankly and licked his lips, his eyes darting around, then riveting on the glistening detective’s shield hanging around the man’s neck.

  Anna thought about begging and pleading, but for the first time it seemed completely hollow. Even her smile felt painted on. Normally, she could do it so convincingly. The anger started next—The Bitch, as she called it, the part of her that sat in judgment of the entire world and found every last fucking one of them guilty of being only slightly above sewer rats in the scheme of things. The Bitch could browbeat the devil back into Hell, she thought with more than a little pride.

  Except this time, she was in quicksand of her own making. Marlin was a cop, a homicide fucking detective. He’s my husband. A faint wail slipped through her lips. Her usual remonstrations failed her as she looked at his eyes. Her heart felt as though it was trying to burst from her chest.

  “Don’t bother coming home. I’ll not have this crap around the girls. You were a bad enough example before I found out about…this,” he croaked, barely able to talk. She knew he couldn’t bring himself to say the word both of them were thinking: whore. “I’m leaving now. I should bust you for possession and prostitution and this shithead for possession for resale and solicitation, but I can’t put our girls through that. But I better never find either of you here again.” His voice squeaked as it broke again. She could hear him hyperventilating and it ripped a chasm into her chest.

  She started to move toward him, furiously wiping her face off with her shirt.

  Marlin stepped back, his tone turning to ashes. “Don’t fucking touch me. Don’t you even try. Nothing you can say will ever make this right.” He turned, bitterly uttering words that carved themselves on her heart. “I’ll ship your worthless sister whatever I think you deserve to have. The locks will be changed by the time you get home.”

  He started to turn away. Abruptly, he spun to face her and rasped, “For the love of God, I hope you stop this before I get a call from a friend in my division to ID your body.” With that, he stalked back down the hall.

  She dropped back to her knees, her body wracked with sobs.

  Behind her Derek started jacking off. “You coming back?” She heard him ask through the roaring in her ears.

  She sobbed even harder.

  All around the room, broken glass glittered.

  * * *

  The succubus watched Derek with a measure of satisfaction. He was working out quite well, destroying lives almost as effectively as she did. Veiled, none of them could see her. To Derek, she was Claire, a sometime sex-addict college coed with boobs like watermelons and legs that went on forever, a hole who dropped more ecstasy than he did and had sex with him for days. At least, that’s what he always remembered in the morning. Derek always believed Claire was much more addicted to sex than he was. The fool never realized he was a cultivated source of lust to help feed her power.

  And yet, she shuddered involuntarily at the thought of him touching her. Even calling Anna back the way he did should have made her feel a measure of triumph. Instead, she shuddered again.

  For her kind, despair was even more succulent than desire. It ate away at the life of the person, not just their personality. She made a note to herself to visit Derek soon to make certain he was keeping with the program. Together, they could corrupt thousands of college students, turning their future potential into “currency” in Hell. Today, she would collect Anna’s future. With a little luck, she could push Marlin enough to condemn the entire family.

  Or at least, it should have felt succulent. Instead, it all abruptly felt hollow. There was a subtle hunger growing inside her that nothing so insubstantial could ever satiate. Dawning realization came to her that she had felt this way for a very long time.

  Not for the first time today, she asked herself, What is wrong with me?

  A Moment of Clarity

  A few hours later, the succubus was walking through the local college campus, headed for the final rendezvous of the night, when an unsettling feeling came over her. Unable to pin it down, she tried to shrug it off. She shimmered into the form of Jean’s lover, Claire.

  Not for the first time in their eighteen-month-long tumultuous relationship, it bothered Claire that she acquiesced to Jean in a lot of areas. And sometimes, the acquiescence was wonderful, too. A gentle urgency passed through her body as the memory of the previous night came back to her: the scent of Jean’s skin, the shyness of their early kisses, the intense heat of the passionate ones that followed.

  She stopped short, vainly trying to contain the swell of emotion within.

  Where’s this coming from? she asked herself angrily as she started walking again. She unconsciously clasped herself in a self-hug and her pace quickened as though running from someone or something. Was it our talk earlier? She didn’t think so. Whatever was going on inside her had started well before that talk.

  Suddenly, she found herself on the circular brick step inside the alcove enclosing her lover’s front entrance. Involuntarily, she took a long, slow breath and checked herself in the reflection of the windows in the mahogany door. An unfamiliar tightness came over her chest as she stood there. She held her fist up to knock on the door—and hesitated, first one second, then two. Unconsciously, she allowed her arm to drop back at her side.

  Upset with herself, she grumbled, What is your problem? This is just another client.

  Her eyes filled for a moment, remembering last night in Jean’s bedroom and the warmth of their embrace as they slept. Claire felt a familiar ache, a longing she could not place.

  As though Jean could feel her standing outside, her lover opened the front door, a broad smile welcoming Claire back into her home, her eyes glistening with tears. “I was terrified you wouldn’t come back. Every sound had me at the front door or looking out the front windows.”

  Claire felt the fami
liar glow again as she walked into the house and into her lover’s waiting arms. Stop it! Tonight, you’re supposed to reject her and destroy her.

  Please. Just stop.

  And yet, as the moment filled her with such fervor, a flash of another, suntanned pair of arms draped in a light animal skin crossed her mind: an equally voluptuous lover who millennia ago had welcomed her in similar fashion. Claire stiffened, caught in the grip of the memory. Grief, pain, and—most of all—loss tore at her. For a moment she could feel the clay clinging to her hands after she buried Arianna, screaming sobs as she cried a river into the grave. “Ari,” she whispered, barely able to breathe.

  Jean’s hand resting over her heart brought her back. She drew Claire close. I don’t have to breathe, she thought desperately, drowning nonetheless.

  I’m supposed to reject you tonight. She sobbed again.

  Wordlessly, Jean led her into the living room above the landing and onto one of her restored antique divans. Jean’s closeness felt like a warm blanket as her lover held her. Over the roaring in her head, she heard her partner murmur, “Sweetheart, my darling, it’s going to be okay.”

  Claire shook as sobs welled within her. Long-buried images of her first lover flooded back into her mind. Her body ached for Ari. She remembered her incredible beauty, a work of art created by Sophia, the Spirit, and Logos, both of whom created Claire. Choosing to love humans had destroyed her, like it had so many of her brothers and sisters.

  No; longing for the ones who died in Logos’s beautiful gardens destroyed us. Anger and loss and, yes, despair at the hopeless prospect of finding love again.

  She could feel the blood of her victims, each as precious as her first lovers, staining her hands, bringing an urgency to wash and wash and wash, knowing nothing would ever get the stain out. Before she realized what she was doing, she was babbling about it.

  Oh no, not now. Jean will never accept this. She’ll think I’m crazy.

  Around her, Jean’s hug tightened again. One of her hands slipped up to stroke the side of Claire’s face lightly, tracing the line of her jaw. The embrace never faltered as the entire room was engulfed in the blinding light of the fallen angel’s true form.

  Another memory, far, far older, awoke unbidden, one from the depths of eons: Logos’s similar caress as she first awoke in a growing jewel that was a wondrous fledgling universe filled with glorious exploding nuclear furnaces making elements. She was to be a part of that creation, a caretaker for the Ancient of Days, as Logos would later be called. In that moment, He was her Prince of Peace, her True Love. She could remember His touch as He first stroked her face, then left her pulsar-sized forehead tingling with a longing kiss.

  She moaned and wept again, her eyes opening to the lovely mahogany paneling and her lover kissing her forehead and stroking her face, Jean’s piercing blue eyes penetrating hers.

  Claire choked with a sob, unable to speak the words that wanted desperately to pass her lips. She turned away, trying to shrug the touch away while the hunger for it filled her entire being. It was as though she had been wandering a desert for one hundred thousand years since her first human lover died and never found an oasis.

  Jean’s whisper caressed her ear. “Tell me. Stop carrying this burden by yourself.”

  The dam burst. All of the blood of millions on her hands and the hands of the humans she seduced poured from her lips, a Niagara avalanche of pain and regret.

  * * *

  After what had to have been hours, Claire came back to herself in her lover’s arms. Jean smiled and whispered, “That was a very big step, sharing all of that with me.”

  Claire blinked, “You believe me?”

  “It’s not my place to judge. Besides, the light show was convincing.”

  Both women laughed abruptly, Claire a bit sheepishly.

  “I’m glad you choose me. It makes me feel that much closer to you,” Jean murmured, rubbing the center of Claire’s chest, “but sitting in judgment is not for the likes of you and me.”

  Moisture spilled from Claire’s eyes as she pulled her partner tenderly against her breast, kissing her hair where the drops fell. “I’m so sorry, my love. I was supposed to destroy you, first by compromising you among the faculty, then with lust and sex. Finally, with rejection.”

  “Somehow, that doesn’t surprise me. Transference is common among addicts,” Jean murmured.

  “Yeah, that was part of the plan. Why did you get involved with me if you suspected me?”

  “Well, after the infatuation wore off, I realized that I felt a connection with you. I still can’t explain it. Your obsession with me left me wondering if you might be a sex addict. But if you discovered the hunger for intimacy driving your addiction, we had a chance. Intimacy and love break sex addiction, eventually. They truly are the only cure.”

  “You could really love me after what you know about me?”

  Jean smiled. “Of course I love you. But you really need to deal with the guilt and grief over your long-dead lovers and victims. Even if you were human, at the age you appear to be, you would outlive me by at least a couple of decades. That doesn’t mean you should run from the love we can share, though. A Jesuit I used to hang out with at my former university once told me that marriage is a sacrament that two people share. Each day, their love gives salvation to each other. After AA, I believe him.”

  “But now you know what I am.”

  “Yes, I do: a very hurt, grieving Daughter of God who took her pain out on other humans.”

  Claire nodded.

  “Telling me the truth is a good first step toward making amends with me. But I can’t be your only victim, not after all the people you showed me. You can’t do much about the dead, nor help the ones who don’t want to be helped, like Derek. He is part of your old life and associating with him will only lead you back into the hateful way you were living before we met.”

  Claire gasped and sat straight up as she remembered Anna. Her victim was all alone with Derek and her misery in a building with hundreds upon hundreds of shards of broken glass. She had set the trap for the meth addict, expecting her to kill herself. That horrible feeling of hellish currency almost ready to pop came over her again as her awareness centered on Anna’s growing despair.

  Jean looked in her eyes and said, “Remember, it can be dangerous to confront one of your victims this early in recovery, But if you can do something to make amends without harming that person more than you already have, then, do it. I will be here when you get back.”

  “I may need to bring someone back with me. Is that OK?”

  “You helped put her in dire straits, I take it?”

  Claire nodded. “I have to stop her now. I will be back, I promise.”

  “Make no promises you cannot keep, my darling.”

  Claire nodded again, then, blinked in surprise as her body erupted once more in a blinding light. She had not intended to appear as a being of light. She certainly had not felt like one in nearly one hundred fifty thousand years. Why now?

  Shielding her eyes, Jean said, “I love you, Claire.” The light around Claire grew even brighter.

  She looked up at her love, eyes tearing. “I know. I love you too, Jean.” The house shook as she vanished.

  Amends

  Anna stood up in front of the crowd as they clapped, tears streaking down her face. She held up a token to the nodding approval of many there.

  “My name is Anna and this is my six month token.” She paused as people sitting in the audience applauded. “Six months ago, in an abandoned tenement, I hit bottom when my husband found me prostituting myself for bags of ecstasy to pay for my drugs of choice: alcohol and meth. In that moment, I squandered my family and everything I truly cared about. I saw my choices tear out the heart of my husband as surely as if I’d used a knife. I still have no idea why he put up with it as long as he did, or why he didn’t arrest me that night. As a homicide detective, he should have.

  “After he stormed out, I sat th
ere, thinking about what I had done to him, what I had done to my beautiful children. Sunset took what little light there was. I think I sat there for hours sobbing, wallowing in self-pity over the mess I had made. At some point, I don’t recall when, exactly, I noticed broken glass on the floor under the boarded-up windows. Big pieces of glass. I picked up a pretty big one and I think I held it in my hands for over an hour, staring at it, imagining it ripping the veins open in both arms.” She paused, her smile brave and pained, and opened her hands. “Here are the scars to prove it.”

  Heads nodded at her. A couple of people looked down at their own hands or wrists.

  “I think it was nearing dawn when I placed it against my left wrist. I braced myself for the pain, when the most incredible thing happened. I felt a hand.” Her voice broke on the word. “I looked around, and a woman was there touching my shoulder. She reached out and took the piece of glass, telling me I wasn’t going to need it any more.”

  She paused, her voice failing her again. For a moment, her shoulders shook as she wept. A few people took off their glasses, wiping their eyes. “It seemed like the whole place filled with a blinding light at that moment. I thought it was the light of dawn, until I saw it was coming from the woman standing before me. In her eyes, I saw my living horror, but also knew in that instant that I didn’t have to stay that way. I can’t explain it. I wish I could. She must have talked to me until dawn broke through the boarded up window behind me. She just stood there listening as I babbled on and on about my beautiful babies, and how they didn’t deserve what I put them through. I couldn’t stop talking about all of it—the drug deals, the kids in the raves I sold the drugs to. All of it.” Many people were nodding now.

  “When I finally ran out of horrible things to tell her, she reached out her hand, and lifted me onto my feet and told me to come with her to meet a friend of hers. We didn’t walk very far, but she brought me to a door. On the mailbox was the name Jeanette Sophia Halloway.” She pointed into the crowd at Jean, who smiled through her own tears. “My sponsor.”