Incubus Awakened by Kitty Thomas

22

Something was different about Luc in this dream. It took a minute for Anna to notice the hunger was missing. In earlier dreams, it had blended so well into the background, she’d never paid it much attention. Now it was obvious by its absence.

He was human.

He crouched behind a cluster of bushes at the mouth of a dark forest. Rage and desperation curled inside him, waiting for the opportunity to be unleashed.

A carriage was on its way around a corner. The horses slowed, sensing danger, and Luc attacked. He held a knife in his hand as he ripped the carriage door off its hinges and peered inside. Two women, one older, one younger sat together, wedged against the back corner.

Pretty, he thought. He hadn’t decided on a plan, but he could practically smell the wealth coming off these women, and it made him angry. How easy and pampered their lives were. The least he intended to do was relieve them of some of their money.

“Please, don’t hurt us. We have money. Just take it and go,” the younger one said, holding out a bundle of fabric that must contain coins.

Luc leaned into the carriage and brushed a hand against the young one’s cheek. “I wager you wish you’d stayed home today, eh?”

The woman flinched, and he laughed. “Just take the money . . . please.”

Anna wanted to shut her eyes. He was hungry and cold and tired and enjoying scaring someone of better means than himself. She wondered how far he’d take it before he stopped, and if she could ever forgive him for whatever he did.

Moments later, he flew backward and landed on his ass. The driver of the carriage was the last thing he saw as strong hands gripped his head and twisted.

The scene shifted, and Luc was in an ornate room made almost entirely of gold. A short, balding man in a nondescript cream-colored robe stood behind a gilded podium reading from a scroll.

All at once, Anna was ambushed by Luc’s past memories. She struggled to hold herself together as image after image assaulted her, memories from other lives merging into one, blending and overlapping. Stealing. Murder. Betrayal. Over and over the patterns replayed showing her the kind of man Luc had been with alarming consistency.

A male voice rose suddenly above the din, as if he were repeating himself.

“Do you understand the charges against you, Lucien?”

She was torn between sympathy for Luc and anger at what he’d been. Had he really had a chance with the lives he’d lived? And yet all sorts of people were faced with all kinds of life challenges and didn’t become monsters.

“Lucien!” the man shouted.

“Yes?” Luc was jolted from the memory dump as he looked up at the little man. Though his stature wasn’t the least bit intimidating, the man seemed to hold the power of existence itself in his hands.

“Do you understand the charges?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t about to show this man fear.

“You’ve been given multiple chances to change your path, and yet you refuse. You are weak and inhuman. You feel no remorse for your crimes. You’ve behaved as an animal. From here on you will exist as one.”

It wasn’t true. Luc did have remorse. Anna could feel it. It was small, but it was there. Surely there was something in him worth saving. But he didn’t speak to defend himself, and the self-important balding man seemed ill-prepared to listen to an alternate perspective.

“You’ll spend the remainder of eternity back in Hell and whatever other dimensions you can manage to slither through. You’ll have no further chances to get it right.”

Then there was a flash of light, and he was on the ground in a town he didn’t recognize, surrounded by people and noise.

The hunger gnawed at him, making his senses narrow to the desperate need to touch someone, to connect, to feed. He saw a beautiful woman and moved toward her. She screamed and ran when she saw him. He chased, tackling her to the ground. But he couldn’t feed this way.

Realization dawned immediately, as if new instincts had been transplanted into his brain to match his new form. They had to want him or he couldn’t satisfy the hunger.

He looked down. His skin was a brownish red and scaled, like the monsters people in small villages often spoke about. Where fingernails once grew, he had long, black talons. He could only imagine what the rest of him must look like.

For once he didn’t care about image or if he appeared weak to someone. He was so tired of everything. Life, the never-ending struggle only to have more shit. He fell to the ground and sobbed, allowing the girl to run away in a hysterical fit.

“And they call us animals.”

Anna recognized the voice right away. Cain. Luc looked up. For a moment she thought the demon had found her in the dream and was using the thrall. She was noticing how indescribably beautiful he was. Then she realized the feelings weren’t sexual. They were Luc’s thoughts when he’d seen the other incubus for the first time.

“I’m Cain,” he said, extending a hand. “I’m what you are.”

Luc looked at his claws and then at Cain, his brow knitting in confusion at their disparate appearance. He wondered if the man was only teasing him.

“We’re shapeshifters,” Cain said. “I’ll teach you to find the form that will be most pleasing to help you catch prey, and I’ll teach you how to hunt and feed. You’re a demon now. You’ll learn very soon how freeing it is to live without consequences. The old man at the gate did you a favor . . .

* * *

Anna hatedthe idea of witches, probably because it was a witch that had created the Luc problem in the first place. She had a hard time understanding how not one witch, but several, were going to fix anything. But seeing Tam in action the previous night had left her no alternative.

“You look like hell,” Tam said.

Four strange women were seated around the kitchen table. The harem was in the living room watching a horror movie marathon and squealing like teenagers.

“Thank you,” Anna said.

Luc, as always, was right there, pressing a glass of juice into her hand and urging her to have some breakfast. “Are you all right after last night?” he asked.

Her eyes widened. Did he know what she’d dreamed about? She felt almost embarrassed at having witnessed such ugly and weak moments, knowing he’d never want her to see him like that.

Then she realized he wasn’t talking about dreams but about Cain and his less-than-disgusting minion. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Luc stood behind her, trailing a hand over her back. She leaned into his touch. How could she want him after all she knew? She didn’t have a comforting abstraction when dealing with his dark past. She had vivid, Technicolor dreams.

Anna didn’t have to guess his thoughts or emotions. She’d soaked them into the deepest parts of her soul while she’d slept. She had so much in her head now that wasn’t her, she felt she was losing herself in the deluge of Luc.

His hand continued to gently stroke up and down her back. She wanted to lash out at him. Hadn’t she asked him yesterday to let her come to him and to stop pushing her? Stop trying to seduce her?

She glared at him over her shoulder but caught the guarded look on his face as he watched the witches. He didn’t seem to know he was touching her. Was it for comfort? For himself? He felt tense, and he reached for her. She felt tense; she reached for him. She didn’t want to think what that meant.

“This is my coven. Not huge, but enough to get the job done. This is Mel, Lisa, Ursula, and Wendi,” Tam said, gesturing at each of them in turn.

The women sitting at the table looked normal enough. Maybe normal was an overstatement. They looked like hippies. Cute, clean hippies who didn’t have an unnatural love of patchouli. Ursula and Mel had short, black hair and looked like they could be sisters.

Wendi had long, strawberry-blonde hair pulled into braids on either side of her face, while Lisa’s was long, free-flowing light brown. They all wore natural fibers, and Anna was sure someone was going to light up a bong and start playing The Beatles any minute.

Anna drank the juice down greedily, her throat gone suddenly dry. The coven was making no secret of ogling Luc. She wanted to shout, Hey! That’s my demon! but thought it would be a little too daytime television. Besides, she couldn’t keep him.

A moment later, a plate was passed to her. Food. Good. Eating would keep her from wanting to claw out the coven’s eyeballs, then having to worry about why she’d felt the need to do it. The harem ogled him all the time, and it didn’t bother her. He wasn’t even ogling back. Was he? She looked up, but his eyes hadn’t strayed from her as she moved to the table with her breakfast.

Tam unfolded a large piece of coffee-stained parchment. “This is our moon phase chart. We’ve figured that tonight would be the best time to do the working.”

Anna stopped chewing. “Why can’t you just do it? The priest didn’t need a special time . . . or the gypsies.”

Wait. Did some of the witches just hiss at her? If the spell worked, she was bringing Father Jeffries back in to do some kind of cleansing. These chicks were freaking her out.

“Gypsies? You had filthy gypsies in this house, and you called on us second?” Lisa asked.

“Um . . . well . . . ” Anna said.

Wendi stood then. “We should go.”

“Wait!” Anna said. “Tam, talk to them.”

Tam sighed. “Look, Anna is my friend. Despite her lack of wonderful judgment here, she needs us to help her get Luc out of the house.”

“Thanks. I love you, too,” Anna said.

“I don’t know why she’d want to get rid of him,” Lisa said. “If he was in my house, I’d never let him go.” She made no secret of looking him slowly up and down as she licked her lips in invitation. “I mean, look at him. What a hottie.”

Anna clenched her fists. She had the urge to swing first and worry about possible curses being cast on her later. “And that’s just the kind of attitude that gets women killed.”

She looked up, suddenly remembering Luc was standing right there. He had a pained expression in his eyes.

“Sorry,” she mouthed, feeling about an inch tall. He nodded, but it didn’t make her feel less guilty for the thoughtless remark. However true it may have once been.

“And besides,” she added, “this isn’t just about what I want. He wants out of the house, too. Right?”

“I do,” he said. But the way he said it made her think he didn’t intend to leave forever once he was free.

Wendi prowled around the demon. “I just want to lick him like a big lollipop.” She ran a hand over his arm, which was a mistake.

Anna lurched out of her chair and flung the witch away. “Enough!” she said. She stood in front of Luc, her arms spread wide, as if she physically needed to protect him.

Wendi hissed. No, Anna hadn’t imagined the hissing. Then the woman hauled back and formed a purple energy ball much like Tam had the night before. These women were completely out of control, like a bunch of middle-aged housewives at a Chippendales.

Tam’s voice rang out. “Ladies, calm yourselves. We are here to reverse the barrier spell, and that is all. Luc belongs to Anna.”

“What?” Anna spluttered. “He does not belong to me.”

Tam arched a brow.

“He doesn’t! He’s not a pet. He’s a person. Um kind of . . . but that’s not the point. My God, are all witches like this?” She’d never seen women behave this way before.

“No,” Tam said dryly, “just my coven. They’re hornier than most. I blame the bonfires and late night nudity.”

Anna didn’t want to know.

“Fine,” Wendi and Lisa said, both folding their arms over their chests in a display of unified disgust.

“What about you two?” Anna asked, glancing at Mel and Ursula.

The other two merely nodded that they were on board. Anna was betting those two were mute. She was beginning to feel claustrophobic surrounded by so many women who wanted to jump on Luc like he was a carnival ride.

Her eyes drifted to his bare chest as she tried not to think about riding him herself. “You can come back tonight. I’ve got to get some fresh air, and there’s no way I’m leaving any of you alone with him."

“My heart flutters with how much you care,” Luc said. His hand was on her back again doing that wonderful light rubbing with the pads of his fingertips.

She didn’t have the energy to snark back. And if she did, he might stop touching her. Which would be bad. Finally, realizing the coven was looking at her with amused expressions, she stepped out of his reach.

“I’m going into town. I need shoes.”

Before Anna could make any headway, Luc grabbed her arm. “No. You aren’t going out.”

“Uh, yeah I am. Let go of me.”

“I said no. Cain and Jackson could be out there, and he may have brought others. I cannot risk that the bond won’t hold up.” He met her eyes, his gaze turning softer. “I can’t risk you getting hurt out there.”

If they’d been alone in the house, there was a real possibility she would have thrown caution to the wind and gone upstairs with him. But with so many eyes on her, she chose arguing, instead.

“What? So I’m under house arrest now? I don’t think so.”

Tam moved between them to diffuse the situation. “It’s all right. I had Ursula and Mel do a spell this morning to see how much demonic activity we had going on in town. We needed to make sure no other energies would interfere with our magic. They’ve left. Luc is the only incubus in town at the moment.”

His grip loosened, but he didn’t release her. “They could return. They could have simply hopped dimensions for a few hours.”

“What if she doesn’t go alone?” Tam asked.

“I don’t need bodyguards, especially these bodyguards.”

“Think of it this way,” Tam said diplomatically. “If they’re out with you, they aren’t here groping your man.”

“Okay, girls,” Anna said, “we’re going shoe shopping now. Chop. Chop.”