by Jamie Davis
The woman screamed as if in pain, and she stumbled backward. The pained noise broke through whatever spell had overcome Dean’s senses, at least for the time being. He steadied his partner who stood on wobbling legs, weakened by whatever it was that had just happened. Barry nodded that he was okay and he sat in one of the waiting room chairs. Dean turned back to the woman but kept his eyes down and tried not to make eye contact with her. She had some sort of charm ability, that much was sure. It wasn’t just her voice, though. It was something else and Dean was betting that her eyes held the power. They were the windows to the soul, after all.
“Ma’am, I need you to stay where you are. Don’t come any closer. Just tell me what is happening here.” Dean found that taking control back for himself helped to clear the cobwebs from his minds. His ability to focus was returning.
“How can you resist me? No one can resist me.”
“Just tell me what your problem is. What kind of Unusual are you?” Dean asked.
“What kind of what? Things are certainly unusual this morning, but they’ve been strange for the last four days. That’s why I came in here this morning instead of going to work. Now I found that I feel better when I get close to people, really close. Can I show you?”
Dean felt her turn on the charm again. It seemed as if she almost had no control over it.
“Stop,” he shouted. He kept his eyes lowered, but he saw her halt out of the corner of his eye. “Barry, don’t look up. Keep your eyes on the floor. I’ll tell you when it’s safe.”
Dean turned his attention back to this woman. “Tell me more about what happened when you got up this morning. What was different about it?”
“I don’t know. I have been in bed, sick for several days. When I got up this morning, my body looked different. I was still me, but I was the ‘me’ I always wished I could be. I mean, look at me, paramedic boy. Come on, look at me.”
She was turning on the charm again. He could break her out of it but he had to take charge.
“Stay back,” he cautioned. He held out his hand again, forcing himself to resist her. The more he did so, the easier if became, he found. “Just answer my questions and we’ll find out what’s wrong with you. So, you’ve never had any strange powers or been able to get people to do what you wanted before?”
“No, I don’t usually like hanging around people that much, come to think of it. Huh, that is strange.” She paused. Then Dean heard sobbing. “Oh my God. I think I’ve become some sort of monster. What is wrong with me?”
“You’re not a monster. Something has happened to you, that’s all. What is your name?”
“I’m Sandra.”
“Okay, Sandra. You listen to me, and stay where you are, and we’ll get through this together.”
“First off, where is everyone? Did you do something with the staff and patients?”
Dean heard Sandra begin sobbing and she brought her hands up to her face. “I don’t know what happened. When the doctor came in to check me out I thought he was attractive and I just stood up and started kissing him. It felt really good and energizing in a way but it faded and he passed out and couldn’t kiss me anymore. Then I called in the nurses and then the registration people, one by one. It was all the same, whether they were men or women. They would make me feel better for a while, but then I needed more. Are you sure you don’t want me to show you what I mean?”
“No,” Dean felt the pull on his mind and he fended if off again. “Sandra, I need you to focus. Stop trying to do that to me. This is a power that has come to you. I don’t know how or where you got it, but you have to learn to control it. You need to know how to turn it off.”
Whatever kind of Unusual she was, she appeared to be human, or at least she used to be before whatever had happened to her. Now she was some sort of — Dean searched for the word — succubus. That was it. He again thanked whoever had started the library at Station U containing all the stories of myths and legends they could find. Succubi, and the male counterparts, Incubi, were a special class of Unusuals that fed off of sexual energy. Unless he missed his guess, something had transformed Sandra into one.
Dean wondered if that something had to do with his family’s current demon hunt. If it did, that was all the more reason to help this woman get some sort of control over herself. Once she was tended to and safe around others, he needed to check on the rest of the staff and patients here at the clinic. He hoped she had not killed anyone. It didn’t sound like it, but he didn’t want her to bear that burden, on top of the changes that had already occurred to her.
“Okay, Sandra, I think I have a handle on what might have happened here, and to you.”
“Really? I thought I was going insane or something.”
“Yes, my name is Dean and I’m part of a special paramedic unit that helps people with strange situations like yours. Do me a favor. Look at the back of my right hand. Can you see anything there?” Dean held up his hand to show her his Station U tattoo with the special UV ink only his patients could see.
“Sure, it’s kind of hazy but you have an ambulance emblem or something there.”
“Okay, so that means that you have had some sort of change placed on you. I don’t like to call it magic. Let’s call it a special virus or infection.”
“So you can cure me? I can go back to normal?”
He could hear the pleading in her tone, even if he avoided seeing it in her eyes.
“I’m not sure yet. Sometimes, if the transformation is very new, these things can be reversed. But if we cannot reverse it, I’ll make sure you get the help you need to learn to control it and maybe look upon it as a gift of sorts.”
“So here’s what I want you to do, Sandra. I want you to go over to that restroom.” Dean gestured to the waiting room bathroom in the corner. “I want you to go in there and stay there with the door closed and locked until I come back for you. I have to check on the people in the back, and I can’t do that if you’re out here using your new abilities on people without control. Can you do that for me?”
“I guess so. You’ll make sure and come back and tell me what is going on?”
“Yes. Let me just check on the doctors, nurses, and patients in the back to make sure they are all okay. Then I’ll come back and tell you what we’re going to do to help you.”
He could see her nod out of the corner of his eye as he focused on the area past her and not looking right at her. She turned and walked to the restroom, closing the door after she went inside.
Dean turned and looked at Barry. “How’s it going partner?”
“I feel like I’ve run a marathon or something. I’m drained, Dean.”
“Okay, you stay here. Use your radio and call headquarters. Tell them we have a mass casualty incident. Some sort of gas leak. Tell them the gas has dissipated but the patients are going to need transport from here to the hospital. I’ll have the number of patients for them soon.”
Barry lifted his portable radio mic and nodded. Dean heard him start talking while he went back into the treatment area to see what was going on with the staff and patients back there.
Chapter 15
Dean breathed a sigh of relief as he checked a pulse on the last of the unconscious people he found in the back of the clinic. They were all alive. All of the staff were in one exam room, stacked on top of each other where they fell. The patients waiting for their turn were all found slumped in the hallway leading back to the exam rooms. He wasn’t sure what Sandra had done to them but they were breathing normally and had a pulse. If he didn’t know better he’d have thought they were all asleep.
He left them, all shifted to laying on their sides in the recovery position so they wouldn’t choke on their own saliva or, worse yet, vomit, if they started throwing up for some reason. He had nothing to go on for how they would recover, or even if they would recover. He didn’t know exactly what a succubus fed on when she drew off the sexual energy of a victim. It could be just a shift in neurotransmitter chemical
s in the brain and after a while they would all return to normal once the body reproduced enough brain chemicals to replace what was lost.
He heard voices in the waiting room and went out to see several nurses and docs who had come over from the hospital’s ER next door to help out. He recognized that these were all those who were trained to treat Unusuals just like himself. He saw his medical director, Doc Spirelli, and walked over to him after directing the rest of the arriving help to the back patient care areas.
“Hey, Doc. I think we have our first succubus attack in the city. The good news is I don’t think it was intentional. In fact, I think she was recently transformed into a succubus and came here just to seek some medical attention.”
“Is she still here?” the old, grey-haired doc asked.
“Yep, I had her stay locked in the rest room over there until I could figure out what to do with her. I found that I could resist her charm effects if I didn’t make eye-contact. I could still feel it, but it was bearable and I could get my work done.”
“Good job, Dean. I don’t think many boys your age would have been able to resist a succubus.”
“Well, maybe it was my previous experience being charmed by a siren when I first got started in this job.” Dean shrugged. “I don’t know. She seems nice enough otherwise. The problem is that since she’s brand new at this, she never learned to control it or turn it on or off. The power is just there, all of a sudden.”
“Let’s go over and you can introduce me, Dean,” the doc said.
“Can you help her?” Dean asked. “I wasn’t sure what to do but isolate her from anyone else who came in.”
“You did the right thing. Don’t second guess yourself.” Doc Spirelli laid a reassuring hand on Dean’s shoulder. “I happen to know a succubus who lives outside of town. She is a licensed therapist specializing in sexual dysfunction. I will call her to come down and take this young lady in until she can be trained to control herself. We’ll get her the help she needs.”
Dean led the doc over to the restroom in the corner of the waiting room. After introducing the doctor to Sandra through the closed door, Dean went to check on his partner.
Barry was still sitting in the waiting room chair, looking around. The activity increased as more people came in to help and hospital stretchers were wheeled out and over to the ER with the unconscious victims. He watched one of the stretchers go by and looked up at Dean.
“That could have been me.”
“Yep, and it wouldn’t have been your fault,” Dean said, trying to reassure his partner and probationary paramedic. “Look at it this way. If you had stumbled into a home with a carbon monoxide leak in the furnace, you wouldn’t have known it was there until you got inside and started checking the family. If you spent too long in there with them, you could have become a casualty as well without ever knowing what the problem was.”
Dean gestured to the now steady line of patients being rolled by the ER response team. “We got a call to come here for a fainting spell, a syncopal episode. We didn’t know this was a mass casualty incident. I didn’t pick up on it from what the dispatcher told us. The lesson we need to learn here is that in the realm of Unusual emergency medical care, always assume something supernatural is to blame until proven otherwise.”
“I guess so, Dean. I know I shouldn’t blame myself, but it’s hard.” Barry shook his head in resignation. “Maybe I’m not cut out for this kind of specialized EMS work.”
“Nonsense,” Dean countered. “You have learned a valuable lesson. Don’t give up now. Take that lesson and learn from it. Let me tell you about my encounter with a siren who tried to kidnap me and turn me into her own private paramedic.”
Dean and Barry gathered their bags while he told the story of the siren, who charmed him with her melodic singing voice early in his tenure as a probationary paramedic at the station. They finished stowing the gear in the ambulance and had put themselves back in service when the first of the news vans rolled up. Dean saw the fire department public information officer walk over to the reporter and he overheard her tell the reporter that it was an anesthesia gas leak in the urgent care center. Clever, he thought as he climbed up into the driver’s seat and pulled away from the increasingly busy scene outside of the clinic.
As he drove back to the station, he thought about Sandra and her sudden transformation into a succubus. He didn’t know much about that variety of Unusual, but if they were like most others, they reproduced just like humans did. Most didn’t come into their full powers until they reached puberty. Sandra’s sudden change from human into a succubus pointed to another source, one that was similar to Steve from their vampire encounter earlier in the week.
Dean made a note to call Jaz about it when he got back to the station. She might have more information about how succubi were created and she would certainly want to follow up on this lead into who had the other figurines.
* * *
———
* * *
Jaz wanted to meet up after he got off work to talk over what she had been able to discover so far about the vampire Steve. He reminded her that he had to check on Jo back at his apartment, and get her some dinner after work. Dean checked with the station chef and resident zombie, Freddy. Maybe he could take home some left-overs. The zombie suggested they all come over and have dinner at the Station. He was cooking up some fresh pasta and a garlic pesto sauce to go with it. He told Dean there would be plenty for everyone.
Dean sent a text to Jaz to pick up Jo and come by the station for dinner. They could talk freely here without worrying about other diners in a restaurant overhearing their strange conversations. He told her what was on the menu and she sent a text back right away saying she’d be there just after six.
He spent the rest of the shift making sure Barry was okay and getting the station chores done in between running the few other ambulance calls that came in. They were all routine sick calls that required standard medical knowledge. Most Unusuals were basically human when it came down to it. They had the same incidence of heart disease, diabetes and respiratory illnesses that other humans did. Often it was just a case of treating the immediate problem and directing them to seek treatment with one of the Unusual-friendly doctors scattered around the city.
By the time the end of the shift rolled around, the station smelled of fresh pesto sauce cooking on the stove and Dean’s mouth was watering. Barry took his dinner to go, and Brook and Tammy arrived early to grab a plate and eat before their shift started. They were just finishing up when there was a knock at the door and Dean went over to answer it. It was Jaz and Jo. Jaz nodded to Dean and looked around before she entered, as if she expected to be attacked at any moment. Jo just bounced in as if she belonged there. Seeing as how she probably grew up around the station in her youth, it made sense.
“Don’t worry, Jaz,” Dean said. “Nobody here bites, I promise. You play nice, they’ll play nice.”
She looked great, wearing a pair of tight blue jeans, knee-high black leather boots, and a white t-shirt. She had her characteristic short-waisted black leather jacket on, too. He was sure that was there to hide the shoulder holster rig she had to be wearing underneath. He sighed. Once a hunter, always a hunter.
“Come on, Mom and Dad, get over here. Freddy has made the most spectacular meal.” Jo already had a plate in her hand and was holding it up to show them.
“Yeah, Mom and Dad,” Tammy said. “Listen to the kid. Get in here and eat. It’s good.” She was just finishing up her meal and she got up to make room at the small station table. “I still can’t believe you have a teenaged daughter Dean. This whole time travel thing isn’t fair. You didn’t have to change any diapers or anything.”
Dean laughed. There were few secrets between the Station U paramedics. “Don’t forget, Tammy. I have all of that fun to look forward to at some point in my future.”
“True. True. Still, it might be nice to fast forward through some of the harder times growing up,” Tammy
mused.
“Yeah, because suddenly being the parent of a teenager is easy,” Dean replied.
“Hey, I’m right here,” Jo protested through a mouthful of food.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Dean and Jaz said simultaneously. The other paramedics in the room burst out laughing and Dean and Jaz looked at each other, blushing in embarrassment, then they laughed too.
Dean sat down at the table next to Jo. Jaz took a seat across from him. He dished up a generous helping of pasta and grabbed a slice of garlic bread. Freddy’s food was excellent, but this meal was among his best. He marveled at what the zombie chef could do with only a few simple ingredients.
It was quiet for a while with the three of them eating their dinner. Brook and Tammy were in the Ambulance bay doing their chores for the beginning of the shift. It was pleasant to eat together, Dean thought. He could see the three of them gelling into a family unit of sorts. Jo had it the easiest he figured. She was used to following their lead. She had grown up with them as her parents. He and Jaz had the most to struggle with, but that had started to resolve into something else. It might not have been a parental relationship, but it was a sort of shared responsibility for another person that approached being parents.
He caught Jaz watching him as he ate and he smiled at her. She gave him a smile in return that made him wonder if she had been having similar thoughts. His rumination on their small family unit ended as Jaz cleared her throat and leaned back in her chair, her plate wiped clean.
“I’ve been doing some backtracking of Steven’s movements before he started acting strange,” Jaz started. “I also went back and interviewed his wife to see if she had anything to offer. The only thing I’ve been able to find out is that his strange behavior started two days before we picked him up. He woke up looking a little pale and seemed to be bothered by the sunlight. She told me he took off work that morning, staying in bed most of the day. It was on the evening of the next day that she called 911 for help.”