Son of a Succubus Series Collection

by Dorie, Sarina

  “No!” Lucifer lifted himself to his feet. He pushed his pain into his hand and tried to form the shadow crackling with red lightning. Still he couldn’t make it work. All he could think about was the throbbing in his shoulder.

  The troll chomped down on Abigail’s hands and feet. But he didn’t stop there. His teeth crunched up her arms to the elbows. He tore through the strawberries all the way up to Abigail’s thighs.

  Lucifer screamed in horror. The troll backhanded him in the face, hurling him into the garden.

  * * *

  Lucifer woke to stars overhead and stars flashing behind his eyes. His cheek throbbed. He suspected his jaw was broken. His back spasmed with pain when he sat up, and his arm hung uselessly at his side. He stumbled out of the garden toward Abigail.

  Baba stood there with Kelsie. Lucifer cried out as he took in the sight of Abigail’s mangled body. That exclamation turned into a moan as he set the pain in his jaw flaring.

  “Ah, there is lover boy.” Baba turned away from Abigail. “You are not going to do any good attempting to heal Abby in such state. First you heal yourself.”

  It was dawn before Lucifer managed to mend his wounds enough for Baba to consider his efforts passable. Kelsie sat by Abigail’s side, muttering spells to sustain her. Tears filled her eyes as she stroked Abigail’s hair. Kelsie might not have been any good at cooking or potions, but her Elementia magic was better than his. She drew energies out of the earth to strengthen Abigail.

  When Lucifer went to Abigail and stroked the stumps of her right arm, Baba indicated Kelsie should loosen the tourniquet. Roots shot out of her flesh, the feelers searching for a place to plant themselves in the earth. The shoots lapped at the dirt where her blood had stained the ground crimson. Another curled around his ankle, yanking him closer.

  “She is hungry.” Baba stepped back and pushed Kelsie aside with her cane. “Do not allow her to taste you or she will never wish to stop.”

  Lucifer tried to pry the vine from his leg, but it tightened. Thorns sprouted up, biting into his flesh. Her benign strawberry blossoms had become carnivorous maneaters. The vine dragged him closer. He was so exhausted, and he hurt too much to struggle. He just wanted to let her eat him so she could heal. None of this was her fault. He shouldn’t have used the good-luck charm a second time. He’d given everyone else bad luck, even the person he wanted to help the most.

  “This is what I deserve.” He closed his eyes, ready to let her plants chew on his flesh to give her the nutrients she’d lost. His actions had cost her limbs.

  “Lucifer, stop being such a drama queen.” Kelsie huffed.

  He opened his eyes in time to see her heft the ax.

  “No!” he said. He didn’t want her to injure Abigail worse.

  She swung it down on the vine. “Get up before another one grabs you.”

  Lucifer rolled away. “It’s all my fault.”

  Baba poked him with her cane, prodding at one of his tender ribs. “Wallow in self-pity later. You have three more limbs to heal.”

  * * *

  It took days for Lucifer’s injuries to mend. Even when he had fully healed himself, went to bathe at the hot springs, and fueled his affinity with amorous pursuits in the forest, Abigail hadn’t returned to her previous self.

  It took weeks for Abigail to heal, and even then, he wasn’t certain she’d walk again. If she had been awake, he knew he could have protected her better. She would have been safe inside at night. The best he could do now was renew his wards each night and study stronger protective spells. He used glamours to better conceal her.

  It wasn’t enough, though. He didn’t know if the troll would return and demand more of Abigail. Each time Lucifer ventured into the forest to collect herbs, nuts, or berries, he feared he would find more bites taken out of Abigail.

  He needed to get Baba to remove the amulet containing Abigail’s soul so he could steal it. Implying she should go to the hot springs for comfort or health hadn’t persuaded her.

  There had to be something, some weakness he wasn’t seeing in Baba’s armor. He knew she liked gold. He considered claiming there were gold coins at the bottom of the springs that travelers had thrown in for good luck, but he suspected she would tell him to fetch them and bring them rather than go see for herself.

  He knew she liked vodka, but she never had more than a shot, and when she did, she sipped it slowly.

  Lucifer waited until Kelsie was weeding in the garden and he was chopping wood, speaking loud enough that he hoped Baba would hear him inside the cottage. “You should come to the hot springs with me after dinner.”

  “Not this again,” Kelsie muttered. She raised her voice. “I’m not going down there with you. You’ll ogle me with your incubus eyes and try to seduce me.”

  He winked at her. “In your dreams.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Plus, if you come with me, it will be safer for you,” he said. “I’ll protect you if the troll decides you’re a delicious morsel.”

  “Right. You’ll protect me like you protected your girlfriend.”

  His throat tightened. He had no response to that. Kelsie must have realized the remark had wounded him because she apologized in her way. She threw a turnip at him and offered him a conciliatory smile. “I would be safer if Baba went with me instead.”

  He tried to smile back at her. He could tolerate the sting of truth in that insult if it helped persuade Baba to accompany Kelsie.

  Later that night as Kelsie cleared dishes and he started on the washing, he tried again. He looked to Kelsie, though he spoke loud enough for Baba to hear as he spun his tale. “Yesterday when I went to the hot springs, I met a Witchkin woman. She claimed to be part siren.”

  “One of Gertrude’s cousins?” Kelsie asked.

  “Probably not. She had dark hair. Anyway, she told me she was eighty years old, but she didn’t have a winkle on her. And believe me, I looked.” He laughed like it was a joke. “She told me the water has healing properties. It erases wrinkles. It’s like the fountain of youth.”

  “What is like fountain of youth?” Baba asked.

  “Oh nothing,” Lucifer said, forcing himself not to turn toward her. “Do you think I look younger?” He shook his hair over his shoulders and held his face to the firelight so Kelsie could look at him better.

  Kelsie frowned. “You’ve got too much beard to know what you look like.”

  “You look like you are twenty. You are too young to have wrinkles.” Baba smoothed a hand over her weathered face.

  “Not that you would care about silly things like wrinkles,” Lucifer crouched at the tub once again, resuming his scrubbing. He’d read about reverse psychology in the Morty Realm.

  Kelsie was trying to hide her smile.

  “It is long walk,” Baba said.

  “Far too long a walk with your ankle,” Lucifer said. “You should be elevating it.”

  Lucifer held his tongue and waited. He didn’t want to give himself away. He needed for Baba to think it was her idea. She needed to order him to carry her. He eyed Kelsie, but she was stacking up the bowls. He flicked water at her as she walked by.

  “What was that for?” she demanded.

  He glanced at Baba.

  Kelsie kicked him in the shin, knocking him onto his behind. “You could use Lucifer as your mule to haul you there and back. I wouldn’t mind a hot bath myself—assuming you can put up some kind of protective ward to keep male ogres, trolls, and incubi from spying on us naked.”

  Baba set her knitting aside. “My wrinkles are ward enough to keep male eyes away. Only if they vanish will we need to construct true wards.”

  * * *

  Lucifer could barely contain his excitement. He was afraid his grumbling about carrying blankets, towels, vodka—and Baba—wouldn’t be enough to mask his true feelings. He was glad for the shadows that dusk brought, to mask his eagerness.

  Kelsie was silent as they
walked to the springs. The pool was cloaked in shadows as the sun slipped low on the horizon. Steam rose in inviting spirals.

  “I can return in an hour to bring you back,” Lucifer said.

  Kelsie’s eyes narrowed. “Do you remember what Artemis did to Actaeon when he gawked at her bathing in the pool?”

  “I think that’s the story of the guy who got turned into a cat and was torn apart by his own hounds,” Lucifer joked.

  “She turned him into a stag,” Kelsie corrected.

  He bounded into the forest. He kept his eyes averted, listening to Kelsie help Baba undress and seat herself in the water. He waited a long while before he peeked. Kelsie was fully submerged by then. She glowered out into the darkness toward him. Their clothes, the towels, and the blankets were all stacked behind Baba.

  The amulet glowed green in the shadows.

  Lucifer stalked forward. His foot snapped a twig. He was never very good at being quiet when he wasn’t a cat.

  Kelsie crossed her arms.

  Baba took a swig from the bottle of vodka. “Do not worry, my dorogaya. No trolls. Just young man trying to catch glimpse of our female flesh.”

  Lucifer’s shoulders slumped. He was too loud and too slow. There was only one way he could get away with stealing the amulet. He hated changing into a cat, but there was no way to avoid it.

  He walked farther away and downwind where Baba wouldn’t smell his magic. He drank in the flavor of moonlight and the Celestor magic of starlight just starting to prickle the sky. Night tickled against his skin.

  A rush of starlight awakened inside of him and tore across his flesh. He shrank and hair sprouted up on him. It wasn’t a horrible feeling turning into a cat. He just didn’t want to stay that way for thirty years.

  Lucifer stalked toward his prey, his eyes on the prize. Baba remained turned away. Kelsie was singing softly. His ears pricked at the familiar tune. It was an eighties love ballad. Either she hung out with unicorns in her free time or she’d lived in the Morty Realm at some point. He continued forward. Baba didn’t notice.

  Carefully he scooped up the cord with his mouth and lifted the vial. He backed away into the shadows, only turning to run once he was deep in the sanctuary of trees. If Baba suspected what he was doing, she would probably punish him by keeping him in the form of a cat for another thirty years.

  Once he reached his own clothes, he transformed back into a man. Relief washed over him that he could change back into being human. The moment Baba knew what he’d done, there would be hell to pay.

  He clasped the vial in one hand and his clothes in the other as he ran back to the cottage. It was bad enough fearing Baba’s wrath, but he also feared the troll’s. At any moment, he might return. He’d left Abigail unattended for too long.

  The moment Lucifer reached her bed, he checked on her hands and feet. She was fine. His heart thundered against his rib cage, as much from adrenaline as running. He dressed in the house as he retrieved the spell. He’d practiced variations of it every day. On animals. He prayed it would work for people.

  One of the main differences was that Gertrude had written that he needed to give her soul a reason to want to return to her body. He needed her to remember the joys of being human. The spell had implied pleasure magic.

  Lucifer touched a green strawberry growing near her hand and used Amni Plandai magic to make it ripen. He would feed her a strawberry like he had once before. He would kiss her and make her whole again.

  He plucked up the strawberry and cradled it in one hand as he held the vial in the other. He concentrated on his affinity, imagining his lips pressed to hers to stoke the fire smoldering within his core.

  The moment Lucifer uncorked the vial, a green sparkling mist rose from the opening. He pressed the bottle to Abigail’s lips. With his other hand, he touched her belly, directing his magic into her center, where it would draw in her soul. Strawberry juice dripped down his fingers as he accidentally crushed it. He didn’t have enough hands for this. He placed the strawberry between his teeth and resumed pushing his yearning into her core.

  Seconds later, glittering green light started to escape from her nose. Not knowing what else to do, he pinched her nose closed. He didn’t want to suffocate her, but he needed her to draw in her soul again. Her body had to want a soul.

  Her diaphragm contracted. She spasmed as she fought for air. He released her nose, but again the green vapors of soul escaped out her nostrils. He pinched her nose closed again.

  She needed air. But she needed her soul. He wasn’t anchoring her properly.

  It had been so easy with snakes and hares.

  Lucifer had been a cat the majority of the time he’d been in the Morty Realm, but he’d observed how humans healed without magic. He spat out the strawberry. Pressing his lips to hers, he continued to keep her nose pinched closed as he pushed breath into her lungs. When the book had suggested kissing and pleasure, he doubted it meant like this.

  Her lips twitched against his. He released her nose and closed his eyes, kissing her with tenderness now. The blanket of strawberry vines shuddered and contracted. She stirred, and she turned her face away to gasp in a breath.

  “Abby? Are you all right?” He smoothed the hair from her eyes so he could see her more clearly. He kissed her face and tried to give her soul a reason to anchor in her body.

  She whimpered, the sound like an animal in anguish. He felt no pain emanating from her body, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t there in her soul. She had been trapped in a bottle. Surely she wouldn’t feel well after such a confinement.

  He seated himself beside her on the bed and held her against him, crushing the green strawberries between them.

  “Are you in pain? What can I do for you?” He kissed the crinkles in her furrowed brow and held her hands in his. “It’s me, Lucy. You’re safe. We’re together now.”

  She opened her eyes and let out a breathy sigh. “Lucy,” she said. Her arm lifted, and she tried to grasp his shoulder, but she missed. Her fingers clumsily snatched at the collar of his shirt.

  Tears filled her eyes.

  “It’s all right. I’m here. I’m going to help you through this.” He pressed her hand to his heart. “Sometimes it takes the soul a bit of time to adjust to being in a body again.”

  He helped her sit up. She leaned against him, her muscles shaking from lack of use. Her gaze flickered to the oak tree above her, to the strawberry blossoms, her eyes full of wonder. The more he stroked her auburn hair, the more leaves sprouted in her tresses. An orchid blossomed and opened before his eyes. She had always loved orchids. They seemed to be awakening with her.

  So much joy filled his heart seeing her awake and restored, he had no words. Despite Baba’s attempts to keep them separated, and to keep him from knowing the secrets of soul magic, he’d succeeded. Abigail was herself again.

  He covered her face in kisses.

  At last they both were human. They were both young and had their whole lives ahead of themselves.

  Together.

  THE END

  The Physics of Souls

  Book 4

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Problem with Sleeping Beauty

  Lucifer Thatch had never thought he’d been so happy in all his life. He was human, not trapped in the body of a cat by a witch’s curse. Abigail was a human again as well, not cursed into being a tree. Nor was her soul trapped in a bottle kept by a wicked witch. He had freed her soul and reunited it with her body.

  Finally, they were together.

  He had always wanted a chance at a fresh start with Abigail, for them to live their lives together like they were supposed to. This was their chance.

  Starlight speckled the sky, peeking through the ceiling of foliage above the oak tree where he had placed Abigail’s bed so that she could be near her affinity.

  He brushed her long auburn hair out of her face. “How do you feel?”

  She was so young and
beautiful, just as when he’d first met her. She couldn’t have been older than sixteen, but he wasn’t certain. The half-Fae and half-human spawn called Witchkin never aged at the same rate as Morties.

  Abigail gazed at him when he spoke, but her face was blank. He had unusually good eyesight at night, a leftover ability from the years of being trapped in the body of a cat, but he couldn’t decipher what her lack of expression meant. She’d just uttered his name moments before, but now she looked at him as though he were a stranger. Anxiety prickled through him.

  He rationalized that he might be a stranger to her now. She’d only glimpsed him in his adult body once when his curse had temporarily been lifted. He hadn’t aged while he’d been cursed, and though he should have had the mind of a fifty-year-old man, most of the time he was more like a confused cat with the last clear memories being that of a love-struck eighteen-year-old.

  He supposed he must appear as a wild man to her with his bushy beard and untamed thicket of black hair. He was taller and bulkier than when he’d been a teenager, the muscle he’d gained in all those years as a tom cat carried into his human form.

  She shifted under the blanket that was half fabric and half strawberry vines, and he helped her sit up. He touched her hand to his heart. “It’s me, Lucy.” He used her nickname for him, wanting to reassure her.

  She said nothing to reassure him.

  Abigail turned her freckled face up toward the canopy of trees above. She gazed at the moonlight filtering through the leaves of the oak above, her expression puzzled. It was natural she must be distressed about how she arrived on a bed made of moss and wood. Her fingers clumsily raked through the strawberry blossoms woven through the blanket. Petals drifted away from her dainty fingers.

  She shivered as the blanket fell from her, revealing naked skin smeared with dirt and partially covered in vines. A sharp prickle of cold went through Lucifer as he experienced the chill of the night that she felt. His magic was so attuned with her it was difficult not to experience the sensations in her body. He tried to pull the blanket around her more securely, but the vines had rooted too deeply in the earth below the bed. When he pulled harder at the blanket, a wave of pain shot through her. She’d always had a sympathy with plants, and some of these were rooted to her.