Son of a Succubus Series Collection

by Dorie, Sarina

  Baba said he wouldn’t love her after this. He was determined not to allow anything to drive a wedge between them. Even if that wedge came in the form of changing a diaper.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Ghost of Boyfriend Past

  “Lucy,” Abigail said, pointing to a spider crawling across the floor as he came in from chopping wood.

  He dropped the pile of wood next to the hearth. “Yes, a spider.”

  Abigail pointed to Kelsie, whose back was turned. Kelsie had placed herself between Abigail and the cauldron of supper she was stirring so that Abigail wouldn’t try to touch the flames. Abigail had tried to grasp fire the day before and had burned her hand.

  Baba had simply said it was practical for her to learn what fire was. If she did, she would understand it wasn’t to be played with.

  Abigail pointed to Kelsie again. He smiled, and she smiled.

  “That’s Kelsie. Can you say Kelsie?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer. In the three weeks since she’d awakened, the one word she could say was his name. There were moments she looked at him, and he thought he saw a hint of the old Abigail, a lucidity to her eyes as if she might be remembering. She was wary when she ventured past Baba’s chair, though Lucifer didn’t think Baba had struck her or done anything to her. Part of Abigail had to be remembering her old reservations of the witch and her methods of teaching.

  “Lucy,” Abigail said, pointing to Kelsie.

  He sighed. Her smile vanished. He forced a smile onto his face. She mirrored it, her own smile strained, reflecting the lack of joy in his. In many regards, she was like a child, learning how to move and behave. Her motor coordination was improving, and she was now ‘housebroken’ as Kelsie called it. Abigail was capable of doing simple tasks. She’d helped him shuck corn when a man paid them for a tonic with some vegetables, but she’d stopped shucking corn as soon as she lost interest.

  Lucifer started out the door to retrieve the rest of the felled wood he’d chopped.

  “Lucy!” Abigail called.

  He turned to see what she wanted to show him now. He waited, his eyebrows lifted. “Yes?”

  After Lucifer had tethered her soul to her body, he wondered whether he’d given her a bad case of ADHD. Not that he fully understood what that was, but he’d heard of it when he’d been a cat living in the Morty Realm.

  Kelsie had said Abigail was progressing very well for a baby, though Abigail wasn’t regaining herself quite as quickly as he’d hoped. Baba said nothing to him when he asked her questions about how to help Abigail.

  All she’d said was, “What is use of instructing apprentice when apprentice does not listen?”

  He supposed he deserved that, but he didn’t think Abigail did.

  Abigail pointed to the spider and then Kelsie.

  He crossed his arms. “Do you want Kelsie to put the spider in your soup?”

  Abigail nodded. He doubted she even understood what he’d said.

  “She is smart girl. She knows she needs protein,” Baba said. “Catch us something for the stewpot, Lucy.”

  He took his bow and quiver of arrows into the forest. He was supposed to take Abigail with him everywhere because she was his job to babysit—except when he was swinging an ax or hunting. Both were too dangerous. That, and there was the practical matter to consider. She trampled through the brush so loudly, she scared off the game he might have hunted. Hunting and chopping wood were the two times he was free of her for a time.

  Free of her. The idea of that thought filled him with guilt.

  She wasn’t trapping him. He was the one at fault for her current condition.

  If he’d had the books in Old High German, he might have understood what he’d done wrong. But he’d given them to Gertrude Periwinkle to translate, and Baba had insisted they move the cottage to a different forest after that. He didn’t know if Gertrude would ever be able to find him if Baba used magic to ensure they remained hidden.

  It was his duty to discover a way to help Abigail, but Baba wasn’t talking. Kelsie didn’t know anything about his kind of affinity or forbidden magics. Not that he intended to talk to a seventeen-year-old about sex magic either. He couldn’t use the good-luck spell again for fear it might bring bad luck upon him and everyone else around him.

  Lucifer was at a loss for how to help her.

  * * *

  As Lucifer stalked through the forest, attempting to be quiet and not scare away deer or other game, he felt a Fae presence up ahead. Lucifer wasn’t as good at detecting other sources of magic as he used to be—and certainly not when he was distracted—but hunting meant he needed to use all of his senses to be aware of animals in the forest.

  In his youth, Lucifer had come across many “lesser” Fae like satyrs, centaurs, and wood nymphs who weren’t as powerful as many of those in the Fae courts who made the Faerie Realm dangerous. The few occasions he’d run into sasquatches, they had nodded at him and gone on their way without further interaction. The wood nymphs were another matter.

  Lucifer had interacted with them quite a bit. Their fertility magic had drawn him in, and his incubus magic had responded in turn. The sirens and wood nymphs who were full-blooded Fae and half-Fae Witchkin like himself had never attempted to kill him. They’d been too busy mutually seducing each other.

  This Fae presence was different from the more benign creatures of the forest. The magic was thick and soupy like molasses, sweet and bitter at the same time. He scented traces of blood and pain in the air, almost masked by the earthy flavor of damp wood and decaying mulch. The lure of the magic was familiar, the way it attempted to barb into his consciousness and draw him into a trap like the Fae that Lucifer remembered from his youth.

  This green magic was that of the leshi tree folk. They could be cunning and their snares lethal, though typically they didn’t attack directly. Leshi only devoured those who fell into their traps. Lucifer had once feared Abigail would be caught by one of them. If there was one here in this forest now, one might lure her to eat her.

  That was what compelled him to keep going instead of going back to the cottage, he told himself. He needed to see if there was a danger that he needed to protect her from.

  The forest was unusually silent, the melody of birdsong absent. Even the wind had died.

  Lucifer used his affinity to build a shield around himself, tiny crackles of electricity dancing under his skin where it would create a barrier that the Fae magics couldn’t cross. He raised his bow, keeping it ready should he have need of it.

  His foot crunched over a twig, the snap echoing too loudly. He felt eyes on him, but when he turned, he saw no one, nor any traces of glamour. A leshi could resemble a tree and hide in plain sight. He’d seen them do it before.

  The lull of magic was like a song. Closer, come closer, my pet, it seemed to say.

  He wouldn’t fall for it. He was creeping forward of his own volition, not because he was being called. His forbidden magic could resist, he kept telling himself.

  The odor of rotting cabbage and fermenting meat wafted toward him. The stench was almost masked by a sickly-sweet perfume not unlike that of nectar. Lucifer’s belly churned at the familiar stink of it.

  When he came upon his enemy’s domain, he sucked in a breath. His feet rooted to the spot in horror, and the past came crashing in on him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Venus Man Trap

  Lucifer had met Abigail when she’d been fourteen, just after she had become an orphan. She’d been separated from her older brother, Niall. Lucifer had tried to scare away Abigail and her younger brother, Emmet. He hadn’t wanted them to be tempted to nibble at the gingerbread façade of Baba’s cottage.

  The children who succumbed to that fate ended up in Baba’s stewpot or were cut apart for her spells.

  But Abigail had been headstrong and determined to find out where her older brother might have gone off to. At nightfall, she’d waited and crossed
the stream that Lucifer had warned her away from. Once there, she stumbled upon the Fae asleep in their camp.

  Abigail had found her brother, though she’d been too late to save him. In the process of trying to save one brother, the leshi had attacked them, and she lost another.

  Revenge had driven her to apprentice with Baba. Part of Lucifer had been thankful—and still was—for that time he’d been able to spend with her while they’d both served Baba as apprentices.

  But it was that drive for revenge in Abigail that had compelled her to try to trap the same Fae who had hurt those she loved. In the process of vengeance, she’d fallen in love with a leshi—or perhaps simply fallen for his spell. Things hadn’t ended well for the leshi, nor for Abigail.

  In trying to save her from an enemy he had feared would do her harm, Lucifer had used his electricity. It had drained Abigail of magic and burned her as well as Coinneach, her leshi lover. If Lucifer hadn’t used his magic, Baba wouldn’t have started demanding blood and pain tithes from Abigail. Baba wouldn’t have seen her as useless.

  Abigail wouldn’t have had any need to run away, nor would Lucifer have left his apprenticeship early and been cursed into the form of a cat as consequence.

  Now here Lucifer was again, repeating his mistakes. Abigail once again was suffering due to his attempts to save her after using his magic. Sooner or later Baba would announce that Abigail was useless and start using her body again as a tithe for spells.

  Lucifer stood in the home of the same kind of Fae that had once murdered Abigail’s brothers, the memories of the past their own kind of trap.

  * * *

  A single Venus man trap loomed ten feet high. The stalk was like that of a giant flower, but as thick as his thigh. The swollen belly of a closed bud at the top attested to having recently caught prey.

  Chills ran up Lucifer’s spine as he gazed at the terrible sight.

  He’d seen these traps up close when he’d gone with Abigail to chop them down. His eyes were fastened on the giant flower, but he forced them away as he scanned the forest floor for an indication he was treading over silken petals that would swallow him up next. Unlike the other Fae traps, this one didn’t use glamours of teacakes or wine to tempt a thirsty or hungry wanderer. Such foods and drinks were laced with poisons that would lull a victim into complacency before turning one’s insides to liquid.

  Lucifer examined the bushes for discarded clothes that the giant plant might have spat out. There were none, nor any other indication that the dinner within the plant’s belly contained a person. Leshi preferred human flesh marinating in their vats of wine as their nourishment, yet Abigail had convinced Coinneach the evil of his ways. She’d made him promise to only lure animals into his traps, not human children.

  He had agreed, but he hadn’t been able to convince his family. All had perished by Lucifer’s hand. Chopping them apart as Abigail had done was insufficient compared to the electrical magic he’d unleashed.

  Even without the evidence of humans being caught in the trap, it was wishful thinking to hope the bud only contained an animal.

  When Vega Bloodmire had visited, she had spoken with Baba about Witchkin coming to her, begging her to hunt down rogue Fae and hold them accountable for their actions. Was this one such rogue Fae? Godric, one of Baba’s patients, had saved his sister from a rogue Fae. Kelsie never spoke about her family, but Lucifer suspected they had succumbed to the greed of the Fae as well.

  Lucifer considered stabbing the bulb and seeing if it contained a person inside. Or even waiting until dark when the bulb would begin to glow like a lantern so that he could see the silhouette inside and determine whether it was a human or an animal.

  Leshi needed sunlight and nutrients. If Lucifer caught the Fae when they were asleep at night they would be at their most vulnerable. He could chop them apart and ensure they didn’t keep on killing. Or better yet, there was his electrical magic to destroy them.

  He raised his hand, drawing the electricity into his palm. He could make these Fae suffer for the way they had hurt Abigail.

  But death only begot more death. Long ago he’d seen that when he’d divined Abigail’s fate. Revenge had only made everything worse in the end. Lucifer had repeated enough of his own mistakes; he didn’t want to repeat this one as well. Instead of retaliating against someone he didn’t even know was his enemy, Lucifer backed away from the bulb.

  A prickle of pain stabbed Lucifer’s ankle. He jumped back, searching for the source. The thorns of a dog rose caught the hem of Lucifer’s trousers. He tried to shake himself free, white petals scattering, while keeping his eyes on the forest around him in case this was a trap. Wind rustled the leaves in the boughs, but he saw no movement other than that. He tore free of the plant and retreated.

  Later he would ask Baba if he was making the right choice fleeing rather than using his electrical magic to fight.

  It was dangerous being so close to leshi when Abigail might wander this far into the forest. Or Kelsie might take Abigail to collect berries near here. These Fae weren’t trapped like the ones who had been cursed to live on a patch of land between streams. The more Lucifer considered the danger of such a Fae being near, the more he worried.

  Dread settled in Lucifer’s belly like a lump of ice. He returned directly to Baba’s cottage without catching any game. Kelsie waved to him from the garden, but he didn’t stop to wave back. He found Abigail sitting at the foot of Baba’s rocking chair, holding her hands up as Baba circled thread around them to untangle a skein of yarn.

  “Back so soon, my dorogoy?” Baba asked, not looking up. “What did my little predator catch for us?”

  Lucifer blanched at her words. He wasn’t a predator. He caught game for sustenance, not because he enjoyed being cruel to animals. The Fae were the predators.

  “There’s a Fae trap in the forest, set by a rogue Fae, I’d wager,” he said. “It isn’t safe here.”

  “Safe for who?” Baba asked with such a sweet smile, he knew there was a wolf in that old lady’s clothing.

  “For all of us. For Kelsie and Abigail especially. They might be lured.” He looked to Abigail, who smiled at him when she heard her name. “They’re leshi like Coinneach.”

  Abigail’s brow furrowed.

  Kelsie asked from the door. “These leshi—they’ve got big vats up on pedestals with people floating inside?”

  “Indeed,” Lucifer said. “Venus man traps.”

  Kelsie stiffened. When Godric had explained how he’d gotten the burns on his body, he’d suspected from Kelsie’s reaction she’d encountered leshi before. Now he knew for certain.

  “We’d best be away from this forest.” Lucifer kneeled beside Baba’s chair. “Can we pack up the cottage and leave before tonight? Please, Baba.”

  Her eyes crinkled up as she looked him in the face. It was rare he thought he saw genuine sorrow there. Abigail twisted the yarn she had just helped Baba coil so neatly. Lucifer removed it from her hands.

  “Why do we have to leave?” Kelsie asked. “We shouldn’t be forced from our home because one of them is here.”

  Lucifer sighed in exasperation. “Because they’re dangerous, and I don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  Kelsie looked to Baba. “Let me kill it.”

  “No. You are not strong enough.” Baba looked to Lucifer. “He is strong enough. Whether he is smart enough, that is another matter. A beard does not make a philosopher.”

  Lucifer patted his beard self-consciously. He’d made enough mistakes to learn the wisdom from them even if Baba didn’t think so. “I want no part in killing. I’m not going down that road again.” And wasn’t he wiser for selecting a different path this time? He’d broken Abigail’s heart the last time he’d tried to help her get revenge. He wanted to be a good person who did good deeds, the kind of person who would make her proud. Not a murderer.

  If he could help it.

  Abigail yelped at the same moment Lucif
er felt a sharp pain radiating from her finger. She clutched her hand to her chest protectively.

  Lucifer looked to Baba’s knitting needles, though they remained in her bag. Abigail pointed to his boot. A sprig of vine clung to the back of his pants. He tore it free, careful to avoid the thorns.

  “That is from leshi?” Baba asked.

  “It’s from the forest near one of their Venus man traps.”

  Baba snapped her fingers and pointed to the fire. “Burn it. We shall hope you did not bring any more with you, lest they use that to find us and track us later.”

  Lucifer threw the vine into the fire, hoping that would be the last of the leshi, though he doubted it was.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Catawampus

  They packed up, and the chicken feet under the cottage stirred. The cottage trembled and rocked as the giant legs underneath uprooted themselves from their roost.

  Usually they only left a location at the end of the summer season before the first frost. That was what Baba said it took to avoid aging. She only left during late summer and arrived into early spring. It made the passing of time difficult to guess and sometimes years passed outside the cottage in the mortal realm while only days passed where Baba settled in the Faerie Realm.

  Lucifer doubted Gertrude Periwinkle would ever be able to return those books of magic that might help Abigail now.

  After moving the cottage to a new location, getting settled, and having supper, Baba insisted Lucifer needed to hunt.

  “Tonight, you change into cat,” she said.

  Lucifer knew what that really meant. She wanted him to become a cat to mate and build up his affinity.

  “I hate turning into a cat,” Lucifer grumbled.

  “Meow,” Abigail said. She smiled, pleased with herself.

  Kelsie looked to Lucifer with curiosity in her eyes. “Can you change into any other animals? How about a toad? I bet you’d be good at that one.”