by Parker Blue
The women seemed spellbound as they watched his dance speak of passion, sensuality, and enticing erotic possibilities. A sudden dramatic pause in the music brought him to a halt in front of one audience member. He beckoned to her and she locked gazes with him then rose slowly to lay her trembling hands on his chest as the women around her sighed audibly.
Micah embraced her and lust surged in the room as the music swelled again and he whirled her in the dance. The woman, obviously no audience plant, was content to be moved in whatever direction Micah chose as he simulated a courtship. Then, when he was through with her, he twirled her back to her table. With her fingers lingering on his arm and gaze glued to his face, she sank bonelessly into her seat.
He glanced around for another partner and caught my eye. I shrank back and he looked startled for a moment, but recovered quickly and spun away to repeat the performance with another audience member.
Okay, this wasn’t too uncomfortable. But that weird feeling in the air . . . what was that? It felt like . . . like satisfaction. Like a thirst finally slaked.
Lola stirred and I suddenly realized what had happened. Just as a succubus resided within me, Micah definitely hosted an incubus . . . and he was feeding it with the lust from the audience.
Shocked, I didn’t know what to think. This had been forbidden to me all my life, yet he did it in full public view, almost like he was doing the dirty in front of an audience.
Finally, the dance ended with Micah frozen in a theatrical pose and the lights went out. Total silence reigned for a long moment, then the lights came up and the women went nuts—hooting and hollering as if it was the best thing they’d ever experienced. And perhaps it was, especially for those who had been seduced in the dance. Those few seemed stunned and completely satisfied, but at least he hadn’t totally drained them of energy. They didn’t seem to regret being singled out for Micah’s special attention, either.
I felt a touch on my sleeve, and the Bela Lugosi look-alike was there, saying, “Micah will see you now.”
I froze. Was I really ready for this?
Well, too late to back out now. Repressing a surge of elation tinged with apprehension, I followed Bela backstage to a simple unmarked room. Seeming a little embarrassed, probably for not believing me earlier, Bela showed me in, saying, “Micah will be with you shortly.”
He left me alone in an office that was bigger than I expected. Not ostentatious, just simple and elegant, with comfy-looking chairs for guests. Not knowing what to expect, I stood in the middle of the space. After a few minutes, I heard the sound of a door opening, and turned toward it. Evidently the adjoining door was to a bathroom, for Micah stood there, smelling fresh from the shower, his hair wet.
Barefoot, but now wearing jeans and a shirt, he paused in buttoning his shirt to give me an enigmatic look, saying, “At long last, we meet . . . Valentine.”
“Val,” I managed. “I go by Val.”
“I know. And I’ve been waiting a long time for you to find us.” He held out his arms, offering a hug, and though I’d avoided personal contact with men all my life, I moved into his arms as if he were a long-lost brother.
Oh God, that felt good. Tears stung my eyes and I hugged him back fiercely. This . . . I had missed this, even though I’d never had it before. I’d never been able to hug men, not even Rick, for fear of the demon getting loose and sucking all of the life from them.
I didn’t know if it was because we carried similar sorts of demons, but my succubus and Micah’s incubus were quiescent, leaving me feeling like a normal person as I held him close.
What a wonderful sensation. In fact, I felt full of emotions, almost bursting with it, though I couldn’t have said what those emotions were. Not romantic, not sleazy in any way, just overjoyed to find someone I could be myself with.
We broke the hug and Micah led me to a chair in front of the desk. As I seated myself, he leaned against the desk and smiled at me. “So what finally brought you to seek me out?”
I surreptitiously wiped the moisture from my eyes and said, “I just learned about your father a few days ago, how he helped my parents help me. I had no idea there were others like me. Are we related?” Did I actually have family on my father’s side?
“It’s very possible we’re some sort of distant cousins, but your father didn’t know much about his background. He was abandoned as a child.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “I know how that feels.” I gave him a curious look. “Did you know him?”
“A little. I was about nine when he died, but my father knew him better, and told me about him.”
For the first time, I wondered what my father had been like, if he was really the monster Mom and my own imagination had made him out to be. “Will you tell me what you know?”
“I remember him as a smiling, happy man, always ready with a joke. But he had dark periods, when he struggled with his true nature.”
That fit what I remembered of him. “Do you know what happened between him and my mother?” All I had was my five-year-old perspective, kind of limited. “Mom wouldn’t talk about it.”
Micah nodded. “I don’t know the whole story, but you do know your father seduced your mother?”
“Yes.” And Mom had been unable to resist the incubus part of him—a fact for which she had never forgiven him.
“Your mother was a very beautiful woman and your father fell in love with her the moment he saw her. He seduced her, then married her when he learned she was pregnant, hoping he could keep his nature under control. But your mother couldn’t resist the incubus in your father, and it really bothered her when she lost all reason around him, so she divorced him and forbade him to see her soon after you were born.”
“But I remember seeing him,” I said in puzzlement. A few flashing memories of a handsome, laughing man who treated me like a princess.
“Yes, he still had visiting rights to see you—she wouldn’t take that away from him. Then . . . something happened.”
“What?”
“I hoped you could tell me that,” Micah said seriously. “What happened when your father visited you on your fifth birthday?”
“Oh. That.” Guilt filled me. I’d been trying to forget it for years, but horribly, it was the one clear memory I had of my father.
“Can you tell me?” Micah asked. “It’s the only piece of the puzzle I don’t have.”
“I . . . it’s difficult.” As he waited patiently, I gathered my courage and told him. “I was a little over-excited since it was my birthday and my daddy had come to see me. For some reason, this time Mom didn’t leave right away when he came.” I shrugged. “I knew all the details of what happened, but didn’t really understand it all until years later.”
I paused, wondering how I could possibly put it into words. “He was . . . very glad to see Mom, very charming and cajoling. I think he was trying to convince her to come back to him, even though she’d already married Rick and had another daughter by that time.”
When I paused, Micah nodded encouragingly.
“She kept refusing and trying to leave, but he wouldn’t let her. Then . . . he did something. Something I didn’t understand at the time. All I knew was that I felt something strange reach out from inside him toward Mom. I could tell Mom thought it was a bad thing, and I felt really afraid, especially since she seemed sort of scared, but sort of wanting it, too.”
Micah nodded. “You would have just begun to recognize his incubus powers at that age, but you couldn’t understand what was happening.”
Glad he understood, I continued. “All I knew is that he was doing something bad and my mother was afraid. I asked him to stop, but he grabbed her and kissed her, and that funny feeling came again.” I knew now I had sensed the incubus my father had been unable—or unwilling—to suppress.
“What did you do?” Micah asked softly.
“What could I do? I was only five. But . . . I beat on his leg with my fists and yelled at him to let her go.” I still
remembered the surprise on his face. “He did, and I jumped between them, holding my arms out to protect Mom, telling Daddy he was a very bad man and should leave us alone.”
Micah kept silent, letting me tell the rest of the story my way. “He . . . he looked totally horrified. Stricken. Then he rushed out of there like the fiends of hell were at his heels.” I blinked back tears. “I never saw him again.” He had killed himself later that day.
Micah nodded. “It makes sense. From what others have said, I know that he often thought himself a monster.”
I nodded. I knew the feeling. And though I knew I’d saved my mother from violation that day, I also knew I had the same possibilities lying dormant inside me. If my father, a strong adult, couldn’t handle it, how could I be expected to?
Micah continued. “Obviously, he couldn’t stand what he was doing to the woman he loved, especially when his five-year-old daughter chastised him for it.”
I had to say what Micah must be thinking. “So I’m the reason he killed himself.”
Micah looked truly horrified. “Is that what you’ve believed all these years?”
“It’s the truth.” It was always unspoken between Mom and me, but I knew I was the reason my father had committed suicide. If I hadn’t jumped between the two of them, he might still be alive today.
Micah dropped to his knees to gather me in a hug once again. “It’s not your fault, Val. He couldn’t handle the two sides of our nature, couldn’t reconcile the two and live with it.”
Intellectually, I’d known that for a long time, but emotionally, I still felt I’d driven my father to suicide. I deepened the hug, letting the tears flow. “So you . . . don’t blame me?”
He moved away from me a bit to look into my tear-filled face. “Of course not. How can you think that?”
I waved my hand vaguely. “You and your father knew about me, but never contacted me directly.”
“It had nothing to do with you. Suffice it to say that your mother didn’t want any reminders of your father around, didn’t want anything that would jeopardize you fitting in with the rest of the world.”
Yes, that sounded like Mom. “I wish you’d ignored her.”
“We wanted to,” Micah assured me.
“Why didn’t you?”
“Because of you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You had a tough enough time growing up part demon in that household—”
“You know what my life was like?” I asked, surprised.
“Yes, we kept track of you as much as possible, helped where we could.”
“How? Why?”
“Since my father and I shared your nature, we knew when the critical times would come, knew what would happen to you as you grew up. Father visited your parents to let them know what was coming, to help them help you deal with something they couldn’t possibly understand.” He smiled at me. “There aren’t that many of us, and we need to help each other out. Besides, as you said, we’re probably related somehow.”
“But I still don’t understand why you didn’t contact me after I got older. We could have met outside the family, somewhere just the two of us, like this.”
He regarded me for a moment, as if unsure what to tell me. “Because I lead a very different life than you do. I wasn’t sure how you would react.”
True, I really didn’t know much about him. I laughed a little uneasily. “Why? Do you do more than dance with those women? You strip?”
He stood, looking uncomfortable. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh. You mean because you let the incubus control you and I keep the succubus repressed.”
He cocked his head at her. “You speak of your gift as if it were a separate part of you.”
Gift? More like a curse. “Isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not. It’s part of who you are. You can’t compartmentalize it, shove it aside. You have to come to terms with it, embrace it.”
“But isn’t that dangerous? I saw what it did to my father. That was a lesson I’ll never forget—demon bad, human good.”
“It doesn’t have to be dangerous—”
“I don’t believe that,” I cut in. “When I was sixteen and kissed a boy for the first time, I almost drained him of his energy, his life force. I almost killed him.”
“You were young and didn’t understand your powers. It doesn’t have to be that way. And it’s dangerous to keep it suppressed the way you do. I can feel your power, straining to get out, caged like a beast.”
Good analogy—that’s how I often thought of the demon within me. “But I don’t keep my ‘gift’ pent up all the time,” I insisted. “I let it out by hunting vampires. That feeds the lust in a different way.”
He shook his head. “But that way is so much less satisfying. The only way to truly satisfy your craving is to use it sexually. I told your parents that, but I guess they didn’t find it a viable option.”
Hardly. A bit uncomfortable discussing this, I said, “I can’t do what you do.” Then I would really lose all ties to my family. Besides, I was so not ready. “What if I take advantage of someone? What if I kill them? Heck, what if I take my father’s route and kill myself ?”
“Look,” Micah said. “It isn’t something you can just ignore and hope it will go away.”
“I know that.” Only too well.
“You don’t understand. You’re like an uptight parent who thinks if they say, ‘No sex’ their teenagers will fall right into line, cross their legs and ignore their hormones. You can’t ignore this. You can’t take a pill for it. But you can keep it from destroying your life. When you bleed it off a little at a time, like I do, you don’t get the cravings. You can control it easily, and you don’t hurt anyone.”
“Do you think those women you . . . seduced . . . feel the same?”
“Oh, I’m sure of it,” Micah said seriously. “You saw the act. They all want to be with me, they all want to experience what I can give them. And I only take from those willing to give.”
He sounded more resigned than pleased by the fact, and I realized he’d probably never been able to have a normal relationship either. It was kind of sad.
“It’s different for me. I can’t . . . do what you do.”
“Too bad. You’ve kept it suppressed for so long that when you finally let loose, there’s no telling what will happen.”
That didn’t sound good. “So, I can’t ever . . . you know . . . ?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Be intimate with a guy?”
Well, yeah. I shrugged, my face hot.
“I take it you have someone specific in mind. Does he know what you are?”
“No, and I want to keep it that way.”
Micah considered for a moment. “Well, you could let loose with someone else first, test it out and see what happens.”
No way. “That’s not an option.”
“I didn’t think so.” He thought for a moment. “I’ve never been in this situation so I don’t know how to advise you. But I’m sure you have a lot more control now than you did when you were sixteen. Maybe it won’t be a problem. Maybe you can keep it under control.”
Maybe. But could I chance it?
A knock sounded at the door and Micah answered it.
It was Dan. Lola perked up at the sight of him, but I forcibly restrained myself from having a reaction. It was just because we’d been talking about him and the possibilities, that was all.
“They told me where to find you,” Dan said, his gaze darting back and forth between Micah and me as if trying to gauge what had happened. “Is everything okay?”
“It’s great,” I assured him. I introduced the two men, fibbing only a little to explain that Micah was my cousin on my father’s side, then realized I couldn’t continue this discussion in Dan’s presence. “I guess I should let Micah get back to work.”
Micah nodded and pulled me aside to talk to me privately. “This is the man. I can sense it, sense your response.”
/>
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Your reaction is strong. You realize you’re either going to have to let loose with him or get him out of your life?”
“Aren’t there any other options?” I asked wistfully.
“Not really.”
It was a lose-lose situation. If I let loose, I’d probably lose his friendship forever. Either way, I’d never see him again . . . and that was just too depressing to contemplate.
The only solution was to keep on going as I had been and hope I never had to make that choice.
CHAPTER TEN
I exchanged phone numbers with Micah and hugged him one last time. “Don’t be a stranger. I plan on seeing you. Often.”
Micah grinned down at me. “Glad to hear it.”
As Dan followed me out of the club, he said, “I take it everything went well?”
“Very well.”
“Good. His . . . dancing didn’t bother you, then?”
“Not really.” I slanted a glanced at him. “You knew what he did, and you didn’t tell me?”
Dan shrugged. “I wasn’t sure how to.”
“Doesn’t matter. He wasn’t like the others. He, uh, didn’t take his clothes off.”
“That’s a relief.”
Dan opened the truck door for me, then went around to his side and got in. Looking curious, he asked, “Did you find out why your mother never told you about that side of the family?”
I shook my head. “Look, I’m sorry, but I really don’t want to talk about this. I—I . . . don’t know how I feel, and I just want to absorb it all, give it a chance to settle in.” I cast him an anxious glance. “You understand?”
“Sure.” He reached across the wide seat to give my shoulder a squeeze. “Let me know if you want to talk.”
“Thanks.” As he started the truck, I added thoughtfully, “It’s strange. I never knew how much my family meant to me until I lost them.”
“I’m glad you found Micah, then.”
“Yeah . . . thanks to you.”
He shrugged, looking uncomfortable with my gratitude. “Anyone could have done it.”