by Lori Selke
“Yeah, yeah, yeah, Portia.” She drawled as she padded down the short hallway between the teleportation chamber and Central Ops. “Or should that be ‘Captain Loser’?” The last she said with a smirk as she dropped into the co-pilot chair next to her partner, Captain Portia Legrasse.
Portia gasped in mock surprise, her long, thin fingers pressing lightly to her chest. “I say you violated the spirit of the wager. You get way too much enjoyment out of this kind of collection mission.”
Senta winked at her as she draped a leg over the arm of the chair and slowly extracted the specimen collection sheath from within herself. She poured the white fluid into a sequencer unit, sparing Portia a slight nod. “I do like these lost colony missions. They are so rare, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to enjoy myself.”
Portia nodded in agreement. “They are rare, especially the human ones. What was with the whole ‘the fate of the world rests on you’ line, anyway? You were skating close to the cultural contamination line, you know.”
She dropped the empty collection sheath into the recycler and triggered the gene sequencer. “It was the truth, mostly. If the analysis shows that they’ve developed some weird genetic deviation, there could be a purge order put out. Like that one that was found over in the Perseides.” The thought of that made her frown.
“Or they could get welcomed into the fold. That whole Faith of Light is an interesting twist to the standard colonial culture patterns,” Portia commented with a hopeful tone, her eyes meeting Senta’s in a sympathetic gesture.
The sequencer beeped and information began flooding the display in front of her. Senta broke the gaze to look back at her monitor, her smile returning as she started to interpret the results. “Anyhow, I don’t see how I violated the spirit of anything,” she said, bringing the conversation back to the more pertinent topic of their wager. “The bet was to see who could get a clean sample first from the infiltrator’s recommended list of targets. We both picked Josef, and I was just better at persuasion than you.”
Her partner laughed in surprise. “Persuasion? Is that what you call what you just did?”
She keyed in a few commands, and the same information that was being collected on Senta’s screen replicated itself onto hers. “Well, it looks like you won the bet anyway. This is a clean sample if I ever saw one. Reasonable deviation on the genome, clear marker references for the descendents of Colony Ship Zweites Leben.”
Senta smiled broadly as Portia continued, “Those markers on top of that peculiar faith of theirs ought to be enough for the Cultural Council to want to initiate contact once they see the report.”
Laughing, Senta said, “Now I just have to think of what I want to claim as my prize.”
Portia forced back a giggle at the thought of what she might come up with, flipped a couple of switches, and a soft throbbing passed through the floor and walls around them as the engines thrummed to life. “Go ahead and start on your report while you are thinking on that. I’ll get our next stop programmed. It’s probably lucky for you that you had such a good time, as it looks like our next three stops can barely even qualify as bipedal, much less humanoid.”
Senta stretched and softly brushed the back of her hand down Portia’s cheek, eliciting a minute smile as the other continued to work at her command interface. “Then I guess I’ll have to rely on the old stand by, huh? Pity me,” she said with grin.
As she began writing up her report, their ship broke orbit around the planet and with a brilliant flash, warped away into the blackness of space. Far below them, Josef, descendent of Lost Colony 62, tossed and turned in his sleep, dreams of seductive women fighting with nightmares of moral corruption and ambiguity.
~ ~ ~
Succubus Chances—C. H. Keyes
How are succubi created? Are they only ever demons made, as it were, from scratch? Do their attributes come in one inborn package from the get-go, or can they be acquired?
And if a human can be changed into a succubus, how in the world does that person deal with such a transformation?
This question of a succubus’ creation is examined by two authors in this collection (see Nina Harper’s “Homecoming” for another example). In “Succubus Chances,” C.H. Keyes treats us to the moral dilemmas of Aimee, a romantic—and reluctant—new-made succubus.
Her human ethics and her new nature have left her in an impossible position. Aimee attempts to follow a moral high road that for a succubus is fraught with hazard. And as she soon learns, a succubus who is starved for love may end up taking all kinds of chances.
Succubus Chances
Yeah, she was a succubus, but she didn’t have to like it. In fact, she hated it. What if her human victim woke up? Sex with someone you loved was one thing, but sex with someone you didn’t know would be downright embarrassing. So she fought it. Long and hard she’d fought off the desire that was now hers to fill.
She was not a natural born succubus, had fallen to it like the victims she was doomed to seduce. That fight left her wasted to a shaky, thin shadow of a woman who was more corpse than sexy lover.
She fought it at the Laundromat where her jeans and t-shirts fluffed in the dryer while her mouth watered over the underwear model in the old magazine on the folding table. She fought it at the grocery store when the checker grinned his stupid happy-to-meet you grin and her loins almost crawled over the conveyor belt to do him right there between check-out six and the express lane. She fought it when the delivery boy she’d hired to take flowers all over town gave her a braces-filled smile that almost cracked his acne open and she’d had to run to the alley out back and slam her hand into the brickwork over and over until she had calmed enough to go back into the sanctuary of her flower-filled shop. Not even her begging-for-mercy prayers kept the wanting at bay. It was eating her alive. And she was afraid; if she was honest she knew she would finally, eventually, give in. Or die.
And she didn’t want to die.
But her momma had taught her better. She was no loose floozy. Sex was not fun and games to her. It was lifetime, a commitment, a true-blue locking yourself to that person for good.
So she held out. For six months she held out. Until she was a walking skeleton. Friday her staff suggested she see a specialist. Saturday her landlord asked her if she was on meth. Monday she staggered into work and her assistant told her she would schedule the funeral. Then came Tuesday. And she knew her time was up.
She saw him at the coffee shop across from the flower shop she and a bank shared ownership in. He was there every morning, stepping to the counter for a to-go quad venti bold vanilla macchiato and a pastry of the day. He then walked, pastry in one hand, big cup in the other, black hair falling in his eyes, sweater vest covering an untucked rumpled shirt, while his man bag that had to hold a laptop bumped at his hip. She’d watched him every morning this last week: arrive, order, leave. He was obviously a student at the local university. A geek. A rube. A boy in man clothes. But his oversized glasses, his floppy hair, and his big feet were endearing, like a big fluffy dog in the park.
She couldn’t hold back the fantasy of his skinny body writhing beneath her, his white skinny chest with small pink nipples pumping up and down with gasping breath as she rode him hard, until he spurted in her in a jetting that nearly unseated her with the force of it. But fantasy was all she had. All she would allow herself. While her skin pulled closer to her bones, her lips tightening against her teeth and her vitality slipping away like dark breezes on hot nights, she fought the urge, the need, the very life of her fading from lack of food. She ordered flowers, arranged bouquets, made corsages and boutonnieres for lucky couples and wreaths for the doors of the church on Atlantic Street and delivered bouquets to the hospitals for new moms, but even though she breathed in the fresh scent of the roses and carnations and calla lilies, the energy she once had for the business she’d dreamed of since she saw the gardens in San Diego on a school trip was fading.
She’d told Celeste, the only other succubus she had direct
contact with, that she couldn’t do what was required of her to survive.
“Look, kid, you are what you are. No changing it now.” Celeste smoothed the red silk over one ample hip and crossed one fleshy thigh over the other. Even Aimee couldn’t resist watching the shapely calf and dainty foot as it dangled in the air, bouncing softly. Then Aimee raised her eyes to Celeste’s face and flushed at the amused smile on the plump lips. Shiny red lipstick emphasized them, over which the dark gray eyes made up expertly looked over the crowd and returned to stare at Aimee. The flesh of her cheeks was firm, lush, pink and dainty all at once.
“See? It’s not so bad. In fact, I can turn every eye in this place, have them eating out of my hand in moments if I want. See the man in the corner, the pin-stripe suit with the maroon tie?”
Aimee looked at the booth in the corner where three men sat drinking. All three wore the suits of men accustomed to business offices but only one had a maroon tie. She nodded.
“He’s number one for me today. In fact, I think he will retire to his room early.” As she spoke Aimee looked back at the men as the gentleman in question yawned, a long drawn out yawn that ended in a slump of tiredness.
“How can you do that?”
“I am already part of him. I brushed against him when he came in and now there’s no way he can shake me.”
“No, not that. I get how you can connect, but I don’t get how you can be so casual about it. I mean, what if he’s married? What if he loves someone? What if he doesn’t want to have sex with you? How can you just force him to? It’s the same thing as rape.”
Celeste shrugged. “Just don’t let them wake up and it isn’t an issue.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, to them we are a dream, a fantasy. They see us in the flesh and then they go home or wherever and sleep and the fantasy starts. When we come to them it’s as if they are dreaming. They want us, they get us, and there is no guilt because we leave without them knowing it really happened. The only danger is in them waking up.”
“‘Cause then they’re hooked,” Aimee mumbled.
“Like a crack addict.”
“Then what?”
“Fuck ‘em.”
Aimee’s shocked eyes widened then narrowed as Celeste broke into laughter.
“Oh, honey, your face,” the older succubus giggled. The musical lilt of the laugh raised the hairs on Aimee’s arms; her nipples tightened and she suddenly sat up. Even as a succubus she wasn’t immune to the bombshell across from her. She looked around where several men at the end of the bar were now focused on Celeste.
“I don’t want to, uh, do that,” she whispered. The red creeping across her face told her truth. “I can’t just go have sex with some guy I don’t even know then leave like it never happened.”
“You have to.” Celeste flipped her longer hair over her shoulder. Aimee’s eyes followed the movement. So did the ten or so sets of eyes from the men in the bar.
“Celeste, tone it down,” she whispered urgently, nodding at the men approaching from behind Celeste. The other woman simply sat up straight, swiveled her chair and said to Aimee, “Watch and learn, l’enfant.”
The sarcasm flowed over her as Aimee slumped in her highback bar stool, her faded jeans and plain cotton shirt slack on her once-full frame. Celeste poked fun at her often. Her fingers idly picked at the side seam of her right leg while Celeste teased and flirted with the men. She pushed at the ponytail of hair that hung limply at her neck, nothing like the shiny tresses of her friend. Her own lips were dry over slightly misaligned teeth, a pointed chin, and long skinny neck. The lushness of Celeste was even more apparent next to her, she thought. She was like a scarecrow next to Marilyn Monroe.
Celeste played games with the men until they were frothy with desire, then she gently encouraged them to leave. After the last one had gone, she turned back to Aimee.
“Well, my evening is full,” she smiled suggestively, wagging her eyebrows.
“All of them?” Aimee asked.
“Well, a girl’s gotta maintain.” Celeste skimmed a hand along her breast, waist, hips and ended at her thigh.
“You do ten a night?” Aimee didn’t know if she should be shocked or surprised or jealous. Ten men in one night was about eleven more than she wanted, but she knew that Celeste spent ample time fulfilling her needs. And she was jealous because Celeste looked great for a one-hundred-something-year-old succubus.
“Oh, to be young and fresh and new!” Celeste laughed, the sound a tinkling of bells, but a hardness was there too.
“What do you mean?” asked Aimee.
“Oh, when you are new you only need it once in a while to keep you healthy. When you get older it takes more to keep you fresh.”
“What if you like him?”
“What if?” Celeste shrugged.
“No. I mean, what if you want more from him? Like, you like him for more?”
“Girly, no succubus ties herself to one man. It isn’t enough. He can’t give enough.”
“But you said it doesn’t take as much at first. That you only need it once in a while, right?”
Celeste narrowed her eyes at Aimee. “Well, yes, but once you get the fever you might want to do more just because it feels so great.”
“But you could just be with one person?”
“Maybe. But why?”
Aimee had heard Celeste’s explanations before, since the night she had awakened with that stupid bat sitting on her chest and a feeling of euphoria she’d never experienced before or since tingling throughout her body. Celeste had found her like that, on her back in the park, looking up at the stars of a northern sky and smiling like an idiot. After assuring herself that her favorite pet bat was fine, she locked him into her patent leather pink purse and focused on Aimee. Step One on leading her through the newness of a succubus life that neither had wanted for her, but the renegade bat had forced upon her. And in the six months since, Celeste had talked, lectured, cajoled and harangued her. But she resisted.
Then Tuesday came. And he was in the coffee shop. And his Harry Potter hair flopped in the wind at the door and she was dying and so she excused herself to her staff saying she was going home sick and moved across the street to the coffee shop just as he was exiting so that they met in a jumble of limbs and books and saggy clothing. She brushed against him and the link was made at the same time desire slammed into her loins and she sagged with the heaviness, grabbing his arm in response.
“Whoa!” he said and slipped his arm around her suddenly weak body. “Are you okay? Did I get you with the door?”
“Noooo,” she managed to mumble, “just not expecting it.”
“Ah, well, uh, are you okay?”
“Yes.” She tried to recover, shaking with the force of the heat building in her. The flush in her loins had spread to her arms, her chest, neck and face. It was about to come out in the form of her crawling on top of him so she pulled herself up and away from that masculine arm she so badly wanted to lick. “I’m fine. Really,” she reassured him. “I’m Aimee.” She didn’t hold out her hand, not wanting to chance touching his bare skin.
“Chance.” He nodded at her.
“Chance? Nice.” She smiled at him. He flushed, a confused look on his face quickly replaced with a bolder look.
“Aimee? You from around here, Aimee?” He rolled the “e’s” so they sounded lyrical. The way she liked her name pronounced.
“You could say that.” She thumbed over her shoulder. “My shop over there,” and smiled in reaction to his nod of approval. “What about you?”
“I’m at the university. Just finishing my master’s in anthropology.” His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed, talked, moved. Aimee found it strangely erotic, wanted to touch her lips there, too.
“You have class now?”
“Um, yeah.” He was looking at her now, so she met his eyes and his face flushed red. His blue eyes seemed to brighten, his nostrils flared and Aimee smelled the excite
ment rising from him like steam from a hot springs. She leaned closer, closing her eyes and sucking in the heat, the near essence filling her head like a hit of wine on an empty stomach. He leaned toward her when someone cleared their throat.
They both jumped, moving from the door and stepping to the side so the couple that interrupted could enter the coffee shop.
“Maybe I’ll see you around sometime,” he said in a half question, half statement.
“Yeah, maybe so.” She had his address, his name, age, memories and whatever else she wanted from that one brush against him. He would see her again. Tonight. He was hers. And she would make sure he knew she was his.
Her mom would like him. So would her dad. And her brother would think he was a geek but he would fit in at church, at the family reunion and with her. She just had to make sure he fell in love with her, not her succubus self. Then it would work out perfectly. She could feed her succubus self while he slept, make love with him in the day for pleasure, and they could both be happy.
But first she had to not die. So this time, she would go to him at night. While he slept.
She called Celeste as soon as she got home. The older succubus didn’t answer so she left a garbled message that she needed to talk to her. Then she dumped a jug of bath oils into the clawfoot tub in her second story brownstone apartment and sank into the hot water.
Hours later she was shaved smooth as glass, oiled, shampooed and had rubbed a mixture of vanilla, jasmine and cherry blossom into her skin. She shrugged a burgundy silk sleeveless shirt over her head, pulled on a black skirt and slipped her feet into flat slipper shoes. Tonight she wanted nothing on her that was unnecessary. Her nipples were already beaded in anticipation.
Tonight was her chance. Chance.
Moving as only the supernatural can, she was at his open window, then inside his house like a cool breeze on a hot day. She stopped at the end of his bed. He lay on his back, the dark blue sheet pushed aside, the only clothing a pair of cotton blue boxer shorts.
The heat inside her came full force to her loins and she let it. It carried her forward and without her even knowing how, she was naked, straddling his now-naked hips. She leaned forward, brushing the tips of her breasts over his chest and his nipples contracted in response. Between her legs his member also jumped in response and she couldn’t wait.