He just stood there for a second while I waited for him to shatter my shield. He flexed and wriggled, but my body bag stayed solid. I poured more energy into it, imagining the mirrors inside showing him a hundred thousand reflections of himself, except maybe there really wasn’t anything to see, only blackness. He let his sonic scream rip, and the bag muffled it and made it even more shrill and ugly, psychic feedback. And I poured strength into the body bag until I started getting lightheaded.
And then I emptied the whole clip into it.
Chapter 15
There was no body to recover, just a bunch of stringy slime—which analysis found to be inconsistent with human remains. And though I’d left twenty bullet casings scattered in an arc around my feet, only a single bullet was recovered, the one I’d aimed at the incubus’ arm. That one had lodged in Jacob’s bedroom wall.
Jacob’s condo was now a crime scene. I’d invited him to stay with me and he’d accepted, though he was still too groggy from the incubus’ sleep-whammy to shuttle me to and from the eye doctor’s. I’d been about to call another cab for my trip home when Lisa called my cell phone and offered to pick me up.
Lisa waited right outside the clinic, idling in a little red hatchback. She’d walked right out of lockup and bought herself a used car. Not quite the reaction I would’ve had to incarceration, though she’d had the sí-no to keep her company, while I would’ve gotten a dead serial killer hanging by his shoelaces for a cellmate.
The clinic’s automatic doors whooshed open and I stepped through, blinking against the glare of the sun. The ophthalmologist had dilated my pupils to look around inside my eyes, and he’d told me the residual blood in the whites looked much worse than it actually was and it wouldn’t affect my vision in any way. I made him look inside again just to be sure. They say if you lose your sight, your other senses increase. And if my sixth sense got any sharper, I’d probably kill myself by tripping and falling on it.
Lisa gave me a big grin and reached to turn down the Mexican radio station as I climbed in. “It’s okay,” I said. “Leave it.”
She ignored me and left the volume low anyway. “What do you think of my car? Is it haunted?”
I grimaced and took a quick look in the back seat before I buckled myself in. “Nope. Sorry.”
“I didn’t think so.” She pulled away from the curb and swung around the U-shaped arc of the driveway, slipping into traffic with an ease that made me think she was learning her way around just fine. No GPS unit strapped to the dash. Maybe the sí-no was a more accurate way to travel anyway.
“I had a hard time deciding,” she said as we idled at a red light. “I think I started out asking the sí-no the wrong questions. ‘Is this car gonna last me five years?’ I got a ‘no’ on everything, and was starting to think the lot was full of lemons.” She put her left turn signal on and crept into an intersection. The oncoming traffic showed no gaps, but she waited for the end of the yellow light without any trace of anxiety and took a smooth turn just before the cross traffic gunned into the intersection. “Then I started worrying that maybe I was gonna be crippled in five years, not able to drive a car. Or maybe even dead.”
I looked out my window at the line of orderly brownstones we passed. I didn’t trust myself to attempt a reassurance that’d probably come out awkward and make things worse.
Lisa waited for a moment, maybe giving me some time to respond, and kept going when I didn’t. “I talked to Carolyn. She told me I was reaching out too far. That I should ask questions like, ‘Does this car have any mechanical problems?’ Or, ‘Will I enjoy driving it?’“
“Makes sense,” I said. I noticed the leaves on a maple coming up were starting to turn gold. One more year just passing by.
“She’s real sorry about leaking our plans to Warwick, you know.”
I sighed. “Yeah. I know. I told her it wasn’t her fault.”
“When Warwick asked her what we were up to, she didn’t even answer him, did you know that? He suspected, though, and when she wouldn’t say whether you were talking to me or not, he just took it as a yes.”
“I get it. I just said it was okay.”
Lisa pulled into a space a couple blocks south of my apartment building. I assumed the sí-no had told her there wasn’t anything closer. “She thinks you hate her now.”
“Jesus. I don’t hate her. It just scares the shit out of me, how it happened. The thought that Warwick could use her own powers to manipulate her. The idea that maybe someone could do that to me.”
Lisa cut the engine and slumped back into her seat. “Yeah. Me too. That’s why I think I’m gonna get some training.”
I swung around to grab her and shake some sense into her, but the seat belt caught me by the neck. I swore at it and clicked it open, but by then I’d calmed down enough to stop myself from acting like a lunatic. “Did Warwick talk you into it? He probably believes that fucking brochure that Heliotrope Station sends out, but lemme tell you….”
“Vic,” she said quietly, putting her hand on my knee. “Calm down. Not Camp Hell. There’s a new place in Santa Barbara. It’s called PsyTrain.”
I hated PsyTrain instinctively, but since I’m not precognizant, my instincts weren’t worth much. “Sounds like a fucking disco locomotive.”
“The department will pay for it. And when I’m done, I’ll have a job waiting for me.”
So that’s how Warwick had talked her into it. He’d let her keep on being a cop. Shrewd fucking bastard. “Visit this PsyTrain first before you go,” I said. “More than once. And make sure you talk to some people that’ve trained there, lots of them. And not just the ones they recommend, either. Find some on your own and….”
“Don’t worry. Carolyn’s going with me to make sure they’re honest.”
I didn’t suppose Lisa could do any better than having the human lie detector in tow, but the mere thought of Camp Hell had sent adrenaline pumping through my veins and I think I wanted to keep on arguing just for the sake of it.
“If something doesn’t feel right, I’ll back out of it,” Lisa said. She gave my knee a squeeze. “I promise. But Jacob’s waiting for you. He’s worried about your eyes. You should go tell him they’re okay.”
I swallowed back the urge to bicker and opened the car door. I hadn’t told Lisa my eyes were okay—but she knew. I wondered how long it would be before HMOs started scooping up psychics to cut down on the cost of medical testing, and then slapping them with lawsuits whenever their diagnoses failed.
One last look at Lisa’s back seat reassured me that the hatchback’s former owners weren’t along for the ride, and I gave her a brief, sullen wave as she cranked the Mariachi back up and pulled away from the curb.
I could’ve said something like, “Hi honey, I’m home,” when I came in, but that would’ve implied that I was in a good mood. Which I wasn’t.
My futon looked strange, small and a little bit cheap, with Jacob on it. He sat there in plaid pajama pants, hunched over the glass-top coffee table, shirtless and insanely buff, poring over one of my old textbooks. I suspected he’d already read the one about Psy-ethics. He looked up as I came in, his finger marking the spot on the page where he’d stopped reading.
“My eyes are fine,” I said. “They just look bad. But they’ll clear up in a week or two.”
Jacob smiled his broad, infectious grin.
“I’m, um…gonna go lay down,” I said, and ducked into the bedroom. Part of me wanted him to follow and help me blow off a little steam. And part of me was drained and exhausted and just wanted him to stay put. I guess I’d get my wish either way.
I kicked off my jeans, pulled on an old pair of sweatpants, drew the curtains and slipped into bed. A few minutes later I felt Jacob’s weight settle behind me. “So tell me about this third eye,” he said.
I managed to not turn it into a dirty joke, since he was so earnest and all, and I didn’t feel much like joking anyway. “What about it?”
“Does it feel like a
n actual eye to you? Does it blink? Did the incubus’ scream affect it, too?”
“It’s all a metaphor,” I said. “It’s not a real eye.”
“But the text….”
“Is incredibly hokey and inaccurate. I used to think it was translated from Russian. They had a handle on Psych stuff a long time before we figured it out here. Them and the Chinese.”
Jacob eased his arm around me and spooned my back into his chest. We fit our bent legs together, and his knees nestled behind mine. “I know you think I’m pushy for asking….”
“What? No, no I don’t.”
“I can tell. You sound disgusted when you answer me. But you’re a difficult man to get to know. And I’m only trying to understand.”
I felt bad. Just a little. “Look at the part on chakras in one of the newer books, the one with the guy on the cover who looks constipated. That’s a little better explanation.”
I think the cover model was supposed to be expressing some sort of psychic talent in action, but I’d always wanted to slip him an Ex-Lax. I half expected Jacob to leap out of bed to go find it since he was so into the whole Psych thing. But instead he just snuggled tighter into my back, his breath warm against my shoulder blade.
And his stiff cock hard against the back of my thigh.
All I had to do was reach back and take it in my hand, let him know that I was ready if he was. And yet I still felt peevish and out of sorts. He sighed and pressed a little harder, his fingertips fanning over my ribs as he held me. I felt a flutter of arousal at his touch, and his warmth, and the sheer solidity of him.
And yet.
Jacob pressed his mouth to my ear. He had a sexy voice and he was shameless about using it. “Make love to me,” he said.
I turned my head toward him and his mouth covered mine, the light bristle of his short beard scraping at the criss crossed network of fine scabs on my cheek. His tongue traced my lower lip, drew my tongue out to meet it, but only reluctantly. I knew the incubus had used heavy psychic stuff to seduce him. Call it a glamour, or some kind of mesmerism. But I couldn’t help it. I was jealous.
I turned my mouth from his. “I don’t have any condoms or lube,” I said, and did my best not to count the number of years it’d been since I’d dated someone steadily enough to need such things. The record store guy. Too many years.
Jacob’s mouth went to my throat, and he traced a long lick down the sinew of my neck. “Who says I need them?” he asked, and I could hear the smile in his voice. “I just want to touch you. Taste you. Hold you.”
His hand skimmed up my body and his fingertips found my nipple, took it firmly this time, and squeezed. Arousal surged toward my groin as if the two points were magically linked, and then he gave a little twist that made me whimper.
His lower hand slipped palm-down beneath the waistband of my sweatpants. My breath shuddered out, but I bit back the moan that threatened to escape me. It wasn’t fair that he could make me so hard so fast. He cupped my balls with his palm and twisted my nipple again, and I writhed against him, feeling his hard cock settle in the cleft of my ass.
“Ready to lose the pants?” he asked me.
I wanted to give him a sulky answer, but he was stroking the skin behind my balls, just one fingertip, light and repetitive, and it was like all of my awareness surged into that one spot, leaving me helpless to reply.
He twisted my nipple again, and I arched and moaned.
“God, you’re so hot,” he said, and sank his teeth into the meat of my shoulder while he took his upper hand and jammed my sweats down around my thighs.
More shocks of arousal traveled down to my cock, which seemed very happy to be free and butting against the comforter.
I felt him against my lower body, thick black body hair, belly, groin and thighs, tickling against my ass and the backs of my legs. He pressed one of his knees between mine and spread my legs from behind. His thigh was so muscular and solid it felt like iron, and my back arched some more to allow him to spread me.
His lower hand slipped deeper between my legs, fingertips gliding feathery touches over my asshole that left me gasping.
“Touch my cock,” I demanded, and my voice was a desperate rasp.
Jacob let go of my nipple and ran his upper hand down my ribs. He gave my cock a cursory stroke, then fondled my balls.
“Goddamn it,” I said, but I wasn’t mad, not really. Just so hard that it hurt—and he knew it.
His upper hand slipped around back to my ass, spread the cheeks while the fingers of his lower hand continued to swirl and tease. And then I felt his balls nestle against my ass, his thick, hard cock cradled again between my ass cheeks.
“Squeeze,” he said, and I clenched up a little. He slid his cock within that cleft and shuddered against me. “Oh, God, yeah.”
His voice was thick, not the usual controlled purr I’d come to associate with Jacob, the hottest cop in the city. And I dug that I could do that to him, make him all trembly and needy and hard.
He took my cock loosely in one hand while teasing my ass, my balls, the creases of my thighs with the fingertips of the one he’d wedged between my legs. It would’ve tickled, except he shifted his grip on my cock and gave it a long, hard stroke.
I arched and swallowed down a yell that would’ve carried to the next apartment if I’d let it out.
“Like that?” he said, gravelly in my ear.
“Fuck, yeah.”
He pulled on my cock again, this time slipping a finger inside me.
I arched, hard, and stroked his cock with my ass.
He grunted and bit down on my shoulder, and pulled my lower body roughly against his on the downstroke. We caught a rhythm somehow, me grinding and clenching the length of his cock between my ass cheeks, him fingering me, stroking me, tearing at my shoulder with his teeth like some kind of beast.
I broke first, grabbing at the comforter, the windowsill, Jacob’s wrist as he jerked off my cock, fingerfucked me, his leg between mine opening me even more, spreading me, taking my body and dragging an orgasm out of me.
I gasped his name as I came, my whole body twitching helplessly on his, splayed out wide like I’d been stretched on a giant rack.
He stopped pulling my cock and just held me for those final few twitches, so violent they rattled the bedframe against the floorboards.
“C’mere,” he said, once I managed to draw a normal breath. He scootched back and helped me to roll over and face him. He took my trembling hand between his and wrapped it around his cock, and I felt my own come, sticky between his fingers. He moaned when I grasped him, and pressed his forehead into mine. He let go of my hand and brought his fingertips to my face, tracing the line of my cheekbone and jaw while I re-learned the shape of his thick, veined cock, learned how he shuddered when I thumbed the ridge under the head, learned how he groaned when I bore down hard on him and glided strong, even strokes down the length of him.
His top leg was thrown over mine and I felt his thighs begin to tremble as he got close. I slowed my strokes and he hissed, whether in approval or frustration, it was hard to say. And then his fingers wove into my hair and he pulled me forward into a slow, deep kiss as his breath hitched, and his hot, wet come painted my hand, belly and chest.
He kept on kissing me, long after he’d gotten off, until finally he drew his tongue into a gentle sweep across my lips, and he lay back just a few inches from my face and sighed.
I held him and felt his breath warm on my cheek, the weight of his leg solid and heavy just above my knee. It was so close to perfect. Except for that cold knot in my belly that told me my jealousy was still coloring everything.
“It’s none of my business,” I said, “but I can’t help but wonder whose face that incubus was wearing for you. I mean, who’s so great that you’d ditch me at the Cottonwood Lounge and run home with him?”
“You’re kidding.”
I closed my eyes so I didn’t have to see him looking at me and decided it was best to
keep my mouth shut, too.
“You are kidding, right?”
As if I would make a joke about something like that. I kept my eyes closed and refused to answer.
Jacob’s sticky fingers traced the shape of my face yet again. “You really don’t know, do you?” He pressed a gentle kiss onto one of my eyebrows, then the other. “It was you, Vic. He disguised himself as you.”
-end-
About this Story
It’s unfortunate that I can’t write at the speed of thought. When I first started writing this series, Victor Bayne was about my age...and now I’m catching up with Jacob and not-quite-forty Vic has been looking more and more like a young whippersnapper!
Among the Living was written in answer to a call for entry for a novella-length story featuring paranormal beings in everyday situations. I hadn’t really thought about writing a series back when I got the idea for PsyCop. It just seemed like it would be an interesting premise to have psychic cops going around doing their jobs, but then also dealing with the personal ramifications of being psychic, because certainly, the knife needs to cut both ways. It’s no fun giving a character a supernormal power without also saddling them with a liability that’s just as prominent.
The worldbuilding and characterization were the two things that made me eager to keep expanding the PsyCop world once this initial story was written. It seemed like there were so many more profoundly awkward situations with Vic’s name written all over them just waiting to be explored.
I don’t think PsyCop should go on forever, since series that do that, in my opinion, tend to overreach the protagonists’ character arcs and jump the shark. But thanks to the worldbuilding I’ve done so far and the slow but sure evolution of my narrator, I do have at least a couple more PsyCop stories planned before Vic will need to ride off into the sunset.
PsyCop 1: Among the Living Page 9