Incubus Honeymoon

by August Li

  SS Man: male, 9-10, black. Female, 7, poss. Puerto Rican. Female, 14, Syrian.

  UncJohn47: Can poss move. Will make inquiries.

  SS Man: Want at least 10 for females, 5 for male

  UncJohn47: No way 10 f0r 14 yr bitch. 7 if lucky

  UncJohn47: Send pics

  I scrolled down, staring in horror at the grainy photographs of the little boy and girls. The older girl covered her bare chest with her hands, and she had a black eye and some other bruises and scrapes. Even with the crappy quality, I could see the boy’s face was wet with tears. I thought I was going to puke, and I had to look away for a while before I checked the laptop for anything else. I didn’t find anything, but then I was no expert. I’d take it and see if Moirin’s friend might have some luck.

  “Fuck me,” Inky whispered. “Somebody should do something…. I never…. Fuck.”

  “I have a contact who can see this gets to the cops, at least,” I said. I knew I was a prick for thinking it, but I couldn’t help being glad I hadn’t seen Ros’s picture. But that didn’t mean they didn’t have her. “I have to know for sure. I have to talk to one of these bastards.”

  I hadn’t heard Blossom come up, but he leaned over the arm of the couch and poked the big bearded guy in the cheek with his long finger. The guy blinked a few times, sat up, and scratched at one of his saggy tits.

  “Why, good morning,” Blossom said. “On your feet. Follow me.”

  I slid out of the way as the big fucker stood and followed Blossom out onto the porch in nothing but some camouflage pants. His bare feet turned red as soon as they hit the snow, but he trudged after the faerie like he didn’t even notice.

  Inky shook his head. “I guess this is what we’re doing. Nice to be consulted, innit?”

  “Let’s go,” I said, sticking the computer inside my coat. Some fresh flurries fell as we made our way back up the hill, into the trees, and deeper into the woods.

  THE TRUCK I found about a mile from the WLF hideout had to belong to Dante. That meant he was already here, but with any luck, he hadn’t made his move yet. I selected the sniper rifle and left the Rogue a few hundred yards from the truck, easily following the tracks left by what looked like two men—Dante and somebody else, a full-grown man as indicated by the size and depth of the tracks. Though many of our associates were quite fond of the young man, I wondered who he’d found to assist him on such short notice.

  They’d been smart enough to stick to the cover of the trees, but when the cabin came into view, the prints led down the hillside and right to the door, which stood open. Either nothing had happened yet or I was too late. Concealing myself behind some mountain laurel that still had its glossy green leaves, I stretched out on my stomach and used my scope to get a better view, trying to ignore the wet and cold seeping through my clothing. Ten minutes passed before a man exited the building. He was hardly what I had been expecting, with his longish blond hair and what looked like a slim-fitting three-piece suit. A behemoth of a man followed him, bare-chested and in his bare feet, clearly one of the skinheads. He seemed almost docile as he walked out into the snow, and I noticed no trace of a weapon compelling him. Soon after, Dante and another man, a plain one with no real distinguishing features, left the house, and the four of them headed back up the hill and into the forest.

  I pulled my knees up beneath me when they passed about a dozen feet to my right. Whatever Dante planned to do, it was best not to have it connected with me or my organization. If he made it out of here—if we made it—remaining anonymous would give me the best chance of protecting him.

  When they got a few hundred yards in front of me, I trailed them, easily following the rutted path they left between the trees.

  The blond man eventually stopped in a small clearing flanked by old-growth oak trees and a scattering of evergreens. A fallen tree, covered in snow, near the edge of the glade offered me plenty of cover, and I knelt down, my gun hanging from my back by its strap.

  “Sit there.” The blond pointed to a swell of ground near the base of a large tree. Though I still saw no weapons trained on the big skinhead—even by Dante—the man acquiesced without argument. “Ask your questions, Dante.”

  Dante stepped forward as the two men stepped back. One look at his face answered my questions about whether he had slept. He was waxen and pale beneath his golden-brown skin, and dark circles lined his eyes. He appeared ready to fall over, but he drew himself up to his full height, made a fist, and hit the skinhead hard in the mouth, making a spray of blood stain the snow. “Where’s my sister, you son of a bitch?”

  The man spat more blood. “If I had to guess by looking at you, boy, I’d say a whorehouse in China.”

  Dante hit him again, two backhanded blows that swelled his left eye and cheek. “I want to know if you and your piece-of-shit friends kidnapped a little girl in North Philly last night, and where you took her.”

  “Well I don’t remember,” the man said. “Them little brown kids all look the same to me.”

  “Fucker!” Dante pulled his pistol and pressed the barrel to the man’s forehead. “This is the last time I’ll ask.”

  “What? You gonna shoot me, pretty boy?” The man spat again, drooling down his front and into the thick hair covering his chest. “I don’t think you’ve got the balls.”

  “Yeah? Why don’t you ask the two fucks you sent to jack our last shipment? You’ll have to go for a swim to find them, though.”

  Bad move. An inexperienced play. While the WLF would certainly surmise it had been my people responsible for the loss of theirs, they wouldn’t have known Dante was responsible or where to find the bodies. That admission could mean trouble for him—for me. Still, it got the man’s attention.

  “So you work for that taco-eating prick who’s too good to sell us guns? He’s gonna be in for a surprise when the rest of our crew gets here. He made a big fucking mistake thinking we’re small potatoes. A bigger fucking mistake than he knows.”

  “That’s good information to have, but not the information I want,” Dante said. “I want to know if you assholes took my sister. Think hard, motherfucker. She’s nine years old. Her name is Rosalind Mayfield.”

  “Suck my dick, boy. Then maybe I’ll tell you if you do it better than your chink sister. Or maybe she’s a ni—”

  I couldn’t understand why the man didn’t fight back or even try to cover himself as Dante kicked him viciously in the ribs. Through it all, his arms hung limp at his sides, his legs stretched out in front of him until Dante stopped to catch his breath.

  “You even think about saying that word, and I’ll tear your nuts off with my bare hands,” Dante panted.

  “Mayfield is a lovely name.” The blond man stepped forward, and something about him made my blood run cold. Perhaps it was the amused tone of his voice. Dante was doing what he felt needed to be done, but the spectacle entertained this man. “What is more beautiful than a field in May?”

  The skinhead looked up at him, as bewildered as I was.

  “That was not a rhetorical question. I’m expecting an answer,” the blond continued. “What is the most beautiful thing you can imagine?”

  “Your mother’s tits, faggot.”

  “No. That is incorrect, I’m afraid. The most beautiful thing in the universe is exchange, the way one thing is given for something else. Transformation. Because of that principle, nothing is ever lost, and everything is eternal. It is this very principle that ensures trees and flowers spring from putrid flesh. However, the alteration can… hurt.” The blond man crossed his arms over his chest, his smile revealing long white teeth.

  “What the fuck? What are you—” The skinhead’s words degenerated into hoarse cries, and he thrashed as if against invisible bonds. What was going on? I didn’t understand, and I neither liked nor felt accustomed to being at a disadvantage.

  As I watched, the man’s bare feet stiffened, the skin chapped scarlet by the cold darkening to a nut-brown. Frostbite was inevitable, but
this was something else. The skin raised up in strips, thick and rough, like… like bark. It couldn’t be anything else. From his big toe, a small branch sprouted, complete with miniature golden oak leaves. The man’s eyes bulged, and he screamed until his voice was gone. Dante knelt down and poked at the sole of one wooden foot.

  “Trees are noble beings, don’t you agree?” the blond man asked, arching one fair eyebrow.

  The skinhead stared at his feet, his massive chest heaving with his pants, blood-tinged spittle dripping from his chin.

  The blond prodded him in the ribs with the pointed toe of an expensive-looking dress shoe. “You’re a slow study. Not a rhetorical question. You’re only tree to your knees right now. If you want to continue to live as a man, that’s still possible.” He waved his hand. “You can cut off the wooden parts, or something. However, try to use your limited imagination to envision what will occur if your internal organs turn to wood. I’ll be sure to stop before it reaches your chest, so you can still take in air while your wooden guts fail to process food, excrete waste, cleanse your blood of impurities… I’m not sure which of them will kill you first, but it will be interesting to see! Can you feel the change moving up your thighs? I bet it’s painful.”

  “Stop! Please stop!” the skinhead choked out. “We didn’t take the boy’s sister! I swear. We haven’t picked up any product in almost two weeks! We didn’t do it, I swear!”

  Furry little roots broke through the fabric of the man’s pants and wriggled their way into the frozen ground. They swelled and grew, braiding and twisting together, tethering him to the forest floor. Another tore the skin of his ample belly, exposing red meat, though the liquid that spilled around it wasn’t blood but something thick and brown. He screamed, his voice cracking, as the fissure widened and the fronds grew thicker. A loud crack sounded; I wasn’t sure if it was the ribs or the spine. It took mere moments before the tear reached from the man’s throat to his base, where his flesh had already become wood. Within minutes he was no longer recognizable as human from the thighs down. A coating of moss even began to stretch across what was now a tangled mass of roots and thick wood, something that looked like it had been in the clearing for a century. It took a lot to disturb me at this point in my life, but I struggled to breathe in enough to fill my lungs, and it was making me light-headed. My first instinct was to get up and run, but my legs felt like jelly, my right ankle and foot throbbing in the cold. For the first time in my life, I doubted whether I’d be able to use my weapon if I had to.

  “I think it’s safe to say he’s telling the truth,” the plain man said, staring in horror at the twisted network of wood that had been a man’s legs. I couldn’t seem to look away either, though I wanted to.

  Dante heaved out a breath and raked his hair out of his face. His whole body trembled, and I had never seen him so pallid. “I-I guess it’s good these assholes didn’t take Ros…. Not them, and not the two of you. What the fuck? We’re… I’m running out of time. She could be out of the state by now, out of the country. What…? Jesus. What the fuck am I going to do?”

  The plain man put a hand on Dante’s shoulder. “Don’t fall apart. We’ll keep trying. We’ll find her.” He turned to the blond and waved his other hand toward the skinhead, who twisted at the waist as he sobbed and gurgled, fresh green branches growing from his chest and abdomen. “What about him?”

  The blond shrugged. “What about him?”

  “We can’t leave him like this.”

  “Why?” The blond man looked genuinely confused. “He’ll be dead in… I don’t know. A week at most, probably.”

  That made the skinhead start screaming again, his face swollen, the skin splitting over the wounds Dante had caused.

  “Look, Blossom, I tried to tell you we can’t draw attention to ourselves like this. What do you think will happen if someone finds him? It’ll lead back to us.”

  “I don’t give a fuck about any of this,” Dante said, his voice cracking. “I need to get back to the city… try to….”

  The blond sighed theatrically, looking very put upon. “Oh, very well.” He wiggled his fingers, and in minutes, a misshapen tree with a round bulge on its trunk sat where the skinhead had been. The twigs and branches sprouting from it soon obscured his appearance, as did the moss and ivy spreading over the surface. Soon his open mouth, frozen in his final scream, looked like nothing more than a knothole, his eyes protruding whorls in the wood. The suggestion of a face was still there, and someone hunting or hiking in these woods might spend a few moments considering it the way one does shapes in the clouds. It was strangely beautiful, and that was perhaps the most terrifying part.

  On my hands and knees, I backed away from the most bizarre and horrific thing I had ever seen. Dante and the others stood looking down, and I watched them recede as I put space between us as quickly as I could without making noise. As soon as it was safe to do so, I stood and ran, pushing myself through the nausea and dizziness, feeling like I struggled through something denser than the cold mountain air. I didn’t stop until I reached the Rogue, threw the door open, and turned on the engine. My hands shook so hard I couldn’t grip the steering wheel at first, and with the strain I’d put on my foot and leg, I didn’t know if I’d be able to depress the gas and brake pedals. The pain radiated into my knee, but staying here was not an option. I had never wanted to be away from a place so desperately. As I’d been trained to do long ago, I focused on the task at hand and banished everything else from my thoughts. It allowed me to put the vehicle in Reverse and pull out with a fan of snow.

  For probably an hour, I drove in no particular direction, just taking turns on a whim. I concentrated on the act of driving, on the road, the signs, and the scenery around me—blocking the internal turmoil by focusing on the concrete. When a gas station and convenience store came into view, I pulled over and rolled the window down, craving fresh air, hoping it would clear my head.

  Already, my mind was trying to convince me none of it had been real, and it was hard to resist the argument that there must be some other explanation. It would’ve been easy to block it out, but it would also have been irresponsible. I would be creating a weak spot in my business by not acknowledging the threat these… people represented. And they were already associated with me through Dante.

  Dante. His involvement was the most difficult aspect for me to comprehend. How had he come into contact with these people? How long had he been hiding it from me? I shook my head. Silly, perhaps, but I’d always imagined my relationship with him surpassed the employer/employee arrangement. I suppose I had hoped we were friends, and I had always endeavored to be someone he could trust, because he had few if any others to turn to.

  But my feelings for him could not be allowed to cloud my judgment. I had worked too hard, sacrificed too much, to build what I had. I rolled up my window and started the car, relieved after having come to a decision and formulated at least a loose course of action. I had to find out what I had just seen, how it had been possible. There was still a chance Dante would tell me the truth if I asked him outright. If I determined his activities posed a threat to me, the threat had to be eliminated.

  But the power I had witnessed would be an advantage to anyone who controlled it, and if I could orchestrate a way for it to benefit me, I would be a fool not to exploit it, albeit carefully.

  I did not get where I was by being a fool.

  Chapter Fifteen

  BLOODY HELL, I didn’t know how the kid made it back to the truck. I didn’t know how I made it back, and no matter what I liked to label myself, I was a supernatural creature. Of course, Blossom looked as buoyant and sprightly as ever, the knob.

  Dante stood in front of the truck, key ring dangling from a finger, eyes glazed. “I don’t think I can drive. I can’t keep my eyes open. I know people use that expression, but… I don’t know if it would be safe, me driving. Can either one of you do it?”

  “I can.” I took the keys from his hand and got behind t
he wheel. In a few minutes we were back on one of the winding state roads, and Dante was fast asleep, his head back and his mouth hanging open. He slumped against Blossom’s shoulder, and the faerie snorted.

  “This is hardly the time for him to be taking a nap.”

  I shook my head; I was too damned tired to engage in a debate with this twat, especially since I couldn’t replenish my energy by feeding. “He’s a human being, for fuck’s sake. The human body can only take so much, so just let him rest. There’s nothing he can do right now anyway.”

  To my surprise, Blossom adjusted his arm so Dante could rest underneath it, against his chest. He even spread his fingers over Dante’s pale cheek. “They’re very single-minded, these mortals.”

  “He loves his little sister, and he’s scared. And he hasn’t experienced magic until now. I think he’s taking it pretty well.”

  “He’s an appealing young man,” Blossom said softly.

  Yeah, I’d noticed. The faerie’s observation only made me imagine what was under that grungy sweatshirt, the tight jeans…. But: “He doesn’t have any sexual desire.”

  “Is that possible for mortals?”

  “It’s rare,” I said. “But not unheard of. He simply isn’t interested. Some of them aren’t.”

  “Well,” Blossom said. “I suppose that allows him to focus on our mission. What do you think we should do next?”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “What, you want my opinion?”

  “Is there someone else here, demon?”

  “I just thought you were all-knowing, your faerie-ness.”

  “Now you’re being a… what’s that word you favor? A cunt?”

  I laughed. “Nice to be on the other end of it for once. But anyway, all we can do is take him home. He needs to sleep. We’re fucked six ways till Sunday if he drops dead from exhaustion. We’ll never find the girl without his guidance.”

  With a grunt, Blossom pointed to the radio. “Instruct this machine to produce some pleasant music.”