My mouth couldn’t form the words, couldn’t let Pavel know that it wasn’t alright, that it would never again be alright. Instead, I pitched to the side and released the contents of my stomach. Then darkness overwhelmed me.
CHAPTER 10
In the weeks following our return to Los Angeles, Mark and Christie juggled hectic restaurant and new house remodeling schedules around babysitting me at their condo each night. I didn’t ask them to, but after the incident in Prague they’d insisted. They felt responsible. That had we all stayed together that evening, I wouldn’t have been attacked.
“Hey, going into that place was my choice,” I explained to them for the umpteenth time.
Christie smiled tightly and continued setting out the dining room table. I could see her lower lip quivering. She was on the verge of tears again and I couldn’t stand to see her cry. It made me feel bad about not feeling better.
“C’mon, babe.” Mark set the last beer stein on the table and took his wife’s hand. “Let’s get Austin some of that great smelling chili you made for him. Extra onions, right, Buddy?”
“And cheddar cheese, too!” I was being overly cheerful, but they needed this from me right now to help ease their misplaced sense of guilt.
“That’s my man.” Mark said it with an exaggerated laugh. “Oh, and I picked up a six-pack of that beer you like. The one with the orange on the label.”
I loved my friends and was beyond grateful to them for taking care of me. But if we were all truly going to get past this, then Mark and Christie had to come to terms with my having been raped and lay the blame squarely where it belonged: on the monster that had violated me.
Did the fact that he’d left me alive mean that he wasn’t the Shadow Walker after all?
I was no expert, but supernatural beasties didn’t tend to rob their victims—my watch and wallet had been taken—they viciously murdered them and vanished into the night in peals of malevolent laughter. At least that’s what horror films and novels had taught me.
So who was he? Another incubus, or something else entirely?
The return to my loft apartment proved rougher than I’d imagined.
In addition to losing the reassurance of daily companionship, the place felt cold and confining and I jumped at every little noise, which turned out to have zero to do with the supernatural and everything to do with my obnoxious new neighbors.
Yet here I was, about to meet Mark and Christie out for dinner to celebrate the progress on their restaurant project. This was my first real social outing in weeks and, I reminded myself. I wanted it to be about celebrating life, not about what was wrong with it. What happened to me in Prague might be something I never truly got over, but I was resolved not to let it cripple me. Whether or not the rapist was the actual Shadow Walker was another matter.
“Welcome to Sin,” the statuesque African-American hostess announced. “Will you be dining with us this evening?”
“Yes,” I replied, admiring the way the bronze fabric of her sheath dress complimented the deep honey tone of her skin and caramel hair pulled back into a stylish chignon. She’d painted her full lips a glossy dark cherry and her eyelids shimmered with the same bronzy tones of her outfit. “I’m with the Gold party.”
The hostess stepped around from behind her podium and gave me an equally approving look. “Follow me, please.”
Those three words conveyed more than a mere courtesy to escort me to my table. The invitation was unequivocal, and my body hummed from the sexual heat I could feel pouring off of her in waves. She’d also made certain that I had an unobstructed view of the slow, inviting sway of her hips as I followed her to my table.
Rape may have left an indelible scar on the human in me, but after weeks of being cloistered away, incubus me was eager to run wild again.
Along the way, we passed tall, diaphanous red panels separating the upper and lower dining areas. Hip electro-beats pulsed through small speaker cubes in the exposed timber ceiling, the music a perfect companion to the trendy, urban atmosphere. On the other side of an enormous glass wall, orange and yellow flames danced on three fire and water pools out in the nighttime garden. Inside, amber candlelight flickered across the lofty ceiling and up dramatically curved, ebonized wooden walls.
“Enjoy,” she said with a light caress of her fingertips across my upper arm.
Again, I fell to admiring her shapely figure slinking away on strappy high-heel sandals, before turning to offer a contrite smile to my friends. “Sorry. Friday evening traffic.”
“Yeah,” Mark chuckled. “That’s some traffic.”
“Your place is only six blocks away.” Christie said to me, and then shot Mark an annoyed look. Evidently I’d walked in on a couple’s squabble.
Determined not to let the shadows back into our lives tonight, I settled into the crimson velvet booth next to Christie and asked, “How on earth did you two score dinner reservations at Sin? There’s an eight-month waiting list to get in this place.”
Mark sat back and grinned.
“Allow me to translate for my husband. Our client, the French chef,” she turned to me to say with the same look of irritation. “He knows the owner of Sin and insisted we come to study the competition.”
“Excuse me, Miss,” I asked in mock-confusion. “Do I know you?”
Now it was Christie’s turn to grimace. “Please tell me you like it. Mark hates it.”
“That’s not what I said!” he hit back, and then looked entreatingly over at me.
This was the source of her frustration with him. Christie had had her long blonde locks shorn to give way to short layers, with a wide strand swept over one eye and tucked behind the ear, lending a sophisticated yet flirtatious edge to the cut. She was also wearing more makeup than usual, and the curve-hugging, lilac cocktail dress showcased to the world exactly how much Christie Gold enjoyed keeping her body fit.
I scowled at the new do and watched her shoulders slump. “Love is more like it!”
The tension at the table instantly evaporated and we all had a good laugh. The first real one since the nightmare of Prague.
“See!” she said to her husband, giving him a playful poke.
“Hey, I never said you weren’t a hottie.” Then his smile faded when he looked over at me again. “How goes it back at your place? You doin’ okay there alone?”
Those shadows were clearly going to make an appearance whether I wanted them to or not. Where was a glass of tequila courage when a guy needed one? “I won’t lie. It’s not easy. What happened was scary and horrible, and I love you both for taking such great care of me…”
“I feel a but coming on,” Mark said.
“But it’s time to stop hiding and try to make life good again. Normal. I miss us, miss the fun the old us used to have before—”
“You were raped?” Christie eyes were already tearing up.
Becoming a demon may have killed any chance at a life of complete normalcy, but I could damn well work hard to make the one I had as fulfilling as possible. With friends like Mark and Christie in my corner, I was off to a great start. “Exactly.”
She forced a little smile. “Fine. We’ll stop mother-hening you. It’s just that the condo’s so empty without you there.”
I chuckled. “You two need a kid in a baaaaad way!”
The comment earned me a broad smile from Christie. “Working on that.”
This was exactly the kind of news I needed to help kick-start my return to the more joyful aspects of life and drive those sinister shadows back where they belonged.
“Best get crackin’,” I told them. “’Cause I can’t wait to become an uncle.”
“And future babysitter,” Mark added with a big grin. “Which you could get a head start on if you say yes to moving into the new house with us.”
CHAPTER 11
I stood on the covered terrace of my new digs on the backside of the Hollywood Hills and couldn’t help but marvel at the late-October sunset, the sky ab
laze with slashes of vivid reds and oranges tinged with deep veins of gold and violet. The lights of the sprawling San Fernando Valley shimmered below amid a sea of rippling heat waves that hugged the basin floor, courtesy of a week of blistering Santa Ana Wind conditions. Perched this high up, though, the heat was somewhat diminished by a mild sea breeze that managed to find its way in off the Pacific Ocean, the sporadic currents of cooler air refreshing against my warm, dry skin.
Mark and Christie had managed to wear me down and get me to accept their invitation to move into their renovated guesthouse, which didn’t come without some misgivings on my part.
The primary concern being for their safety.
Ten months had passed since Laura’s death, and five since the sale of the Monrovia house. My dreams of the twelve beautiful women, and that forbidding thirteenth with her ominous promise to come for me when the time was right, had thankfully ceased. I’d essentially received what I’d asked for that night at Sin—a return to normalcy.
As for my online demon research, it continued to serve up the same fanciful stories about fallen angels, psychic vampires, energetic wind sprites, and ethereal demons that could take on the shape of whomever they chose through their victims’ dreams, usually disguised as a beautiful woman or man. The majority of these fictions, however, centered on short, ugly, cold-pricked demons with a penchant for perching on the chests of slumbering women.
For the record, I preferred my women awake and on top, and I’d never once had a complaint about my physical appearance or the temperature of my prick.
The reality of my predicament was that I was an orphaned incubus with no one to guide me through the ambiguity of what I’d become. I was on my own. Despite this fact, I’d never felt safer or more at peace with myself. Who would have thought?
With regard to the pursuit of my adoption, it seemed entirely pointless when every lead ended in failure. Not surprisingly, the Marmaggi clan in Rome failed to send the promised photographs of Laura pregnant with me and had essentially fallen off the face of the planet. Adding to my frustration, a Sergeant at the military base in Naples had refused to cooperate with the release of any information pertaining to my father’s time there. He’d told me to make a formal request through the proper channels once I’d returned Stateside, which I did and was still waiting for a response. Another dead end was locating Laura and my father’s marriage license in storage. According to a cranky employee at the Los Angeles County of Records, there was (surprise!) no such license on file with them. As for my birth mother, if she was out there, she didn’t want to be found.
Good thing I wasn’t prone to paranoia or had a penchant for conspiracy theories.
My cell phone roared to life with “Don’t Dream It’s Over” by Crowded House.
“On a scale from one to ten, how much are you hating us right now?” Christie’s remark caught me completely off guard. “The tile guys were supposed to finish installing the marble in your shower before you moved in.”
I chuckled. “Relax, it’s my first day here. I’m in perfect Zen mode. Besides, I can use the one off the laundry room downstairs until they finish it.”
“The contractor triple-extra-swears he’ll have it ready by the end of the week. For his sake, he’d better. Nothing brings out my inner bitch more than broken promises.”
Christie Gold might be a bona fide sweetheart, but she was also a force to be reckoned with when crossed. I didn’t envy the contractor if he failed to keep his word.
After we hung up, I walked into the bathroom to assess the shower stall covered in green sheet rock. So it wasn’t ready. Big deal. The new toilet and sink looked great and worked fine. Being fifty feet from my best buds was prize enough.
Out in the living room again, I opened the front door and walked onto the terracotta tile landing, down the flight of stairs to the concrete and brick drive, and then turned around to take in my new digs. Perfect.
The coach house above the three-car garage mirrored the Nineteen Twenties’ Spanish Colonial main house. Thick, cream-colored stucco walls housed arched windows, the trim of which had been painted a deep charcoal. The aged terracotta roof tiles held a slight green patina in patches that contrasted nicely against the dark trim and chunky wood veranda surrounding two sides of the place. And while rear windows did look onto the main house and auto court, the view from my veranda was an unobstructed stretch of rolling green that led all the way to the oak and liquid-amber trees bordering the property. Off the rectangular pool, an inviting cabana lay nestled beneath a cluster of banana tree fronds.
Back inside, I marveled once more at how workers had sanded, stained, and varnished the original white oak floors to a dark cherry luster. A few lathe and plaster walls had either been removed to open the place up or replaced with drywall, and the old knob-and-tube wiring had been updated with new electrical. The revamped kitchen (my favorite spot in the house) gleamed with state-of-the-art appliances and granite countertops. Christie had insisted that old L.A. Deco charm should tastefully meet contemporary aesthetics, so all the lighting was ultra-modern.
My phone rang again. This time it was Mark. “All settled in?”
“The place is awesome, thank you.”
“Knew it’d be a good fit for you.” The background noises told me he was still at the studio. Then a woman’s voice asked something to him that I couldn’t quite make out. “Listen, I gotta finish up here. Have a beer with me when I get home?”
“Consider it a date!” I tapped the “end call” field, sunk into the soft, buttery brown leather of my sectional sofa, and let out another sigh of contentment.
Life really was good again.
So was the bottle of red zinfandel sitting on the granite counter-top separating the living room and kitchen that I’d cracked open to mark the occasion. The ripe berry, cocoa, and peppery spice flavors would be a fitting and savory end to the first day in my new home.
I got up to pour myself a glass, and then headed out onto the balcony. Twilight was giving way to evening, and the scent of jasmine was everywhere.
About to take a sip of wine, movement from the neighboring property caught my eye.
A lone male figure had emerged from a thicket of trees. He came to a stop at the center of a small knoll, his hands shoved deep into his pants’ pockets.
Impossible to tell what he looked like from this distance and at this late hour, the man turned to gaze in my direction. I felt rather than saw his eyes lock onto mine.
The wine glass in my hand grew inexplicably heavy, as random images flashed behind my eyes, too fast to capture before another took its place. I had to balance my weight against the chunky wooden balustrade when a disorienting, prickling sensation ricocheted through my body. When I glanced up again, the man had vanished.
So much for normalcy returning to my life!
CHAPTER 12
“Later,” I said to Mark on my way to the front door, a piece of sourdough toast clenched between my teeth. Out of bread, I’d come over to borrow some of his—and his toaster, some butter, oh, and his kitchen, too.
“Hold it.” He regarded me from the living room sofa over the leading edge of the morning paper, looking a bit green around the gills. “We polish off a six-pack and untold tequila shots last night and Mr. Unemployed’s out the door at seven a.m. What gives?”
You’d be fine, too, if you had my incubus constitution. Booze was beginning to have very little effect on me anymore. “Got some errands to run.”
Tossing the newspaper onto the seat cushion next to him, Mark folded arms across the chest of his favorite Bruins T-shirt and leveled a suspicious gaze at me. “Like snooping at the moving vans next door?” I took the piece of toast out of my mouth. The mystery guy in the clearing last night was our new neighbor? “Don’t take this the wrong way, but please do us all a favor and don’t get too friendly.”
That same, almost electric, prickling from last night skittered across the surface of my skin. “No worries,” I reassured him o
n my way out the door.
Backing the convertible down the long driveway, two enormous moving trucks came into view. Tall rear and side doors stood open, while half a dozen men pushed substantial pieces of furniture and several hefty-looking crates on dollies down their ramps.
Once in the street, I pulled forward and killed the engine. Becoming an incubus hadn’t only heightened my sex drive, it had also given one heck of a boost to my already considerable curiosity.
Despite Mark’s warning, something told me it was time to meet the new neighbor.
A high, vine-covered wall and the tallest oak tree I’d ever seen obscured most of the property from the street. The driveway’s wrought-iron gates, tipped with arrow-shaped points, stood wide open, affording a better view of a house that looked more like a medieval stronghold than a stylish Los Angeles mansion. Mullioned windows held a multitude of diamond-shaped, lead glass panes, with stones of various size and shades of gray and brown cladding the exterior walls that soared three floors to meet a steep-angled roof. A striking turret with three elongated windows and a crenellated crown served as the centerpiece of the structure.
“Welcome to Hogwarts,” I chuckled passing through the main gates.
Hollywood theatrics aside, the house wasn’t without a certain stateliness, which became more evident as I followed the cobblestone drive curving beneath the colossal oak.
That was about the same time a chorus of warning bells went off in my head.
This time, though, they weren’t cautioning me to beware of any Shadow Walker. No, this was far more mundane a warning. I was trespassing on someone else’s property, a fact which didn’t (but probably should) keep me from drawing nearer the main entrance to the house. But the broad, arched front door was standing wide open and begging me to peer inside.
The more I thought about it, I wasn’t a trespasser in the true sense of the word. I mean, I lived next door, for heaven sakes. One little peek wasn’t going to hurt anyone.
Incubus Moon Page 7