Incubus Moon

by Andrew Cheney-Feid

  Offering him one in return, her demeanor shifted to cool assessment when she glanced back at me. Eva might be aware of my appreciation for her physical beauty, but she was clearly not a fan. Which didn’t stop me from taking in the slow, inviting sway of her hips and the subtle movement of shadow from her buttocks against the airy fabric when she forfeited the room with her brother in tow.

  Dimitri, I noticed with a twinge of jealousy, was equally enthralled.

  Envy and aching ribs aside, a growl from my stomach reminded me that I hadn’t eaten all day, with the exception of the bottled blood with which Niko had provided me on the ride from the harbor. With all or most of Dimitri’s blood out of my system now, solid food was looking pretty damned good to me.

  When I reached for a cluster of grapes, I was surprised to experience only a modest twinge of pain. Popping a few into my mouth, I let the dark, sweet meat slide over my tongue before swallowing it. It didn’t take me long to polish off half the tray.

  No way could I be a vampire. I enjoyed food too much.

  Dimitri retrieved the book I’d replaced on the table. “I have given considerable thought to what my sister and Haemon might want with you. For I know now with absolute certainty that Kassandra has not visited the Council in Rome for several months.”

  “But back on the ship she—”

  “My sister is cunning. Lies flow from her lips as truths.” He then regarded me intently. “As for Haemon, a trusted source has confirmed for me that the Council know nothing of his existence, which I suspected all along. They believe him to be dead, as I once did.”

  “We both know that’s not true,” I said.

  “Indeed. Centuries ago, the Council uncovered a plot to expose our kind to the humans, an act punishable by swift death to any vampire who betrays this most sacred law. Haemon was behind the plot and the Council dispatched assassins to silence him. They trapped him in an abandoned casale on the outskirts of Mantua, Italy, and then burnt it to the ground.”

  “But he survived the fire.”

  Dimitri nodded. “Given the description of your attacker in Prague, and the vision you shared with me aboard the yacht, Haemon is very much alive.”

  “At least we don’t have to worry about the Council anymore,” I said, relieved to scratch a few enemies off the hit list. “Maybe they could help us…”

  No need to finish the sentence. The High Council of Vampires had ordered the slaughter of my ancestors. If they knew an incubus existed, they’d send more than a few assassins after us.

  “Fortunately, our enemies are unacquainted with this sanctuary,” Dimitri said, having plucked the thought from my mind. “But that is where our luck ends. We are alone in this.”

  I pushed up slowly to my feet, my ribs significantly less tender, and moved to the colossal fireplace. I stared into the crackling flames and let their warmth penetrate me.

  “You said before that you knew what Haemon wanted with me.”

  “Might want with you. “Dimitri held up the book. “A passage in this refers to a blood drinker who gains supremacy by harnessing the power of the somnium deum.”

  “Dream god,” I said in a whisper. “An incubus.”

  “Blood drinking rituals have been around since the dawn of time. I cannot be certain it speaks of a vampire.”

  I walked over to him to better study the book’s cover and spine once more. It was so old I couldn’t make out the title. “What does it say?”

  “Pro Lux Lucis.”

  “Before Light.” I took the book from him and traced the raised lettering on the book’s worn leather cover. “Does it say how he gains this power?”

  Dimitri offered me another pointed glance. “Through dark ritual.”

  I didn’t get the chance to ask him to expand on this, because Haemon’s face flashed in front of me. Around him sped the headlights of fast-moving automobiles, with familiar high-rises reaching up into the nighttime sky and the smiling billboards of the rich and famous.

  Haemon was in Los Angeles!

  CHAPTER 28

  Beautiful and lethal.

  Kassandra Ravello was the embodiment of the archetypal femme fatale. She exuded a raw allure that made her irresistible to her victims, the promise of the forbidden reflecting in her cool, amber gaze. Except that in my vision of the vampire, the only thing that echoed in her eyes was an insatiable lust for inflicting cruelty and pain.

  Curled up beside a blood-spattered Haemon in the rear of a speeding limousine, she offered him a chilling smile. The expression reminded me of a cobra’s seconds before it strikes.

  “I did not care for the child,” she said with a sneer. “It tasted of lard and chemicals.”

  “But the mother,” Haemon said with perverse glee, “mercifully did not share in her teen’s fondness for fast food.”

  Kassandra laughed. “You know, I think I got a little buzzed off of her.”

  When she leaned in to lick the blood spatter decorating the side of Haemon’s face, he pulled away. Using the tips of his index and middle fingers now, he scooped up a line of crimson globules from his cheek and held them a few teasing inches from her mouth.

  She parted her lips for him, her eyes hooded, and leaned forward to wrap them around his fingers with a moan.

  Haemon watched her bob slowly up and down on the length of his fingers, a scene which might have been erotic were it not for all the blood and the fact that these two psychopaths had just murdered a mother and her son!

  “She thought she could protect them with—”

  Haemon fell silent and began to scrutinize the shadowy corner of the limo where my ethereal body sat observing them. Slipping his fingers out of Kassandra’s mouth, he sniffed the air, an insidious grin beginning to tug at the corners of his mouth.

  “What is it?” Kassandra was looking in my same direction.

  “We have company.” His eyes widened in mock wonder. “Such a clever little incubus.”

  Just as he made to pounce, my essence was ripped from their speeding automobile and catapulted headlong into a howling void at unimaginable speed.

  My arms and legs flailed wildly as I tried desperately to grasp onto something (anything!) solid to keep me from tumbling further into the frigid darkness, where ice crystals struck the exposed parts of my skin. They gouged thin furrows into my face and arms, while from all around me rushed the putrid scent of rotting citrus. How could I ever forget that smell?

  She was near. The terrifying raven-haired woman who’d appeared to me in my bedroom in Los Angeles. The one who’d promised to come for me.

  No sooner had I been cast into that terrible place than I reemerged onto a sidewalk behind a petite redhead, my pulse a stampede in my throat. The woman was working her way along an illuminated, terracotta path to the front door of a familiar Spanish Revival mansion.

  Mark and Christie’s house!

  The moment I realized it was Caulfield, the police detective from the hospital, my ethereal body appeared next to hers.

  She startled and reached for her holstered gun.

  Spinning around, she scanned the walkway behind her, then the twilight garden to her left and right. Over the loud cricket song, I could hear the gallop of her heartbeat, along with my own from my almost-encounter with the Queen of the Damned.

  Once Caulfield was satisfied that she was alone, her shoulders visibly relaxed and she released her hold on the gun’s grip. She then resumed her approach to the front door and gave the bell a quick push.

  My heart sunk when the door opened and I saw Mark standing in the opening in baggy sweatpants and a faded UCLA T-shirt. He was thinner, his eyes dull and heavy with dark circles.

  “It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

  Caulfield moved past him and into the foyer. “Is your wife at home?”

  Mark nodded and shut the door behind her.

  The detective and I followed my best friend into the living room. How badly I wanted to put my arms around him, tell him how much I missed him, but
then I wasn’t really there.

  The place held an air of neglect. Newspapers lay scattered here and there, a few dirty cups and plates sat on the coffee table, along with a throw blanket that half hung from the sofa onto the dusty wooden floor.

  “Babe?” Mark’s weary voice echoed over the tall, coved ceiling. “The Detective’s here.”

  Christie emerged from the study in a blue sweater-dress that seemed to hang on rather than fit her. Her short hair was unkempt and she looked as though she hadn’t had much sleep either.

  “I’m not here about Mr. Iverson. Not entirely,” Caulfield announced, handing Christie a manila folder. “We’ve got bigger problems at the moment.”

  Mark looked back at her with a mixture of incredulity and rising irritation. “Bigger than finding our friend?”

  He motioned for her to sit, traded anxious looks with his wife, and then sat down beside her and waited for the detective to continue.

  “I have strong reason to suspect Dimitri Ravello in the disappearance of your friend.”

  Mark was back on his feet. “Our neighbor?”

  “You told us an unidentified man at the hospital abducted him.”

  “I lied, Mrs. Gold.” Caulfield gave a quick glance at the living room’s large, arched window and at the ever darkening sky beyond it. “And Ravello’s not like other men.”

  “Meaning?” Mark wanted to know.

  Christie reached up to place a hand on his forearm. “Honey, take a look at the second page of this hospital report. It says that Austin was bitten on the neck. Wasn’t that what happened to him in Prague?” She handed him the report. “I’m not positive, Detective, but I don’t believe our neighbor has any dogs.”

  “He doesn’t. But the bite wounds weren’t caused by an animal, Mrs. Gold.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  Mark took the file from his wife and began scanning the report for himself.

  “Your friend stated in his report to me that he and your neighbor had gotten into an argument, followed by a physical altercation. He alleged that the neighbor had bitten him.”

  Caulfield was lying. I’d never reported any such thing.

  Mark looked up from the report and over at Caulfield with undisguised skepticism. “It says in here that the incisor wounds were spaced too far apart to be canine in nature. They also contained no dog saliva.” He tossed the file onto the cluttered coffee table. “How’s that even possible? People don’t have sharp teeth like that.”

  “Vampires do,” Caulfield said.

  I thought Mark would burst out laughing. “Come again?”

  “Vampires, Mr. Gold. That’s what Dimitri Ravello is.”

  “Is this your idea of a sick joke?”

  “I wish it were. Unfortunately, Dimitri Ravello’s suspected in a string of homicides across the country, including the brutal torture and murder of my own family,” she informed them with a crack of emotion in her voice. “He’s a monster.”

  “So now he’s a serial-killer vampire?” Mark was furious. Christie just looked plain old horrified. “We’re done here, Detective.”

  “Credible eye-witnesses put Ravello at the hospital the night your friend was abducted,” she pressed when Mark moved to escort her out of the house.

  “How do you know this?” Christie asked.

  “Because I was there.” Caulfield waited for Mark to protest. He didn’t. “Digital recordings from Mr. Iverson’s room reveal the patient interacting with me. From our reactions, it’s evident that a third party entered the room.”

  Christie frowned. “Without being visible on camera?”

  “He must have been out of range,” Mark speculated.

  Caulfield shook her head. “If so, he didn’t stay that way for long. The next series of images show me being thrown against a wall by an invisible something, followed by your friend jerked forward out of his bed, lifted into the air, and then tossed through the plate-glass window.”

  “My God!” Christie brought a hand up to her mouth.

  Caulfield was about to add to this when a massive displacement of air knocked her out of her shoes and over the chair in which she’d been sitting earlier. The living room was suddenly a war zone, filled with projectiles of flying plaster, wood, and metal debris from the exploding front door and surrounding jamb.

  Mark and Christie brought arms up to cover their faces, but the jagged fragments repeatedly struck their bodies, while dried leaves and dust eddied in an eerie dance in the foyer.

  Two figures loomed large in the darkened doorway—a man and a woman—their silhouettes etched by the exterior garden lights.

  The female was exotic and beautiful, but utterly devoid of warmth. The bald-headed male sported a Van Dyke beard and took in my wounded friends with soulless, black eyes.

  “No, my dear,” Haemon told Christie with a twisted grin. “God had nothing to with it.”

  I was sucked back into the howling vacuum of space only to be returned to the dark sedan I’d visited in dream form earlier.

  “Consider yourselves lucky.” Haemon turned to leer into the back seat. “The psychic and her son we visited earlier this evening didn’t share in your same good fortune.”

  Joy…

  On either side of Dimitri’s sister sat a bloodied and battered Mark and Christie Gold. Kassandra leaned to her left to lick a gash on the side of Mark’s cheek.

  I wanted to rip her fucking head off with my bare hands and save my friends, but I was powerless to do anything other than float there, impotent and disembodied.

  Part of me prayed that this was some awful dream from which I’d soon awaken. The other part knew that this was all horribly real.

  “Surely only one of them is necessary,” Kassandra said.

  A familiar male voice echoed inside my head then. He was calling to me from somewhere far away. I could even feel the sensation of hands tugging on me. When I refocused on the dark interior of the sedan, I froze in horror. Haemon was closing in on Mark.

  “Now, why don’t you tell us where your little incubus friend is hiding.”

  CHAPTER 29

  Dimitri was out of his ancient, fucking mind if he thought I was going to get any rest. Not when all I could think about was poor Joy Ebersole and her son and how Haemon now had Mark and Christie! The horror of it refused to let go of me, had seeped into every part of me.

  Sitting up in bed, I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyelids, the ghoulish scene playing over and over again in my mind. Joy and her son were dead because of me, and Mark and Christie were next.

  Dimitri had tried to alleviate my rising panic, but with little success, insisting that he knew how Haemon reasoned. That how, from a military perspective, such captives were far more valuable alive. Haemon would use them as bargaining chips.

  I prayed he was right. Because it was nearly impossible for me to fathom that a real life monster who got off on rape and torture was the most rational of thinkers.

  Guilt and fear weren’t the only emotions gnawing at my gut. Incubus rage and a burning need for vengeance had joined the mix. We should leave this sanctuary right the hell now. Take the fight to Haemon. I’d amassed considerable power that could be used to bend a vampire to my will, if I was clever about using it and quick enough to catch him (or her) off guard. The very same power Dimitri feared I’d ultimately turn against him.

  Shit. We were wasting valuable time sitting around when we should be rescuing my friends—wherever it was Haemon had them. Then I’d show the monster exactly what this little incubus was capable of. He was going to pay for what he’d done.

  “Precisely what he’ll be expecting you to do,” Dimitri countered. “He and my sister are as old as I am; each possessing a unique set of skills. Strong you are becoming, Austin, but you are still a fledgling incubus. You would be walking into an ambush.”

  Maybe. But I was fueled with too much rage to sit here and do nothing.

  A dark silhouette appeared in the doorway then
.

  “Not in the mood for company right now.”

  Niko approached me with tentative steps, pausing at the foot of the bed. “That is why I am here,” he replied, perching on the corner of the mattress. “I overheard what you and the Master were talking about. You should not be alone.”

  Everyone had a theory about what I needed or how I should feel. “If you really want to help, find me a fast ticket out of this place.” I had some vamps to kill.

  “Master Dimitri will rescue your friends. You’ll see.”

  As far as I could tell, Master Dimitri wasn’t doing much beyond sitting on his immortal ass, or ogling Eva’s with enough sexual heat to make even me blush. A twenty-four-hundred-year-old vampire and former military leader had to be good for something other than that.

  Unless helping me isn’t his endgame. I pushed out of bed and began pacing the guestroom, trying to bridle my rage until I could give it a more deserving target.

  Niko lowered his gaze and shifted uneasily on the mattress. “Even if you want to, Master Dimitri has forbidden you to leave without him.”

  The muscles in my jaw clenched. “Forbidden me to leave? I don’t fucking think so.”

  Dimitri had decided advantages over me—a shrewdness that came with age, battle experience, and sheer brute force. But the frightened Austin he’d plucked from that hospital bed a week ago died somewhere along the way. This new one, beyond possessing supernatural abilities, had acquired a newfound sense of confidence and resolve. No one person or thing was ever going to make me feel powerless again and not suffer the consequences.

  And if Dimitri Ravello chose to become an obstacle to my decision to rescue my friends and punish their captors, then he was in for one helluva battle.

  “I meant no offense,” Niko was quick to say, rising to his feet and taking a few steps away from me. “The Master doesn’t want you to get hurt. I do not want you to get hurt.”

  The sincerity in his voice robbed me of some of my fury. In fact, being around Niko served as an unexpected balm, when I let it. He had a natural balancing effect on me which, at the moment, opened the door for anguish, guilt, and sorrow to rush back in.