In the Flesh

by K D Grace

  “Possibly,” came the reply that disturbed me way more than the naked succubus now sliding down under the duvet by my side. Whoever this Magda was, she pulled no punches and made no effort to soften the blows. Clearly the woman didn’t have to make nicey-nice.

  Michael leaned down and kissed me again. “I’d wish you pleasant dreams, but under the circumstances…” He shot Talia a warning glance, then settled near the foot of the bed on a battered captain’s chair that creaked under his weight.

  My last memory of the waking world was Talia pulling me into her arms and kissing me as though she were pulling the breath from me, pulling me under, into the world of sleep. Just before I lost consciousness, I wanted nothing more than for Talia to keep on kissing me.

  It was a cry of terror that awakened me from a mundane dream of sitting at the big desk in the study of Annie’s old flat, tapping away on the keyboard of my Mac. After all the dreams I’d had, or thought I’d had recently, after the way dreams had bled so convincingly into reality, I was totally prepared to be the one screaming like a banshee and making a fool of myself. I was completely unprepared to find that it was Talia doing the screaming.

  I shoved my way from under the duvet and fell on my arse in the middle of the floor amid blinding light, confusion, shattering glass and screams. Michael helped me to my feet, and eased me back onto the bed. By the time my eyes adjusted to the light, I discovered Alonso sitting in the middle of the floor with Talia in his arms. She was wrapped in a blanket, sobbing and trembling against his shoulder. Magda knelt next to her and Reese stood behind them, shoving aside pieces of the shattered mirror from one of the wardrobe doors with the toe of his hiking boot.

  When Magda saw that I was awake, she moved to my side, motioning Michael away from me. “Are you all right?” She lifted both of my eyelids in turn, staring into each like she was an optometrist.

  I shrugged her away. “I’m fine. What happened?” I nodded to Talia.

  “The succubus claims the Guardian’s inside you, that he confronted her in your dreams. Was he there?”

  “Christ, Maggie, you’re as subtle as a heart attack,” Michael spat. “Do you even know what tact is?”

  She shot him a warning glance, and he shut up. “Clearly you weren’t seeing the same things she saw. Were you dreaming?”

  Suddenly all eyes were on me.

  “I was, yes. But it was nothing important, certainly nothing about Him.” I shuddered at the thought of the dream visits I’d had from Him. No, if he’d been there I’d have known.

  “I know what I saw,” Talia said, looking at me as though I had two heads.

  “Susan, perhaps you should tell us what you remember,” Magda suggested.

  I told them, a little embarrassed that I’d had such a mundane dream and poor Talia had clearly had a nightmare. “There’s no way He could be inside me,” I added. “I’d know. I mean, surely I’d know.”

  No one nodded agreement. Instead they all gave me the doubtful stare. That did nothing to make me feel better. For a moment, no one said anything at all. Then I remembered my friend, who supposedly was resting comfortably somewhere in the bowels of High View and an icy prickle crawled up my spine. “What about Annie? If He’s here, won’t He go straight for her? Isn’t she an easy target?”

  Michael shot Magda an accusing glance, which she ignored. “Trust me, Susan, she’s safe from Him.”

  “Instead he was drawn to the succubus?” I said.

  “Everyone is drawn to a succubus,” Talia replied with a convulsive shiver. “That was the whole point.”

  Unnoticed, Reese had gone into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water, which Talia took from him with a nod of thanks.

  “I was the bait.”

  “Jesus!” I suddenly felt queasy. “You mean you went into my dreams knowing you might encounter Him there?”

  Talia gave no answer, only sipped at her water.

  “Just because it’s a dream, doesn’t mean it’s not real,” Magda said. “The only one who would have half a chance against the Guardian if he were to choose the dream route, which I’m guessing is how he got to you, was Talia. She feeds on dreams, especially sexual dreams.”

  Talia forced a laugh. “That didn’t work out so well, did it?”

  “So it was you He was waiting for then, not me,” I said, standing to pace by the bed. “All I had was a dream about writing—something I do every day.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t trying to seduce me,” Talia said. “He was trying to chase me out, and that’s exactly what he did.” She forced her way to her feet with a little help from Alonso and Reese, then came to pace next to me. “Tell me about your dream in as much detail as you can remember.”

  I shook my head. “All right. It was a writing dream. I have them all the time. I have them more often when I’m close to a deadline. Usually those involve my laptop breaking down or my entire manuscript being deleted, that sort of thing.”

  “Look, what might seem completely mundane to you could be critical,” Alonso said. I noticed his arm was now draped protectively around Reese’s shoulder and the two had crowded into the shadowy space next to the wardrobe, away from the window.

  “It is strange,” I said, sifting through the jumble of events of the past few days. “Every other dream I’ve had up until this one has been either sexy or nightmarish or some bizarre combination of the two. Even if I just doze. I’ve dreamed a lot,” I added.

  Talia studied me for a second, brow drawn, then she huffed out a sharp breath. “May I try something?”

  “Of course.” The words were barely out of my mouth before she pulled me into her arms and kissed me. She kissed me hard and deep, and I returned the favor with more gusto than I would have thought possible. Somewhere far off, I heard Michael protest. Magda cut him off. In the back of my mind, I heard Katy Perry singing I Kissed a Girl, and then the world went blank, as though someone had just pushed the reset button.

  I sit in front of my Mac, the tap, tap of the keys filling the silence like the rhythm of my pulse. The moon hangs heavy, framed by the open window in Annie’s study. I’m tipsy, but not drunk, at least not too drunk, but I can’t sleep. My whole body buzzes, but it isn’t an alcohol buzz, it’s like being in the zone when all the words flow onto the page, and the story I have inside me explodes like magic, like an orgasm. I’m breathless and trembling and pushing, pushing, always pushing against it, rubbing against it, feeling it penetrate me, fill me, ride me in the darkness until every last breath, every last word, every full stop burst onto the page, and I’m left weak and trembling and wrung out.

  Then I’m no longer in Annie’s comfy flat. I’m in the crypt at Chapel House, the darkness awash in the scent of roses—sweet, sweet roses. I’m writing away with insane focus—something that has to be said, something that has to be freed onto the page. And, fucking hell, I’m horny. I’m always horny when the words are flowing. When the story’s coming fast and furious, it makes me want to come too. I’m writing. I’m writing. I’m writing!

  The silver light bleeding through the bars in the tunnel touches me like the words do, touches me exactly where they do, in places so private no one has ever touched me there before. And I’m shy, and I’m embarrassed, even ashamed, and I’m overwhelmed with desire that burns me and flashes across my synapses like sheet lightning. And I need! Oh God, how I need! I’m writing. I’m writing… but what I’m writing is more powerful than any story I’ve ever written, and I want more, good Christ, I want so much more! I want it all and I need it with an ache that will surely destroy me if I can’t have it.

  And the door’s not locked, and I’m terrified and aroused, and intrigued, and I can almost see the words flowing onto the page as, with trembling fingers, I open the barred door that creaks with ancient disuse. And He’s there like light itself splitting the darkness. And I write Him onto the page, feeling His lust, His need, His passion in every word. And when I’m finished, trembling and spent and replete, He’s there, fully
present, fully mine to possess.

  Then I hear Annie in the bathroom. The toilet flushes, and I hold my breath, hold my secret tight so she won’t hear. And when I’m sure she’s gone back to her bed, with fingers cold against the keys, I copy everything, all of it, every word, every nuance, every stuttering heartbeat onto a memory stick. Then I hide it away. But before I do, I delete the words from my Mac so no one else will see, no one else will share in my ecstasy, in my passion, in the shame that so arouses me.

  It’s only then, when I feel His breath against my neck, and the scent of roses fills the night air, that I realize I can’t close the door.

  Chapter Eighteen

  I came back to myself sitting on the floor in Talia’s arms, she whispering softly to me, words I didn’t recognize from some language that sounded Eastern European. She didn’t try to stop me as I pushed myself to my feet. No one did. In fact no one moved. They all just watched as I sleepwalked my way to my bag, unzipped it and pulled out my computer case.

  “I bought this the next day,” I said, emptying out its contents onto the sailor’s trunk at the foot of the bed. “After it all happened.”

  Around me no one spoke. I had the very distinct feeling they were all holding their breath. “I needed a place. Someplace secure.” I reached down into the side pouch of the neoprene lining, fumbling and fingering until I found the tiny flap of soft cloth Velcroed tightly to a pocket that was nearly impossible to detect unless you knew where to look. I’d found it by accident while we were shopping for belts and bags in the local Saturday market. The case was black with bright red roses strewn across it as though the wind had just blown a bouquet through an open door.

  “Looks like an old lady’s handbag,” Talia remarked.

  “That’s exactly what Annie said.” There was a sharp ripping of Velcro in the otherwise silent room, and I felt my way into the pocket, felt my way to the cool, smooth plastic of the flash drive still there, still secret, even from me, until a few minutes ago.

  There was a collective inhaling of breath when I pulled it free from its hiding place and flipped open my computer. As the screen flashed and the soft light competed with the bedside lamp in the receding night, everyone drew around me in a tight circle as though I were about to impart a secret. In truth, that’s exactly what I was about to do, and more than a little bit of it was still a secret to me as well.

  “You don’t have to do this,” came a voice next to my ear, and I found myself embraced, caressed, tenderly fondled. I breathed deeply, breathed in the scent of roses, and suddenly Michael’s love bite on my breast burned like fire.

  I yelped and jumped back, fumbling with the flash drive, which Magda caught deftly then shoved into the USB port. As it clicked into place, all the air went out of my lungs as though someone had suddenly punched me in the gut. The room swam before my eyes.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?” Michael said, sliding his arms around me to keep me on my feet. The others stepped back as though they half expected me to burst into flame. For a second I wasn’t so sure myself. “I think Talia might be right,” I managed. “Does anyone else smell roses?”

  “There are no roses growing in High View,” Reese said. “The soil’s too rocky and it’s too cold.”

  “What do you mean, I might be right?” Talia pushed her way in close, her blue eyes wide, looking at me once again as though I had two heads.

  “I mean…” I turned to Magda. “This Guardian, does he do possessions, you know like demons, that kind of possession.” Even as I said it, a sense of disappointment tightened my chest as though I had let Him down, as though I had deeply wounded Him by my act of betrayal.

  “In a way, yes.” It was Michael who answered. “When I was with Him, He was desperate to know what it was like to have flesh. As a non-corporeal entity, His interactions with the physical world are limited. Oh, He can affect mortals in devastating ways.” He shrugged. “Angels, too, I found out. But the physical aspect of Him that corporeal beings think they experienced is only His fabrication to elicit the response in them He can’t have Himself. He wants to know what it feels like to walk, to eat, to sleep, to… make love. The thing is, the more He affects a mortal, the less desire they have to interact with the physical world, and the more they desire to remain in His presence only. That leaves Him constantly in need of new lovers, for lack of a better word.”

  “Bloody hell,” Talia whispered.

  I saw that the succubus now shivered nearly as hard as I did, even still wrapped in the blanket as she was.

  “I…” Michael swallowed hard, and his chest rose and fell as though he’d just been out for a morning run. “I let Him inside me a few times when we were… making love, when He wanted to know what it felt like, what I felt. He would then… use my body as His own. At first it was such an incredible rush of power. I’d never known my body was capable of feeling such things.” He closed his eyes in a struggle for control, or perhaps only because it made sharing such an intimate detail of his life in such a public way a little easier. When he continued, he kept them closed. “In the end, the Guardian stopped asking for my permission. He… He came into me whenever He wanted, and when He was there… well, sometimes I didn’t even know He’d entered. Then He started taking lovers, other lovers, using me with them.” His fist clenched and opened and I could see the half moon depressions where his nails had bitten into his palm. He gave a quick glance around the room, and color rose to his cheeks. “You see, being an angel, I was strong enough to be His vessel, where no human would be.”

  As he spoke, I felt a tightening in my chest, an aching sensation just below the breastbone. “But I am human,” I managed the words as calmly as my near-state of panic would allow. “Surely He knows I’m not a suitable vessel.”

  “He’s not actually possessing you,” Magda said. “Not the way He did Michael anyway. He’s attached himself to you like… well, for lack of a better word, like a parasite.”

  “Christ! That makes me feel a whole lot better.” The tightness in my chest made it difficult to breathe, and seeing Michael struggling with his memories of having the Guardian inside him only made it worse. I could do nothing more than stand there stupidly, shaking my head and rubbing my chest, which hurt like it had in my childhood back when asthma was a regular part of my daily life. But I had outgrown that a long time ago and hadn’t had so much as a sniffle until recently.

  Magda patted Michael’s shoulder gently, then perched on the sailor’s chest next to my computer. “You’re a writer, Susan. I’m assuming that also means that you read a lot.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And romance? Do you ever read romance?”

  “Read it and write it as well,” I answered. “What’s your point?”

  “Don’t tell me you’ve never had the hero of a story so possess you that you couldn’t stop thinking about him, even dreaming about him long after you’d finished the novel?”

  Before I could do more than nod, she continued. “And in your own writings, aren’t there times when your own stories so possess you that they become more real than the world you live in?”

  “Jesus,” I whispered. The pressure on my chest now felt like an elephant was doing a tap dance across my sternum with my heart providing a rapid staccato drumbeat. “That’s exactly what I was doing that night, the night I wrote that.” I nodded to the words on the screen. “I remember now. It was just a story idea, something that came into my mind down in the crypt when I saw the rusty bars over the tunnel entrance at the back. I mean, what writer wouldn’t find something like that intriguing fodder for a story?”

  I looked around the room, seeking understanding.

  Michael took my hand and gave it a squeeze, encouraging me to continue. “I was in the middle of a major project at the time, so what I wrote that night was fast and furious, just to get the ideas down so I wouldn’t lose them. I do that all the time. I planned to come back to it later. I thought it would be a great story. But then it all sud
denly felt so real. While I was writing it, I mean. I could swear it all actually happened, and for a writer that’s an exciting thing, because of course it’s all just my imagination, isn’t it? At least that’s what I told myself, and why would I believe anything else? It’s always been true before. But then…”

  “Then what?” Magda asked.

  “Then I totally forgot all about it. Even when I bought the computer bag, even when I tucked the memory stick away, I forgot it almost as it was happening. How could I forget it? I never forget a story idea, no matter how lame it might be. How could I have forgotten something like this?” I shivered, and Michael slipped his arm around me.

  “You forgot because the Guardian didn’t want you to remember. That’s how you forgot,” Magda said.

  “I never meant to hurt anyone.” I glanced around the room. All eyes were locked on me. “What am I going to do?”

  “You’re going to do exactly as I say, just like Michael did. And if you do that, I’ll get you and your friend through this, and it’ll be okay. I promise.”

  Before I could ask how she could make such a promise, before I could ask who the hell she was that she could even be so presumptuous, Magda took me into her arms, and for a second the pressure in my chest constricted like a fist. I think I might have passed out, maybe from the shock of her embrace, maybe from His unwanted presence. I don’t know. Whatever happened, the scent of roses dissipated and when she released me, I could breathe easily again.

  She noted my surprise and her full lips quirked in a smile. “The Guardian doesn’t like me. He won’t hang around for my embrace.” Before I could question what she meant by that, she nodded to the computer screen, and I turned to see the words I’d written about my first encounter with Him.

  I wasn’t alone in the dark.

  To my surprise and embarrassment, Magda began to read them out loud.