by Tamara Hogan
“How about protocol?”
Sasha looked at her with an odd expression on her face. “What?”
“Hey, this Council stuff might be old hat to you, but tonight I’m meeting royalty. And everything I know about protocol comes from networking books. Or the Goldie Hawn movie.”
“You held Annika’s hair out of the toilet when she puked the other night. You’re sitting with two Council members right now, people you work with every day. One of them is your best friend. It’s way too late for protocol, sweetie.”
Bailey froze.
“C’mon, don’t freak out on us now,” Sasha said, grasping both of her hands again. “You know us. At least, you’re starting to know us. You already know that Lukas is an annoying grouch, you’ve known Jack forever, and you ogle men’s asses with me, The First Daughter.”
“True.”
“Back to the matter at hand, ladies,” Jack said. “Time’s tight. Claudette asked for a personal favor, council leader to council leader. We don’t have a choice here.”
“Our families go way back,” Sasha added, examining a chip in her purple nail polish. “I live with Scarlett and Annika. Claudette practically moved in after Mom died and helped raise us.” She turned her head to her brother. “Did you know that Dad and Claudette are finally doing the deed?”
Lukas winced.
“What?” Sasha shrugged with a grin. “I’m happy about it. I don’t know why they waited so long. And it’s so cute to see her doing the Walk of Shame out of Dad’s place in the morning.” She giggled and sing-songed, “Dad’s getting la-id.”
“So saying ‘no thanks’ really wasn’t an option, no matter how much you might have wanted to,” Bailey said to Lukas.
Lukas stiffened. Sasha looked at Jack, and then Lukas.
Bailey sat back in her chair and spread her hands. “Okay, guys. What’s up?”
“Sorry. You have to cut us a little slack here,” Lukas said. “This is only the third time in history this information has been shared—”
“And Captain Sphincter here is just a little uncomfortable discussing our species’ susceptibilities,” Sasha said, indicating her brother. “His susceptibilities.”
If possible, Lukas’s jaw clenched even tighter. Bailey feared for his teeth.
“Okay, Incubi Physiology 101,” Jack broke in smoothly. “You might notice that both Lukas’s and Sasha’s nostrils are twitching right now.”
They both immediately stopped.
“It’s not a twitch,” Sasha said, crossing her arms over her chest. “You make it sound like I’m Samantha on Bewitched or something.”
“It’s a definite twitch,” Jack informed Sasha, then turned back to Bailey. “Incubi and succubi absorb emotional energy for sustenance. They do this unthinkingly, autonomically. If it’s there, they absorb it, like humans breathe air.” He kept his eyes on Bailey, his voice clinical. “Absorbing positive emotions is pleasurable, absorbing negative emotions is not. When they’re feeling pleasure themselves, they emit pheromones which others around them find pleasurable.”
“Creating a feedback loop?” Bailey asked.
“Yes. That incubus sex myth?” Sasha flicked a challenging glance at Jack. “Fact.”
Bailey’s brain was clicking, processing. “How…?”
“Your guess is as good as ours,” Lukas said. “The best we can tell, our species can process and utilize a type of energy that humans can’t.”
“Like a sixth sense.”
“Yup,” Sasha responded with a smile. “It’s not magic by any means. Just because I can discern—” Sasha gazed at Jack, let her eyes travel over his face and upper body “—lust in the air doesn’t necessarily mean I can tell who’s feeling it. But sometimes, just by process of elimination, it’s pretty easy to guess.” She curled her legs in her chair while Jack’s face went tight. “I just know if it’s there, I absorb it. And it feels really, really good.”
Oh my God. They could tell what she was feeling? When she was pissed off? Aroused? By sniffing? Sniffing the air? Bailey put her hands to her own burning cheeks.
“We try not to be invasive about it,” Sasha said with a shrug. “It just… is.”
Jack rubbed his neck. Bailey was pretty sure he was counting to ten. “So, tonight’s show,” he finally gritted out. “The club holds nearly a thousand people. No humans tonight, other than you and me. Weres, vamps, hundreds of incubi and succubi in an enclosed space, drinking, dancing, having fun. And where there’s fun, there’s pleasure, and where there’s pleasure, there are pheromones. Now, factor a siren into the equation—a siren who interprets and amplifies emotion with her song.”
If Bailey understood Jack correctly, Scarlett’s voice would ratchet the pheromone level sky-high.
“Yes,” Sasha said, her voice dripping with anticipation as she confirmed Bailey’s suspicion. “It’ll be Bacchanalia.”
Lukas abruptly stood. “Can you take it from here, Jack? I have some work to do.” He stalked to the door without waiting for an answer.
“Um, good-bye!” Sasha called to her brother’s back. She stood up to follow him. “He can be such an asshole.”
“So can you,” Jack snapped. “You know how hard this is for him. Andi’s assailant shoved some nasty second-hand shit down his throat not twelve hours ago, he’s had no sleep, and Scarlett’s show is the last place he wants or needs to be. But he’s doing it. He’s sucking it up and doing it. So back the hell off.”
The silence hummed.
“Bite me,” Sasha finally muttered. But it was said without heat.
“You wish.”
Sasha’s eyes wandered over Jack—all over Jack. Bailey felt a tug between her thighs as their eyes locked in battle. She barely stopped herself from writhing against the leather seat, and she was just sitting on the sidelines.
Sasha smirked. “Don’t forget to take your meds,” she said airily as she followed her brother. “Catch you later, Bailey.” The door slammed behind her.
“Meds?” Bailey finally said.
“There’s a drug that humans can take to make them less susceptible to the pheromones.”
“Hmm, handy. Something that Sebastiani Labs conjured up?” At his affirmative nod, she sat silently for a moment. “Is Lukas okay?”
Jack reached across the table and turned off the overhead projector. “He’s under a lot of stress right now, but he’ll deal with it.” He looked to the door, and sighed in relief. “It’ll be easier to explain this now that they’re gone. I swear she picks on him for entertainment. I hope Lukas can catch a nap.”
She could use one herself. In the last hour, she’d found out humans weren’t alone in the universe—hell, weren’t even alone on Earth. She’d learned her boss was an incubus, and his sister a succubus. She’d learned her best friend was a member of a Council governing Earth’s non-human species. “So, this is what all the secrecy is about.”
Jack raised his eyebrows in question.
“The rooms at SebSec that I can’t badge into. The servers and files I can’t access.” She looked away from him for a moment. “I thought you didn’t trust me.”
“I trust you implicitly. But Lukas and the Council were a little more challenging to convince, and it wasn’t my secret to share.” Jack rose and sat in the chair Sasha had just vacated. He looked her in the eye. “I’m so glad you backed away from that firewall when you did.”
“Yeah, well, it was close,” she muttered, “and we both know that at one time I probably wouldn’t have.” They sat in silence, let it wrap them comfortably. “Wow,” Bailey finally said.
“Yeah, it’s a lot to think about,” Jack agreed. “There are aspects of their world that I’m still trying to learn about, to absorb. But tonight, all that has to be put aside. Scarlett’s safety is the priority.”
“What is Lukas so uptight about?”
“Lukas has a genetic anomaly which forces him to taste and smell emotions as he absorbs them. He’s battered by stimuli 24/7, and a lot of
it isn’t pretty.”
“Kind of like emotional synesthesia?” she asked, referring to the sensory integration disorder which enabled some humans to see numbers in color, smell music, and taste scents.
“Yeah. He doesn’t talk about it, but the bottles of antacids scattered around the office speak for themselves. And yes, before you ask, he and Scarlett have a history. He’ll be struggling tonight.”
Bailey pursed her lips. “So, let me get this straight. Basically, the Underworld Council is coming to an orgy.” She started giggling as she tried to imagine some of humanity’s historic rulers doing the same, but stopped as a horrible thought struck. “Is Dick Cheney a vampire?”
Jack blinked. “Not that I know of.”
Bailey took the mouse from Jack and clicked on the “Species” link. “What do I need to be on the lookout for? Cliffs Notes version, please.”
“The werewolves tend to be vocal, physical, and exuberant, and will probably shed clothes as the night goes on. The vamps might flash some fang, but most of them aren’t about to strip off in public. The Valkyries have been officially reminded that they can’t fight in the building. The sirens shouldn’t be a problem, unless they band together and start singing along with Scarlett. Jesus, I hadn’t thought about that one,” he muttered, grabbing his mini-comp and tapping a note. “But in terms of crowd control, the incubi and succubi will pose the biggest challenge. They’re the most vulnerable due to their susceptibility to siren song, but they emit pheromones which loosen everybody’s inhibitions.”
“No meds?”
“So far, the pheromone meds only work for humans.”
Only three humans in history knew of their existence in the first place. Two sat in this room, and one was dead. Damn it, Jack had allowed himself to be used as a lab rat.
Jack clicked deeper into the website, explaining what he knew about the species. Bailey took mental notes on the areas where she needed to spend more time, do more research. And as the facts and factoids scrolled by, she learned Earth’s unvarnished history: how the Underworld Council’s guiding hand had been poised behind countless thrones, influencing events to their benefit, and about how many of humanity’s accomplishments weren’t actually humanity’s at all.
But it was the small facts that mesmerized her: that vampires’ mythological aversion to the sun was simply because they were allergic to the sun’s UV rays. That incubi drew energy from the aurora borealis, and that pictures of the aurora were prominently displayed in most incubi homes—rather, Bailey thought, like some Christian homes featured pictures of Jesus or Mary, or of that old guy praying over a loaf of bread. That sirens had an affinity for water and waves, and that a lot of them kept tabs on America’s big surf breaks, dropping everything when word of epic waves went out over the surfer’s grapevine. That werewolves were the only species capable of shifting physical form. That all of the species could breed with each other, and could breed with humans.
And had, for generations.
Incubus clubs. The Underworld Council. Siren song. Sexual feedback loops. Jack continued on, and the web pages kept scrolling by.
Finally, the information all started to swirl together. Bailey held up her hand in the universal gesture for “enough.” Buffer overflow. Her mind needed to rest.
She tucked her small hand into Jack’s big one. Humanity wasn’t alone. And neither was she.
CHAPTER TWO
Several hours later, weighed down by a tool belt and backpack, Bailey wound her way through the maze of scrims, screens and curtains backstage at Underbelly. She was running late, but apparently so was everyone else. Scarlett and her band should have taken the stage ten minutes ago, but pre-recorded music still slithered and thumped through the club’s extraordinary sound system, and when she’d walked past the hospitality room a couple of minutes ago, she’d seen Scarlett, bundled in a purple bathrobe, sipping from a water bottle and pointedly ignoring Lukas. For his part, Lukas, eyes peeled and lips moving, half-blocked the entrance to the room with his linebacker-sized body. Though it might look to others like he was talking to himself, she knew he was issuing instructions to the rest of the Sebastiani Security team via his tiny communication device.
Well, whatever the hold-up was, it meant she had time to change. Installing the extra security cameras Lukas had requested had taken a little longer than she’d anticipated—not due to technical issues, but because she’d spent too much time fighting with a heavy ladder over twice her height. But the cameras were finally installed, easily jacked into the club’s security system—too easily—and that was something she’d have a serious talk with Sasha and Jack about.
It would have to wait for Monday, because tonight, after not being able to scare up a single Scarlett’s Web concert ticket no matter how many internet back alleys she’d scoured, she was going to be standing front row center at one of the most highly anticipated shows of the year. She grinned down at the coveted All-Access pass dangling from a lanyard hanging from her neck. Jack had told her that working for Sebastiani Security would come with some unusual fringe benefits, but dude, this was ridiculous.
A heavy curtain tangled around her backpack. Swiping it aside, she pressed on. Yes, ‘unusual’ was a good word to use to describe the goings-on at Sebastiani Security. All those bags of blood in the break room’s second refrigerator? Not there to address emergency medical issues, as she’d imagined, but refreshments for her vampire co-workers. The dogs trotting around the office weren’t her colleagues’ pets, but her actual colleagues.
I work with werewolves. She’d probably committed some sort of cross-species sexual harassment by cuddling the dogs, scratching their bellies, telling them how strong and handsome they were, but damn it, they’d flashed their kibbles and bits at her, not the other way around.
And the Sebastiani family? Lukas? His father, his sisters, his brother Rafe? The family had won the freaking genetic lottery, every single one of them possessing preternatural good looks and mad charisma.
It made complete sense now that she knew they were incubi and succubi. Sex demons. She sighed. At least now she knew why Rafe Sebastiani—long, lean, luscious Rafe Sebastiani—made her ovaries ache.
Jack and Lukas had provided her with a lot of information earlier, but her admittedly-outsized curiosity was nowhere near satisfied. Unanswered questions buzzed her brain like bees in a hive: How could she tell the species apart when they all passed for human? How in the world had their people managed to hide in plain sight for so long without humans noticing? What possible survival driver would cause a species to evolve so they absorbed emotional energy for sustenance, and emitted drugging sexual pheromones in response?
It boggled the mind, and she was very much a creature of the mind, thank you very much. She had to keep that thought front and center, because the second-hand pheromones Jack had warned about were already starting to build. Her thoughts were getting a little blurry around the edges, and her skin felt hypersensitive, too tight for her body. She scrubbed at her sternum with her knuckles, rubbed her palm over her breast—Gah. Jerking her hand away, she shouldered through acres of three-story curtain, eyes down so she didn’t trip over the thick cables duct-taped to the floor.
Mind back on the job.
What kind of culture was this, where assaulting a leader’s family for political gain was something that even crossed anyone’s mind? So much for Star Trek’s Federation of Planets utopia—
“Whoa.” She bumped into something—someone—very tall, very hard, and very warm.
Who smelled like sin.
Sex demon.
“Hey, there.” The guy wrapped strong hands around her upper arms to steady her. “Are you okay?”
She took a big step back, away from the succulent tendrils of scent. “I’m fine, thanks.” One of Scarlett’s roadies. With his sparkling eyes, slashing cheekbones, and lush mouth framed by a neatly-trimmed goatee, he’d be worth a second look—hell, a third—even without pheromones starting to fog her brain.
“Is there a place back here where I can change?” Her tool belt felt diabolically heavy, its weight focusing too much attention on the sudden heat blooming between her thighs. She clenched her hands around the backpack strap so they wouldn’t be tempted to wander.
The guy looked her up and down, quirking a cheerfully carnal smile. “There’s a guest dressing room back there.” He pointed into the shadows. “I’ll show you.”
Looking where he’d gestured, she saw the door. “That’s okay. I’m good.”
White teeth flashed in the dim light. “You certainly are.”
Music slithered and pulsed. Taking a deep breath, she locked her knocking knees. Jack had warned her that personal boundaries between the species were wafer-thin compared to what humans might expect between strangers, but he’d also assured her that no meant no.
What he hadn’t told her was that she might think twice about saying it.
She dragged her eyes away from a yard of jean-clad leg. Damn it, where was Sasha with those pheromone intoxication meds? “I’ve got it, thanks.” She scurried into the dressing room, slammed the door, and shot the deadbolt lock so quickly that the motion-activated lights were still brightening the room when she dropped her hand. The metallic thunk sounded unnaturally loud, echoing against the tiles. “Jesus.” Letting her backpack slide down her arm to the floor, she clawed at the fastening of her tool belt. If this was how she reacted to a single incubus, what was she going to do once she was surrounded by hundreds? When Scarlett and her band took the stage, and they flooded the place with pheromones in response to Scarlett’s transcendent siren’s voice?
Incubi and sirens and vampires, oh my.
She shoved away the fanciful thought. Mind over matter; it was time to get to work. She had to prove to Lukas and Jack that she could handle this, that she was worthy of their trust.