by R. C. Murphy
Stunned, Shayla slid her hand free from his. She opened the car door and sat in the driver’s seat. “I, ah, I’ll call you later this week.”
“No pressure, Shayla. You don’t have to decide right away.” His hand landed on the top of the door. “Goodnight. Please drive safely.”
Deryck shut her inside the car. Shayla gave a little wave. Her voice fled for the woods the second she realized he was completely sincere. The decision to see him again was completely in her control.
She started the car and pulled out of the parking spot. Shayla stopped at the street ramp. Looking back in the rearview mirror, she saw Deryck wave. He walked back toward one of the few cars left and vanished behind it.
For starting out a disaster, the night ended perfectly. Shayla smiled all the way home.
The moment Shayla’s car rounded the street corner; Deryck transported himself across the city. He manifested across the street from her home and tucked into the shadows between two of the houses. A dog in the yard of one house gave a warning growl. Deryck summoned a large dog treat and tossed it over the fence. The dog sniffed at it, grabbed the treat between its teeth, and retreated to the other side of the yard.
Being in possession of his limited powers certainly came in handy in the human realm.
Deryck leaned against the stucco siding and waited. After a while, Shayla’s car turned onto the street. She pulled into her driveway and parked. He took a relieved breath. She’d looked so out-of-sorts when they parted. The least he could do was make sure she made it home safely. I shouldn’t have kept her out so late.
Shayla stepped out of her car. From his vantage point, Deryck got a nice flash of thigh from where her dress had ridden up during the drive. He sucked in a breath, unable to believe the raw physical effect she had on him.
The rear lights on her car flashed twice. Deryck pressed tighter against the wall and prayed she didn’t see him. Shayla seemed oblivious to his spying. Her keys jangled together when they slid into the lock on the front door. She slipped inside.
He waited a moment longer for the locks to click back into place. None of the lights inside came on; Shayla must have walked straight to her bedroom.
Before Deryck succumbed to thoughts about what could happen inside Shayla’s bedroom, he crept out of the shadows and walked away from her house.
The street was silent, save for the occasional barking dog. Most of the houses were dark. Deryck passed a few with flickering TV screens lighting up the front windows, but it was the only signs of life he found in Shayla’s slice of the human realm.
He understood all too well why she’d chosen the neighborhood. The lawns were well kept, as were the houses. If not for the harsh sting of the air in this realm, Deryck could almost believe he walked in the Inbetween. His callers favored quiet places where one wouldn’t normally expect privacy, but thanks to the nature of the realm, they were given it no matter what.
Block after block, Deryck simply enjoyed the fact that he was free to go and do as he wished. Eventually, the neat little houses gave way to homes needing some work done to them. Stray dogs sniffed along the gutters, looking for dropped food to fill their empty stomachs. Deryck summoned a tray of food for them. He knew it wouldn’t help in the long run, but at least they’d have something to help them through the night.
The houses petered off, becoming empty lots filled with tall weeds and garbage. A couple warehouses broke up the mile-long stretch of vacant land.
Deryck stopped and sat down on the curb. Leaning back, he looked up at the stars. There were no stars in the God’s Lands. There wasn’t anything of substance in the realm he lived in, really. Everything was glamour, a beautiful distraction from the reality of their existence. It’d failed to take his mind off his servitude for the last three thousand years.
The gods designed it that way on purpose. They kept the incubi like pet mice in a cage, dropping the occasional treat in their dishes throughout the centuries to give the illusion they gave a damn. In reality, they were ashamed. The incubi were bred from the god’s inability to keep their dicks in their pants, or their wives. Before Deryck’s time, once a male demi-god was of age and showed potential to be an incubus, the pantheon that bore him, slaughtered him.
The gods really knew how to show familial love.
Their offspring weren’t any better at showing the bonds of kinship. Deryck ground his teeth. “Herryk, you bastard.”
The male was always meddling in the affairs of others. Always shoving his nose where it didn’t belong. Herryk had a delusion if he stepped up to “manage” the incubi, he’d eventually be their leader. It was a pipe dream. The gods ruled them. An internal force would never govern the incubi, lest they find a way to overpower the gods.
Herryk possessed one fatal flaw; he took after the god who spawned him. Marduk thrived on taking over new lands. He led his Babylonians to sweep over Mesopotamia. While they were busy in the human realm, he slaughtered any pantheons of the people his followers defeated and rewrote their histories to make himself seem kind and generous.
Deryck, on the other hand, wanted nothing to do with his father. Min knew full well the hell Deryck’s human mother would go through. Still, he courted her, impregnated her, and forced her to believe Deryck died when she miscarried during her eighth month of pregnancy. He wanted to visit every ounce of pain his mother experienced onto Min. No female should ever suffer the agony of losing her unborn child.
An airplane passed overhead. The blinking lights broke Deryck free of his thoughts. Silently, he said his goodbyes to the stars and another goodbye to Shayla. Promising himself he’d return to her realm soon, he transported to the storage facility. A thread of his power kept the security system from triggering. He stowed his human identity in a safe box.
Regretfully, Deryck transported himself home, taking with him images of Shayla lit by moonlight reflected off the creek. If only he had a better way to capture the moment. Memories were so flawed. They changed, morphed each time one resurrected them. He didn’t want the memory to change at all. Shayla would never be more beautiful than she had been that instant.
Early-morning fog snaked across the ground. Thick tendrils of it blanketed the street, concealing the houses on either side. No one else was awake, not even the birds that normally took advantage of the damp morning grass to find their squirmy worm breakfasts.
Shayla shivered and zipped the front of her hooded sweatshirt all the way up to her throat. She seriously needed to reconsider what time of year to become an exercise junkie.
Jogging along the sidewalk, the silence was unnerving. Where the hell is everyone? Surely she couldn’t be the only suburban-dweller taking advantage of the cool weather to work out. Typically, she’d see at least a car roll past at this time in the morning.
“Freaky.”
She dismissed it and kept going. Her legs burned to high-holy-hell. The breaths tearing from her lips came in jagged gasps. Her heart beat so hard and so fast, she heard it like a drumbeat echoing from the bottom of a deep-dark pit.
“So help me, if a cave troll attacks me around this corner, I’m never exercising again.”
Around the corner, there wasn’t a cave troll, just more fog trapping her in a bubble all by herself. Shayla mentally calculated her trip so far and decided after the next block, she’d turn back. One mile was good enough to get started. Though, she felt like she should run ten. Maybe if her ass wasn’t the size of a loveseat, she’d get more than a kiss on the hand at the end of a date.
Finally, Shayla spotted someone approaching through the fog. They were backlit by the rising sun. She couldn’t tell who they were, but whoever it was had to be male, given the width of their shoulders.
She slowed to a walk and moved to the right side of the sidewalk to let him pass. The man-shape followed suit, stepping right in her way. Shayla laughed, thinking one of them should have had some coffee before heading out, and moved to the other side of the sidewalk. He followed her lead again. Shayla st
opped. He did, too.
The fog was dense in the section of the neighborhood. The man remained blurry, unidentifiable, certainly not someone she’d seen in the area before.
“Morning,” she called.
“Good morning, Shayla.”
A sick feeling wrapped around her stomach and clenched tight. “Who are you?
“I am the man you’ve been waiting for.” His voice was low, seductive and familiar. Had Deryck come by to visit again despite saying he wouldn’t until she called?
Shayla’s thrumming heartbeat sped up at the thought. I was wrong about him. He’s a damn stalker and I played right into his game.
“I haven’t been waiting for anyone.” She slid her hand into her pocket and grabbed her keys. In a pinch, they’d make a decent weapon. God, she hoped it wouldn’t go that far.
The man stepped closer. The fog shifted with his movement and parted like a curtain after the overture of a Broadway show.
Cyrus stood in the middle of the sidewalk, a smug grin on his sickeningly handsome face. Dark red blood dripped from his fingertips and splattered onto his work boots. The forearms of his blue Henley shirt were soaked in it, all the way up to his elbows. Cy tugged a ragged handkerchief out of the back pocket of his jeans and wiped his hands off. It didn’t do any good; there was too much blood.
More blood dripped onto the sidewalk. Bright, red, reminding Shayla of everything she fought hard to keep buried in the past.
“Of course you were waiting for me. You will always wait for me to come back, Shayla.”
She shook her head. “You’re dead. I watched them put you in the ground.”
“You can’t get rid of me. I’m in you deep, baby.” Menace darkened his face. Cyrus snarled. “And I won’t share you with anyone else.”
Shayla stumbled back on rubbery legs and wrapped her arms protectively around her midsection, taking care to hide her keys in the crook of her arm. She couldn’t go through this again with him. The first time had nearly killed her, but she’d survived with scars in places no one could see. He’d cost her a future. A life she’d wanted for so long. The loss was too much.
“Leave me alone.” A sob choked her.
“I’ll never leave you again, my love.”
Cyrus closed in on her, his long strides eating the distance she’d put between them. His large hands clamped down on her sides and jerked her against his body. The scent of blood was overwhelming.
Pain ripped through Shayla’s lower stomach. She screamed and crumpled to the ground. Hot wet blood pooled around her, soaking into her sweatpants.
Shayla bolted upright in her bed. Tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped onto her nightshirt. She covered her mouth with the back of her trembling hand to hold in another scream.
Her eyes wouldn’t focus through the tears. For a terrifying moment, she thought she’d been taken back to her old house—back to the bedroom where her life had forcibly been changed forever.
Shayla rubbed a hand over her lower stomach to chase away the ghost pains from the dream. She’d give anything to forget losing her child that way, lying on her bed bleeding and screaming while Cyrus watched. He’d been indifferent to her suffering. Blamed her the entire time. She’d passed out from the pain. When she woke, he’d cleaned up the evidence and burned it in the backyard.
“He’s dead. Gone. It was just a dream.”
She scrubbed her hands over her face. The bedroom came into view and Shayla breathed a sigh of relief. She climbed out of bed. Her feet took her straight to the large bathroom.
Cranking the shower as hot as she could stand it, Shayla stripped and stepped under the water. She grabbed the purple shower poof and poured her favorite body wash onto it. She’d scrub away the lingering sensation of blood, even if it scratched the skin off her body.
The hiss of steam meeting milk carried over the handful of hushed conversations inside the coffee shop. A line at the counter stretched to the front door. Apparently everyone within the block came to this establishment for this lunchtime caffeine fix.
Everyone except Shayla.
Deryck leaned forward in the plush leather seat he’d been camped out in to check the end of the line. He hadn’t recognized anyone coming in our out of the Sweet Bean. He’d hoped if he couldn’t find Shayla, he’d at least find the woman she’d been with the first time he saw her, Kelly. No such luck. He spent the last four hours pretending to read a book and had one hell of a caffeine buzz going. Sitting still was becoming a serious issue.
It’d been three days since their abbreviated date. Shayla sounded so sure she’d call him again when they parted, but he hadn’t heard from her. A few times during the last two days he found himself itching to retrieve his phone from the safe box. That morning he gave into the urge. There wasn’t anything on the voice mail, as the sales clerk called it when he purchased the device.
Instead of calling and potentially upsetting her, Deryck decided to “accidentally” run into her. Though, given his track record with Shayla, she’d think he was stalking her again. He had no clue what happened in her past to make her so jumpy, but he wished he could fix it.
The last of the lunch crowd ordered their drinks and dispersed. Deryck polished off his final cup of coffee. There was no use waiting around. She wouldn’t be coming in.
Deryck stepped outside. His eyes automatically sought out the windows of Shayla’s office. She hurried past, a ghost in the tinted glass, and vanished deeper into the building.
Before she came back and caught him lurking, Deryck took a slow walk around the block to clear his head. He’d need to go home soon. Some of the others, especially Herryk, were beginning to notice he seemed to spend more and more time away. He didn’t know how long he could convince them it was a fluke—some sorority girls stumbled across one of his charms and had been passing it through their ranks. He feigned exhaustion and spent what little time he had in the compound in bed, pretending to rest and sorting out a way to discover exactly how Shayla was supposed to break his incubi bonds. Maybe Wolfrik knows more than he’s shared.
A horde of children rushed up behind Deryck and poured around him like a rock in a stream. Chasing after them was a harried-looking woman. She yelled at the children to slow down and keep a hold of their walking buddy. He smiled at her. She paused for a moment to gawk. One of the children let out a feral squeak and broke the spell. The woman stuttered a, “good afternoon” and hurried to catch up with them.
Deryck watched them cross the street. He took a right around the corner of the block. Traffic was lighter there, not a constant thundering sound rattling his nerves.
The phone in his pocket buzzed. Deryck yanked the phone out with so much force he nearly ripped his pants. A grin spread over his face the moment he saw Shayla’s name and number on the small screen.
Deryck’s thumb hovered over the green button. Searing pain raced down his wrist, into his hand. Cursing, he shoved the phone back in his pocket. He yanked up the sleeve of his jacket. The tattoo on his wrist expanded to cover most of his forearm.
“Of all the times to be summoned…”
The world around him melted away.
Cool, crisp grass tickled between Deryck’s bare toes. He frowned down and discovered loose black linen pants and a silver vest had replaced his jeans, t-shirt, and jacket. He looked like a male stripper. Wonderful, one of those types.
The Inbetween was eerily quiet. Tall trees surrounded a small circular patch of grass. To his left, a stream cut through the trees and fell down a short waterfall. He had a feeling whoever summoned him fancied stories with fae, the place reeked of potential magic—and not the sort that happened when two people came together to make love.
Leaves rustled behind him. Deryck turned slowly so he didn’t startle the woman.
She peered at him from behind the trunk of a tall oak tree. Something silver dangled from her fingertips. “I can’t believe this hunk of crap worked.”
Deryck fought not to shake his head. He hat
ed the charms, they were the easiest way for him to be used over and over again if a woman desired. So far, he’d escaped being trapped by one of his callers by such a device. May the gods help him the day someone found a charm made specifically to call him and not just any nearby incubi. He kept the only one of his charms he knew existed safe in the barracks.
The woman stepped around the tree. Just as he suspected, she fashioned clothing for herself akin to what a nymph would wear—a loose gown draped over one shoulder and pinned in place with a pearl-encrusted broach. The material was so flimsy; he caught glimpses of her nipples each time the dress moved. It was an outfit meant to drive even a monk wild with lust. Deryck held no appreciation for her efforts. She was a gorgeous woman, but he had no desire to sleep with her.
“My friend bought this thing for me from a voodoo shop in Cleveland, of all places.” She twirled the charm around on its silver chain. “I thought she was bat-shit crazy when she told me what it was supposed to do. But,” she said and came to a stop so close he could smell the natural fragrance of her skin. “Here you are. In the flesh. Mighty fine flesh too. I have to thank Cathy when I get home.”
Deryck got the impression the woman would never shut up unless he did something to distract her. His fingertips gently closed around her wrist to stop the twirling charm. “Then make the most of your time, mistress.”
She shivered. “Ooh . . . I like that. Say it again.”
Deryck plastered on his best grin. “Anything you wish, mistress.”
The woman dropped the charm. It landed in the grass with a soft whoosh and vanished. Her free hands smoothed up Deryck’s chest, fingertips teasing circles around his nipples. She raked her nails down his chest. Deryck forced himself to stay put through the discomfort. Pain was only pleasurable for him in the heat of the moment, even then he rarely truly enjoyed it.
Her hands continued to explore his body, heading further and further south. “Whatever I wish? I wish to . . .” She paused, one hand on his groin. “Thought you guys were supposed to be ready and willing no matter what.”