by C. J. Pinard
Sheila paused the powder puff at her nose and raised her penciled-on eyebrows. “Cruised?”
Tristan interjected, “I think Agent Clark is trying to say that we didn’t run into any shifters or vampires, ma’am,” he said in his most respectable Southern way. Even though he was from the Northeast, Tristan learned quickly that he’d better embrace Southern manners or be treated like a Yankee.
“I see,” Sheila said, placing the circular compact back into the desk drawer and shutting it. She steepled her fingers, which looked a little painful because of how long and curvy her pink fingernails were.
“Where you two ya-hoos headed to tonight?” she asked, seemingly genuinely curious.
Lauren opened up a small manila folder and read from it. “It seems we have a tip about some succubus in a club downtown – she’s making her rounds there.”
Sheila nodded. “I was briefed about this during a telephone conference yesterday with D.C. The succubae are definitely not hiding anymore.”
“I remember hearing about them at the academy. They’re vampires, right?” Tristan asked.
SAC Morris nodded. “Yes, in a way. They are immortal for sure, but instead of drinking blood, they take a person’s… soul. It sounds so crazy to say it like that, but it’s the only way of explaining it.”
Tristan raised a dark eyebrow. “Their soul. Are you serious, boss?”
She laughed a little, her perfectly straight, white teeth on proud display. “Yes, Agent Ellis, that’s all we got for now. It seems the victim will not only lose a lot of his memory of the event, but his emotions seem to be almost dead afterward.”
“His?” Tristan questioned.
“Yes,” Lauren interjected. “Succubae are only female. They are usually very beautiful females and lure their victims with the promise of sexual favors.”
Tristan’s eyebrows raised. “Doesn’t sound like a bad tradeoff. Who needs their soul anyway?”
Lauren punched Tristan in the arm. “Very funny, wise guy.” She looked at her boss. “Men!”
Sheila picked up her pen and started writing. “Yeah, Agent Clark, men. You should try one on sometime. They do serve a purpose…” she shot a glance at agent Ellis, “sometimes.”
Lauren laughed.
Tristan, not so much.
“So I take it you two are going to be staking out this…” she glanced at the folder Lauren had handed her, “Muse Club tonight in the French Quarter?”
“Oh, and what a horrible assignment that will be!” Tristan said with a glint in his brown eyes.
Lauren ignored him and looked at her boss. “Yes, we’ll be there.”
Tristan looked at Lauren. “Mm, mm, mm… I can’t wait to see you in a mini-skirt!”
She shot daggers at him with her eyes. “Not on your life, buddy.”
∞∞∞
Lauren tugged at her min-skirt, willing it to be longer. She had to borrow the damn thing from her roommate – Priscilla – who was the complete and polar opposite of her. In fact, Priscilla had begged to come to Club Muse with her tonight. When Lauren informed her it was strictly government business, she had pouted and informed her that Thursday nights weren’t the best night to go, but it would still be ‘happenin’. Lauren had just shook her head with her hand out, asking for the skirt. She was both relieved and disappointed they were both a size 6, as the skirt fit perfectly. She definitely wasn’t going to show any cleavage, though, as she was drawing the line at the short, black spandex skirt.
She met Tristan at the front of the club as MC Hammer’s “You Can’t Touch This” blasted out through the front door. Paying the ten-dollar cover, they both wandered into the club.
The rap music was an assault on Lauren’s ears, but she endured it, all in the name of federal law enforcement. As much as her partner, Tristan Ellis annoyed her, she was relieved he was here, helping her not feel so out of place in the massive club.
Bodies were writhing on the dance floor and Lauren was already scanning the club for the succubus in question, a female going by the name Quinn, who was stealing poor mortals’ souls just to stay alive.
The nerve.
She noticed some eyes on her, and again yanked on her skirt, feeling it was too short.
“Stop fidgeting!” Tristan scolded. “You have awesome legs, be proud of them!”
She gasped. “Ellis!”
He laughed, smacking her arm. “Seriously, take a compliment, girl. I don’t get why you don’t have a man yet.”
She looked at him as if she wanted to slap him.
He put his hands up in surrender. “Okay, maybe I kinda get it. You some lezbo or something? I mean, if you hate men, just tell me.”
She stomped her right foot, which was encased in a flat shoe. “I am not a lesbian! Not that there’s anything wrong with that… I am just very… selective with who I date.”
He raised an eyebrow. “And who is that?”
She looked away from him, the colorful pulsing lights from the dance floor flashing on her pretty face. “Nobody at the moment. I’m single and free to do what I want.”
He admired the way her blonde hair hung down on her shoulders. She always wore her hair up for work and he’d never noticed how pretty it was down – although he’d often wondered.
Tristan Ellis grew up in Minneapolis. His family lived on the wrong side of the tracks, and while his friends growing up were busy stealing cars and slinging dope, he stayed inside to help care for his mother, who was sick with sickle-cell anemia. He secretly admired the Minneapolis PD and all they stood for, not despising them, like his schoolmates did. He graduated from high school with pretty good grades, and when his mother died his senior year of high school, she made him promise he’d go to college.
True to his word, he received a degree from the University of Minnesota in Criminal Justice in 1985 and was quickly picked up by the FBI. He thought he would need some sort of experience to join, but it turned out the Justice Department was quickly learning that young graduates with clean backgrounds and no other training made the perfect clean slates for them to train. They found those with experience in other law enforcement venues were harder to train in the ways of the FBI, and would frequently recruit from college campuses.
One large drawback to joining the FBI was that one had to move away from home – probably for good. They’d have to go to a part of the country where they knew nobody, and where nobody knew them. That person would be a stranger, a nobody to everyone around them, and that made for the perfect undercover agent.
Fresh from the Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Tristan drew the long straw and got selected for the field office in New Orleans, Louisiana. In his first year, he had four unsolved cases – all of them supernaturally related, but he didn’t know that back then. He just knew the cases were strange and unexplainable. Determined as he was, he dug and dug until he dug too deep and got pulled aside by the SAC of the field division, asking him if he was interested in the BSI. Of course he wanted in.
Things became clear to Tristan after he went back to training and joined the BSI. The unsolved cases were picked up and quickly solved. He even got the pleasure of detaining and interrogating a vampire in 1987, which was an eye-opening experience.
It also almost cost him his life. He learned quickly that you can’t treat vampires like regular suspects. You know, super-human strength and all that.
“Are you listening to a word I said?” Lauren said.
“I’m sorry, girl. What did you say?” he replied, breaking out of his trip down memory lane.
She huffed. “I said, that lady over there matches the description of Quinn, our succubus.”
Tristan followed her line of sight to a very beautiful woman with hair as red as a blood orange – so red it reflected every rainbow color the strobe pumped out, gleaming perfectly off her sleek, sharp haircut. She had cherry red lips and skin as pale as alabaster. Her eye makeup was done jet-black and cat style, and even from a distance, Tristan could see they were a very
light color, probably blue. She was surrounded by two men and three women. One of the men looked to be a very young blonde man, probably no older than twenty-one, if that, and he seemed very enamored by her.
Tristan nodded. “Yes, she does seem to fit the description perfectly. What is the plan?”
When the succubus looked their way, almost as if she felt their eyes on her, Lauren and Tristan looked at each other. “We’ll just keep an eye on her. If she leaves with anybody, we follow.”
“Can I at least have a beer?” he asked.
“Negative. We’re on the clock.”
Tristan looked at her and laughed. “Really? I don’t remember submitting an overtime sheet.”
She looked up at him. “We’re on the swing shift tonight, or did you forget that you only spent 5 minutes in the office today with the SAC?”
“Oh, I guess you have a point.”
“Go to the bar and get me a club soda, will ya? And no alcohol for you,” she chided.
He nodded and left her standing alone in a dark corner of the bar with her arm leaned up against a tall round table with no chairs. She was watching the succubus she assumed to be Quinn.
Quinn leaned in and whispered something in the blonde man’s ear and he smiled at her with a gleam in eye, something Lauren could only assume was lust. She had probably promised him something of a sexual nature and the poor sap seemed to be falling for it.
As Tristan made his way to the bar, he looked back once again at the succubus. Quinn caught his eye once more, her pale eyes locking on his chocolate brown ones. Even from across the club, Tristan seemed to be mesmerized by her. His eyes raked over her body. The skin-tight red shirt matched her lips perfectly and showed off her large breasts. Her short, white skirt accented the muscular lines in her thighs while her legs were crossed. She had on very high, glossy red pumps, which swished as she rocked her ankle back and forth as she spoke to the blonde man.
Tristan licked his lips then let out a breath, running a hand over his bald head. “Snap out of it, dude,” he hissed at himself.
“Excuse me?” asked the bartender.
Tristan smiled at the man with the mullet hairdo, which was shorter and feathered in the front, and all party in the back. “Oh, sorry, just talking to myself. A club soda and a Coke, please.”
The bartender nodded, the lights from the club making the large fake diamond in his left ear gleam under them. Tristan spied the comb in his back pocket as the bartender turned around to pour his drinks and laughed.
As Tristan headed back in Lauren’s direction, he caught Quinn’s eye once again, willing himself to look away. Yeah, he’d love to hit that, but it wasn’t worth it, he had to tell himself.
He reached Lauren at the dark table and set her club soda on the table. “I think she knows we’re watching her,” he said flatly.
Lauren took a long drag from the little black straw and nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure she does know. But whatever. Hopefully she thinks we’re swingers or something and not cops.”
“So what happens after she takes this dude’s soul… or whatever it is she does?” Tristan asked, feeling stupid for even asking. He couldn’t believe that was even possible, it sounded so ludicrous.
“Well, in about seven days, he turns into a vampire,” Lauren replied matter-of-factly.
Tristan spit Coke out, then wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“What!”
“Seriously.”
He looked around to see if anyone saw him, then lowered his voice even more. “We have to get that kid out of there then!”
She nodded. “I agree.” She paused and stared at the young, blonde man, who was now running kisses up Quinn’s neck. She had her head back, appearing to be completely enjoying herself. “Although, if he kills her, he won’t turn into one.”
Tristan stared at her in shock. “You’re screwing with me, right?”
“You’re such a rookie, Ellis.”
Chapter 12
∞∞∞
SAC Sheila Morris read over the report as the two agents were once again seated in her office. Sheila’s color of the day was green, and her dress, fingernails, and shoes – even her eye shadow – boasted the bright green shade.
“Your report says they were kissing. Did you observe anything else?” she asked, flipping her dark eyes between the two agents.
Tristan looked at Lauren, then back at his boss. “At one point she had both her hands on either side of his face and was staring into his eyes, but I don’t know if that is significant.”
Sheila nodded. “It is. They only require physical contact. It doesn’t have to be sexual intercourse. It doesn’t even have to be highly sexual. They can just kiss intently, and we do know it has to do with locking eyes. Did you get close enough to see if her eyes changed colors?”
Lauren shook her head. “No, we were across the club. Their eyes change color?”
Sheila blew out a breath and pulled a nail file from the drawer. “Did you two ya-hoos pay any attention at the academy? I mean, at all? Yes, all vampires, their eyes turn pure black – no whites at all – when they feed.”
Tristan was getting both angry and a bit uncomfortable with the conversation. “We know vampires’ eyes turn black, but this is a succubus.”
Sheila tapped the nail file against the edge of the desk after blowing nail dust from it. “Succubae are vampires. Their eyes turn black when they feed, and in their case, off the soul, not blood.”
“So noted,” Lauren muttered.
“Back to the club, both of you. That poor kid is probably gonna be our latest bloodsucker soon. Yet another damned vampire we’re going to have to monitor,” Sheila said, shoving the nail file back in the drawer and pulling out a pen, jotting notes into a notebook.
“Is it true if he kills her, he won’t turn into one?” Tristan asked.
Sheila’s pen paused mid-scrawl. “We don’t know that for a fact, but hey, if you two can prove it, I’ll promote you both.”
Lauren’s eyebrows rose. “Are you serious?”
Sheila went back to writing and chuckled. “No, I’m not serious. But for real, if you find that out, I will be very impressed.”
A heavy silence hung in the air as the agents sat in their chairs and stared at their boss.
“You two, get the hell out of here. I have work to do.”
They both left her office and closed the wood door behind them.
As they reached their cubicles, Tristan looked at Lauren. “You gonna wear the skirt again?”
She scowled at him. “Piss off, Ellis.”
∞∞∞
Tristan and Lauren were in line in front of Club Muse in the French Quarter. It was now Saturday night and they had ignored their boss’s orders to go on Friday night. They knew Saturday night would be much more busy, and that’s what they wanted – a busy club with lots of distractions so they could watch the succubus in question – and in action.
They knew they were taking a chance – if succubae were like vampires, they only needed to feed about once a week, but by the look of this particular succubus, they knew she’d be back for more. Tristan could tell she was cocky and confident, and could feed from whomever and whenever she wanted.
Lauren, feeling a bit more confident tonight in a slightly longer pencil skirt, but a tight-fitting pink ruffled tank top, strolled in with Tristan, who decided to wear a T-shirt with some parachute pants and shiny tasseled loafers. “All you’re missing is a high-top fade,” Lauren said, suppressing a laugh at his outfit.
He stared at her in disbelief. “What do you know about high-top fades?”
She put her hands on her slender hips. “Hey, I watch MTV, you know. I’m not as stuffy as you think I am.”
Truth was, Priscilla always had it on in the apartment but Lauren never purposely watched. Sometimes it was just unavoidable. Like trying to look away from a train wreck.
Tristan smiled at her. “Oh yeah? Well then I want you to be all over me tonight. Pretend
I’m your pimp and you’re my hoe.”
She gasped. “Never!”
He threw his head back. “That’s what I thought, hooka!”
She shook her head and paid the five-dollar cover charge to get inside, strolling into the massive club, which was definitely busy.
“The Bureau better be reimbursing us for these charges,” Tristan said, shoving his wallet into his back pocket.
She nodded. “Yeah, just put it on your monthly expense report.”
Both of them looked toward the corner of the club where they had seen Quinn previously, and sure enough, she was there, surrounded by an entourage of females and a large white man with a bald head wearing a tight white T-shirt.
Security.
“Wonder what a powerful succubus like her needs security for?” Tristan said, jutting his chin toward Quinn’s location.
Lauren looked. “I don’t know, but I think we need to approach her tonight. Since apparently they only feed off males, you get to be tonight’s bait.”
Tristan’s mouth kicked up in a grin. “Oh, the way you treat me.”
She looked at him and laughed. “Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be very painful.”
They walked toward the area Quinn was sitting at, and Tristan went to try to sit next to her, but the bouncer put his arm out. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”
Tristan, whose six-foot frame matched the bouncer’s, looked him straight in his blue eyes. “I’d like to talk to the pretty lady. Is that okay?” He flicked his eyes toward Quinn, who was smiling invitingly.
The bouncer looked at Quinn, who briefly met his eyes and nodded, then back to Tristan.
The bouncer lowered his arm and Tristan went to sit next to her on the small sofa perched in the corner of the dark club.
“Hi, I’m Tristan. I couldn’t help but notice you across the club. You’re way too beautiful not to notice.”