Blood of the Succubus

by McGeary, Duncan

  And real. He had to admit that Cathy was like a dream, almost unreal, like someone a horny boy would manufacture. Lucinda was real, like someone a more thoughtful boy (though still horny) could imagine spending his life with.

  That night, he felt the beginning of an erotic dream, but it was short-circuited somehow. Instead, he dreamed of the time Lucinda had gone with his family to the coast. They played tag in the waves, and he noticed her body for the first time, that she was softening and rounding in places, developing breasts, her figure not boyish anymore. While this dream didn’t culminate in a climax, it left him with a warm, glowing feeling that filled his heart, not his body.

  The next day, Cathy was particularly solicitous and interested in everything he said, but instead of this reassuring him, he found himself growing irritated by it. Is she really interested, or is she just pretending? he wondered. He searched for the most boring subject possible. “My cat threw up on the carpet last night. I had to clean it up,” he ventured.

  She laughed as if it was a great joke, and some part of him was chilled by the performance—not enough to call off the camping trip, however; not even close.

  But a small, still doubt entered his mind.

  Chapter 11

  The car was fully loaded, with way more gear than Jeremy and Cathy would ever need, but Jeremy figured better too much than too little. His mom and dad thought he was camping with his Boy Scout troop, and Cathy’s parents…Did Cathy have parents? Weird that she never talked about them.

  Cathy wanted to camp in nature with no one around for miles, but she didn’t want to worry about bears, so he found a campground near Elk Lake that wasn’t too far away but not too popular either. She liked that. There was always a risk of snow in September, so he threw in some extra blankets too. By the time he was done, there was barely enough room for the two of them in the car.

  She teased him about it all the way there. “All I need is my toothbrush,” she said. “Maybe a little soap.”

  “Gonna live on mushrooms?” he teased her back. “Make a shelter out of branches?”

  “Maybe,” she said.

  When they set up camp, Jeremy had to admit he’d overdone it. Half the stuff stayed in the car.

  He brought the food to the fire pit, and for the first time since he’d known her, Cathy actually seemed worried about something. “Shouldn’t we hang the food in a tree or something?” she asked. “Wasn’t there a bear attack a couple of weeks ago?”

  “I was going to put the food in the car before we went to bed,” he said. “That bear thing? That almost never happens around here. I mean, the odds are astronomical. That guy was just really unlucky.”

  She looked at him with a mock-serious expression. “My life is full of the astronomical.”

  And sure enough, much of it didn’t make sense. She spouted lots of non sequiturs that weren’t really responses at all. Jeremy seriously began to wonder if he was bewitched. He sighed. Not bewitched, just horny. His junk had been in overdrive the whole drive up, and the little bounces in the road hadn’t helped. It also hadn’t helped when Cathy leaned over and put her hand on his thigh, smiling like she knew exactly what was happening.

  “You want your first time to be right, Jeremy,” Lucinda had said. “With someone who really cares.”

  Well, in theory, he agreed. But he was a teenage boy, and right then, he’d have screwed anything that said yes.

  “Can we have a fire?” Cathy asked.

  “Sure!” he said, frowning at the worry in her voice. She’d wanted to go camping, but ever since they’d started out, she’d been nervous about it. Or maybe she was nervous about something else?

  As soon they had a roaring fire going, Jeremy began to relax. He couldn’t imagine camping without a fire. “Want to roast some hot dogs?”

  “Hell, yes, I want a…hot…dog.”

  Ah, he thought, Cathy is laying it on thick tonight. She didn’t need to. He couldn’t be any more primed if he’d just spent the day watching porn.

  Jeremy watched her from across the fire. Cathy stabbed a hot dog onto her roasting stick and let it sizzle over the fire.

  “Ooooo, yeah. I’ve been waiting all week for this.” She lifted it off the flames and blew on it, and then bit into it, giving it a lick first. Jeremy laughed at the innuendo.

  She was attractive, almost too perfect. Like a model or a CGI character in a movie. What was she doing with him? He wasn’t the handsomest, the funniest, the wealthiest, or the most charming guy in school, not by a long shot.

  Really, what was she doing with him? Why offer her body to him? And why the hell hadn’t he asked himself these questions before?

  Last week, his best friend, Jess, had made no bones about wondering about that himself. Jeremy chalked it up jealousy, but he hadn’t seen Jess since…when? Then he realized: Jess hadn’t disappeared, Jeremy had disappeared into Cathy’s magnetic personality.

  For the first time since they set off on the trip, Jeremy’s erection was nowhere in evidence as a new thought broke over him. I’ve always distrusted charisma, he thought.

  So why had he fallen for the first beautiful girl to come on to him without questioning her motives? Could it be that she was actually in love with him? He doubted it. So why him? Why now?

  Cathy seemed to sense his thoughts, because she moved to his side of the fire and sat down next to him, her land landing on his thigh. He started instantly getting hard, and wasn’t sure if he wanted her to notice or not.

  She was chattering on about the wonderfulness of nature. “It’s like every tree and every rock is exactly where it should be…” and when Jeremy tried to tune out her tone and just listen to the words, he realized it was a bunch of earth goddess nonsense, the kind of thing he’d always made fun of.

  Why do we never talk about anything that matters? he wondered. The meaning of life. Is there a God? Have we been visited by aliens?

  “What do you plan to do with the rest of your life?” he asked suddenly, interrupting her nattering.

  “What?”

  “What are your plans, your dreams? How do you want to live your life?”

  “Same as I’ve always done,” Cathy said. She looked as if she was having trouble coming up with an answer, as if she’d never, ever thought about it. “Have fun; enjoy life.”

  “That’s it?” he said.

  “What about you?” she asked, sounding almost defensive.

  Where to start? Jeremy wondered. “I want to be a writer. I want to write poetry that expresses everything I’m saying right now, only better. I want to direct a movie. I want to learn as much as I can. I want to travel, have a family someday, with kids and dogs and cats. I want to learn a foreign language, maybe be a teacher, or own a bookstore. I…” He broke off, trying to gauge her reaction. “I could go on all night.” He shrugged. The one answer he would never have given was, “Have fun.”

  What’s wrong with that? he asked himself. He wasn’t sure, but it felt vague, shallow, and selfish.

  Cathy was still smiling at him, but her eyes were angry. She looped one arm around his neck.

  “Do we have to be so serious?” she asked. “I’m not asking you to marry me, Jeremy. Let’s just let happen what will happen; let’s just enjoy ourselves.”

  Her hand moved up his leg, stopping just short of his crotch. His erection came back in full force, and embarrassingly, he was forced to surreptitiously rearrange the awkward bulge.

  She stroked his leg, and he almost groaned. Why the hell was he questioning this? What was wrong with him?

  Jeremy closed his eyes, concentrating on her movements. It wasn’t simply the motion that turned him on; it was almost as if she was sending sexual messages directly to his body, which overrode his brain. He tried to think. What’s going on here?

  Her hand drifted all the way up, rubbing him once or twice, and after that, he gave in to her. He groaned and came in his pants, nearly falling off the log.

  “No!” Cathy hissed, outraged. �
�Not yet!”

  She stood up and straddled his hips, unbuttoning her shirt. Her breasts were right there, but Jeremy felt nothing. Whatever hold she had on him was gone. He told himself he wasn’t interested, but his body still was. He was getting hard again. He shrugged and took a nipple into his mouth, then closed his eyes and tried to get into the spirit of it.

  Cathy ground against him as if in ecstasy, and she whispered into his ear, “Let’s go to bed.”

  She led him, unresisting, to her sleeping bag, shedding clothes as she went. She lay on top of the sleeping bag, naked despite the chill in the air. Jeremy removed his clothes hesitantly, almost reluctantly. He was hard again, and he had to untangle himself from his underwear. There he stood, shirt still on, socks still on, feeling ridiculous and not at all appealing. Cathy beckoned to him as if he were the most erotic thing she’d ever seen.

  “Can we get into the sleeping bag?” he asked, and his voice sounded rough, anything but seductive. Cathy got in first, opening her arms to him with a smile.

  Jeremy crawled in, zipping the bag around them. They were face to face, chest to chest, sex to sex, and though he was hard, he felt a strange reluctance to go further. Cathy grabbed him and wiggled her way around so that she was above him. Then she put him inside her.

  She swayed slowly, moving against him. She smelled wonderful, and her body felt soft but firm. Her body fitted his as if made for it, and he couldn’t believe it was happening. All his senses were expanded, and even as the intensity grew below, he became aware of the wind in the trees, the waves on the shore of the lake.

  But something was missing. The spark of horniness was gone. The desire to become lost in her had evaporated. Though his body responded, his heart and his mind were detached. “Cathy,” he whispered, “I…I don’t think I’m going to come again.”

  “Yes,” she hissed, “you will.” She picked up the pace, moving faster and faster, frenetically trying to build something that wasn’t happening.

  Something was wrong with her face. The beautiful girl flickered in and out of Jeremy’s vision, alternating with another visage: a gargoyle with a sharp nose and a forked tongue, her hair waving over her head as if alive. Her eyes opened then, and the pupils were narrow, pointed like a cat’s. She stared down at him not in love or even lust, but in hate and a raw desire to consume him.

  Jeremy’s erection fizzled, and he slid out of her.

  “No, you don’t.” the gargoyle said. “You can’t!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, wondering why he was apologizing to a monster. At this thought, he tried to buck her off, but her legs clamped around him.

  She grabbed a fistful of his hair, brought her face close to his, and hissed, “You will give yourself to me. Give your life to me.”

  Jeremy couldn’t understand the words. It was a nightmare, like a bad drug trip, or what he thought a bad drug trip would be like. It was a crazy vision of a thing that didn’t exist.

  She was staring into his face, and as he stared back, the beautiful features returned, and he felt himself falling instantly in love—or in lust. But even through the haze of desire, he realized it was an illusion.

  For once in his life, Jeremy’s survival mode kicked in.

  He punched Cathy in the nose with all the power that fear and revulsion gave him.

  She shrieked, lifting her taloned hands.

  Blood dripped down on him and into his mouth. It tasted bitter, like sulfur smelled, but it invigorated him with more strength than he ever thought possible.

  She swiped down at him, but he caught her arm in mid-motion. She pushed harder, a needle-like talon cutting into his cheek.

  Panicked and frightened, rejuvenated by her blood, he pushed her off him, despite her heavy legs and arms. He broke away, scrambling naked out of the sleeping bag. He ran out of the tent and grabbed one of the branches from the fire, then turned to the tent’s entrance, waving the flaming branch.

  Cathy emerged, still naked and lovely. Tears ran down her cheeks, and she pinched her nose tightly to stem the bleeding. “Why did you do that?” she asked. Her chin quivered slightly, and there was a tremor in her voice.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Jeremy said, but his fist tightened on the flaming branch. What have I done? he wondered; then What the hell just happened? He wanted to rush forward, to take her in his arms, to beg her forgiveness. But something held him back.

  “Get dressed,” he said. “I’ll take you home.”

  They loaded up the car without speaking, but all the while, Jeremy’s thoughts churned. Will she tell anyone? Will her parents call the police? It was near dawn when they pulled up to Cathy’s apartment, and it hit him suddenly that he had no idea who she lived with, or whether she had parents or siblings, or anything about her at all.

  He shuddered as she got out of the car and walked away. He was in big trouble; he couldn’t deny hitting her. He’d struck her because he’d had some kind of psychotic break, some kind of hallucination. But even as he struggled to come up with answers, he knew he never wanted to see Cathy again.

  Chapter 12

  Eisheth averted her face upon entering the temple. It was dark inside; the fire in the central pit was low, little more than glowing coals. The building was so much bigger than its predecessor, with marble floors and walls, and adorned with gold and precious stones. A statue covered in gold leaf stood at the altar, a representation of Agrat Bat at her most fertile roundness.

  Despite the darkness, her sister instantly noticed Eisheth’s cut lip and bruises.

  “He beat you again, didn’t he?” Agrat Bat said, disgusted. “And you let him.”

  To her sister, Eisheth’s letting Komor beat her was mystifying. The Succubae were stronger than any man, faster and more lethal. They were Goddesses. No mere man could stand up to them.

  “He doesn’t mean to,” Eisheth said. “He is a man of strong emotions. In his heart, he is a kind man. It is why I love him.”

  “Kind?” Agrat Bat snorted.

  “You do not see his gentleness.”

  Agrat Bat just stared at her. She was dressed in the silks that Komor’s raiders had brought back. She wore a circlet of pearls. She was more beautiful than ever. “I will kill him for you.”

  Eisheth felt a strange combination of fear and hope, but tamped it down. She loved Komor. No one saw the gentleness that he showed her when they were alone. He spoke to her as an equal. He was not so awestruck by being in the presence of a Goddess that he couldn’t tease or joke or simply talk about little things. Eisheth discovered she had a deep longing for another soul at her side. She’d been lonely for a long time without knowing it.

  “He won’t do it again,” she said, trying to keep the pleading out of her voice. “I’ve warned him.”

  “Do you realize, sister, how many times you’ve told me this?” Agrat Bat asked. “I will kill him next time, with or without your blessing. Not just for you, Eisheth. The villagers are looking at us differently, wondering if we are truly Goddesses, for what deity would let a mortal man beat her? You undermine all of us.”

  “But look what he has done!” Eisheth objected. “Look at your temple, sister. It isn’t a crude building anymore, but a tribute to the Goddesses. You have more worshippers than ever before.”

  The temple was packed on High Holy Days, and the village itself was inundated with newcomers. It sometimes seemed as if the strangers outnumbered the natives. With a flash of insight, Eisheth realized this was probably true. The Storm King’s riches were drawing people from far away.

  Agrat Bat waved her fat fingers in dismissal. “Yes, on those days when it is thought to be necessary, we get the crowds—but on days when no ceremony is required, there are fewer worshippers than ever before. There are fewer real believers, Eisheth. Have you not seen the look in their eyes? Do you not find it alarming that they will look you in the eyes at all?

  “Once they bowed to us when we passed, and they whispered in respect. Now they barely notice us, but keep talk
ing loudly as if nothing unusual has happened at all.”

  Eisheth rarely ventured from her home anymore. Komor had made it for her, and it was the largest structure in the village other than the temple. Indeed, the house was a temple of sorts, with a front entrance and a throne from which Eisheth would greet her followers.

  There were more visitors than ever before, but she knew few of them. When was the last time she’d seen handsome Coss, or Moros the blacksmith or his wife, Tari, or any of the humble folk who had once been her followers—her friends, even? She stayed inside all the time now. Komor insisted that a true Goddess should not walk among her lessors, but stay aloof, mysterious.

  The image of Forr’s head bouncing down the path came to her. Guilt and unease always overcame her when she remembered that day.

  “It was necessary,” Komor explained one night as they lay in bed. “Better one old man lose his head than that I kill dozens more to keep them in line. The message was sent, and the people of this village understood. If not me, then another invader would have come, and he might not have been so restrained. Your village was ripe for the plucking, Eisheth. But I will defend you now. I will clothe you and feed you and take care of you from now on. I will build you temples that the whole world will come to see.”

  It had been a full year since that day. Tomorrow was the beginning of spring. Agrat Bat would descend from her new temple, and Eisheth and Naamah would greet her, and together they would bless the season.

  Eisheth frowned. At least she thought Naamah would be there.

  “Have you seen Naamah?” she asked Agrat Bat.

  “I have not seen her, but I hear reports of her in the lower city. The people there are not happy,” her sister replied.

  The lower city, with its crude hovels, had once been as much a part of Lilith’s Home as the upper city, with its temples and homes. The young drifted down there, and before settling down, lived out lives more vigorous and daring that the staid inhabitants of the upper city.

  Once such behavior had not been looked down upon. Sexual experimentation had been considered normal. The word “prostitute” had not been a bad thing. Now, with the Storm King’s troops throwing their riches around, the lower city had become something darker, a place the newcomers talked about with scorn.