Page 3 of Wicked Succubus

She clears her throat. “Task at hand. About the murders . . . Did you know the victims, or were they random kills?”

She tries to bring the conversation back, but Agent Cooper is insistent. He leans even closer to the table. The hair on the back of my neck stands up as he fixes me with a predatory stare. There’s a lot of tension in this tiny room, and it does nothing to ease the anxiety slowly growing in the pit of my stomach.

“What supernatural are you?” he asks more forcefully. “If you were human, you wouldn’t have been able to resist my orders back at the motel.”

“A shifter.” It was the first thing that came to mind, but I regret it as soon as the words fall from my lips.

“So, she does speak English.” Agent Cooper rolls his eyes.

Agent Rodriguez ignores Agent Cooper, drawing her brows together in confusion. I know I’m going to have to give her more if I’m going to sell this story.

Before she asks any questions, I add, “I was cast out for not being able to shift.” I hold my breath as my lie lingers in the air between us.

“Which pack?” Agent Cooper narrows his eyes, looking for holes in my story.

I look down at my hands before looking up again, but this time with teary eyes. After my abuelita died, I had to learn other skills to be able to get what I want, and this is one of them.

“I’d rather not talk about it if it’s not important to this case.” My voice breaks as though what I’m saying is really true.

“Yes, of course.” Agent Rodriguez nods because she understands how pack life works. If you can’t perform a shift, you’re out. “If you’ve been cast out, then you have no pack. I’m sorry to hear that.”

There is genuine empathy in Agent Rodriguez’s voice, and I feel like an asshole for lying, but if I have to lie to protect my identity, then I will do it so many times over. I realize they’ve only asked me about the woman, and I’m livid and disgusted on my boyfriend’s behalf. Why aren’t they concerned about him? Speaking of, where’s his body?

“Aren’t you going to ask me about my boyfriend?” I snap, knowing that I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

The agents are hanging on my every word, and any new detail I give them could be one step closer to being locked up, which would be a death sentence for an anomaly like me. I will need to feed again eventually, and it would prove difficult to go on a killing spree when I’m locked up. A Succubus should be able to feed off of lust alone, but every time I’ve tried to feed or be intimate, I leave another corpse in my wake. I would be able to break out of a human prison if they locked me up without knowing my power, but if they find out what I’m capable of—

“Your boyfriend? Do you mean the human man you killed? He’s of no concern to us. He wasn’t going anywhere in life and had no blood relatives to look for him.”

She’s wrong. He had me; we were each other’s family. We were supposed to make something great out of ourselves. Both his parents were addicts and died long ago. We found each other shortly after my abuelita passed away. He worked long hours in construction and spent good money to spoil and take care of me the way no one ever has.

“Boyfriend, is it?” Agent Cooper wrinkles his nose like he smells something disgusting. “Is that what you do with all your relationships?”

My mouth falls open, and I lean back as far as I can in the uncomfortable, straight-backed metal chair. Is he really asking me if I have a habit of murdering all my boyfriends? I suck in a deep breath, ready to give him an answer and tell him off in the same breath, but Agent Rodriguez holds up a hand and cuts me off.

“That’s not our problem, Agent Cooper. She can kill all the human boys she wants, and that won’t be our issue unless she’s using them for a sacrifice. Ritualistic killings would definitely be our problem.”

Her gentle reminder must irritate him because I notice a slight twitch in his eye. Seems like he was more interested in the answer than he wanted either of us to believe. Of course they don’t give a shit about Nick. These fuckers are soulless. In this case, I’m glad they aren’t looking too deep into Nick’s death, or they’d find out what I truly am. If they had really inspected the body, it would have given me away.

But I have to reassure myself. “What did you do with his body?”

“Why do you care?” His question is cold and hard. My gaze snaps back to meet his. Anger and disgust swirl in his eyes.

“Because I loved him. He wasn’t just some worthless human to me like he is to you. Funny how you want to treat me like I’m the monster in the room, but you’re the ones who want to treat a man like he had no value just because he wasn’t a supe. So, tell me, who’s the real monster here?”

Agent Cooper scoffs, shaking his head. “His body disappeared.”

Which means they burned it to hide any evidence of a supernatural being killing a human. That’s what these supes tend to do to protect our world. It’s atrocious. Nick has no family to miss him, nobody but me. I nearly cry out in a sob, but I hold my lips tightly shut. I know this is for the best. I have to protect myself. The room is quiet, the only sound coming from the cuffs rubbing on the desk.

“Why have you killed two supernatural women, two consecutive weekends in a row?” Agent Rodriguez asks.

My heart jumps a beat at the sudden change in conversation. The shifter tilts her head when I startle, but she doesn’t realize why the agent’s words are so alarming. Hearing about someone going on a killing spree and murdering women brings back a lot of memories I’ve tried to forget.

“Are you using their body parts for a ritual?”

She opens the brown folder on the table and pulls out two photos, laying them side-by-side. Each photo is of a young woman between the ages of eighteen to twenty-five in human years. As supernaturals, they could be a lot older. They’re lying face up with blistered and empty eye sockets. The areas around the eyes and mouth have a purple tint, and there is writing beneath their bodies, but it’s obscured by the amount of blood pooling around them.

I inhale a sharp breath as I take in the freakishly similar wounds on these women—wounds I’ve seen before as a child looking at my mother’s lifeless body. The first picture is a lot bloodier than the second one, but both murder scenes seem sloppy and more impulsive than hers. Even after all these years, I can remember in great detail the precision of the knife work decorating my mother’s beautiful skin.

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