Page 32 of The Prospect's Succubus
It took an hour to finish the safe room, not because I was slow, but because my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Every line of sigil had to be perfect, every ring of salt unbroken, every holy water spritz dry before I moved to the next. The candles went last, a two-dozen perimeter of glass votives and cheap church tapers, stolen from every bodega in a ten-mile radius. Each one flickered in a different color—red, blue, green, and two in a kind of jaundiced yellow that didn’t exist in any spectrum I’d learned in school.
I stepped back, wiped my forehead, and surveyed my handiwork. The room didn’t look like much, a closet cleared to the studs, lined with aluminum foil, then painted with half-mad Enochian glyphs that would have made a Vatican archivist weep blood. The only furniture was an old steel office chair and a folding card table. On the table, I set the 1911, a bag of pre-rolled hollow points, and the obsidian blade I’d pulled from a deadshaman in Topeka three years ago. If a demon made it in here, it wasn’t coming out alive.
I double-checked the hinges and locks, then reached for the last step. Pricked my finger with a thumbtack, let a fat drop of blood fall onto the concrete just inside the threshold. The sigils flared, hungry and blue, then settled back to a faint glow. The lines were holding.
I thought I’d feel proud, or at least safe. Instead, I just felt the old itch at the base of my skull, the one that meant I was being watched.
I was halfway through bandaging my finger when the talisman at my neck, Jasmine’s talisman, went thermonuclear. One second, it was just another worry stone on a string; the next, it burned a hole in my sternum, like someone had dropped a cigarette onto my bare skin and then ground it out for fun.
I clamped a hand over the pendant, biting back a curse. A spike of vertigo slammed me back into the wall, and for a moment, the world bled away into static.
Psychic link. Not just pain, but data, raw and loud, like a crime scene highlight reel played at double speed.
I saw a blur of neon. A back-alley cut behind the old prize booth at the Carlisle. Jasmine, on her knees, hands out, eyes wild. Two shadows, tall and wrong, peeling off the brick like bad paint. Their teeth glinted. They moved in stutters, frames missing. And then blood, everywhere, painting the garbage and the flyers and even the walls.
I snapped back, sucking air. The pain in my chest hadn’t faded, but I’d gotten the message. Jasmine was in trouble, and whatever had come for her wasn’t waiting for dawn.
I made the call in under five seconds. The 1911 went into its holster, two spare mags in the jacket pockets. The blade tucked into the boot sheath, sharp enough to split atoms. I grabbed the salt canister and a bandolier of flares, because you neverknew when you’d need to turn night into day. The talisman kept burning, but I ignored it. Pain is just a warning that you’re still alive.
The city at night is a different world, much harsher, but also honest. The drunks and the desperate are the only ones who dare, and the rest of the population holes up, hiding from the knowledge that the dark owns more than just the clock. I cut through side streets, keeping to the shadows, letting the muscle memory of a hundred missions guide my feet. Every few blocks, I stopped to check the link, pressing the obsidian hard to my palm until the images sharpened.
By the time I hit the edge of the Carlisle, my hands were steady. My heart was jackhammering, but the rest of me was pure machine. I stalked the perimeter, keeping low, eyes peeled for anything that moved.
The carnival was dead, but the residue of old joy and newer terror was thick enough to taste. Trash drifted in the wind, plastic flags hung limp, and somewhere a speaker played a looping calliope tune that had been warped into minor key hell by bad wiring and neglect.
The psychic link guided me straight to the back service alley, the one lined with dumpsters and broken bottles and the skeletons of a hundred forgotten pop-up stands.
I slowed at the mouth of the alley, senses cranked to max. The air was wrong, colder than the street, thick with a sulfur note that didn’t belong in this world. My scars lit up, but I tuned them out.
I peered around the corner.
Jasmine was there, slumped against the far wall. Her dress was half-gone, shredded into ribbons, and her hair hung in her face in a way that would have been sexy if she wasn’t bleeding so much. Two things towered over her, both at least seven feet and thin as wet rebar. Their arms dangled to their knees, handsending in too many fingers, each tipped in a black claw that looked custom-fit for evisceration. The faces weren’t faces at all, just wet slits packed with rows of broken-glass teeth. No eyes, just a faint glow in the middle of the “skull” that pulsed in time with their breath.
They spoke in a language of hisses and scrapes, the kind of sound that makes your teeth want to crawl out of your mouth and hide. Jasmine’s chest rose and fell, ragged, but she didn’t move.
I checked the exits, but there were none.
The first demon didn’t notice me until the bullet hit. Iron-core hollowpoint, blessed by Father Constantine at St. E’s and then triple-dipped in holy water for good measure. The round hit the thing in the ribs and detonated half its chest into wet ash. It howled, a sound like someone throwing a cat into a blender, and spun toward me, arms windmilling.
The second one moved faster, vaulting the dumpster and landing ten feet closer in a single, liquid leap. I put a round into its left knee, which slowed it down but didn’t stop it. It came at me, mouth open, hissing. I caught a whiff of rot and burned plastic. I dropped to one knee, sighted center-mass, and double-tapped. Both bullets punched through, but the demon just grinned wider, like pain was its native tongue.
I rolled right as it lunged, claws flashing. It raked the brick where my head had been, and the wall exploded in a shower of mortar and dust. I kicked its ankle, hard, and it toppled, catching itself with those fucked-up hands. Up close, the flesh was pocked with eyes that blinked and rolled and then vanished as the skin healed over. I aimed for the head, but it moved like a snake, twisting, recoiling, always a half-step ahead.
The first one was back on its feet, chest wound smoking. It circled left, trying to flank me. I reached for the blade, yanked it free, and slashed at the nearest limb. The obsidian edge cutthrough the arm like cartilage, sending a spray of black goo onto the pavement. The severed limb twitched, then dissolved into mist.
That got their attention.
They backed off, started circling in tandem, chittering at each other. I kept the gun trained, but my focus was on the knife. These things didn’t care about lead; they cared about ritual, about pain, about the old ways.
“Jasmine!” I shouted, not sure she could hear. “Move if you can!”
She groaned, tried to push herself up, but one leg wasn’t cooperating. The demons hissed louder, one of them scraping a finger down the alley wall, sparks flying.
I threw the salt canister at its feet. The impact blew out the cap, and a cloud of pure, white powder rolled over the pavement. The demon shrieked, recoiling from the line, limbs flailing. The other one tried to leap over the cloud, but it hesitated, as if the salt was a wall that only it could see.
I used the distraction to close the distance. The obsidian knife sang in my hand, hungry for blood. I drove it up into the jaw of the nearest demon, felt the blade scrape bone, and then punch through the skull. The creature convulsed, limbs slapping the air, and then folded like a marionette with its strings cut.
The second one hesitated, just long enough for me to put a round through its hand, then its foot. It dropped to one knee, and I was on it, knife going in right under the sternum. The thing spasmed, tried to tear my face off, but I shoved the barrel of the 1911 into its mouth and emptied the clip. The last shot went through the back of the head and sprayed the wall with black fire.
