Idle Hands 5

“Hey there, little girl,” Jeremy Edwards said softly. The object of his affection opened her dark brown eyes, peering up at him sleepily. “Who’s the most beautiful girl in the wide green world?” he asked quietly, smiling down at the blinking face of his niece. “You are!” he exclaimed, raising her high above his head. In response, baby Abigail grinned happily, her fat pink face creased in glee. He smiled up at her, heedless of the stream of drool that hung down from her toothless gums.

“You keep that up, and she’s going to spit up all over you,” his older sister Frances informed him dryly, cocking an amused eye at her younger brother. She was sitting beside him outside her small house in Deerfield. A few feet away, her husband Walt was slathering barbeque sauce on a rack of ribs, steaming gently on the grill. Their parents were scattered on the small lawn, cans of soda or beer in their hands, enjoying the bright May sunshine and the end of the Memorial Day weekend. Nearby, a radio was tuned to the ballgame, punctuating the summerlike atmosphere.

“You can’t scare me,” he retorted, holding Abigail over his head. “I’ve got three nieces and two nephews, thanks to you and Alicia and Karen. You think I’m not used to a little spit-up?”

As he spoke, Abigail went through a series of unnoticed facial gyrations. As he turned back to her, she burped and deposited a fetid blob of partially digested milk on his shirt.

“Gack!” Jeremy said, lowering Abbie to his lap and futilely trying to brush off the offending item as his sister giggled. His nose wrinkled as the smell of sour milk hit his nostrils. “Bad baby,” he scolded Abigail, who took no notice and burbled cheerfully up at him. “No Christmas present for you this year.”

“She looks terrified,” Walt said as Jeremy gingerly dabbed at the mess with a napkin. A tall, shambling, slump-shouldered man running rapidly to fat, Frances doted on him nonetheless. He worked in the financial district in downtown Chicago, doing something arcane with stocks and bonds. Jeremy had tried to have him explain several times what his job consisted of, but each time he was lost inside of a few minutes.

“Uncle Jeremy!” shouted a newcomer to the scene. His nephew Nathan, Abigail’s older brother, darted out onto the deck, brandishing a brand-new baseball glove and a wiffle ball. “Come play catch with me!”

“All right,” he said, heaving himself out of the patio chair with an exaggerated groan. “But if you throw the ball into Mrs. Pakulski’s yard, you’re going to be the one who has to get it. I’m too old to be climbing over fences.”

Nathan eyed him with the squint-eyed suspicion he seemed to hold for anyone over the age of six. “All right. But you better catch it if I make a good throw.”

“Deal.”

“So what’s new, Jeremy?” his sister asked later, as they sat around the patio table after the meal. She held Abigail to her chest. Beneath the concealing dishtowel, satisfied gurgles attested to Abigail’s healthy young appetite. “I hardly get to see you anymore. How did that internship at the law firm downtown work out?”

“It was fantastic,” he said enthusiastically. “I was able to work with Rachel Wainwright. She’s absolutely brilliant.”

“Wainwright?” his brother-in-law said. “Oh, yeah. Wasn’t she the lead attorney in that Antioch Chemical lawsuit? Man, they lost a shit-ton of money. Their stock fell three points when the verdict was announced.”

“Shit-ton, shit-ton!” chanted Nathan, displaying a four year-old’s ability to latch onto the most offensive part of any conversation.

“Hush,” his mother said. She eyed her brother speculatively. “Weren’t you over at her place yesterday? I thought I heard Mom saying something about it.”

He nodded. “She invited me over for a cookout with her family and some friends.” He took a deep breath, not looking at his mother, who was engaged in an animated conversation with Walt’s parents. “I’m going to be going out with her daughter on Friday night. Dinner and a play over at College of DuPage afterward. Her brother is playing Iago in a production of Othello.”

As if guided by radar, Marian Edwards’ head swung around. “A date? With who? What’s her name? What’s she like? Is she pretty? What does she do for a living?”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. Around the table, Frances and Karen and Alicia smirked. His mother’s mania for getting her youngest child married off had reached levels that his sisters found hilarious and he found annoying. “Her name’s Sarah Sunderman, Mom. She graduated high school last spring and she’s going to be starting culinary school at Kendall College in a few weeks. She’s…” He trailed off. How could he describe Sarah to his mother? Her bright eyes, her mischievous sense of humor? Her wonderful way of walking around a kitchen, as if she owned it? Her tall, slender body? He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, grateful the patio table hid his groin from Marian’s perceptive gaze, as even thinking about Sarah caused his cock to stir.

While no stranger to the pleasures of the body, he had to admit frankly to himself there was something about Sarah which he found simultaneously incredibly arousing and disturbing. The raw, sensual power of her presence had hit him like a sledgehammer. When she made an offer to him to go to her room and make love, as casually as anyone else might talk about going to the grocery store, he had been almost painfully aroused and terrified at the same time. Unable to cope with such a blatant invitation, he had dealt with it by beating a shameful retreat, and had spent the hours since then castigating himself for missing a golden opportunity. He hadn’t heard from Sarah since he had bailed, and was half-convinced she would send him a text message canceling their date at any moment.

“She’s nice,” he finished lamely. Though, to be honest, nice was not one of the words he would use to describe Sarah Sunderman. She might be smart, funny, attractive, and sexy as hell. But she was not nice.

“Well, I hope to met her soon,” his mother said, apparently satisfied with his description.

He was just reaching for another helping of apple pie when his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. Looking at it, he saw Sarah’s number on the screen.

“Excuse me,” he said, standing up and leaving the table.

“That’s her, isn’t it?” his mother said. She gave him a bright smile. “Tell her I say hi!”

“Yes, Mom,” he sighed, wondering if she was telepathic, or just seemed that way. He walked away from the table and around the side of the house, hiding from prying eyes. “Hello?”

“Jeremy?” said Sarah. Jeremy stopped. Even through the phone he could tell Sarah was upset. Her voice was high and tense with strain. “Listen. You have to come over here. Right away.”

“What?” He looked around. “Sarah, I’m at a cookout with my family. I can’t just leave.”

“Jeremy, you have to leave. My mom says it’s a matter of life and death. She-” her voice cut off suddenly.

“This is Rachel, Jeremy.” He froze. Rachel’s ordinarily cheerful voice was hard and cold. The only time he had ever heard her sound that way before was in the middle of a case, when she had an uncooperative witness on the stand. “I’m not going to argue and I don’t have time to explain. You need to leave now. You’re in terrible danger. You, and everyone around you. The only way I can protect you is by getting you over here at my house.”

His jaw flapped uselessly. “But if everyone around me is in danger-”

She cut him off firmly. “Everyone around you is in danger because of you, Jeremy. Once you’re gone, they won’t have anything to worry about. I think.” The qualifier was more than a little disturbing. Her voice gentled slightly. “Jeremy, I promise I will explain everything as soon as you get here. But you have to leave now.”

He swallowed. “All right, Rachel. I’m on my way.” He hung up the phone, discovering patches of cold sweat at his temples and his upper lip. He wiped them away with the sleeve of his shirt.

What the hell is going on? He had worked with Rachel Wainwright for four months. He had seen her happy, cheerful, depressed, angry, and enraged. But he had never seen her scared.

And that’s what she was. She was terrified. He plastered a false smile on his face and sauntered back around the corner of the house.

“I have to go,” he said. “That was Sarah. She says she has an emergency at home and needs my help.”

His sister Karen raised her eyebrows while trying to remove barbeque sauce from her son Connor’s face. “Karl and I used to have that sort of emergency too, when we first started going out. Just remember, buddy,” she said as he glared at her. “No glove, no love.”

“Gotta remember to wrap that rascal,” put in Alicia from a few feet away.

“If there’s gonna be affection better cover your-”

“Enough, Frances,” his mother said, though her eyes danced with suppressed glee.

“I hate you all,” Jeremy said solemnly, smiling as they all burst into giggles. He bent and kissed his mother on the cheek. “Gotta go. I’ll see you at home tonight.”

“Maybe,” put in the irrepressible Karen, who was the next youngest after him, and never tired of tormenting her baby brother. With a wave, he walked around the house and towards his car. By the time he reached the curb he was running.

Let them laugh, he thought as he pulled away from the house, his mind already mentally tracing the route out to Woodridge. Anything bad enough to scare Rachel like this has to be serious.

xxxxx

“No,” Rachel snapped at her son. “I am not going to explain. Not until Jeremy gets here. This is too dangerous to leave him in the dark. And I’m not going to do it twice.”

“Why?” Alex asked. They were gathered in the family room, in answer to her half-hysterical summons. His forehead wrinkled as he looked around confusedly at the rest of the family, seeking support. “So we caught someone trying to break in? So what? Why don’t we call the police and have them deal with it?”

“Because the police can’t deal with it, Alex. If I bring them in, they’ll be useless at best and sitting targets at worst.”

“Targets? For who? That loser who was trying to pick the lock? What could he possibly do?”

Her lips thinned as she glared up at her son. “It’s not who he is, it’s who he works for.”

“But-”

“Alex.” The voice was quiet but firm, and would allow no contradiction. Rachel sighed with relief as her husband finally joined the conversation. “Enough. Your mother has made her decision. It’s time you abide by it. Honey,” he continued, looking at her from beneath raised eyebrows as Alex sat down beside Maria. “Does this have something to do with that…thing…we discussed earlier today?”

She nodded distractedly, walking slowly around the room in response to Althea’s promptings. She bent and peered under a lampshade. “Ah. There’s one,” she muttered, peeling away a tiny bit of metal from the underside of the shade. She tossed it onto the coffee table with a small clatter.

“What the heck…” Sarah said, walking over so she could peer at it. “Mom, what is that?”

“A listening device,” she said grimly. “Our house has been bugged. For who knows how long. But if my suspicions are right, it’s been going on since the beginning of the Antioch trial. At least. Someone on the other side was trying to dig up dirt on us.

“If they had, I would have received a phone call, with a few quiet ‘suggestions’ about how I should proceed. If I refused, the information would have gone public. You know how the press in this town loves to drag people through the dirt.”

She looked around the room, nodding in satisfaction as Alex and Sarah went white, the fear of their private lives being exposed finally sinking in. Maria looked oddly undisturbed, and Josh? Well, Josh had been dealing with bad press since he was in college. His art shows had pushed the envelope for years. Much more than any of the children, he knew how the game was played.

“Kincaid, do you think?” he asked.

She nodded shortly. “Almost certainly. The man is a disgrace to the profession. If I could prove this, I could probably have him disbarred. But I won’t be able to. He’s always careful to keep his tools well away from his hands. It was probably that pig we caught out front who actually did the work. Broke in here one day when I was at work, Alex was at class, and Sarah was out. It wouldn’t have taken more than a few minutes.” She sighed. “We should have gotten a better security system years ago.”

Guided by Althea, she was able to locate five other listening devices. One was in the kitchen, one in the downstairs bath. A third was in the basement. The last two were in her bedroom and the master bathroom upstairs.

Is that it?

~Yes,~ Althea replied, the succubus’ voice so familiar in her head by now that she could barely remember a time when the two of them had not been joined. ~That’s it.~

She swept the tiny pile of electronics into her hand. She was tempted to take them to Josh’s workshop and pound them to pieces with a hammer. But even the tempting thought of violent destruction couldn’t get her to leave the house alone. Not with Kincaid at large. Althea assured her he was nowhere nearby. But that was cold comfort. Who knew what other accomplices he had, ready and waiting for them to set foot outside?

Instead, she took the tiny spying devices to the kitchen. She turned on the garbage disposal and dumped them down the drain, one by one. If the tiny blades didn’t hack the electronics to pieces, Kincaid and his lackeys would be welcome to listen to whatever secrets the sewers of DuPage County had to tell.

A pounding at the front door interrupted her whirling thoughts. She opened it to find the wide-eyed face of Jeremy Edwards.

“Good. You’re here,” she said, as if she were hosting a dinner party and he had committed the faux pas of showing up late. “Come into the living room, dear,” she continued, gesturing him forward. As she followed, her hands went to the zipper of her skirt. By the time she reached the room where everyone was gathered, she was naked from the waist down.

“Mom! What the hell?” Sarah asked, her eyes glittering with surprise and anger. Jeremy also gaped in astonishment when he turned to see her half-nude. He sat down beside Sarah on the couch, his hand unconsciously reaching out to clasp hers. Of the remaining people in the room, Alex opened his mouth and closed it, looking somewhat like a landed fish. Maria was quietly serene as always, and her husband merely looked on, lifting one sardonic eyebrow as she turned to meet his eyes.

With a slight effort, she willed her tail out, letting it emerge to its full length. Ignoring the gasps of shock, she turned so everyone could see.

“So, it’s like this, kids…”

xxxxx

When she finished, she stood still, letting everyone in the room get a good long look.

~No use giving them a chance to convince themselves they aren’t really seeing what they’re seeing,~ Althea mused, and she could only agree.

“Dios mio,” Maria said, crossing herself reverently. Her eyes, when she looked at Rachel, were bright with wonder. “Truly we live in incredible times, when one of God’s own angels can take shelter in a human woman.”

“Althea isn’t an angel,” Rachel corrected quickly. “She is merely the daughter of one.”

“And of the first wife of Adam?” Sarah said. Her face was stunned.

“So that lady we saw at the hospital earlier today? That was her?” Alex asked.

Rachel nodded. “She asked me to look in on her and make sure her body was being taken care of,” she said. “But here’s the problem. Althea might be a prisoner in my head, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have skills. Or enemies. And when that creep Fontein touched me, she was able to see into his mind.” She swallowed bitter bile. “He’s under the control of a demon-spawn.”

“A demon-spawn?” Jeremy asked blankly.

Rachel nodded. “The Forsaken, the angels who rebelled against God and were cast into the Pit, escape occasionally. They are able to disguise themselves in human forms, nearly as beautiful as the succubi or the incubi. Jealous of the succubi and their power, they mate with humans.

“The mating of a male demon and a female woman almost always leads to the woman’s death,” she said. She kept her voice brisk, unwilling to describe the horrors such a mating produced. “The demon-spawn usually dies as well. However, when a female demon mates with a male human, the demon-spawn usually survives. Our enemy is one of those.

“He calls himself Mortimer Kincaid. He is the offspring of purest evil. He knows of Althea’s illness. He knows we know about her. Being who and what he is, he will stop at nothing until Althea, and all who are associated with her, are dead.

“We have one hope. It is obvious that Kincaid does not yet know where Althea’s body is. Otherwise Fontein would never have come here looking for information. He might suspect I am sharing my body with her. Succubi are notoriously resistant to disease and illness, so the fact her body is hospitalized is strange. The logical conclusion, from his point of view, would be that she has either abandoned her body or been forced out of it. Our only course of action is to rescue her from the hospital and restore her to her own body before Kincaid finds out her location.”

“And then she’ll kick his ass straight back to Hell!” Alex said, pumping his fist. “Sweet! When do we go?”

Five pairs of eyes looked at him. Maria’s were loving, Rachel and Josh’s tolerant. Sarah, Rachel was amused to see, looked actively horrified.

“Mom, this is crazy,” she protested. “I mean, I can tell you’re telling the truth, but…” she made an abortive gesture at her tail, which was slowly swaying back and forth. Her eyes focused on it. “How the hell does that thing fit inside you, anyway?” she demanded, momentarily diverted..

Rachel reached behind her and stroked her tail, shuddering in sensuous pleasure at the feel of warm fingers on its sensitive skin. Heat bloomed in her belly, and she suddenly wanted her husband with a fierce urgency that defied logic and danger. “Althea tells me that the presence of a succubus’ soul inside a mortal body causes that body to change to match its passenger,” she said. “A succubus has different vertebrae than humans. Rather than the single opening in each vertebra for the spinal cord, a succubus has two. One is for the spinal cord, and one serves as a sheath to provide a place of refuge for the tail when not being used.

“But you’re right, Sarah. This is crazy.” She shrugged. “If anyone had told me a month ago what my life would be like right now, I’d think they were completely fucking nuts. But it is what it is. I can’t escape it. And truth be told, I wouldn’t trade what I have right now for the world.” She took them all in, her eyes warm. “A husband regained. The love of my children restored. And new friends, who may turn into something more.

“Our path is clear. Get Althea back into her body. The succubi were charged with the protection of humanity from the demon-spawn. If she was at her full power, Kincaid wouldn’t stand a chance. As it is…” she sighed. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“But, Mom! We can’t just walk into a hospital and…and steal one of their patients! We’ll never make it out. We’ll be arrested and thrown in jail!”

“Sure we can,” Jeremy said. She turned to him, gaping, and he grinned. “It’s not that hard.”

“To smuggle someone out of a hospital? You’re nuts.” She folded her arms below her breasts, pushing them upward slightly, a fact that none of the men in the room missed, Rachel saw. Not even her own brother. And certainly not Jeremy or her father.

“When I was an undergrad,” Jeremy started, “The dining hall in our dorm served pies about once a month. And being young men, we were always hungry. One guy I hung out with loved lemon meringue. He decided that he deserved not one or two slices, but an entire pie,” he continued with a reminiscent smile.

“So he decided to take one. An entire lemon meringue pie. But he was smart enough to know that if he tried to smuggle it out under his shirt or something he was sure to get caught. So he just picked up the pie and walked right out the door with it.”

“And your point is?” Sarah asked testily.

“If you act like you have every right to be doing what you’re dong, people are way less likely to question you,” he said. Around the room, slow, thoughtful nods agreed. “It’s always the guy who looks shady and guilty who gets caught.”

He leaned forward, his hands clasped. “You still have that trailer out there from when you moved back up here, don’t you, Mr. Sunderman?”

Josh nodded. “I was going to return it tomorrow, after the holiday. But please, call me Josh. If we’re going to be committing multiple crimes together, it’s the least I can do.”

“I say we drive the truck up to the hospital a little later on tonight,” he said, “After it gets dark. We’ll have the trailer attached, so we won’t have to move Althea out of bed. I’ll park by the main entrance. You all can dress up real nice, in suits and ties. Look official, you know. Maybe you’re hospital inspectors. Or insurance investigators, who suspect the hospital is padding the bills. Walk quickly, look official, frown a lot. Put Rachel there at the head of the pack. When she wants to, she can look harder than a coffin nail. You sail right by everyone as if you have every right in the world to be there. You wheel Althea out of her room, down to the front door, I’ll pick you up, we drive on home, stuff Althea back in her body, and kick this asshole Kincaid back into the Abyss.”

“It’s called the Pit, Jeremy,” Rachel said, but her tone was impressed. She looked around the room. “Does anyone have a better idea?”

“Not doing this at all?” Sarah said. “No offense, Mom, but if this guy Kincaid is as bad as you say, maybe we should stay out of things.”

“We’re already in, Sarah. And it’s too late to get out.” Josh’s voice was low and…angry? Rachel blinked at her husband, who was looking at his daughter with a quizzical expression on his face. “When did you start taking the easy way out?”

“I’m scared, all right?” Sarah replied. She put her face in her hands. “For the first time in forever, I’m happy, and now we have to deal with…with succubi and demons and who knows what. Is it too much to ask that someone not try to kill me and everyone I care about?”

At her side, Jeremy patted her back awkwardly. She lifted a tear-stained face and gave her mother a glare. “All right,” she said. “I’ll help. But so help me God, Althea, if any of my men get hurt during this…this idiocy, I don’t give a damn how powerful you are, you’re going to have to answer to me.”

Rachel nodded, her face solemn. “She hears, sweetheart. And she thanks you.”

“But what I still don’t understand,” Alex said, “is what Jeremy is doing here. No offense, man,” he said as the former intern turned towards him. “I know why the rest of us are here. Family, you know? And since Maria and I are together, her being here makes sense. But why him?”

Rachel sat down beside her husband, seemingly oblivious to the fact she was naked from the waist down. She leaned in towards him and smiled as he reached around her and cupped her breast in his hand. She wiggled against him, sighing happily as a firm nipple rose to challenge his palm. “It’s very simple, darling. I’m simply protecting everyone me or my family has been intimate with since Althea joined with me. Anyone who Kincaid would view as contaminated by a succubus’ love.”

Alex blinked, then stared as the full import of her words hit home. Across the room, Jeremy blanched, looking at Josh nervously, as if he were afraid he would leap off the sofa and disembowel him on the spot.

“Mom?” Sarah asked. “You? And him?”

She nodded, unembarrassed. “It was right after Althea joined with me. I think…no, that’s not right. I know she had been working on me for several days. Trying to get me to be more open about my body and my sexuality. Jeremy was available. So I took advantage of him. Though I don’t think he was terribly upset with the way things turned out.” She smiled warmly at the young man, whose face was flaming.

Sarah looked at her potential boyfriend, then at her father. “Daddy? You’re…you’re not upset about this?”

“If you think about it, your mother and I were divorced at the time, Pumpkin,” Josh said mildly. He shrugged. “Hell, to be strictly honest, we still are. I had no idea your mother and I would ever be getting back together again. Why should I be upset? For that matter,” he said, his gaze sharpening, “Why should you be upset? It’s not as if you had even met Jeremy yet. So don’t be pissed at him for sleeping with your mother before he ever saw you.”

Sarah nodded, but Rachel thought she looked unconvinced. “So are we agreed on Jeremy’s plan?” Nods and muttered agreements followed. “All right, then.” She picked out Maria, Alex and her husband with her eyes. “We’re going to go out and get the truck and trailer ready for tonight. Together,” she stressed. “Until we deal with Kincaid, no one is to leave this house alone.

“What, Jeremy?” she asked impatiently as the young man raised his hand. “We’re not in grade school, you know. You don’t have to ask permission to speak.”

“My parents will be expecting me back home this evening,” he said. “Does that rule apply to me as well?”

“Yes. I don’t know if Kincaid knows about you. But I don’t know that he doesn’t either. And a demon-spawn will stop at nothing. He would kill you and your entire family as easily as you would kick over an anthill. And with as little remorse. You stay here. We’ll think of some excuse to give to your folks.

She swept her eyes around the room. “Any more questions? No? Then let’s get to work.”

“Mom.” Alex’s voice was firm. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“What?” She thrust out her chin belligerently. “Just try to stop me, young man.”

“Really?” he said. He nodded towards her groin, where one of her fingers was idly amusing itself, and her. “You’re going to give the neighbors a free show then?”

She pinched her lips together as a wave of loving laughter rolled through the room. “Fine,” she said with a put-upon air. “I’ll put on clothes and meet you out there. Good enough for you?”

xxxxx

As the rest of the family trooped out, Rachel pausing to pick up her discarded skirt, Jeremy slumped back against the back of the couch, his mind reeling.

How could it be true? Then he thought of the slowly swaying tail emerging from Rachel’s back, just above the cleft of her sexy buttocks, and shivered. How could it not be true?

“Did you know anything about this?” he asked Sarah. Even in his own ears his voice sounded strange.

She shook her head, her eyes wide and stunned. “No idea. I mean, I could tell something was going on. Her personality has changed so much over the past few weeks. No, that’s not right,” she corrected herself. “She hasn’t changed. She’s just…more herself. More the way she was when Alex and I were kids. Happier. She seems more comfortable with who she is.”

“Well, you’ve known her a lot longer than I have,” he said. “But she always seemed…driven. When I was interning at the law firm. Completely focused on her work and on the law. Now she’s still driven. But she has a different focus.” He took a deep breath. “So,” he said, trying not to let his voice falter. “Does it bother you that I had sex with her?”

She smiled faintly, then leaned over, shoving at him with her shoulder and chest until he was laying on his back on the leather couch. She leaned over him, her eyes kindling with desire, much as they had the night before. She took his head between her palms and kissed him with a passionate thoroughness that made him ache. “Only if it bothers you that I slept with my father last night.”

“Huh?”

“Me,” she explained patiently, as if he had a learning disability. “And my father. You remember him, right? Older fellow, not too tall, sandy blond hair, lives here?”

“You? And Josh?”

“Yup.” It would be hard not to call her expression smug. “I’ve wanted to for years. But what Althea did to my mother…it’s spilling over, Jeremy. To all of us. That’s why she’s protecting us, you know. Any of us who have been touched by Althea’s power.”

“I haven’t-”

“Of course you have.” Her voice was slightly impatient. “You had sex with my mother while she was the host of a succubus,” she said, giving his head a gentle shake. “Haven’t you been listening? The changes are already happening. You can feel it, can’t you, Josh? The increase in your sex drive? The way our bodies seem made for each other?” Her body slid down until it was almost lying on top of his. He closed his eyes as their groins touched. He could feel the heat flare between them, his cock rising until it was pressed snugly against the crotch of the loose pair of jogging shorts she wore.

“I’m wet,” she whispered against his lips as they kissed again. “Down there. Daddy and I made love three times last night, and again this afternoon while everyone else was at the hospital. And I’m still so horny I feel like I’m on fire. What about you?”

He swallowed thickly, but her blazing eyes tore the unwilling truth from his lips. “Ever since I was with your mother…I’m thinking about sex a lot…a lot more than I was before. I’ve been masturbating three or four times a day.”

“Poor baby,” she said. Her hand reached down between them to cuddle his erection. He could feel her fingers working, and suddenly a wash of cool air hit his groin as the zipper of his shorts gaped wide. “Nice,” she breathed as her hand slipped under the waistband of his boxers. He arched involuntarily upward as her fingers encircled his shaft. “Not as thick as Daddy’s. But longer. Yes,” she smiled, her brown eyes deep and dark with lust. “You’ll do.

“Who were you thinking of while you were stroking this nice, hard cock?” she asked, rising up momentarily. Before he could protest he found his shorts and boxers jerked down to his knees, then completely off. As if to balance things, though, Sarah stripped off her shorts. Which left her, in unconscious mimicry of her mother, naked from the waist down. Her hand fell back to his crotch, exploring his manhood until he thought he would erupt in her hands.

“Your mom,” he said, then tensed as her hand tightened warningly around him. He could feel the gentle bite of nails on the tender skin of his scrotum. “And you. Last night. And this morning. Twice. This morning,” he hurriedly finished.

“Good answer,” she said, pulling her shirt up and over her head. Her long brown hair, loosely tied back in a pony tail, flowed like a dark river down her back. He cupped her breasts in his hands as she straddled him. “I was with Josh here last night. We didn’t finish. But he ate me out until I came all over his face.”

Fighting through a haze of desire, Jeremy shifted uncomfortably on the worn leather of the couch. “Um. Maybe we should go to your room? Someone is bound to come through here any second.” He looked at the pile of discarded clothes on the floor.

Sarah made a disgusted noise and leaned down to kiss him again. “Men. Why do you think Mom herded everyone out of here? She wanted to give us some time alone.”

“Although I did think you two would have the good sense to go upstairs to your bedroom,” Rachel Wainwright observed. She was standing in the doorway with Maria. “But you are two beautiful children. Aren’t they, Maria? No, don’t stop on my account,” she said, as Jeremy hastily tried to cover himself. “The more power Althea has for the transfer tonight the better. And I’m sure she’ll get quite a lot from you two,” she finished with an amused leer.

“But for now, Maria,” she said, “I’d like you to take off your clothes. And mine as well.”

“Yes, Mistress,” the sexy Latina said, immediately shedding her skirt and loose blouse. Her quick, clever hands soon had Rachel naked.

“Mistress?” Jeremy murmured to Sarah.

She shrugged, the motion drawing his eyes to her chest. “Her and Mom and Alex have got some sort of D and s thing going on. I don’t have all the details yet.”

“D and s?”

“Dominant and submissive,” she explained, then moaned as his lips found her taut nipple. He suckled gently, his tongue roaming around the raised nubbin of flesh until it was thick and engorged.

“It is not so difficult to understand,” Maria said. She stood facing them, while Rachel, her back to them, slowly caressed her dark skin. At Rachel’s ankles, the swaying tip of her tail twitched from side to side. “Alex is my master. But his mother, the senora, is the Mistress of the Household. She will not countermand my master’s wishes. But with his permission, she may ask me to share her bed.”

“I don’t get it, Maria. What do you get out of the arrangement? Why do you let yourself be used this way? As far as I can tell, you’re just a…a receptacle. Don’t you have any pride?”

Maria smiled at Sarah, her hands busily massaging the globes of Rachel’s rear. “No, it’s obvious you don’t understand. Someday I will try to explain it to you.” She closed her eyes and suddenly shuddered violently, then looked down and gasped. Sarah’s own eyes widened in surprise as she followed Maria’s gaze. Her mother’s tail had curled around and was actively stroking the soft flesh of Maria’s inner thigh.

“Holy Mother,” Maria sighed. “So good.”

“Well,” Joshua said calmly, as he and Alex entered the room, carrying assorted bits of lumber and carpentry tools. “That’s something you don’t see every day.”

“What are you talking about, Dad?” his son asked conversationally. “Is it Mom’s intern screwing my sister on the couch?”

“Actually,” Jeremy said weakly, as Sarah hung poised over the tip of his throbbing cock, “It’s more like she’s screwing me.”

“Or are you talking about what my mother is doing to my girlfriend?” Alex continued, taking no note of Jeremy’s feeble protests.

Josh rubbed his chin in careful consideration. “Not sure, to be honest. I will give Jeremy credit. He’s pretty well hung.”

“Daddy, you have no idea,” Sarah said, lowering herself onto Josh. She groaned as he filled her. “He fits as well as you do. Isn’t that weird? I thought what I felt with you…would only be with you, you know?”

“Don’t be silly, Sarah,” her mother said, looking over from where she was tenderly ravishing Maria. They could all see the muscles of her tail flex as it caressed Maria’s skin. Under her touch, Maria writhed ecstatically, emitting tiny whimpering noises. “Can you only love one person at a time? Of course not. So why should you think that your body only matches perfectly with one person? As long as you love you will find that variety makes for an eternity of pleasure.”

She looked at her son and her husband. “So are you two going to do something? Or just stand there? The more power Althea has the easier the transfer will be tonight.”

The two men looked at each other, then swiftly away.

“That would be a big hell no, Mom,” Alex said. “I mean, I’m happy you and Maria like each other, but I’m no switch-hitter.”

“And I’ve got that other thing to take care of that you told me about,” her husband said.

“All right, Josh,” she said with a loving smile. “And Alex, if you’re not going to help, go somewhere and jack off. Every little bit helps, you know.”

As she spoke, Jeremy sat up, managing not to dislodge Sarah. He cupped his hands around the curves of her buttocks and stood, lifting her with him. Sarah made happy mewling sounds as his cock shifted inside her and buried her head in his shoulder, her hips rocking. He rose to his feet, her legs locking around his waist.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m open to some things. But not a full-scale orgy. Sarah, which way to your room?” She whispered into his ear, and he walked out, trying to maintain his dignity.

Rachel glanced around, finding that Josh and Alex had also hastily vacated the premises. However, a quick search using Althea’s powers of location showed that both of them were still inside, and were following her orders. Indeed, even as she watched, a renewed surge of power told her that Alex had reached climax.

“Spoilsports,” she muttered, then reluctantly parted from Maria.

xxxxx

Jeremy shoved the bedroom door open with his shoulder, then all but fell onto Sarah’s bed, her lean body cushioning his collapse. The trip up the stairs had been exquisite torture. With each step, his cock shifted inside Sarah’s hot, wet channel. Stimulated by his motions, she had rocked back and forth, her vagina clamping down on him until he thought he would burst.

As he fought for breath, she smiled and gave him her mouth. When their kiss ended, she brushed his cheek with her fingers. “Poor baby. All those hot women around, teasing you. And you’re trying to save yourself for me.”

“I don’t think they were teasing me. I think they were totally horny for each other. The fact that it was turning me on was just collateral damage. But I had to get out of that room,” he continued, slowly easing into her, then pulling out even more slowly. He closed his eyes, savoring the feel of her wrapped around his cock. “I’m not into that kind of exhibitionism.”

She stretched her hands up over her head, as if to better display her beautiful assets. “But you’re changing, Jeremy. We all are. Maybe not so much as Mom. But some. I certainly would never have tried to seduce my own father. And I bet you would have been shot dead rather than make love on a couch in broad daylight, where anyone could walk in and see.”

He nodded, but then halted her next comment with a kiss, not letting her go until she had stopped trying to talk. “Maybe you’re right. But I want to think about other things right now.” He pushed her thighs apart until her legs were spread wide and he could thrust strongly into her.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he said softly. He bent his head, kissing first one breast, then the other, even as he continued to drive his cock in and out of her soaking sheath. In return, her hips rose to meet his, their groins joining for a single fevered instant before they parted. Each time, he could feel the liquid heat of her sex, each time hotter and wetter and stronger.

“Christ,” he grated. “Sarah, I want to wait, but…” He shook his head, strands of hair blocking his eyes. “I can’t. It’s too much. I’m going to come!” Even as he said it he felt the rush of his orgasm boiling up the length of his cock. He buried his head in Sarah’s shoulder, muffling his groans as he burst inside her with a wrenching series of spasms.

He slowed, then stopped, coming to rest with his head pillowed on her arm. He turned to find Sarah scowling at him angrily.

“What?” he asked stupidly.

“I’m. Not. Done. Yet.” She bit out each word distinctly.

“But-”

She wiggled her hips. “You’re still hard. I can feel it. And I’m not that far away. I’m gonna do you a favor. I won’t make you eat me. Instead, you can keep fucking me until I come.”

He opened his mouth to say who knew what idiotic thing, but closed it with a snap. For the first time, he saw her mother inside her. The indomitable will which had driven Rachel Wainwright through college, law school, and a profession which chewed up and spat out its members was reflected in the face of the daughter.

Besides, he thought,as he began to move inside her once more. You owe it to her. He tried not to look at the place where their bodies joined, where his still-erect cock emerged, damply glistening, in the dim light of the room. He shoved it back inside her, not wanting to look at his own semen.

“Men,” Sarah groaned, reading his thoughts. “I don’t know why you all get uptight about things like that. You spend all of your time trying to get rid of it, then once it’s out of you, you act like it’s poison.

“It’s not, you know.” Her eyes, when they met his, were dreamy. “It’s wonderful. The stuff of life.” She laid her hands on her flat belly. “Someday you’ll use it to give me a baby, Jeremy. Or babies.”

“How can you-”

“I know,” she said. “We are meant for each other. Just like Mom and Dad. Like Alex and Maria. I may fool around with other men, like you fooled around with another woman.” Her voice teased him as she pulled his head down, her breath hot in his ear, making him shudder. “But you are my soulmate. The man God made for me.” She kissed him again, her lips hot and strong on his, and her legs wrapped around his thighs, her heels pulling him in deeper with every stroke, a lewd squelching sound emerging from their loins as he pounded into her over and over again.

He kept up the rhythm, setting a strong, steady pace. Inwardly he prayed that his cock would stay erect. He had no idea what fluke of fate was keeping him at attention so soon after a climax, but he knew it wouldn’t last long.

I have to make her come. It wasn’t just a desire. It was a duty. A need.

He pulled out, his shaft emerging from her cleft. “Turn over,” he said, pulling at one bare shoulder.

“But-” she protested, her hands replacing his tool at the gates of her sex, rubbing urgently.

“Trust me,” he said. With her reluctant assistance, he flipped her so she was lying on her belly. He lined up his staff with her nether lips, then entered her once more. A shift, a proper angle…there!

Sarah gave a startled squeak as he moved within her, his length causing her to tremble uncontrollably. “Oh, fuck. What are you doing?“she gasped.

I guess her father didn’t have time to teach her everything he thought smugly. “Pubic bone,” he panted, his belly slamming against her butt. “Lots of nerve endings there. Makes it easier for you to come. And it’ll help me stay up. Until you’re done. But you might want to help,” he growled, “Rather than simply lying there.”

She smiled over her shoulder as he labored on top of her, but with a quick cock of her hips and a wiggle of her arms, her hands disappeared from view. In seconds, he could feel them working on the nub of her clitoris, occasionally drifting down to caress his shaft.

Jeremy was rapidly growing tired, the events of the last few hours taking their toll. His spent member was sore, his arms shaking with the effort of holding him above Sarah. But the trembling of her body beneath his told him his diligence would soon be rewarded. Her taut buttocks quivered as his belly slapped them time and again. Her shoulders rose and fell, then rose again, her back arching like a bow, an arrow of desire ready to spring forth. From beneath her, a hand emerged. With stunning speed, it moved like a striking snake, grabbing his wrist and pulling it to her heaving breast.

“Now,” she said, and he could feel the muscles of her pussy clamping down on his cock like a vise. He gave an anguished moan, but continued to please his lover, his hand cupping her tit, his fingers flicking the nipple. “Oh, Jeremy, now!” she cried, and collapsed onto the mattress, her entire body rippling in ecstasy as she came to her orgasm.

xxxxx

“Well, that was disappointing,” Rachel murmured to Maria. The soft sound of receding footsteps told them Jeremy had reached the upstairs landing without killing either himself or Sarah. Alex had retreated downstairs, and Joshua was in one of the spare rooms on the ground floor, making the final preparations for their return from the hospital. Maria could hear the faint whine of a cordless drill as he worked, his tuneless humming a backdrop to the other soft sounds inside the house.

“You can’t always get what you want,” Maria agreed with a soft smile. She took Rachel by the hand. “Come, senora. We still have things we can do to pass the time until we must leave.”

She led her into the kitchen, where the dishes from their lunch were stacked in the sink. She pursed her mouth disapprovingly as she took in the mess. Not so bad, considering some of the other families whose houses she had cleaned before Rachel offered her a full-time job and an apartment. But still messier than she liked.

Maria opened the dishwasher, finding the dishes from the previous night still there. She sighed in resigned frustration. “Sometimes I wonder how you managed before I came along, Mistress.” She began to pull the clean dishes out, putting them away neatly in the cabinets.

“What do you mean?”

“You are all so…untidy.”

“Why is it so big a deal to you?” Rachel asked her quietly. She started to help put away the contents of the dishwasher. “It’s only a few dirty dishes. They could easily wait until morning.”

Maria sighed as she handed her a glass, lost in memory. “I grew up in a small apartment with a big family, senora. My father was a good man, but had no education. So he worked hard for small wages and died too young. My mother, she went to work to put food on the table, and came home too tired to take care of our home properly.

“It was a hard time for us, my brother and sisters and I. I was the oldest, after Paco, and he went and found work too. So it fell to me to keep our home clean. And I found out it was a way of having some control over my life. Our lives. We might not have much to eat, but we could eat it from clean dishes on a clean table. The carpet might be twenty years old, but at least it could be vacuumed. When my mother brought a friend home from work, or the padre came from church, or my sister came to present her newest novio to my mother, they would see we were decent people, who had standards.”

“Unlike some people.” Rachel’s voice was soft and understanding.

“Yes.” Emotion thickened Maria’s accent. “I saw it happen too many times. When people in our neighborhood began to despair. When they saw no way out. When they thought themselves trapped by poverty and bad schools and dead-end jobs. That’s where it started. First the dirt would creep in. Then the alcohol and the drugs. Then the violence and the crime. By then, it was too late.

“So I made sure it did not happen. Not to my family.” She rinsed a glass, then set it firmly in the washer. “My brother and sisters and I all graduated high school. None of us have ever been in a police report. None of us got pregnant at sixteen, or sold drugs, or have ever given my father, God rest him, a reason to be ashamed of us.”

“I’m sure you haven’t,” Rachel said gently.

Maria continued to empty the sink. As she turned, one final glass in her hand, her fingers slipped on the slick surface. The glass dropped to the floor. She gasped, already hearing the crystalline tinkle as it fractured, seeing the spray of slivers bounce across the floor, a trap to wound an unwary walker.

Before it could shatter into a thousand pieces, Rachel’s tail reached out, quicker than thought, and caught it a bare inch above the floor. The tip cradled it much as would the palm of a human’s hand.

They looked at each other, eyes wide. With a tiny smile, Rachel used her tail to set the glass in the dishwasher.

“They are useful,” Rachel said quietly. Her lips quirked in a smile. “And I can tell that I was right about you.”

“Mistress?”

Rachel’s hand reached out to brush her cheek, and she leaned into her touch. “Poor child. You have known so much pain, and so young. But we are very lucky to know you. Your passion will be a blade in our hands.

“And you will be our…our moral center as well. Althea doesn’t think much of our ideas of ethics and morality,” she said. Her lips curved in a private smile, as if the succubus who shared her body had just made a rude comment. “Especially when they pertain to sex. But we need a center, Maria. Something to hold onto. Have you ever heard the expression, ‘A man shows what he is when he can do what he wants?’ We have to be wary of that trap.

“Look at what she dangles beneath our noses. My family is already wealthy. And, if I can be allowed a touch of maternal pride, my children and husband are intelligent and moderately attractive as well. Throw in the lure of guilt-free sex and you have a recipe for disaster. People who think they are special in some way. Better than their peers. People who will do as they please simply because they can.

“And that will destroy us. Make us become what we hate. Greedy, selfish monsters with no thought for anything but their own desires. Perhaps the succubi are different. But we humans are not built to resist that sort of temptation.

“But you will see that dos not happen,” she concluded, “You have fought against it all your life. Maybe a different battlefield, but the same war.

“Ah.” Her eyes glinted. “It looks like my daughter has finally climaxed. Took that boy long enough,” she critiqued. “Let’s see if my husband is done in there, and get this show on the road.”

xxxxx

With exaggerated care, the being which called itself Mortimer Kincaid pressed the disconnect button on his cell phone, restraining the urge to hurl it through the wall with only the greatest difficulty.

You just can’t get good help these days.

He had listened, his face expressionless, as Fontein reported his failure to get any information out of Rachel Wainwright and her wretched family. His terrified, stuttering voice would ordinarily be a source of pleasure, but tonight it simply filled him with rage.

I’ll have to kill him soon. The prospect brought him only a weary regret. Fontein had been a useful tool. But all tools outlived their time. Fontein had been slipping, his work growing sloppy. This failure was only the latest of many.

How hard can it be to find one woman in a hospital in Chicago? He knows her name. Was he just too lazy to actually make the calls?

Inefficient, he sighed, looking out the window of his penthouse apartment at the dark cityscape below. The sun had gone down an hour before. Below him, he could sense the mass of teeming humanity. It sickened him. They were all so inefficient. Humans were bad. But his so-called superiors in the Pit were even worse. It was laughable, really. He had spent time with them, some of the really sad ones, like Pithius and Ukobach and Belphegor. They kept on whining about the good old days, when temptation and corruption had been an art.

He snorted. Why do all the legwork of destroying a human’s soul when they were so much better at doing it themselves? Retail work was all well and good (or bad) but the real money was in wholesale. He could cause more genuine evil by causing a man to walk in front of a train at rush hour than most demons could in a decade. The chain reaction of anger, frustration, and petty violence as the transportation system backed up could cascade through an entire city, a slow-moving wave of hatred and despair, tarnishing every soul it came into contact with.

And those old lumps bragged about tempting a priest or bribing a politician. By the Dark One himself, it was so fourteenth century! Didn’t anyone realize there were seven billion humans on this stinking dirtball? It wasn’t like the old days, when your chosen target would probably die of bubonic plague or smallpox before the week was over. Sure, back then you had to aim carefully. But now you could carpet-bomb an entire populace and go home early, content in the knowledge of a bad job well done.

He drew his laptop closer and brought up the audio file Fontein had sent him earlier, listening to it with only half an ear as he tried to decide how to go forward.

A succubus within his reach, helpless and crippled! The mere thought of it made him drool. If he succeeded in finding and disposing of her, he would finally be able to go back to the Pit himself. He might even be able to enact some of the reforms he had been proposing for the last several decades. The Dark One couldn’t ignore him forever.

Careful, Old Boy. The attention of the Dark One is a two-edged blade. Most of your kind go out of their way to avoid it.

He snorted at his timorousness. Wasn’t he the son of Merihem herself? One of the eight Dukes and Duchesses of the Pit? A demon who had escaped and eluded all of God’s agents for decades here on Earth? He would respect the Dark One. But he would not fear him. When he came before him, with Althea’s blood red and dripping from his hands, the Lord of the Pit would raise him above all others. He would…

The pleasant fantasy was interrupted, his ear snagging on a stray thread of sound. Frowning, he replayed the file.

“…some sort of seizure outside her home. Witnesses called the EMTs and they brought her here. She’s in our ICU. Dr. Marafi has been running tests on her, but she doesn’t seem to have found a cause for her illness.”

“Dr. Marafi…” he breathed. “What an…unusual…name.” He smiled, an expression which would make most humans quail. He sat up and pulled the laptop closer to him.

It took some time, not being familiar with the spelling of the name. But in less than ten minutes he knew where Althea Carpenter’s body was hiding.

“The University of Chicago Medical Center,” he said. “Not the north side, Fontein, you stupid, ignorant fuck. The south side.” He leaned forward and pushed a button on his desk.

“Yes, Mr. Kincaid?” a voice immediately answered.

“Bring the car around,” he said. “I am going out.”

“Yes, sir.” The brisk efficiency in his lackey’s voice would have warmed Kincaid’s heart, if he had one.

Althea Carpenter, you bitch.

You are mine.

xxxxx

They all gathered together, in the hallway in front of the door, as the last light bled from a late May sky. Alex and Maria, Jeremy and Sarah, Joshua and Rachel. Except for Jeremy, who was still in the clothes he had worn at the cookout, they were dressed in their best. In expensive skirts and dark suits and sober ties.

Althea looked at them from Rachel’s eyes, spoke with Rachel’s voice. And yet there was not a one of them who did not pause in awe, to hear that voice, deep and dark and rich and impossibly clear, emerging like a trumpet-call from Rachel’s lips.

“Aside from Rachel, none of you know me. You are risking not only your lives, but your very souls, to rescue a woman whom you have never truly met. For all you know, I could be merely a figment of Rachel’s imagination, a personality made up out of clouds and moonbeams.

“Your faith in us humbles me.

“Thank you.”

Rachel spoke next. “All right. As we agreed. Jeremy drives. Sarah beside him, Josh and I behind them in the cab. Alex and Maria in the trailer. Try not to get knocked about too much back there,” she said to the last pair. “Once we park, Jeremy will stay behind with the motor running. If he sees any sign of trouble, he’ll send Sarah a text.

“The rest of us will go into the hospital through the front door. Not the E.R. side. There will be too much traffic there on a holiday weekend. Thanks to our recon mission this afternoon, Alex and Maria and I know where Althea’s body is. Don’t initiate any conversations, don’t make eye contact. Walk like you own the place and hopefully no one will care enough to ask us what the hell we’re doing.

“Ready? All right.

“Let’s go.”

xxxxx

Yasna Marafi sat in Althea Carpenter’s room. She held one of her fragile hands in her own, confused by the degree by which she had become bound to this woman in the last few weeks. She should have left hours ago, but tonight some indefinable impulse compelled her to stay.

It was unnatural, she knew. A small part of her was aware her preoccupation with Althea and her mysterious malady was verging on, and perhaps had already crossed the line into, obsession. She had been warned about the dangers of ‘Nightingale Syndrome.’ When a nurse or doctor became infatuated with his or her patients. But despite all the cautionary tales, she could think of little else than the light on Althea’s lovely face, the sculpted beauty of her body, the faint, fleeting fragrance of her in her nostrils, which gave birth to sinful urges she thought had long since been forever extinguished.

How long until her work began to suffer? How long until she made some indefensible mistake, leading to the death of one of her other patients?

But still she sat, bound to the woman who lay in a sleep as still as death. She knew no joy but that of seeing her. Had no hope but that of hearing her voice. Knew no desire but that of her arms rising, to take her in their embrace…

A soft murmur in the hallway, then the door eased open.

“Oh, Christ,” a soft voice said. “She’s here.”

Her head jerked around and her eyes widened, unable to believe what she saw.

“What the hell are you doing here again?” she demanded. She placed her body between the five men and women who entered the room and Althea’s sleeping form. She recognized three of them from earlier in the day; the ones she had caught making love in Althea’s room; the attractive older woman, the lovely Latina, and the well-built young man with his jutting beak of a nose. Two were unfamiliar; a tall, slim young woman with brown hair and small breasts, and an older, sandy-haired man, who wore an air of calm competence.

The older woman gave a huff of exasperation, but kept her voice low. “What we’re doing is rescuing Althea. And you can either come along or stay here.”

“Rescuing her? From what?” She tried to find her bearings, taking refuge in her own authority. “And you’re not taking her anywhere without my permission.”

The woman gave a dismissive hand-flip, as if her protests were all but meaningless. “From death. Or a fate even worse.” She shook her head in aggravation. “I don’t have time to explain. Something evil is stalking Althea. If we leave her here, she’ll die. Horribly. And there’s nothing you can do but die trying to protect her.”

“No!” she whispered fiercely. She didn’t want to draw attention, but she interposed her body between Althea and the newcomers. “I won’t let you take her from me!”

The woman raked her hand through her shoulder-length hair and turned to her companions. “Damn it, we don’t have time for this! God knows when Kincaid will figure out where Althea is. When he does, he’ll come here and kill her!”

“You could try telling her the truth,” the older man suggested mildly. At his side, the Latina woman nodded.

“Truth is your friend, Mistress,” she said.

“Wait? What?” Yasna floundered, the import of their words finally sinking in. “Someone wants to hurt Althea?”

“God-damn mother-fucking cock-sucking hell,” the woman, whose name, Yasna suddenly remembered, was Rachel, muttered viciously. “Right,” she said, wheeling towards Yasna again. “This is the truth, and I don’t give a good God-damn if you believe it or not, because this is the best explanation you’re going to get. She,” she said, pointing to Althea’s body, “Isn’t human. She is a succubus, the immortal offspring of a human and one of the Fallen, angels who refused to fight for God during the War in Heaven. Her soul was ripped out of her body and put into mine. There is a demon who knows she is incapacitated and is probably looking for her body right fucking now, so would you please let us get her out of this hospital, back to my house, and help me stuff her soul back into her body before the demon-spawn finds us and makes us all horribly and irretrievably dead?”

“Oh.” Yasna blinked. The well-oiled mind which had lifted her from obscurity to chief of surgeons at one of the premier medical facilities in the United States turned over, rejecting some possibilities, accepting others. “Well, why didn’t you just say so?”

“What?”

“I know she isn’t human. I figured it out last night, after the lab called me and accused me of screwing around with the blood samples I sent them. She also has some very interesting bacteria colonizing at the base of her spine. And when you take into account the mutations in her vertebrae, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out something strange is going on.”

“Maybe not,” the younger woman said. “But it does take a special kind of mind to recognize the truth, even when it is jumping up and down and yelling in your face.” She slanted a quick look at the woman Yasna realized must be her mother. “We’ve got to take her with us, Mom. We can’t leave her to Kincaid’s mercy.”

“Which is nonexistent,” Rachel agreed. She turned back to Yasna. “Right. You might even be useful. None of us are doctors. Though Alex has had first-aid training.” The young man waved at her cheerfully. “Can you help us get her ready to leave? And maybe run interference for us if someone makes trouble?”

“Of course I can.” She bent to ease the catheters that fed Althea out of her arm, her fingers swift and sure. As she wrapped the area in a pressure bandage, she looked over her shoulder. “You said you’re going to put her consciousness back in her body? And she’s in your body now?”

“Well, we’re going to give it a damn good try,” Rachel said. “Josh. Alex. Don’t just stand there. Get the bed ready to go out the door.” Sharp as a scalpel, that one, Yasna thought. And as dangerous to a foolish hand. The two men dropped to the floor, making sure the wheels were free from any inconvenient obstructions. “And yes, she’s in my body.”

Yasna bit her lip as she removed the last of the sensors from Althea’s skin. “Can I…can I talk to her?” she asked, her skin burning as blood flooded her face.

Rachel looked like she was about to make a sharp reply, then hesitated. The impatient look faded from her eyes, replaced by an expression of infinite tenderness. “Yasna,” Rachel’s voice said. But it was not Rachel. The deep, ringing tones struck a chord in her body, making her feel as if she were a huge bell chiming out the hours. She opened her arms and took Yasna into her embrace.

“My sweet child, my healer,” she murmured, her breath stirring her hair. Even this gentle touch made her knees weak. “Come with us. You will find your place within our circle, and we will give you the happiness you deserve.”

“Mom?” A girl’s voice said urgently. “I just got a text from Jeremy. He says that a guy just pulled into the parking lot in a huge-ass SUV and ran into the hospital. He…” she swallowed and her voice was tight with fear. “Jeremy says he matches your description of Kincaid.”

Yasna found herself loosed from Rachel’s arms. “Oh, Christ,” she muttered. “Now we’re in deep shit.” She closed her eyes, her mind obviously sorting possibilities. “All right,” she said, opening her eyes and fixing Yasna with a piercing look. “He’ll go to the front desk first to find out what room she’s in. It’s past visiting hours, so they’ll refuse him entry at first, right?”

“Well, they’ll try at least,” Yasna agreed. Behind them, the young woman held the door open and the men maneuvered the bed out of the room. Walking quickly but unhurriedly, they pushed the bed down the hall towards the bank of elevators. Yasna followed them, picking up her purse and her black medical bag on her way out the door.

“Let’s just hope they don’t try too hard,” Rachel muttered. “I don’t want anyone to die on our account.” Her eyes lit with black humor. “Especially us.”

“Dr. Marafi?” came a hesitant question. Yasna turned to see one of the nurses looking at them, confusion in her eyes. “What’s going on?”

“Keep going,” she murmured to Rachel. “I’ll handle this.” She peeled away from the group to approach the nurse.

“We finally know a bit more about this case, Theresa,” she said, her lips curved in a professional smile. “I was right. She was poisoned. Very subtly. These people,” she waved a hand at the retreating forms, “are with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“The FBI?”

“Right. Ms. Carpenter is a witness in an important court case. They’re taking her into protective custody.”

“But…” the nurse’s voice faltered, then firmed. “Shouldn’t we see some ID? And there are procedures before we release a patient.”

“I’ve already verified their identities,” she said, her voice brisk and competent. Inside her head, she was cursing the woman’s commitment to her duty, and the hours she had spent drilling that very attitude into her staff. “And a paper trail would just alert those who wish her harm that we are aware of them.”

She caught Theresa’s eyes, speaking quickly. In the distance, she heard the chime of an elevator. “Spread the word. If anyone besides a member of the hospital staff comes here to ask about Ms. Carpenter, tell them she has been transferred to another facility for additional tests. Play dumb. And if you can, call the police. Anyone who comes looking for her is going to be very dangerous.” She paused, wondering if she should say more, then shook her head. “I have to go. Be safe, and may Allah protect you.”

She turned and walked towards the elevators. By the time she reached them, she was nearly running.

xxxxx

The ride down to the ground floor was quiet and tense, the atmosphere charged with fear. When the doors slid open, Rachel helped them guide the bed out of the elevator, then held up her hand, bidding them to silence and stillness.

“He knows me,” she said softly. “And Josh, from some of the functions we’ve attended together. He might even have seen Alex in the courtroom last week. Sarah. Go around the corner and tell me if you see anyone.”

The young woman was back in seconds, shaking her head. “Empty, Mom.”

“All right. Nice and steady. Sarah, go hold the outside doors open.”

For the rest of her life, Yasna remembered the moments which followed. The cool air of the hospital, smelling as always, of old flowers and antiseptic. The click of their heels echoing back off the walls, the slight squeak of one wobbling wheel as they pushed Althea’s bed down the corridor. The acid taste of fear in her mouth.

As they exited the building, a truck with a small U-Haul trailer attachment pulled up to the curb. As soon as it had screeched to a halt, a young man jumped out and heaved up the door of the trailer.

“Hurry,” Josh said. He and Alex lifted the bed, letting the legs collapse as they slid it into the bed of the trailer. Alex and Maria scrambled in, and the young man pulled down the door and bolted it closed with a bang.

“Oh, fuck,” Sarah said. She was looking back towards the building they had just left. “Mom? Is that him?”

They all whirled to face the hospital. Through the glass doors, at the end of the hall, a figure was standing, looking at them. It was much too far away for Yasna to make out any details about his face or expression, but she still received an impression of vicious, soulless hate. The sort of hate which would see the whole world drowned in death and blood and merely consider it a satisfactory start.

“Yes,” Rachel said. “That’s him.” Her voice seemed oddly serene, but Yasna could see how pale her face was. “Into the truck. Jeremy, it is not possible to drive too fast. Do you understand me?”

Suddenly released from their immobility, the five of them dashed for the doors of the truck. Yasna found herself jammed into the front seat between and Jeremy and Josh. Rachel and her daughter were in the back seat.

“Go,” Sarah chanted, almost moaning with fear. “Go, go, go!”

“I’m going!” Jeremy shouted, sounding almost as scared as she. With a lurch, he put the vehicle in gear and the truck pulled away from the curb, slowly gaining speed, hampered by the trailer and the narrow, constricted aisles of the parking lot.

Yasna looked in the side mirror, and felt her blood run cold. Far faster than a human could run, the figure was blazing down the hall. It did not pause when it reached the doors. Instead, it raised its hand, and they blewapart in a hail of shattered glass and twisted metal. Still accelerating, the figure pursued them across the parking lot, even as the remnants of the doors pelted down on to the roof of the truck. A huge chunk crashed down on the windshield on the passenger side, starring the glass and making Yasna flinch in fright.

“Jeremy?” Rachel’s voice was tight.

“Gotta get out of here,” he muttered tensely, turning a corner and accelerating towards the exit onto 58^th Street. “Once I get out of this damn maze and onto the expressway, we can lose him. I don’t care if he is a demon. There’s no way the bastard can run eighty miles an hour.

“Can he, Rachel?”

“No,” came her voice from behind. “Forty miles an hour tops.” A pause. “Well, maybe sixty. But only for short stretches.”

“Oh, God,” Sarah’s voice choked out from behind them. “Here he comes!”

The demonic form behind them was rapidly catching up, its legs and feet a churning blur, taking impossible long steps. Jeremy finally maneuvered the bulky truck out of the parking lot and stomped on the gas, making the vehicle leap forward. But Kincaid cut the corner, using the angle to close the distance even more.

“Rachel, call Alex and Maria,” he bit out. Yasna could see his eyes flickering from the dashboard to the rapidly approaching intersection to the side mirror, judging distance and speed. “Tell them it’s going to get bumpy back there.”

His hand hovered over the turn signal, then turned it on, signaling a left-hand turn. “No cars coming,” he muttered, eying the T-intersection ahead. “Thank God.” Yasna chewed her lip. Kincaid was only yards behind them, a clawlike hand reaching for the rear bumper. Just when Yasna thought they must brake or blow through the intersection and into Washington Park, Jeremy hauled the wheel around to the left, banking the truck and its burden in a long, looping turn that brought them up onto the curb for several heart-stopping moments before they settled on the street again.

“Ha!” Jeremy howled, his face fierce with glee. “Take that, you stupid bastard!” A new glance in the mirror showed her that Kincaid had fallen behind by several hundred feet.

“What?” Rachel asked, shoving her phone into her purse.

“Turned on my signal, showing that I was going to go left. He thought I was lying, so he was cheating to the right. I caught him off balance. Double-crossed him, and went left anyway. Takes a while to slow down when you’re going that fast,” Jeremy chortled, taking another left onto Cottage Grove Avenue.

“Don’t get cocky, kid,” Joshua warned. “He’s coming again, faster than ever. And he looks pissed.” He leaned forward and opened the glove compartment. Yasna’s eyes widened as she saw the slim, deadly form of a handgun resting there, as mindless and vicious as a rattlesnake. Josh picked it up, looked it over, and rolled down the window.

“How far to the expressway?” Rachel asked from behind them.

“Two miles, maybe three,” Jeremy gritted through his teeth. He jerked the wheel sharply to the right, trying to deke the pursuing demon. “But the way he’s coming, he’s going to catch us by the time we hit 63^rd Street. Dammit!”

“Calm down, Jeremy,” Josh said. Yasna could not believe how he could sound so serene. “Slide over to the left a bit, so when he catches us, he’ll be on my side.”

“I don’t suppose those are silver bullets in there, are they, Dad?” Despite the choking fear, Yasna laughed hysterically at the joke, as did Josh and Rachel.

“Sorry, Pumpkin,” he replied. A broad grin flashed across his face, making him suddenly, unexpectedly handsome in Yasna’s eyes. “I think I left them in my other jacket,” he said to more giggles.

“Here he comes,” Jeremy said. At the last moment he jerked the wheel to the left. From behind came a lurch, as if a heavy weight had landed on the trailer.

“God, he’s fucking huge,” Josh said. Yasna agreed helplessly. The monster behind them was at least eight feet tall, and in the strobing glare of the passing streetlights, his skin looked dark and slimy, as if he were covered in corrosive acid. He drew pack one massive fist and punched through the wall of the trailer, then began to peel strips of metal away, as if he were some sort of horrible burrowing insect. Shouts and scream reached their ears from inside the trailer, then were lost in the howling wind.

Josh leaned his head and shoulders out the window, his sandy hair whipping around his ears. The gun in his hand barked, jerking his hands back. Once, then twice more in rapid succession. A howl of rage and pain sounded from behind them, and the loathsome figure pinwheeled away.

Just in time. Honking the horn desperately, Jeremy ran a red light, avoiding two cars crossing in front of them only by slaloming in a long, terrifying s-curve that nearly resulted in them t-boning a tractor trailer that was pulling out of a warehouse. Muttering curses under his breath like prayers, Jeremy juked into the oncoming lane, shoved the accelerator to the floor, and pulled around the huge vehicle just before he could run down a group of day-tripping motorcyclists.

“Any sign of him?” he panted as he took the right-hand turn onto 63rd Street, a trail of angry shouts and raised middle fingers in their wake.

“Not yet,” Josh answered. “I got him in the hand or wrist, I think. Broke his grip on the trailer right when he was going to peel off another strip.”

“You did,” Althea answered with Rachel’s voice. “But that didn’t incapacitate him. Demon-spawn heal quickly. Beheading is the preferred method of killing them.”

“Now you tell me,” Josh cracked. “And me without my favorite choppin’ ax.” From behind came a snort of laughter, then Rachel leaned forward to kiss him on the neck.

“Before we all get killed, we might as well introduce ourselves,” she said.

“Of course,” Yasna replied with mock gravity. “When we die and go to paradise, we should be on first-name terms.”

“I’m Rachel Wainwright. That’s Jeremy Edwards driving the truck. Beside you is my husband, Joshua Sunderman, and my daughter Sarah is back here with me. In the trailer we have my son Alex and his girlfriend Maria Ochoa. And of course, Althea Carpenter inside my head.”

“Pleased to meet you all.” The words sounded hopelessly inane. “Doctor Yasna Marafi, Chief of Surgeons at the University of Chicago Medical Center.”

“Any idea where he is, Althea?” Jeremy asked. His hands were bone-white where they clenched the wheel as they barreled up 63^rd Street. Less than a mile ahead, Yasna could see the overpass and the streaming lights of cars on the expressway.

“Not behind us,” came the rich voice from behind them. It sounded slightly uncertain. Doing nearly sixty, the truck blew through a green light at Martin Luther King Drive.

When the attack came, it was so swift and from a direction so unexpected Yasna could do little more than gasp. From their left, in the dim, dank darkness of the Norfolk and Southern train depot, came a flickering shadow. The truck rocked under the assault, and Yasna could see Kincaid’s horrible form clinging to the trailer like a massive four-legged tick. Splay-legged, its arms and legs bunched with muscle, it crawled towards them.

“What is it doing?”

“Probably intends to kill Jeremy and wreck the truck and then kill us all at its leisure,” Rachel said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have shot him, Josh,” she giggled hysterically. “All you did was make him mad.”

Dressed in the tattered remnants of its suit, the demon-spawn crawled towards them. It leaped, crossing the gap between the trailer and the truck as easily as she jumped across cracks in the sidewalk when she was a little girl.

“Down, Sarah,” Rachel said. Seconds later, a taloned fist crashed through the back window, spraying them all with shards of glass. Yasna yelped with pain as a piece glanced off the back of her hand, drawing blood. Josh wheeled in his seat, firing his gun through the window. She thought she saw Kincaid hit, but if he was, he shrugged off the wounds with contemptuous ease.

His clawed hands reached through the window, groping for Jeremy. He hunched forward in his seat, his hands frozen to the wheel like a sea-captain lashed to the mast. “You want me?” he screamed, his voice taut with terror. “Come and get me, you fucking bastard! I’m right here! Come on!”

Through the screams and howling wind and the din of the attack, Yasna thought she could hear the grotesque chuckle of the beast. It withdrew from the back window. One hand gripped the frame of the cab of the truck, ready to swing around and rip open the driver’s-side door.

As it pivoted, Jeremy’s lips moved in an unvoiced prayer. He pressed the pedal to the floor, and the truck leaped forward as if it had been stung. Shouting incoherently, he jerked the wheel to the left, bringing the truck speeding past the concrete abutments which held up the Ross Avenue overpass.

Splat!

Even superhuman strength was no match for physics. The track brushed by the abutment doing nearly seventy miles an hour. Taken utterly by surprise, Kincaid had time for no more than a hoarse shout of fear before the pillar peeled him off the truck like a fingernail flicking away an orange seed. Yasna looked in the side mirror, but could see little more than a flailing, tumbling pile of bloody rags receding in the distance.

“Well,” Jeremy said, his voice satisfied. “That’s the end of that.”

“Ummm…no, Jeremy. It isn’t,” Rachel’s weak voice replied from behind them. As Yasna turned, she struggled back into her seat from her place on the floor. Her daughter, whom she had protected with her own body, followed. Shards of glass glittered in her dark hair like spangled diamonds.

“What? Are you kidding me? Nothing human could survive that.”

“No. Nothing human could.”

It took only a second for the import of her words to strike home. “Oh.” Chastened, Jeremy turned away, slowing down so he could take the exit to the expressway.

“So, Dad,” came Sarah’s weak voice from behind them. “Did you get the optional insurance when you rented the trailer?”

xxxxx

They pulled into the driveway of the house forty-five minutes later. Josh exited the truck, brushing glass shards away from his suit jacket, and gaped at the trailer. It looked like someone had gone after it with a butcher knife the size of a lamppost. Shredded metal hung off of it in strips and huge holes were punched in the sides.

Alex! Maria! Althea!

He rushed to the back and pulled up the door, afraid of what he might see inside. His son knelt at Althea’s side, looked up briefly, then back at the bed. “Hey, Pop,” he said carelessly. “Help me and Maria get her out of here, huh?”

“Interesting ride home?” he asked, trying to match his son’s nonchalant attitude.

Alex shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“Like hell you have.” Maria said flatly, and Josh jumped. He didn’t think he had ever heard the sweet-tempered Latina curse before. “Gunshots and squealing tires and people screaming bloody murder.” She paused for a beat. “Reminds me of prom night at my high school.”

Josh shouted with laughter, and even Alex gave a weak grin. Working together, they wrestled the bed out of the trailer and up the steps. They were stymied at the front door, however, as it was too narrow to wheel the bed through. Alex solved the impasse by the simply lifting Althea’s body up and carrying her into the house.

“Where to, Mom?” he asked.

She pointed him to one of the spare rooms on the ground floor. “In there. Your father set it up earlier this evening.” She looked around at the rest of them. “I know we’ve all just been through one hell of an experience,” she said. “No pun intended.” She waited until the rueful chuckles died away. “But we don’t have time to waste. Kincaid was injured badly, but not killed. And the demon-spawn are the next closest thing to immortal that we are ever likely to see. Once he recovers he will not hesitate to attack us. Our only shield is Althea. So our best bet at safety is to restore her to her body.

“Go and clean up. If you were hurt, peroxide and band-aids are in the medicine cupboards.”

“I’ve got my medical bag if you have a serious injury,” Yasna put in helpfully, showing the item in question.

Rachel nodded her thanks. “Everyone showers. If you are a man, shave. Put on something clean and comfortable. Yasna, come on upstairs with me. I’ll get you something to wear. Everyone else, back down here in thirty minutes. Go.”

xxxxx

“Do you really know what you are getting yourself into?” Rachel asked her as she led Yasna up the back stairs.

She felt her lips quirk in an unmeant smile. “Probably not. But that doesn’t matter. I saw the face of evil at the hospital tonight, Rachel. It would kill you, me, Althea, and everyone else in the wide green world, and even that would not satisfy it. That sort of evil must be opposed. No matter the cost. Even if it’s my own life.”

Rachel nodded soberly. “I know what you mean,” she said. “What I did before I met Althea, it just doesn’t mean as much as it did. I used to be a lawyer. Still am a lawyer, I suppose, though I’m not actively practicing any more.”

A spark of humor manifested. “Why?” She let her voice take on a teasing tone. “Weren’t you any good at it?” She stopped, surprised at her rudeness. “I’m sorry. That was…unpardonable. Especially after you and your family put themselves at risk for me.”

“Forget it.” Despite her blunt words, Rachel’s face was kind. She led her into a sumptuous bathroom. Yasna paused at the threshold, comparing it to the tiny closet of a bathroom she had in her condo in Hyde Park. “Make yourself at home. I’m going to find some clean clothes for you.” She eyed her body critically, holding Yasna’s surgical scrubs away from her body. She nodded. “We’re about the same size, though you’re a bit taller. And if you stopped hunching your shoulders, it would make your tits look bigger. But that’s not my business. For now.

“So,” she said as she stepped out of the room. The door stayed open, an invitation to gossip. “What’s your story? Althea can read a lot about a person just by touching them. So we got a bit out of you when we met earlier today. You’re originally from Iran?”

She shook her head as she disrobed. She cast a longing look at the sunken tub, but then opened the door to the walk-in shower. A quick turn of the handle had blessedly hot water pouring out of the nozzle overhead. She left the door open so they could talk, reminded of long weekends with her girlfriends, years ago. When they would stay up all night, exchanging stories and dreams of their futures.

And sometimes, more than that.

“My family is, not me,” she said. “My father was a doctor. When the Ayatollah took power, back in the seventies, he took my mother and fled the country. America was welcoming, at least for a while.” She tried not to let bitterness cloud her voice. She stepped into the shower, sighing as the warm water caressed her skin, washing away the stink of fear. “I was born after they settled here.”

“Husband? Children?” Rachel’s voice was carefully neutral.

“None,” she replied shortly. She lathered her body with scented soap, trying not to imagine it was Althea’s hands spreading it across her eager flesh. “Please, understand. My father was a good man, and no reactionary. But the move to America broke something inside him. He held onto the old ways, because he could not adapt. Back home-” she cut herself off and laughed. “Listen to me! I still speak as he did! Back home, he was a learned man. An educated man. But here…he could not speak the language. He was mocked as an immigrant. He! Who held a degree from the Tehran University of Medical Sciences! He was forced to find work as a janitor. Then as a cab driver.

“So when I graduated from medical school, following in his footsteps, he was very proud. But he also tried to make a marriage for me. A young Iranian man of good family, who had fled just as we did.” Why not tell the truth, you coward? You opened your soul to him. Told him in what direction your desires led. And he ignored you. “I…agreed. It was a mistake. We did not suit each other. Or rather, I did not suit him. He wanted a…a traditional wife. Like his mother. And I, who had been raised in Chicago, not Tehran or Isfahan or Meshhad, was not traditional. At all. We divorced three years ago.” She rinsed off the soap and stepped out of the shower, only to meet a smiling Rachel, holding a towel between her spread arms. She wrapped it around her and led her to her bedroom, where she presented her with a choice of clean clothing, mostly loose t-shirts and cut-off jogging shorts.

“I have to warn you,” she said, as Yasna slipped into a pair of sheer white panties, “our efforts to heal Althea might be a little…disturbing. She is a being who gets her power through sex, after all.”

Yasna smiled as she shrugged her way into a cotton t-shirt, the soft fabric of the clean cloth wonderfully cool on her skin. She tried to ignore the way Rachel’s eyes lingered on her, the look frankly appreciative. She glanced away, embarrassed at the attention. “Well, I doubt that you have some sort of virgin sacrifice planned. Do you?”

Rachel laughed. “No. We don’t. There being a complete lack of virgins in this household. A circumstance I do not find at all distressing. Despite some people’s insistence to the contrary, I have never thought that virginity is a desirable trait. At least after I deflowered my husband,” she grinned. “One benefit of being a man’s first lover,” she continued, as Yasna bound her hair back with a scrunchie, “is that you have the opportunity to shape him as you like.”

She stripped down to bare skin, oblivious to Yasna’s widening eyes, and took her place in the shower.

“Come on in so I don’t have to shout,” she called. Yasna followed her, sitting on the lip of the bathtub.

“So I have to ask, because someone is bound to eventually. What is your…” her voice trailed off, oddly hesitant.

“My religious affiliation? I am a Muslim, of course, as were my parents before me.”

“And your sect? Or am I being rude?” She closed her eyes as she lathered her face. Yasna eyed her hungrily, taking in the proud swells of her white breasts, the coral-pink nipples that jutted out perkily from their centers. When Rachel rinsed her face and looked at her, she dropped her eyes, flushing with shame.

Perhaps she is different. Perhaps she will not judge me.

And Althea. Oh, Althea. If the tales they tell about you are true…

She shook off the thought. “We were Shia. I still am Shia, I suppose, although I am not active in my mosque.” She tried to explain the tangled history of Islam to this gorgeous woman. “Shia are the followers of the Prophet’s nephew, Ali. We split off from the Sunni after the Prophet’s death.”

“All right,” Rachel nodded, soaping her legs. “And are there subdivisions within the Shia? Are they…you…more moderate than the Sunni? Or less?”

“Broadly, more moderate, I suppose.” She shrugged. “There are divisions within the Sunni. And the Shia. Splinter groups and different interpretations of the Prophet’s words. But there are radical Sunni. And Shia. Just like Christians have radical fringes of Catholicism and Protestantism. I could explain the subdivisions of Islam, but I doubt you’d understand without having the necessary background. It would be like a Christian trying to explain the difference between an Episcopalian and a Methodist to me.”

Rachel laughed, the sound delightfully cheerful. “I’ve been a Christian my whole life, more or less, and I don’t understand it. Although I will admit the last several weeks have made me more of a believer.” She stepped out of the shower, taking the towel Yasna offered her with murmured thanks. As she dried off, Josh entered the bathroom, stripped unselfconsciously, and took her place in the shower.

“Starting to get a little crowded in here,” he said cheerfully. “Good thing this place has a big hot-water heater. Rachel, have you shown Yasna her room?”

“My room? I’m not staying here.”

“Well, of course you are,” Rachel said, speaking to her as if she were a not-terribly-bright child. “Do you think we’d drive you home and leave you alone with Kincaid running around off his leash? That’s assuming,” she continued, “that he has one, which I do not believe for a second. He found Althea. Which means he knows who her doctor is. Which means that your home is not safe for you until he is dead.”

“Don’t worry,” Josh said, industriously lathering his crotch. Yasna turned her face politely away. “We have plenty of room here. Two guest bedrooms here on the second floor. And the couch in the basement opens into a bed. Or, if you’re a glutton for punishment, you can sleep on the couch downstairs. I’ve done that more than once when Rachel was pissed at me.”

Rachel blushed becomingly, the blood showing pink under her fair skin. “Josh!” she scolded. “It’s been years since that happened.”

“Only because we were divorced. I am sure that if I had been living here it would have happened a few more times.” He stepped out of the shower and looked in the mirror, a towel draped negligently around his lean hips. Rachel caught her glance and smiled. “Do you really think I have to shave?” he asked, fingering the blond stubble on his cheeks.

“Yes,” Rachel said firmly, making him sigh. With a put-upon groan he began to lather his face and scrape off his bristles.

“How are the kids doing?” Rachel asked.

“All right,” he answered. “Alex has Althea ready to go. He and Maria are taking care of Sarah. No, not that way,” he said as Rachel raised her eyebrows curiously. “Try to keep your mind out of the gutter, Venus. Sarah was pretty shaken up by the whole thing. I don’t think she truly believed until she saw that thing in the hospital coming after us. You might want to have a talk with her later.”

“I will.”

“Good.” He wiped the remnants of shaving lotion from his face, eying it with a suspicious frown. He sighed. “How did I get so old?” He touched his temples. In the bright light of the bathroom, Yasna could see delicate threads of silver running through his hair.

Rachel took his hand in hers, leaning up to kiss his cheek. The gesture was so simple in its expression of love Yasna had to look away, her eyes stinging with unshed tears. “You are just as beautiful to me now as you were the night I met you,” she whispered softly. “Are you ready to do this?”

“I-L-L,” he murmured, so low Yasna could barely hear.

“I-N-I,” Rachel answered.

xxxxx

They gathered in the spare room on the ground floor. Some standing, some sitting, some leaning uncomfortably against the walls. In the middle of the room, Althea’s nude body lay on a low wooden platform, no more than waist high, cushioned by a down comforter. Her head was propped up by a pair of pillows, reminding Yasna uncomfortably of funerals she had attended. In defiance of her morbid thoughts, Althea’s golden skin seemed to glow in the dim light.

To Yasna’s eyes, she no longer looked like she was sleeping. Instead, it seemed that she was waiting.

Rachel cleared her throat, bringing their attention to her. “It’s time. What we do here tonight may make you uncomfortable. Althea and I do not ask that you take part if you are unwilling.” She took a deep breath. “Thanks to our efforts, Althea has regained much of her power. It should be sufficient to allow her to move back to her body. But she has been away from it for some time. Longer than she ever has before.

“We must remind her body of the joy to be had in sex. Make it again the willing vessel of her spirit. Also, the transfer is going to take an incredible amount of power. To help cushion the drain, Althea has asked me to…to…”

She closed her eyes, speaking as if she couldn’t believe what she was saying. “We’re going to have ourselves a nice little orgy in here, and if anyone laughs at me, so help me God I will punch you right in the face!”

“Orgy?” Sarah asked weakly. Beside her, Jeremy swallowed, his larynx bobbing jerkily.

“Well, no. Not really an orgy. No one is actually going to have sex. But I need you, all of you, to give me pleasure. Me, and Althea.

“Alex and Sarah. My children. I would like for you to be at my breasts, just as you were when you were babies.

“Alex, are you all right with this?” The young man nodded soberly. “Sarah?”

The young woman started and tensed. Her fingers were laced tightly together. “Mom, you’re the only woman on the planet who I wouldn’t slap for asking me that question. I don’t…being with a woman…” she made a wry face. “Urk. But for you and Althea, I’ll do it.”

“Thank you, sweetheart.” She turned to Jeremy. “I would like you and Maria to be at Althea’s breasts. And anywhere else you think you might be useful. One thing, though. Stay away from her vagina and her mouth. A succubus’ secretions are powerful. Sometimes even dangerous. Until Althea is aware and able to control them, we should be careful.

“Yasna, I would like you to monitor Althea’s body. If you see any sign she is in danger, make us stop.”

“But what about me?” Josh said piteously.

“You? I have a better use for you,” she said, climbing onto the platform. She lay down, at first toe-to-toe with Althea’s recumbent form, propped up on the cushions someone had thoughtfully placed on the platform. She wiggled forward, until her calves lay across Althea’s shins. “I thought about having you screw me, but that would make things awfully awkward for Alex and Sarah.” The children looked at each other and nodded mutual agreement. “Then I thought about oral. But then you would be squashing our poor succubus. So the best solution is for you to let your fingers do the walking.” She spread her legs suggestively as she laid back.

“So that’s it?” Sarah asked at her side. “No candles, no spells?”

She grinned at her daughter, unbelting the loose nightgown she had worn downstairs and spreading it open. “That’s how this whole mess started, dear. All we need is love. And desire.”

She closed her eyes, diving deep into her mind. Althea was waiting for her in her glade. She shivered to look at her. When they first met, Althea had been gorgeous. But fed by the power they had created, she was now terrifyingly beautiful, a bonfire roaring in her soul. She thought about the poor boy who had summoned her, and in so doing, had brought her into his mind, and spared a moment’s pity for the sad little fool.

“Are you going to miss this?” she asked.

Althea smiled. “No. Not really.”

“I’ll miss you,” Rachel said. “This whole experience. I wouldn’t have traded it for the world. Thank you.”

“No,” the succubus replied. “Thank you.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, centering herself.

“Begin.”

xxxxx

It started awkwardly, all of them casting sideways glances at each other, waiting for someone else to make the first move.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sarah snapped. She took her place at Rachel’s side and knelt, her brown hair shining in the dim light. “Mom, you are so totally going to owe me one when this is over,” she said. She could see Alex kneeling down opposite her. At her side, her father was a gentle, solid presence.

She examined her mother’s breast, standing high and firm. The pink nipple was slightly pebbled.

She took a deep breath. What was it you said to Jeremy earlier? “It’s not poison. It won’t kill you.” Just because you’re not a lesbian doesn’t mean you can’t do this.

She reached out a trembling hand and cupped the breast, its weight firm and heavy in her palm. A thought crossed her mind and she suppressed an insane urge to giggle.

“What’s funny?” Alex asked. He was staring at his mother’s naked body as if it were a dangerous mountain range he was being forced to climb.

“I was trying to convince myself that it wasn’t much different than kissing Jeremy’s nipples,” she said, and snorted. “And then I thought, ‘I bet Jeremy never gets so fat his boobs look like Mom’s.'”

“Well,” Jeremy said from a few feet away, where he and Maria were looking at Althea with something approaching awe. “You’re a pretty good cook. There’s always a chance.”

Sarah gave one final hiccup of laughter, and bent to her mother’s breast.

xxxxx

Rachel floated in a sea of delightful sensation. She had to suppress an animalistic urge to writhe in sensual abandon. Only an act of will kept her relatively still, so her body would stay in contact with Althea’s.

Alex held one of her breasts gently in his hand. His mouth was hot and sweet and loving, his lips circling her nipple, then drawing on it like the nursing child he had once been. She felt his tongue lave her, the rough pad licking her in long strokes, then flicking over her tender nubbin. His free hand wandered along her side, the hollow of her flank, the soft curve of her belly, both firm and gentle at the same time, and she spared a moment’s thought to envy Maria.

On the other side Sarah had fought her inhibitions to a standstill. Her lips dotted soft kisses on the curve of her breast. Not a lover’s touch, but a child’s. Not seeking passion, but offering comfort and support. Her eyes were focused elsewhere, down the bed towards her two lovers.

Josh, the first of those lovers, was fingering her. With the ease of long practice, he had parted her nether-lips, and two of his fingers were slowly plunging in and out of her cleft. Meanwhile, his thumb was tapping on the throbbing bud of her clitoris, which had left its protective hood. She bit her lips, her hips twitching, as he softly stroked and massaged her most sensitive parts.

A few feet away, Maria and Jeremy were doing their part. The golden mounds of Althea’s breasts were wet with their saliva, and her nipples had drawn up, tense and turgid testaments to their attentions. As she watched, their hands met and clasped on Althea’s stomach, stroking her softly glowing flesh in unison.

The room was warm, the air scented with musk and sweat and lust. At the head of the platform, Yasna removed her hand from Althea’s wrist. “Heart rate is climbing slowly,” she stated. She bent to check a cuff around her upper arm. “And so is her blood pressure. Eyes still unresponsive.”

Alex looked up at her, his eyes worried. “Shh, it’s all right,” she soothed him. She curled a hand behind his head, holding him close. “You’re doing fine, baby. Just fine.” A glowing spot of heat was slowly making its way down her spine. In response to Althea’s signal, she let her tail extend. The pale length of it emerged from the cleft of her buttocks, which were held aloft by the conveniently placed cushions.

Alex raised his mouth from her breast. “God, Mom, your breasts…they’re awesome. I wish…I wish we were alone.” Across from him, her husband was silent, but his loving touch on her body was signal enough. She raised her leg, allowing him to slip in underneath her thigh, and gave a muted hum of pleasure as his mouth kissed her soaking folds.

“Really, Alex? Are you hard? Hard for Mommy?” She shivered as the forbidden words crossed her lips.

“Like a railroad spike,” he affirmed for her.

“Well, don’t let me stop you. Take it out. Let me see it. Show me what a…what a big boy you are.”

One hand left her body, disappearing from sight. She looked over the edge of the platform and caught her breath. Alex’s rock-hard erection rose enticingly from a nest of hair the same rich brown color as that on his head. It jerked in time with his rapid heartbeat, and as she watched, a milky pearl of pre-come formed at the tip.

She swallowed hard. Guided for instinct and desire, her hand reached out to caress it. “Oh, Alex. That’s a lovely cock. Don’t you agree, Sarah?”

Her daughter’s eyes were soft and hazy. “Hell yeah it is. Looks like someone here is going to be giving Jeremy and Daddy a run for their money soon.”

Rachel slowly pumped it. As if in answer to an unspoken signal, she saw Maria and Jeremy slipping out of their clothes as well. Yasna had abandoned all pretense of checking Althea’s vital signs. Her shirt was pushed up to her shoulders, the hem resting on the slopes of her lovely brown breasts, her nipples hard and thick and so dark in color as to seem almost black in the dim light. Her hands cupped them, squeezing rhythmically, her eyes fixed on Althea’s face.

Now.

Still pumping Alex’s shaft, she summoned all the control she possessed. Moving more delicately than she would have considered possible, she let her tail grow to its full length. The tip parted the pink folds of Althea’s vulva, and slipped inside.

The sensation was indescribable, impossibly pleasurable. Her brain exploded as Althea’s juices soaked her tail. She bit her lip, realized she was screaming, and futilely wrestled for control. Through the haze of desire, she stroked the inside of Althea’s sheath, somehow trying to bring her as much joy as she was bringing Rachel.

Go, Beloved. Go back to your body. Come back to us.

The muscles of her womb spasmed, and she realized she had just climaxed. She gasped for breath, her body sheened with sweat, and levered herself up, looking at Althea’s face, hoping for some hint of movement, some miniscule twitch which would show her soul had reclaimed her body.

“Mom?” Alex said, his voice hoarse and trembling, “I’m going to-”

“Do it, Alex,” she whispered fiercely. “Give us your power. Help our friend Althea. Give Mommy your come!”

As if her words were a signal, he climaxed. White ropes of his seed burst from his cock, painting her body with his essence. As it fell onto her, her eager hands rubbed it into her skin, knowing somehow this was what Althea needed. Across her body from him, Sarah trembled and shook, and she knew another orgasm had occurred. Then her husband, one hand still pleasuring her, the other hidden below the table. He buried his head between her thighs and groaned as he came.

Standing at the head of the table like a pagan priestess, Yasna had pushed down the loose shorts she had borrowed, and was resplendent in her dark beauty. But her eyes were shadowed and troubled. Even as Jeremy jerked and shuddered, spending himself on the barren floor, she frowned, her face twisted in anguish. And as Maria keened and collapsed, her rapidly stroking fingers bringing her to an equally futile climax, her haunted eyes met Rachel’s, sharing an unbearable grief. The power of the coordinated orgasms hit Rachel’s mind like the peals of a bell, tolling out the death-knell of a beloved friend and companion.

The room slowly grew quiet, the only sound that of their slowing breath.

“Is she…” Yasna’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“I…I can’t sense her,” Rachel said. She wanted to howl in despair, to rail against heaven and earth that so bright a spirit could be lost to them.

“No!”

Her face twisted in fury, Yasna tore at the collar of her shirt, then at her panties. They parted with a scream of shredded cloth, leaving her clad in little more than rags. She leaped onto the platform, shoving aside both Jeremy and Maria.

“Wake up, damn you! Wake up! I have waited for you my entire life! You can’t leave us now. We need you!” Yasna took Althea’s head in her hands, kissing her with all the pent-up passion in her soul.

“You are my shining star, my heart’s desire, my one true love. Wake up, and let me see the light shine from your eyes. Wake up,” she sobbed, the piteous sounds enough to shatter even the hardest heart.

Sarah saw it first. The barest hint of a twitch in one of Althea’s toes. She gave a muffled exclamation, but Rachel grabbed her hand warningly, lest they break the spell of the moment.

Althea’s legs shifted slowly, oddly fluid and boneless. They parted languidly, and Rachel caught her breath as she saw her golden tail emerge. The tip curved upwards, almost like it was questing for a hidden scent.

And then, with a movement which was almost too rapid to be seen, it curved and buried itself to the hilt in the unfurled petals of Yasna’s sex.

The woman shrieked, but her voice was cut off by Althea’s mouth. Rising from her pillow, she kissed Yasna with slow, professional thoroughness, even as her tail continued to pump in an out of her. Then her breasts, mouthed and suckled until Yasna was wild-eyed and panting.

“Do you know what to do with your hands?” came a rough, raspy voice. “Or are you just going to lie on top of me? Oh,” she said, her voice wearily disappointed. “I see. Never gave in to your desires, did you? Just prayed to Allah to take them away. I swear, I will never understand humans. This,” she said in a lecturing tone, “is my pussy.” A golden hand, much gentler than her words, guided Yasna’s between her legs. “And this,” she continued as her voice deepened, becoming husky, “is my clit. You have skilled hands, Yasna. You know what to do. Just please me and I…will please you.”

The members of Rachel’s family slowly stood. They gathered in a circle around Althea and Yasna, their faces suffused with awe. But when Rachel levered herself up onto her elbows, she heard a voice in her head, the tone eerily familiar.

~You’re not going anywhere. I like the feel of your tail inside me. How about you just hold still for a while. Well, mostly still. There’s one part of you you should keep moving. Oh, yes. That’s nice.~

I thought you were…gone.

~Beloved idiot. Do you think transferring an entire consciousness from one body to another is easy? How long did it take when it happened to us?~

Well, the first thing I can remember is when you started to fantasize about that doctor fucking my ass. she said tartly.

~Oh. Right. He was cute, wasn’t he? Damn. We should look him up. I bet he’s got a great cock.~

You’re unbelievable. You’ve got a woman on top of you who is completely infatuated with you, six other people who would screw you at the drop of a hat, my tail inside your cunt, and you’re still fantasizing about someone else.

~Get used to it, baby. That’s who I am.~

Well, it’s not who I am.

~Of course not. You’re human. I’m not. It’s all right,~ she said in a tone of unbearable smugness. ~I love you anyway.

~Oh, fuck, she said, her mental voice becoming disjointed. ~Here I…here I…oh God!!~ Her arms and legs wrapped tightly around Yasna, her inner muscles clamping down on Rachel’s tail. Her long, slender throat bowed back, completely off the platform, her hair falling down from her head in a mass of tumbled curls. Her hips snapped up. Once, twice, and then in rapid blur too fast to count or even see clearly. Yasna arched back, her mouth open and gasping, but only the faintest of sounds could be heard before she collapsed across Althea’s magnificent chest.

When Althea finally halted, she sat up, cradling Yasna in her lap as easily as Rachel would a child. Her eyes, when they swept around the room, were cheerfully mischievous.

“I could absolutely murder a fucking cheeseburger right now,” she said. “Is there a Portillo’s anywhere around here?”

xxxxx

It turned out they were all hungry, worn out by the stress of the evening and their recent activities. Alex and Jeremy were deputized to bring back food from a nearby burger joint. With brisk efficiency, Maria cleaned the floor, somehow making even this distasteful chore look elegant and graceful. With awkward glances at each other, the rest of them dressed, gathering around the dining room table. Rachel blinked as Yasna claimed a chair by Althea, moving so close to her she was practically sitting in her lap.

Can you hear me? She settled on Althea’s other side, opposite Yasna.

~Of course. But only if you desire it. I promise I won’t invade your privacy.~

Good. I wasn’t sure if our mental communication would survive what just happened.

~Neither was I. Lucifer’s Balls! It feels good to be back home! Back home in my body, at least.~

Rachel smiled, then drew Althea’s attention to Yasna. What are you going to do about her? I’m not staking any claim to you, she said hurriedly, but if she’s the jealous type, it’s going to be a problem. You know everyone else here is going to be drawn to you. Except Sarah. And maybe Jeremy. I’ve got the feeling he’s a one-woman man.

~Jeremy? Really? I do love a challenge. But I have to agree about Sarah. A pity. Heterosexuality is so dull.~

Really? I’ve never found it so. But maybe our experiences have been different. Maybe you just need to find the right man, she giggled.

Althea gave a mental snort. ~Brat. But you’re right about Yasna. I’ll have a talk with her later this evening. Alone. I don’t want to hurt her in front of the rest of you. She has been too badly damaged already.~

Before Rachel could pursue the topic, Alex and Jeremy returned, laden with bags of burgers, french fries, onions rings, soda, and a tray of shakes.

“We were so lucky,” Jeremy said. “They were just about to close. I think they wanted to kill us when we pulled up to the drive-through. Good thing we had our order all written down.”

“Preparation is important,” Althea agreed, and Rachel smiled as the two young men blushed under her approving smile.

She doesn’t even try. Being jealous of her is like being jealous of a flower when the bees come to gather pollen in the spring. It isn’t something she does. It’s who she is.

“So, Althea,” Josh said, interrupting the sound of chewing and happy groans as they wolfed down the meal. “What are your plans?”

Althea took a bite of her burger, her eyes closing ecstatically. “God, I missed bacon. Almost as much as sex. Well, no. That’s a lie. Nothing is better than sex, Not even bacon.” She took a sip of her shake.

“Right now I have no home, money, clothes, weapons or resources, and my power, while in a far better position than it was a few weeks ago, is still severely compromised,” she said soberly.

Rachel hid a grin. The three women in the Wainwright household had done a quick search for clothes that would fit Althea, and the results were humorous to say the least. Her statuesque form was too tall for Rachel’s clothes and too busty for Sarah’s. Maria was closest, but even the oversized t-shirt she used as sleepwear strained to contain her impressive chest, and the cut-off pair of lime-green workout pants looked hilariously incongruous against her golden skin.He erect nipples tented the cloth of the shirt, and even Rachel couldn’t keep her eyes off her legs.

She looks like a teenage boy’s wet dream, she thought.

“All of these problems are short-term and temporary,” Althea went on, as if being homeless, penniless, and forced to borrow clothes from them were issues of no consequence. “If Dr. Marafi will retrieve my personal belongings from the hospital tomorrow, I can get my ID and my money issues will be solved.” Yasna nodded, seeming almost pathetically eager to help. The look on her face made Rachel frown. “From there, it is a simple step to buy some suitable clothes.

“However, I will not be returning home until the risk to all of you is resolved satisfactorily. To do otherwise would put you in unacceptable danger. I think our experience this evening with Kincaid has stripped you of any illusions about how you would fare in a confrontation with one of the demon-spawn.

“Which leaves us with the unanswered questions of weapons and resources. I have told Rachel that one of the succubi is easily a match for a demon-spawn like Kincaid. This is true. But I have weapons and tools I have have crafted over the millennia. These are irreplaceable.”

She popped a last onion ring in her mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “I would love to have them with me when we confront Kincaid. But my home will be certainly watched. I have grown careless over the past few decades. For someone with his resources, it will be no trouble at all to discover where I live. To go there would be to invite an attack on myself, and also on this house in my absence. No. I stay here.”

She drummed her fingers on the table. “Which means I must take thought and see if I can somehow craft replacements. Joshua, I know you are an artist. Will you allow me to use your workshop? And purchase such materials as I might need?”

He nodded. “Of course.”

“Thank you.” Her answering smile was gracious. She wiped her lips with a paper napkin, for all the world as if she were eating dinner in a five-star restaurant, rather than take-out food at midnight.

“And now we come to a bigger question. Or, if not bigger, one I am sure everyone here has thought about since I woke in this body.

“Who is the succubus going to sleep with?”

She smiled at them, the expression hungry and tender at the same time. “The answer, of course, is all of you.”

Sarah cleared her throat pointedly.

“All of you who wish it,” Althea amended serenely. “But, since there are six of you and only one of me, there is something of an imbalance. However, I do not think any of you are at a loss for lovers right now, thanks to my efforts. Except for Yasna here, of course.”

“You are the only one I desire,” Yasna said quietly.

“Be that as it may,” Althea continued, ignoring the interruption. “It is not my place to dictate to Rachel and Joshua how their household should be run. I am a guest. And it has been many years since I tried to navigate this kind of tangle, with all the possibilities for emotional traps. The last time I lived with more than one lover was in the eighteenth century, when I was the mistress of a French Comte and Comtesse.” Her eyes grew hazy with reminiscence. “Oh, they were a lovely pair. And so inventive.

“I am a sexual being,” she said, rising from her seat. “It is who and what I am. I make no apologies and no excuses. You could no more stop me from trying to go to bed with you than you could make water run uphill.”

Sarah interrupted. “But why…why do you want to go to bed with us?” she stammered. “I mean, look at your body. It’s incredible. Ridiculous. I feel silly just being in the same room as you. Don’t you want someone…more attractive?”

Althea’s return look was loving. “Oh, Sarah. My gorgeous child. It is not the beauty of the body alone that draws me. Although that never hurts. It is the purity of the soul. And you all have that in abundance. Why would I not want to spend time in the arms of those who risked so much to rescue me?

“I make you this promise. All of you. If you do not desire me, I will not try to force you. That is anathema to the very tale of how I came to be.

“And I ask this of you in return. If I should take your lover, or husband, or wife to my bed,” her glorious eyes caught them all in turn, “you do not resent me. Or him. Or her. I do not think any of you are the sort who are stupidly possessive or jealous. The last few weeks must have taught you that love shared is love doubled, and having more than one partner can be a joy to all involved, not a source of pain.

“Are we agreed?”

Joshua cleared his throat. “I can’t speak for everyone,” he said. He shook his head. “Three days ago I pulled into this house hoping to reconcile with my former wife. In that time I have gained a fiancee,” Rachel smiled back at him fondly, “a lover,” a look at Sarah, “and new friends,” a glance taking in Maria, Jeremy, Yasna, and Althea herself.

“I can’t tell you we will be able to put aside decades of habit in the blink of an eye. But speaking for myself, I can tell you that we’ll try.”

“Thank you, Josh,” she said softly. She looked at Sarah, who was watching her with an expression of guarded terror. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” she said. “I’m not going to take your lovers away from you. Away from any of you,” she continued, casting her eyes around the table. “I know what you fear,” she said softly. “A gorgeous woman shows up, beautiful and powerful. Will your loved ones abandon you? Will she crook her finger and lure them away?” She shook her head. “You have risked so much for me already. And I will ask for more. But you are not mine. Say, instead, that I am yours. I owe my life to you. My very existence.” She reached out to grip Rachel’s hand as her eyes pooled with tears. “I love you all,” she choked out. “So much. Thank you.”

The mood was broken by the ringing of Rachel’s cell phone. She pulled it out of her pocket and went cold when the name appeared on her screen. She raised horrified eyes to Althea.

~How the fuck does that worm have your number?~ she demanded.

Rachel grimaced disgustedly. It’s only natural for opposing attorneys to know how to reach each other, in case something unexpected comes up that might affect the trial, she said. It’s not like I knew he was the son of a demon when I gave him my contact information. How do you want to handle this?

Althea gave her the mental equivalent of a saw-toothed grin. ~How about like this?~ she suggested, letting a suggestion flow into her mind

Rachel nodded slowly, then pulled her thoughts away. “All of you, keep quiet,” she said, then pressed a button.

“Hello?” she said, making her voice quaver fearfully.

“You bitch,” Kincaid said conversationally, sounding as if he were talking through a mouthful of broken glass. “When I find you and your family you’re going to wish you’d never been born. Do you have any idea how much that suit cost me? You, and your worthless husband, and your two whelps, and whoever else you have hiding over there with you. You are all going to die.

“And that goes double for that…that disease you have in your skull. Tell me, Rachel. Do you actually know what you are carrying around? The bastard spawn of a mating which God himself forbade, and which so sickened him he cursed it to barrenness. A mistake which never should have been allowed to live.”

“I don’t want it!” she cried. “I don’t know how she got here and I don’t care! I just want her out of my head! She’s making me have these…these urges,” she said, letting her tone grow thick with loathing. “Not just for men. But for women. And…and other things.

“Just leave me alone! All of you! She’s driving me insane! She forced me to steal her body from the hospital. But now she tells me I have to do these…things…and I don’t want to!

“No, I won’t shut up!” she screamed, as if she were talking to a voice which only she could hear. “Just go away,” she sobbed, her voice breaking. “All of you. Go away and leave me alone.”

She disconnected the call and turned off the phone.

Alex clapped softly, Maria and Jeremy joining him. “Bravo,” he said, not a trace of mockery in his face. “If I wanted to convince Kincaid your mind was about to snap, I don’t think I could have done a better job.”

Althea nodded, a grim smile on her face. “He’ll assume you’re lying, because a creature like him always assumes everyone is lying. But lying which way? Was the rescue a plan meant to accomplish what we have done here tonight? Have we succeeded? Or perhaps we failed, and you are simply trying to bluff him by pretending I still exist. Or maybe you are being driven slowly insane by my spirit within you, and the entire family is headless and flailing.

“Form now on, doubt will gnaw at him.”

“What will he do?” Jeremy asked.

“He will attack,” Althea said. “A creature such as he, weaned on hate, cannot help itself. He has no choice in the matter. He knows I exist. Therefore, he must destroy me.

“He may be clever or cunning or clumsy or cruel. But eventually, he will come for us.”

“And when he does, we will be ready.” Rachel said.

Althea nodded. “Yes.” She let her glance fall on Yasna. “I am so tired I am about to fall down. Will you help me to bed? And if you are willing, I would like to talk to you alone for a few minutes.”

Yasna’s face shone happily. “Of course.”

Althea nodded at the rest of the room. “I will see you in the morning. Dream sweetly.”

As the rest of them murmured their good-nights, Althea and Yasna left the room.

THE END OF CHAPTER FIVE