Succubus Hunter 2 (The Succubus Series) Read online

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  Succubus Hunter 2 Copyright © 2019 by Daniel Pierce

  Book design and layout copyright © 2019 by Daniel Pierce

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

  Daniel Pierce

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  Succubus Hunter 2

  Book 2 in the Succubus Hunter Series

  Daniel Pierce

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

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  About the Author

  1

  A cold October breeze brushed against my face, causing my breath to mist the air in front of me. Though it was still early in the fall, the temperature had already dropped enough that the only people out on the streets were those that had absolutely no way to avoid it. This late that was very few, particularly in this dark part of the park. I noticed one shaggy looking man, probably homeless, trying to stay out of sight, and a pair of necking teenagers whose hormones overpowered the pressing cold.

  As for me, the cold was a minor nuisance, something I was vaguely aware of as I followed my instinct deeper into the park. I could sense my target not far from me, like a tingling sensation in the back of my mind that pointed me in my quarry's general direction. My focus was divided between this inner compass and carefully trying to mask my presence. The aura I gave off was like a beacon to the creatures of the night, and if I did not concentrate on keeping it repressed I could scare my target off long before she came into sight.

  I wasn't stressed about it. This was stalking, and it was what I did. I was a Hunter. And I was damn good at it.

  A chill on my neck, like a ghost breathing down my back, alerted me that I had been spotted. I located my target at nearly the same time.

  She looked like any other woman from this distance. Perhaps oddly dressed for the weather, wearing a skirt and a low-cut top that barely contained her breasts, but for New York City that level of oddity was barely enough to warrant a second glance. The way she was leaning easily against a tree in the dark, her dark hair running down her face, her hands wrapped around the tree bark, was clearly meant to entice the men who stumbled upon her, and right now her attention was on me.

  I quickened my pace toward her, doing my best to behave like a man who had been on a casual stroll when he noticed this figure of beauty in front of him and decided he needed her for himself. Within a few strides I got close enough to see her grin, greed and desire mixed together at the thought of a new victim she had lured to her.

  Then her grin suddenly faded as she got a whiff of my aura, repressed as it was. I reacted immediately, breaking into a bolt toward her, but I was too late. Her eyes went wide and she leaped into the air, clearing the top of the tree she had been leaning against and coming down to land on one of its upper branches. She then took off like a super-powered chimpanzee, jumping from tree to tree and branch to branch to clear distance from me.

  I cursed and followed along at the bottom of the tree line. It was impossible for a human, even one with my skills, to keep up with the supernatural speed of a creature like her, but I didn't have to match her pace. By opening up my sight, I could see a path of darkness that would show me my target's intended path for the next few seconds. The woman was plotting a circuitous route, attempting to get far enough ahead of me that I wouldn't notice when she circled back around to get behind me. I cut a path to intercept her on her way back.

  I drew my pistol from under my leather duster and took aim at a branch my sight told me she was going to come across. She was moving fast. I felt like I was playing a game of Space Invaders where I had to fire my shot not at where she was but where she was going to be. I timed the creature's path, and just split second before she was set to appear, I squeezed the trigger.

  A simple bullet couldn't kill this creature. She probably wouldn't even feel the sting s a few seconds later. But it did pack a big enough punch to knock her from the treetops. She tumbled down, crashing through branches and hitting the ground with a resounding thud.

  Her body was twisted around, her legs tucked behind her back at an unnatural angle. I approached, ready to deal the finishing blow, but this night was not going to be that easy. There was a snapping sound as the limbs of the creature righted themselves and popped back into place. Fewer than five seconds after she hit the ground, the creature was back on her feet and scowling at me. While she still resembled the attractive woman I had spotted from afar, there was something inhuman about her now: the way her mouth was twisted up too far, the sharpness of the nails at the ends of her fingers, the glow of her eyes that cast a dim light on darkness around her.

  I was face-to-face with the true form of the Succubus.

  I could have struck her there and ended the fight before she had a chance to try anything else, but I needed a moment to examine her. Not every Succubus needed to be killed. Some still had enough of their humanity left that I could remove the curse that had transformed them and return them to the women they used to be. The trick was to look into their eyes. If there was even a sparkle of their humanity left in those eyes then they were worth trying to save. But all that was left in her eyes was hatred and hunger. She was beyond saving.

  My hesitation cost me my chance at a quick conclusion. With an inhuman shriek, the Succubus turned tail and ran deeper into the park.

  They always run. Succubus liked to prey on unsuspecting men, preferring those who they could steal the life force from with little struggle, or who may just give it to them willingly. While they were super humanly strong and fast, they rarely had to use that strength. And when they got a sense of me, they understood at a primitive level that I was one of the only things that could put an end to their immortal existence. And so they ran rather than risk annihilation.

  Well, I wouldn't be much of a Hunter if I couldn't track. The Succubus was still too wounded to take back to the treetops, but she could still move across the ground much quicker than me. I wouldn't exhaust myself trying to keep up. Instead I took a calm approach, walking at a casual pace as I followed the easy to detect signs of the Succubus's passage. She was leaking a lot of blood, and the easiest signs of her path came from the red splatters across the ground and among the brambles when she went off the path. The trail took me out of the park, across a darkened street, and into a complex of old red-brick buildings.

>   The Succubus had taken refuge here, thinking she had lost me way back in the park. Her fear was palpable as I stepped into the mouth of the alley she was in. In her haste to get off the street, she had come into the one-way alley and was now stuck between me and a solid brick wall. There was nowhere else for her to go but through me.

  She hissed at me, an inhuman, snake-like sound. “Why do you harass me, mortal?”

  I shrugged as I stepped calmly into the alley. “Why do you harass men in the park? You tell me and I'll tell you.”

  Her whole body tensed, coiled like snake ready to strike. “I don't harass anyone. Men come to me full of desire, some intent to fulfill that desire with or without my permission. I simply allow them to play out those desires to their heart's content.”

  “And you kill them. That's why I'm here.”

  She inched back toward the wall and reached behind her back. “So what? Mortal lives have little value, particularly those of men. Do you weep every-time you consume a burger for the loss of the cow?”

  I stopped one body's length away from the cornered Succubus. “That reminds me. I'm starving. A burger would be great right now. So how about we make this fast?”

  The Succubus snarled at me as her hand ran down her back. “Fine with me. You're so concerned with the fate of my mortal victims, you can experience what befell them firsthand!”

  There was a sickening squelch as the Succubus pushed her fingers into her own back, spraying blood all over the ground. I was so fascinated by the grotesque display I made no move as she contorted her back until she could pull a short but deadly sharp looking sword from her body. It dripped with blood and ichor as she raised it in a striking stance.

  My sight warned me that she was about to strike. I held out my arm and The Night Flail was there, its chain wrapped about my wrist as it always was when I called it. It was the ancient enemy of the Succubus, a weapon passed down from my mother to me so I would become a Hunter. It shot out just as the Succubus's sword came for my throat. I slapped the sword across its broadside and knocked the strike aside.

  My sight filled with the dark streaks of the Succubus's intent, the pattern of attack she was about to take. She was fast, much faster than most of her kind, and it was clear that the sword wasn't a weapon she used just for style, but because she was practiced with it. Deadly. Any one of her strikes could have taken out my throat or impaled me through my heart. An amateur I might not have been able to keep up, but I was an experienced Hunter now, and with the warning provided to me by my sight, it was child's play to deflect each attack with the long chain of The Night Flail.

  I swung the flail around in small, rapid arcs, and the air filled with sparks as the impossibly tough sword slammed against the fail again and again. The Succubus howled in frustration, desperate to break through my defenses but finding no gap between my swings. She pressed herself forward, extending to try and get in too close for the flail to be effective.

  That was a mistake. The flail lashed out and caught her under her hand, which began to sizzle and burn on contact. She shrieked and dropped the sword, and I smacked it on its way down to knock it far out of her reach.

  She made a swipe at my eyes with her razor-like claws, and her sudden aggression caught me off-guard. I had expected her to back off with the loss of her weapon, to go collect her sword or maybe try to find a way to escape. Even with the warning of my sight, I just barely had time to arch my head back and save my eyes from being torn out of my face. Her fingers did manage to graze the tip of my nose, drawing a trickle of blood.

  Okay, so you want to play.

  I kicked out with my left leg, catching her in the gut as she was still in for another attack. Kicking a Succubus is a bit like kicking stone wall, and I felt a numbness run up my leg from the impact, but it had the desired effect as she was sent stumbling back.

  Right into the range of my flail. The Night Flail lashed out and struck the Succubus directly in the center of her chest, piercing her, and a circle of symbols were burned into her around the point of impact. She let out a low moan as her body slowly disintegrated, soon becoming nothing more than a pile of ash and clothes.

  And a plastic bag.

  I almost missed it in the darkness of the alley, but as I spent an extra moment there to wipe the blood off my nose, the wind shifted the Succubus's remains and caused the edge of the bag to flap. It was strange: to my memory, she hadn't been carrying anything on her.

  Of course, she had stored her sword inside her own body. I quivered as I considered where this bag would have been stored.

  I pushed those feelings down so I could bend over and lift the bag from the ashes. Unfortunately, the contents of it were not much easier to deal with. I’d served in the army, and during that time I saw plenty that I wish I could unsee, but there was something particularly unsettling about a bag of unidentified, bloody meat that had likely been stored inside the person of a Succubus.

  The meat was wrapped in wax paper, as if the Succubus had just come from the butcher's and was planning on attending a barbecue after murdering some random men in the park. I supposed it was possible that it was pork or beef and the Succubus just happened to like carrying her dinner inside her body, but I had the uncomfortable idea that meat belonged to something more unpleasant to think of.

  Looks like I was bringing a mystery home with me.

  I put one hand around the silver wristlet that was tied around my neck with a string and focused. The blue gem set in its center began to glow as the magic of the Portal Stone was activated. My mind filled with visions of the wine cellar beneath my home in Vermont. Once I had a clear picture, a swirling pool of radiating red energy appeared in front of me. I stepped into the pool—

  And stepped out into the wine cellar. I focused again on the stone to close the portal before anyone else stumbled upon it. It sure was convenient to be able to go from New York City to my home without taking the eight-hour car drive.

  Lyanne was already waiting for me, sitting on the stairs up from the cellar with her head resting on her hand as if she had been admiring the wine for a good time. Perhaps she had. “Welcome back, Kurt. Have a good hunt?”

  She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and my career brought me around many gorgeous figures. Her hair was a dark brown, and when she wore it down it obscured a perfect face of white skin, red lips, and dark eyes. Her body's every curve was gentle and sensual, as if she had been sculpted by an artist to be a representation of beauty instead of a real being you could touch.

  I held up the bloody bag of unidentified meat. “Naturally. I even brought you back the spoils.” Her eyebrows arched curiously as I brought the bag over to her. Lyanne was the first Succubus I had ever rescued from her curse, and since then she had become a friend, my closest confidant, and my lover. She had been around for a long time (though I still couldn't get a clear answer as to how old she was) and that made her knowledgeable on a wide variety of topics, particularly regarding the supernatural. If anyone could identify a bag of meat and what it meant to a Succubus, it was her.

  She took the bag and weighed it in her hand. “Not exactly the kind of romantic gift I was expecting. Most men would bring flowers.”

  “Oh, come on. Flowers are so played out. How many men have gifted you bags of meat?”

  She smiled playfully at me. “Two.”

  I laughed. “Guess I need to get even more creative.”

  Lyanne opened up the bag and took a deep whiff of the meat inside, and apparently that was all she needed. “Oh, yeah. That's human meat.” It was sometimes weird how Lyanne's tone made everything she said sound sexual, even when she was describing something awful.

  Human meat. That was what I feared. Though it still didn't make sense. “But why would a Succubus be carrying around human meat? Don't they steal life force through, well, sexual means?”

  She was already pulling out one of the wrapped packages and unpacking it. “That is how it is done, yes. A Succub
us would not get anything out of eating human flesh. Though perhaps she did it for pleasure? Some Succubi are very unstable, particularly if they have no master.” She turned the chunk of meat around in her hand and gave it a careful inspection. “Yes, this was definitely carved by a Succubus. You see these grooves here?”

  I didn’t want to examine the meat more closely, so I just nodded. “Yeah … those are grooves, alright.”

  “These were almost certainly caused by Succubus claws. And the way they are jagged here? Signs of the victim struggling while this bit was removed.”

  As if this couldn't get any more unpleasant. “So you're saying he was alive while he was … butchered.”

  Lyanne's face didn't show any reaction to the things she was saying. “Most likely, yes. While he still had the power left to struggle, so it is unlikely that the Succubus had properly drained him first.”

  This was only creating more questions than answers. “Why would she do that? Even the most insane Succubus should have wanted to 'feast' before murdering her victim. And this one … she didn't seem particularly crazy. She actually seemed quite in control, all things considered. You know, for a murderous killing machine who had abandoned all of her humanity.”

  Lyanne didn't have any more answers for me. “It is a mystery. Perhaps we could learn more if we examine the rest of the body. This meat is fairly fresh, so it was likely carved this very night.”