Succubus Hunter 2 (The Succubus Series) Page 2

  “So it might still be around the park area.” I sighed, feeling weary but knowing what came next. “Guess I need to run back and see if I can locate it. Got to say, corpse-hunting is not the way I wanted to spend my Friday night.”

  “Oh, I also had a much more … entertaining idea of how to spend the night.” Her heated gaze had a physical weight—mostly below my belt. “But duty calls. I will miss you, though.”

  I frowned down at the bag that had ruined my night. But perhaps I could ensure I was not suffering alone. What was it they said about misery loving company? “You know, two sets of eyes are better than one?”

  That got a reaction from her. “Oh, come now. You really want to make me go out into that cold, in the dark of the city?”

  I smirked at her. “I need my trustworthy sidekick at my side.”

  She didn't seem pleased by the word 'sidekick,' but she couldn't deny that we could cover more of the park together than I could alone. In the end, it didn't make much of a difference, though. The two of us braved the cold and searched the park right up until moments before the sun was set to rise, paying particular attention to the area where I had first located the Succubus, but we couldn't find any sign of the body.

  Exhausted, the two of us returned via portal back to the wine cellar then went upstairs to take a hot bath.

  “You know,” I said as I adjusted the temperature of the tap, “there is one avenue of answers that we have not yet pursued, because I know how much you don't like it.”

  She was smiling wearily, but I read the distaste there. “But I feel you are going to suggest it anyway.”

  I ignored her attitude. “Maura at The Dispensary might have answers. She's deeply connected to the supernatural community of the city.”

  “And all she wants in exchange is money. Such a trustworthy attitude.”

  “Not always. Remember Tandi?”

  The first, and thus far greatest, challenge of my Succubus Hunting career was a cult led by an ancient Succubus named Tandi. The day before Tandi and her minions assaulted my house, Maura had called to warn me. Thanks to her, we were able to prepare the estate for the attack.

  For the most part, Lyanne followed my lead as Hunter. But she could be remarkably stubborn about Maura, whom she didn't trust. I could always just go to see her myself, but Maura wanted to exchange information for cash, and Lyanne's near infinite supply of money (from sources she would not disclose) made such a thing easier.

  “And I am sure she had no ulterior motive.” She sighed. “Kurt, if you really feel that going to Maura is the best course of action, I will support you. That's what I'm here for. I just want you to be careful, okay? You have a habit of being reckless … particularly where women are involved.”

  “I'll be careful, promise. Now get in the tub so I can demonstrate just . . . how careful . . . I can be.” I punctuated each word with a touch, and the flare on interest on her face told me I was hitting the mark.

  Turns out, the tub was built for two.

  2

  The Dispensary was a hidden bar that didn't show up on any maps, had almost no web presence, and whose GPS coordinates led you around in circles for a block downtown. You had to know what to look for: a narrow stairwell that led to a single, plain green door with no identifying markings. For most of its patrons, it was a well-kept secret hangout that made them feel like part of an elite club. The drinks were good, the atmosphere was lively, and its secrecy kept away obnoxious tourists.

  But the bar had one more secret: it was a meeting place for all kinds of immortal patrons. As I passed through the green door and into the smoky light of The Dispensary, my instincts were instantly assaulted by all kinds of strange tingling sensations, different from what I felt when Succubi were around but which told me that many of the people around me were more than mere mortals.

  My aura alerted many of them as well, and I had a number of glances my way as I walked to a seat at the end of the bar. But Maura's was a safe place, so these looks were more of curiosity than of anyone getting alert for a battle.

  I ordered a beer and took in the room, waiting for the bar's proprietor to make her appearance. She did a few moments later, moving through the crowds with a practiced ease even as she carried an armload of mugs to set down at one of the tables. I made eye contact with her and she nodded, breaking off a conversation with the patrons at the table to make her way over to me.

  Maura had eyes the color of chocolate, auburn curls, and the kind of body that could have graced the cover of a 90's Playboy magazine. The way she moved had a way of demanding your attention, and I found I couldn't take my eyes off her for a moment as she approached and took a seat next to me.

  “It has been a while, Kurt.” As always, Maura smelled of menthol cigarettes, a scent that got intense as she leaned in close to me. “I was beginning to think you didn't like my bar.”

  I raised my glass to her. “Drinks are good. A little on the pricey side.”

  She didn't take offense. “It depends on what you are ordering. What are you after tonight?”

  I lowered my voice and leaned in closer. “What do you know about bodies being butchered like animals? Like … meat being torn off?”

  Maura had her finger on the pulse of everything happening in the world of the immortals. If there were Succubi going cannibal in the city, she would know about it.

  To my surprise, considering the gravity of what I had just asked, Maura laughed. “That? That's an everyday occurrence recently. You're going to have to get more specific.”

  I continued to speak lowly, despite Maura's flippancy. “Do you know why it's happening?”

  She looked thoughtful. “I haven't really looked into, but I could ask around. We'll have to talk price … later. I'm a bit busy today.”

  A patron at a nearby table called out to Maura and she had to excuse herself to deal with it. I was left alone to contemplate the implications of what Maura had told me. If the butchering of humans was so common that Maura called it an 'everyday occurrence,' it was definitely the work of more than just one unstable Succubus. But the why was still a mystery.

  I had to admit that there were still many things about the supernatural world that I didn't know. Perhaps the meat was part of a ritual, like the one Tandi had used to create new Succubus and expand her powers.

  One glass of beer turned into two and then three as I sat lost in my thoughts. I was so absorbed in my reflections that I didn't even notice the woman taking a seat next to me until she dropped a heavy box down on the bar.

  The bartender gave the new arrival his immediate attention. “Welcome back, Darcy. New delivery for Maura?”

  The new woman was short and plush, with a freckled face that lit up when she smiled, which she was doing now. “Another odd request, but I've gotten used to it at this point. Is Maura around?”

  The bartender filled up a glass and put it in front of her. “She’s around here somewhere. In the meantime, drinks on the house.”

  Darcy was cute, with her black curls and hazel eyes, and I found myself checking her out as she was enjoying her drink. I must have been too obvious because her attention turned to me. “Can I help you with something?”

  I coughed to give myself a moment to come up with a good explanation. “Oh, I was just—I overheard that you work for Maura?”

  She eyed me suspiciously. “Not specifically. I'm a delivery agent. Maura just happens to be one of my most frequent clients.”

  “Delivery agent? Like for one of the big delivery companies?”

  Her eyes were locked on mine. “More like freelance. People contract us when they have … unusual items to be delivered that they don't want to trust to more traditional delivery services. Why are you so curious, anyway?”

  “I know Maura's clientele includes many … unusual types. The types I know better than to trust. So why don't you tell me what you really want?”

  I was saved from the awkward interrogation by Maura's timely appearance. “Relax, Darcy.
This is Kurt. He's one of the good guys.”

  My grateful smile was genuine. “You consider me one of the good guys?”

  Maura shrugged. “It's a relative term. Is this the item I asked for, Darcy?”

  Darcy had relaxed considerably since Maura appeared. “Yep, packaged exactly to your instructions. You know the account to pay.”

  Maura took up the heavy box without so much as a grunt of effort. “I should take care of this. You two play nice.”

  She left us alone, and Darcy gave me an embarrassed smile. “Sorry about the third degree. I've had … experiences with the odder members of Maura's clientele. Some of them have even gone as far as to try to follow me when I leave, though they find trying to keep up with my driving a bit more than they bargained for.”

  I took in the room around us again and recognized just how many strange signals my instincts were picking up. While they were safe here, any one of these creatures might be dangerous outside the sanctuary of the bar. It occurred to me how dangerous a job like this must be to a normal person like Darcy. “Well, let me know if you need an escort when you leave. My job is kind of to deal with people like that.”

  She looked at me with a new appreciation, as if trying to size up exactly how much protection a guy like me could provide. “What are you, some kind of cop?”

  “No, like you, I'm freelance. When 'odd' people start to cause trouble, I track them down.”

  Darcy's eyes lit up with understanding. “And you use Maura as a source of information, don't you? I know she's very connected with certain undergrounds.”

  I was trying to pick my words carefully. Darcy seemed to have some appreciation for the fact that there was more going on beneath the surface than you would get at first glance, but at the same time she seemed unaware of the world of the supernatural. I didn't want to say anything that made me look crazy, or worse, put her in danger. “She's a source, yeah. An expensive one.”

  “That's Maura for you, always thinking with her purse-strings first. But she's a good person, deep down, and if she trusts you, so do I. Your job sounds interesting, by the way. Care to tell me more?”

  I gave her the gist of what I did without mentioning the words 'Succubus,' 'supernatural,' or 'Hunting.” The job ended up sounding sort of like private detective work, which, in way, it was. I would find a crime, follow the clues, and eventually those clues would lead me to a culprit. Except in this case, the culprit was often an immortal monster and the only way to deal with them was with an ancient artifact I didn't fully understand.

  In exchange, she told me a bit about what she did, though she was vague on the details of what qualified as the 'unusual' objects that would require her services for delivery, I learned that she was in quite high demand, not just from those who worked with the 'odder' end of society like Maura, but also politicians and celebrities who just didn't trust the regular services with their sensitive items.

  “My route takes me all over. One day I'll be in the slums, doing a series of secret knocks on the doors of buildings that look abandoned to get shadowy figures to crack it open enough for me to slip the package inside, the next I'll be in an uptown high-rise, being waited on by an overly proper butler while some business mogul finishes a call with his Chinese investors. Never know what I'm going to see when my day starts.”

  “Our job are similar, then.” I thought of all the strange, sometimes wonderful and sometimes awful things I had seen since first coming to the city. “Although I really only come to the city for work. These days I'm living on an estate in Vermont.”

  “That's quite the commute.”

  I unconsciously fiddled with the wristlet tied around my neck. “I know how to make the time pass quickly.”

  She waited for the bartender to refill her drink before leaning back toward me to continue. “So what work brings you to the city this time?”

  An image of the bloody bag full of human meat came to my mind and caused me to shudder. “You're probably best off not knowing.”

  “Try me.”

  “Well let's just say it involves … tracking down some bodies.” I hoped she would leave it at that.

  She didn't. “Any specific bodies? Like I said, my route takes me all over, that includes stumbling across the occasional crime scene. I mean, it's New York City. It's an odd week when I don't come across police tape at least once.”

  It wasn't the worst point, despite my reservations about bringing another civilian into it. There was probably no harm in asking her to just keep an eye out for something she may encounter anyway. “I don't have identities for the victims, but … basically I'm looking for bodies with large chunks of meat torn out of them, as if some wild animal clawed out a large slab to take back to their lairs.”

  Darcy's face paled. “Oh. That's … disturbing.”

  “I tried to warn you.”

  She drained the last of her cup and rose from her seat. “I should get moving. More deliveries to make, more payments to take. But I'll keep an eye out for you. If I find something, I'll contact Maura. I assume she knows how to get in touch with you. Nice meeting you, Kurt.”

  As she walked away, she paused and turned back to me. “I actually hope I don't find anything.”

  I felt the chill in the air between us. “Yeah, me too.”

  With that, she left. I sighed and turned my attention back to the bartender to order another drink.

  I had the feeling I would need it.

  3

  “This one here? This phrasing seem familiar?” Eve handed the newspaper she had been reading across the table to Sara.

  Sara quickly glanced the article that was pointed out to her. “Oh, yes! This one is just like the other one—where is it—the one from the Gazette we just read. I'm sure it is around here somewhere.”

  I silently sipped my morning coffee while the two women worked. Usually I would be digging through the massive pile of newspapers with them, finding articles of missing persons and unexplained phenomenon, but I slept in, and by the time I made it to the table the two of them were already deep in the work. Plus, it was nice to have a lazy morning with time to savor the expensive coffee beans that Lyanne buys.

  Sara dug through the pile of newspaper clippings arranged in a chaotic pattern around her until she found the one she was looking for. Sara was a human, completely mortal, but she possessed the remarkable ability to research and make connections between pieces of seemingly unrelated data, which she had put to use helping me locate Succubi ever since I rescued her from her Incubus boyfriend. She technically still lived in the city, but she was here so often in her role of researcher that she had her own bed.

  When she wasn't sharing mine, anyway. Sara was a bit on the bookish side, but in a hot-librarian kind of way. When she adjusted those thick glasses on her face to give you a look of desire, it was near impossible to resist.

  She put the articles side-by-side and scanned them. “Yeah, they're almost exactly the same, but two different victims.”

  Eve pulled the articles across to her. She was a Succubus I had cured, like Lyanne. She had joined me to fight her former master, the Succubus Tandi, and though she could have left any time after Tandi's destruction, she chose to stay here and continue to assist me in my quest.

  Or perhaps she just didn't want to leave me. Though she wasn't quite as frequent a guest in my bed as Lyanne or Sara, my time with Eve could be pretty … wild. If Lyanne's body was sculpted to represent beauty, Eve's had been crafted for sex, slender around the waist but plump and full in the right places for peak performance. And she knew how to use it.

  “This definitely bears looking into. What do you think, Kurt?”

  The articles were slid over toward me and I set down my now empty cup. They were both similarly worded articles about murder victims. The phrase “Body found floating in the water” was used as the first line of each. And both were found in similar areas. The rest of the details were sparse, the kind of boiler plate stuff you always see about the poli
ce not commenting on suspects or theories at this time.

  “Certainly weird,” I admitted. “But it could just be a coincidence. Bodies are always washing up in the city.”

  Sara was still digging through her pile of newspaper clippings, then she pulled another and held it up like it was the Holy Grail. “Two is coincidence, three is a pattern. Take a look.”

  The third article was more of the same: “Body found floating in the water,” same area, same sparse details. “Now that is interesting. I'll check it out.” I looked into my empty cup. “But I'm going to need more coffee if I'm going to have to deal with the morgue this early.”

  The clerk behind the desk at the front of the morgue was being difficult. The squat, unshaven man gave me a glassy-eyed stare after I failed, for the third time, to get through to him. “Dude, no one is allowed in the back with the bodies without a badge.”

  I put my face in my hands and tried, for the final time, to at least get the clerk to acknowledge my cover story. “I told you, I work for a life insurance company. I need to confirm for my paperwork the identity of one of these bodies to settle a claim. I'm well within my rights to examine the body, with supervision.”

  He looked me in the eyes and paused, and I felt I could hear the gears in his head turn as he tried to decipher the meaning in my words. Just as I thought I might be getting somewhere, he repeated, “Dude, no one is allowed in the back with the bodies without a badge.”

  I threw my hands up in the air in frustration. “Forget it.”

  Lyanne and I left the morgue, her looking even more frustrated than I was. “The fool was so high that my influence couldn't reach him.” Lyanne still possessed a sliver of the power she once wielded as a Succubus, and she often used it to charm men if they were in the way of my investigations. On occasion we would be reminded the limits of her power, such as now.

  She did not take it well. “If I still had my claws …”

  The morgue was attached to the side of Saint Mercer's General Hospital. It was a fairly small, unassuming building when compared to the grandiose exterior of the hospital proper. It seemed in the upper-class areas even the hospitals had to display proper levels of wealth, but no one wanted to think about death.