Faith Hunter - Host

Gramma, though not my idea of a sexually alluring female, was having an effect on Rupert, who watched from the porch; he was panting in fear and need. The beast saw me across ten yards of rutted snow. For a moment, scales slid over its skin like foam on the beach, the glamour of the old woman giving way to the true form beneath. It cackled, and when it spoke, it talked in Gramma’s voice. “Little mage. This child is mine to kill or save, yet her life is in your hands. A boon, and she will be set free.”

The last time I was this close to the succubus queen, it was newly born, only a month old, cocky and bragging with a teenager’s fragile ego, easy to manipulate. Now it looked deadly. The succubus pressed the edge of the blade against the girl’s throat. Cissy stared at me in horror, gasping. Her skin darkened at the touch of the demon-iron as the metal burned into living flesh.

Audric moved counterclockwise, placing his bare feet firmly with each step, his blades in the swan. This was the beast that had nearly killed him, the thing I had left him to fight alone. He still hadn’t told me about that fight. There were lots of secrets resting uneasily between us, unspoken. “The entrance to the hellhole was sealed,” he said. “How did it get out?”

I shook my head. I didn’t know. I moved clockwise, away from the shop, feet freezing.

“You bound it once,” Audric said softly, his face hard. “Can you use that?”

Gramma ignored him, eyes locked on mine. “Send a child of Mole Man to me and I will release her. My word. You may even choose the one you would sacrifice.”

“I don’t know,” I said just as softly. I wasn’t going to bet on it. The partial binding hadn’t held for long last time.

All succubi were dangerous, but the adolescent queen was doubly so. It could reason and make independent decisions, and it was capable of breeding other succubi. Once, it had taken orders from Forcas, the Power who lived on the Trine, but that beast had been burned in battle dire, meaning the big ugly sucker was the next best thing to dead. Its boss, the Dragon, was stuck between realities, but maybe the Dragon had found another beast willing to risk everything in return for a bit of Dragon power and appreciation. Unless things had changed, the Dragon’s freedom required Stanhope blood to finish the job.

As I watched, the creature seemed to grow, its form expanding, its glamour slipping and slithering across its body. The smell of sex-demon blossomed out, fetid and cloying. While not able to transmogrify—to restructure their energies into almost any physical body—powerful minions of the Dark often appeared physically attractive to humans. Not so this Darkness. Though once it had been able to assume and maintain the shape of its victims, it seemed to have lost that ability. Or maybe it felt it no longer needed camouflage. The queen was all about being a BBU, which could mean she would be bigger and badder and uglier in the future, as she matured. That was a scary thought.

Cissy straddled its thigh, her feet kicking, tendons in her neck straining as she tried to take the weight off her throat to breathe. To the succubus, I said, “Better deal. I kill you and no one gets handed over.” A thin rivulet of blood, near black in the scant light, rolled down Cissy’s throat, into her collar. The blade cauterized the wound even as it cut her.

“Call mage in dire,” Audric demanded as we circled the queen, feet icy in the snow.

“Can’t. Cissy isn’t close enough to death for me to summon seraphic warriors.”

“I say she is,” he said.

Uncertainty snaked through me. My breath puffed in tiny, rapid clouds. If I called mage in dire, every adult in town could die. When seraphs came to fight evil, humans died. Always.

Gramma smiled, drawing its lips back to reveal sharp teeth, jaw stretching forward, squaring off. I had seen this transformation before. It wasn’t pretty. The succubus drew its illusion back around itself like a cloak, smile narrowing and teeth reshaping into human-molar bluntness. But Cissy’s blood and burned skin were no illusion. She mewled like a kitten in the grip of a hawk. Gramma kissed the top of her head, snuggling her close. “Not to worry, poppet. It won’t hurt much. And not for long.”

“Cissy?”

It was Ciana, my stepchild, above and behind me, on the porch of Rupert’s loft. Gramma’s nostrils flared as she scent-searched, but her eyes never rose to the girl. Ciana possessed a pin with camouflage properties. She didn’t become invisible, exactly, but it did seem really hard for evil to find and focus on her.

“No seraphs,” I warned. I didn’t have to explain what could, what would, happen if she called the High Host for help. She had seen humans die in the presence of the holy ones. But I wasn’t sure we could save Cissy without help. The beast bulked larger as I watched. It had grown in power since I’d seen it last. I didn’t think I could use verbal ploys against it this time. “Not yet,” I added.

“All right,” the young girl said, sounding far calmer than I felt. Her trust in me had always been terrifying.

Use the binding, Audric had suggested. Okay. An icy wind blew against my body and I shivered in reaction. “You are mine,” I said to the beast, “bound to me. Let the child go.”

The thing that no longer resembled Gramma cocked its head, the movement human-slow. Its shoulders rose and fell, an almost pensive shift of muscles.

“Let the child go. You are mine. You must obey,” I said, drawing on the mage visa, the one function I had mastered, to instill my voice with command.

The glamour quivered across its features again, revealing patches of alabaster skin, blond hair, and one vivid eye in a mishmash of features, the beautiful Jane Hilton on one half, Gramma on the other. The new face, the face Lucas had left me for, looked startled, then astonished, and said, “You!” The lovely half snarled in anger and rippled, and the human visages vanished, leaving only succubus in its wake. The beast smiled, canines longer and razor sharp. Cissy fell silent. I wasn’t sure she was breathing.

I rushed it, blades flashing. It snapped back a dozen steps, demon-fast. “No, no, no, mageling.” A shield snapped open just in front of my toes, the energies throwing me back, feet burning like lightning. In mage-sight, the shield was an ocher-yellow dome seething with earth energies. It was a mage construct, which meant there were mages nearby, Dark mages, helping this beast. Whether willing or under compulsion, it was bad on all sorts of levels. “You constrained me once,” it said. “My master’s master freed me of your lowly incantation.”

My master’s master? Death and plagues. Is she talking about the Dragon? Audric and I circled the shield, reversing midway, back and forth. My socks stuck and pulled free of the ice beneath my aching feet with each careful step. Gramma sniffed, head raised, searching for a whiff of the Stanhope genetic strain, but was unable to locate Ciana. I looked around for Rupert or Ciana’s father—my ex-husband, Lucas—or Thaddeus Bartholomew, their cousin, all descendents of Mole Man. I would have prayed they’d all remain indoors, but I knew they wouldn’t. I knew they hadn’t. That would be too easy and men never made anything easy. The succubus’s eyes glowed brightly as it located prey off to my right. Seraph stones. What was I going to do?

From my angle, I could see Ciana standing on the high porch, her nightgown fluttering in the rising breeze. She was watching me, and in her hand was the pin gifted her by the seraph Raziel as protection from evil; it glowed a brilliant gold, as if she held a star in her fist, shielding her. The succubus was looking away from the girl and down, on street level, at Rupert.