Rachel Vincent - With All My Soul

For her, it was understandably traumatic, and the more of the truth she heard, the worse that would get.

“Beck was an incubus,” Emma said. “That’s basically a sex demon.”

“A sex demon? ” Traci stared at the coffee table like it might contain a translation of that phrase that was easier to stomach. “I had...” She swallowed thickly. “With a demon?”

“Actually, an incubus is just one of several kinds of psychic parasites. This kind happens to feed on...desire.”

“Lust,” Emma corrected, her voice sharp enough to sting. “Don’t sugarcoat it. She needs to know what really happened.” Em turned to her sister. “He came here that night looking for us, and he found you instead.”

“Why would he be looking for you here?” Traci’s frown deepened. “Who are you?”

Emma groaned, frustrated by the reminder that her own sister still didn’t recognize her. “Who I am doesn’t matter. The point is that he was mad that we stood him up, and he took that out on you, and I’m so sorry. He raped you, Traci.”

“No...” She shook her head, confusion momentarily overridden by denial that bruised me all the way to my soul. “I wanted to....”

“You didn’t have any choice,” Harmony said softly, and I could have hugged her for stepping in. Em and I...we were in over our heads. I didn’t know how to explain the truth to Traci without further upsetting her. “He made you want to. It’s as much a violation of your will as of your body. There’s nothing you could have done any differently.”

“No.” She shook her head again and swiped tears from her cheeks in one determined motion. “That’s not how it happened. I—”

“Traci.” Emma reached for her hand, but her sister pulled away from the touch she didn’t recognize, and my heart ached for Em. “Under what other circumstance would you have opened the door for a perfect stranger, then invited him straight to your bed?” Fresh tears swelled in Traci’s eyes, and her sister continued, “The only difference between Mr. Beck and half the men in prison for assault right now is that he violated you on multiple levels. Which makes me wish Kaylee could kill him all over again. And that I could help this time.”

Traci stared at the floor, her gaze unfocused, one hand still spread over her stomach. I wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. Or how well she was handling what she’d already heard.

Hell, I wasn’t sure how well I was handling it.

“So the baby...?”

“Your baby is almost certainly an incubus,” Harmony said. “So we need to discuss the best way for you to...survive.”

Traci blinked, then frowned, and my heart ached as I watched her struggle to bring Harmony into focus through pain, confusion, and the Netherworld contaminate in her system. “Why wouldn’t I survive?”

“Because incubus babies are notoriously hard for human women to carry. They...” Harmony only hesitated for a moment, but I could see how much she dreaded speaking the necessary truth. “Well, they drain their mothers, from the inside out.”

Em set her soda on the coffee table and ran one hand through her hair. She seemed surprised when there was less hair than she remembered. “Then, when they’re born— if they’re born—they have no soul of their own, and if there isn’t one ready for the baby, it’ll take the mother’s soul. Unless she’s human.”

“Even if she’s human,” Harmony clarified, to my horror and confusion. “A human soul can’t support an incubus baby for long, but that’s no help to a mother who’s already passed away for want of a soul by the time her baby dies. Usually the father spends most of the gestational period hunting for a non-human soul for his child, but in this case, there’s no father.”

“May he rot in hell for all of eternity,” Em added.

“I don’t...” Traci shook her head, like she was trying to clear cobwebs from her mind. “That’s a lot of information about something I’m not sure I understand.” She glanced from one to the other of us in mounting fear. “What does all that mean?”

Harmony exhaled slowly. “It means that if you manage to carry the baby to term and deliver it, at birth he will take your soul, which will kill you. Then, when your soul fails to support him long-term, the baby will die anyway.”

Em met her sister’s gaze with a wide-eyed, urgent one of her own. “So, basically, the only way for you to survive an incubus pregnancy is for your baby...not to.”

Traci nodded. Then she stared at her hands, sitting idly in her lap, obviously thinking. Hard. When she finally looked up, I was impressed by how calm she seemed, and I wondered how much of that was because of what Harmony had put in her drink. “So, what are the chances that the baby is actually an incubus? I mean, I’m human, so the baby could be human, too, right?”

I nodded, but Harmony shook her head. “Traci, hon, your baby is an incubus. I can tell that from looking at you. At how sick you are. You’re sick because your baby is sharing your soul at the moment, just like it’s sharing your blood and everything you eat. All of that puts a huge strain on you, and, frankly, you’re older than anyone I’ve heard of who’s successfully delivered an incubus.”

“But I’m only twenty-two.”

“The younger, the better. Evidently,” I said. Which was why Beck had posed as a high school math teacher—for virtually limitless access to underage girls. The bastard.

“Okay.” Traci took a deep breath and stared at her hands. Then she took another deep breath and looked up, her mouth set in a firm line. “I’m not ending my pregnancy—I don’t care what kind of baby I’m carrying. I don’t care who or what his father was. I care that this baby is mine and I want him. So...what do we do?”

Harmony frowned, and I recognized the worry lines in the center of her forehead—the only sign that she might be older than the thirty-year-old she looked like. She got those same lines every time she saw Nash and Sabine together.

Emma exhaled heavily. “Trace, you’re not thinking this through. If you try to have this baby, you’re going to die. That’s, like, ninety-nine percent certain. You can’t do that to Mom and Cara. Not after the funeral.”

“Who are you?” Traci’s eyes flashed with anger, and in that moment she looked so much like Emma—the old Emma—that I caught my breath. “I don’t even know you!”

Em’s eyes filled with tears again. “Traci. It’s me.” She waited, searching her sister’s face for some sign of recognition, and when she found none, she turned to me, heartbreak drawn in every feature on her face. “I thought she’d be able to see it, at least in my eyes.”

I got up to sit on the arm of Emma’s chair so I could put one arm around her, hating how helpless I felt in the face of her pain. “Traci, this is Emma. Your sister. She didn’t really die. Well, she did. But...it’s complicated, and now she has a new body.”

Somehow, even as the words fell out of my mouth, that part sounded much less believable than, “Hey, Traci, you’ve inadvertently taken on the role of human incubator for a demon’s spawn.”

Traci blinked at me. Then her gaze hardened. “What is wrong with you? My sister—your best friend— just died, and I don’t care whether you can make yourself disappear, or run at the speed of light, or fly to China with no airplane, it is never going to be okay for you to joke about that.”

“It’s true,” Harmony said. “There was an...accident. I’d appreciate it if you don’t make us explain every little detail, because it’s complicated, and we don’t have all night. What you really need to know is that this is Emma. Your sister. Her death has been just as hard on her as it has been on you and your mom and sister.”