Page 6 of The Prospect's Succubus
Nothing. The predator was gone. I was too late.
I left the House of Mirrors fast, shoving past a pair of giggling idiots who didn’t notice the corpse three feet away. Outside, the air felt cold as a morgue. I scanned the carnival, looking for any sign of the succubus, any sign of the hunt.
All I got was the scent—fresh, metallic, seductive. She was still here, somewhere.
I moved toward the next cluster of rides, adrenaline humming under my skin. My hand hovered over the gun, my mind locked in.
If she wanted a dance, I was ready. Hell doesn’t let you out for free, and I wasn’t about to let it take another soul without a fight.
If you’ve ever walked the midway after dark, you know that the further you get from the lights, the more the tents look like mausoleums, cloth stretched over wood, all shudders and whispers. The Ten-in-One sideshow was set up in a forgotten corner, a striped circus funeral draped in faded banners. The acts were a throwback of sword swallowers, fire eaters, human pincushions, and the bearded lady, pride of Carlisle. She was out front, working the crowd with a patter honed by decades of knowing no one really believed her story. Her beard was a gorgeous thing, black and oiled and braided with tiny red ribbons. The rest of her was denim overalls, a too-tight tee, and a tattoo sleeve of winged skulls that wouldn’t have been out of place at my own clubhouse.
I didn’t slow as I passed, but she caught my eyes, and for a split second, I saw it, recognition, deep and immediate. Not of me, specifically, but of what I was. Her eyes went from professional boredom to pure animal alertness. I saw her nostrils flare, and she ran a thick finger over the braid, as if to check it was still there.
“Hey, soldier,” she called, voice low and private, for me alone. “Don’t go stirring up ghosts if you ain’t got a shovel.”
I paused, just long enough to give her a nod, then moved on. If you survive the underworld, you pick up the knack for spotting fellow escapees. The way she ducked her head and vanished back into the tent said she’d seen enough of Hell to recognize it on someone else. It didn’t reassure me. If anything, it made the air colder.
The ghost train was near the far end, across from a row of ring tosses and an inflatable slide that looked like it’d collapse if you breathed hard enough. The queue was longer than any ride here. There were teenagers, mostly, and a few parents pretending to be brave for their kids. I took up a spot by a battered metal support column, one leg cocked casual, scanning the entire loading platform.
The scars on my arms burned, subtle at first, but growing sharper as I stood there. The demonic energy in the air was so thick it could be sliced. Every so often, a cold wave would run up my spine, like someone dragging an icicle along my vertebrae.
I watched the crowd, looking for patterns. At first, it seemed random, but the closer I looked, the more it felt rigged. People bunched together in some spots, but in others the line thinned out to nothing, as if invisible hands were sculpting the flow.
On the loading platform, a carny in a skeleton suit manned the controls, face hidden behind a cheap plastic mask. He kept glancing over his shoulder, then at the empty air above the ride, as if expecting something to drop out of the sky. That’s another sign. When the men paid to pretend to be scary start acting nervous, you know it’s not an act anymore.
My back was against solid steel, clear lanes to either side, and the gun sat ready in the holster under my jacket. The silvered knife rode low behind my hip, easy to draw. I didn’t bother with a radio; Vin and the others were standing by, but this was a solo job until proven otherwise.
The sky above was black, but every so often the clouds would pulse with electric blue, maybe lightning, maybe something less explainable. The air was so charged I felt my hair prick up under the cut. The smell of burnt metal, and something sweeter, almost cloying. Lust and death. The signature of a succubus in heat.
I flexed my left hand, watching the veins stand out against the skin. The tattooed sigils shimmered, visible even throughthe fabric. A couple of kids drifted too close and immediately detoured, their instincts better than their brains. I watched them go, then turned my attention back to the queue.
The pattern was shifting again. Instead of random, the line was now almost perfectly spaced—one couple, then a pair of teens, then a solo parent, repeat. Like a predator was pacing itself, picking off every third mark and letting the rest move through as bait.
The hairs on the back of my neck snapped to attention. The last time I’d felt this, I was stationed outside Fallujah, waiting for a mortar strike that never quite came. The anticipation was worse than the explosion.
I scanned the crowd, looking for any face that lingered too long or any shadow that moved against the lights. The only thing out of place was me, and the bearded lady’s eyes, watching from the slit in her tent flap. She mouthed something, maybe a prayer, maybe a curse, and vanished.
The line for the ghost train inched forward. The carny waved them on, two at a time, always keeping an odd seat open in the back car. I watched as the riders loaded in. There was laughter at first, then screams, but the screams were too real, too close to the edge. When the cars returned, the riders staggered off, glassy-eyed and shivering, the way people look after a trauma they don’t remember.
The breeze shifted, and with it, the cold. The taste of blood on my tongue, the memory of flame behind my eyes. I blinked it away, did a quick head count, then fixed my stare on the loading bay.
That’s when I saw it. A flicker of movement just at the edge of the crowd, too graceful to be human. For half a second, I caught a flash of dark hair and the arc of a jawline that didn’t belong in this world. She was moving through the people, not touchinganyone, but every head turned to watch her pass, even if they didn’t realize they’d done it.
My heart thudded, once, hard enough to make my vision pulse. The scars on my arms went nova, blue-white fire licking beneath the skin. I pushed off the support beam, every sense focused, ready.
She wore black, always black, but it wasn’t the color that caught the eye so much as the way it clung to her. Every line telegraphed the confidence of someone who’d never once considered losing. Her legs were bare even in the October cold, skin flawless as a crime scene, and her hair, long and dark and gleaming, spilled over her shoulders like an invitation to a very private execution.
She walked slow, every step measured, every sway of her hips a calculated distraction. But the thing that ruined me wasn’t the body. It was the face. Her features were both familiar and impossible, heart-shaped and severe, and her eyes—Jesus, those eyes—flared red, then violet, then red again as she passed beneath the LED lighting. My dick twitched and then stood at attention. I wanted to fuck her as much as I wanted to kill her. That was the intention of every succubus.
My hand snapped to my side, knuckles white around the grip of the 1911. I held steady, didn’t draw, but my pulse was pounding loud enough that I was sure the nearest three people could hear it.
She glanced up, met my stare, and smiled. It was a small thing, a private joke for the damned. I’d seen that smile on faces in nightmares, right before they started talking in my voice.
The scars on my forearms flared, blue-white, hot enough to make me sweat. I dug my feet in, forced my breath slow and deep. Instinct screamed at me to shoot first, but something heavier, colder, told me to wait.
She closed the distance, not in a rush. The crowd bent around her, parting like water, not a single person daring to brush her sleeve. Her perfume reached me before she did, a blast of myrrh and burnt sugar, with an undertow of smoke. I recognized it from the coroner’s reports.
She stopped dead in front of me, not quite close enough to touch.
