Page 116 of Succubus

CHAPTER 38

He looks completely different.

Or maybe not completely—some essence has been preserved, some shrewdness in his eyes, some relationship between his features, the underlying geometry of his limbs. But he is bigger, he is younger, impossibly. Or maybe he looks ageless rather than young. He is bright with health, his skin taut, his muscles pronounced. It’s not just a great personal trainer and a bunch of supplements and Botox and his plant-based diet. That much is obvious. It’s something infinitely stranger than all that. It’s something infinite.

“You look like shit,” he says, frowning, leaning away from me even though he isn’t close.

He feels too close anyway; cold air from outside seems to swirl in after him, as though it has followed him up the stairs. He’s filling up my room, aggressively golden, like a gaudy, overpriced statue some art dealer delivered to the wrong address. I feel I should be better looking, by virtue of being related to him.

“Are you sick?” He squints suspiciously. “Are you dying?” He is faintly horrified. Not for me, clearly. But for what this might mean. And maybe just at being in the presence of decrepitude and decay.

I listen, waiting for other feet on the stairs, for someone to burst in and confront him. But the house is quiet.

“What did you do to them?” I ask, my voice a broken instrument that hardly sounds.

“Hmm?” He looks irritated. He runs a hand over his glossy mane of hair, checking it. “I knew the—what are we calling it? The pain demon? I knew the pain demon would fail.” He swears in his other, unidentifiable language. “He’s too emotional. He always gets attached. Pathetic little twat. Like a woman! I wanted the fire one. That’s the good one. If I could remember the goddamn ritual— ” He interrupts himself: “Now I have to kill the asshole myself.”

For a second I think he means Al, which doesn’t make sense, or the fire demon, but then I realize he means Joel, of course.

He cracks his knuckles theatrically. “Good timing, though, right? I’m back!” He swings his arms lazily, ending the gesture with hands spread in mocking victory.

I stare at him.

“How do you like me now?” He grins and his teeth seem painfully white. Or maybe it’s my eyes that hurt. “Better than before, huh? That fallow shit is the worst. About fucking time, too. Was getting bored out of my mind. I felt like a worm, hiding underground, feeling all sorry for myself. Like one of the little normie suckers. . . .”

“What did you do to them?” I whisper, sitting up now. My head throbs savagely.

“What? Oh, the ladies downstairs? I just put them on hold. They’re fine. Don’t freak out. You’ll have a heart attack or something.” He does a brusque bug-flicking gesture toward my chest.

I close my eyes briefly, trying to orient myself in my own body, in this bizarre, dire moment.

“Before you die you need to tell me where he is.” He does lean forward now, and his voice drops into a demanding but pleasingly resonant thrum as he says, “Where is the hunter?”

I shake my head.

“Why are you shaking your head?” he growls. “You don’t know? You must know. You said you know who it is. And he did this.” He waves dismissively over my sickbed, over me. “You’re already dying.” For a second, he looks almost sorry about that. But sorry isn’t right. Disappointed is closer.

“You lasted a while,” he says. “I thought you had a chance. Not a big chance. But a chance.” He tsks.

“I don’t know where he is,” I whisper.

There is a brief silence as Dick Face crosses his arms over his newly broad chest, which is displayed in a tight black T-shirt. No coat. He’s wearing black jeans that look somehow expensive. He squints. He looks like someone who might wear (designer) sunglasses inside. “Is there some reason why you don’t want me to find him, Stormy?”

“Not,” I whisper. “My. Name.”

“You want to kill him yourself. I get that. But you tried. You failed. Look at yourself.”

I don’t look at myself.

“He’s wily. He got the pain demon. It’s time to bring in the big guns.”

I think I see a flicker of uneasiness behind his eyes as he says this. He would rather not put himself in any kind of risk, even now.

“That wasn’t him,” I say with effort. “That was another angel. Joel isn’t going to kill anyone else.”

I know my error as soon as I make it. I swallow in an attempt to shove the words back down into nonexistence.

Dick Face cocks his head like a bird of prey, his eyes sharp. “Joel?” he says, honey voiced. “You’re on a first-name basis with the hunter now, huh? The guy who is killing us all. The guy who is killing you.” He raises his eyebrows, taps one bicep, arms still crossed in a power pose.