Page 121 of Succubus

CHAPTER 40

I’m in a gray current, drifting, submerged. I don’t need to breathe anymore.

Joel is next to me, he’s right there; I’m aware of his thick body, the comfort of him. He’s saying my name. He sounds upset. I want him to touch me. He isn’t touching me.

I smell loamy pine and dark earth.

My eyes open themselves, and at first there’s only a blur, like paint being swirled by a brush. And then towering evergreen trees emerge into my vision—the interplay of twilight sky with branches and the delicate fans of needles. The colors aren’t quite right. Everything is suffused with light like dawn, the trunks of the trees glowing. And it’s warm. A summer evening.

Where are we? I think, but I can’t speak. I can’t even locate my mouth in order to open it. My body is no longer responsive, no longer quite mine, except for my eyes.

If this is death, it’s definitely odd.

But not the worst.

But then Joel is also dead.

Unless this is just some spectral version of him. In which case—impressive re-creation. And also, why isn’t he touching me?

I’m probably not dead. Which is sort of astounding.

“You have extinguished my lover,” says a soft voice that takes the place of the air, that is the same as the light.

And then there she is. I can’t tell if I’ve managed to change my position somehow or if she has materialized. Maybe the whole earth has rearranged itself a little, just to accommodate her.

She is exquisitely beautiful, a very young woman of indescribable size—all warmth, glowing dusky skin with gold and auburn and walnut tones. Eyes so dark they appear pure black. Soft black masses of hair with hints of green and blue and gold that lift away from her face, spilling out and up as though she is underwater, as though she is a mermaid.

I thought she was standing, in a cascading green waterfall of a gown that frothed around her feet, but now she’s sitting, cradling my father’s body on a long, flat boulder that looks like a throne. He’s draped over her, much larger, for the moment, than she is, but she holds him easily. He seems undamaged, unmarked. He’s dressed only in a white cloth that winds around his waist. His head lolls back, his arm has drifted down, the sculpted muscles in repose. He is different again, exceptionally beautiful himself now. He has gotten bigger, younger, more saturated in color, his features vivid and lush.

She looks up at us for the first time, and I feel Joel fall still under her gaze. For some reason, I haven’t been able to look at him since she appeared. I wonder if he, like me, is no longer able to speak.

“You weakened him. . . .” She uses a word, like Al first did, for what Joel is. “He died because of you.” There is no distinguishable anger in her voice. There is no voice in her voice, really. It’s too many other things. It steeps the trees, it fills my body.

The violent beam of her gaze slams into me. “And you. His offspring.”

Now Dick Face, the beautiful almost immortal, is lying alone on the rock, and she is standing in front of it, on the ground, closer to us. Pine needles lift in vague, twirling columns on either side of her. The rich, wild scent of sap and sunbaked bark and cold water rushes ahead of her. Her beauty is too much, it’s a flood that has just broken through its dam. And then she changes, and now she’s very old and wearing trailing white, her hair a translucent fizz in the air above her, her face a mass of wrinkles. Danger and peace wrestle around her; there is too much knowledge in her eyes.

“Daughter of my lover,” she breathes. I realize abruptly that there are other words underneath her words, shadow languages just inside and around her speech. I can’t quite hear them, but I also know they aren’t all exactly human. “Bearer of the curse I placed on his seed.” She reaches out, her fingers knotted, bony, her skin folded silk, her nails curving and yellowed. She touches my forehead.

I think that now I will surely die. I will erupt. I will liquefy, disintegrate. But she wrenches her hand back as though shocked. Her eyes are black holes, gulping matter, devouring light.

Is she angry? Disgusted?

“Hmm,” she whispers. “I see what I have done. So much pain. I can end it quickly.”

Her hand shoots out. There’s no time to react.

I gasp. Fire gushes into my lungs. I’m burning from the inside. I’m being incinerated. My hands open wide, each finger a tunnel of searing pain. My bones are flaming poles. I think I’m screaming, but it’s only a small thought in a raging plane of red and dark.

When I thrash back up to consciousness, Joel is holding me. He is crushing me against his chest—all I can smell is him, his sweat and warmth and blood. He is yelling at the goddess (I think she must be a goddess).

She is laughing.

“Joel,” I choke out. My voice works! I can speak! More than that, I can move. My muscles have breath in them.

“Angel,” the goddess says, except in that other language, still bubbling with laughter, “you would not be able to touch your love if I hadn’t already cured her and accepted your offer. Have you forgotten that your touch would otherwise be poison to her?”

Cured, I think. Cured. I can’t make sense of it.