Incubus Moon (6 page)

“We haven’t much time,” a voice whispered.

I startled awake in my darkened bedroom to find those same twelve women gathered at the foot of my bed. The one nearest me could have passed for the sister I never had, so eerie was the resemblance. She was oddly reminiscent of the woman I’d seen as a child; the one standing in the shadows.

She smiled down at me now and rested a cool hand on my bare leg protruding from beneath the bed sheet. The contact sent an electric thrill rippling through me. “Do not worry. Your human cannot see or hear us.”

I turned to check on the young woman asleep next to me. We’d met at a club earlier that evening. She looked so peaceful lying there, the bangs of her brunette pixie cut stuck to her forehead, her face and exposed breasts still flush from our recent lovemaking.

“I’m here to warn you. You must not let her—”

The room exploded in a shower of blue-green crystalline light, the circle of twelve women vanishing under its brilliance only to be replaced now by something else. Something that brought with it a sudden drop in temperature and the putrid scent of rotting citrus.

I sat up in bed, my heartbeat a stampede in my chest, the fine hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. I remembered this smell, remembered the terrible presence that accompanied it.

My breath came in rapid vapor bursts as I watched an amorphous shape begin to coalesce at the far end of the room. Once the brilliant light had dimmed, the apparition glided toward me from within a dense mist through which I caught fleeting glimpses of an ivory arm or hand, a bare shoulder or hint of leg. It traversed the polished floor of what was no longer my modest bedroom but a colossal temple structure. Only after it had come to a stop at my side of the bed did I realize that the shape beneath the shifting mantle was female.

The being radiated great power. It lashed across the surface of my shivering skin. It was a wonder that the woman sleeping next to me hadn’t been roused by it.

“Humans are easily influenced, are they not?” The female voice was mocking.

“What do you want from me?”

“Such things are not yet yours to know, child.” Wasn’t that what the entity at Joy’s had called me? “Trust that when the time is right, I shall come for you.”

Her vaporous form flickered, and then began to fade, along with the great temple behind it. The inexplicable cold that had settled over the room released its icy grip and the cloying scent of decomposing citrus grew fainter.

“Wait!” I called out after her. I had to know. “Are you my mother?”

In her wake came the soft, thin echo of feminine laughter.

CHAPTER 7

The bizarre and frightening world that touched me in dreams was spilling over into my waking hours. I was screwing up at work. How on earth was I supposed to concentrate on the more mundane aspects of life when all I could think about was storming the cotton gin or reliving the nighttime visits of those twelve, white-haired women, not to mention my most recent encounter with the Queen of the Damned?

Mark and Christie weren’t blind to the changes in my behavior, either.

On our last couple of get-togethers, I’d been jumpy and unfocused. Were these missed opportunities to come clean regarding my close encounter of the spookiest kind, or that I’d become something other than human?
Riiiight
. Mark would horselaugh me into tomorrow while Christie quietly excused herself to book me an extended stay in some cozy mental hospital. The less the Golds knew, I’d decided, the better for everyone.

Hell, it wasn’t as if I even knew that much about what was happening to me!

Then I finally caught a break.

The Monrovia house sold.

In sixty days, it would be gone forever.

Part of my heart would definitely ache to see it go. Beyond residual hurt and anger, or the strange occurrences that had happened to me there, I’d grown up in that house and made what I believed to be real and wonderful memories with Laura behind its walls. Now, another family would soon call it home, one who would, I hoped, create new memories there for themselves built on a foundation of trust and honesty.

As for my own new life, the only time I didn’t feel unsettled or like knocking back a drink or six was when I was seducing would-be bed partners.

It also seemed pointless to continue a search for a birth mother who almost certainly wasn’t human. Where did one begin to look for a genuine succubus? The pages of a Brothers Grimm fairytale? Even more unsettling was what the creepy woman in the mist had revealed to me the other night. “Trust that when the time is right, I shall come for you.”

The entity at Joy’s failed to mention whether the
Shadow Walker
was male or female. Maybe this creature was the Big Bad I was told would be gunning for me? The entity also claimed that more of
its
kind would soon discover what I was and hunt me down.

Was it any small wonder that I couldn’t focus on real life stuff?

Of course, there was still one other plausible explanation for all the weirdness making up my life for the past few months: I’d gone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.

I startled at the ringing of my apartment phone. It was after midnight. Who’d be calling me at this late hour? Tempted to let the answering machine get it, I picked up on the fourth ring.

“Hello?”

“I look for Austin Iverson.”

The static on the line made it difficult to hear the caller. “Who is this?”

“Riccardo, the
cugino
of
tua
mamma, from Italy.” Unmistakably Italian from his heavy, sing-song accent, I was unaware that Laura had a cousin by that name. “
É urgente che ti parlo
.”

“How did you get this number?” I was unlisted.

“Zia Lucia give to me.” Lucia was Laura’s sister. “I—I sorry for my bad English. But I have the information of which you seek…”

“You’re doing fine, Riccardo.” I was fluent in Italian, but for some reason I didn’t want him to know that. “How can I help you?”

“Is about…
la tua adozione
.” Okay. He now had my full attention. “I want to help you, but we must to be very careful. No one can know what we do.” A moment of protracted silence ensued. “There are those who will not want you to discover
la verità
. You understand?”

Not really. And so much for accepting the bizarre in my life and moving on with it.

By the end of the call, and against my better judgment, I agreed to meet up with Riccardo in Rome in the coming weeks. Once I knew where I was staying, I’d leave my hotel info on the cell phone number he’d provided. Cryptic enough?

CHAPTER 8

I leaned forward in my seat to peer through the oval window at the thick mantle of coppery cloud cover beneath us. We were in a race with twilight to reach the Eternal City and a man I didn’t know existed until a few short weeks ago. Cousin Riccardo alleged to have vital information regarding my adoption and had sworn me to absolute secrecy with respect to our meeting. I was not to mention a word about him to the other members of Laura’s family. Apparently, he owed some of them money. Not a promising sign.

Desperate for the smallest breadcrumb, I agreed to his terms.

However, I couldn’t help but wonder if he knew that incubi existed, or might even be one himself? Guess I’d find out soon enough.

Mark peered around the other side of his wife. “Doin’ okay there?”

I nodded. “Excited and nervous.”

“Who wouldn’t be?” Christie said.

From the moment they’d learned about my chance to uncover significant information about my adoption, they’d insisted on coming with me. My knee-jerk reaction had been to tell them no way, which didn’t go over well with either of them—especially Mark.

What if meeting Cousin Riccardo exposed what I’d become? More importantly, what if this encounter turned out to be a trap, mystical or otherwise? How could I ensure their safety? I was an incubus, not the Man of Steel.

So I came up with a plan that satisfied most of my concerns. The basis of this plan was that I wasn’t going to let Mark and Christie get anywhere near Riccardo. I’d also decided that revealing the truth about myself to the Golds was pointless. I couldn’t begin explain how this
condition
had befallen me. None of my internet research thus far had answered that very basic yet titanic question. There were no web-related accounts of Joe Human waking up one morning to discover that he’d become a sex demon.

So what ended up tipping the scales in favor of my letting Mark and Christie come along with me? An unexpected phone call from Psychic Joy.

“My son told me you called.” Her tone was guarded.

“For two straight months! Joy, I’ve been worried sick about you.”

“I’m doing…better.” The strain in her voice belied her words. “Look, Austin, I don’t know how to say this any other way, so I’m just gonna say it. You’re dangerous. To me and others like me. After you left my house that day, my guides came to me. They warned me that you’re a conduit; a channel for bringing evil into the world.” The harshness of her remark floored me. Joy Ebersole wasn’t a cruel person by nature, at least I hadn’t thought she was. “That’s why I can never see or speak to you again. You’ve opened a door no one else can close, and I have a family to think about. You get that, right?”

“That I’m a gateway to badness?” To say that my feelings were a little chaffed was an understatement. “Even if it’s true, it’s not my fault, Joy. I didn’t ask for this.”

“It doesn’t matter. The damage has been done.”

I’d sensed she was about to hang up. “Please, just answer me one last question and I swear I’ll never bother you again.”

She gave a weary sigh, which I took to mean that she was waiting for me to continue.

“Am I a danger to
everyone
around me?”

“Psychics, primarily…and to yourself.” After another long pause, she added, “Evil is coming, Austin, and it’s targeting you.” This was followed by a click and a dial tone.

After the initial shock of her call had worn off, a deep-seated anger boiled to the surface. I wasn’t a conduit for evil, and I sure as hell didn’t deserve to be treated that way by someone I’d grown to care about, or anyone for that matter. Weirdness had entered my life, okay, but that didn’t make me the fucking Anti Christ.

Screw Joy Ebersole and her insensitivity! I was going to live my life to the fullest, which included spending as much time as possible with the two people I loved most in this world.

I’d launched the hand-held receiver across the living room just as a modest tremor shook the floor and walls of my apartment. Guess I wasn’t the only one pissed off. The San Andreas fault had been in a shitty mood, too.

“What gets me,” Christie said from her seat across the aisle, her voice re-anchoring me in the present, “is how much you look like your dad. Laura showed me dozens of pictures of him over the years. He was basically you with black hair.”

Mark nodded. “I’m with the wifey on this one.”

Joshua Iverson and I did share a striking resemblance. Too striking for it to be mere coincidence. “Then why fake a birth certificate and stash it away at the bottom of a jewelry case?”

Mark shrugged. “It’s bizarre, I’ll give you that. But if the adoption was legit, it seems more likely that Joshua was your biological dad, and that, for whatever reason, he gave you up for adoption.”

“To his own wife?” Christie countered. “That makes no sense.”

“True. And there’s also the matter of the Iverson Family Trust, of which you’re the sole beneficiary. The house in Monrovia belonged to your dad’s family, Austin. All of this provable stuff. What about your neighbors?” he pressed. “They might be able to tell you—”

“Not to sound callous,” Christie interrupted him, “but I’m looking at this thing from an entirely different perspective.” Her blue eyes filled with excitement as she looked back at me. “It’s an adventure! A mystery to solve. I swear, Jean’s timing couldn’t have been better.”

At last, an opportunity to change subjects.

I didn’t want to dwell on my meeting with Riccardo, Joy’s upsetting telephone call, or my dubious ancestry anymore. “Tell me all about the new restaurant job.”

“Delays are usually problematic,” Mark was quick to point out. Their latest client had put the five-star restaurant project on hold for a couple of weeks while he attended to pressing business in his native France. “But he did ink the deal with MaGo right before he left.”

“Can you believe it?” Christie said. “I feel like we won the Lotto!”

“We beat out some major firms in L.A., too. Not to mention New York and Chicago.”

“I can totally believe it. You guys are amazing and deserve this break.”

My best friend had started up MaGo Design Studio shortly after college. The name evolved from using the first two letters of his given and last names, which meant magician in Italian. It appealed to his Italian roots and self-image as a gifted conjurer in the art of building design. After they got married, Christie came aboard as MaGo’s chief interior designer.

“You know we haven’t been back to Rome since our honeymoon,” she said.