Life in Shadows (19 page)

“Okey-dokey,”
Kevin smiled cheerfully. With that, he slipped past the two women and headed down
the hall to the elevator.

Shannon
blinked in shock.

“Ms.
Abrams... Shannon? May I call you Shannon?” asked the raven-haired woman. “We
must speak. Privately. May Rachel and I come in?”

“What...
who are you?”

“My name is
Lorelei,” the woman said. “My…companion is Rachel. You’ve already met. You had
a very strange episode yesterday afternoon. You almost certainly have
questions. We hope to provide answers.” She paused to let her words process.
“Shannon, we’re here to help.”

Shannon’s
eyes shifted from Lorelei to Rachel. The lovely young blonde rolled her eyes.
“We’re on a mission from God.”

Lorelei
winced, but held her response down to a soft, disgusted breath.

“Okay,
 
I’m
 
on a mission from God. She only came
along ‘cause I nag.”

Shannon’s
first instinct was to close and lock the door. Her natural reluctance to allow
strangers into her home reasserted itself. Who were these two women? She’d been
able to write Rachel off yesterday as just another Capitol Hill weirdo. Now the
blonde stood at her door with a composed, clearly sophisticated woman who
seemed to agree with her professed concern for Shannon. Kevin’s blithe
departure upon Lorelei’s prompting unsettled her, too.

She knew
she should slam the door, lock it, grab the baseball bat and the pepper spray
and call the cops. Uniformed, on-duty cops who hopefully wouldn’t walk right
off like Kevin had. She knew all of that.

She also
knew that she had never, ever met a woman this sexy. Lorelei wasn’t even
trying
.
She was calm, collected, businesslike and not at all flirtatious, and yet
Shannon found her breath deepening and felt herself lick her lips and shift her
posture, pushing her chest ever so slightly forward...

Shannon
tried to blink away her strange thoughts about Lorelei—and about Rachel, too.
The blonde was undeniably beautiful. But Shannon had never felt attracted to
women before. At least, not to this degree. Nothing more than curious wonder,
which she had always stepped on before it ran away with her. Perhaps, she might
admit only to herself, she was less than bothered by the girl/girl action in
her ex-boyfriend’s porn movies. But that was all just idle fantasy. Just an
appreciation of kink and female beauty...

Wasn’t it?

Lorelei’s
head tilted curiously. “Shannon,” she said, “have you caught yourself feeling
or acting... out of character at all?”

That was
more than Shannon could ignore. Her need for answers overrode her worries about
self-defense, but not every other concern that came to mind. “I’m not exactly
ready to, uh, entertain visitors just yet,” she said.

Lorelei
immediately held up her hand to the blonde without even turning around to her.
Rachel’s mouth had opened, but at Lorelei’s gesture it closed again without
comment. “You wish to get dressed, I imagine. I understand. We’ll wait out
here.”

“Two
minutes. Maybe three.” With that, Shannon shut the door and threw the deadbolt.

Lorelei
turned to a frowning Rachel. “Your one-liners would not get us through the door
to talk to her.”

Rachel
folded her arms over her chest. “Doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be funny,” she
pouted.

* * *

“...so I
started rescue breathing, or at least I was about to, but then I sort of passed
out,” Shannon explained. She sat in her plush living room chair—the one Kevin
had bent her over the night before—with a coffee mug in her hands. Blue jeans
and an old grey top had replaced her bathrobe. For all the comfort of the
chair, her posture wasn’t at all relaxed. “When I woke up, something like
fifteen or twenty minutes had gone by and there was this cop standing over me.
I’d never met him before.”

“That’s the
guy who just did the walk of shame,” said Rachel. She sat on the couch beside
Lorelei, directly across from Shannon’s chair.

Even the
way the two sat contrasted sharply. Rachel slumped back against the sofa
cushions without a care for ladylike manners. Lorelei exuded the sort of
practiced elegance that made perfect posture seem completely natural. There was
no prim and proper snobbishness to her, either. For all Lorelei’s masterful
etiquette, nothing she said or did put herself above anything in her
surroundings—except, of course, for the slight, disapproving frown she turned
on her companion.

“Ugh.
Yeah,” Shannon sighed, putting one hand to her face. “That’s about the size of
it, actually. I mean I only met him yesterday afternoon, and last night I
called him up and... and initiated everything,” she forced herself to admit.

“I take it
that is not ordinary for you?”

“No! Not at
all.”

“You should
consider that there is nothing wrong with taking the initiative,” Lorelei
noted, and once more held up a preemptive finger to Rachel’s inevitable remark.
“You work in a field commonly dominated by men. I’m already willing to guess
that you excel at your job. You know you are the equal of any man, certainly.
You live independently of family. Surely you don’t feel that it is a woman’s
place to wait on a man when it comes to dating? Or to sex?”

Shannon
blushed a bit at the last. “No. No, I know all that up here,” she answered,
pointing to her head. “But that doesn’t mean I’m comfortable taking the lead.
At least not usually. It felt totally natural last night, though.”

“I realize
this must be uncomfortable as a topic,” Lorelei prefaced gently. “I will not
pry for details, but... was there an unusual energy for you last night with
your companion?”

“Yes. I
mean I really do like him.”

“Not like
that,” sighed Rachel. “Did you bang him all night long? Screaming awesome sex,
literally all night, to the point that you should’ve both been broken husks?”
Lorelei winced, but Rachel paid it no mind. “Did you both get off over and over
without having to rest? And you both went at it beyond all ordinary sense,
didn’t you?”

Shannon
stared at the floor. She swallowed hard. “Yes.”

Rachel
threw a sour look at the woman beside her. “She’s a fuckin’ paramedic. She deals
with blood and guts and puke all the time. You don’t have to be so delicate.”

“Look, can
you just tell me what’s going on?” Shannon asked finally. “What’s wrong with
me?”

“Please
understand that we only suspect we know what has happened to you,” explained
Lorelei. “The details help us create a firmer explanation. Shannon, have you
seen any physical changes in yourself?”

“Yes. I
don’t know. I might be imagining it. But every time I’ve looked in the mirror
since I got home yesterday, it’s like I’ve gotten... prettier. Shapelier. I
mean I work out regularly and I’ve never thought I was ugly, but everything
looks different now. I haven’t weighed myself yet, but I’m sure I’ve lost a few
pounds, and I’ve toned up. My skin is smoother. Clothes feel like they fit
differently.”

“And have
you had any memories that seem out of place? Dreams? Visions?”

The answer
didn’t come right away. “Yeah, kind of. I had some dream last night about being
a princess, I think? Not like in a fairy tale, but historical. Something in
Europe. I’m not a history buff, so I couldn’t tell you when or where it was
supposed to be exactly, but it all looked medieval to me.” She noticed the
obvious interest in the eyes of her visitors. “I was pretty. I was all dolled
up. There was a party or something, we had guests, and I think I was supposed
to marry one of them. My father or whoever was arranging it. I wasn’t happy,
but I had a way out.”

“What did
you do?” Lorelei asked. Her tone hinted that she already knew the answer.

“I... I
snuck out of my room, and found my fiancé’s... staff? Bodyguards? I don’t know.
He was a prince or something, too, and he had an entourage. I met with them,
and I... I had sex with them. Several of them. We got caught, and it led to a
whole huge mess.” Shannon paused. “I think there was fighting. People died over
it. But not me.”

Lorelei
frowned. She turned her eyes to Rachel. “Serena,” she said.

Rachel
leaped out of her seat, looking as if she might shout out, “Touchdown!” until a
single, random glance at Shannon quickly clamped down on her elation. The
blonde’s fists had come up to shoulder level on their way to the sky, but now
they dropped back down and merely bounced together awkwardly. She bit her lip.
Rather than cheering or howling, Rachel sat back down and muttered, “I am such
a badass.”

“Shannon,
the woman who fell in front of your ambulance yesterday was named Serena,”
explained Lorelei. “I am fairly familiar with her. For a very long time, she
and I had a great deal in common, and none of it good.”

“...okay?”

“She was a
murderer and a manipulator. She destroyed lives at the bidding of others and
also for her own amusement, and she was wholly unrepentant. You should feel no
guilt or remorse for her fate.”

It hung in
the air for a long breath. Shannon asked, “You have all that in common with
her?”

“Not the
amusement. I am not wholly unrepentant.”

Shannon
swallowed hard. “Oh.” Her hand went to her coffee mug, which she now thought of
more as a weapon than a wake-up aid. “So what happened to her?”

“I punched
her bitch ass off the roof of that apartment building,” Rachel answered with no
small amount of pride.

“It is more
complicated than that,” cautioned Lorelei, seeing Shannon’s eyes widen and her
jaw clench. “This will only get more shocking, and I apologize for that,
Shannon,” she continued, “but there is unfortunately only one way to
effectively help you understand. Again, you are in no danger from us.”

“Uh-huh.”

“You may
want to put the coffee mug down.”

“I’m good,
thanks.”

“Very
well,” Lorelei said. And then she changed.

Shannon
hadn’t blinked. She was sure of that. But in exactly that amount of time,
Lorelei suddenly looked very different. Her perfect, smooth skin went almost
crimson. Small black horns jutted from just below her hairline. Black,
featherless wings appeared at her back, rising up from her shoulders and
seeming to fade into the couch and wall behind her in an odd, ghostly effect.
Her beauty remained, but now took on a deadly edge.

“Nice,”
Rachel quipped.

“What the
fuck!?” Shannon blurted, rising to her feet. She cocked back with her coffee
mug as if to throw it, heedless of the resultant spill across her the wall
behind her.

Lorelei
looked on placidly. “This is what I am, Shannon. What you saw before is a
second form—not exactly an illusion, but not entirely my true self, either.
This is my true visage. I will not harm you. But you must understand, Shannon:
I am very much the demon you now see. I am a succubus.”

“You—um—wait—uh.
What about her?” Shannon pointed at Rachel. “Are you…?”

“Pff. Fuck,
no,” Rachel scoffed. “No way.”

“You could
show her, Rachel.”

“I’m not
gonna just show her. Get real.”

“Well what
the fuck is—” Shannon pointed at Lorelei “—one of those?”

Once again,
Lorelei’s first response was to interrupt Rachel’s inevitably snarky answer with
a sharp gesture. “The succubae are demons of seduction and lust,” Lorelei
explained. “We play on the desires of mortals. We are made to manipulate and
draw mortals into their doom through temptation and carnal overindulgence. We
are not corruptors—we do not prey upon those who lead virtuous lives—but rather
those who have strayed too close to the brink, and those who are overdue in
Hell. Shannon, the woman who died under your care yesterday was, like myself, a
succubus. Unlike me, however, she still served Hell. I do not. You are safe
from me.”

“You don’t
look safe,” replied the shocked host.

“Would you
prefer my previous image?”

“Kinda,
yeah?”

Even before
Lorelei finished her nod, she looked entirely human again. “I show you this
because what I must tell you goes beyond much of your understanding about your
world. I must explain matters that will sound like superstition and magic to
you, but they are quite real. And you cannot afford a lengthy process of
overcoming your natural doubts.”

“Okay,
well... well what the
fuck
?” Shannon demanded. “Just come out with it
already, huh? What the hell does all this have to do with me?”

“That demon
yesterday died right in front of you, yeah?” Rachel broke in. Her sarcastic
tone was gone. “So it turns out, demons don’t really die. Not like that,
anyway. You were trying to help her. You put your mouth on hers right when she
let out her last breath. That was supposed to be her soul fucking off to Hell
so she could reconstitute in a new body and come back in another couple
decades. Instead, she went straight into you.”

None of
this settled Shannon’s nerves. She remained on her feet, still ready to hurl
her mug and lock herself in the bathroom where she could call 911 on her cell
phone. She’d have to say there were two crazy women in her apartment. She’d
definitely have to leave out the part about Lorelei turning red and demony.
Sooner or later, the cops might realize she wasn’t telling the whole story, but
at least she would have sane people around her.