Succubus Blues (14 page)

“What's that supposed to mean?” I immediately thought of my attraction to Roman.

Carter's eyes flashed mischievously. We were at the hospital's exit now. “I don't know. You tell me, Letha.”

I had nearly walked out the door, but his comment jerked me back. I spun around so fast, my hair whipped around and hit me in the face.
“Where did you hear that name?”

“I have my sources.”

A great nebulous emotion swelled up in my chest, something I couldn't entirely identify. It fell somewhere on the continuum of hate and despair, not really subscribing to either one. Hotter and hotter it grew within me, making me want to scream at Carter and that smug, knowing look on his face. I wanted to beat my fists against him or shape-shift into something horrific. I didn't know where he'd learned that name, but it woke up some sort of sleeping monster within me, something that had been tightly coiled up.

He continued watching me coolly, undoubtedly reading my thoughts.

Slowly, I became aware of my surroundings. The chilly corridors. The anxious visitors. The efficient staff. I calmed my breathing and fixed the angel with a scathing look.

“Don't you ever call me that again. Ever.”

He shrugged, still smiling. “My mistake.”

I turned smartly on my heels and left him there. I stormed out to my car and didn't even realize I was driving until I was halfway across the bridge, tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.

“M
an, if Jerome had threatened to stash me somewhere, I wouldn't be out snooping around.”

“I'm not snooping. I'm just speculating.”

Peter shook his head and took the cap off a beer. I sat with him and Cody in their kitchen, the day after Hugh's attack. A ham and pineapple pizza had just arrived, and Cody and I dug into it while the other vampire merely watched.

“Why can't you just accept this for what it is? Jerome's telling the truth. It's a vampire hunter.”

“No. No way. None of this adds up. Not the goofy way Jerome and Carter are acting. Not Hugh's attack. Not that fucked-up note I got.”

“I figured you get screwy love notes all the time. ‘My heart bleeds for you, Georgina.' Written in actual blood. Stuff like that.”

“Yeah, nothing like self-mutilation to turn a girl on,” I muttered. I gulped some Mountain Dew and returned to my pizza. Really, as far as caffeine and sugar went, Mountain Dew was nearly as good as one of my mochas. “Hey, why aren't you eating any of this?”

Peter held up his beer bottle by way of explanation. “I'm dieting.”

I peered at it.
Golden Village Low-Carb Ale.

I froze, mid-bite. Low-carb?

“Peter…you're a vampire. Aren't you by definition always on a low-carb diet?”

“It's no use,” Cody chuckled, speaking up for the first time. “I've already had this argument with him. He won't listen.”

“You wouldn't understand.” Peter eyed our pizza wistfully. “You can make your body look like anything you want.”

“Yeah, but…” I looked to Cody. “Can he really even put on weight? Aren't immortal bodies, I don't know, unchangeable? Or timeless? Or something?”

“You'd know more about it than me,” he said.

“We eat other things.” Peter rubbed his stomach self-consciously. “Not just blood. It all adds up.”

This had to be weirdest thing I'd heard since Duane's death. “Stop it, Peter. You're being ridiculous. Next thing, you'll be down at Hugh's asking for liposuction.”

He brightened. “Do you think that would help?”

“No! You look fine. You look the same as you always have.”

“I don't know. Cody's been getting all the attention whenever we go out. Maybe I should get more blond put into the spikes.”

I refrained from pointing out that Peter had been almost forty when he'd become a vampire, his hair heavily receding. Cody had been very young—barely twenty—and bore tawny, leonine good looks. Immortals who were formerly human stayed fixed at the age and appearance immortality had taken over. If the two vampires still frequented clubs and college bars, I didn't doubt Cody had more luck.

“We're wasting time,” I exclaimed, wanting to derail Peter from this whole image thing. “I want to figure out who attacked Hugh.”

“Christ, you have a one-track mind,” he snapped. “Why can't you just wait to find out?”

Good question. I didn't know why. Something inside me was tugging to get to the truth of this, to do what I could to protect my friends and myself. I just couldn't stand passively by.

“It couldn't have been a mortal. Not from the way Hugh described the attack.”

“Yeah, but no immortal could have killed Duane. I already told you that.”

“No
lesser
immortal,” I pointed out. “But a higher immortal…”

Peter laughed. “Oh-ho, you are pushing the envelope now. You think there's some vindictive demon out there?”

“They'd certainly be capable.”

“Yeah, but they have no motivation.”

“Not nece—”

A funny sensation suddenly spread over me, tingly and gentle and silvery. I was put in mind of the fragrance of lilacs, the tinkling of small bells. I looked sharply at the others.

“What the—” began Cody, but Peter was already moving toward the door. The signature we all felt was similar to Carter's in certain ways but lighter and sweeter. Less powerful.

A guardian angel.

Peter opened the door, and Lucinda stood there primly, her arms clasped tightly around a book.

I nearly choked. It would figure. As a general rule, I didn't interact with many angels in the area, Carter being the exception because of his relationship with Jerome. Still, I knew who the locals were, and I knew Lucinda. She wasn't a true angel like Carter. Guardians were more like the heavenly equivalent of Hugh: former mortals who served and ran errands for all eternity.

I had no doubt Lucinda performed all sorts of good deeds on a daily basis. She probably worked in soup kitchens and read to orphans in her free time. Whenever she was around us, however, she became a prissy little bitch. Peter shared my sentiment.

“Yes?” he asked coolly.

“Hello, Peter. Your hair is very…interesting today,” she observed diplomatically, not moving from the doorway. “May I come in?”

Peter scowled at the hair comment but had too many good hosting instincts drilled into him to not wave her inside. He might tease me about mortal hobbies, but the vampire had a meticulous sense of propriety and etiquette bordering on obsessive-compulsive disorder.

She swept inside, proper in an ankle-length plaid skirt and high-necked sweater. Her short blond hair curled under in a perfect bob.

I was a different story. Between my plunging neckline, ultratight jeans, and fuck-me heels, I felt like I might as well lie down on the floor and spread my legs. The demure look she gave me clearly implied she was thinking the same thing.

“Charming to see you all again.” Her tone was crisp, formal. “I'm here to deliver something from Mr. Carter.”

“
Mr.
Carter?” asked Cody. “Is that his last name? I always thought it was his first.”

“I think he just has one name,” I speculated. “Like Cher or Madonna.”

Lucinda said nothing to our bandying. Instead, she handed me a book.
Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex
.

“What the hell is that?” exclaimed Peter. “I think I saw it on some talk show.”

I suddenly remembered walking out with Carter in the hospital and how he'd claimed to own a book that would help me with Seth. I tossed it on the counter disinterestedly.

“Carter's fucked-up sense of humor in action.”

Lucinda flushed deep crimson. “How can you use such language so carelessly? You sound like you're…like you're in a locker room!”

I smoothed down my tank top. “No way. I'd never wear this in a locker room.”

“Yeah, it isn't even in school colors,” said Peter.

I couldn't resist toying with the guardian. “If I were in a locker room, I'd probably have on a short cheerleader skirt. And no underwear.”

Peter continued playing off me. “And you'd do that one cheer, right? The one with your hands splayed against the shower wall and ass sticking out?”

“That's me,” I agreed. “Always ready to take one for the team.”

Even Cody flushed at our crassness. Lucinda was practically purple.

“You—you two have no sense of decency! None at all.”

“Oh whatever,” I told her. “Back at the country club, or wherever you and the rest of the choir hang out, you probably wear a shorter version of that skirt all the time. With knee socks. I bet the other angels really go for the schoolgirl look.”

If Lucinda were any one of my friends, a comment like that would have only escalated into more sarcasm and snide remarks. The guardian, however, merely stiffened and chose to rely on deadpan self-righteousness.

“We,” she declared, “do not carry on in such an unseemly manner with each other.
We
act with decorum.
We
treat each other with respect.
We
do not turn on each other.”

This last one came with a brief eye-glance toward me.

“What was that for?”

She tossed her hair, what little of it there was. “Oh, I think you know. We've all been hearing about your little vigilante act. First that vampire, then the imp. Nothing about you people surprises me anymore.”

Now my face flushed. “That's bullshit! I was cleared of Duane a long time ago. And Hugh…that's just stupid. He's my friend.”

“What does friendship mean among your kind? He's just as bad. From what I heard, he received a great deal of amusement telling anyone who would listen about your little whip and wings getup. Oh, and by the way, if you don't mind my observation, I think that has to be the most degrading thing I've ever heard. Even for a succubus.” She arched a glance toward the book I had tossed to the counter. “I'll tell Mr. Carter you, uh, received the book.”

With that, she turned neatly and left, closing the door behind her.

“Sanctimonious bitch,” I muttered. “And how many people know about that demon girl thing anyway?”

“Forget her,” said Peter. “She's a nobody. And an angel. There's no telling what they'll do.”

I scowled. And then, it hit me. I couldn't believe I'd never thought of it before. Maybe Lucinda needed more credit.

“That's it!”

“What's it?” mumbled Cody through a mouthful of nearly cold pizza.

“An angel killed Duane and attacked Hugh! It's perfect. You were right in saying a demon would have no reason to take our side out. But an angel? Why not? I mean a real one, not a guardian like Lucinda.”

Peter shook his head. “An angel could do something like that, but it'd be too petty. The great cosmic good-versus-evil battle is bigger than one-on-one matches. You know that. Taking out one agent of evil at a time would be a waste of resources.”

Cody considered. “What if it was a renegade angel? Someone not following the rules of the game.”

Peter and I both turned to the younger vampire in surprise. He'd been more or less avoiding our speculation this evening.

“There's no such thing,” his mentor countered back. “Is there, Georgina?”

I felt both vampires' eyes turn to me, waiting for my opinion. “Jerome says there are no bad angels. Once they're bad, they become demons, not angels anymore.”

“Well, that kills your theory then. An angel doing something bad would fall and not be an angel anymore. Then Jerome would know about him.”

I frowned, still intrigued by Cody's use of the word “renegade” over “fallen.” “Maybe angel sin is like human sin…it's not always ‘bad' if the person thinks they're doing ‘good.' This one hasn't gone over yet.”

We all pondered this a moment. Humans continually labor under the delusion that there really is a precise set of rules on what sin is and is not, rules that one might break without even realizing it. In reality, most people know when they do wrong. They feel it. Sin is more of a subjective matter than an objective one. Back in the days of the Puritans, corrupting souls had been no problem for a succubus since almost anything sexual and pleasurable felt wrong to those men. Nowadays, most people don't regard premarital sex as wrong, hence no sin is committed. Succubi have been forced to become more creative over the years if they want to get an energy fix
and
corrupt a soul.

Still, by that logic, it was possible that a renegade angel who believed he or she was doing good might not cross into the realm of sin. If there was no sin, then there could be no fall. Or could there be? The whole concept strained the mind, and Peter apparently thought so too.

“So what's the difference? What makes an angel fall? We're staking a lot here on a technicality.”

I could have concurred until I recalled something else. “The note.”

“Note?” asked Cody.

“The note that was on my door. It said I was beautiful enough to tempt angels into falling.”

“Well, you do look pretty good.” When I raised an eyebrow, Peter said grudgingly, “Okay, that is kind of suspicious…but it's almost too suspicious. Why would someone overtly leave a calling card?”

Cody nearly jumped out of his seat. “It's some kind of psycho angel who likes playing mind games. Like in those movies where killers carve clues into their victims, so they can watch the police puzzle things out.”

I shuddered at that image as I thought over what I knew about angels in general, which really was nothing. Unlike our side, the powers of good did not have the same cryptic hierarchy of supervisors and geographical networks, no matter the stories about cherubim and seraphim. After all, we were the ones who had invented middle management, not them. I always had the impression that most angels and denizens of good operated like private investigators or field agents, completing assorted angelic missions in a very loosely organized way. Such an open venue would provide ample chance for someone to surreptitiously tackle a side agenda.

Angelic involvement would also explain the subterfuge, I reflected. Their side was embarrassed. Typical, really. Little embarrassed our side anymore. They, however, would be shamefaced to admit one of theirs had turned rogue, and Carter, being so chummy with Jerome, had conned the demon into keeping quiet about the whole matter. All of his sarcasm and attempts to mock me were only more weak efforts at saving face.

The more I considered this far-fetched theory, the more I liked it. Some disgruntled angel, wanting to be heroic, decided to turn vigilante and take on the forces of evil. The renegade angel theory would explain how any of us could be legitimate targets, as well as shed light on why no one could sense this being since we now knew higher immortals could hide their presence.

Which made me wonder why exactly Jerome and Carter were also masking their presence. Were they hoping to catch this angel unaware? That, and…

“Why'd this person let Hugh live then?” I looked from vampire to vampire. “An angel could take out any of us. Hugh said he wasn't winning, and no one interrupted. The attacker just got bored and took off. Why? Why kill Duane but not Hugh? Or me, for that matter, since this person knows what I am.”