Chapter 13: The Gas and the Needle
The warehouse cold seeped into Jan’s bones. She stared at the pulsing light under the distant door, the jagged, screaming harmonics of the unstable translocation spell making her teeth ache. Hans was right. Charging in was suicide.
Then her phone was in her hand, the screen a beacon in the gloom. She hit call.
It rang once.
“Jan? What’s wrong?” Brigid’s voice was clear, alert, devoid of sleep. In the background, Jan could hear the faint rustle of pages—a textbook, probably.
“How quickly can you get from Northwestern to New York?” Jan asked, her words tumbling out in a rush.
“Seconds, if you can send me coordinates,” Brigid replied, her tone shifting into pragmatic focus. “Why?”
“A rogue Golden Wands elder. He tried to steal magical secrets from other Orders through… painful experiments. Wanted to do Archimedes-style magic. He’s getting away right now using a transporter spell that doesn’t look very stable. It’s screaming, Brigid. It hurts just to listen to.”
Before Jan could say another word, the air next to her cracked like thin ice. A shimmer, a tear in the fabric of everything, and Brigid was there. She stood in fluffy cyan pajamas covered in cartoons of smiling test tubes, her long red hair frizzing from the transit, her intelligent green eyes scanning the dark warehouse instantly. Godfrey let out a soft woof of recognition.
Brigid looked at the pulsing door, her head tilting as she listened to the magical frequency. A frown of academic distaste touched her lips. “That’s not unstable. It’s barbaric. It’s like performing surgery with a rusted shovel.” She glanced at Jan, a flicker of fierce light in her eyes. “I can show them what a real Archimedes mage can do.”
Across town, in the ivy-choked Green Moon chapter house, Lydia was in her nightgown, brushing her long grey hair at her vanity. The strokes were methodical, a calming ritual. The old house groaned and settled around her.
The window shattered inward.
A glass sphere arced through the air, hitting the floorboards and exploding into a cloud of pale, sweet-smelling gas. Lydia had time for one startled inhale. Her severe grey eyes rolled back, and she slumped from the stool, collapsing onto the Persian rug, unconscious.
Below, Peter moved with silent efficiency. He led a team of four in matte-black tactical gear through the back kitchen door. Their footsteps were ghosts on the creaking stairs. They bypassed the living areas, heading straight for the basement.
In the holding cell, a room lined with lead and etched with quieting sigils, Yara Abaza sat cross-legged on a thin mattress. She was naked, her skin sheened with a cold sweat from the null-field that dampened her powers. The silence was a physical weight. She heard the lock snick and smirked, expecting Lydia’s stern face.
The door opened.
Peter stood there, a sleek tranquilizer rifle raised. Behind him, two agents covered the hallway.
Yara’s smirk vanished. A snarl ripped from her throat. Shadows, weak and frayed, flickered around her fingertips—the dregs of her power pushing against the null-field. She lunged.
The dart hit her in the hollow of her throat.
A warm, velvety wave of pure compliance washed through her. It unstoppered her will, let it drain away. Her muscles loosened, the snarl smoothing into a placid expression. Her mind went quiet, empty, a vessel waiting to be filled. She looked up at Peter with wide, adoring eyes.
“Master,” she breathed, the word a sigh of reverence.
Peter lowered the rifle. He crouched before her, his movements economical. He cupped her chin, his thumb stroking her cheek. “Good. Your cousin Youssef is nearby. You’re going to find him for me. And you’re going to make him love you. You will bring him to the extraction point. Do you understand?”
Yara nodded, a slow, vacant smile spreading across her lips. “Find Youssef. Make him love me. Bring him to you.”
“Perfect.” He handed her a stack of clothes—simple jeans, a sweater, boots. “Dress.”
Her movements were obedient, fluid, like a doll being animated. She dressed without shame or haste, her previous fierceness gone, replaced by a terrifying calm.
An hour later, back in the chapter house, Lydia groaned, pushing herself up from the floor. Her head pounded. She stumbled to the basement, one hand on the wall, and found a scene of contained chaos.
In the main holding cell, Bedivere sat on the floor, his tailored suit torn, one eye swollen shut, his hands bound with glowing green cords. Several of his agents were in adjacent cells, bruised and sullen. Jan was pacing, Godfrey at her heels. A serious German man with a tracker’s tension watched the prisoners. And a young woman in cartoon pajamas was examining the shattered null-field generator with a clinical frown.
“Jan O’Connor,” Lydia croaked, her voice raspy from the gas. “What is the meaning of this?”
“Hey, Lydia. We brought you a present,” Jan said, gesturing to Bedivere. “Rogue Wand. He’s been hoarding secrets and hurting people. We just… intercepted his retirement party.”
Lydia’s gaze swept the cells. Her eyes, clearing of the gas-induced fog, narrowed. “Where is the half-succubus? Yara. She was in the secondary cell.”
Jan stopped pacing. The blood drained from her face. “She’s not here?”
“I was… incapacitated. Someone gassed me.” Lydia’s voice was thick with self-recrimination.
“The Consortium,” Jan whispered. The word was a curse. “They were watching. They waited for the perfect moment of chaos.” She yanked her phone out, dialing frantically.
In the hotel room, the phone buzzed on the dresser, buried under a pile of clothes. The room was dark, the only light coming from the city through the gap in the curtains. On one bed, Mike lay on his back, deeply asleep, one arm flung over his face. Mara was curled into his side, her head on his chest, her bare leg hooked over his. Her breathing was deep and even.
On the other bed, Zack was sprawled on his stomach, sheets tangled around his waist. Casey was draped over his back, her lips parted against his shoulder blade, her dark hair covering them both like a blanket.
The phone buzzed again. Vibrated against the wooden dresser. A faint, insistent insect sound. No one stirred.
Jan listened to the ringing, then the click to voicemail. “Dammit.” She tried again. Same result. A cold knot of fear tightened in her stomach. “They’re not answering.”
Brigid looked up from the ruined machinery. “Who do you suppose they’re fucking this time?” she asked, her voice dripping with sarcastic irony.
Jan didn’t laugh. “We need to get to that hotel. Now.”
In the pre-dawn gloom, the streets around the hotel were desolate. Yara walked with a purpose that was not her own. The compliance drug was a gentle, unyielding director in her bloodstream. Find Youssef. Make him love you.
She entered through a side door left ajar by a departing guest, her steps silent on the concrete stairs. She didn’t need room numbers. She could feel him—a familial pull, a cousin’s blood calling to hers, amplified by the chemical need to obey. She stopped outside room 711. She could feel the warm, sleepy haze of satiated desire seeping from under the door. And him, inside.
She knocked, three soft, polite taps.
Inside the room, Youssef stirred. He was curled around a pillow, Molly’s back against his chest, Ginny’s leg thrown over his hip. The knock was an intrusion from another world. He untangled himself, grabbing his boxers. “Probably room service wrong floor,” he mumbled, padding to the door.
He opened it.
Yara stood there. She was beautiful in a stark, sharp way—high cheekbones, full lips, dark eyes that held a strange, distant warmth. He’d seen her only in old family photos. “Yara?”
“Youssef,” she said, her voice a soft melody. The vacant smile was gone, replaced by a focused, intense allure. The drug had quieted her will, but it had done nothing to dampen her natural power. If anything, it had streamlined it, removing all hesitation. “I need you. May I come in?”
He was confused, but she was family. He stepped back. “Yeah, of course. Are you okay? What are you doing here?”
She entered, closing the door behind her. Her eyes scanned the room, the tangle of sleeping, naked bodies. “This is good. You’re safe here.” She turned her gaze back to him, and it was like being struck by a beam of concentrated sunlight. “But you’re not complete.”
“What?” Youssef whispered, already feeling dizzy. Her presence filled the room, pushing out the air.
“You don’t know what you are. What you need.” She stepped closer, her hand rising to cup his face. Her skin was furnace-hot. “Let me show you.”
Her power didn’t flood out like Vivian’s comforting warmth. It speared into him. It was a predatory, consuming hunger, wrapped in the soft package of family. It bypassed his brain, his doubts, and went straight to his primal core. His cock, semi-hard from sleep, thickened instantly to a full, painful erection, straining against his boxers.
“See?” she whispered, her other hand sliding down his chest, over his stomach, and palming him through the cotton. He jerked, a gasp wrenching from his throat. “You need this. You need me.”
Behind them, Molly shifted in her sleep. Ginny muttered something unintelligible.
Yara ignored them. Her power was a vortex, drawing his desire, his life, his attention into the black hole of her own need to obey. “You will love me,” she murmured, and it wasn’t a plea or a seduction. It was a command, etched into his synapses by her demonic heritage. “You will come with me. And you will be happy.”
She pushed him back until his legs hit the bed where Jason and Amy slept. He fell onto it, the impact jostling them. Amy grumbled, her eyes fluttering open. She saw Yara standing over Youssef, saw the glazed, enraptured look on his face, saw the predatory halo of power that wasn’t Green Moon magic. It was something older, darker.
“Hey—” Amy started, pushing herself up.
Yara didn’t even look at her. She flicked a hand. A whip of condensed shadow, hot and stinging, snapped across Amy’s bare chest, not cutting but branding with sheer psychic force. Amy cried out, falling back against Jason, who woke with a start.
Yara climbed onto the bed, straddling Youssef. She yanked his boxers down, freeing his cock. She was already wet, her arousal a tool, a lubricant for her purpose. She sank down onto him in one vicious, claiming stroke, sheathing him inside her tight, scalding heat.
“Oh, god,” Youssef moaned, his back arching. It wasn’t pleasure. It was possession. Her inner muscles clenched around him like a fist, milking him, pulling at his essence. Her power latched onto his climax, demanding it, feeding on the surge of his life force as much as the physical release.
She began to ride him, a brutal, efficient rhythm. Her head thrown back, her eyes closed in concentration. She was feeding, but she was also programming. Each deep, penetrating drive was another stitch in the psychic tapestry she was weaving: You love me. You will follow me. You are mine.
“Stop her!” Jason yelled, jumping from the bed, but another lash of shadow sent him sprawling into the TV stand with a crash.
Youssef was drowning. The orgasm built, not as a cresting wave, but as a dam being deliberately dynamited. It was agonizing in its intensity. He clawed at the sheets, his eyes wide and unseeing, trapped in the ecstatic prison of her dominance.
“Come for me, cousin,” Yara purred, leaning down, her breath hot in his ear. “Give it to me. Give me everything. And then you will get up, and you will come with me to see Master.”
With a final, devastating clamp of her internal muscles, she triggered his release. Youssef screamed, a raw, broken sound as he erupted inside her. The burst of energy was massive, a feast she drank down greedily. Her own body convulsed, a secondary, minor tremor compared to the tsunami she’d pulled from him.
As he lay beneath her, gasping, drained, and utterly hollowed out, she climbed off. She pulled her jeans back on, not bothering with underwear. She looked at him, her eyes now glowing with a faint, satisfied ember-light.
“Get up, Youssef,” she said softly. “Get dressed. We’re going now.”
He moved like a marionette. His limbs were heavy, his mind a blissful blank slate where only her voice and her face existed. Love wasn’t the right word. It was devotion. Addiction. He pulled on his clothes, his movements clumsy.
Molly was sitting up now, holding a sheet to her chest, her face pale. “Youssef, don’t.”
He didn’t hear her. He only saw Yara, who stood by the door, waiting, a benevolent goddess who had shown him his purpose.
Yara opened the door. She took his hand. Her skin was still impossibly hot. “Good. Come.”
She led him out into the hallway, toward the stairs, toward the waiting extraction point. Behind them, in the wrecked room, the others stared, helpless and horrified, as the brother they were meant to protect walked willingly into the arms of the enemy, a vacant, adoring smile on his lips.
Yukio stumbled from the bathroom, towel clutched around her, drawn by the crash and the screaming. She saw Youssef’s blank face, saw the possessive grip Yara had on his hand. “Hey! The fuck are you?” she shouted, blocking the hallway to the stairs.
Yara didn’t break stride. She swatted a hand, almost bored. A coil of shadow, thick as a rope, snapped out and wrapped around Yukio’s torso, yanking her off her feet and slamming her into the wall. The air left Yukio’s lungs in a pained whoosh, the towel falling away as she crumpled to the carpet.
“Do not interrupt,” Yara said, her voice monotone.
She led Youssef past the dazed Yukio. The shadows at the end of the long hallway seemed to deepen, to curdle.
They shifted.
Vivian emerged from the doorway of her own room. She was barefoot, in just a long t-shirt. Her eyes were no longer tired. They were chips of green ice, burning with a remembered hospital room, with Dale’s scarred body lying still on white sheets, with the phantom taste of Yara’s stolen power from their last, desperate fight. Rage, cold and pure, electrified the air.
“Come for a rematch, bitch!” Vivian shouted.
The shadows in the hall answered her. They surged from the corners, flowing up her legs, her torso, weaving into a suit of jagged, obsidian armor. They formed curling horns from her temples, sharp fangs in her snarling mouth, and great, tattered wings that snapped open with a sound like tearing canvas. A whip of solidified darkness coiled in her clawed hand.
Yara released Youssef’s hand and turned, a flicker of something—annoyance, recognition—cutting through the drug’s compliance. Her own shadows rose, not as armor, but as swirling, hungry tendrils.
Yukio, gasping on the floor, saw Youssef standing there, swaying. She lunged, grabbing his ankle and yanking him backward just as Vivian charged.
The two half-succubi collided in the center of the hallway.
It was less a fight than a localized disaster. The air screamed. Shadows clashed, sizzling and snapping like live wires. Vivian’s whip cracked, tearing a gash in the wallpaper that wept plaster dust. Yara’s tendrils speared forward, seeking gaps in the armor, and one pierced Vivian’s wing, making her roar in pain and fury.
They were a cyclone of darkness and fury, smashing wall sconces, shredding carpet. Their power wasn’t meant for destruction, but their fury transformed it. The hallway light fixtures exploded in showers of sparks, plunging the corridor into a strobe-lit nightmare of clashing forms.
Vivian got a clawed hand around Yara’s throat and slammed her into the ceiling, then drove her down into the floor. Tiles shattered. “You hurt them!” she screamed, her voice layered with a deeper, demonic resonance. “You broke him!”
Yara laughed, a wet, choking sound. She drove a knee up into Vivian’s armored gut, the shadow-plates cracking. “He was a tool. They are all tools!” Her tendrils wrapped around Vivian’s throat, squeezing.
Back in room 711, Jason was helping a stunned Amy up. “We have to get out of here,” he said, his voice shaking.
“We have to help!” Molly cried, pulling on a robe.
“Help what?” Ginny snapped, peering out the shattered doorframe at the maelstrom of shadows. “We’ll get torn apart!”
Yukio, still naked, dragged Youssef back into the doorway of 414. Mike was already there, baby Rick clutched protectively in one arm, a hotel fire axe held awkwardly in the other. Casey and Mara stood behind him, Zack trying to pull on his pants.
“What is that?” Mike asked, staring down the hellscape of the hallway.
“Family trouble,” Yukio spat, shoving the docile Youssef at Mara. “Hold him.”
Mara grabbed Youssef’s shoulders. He looked at her with empty, placid eyes. “She’s calling me,” he murmured. “I need to go to her.”
“You need to sit the fuck down,” Mara said, pushing him onto the bed.
In the hallway, Vivian tore the tendrils from her throat. She headbutted Yara, their horns clashing with a sound like grinding stone. She was fueled by love, by protection. Yara was fueled by chemical obedience and a lifetime of predatory instinct. They were evenly matched, and they were destroying the building.
Vivian managed to pin Yara, her armored knee pressing into her cousin’s chest. “Let him go,” she snarled, her fangs inches from Yara’s face. “Break the command.”
Yara smiled, blood trickling from her lip. “I can’t. Master’s orders are absolute. He will come.” She looked past Vivian, right at the doorway to 414, and whistled—a sharp, piercing sound.
On the bed, Youssef convulsed. He threw off Mara’s grip with sudden, unnatural strength, his blank eyes fixed on the hallway. “She’s calling!”
He burst from the room, shoving past Mike. He ran not to the stairs, but straight toward the vicious, shadow-cloaked fight.
“Youssef, no!” Fatima’s voice rang out from the stairwell door. She, Jan, and Brigid skidded into the hall, arriving in a rush of cold outside air and panic. They took in the scene: the two demonic forms, the destruction, Youssef sprinting mindlessly toward it.
“Fuck,” Jan breathed.
Youssef didn’t falter. He ran right into the whirlwind of claws and shadows, his hands reaching for Yara.
Vivian saw him coming. “Get back!” she roared, but it was too late.
Yara saw her opening. As Youssef reached them, she wrapped a tendril around his waist and pulled him tight against her side, using him as a shield. Vivian jerked her striking claw back, her own momentum nearly toppling her.
“Shoot her, Master said,” Yara whispered into Youssef’s ear, her voice sweet again. “The red one. Shoot her for me.” She pressed a small, sleek pistol from her own waistband into his hand. It was Consortium make, quiet and efficient.
Youssef took it. He turned, the adoring look now sharpening into a fanatical focus. He aimed the gun at Vivian, his finger on the trigger, no hesitation in his eyes.
“Youssef, don’t!” Fatima screamed, frozen in horror.
A flash of cyan light, precise and sudden, cut between them. Brigid, still in her pajamas, had simply drawn a glowing equation in the air. The gun in Youssef’s hand dissolved into a shower of harmless, metallic confetti.
The distraction was enough.
Vivian didn’t hesitate. She couldn’t risk Youssef being used again. Her shadow-whip lashed out, not at Yara, but at Youssef. It wrapped around his chest and yanked him violently backward, throwing him down the hall toward Jan and Fatima. He landed in a heap, gasping.
Yara, now unprotected, snarled. She launched herself at Vivian, but her power was faltering, split between the fight and maintaining the deep psychic command over Youssef from a distance.
Vivian took the impact, letting them crash through the doorway of a ruined, empty room. She rolled on top of Yara, pinning her in the debris of a shattered minibar. She leaned down, her mouth hovering over Yara’s. But this wasn’t a kiss.
“You took from me,” Vivian whispered, the hunger in her voice not for pleasure, for justice. “Now I take it back.”
She didn’t feed gently. She opened her will and sucked.
Yara’s eyes flew wide. It was a repeat of their last encounter, a violent siphoning. Vivian wasn’t just drawing sexual energy; she was pulling on the very power that fueled Yara’s compulsions, on the chemical obedience itself. Yara’s shadows frayed, dissolving. Her body arched, not in pleasure, but in agony, as Vivian ruthlessly drained the conditioning out of her.
The compliant vacancy in Yara’s eyes shattered, replaced by searing pain, then clarity, then horror. The drug’s hold broke under the onslaught of pure, stolen energy.
Vivian pulled back, gasping, her own demonic armor flickering. Yara lay beneath her, limp, sweat-soaked, utterly drained and finally, terribly herself.
In the hallway, Youssef groaned, clutching his head. The adoring smile was gone, replaced by confusion and a crushing migraine. “Fati? What… what happened?”
Fatima dropped to her knees beside him, pulling him into a fierce hug, tears streaking her face. “You’re okay. You’re back.”
Jan stepped over the wreckage toward the empty room. Vivian was climbing off a motionless Yara, her shadows receding, leaving her pale and shaken in the torn t-shirt. She looked at Jan, her eyes full of a exhausted triumph.
“I got it out of her,” Vivian panted. “The command’s broken.”
Jan nodded, looking down at the defeated half-succubus. Then she looked at the panic-stricken faces in the hall, at the massive damage. Sirens began to wail in the distance.
“We can’t be here when the cops arrive,” Jan said, her voice tired but firm. “Grab everyone. Grab her too. We’re going to Lydia’s.”
Brigid was already calculating, her fingers tracing new equations in the air. “I can translocate nine, plus the puppy, if we all hold hands. The energy signature will be a lighthouse, but it’s better than arrest.”
“Do it,” Jan said.
They gathered—the dazed Youssef, the shaken friends from 711, Mike and Casey with the baby, Mara and Zack, a now-sobbing Yukio holding her ribs. Jan and Fatima hauled a semiconscious Yara to her feet. Vivian took Youssef’s other side, her grip protective.
Brigid finished her spell. The world folded.
They landed in a heap in the center of the Green Moon chapter house living room, amidst the smell of burnt sage and old blood. Lydia stared down at them, her hair still disheveled from the gas, her expression moving from shock to profound, weary resignation.
Jan looked up from the pile of bodies and muttered, “We brought another one.”
Outside, in a surveillance van three blocks from the ruined hotel, Peter watched the silent, static-filled feed from Yara’s abandoned subdermal microphone. He heard the scream, the conflict, the final, dead silence. He smiled, a thin, satisfied expression.
He keyed his comm. “Asset Yara is likely compromised. But the package, Youssef Abaza, received the full conditioning protocol before termination of the link. The imprint is deep. He is a primed vessel.”
He listened to the reply, his smile widening.
“Understood. We will acquire him through subtler means. The family connection remains the perfect vector. They will deliver him to us themselves, thinking him saved.” He closed the feed. “Initiate Phase Two.”