Chapter 7: The Distraction Works
The chill of the warehouse district seeped into their bones despite the spring night. From their shadowed alcove across the street, Fatima watched the operation unfold through a pair of sleek, enchanted binoculars that dimmed the halogen glow of the security lights. Beside her, Eric stroked Reggie’s ears, the dog’s whole body a coil of silent tension. Godfrey sat primly, observing with an air of detached professionalism.
“Two at the main door, one patrol every five minutes around the east corner,” Zack’s voice crackled softly in Fatima’s earpiece. He and Yukio were perched on a fire escape two blocks over, the perfect vantage. “Mara’s on approach.”
Mara Henderson, a silhouette of unwavering confidence in a tailored navy suit, cut across the empty street. She didn’t sneak. She occupied. Her heels clicked a definitive rhythm on the asphalt. The two Golden Wand guards, their charcoal suits making them look like extensions of the building’s gloom, straightened as she stopped before them, clipboard held like a shield.
“Gentlemen,” Mara’s voice carried, crisp and icy. “I’m here on behalf of the city’s historical preservation commission. We have reason to believe the structural modifications to this facility violate three separate municipal codes and the federal Antiquities Act. I need to speak with the site manager immediately, or I’ll have no choice but to file for an emergency injunction and have the NYPD shut this entire block down. Do you have a supervisor, or are you the ones I should be serving?” She produced a thick sheaf of official-looking papers. The guards exchanged a glance, their subtle glamours flickering with confusion.
“Side entrance team, go,” Zack whispered.
Mike and Casey ambled into view from the opposite direction. Mike’s suit was a size too large, Casey’s skirt just a shade too long. They looked like the kind of people who bought furniture on credit. Mike carried a battered briefcase.
“Good evening!” Mike’s voice was painfully earnest. “We’re with Fresh-Scent Industrial Cleaning Solutions. We’re doing a promotional survey in the area. Do you have a moment to discuss your custodial needs?”
The guard at the side door, a woman with a severe bun, didn’t even blink. “No soliciting. Private property. Leave.”
Casey stepped forward, her smile beatific. “Of course, we understand. But before we go…” She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a handful of brightly colored pamphlets. “Have you heard the good news about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?”
The guard’s stoic expression cracked into pure bewilderment. “What? No. Get lost.”
“We’re just concerned for your eternal soul,” Mike chimed in, his face a mask of sincere worry. “It’s a dangerous world. You never know when the Rapture might come. Say, are you two married? Casey and I, we’ve been blessed with one beautiful son, and let me tell you, starting a family was the best decision we ever made.”
“We’re trying for a second,” Casey said, her hand going to Mike’s arm. “Right now, actually.” Her gaze locked with the female guard’s. “The Lord tells us to be fruitful and multiply. We take that very seriously.”
Mike grinned, a goofy, lovable expression. “He does! So we figured, no time like the present. The spirit moved us, you know?” He let Casey tug him away, back toward a nondescript rental van parked haphazardly nearby. “Excuse us, we’ve got to answer the call!”
They reached the van. Casey threw open the rear doors with a metallic shriek that made both guards jump. She climbed in, Mike right behind her. They didn’t close the doors.
From the alcove, Fatima watched, her breath held. The two guards at the side entrance were staring, unsure whether to laugh, yell, or look away. Inside the van, lit by the dull orange streetlight, Mike’s pants pooled around his ankles. Casey hiked her skirt up to her waist, revealing the pale curve of her ass, already bare. She bent over, bracing her hands on the van’s corrugated floor.
“Come on, honey,” she called, her voice loud enough to echo. “Give it to me. I’m ready.”
Mike positioned himself behind her. He was already hard. He gripped her hips, his fingers pressing into her skin, and with one solid thrust, he buried his cock inside her. Casey let out a gasp that was half-performance, half-genuine pleasure.
“Oh, yes! Mike! Right there!”
He set a relentless, driving pace immediately. The van rocked on its suspension. The slap of skin on skin, wet and rhythmic, cut through the distant city hum. Casey’s moans crescendoed, theatrical and raw.
“Fuck me! Yes! Make me a mommy again, Mike! Fill me up! Oh, God, I can feel you so deep!”
The female guard’s mouth was slightly agape. Her partner had turned fully toward the spectacle, his professional detachment crumbling. Their radios squawked with a question from the main entrance, but neither moved to answer.
“Rear entrance, Molly and Ginny are on,” Zack reported.
Fatima shifted the binoculars. Molly, in a terribly touristy ‘I ♥ NY’ sweatshirt, and Ginny, clutching a giant unfolded map, stumbled toward the back loading dock. A lone guard stepped forward, hand raised.
“You can’t be here. Move along.”
“Oh, thank goodness!” Molly’s voice was a high, breathy squeak. “We are so lost! We’re trying to find the Empire State Building. Can you point us the right way?” As she spoke, her hands went to the buttons of her sweatshirt. She popped them open, one after another, revealing she wore nothing beneath. Her large breasts spilled free, nipples taut in the cool air.
The guard froze. Ginny giggled, stepping closer, letting the map fall. She pressed her slender body against his arm. “We’re really very lost,” she purred, her hand drifting down to brush against the front of his trousers. “Maybe you could show us somewhere… quieter? To get our bearings?”
The guard stammered, his face flooding with color, his free hand hovering uselessly near his holstered arc rifle. His radio erupted with static and a confused demand for a status report from the distracted side entrance team.
“Now,” Fatima said.
They moved as one unit—Fatima, Eric, Noor—flowing from the shadows like oil. Reggie was a silent grey ghost at their heels, and Godfrey trotted ahead, nose to the ground, heading unerringly for a rusted service door half-hidden behind a dumpster. Noor didn’t pause; she placed her palm against the lock. A faint, warm scent of saffron and ozone bloomed, and the mechanism clicked open without a sound.
The interior of the Greyhold was a different world. The sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor hummed with suppressed energy. The air was cold, circulating, smelling of ozone, antiseptic, and underneath it all, a coppery tang of fear and sweat. Godfrey led with absolute certainty, his claws clicking on the linoleum. They passed empty, cell-like rooms with heavy doors.
The corridor sloped downward. The hum deepened, vibrating in their teeth. They reached a sealed bulkhead door. Through a thick glass porthole, the scene within was a tableau of horror.
It was a laboratory, but one designed by a sensualist torturer. In the center, resting on medical gurneys arranged in a star pattern, were the captives. Stacy, Katie, and Jan were naked, held in place by glowing golden restraints at wrists and ankles. Their skin was sheened with sweat, bodies trembling. Annie and Aaron were on gurneys to the side, still in their street clothes but torn open, Aaron’s shirt ripped apart, Annie’s blouse unbuttoned. They were unconscious, pale. Dale Foster was on the floor near them, his shirt scorched and bloody over his heart, breathing in shallow, ragged hitches. At Annie’s feet, her open purse vibrated slightly; within, Sophie the calico kitten was a tiny, hidden bundle of furious fear.
Vivian was isolated in a crystal-lined enclosure to the left, her own naked form curled in on itself, shadows leaking from her skin like black smoke, her eyes wide and desperate with a hunger that was eating her from the inside out.
Standing over Jan, one hand splayed possessively on her stomach, was Yara.
She was voluptuous, her curves exaggerated in a way that spoke of predatory allure rather than comfort. Her dark hair cascaded around shoulders left bare by a simple, expensive black slip. Her lips were full and currently pressed to Stacy’s neck. As they watched, Stacy’s athletic body arched, a choked scream-turned-moan tearing from her throat. A visible pulse of energy, like heat haze, traveled from Stacy’s skin into Yara’s mouth. Stacy shuddered violently and went limp.
Yara straightened, licking her lips. “More resilient than the farmer,” she mused, her voice a rich, melodic thing that somehow made the hair on Fatima’s neck stand up. “Good. I need the stamina.”
Behind a bank of monitoring equipment stood Bedivere. He looked like a prosperous banker observing a mildly interesting stock ticker. His grey hair was impeccable, his suit a dove grey that was a shade lighter than his initiates’, a subtle assertion of dominance. Amir stood rigidly beside him, his face the color of chalk. Becky was at a console, her fingers flying over keys, her expression focused, devoid of anything resembling empathy.
Godfrey nudged the bulkhead door. It wasn’t fully latched.
Fatima pushed it open.
The scene froze. The hum of the machines seemed to grow louder. Yara turned, her eyes—a luminous, impossible gold—landing on Fatima. A slow, wicked smile spread across her face.
“Look who decided to join the family reunion,” Yara said. “Little Fati. The good daughter. The scholar.” She took a step away from the gurneys, her hips swaying. “Did you bring Aunt Noor? How quaint.”
Amir’s eyes were wide, moving from his sister’s furious face to his cousin’s predatory glee, to the broken bodies on the gurneys. He looked like he might be sick.
Fatima ignored Yara. Her gaze went straight to Amir. The disappointment that settled in her chest was a cold, heavy stone. She wasn’t surprised. Not really. She’d always sensed the secret he kept, the superiority he wore like cologne. Seeing it solidified here, in this chamber of suffering, just confirmed a long-held, sad suspicion.
“Amir,” she said, his name flat, final.
He flinched.
“And you brought pets,” Yara continued, eyeing Eric and the dogs. “How… humanitarian.”
Bedivere finally spoke, his voice calm, analytical. “Initiate Abaza. You are trespassing in a sanctioned Greyhold. You will stand down, or you will be neutralized.”
Fatima stepped forward, her magic rising, a green, verdant pressure in the room that countered the sterile gold. “This is why the Order of the Green Moon needs to guide half-succubi,” she said, her voice low and vibrating with intensity. She looked at Yara, then back to Bedivere. “You Golden Wands see a power source. A weapon. You don’t understand there’s a person there. There’s need, and pain, and a choice between feeding and thriving. You just see another equation to solve.”
Yara laughed, a sound like shattering crystal. “Thriving? You mean your pathetic timidity, cousin? The little ‘bites’ your redheaded pet takes? That’s not power. This is power.” She gestured to the drained forms around her. “And I earned it.”
“You didn’t earn shit,” Eric growled, his hands clenching. Reggie let out a subsonic rumble.
Bedivere sighed, a man inconvenienced by sentiment. “Becky. Detain them.”
“Noor,” Fatima said.
Her aunt moved. There was no grand gesture, no shouted incantation. Noor simply stepped between Fatima and the two Golden Wand initiates who broke from the shadows near the door. She clapped her hands once, hard.
The sound was not loud, but it was profound. A shockwave of force, smelling of desert wind and crushed herbs, slammed into the initiates. They flew backward as if hit by a truck, crashing into monitoring screens in a shower of sparks.
“Eric, the cells!” Fatima shouted, her own hands rising, weaving a complex shield of shimmering green energy as another guard fired a bolt of golden light from his arc rifle. It splashed against her shield, sputtering like grease on a hot pan.
Eric and Reggie sprinted for the gurneys. The restraints were complex magical locks. Eric’s Crimson Heart magic wasn’t about force; it was about connection, understanding. He placed his hands on the golden band around Jan’s wrist, closing his eyes, seeking the pulse of the spell, the animal-like fear layered into its structure.
Jan’s head lolled toward him. Her face was pale, freckles stark, but her eyes burned with a fierce, dim light. “Eric…” she rasped, her voice horse.
“I’m getting you out.”
“No…” She gasped, fighting the draining weakness. Her eyes slid toward the crystal prison. “Vivian… get Vivian first… She’s starving… If she cracks… she’ll be worse than… her.” She struggled to nod toward Yara, who was now advancing on Fatima, shadows beginning to coil around her own hands.
Eric didn’t hesitate. He trusted the instinct. He turned and lunged for Vivian’s prison.
Across the room, chaos erupted. Noor was a whirlwind, her unaffiliated magic wild and unpredictable, tangling guards in chains of scented smoke, warping the metal of their rifles. Fatima dueled Yara not with blasts of force, but with threads of composure, weaving Green Moon spells meant to soothe and pacify, a dam against a tsunami of hungry shadow.
Yara swatted them aside. “You think your little ‘feel-good’ tricks work on me?” she sneered. A whip of darkness lashed out, slicing through Fatima’s shield and tearing a line across her forearm. Fatima hissed, stumbling back.
Amir watched, paralyzed. He saw his sister bleed. He saw his cousin, a monster he helped create. He saw Becky, her face a mask of loyal efficiency, preparing another inhibitory blast.
Bedivere calmly picked up a second, more ornate arc rifle from a table. He aimed it not at Noor or Fatima, but at the struggling Eric, who was desperately trying to commune with the frenzied, crystalline energy of Vivian’s cage.
“The succubus is the priority asset,” Bedivere stated. “Terminate the interference.”
The rifle hummed, charging with a high-pitched whine.
Amir’s paralysis broke. “No!”
He didn’t shove Bedivere. He didn’t shout a spell. He simply lunged, his body colliding with Becky just as her finger tightened on her own trigger.
The blast meant for Eric went wide, searing a black line across the ceiling.
Becky cried out in shock and fury. “Amir! What are you doing?!”
Bedivere’s aim never wavered. He switched targets, the rifle now centering on Amir’s chest. “Disappointing,” he said, and fired.
The golden blast from Bedivere’s rifle seared the air, a line of incineration aimed squarely at Amir’s heart.
Amir flinched, a final, useless contraction of muscle.
The detonation never reached him. A shimmering, honeycombed lattice of pure golden light erupted in front of his chest, intercepting the blast with a sound like a thousand bells shattering. The energy dissipated in a shower of harmless sparks. Becky stood beside him, one hand extended, her expression transformed from chipper loyalty to cold, operational clarity.
She leaned in and kissed Amir firmly on the cheek. “You passed,” she said, her voice low and urgent, meant only for him. “I’m Internal Affairs. I answer only to the Merlin. I had to be sure which side you’d choose.”
Bedivere’s aristocratic composure evaporated. His face blanched a sickly white, the horror of exposure wiping away all academic pretense. “You,” he breathed.
He didn’t hesitate. He raised his rifle and sprayed a wild arc of suppressive fire across the center of the room, forcing Fatima and Noor to dive for cover behind overturned gurneys. “With me!” he bellowed to his remaining conscious guards, and fled, scrambling through a side door that hissed shut behind him.
The sudden shift was paralyzing. In the echoing silence left by the fleeing Wand, Eric finally found the pulse of Vivian’s cage. It wasn’t a lock to be picked; it was a starving animal to be soothed. He poured calm, communal understanding into the crystal, a psychic image of open fields and safety. The panel silently dissolved.
Vivian stumbled out, naked and waifish, her red hair clinging to damp skin. Her eyes, wide and black with hunger, swept the room. They fixed on Stacy, on Katie, on Jan—their auras diminished, frayed. Then they found Dale.
He lay where he had fallen, a dark bloom of blood on his shirt, his breathing a wet, shallow rasp.
A sound emerged from Vivian’s throat that was not human. It was a snarl of pure, dimension-rending fury. The shadows leaking from her skin didn’t just coil; they congealed. They armored her, plating her slender form in a carapace of living darkness that gleamed like insect shell. Curved horns, sharp and wicked, spiraled from her forehead. Her fingers elongated into cruel black claws, and when she bared her teeth, they were needle-sharp fangs.
Her gaze, now pits of reflective onyx, locked onto Yara.
Yara had been smirking, enjoying the institutional betrayal. Now she took a step back, her own shadow-whips faltering. “Little cousin,” she spat, trying to muster disdain. “You look hungry.”
Vivian launched herself. There was no grace, only terrifying economy. She crossed the room in a blur of darkness and slammed into Yara, driving them both into a bank of sparking machinery. Her clawed hand clamped around Yara’s throat. Her other hand pressed against Yara’s sternum.
And she took.
It wasn't a kiss. It was a voracious, inverted eruption. The stolen energy—Jan’s vivacious chaos, Stacy’s disciplined strength, Annie’s verdant life, Aaron’s binding fairness, Katie’s explosive passion—all of it, a cacophonous storm of power that Yara had gorged on, now ripped from her in a torrential backflow.
Yara jerked, her back arching violently off the broken console. A scream was trapped in her clamped throat, emerging as a gurgle. Her luxurious form began to wither, her skin tightening over sharpening bones. The stolen vitality flooded into Vivian, a tsunami into a dried riverbed.
The dark carapace on Vivian pulsed, drank, and then began to recede. The horns retracted. The claws shrank back into fingernails. The fangs disappeared. As the stolen energy filled her, it burned out the ravenous desperation, replacing it with a shuddering, overwhelming sense of self.
She blinked. The reflective blackness of her eyes softened, revealing frightened green irises. She looked at her own human hand, now splayed on Yara’s collapsing chest. She looked at the wreckage of her friends.
Human words formed, jagged and broken by a sob of rage and grief. “You… you hurt them.” Her voice gained strength, rising to a raw scream that echoed in the chamber. “YOU HURT MY FRIENDS!”
She leaned down, her lips nearly touching Yara’s ear, her voice dropping to a venomous whisper.
“And you hurt Dale.”
With a final, vicious pull, she siphoned the last dregs of conscious power from Yara, leaving her a gasping, hollowed-out shell on the floor. Vivian shoved herself away, the connection severing. She staggered, now fully herself, naked and trembling, toward where Dale lay.
Eric was already there, his fingers pressed to Dale’s neck. “He’s alive. Pulse is thready. We need an ambulance now.”
“The wards,” Fatima gasped, clutching her bleeding arm. “They’ll block mundanes.”
Becky was already at the main console, her fingers a blur. “I’m scrubbing the location seals and dialing 911 from a spoofed line. Seventy seconds.” She looked at Amir, her gaze softening a fraction. “Help them.”
Amir, shaken from his stupor, moved to the gurneys. He fumbled with the releases on Jan’s restraints. The golden bands snapped open. Jan slumped, free, her body curling instinctively. Her hand flopped out, searching, and found Godfrey’s warm fur where the puppy had sat, steadfast, beside her gurney the entire time.