Chapter 1: A Succubus's Last Resort
The music was a physical thing, a throbbing bassline that vibrated up through the soles of her boots and into the bones of her ankles. Morrigan pushed through the crowd, a sliver of shadow in the neon haze. The smell of spilled whiskey, cheap perfume, and human sweat was almost strong enough to mask the other scent. Almost.
It was the sweet, cloying odor of rot. Her rot.
It clung to her like a second skin, seeping through the cracks in her glamour. She could feel it, a crawling sensation beneath her own pale flesh. The curse was a living thing, a feverish parasite chewing its way out from the inside. Felicia’s parting gift. A single scratch, infected with that bitch’s feral magic, and now her immortality was unraveling like a frayed seam.
She needed an anchor. A lifeline.
Her eyes, violet and sharp, scanned the bar. They passed over boys with soft hands and softer wills, over loud men whose vitality was already thinned by liquor and poor life choices. She needed something… substantial. A flame not so easily snuffed.
Then she saw him.
He was leaning against the scarred mahogany, a bottle of dark beer untouched in front of him. He wasn’t looking at his phone. He was just watching the crowd, his gaze a calm, assessing sweep. Rugged wasn’t the right word. He was worn, like river stone. His shoulders strained the fabric of his simple grey t-shirt, and the hands wrapped around the bottle were broad, knuckles marked with faded scars. Not a fighter, perhaps, but someone who’d dealt with hard things. His life force didn’t spark and sputter like the others. It burned, a steady, stubborn coal.
Him.
She started toward him, each step a small agony. The high heel of her boot caught on something sticky. The sickly-sweet decay smell grew stronger. She felt a warm, wet trickle trace a path down her spine beneath the black silk of her dress. Not sweat. Something else.
“Keep it together,” she whispered to herself, the words lost in the din. The glamour shimmered, a desperate projection of what she was supposed to be: flawless skin, lush lips, hypnotic eyes. The real flesh beneath was a secret battlefield.
She slid onto the empty stool next to him, the movement meant to be fluid but landing with a slight, jarring stumble. The copper tang of blood joined the cocktail of scents around her.
“This seat taken?” Her voice was smoke, but it cracked on the last syllable.
He turned his head. His eyes were a cool, quiet grey. They didn’t glaze over with instant, dumb lust. They just looked at her, taking her in. Seeing the glamour, surely, but perhaps sensing the desperation underneath.
“It is now,” he said. His voice was low, gravel under water.
“Buy a girl a drink?” she asked, nodding to his beer. “Something stronger.”
A faint, almost imperceptible frown touched his mouth. “You look like you’ve had enough.”
She laughed, and it sounded like breaking glass. “You have no idea.” She leaned in closer, letting the glamour’s perfume wash over him. “What’s your name?”
“Kai.”
“Morrigan.” She offered a hand. A mistake. As he reached out, the cuff of her sleeve pulled back. The skin of her wrist, just for a flicker, was not pale and smooth. It was the greyish-purple of a week-old bruise, and the surface was dry, flaking away like old parchment.
She snatched her hand back, tucking it into her lap. His eyes followed the movement. He’d seen it. He had to have seen it.
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through the fever. She was running out of time. The careful seduction, the slow drain—it was a luxury she didn’t have. The rot was winning.
“Get out of here with me,” she said, the urgency stripping the seduction from her tone. It was a raw plea.
Kai studied her face. He saw the perfect arch of her brows, the full, red lips. But his gaze lingered on her eyes, where the violet light was sputtering, revealing fractures of sickly yellow. “You’re in trouble.”
It wasn’t a question.
“You could help me,” she breathed. The room tilted. A piece of her, inside, sloughed away. She felt it. A wave of dizziness hit her, and she swayed on the stool. The glamour flickered, a bad television signal. For half a second, the lush green of her hair dulled to the color of moss on a corpse. The smooth curve of her cheek revealed a sinister, shallow dip beneath the eye.
Kai didn’t flinch. He didn’t run. He just set his bottle down with a definitive click. “What kind of trouble?”
She had no more words for explanations. The pain was a white-hot drill in her gut. Her fangs ached, longer and sharper now, pressing against her lip. The hunger wasn’t for pleasure. It was for survival, vicious and primal.
Her hand shot out, not seductive, but desperate, clamping onto his forearm. The touch broke the last vestige of the spell. The beautiful woman at the bar vanished.
In her place was something dying. The pale skin was mottled, translucent in places, showing the dark, thorn-like paths of corrupted veins beneath. The sweet stench of decay bloomed between them, overpowering the club smells. Her eyes were fully yellow now, pupil-less, swimming in pain.
A woman at the next stool screamed, scrambling backward.
Morrigan ignored her. Her entire world was the man’s arm under her hand, the steady, potent thrum of his life inside it. “Please,” she gritted out, her voice a ruin. “It will kill you if you’re weak. Be strong. For a minute. Just be strong.”
She didn’t wait for consent. She couldn’t. With the last of her strength, she pulled herself toward him, her body collapsing against his chest. Her mouth found the side of his neck, where his pulse hammered a strong, rhythmic warning against her lips.
She hesitated, a shard of something like mercy piercing the hunger. Then the rot twisted inside her, and she clamped her parched lips against his neck. The contact wasn't intimate enough to create as much conduit to his life force as a deep kiss would have....or a blow job....but at the moment, her only chance was to make him want to help her.
Kai’s body went rigid, a shockwave of tension locking every muscle. He didn’t scream. A harsh, choked grunt escaped him, his hands coming up to clutch at her shoulders, not to push her away, but to hold on, as if he were riding out a storm.
And his life force… potent and soothing, trickled into her. Just enough to tantalised with the promise of a healing elixer, but, like sucking for air on an empty coke bottle, not near enough to provide relief. For a moment longer, the demon woman sucked desperately, her chest heaving,from the effort, but then pain halted her efforts. She gasped and her usually firm and perky breasts bounced, feeling like the consistency of pudding.
She clutched at her breasts with both hands, and her fingers sank into the mushy flesh. Instantly she was immersed in an ocean of pain. She fainted.
The scream cut through the music like a shard of glass. Then another. A bottle smashed on the floor. The sea of bodies around the bar surged back, creating a widening circle of sticky tile and stunned silence.
Kai was still holding her. The weight in his arms was all wrong. It was less like holding a person and more like holding a sack of wet gravel, some parts rigid, others terrifyingly soft. He looked down at her face, which now rested against his chest. The illusion was utterly gone. The beautiful, sharp features were still there, but sunken, the skin taut over bone in some places and sagging in others. A thin, dark fluid leaked from the corner of her slack mouth.
“What the fuck is that?” a man shouted from the crowd.
“Is she dead?”
“Call an ambulance!”
“Call the fucking police!”
Kai’s mind, usually a slow, deliberate engine, kicked into a brutal, simple gear. Get out. Now. The authorities meant questions. Questions meant time. The thing in his arms was clearly not human, and explaining that was impossible. And beneath the horror, beneath the primal revulsion at the smell and the feel of her, a stubborn ember of that initial assessment remained. She’d asked for his strength. She’d warned him.
And for a second, before she… changed… she’d just looked scared.
He hoisted her up, one arm under her back, the other under her knees. She was surprisingly light. A damp, warm patch soaked through his shirt where her back touched him. He didn’t let himself think about what it was.
“Move,” he said, his voice a low rumble that carried over the panicked murmurs. He didn’t yell. He just started walking toward the fire exit, the one past the restrooms, the one he’d clocked when he came in. It was a habit.
People stumbled out of his way. Their faces were masks of disgust and fear. A bouncer, a mountain of a man with a shaved head, moved to block the hallway.
“You ain’t going nowhere with that, man,” the bouncer grunted, his eyes wide.
Kai didn’t stop walking. “It’s contagious,” he said flatly, meeting the man’s gaze. “You touched her yet?”
The bouncer hesitated, looking at the weeping, mottled skin of Morrigan’s exposed arm. He took a swift step back, bumping into the wall. Kai walked past him, shoved the heavy bar of the fire door with his shoulder, and stumbled out into the shocking chill of the alley.
The silence was immediate, broken only by the distant wail of a siren and the dull thump of the club’s music from within. The air smelled of garbage and damp concrete. It was clean.
He leaned against the brick wall, catching his breath. The woman—Morrigan—stirred in his arms. A low, pained whimper escaped her. Her eyes fluttered open. They were still that sickly, pupil-less yellow, but the intelligence in them was returning, swimming up through a fog of agony.
“Car,” she rasped, the word barely audible. “Not… hospital. They can’t…”
“Where’s your car?” Kai asked.
A tremor wracked her body. “Don’t have one. Came… through a shadow.” She coughed, a wet, tearing sound. “Yours. Please.”
The siren was getting closer. A blue flash reflected off a puddle at the mouth of the alley. Decision time.
Cursing under his breath, Kai adjusted his grip and started moving down the alley, away from the main street. His truck was parked two blocks over, in the well-lit lot of a closed hardware store. A sensible spot. It felt like a lifetime ago.
Every step was a lesson in surrealism. He carried a decaying mythical creature through the backstreets of his city. Her head lolled against his shoulder. He felt the faint, feverish heat coming off her, and beneath it, a deep, unsettling cold.
He reached the truck, fumbled the keys from his pocket with one hand, and managed to unlock the passenger door. He laid her on the seat as gently as he could. The overhead dome light came on, painting the scene in a harsh, unforgiving yellow.
It was worse in the light. The black dress was fraying at the edges, as if the fabric itself was rotting. The beautiful green hair was lank, streaked with strands of dull grey. And her skin… it was a map of ruin. But as he watched, a faint, shimmering haze seemed to struggle over the worst of it, like the world’s weakest projector trying to display a broken image. The glamour was trying to reassert itself, and failing.
He closed the door, walked around, and climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine turned over with a dependable growl. He pulled out of the lot and drove, aimlessly at first, just putting distance between them and the club.
“Where?” he asked, his eyes on the road.
She was silent for so long he thought she’d lost consciousness again. Then her voice came, thin and strained. “Anywhere quiet. Dark. The light… it burns now.” She shifted, and the leather seat creaked underneath her. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” Kai said. His eyes darted to her cleavage, and her swollen, mishapen breasts, sickly grey veins radiated out from her nipples and spready across her chest. “What are you?”
Another pause. He could hear her breathing, a ragged, effortful sound.
“Dying,” she finally said. The word hung in the close cabin, simple and absolute. “I am… was… a succubus. An energy vampire. A pretty story for a night of fun.” A bitter, choked sound that might have been a laugh. “Got into a fight. Got poisoned. Now my energy is leaking out, and my body is coming apart without it.”
He glanced over. Her head was turned toward the window, watching the streetlights blur past. The pathetic glamour showed a beautiful profile. She must have been so beautiful. The reality beneath showed the edge of a cracked and blackened cheekbone.
“You tried to drain me,” he stated.
“Yes.”
“Would it have worked?”
“If your will had broken, it would have killed you in minutes, and bought me a few hours,” she said, her tone matter-of-fact, clinical. “If you had resisted, it would have hurt, and I would have gotten nothing. But you… you held on. You didn’t break. You just… took it.” She turned her head to look at him, the yellow eyes gleaming in the dashboard lights. “You’re still here. That means you have enough life in you to share. Not a drain. A… transfusion.”
Kai’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “You want to try again.”
“I need to try again,” she corrected, desperation clawing back into her voice. “A real kiss. A proper conduit. Not that… desperate clawing at the surface. It’s the only thing that can reverse the decay. But it has to be given. Not just taken. The connection has to flow both ways, or your energy will reject mine like a bad organ.”
“Given,” Kai repeated, his voice flat.
“You have to want to save me,” she whispered, the admission sounding like it cost her everything. “Even a little. Even just the part of you that doesn’t like to watch something suffer. That’s the anchor. That’s the thread I can use. If you can get past the revulsion and make love to me, it might just be enough. She met his eyes with a vaguely hopeful expression. "I could be pretty for you again, if you can save me. Imagine my skin like butter against yours, my nipples stiffening when you touch me.”
He drove in silence for ten blocks. He pulled into the empty parking lot of a community park, shrouded in the deep shadows of old oaks. He cut the engine. The sudden quiet was immense.
He turned in his seat to face her. The dim light from a distant streetlamp filtered through the trees, dappling the ruin of her.
“Why me?” he asked.
She met his gaze. “I saw your light. In that pit of frantic, guttering candles, you were a torch. Steady. Slow burn.” She lifted a trembling hand. The glamour flickered, showing a perfect hand with red nails. The reality underneath was a claw with peeling, blackened skin. She didn’t touch him. She just let it hang in the space between them. “I am not a good person, Kai. I have done terrible, wonderful, selfish things for centuries. I am asking you to share your flame with a monster, knowing it might gut you. Knowing I don’t deserve it.”
He looked at her hand, then back at her ruined face. He thought of the grunt of pain he’d stifled in the club, the feeling of something vital being tugged at. He thought of the fear in her eyes before the decay took over.
He leaned across the center console.
“Don’t make me regret this,” he said, his voice a low growl.
And he closed the distance.