Mike Landis wasn't going to go to the Halloween university reunion party, not originally. He had no desire to see his old university associates and he suspected the feeling was mutual. And there was always the
thing
hanging over him...
Then something happened.
Landis examined himself in the full length mirror. Perfect, he thought. The top was exactly the right shade of blue and the badge above his left breast was a good facsimile. He'd been concerned the pointed ear prosthetics would look silly, but they looked good now he'd put them on.
"Live long and prosper," he turned and said to the girl sitting on the end of his bed. He held up a hand, palm outwards, fingers split two on each side in a 'V'.
The girl on the bed clapped her hands and giggled.
She looked younger than Landis. Late teens to turning twenty would be a reasonable estimate. In contrast, Landis wasn't far off the big four-o.
"It's a shame we couldn't get you a costume in the same theme," Landis said. "You'd make a hot Romulan or green-skinned alien babe."
The additionals weren't really needed. The girl would make a hot
anything
.
Currently she was a hot horny devil.
A pair of dainty red horns emerged from waves of silky, flame-red hair. Her full breasts, large in comparison to the rest of her slim build, were contained within a skimpy black bra. The bra was matched by an equally skimpy pair of black panties. That was all she wore apart from a pair of black boots with laces that twined up to her knees.
Her face didn't really fit her suggestive costume. Cute and innocent, she resembled more the classic girl next door... if next door happened to be on the set of a Hollywood movie.
Mostly...
There was just the hint of something else in her smile. A little bit of mischief. A little bit of dirty. The smile of a girl who wouldn't have any qualms about wrapping those moist, pillow-soft lips around a man's penis and sucking until the owner collapsed in a state of blissful exhaustion.
The rest of her costume was surprisingly detailed and realistic. A pair of black bat wings was folded behind her back. A long red tail terminating in a 'devil's' point hung over the side of the bed. She'd even gone to the trouble of putting in contact lenses that made her eyes resemble empty black pools.
There was good reason her costume looked so realistic...
"Oh. But I like Halloween because it's the one night of the year I can be me," the girl said.
"I know, I know."
It wasn't a costume.
She was a succubus. His succubus to be precise and the reason why he'd decided to go to the party after all.
How he'd ended up with her, well that was a little more complicated...
* * * *
"What do you have for me here?" Landis asked.
"Not sure. Heart attack, maybe," John Volk said, wheeling the body into the autopsy room.
"Looks young for a heart attack victim," Landis commented.
The body lying on the gurney looked to be a young man in his early twenties. Lean and muscular. Not your typical heart attack victim.
"That'll be the reason for the 'not sure'," Volk said. "They want a full tox."
Tox, toxicological. Healthy-looking young men did sometimes keel over with heart attacks for perfectly natural reasons, but it was an infrequent occurrence. Landis wouldn't know for sure until he'd opened him up and taken a look inside. Corpses were very much like books in that regard; you couldn't judge either by the cover.
"Did they find anything with the body?" Landis asked.
Volk's eyes lit up and he smiled.
"You're gonna love this," he said. He reached under the gurney and pulled out a cardboard box. "They found a whole bunch of spooky shit with the corpse."
"Spooky shit?" Landis said, raising an eyebrow.
"Satanic paraphernalia," Volk said, putting the box on a low desk next to Landis.
Landis looked through it. The box was full of black candles, old scraps of parchment and other satanic accoutrements, all carefully wrapped in clear plastic evidence bags.
"Different," Landis commented.
He pulled out a black stone tablet about the size of his fist. One side was engraved with a picture of a ferocious-looking female demon. She had grotesque exaggerated breasts and vagina. The other side was covered in worn and illegible writing. An ugly thing, Landis thought, putting it back in the box.
"You're thinking the candles?" Landis said. "The wax could be steeped in some kind of drug or poison."
Volk nodded. "Although some of the lads reckon he got over-excited at the thought of summoning up a hot demon babe and wanked himself to death."
The detective inspector guffawed, slapped Landis on the shoulder and left him with the body.
* * * *
The real explanation was far more prosaic. Mr Healthy-looking Twentysomething had an undiagnosed congenital heart defect. A little extra excitement and boom, no more Mr Healthy-looking Twentysomething.
The source of that extra excitement was also trivial to work out. There was clear evidence the young man had been engaged in vigorous sexual activity right before he'd died.
With who, now that was the interesting question.
It should have been 'with what', as Landis was to discover later that night as he was sewing the corpse back up.
"He's dead, isn't he?"