Tristessa: a Succubus in Love

Charlotte was good. I had to give her that. First, sneaking up on my in my hotel room (although admittedly I was really focused on masturbating at the time), and second, losing me as I tried to follow her. Well, technically, she didn't lose me. I'd tracked her to a more or less ordinary four-story building on Baker Street, but then she just disappeared. I spent the better part of a fortnight staking the place out to no avail. Probably the Circle of the Purity Scroll, an ancient demon-hunting organization with which I suspected Charlotte was affiliated, had some sort of hideout or clubhouse or whatever those people have, with a secret entrance somewhere in the building. But they must have had another way in and out as well, because I never saw her use that building again.

I'd had my things moved to the room directly above my old one at the May Fair, thinking she might come back with backup at some point, but after two weeks, there was no sign that she'd done so. I was starting to think myself quite the fool for having let her go at all. But what was I going to do? I couldn't make her love me by kidnapping and/or raping her.

After a night on the town (and a successful feed in the stall of a nightclub restroom with a guy who'd slipped a couple roofies into his date's drink), I made it back to my room, a little worse for wear. Yes, demons can get drunk. In fact, alcohol can have pretty drastic effects on some of us. Succubae handle it pretty much the same as humans do, though after twelve hundred years, I had a pretty solid tolerance. Nevertheless, I realized as I fumbled with the key card, I had officially had One Too Many. I didn't even bother turning on the lights or getting undressed; I just kicked my shoes off, threw my leather jacket on the floor, and flounced onto the bed. I slept great until I woke up at about four-thirty with a bladder that was about to burst. Just as I crawled back into bed, feeling much relieved, the bedside lamp was switched on. There, sitting in the high-backed armchair, not two feet from where I'd been sleeping, was Charlotte. I told you she was good. She looked at me with no expression, and said nothing.

"No crossbow this time," I said. "Are we making progress?"

"I need your help," she said.

"I thought you'd never ask. Sexual tension getting to you?"

"You have a smart mouth for a demon."

"It's true."

"What do you know about Karsten Nieves?" she asked.

Karsten Nieves was an incubus Prince. Incubae and succubae have both Noble and Common lines. I was from the latter. As the name implies, we are much more, well, common. Numerous. Nobles are quite rare, in fact, and while their powers are much greater, they are somewhat hindered by their inability to assume human form. They're the ones who provide most of the stories about our kind. While they can't enter anyone's dreams, they do feed on sleeping humans, and are able to put their victims into deep, trance-like states. They can also, if they choose, turn humans into our kind, a gift they share with certain types of vampires. Anyhow, I told her what I knew, which wasn't much.

"He's a incubus Prince, nearly ten thousand years old, extremely powerful and dangerous. Whereabouts unknown. Last I heard he'd developed a taste for the Asian ladies and kept some sort of mountaintop palace outside Kowloon. But that was in the 1920s."

"All correct. And now he's here. He's got a big underground thing he's carved out of the sewers beneath Baker Street." So that's where she'd gone, and why I hadn't seen her around there again.

"Seems like you should be handling the succubae and leaving the incubae to the menfolk. Just, you know, out of precaution."

She smiled, just a little. "They're my specialty."

"I must say, you handled Ellison very competently. What exactly do you need my help for? Not that I'm not agreeing. I am agreeing. I'll help. I'd love to help. Just so you know, Nobles and Commons don't really have much in...well, common. We don't associate much. They don't like us."

"Karsten keeps a sort of Praetorian Guard of Common incubae and succubae. Minions, more or less," she said. "Not that he needs them to feed or anything, he just enjoys the trappings of power. Anyway, after last night, he's down one. He could use a replacement. That's where you come in."

"What's the plan? I walk in with a resumé and ask if they're hiring?"

"Something like that."

"And then what?"

"Then, once you've earned his trust, you get me close to him."

"A, that's a very vague plan. B, you get within ten feet of him and he'll put the whammy on you. I'll help you, but I'm not gonna help you get killed."

"I can handle myself," she said.

"Then why do you need my help?"

"Maybe I'm giving you a chance to prove yourself to me."

"Well, I appreciate that. How about I kill him for you? That way you stay out of danger. I'd feel a lot better about that."

"Do you know how to kill a Prince?"

"Is there a trick?"

"Apart from high explosives, no. Unless you count this." She took a little vial out of her pocket.

"What's that?" I asked.

"An antidote we've developed. Works against their ability to put someone in a trance."

"I don't need to worry about that, it doesn't work on us."

"No offense, but you're no match for a Prince. They're impossibly fast. He'd have your head off before you even realized that whatever you were trying didn't work."

"No offense yourself, but I'm faster than you," I said.

"That's not gonna matter. Here's the thing about the antidote. It's an antidote. It only works after one's been entranced. So, once you've wormed your way into his good graces, you're going to bring me in as a prisoner. A Purity Scroll demon hunter. He'll like that a lot. And he'll do his thing, and get me into bed, and that's when you'll administer the antidote. He'll be preoccupied, I'll be awake suddenly, and his guard will be down."

"And then you'll what? Punch him in the back of the head? Are you going to have a weapon hidden somewhere on your what by then will almost certainly be naked body? Why don't I just kill him while he's preoccupied instead of waking you up and waiting for you to kill him?"

"Because you won't be in the room."

"Then how am I going to give you the antidote?"

"Once you bring him to me, he'll make a nice speech for his minions about how wonderful it is to have caught one of us, and he'll give you a big round of applause, and as he takes me from you, that's when he'll zap me. Right in that instant, you'll inject me. It'll just be in a little syrette, you'll just have to slap my arm or neck or something. It takes about two minutes to kick in. As to the weapon, you're going to hide this," she said, as she pulled out a nasty-looking stiletto, "between his mattress and headboard."

"This is a very bad plan," I said. "There are a lot of assumptions in there."

"I know how he operates. It will work. If it doesn't, well, too bad for me. You shouldn't be in any danger."

"It's not me I'm worried about, Charlotte! In case you don't remember, I'm in love with you!"

"I know. That's why you're going to help."

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"Tristessa of Prague," Karsten Nieves boomed as I stood before him. He stood nearly eight feet tall, muscles rippling through his taut maroon skin. "A scourge to be reckoned with in years gone by. I seem to recall tales of terror on the road to Jerusalem that had your name attached to them...when was that? 1100?"

"Thereabouts."

"You say you knew our dear departed Ellison."

"We were in Chicago together some decades ago. I bumped into him here the night he died."

"The night he was killed."

"Quite right. I know who did it. A Purity Scroll demon hunter by the name of Charlotte. She's sneaky, but I've been figuring out her patterns around town. Not exactly able to follow her but I'll catch up with her soon enough. I thought that might interest you."

"It will only interest me in so far as it leads to her appearance in my bed."

"Capturing a demon hunter of her ilk is no small matter. I'd like to think it will reflect well on me."

"If you can procure me this Charlotte, you will have a place of honor among my Guard, if that's what you desire. I wonder, though, why I've heard so little of your exploits for the last 900 years." His voice went up a little at the end, the hint of a question buried in it.

"Well, after Jerusalem, I decided to keep a low profile. Opt for subtlety. Notoriety is rarely the friend of the demonic, save for those of great power such as yourself."

"And yet in your younger days, notoriety found you."

"Hence my disappearance from the annals, as it were. Chalk it up to foolhardy youth."

"Bring me someone else first. Someone young. A real innocent, flush with the buds of womanhood but unsullied. Someone," he said with what felt to me very much like a gleam in his eye, "who doesn't deserve to die."

*********************************************************************

"He's onto me," I told Charlotte. "He wants me to bring him some pubescent teenager. 'Someone who doesn't deserve to die,' were his exact words. That after asking me all sorts of questions about why he hasn't heard anything about me for centuries."

"He asks that of everyone he lets join his little group. It's nothing to do with you."

"Well, I thought you were in the business of protecting the innocent. Now we have to sacrifice a little girl just so you can go after Karsten?"

"Find one of your terminally ill people to which you're so generous," she said, with no small amount of venom dripping from the last word. "Won't she die just as pleasurably as your other victims?"

"I've never preyed on a child, Charlotte."

"So don't bring him a child. 18, 19, 20. So long as she's a virgin. And beautiful."

"And terminally ill. I'm sure Greater London is brimming with girls that fit that particular bill."

"Do your best. Leave another note when it's done." Our means of contact were that I would post a hand-written note on a coffee-shop bulletin board telling "Heather" to meet me at Charing Cross, with a time, though the meeting place itself was actually the coffee shop, and not the station.

With a bit of research online, I tracked down Marjorie. A true English Rose she was, pale skin just slightly befreckled, strawberry blonde hair, the faintest ruddiness to her complexion. She was 19, and had been diagnosed two years earlier with non-typical ALS -- non-typical because of her young age. Otherwise, completely typical. Her body would gradually, over the next couple of years, become paralyzed. She would be unable to move or even to speak, yet her brain would remain completely intact, free to experience every agonizing minute of her horrific descent into death.

Daily, she would walk alone for an hour or two along a wooded creek behind her family's house. I showed myself to her there, in my true form, something telling me it would cause her no greater fear than what she lived with each moment.

"They didn't say anything about hallucinations," she said, looking much more interested than scared.

"Well, I'm not one," I said.

"Are you a devil come to take me to hell?" she asked, no affect in her voice.

"Appearances aside, no."

"That's too bad. I think hell would be better than what's in store for me here."

"I know what that is, and I'm sorry. My name's Tristessa."

"I'm Marjorie. How do you know?"

"There were some news articles back when you were diagnosed. That's all."

"Oh. I thought maybe you had special powers. You look as if you would."

"I do, after a fashion. Look, Marjorie. I know what's in store for you, and...well, I can offer you something else. It's not..." I struggled to find the words. "It's still death. But a better death. A much better one, I hope."

"You going to murder me?"

"No. Do you know what a succubus is?"

"Some sort of demon, innit?"

"Yes. That's what I am. We feed on people's souls. That's what keeps us alive. And we do it by having sex. I only take two kinds of people, either really bad ones, or ones like you that are terminally ill. You see, it's a very pleasurable death. Extremely pleasurable, beyond anything humans could normally experience. But I can't do it to you, because you're a woman, and I only have that power over men. But there are males of my species, called incubae, who can give you that pleasurable death. There's one here in London. I can take you to him. But it's not a decision you should make lightly. Think about it. Meet me here in three days."

"No, I'll do it. I don't need to think about it. I want to make love before I die. I have been thinking about that. And I don't think I have long. I've already had some brief episodes. Loss of control. It's terrifying. I don't fear death. I fear being trapped in a shell. That's what I'm headed for. Take me to your friend." She looked at me with great earnestness.

"I should warn you," I said. "The incubus in question is not quite like me. He's much more powerful."

"It'll be that much more pleasurable then, eh?"

"I...don't know."

"It doesn't matter. At least I'll feel something on my way out. S'a lot better than the alternative. How do I know you're not just some tart in a devil outfit, though?"

I changed into my usual human form before her eyes.

"That's a good trick," she said.

We talked more on the walk to the Tube and on the train into Westminster. She was a sweet girl. It was easy to see that fear haunted her every moment. No wonder she'd jumped at this chance to escape her fate.

Karsten was pleased. He ran his massive hand through her hair and caressed her cheek. Already she was under his spell, her eyes now empty, staring at nothing. A cruel reminder of where her disease would take her, to me. At least she would still feel. I thought that was a good thing. Suddenly I felt strong hands grab me, two large incubae on either side of me, forcing my arms behind my back, and then pushing me down to my knees. As Karsten cast off his black robes, I saw for the first time his erect member. Even on his massive frame it stood out, as long and as thick as my leg between knee and ankle.

"Take off your clothes, my dear," he said softly to Marjorie, as the rest of his minions gathered around for the show. She did so, simply, deliberately, until she stood naked, a small tuft of brown hair covering her mound. Then to me, he grinned and said, "I hope you enjoy this, Tristessa of Prague. I don't believe you've seen what an Incubus Prince is capable of." With that, he picked Marjorie up and then lowered her onto his massive erection. There was no way, I thought, that it would fit, but, as I've since learned, the same hormones that cause the trance also make human skin much more pliable. That, and with his great strength, he simple pushed her down onto him. Her screams ripped into my brain. In my centuries on Earth I've heard every kind of scream. There was not even the least bit of pleasure in hers. Over and over again he lifted her and then pushed her back down. Blood spilled from between her legs and out her mouth. Through it all, Karsten's eyes were locked on mine, and as much I wanted to, I could not look away. Soon his face contorted into what I hoped was anguish, but I knew that it wasn't. He exploded into her, and it was only then, finally, that she descended into the orgasmic frenzy that would convert her soul into his food. Her ruined body twitched, impaled on the giant phallus, her moans building and then trailing off until he pulled the lifeless corpse off of himself and tossed it aside like a wet rag. He ran his hand over his still-hard cock, scraping off the mixture of blood and juices and then licking it off his hand with a long, sinewy tongue.

"Thank you, Tristessa, for bringing me that little morsel. It's quite whetted my appetite. And look who we have for the main course." I followed his gaze. Two more of his largest incubae minions held Charlotte tightly between them, a look of mute terror in her eyes. "Lock her up," Karsten said, and the last thing I saw as my captors dragged me out of the room was Charlotte, released now from her hold, beginning to matter-of-factly undress. I think I screamed.