Incubus Moon Page 6

  Contacting that military base before I returned to Los Angeles moved to the top of my To Do list. They’d have documented proof of whether or not my father had been stationed there.

  It seemed that yet another facet to my becoming an incubus was a newfound ability to perceive falsehoods. I could feel rather than specifically hear a person’s thoughts. And behind the smiling eyes of the Roman branch of the Marmaggi family were a great many secrets and lies.

  I was relieved to be getting out of Dodge.

  Mark and Christie were naturally disappointed for me, but also sad to be leaving sooner than planned. We weren’t due back in Los Angeles for another five days.

  “I still think you should’ve accepted their invitation to put us up,” Mark said in the taxi en route to Leonardo Da Vinci Airport. “They seemed like nice people to me.”

  Christie nodded and patted her stomach. “And Laura’s sister’s an amazing cook. This has got to be a record for me, five pounds in five days.”

  I responded with sullen silence, watching the small, European cars whiz by us.

  “Ever stop to consider they might be right about that birth certificate? That it’s a hoax?”

  I gave Mark a sour look and hadn’t meant to.

  “Buddy, I’m on your side. You also happen to be the spitting image of your father. In my book, that’s irrefutable proof that, at the very least, you’re an Iverson.”

  Christie nodded again. “What about their marriage certificate? If Laura and your father were really married, there has to be a record of it somewhere.”

  They were right. Too bad I was so damn irritable I couldn’t think straight. Another apparent side-effect to being an incubus was heightened emotions, especially anger. I liked being angry. It energized me. It didn’t, however, give me a right to be pissy with my friends. They didn’t deserve it.

  I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re right, but I couldn’t find one in any of Laura’s files.” The minute we got home, I was going to blow the lid off this mystery. And nothing, I promised myself, was going to keep me from doing just that.

  Except we weren’t heading back to Los Angeles right away.

  “You’ll get to the bottom of it,” Christie said, snuggling up to her husband on the bench seat next to me. “And for what it’s worth, I applaud your decision not to let the rest of the trip go to waste. Prague’s going to help chase away those disappointment demons, you’ll see.”

  I was tempted to say, “Wanna bet?”

  Through a Czech design connection, Christie arranged for lodgings in a charming boutique hotel located in Prague’s historic center, which was to be their treat. It was the least they could do after I’d paid for the airline tickets and accommodations in Rome.

  Our rooms offered lovely views of the old Charles Bridge, its thoroughfare extending over the Vltava’s murky waters, and ending with the imposing Prague Castle perched high on a hilltop overlooking the city. I appreciated the gesture, but honestly, all I wanted was to get home and make one last ditch effort to obtain the answers I needed surrounding my strange adoption, which I was still convinced was no hoax.

  If that effort failed, I was officially done with it. I’d do what my friends suggested and put the infuriating mystery of it behind me and get on with the rest of my life.

  I was also still in the dark about the whole being a demon thing. Other than the entity at Joy’s claiming that my thirtieth birthday triggered the change, it didn’t explain how and why this had happen to me. How did a guy even begin to put something like this behind him?

  In the meanwhile, Prague delivered. It proved exactly what Christie had promised it would and was the diversion I needed to pull me out of my sullen funk, at least temporarily.

  Her contact, an engaging and flamboyant fellow named Pavel, proved an exceptional tour guide. By day, we visited all the noteworthy sites. By night, he had us wiling away the late hours in the trendiest restaurants, bars, and dance clubs the city had to offer. Dancing was anathema to Mark, which didn’t stop the rest of us from tearing up the dance floor without him.

  It also quickly became evident why Prague was the porn capital of Europe. The women and men of the Czech Republic were hot, hot, hot!

  Christie’s words to me during the ride to the airport in Rome turned out to be truer than I could have hoped for. Prague really had chased away the disappointment demons.

  The night before our departure, Christie and Mark bowed out to spend a romantic evening alone. Fine by me. Pavel had lined up some special fun of his own for us.

  Regrettably, that fun proved to be outside of my comfort zone—multiplied by ten!

  I peered out through the taxicab window at the large banner above the entrance to Alcatraz, one of Prague’s most infamous sex clubs, and felt my shoulders slump. It boldly announced: Men’s Only Night. With all the hot Czech women afoot, in addition to my complete lack of sex in nearly two weeks, I was ready to pop.

  “There is problem?” Pavel asked as we exited the cab.

  “Yeah, I’m not gay.”

  He stared back at me for the longest moment, his blue eyes wide with self-conscious disbelief, his pale, freckled cheeks turning bright red. Then he did something unexpected.

  He lost it.

  Passersby took in his laughing fit with smiles. The sound of it was somewhat girlish but completely infectious. Even I couldn’t help letting loose a chuckle or two.

  “Big apologies, Austin. I assumed that…” He shook his head and wrapped his tall, lanky body around mine, which shook now with silent laughter. “Come,” he said taking a step back, “I know just where in Prague to take cute straight boy like you.”

  What Pavel didn’t know about me (couldn’t know) was that I wasn’t altogether straight anymore. Okay. I’d had sex just once with another man, along with a raunchy dream-gone-bad starring an impossibly handsome Alitalia flight attendant. That did not make me or my libido any less female friendly. Then what did it make me, exactly?

  Pavel started to maneuver me toward an idling taxicab, but I held my ground. “No.”

  His amused embarrassment faded. “Austin, I am sorry that—”

  “No. What I mean is, let’s go inside,” I shocked myself by telling him.

  His eyes grew large again. “But I know very nice club where lots of pretty girls go.”

  The way I saw it, this guy had gone out of his way big time to ensure that the Golds and I had a memorable visit to his city. That he’d also been largely responsible for pulling me out of my sullen funk was yet another reason I could do something kind (albeit weird) for him.

  Besides, I had no intention of scoring at Alcatraz.

  “That’s great, Pavel, but I want to see it.”

  He appeared to weigh my decision, then nodded. Hey, he’d brought us here to begin with. Pavel clearly wanted to go inside and blow off some steam.

  “Do not worry,” he said once we got in line. “I will protect you.”

  Shit. Was I really ready for this? “You’d better.”

  My host might be taller and more familiar with the workings of a sex club, but he lacked a good forty pounds of muscle over my one-hundred-ninety-pound-frame. Factor in years of martial arts training and my newfound incubus strength and the one thing that I was not the least bit concerned about was having to fend off overly eager admirers.

  Once inside, though, I began to have second thoughts. Make that third and fourth thoughts. The club’s clientele skewed much older than I’d expected and also leaned toward the leather gear and harness-wearing crowd. As an incubus (God, would I ever get used to referring to myself as that?), I’d recently opened to new forms of sexual experimentation. Hardcore gay S&M/B&D weren’t among them.

  Not yet, anyway.

  Shaved heads, tattoos, and piercings everywhere imaginable, also played a major theme at Alcatraz, as did a general disregard for the use of deodorant. Pavel didn’t seem to mind this one bit. He was glowing like a filly in estrus in a field of r
andy stallions.

  “Go,” I told him with a laugh. “Have fun. Just come get me when you’re done.”

  After twenty minutes of raunchy Euro porn in the club’s only bar, and being the decided apple of several leather-clad gents’ eyes, I abandoned my half-finished vodka martini in favor of a little exploration. Exploration did not have to mean participation, I reminded myself.

  Larger than expected, Alcatraz played host to fewer customers than I’d imagined, lending a more squalid and sinister air to its dark, maze-like corridors.

  The few low-wattage red bulbs did little to give the place a less creepy feel, as I passed small rooms tricked out with all manner of sex gadgets—or devices of torture, depending on one’s bent. De rigueur porn played on small color monitors in each of these rooms, most of which were open to reveal empty cubicles with plastic-covered mattresses atop raised platforms. The creaking of wood and vinyl from behind the few closed doors were accompanied by the sound of male grunts and moans. At least some of the patrons were having a good time.

  Pavel was probably behind one of those closed doors right now. The thought of him getting fucked roused my incubus appetite.

  The club’s seedy allure appeared to be growing on me. My stiffening dick was suddenly a lot more interested in further exploration.

  Rounding a bend into the deepest part of the club, I spotted a lone male leaning against a wall at the far end of the corridor. I approached him slowly, his face obscured by shadow, his features indistinct. Although there was nothing indistinct about his spiked, platinum blond hair and the tight, lean body beneath the light-colored jeans and snug-fitting T-shirt.

  I moved in to get a better look.

  We cruised each other in silence, our looks both appraising and lewd. He jutted his hips forward to display what he was offering. It looked promising.

  I chose to keep walking. Here, kitty, kitty, kitty.

  Ducking into an unoccupied cubicle at the end of the hallway, I left the door ajar and positioned myself to the right of it, thumbs wedged into the pockets of my jeans, hands covering my crotch cowboy-style. A hot, familiar energy began to churn at my core and I let my gaze drift up to the virile bodies writhing on the sands of some tropical beach on the wall-mounted video monitor. That was all it took to ignite incubus lust.

  It was also the same instant I heard the door creak open.

  A man, not the guy from the hallway, stepped inside and turned to close the door. I detected the faint clicking of a locking mechanism. Uninvited strangers did not get to lock doors on me, no matter how out-of-control horny I was.

  Trouble was, the guy was blocking my only exit.

  He turned around now and fixed me with dark, glittering eyes. “Vide quam mihi.”

  Those three words came out in a hissing whisper and I froze in mid-step, powerless to move, alarm bells clanging in my head. I’d understood from high school and college Latin that he’d commanded me to look at him. And I had to obey.

  The instant I met his eyes, black-as-midnight pools and fueled by terrifying power, I found myself being backed into the center of the room. Icy fingers sank into the muscle of my shoulders in a vise-like grip, and I was incapable of anything other than what that wicked gaze compelled me to do.

  Matched in height, there was also something eerily familiar about the way his lips lengthened into a cruel smile beneath an aristocratic nose. Alabaster skin stretched across high cheekbones and his dark, manicured Van Dyke beard contrasted sharply against his pale skin and shaved head. The sum total of his looks was handsome, but with a predatory edge.

  More frightening still, my incubus senses told me that this man was not human.

  “I have sought you out,” he said in Czech now, although the words echoed through my mind as though he’d spoken them in perfect English. He moved to stand behind me, my immobile body trapped in his thrall. His cool hands and forearms slid down to wrap around my waist, and then brought me in hard against the line of his hips and groin. “Do you know why?”

  I wanted to break free of him, get the hell out of there, but my body wouldn’t cooperate.

  He leaned in to brush my ear with his smooth lips, before running a cold tongue down the side of my neck, his breath coppery-sweet. Those same icy fingers popped the top button of my jeans, then the second and third one. His mind willed me to melt against the increasing hardness of him, my jeans slipping past my hips to bunch at my ankles, my belt buckle thudding against the concrete floor. “Your distinctness called to me.”

  I’d broken out in a thin layer of sweat, waves of hot and cold pouring off me.

  When I felt the brush of his pubic hair tickle my bare ass, I spasmed in his embrace, my mind slipping deeper and deeper into his evil trance.

  What was he that he could control me like this? Another incubus?

  “Shall I show you?” He’d said this in English.

  Heightened fear gripped me when I widened my stance to accept him. The human in me was terrified, but incubus me was furious to be corralled and helpless like this. It wanted to lash out at this thing, to do to him what would have otherwise made the human in me cringe.

  “If only you could.”

  He taunted the opening to my anus with the head of his excitement, repeating this tapping motion several times, until I gasped from him driving the length of himself inside me.

  I bit down on the stinging sensation, only to have it replaced by a sudden perverse pleasure that made me begin to ride him with a slow, deliberate grinding of my hips. I pumped back against him, feeling him grow larger still. His mind control was driving our rhythm, our bodies growing hot and damp from our efforts. I was being defiled, and yet my human body craved more of him, demanded that I continue to thrust back against him.

  Incubus me felt no such emotion. It trembled with rage. It wanted revenge.

  It wanted to kill.

  This explosive anger caused the monster to lose some of the purchase he held over my mind, the feel of him moving inside me becoming pure agony.

  It was suddenly and horribly clear to me. I knew who he was. Who he had to be. The very same evil the entity at Joy’s had warned me about. The shaved head. The alabaster skin. This was the phantom figure from my nightmares. This was the Shadow Walker!

  “Yield to me!” His powerful thrall warred with my own supernatural resolve to break his spell and survive this nightmare. I knew that only one of us would prevail.

  Mobility returned to my hands and arms, and I reached back to claw at his face, my voice ragged. “Get the fuck off me!”

  He clamped a hand over my mouth, a metal band on his finger connecting with my two front teeth in a zinging jolt of pain. His other arm tightened around my waist in a vice-like grip.

  “Yield to me, incubus!” The more I struggled, kicking and thrashing and trying to bite at his tightly cupped hand, the more I realized with mounting horror that I wasn’t strong enough to defeat him. He was going to win. “Yes, you are mine!”

  Brilliant pinpoints of light crowded the outer edges of my vision and I fell limp in his arms, the full weight of my body suspended in his grip as though I were nothing more than a rag doll, while he continued his violent assault.

  With one final, agonizing stab, he shuddered his release into me. It burned like liquid fire, the dank cubicle growing black around me, as I glimpsed people and places that flashed behind my eyelids—an exotic beauty with long, dark hair and upturned amber eyes, an ornate carriage drawn by sleek horses racing through the foothills of a jagged mountain range etched against an angry sky. And I could see him, my attacker, pacing before an enormous fireplace.

  I was dimly aware that shouting had erupted from the other side of the locked door, accompanied now by several sets of hands pounding on it.

  “There is no salvation for you,” my assailant hissed.

  My body stiffened when two large needles punctured the left side of my neck and I pitched forward, palms and knees connecting with the sticky concrete floor.


  I willed myself to remain conscious, at least long enough to try to drag myself over to unlock the door, but I was losing it fast. Whatever he’d injected me with had robbed me of more of my basic motor skills. I could feel my feet ensnared by the jeans wadded up around them and barely managed to turn over to face my attacker.

  Gone.

  What sounded like Pavel’s frantic voice called to me from the other side of the door. How did he know I was in here? Did it even matter?

  I tried to answer him, but my voice wouldn’t come. My mind and body couldn’t get past the attack, or why he hadn’t left me for dead. Wasn’t that the Shadow Walker’s supposed mission, to take my life? He definitely knew that I was an incubus.

  More hands pounded on the door, the hinges straining under the siege.

  I tried to tug at my jeans in a useless attempt to pull them up, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I’d been raped by a real-life monster in a sleazy Czech sex club, but I didn’t want the people on the other side of that door to see me with my battered, bare ass hanging out.

  Trouble was, I didn’t have the strength to do it.

  The pounding increased and the doorknob shook loose and clattered to the floor. It took all the strength I had to roll onto my side, which was when the door flew open to a blur of people stampeding in and staring down at me.

  The guy who’d cruised me earlier was among them. I tried to focus on him, but his face looked distorted, ghoulish. Everything around me held a bizarre, nightmarish haze to it.

  I was lifted and taken out into the cooler hallway, my limbs numb and inert against the many hands supporting the weight of my body. The passageways beyond stretched into infinity, the walls slanting at impossible angles. I was about to black out, or vomit, or both.

  “It will be alright,” Pavel said with greater panic in his voice, as he supported my head. “I will call Mark and Christie.”