Come to Me (7 page)

His balls ached with unspent desire, and he was fully hard. He had an almost unbearable urge to relieve the pent-up lust, but with an effort of will he kept his hands at his sides. He was at a loss to explain why he was in such a state, not to mention how he had ended up on the floor. He closed his eyes, trying to gather his wits. The last thing he remembered, he'd been sitting at the table, reading.

As his head slowly cleared, his sexual hunger subsided, disappearing back into whatever far Corner of his soul from which it had crept. He hadn't allowed himself to feel such things for over two years. Why it had happened now, against his wishes, he didn't—

The succubus
. His eyes shot open and he scrambled up off the floor, turning round and staring into all corners of the dimly lit chamber. God in heaven, he remembered now: there'd been a succubus here! Was she well and truly gone?

That sexual hunger hadn't been his at all. More likely it had come from
her
.

Samira. That's what she'd called herself.

Saints protect him, he hadn't known that succubi truly existed, much less that such a she-devil would stand bold as daylight in front of him and introduce herself by name. Had he somehow summoned her without realizing it?

Filled with new energy, he hurried back to the table, and to the book he had been reading. The entire visitation was coming back to him now, in all its frightening detail.

The succubus pictured in the book had the same wings and long hair as Samira, but the body did not do the reality justice. The creature in the drawing had thin legs and a thick waist. Samira's thighs had been plump, inviting a man's touch, while the curve of her hips rounded into a slender waist. Her breasts were high and full, while her hair… Such hair did not exist on mortal women, nor did eyes of such an intense blue, like the heart of a flame.

He sat back down on the bench, unconsciously using his hands to help lift his damaged leg over the seat. He gave the injured limb only a passing thought, his attention too focused on the magical tome to feel his customary flicker of anger at the weakness.

The Hierarchy of Demons, and Their Summoning
, the book was called. It was a collection of lore and spells, supposedly gathered from many countries over many centuries. He'd found this book, and dozens of others like it, hidden in a secret space deep inside one of the remaining walls of this fortified monastery he now called home. The Tartars had attacked and burned the monastery several times in its history, which explained the need for such a hiding place, but it had been the Turks who came afterward who had finally succeeded in killing or chasing off the monks, perhaps to the relief of the villagers.

Lac Strigoi
had been named for the monks: Lake of the Vampires. Nicolae was sure that the monks had been mere mortal men, not vampires, but local legend would have it otherwise. Over the years the monks had gathered the books on the dark arts in order to understand evil, and thus better combat it.

The legend went that a hundred years or more in the past, one of the young monks had become obsessed by what was in the books, going half-mad and eventually trying to summon and control the evil of which he read. He had poisoned some of his fellow monks, and then after they were buried, had gone out in the middle of the night and raised them from the dead. He'd led his gruesome troop of walking corpses through the village, screaming all the while for everyone to come look at his army of the damned.

The villagers, although frightened, had responded with admirable practicality. They'd taken their scythes and lopped the heads off the lot of them, monk included, and burned the remains at a crossroads.

The remaining monks at Lac Strigoi had lost the trust of the villagers, who chose to flee into the hills when the Turks came, rather than hide with the monks within the walls of the monastery. With the monastery burnt and the remaining monks dead, the cursed books had been forgotten, resting secure in the wall until Nicolae had discovered them.

He'd read half of
The Hierarchy of Demons
, each page convincing him more deeply that it was a heap of rubbish dreamt up by foolish and ignorant men. There was nothing in that tome, he'd decided, that would help him achieve his ends.

He had barely turned the page to the section on the succubi, feeling bleary-eyed and bored by the inanity of the text, when sleep had overtaken him. Having spent far too many nights cursed with insomnia, he'd been grateful to give in, his last waking thought being that the book was good for something if it could send him into the blissful darkness of slumber. Demons be damned, he was going to get some much-needed rest.

And then
she
had come.

He raked his fingers through his hair, the ebony locks falling back against his cheeks as he painstakingly deciphered the Latin script on the page. The calligraphy had been done by an untalented hand, the strokes so thick they made some letters no more than black blots upon the page.

It had been two years since he'd found the stash of magical books, and he had spent those two years up in this tower, reading and experimenting, seeking out the magic that would help him achieve his goals. Many would say he was risking eternal damnation by such wicked dabbling; he would counter that he was damned already—to a life that was not a life. He would rather risk everlasting Hell than live the rest of his life powerless and forgotten in this godforsaken swamp of a lake.

He was aware of how similar to that insane monk of legend he must appear, but he trusted that he would be able to better handle whatever magic he found. He wouldn't parade corpses through the village. Well, not unless he had a very good reason for doing so.

More than having a sane head still attached to his shoulders, though, he was hoping that there was something within him that would give him an advantage over that long-decapitated monk: his ancestress Raveca had been a seer. If he were lucky, a talent for the uncanny might run in his blood.

But all he'd found so far in the books were spells and charms that did nothing of use; at worst, he'd nearly killed himself and his few remaining men with spells gone awry. It appealed to his dark sense of humor that it was this demon book, this conglomeration of asinine foolishness, that had against all expectation just yielded his most stunning success.

He read:

Of the lowest order of the demons of the darkness are the succubi. A female with the wings of a bat and a nether channel as cold as ice, this hellish creature drains the seed of sleeping men, leaving them without strength or wit upon waking.

If a succubus chooses the same man for many nights, he will become pale and weak, lose his appetite, lose his powers of thought, and sink into a melancholy relieved only temporarily by another visit by the succubus. If not freed from her, the man will soon die of exhaustion and loss of vital fluids.

Different opinions exist on why the succubus should drain a man. Some say that they are her sustenance, as bread is to man. Others say a man's
seed, once taken by a succubus, will be passed by her to her male counterpart, the incubus. The incubi then deposit such emissions into sleeping mortal women, impregnating them and causing great mischief when the child is born bearing no resemblance to the woman's rightful husband. Such children are tainted, doomed to a life of sin and depravity.

Herein follow instructions to lure and capture a succubus.

A diagram followed, of geometric designs to be drawn upon the floor in chalk. Strange, foreign symbols graced the angles and crossings of the lines, few of which he recognized. They could be from the underworld itself, for all Nicolae knew.

He stared at the design, the possibilities it offered making his heart pound. If merely having the book open to this page and falling asleep upon the drawn charm had been enough to draw a succubus to him, what might happen were he to draw the design upon the floor, as the book instructed, and follow that act with the rest of the conjuration?

He might truly hold a demoness in his power. A flush of excitement washed over him, making his skin prickle. This could be the beginning. He might finally be on the way to regaining all that he had lost—and wreaking his revenge upon the man who had brought him to this nadir of existence.

A trickle of practical doubt invaded his thoughts.

And what if the spell really did work? What use had he for a succubus? She would be the most useless sort of demon for what he needed to accomplish. He hadn't wanted any sort of demon at all when he began his research. It was only desperation that had made him open this book.

It was raw power he needed, not soulless sex and damnation.

The thought brought back the shadows of the melancholy that had haunted him ever since his father had banished him to this ruin. He stood and went to the window embrasure, looking out at the sky, the first hints of dawn lightening it to a soft charcoal blue. Daybreak was a bitter reminder of another night passed without accomplishment, of another day that he would spend in this godforsaken ruin in the middle of a swampy, mosquito-laden lake.

He turned away from the offending dawn and went back to his worktable, which was scattered with useless books and questionable potions.

He looked at the drawing of the succubus and reconsidered his doubts. One minor demoness was better than none. She might lead to stronger otherworldly forces that he could then draw under his command, until he had an entire army of demons at his beck and call.

And with a little creative thought, there might even be use for a pet demoness who made sexual prey of men.

A vivid memory of Samira's body suddenly filled his vision. Full, high breasts. Hair like liquid rubies, sliding over her snowy skin, and over those pink, erect nipples, one of which she had so wickedly rolled between her fingertips, as if offering a newly ripe cherry for his taste.

His body reacted to the thoughts, his loins stirring once again.

God's blood! She truly was a devil.

He fought to control his body's reaction and failed, the image of her hand on her breast forcing its way into his vision, each pinch of her fingertips acting like a touch upon his own manhood. And then, for what reason he did not know, he suddenly envisioned her lying beneath him, her legs around his waist, her sex wet and warm against the head of his cock. He groaned and shook his head, hard, as if he could shake the unwelcome vision from his mind.

It had been two years since he'd let himself feel any physical passion. Two years since he'd paid the least attention to his base and lecherous desires. He would often wake with his manhood engorged but had known it to be the meaningless habit of a male body, the same as since he'd been a boy. The engorgement never came with an accompanying lustful hunger, nor thoughts of nubile young women—or at least, none that he allowed himself to acknowledge.

He had reasons for blocking those thoughts out, harsh lessons that had taught him not to let such desires interfere with the pursuit of his goals. He would control himself, at all costs, until he achieved his ends.

It was going to be dangerous to try to capture Samira. He didn't want to end up one of those listless men described in the book, sucked dry by sex with a minion of Hell. Nor could he let his judgment be clouded by desire, as he had once before, and with such nightmarish consequences.

A twinge of pain went through his left arm, and he rubbed it, feeling the thickness of scar tissue and the wasted weakness of the muscles, which were only now beginning to regain some of their former mass. The slowly healing injuries were a reminder of all the reasons he had been banished to Lac Strigoi, and a reminder of all he was intent upon achieving despite—or because of—that banishment.

Again he saw the succubus in his mind's vision, and saw the strange and fearful longing in her brilliant eyes. Again, he heard her saying her own name, as if determined that he should know it. One might think that there was something human about her, something seeking a connection with him beyond the physical.

Nonsense. He was being overly imaginative. Surely succubi never felt such things, and he himself hadn't the least desire to become entangled with a soulless monster. Compassion was expensive, and a pretty face a mask for deception. He would best use this Samira to his own ends, without qualm, just as she would use him if given the chance.

He lay a fingertip on the diagram. "Samira," he said, the spoken name a promise made to the fading night. She would be his.