Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel (3 page)

“This is going to be awesome,” Suze interrupted, glee heavy in her voice. “It’ll be like the whole Victoria’s Secret catwalk show.”

“How do you figure that?” I asked.

Suze scoffed. “They’re
succubi
, Fort.”

“Oh. So they’re actually—” I looked over at Loren and raised my eyebrows inquisitively. I was living proof that superstition, literature, and Hollywood were not always accurate in presenting the supernatural, so I’d assumed that any particular cultural assumptions I might’ve had about succubi were likely to be hugely off base.

Loren wiggled a hand in a maybe-yes-maybe-no gesture. “We’ve never had them in the territory, and they seem to prefer warmer climates, so I couldn’t find much information in the files.” Irritation crossed her face for a brief moment. Nothing got under Loren’s skin like shoddy file-keeping. “Your mother categorized them years ago as completely nonthreatening, and with none in residence, that was rather it. It made for pretty brief reading.”

“The Northeast isn’t good thong weather. It makes sense that we wouldn’t see many of them,” Suze noted.

“They’re not all female,” I pointed out. How much of it was to prove that I’d actually done the reading, I couldn’t exactly say.

“Dudes can wear thongs too, Fort. Unlike you, I’m not making sexist assumptions.” Suze was using her most helpful tone, which she only used when she was having particular levels of fun.

I pushed onward. Loren’s mouth had made a suspicious twitch at Suze’s comment, and whether the secretary was struggling not to laugh or containing the urge to throttle the kitsune, I figured that a little more filler would give her the minute to find the strength. “It’s like foxes—we call females vixens, but they’re still foxes. All succubi are called succubi, but if you need the gendered term you can call the males incubi.”

“That’s very fascinating, Fort. I’m taking notes, I swear.” In the rearview I could see Suze push up her left sleeve to the elbow and solemnly start moving her index finger on the inside of her arm in a writing motion.

It was a sleepy, rural town, heavy on big farming fields covered in snow and a few derelict buildings that suggested that the area had been having trouble hanging on to businesses. It was close enough to wilderness vacationing areas that there were a few motels and one bed-and-breakfast, but that was about it. The GPS led us down several winding two-lane roads that boasted nothing but woods until, like magic, there suddenly appeared a tidy little subdivision. The neat and wholly forgettable and generic sign at the entrance to the subdivision read C
EDAR
H
ILLS
, and a short road led to a rounded cul-de-sac with four identical houses set around it. They were all modest Colonials, the kind that could be found across the country. All of them were painted a tastefully bland wheat color; all of them were in good condition, with identical driveways and a basic amount of landscaping. And for fifty-one weeks out of the year, these houses were always completely empty.

This secluded little area, existing like a ghost in its community, was where petitioners from the south and west of the country came to wait for meetings with my family. There was a similar setup in Québec for more northern visitors, and I was fairly certain that the subdivision there was identical to what I was looking at now. Our eastern border was a whole ocean, so overseas petitioners essentially had to choose where they preferred flying into—Canada or New Jersey. These tiny wait stations were set just inside our border, positioned for easy expulsion of anyone who didn’t make a cut. There was no way for my family to fully police our borders against someone who just drove in—but anyone who did that was risking the death penalty that it carried if a member of the Scott family caught them. My sister had apparently made something of a name for herself over the years with how inventive she could be when it came to punishing trespassers. I’d been told that videos existed of her inventiveness.

There was a large van, the kind driven by church groups and college sports teams, parked in the driveway of the third house, and I pulled the Scirocco in behind it. Whenever a petition call came in, Madeline’s local agent would drive over to one of the houses and leave a key in the mailbox. The agent was also the one who was paid to make sure that the houses were always fully maintained, and was paid well for the privilege of asking no questions. One key per group, one house for their stay, and one interview with a member of the Scott family. Decisions were final.

We all sat for a moment in the car, looking at the house. There were blinds in the windows, but we could see them being rustled. At least one of the succubi was watching. I felt a tug in the pit of my stomach. Inside were the representatives of a group that desperately wanted to get away from wherever they came from and come to the presumed safety of my mother’s territory, and I was the person who represented my mother and held all that authority in my hands. Maybe it should’ve made me feel more excited, but mostly it just made me feel awfully depressed and a bit embarrassed.

Loren and Suze were both doing small, surreptitious checks on clothing and hair after the long drive, so I pulled my vanity mirror down as well. What I saw looking back at me was exactly what I’d expected—a guy in his late twenties who wouldn’t have turned a single head on the street, either positively or negatively, with dark hair that only with the greatest reluctance would yield to styling gels. I was wearing the khaki and collared button-down combination that Suze had said made me look like I was on my way to a Christian revival picnic, and I’d traded my aging winter parka for a more dignified black wool knockoff-of-a-knockoff jacket that came to midthigh, and that from a distance actually looked fairly nice. I’d spent my life trying to make sure that I didn’t become like the rest of my family, and while the surface still showed that, I was becoming more and more concerned about the rest of me.

Behind me, Suze made a rude noise and swatted me lightly. “I can actually
hear
your internal demotivating monologue,” she said. “The best cologne in the world is power, and right now you’re covered in it, so let’s head in.”

I deliberately didn’t look at Loren, and instead just opened the door. The blast of icy January air was immediate. In the car, with the heater cranked and the weak winter sun greenhousing through the windows, it had been easy to forget how lung-bitingly cold it was. After a quick walk around the car to unlock the passenger door and release the women, who were giving me what I felt to be unnecessarily grumpy looks about not having control of their own egress, I stuffed my hands into my pockets and shuddered. With the winter wind biting at us, we headed up the walk at double time, Loren’s sensibly low pumps clacking urgently against the slate panels. The door was pulled open as we neared it.

If I’d had any particular personal investment in having Suze’s expectations of six-foot-tall underwear models be realized, my day would’ve received a quick crushing. The figure standing in the doorway was male, average height, but lean in a way that reminded me of a marathon runner, with nothing but muscle, veins, and skin. His hair was black, but with a line of pure white at the roots, as if a recent dye job was growing out. His skin had that particular orange hue of someone who was a fan of spray tanning, with the lighter patches around his eyes and at the corners of his elbows that confirmed it. From his face I would’ve guessed his age at not more than early thirties, but that felt oddly wrong, though I couldn’t figure out why. His clothing was wildly out of season—sandals, shorts, and a thin T-shirt, and the house was definitely not heated to match.

As I stepped over the threshold and into the small foyer, I could see a woman standing a bit farther back. She was also showing the signs of spray-tanning, though hers looked a bit more evenly applied, and if I hadn’t caught a glance at the palm of her left hand, I might not have suspected it. Her hair was a midbrown, but had the same line of white rootiness showing at her hairline as the man. Both of them had dark brown eyes.

The man was standing within reach, so I began what I hoped to be a solid, honest handshake, but unfortunately the amount of stress sweat on the succubus’s part left the experience rather lacking in vigor—though it certainly made up for that in sheer sogginess. I concentrated on meeting his eyes and carefully resisted the urge to wipe my hand on my pants. “I’m Fortitude, Madeline Scott’s son. I’m here to negotiate.”

“I’m Nicholas,” he responded, and immediately tipped his head toward the woman beside him, “and this is my wife, Saskia.”

“Lovely to meet you,” I said, making another round of handshakes. Saskia’s hand was drier, though she was shaking hard enough that I felt like I was chasing a moving object. Clearly both were under pressure. My smile must’ve looked like a rictus by now, but I tried to normalize and continue with introductions. “My companions are—”

“Shenanigans.” Suze cut me off.

We all froze. I turned around, completely unsurprised at the sight of the long, carefully honed knife that had suddenly appeared in Suzume’s hands. I could feel my muscles tense immediately, and I looked around the room, moving sideways to put myself between Loren and the two succubi, who both looked ready to faint. “What’s wrong?” I asked, sliding my right hand into the pocket of my jacket. One of the things I’d liked about this coat was how well the pockets could conceal a .45. It wasn’t exactly a regulation holster, but with the safety engaged I wasn’t worried about it going off, and I hadn’t wanted to let anyone know that I was carrying. I’d gotten more distrustful over the last year.

“This isn’t just a representative pair. I smell multiple other recent scents.”

I took the gun out and stared at the succubi. “If there’s an explanation, I’d recommend that it starts fast.”

It was Saskia who started speaking—fast and terrified, never able to take her eyes away from Suze’s knife, even though I was holding a gun, and her words tumbled over one another and became incomprehensible.

Loren’s hand closed over my wrist. “Look,” she said softly, drawing my attention to the small figure that was just barely in view through the open archway that led into the living room. I froze at what I saw.

“Suze, put the knife away,” I whispered.

“What—”

“Look.”

They must’ve been told to hide away where we wouldn’t see them, but there were a lot of them, so it was understandable that one had managed to slip the leash. Peeking around the corner at us was a toddler.

*   *   *

We ended up in the living room. All of these houses were fully furnished, so there were sofas to sit on, along with end tables, knickknacks, and even books to fill the shelves, though it all came off looking just slightly too much like an IKEA showroom display. I sat on one long sofa, flanked on either side by Suze and Loren. Saskia and Nicholas were on the catty-corner love seat. And between them was their daughter, Julie.

It was hard to look away from Julie. Saskia and Nicholas looked just a little off, but nothing that would’ve looked particularly unnatural on the streets of a city like L.A., or Las Vegas, which was where they were from. But Julie stood out—she lacked the familiar level of baby chub that I’d always seen before on toddlers, and was a miniature version of the adults, built like Iggy Pop. Like her parents she had only clothing fit for an afternoon in Nevada, but they’d tried to compensate by swathing her in an adult-size hoodie that covered her from neck to knees, the kind sold at highway rest stops—this one had been bought in Illinois, judging by what was written across the front. But I could see her face and her lower legs—her skin was pale, so pale that it was translucent enough to see the blue and purple tracings of the major arteries in her legs and throat. Her lips were the color of old chalk dust. Her hair was pale, and not just the white-blond of some small children before it turns to brown, but pale like the fur on a polar bear, ranging from pure white to a dull cream. And her eyes had just barely enough pigment to be charitably called gray—it was uncomfortable to look at, which was probably why her parents were both wearing colored contacts.

She was the one I was focusing on, but I could’ve looked at any of the others. Six other children sat around us, from a fourteen-year-old boy down to a two-year-old who was so tightly swaddled in a blanket from one of the upstairs beds that if I hadn’t been told, I wouldn’t have been able to guess gender. He was held by his father, the third of the adults, though Miro was clearly unable to do anything more at the moment than hold the baby and rock back and forth—though whether that was meant for his son’s benefit or his own, I had no idea. The children all had the same pale looks, the traits that the adults apparently covered up later with spray tan, hair dye, and makeup.

And according to what they were telling us, these three adults and seven children were possibly all that was left of a community that had been over fifty members strong.

“It started a month ago,” Saskia said slowly, focusing on the children rather than us. “Las Vegas is pretty quiet, supernaturally speaking. Usually it’s just been us and the humans, with a few roamers coming through every now and again, but we just minded our own business and kept our heads down and almost nothing ever happened. Then, overnight, there were a dozen skinwalkers walking the floor of almost every casino. Most of us ran as soon as we saw them, figured that they were just in for a convention or something, and that if we would all just take a few days off of work and lie low, then everything would be fine.”

“But they started hunting you,” I said grimly. I’d had a run-in with a skinwalker before—they were strong, predatory, and vicious, and Suze and I had both had our asses handed to us in a one-on-two fight. Frankly the fact that we’d made it through and even managed to kill it in the end had been more out of luck than skill. Skinwalkers were viciously dangerous, enough to make even adult vampires tread cautiously. A skinwalker had once killed one of Chivalry’s previous wives and worn her skin to taunt him—that it had managed to survive for several months was a testament to just how tough and deadly they were.