Dark Possession (3 page)

He frowned before he answered. "Not
usually…no." The frown became a smile. "But I think we should relax
this evening and just enjoy each other. I feel much better, and you
look like you could use a massage?"

A massage?

Rhonda's earlier questions evaporated when
she laid down on the mattress on her stomach with her shoulders,
head and neck hanging off the mattress's edge. She folded her arms
under her and rested her head on her forearms. Remi kneeled beside
her. She tensed just a little when he started kneading her
shoulders. "There…how does that feel?"

"It feels good," Rhonda said and tried to
relax. Something sent out warning bells. Some part of herself she
hadn't listened to in weeks. But she couldn't get a handle on where
the feeling of unease came from. Was it from Remi? Or was it from
her own fears? He would never hurt her. She was sure of that.

So…why couldn't she relax?

"Why don't you take your shirt off?" Remi
said in a soft voice. "That way I can work better down your back.
You don't have to remove your bra."

Well…

Rhonda never considered herself a prude and
if she could keep the bra on it seemed like a reasonable trade.
After she had it off she folded it neatly to the side and took up
her position again.

"Why do you do that?" he asked her.

"Do what?"

"Keep everything so neat? I'm not sure I've
ever known any one to be so neat about everything." He gave a harsh
laugh. "You fold your dirty clothing."

His words hurt but it wasn't a unique
question. She'd always been a neat person. "I like order. I like
knowing where things are. If you know where to return things, if
you know where they belong, then it relieves stress."

"And you've had a lot of stress lately?" He
started on her shoulders again and he was right, the heat of his
fingers felt good on her muscles.

"Yeah…I have."

"Friends? Lovers?"

"Friends. Or friends I used to have."

"Mm." Remi moved his fingers in circles. "So
you like to be in control."

She stared at a spot on the rug for a few
minutes. "Remi, why are your hands so warm?"

"Because they're rubbing up against you. You
know…" he shifted behind her, though his hands never left her back.
"I have a sister a lot like you. In fact you remind me of her."

Sister? She and Remi had already had this
conversation. He was an only child, the son of two doctors. She
remembered it because he told her he always felt like he'd
disappointed them because he never wanted to be a doctor. He'd
never gotten the grades to get into pre-med, and he never wanted
too. He preferred economics.

So…why did he lie about a sister?
Unless…he'd been lying before. "Remi…you said you didn't have any
siblings."

Remi moved again and this time she felt him
get on top of her and settle on her lower back. She pushed up on
her elbow and half-twisted to see him straddling her as he massaged
her. He didn't answer right away, then, "I do have a sister. I have
a twin sister."

What the hell? Rhonda gasped when Remi
shoved her back down. She wasn't expecting the force of his weight
on her so her elbows rubbed against the carpet where she hung off
the mattress. "Remi that hurt. Let me up."

"You need to relax." He held her by her
shoulders and pressed harder and harder.

The building feeling of
worry, the nagging ache that something was wrong turned into a full
blown klaxon of
Oh Shit
when she realized she was numb from her neck to
her toes. Whatever he was doing to her was causing her muscles to
relax
too
much.
She tried to wiggle her hips back and forth to get him off of her.
Remi tightened his thighs and trapped her painfully between the
two. "Ow…Remi what are you doing?"

"I want you to listen to me, Rhonda. I need
you to be relaxed and listen to what we have to say."

We? Oh no…are there other people in the
house? Was that it? He was some kind of pimp that lured naive girls
into trusting him and now I'm going to pay for it?

He laughed as he continued moving his
fingers over her neck. She could feel parts of the sheets under her
fingers and some of the carpet, but moving them was like swimming
through molasses. Her cheek rested against the carpet.

"There," he said as he continued to move his
hands over her back. "I need you to be open to what we can do for
you. What you can achieve if you listen and say yes."

"Remi—"

"Ssshhh…" he said as he leaned over and put
his lips to the back of her neck. "I'm no longer Remi, Rhonda Orly.
My name is Scylla."

Scylla. Rhonda's memory went into overdrive
as she tried to remember the significance of the name. "That…that's
a mythical name. A sea monster."

He sat up suddenly and bared
down harder. Rhonda cried out at the pain shooting down her back to
the base of her hips. "Sea monster. Damned Ethereal tripe. They
knew nothing about me. Or about who I was, what I can do, and what
I
will
do."

Ethereal…

Rhonda's breathing
increased.
Ethereal? No! No no no
no!
She'd turned away from that life. Away
from the planes and the magic and the monsters. She no longer
wanted any of it! She tried again to push him off of her, to turn
and twist, to remember any of the fighting lessons Joe or her uncle
taught her.

But no matter how hard she tried to get up,
Remi's—no Scylla's—weight held her in place.

He laughed in her ear. "I see the fight's
come back, child of the God Mother."

"What does that mean?" She hissed out and
never stopped trying to move. Her heavy breathing moved the fibers
in the carpet beneath her cheek.

"I didn't believe my sister." He moved his
body to match hers, his arms to hers, his hips to hers, his feet to
hers. "When she told me there were so many that didn't know the
stories. They didn't know the real histories of how the planes were
forged. Or should I say, forced. And then burned."

Rhonda wished now more than she had in the
past month to have just a small bit of her power back. Something.
She'd always used it to defend herself, to protect herself from
crazies, mortal or planar. She regretted not paying more attention
to Joe's insistence that she needed to be physically prepared as
well.

"But you really don't know whose blood runs
in your veins, do you?"

"Remi—Scylla—look, we can talk, okay?
Just…get off of me. Please."

"Are you afraid of me, child? You think I'm
going to rape you? Murder you? Perhaps…dismember you?" He laughed
and a chill ran down Rhonda's back. "Be assured, little witch, our
plans are far more nefarious."

Rhonda cried out as she tried to push him
off. "I'm not a witch anymore!"

"Oh but you see…you believe the lie. You
will be a witch as long as her blood flows in you." He moved his
right hand from hers and softly, mockingly, moved the back of his
hands over her cheek. "Tell me about this creature who took your
power."

Tears welled up in Rhonda's eyes. This thing
wanted to know about Zoë. At first her old heart flared with
jealousy, but she managed to cool it. To temper it with the
emotions she once felt for her old friend. She closed her eyes and
remembered their friendship. "I don't have anything to tell."

"You could tell me yourself. It could be
your last independent act, Rhonda Orly. Trust me…it would be less
painful. My sister believes you will resist, and she enjoys pain,
and pleasure, even more than I."

"No," Rhonda said softly. "Please
don't."

"Don't you want your power
back, Rhonda Orly? Don't you want to have control of things,
people, places? Don't you
want
revenge?"

Yes
.

"No!" Her throat burned with the cry and she
threw her head back as hard as she could, remembering something Joe
showed her once and she hadn't forgotten. The back of her head
connected with Scylla's face and to her surprise and amazement—the
weight on her back disappeared.

She rolled away from him, looked to see
where he was, analyzed his weak spots and started hitting. She put
as much force as she could as she brought her knee into his crotch,
then slammed her forehead into his face again. Blood sprayed her,
the sheets, her shirt, everything. Without thinking she grabbed the
knife beside the cheese and stabbed him in the gut before she
scrambled to her feet, grabbed the fireplace mantel for support and
then ran to the door.

Please let the Society be outside. Please
let this be one of the days!

Her hands were slippery with blood as she
tried to turn the knob. The deadbolt was thrown. She turned it just
as a larger, bloodier hand covered hers and something grabbed the
back of her neck like a vice.

"We do this the hard way then."

Scylla squeezed her neck as she tried to pry
his hand off of her. Her visioned blurred as she reached behind her
to find him. Her hand touched something cold and slick and she
realized it was the knife, still protruding from his body. She
grabbed it, pulled it out and raised her arms and jabbed backwards,
over her head.

He cried out and let her go. She dropped to
her knees and lost her grip on the knife, but it was a long enough
space of time for her to gather her now desperate wits and summon
the power still in her thighs. She delivered a good blow to his
chest with her shoulder before she stumbled away from him toward
the hallway. She smeared blood on the walls as she grabbed the
sides to push herself toward the bedroom. There she had a weapon.
She had something she'd kept, something from Rodriquez's personal
collection of magical things.

Something she knew would
destroy whatever planar had possessed Remi. The fact it
possessed
him told her it
had to be a First Born, but she'd never known a Revenant to act
like a homicidal maniac before. Most of the time they were
courteous and friendly, to an almost nauseating degree.

But this…this was raw.

Angry.

Sexual.

And sick.

Inches from her bedroom door something cold
grabbed her ankle and yanked her leg out from under her. She hit
the floor face first. Her nose burned and filled with fluid so fast
she choked and turned on her side. She opened her eyes to see blood
pooling on the rug. He'd broken her nose.

He dragged her into the bathroom. She
grabbed the sides of the door and kicked as hard as she could. But
another strike to her face took the fight out of her. Scylla,
bleeding from his stomach and a nasty slash along his nose and
cheek, pulled her into the bathtub and turned on the cold water.
The temperature and shock of it made her flail, but he grabbed her
hair and leaned over the tub as he forced her to face the
spray.

Rhonda reached up and grabbed at his arms,
his face, anything. When she felt the cold under her rise, she
realized he'd stoppered the tub. He planned on drowning her!

"If you stop fighting me, we can have our
talk, Rhonda Orly."

And there it was…the dual voice. The
unmistakeable pairing of First Born and human host. Scylla's
darker, deeper voice and Remi's sweet gentle cadence. But had this
First Born been inside of Remi all along, or was it recent? How
could she know?

"That's better. Maybe I should have revealed
myself sooner." He released her hair, turned off the water and
threw a towel at her.

Rhonda sat up, shivering in the cold water.
It reached her ankles. She was chilled, terrified, and bleeding.
Blood covered the towel as she held it to her nose. When she looked
up, Scylla sat on the edge of the tub.

The subtle changes she was familiar with a
Revenant weren't subtle on his face. They were horrendous. Remi's
beauty was twisted into a garish, halloween mask. And his eyes…they
weren't black like a Revenant's.

They were red.

Blood red.

She pushed herself into the
back of the tub. "What
are
you?"

He smiled. "I'm Scylla. But I'm also your
dear, departed lover, Remi." He frowned but it wasn't a real frown,
more a mockery of sadness. "He fought hard. Not physically, because
my sister and some of our…associates…were able to paralyze he and
his friends. Not all of them were good candidates. We chose this
one, and one other. My sister wanted a female, and when she saw you
in this man's mind, she knew you were perfect."

He reached down to touch
her, but Rhonda buried her face in the towel. When she didn't feel
him, she looked up again. He was staring at her. "What Remi told
me…about waking up in the cemetery…"
That's when this First Born took him. That had to be
it.

"It took a few days to gain
control. My kind aren't accustomed to
possessing
a body. Toying with one,
yes. Influencing their dreams," he sighed. "Splendid. But to walk
and talk and move
inside
one is both horrible and alluring. The sensual
pleasures we take in our true forms is nothing compared to the
real, actual physical contact."

Rhonda studied his face and realized the
slash she'd given him with the knife was almost gone. So was the
slit in his stomach. He healed like a Revenant, but she was pretty
sure he wasn't. Not like she remembered.

"What are your kind?"

"You really don't know? I'm not a Revenant,
little witch. I am Incubus. I am nightmares, passion, dreams,
sensual desire, anger, horror, rage, pleasure… my sister and I are
all of these things."

Rhonda shook her head. "No…Incubi are just
delusions. They aren't real!"