Drained: The Lucid (22 page)

Riley thumbed through the first few pages, absorbing the abundance of new information.  It wasn’t only a book on the mere act of extracting, but the history of it and the theories behind it.  After an hour had come and gone without much luck, Riley came across a section on methods.

Riley tilted her head closer to the text as if her nearness would accelerate her intake of the knowledge. “Method One,” she read aloud. “Be Lilith—Our Mother Goddess.” A frown marred her features. “Well that’s not happening.”

She read on. “Method Two: Ask your Sire.” Riley’s frown deepened. “Nope.”

The last method was a concoction of ingredients she had never seen or even heard of before; the list sounded like names someone had decided on while drinking. She opened her laptop and quickly searched for mentions of the ingredients, but nothing useful came up. It was unfortunate that a quick trip to the local grocery store wouldn’t work.

Riley closed the book and pushed it away from her. Even if she could find the ingredients, it wasn’t like she practiced magic outside of the realm. Not really anyway.   

She folded her arms on top of her kitchen table and laid her head down. It was frustrating to be able to get the energy in the realm, but not understand the entirety of the process.

The hands on her wristwatch ticked by and she was helpless to the passage of time. Time. She was immortal. She was supposed to have all the time in the world. But ironically, it was the one thing that she never seemed to have enough of, especially as of late. In that moment of stillness, her mind wandered, needing to find the answer she sought.  

The idea that came to her was far from ideal; but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and Riley was flirting with desperation. For the time, this was her best bet to finding a solution.

Riley stared at her feet as she shuffled down the moonlit concrete. Her hands were shoved deep in the pockets of her jacket, its collar popped not to stave off inclement weather but rather to avoid confrontation. Her destination that night was a bar popular with independent cubare. The tavern was located in a less than savory neighborhood, far from the gentrified community where her apartment and favorite café were located. Although she had heard of a small number of cubare-friendly establishments, she herself had not been to any since arriving in Los Angeles. While her employer didn’t forbid interactions with cubare that were unassociated with the company, the act certainly wasn’t encouraged in any pamphlet.

But her avoidance wasn’t unwarranted. She wasn’t blind to the tension that appeared when she was recognized as a part of the company. Most cubare preferred to be on their own, not governed by a boss. She knew the more extremist independents despised her kind. Those employed by Trusics were viewed as sellouts. The rules were too stifling or the monthly quota too high, while others saw Trusics’s capital gains as a blasphemy.

Riley turned down a dark, narrow alley. The entrance to this particular bar, the Red Sea Tavern, was reportedly halfway down the passage, far enough off the beaten path to avoid the detection of potential human patrons. She rapped her knuckles on a blue, metal door. A small window at eye-level slid open, and she was met with the intense gaze of twin emerald eyes.

“Identification,” a deep male voice snarled.

Riley let her eyes slip from her practiced pale green to show the blackened irises of her primordial cubare form. The window slid shut with a loud bang so abrupt that she cringed. The door swung open towards her and she had to slide to the side to avoid being pancaked.

A bulky man with biceps larger than her thighs inspected her. He folded his arms across his broad chest, making his arm muscles pop even more beneath a skin-tight black T-shirt. “No cycling energy. No human pets. No problem. We run a legit business here. Understood?”

Riley held her breath and nodded. 

The bouncer moved to the side and gestured with one hand for her to enter. “Have fun,” he growled.

Riley skirted inside before the bar security could change his mind. She removed her jacket and carefully folded it over her forearm. From the entranceway, she surveyed the layout of the tavern. She hadn’t known what to expect. The bar wasn’t very large, and overhead lighting was in high demand. One could be completely swallowed by darkness in the corners and back hallway. She wondered how closely the bouncer’s rules were heeded once inside. Small circular tables took up most of the square footage. Tea candles in red jars served as table centerpieces, giving off an otherworldly, crimson glow. The bar itself dominated one entire wall. About a dozen stools hugged the bar top, but only two were occupied. A short woman with long dreadlocks and reed-thin arms covered in tattoos took advantage of the lull in customers to wash pint glasses.

Riley studied the bar’s patrons and her options. It was emptier than she’d expected. Two men sat at the bar with two empty stools spaced between them. The tables were also sparsely populated; patrons’ heads were bent together in subdued conversation. The only real noise came from a jukebox playing Johnny Cash and a mixed group of four or five incubi playing darts in a back corner. The plan had seemed easier from the confines of home: She would go to the cubare bar and casually ask if anyone had information about energy extraction. But being at the tavern made things real, and the absurdity of the idea made her anxiety flair.
Hey, we don’t know each other, but I’m wondering if you could tell me how to do this thing that could get me fired.

Riley settled down on an empty stool away from the other two seated incubi. Instead of a warm welcome, the bartender’s gaze was bored, and Riley fidgeted under the silent appraisal. She wondered at how the woman was able to meet her energy needs if she had to spend the majority of her hours behind a bar instead of accessing the realm.

With the exception of her girlfriend, Riley had not fed on a human in the waking or dream realm without employer notification since joining the company. Sometimes she missed the hunt. There was a certain thrill in seducing a stranger, a rousing challenge that could also be a stressful burden when one’s survival depended on it.

Riley ordered a beer and stared into the bottom of her drink. She wasn’t planning on sticking around long, but she might as well have one drink so the out-of-the-way trip wasn’t a complete waste of time.

A woman sidled up to the bar, one bar stool separating herself from Riley. She flagged down the bartender and ordered a mixed drink.

Riley worried she might be a little rusty making conversation with a stranger. She moved around frequently, meeting new people, but always with her friends in tow. There was a certain confidence that came from being in a group. In their time of attending countless human clubs, VIP treatment came for free, and lines were never an inconvenience they dealt with.

“Hi. I’m Riley.”

The woman didn’t bother looking in her direction. “Good for you.”

Riley pulled back her hand and balled it into a fist before returning it to her lap.

The woman waited for her drink before leaving the bar area for a more secluded table.

Riley stared straight ahead, embarrassed and annoyed. She was a succubus. She was supposed to be good at picking up women at bars. She downed her beer in a hurry and ordered a second one to dull the sting of rejection.

Another woman sat down on the vacant stool beside Riley. She hefted an oversized bag with distinct designer markings onto the bar top. Her blonde, curly hair was piled on top of her head, and when she tilted her head forward to retrieve her wallet from her purse, Riley thought she might tip over entirely.

“Martini. Dirty,” she ordered.

Riley worried her bottom lip.
One more try
, she told herself. If she couldn’t make amiable conversation with the second stranger, she’d promptly leave.

“I’m Riley.” Her voice sounded too loud in her head, and she mentally cursed her awkwardness.

The woman twisted in her chair just enough to regard the succubus. “Sorry, honey. I don’t do names.”

Riley pulled her hand back. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Relax, Sugar. You can’t be too careful,” the woman drawled.

“No, I get it.” Riley bit the tip of her tongue. She was furious with herself. Why hadn’t she thought to give the woman a fake name? At least she’d had the foresight to leave her watch at home. She didn’t want to stick out anymore than she already did.

The woman delicately pushed a defiant curl out of her face. “So what brings you here tonight?”

Riley pushed her pint of beer around on the bar top, watching the trail of wet condensation it left behind. “Just felt like a drink and the company of my own kind.”

The woman hummed and took an experimental taste of her martini.

“And yourself?” Riley inquired.

The woman fished out an evasive olive from her funnel-shaped glass with the help of a toothpick. She removed the small tangy fruit from the wooden spear and popped it into her mouth. “Much the same. I’m new in town, trying to get my bearings and deciding if I want to settle down here for a while.” Her southern accent was comforting and it reminded Riley of her time as a human.

Riley nodded and took a quick sip from her beer to give her something to do.

The woman stood with a struggle and grabbed her purse off the bar top. “Excuse me, Sugar,” she said, blinking under sooty lashes. “I need to go powder my nose.”

Riley remained at the bar, once again seated alone. She made a face when she realized that her first beer had gone right through her. She needed to use the bathroom as well.

Riley pushed through the doors of the women’s bathroom and found it empty. She recognized the designer purse perched on the bathroom sink. The owner, however, was nowhere in sight. The bag was wide open, and its contents were messily spilled across the countertop. A heavy set of keys sat beside a long wallet. Riley shook her head. This woman was asking to be robbed.

The toe of Riley’s boot knocked against other items that had fallen from the woman’s purse. A tube of lipstick rolled across the bathroom floor. Riley squatted to retrieve the rest of the spilled makeup: a bottle of liquid foundation, a cracked eye-shadow compact, and a glass container of something Riley could not readily identify. The small cylinder reminded her of one of those delicate clear bottles in which a penny, too large for the opening, would be found inside. She hefted the barely-there weight of the vial, tossing it lightly up and down in her palm.

“Break that and you’ll be in a world of hurt.”

A bathroom stall door swung open, and a woman with glossy black hair, dark as a raven’s feathers, stepped out.

Riley’s fingers reflexively curled around the glass vial.

The woman stalked close and plucked the container from Riley’s hand. “That’s not yours.”

“I—I’m sorry,” Riley stammered. “The stuff in your bag fell out. I was trying to help.” She righted herself and brushed her palms against the front of her jeans. A schmear of purple eyeshadow painted her thigh.

The woman held the vial up to the overhead bathroom light. Riley could see its contents, a black vapor, angrily swirling around inside its prison like a tiger pacing, just waiting to escape. “No need to apologize, Sugar.” The words and the voice were familiar, but the face and body weren’t.

Riley blinked as the realization hit her like a semi-truck. “You changed forms.”

A slow smile crept from the corners of the woman’s mouth. “Like I said before, you can never be too careful.”

“Is that what I think it is?” Riley asked, gesturing at the glass vial the woman held between her thumb and forefinger.

She twisted the glass bottle between her fingers. “It’s a little pick-me-up for when you find yourself a little short.”

“Energy.” Riley gaped as a surge of excitement rushed through her. “Extracted energy.”

The woman batted heavily mascaraed eyes. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Riley couldn’t tear her eyes away from the swirling vapor; her devoted attention did not go unnoticed.

“What did you say your name was again, Sugar?”

“Riley,” she blurted out in a voice too desperate for her own liking. She sucked in her cheeks and waited for the woman to say something.

The woman thrust the glass vial in Riley’s face. “Take it here, so I know you’re not a narc.”

“No.” Riley held up her hands. She took a defensive step backwards until her backside hit against the sink vanity. “I couldn’t.”

“
Take it
,” the woman growled, her eyes blackening. “It’s the only way I can be sure you won’t rat me out to Trusics.”

“Trusics?” Riley echoed, eyes wide in shock. “How did you …”

The woman smirked, lips twisting cruelly. “It was smart to leave your watch at home, but you should have at least worn a bracelet to cover that tan line, dear.”

Riley looked down to her wrist where her watch religiously resided. She hadn’t noticed the stark white swatch of skin before, but the lighting in the bathroom had made it obvious.

Riley knew she was being reckless, and the realization gave her pause. She now found herself at the precipice of a slippery slope. One misstep and life could unravel for her. But she’d made a promise to Morgan, that their time wouldn’t be cut short by her watch. Honoring that promise wasn’t optional, and she couldn’t fulfill it without the substance the stranger offered.

If she continued on her current path, without any intake, Morgan would be flagged as an inefficient mark sooner or later. And with the dip in her productivity level, specifically during that appointment, she was sure she’d be called to Hyrum’s office when he noticed the pattern.

Her hands shook as she took the bottle. “How do I …?”

The woman snatched the container back and loosened the small cork from its opening. “Were you sired yesterday?” she huffed impatiently. “You’d think your maker would have taught you about this stuff.”

She grabbed Riley by the elbows and positioned her close to the vapor. “Now open your mouth,” she instructed, her voice near Riley’s ear, “and suck.” The cork lifted from the opening and black wisps of energy crawled out of the container. Chaotic gas hovered in the air and threatened to disperse.