Among Demons : Succubus Divine

Ch. 37 : Growing Hunger

*Marcus Ciaran*

Things between myself, my father and Hannah have been nothing but infuriating since the night she appeared in my apartment. With my father pushing me to ‘talk things out’ with my Ex, claiming that I needed to ‘man up’ and fix things while I still had the chance of being with ‘such a good woman’. While Hannah revolved around cursing me for rejecting her and pleading to give her a chance to explain herself, practically shouting at me through long winded texts that she loved me. It was draining to have them both bombing my phone with at all hours of the day, interrupting my work and generally stressing me out. So I was left constantly looking for things to do during the rest of my weekend to keep my mind occupied and away from my buzzing phone.

Having my mind drift back to Devin throughout it all wasn’t helping my sanity either.

After explaining that she was taking on a different case on her own, one involving some Demon man she seemed acquainted with, I was filled with overwhelming emotions.

I wanted to know who he was, what the case involved and if there would be any level of danger for her working alone. I was left anxiously pacing around during those last few work days while they slowly bled into the weekend, glancing towards her office whenever I stepped out of my own. She would communicate with me and the others through emails, asking questions about some Human protocols she wasn’t familiar with at times and I’d catch myself rereading those emails just to calm myself. And when she finally closed the case on the same day that Hannah ambushed me, my relief was crushing, and I was grateful that she wasn’t hurt in any way.

All of these emotions were overpowering at times and I found them slithering into my dreams at night too. It confused me when I would wake up in the morning, recalling how chaotic and blurry some dreams were, leaving me with a throbbing headache. While others were much more vivid and left me in a state of burning hunger for the Succubus that pointedly avoided me.

I knew that there was something going on between the two of us, I wasn’t blind to that fact. And I also knew that things were growing much too quickly to be normal.

My need to be close to her grew a bit every time I saw her, making me question my self control whenever I’d find any part of my body grazing hers. The urge to speak to her and hear her voice would take over me during her lessons that followed that solitary case of hers, leaving me smiling like a moron while she taught. I’d catch myself staring at her while speaking to my friends and they’ve started to comment on what they kindly nicknamed as ‘Stalker behavior’. They’d resort to teasing and mumbling innuendos whenever Devin passed by, which of course, earned them a quick strike to the head or crotch.

Then there were those rare moments when the conversation between Devin and I would slip into a more intimate tone, with her responding or instigating a flirtatious response out of me. I would feel as though I was being hypnotized by the flush in her cheeks… the delicate curve of her lips… the longing glow in her eyes… and the soft, sultry tone of her voice.

It was like she was slowly engraving her presence into my mind with every little interaction we had… and I kept wanting more.

Of course, a part of me wanted to ask, outright, what the hell was going on. I wanted to sit down with Devin and talk to her, to see her reactions and figure out why these emotions and reactions were taking over me. It wasn’t frightening to me, even though I truly felt like I was losing control of myself. In fact, it felt strangely… right, as though it was all meant to be like this. But finding the chance, and the balls, to bring this up to her seemed like too much. At least for Devins sake.

She was still distancing herself and clearly putting up a massive wall between us everytime we interacted. Her eyes would grow panicked once she’d snap out of her lustful or relaxed haze and a piece of me felt like it was being stabbed when I would catch fear in those poison colored eyes of hers. I even felt like she deliberately timed her arrival and departure from work so we wouldn’t be forced to stand together in the elevator or run into each other in the lobby.

It all just left me feeling lost once the weekend rolled around again.

So, instead of going out with my friends after work, since weekends were our half-days when not working a case, I chose to return home and take some time to think.

I gathered up my laundry, cleaned and made a list for myself of things I would need to buy soon. Keeping my body moving while I thought about my situation helped relieve a bit of tension, though sadly I wasn’t able to solve anything.

When I reached my room and gathered the bedding that Hannah had left behind, I tossed it into a corner and got to work on replacing my own back on the mattress. I had already tossed out the candles and flower petals she had scattered all over my room and double checked to make sure that she hadn’t gone through any of my things. She had had a habit of moving my s**t around when we were still together, taking things from me and seemingly making them vanish when she was angry. It was thanks to this fact and the pile of unneeded bed clothes I’d tossed aside that I was able to spot something under my dresser near the corner of my room.

I flattened my body enough to reach under it, pulling out a pair of papers that I didn’t recognize. Rolling myself into a sitting position, I looked them over slowly, wondering where they had come from.

The first page was suspiciously redacted, with many lines of thick, bold, black bars covering most of what had been typed. The few words that hadn’t been covered up at all only hinted something about a group of Hunters. This made my body stiffen and I tried to see if I could read any more that was hidden underneath the black bars to no avail. The back of that same page looked almost like a personnel page, with a picture of some guy with a serious expression, long blonde hair, pale blue eyes and a nose ring. His name and age, along with a few lines below his picture were the only things I was able to read while all the rest was redacted like the other side.

Name: Austin Milton

Age: 19

Mission failure. – Vampire. – Succubus. – Ambush. – Dead on arrival.

Something about the young guy's name and face made me think of Hannah, whose family name was Milton. I sifted through my mind to recall that she had once told me that she had had an older brother that had died at a young age… and this guy looked almost exactly like her.

I slowly got up as I turned my attention onto the second page. This one was one sided with most of the information hidden from me, thanks to those long black bars again. The most I was able to read was something about Enforcers, Hunters, their possible identities, and hidden allies for both that were scattered throughout the NorthWest. No names were given. No descriptions were listed. And the only word that popped up a few more times than the others was Matron, though nothing else around it was exposed for me to read.

Confused, I scanned over the pages again just as my phone pinged in the living room, alerting me to a new message. But when I approached my coffee table to pick it up, my doorbell rang, so I turned and made my way to the door.

“Hannah?” I question, looking at the breathless blond who looked like she had raced up the two flights of stairs to my door. “What are you doing here?”

She didn't answer me, her eyes widening once they caught sight of the pages I was still holding.

“THAT’S MINE!” She snapped out suddenly, lurching forwards and nearly ripping the pages out of my hand before crushing them to her chest.

I kept staring at her, feeling a strange mixture of suspicion, anger and caution before she composed herself, straightening her back and taking deep breaths.

“Sorry… I just… really needed these.” She said lamely, flashing a smile. “Where did you find them?... Did you take them from me?” Her sky blue eyes filled with their own mixture of doubt and rage and I simply scoffed and shook my head, gripping the door to prepare to close it.

“You left them here.” She slowly relaxed at my words, smiling more genuinely and beginning to inch closer. “The night you ambushed me, remember?”

“Marcus, please don’t be like this.” She whined, reaching out to place a hand on my chest. “Haven’t I shown you how much I love you? How badly I want to make this work?” She closed the distance some more, nearing the threshold, but not crossing into my home yet. “Don’t you believe in ‘us’ anymore? Can’t we just talk things out, fix things, and go back to how everything was when we were happy?”

Another ping from behind me reminded me of my phone and I stepped back without giving her any room to walk in, pinning her just outside my apartment with a cold look.

“I don’t care how many times I say this to you, or to my dad, but I’m not going to go back on my word.” I slowly started closing the door and watched as her frowning, hurt expression gradually morphed into a mask of malice. “Just leave me alone, move on, and stop making this worse than it should be.”

With that, I closed the door, locking it quickly before heading to the living room to grab my phone.

Unlocking the screen I read through the two texts I received from Izaak asking me to call him if I wasn’t busy. So, after plopping down on my couch, I called him like he asked and waited for him to answer. He sounded stressed for the entire time that we talked about everyday things, and I was worried that he would put off bringing up whatever it was that he had wanted to talk about. Thankfully, after a small pause he began to tell me the real reason for the call and I was completely floored.

Izaak, who had been a long time friend of mine and Danny’s, had been the first out of our group to tie the knot. He married his High School sweetheart Samantha who he had known for a few more years than he knew us. And soon after getting married, Sam announced that she was pregnant, giving birth to a beautiful little girl they named Marianna. Little Mari was soon to be five in a couple months and all Danny and I had heard from him all throughout the holidays was how excited he and Sam were about Mari starting Kindergarten. But somewhere between Christmas and New Years, he stopped bringing it up and now barely talked about his little girl as much as he used to.

Both Danny and I had noticed this and knew better than to bring it up before Izaak was ready to talk about it. He and Sam both weren’t the type to just talk things out unless it was eating at them too much. They were known to shut down if anyone tried to force them to talk about something they weren’t ready for. We never wanted to press our friends into an uncomfortable conversation either, so we always gave them space, knowing they would bring it up when they were ready. And as it turns out, there was a pretty serious reason for why he had begun to act so stressed and anxious all the time.

Because it all revolved around their little girl.

“We don’t know if we’re going insane right now, man.” He said to me, sounding defeated and filled with worry. “Sam and I never considered this at all, but… she’s showing signs of something, Marcus… she’s doing things and telling us things that a four-year-old shouldn’t know.” I could hear the panic in his voice along with his fears as he exhaled into the phone. “And, after talking it over with Sam, I wanted to ask if, maybe, you and Devin would be willing to come over sometime today and just… I don’t know… see if Devin could help us out with this. We don’t know much about Demons except what Devin’s taught us and I… I don’t know where else to go.” His voice broke and I felt my own throat close up at the sound, hating to know that my friend was hurting like this. “It’s my baby girl, man… We want to be there for her, you know, help her understand if she is, a-and learn more ourselves too.”

I agreed to help out in any way I could and hung up after managing to calm him down a bit before calling Devin.

She sounded sleepy when she answered and I felt myself smile the second I heard her voice. I tried to explain things after a short greeting but she sounded confused once my rambling was over, muttering that all the information I was spilling at once wasn’t helping. I felt like a dumbass and apologized, blaming it on my worry for my friend before she yawned and told me to pay her a visit so I could explain better. My mind froze over for a moment, needing to buffer as I fully registered her words. I quickly agreed a second later and hung up after jotting down her address, racing around my apartment looking for my shoes, keys and jacket.

Once in my car, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that she lived a little less than twenty minutes from me. And thanks to the late hour, I arrived even faster, parking in the guest spaces on the side of her building.

I started to feel pathetically nervous as I climbed up to her floor, almost as if I was a teenager that was about to take his crush out on a first date. I laughed at my stupid thumping heartbeat and somehow shook off the nerves just as I arrived at her door, knocking on it twice before I had the chance to second-guess myself, like the moron I was.

But when the door was pulled open, my stomach dropped to my crotch, my chest exploded and I was sure my mind had all but malfunctioned on me.

Devin looked as though she had gotten up from a nap, with her sandy brown hair let loose around her and sticking up in small spots, here and there. She rubbed her eyes a bit before greeting me with a sleepy smile, stepping aside to wave me in. The large, obviously oversized sweater she had on made her look smaller and more delicate than I thought possible. Giving her an almost innocent and adorable appearance that made me smile instantly. Then I caught sight of the long fuzzy stockings she had on as I followed her in and my mind began to work overtime, producing some not-safe-for-work thoughts that I had to fight to push aside.

Those stockings stopped a little higher than mid-thigh and I could see that she was most likely not wearing anything underneath that sweater. At least, maybe, panties and a bra, if I really had to guess. And when she flopped back onto her recliner to the right of the couch, that sweater climbed up higher on those soft, sun kissed thighs, confirming that panties were the only likely things she was wearing beneath all the cozy fluffiness.

I had to swallow hard a few times and pointedly focus on everything else in her apartment to clean my head before speaking to her. Though it took a lot longer to control the growing ache in my crotch that had tightened my pants the second I saw her.

Somehow, I managed to explain things to her, while also calming myself in the process.

She thought it over for a little while after I finished talking then jumped out of her seat, looking determined and a little annoyed. Though that last emotion seemed to be directed at something else.

“Tell him that I can come over now, if it’s still alright.” She moved her arms to the edge of her sweater as she made her way towards a small hallway across from me. “I’ll be able to confirm things for him thanks to what I know, but you need to warn him that my knowledge isn’t limitless.” I swallowed the gasp that would’ve left me when she pulled up her sweater as she walked away, confirming that she had, indeed, only worn a bra and matching panties beneath the sweater. “If his little girl turns out to be something I’m not familiar with, then we’ll have to run a blood test, or wait until she grows up a little more for her powers to fully manifest.”

I couldn’t concentrate on her words while my brain replayed what I’d seen over and over again before she disappeared into the hallway. Her back was to me but the quick glimpse of her body had me reeling with that same damned hunger that had been plaguing me for a while now.

I wanted her. Badly. Painfully.

I needed to hold her again. Kiss her. Taste her.

It was growing, this craving for her, and I felt like a madman, simply because of how intense it all was. I had to truly fight for self control now and I knew that I was going to reach a point when even that wouldn’t be enough before I do or say something to her. But I needed answers too. I didn’t want to force things when she so clearly put up a fence around herself just to keep me away. And even if I could see that she was fighting her own self control too, I wasn’t going to let whatever was happening between us turn into another source of regret.

Not for her.

Not for me.

She came out a short while later, thankfully after I had regained my composure, fully dressed with her hair combed and her satchel on.

“Alright.” She looked more awake now too as she strolled over to the key hooks by the front door, smiling and waving me over. “Let’s go see if Izaak’s daughter is a Demon.”