Among Demons : Succubus Divine

Ch. 22 : Predator to Prey

*Nick Carnia*

It took us a few hours, loads of calls and a few trips to some abandoned places to finally narrow down the location that the Flesh-Eaters were calling home. And in between all the moving around my sister left to grab a change of clothes from her place as well as buying a few more potions from a young Sorceress she was sponsoring.

While she was gone I explained things to her coworkers about why the potions were necessary, stressing the strengths and abilities of Flesh-Eaters. It stunned me a bit that they were truly paying attention to me and I felt more at ease about Dev working with these guys, thankful that they were willing to learn about Demons. And their interactions with my sister were normal, friendly and patient when it came to a new subject they knew little about. I was able to relax thanks to this and focused more on helping Devin’s preparations for the Flesh-Eaters that have trespassed onto her territory.

“How’d you learn everything you know?” Asked the blond guy, whose name was probably Dane or something with a D.

“Growing up together helped.” I told him, nudging my sister as we loaded things up in their van. “She would learn about a new race of Demons and I would be right there with her.”

“We worked for the previous Patron as Enforcers too.” Dev added, looking through her bag as she spoke. “So a lot of our knowledge was learned on the fly in the middle of an assignment.”

“Enforcers?” The more quiet guy asked, pausing to look at the knives my sister was soaking with the potions nearby.

“Yeah, they’re people that do the dirty work for the Patron or Matron.” She continued, moving on from one knife to the next. “They travel around tracking Demons that have broken our laws in some way and need to be either arrested, or killed on the spot. Depending on the crime.”

“How old were you?” The Team Leader asked, staring at my sister who stiffened at the sound of his voice.

I glared back as she responded, not liking that amount of concern and attention he had been paying her and wondering if a damned bond had already formed between them.

“I started when I was sixteen.” She didn’t turn to look at him, keeping her eyes trained on her blades. But I noticed how her body fought to turn and face him, making her twitch a bit to regain control of herself. “And stopped a little before turning twenty.”

The man's gray eyes were filled with even more worry as he kept staring at her back but he said nothing. Silently signaling to his team to climb in so we could all leave.

I gripped Dev’s hand as we made our way to the more secluded area of the city, a full hour away from the nearest public anything. Here was where we had managed to pin one or two Flesh-Eaters with the help of some other Demons that had spotted them. They had stupidly made it a habit of attacking people stumbling out of the seedy bars and filthy gas station that hardly anyone stepped into. It was a perfect place for the more… unaware Humans and Demons to go missing without a trace. And where Dev planned to act as bait.

So we stopped a full two blocks away from a perfect scary-movie looking spot with one lonely street light across the street from a crappy loud bar. There weren’t any other signs of life around that light, not even other cars, with a sticky looking bus sign barely getting any light.

“Once one of them shows up you need to make sure you stay put.” Devin rattled off, pulling off her nice blouse and quickly shoving her arms through a tight black sweater. “Flesh-Eaters attack in teams of at least two, so don’t make a move until you spot the other one.” She shivered as she kicked off her pretty little office shoes, wiggling her toes before stomping her feet into boots. “I’m going to act like a lost Demon that’s been stood up so don’t respond to my bullshit.” She directed that last part to me and I shrugged, making her smile. “I mean it Nick, you’re gonna make me laugh.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” I challenged, pulling out a small vial with very little pale pink liquid inside that had two tiny floating pearl-like things.

“I don’t know, how many times have you ruined an ambush plan like this by making me laugh?” She playfully glared, pulling out a small switchblade from her pocket and pressing it to her palm.

“What is tha-” The blond guy stopped short as she cut into her hand and quickly cupped the blood that pooled out, waiting for me to uncork the vial for her.

“What the f**k are you doing?!” The Marcus guy snapped, grabbed her wrist just as I uncovered the vial. “Why the hell are you cutting yourself?!”

“It’s fine.” She softly told him, pushing his hand away while fighting to keep her eyes glued to me. “It’s for the potion.”

“Potion?” He looked at my hands and glared as she tilted her still cupped hand and spilled her blood into it, watching as the tiny pearl things began to glow and a faint mist rose and escaped the vial.

“It’s a Telepathy potion.” I explained, placing my thumb over the opening and shaking it a bit. “It lets us communicate through our minds for a couple hours so we don’t have to use any equipment.” Once the mist died down I passed the vial to her and took the switchblade, cutting into my own palm and spilling a couple drops into the vial, making it mist and glow again. “It’s extremely potent so this little bit is enough for a couple hours and it doesn’t have any side effects either, so you can try it if you want.”

Devin looked up at the three men while I pulled out a healing potion, spilling a few drops on my cut and Devins to quickly close our wounds.

In the end the only one willing to try it was the Marcus guy, which didn’t make me happy at all. Especially since he deliberately asked my sister to cut his palm while he held the vial and heal his hand, keeping his eyes on her the whole time.

Once the mist and glowing from the vial stopped once again, we each took a small sip from the now bright pink mixture, not tasting any blood at all. The Detective seemed surprised by this but didn’t comment, moving into position after Devin explained how long it would take for the potion to respond. I was the last to move away from the van since I needed a bit of time to collect myself. But the fact that I was witnessing both my sister and the Detective reacting to each other as if there was already a bond…. It didn’t sit right with me.

“Hey Nick, you there?” My sister's mental voice rang out in my head a few minutes later as I ducked into a deep alley that stopped at a dead end.

“Yup.” I answered back, smiling a bit at the nostalgic feeling that hit me. “It’s been a while since we’ve used this potion.”

Her laughter that followed echoed in my head, just like her words did, and always made me think of when we were kids, shouting through an empty paper towel roll to make our voices sound funny.

“Detective?” She called out, sounding worried while my smile dropped. “Can you hear us?”

“f**k!” Came his loud echo, making her laugh again. “This feels interesting… are you supposed to sound like that?”

“Yes.” We both answered, feeling the presence of the other a lot clearer in our minds now.

“It feels strange the first time.” She told him, sounding revealed.

“Especially since you’re Human.” I added, seeing Dev snap her head in my direction from beneath the street light.

I joked with her a little bit and managed to get the Detective to laugh too, which both bothered and calmed me. He seemed like a nice guy and if it wasn’t for the damned Curse I wouldn’t have a problem with anything happening between him and my sister. But the memories of what had happened to Tony and how broken my sister had been afterwards… I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t accept that level of danger just hovering over her head again and risking her getting close to death after surviving so many close calls in her short life. So I made sure that the two didn’t have a chance to talk much by focusing on the guy himself and asking him random questions about his job. Questions that soon became boring and tedious with how specific and detailed I was being. He even sounded annoyed after a while, but still answered me while my sister remained silent in our heads.

No doubt wondering what the hell I was doing.

We quickly went silent when some movement caught her attention by the bar across the street, making her tense up. I had faintly seen it in my periphery and tensed like she had when what looked like a head poked out from the shadows, looking as if it was watching Devin under the weak streetlight.

So she quickly pulled out her phone and began having a pretend fight with someone on it once the shadow retreated, pacing back and forth in front of the bus sign. She hugged herself as she did too, having chosen a thin sweater to make herself shiver in the cold of late January so she would look more like Prey. I didn’t like it but it was something that would be hard for a Flesh-Eater to ignore, since their main instinct to kill and feed takes over them almost completely. And having a young Demon woman who looked lost, shivering out in the middle of nowhere was like having a wounded deer cross paths with a starving pack of wolves.

An unstoppable bloodlust takes over.

Another strange moving shadow caught my eye a little closer to her, just down the street and looking to have slithered into one of the gaps between the abandoned buildings. I raised my gun and slowly stepped to the edge of the alley I was in, alerting the Detective who would then notify the rest of his team through their headset.

“Three.” Devin called out, pausing in between pacing to angrily hang up on no one and begin furiously texting on her phone.

More movement across from her had me inching closer, using the dead looking trees and shrubs near me as cover.

“Izaak and Danny have one.” The Detective guy said, sounding tense as I caught him moving away from his cover just like I had. “The other one I see is across from you.”

I was about to respond when I froze, sensing the presence of something predatory to my left before a black figure manifested itself out of the shadow of a broken down car.

“I’ve got one.” I reported, raising my gun up at the things head. “Six feet in front of me.”

“So four.” She mused, resuming her pacing as the four Flesh-Eaters made their way towards her, no longer seeking cover.

My nose wrinkled as I calmly and quietly followed the one before me, being assaulted by the stench of dry blood, sour body odor and something else that I could only guess to be feces. Thankfully, this walking undead f**k was covered in what looked like an old raggady coat that kept me from being forced to stare at his sickly shriveled man-meat. The others that I peeked at were partially clothed too, though still showing bits of their bodies that I hoped didn’t haunt my dreams later.

“Go for the one to my left.” I stopped moving to look at the one my sister picked out, quickly agreeing with her since this one seemed younger than the others.

It still held a bit of normal skin coloring and their movements weren’t as robotic as the others that looked like monsters pretending to be Human. The younger one also seemed to have some solid black looking crap stuck to their arms and legs too. Like a crappy sprinkling of moles or birthmarks. Which could only mean that that little Flesh-Eater had only recently hatched and wasn’t used to hunting or using its powers yet. This would make him easier to control and less dangerous for us as well.

A second later, probably after the Detective passed along the information to the other two, they all jumped out and began shooting at the gray skinned monsters.

The two guys whose names I still don’t remember managed to shoot down the one that had been closing in from across the street, killing that one instantly with the potion coated bullets. Devin fought off the only woman in their little hunting party since she was the closest one to her. And a full two minutes later had the corpse-y b***h on the ground with her guts spilling out. The Detective was a surprisingly sharp shooter and only needed two bullets to take down the one that had been right in front of me. And I, having seen the crazed hungry look in the eyes of the younger Flesh-Eater, ran out to my sister who had turned her back to him to finish off the woman.

He lunged at her right as I reached him, giving Devin just enough time to raise her arm as a shield so he wouldn’t sink his filthy, yellowing teeth into her neck or back. Instead, he pressed his face right up to the barrel of my gun while his creepy clawed fingers gripped my sister's arm, aiming to pull it into his waiting, open mouth. Blood trickled from where he dug into her and I pushed his face further away, glaring down the gun at the fucker who only tightened his hold.

“Give me a reason.” I hissed at him, watching as his ghastly red pupil rolled up to meet my eyes.

Devin pried her arm from him as he knelt there, staring up at me while clearly trying to weigh out his options. But when the scent of blood kicked up thanks to a sudden winter breeze, his eyes snapped back to my sister's wounded arm and he inched forward, salivating violently while the others joined us.

“Don’t think of doing anything stupid.” Devin warned, stepping around me while the damned thing followed her. “You’re going to answer some questions before you even get the chance to feed.” She waved towards me and smiled when I nudged the thing with my gun. “If you so much as open your mouth again, my brother here will add a lovely little hole into that face of yours.” She then pulled out a rolled up napkin and pulled out a dried herb that she tilted to show the Flesh-Eater. “And if you lie to me, I’ll gladly feed you this instead.” The thing flinched away from it while Devin carefully kept the herb on the thin napkin, making sure it didn’t touch her own hand.

The other guys joined us not long afterwards and aimed their weapons at the thing with me, looking to Devin for the sign to kill it.

“Questions about what?” The bastard snarled, licking his mouth with a gross looking black tinted tongue. “Do you want me to feed you?” Devin rolled her eyes but I didn’t miss the look of pure rage that came over Detective Marcus’ eyes. “Or were you hoping for an orgy of some sort?”

Dev stepped closer to him and smiled as she shoved the Pestis herb in his face, making him groan and flinch away.

“Keep pushing my buttons.” She muttered to him, letting a single tiny leaf slide off the napkin and land on his cheek.

He screamed and howled as the spot on his face turned bright red in an instant, branching out in almost neon pink veins that looked absolutely painful. His hand tried to swipe at the little leaf that was now on the ground but the redness was still there and a thick sheen of sweat sprung out all over him, leaving him gasping when he looked back at my smiling sister.

“Looks like you understand now.” Stepping back and carefully curling her fingers around the herb, Devin sucked in a breath and released it slowly, thinking over what question to ask first.