Among Demons : Succubus Divine

Ch. 24 : Relentless Pain

*Marcus Ciaran*

My headaches continued to bother me as I thought about the Demon woman that had kissed me.

Things were almost like nothing had happened after that night and I figured she would want to keep things that way. Especially after she had acted like kissing me was a bother, yet clinging to me once her lips were pressed to mine. It was a confusing rush that remained glued to my mind for hours after, preventing me from sleeping. And the things I had felt during those few seconds weren’t helping matters either.

It had been something electrifying and warm that had passed between us, with her small frame fitting in my arms flawlessly. A tightening feeling settled into my chest and a feeling of blissful contentment followed a second after. And though it sounds cliche, that entire moment felt completely and utterly perfect to me. It was more than just right, making me feel a bit stupid afterwards when I compared such a feeling to being ‘home’. I also had to stop myself from tightening my hold on her too much in the moment, wanting to keep her pressed against me and devour her.

She had felt so soft, with lips that tasted of something mysteriously sweet that instantly became addicting. The warmth of her body made my fingers twitch with a sudden urge to remove her dress and I struggled to remain in control of myself. My mind racing with thoughts and heated fantasies about her, wanting nothing more than to taste every inch of her body. To drown in every single little thing about her and find each hidden spot on her body that makes her squirm and moan. To trace every little curve and bend of her body with my fingers and lips so I could commit it all to memory. I wanted to push this dangerous little Succubus to her limits and have her pinned beneath me, unable to escape as I had my way with her until I was satisfied. And when her lips parted and she sighed deeply, relaxing into me, I felt some faint and distant click in my chest that helped pull me back from the rush I was feeling.

I nearly lost myself in that warmth and taste of her in those few seconds.

So when she backed away from me, looking like she had seen a ghost, apologized and ran, I remained rooted in place, still struggling to regain control over my own emotions and thoughts. Annoyingly, that pleasant rush was cut short when my head began to pound painfully just as Danny and his girlfriend returned.

Since that night I had been fighting through the pain that throbbed in my head while I questioned why it only ever started up when I thought of my past.

I had noticed that whenever I tried to think of my childhood and any possible connection I had to Devin, my head would pound incessantly, making my vision blurry at times. Then, after talking to my friends, I realized that I never really talked about my childhood before my father found me in an orphanage after my mothers death. I never even talked about my mother to them either and everytime I tried to think of her, that f*****g headache would return, only ten times worse than when I thought of Devin. I would sometimes even find myself blacking out from the pain on my couch or in bed with my body coated in sweat and a stinging feeling behind my eyes.

It all infuriated, confused and saddened me, making me wonder why the few precious memories of my mother were doing this to me out of nowhere.

I knew that I had thought of her before and even recall talking about her to my father before starting high school. But at some point I stopped and noticed how not even a picture of her hung in my apartment. All of the boxes that held old photo albums, baby clothes and toys were all tucked away in a storage unit I shared with my dad and I never once touched them after I moved out.

It was all very strange to me since I had always cherished my mothers memory as a child. I had talked to her pictures after moving in with my father and his then fiancee and remember still celebrating her birthday through middle school. Her name, Dawn, used to be scribbled onto the edges of my homework papers too before I would turn them in at school. She had meant everything to me as a child, and though a part of me hated my father for leaving her when I was a baby, I still talked to him about her when I was still a young boy.

Yet out of nowhere, I just… stopped, and I never noticed or questioned why I had.

A bout of self hatred settled into me on the day that my friends and I learned about Flesh-Eaters and my temper flared out at Devin after she explained her plans to question one. A strong urge to keep her safe from creatures that would’ve gladly killed and eaten her fueled my anger and I snapped at her without meaning to.

I could see that I had crossed a line in trying to force her to stay behind, but I never imagined that she held the authority to out rank me if she wanted to. So I had to swallow my worries and instead forced myself to remain quiet, learning about the potions she was using. It was fascinating to learn that the potion she was spilling over the blades of her knives was a type of paralyzing agent that numbed a Demon's limbs for a few minutes, allowing her to capture or kill them if she needed to. Of course, having been stabbed by said blades would incapacitate her targets anyway, it was still useful to know that whoever she cut would be left unable to escape.

The telepathy potion was a new experience for me as well and I was surprised with how I could feel her presence as well as her brothers in my mind, even when they weren’t talking.

Nick had felt like a heavy ball of steel that settled into my head, though I figured that his tightly packed emotions were the reason why he felt that way to me. But Devin was a much more soothing presence in my mind. It made me picture a faint warmth that one could feel from the sun with a cool, playful breeze swirling around with it. It helped me relax before the shooting started and I couldn’t help but keep my eyes on her afterwards.

She practically danced with her knives as she fought the woman Flesh-Eater, skipping back and forth and skillfully avoiding the she-monsters claws. And even during her little interrogation of the man we had captured had been like a form of dance as well. With her mind spinning behind her ringed eyes as she pieced things together before speaking. Once the pathetic beast was released too I had watched as she tucked her body into itself after pulling out a final dagger, spinning once and stopping her body short. I was stunned with how she had packed as much power and speed behind her weapon with that spin and managed to sink her blade into the monster's back, centering it just enough so he couldn’t reach it.

She looked like a modern angel of death, albeit, a short and dangerously attractive one.

Now, back in my apartment after the shooting, questions and clean up, I thought back to what Devin had said in the car, rubbing my temples as another headache threatened to strike me down.

She had told us that she and Nick had been in an orphanage as kids and became family while there. Something about that made my head ring and I wondered if we had gone to the same place as kids. Maybe that was why I had felt like I knew her and I couldn’t stop thinking about her. So I dug through my spare room that I used as storage and looked for the one thing I had kept with me from the orphanage I had stayed in. It was a small childrens photo book with some pictures that were taken of me by the staff at the orphanage. I hadn’t touched it in such a long time and wondered, if maybe, Devin had shown up in the background of any of them.

But when I found the tiny little book again, I was stunned to find it empty.

All of the pages that held a picture were torn out, leaving a few empty sleeves behind. Confused, I looked through the box to see if they had just fallen to the bottom but nothing was there. I looked through the book again and leaned closer to the inner binding, noting how roughly the pages had been ripped out. It was then that a faint stinging began in my head as I thought back to my childhood again.

I started off slowly, recalling my days with my father and step-mother, working my way back to the day my father found me in the orphanage. I was seven and suffering from a cold when he came to get me.

I could picture the tall dark walls of the house I had been living in for months before my father came. I could still remember the smell of the rain from the night before slipping in through some cracked windows. The sight of my father, who I had only seen in pictures, was intimidating to my young mind and I could still recall how I had flinched away from his voice when he spoke to me. The sound of children running and playing in the distance could be heard just under the soft discussion that the adults were having with my father in the room next to the bench I sat on. Even the feeling of my small suitcase that sat at my feet while I played with the zipper was easy to bring up.

But the stinging behind my eyes grew as I tried to push further into my memory, making a few tears spring free as I lay in bed groaning. The throbbing in my head grew a second later and my own mind became a mass of blurry, smeared and moving colors with distorted voices that only increased the pain. A sense of guilt, so deep it cut me, rose from the depths of the pain and I slammed my hands on either side of my head, weakly trying to remove the pain. Sweat soon broke out, coating my neck, chest and face as I started to writhe and press my hands harder against my skull.

It felt like my head was going to snap in two and my hands were the only things holding me together. I could hear those distorted voices becoming louder then softer as if someone was messing with the volume to my mind. The foggy colors were also fluctuating in brightness, blinding my mind's eye one second before becoming so dark that I could see nothing. I could recognize my own young voice within the chaos as tears continued to spill from my eyes, but no words would be clearly heard over the pain and sudden ringing. I managed to catch a woman's voice at some points but that quickly vanished. And then there was an even softer and younger wounding voice that tried to pull me deeper into my swirling memories.

But the pain was too much.

“f**k!”

The final shout that was ripped out of me helped snap me away from my struggling reverie, feeling the pain spread down my neck and onto my shoulders, burning me.

I lay there, panting and tried to focus on the current case we were working on, slowly feeling the pain melt away from me as the seconds ticked by. And when I opened my eyes, no longer needing to keep them clamped shut against the stabbing in my head, I stared up at my ceiling for a little while longer.

After a short while later I rolled onto my side and grabbed my phone, texting my father about possibly meeting up sometime after my current case. I wanted to talk to him and see if he could help me with my painful memory recall. I also wanted to see if he would lend me the key to the storage unit since I never saw a reason to carry one myself. A part of me just wanted to get to the bottom of this and figure out why I was feeling this way. I also hated the fact that I had somehow forgotten about my mother and never even realized anything was missing or wrong. It bothered me deeply and I was set on fixing it and digging up a few of her pictures to keep around my home.

But the nagging question still remained as I sluggishly got up and ready for a shower.

Why were these headaches happening?

Why only when I thought about my childhood?

Could it have been caused by some external thing/person? I had only recently experienced potions first hand tonight so the possibility of something like that being used on me wasn’t impossible.

But if someone had potentially ‘drugged’ me with some kind of potion… why did they?

For what reason would I be a target of something like this? And why only blur my childhood?

These questions swam in the aching sea of my mind as I showered and I paused a few times as I stepped out, wondering if maybe Devin or maybe even her brother could help me with this. They were both very knowledgeable about all kinds of Demon related things so they could very well know what was going on with me.

Yet, with how distant Devin was being and the strange tension that radiated off of her brother Nick, I was hesitant to bring it up.

At least, not until after we closed this case.

So I threw myself onto bed and sighed into my pillow, making up my mind to bring this up to one of them once our current assignment was taken care of.