Page 6 of Adepts and Alchemists
Angelo propped an elbow on the armrest, glowering out at the passing houses through a gap in the hood of my sweatshirt. He’d cinched it as tightly as it could go, obscuring his face from any random passerby. Someone would need to have their nose pressed to the glass to make out the handsome realtor in a ‘Bigfoot Search Team, Haven Hollow, USA,’ t-shirt and the matching unzipped jacket.
As to where we were headed—as I understood it, we were en route to some motel out of town that Lydia seemed to think was safe. At least for the time being.
“You didn’t mishear and, no, it’s not a weird nickname. I’m an incubus.”
I absorbed that. It sounded absurd when he said it offhandedly like that, but when I stopped to think about things, it started to make sense. Marty, Henner, and I were treated to an absurd number of ghost stories and supernatural phenomena. Then there were the rumors there was a cult heading up the town Council, and that they’d had the last chief of police bumped off in favor of someone easier to work with.
“You’re an incubus—as in a sex demon?” I checked, making sure I had my facts right. “The kind that preys on sleeping women?”
Angelo’s eyes rolled skyward. “Myth. Every woman I’ve been with has been conscious. A woman might be exhausted by the time I’m through with her, but the night starts with her eyes open. And before you ask the obvious and inane follow-up question, yes, that makes my sister a succubus.”
I shut my mouth and scowled at the pale stripe of road visible by moonlight. Aspen trees lined either side of the street, casting long shadows over our exit route. From the way Angelo was watching the treeline, I half-expected something to come charging out of the trees to run us down. I didn’t know the guy well. I’d basically only seen him at the functions Fifi dragged him to. For a while, she’d been pursuing Marty, though the big lug had remained oblivious to her interest in him. Then she’d found Roy and Marty was just a thing of the past.
As to Fifi being a succubus though? I had to admit I was having a hard time trying to put the image of a thoroughly hopeless romantic like Fifi together with the image of a lusty demoness. It just didn’t compute. She was just...too sweetto be a demon.
“It’s just too weird. I mean, I would have guessed Fifi to be an angel before a demoness.” I hesitated, casting a nervous glance in Angelo’s direction. “Is that the wrong thing to say? I don’t want to be offensive or anything.”
I expected to find Angelo snarling at me, but he hadn’t yanked his gaze away from the tree line, which I thought was arguably worse. I didn’t have to know the guy well to realize he wasn’t acting like himself. He let out a small, derisive snort.
“She’s an odd duck. She might think of it as a compliment. I’m too far gone to give a rat’s ass about political correctness at the moment.”
“Can I ask why?”
He spared me a glance. “That bitch Andrea took Lydia. And she’s the only thing I care about. Say or do whatever you want, human. I don’t give a damn. I’m here for her. Nothing else.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that when I’d just seen Lydia, so I was pretty sure she hadn’t been taken anywhere. Unless something had just happened in the last five minutes? Had she fallen out of my truck bed? I glanced in the rear view mirror and saw her still sitting there. So, maybe Angelo was the one who was drunk? Regardless, there was a note of inarguable menace when he spoke Andrea’s name. Like the results might be lethal if he got his hands on her. Call me crazy, but I didn’t like hearing a demon talk about any woman like that, monster girl or not.
“Um,” I started, trying not to sound belligerent. I wasn’t sure I succeeded. “Lydia is back there—in my truck bed. I just helped her and the other women up there, or did you forget the last twenty minutes?”
I’d heard my share of impressive snarls on forums and YouTube videos. The basso roar of a sasquatch would make any human’s stomach quiver with instinctive fear. I thought I’d been inoculated against scary sound effects. But the sound that ripped out of Angelo’s throat had me cringing against the driver’s seat, desperately trying to keep the truck on the road. It was so close and so savage that the sheer wrath attached to the sound made my bones shake. There was no possible way for a sound to echo in my head like that, but it did. Suddenly, the idea that he might be more than human didn’t seem as far-fetched.
There was a moment when the black of his pupils seemed to swallow the entirety of his eyes. Then it was gone, leaving him looking human and even more tired than he’d been a moment before.
He pinched the bridge of his nose, visibly reining himself in. I waited, sucking in short breaths, trying to still the furious beating of my heart.
“Sorry,” Angelo muttered after a moment. “I’m behaving badly. I know better than to flash my true form at a mundane. Even one as odd as you.”
“Um… thanks… I think.” I paused. “And I’m not sure what you just called me.”
“A mundane,” he repeated. “Another word for a human.”
“Oh.”
Angelo chuckled, though it sounded fairly lifeless after the emotion he’d packed into the one warning note. He subsided, staring out the window once more.
“It’s a compliment. Odd ducks react better when they make contact with our reality. I still don’t understand why the Council decreed that you needed to be kept out of things. But I’ve only become a member recently. Henner is the grandson of a witch and Marty is a monster hunter now. It seemed silly to leave you out when they’re both in the know, but again, not really my call.” He looked over at me. “I’m sorry you got mind-wiped.”
I blinked, taken off guard by the casual way he’d just dropped that nugget of information. Was he really implying what I thought he was implying? That I’d somehow been in this position before but had been Men-In-Black-ed into forgetting it all? How? Why? And whose ass did I kick for it? That was massively uncool.
But also irrelevant, at this point. The fact my feelings were hurt didn’t change the reality of things. Whether I believed what they had to say or not, their need for help was real. Poppy really seemed to think that I could help them, which was what eventually made me okay with piling all the women into the back of the truck like I was trying to smuggle drugs over the border.
I sucked in a deep breath and then muttered, “Later. You’ll explain that bit to me later. Tell me what’s going down right now. I need to know what has your panties in a twist.”
“I don’t wearpanties,” Angelo stressed, putting mocking emphasis on the word. “I tear them off, and women are usually begging me to do it.”
I thought about telling him where he could shove the arrogant tone and promise, but decided to behave myself instead. It appeared I could be taught.
“Fine,” I said in a tone of strained patience. “What’s got your demonic and very manly briefs in a bunch? Did you sleep with someone you shouldn’t have? Is that why we’re undergoing this action movie cliché?”