Succubus in the City (14 page)

“Tell the others,” I said.

“Let me get you taken care of first,” he protested, spreading the ointment so gently over my burns that I felt only cooling relief. Then he applied the bandages expertly. I raised an eyebrow; his skill was professional and unexpected.

He shrugged. “You get a lot of experience with the gangs” was all he told me.

“Tell the others.” I couldn’t dial the phone, couldn’t even think of talking. “My Treo is in the bag. It’s got their phone numbers. Call on their cells.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it,” he said soothingly.

But he wasn’t on the phone. Instead he returned to the kitchen, took one of my knives and nicked the inside of his wrist. In the thick ichor that dripped into my white enamel sink he added some dragon’s blood root and sulfur and muttered a few words. I was too weary to actually move so that I could see, but I knew the procedure. And weak as I was, I could feel Satan’s magic flow into my apartment.

Then She was there, not in Her aspect of our den mother/big sister Martha, but as Anger and Vengeance, as Kali and Coatlique and as all the goddesses of destruction who ever lived.

Sometimes I am almost too used to Satan as She is with us, in Her Chanel suits. I can forget that She is one of the most powerful angels in the Hierarchy, that in some ways She is destruction incarnate. Hurting and weak as I was, I was overwhelmed with the urge to do Her worship.

“Lily,” She said, coming to me directly as She manifested.

I tried to kneel down, though moving from the sofa was a great effort. “Satan,” I greeted Her.

“Tell me what happened.” Her voice was hard and commanding, but She did soften Her aspect so that we could gaze on Her. This was indeed Lucifer, the Light-Bearer. Sometimes with our girlfriend it’s easy to forget that.

So I told Her and Vincent filled in where I hesitated. He showed Her the copy he had made of the message.

“My poor Lily,” She said, and She touched my hands.

The pain abated and suddenly the blisters were gone. I felt calm and light and in perfect health.

“The others?” I asked. “They may have gotten letters, too.”

“They have been informed,” Satan said in that voice that brooked no argument. She was utterly, perfectly, completely in command. If She said the others knew, they knew. I just hoped we’d been in time.

Then Satan took one long last look at me, there was a sound like a soft popgun, and She was gone. The scent of sulfur remained in the air.

chapter
THIRTEEN

“Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I asked Vincent about half an hour later, after we’d finished the pint of Chunky Monkey between us. Then I realized that he’d been in my apartment for a long time and asked, “Don’t you have to be downstairs? Is this going to be a problem?”

He smiled broadly. “No prob, Lil. Her Evilness has a simulacrum of me down in the lobby even now, guarding the residents and delivering the packages. No one knows I’m gone.”

I licked my spoon again. I’d scraped out the carton twice already, and wondered idly whether the bodega on the corner would deliver more, if only I could find the phone number.

“Who do you think attacked me? And how? And with what?”

“Well, the what is easy,” Vincent said dismissively. “Holy water. Clearly. Burn pattern. Who and how is a lot harder. The letter came in the mail with the regular mailman. No one besides our regular mailman opened the mailboxes. And the UPS and FedEx deliveries were also by the regular route drivers. I know them all; they greeted me by name. So it wasn’t like someone snuck in and dropped that thing off. It went through channels.”

Which made sense. Holy water wouldn’t hurt a live human, so the letters could be processed through the mail like anything else.

But how did they find me? And who were they?

I wanted to cry.

I wanted more ice cream.

“Look, my shadow is downstairs,” Vincent offered. “If you’re okay with being alone for a few minutes, I’ll go and buy a couple more pints. Just Chunky Monkey, or what other flavors?”

I thought about it for a moment. I just wanted comfort and safety. “Cherry Garcia and Fudge Brownie. They should have those in stock.”

My ridiculously handsome and resourceful doorman disappeared. He didn’t even ask me for the cash.

I was about to dial Sybil when the phone rang. I picked up; it was Desi. “Are you okay?” she demanded abruptly.

“Satan took care of me,” I said, aware that she knew the full story. Okay, sometimes magic is more effective than technology. It takes a lot more energy, but sometimes the additional expenditure is worth the impact. “Did you get a letter?”

“Yes, but I heard from Satan first and turned it over to an Enforcer. And before you ask, yes, so did Sybil and Eros and neither of them opened theirs and everything has been turned over so they’re on it.”

“They” were the Enforcers, which is what passes for the demon police. Mostly they just break up fights and demon exhibitions and clean up after they catch minions who aren’t doing their jobs. Easy grunt work, so most of the Enforcers are not exactly geniuses.

“The Enforcers won’t figure anything out,” I said, speaking before I thought.

There was silence on the other end. What else could Desi say? There are plenty of brilliant denizens of Hell, but none of them would stoop to Enforcement. The smart demons work for Beliel in Security, but it didn’t look like Satan had called him in on this one. His area was more internal in Hell rather than the mortal world.

No, this was not going to get solved by anyone but us.

“How’s Syb?” I asked. Desi was upset and unhappy, but it was Sybil who had me really worried. She wouldn’t be able to cope if she knew who was pursuing us.

If she knew who was pursuing us we could catch them and get rid of the problem. The problem was that in this teeming island, to say nothing of the four other boroughs, it could be anyone. And they would think that they were doing Heaven’s will, too, without any real directives from On High. Because, trust me, On High has no percentage in making war on us. That’s a human perception. We’re part of the Hierarchy and of general use to the Upper Orders, even if they detest our methods.

Anyway, that’s all for the higher-ups. I’ve never quite been able to wrap my mind around the good/evil dichotomy, and even less able to understand why something perfectly lovely like sex gets put under the general subheading of evil.

When I was human we worshipped the power of creation.

“Sybil is not thinking about this, but I think she’s terrified,” Desi said. “Truth is, I’m terrified, too.”

“Why don’t you both come over? We can have ice cream and Frangelico,” I invited.

“I’m—I think I’ll be okay,” Desi said softly. “But why don’t you call Sybil?”

So I did call Sybil, but she was too scared to leave her apartment. I told her that Vincent would come and fetch her in a taxi and she could stay over and we could both call in sick to work tomorrow. Clearly relieved, she agreed to the plan, so I was alone again with no ice cream in the freezer.

Nathan kept coming back to my thoughts, Nathan and Desi. Was Nathan one of them? Had he sent them to me?

But I couldn’t bear that and I had to know. I liked him so much. And we just clicked on things that weren’t about my looks and sex. He cared about the ancient world and knew my background, my home, and that touched me in a gentle soft place that I had mostly forgotten.

I was all alone and I’d been hurt and I wanted to talk to Nathan. I wanted assurance that he had nothing to do with the mess, and that he’d find the people who’d hurt me.

He was a detective, after all.

The thought wouldn’t leave. But how would I explain without letting him know what I was? How could I hire him to find people who attacked us unless he knew the basic battle lines?

Still, I was alone. Vincent couldn’t babysit me while he was out fetching Sybil. I pulled out my Treo and looked up Nathan’s number and, well, so it was ringing. I hadn’t meant to dial and I could still hang up. I could always hang up.

“Hello?” He was on the line. His voice was warm and deep and slightly raspy with congestion.

“Hi, Nathan, it’s Lily.” I felt like an idiot. Eros would be horribly disappointed in me if she knew.

“Hey, Lily, great. Thanks for calling. What’s up?” He sounded ridiculously happy for a mere phone call.

“Oh, I just wanted to say hi and that I checked my schedule and I can make it on Saturday as long as it’s early. I’ve got plans at six, but if we go early we can have lunch.”

“Great!” He sounded quite enthusiastic. “Temple of Dendur. Not quite Babylon, but maybe one day we’ll go to Berlin.”

“Berlin?” I was slightly confused.

“The Pergamon Museum,” he said. “They took the entire temple from the top of the hill of Pergamon and rebuilt it, stone by stone, in this museum in Berlin. And they have a re-creation of the Ceremonial Way with the real bricks that lined the walk. Not at full scale, but it’s still wonderful. I went there back when I was an undergrad. A bunch of us went to Berlin. Everyone else wanted to go to the Love Parade and the clubs, and all I cared about was this one museum. They all laughed at me. But hey, it was great.” Then he paused for a breath. “I’m sorry, I’m rambling. I’m just thrilled that you can make it on Saturday. How about if we meet at ten on the museum steps on the Fifth Avenue side?”

“Can we make it eleven?” I asked. That was still too early for me to wake up on a weekend, but it would be worth it.

“Sure. Eleven it is. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to this,” he said cheerily, signing off.

Okay, I was being stupid. He could be like Steve, be in on the plot. I could have given him way too much information by calling. He would know that I was fine. Maybe the date at the Met was a setup and something awful would happen to me on the way there, or on the way home. They would have some knowledge of my movements.

Paranoia chased hope around in my brain, and if Vincent hadn’t shown up with Sybil and three more pints pilfered from her collection I might have been inconsolable and afraid. As it was, Sybil was afraid and I had to pay attention to her.

Fortunately, I could obsess to her about Nathan to distract her from her own fears.

“Eros is right, you know,” Sybil said solemnly. “You really should have made him wait longer and call a few times. And you should have sent an e-mail instead of calling.”

We had changed into pajamas and banished Vincent downstairs. I had given her the short version of meeting Nathan and the possible date, my very first ever real honest date.

“But I wanted to call,” I said. “I wanted to talk to him.”

“Exactly. Of course you wanted to talk to him. Which is why you shouldn’t have,” she chided me gently.

“But I had this other thought about it,” I went on. “I wimped out, I was too scared really to ask, and it would probably mean telling him way too much about me, about all of us, but you know, he is a detective. Or at least pretends to be. So I thought that maybe he could help us. With these people who are following us. Or whatever.” I suddenly remembered that I had to be careful. Sybil is the most timid of us. I almost wished it were Eros here—she would be planning a nuclear holocaust. And she’s the one who talks to Beliel. Desi would be analyzing them, figuring some way to turn them from their plans. Sybil just couldn’t cope. Which made it harder, but in some ways better for me because I had to keep her on subjects that wouldn’t frighten her. So maybe it was just as well that she was focusing on my bad dating behavior. That certainly managed to distract her.

“The reason there are rules about these things, Lily, is that we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Men haven’t changed in three thousand or six thousand or ten million years. They want to hunt. The less interested you appear, the more interested they become. The more available you are, the less they have to work, and they don’t value you unless they have to work for you. So you’re just undercutting yourself. I’ve had dozens of boyfriends and more than a dozen husbands and I’m telling you, you have to play it cool.”

“But I am,” I protested, wailing. “It’s not Saturday night, it’s daytime.”

“Lily, you’re hopeless. Totally hopeless.” Sybil moaned in despair. “Forget accepting a Saturday date the first time he asks, and in the same week, too. You called him. You never ever call guys until the relationship is established or if you have something urgent to say. Like, your cat died and you can’t make the date you had that evening. Emergencies. I can’t believe you’ve been living with your head in the sand for three thousand years. I think we need to send Vincent to rent a whole season’s worth of
Sex and the City.
”

“I watched that show, it was one of my favorites,” I told her.

“Who did you relate to?”

I shrugged. “I didn’t. Well, maybe Samantha some.”

Sybil shook her head and looked sad. “Lily, Lily, Lily, that is the problem. You need a different role model. You want love, not a one-night stand. I’ll send Vincent out for my DVDs.”

I called Vincent again on the intercom, but the doppleganger answered. Damn. I never thought that Vince would take advantage of having a simulacrum for the evening but hey, he is one of ours.

So at least I was off the hook for the dating dos and don’ts, which was no end of relief. No doubt Sybil was right and I’d made a complete mess of things, and I started to feel nervous that she was thinking of how inexpert I was in one of her areas of accomplishment.

No, she was flipping through the listings on my TiVO.

“They’re doing reruns of
Rome
,” Sybil suggested. “You lived there, didn’t you? You might find it funny.”

As usual, she was right, so we stayed up and reminisced about dear lamented days of yore. I love watching modern interpretations of what the world was like more than two thousand years in the past. Sometimes they try to get it right and sometimes they don’t, but it doesn’t matter because something always turns out wrong. So Sybil and I had a good giggle over the year that kind of mustard yellow stola with glass beaded fringe was just the hottest fashion item. Glass beads were more expensive than pearls in those days, actually—I remembered wearing that stola every single time I went out that season.