WereWoman (15 page)

He led me to a private office. “You asked for a Were?” he asked the occupant, a portly older Incubus. The desk plaque said INGRAHAM/SYMMETRIA. That would be the Incubus and Succuba names.

“Mena Were,” I said.

“Oh, good. Come in, Mena.”

I entered the office as Incomer departed, out of sorts. “One of yours has been killed?”

“Last night, as far as we can tell.”

“You don't know whether he's dead?”

“We don't know exactly when he died. Or why he was murdered. We fear it is part of the series of Supe extinctions your boss is investigating.”

“That could be. I'll need details.”

“I will turn you over to his friend Suzy/Innis. She discovered the body.”

“Do that.”

He conducted me to a chamber buried in the bowels of the building. A lovely young woman was primping before a mirror. “Suzy, this is Mena Were, the investigator I mentioned. Bring her up to snuff.”

“I can't take time right now,” Suzy said. “I've got a double load of clients to service, until you get Increase/Succula's ones reassigned.”

“I am working on it. We're shorthanded this week. This is a matter of murder of one of our own. Make time, if you value your career.” Ingraham departed.

“Oh, piss,” she swore. “I've been all day without a connection. I can't wait hours dickering with you. There's a window of opportunity I have to catch.”

This was interesting, apart from the murder. “You have a desire to service clients? It's not just a business?”

“Of course I do. We're sexual creatures. Without regular sex we'd soon sicken and die. We need at least ten clients a night to maintain our health. But tonight I've got thirty. I'll have to average four an hour. That would be fun if it weren't for the logistics.”

“Logistics?”

“I have to assess the most efficient route to pick them all up rapidly, get there on schedule, and catch them in the right gender and orientation. Any mistake, and we lose a client. The sex is fine and necessary, but the organizing is a pain.”

Gender and orientation? I could see the first, because a Succuba had to service a man, and an Incubus a woman. But what was the other? “Why don't I just tag along, and you can update me as you work.”

“Tag along! Weren't you listening? I'm going to be
busy
.”

“I have some skill at organization. If you give me the list, I should be able to help you get a feasible route. It's a variation of the traveling salesmen challenge, one of my favorites.”

Suzy looked appraisingly at me. “You can be silent when you need to be? I can't afford to wake up clients; I'd lose them. We can't risk losses; it's already tricky to break in new ones.” Her mouth quirked. “Some idiots think sex is sinful, especially with our kind; it casts a pall.”

I was getting new insights. I had never thought of sleeping sex as a profession. “Yes. Just signal when it's time.”

“Okay. Here're the lists. We have to integrate them efficiently.” She handed me two plasticized notebooks. “Alternate genders.”

I perused them rapidly. Each name had salient facts: gender, age, address, plus some incidental notes of likely complications, such as a spouse sleeping in the same bed, or irregular sleeping hours. Some were close to our present location, others some distance away. They were already in geographic order; I just needed to integrate the two lists. That helped. I took a pencil and marked numbers, starting with the closest. “I've got the organization started.”

“Good enough. This way.” She led me out of the chamber and the building to the parking garage. “You'd better be able to ride double on my moped.”

A moped! That was a motorized bicycle with pedals for low-speed travel. Maybe that was what she could afford, since she didn't have paying customers. It was bound to be awkward. “I'll try.”

She tooled out the machine and got on it. I climbed onto the long seat behind her. It was precarious, but feasible. “How is it you're heading out by day?” I asked. “Don't your clients have to be asleep?”

“I have some early sleepers. Gives me a nice head start.”

Live and learn. Of course some folk did sleep by day.

She started the motor, put it in gear, and we started moving. “The two closest, male and female, are your regulars,” I said. “Then comes a male on Succula's list.”

“Got it.” She guided the moped out of the garage and along the street. Mundanes were about, but they didn't pay much attention. Apparently they were used to seeing girls of that dating service making house calls, and of course some men liked to tackle them in pairs. One man we passed took a good hard look at the pair of us, then changed course to walk toward the CIRCUMSPECT DATING entrance.

We came to an apartment complex, parked, and headed in and up to the third floor. There was a woman in the elevator, but Suzy made a gesture and the woman ignored us. I recognized the magic: a tune-out spell, probably bought from a Witch. The woman saw us but we didn't register in her consciousness.

The apartment door was locked, with a DO NOT DISTURB sign hung on the knob. Suzy touched the knob, focused, then turned it, and the door opened. More incidental magic: an unlocking spell. Why struggle with heavy magic, such as walking through walls, when mini spells sufficed?

We went to the bedroom. A middle-aged man slept on the bed. “Damn,” Suzy muttered.

Now I understood the “orientation” problem: how could she engage him in sex when the operative part was buried under his body? To try to turn him over physically would likely wake him, and waking sex was not the business of a Succuba; the client had to be asleep.

She tackled it. “Turn over, dear,” she whispered in his ear. “Turn over. Turn over, handsome.” About the eighth repetition it seemed to register: he turned over and lay on his back.

Now Suzy hoisted up her skirt. She wore no underclothing. She opened the man's pajama fly, lifted out his limp penis, and gently kneaded it. It responded immediately; I realized that her touch was magic, causing instant arousal. Soon he had a formidable erection. Then she got on him, fitted him slowly into her, stretched out on him, and kissed his mouth.

The effect was dramatic. His body hunched, thrusting deeply into her and ejaculating immediately. I saw her buttocks flex, and realized that she was squeezing him internally, milking the last of his semen. “Good boy,” she whispered, kissing him again. Then she drew herself off him, closed his fly, and let her skirt drop back down as she stood on the floor. She hadn't even taken off her shoes.

She walked to the bedside desk and picked up the two-dollar bill on it. Then we departed the apartment, leaving its occupant still sound asleep, but with a smile on his face.

“Two dollars?” I asked when we were clear.

“Traditional gratuity. It hasn't changed in a century, at least not for us. The fact that it's a two-dollar bill is a signal that he's expecting me. Now let me Change.”

She invoked her magic and shifted to male form, becoming Innis. It happened much faster than my own Change; this form of Supe specialized in it. He reached down to zip up the skirt, which I now saw was more like culottes, convertible to a man's shorts. The shirt needed no adjustment; it now covered wider shoulders instead of a full bosom. I made a mental note to get a similar outfit for myself; it was efficient.

“Now the next,” he said.

“Your Change,” I said as we rode down in the elevator, the two of us alone. “How soon do you have to do it, after sex?”

“There's no time limit. It's just that we can't have sex twice in succession the same form; we have to Change. Since we have to have sex frequently, we generally Change immediately after a tryst, to be ready for the next. My last client last night was female, so I did her then Changed and spent the day female.”

The next client was just down the street, in another complex, on the second floor. She was married, but the two of them seemed married in name only. He was still up watching TV football, but she was not with him. We slid by him with another tune-out spell and entered the bedroom. There she was, spread out invitingly, sunny side up, naked. She was well formed; it seemed a shame that her husband was more interested in the game than in her.

“Hello you gorgeous creature,” Innis murmured appreciatively. He sat beside her and stroked her full breasts, then kissed them. She made a little moan of pleasure as her nipples swelled. Then he stroked her vulva, and I saw it too expand, stimulated.

He mounted her and touched his member to her vagina. Her breath quickened. He pushed in half an inch. She began panting. It was apparent that his touch turned her on, making her eager for the culmination. He advanced a little farther, and she practically rose up to meet him. Finally he thrust in fully, spread his body on hers, and kissed her.

She erupted like a volcano, her whole body shaking with the rapture of her orgasm. He thrust repeatedly, not because he needed to, but because that magnified her pleasure. I could almost see the ejaculate pumping into her, pulse after pulse.

Then he withdrew, slowly, leaving her shuddering with aftershocks of pleasure. “I wish I could stay the night with you, you phenomenal creature, but I must be on my way,” he said with regret as he picked up the two dollar bill. She just lay there, in fading bliss. Was she really asleep?

Innis Changed, becoming Suzy and adjusting her clothing. “She's always fun,” she said. “She really appreciates our visits.”

We walked past the husband, still locked in the game. Did he have an idea what he was missing? It seemed like such a waste.

We rode on to the first client on the other list. “This will be a little different,” Suzy said. “Because I don't know him. He may recognize the difference.”

As it turned out, there was no such problem. The man was dead drunk. Not only was that sloppy, his penis remained determinedly limp. “Crap! I can't afford to take time. I'll have to suck him.”

“Oral works?” I asked.

“No. It has to be traditional penis/vulva.” Suzy got on the man, fed his limp member to her vagina, and closed it around him. Then I heard a faint humming. “Vacuum,” she explained. She got him hard, then kneaded him peristaltically until she drew his ejaculate from him.

Succubi had powers I had not thought of.

Between clients we had a chance to talk. “How exactly did Increase/Succula die?”

“We spent much of the day figuring that out. Increase had been dead several hours before we located him. He had gone out on his route, but not returned. I had a duplicate of his client list, so I followed it, and discovered him dead on the floor in the client's apartment, pale as a mask, no mark on him. We brought him home and had the doctor examine him. He had bled out internally. He had been dosed with enchanted red squill, normally used to kill rats. It thins the blood to the point where clotting can't occur.”

“I didn't realize you folk ate or drank when on your tour,” I said.

“We don't. He didn't eat it. As near as we can tell, it was in the ejaculate of the client. Succula took it in, Changed, and that activated it and took her out within an hour. Had she known, she would have come home before Changing and we could have cleaned it out of her with minimal damage. But the Change affected every part of the body, and the squill spread though the whole of him and took him out before he knew. He just lay down and died.”

“In the ejaculate! And it didn't affect him?”

“It would have, had he done a Change or equivalent. It was inert until then. He must have injected it into his prostate, and let the ejaculation carry it on out. Then he departed while Increase died. It was a brutal, ugly scene.”

“I hate to say it, but that does seem to fit the pattern of our serial killer. He took out a Demon by putting his bottle in the freezer and leaving.”

“Well, catch him! Torture him. Kill him. He deserves it all.”

“But if each of you have a regular client list, wouldn't this man have been vetted before?”

“Yes, of course. All Innis's clients were safe. But we discovered that the regular client had had an accident and spent the night in the hospital unexpectedly. The killer came in to take his place, we think without his knowledge. So he was there, sleeping in the client's bed, when Succula came. She must never have thought to verify his identity; it was routine, one of many. One horny sleeping man is much like another. She milked him and died.”

Another fiendishly clever murder plot. “If it was an intruder primed for murder, was he really asleep?”

“He could have been. But it might not have mattered. We do it with sleeping folk, but can do it with a wakeful one if he plays the part, making the motions. Most men aren't good at that; they get near a hole, they want to jam into it. But if he let Succula stimulate him, mount him, and take him in, it would work. We do think it was a Supe, because no mundane would have the wit for such a sophisticated ploy, or the ability to accomplish it.”

“Wouldn't Succula have recognized a Supe?”

“Certainly. But there are occasional Supes on our client lists; they sleep too, and hunger for more sex than they get by day. Some like to do it with us, especially females, because we always make them climax. Males tend not to care much whether the females get theirs, and some females may get tired of sex entirely so leave their males hungry. I've had sex with Supes, both ways. If they play the roles, they get the services.”

“Supes take care of Supes.”

“Exactly. If I'm male when we finish the night, and you are worked up, I could do you.”

“Thank you, no,” I said quickly, without explaining further. Had I been Phil, the chance of sex with a Succuba might well have turned me on. But perhaps fortunately, I wasn't.

We continued the rounds, and did manage to complete them by dawn. One of them was the man who had been hospitalized; he was back home, a bandage around his broken arm, sedated, but clearly happy to enjoy his nocturnal dream. He was obviously not the killer.