"Oh, good, focusing on you works! Hi, Jacob," I said as his
body became solid.
He jumped back when I .stood up, his body immediately
becoming hazy.
"No, there's no dragon! You don't have to leave," I said
hastily, waving my hands around to indicate the dragon-free environment. "See?
Just me, a friend, and my demon."
Jacob's body solidified again as he looked curiously at Nora.
"There are two of you."
"Yes, that's Nora. She's a friend of mine. She's also a
Guardian."
"Eh," he said, looking disconcerted for a moment. Then back
went his shoulders, and out puffed his chest. "I can handle a threesome. I am a
most virile and strenuous lover."
I walked over to where I had filched one of the hotel's navy
blue terry bathrobes. "I'm sure you could, and I don't doubt that you are, but
tempting as that offer is, I'm afraid we're going to have to turn it down. Nora
was assaulted last night, and I've had an awful day. Here, why don't you put
this on?"
He stared at the bathrobe I held out for him, eyeing it as if
it was made up of slugs. "Why do you want me to wear that garment? Is it part of
a game? Will it excite you if I do?"
"It'll make both Nora and me a lot more comfortable if you
wear it," I answered, shoving it into his hands. To my relief, he donned it,
although he didn't tie the belt very tight, so the front part gaped enough to
give anyone who cared to look a view of his prime real estate.
"You do not wish for me to make love to you both?" Jacob
asked, still clearly confused. He sat down on the edge of the bed. "It is
because you have heard stories of this other one? I told you last night, I will
make you forget him."
A little shudder went through Nora. I shared her sentiments.
"We don't want sex. We just want to talk to you."
His eyes widened in horror. "You do not want me to service
you? To pleasure you unlike you have ever been pleasured? To bring you to the
highest peaks of ecstasy?"
"No servicing, no pleasure, no peaks, just answers."
He thought for a moment, then he stood up. "I am an incubus
of the House of Balint. I have pleasured women for many centuries. I do not
answer questions."
I leaned to the side to look around him. "Nora?"
She got to her feet and before Jacob could so much as blink,
she had drawn binding wards surrounding him in the four compass points.
"A ward," she said in an instructing tone of voice as she
pointed to one of the wards thai glowed blue in the air, "is only as good as the
person drawing it. You must have belief in your own powers for the ward to draw
with any success. If you doubt yourself, or if you draw a ward you have seldom
used, it will be weak and ineffectual."
Jacob, looking around himself in disbelief, tried to move but
couldn't, the four wards flaring to life with his attempt. "What is this? What
have you done to me?"
"I believe it is because you have little to no experience
drawing wards that the ghosts you met earlier gave you a binding spell. They
must have known that you would not be able to hold a strong incubus with wards
hastily learned. You can see, however, that once you have gained experience with
wards, they are a fast and effective means of controlling many beings."
"I do not wish to be controlled! You will release me at once
so that I may make love to you."
"Yes, I can see that," I said, ignoring Jacob's outbursts.
"'I like how the wards glow bright whenever Jacob tries to break them. How long
will they last?"
Nora returned to her chair. "As long as I desire."
"Pen!" Jacob exclaimed, and struggled against the wards
again. It was hopeless, of course. Nora was no slouch at ward drawing.
Eventually Jacob grew tired of yelling demands to be freed, and he slumped down
onto the bed again, the wards allowing him a certain range of motion so long as
he didn't try to break free. "You wish to play dominate. I will be submissive,
although I am best when I am allowed to be virile and manly."
"Question-and-answer time," I said, kneeling before him. "If
you play along with us, we'll free you so you can go seduce hundreds more
women."
"You really do not wish me to make love to you?" He seemed to
be having a hard time accepting that fact.
'That's right. We just want to talk to you."
"Ai," he said, his shoulders drooping as his eyes closed.
Slumped there in resignation, he looked like a totally different man. "It is so
tiring, this constant love-making. At last I have found someone who does not
wish for me to be the stallion."
I stared at Nora in surprise for a moment, then looked back
at Jacob. "Wait a second—are you saying you don't want to have sex?"
He nodded, his eyes still closed.
"But. . . you're an incubus. That's what you do. Ifs your
whole reason for being, isn't it?"
"It is," he agreed, then suddenly sat up straight and opened
his eyes. "It is my doom! My curse! I do not wish to be the muffin stud, every
night fulfilling the endless fantasies of the women who summon me. And always,
they summon me, demanding I give them pleasure after pleasure. For centuries I
have been cursed to be the foremost lover in my house, but now"—he sighed and
slumped down again—"now I just wish to live quietly and raise horses."
"Horses," I said, knowing control of the situation was
slipping away from me, but unable to grasp it. "You want to raise horses."
He looked up, his eyes lit with warmth. "Yes. They are
magnificent creatures, are they not? They are strong. They are beautiful. They allow you to ride them, and they
never, ever ask to ride you in return."
Jim snorted. I shot it a look, having earlier ordered it to
silence when the incubus showed up. "I don't think I'm going to touch that.
Moving on—I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, do you know of any
incubus at your house who has murdered women he served?"
"No." I glanced over to Nora. "How do we know if he's telling the
truth? I know a demon can't lie when I ask it a direct question, but does that
work on an incubus?"
"I don't believe so," she answered slowly.
"I do not lie," Jacob said, his shoulders straightening. "I
have no reason to lie to you. You do not wish for me to make love to you. You
are my friends."
"That's right, and friends help each other. You said you
don't know of someone at your house, but what about other houses?"
He made a halfhearted shrug. "There are no other houses in
Budapest."
"OK, but what about incubi who come here from other houses?"
Jacob looked at me with an expression of mild amusement.
"Incubi cannot leave the domain held by their houses. The House of Balint holds
domain over Budapest and the surrounding area. No other incubus can cross into
our territory."
"Really?" My gaze met Nora's for a moment. I rubbed my
forehead. Something was niggling at the back of my mind, but I couldn't pin it
down. "So that limits us to just the members of your house. How many are there?"
"Twenty-five?" he said. "Twelve brothers, twelve sisters, and
the morpheus."
"The morpheus? The god?"
"No. It is a title for the head of the house."
"Ah. Well, that's good. That limits the numbers of incubi to
just eleven, twelve minus you."
I raised an eyebrow at Nora. She rose and sat next to Jacob
on the bed, He looked at her curiously, recoiling as far as the wards would
allow when she suddenly leaned into him and pressed her nose against his neck.
"No, it was not him," she said, resuming her seat, her cheeks
an ashen parody of their normally warm color.
"Good. Eleven to go. If you don't mind, Jacob, I want you to
tell us about all eleven of your brothers. Give us their names, what they look
like, and whether or not they have ever expressed any desire to hurt a
Guardian."
It took three hours, but at long last I felt like we'd picked
Jacob's brain clean of information about his incubus brothers. Unfortunately, we
weren't any closer to finding out who was killing the Guardians, nor did I have
even an inkling of who might be the murderer's target. There were some three
hundred Guardians at the conference—any of them might be the intended victim.
"Thank you for all your help," I said to Jacob after Nora
released the wards. "I appreciate it. If you can think of any of your brothers
who have been hanging around the hotel the last couple of nights, I'd appreciate
you letting either Nora or me know."
He shrugged out of the bathrobe, not the least bit bothered
by his nudity. "Many brothers come in the night, but only because they are
summoned. Only a few visit during the day."
I froze in the act of taking the bathrobe. "What? What do you
mean, during the day? I thought you guys were tied to a sleep or meditative
state. You mean you can come out during the day, too?"
"Yes, of course. When we take human form, we are as humans.
We are not vampyr, you know," he said, a bit scornfully, "Sunlight does not
bother us. Many of my brothers visit hotels such as this during the day, for how
else will they know which summons to answer if they have not first seen the
women who appeal to them?"
"Oh. I thought you guys had to more or less come when
called."
The look he gave me really was scornful. "We are not
attendants to be called with the press of a bell. The only one who can come of
his own will is the morpheus, but he has shut himself away, shunning contact
with mortals."
"Right. Sorry. No slur intended. So you guys can go anywhere
you like in daylight. Are you only in human form in daylight? I mean, can you do
the smoke thing during the day, too?"
"Of course! Although once we are in human form, we are
indistinguishable from a mortal," he said, rolling his eyes just a little. "It
would not make sense to be able to change form only at night. Many people sleep
during the day, do they not? We provide twenty-four-hour service."
"Just like a good towing company. Huh. Well, thank you again,
Jacob. I appreciate you being so cooperative. And about what we talked about—you
really should think about breaking free from your house and moving to the
country. There's no reason you need to be a stud if your heart isn't in it."
A wistful expression stole over his face before he dissolved
into smoke. The smoke snaked out under the door, leaving behind nothing but the
faintest smoky residue.
"Towing company, Ash?" Jim, released from its silence by the
disappearance of Jacob, shook its head. "Man, I'm so glad I got a really
quality Guardian as a demon lord."
"What do you think?" I asked Nora, sitting down on the bed,
clutching the bathrobe, which was still warm from Jacob's body.
She was silent for the count of five. "I think we are going
to have to wake up a great many Guardians tonight and warn them of the
possibility of attack."
"You don't think they're going to be on their guard after the
news of your attack this morning?"
"I think it is better to be safe than sorry," she said, her
eyes thoughtful. She glanced at me. "What did you think of what the incubus had
to say?"
My fingers smoothed over the bathrobe as I mulled over the
miscellaneous bits of information that tumbled around in my brain. There didn't
seem to be a pattern, anything I could grasp to unravel, nothing tangible to use
to figure out the problem. But there was a nagging sense of familiarity, of
something someone had said that was important. Damned if I could think of what
it was, though. I rubbed my forehead again, then set the bathrobe aside. "I
think you're right—we're going to have to wake up a bunch of Guardians. We'd
better split up. The sooner we start, the sooner we can get some sleep."
Two hours later I slipped through the door into Drake's
bedroom, still stinging from some of the comments received from irate Guardians
I’d woken. At least we'd done what we could for the night. Nora asked to sleep
in Drake's spare room again, and since I knew it wouldn't be in use, I told her
she could, ordering Jim to sleep in the room with her.
Jim acquiesced, muttering something about finally being able
to get a decent night's rest without snoring or squeaking bed springs. I wished
Nora a quiet night and went off to make whatever amends I could with my
fire-breathing dragon.
The room was dark, but the slight rustle of the sheets told
me Drake was in bed. I peeled off my clothing, carefully navigating my way
around to the side of the bed I'd claimed as mine, sliding beneath the sheets,
hoping against all hope that Drake wasn't so wounded by what had happened
earlier that he'd snapped my head off.
"You come at last."
His voice was chilly, but at least he was still speaking to
me.
"I'm sorry it's so late, but Nora and I felt we had to warn
all the Guardians present to be careful." I slid a little closer to his warmth,
unsure of whether he wanted me to comfort him, or if he wanted to be left alone.
I fervently hoped it was the former, because just the scent of him was making
secret parts of me grow damp with desire. "Drake, about this afternoon—I can't
begin to tell you how sorry—"