I slept for less than an hour.
At precisely 11:17 p.m., something woke me up. I didn’t notice at the time, but this had been the exact moment of my birth, twenty-five years before.
I sat up, fluffed my pillow, and turned on my side. On the way over, something caught my eye. The apartment was dark, but I could see a female form, sitting on the edge of my bed.
I was in that half-conscious dream state, where every coat draped over a chair looks like a monster. Still, no object in my bedroom looked quite like that. I sat up and tried to focus. There wasn’t much light coming through my window, but the shape was unmistakable.
A female voice came out of the darkness. “Before you turn on the light, there are some things you should know.”
I immediately turned on the light.
The demon was nude. Her skin was pale, but I saw a gold tinge when the light hit it. Her hair was a mass of golden curls, tumbling to her shoulders. Her body was lush, but not quite plump. Her face was dignified, but not cold. Youthful, but not girlish. It was a timeless face, the kind of face you see in old movies.
She was beautiful, but her proportions were all wrong. Her body reminded me of those candid photos of Marilyn Monroe. A modeling agency would have told her to lose ten pounds and spend six weeks in the gym. Even her bone structure was like something from another time. She looked like an old painting. Her eyes were blue - deep, luminous blue. Nipples like pink roses, with her hips angled away from me. There was something very deliberate about that posture.
Modern women were very selective about where they grew muscles and where they put fat, but nothing about this body had been conditioned, sculpted, or planned. I was so puzzled by this; it took me a moment to realize she wasn’t human.
That hair hid a pair of black horns. Her hands and feet looked normal, but there was a strange shadow behind her. I caught a glimpse of something darting behind her shoulder and realized what it was - the arrowhead tip of a prehensile tail.
“Happy birthday, Timothy. I’ve waited a long time to meet you.”
Her voice was soft, warm, and strangely comforting. I was trying to be angry, but something about that voice cut right through it. It was profoundly flattering, to hear a woman so glad to see me.
“Who are you? What the hell is going on?”
“It’s all right. This will be confusing at first, but you must be patient with me. The explanation is not simple, and it cannot be rushed.”
“I said who are you?”
“I am a succubus in the service of the Demon Prince Baalphezar. I have been assigned to you.”
Immediate involuntary laughter. “No kiddin’.”
She sighed. “I’m sorry you don’t believe me. It’s important that you accept the truth of this, as quickly as possible.”
“The attack made the news, right? That’s why you’re here? Whatever this is, whoever you are, you do not have permission to be in my home. Please just go. I won’t call the cops if you just go.”
“No,” she said. “I have to stay with you, but I promise, there’s nothing to be afraid of. I really am here to help.”
“Yeah, I bet you are. This can’t be the first time you’ve done this, so if I pull up my phone and punch in ‘birthday succubus,’ how far will I have to scroll before I see you?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
I stretched my face in my hands and wiped my eyes. “After the night I’ve had, if you make me roll out of bed and do forty minutes of searches to figure out what this is, I swear to god, I will track your producer down to whatever Taipei shithole this is broadcasting from and make this a very expensive mistake.
“Let me guess,” I growled, really warming up now. “Your producer scanned my face from the crime scene video and picked me because he thinks I’m too poor to sue him. He’s right, but if you already know my name, you should know that I don’t need the legal system to ruin your day.”
I started projecting my voice around the room. “So, whoever is in that earpiece feeding her lines, look at my work history and ask yourself, am I really somebody you want to fuck with?”
The girl had a strange response to being threatened. She smiled a faintly wicked, satisfied smile and said, “There it is. The world has changed so much, I was afraid the fire had gone out. It’s nice to see the blood is still in there.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“This is always the hardest part to explain. You come from a long, proud bloodline, bred from some of the most powerful mages who have ever lived; but the power doesn’t always breed true. It can skip generations. We thought the whole project might be over when your— when your predecessor died, but I’m sure you’ve got it, it’s just a matter of learning how much.”
“Wrong,” I said. “There’s not enough magic in my body to light a match. If you looked in that closet behind you, you’d see three red cards from three tests for magical ability, from blood samples taken when I was six, twelve and eighteen.”
She seemed to be genuinely alarmed by that, almost like she was breaking character. “That blood, what did they do with it?”
“They exposed it to a KMP flash and measured how much magic it retained, which was zero. All three times.”
The girl said, “Good.”
“Why is that good?”
“Terms of your contract. I cannot contact the new heir until they turn twenty-five. If your abilities had manifested early, you would be walking around with all this power, and no one to guide you. If they had manifested when you were just a child, that could have been catastrophic.”
“How can I have a contract I don’t even know about?”
“The contract was signed by one of your ancestors, many centuries ago. Whenever this power turns up in a male of this bloodline, they send me. I’m here to help you learn magic and fulfill the terms of that agreement. Among other things.”
“So, you’re sticking with this? You insist that you’re a demon? I’d have to look it up, but aren’t succubi supposed to sneak up and ride men in their dreams? Why are we even talking?”
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
I swear she scoffed at me. “I am not allowed to touch you without permission. You have to ask for me. Very clearly.”
“And loudly for the microphone, right?” She didn’t blink. “I changed my mind. You’re not a witch. You’re a law student. Look, if this isn’t just a monkey’s paw thing, if you’re waiting for explicit permission, you might as well go. What kind of man agrees to this? You’d have to be the dumbest, most desperate motherfucker on Earth to—”
“I know you’re testing me tonight,” she interrupted, “but you should not insult the character or the intelligence of the men who came before you. The first night they called for me was the beginning of a long and loving partnership, seven times so far.”
That one got me. Totally flat-footed. The tone was wrong. The content was wrong. It made no sense at all. “Why are you adding emotional complications to a seduction script? Is this some real time AI bullshit? Is this production even cheaper and lazier than I thought?”
“Seduction script? You think I’m some kind of actress? That’s flattering, but I assure you, I am not a human woman. I can prove that very quickly… with your permission.”
* * *
“I really should be calling the cops.”
“And why haven’t you done that?” She called my bluff immediately, like she had heard this a thousand times before.
“Because I’ve already talked to the cops once tonight. I’ve already been involved in one demon attack, so if I call this cop and tell him there’s another one, he’s gonna bring everybody. Bluestar 7 is gonna throw down in my living room and destroy half this building.
“My furniture is nothing but glue and particle board. Nothing in this apartment can survive a super fight, least of all me. I have no savings and no insurance. I have equipment in here that I cannot afford to replace, holding data caches that have never been properly backed up.
“So, if you really are a demon, do you think you could maybe wait outside and fight them on the lawn? Maybe try to aim whatever hellfire shit you do away from things that I own? And could you maybe fight them at an angle, so when they fire bullets back at you, they don’t punch straight through my home?”
“I didn’t come here to fight anyone.”
“Right. You came here to fuck my brains out and be my best friend forever. I keep forgetting. Has anyone ever called you on this? Has anyone ever told you how insulting this is, to assume a man is just gonna go along with this?”
It was hard to see her face in the shadows, but that one really seemed to hurt. “I was afraid of something like this,” she said. “I’ve been gone so long, I don’t understand how your society works, so my usual approach has offended you.”
“Your ‘usual approach’? Okay fine, I’ll engage with the backstory. You say you’re a succubus, when’s the last time you were on Earth?”
She answered, “Nineteen eighty-six.”
“So, you’ve been gone seventy-two years, and you have no idea what’s been happening in the world since?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Sometimes we hear gossip during language lessons, but you never know what’s true.”
“And how long have you been doing this?”
“Over six hundred years.”
I snorted. “You’re seriously claiming to be six hundred years old?”
“Something like that. I don’t know exactly.”
“Well, if you really have been doing this since before we invented porn, most of these guys would have been so grateful to see a naked woman, they would just go along with whatever you wanted, right?”
“Frequently, yes.”
I had been trying not to laugh, but her deadpan delivery got me.
“Okay well, this,” I gestured to her naked body. “This peep show introduction isn’t really anything special anymore. You’re coming from the 1980s? What did they even have back then? Playboy? 2-D photos of girls in soft lighting acting shy? Oh man, you’re in for a bit of a shock.”
I waved my wrist at her. “Even if this story is true, and you really have been seducing men for centuries, you give me two minutes with this phone, and I guarantee I can find something you have never seen before. You give me another five minutes, and I bet I can find something that will genuinely offend you, to the point where you have to look away or ask me to turn it off.”
The girl or whatever was quiet for a while, then said, “I accept your challenge.”
“What? No, I was just kidding. I wouldn’t actually… I mean, it would be funny as hell, but no, I really don’t want to pull up porn on this phone. Assuming you’re telling the truth, in the time you’ve been gone, my culture, we went so crazy with pornography and sexual experimentation, it’s kind of going back the other way now.
“The quickest way to get promoted or be popular in school is to join a virtual men’s club and demonstrate how long you can go without stuff. We’ve lived so long with access to unlimited amounts of food, sex, and media, the only way to be special is to prove how long you can go without it.”
I angled my phone projector and started to show her something she couldn’t possibly see without coming closer.
“It started in Japan. These apps monitor all your devices and plug into social media, so if you break your streak or miss a day, they can publicly shame you in front of all your friends. You can get points for cutting carbs or going to the gym, or in my case… if I can go eight more days without pulling up tits on my phone, I can get a free sandwich.”
* * *
Azael made me watch this part over and over again. Why was I talking so much? Why was I staying in bed? Why had I gone so long without calling the police?
He knew damn well why, but he wouldn’t stop until he made me say it.
I told him first, if she was a demon, I really did think Bluestar 7 would try to fight her in my living room, and I was still holding out hope that this was just a prank.
I thought if I could keep her talking long enough, I would either catch a mistake, or draw this thing out for so long, her producer would make her accelerate the process and grab me or something, ruining this elaborate fiction they had set up.
And yes, I was excited by the idea of pushing it. Nobody’s immune to a naked girl, but I didn’t just want to roll over like some chump. I was turning my seduction into a debate because I wanted to lose.
* * *
Her body had stopped being titillating and was starting to feel like a threat. “It’s gonna take more than this to knock me over, so you might as well put some clothes on.”
She said, “Of course,” and was suddenly wearing a black silk robe - thin, and just a little too short.
But that’s not the part that bothered me. “Please tell me that was a holographic projection, and I’m just a little too tired to see the scan lines. Because there would be scan lines. Even with a really good one, there would be… Shit!”
The not actually a girl gestured to her robe. “Is this bothering you? I can change it.”
I said, “Lower the hemline,” and she did. No flicker, no scan lines.
I said, “Shit” again. “I really wanted that to be a projection, because if it’s not a projection, it really is magic, and if this really is magic that means this is not a cheap prank. It means they hired a real witch for this, and that would make it a very expensive prank. Which increases the odds of this not being a prank at all, which increases the odds of you being exactly what you say you are. And that means I should have called the cops ten minutes ago.”
“You are not going to call the police, Timothy. They can’t take me away from you, but they might try and take you away from me. They would take you away from everything if they knew what you could do.”
That was it, by the way, the first time I could have saved myself. Don’t feel bad if you missed it, there’s gonna be at least two more.
I looked, really looked at her for the first time. “What’s your name?”
“Lydia.”
“My succubus is named Lydia?” I laughed again. “Sorry, I don’t really think of Lydia as a sexy name.”
“You will,” she said. “Soon.”
* * *
Did you notice the possessive pronoun up there? I didn’t. Because I had it all figured out. Really smug about it, too.
“You’re very charming, miss, but I think I’ve had enough of this. And I think I just figured out what’s going on.” I grabbed a corner of the blanket and wiggled it, pulling it toward me. “You’ve been sitting on the edge of my bed all night, but you’re not leaving a dent in the mattress. You’re sitting about where my feet would be, but I can’t feel you, because you’re not here.”
I let out a breath I’d been holding all night and felt my whole body relax. “It all makes sense now. This apartment is built to reclamation code. I’ve got a steel door and bulletproof windows. There’s no way you just crawled in here.” I shook my head. “This is so embarrassing. The power and destiny bullshit, the transparent wish fulfillment, the ancient schoolboy dream of infinite power and a willing woman.
“It’s all so childish, but hey, I got my chest sliced open by a demon tonight. I have never been more scared in my life. I can barely keep my eyes open, recovering from three adrenaline dumps and a broken heart. I risked my life tonight and all I did was prove to eight decimal places that my ex-girlfriend doesn’t love me anymore.
“God knows what kind of PTSD I’m gonna wake up with, but right now, my subconscious is trying to help. It took all of these frustrating, terrifying things and reworked them into a whole new story, to make everything feel all right. I’m dreaming, Lydia. I’ve been dreaming since you got here. I don’t remember what movie I pulled your face from, but thanks. This was kind of fun.”
Exhausted, I turned my back on her, turned my bedside light off, and went back to sleep.