Incubus Dreaming (The Incubus Series Book 3) Read online

  Bigger quarry? Suddenly everything made more sense. Well, you’re going to find you’ve chosen the wrong tool for this job.

  Azrael wasn’t surprised when the kid pulled his hand from his pocket and blew a puff of choking dust into Azrael’s face. The adolescent voice seemed to echo from a distance. “Wake up, my puppet. We won’t meet again. As far as you’re concerned, we never did.”

  “You’re wrong,” whispered Azrael and hoped, desperately, that he was right.

  Chapter 42

  Mal

  Lucy sighed. “Let’s rest for a moment.” Almost to herself, she muttered, “Lust is not a patient creature.”

  No, thought Mal with a flash of irritation, no one with a cock would be patient in this situation!

  Lucy ran a finger along the curls of dark hair between his naval and groin. Mal was about to tell her that this did not constitute a rest when she murmured, “He told me the other day that he wants to teach you magic. He wanted to know what I thought of that.”

  Mal was shocked. He remembered Azrael’s desk drawer jumping open beneath his fingers. He remembered his own sense of alarm and Azrael’s strangely mild reaction. “I’m sure you told him exactly what you thought of that.”

  Lucy didn’t answer. She kept brushing her fingers over his stomach. “What do you think? You used to read his grimoires whenever you got the chance.”

  “I wanted to get loose!” exclaimed Mal. “I am loose now, so…doing magic is for humans.”

  Lucy raised her head to give him a speculative look. “You don’t mind being Azrael’s magical battery?”

  “No.” Mal spoke in a small voice, aware of how hypocritical he sounded after so many years of complaining.

  Lucy sighed. “The thing is, Mal, he can’t bear to think of you as a slave, so he thinks of you as a pet. But he doesn’t want to be in bed with his pet, either. He wants a partner.”

  Mal felt bewildered. “Sometimes I like being his pet.”

  Lucy gave a snort of laughter. “Sometimes he likes petting you.”

  “You certainly do,” said Mal and Lucy rolled her eyes.

  “But you are part of the persona he has created for himself,” she continued. “He wants to give you a lot more autonomy in that role. Can you handle it?”

  Mal swallowed. I can’t even handle cloaking, apparently. “I don’t know, Lucy. I’ll try. Teaching magic seems like apprentice stuff. I’m not his apprentice.”

  All of this talking about Azrael and Jessica had brought back Mal’s sense of grief. Jessica will feel so alone in the void. Then, if she can’t escape, she’ll slowly come unraveled. I can’t imagine a worse way to die. And Azrael… What if he figures out what’s happened, but he can’t get us back? What if he thinks he killed me…draining magic out of the artifact, bleeding me to death? He’ll think I died believing he betrayed me. He’ll think about that for the rest of his life.

  Lucy’s voice—strangely gentle. “Mal, that’s not helping.”

  Mal didn’t bother to respond. He was certain that Lucy could see the grief in his aura, and of course it was the wrong emotion. Everything he did was wrong. He felt so tired.

  I wish we were all in bed reading and Azrael and Jessica were talking about which book to visit next. I wish Azrael was picking out dresses for Jessica and he’d let her have that baby, and I could help them do it. I wish I was home.

  “Mal.” The timbre of Lucy’s voice had changed. Mal opened his eyes. She was staring at his aura. “What are you thinking about right now?”

  “Jessica and Azrael doing stuff together.”

  Lucy didn’t take her eyes off his aura. “What sort of stuff?”

  “Reading, dressing, kissing, I don’t know, Lucy. Stuff we do together.”

  “But without you?”

  “Well, not completely…but, I guess…sort of.”

  Lucy ground her pelvis against him. Mal did not want his body to respond. He wanted to rest. But he was an incubus, and that came with certain unavoidable side effects. Lucy kept gliding up and down his length, and at last he grimaced and clamped his hands on her hips. “Lucy, I think we should be done now.”

  “Oh, we are.”

  Mal looked up. Lucy was grinning. “You’re cloaking, Mal.”

  “I— What?”

  “Your aura is totally opaque. Your body is responding, but I can’t see lust in your aura. The chord you’ve struck is powerful enough to obliterate the signs of your own essential nature. If it can hide your essential nature, it can hide the rest of your thoughts and feelings. That’s cloaking.”

  Mal tilted his head back, weak with wonder and relief. “Azrael and Jessica together—”

  “Prompt unselfish emotions in you, apparently.”

  “Can I finish now? I’ll do it myself; all you have to do is get off me.”

  Lucy tilted her head. “Is that what you want?”

  “You keep asking that question.”

  “I always wondered whether you actually had desires of your own or whether you simply mirror your partner.”

  Mal felt indignant. “Of course I have desires of my own!”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “I want to flip you over and fuck the shit out of you.” He was sure Lucy would find this expression vulgar, but right now he didn’t care.

  Lucy stretched, arching her body like a cat, and then slid his cock inside her. “Alright.”

  Mal groaned. He almost came right then. He would have if her last word wasn’t reverberating in his head. “Did you just say—?”

  “Do you really need to be told twi—?”

  He flipped her over.

  Mal covered Lucy’s mouth in a savage kiss, hips driving hard between her legs. She growled, bit his lip, her nails digging into his shoulders and back. She bucked so hard that he might have worried that she didn’t actually want it…except that her legs clamped around his waist like a vise. She climaxed an instant later, shuddering all over, and Mal let himself go. After so much teasing, his orgasm seemed to go on and on. He had time to drop his head against Lucy’s neck and whimper her name.

  They lay perfectly still for a moment, and then Lucy panted, “Well…it’s been a while since I’ve done it like that. Get off me.”

  Mal backed off of her and turned instantly into a cat. “We…ah…don’t have to—”

  “Ever talk about this again,” Lucy finished for him. “Excellent.”

  Mal felt dazed. He was still trying to understand what Lucy had just given him. “Am I still cloaking?”

  Lucy melted into her dragon form. She examined his aura. “Yes. It should last for a while.”

  “Are you…alright? I feel like I’ve got a lot of your magic inside me.”

  Lucy yawned. “I’m a little tired.”

  Mal snorted. “Me, too. Maybe for different reasons.”

  The fire on the beach had burned down to almost nothing. Lucy gave it a puff of flame. Then she stretched out beside it. Mal curled up against her back. For an instant, he thought she would tell him to go lie on the other side of the fire.

  Then she stood up, turned around, and lay down beside him, facing in the opposite direction. She draped her long neck over his hips, and after a moment, Mal tucked his nose against her flank. He knew he couldn’t really sleep in the dream space, but he felt content enough to let his mind drift, almost to doze.

  They were still lying curled together when a wolf and a fox came trotting up the beach.

  Chapter 43

  Azrael

  Azrael woke alone in his bed. He blinked and felt dust in his eyes, just for a moment. He raised his hand above his face, saw the silver on his finger, and remembered everything.

  Azrael sat straight up in bed, snarling. He turned to the headboard and saw the words he’d scribbled each morning—messages to himself in the few frantic seconds when he partially understood what was happening to him: Something is feeding on

  “Me,” Azrael finished the sentence aloud. He felt the chill of t
hose words in his bones. With a sinking feeling, he reached for his own magic.

  He recoiled instantly. It was worse here than in the dream—an oily contamination that made his own power feel untrustworthy and alien, a weapon that might twist in his hand. I am halfway to possession. The ring was, for the moment, an untainted source of his own magic and a connection to Jessica. Even that anchor, however, would not hold for long. He would have only a few moments in full possession of his faculties. He had to make the most of them.

  Azrael sprang out of bed. In spite of the precariousness of his situation, he did not feel anxious. He felt light with rage. He hurt Mal and Jessica. He stole Lucy. He intended to make the murder of my friends a mere footnote to a broader massacre. By all the gods, I will have blood!

  But first, to deal with that vile book.

  “Tod?” Azrael didn’t see him in the room, so he glanced under the bed. The wolf lay there, fast asleep with his head on his paws. Azrael considered trying to wake him. But what if Jessica needs him right now?

  Tod couldn’t do what Azrael needed anyway. He was too human, too mortal, too good. Time to fight fire with fire.

  Azrael couldn’t leave his bedroom. He didn’t trust himself to walk past the dreamcatcher on the kitchen table. His supply of untainted magic was pitifully small, and he had precious few materials. He needed a sacrifice, and he didn’t have much in the way of conventional options, except perhaps Tod’s lifeblood, and he wasn’t about to offer that.

  Azrael had one other option, however. He could offer himself.

  He’d never summoned a demon this way before, never dared, but he did not hesitate now. He drew the simplest possible summoning circle on his bedroom floor, using the same pen he’d been using to scribble on his headboard. He activated the circle with a trace of magic from the ring. No need for salt. He wasn’t trying to protect himself.

  Azrael stood before the circle and intoned, “Cleothrasis Andramache Stigorath Tash, I summon you. By your true name, I bind you. I offer myself as sacrifice. Come to me and do my will.”

  Some distant part of Azrael’s brain wondered at his own audacity. He’d infused the name with as much magic as he dared, but his power was weak, and he knew it. For this sort of summoning to work, the sacrifice itself had to be very strong.

  For an interminable moment, nothing happened. Then a red plume rose in the middle of the circle—the thinnest stream of smoke, as though the boards of his bedroom were on fire. The smoke twisted in the air, licking towards him like a questing tongue. Azrael put out his fingers and let the smoke drift through them. Instantly, it blossomed into form.

  The creature that appeared in the middle of the circle was deceptively small. To all appearances, she was a child of perhaps seven or eight, sitting cross-legged. Her mouse-brown hair bobbed in messy ponytails on either side of her head, tied with different colored ribbons. She was barefoot, dressed in a stained, pale pink jumper. At first glance, her eyes were the only unsettling thing about her. They were red as blood.

  “Lord Azrael,” she cooed. “It has been such a long time. You’re all grown up!”

  “And you’re exactly the same. Cleo, I need you to go into the next room, close a book for me, and bind it. The book is something like a spirit vessel, and it will try to devour you. It has already trapped three demons. I believe it contains an entity, and I believe it is a dark aspect. I don’t know which one.”

  The girl clapped her hands and stood up. “And you’re so angry about it! Delicious! But there’s something wrong with you, isn’t there?”

  “It has been feeding on me,” he admitted. “You may consume its magic out of my aura, but I forbid you to use that magic without my explicit command. I forbid you to possess or control me or to influence my decisions. Once my aura is free of dark magic, you must cease feeding on me.”

  Cloe pouted. “You’re always so picky.”

  Azrael rolled his eyes. “Can you consume this magic?”

  “Oh, yes. I can do all kinds of things with this!”

  “Then please go close the book.”

  “Is Mal inside?” she asked sweetly.

  “Yes.”

  Cleo and Mal had always gotten along, but Azrael was under no delusions about Cleo’s loyalty or sense of friendship. She was dark aspected Wrath—an agent of pure chaos.

  “No wonder you’re so pissed! Never fret, Master. I’ll go disembowel something and be right back.”

  “Metaphorically, please,” he called after her. “I don’t want the book destroyed until I get my people back.”

  Chapter 44

  Jessica

  “Mal! Lucy!” Jessica dashed forward over the sand. It still felt strange to be so low to the ground.

  Mal leapt to his feet. Lucy raised her head, stretched, and addressed herself to Jessica. “Darling, I thought you’d never get here. Please reassure your lover of your safety. He has been fairly gnawing his own tail with anxiety.”

  Mal stared at Jessica—at the red fox, fluffed with excitement. Please still love me.

  “Jessica?”

  “Mal.”

  He made a noise somewhere between a sigh and sob and butted her so hard with his head that he knocked her over. Then he was a man, scooping her off the ground, clutching her to his chest. “Jessica! Oh gods, I thought you were lost in the void! I thought you’d come unraveled! I thought you were dying all alone.” He stopped to catch his breath. “Why are you so small?”

  Lucy huffed. “Because she’s only a little bit of a demon. If you stop crushing her, she might talk to you.”

  Mal really was holding her too tightly. Jessica squirmed. “I almost did come apart,” she managed. “I changed shape to get out of the void, but I didn’t know who I was, and I came out in a different dream, and I probably would have just wandered around until I fell apart, except that Tod came looking for me. And then he found Azrael and led him back to me, and it’s all very complicated, but we’re alright.”

  Behind them, Lucy said, “Hello. It’s Tod, isn’t it?”

  “That’s me. You’re Lucy?”

  “Yes, we met briefly at one of Mal’s dissolute parties. You’re not a demon; what on earth are you doing here?”

  “Well, I have several friends who are demons— Omph!”

  Mal dropped to his knees beside the wolf and hugged him with the arm that wasn’t holding Jessica.

  “You are the best werewolf I know.”

  “I’m the only werewolf you know.”

  “And my favorite. Have I ever told you that your magic is delicious? Even secondhand?”

  “That is something I never needed to know, Mal.”

  Jessica giggled in Mal’s other arm. “I told Tod that now we’re really Red and the Wolf.”

  Mal barked a laugh. “How come you don’t turn into a human?” he asked Jessica.

  “Because I’m naked! I can’t make clothes like you. Apparently it takes a lot of practice.”

  “So?”

  “So I’d rather not feel any more vulnerable here than I already do. It’s also sort of hard for me to change shape. That takes practice, too, apparently. Ren helped me. I don’t want to get stuck naked as a human.”

  Mal’s fingers had encountered the slender circlet around her neck. “What’s this?”

  “It’s my ring. It changes when I change just like your collar, only it wouldn’t stay on my foot.” Jessica licked his face. “We’re getting married! That’s alright with you, isn’t it?”

  “Of course! Azrael said that?”

  “Yes. He made rings out of a link of your collar.” She leaned up and whispered in Mal’s ear, “We’re going to have a baby.”

  He stared at her wide-eyed. “He said that?”

  Jessica tried to nod. That felt strange as a fox, so she wagged her tail instead.

  Mal laughed with delight.

  “He was so scared, Mal, but he said yes.”

  “And you said yes.”

  “Everyone said yes! All yes!”
r />   Mal kissed her on the nose. “Well, now I really can’t die in here.”

  “I told you Azrael would get it all straightened out,” began Lucy and stopped. She turned towards the sea, her long, fine-boned face alert.

  A moment later, Jessica heard it, too—a diminution of the waves. The fog over the water had thickened. Jessica could no longer see the ocean.

  Tod took a cautious step into the mist. Then another. And another.

  “Tod?” called Jessica uncertainly.

  He came hurrying back. “The ocean’s turning into void.”

  Lucy growled.

  “What does that mean?” asked Mal.

  “It means that someone is shrinking the dream space,” said Lucy.

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I think it means this is about to be over. One way or the other.”

  A moment later, the fog began to thicken over the beach, smothering Lucy’s fire. “The sand is changing,” said Tod.

  “We’re being driven inland,” murmured Lucy. “One guess as to where.”

  “What happens if we just stay here?” asked Mal.

  Lucy shook her head. “In a dream void? We could get trapped. I think we’d better play along for now.” She gave a full-body dragon stretch and then led the way into the hedge maze.

  Chapter 45

  Azrael

  Two hours later, Azrael was in his garden, examining his own recent endeavors. He was grudgingly impressed. My enemy is clever. He was still trying to decide how to deal with the problem when his butler approached hesitantly to inform him that his guests had arrived.

  “Which guests?”

  The butler was eyeing Cleo, who stood on one leg, grubby hands twisted behind her back and somehow still radiating malevolence. In the light of day, the stains on her jumper might have been mud…or they might have been something else. The longer one looked at them, the less they resembled mud.

  “The group who were to arrive early,” said the butler, eyes darting between Azrael and Cleo. “Lord Loudain, the Lady who goes by S, and a gentleman who only gave the name Jacob. Lady S also has a lemur with her, my lord.”