Not What She Seems

chapter 26



“So,” Jeffrey began, sipping his scotch, “looks like it’s just you and me now.”

Sylvia sank back down into the recliner and nodded. She didn’t care for the look in Jeffrey’s eyes.

“Yes, at least until Mason gets back. I assume the firefighters will get it under control quickly and he’ll be back soon.” She was sure of no such thing, but she wanted to give the impression that she was confident he would be back shortly.

“He’s not the only lucky one, is he?” Jeffrey asked, studying her. His gaze made her uncomfortable and she struggled not to squirm under his scrutiny.

“Well, yes, I’m lucky as well, he’s a great guy.” She disliked his implication.

“Oh yes, a great guy, everyone thinks so. Even our own Grandfather preferred him to me, did you know that? He got the business, and all the money, I got a boring new job with Mason as my boss. Lucky me.” Sylvia didn’t respond; she didn’t want to encourage him.

“But you, you’ve got a chunk of the fortune without even lifting a finger, now, haven’t you?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, you don’t have it directly, but I’m sure Mason’s throwing all kinds of money at you. It must be easy being you, so beautiful, and so sexy. Men must open their wallets for you in a heartbeat. And you landed one of the richest men in the city, probably without having to work for it in the slightest.”

Sylvia’s brow furrowed. She was tempted to unleash her fury and rip into him, but he wasn’t worth it. She only had to tolerate him for the evening, then he’d be out of her life. “It’s not like that at all.”

He waved off her answer with his free hand. The other still held his rapidly dwindling scotch. “If you say so,” he humored her.

“I best go check on dinner, excuse me please.” She rose hastily and crossed the room towards the kitchen, anxious to get away from him. Checking on the chicken in the oven was the perfect excuse.

“Sure, sure. I have to run to my car anyway.”

A quick look at the chicken showed it was browning up nicely, which was good news as Sylvia couldn’t cook very well. She was reluctant to go back into the living room with Jeffrey so she decided to poke around to see what else she could put together to serve with the chicken. The grocery service had made a delivery while she was away, and Mason had already put everything in its place. She heard the front door close while she was digging in the fridge for the ingredients she needed to make a salad.

“Need any help?” Jeffrey called from the living room.

“Thanks, but I got it.” She decided she would stay in the kitchen, away from him, for as long as she could. She didn’t like him and the less time she had to interact with him while Mason was gone, the better.

“You mind if I turn on the TV?”

“Please, go ahead,” she called back, relieved he had found something to entertain himself. She pulled out some assorted vegetables and went to work washing them. She frowned as she heard the TV come on. Jeffrey had turned the volume up way too high, but she wasn’t going to complain. Whatever kept him out of her hair.

As she began coring the green peppers she didn’t hear him sneak up behind her. She sensed him, rather than heard him, and warning bells rang in her head. Just as she was turning to face him, he snaked a wire cable over her head and pulled it taught from behind, choking her. Sylvia thrashed with all her might, but he had the upper hand with his vastly larger frame and his positioning behind her as he choked her. She tried to pull the cable away from her neck but he pulled it so tight she couldn’t snake her fingers beneath it to pull it away. Panic coursed through her as she tried to reach back and grab him, any part of him she could reach to scratch and gouge. He turned his face away from her, out of her reach, while increasing the pressure on the garrote. It was a fight for her life as Sylvia struggled against him to no avail. She had more strength than an average woman, but it did her no good when her body was unable to take in the oxygen it needed to fight off her attacker.

“You’ve been very naughty, hiding from me. Who would’ve thought I’d find you at my brother’s house?” he chuckled darkly. Sylvia’s struggles became more frantic but finally her oxygen-deprived body could stand it no more and she passed out. The Hunter had found her at last.

~~~

She came to and found herself zip-tied with plastic cable ties to one of the kitchen chairs, with her hands and feet bound. Her mouth had been gagged with a necktie. She struggled against her bonds as they cut into her flesh, drawing blood. Jeffrey had taken no chances and made them extra tight; she couldn’t escape them.

“Calm down, there’s no need for the drama,” he told her calmly as he unpacked the contents of the duffle bag he had grabbed from his car. Sylvia watched him with wide eyes as he laid out on the table a few different hunting knives, a container of rose petals seeped in Holy water, a tarp, and duct tape.

“I was thinking I’ll dump you in the sewers, let the rats have you, but maybe not,” he said conversationally. “You’re probably wondering how I know what you are, yes?”

Sylvia stared at him, unable to respond through the horror that gripped her.

“Well, you see, my brother may have gotten the looks, the charm, and the money, but I apparently got a gift he didn’t. I can read auras. You know, auras? The essence of an individual?” He looked to Sylvia expectantly and she grunted. A plan slowly began formulating in her mind. If she could convince him to remove the gag, maybe she could talk her way out of this if she got the chance. It seemed to be her only hope. She didn’t count on Mason walking in the door anytime soon.

“Oh, that,” he said as an afterthought. He pulled the gag down roughly. Sylvia forced herself not to flinch in response to his touch. “Okay, behave yourself, and I’ll leave it off. Where was I? Oh yes, the auras. I could always see auras, ever since I was a child. I didn’t tell many people about my special ability, because when I did they would usually just laugh it off like I was joking. My Grandfather even declared me ‘unstable’ and tried to have me committed over it, just because I’m different.”

Privately Sylvia agreed his Grandfather had been right, but not because Jeffrey could allegedly read people’s auras. He was unstable because he was a psychotic serial killer. His Grandfather much have sensed something was seriously wrong with him, and it had nothing to do with auras.

“Everyone’s aura is different, but usually, unless you’re very good or very evil, the variations between auras don’t much change between folks.” He paused to sharpen a particularly nasty-looking knife. The noise of the blade against the sharpening edge made the fine hair on her body stand straight up as he made long, repetitive strokes along the blade’s edge. “I must have been, oh, I don’t know, 17 or 18 when I first noticed some men and women have completely different auras. Theirs were blended, I don’t know how else to describe it, like everyone else’s auras all mashed together. I didn’t think much of it at first, but over time I realized something else about these folks. They were almost always far more attractive than the vast majority of people. It was like the more attractive someone was, the more likely I’d find they had that weird kind of aura. Not everyone, of course, but many.”

He paused to look at Sylvia directly. “Yours… your aura is simply stunning, like you. It’s brighter than it was when I first saw you on the T that day. I suspect my brother has something to do with that. It looks much like his, but not quite the same. I’m sure you’ve stolen tons of his aura already, that’s really what you’re here for, isn’t it? Not even his money, like all the other greedy bitches who throw themselves at him, but his aura. His aura is far better than most people’s and I’m sure a nightmare like you can’t resist taking it for yourself.”

Sylvia didn’t respond. She believed he could read people’s auras, stranger things existed in the world, but she didn’t understand yet how he knew about the succubi and the incubi.

“So anyway, I didn’t think a whole lot about these people with the mixed auras, I mean, I never dealt with one personally and I figured it didn’t mean much. A few things happened to clarify it for me. First, my brother wrote a thesis for one of his classes, discussing how people used the explanation of incubi and succubi as explanations for many sexual happenings that concerned them, like nighttime emissions in males. One of the theories supported was that these kind of things happened when a person was seduced by a succubus or their male counterpart, the incubus, who wished to procreate with them. Another theory that materialized later was that these creatures used sex as an opportunity to steal the life energy of their victims.”

He turned suddenly to Sylvia and she recoiled in horror despite her best efforts to remain calm.

“Calm down, calm down. I’m not going to kill you yet, we’re having too nice a conversation here, aren’t we?” he asked. When she did not reply he became furious and screamed at her, “Aren’t we?”

“Yes,” Sylvia gasped, barely finding her voice. “Yes.”

Her response seemed to calm Jeffrey down, at least temporarily. “Indeed we are. Oh, and if you think Mason will come running home to save you any minute now, forget it. He’ll be tied up for a while. You see, Sylvia, the fire at his offices tonight are no mistake. Wait, I’m getting ahead of myself, my apologies,” Jeffrey paused to regain his train of thought. “Ah, yes. So Mason’s thesis got me wondering if these beautiful people with the mixed looking auras were incubi and succubi, those sexual deviants of the religious world. I didn’t have an opportunity to sleep with one, as most didn’t give me a second glance. To my surprise, while I was working in Madrid, one came on to me. I knew I shouldn’t sleep with her, just in case the legends were true, but I was curious to check it out, and she was beautiful, far more beautiful than most women. She was gorgeous,” he sighed, lost in the memory of her. “She was small, and curvy, with glorious dark hair and eyes, and the cutest little scar above her right eye.”

“Elora!” Sylvia gasped without meaning to.

“Yes, I think that was her name, it was something unusual like that. Anyways, we spent a wild night together. She did things to me I didn’t know could be done! I dismissed the idea of succubi that night, but the next morning, when I woke up and she was gone, I felt poorly. I felt tired and worn out, like I was about to become ill. That’s just what I would have assumed too, if I hadn’t just slept with a woman that had an aura that presented as a mix of other people’s auras. If I couldn’t read auras I would have been none the wiser, but that just proved it to me. Succubi were real, and seducing poor innocent men to steal their energy, and I had just been victimized. Elora, or whatever her name was, had mentioned to me that night that she planned on returning stateside soon. Do you know where she was headed, she-demon?” he asked her, pointing the tip of the hunting knife at her.

“Boston,” Sylvia replied shakily. She hoped his story would continue forever. He seemed content to talk for the time being, and she planned to cooperate to keep him going. The longer he talked, the better the chances were for her that Mason would arrive home and stop him from killing her.

“Yes, Boston. When I realized the next day that she had stolen my energy from me, and the sex was just a farce to get it, I went looking for her in Madrid, but I never found her again. It was right about that time that I called my darling baby brother and requested to be transferred back to good ole’ Beantown. I gave him a whole song and dance about how families should be near each other, involved in each other’s lives, and he just ate that right up and transferred me back to Boston immediately, at my request.” Sylvia was horrified to hear this had all started with Elora, and Jeffrey had stalked her across the Atlantic Ocean.

“I couldn’t find that slut who stole my energy in the city, at least I haven’t yet, but let me tell you something: this place is crawling with you creatures. I’ve never come across so many in one spot. It’s like the few years I was overseas you all came flocking here or something.” Sylvia considered this and found herself agreeing with him. A lot of new succubi had moved to Boston in the last few years, to join Enchanted Escorts, hence the need for strict territory policies to keep the peace between them.

“So while I was looking for that stupid bitch who tricked me in Madrid, I researched how to destroy succubi and found it’s really nothing special.” He placed his finger under her chin and forced her to meet his gaze while she trembled with fear. “You’re not any harder to destroy than the people you prey on, it turns out. But historically it seems somewhere along the line, Hunters began filling the demons with rose petals seeped in Holy water to ‘cleanse’ the corpse. The apple in the mouth came later, as a symbol of the devil’s influence in the Garden of Eden, when he tricked Eve into eating the apple and dragging Adam along with her, so that God had to cast them out. While those things aren’t necessary, I find them to be a nice touch, don’t you think?” He dug his fingernail into the soft flesh under Sylvia’s chin and her eyes watered from the sting of it.

“I couldn’t find Elora, but I found plenty of you other filthy creatures to destroy, so I got to work, as you’ve probably seen on the news. It was easy at first; they all wanted to sleep with me to steal my energy, but when word about me got out, your little ‘community’ seemed to become a lot more cautious. The first few were easy pickings. They never expected me to attack them, they probably figured I’d be easy prey like the rest of the sheep out there, too interested in a little free action to pay attention to what was really going on. But I showed them.” He smiled darkly at her and removed his finger from underneath her chin. Sylvia felt sick.

“Then I saw you, on the subway that day, when I was out with Steven. You’re the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen, and that probably means you’re one of the most dangerous, too. I could tell from your aura that day you’d been feeding well, and I vowed right then and there to make sure I ended your miserable existence. How many? How many men have you sucked the life energy away from in the past year? Or even month? More than most, I’ll bet, looking like that.”

“I stole your number out of Steven’s phone, and managed to track down your name and address once I hacked into the cell phone company’s records, but then you got that stupid Incubus to guard you. I took care of him eventually, and the other one too,” he gloated with a grin. Sylvia bit her tongue; she knew it wasn’t the time to defend Keith and Tucker. Silence was her best defense- for now.

“But then you disappeared. I didn’t know you were away that weekend. My intention had been to wipe out you and the incubi. It’s been a busy time for me, trying to find Elora to make her pay for what she did to me, trying to snuff you out, and taking down any of you monsters I found in my travels around the city. And you disappeared into thin air on me.”

“I was riding the T yesterday, actually riding around looking for you or one like you, and a fellow passenger was reading the paper. He had it folded back so I could see the picture of you getting into Mason’s car. I didn’t know it was his car, of course, but I bought a copy at a newsstand when I got off at the next stop and there it was, all the information I needed to find you.”

So that was how he found her again. Her fears about having her picture published in conjunction with Mason’s name had not been unfounded.

“Imagine my disgust when I realized one of you foul creatures had your hooks into my brother, and not just any succubus, but you; the one I most desired to destroy. And you’ve become that, really, a priority even over Elora. You have far more power over men than she ever will, and I can’t let that go on. I couldn’t come here last night, I needed time to formulate a plan to get Mason out of here so I could have you all to myself. I just knew you had to be here, since you’d abandoned your apartment.”

“The fire.” Shea didn’t doubt for a minute now that he had something to do with the fire at Mason’s office building.

“Oh, yes, that’s worked out beautifully. Let me explain how I managed to pull that one off.”

Sylvia dry-swallowed as Jeffrey continued to brag about his madness.