Page 6 of The Succubi's Choice
“Wow,” Miri whispers, and the noise stops dead inches from her face, as if hanging there.
With a glance up at the door jamb, Miri steps down the first step and…
Her skin crawls, her stomach seizes, and all the hair on the back of her neck rises, as if she’s struck by some current of electricity. The skin on her arm cools, as if she’s stepping through a store fridge.
Succubi are creatures of warmth, not cold.
“Stop,” she whispers, holding her hand out flat, stopping Katya from taking a step further. “Something’s up.”
She cranes her neck back at the door jamb, but nothing she can see is written on it. But the feeling remains, and her skin crawls.
“Some sort of warding.” She lifts her hand, waves it in the air, watching the dust settle. “Do you have a UV light?”
Katya unclips one from her belt, tosses it gently to Miri, who catches it, her fingers fumbling in the silent air, before she flicks it on and shines it at the jamb.
There, painfully peeling and faded but visible, are a bunch of scribbled wards, written with some sort of invisible ink and by someone who only has a basic grasp of what they should look like.
“I’m seeing a noise ward and a cooling spell,” Miri says, flicking the purple blue light down to Katya’s face. Katya glows, her skin almost translucent, her eyes reflecting the light right back. “Can’t read it all, you should stay here.”
Katya sticks her chin out, mulish. “I can deal with anti-noise spells.”
“Yeah well, I can’t read all of them cause they have shit penmanship.” Miri flicks the light back at the wards, but they’re as impenetrable as before.
Katya steps forward, as if to prove that she’s unafraid, before exhaling slowly when she encounters the wall of cold. “Well that’s pleasant,” she says, still in her suit jacket and without bare arms like Miri. “That’s not even that strong of a ward.”
“Sure, if you like too much air conditioning,” Miri says, flicking the light up for Katya to read the runes. “That too dim for you?”
“Wow,” she says, dramatic. “That’s some shitty writing.”
“I know, right?”
Goosebumps raising on her arms, they slowly step down the carpeted stairs with only the blacklight to light their way, until the steps even out to a roughly hewn dirt tunnel.
“Man, this would be so shitty during an earthquake,” Miri whispers, her voice falling flat in the air. “It’s LA, what are they doing?”
Katya is unruffled, shining her UV light up on the ceiling of the tunnel, but no more runes adorn the walls. “I’m thinking they’re not entirely bothered by close spaces or the lack of air,” she says, voice tinny as if far away, even though she’s so close that Miri can feel the warmth from her suit.
A small noise, something between a whimper and clearing of a throat, and they both fall silent. It’s a human noise, one that non-natural creatures can imitate but rarely get right.
Miri and Katya lock eyes, before moving on.
In a crevice, hollowed out in the side of the tunnel, with blankets and pillows and a string of twinkling patio lights, lays a human woman. Or, rather, a human girl, barely old enough to be considered near an adult, with long dark hair and black eyeliner and a black choker around her neck. A pair of noise cancelling headphones hang around her shoulders.
She blinks sleepily at them, and Miri belatedly realizes she’s wearing a sweatshirt from the college that Gabriel’s getting his PhD from.
“Who are you?” Her voice is husky, as if she’s just awoken from a deep sleep, and she props herself up on her elbows to look at them.
Miri kneels on the ground next to her, her heart thumping, doing a quick visual search of her, for any injuries or sickness, but finds nothing. “Hello, we’re with The Organization,” she says, pitching her voice low, soothing, before rubbing her fingers together in front of the girl’s eyes and touching her hand.
The girl’s eyes glow gold, briefly, as the charm takes hold, and her lips part. “Organization?” She asks, voice lazy.
Keeping her shoulders just as relaxed, Miri nods. “Yeah, we keep track of people like your friends,” she says, with a glance at Katya, who’s sticking firmly out of the way. “We heard you were down here, wanted to check up on you.” She places her hand on the girl’s arm, where the sweatshirt loosely fits above her wrist. “You doing okay?”
“Yeah,” the girl says, voice flowing like someone’s who’s remarkably chill with the situation.
“What are you doing down here?”
“Sleeping,” she says, as if it’s obvious. Which, if the spooky goth college student is gonna be chill with it, Miri’s gonna do her best to mirror that.