© 2013 Kimber Lee HOW TO KILL AN INCUBUS

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CHAPTER ONE

Waking up to an incubus attempting to – violently, might I add – pull off my Baby Phat sweatpants at three in the morning wasn’t a great way to start my twenty-seventh birthday.

Granted, it was going to be pretty shitty anyway, but that was beside the point.

The fact of the matter was that I was being attacked by something that wanted to have sex with me and preferred me comatose and I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand for that.

My kick to his face definitely caught him by surprise, judging from the way he jolted back and uttered a low grunt, nearly stumbling. I didn’t know if sex demons had pain receptors but I did know that years of kickboxing made my kicks a little more potent than the average five-foot-six woman. Alert and more than a little annoyed, I rolled out of bed and onto my feet, cursing when I stubbed my toe against the nightstand. Intense pain sizzled through my big toe. I felt a little warmth down there and figured the damn thing had drawn blood from under my toenail.

Now I was pissed.

Damn you, Dad, I thought, dodging the incubus’s repeated feeble attempts to molest me. He was staggering around the king-sized bed. I paused, regarding him in the pale moonlight of my hotel room.

He was drunk. And that was weird because alcohol didn’t – wasn’t supposed to – affect demons. So either this particular creature was so caught up in pretending to be human that he’d subconsciously created the ill-effects of alcohol – or he was too weak and needed to recharge by sucking out most of my energy through what would probably be mind-blowing animal sex.

As much as I wanted – hell, craved – mind-blowing animal sex, I wasn’t desperate enough to willingly sleep with a creature of darkness. I wasn’t my mother.

“You can sense me,” he said suddenly, his voice low and weirdly singsong.

“No shit,” I told him, because what else was I supposed to say?

“No, at the club. Earlier,” he went on, slurring the R’s. He resumed his catlike prowling towards me and I jumped onto the bed, well aware that this was a ridiculous position. “You could sense me. I could feel you sense me.” He regarded me quizzically now, his eyes meeting mine.

The club. I mentally groaned, remembering what had gone down hours earlier.

Nicolette was a well-known rave club in Paris’ Left Bank I’d been staking out for the past two weeks. The real reason I was there was because Derek Karr was there and I was tailing him. It sounded glamorous whenever I thought about it but the reality was far from it. Derek was supposed to be on a business trip – something to do with software he was developing for some fancy French hi-tech company – not grinding with multiple redheads and blondes. He did this in very obnoxious silk shirts and khaki slacks. He also did this while his wife was back in Florida.

Anna Karr had paid me a huge lump of cash to trail her husband of fifteen years to Paris.

At first, Karr had been good – going to meetings, business lunches, ordering room service – all well and fine for a man who was innocently making millions doing what he did. But come weekend? Karr decided to let loose, pretend he was Chris Brown and hit Nicolette as if he wasn’t a forty-eight-year-old man with a wife and teenager at home. In fact, I had enough evidence of Karr playing around to send to Anna, which was why tonight had been my last night at the Ange Noir and my last night in Paris.

This incubus, apparently, had checked me out at the club and followed me here. Of course, I’d sensed something at Nicolette but an incubus would have been last on my list of suspects.

Which was utterly stupid of me. Clubs were their playground. Lots of fresh meat.

“I’m warning you,” I said clearly. “You take one step toward me and I’m slashing off your demon dick. Got that?” With what? my conscience asked me. Your fingernails?

He looked at me, his eyes so dark they were practically onyx. Everything else about him was light – the thick waves of blonde hair on his head, the apple slices of his full red lips, the paleness of his skin. If he were human, I’d probably find him good-looking – but he wasn’t.

Once again, I cursed the supposed “gift” my father had passed down to me: The gift of knowing what was human and what wasn’t. Ignorance was freaking bliss.

“Demon dick?”

He surprised me by bursting into a fit of ear-splitting, uncontrollable laughter. Doubling over, he fell to his knees, rocking back and forth with laughter. I was momentarily confused. My dad had never mentioned supernatural creatures possessing funny bones. Then again, I hadn’t exactly been keen on listening to anything he’d told me about what he did in his spare time, which was hunt demons, specifically incubi and succubi, seeing as my mother had run off with one and he’d sort of taken it personally.

“I’m going to count to ten and you’re going to get the hell out.” My voice was surprisingly calm in light of this new situation.

“What are you?” the incubus asked, slowly getting to his feet. “A hunter? A witch? A medium?”

“None of your business,” I snapped, in the same way I would have snapped at one of Dad’s old hunter buddies. They weren’t my people and I didn’t care to help them “fight the good fight”, as they put it. I preferred my low-key PI work because it paid a hell of a lot better than those freaks did.

“At least tell me your name,” the incubus implored soothingly, almost like he was trying to seduce me.

I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was a little freaked out. Actually, a lot freaked out.

I had never been one-on-one with any demons and had spent the last few years after my father’s untimely demise trying to pretend that they simply didn’t exist. Aside from the occasional, creepy “sixth sense” I got whenever I was in the vicinity of one, I was doing a pretty good job burying my head in the sand and ignoring the other things.

“Get the hell out,” I fumed.

He shook his head, chuckling. He seemed so...human, and that was the scariest part. How many women fell for his charms and cheerfully opened their legs to him? How many women woke up the next day feeling physically drained with no explanation whatsoever? How many of them just put it down as the demon’s mad sexual prowess?

He wasn’t human. He was pure evil.

“Andrei would like you. You’re just his type,” he said, grinning, and it occurred to me then that he didn’t sound or look intoxicated anymore.

“Go feed somewhere else,” I spat, disgusted and, at the same time, afraid. Andrei was probably one of his billion-year-old incubus friends, as evil and perverse as he was. The small part of me that clung to that stab of fear was praying for a miracle. I looked down at the demon and I didn’t like that small part of me at all.

He was probably – no, definitely – stronger than me and could probably take me down and have his way with me. Then, he could summon his buddy Andrei, who’d suck out the remainder of my life force – and I’d be dead as a doornail by the time the sun came up. With a smile of ecstasy on my inanimate face, no doubt. Mind-blowing animal sex tended to put a smile on a person.

“Will do,” the demon said pleasantly. His eyes licentiously raked my body and I instantly felt unclean, as if he’d touched me. “Nice Baby Phat.” And he disappeared into thin air.

I sank to my knees, breathing heavily, and fell onto my back.

I’d survived that. I’d survived that and it felt...good. Really good.

But something nagged at the back of my mind.

Did he mean Baby Phat? I thought hazily, drifting to sleep again. Or baby fat?

***

“Renée, don’t sweat it,” I said, putting my BlackBerry in the crook of my shoulder as I simultaneously opened my front door and dragged my suitcase in. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t sweat it?” she roared into my ear, making me wince. “Honey, the man attacked you!”

I rolled my eyes at Renée Marino’s melodrama. I should’ve known she’d blow things out of proportion. Drama was embedded in her DNA.

“We were in a crowded place,” I told her calmly. “Namely, an airplane.”

“Yeah, but he could’ve strangled you, babe. He did.”

I sighed, unconsciously fingering my neck. “Yeah, but by then, he got pulled off me. Come on, Ren. It’s actually quite funny.”

At the time, not so much.

It was just my luck that the guy sitting beside me on my return flight to Heathrow from Charles de Gaulle just happened to be Gavin Turner – and I hadn’t recognized him. I hadn’t recognized him because I’d still been recovering from last night’s – well, this morning’s – incubus attack. And also because Gavin Turner had gone from being an Abercrombie model to Zach Galifianakis’ older, chubbier brother.

“I hate flying,” he’d said conversationally, while I’d tried to find a comfortable way to sit that didn’t involve my hip being crushed by his.

“Me, too,” I’d said, when I actually loved it.

“I’m Gav.”

“Rae,” I’d told him, absentmindedly giving him my working name as I flipped open a People magazine. Sandra Bullock was on the cover and I loved her.

“Rae?” His voice had turned furtive, quiet. “Are you the Rae? The private investigator?”

I set the magazine on my lap and twisted at the waist to look at him. “This isn’t the way I operate.”

And that was when Gav snapped.

It had all happened so fast. One minute, he was blinking at me benignly with deep-set baby blues, and the next, his big hands were around my neck, throttling me and making his intent to crush my windpipe crystal clear. His hands were like a vice and I couldn’t breathe; couldn’t even smell. People started screaming and Gav started talking, his voice chillingly fanatical.

“You broke me and Zoe up, you meddlesome little bitch! I was with Mel once! Just once! You had no right! No right at all!”

And that was when I’d seen Gavin behind that face; Gavin, who had cheated on his gorgeous wife of three months with his sister’s best friend and blamed me for the inevitable divorce.

Two men jumped into action and attempted to pry Gavin off me and, once his viselike grip loosened, I reached out and punched him in the throat, gasping for air when he finally released me. He spluttered, choking for air, and flopped back into his seat. Unbuckling my belt, I’d shakily gotten to my feet and swopped seats with a guy on the opposite aisle for the remainder of the flight.

 “You’re crazy, girl,” Ren was saying in my ear. “You’re crazy because this job you’re doing? Yeah, it’s gonna get you killed. You know what Lorenzo was saying?”

I kicked my suede ankle boots off and flopped back onto my couch. “What did the great Lorenzo say?” I asked, although I did like Ren’s fire-fighter husband. I just didn’t enjoy the fact that he thought of himself as some kind of sage.

“He said you’re doing this whole PI thing because of what happened with your parents.”

“Is Lorenzo taking psychology now?” I asked sarcastically, examining my broken toenail from the previous night. It had turned a deep crimson and looked worse than I’d thought. My boots hadn’t helped either.

“Think about it, babe,” Ren went on. “This is a vendetta.” She paused, letting her words sink in. “Your mom was cheating on your dad. She left you guys. Now you feel like all cheaters gotta pay. It doesn’t matter that most of them are really powerful – ergo dangerous – they still gotta pay.”

Yeah, she was cheating, all right – with a sex demon, I thought, wondering what Ren would say if I told her. She’d probably put me in a straitjacket pronto.

“Wouldn’t I be after cheating housewives if that were the case?”

“Babe, screw that. Go back to powerful and dangerous.”

“I can handle myself,” I said sharply. She had hit too close to home.

“Like today? When Gavin Turner nearly wrung your neck like wet laundry?”

I let out an exasperated sigh. “I never should’ve told you about what I do for a living.”

“We tell each other everything,” she said, and I could picture her pouting.

Everything? Ren didn’t know that I was almost defiled by a demon last night. Ren didn’t know that my father had been out banishing demons when one of them had killed him and I had to find his mangled body. Ren didn’t know everything. She didn’t know anything.

“When’re you coming to the Bay?” she wanted to know. “It’s been two months. I feel like all we do is have phone sex. Fly on over so I can give you your birthday present, baby.”

I laughed at the sound of her husky voice. She was ridiculous. “Soon,” I told her. “Real soon. I just have to take care of some things here.” I would never tell her, but each time I returned to my birthplace, Tacoma Bay, a piece of me withered away, never to grow back again. Too many fucking memories.

“Pick up a British boy,” my best friend reminded me, “or any boy. Didn’t you say your neighbor’s got a sexy ass?”

I bit my bottom lip, looking out the window at the late afternoon fog of English countryside weather. “Considering the fact that I only live here five days out of the year at most, it doesn’t matter if I find him hot. Nothing will happen.”

“Well, fuck him on one of those five days and be done with it.”

“Ren, you are so crass,” I admonished. “Daniel Lawless doesn’t fuck. He makes love.” At least, that was what I assumed by just looking at him.

“Seriously? With a name like that, he should be a total badass.”

“Nah,” I said, getting onto my back on my couch and staring up at the ceiling. “He should’ve been called Lawful. He’s the type who’d pay a parking ticket on time and add a thank-you note for being rightfully punished.” I paused. “Actually, he’d never even get a ticket in the first place.”

Ren giggled in my ear. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Well, he’s attractive. I mean, really attractive,” I explained, because he was.

I was twenty-seven now, therefore way too old to have “crushes” on guys – but that was the only way I could describe what I felt whenever I was around Lawless – which was, as I’d mentioned, five days out of a year. Just knowing that Daniel Lawless was getting naked next door to shower made my heart palpitate and moonwalk across my ribcage. I got tongue-tied around the guy. It felt like I was sixteen again and it was humiliating.

And that voice of his. God, he made a simple hello sound like something filthy. That wasn’t good because while Lawless might be a good guy, I was a bad girl and we were like water and oil: We just didn’t mix. It didn’t matter how much I wanted to get into his pants. It would never happen because he would want a Mary-Sue and I was further from a Mary-Sue type than Amber Rose.

“And you’re attractive. So what’s the big deal?”

I laughed again. “You’re biased and I need to shower. Hanging up now, Renée.”

“I’m not finished yet!” she protested, like she always did.

“Give Lorenzo a French kiss for me. Make it wet,” I told her, like I always did, and cut the call. I loved Renée Marino to death but she could talk for small countries.

As soon as I put my phone down, it pinged to notify me that I had an e-mail. I thought about ignoring it – for about a second. Sighing, I clicked it open.

Great, I thought morosely, quickly scanning through a message from a woman named Cassie Winer. Don’t I get to relax?

Cassie was positive that her husband was screwing around on her with prostitutes. Ick. She wanted me to follow him to Las Vegas, where he had a casino opening that weekend, and report back to her immediately.

Money first, I sent back. Then you give me all his details.  – R

Anyone who e-mailed me knew to wire my money into my offshore account. I had only given the account details out once before. Word of mouth ensured that I never had to give it out again.

I put my phone on silent, set it on my glass coffee table and went upstairs to take a long, steaming and well-deserved bath. It felt good to be home – well, at one of my homes – and in a place I considered safe.

Out of all the rooms in this particular house, my favorite was the bathroom, simply because of the ivory claw-foot bathtub. It was spacious and old-fashioned and I could spend hours lounging in it. I’d put more modern tubs in my homes in France, Italy, Greece and the States but this one? This one was old-fashioned perfection.

I was still pretty shaken up by the incubus and wondered if I should call my dad’s old friend, Teddy Bunting, who had been a hunter, just like him. I shook the crazy thought out of my head as I reached for my loofah. If I phoned him and let him in, I’d be letting them all in. I didn’t want that. I was cool with following unfaithful husbands around and getting paid for it. I didn’t want to end up as crazy as my father had been during his final years, hopped up on some fanatical quest to destroy the demon that had stolen the love of his life.

After my bath, I tugged on my silk robe and, glancing at the bedside clock that informed me that it was almost six p.m., I decided that I deserved an early night, sans dinner. I went to draw the curtains – and froze.

Daniel Lawless was giving me my very own striptease.

His bedroom window was right across mine, separated by a measly picket fence, so I had a front-row view to a very private show. I didn’t have anything to be ashamed of because, quite frankly, he was asking to be looked at, leaving his windows wide open like that.

His pea-green T-shirt went over his head, ruffling his dark brown hair and making it stick out at odd angles. It went onto the floor and I got a good look at his well-defined back. From what little I knew, Daniel worked in construction, hence the great physique. I was getting turned on by his back. Was I pathetic or what?

My inner voice was about to answer with an affirmative, when a tall, lithe butt-naked blonde launched herself into Daniel’s waiting arms and drew him into a very passionate, very sexy kiss. Mortified, I quickly drew my curtains. Like a voyeur, I had just watched him undress for another woman and almost gotten off on it.

Yeah, pretty pathetic, Rainelle Erickson. But what’s new? My inner voice was very vocal all of a sudden.

Scowling, I went downstairs and checked my phone. Cassie Winer had sent me everything she knew about her husband, coupled with plenty of photos (he was a handsome, redheaded forty-something) and proof of payment. I pulled my laptop out and got online to book a ticket to Vegas for that weekend.

Today, Paris. This weekend, Vegas.

Maybe I’d get laid.

After all, my inner voice said conspiratorially, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.