Succubi

kidding me, right? He’s from a town called Lockwood?”

“Yes. What’s so funny?”

Fredrick’s eyes suddenly appeared huge in their amusement. “It’s almost a joke—the name, I mean.”

“I don’t under—”

“Lockwood,” Fredrick said. “Simply break it down. Lock for loc. Lockwood, ‘wood of the loc.’ Wood of the —”

“Succubus,” Dr. Harold realized. More coincidence? “That is strange. And you’re sure there’s no way an actual Ur-loc cult could be in existence today?”

“I don’t see how. Unless the bloodline really did remain intact, as the legend indicates. The Ur-locs dispersed themselves a millennium ago, after the last supposed incarnation. They disappeared without a trace, quite like Christ’s disciples after his death. The demon incarnate supposedly blessed them all, then sent them out into the world to spread her influence for the next thousand years.” Fredrick again chuckled, a sound like creaking wood. “But of course to believe that, you’d have to believe the original myth.”

This latest abstraction didn’t set well with Harold. Actually, none of them did. I do not believe in demons, he reaverred. He began putting Tharp’s transcripts and sketchpads back into the big leather bag. One pad slipped from his hand and fell open. When he picked it up, a page slid off the other. They’d been stuck together somehow; he’d never noticed it.

His eyes fixed down. It was a sketch he’d never seen.

“What is it?” Professor Fredrick asked.

“I…” Harold replied. He paused. “Impossible.”

Fredrick leaned over and looked. The pointillistic sketch showed a cloaked figure standing between a pregnant woman’s legs. The figure’s hands formed a cradle, as if to receive the newborn. Beneath, Tharp had written the single word:

Dooer!

And behind the figure, the symbol seemed to hover:

Ann Slavik’s nightmare, Harold realized. To the last detail.

“It’s just more of the same thing,” Fredrick said, not realizing Harold’s shock. “The symbol is the nihtmir, the night-mirror, and the word, dooer, is part of the incarnation litany. It’s the final acknowledgment of the birth of the host.”

“What’s it mean?” Harold croaked more than asked.

“Denotatively it’s a concrete noun, meaning, essentially, door. But the religious connotation goes quite a bit further, not a noun but an elliptical statement of welcome. The mother of the host was considered the door through which the host of the Ardat-Lil would come among them.”

The revelation seemed to collapse, like a bombed building. Dr. Harold’s eyelids felt peeled open.

“I’ve got to go,” he said. He got his coat, his keys, and made quickly for the door.

“But it’s almost midnight,” Professor Fredrick pointed out. “Where do you have to go at this hour?”

“To Lockwood,” Dr. Harold replied.

—

Chapter 32

“Upstairs! Quick!” Erik shouted as three more bullets punched holes along the wall of the drawing room. Ann screamed after each heavy, concussive shot; her senses dispersed like confetti. Laughter black as char rattled from the hall as Erik and Ann pounded up the stairs. The shadow turned below. A sixth bullet exploded the mirror at the top of the landing, raining glass.

Impulse had caused him to flee upward; a high vantage point was easier to defend. He’s reloading, Erik thought. He dragged Ann to the floor around the corner and brought up the shotgun.

Sweat and hysteria glazed Ann’s face. “Who is that!”

“My former traveling companion,” Erik replied, understanding none of it yet. “Stay behind me, stay down.”

Duke, Erik thought. His hands shriveled against the shotgun. The fucker followed me here. But how?

“Hey, buddy-bro!” erupted the familiar voice from downstairs. “Thought I’d come back for some of that dandy head! Ain’t ya pleased to see me?”

Erik replied with a stray shot down the stairwell. Even the 12-gauge report sounded feeble against the Webley’s mammoth .455 concussion. “I killed you, you sick fuck!” Erik grated to yell.

“Must be that dandy head you give,” Duke Belluxi replied. “Brings a fella back from the dead, ya know?”

Did I miss all those times? Erik wondered in spite of his prickling, bare-eyed terror. The fact smashed into his consciousness: Duke was back. Duke was here, now, just downstairs. And he’d definitely be wanting some revenge. Plus he still had that giant revolver, which didn’t lighten the matter. But Erik was sure he’d put several shotgun rounds into Duke’s chest back at that second Qwik-Stop…

This is not going to be one of my better days, Erik realized.

He fired two more stray shots down the stairs. “Just get out of here, Duke!” he attempted to bargain. “If you don’t get out of here right now, I’ll have to kill you!”

Duke belted out a good, hard laugh. “You already tried that, didn’t ya, faggot? But just to show you I’m a fair guy, I’ll give you another chance. How about that?”

What the fuck? Erik still couldn’t see his enemy, but in a moment, he could hear him.

He could hear him coming up the stairs.

He must be crazy, Erik thought, and then frowned. Considering where Duke had spent the last decade, his state of mind was not even debatable. But the guy was coining up the stairs, knowing full well that Erik was armed…

Wait, wait, he told himself. Ann quivered, clinging to Erik’s shirt. Not…yet… The footfalls continued to ascend, each fat thump! inducing a different image of atrocity. If this guy gets me, I’m…but Erik didn’t even bother to contemplate the rest of the conjecture. What Duke would do to him was bad enough to ponder. But what he would do to Ann was significantly worse by comparison.

Erik paused another second, then rolled out on the landing. He had two rounds left in the shotgun. He raised the bead, touched the trigger…then paused. Memory drew his stare out like elastic.

Duke stared back, halfway up the steps. His plump, sociopathic face grinned almost childlike, all big teeth and chubby cheeks.

“Hey, fairy. Long time no see, huh?”

Erik’s finger depressed. The gun bucked behind a spew of sparks as the spread of 12-gauge rammed into Duke’s chest.

Duke tumbled like a bag of stones down the steps.

That was too easy. Erik, bewildered, stared down at the Remington’s bead, then raised his head. Shooting Duke had been no more complicated than spearing a fish in a bathtub. It seemed almost as if he’d let himself be gunned down…

Gunsmoke drifted. Duke’s bulk shape lay limp at the bottom of the steps, sprawled across the fine slate foyer.

Ann crawled forward, her hair in strings. “Did you—”

“I got him this time. Christ…”

Erik, regrettably, did not weigh the incongruities. Who would? The task ahead summoned him: getting Ann away, finding her daughter, breaking the maleficent thousand-year-old chain of the Ardat-Lil. He helped Ann up, brushed her hair out of her face, and tried to calm her down. She shivered in his embrace. Probably half