A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day previews - 3: Number 66

Here's the third in a series of six previews of the brand new stories in my upcoming collection, A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day.  The reason they're all scrunched together rather than spread out a bit more is the sudden cloud of chaos that engulfed my life over the past few months.  I'm currently in a nice new house and things are looking much better, but I'm without an internet connection until a phone line is put in next week.  Thankfully, blogger seems to have a "here's one I prepared earlier" feature so I can queue these previews up over the next couple of days.

That's all boring technical stuff anyway.  Let's go straight to the words instead.  This one's from "Number 66".  In this one there maybe sexy body-to-body massages on an air mattress.  There may also be terror and icky Bad Ends.  You'll find out at the weekend (I hope - I'm going to look very foolish after doing all this if the date gets moved back).

* * *

Harrison took a taxi.  The GI was right; it wasn’t where he’d expected it to be.  Pom Prap Sattru Phai was off the beaten path for the degenerate expat set.  This was where the normal tourists came to take pictures of old Buddhist temples.  Harrison thought the man might have the wrong street.  He arrived there and saw a plain narrow alley.  It was only when he walked down its length he found the massage parlour discreetly tucked away.  The signs and neon lights were as gaudy as any down Soi Cowboy, but positioned in such a way they couldn’t be seen from the main thoroughfare.  Harrison wondered how they did any business hidden away like this.

A shrunken mama met him at the door.

“American?”

“English,” he corrected.

She led him down a stairway festooned with tinsel and flashing pink Christmas lights.  At the bottom he was shown into the infamous fishbowl room.  Fifteen girls sat in three rows of five behind a big glass window in the far wall.  They were dressed in skimpy bikinis and each had a white disc with a number on it attached to their right hip.

And there she was—number 66.

She was impossible to miss.  She was tall, leggy, busty, blonde... totally unlike the other girls sitting behind the glass.  She was clearly a foreigner and Harrison wondered what she was doing here, working as a common hooker amongst the local girls, especially with a body like that.  She was as good as any glamour model Harrison had seen in lads’ mags and those models had the advantage of Photoshop to brush up their appearance.  It made no sense at all.  Why was the girl here when she could be doing the exact same thing for fifty times the price out in the expensive hotels by the airport?  It must be as they said—she was a rich heiress playing around for kicks.  She certainly had an aloof air about her.

The other girls were a much of a muchness.  Harrison saw plenty like them every night in the clubs in Patpong, apart from maybe the girl sitting in the centre of the front row.  She looked a real sweetie. It was something in her eyes and smile.  There was an infectious sense of fun about her.  Her figure wasn’t bad either.  She couldn’t compete with the blonde girl, obviously, but at least she had some curves beneath her bikini top.  Smiling enthusiastically, she beckoned to Harrison, urging him to pick her.

From the disc at her waist he saw she was number 9.  She was the girl both Murray and the GI had recommended.  He could see why.  She looked cute.

Under normal circumstances Harrison might have picked her.  That wasn’t why he was here though.  Number 66 was why he was here and that was the number he whispered into the shrunken madam’s ear.

The madam made eye contact with Number 66 and the blonde girl looked Harrison over.  For a brief horrible moment Harrison thought she might reject him, but instead she gave a curt little nod and got off her chair.  She met Harrison in the corridor outside and took him all the way down to a door at the end.

The room on the other side was a surprise.  When he’d visited establishments like this before, the girl usually led him to a small cramped bathroom with a narrow inflatable lilo squashed up against an equally narrow bath.  The room he walked into was palatial by comparison.  A big jacuzzi bath stood in one corner.  A patterned screen hid the other.  On the floor in the centre was a king-size air mattress.  Even as big as it was there was still space on the floor to walk around it.

Harrison looked at the lush designs of ancient debauchery painted on the tiles covering the walls.  “This is fancier than I was expecting,” he commented.

Number 66 didn’t answer, instead motioning for him to go behind the screen and take his clothes off.

Before he did he asked her for her name.

She smiled and pointed to the white disc attached to her hip.

* * *

Out soon, A Succubus for Saint Patrick's Day and other tales!

"A Succubus for Remembrance" Excerpts - A Succubus for Remembrance

And we have a release date!  A Succubus for Remembrance and other tales of Femme Fatales is finished.  I'll be uploading the files tomorrow evening and it should be available from most online bookstores Friday or Saturday.  To whet the appetite here's another excerpt, this time from the title story:

* * * *

Greg Holmes was dreaming.  He knew he was dreaming because he was standing beneath the cliffs overlooking Kabul.

He knew it was a dream because he was on the other side of the world to Kabul and nothing—not wild horses, not masked men with guns, not even a direct plea from Her Majesty herself—would make him return to this wretched patch of rock, sand and sun.  It didn’t matter.  A piece of him would always be left here, frozen in time amongst the heat and dust like fossils in the sand.

He was not alone.

A woman stood at the base of the cliff.  As with most women from this part of the world she was covered from head to toe in a black burqa.  In itself that wasn’t an unusual sight.  What was unusual was the level of ornamentation added to her costume.  Exotic designs and symbols were stitched onto cloth usually as plain and black as midnight.  An exotic golden frill hung from the black scarf wrapped around her forehead.  The niqab covering her face was composed of gold and precious stones.  This was attire to attract rather than deflect attention.

And her eyes.  They simmered with sinful desire.

The sun plunged out of the sky and the cloudless blue of midday turned to the deepest indigo of night in a few blinks of an eye.  Time rushed around him as though he was standing in a time-lapsed film.  The only fixed points were him and the girl.

She turned and headed towards the entrance to one of the caves that carved deep holes into the rocky cliff face.  A warm orange glow emanated from within, promising warmth and shelter from the harsh desert night.  The same fires flickered in her eyes as she reached the entrance and glanced over her shoulder back at Greg.

The meaning was clear.  He followed her into the cave.

He was naked now.  So was the girl.  By the soft light of candles he caught glimpses of dusky skin, long lithe limbs, shapely swells of breasts and ass, and then the shadow-painted cleft of the most intimate part of all.

She beckoned him on with an outstretched arm, an exotic wraith painted in swirls of shadow and candlelight.

He stepped towards her, wanting—no, needing!—to put his arms around her and bear her down to the soft earthen floor of the cave.  Needing to feel her warmth between his legs.  Needing like a parched man needs water in the desert to hear her quiet sighs as they lay entwined together.

She opened her eyes and they flared orange like the fires of burning suns.  Like the balls of fire rising up from a city as airplanes rained destruction down on it.

Greg’s desire burned away to fear.

Something terrible with burning eyes awaited him in the darkness of that cave.

Yet he couldn’t stop.  Trembling legs put one foot in front of the other as he was drawn, inexorably, towards her outstretched arms.  Her eyes expanded.  Twin suns grew from tiny spheres the size of marbles into burning stars that filled his entire world.  They became his world and consumed him.  Beneath their scorching glare his body shrivelled to blackened charcoal and blew away like ashes before a bomb blast.

Greg jerked awake with a start.

The fuck?

Greg was not normally a dreamer and never as vivid as that.  He stumbled out of bed and walked into the bathroom to splash water onto his face.

He’d heard some vets complain of Post-Traumatic Stress, but he’d barely seen any action in Afghanistan.

Barely had still been too much.

Frowning, he looked down.  An erection was tenting the front of his underwear and showed no sign of going down.  He supposed part of the dream had been sexual.  He took care of it with his hand and returned to bed.

* * * *

A Succubus for Remembrance and other tales of Femme Fatales, out this weekend!

"A Succubus for Remembrance" Excerpts - Ways To Break A Good Man, 3

Still buried in the guts of editing and formatting A Succubus for Remembrance.  Watch this space, soon, etc, etc.

In the meantime here's another excerpt from one of the new stories, "Ways To Break A Good Man, 3":

* * * *

DCI Ben Millard noticed the girl with the flame-red hair as he was walking back to the station after lunch.  Or rather, it was her perfume he noticed first—a seductive melange of sensual aromas that surrounded her in a cloud.  The perfume tugged at his nostrils as he walked past, teasing him with fragments of half-remembered erotic exploits.  The scent seemed familiar although he couldn’t place it.  Maybe it was a brand Adrienne used to wear.

Millard pushed thoughts of Adrienne aside.  Not today.

Even though he was single now, Millard didn’t usually look at other women.  Old habits die hard and all that.  This girl was hard to ignore.  She stood beneath a streetlamp about fifty feet from the rear entrance to the station.  Her appearance was as attention-grabbing as her perfume.  Her slim figure was hidden beneath a glossy leather coat that extended down to just above her knees.  A pair of long lithe legs emerged from the hem of the coat and terminated in a stylish pair of black shoes.  Her hands and wrists were covered in a matching pair of black gloves.  Lustrous red hair cascaded down onto her shoulders in waves of shimmering fire.  Millard thought she resembled a starlet from an old ‘70s thriller.  Unusual to see a young woman embrace the old fashions.  Classy.  Most girls today were either aggressively dowdy or ineptly raunchy.

“That’s a bit of alright,” DI Martyn Ward said to him as they passed her and entered the station.

“Bit young for me,” Millard said.

“Never stopped Berlusconi,” Ward said with a wink.

Considering he was a detective chief inspector in one of the largest metropolitan boroughs, Millard’s afternoon was remarkably incident free.  He debriefed the team on the forensics results from the latest murder case.  Case was possibly too strong a word.  One young lad, Joe Turner, had stabbed one of his mates in a petty dispute over a girl.  They had the motive—as feeble as it was—the murder weapon, and both Turner’s fingerprints on the murder weapon and his DNA at the crime scene.  This wasn’t one for the casebook of Sherlock Holmes.

Oh, the young lad would continue to swear black was white even when given irrefutable evidence of his guilt, but it would be enough for a jury.  Millard was sympathetic to the plight of disadvantaged youth, but—god help them—they didn’t half make it harder for themselves.

And that was mostly it for the afternoon.  Millard took advantage of the brief respite to get stuck into his paperwork backlog.  No doubt another alcohol-sodden city-centre weekend would leave him with a full plate of work again when he came back in on Monday.

“Hey boss.”  Ward popped his head around the door as the hands of the clock swept around to five-thirty.  “Looks like we’re all done here.  We’re going to have a poker night over at Chris’s.  You in?”

“Yeah, su—”

Millard pulled a face.  He looked at the phone sitting on his desk.  There was still one item sitting in his in-tray.

“Sorry, Martyn.  Still some work I need to get done.  Maybe next time.”

“Sure, no problem, boss.  Give us a buzz if you change your mind.”

Millard knew Ward was trying to help.  They all were after that . . . business with Adrienne.  The frustrating thing was this time he would have come along . . .

He looked at the phone again.

. . . if there wasn’t something else he had to do.

Millard carried on with his paperwork for another ten minutes or so and then got up to stretch his legs.  He walked over to the window and watched as most of the staff headed out to either their homes or their local watering holes.  He was tempted to say sod it and join them.

He noticed the girl with the flame-red hair was still waiting underneath her streetlamp.  Her arms were folded and she glanced left and right along the road.  She couldn’t be a working girl, could she?  She’d have to be a bit daft to set up a pitch here, not fifty yards from the largest police station in the city.  Poor lass must be waiting for someone.  No doubt they’d be in for an earful when they finally showed up.

* * * *

This one has links with another story in the collection and features a returning character from the last collection (Freedom).

Coming soon (providing I don't collapse from overwork :) ) . . .

"A Succubus for Remembrance" Excerpts - Vernon the Volunteer

I was going to post a new excerpt yesterday but had a horror journey back from holiday that culminated in a car that wouldn't start and a flooded kitchen.  Fun times.

I still don't have a concrete release date as I'm still waiting on a few things like a cover and some final editing tweaks.  Usual #ChaosWriting, in other words.  I'll update here as soon as the new book goes live (hopefully sometime next week).

In the meantime here's an excerpt from the third of the hell-space stories in the collection, "Vernon the Volunteer".  (It's also a little bit more NSFW than the other excerpts).

* * * *

“—give a demonstration of the techniques used by H-space indigenous life forms to overwhelm and subdue opponents.”

Vernon didn’t really hear the doctor.  He was still staring at the girl who’d joined them up on stage with slack-jawed appreciation.  Holy shee-it.  Were all the girls of H-space as hot as this?  She was fucking smoking.  She looked like a lingerie model.  That was all she was wearing as well—lingerie.

Well kind of.

Vernon didn’t know what it was.  Some kind of inky-black substance covered her boobs and pussy like a cloud.  Didn’t bother Vernon that much.  Why be bothered about that when a super-hot babe was standing in front of him.  Vernon certainly wasn’t.  Like he wasn’t bothered by her horns either . . . or those yellow eyes . . .

Vernon frowned.  His brow furrowed.

. . . or her wings . . . or her tail . . . or the way she looked like a . . . devil . . .

Then she smiled at him with a face that looked like it belonged on the cover of a magazine.

No, it was way better than that.  Model types were all haughty, stuck-up bitches.  He could see she wasn’t like that.  She was more like one of those pretty actresses that play the sweet girl next-door, and were just as nice as the characters they portrayed.

Vernon knew a girl just like that back home.  What was her name again . . .

Vampyrotiea’s eyes met his.  Her smile looked innocent and sweet on the surface, but there was a little curl at the corner that promised naughty pleasures once the lights went out and it was just them, alone.

. . . oh, he couldn’t remember.  Didn’t seem important.

“Vampyrotiea is a succubus,” the doctor said to him in a quiet voice.

Vernon’s eyes remained fixed on Vampyrotiea’s.  The doctor’s voice was an irritating mosquito whine in his ear he tried to ignore.

“Sexual intercourse with her will kill you.”

“Uh huh,” Vernon said, not caring what the doctor said.

She was gorgeous.  Amazingly, beautifully, gorgeously hot.  She had the full package—nice rack, peach of an ass, long toned legs.  And she was smiling at him.

Him!

“I’m so sorry, son,” the doctor said before walking away.

“Uh huh,” Vernon nodded again.

His hands were pointing forward from his sides.  He had the strong urge to reach out and grab her round the waist.  No.  Mustn’t scare her off.  He had to be smooth.

“What’s your name?” the girl asked.

She placed a warm hand against his cheek.

“Vernon,” Vernon replied.

His hand itched at his side.  He ached to slide it over the curve of that peachy ass, to feel her smooth skin beneath his fingers.

“I’m Vampyrotiea, Vernon,” Vampyrotiea said.

She caressed his cheek.  The strange inky-black substance covering her breasts flowed up her arm like the tendrils of a plant.  Didn’t seem important.

“I want you to do something for me, Vernon,” Vampyrotiea said.

He picked up a strange scent.  It must be her perfume.  Fancy perfume.  Expensive perfume.  Sexy perfume.

“I want you to pull your pants down.  Can you do that for me, Vernon?” she asked in a voice as smooth as the most expensive silk.

For a babe like her, of course he could.  Vernon undid his pants and dropped them and his underwear to the floor.  His boner popped up like a flagpole.

Vampyrotiea’s eyes lit up.  She murmured sexily and her other hand stroked up and down his shaft.  It was soft and gentle, just like her smile.  Twin tendrils of darkness slithered down her arm and nudged against his exposed boner.  Ticklish.

“I want you to fuck me, Vernon,” Vampyrotiea said.  “Fuck me hard from behind.”

She turned around and bent over a chair with her legs splayed apart.  That peach of a bubble-butt ass was right in his face and waggling invitingly.  The oily black cloud swirling between her legs parted like rainclouds before the sun and for a moment Vernon glimpsed . . .

. . . something like a maw.  A circular maw like the mouth of a lamprey, but with no teeth.  Instead Vernon saw rows and rows of fleshy lips.  It gaped open, deep purple in color and lined with pulsing black veins . . .

. . . the folds of her exposed vagina, moist and dewy-dropped with arousal.  She glanced back at him over her shoulder.  Her luscious lips were bunched up in a sultry pout and need smoldered in her eyes.  She was eager for him.  Desperate for him.

* * * *

I don't think this demonstration is going to end well . . .

Apologies for the continuing vagueness over the release date.  Keep an eye out here and I'll post as soon as the book hits the (virtual) shelves.

"A Succubus for Remembrance" Excerpts - Slugjob

As promised yesterday, here's another excerpt from one of the brand new stories in my forthcoming collection A Succubus for Remembrance.  As it's Halloween, I thought it appropriate to let my sexy (and scary!) little witch, Annette Brite, come out and play.

* * * *

He saw light flickering in the archway on the other side of the room.  Someone was coming down the steps.

Annette Brite.  Naked Annette Brite.  Naked and gifted with the body of a complete sex goddess Annette Brite.  Hutson stared at her wistfully.  He’d thought she might be hiding a knockout body beneath that voluminous velvet dress, but the reality beat even his desire-fuelled imaginings.  She had gorgeous long legs and a pair of tits a reality TV show sleb-wannabe would sell her mother for.  Her skin was a little pale, but it suited her exotic features and was far easier on the eye than the gaudy fake tans favoured by the orange people.

He was less aroused by the occult symbols daubed all over her exposed flesh.  The markings were dull red in colour.  It could be paint but Hutson didn’t think it was.  She was still wearing that necklace of wooden beads.  She carried a torch in one hand and a long ebony staff in the other.  In the flickering light she looked like an albino aboriginal witchdoctor.

The feral savage look didn’t really suit her, in Hutson’s humble opinion.

What a crying shame.  Hottest bod he’d ever seen in the flesh and its owner was a complete fucking nutcase.

God, you’re a dick.

“Hello studmuffin,” she said, giving him a smile.

“Hi,” Hutson waved his hands out of the top of the manacles.  “It’s normally the blokes that have to resort to the Rohypnol, you know.”

“It’s crude, I know, but you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to bring men back here.”

“It’s not exactly the Playboy mansion,” Hutson commented.

The pool in the centre burbled again as a couple of bubbles broke the surface.  An odd smell came from it.  Hard to describe.  Not rot, not decay, not chemical, but bad.  Nasty.

And that definitely wasn’t a jacuzzi, Hutson thought.

“I don’t suppose I can get that massage now?” Hutson asked.  “These manacles are buggers on the wrists and shoulders.”

Brite paused.  Her full lips pursed and puzzlement flashed across her eyes.

Good.  That’s what he wanted.  He wanted her knocked off balance.  He wanted her to worry she might not be as fully in control as she thought she was.  Plus, it was what all the cool dude heroes did in the face of danger in the big Hollywood movies.

“No, I’m afraid not,” Brite said.  “But don’t worry, you’ll find tonight’s activities to be equally as pleasant, I’m sure,” she added, leaving the innuendo hanging in the air.

I Was Forced To Take Part In Satanic Orgy! Says Local Man.

“As long as you have condoms,” Hutson said.  “I always practise safe sex on the first date.”

Another puzzled look from Brite.

“You’re being very flippant,” she said.  “Do you think this is a dream?”

It took his mind off the fact his insides felt like ice-cold porridge.  It was taking nearly all of his willpower to stop himself from shitting streaks of thin diarrhoea across the stone floor.  He wondered if the cool dude heroes of Hollywood movies ever had that problem.

“No, I’ve been kidnapped by a crazy bitch who wants to sacrifice me to the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s evil twin.  But I don’t let anyone intimidate me.  Only my old man gets to do that and he’s been under the ground for over a decade now.  Where’s the rest of the Manson family anyway?  Shouldn’t your little coven be showing up by now?”

Those were the questions Hutson asked, but what he really wanted to know was: How long have I been out?

Brite smiled.  She recited some gibberish words that sounded like no language Hutson had ever heard before and banged the base of her staff on the stone floor.  He’d told her he wasn’t scared of her, and he tried to tell himself the same thing, but there was something really wrong here.  It was more than her obvious craziness or the weird symbols daubed on both the stone surfaces and her flesh.  It was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, like his senses were trying to scream something through a thick glass window and he couldn’t quite hear them.  There was something not right about her.

More bubbles welled up to the surface of the pool and popped with oily plops.

And that rancid pool gave him the fucking willies.

“You do realise if you stab me through the heart you’ll suffer three simultaneous heart attacks,” Hutson said, trying to bolster his flippant front.

Puzzlement again, then Brite gave a little giggle of laughter.

“Ah, the Wiccan Rule of Three,” she said.

“I thought you’d be aware of it, being the leader of the local Wicca group and all that,” Hutson said.

“It’s a sweet religion,” Brite said, “but the fate of the sweet is always to be crushed by the cruel.  My true religion is older and darker.”

“Older than Christ?”

“Older than man.”

Hutson knew it was nonsense, but felt an icy chill slither through his guts nonetheless.  His eyes widened, briefly cracking his shield of flippancy before he wrested back control from his primal fears.  Meant nothing.  Crazy people always sounded convinced of their crazy beliefs.  It’s why they were crazy.

How long had he been out?

She recited another occult verse and punctuated it by banging her staff down on the stone flagstones lining the edge of the pool.  More bubbles welled up and blopped at the surface.

Coincidence, or some kind of trick.

“Older than man?” Hutson queried.  “Are you seriously trying to tell me Cthulhu himself or one of his mates is going to rise up out of that pool and crush me in his slimy beard tentacles?”

He tried to show his derision through laughter.  He couldn’t keep the unease out of his voice and it came out too high-pitched—brittle and panicky rather than smooth and dismissive.

Her naked body.  What wasn’t right with what he was seeing?

“That’s all makebelieve,” Brite told him with a smile.  “An American writer made it all up and other writers copied him.”

She recited more ominous gibberish and banged her staff on the floor.  Hutson couldn’t pick out her words.  Even though she’d said them mere moments ago, they slipped straight from his mind.  It was as if his ears and brain found them so abhorrent they rejected the sounds and dismissed them from his memory.

Stop it.

More bubbles were streaming up to the surface of the pool and popping with noxious burps.

Burps.  That was a word to use.  And farts.  Children’s words.  The mangy pool was plurping and garargalling.  Pretend he was Ricky Gervais inventing stupid animals and calling them stupider names.  Twist her insanity and see it for the ridiculousness it was.

Hutson couldn’t keep out the atmosphere of dread.  It seeped through his skin and crept up his bones.  The sludge in the pool sloshed about like something was moving below.  Something big.  Even though he knew it had to be nonsense, he couldn’t shake the feeling that some vast and indescribably malevolent entity was rising up to the surface.  Coming to claim him.

Stop it!  Stop scaring yourself.

Brite raised her staff again.

Okay, that was enough.  Time to play his hand.

* * * *

Why the title "Slugjob"?  Uh . . . um . . . no particular reason . . .

*reads a little further*

Oh dear fucking god!  What the fuck was I on!?  Imagination, you're sick!  Sick, I tell you!

"A Succubus for Remembrance" excerpts - Ways to Break a Good Man, #1

Last Halloween I posted a story called "Ways to Break a Good Man, No.2".  A few people asked where the hell is "Ways to Break a Good Man, No.1"?  In truth there was an original "Ways to Break a Good Man, #1" story involving my succubus-wielding mob boss, Koontz, and a dangerous game for a 'good man' Governor's soul.  I liked the idea and it had a really effective horror scene early on, but the story kept petering out in a mess of convoluted dialogue (One character realised they needed to stall for time and I made them so good at it they kept filibustering the story into oblivion).  I've finally straightened that story out and it will be present in the forthcoming collection, A Succubus for Remembrance.  Here's an excerpt to whet the appetite:

* * * *

“My people are turning this hotel upside down as we speak,” King said, trying to regain composure, authority.  “They will find me.  And you.”

“Tut tut, Governor King.  You didn’t think Ceptophthorié was the only demon I have working for me . . .”  The fat man grinned like a toad before turning away.  “Enjoy your time with Ceptophthorié.  She’ll give your fall a soft landing.”

He tittered as he left the room.

That left King alone . . . with the demon.  He sat up on the bed and his gaze flicked back and forth between her and the lamp sitting on the bedside table.  He was ready to pick it up and hurl it at her should she make an aggressive move in his direction.

The girl didn’t move.  She sat on her chair and her full lips curled up in amusement.

“You look very tense.  Would you like me to give you a massage?” she asked.

“No thanks.”  King’s gaze flicked back and forth between her and the lamp.  “I’m not going to let you do to me whatever you did to McMillan.”

“That’s not how it works,” Ceptophthorié said.  “You have to do me.”

King’s brow furrowed.

“Like McMillan,” Ceptophthorié said.  “He shoved his big prick inside me and filled my gorgeous pussy with his cum.  Then I made him into my little toy.  Those are the rules—the man must instigate sexual intercourse of his own free choice.”

“Then I won’t,” King said.

“No?” Ceptophthorié arched a pencil-thin eyebrow.

“No,” King said, his voice flecked with ice.  “I have a wife and daughter I love very much.  I’m not interested in a common whore.”

Ceptophthorié smiled at his insult.

“I could make you,” she said.  “I could use my magic to pin you to the bed, climb on top, swallow up that gorgeous prick with my luscious pussy and ride you until you melted inside me.  Or I could entangle you in a web of seduction so potent the merest pluck of a thread would bring you to me on your knees like a faithful little dog.”

For a moment King felt that oppressive force of her presence wrapped around him like a velvet glove.  He feared her words were no idle boasts.

“Do it,” he challenged.

Ceptophthorié smiled.  “Where would be the sport in that?  There’s no fun in taking a man as if he were a common beast.  It’s not what I want.”

“What do you want?” King asked.  The more he kept her talking the more time it gave the others to find him.

“I want to play a game,” she said.  “Would you like to play a game with me?” she asked with a coquettish expression of wide-eyed innocence.

“What if I say no?” King asked.  “What’s to stop me walking out of that door right now?”

Ceptophthorié pushed her lower lip out in a disappointed pout.

“That would upset me.  I don’t like it when my games are spoiled.  And when I’m upset I take it out on the loved ones of the person who upset me.  McMillan is not my only toy.  Would you like your wife and daughter brutally gang-raped?”

The furious intensity of King’s glare was broken as he stared into the demon’s burning red eyes and realized she wasn’t bluffing.  It felt like ice-cold water poured down his spine.

“Now for the rules of the game.”  Ceptophthorié switched back to coquettish playfulness.  “It’s a challenge—your resolve versus my erotic temptations.  At sunrise I must depart this plane.  If you can resist my seductions until then you win and get to keep your soul.  I’ll even make it easier.  I won’t use my demonic abilities to entrance or otherwise compel you into having sexual intercourse with me.  I won’t even touch you . . .”

The corner of her full lips turned up in a suggestive smile.

“. . . unless you ask me to.  How does that sound?”

“It sounds very easy.  I don’t want to have sex with you.”

“Really?” Ceptophthorié said with a teasing smile.  “It seems your body has other ideas.”  She glanced at the obvious erection tenting the front of his underwear.  “He seems eager to greet me, to feel the warmth of my flesh wrapped around him.”

King reddened and shielded the embarrassing protrusion with his hands.  It was an automatic response, that was all.

Ceptophthorié giggled.

“If I decide to play, what guarantee is there that you’ll stick to the rules?” King asked.  “If your . . . demonic—”

It still felt wrong to use the word even though he’d accepted the impossibility of what she was.

“—abilities are as powerful as you claim, what’s to stop you using them once it gets close to sunrise and I’m about to win?”

“My word,” Ceptophthorié said.

King snorted.  “You’re a demon.”

Ceptophthorié was about to feign an expression of hurt, but laughed instead.  “True,” she admitted.  “I won’t cheat though.  The game has no challenge if I allow myself to break the rules whenever the game doesn’t go my way.”

She fixed her gaze on King, temporarily casting aside her flirtatious mask.

“I want to see you fall.  I want you to feel the wind flutter through your hair as you plummet into my abyss and know it was you that jumped.  That is true pleasure.”

She closed her eyes, brought her hands up and lewdly squeezed the swollen mounds of her breasts.

“It won’t happen,” King said.  “You made a mistake.  You showed me McMillan.  Do you think I’d be stupid enough to fuck you after I saw what it did to McMillan?”

Ceptophthorié threw back her head and laughed.

“I always show the men the consequences of their own damnation.  It makes the game so much more interesting.”

The succubus made no move towards King.  He watched her warily.  At least it started that way.  His gaze dipped downwards and was pulled in by the lush, swollen hemispheres of her breasts.  It orbited her fleshy curves, trapped like a ship caught in a black hole, sucked down, tugged into the shadowy cleft of cleavage while he became aware of the steady beat of blood through his temples.  Down his gaze fell, sliding down a flat belly to the beginnings of her short skirt.  She uncrossed her legs and he glimpsed the gates to her sex—plump, dewy, welcoming.  His vision narrowed until it seemed like the shadowy pink cleft between her legs grew to encompass his entire world.  It was like he stood on the edge of the hotel roof, staring at something far below, staring then teetering, teetering then falling.  He was falling down into a fleshy canyon and the soft pink folds of her sex were opening to accept him, opening to engulf him.

* * * *

I suspect this game will be a little harder than Governor King first thought.  A Succubus for Remembrance, out November.

A Succubus for Remembrance Excerpts - Hugh the Hero

The holiday back home with the folks has been unsurprisingly chaotic.  I'm still endeavouring to get A Succubus for Remembrance ready for an early November release, although this might slip - I'd rather put out a good book two weeks late than an on-time book filled with embarrassing errors.  In the meantime here's an excerpt from one of the new stories, "Hugh the Hero."  This is the parallel-quel story to "Trent the Traitor."  You'll recognise the opening scene in the excerpt, although this time it's from Hugh's perspective.

* * * *

They paused outside a large ornate door.  Hugh saw a face he recognized walking in the opposite direction with an accompaniment of succubus guards.  One of the lower-ranked infantry grunts.  He’d seen him a few times in the main mess tent at Helmuth.  Weaselly-looking dude.

“Hang in there,” he bellowed.  “Don’t let them break you.  The marines will come.  They’ll bust us all out of this hellhole.”

Hugh truly believed that.  He believed in supreme American military might.  The unusual H-space physics and unorthodox hindig tactics had caught them off guard, but they would find a way to adapt and then they’d flatten this little shitball just as easily as they’d steamrollered over Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and all the other fucktards.

 “Pray to Jesus!” he shouted.  “Keep your faith in...”

Hugh’s words tailed off.  Why wasn’t this guy in chains?  Why did he look more like a VIP with an escort detail than a prisoner with guards?

An awful thought germinated in Hugh’s mind.  The attack on Helmuth had been too easy.  Even with their unorthodox tactics the devils should not have been able to penetrate their outer defenses and surprise them like that.

Unless they’d had inside help.

“You sold us out.”

Rage exploded within Hugh.  This asshole hadn’t just sold out his side, he’d sold out his country, his species, his world, God.  For what, a piece of demonic tail?

“You motherfucker.  You sold us out.  That’s how they got in so easily.  You sold us out for a piece of ass.  You traitorous fuck.  I’ll tear your fucking lungs out.”

Thoughts of waiting patiently for the right opportunity were incinerated in the incandescent blaze of Hugh’s righteous rage.  Right then, at that moment, he cared about nothing other than putting his hands around that fucker’s scrawny throat and squeezing until the asshole’s eyes popped out.

The bubblegum-skinned demon girls giggled and opened the big ornate door.

Hugh tensed his muscular frame to pounce and...

...was suddenly travelling backwards in the opposite direction.  He felt a constriction around his waist and looked down to see pink tentacle as thick as his thigh wrapped around his midriff.  It was fantastically strong.  Hugh was lifted up off the floor and dragged through the open door and down into darkness.  One of the succubi gave him a little wave as she closed the heavy door behind him.

Hugh’s struggling form was dumped onto a floor that was underneath an inch of what he initially thought was water.  The substance was wet, but as he moved his hands through it he realized it was too viscous to be water.  It felt more like warm slime.  The floor didn’t feel much like a floor either.  It yielded beneath his weight and felt more like a trampoline, or the surface to a waterbed.

Unsteadily he got back to his feet, wobbling on the yielding and slippery floor.  Initially the room seemed to be in darkness, but as his eyes accustomed he saw the slime beneath him was mildly phosphorescent.  It wasn’t as bright as the corridor outside, but his eyes were able to adjust and see—

Oh Mary-fucking-mother of God.

Most of the hindigs looked like the typical devil girls of computer games.  Some were weirder—he’d heard of floating jellyfish girls; strange plant hybrids; girls that were half spider; and he’d glimpsed the giant fog puffers that had overwhelmed FOB Helmuth.  The hindig before him was half octopus or squid.  From the waist up she had the voluptuous body of a porn queen.  There was a regal cast to her face as well.  Hugh might have thought it beautiful if it wasn’t for the unnatural bubble-gum hue to her skin, or her yellow eyes.  She didn’t have hair either.  At first he’d thought it contained within a pink sack hanging behind her head.  Then he realized that sack was part of her body.  He watched it swell up and down as if it was breathing.

That part, her upper half, Hugh could just about deal with.  It was her lower half that nearly tore his mind asunder.  His disintegrating sanity tried to tell him it was a ball gown—a giant, elaborate, puffed up ballroom dress, like a princess might wear in a Disney cartoon.  One that was so huge she needed to stand on stilts to wear it.

He wasn’t yet insane enough to be fooled.  It was a ring of pink tentacles, each as thick as his thigh.  They bulged out of her waist and curled down to the ground.  Hugh saw it clearly even though he knew it should not be.

“Welcome,” the demon said in a surprisingly melodious voice.  “I am Enteroctia.”

* * * *

And that's a little more of Hugh's eventual fate revealed.  For the rest you'll have to wait until the new collection comes out next month.

There is also a line in this story that should hit like a slap in the face.  Don't worry, I love you all really... ;)

A first preview for "A Succubus for Remembrance"

In an ideal world this would be where I show off a cool new cover and a coming soon link.  As I normally write in a state of complete chaos those aren't ready yet.  It also didn't help that the last few stories ended up being 10,000+ word monsters and a couple needed full rewrites.  In the meantime, while I'm trying to get my shit together, here's a peek at the contents list:

1. A Succubus for Remembrance
2. The Skinning Knife
3. Vernon the Volunteer
4. Trent the Traitor
5. Hugh the Hero
6. Slugjob
7. Iron Girders and Steel Springs
8. Ways to Break a Good Man, #1
9. Ways to Break a Good Man, No.2
10. Ways to Break a Good Man, 3
11. Vampiric Boobies
12. Streetwalking with a Succubus
13. Nazi vs. Succubus

Some of those will be familiar, but not as many as with previous collections.  This time over half will be brand new stories making their first appearance with this collection.  These are also some of the longest stories I've written.  This time I built the running order from my ideas file and then wrote the stories afterwards.  I wouldn't recommend this approach to any budding writers as you end up with a 90K monster instead of the more sensible 70K words it should be! :D

The list isn't 100% finalized.  "Nazi vs. Succubus" was supposed to be a succubus-themed parody of the Ilsa nazisploitation films.  I let horror-head out of his cage for that one and he ended up rampaging off into some very dark and disturbing territory.  I'll have to run that one past the folks at eXcessica to make sure it doesn't cross the line.

Overall A Succubus for Remembrance might be a little darker and more monstery than my other collections.  Perversely, it also has my highest number of happy-ish endings so far.  Some questions are answered - such as what did happen to Hugh in "Trent the Traitor" and you'll also get to see "Ways to Break a Good Man, #1" after I confused everyone with the title "Ways to Break a Good Man, No.2" last Halloween.  More of the devious witch Annette Brite's background will be revealed, the hell-space campaign continues to worsen, and I add Octopus Girl/Scylla to the list of monster girls I've written stories about.

Provisionally, the collection should be out early November, although there is a chance the date might slip (Chaos writing, sorry).  I'll be giving out further details in the coming weeks as well as excerpts from the new stories.