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EXCERPT:
I sleep with the dagger under my pillow, one hand on its hilt, the other on its sheath, ready to pull it free. She shouldn’t appear—she shouldn’t—but still I wait, trying to feign sleep. My entire body is tense with anticipation. Or at least, anticipation is what I’ve chosen to name it. To acknowledge anything else feels like sabotage.
Faint at first, the scent of smoke returns. I think all my anxious wanting has made me imagine it until heat and oppressive shadow follow. The circle blazes to life, but beneath the glow, the wards lie dormant. She’s here.
Am I so fallen that my light does nothing to repel the damned?
I tug the blade free, thrusting upward to bring its edge to bear against the form solidifying above me. Shadow melts from the figure like clearing fog until a woman materializes from its depths, her skin light brown and her hair a long spill of silky black ringlets. And those golden eyes. I know, when I meet them, that I’ve hesitated a beat too long.
“I’ve never been held at knifepoint while trying to seduce someone.” She leans into the edge of the blade as if it’s a silly flirtation. The silver gleams bright against her neck. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she says, suddenly all sincerity. “I should’ve properly introduced myself sooner.”
“Why are you doing this to me?” I demand.
“I was sent to find you, watch you. When it was clear you weren’t a big scary angel with a thousand eyes, I thought maybe I could reveal I was here, let you decide how you wanted this to go.”
She leans closer, and I let her, keeping the blade steady at her throat but not pushing back. My training screams against this restraint. I remember what happened to Zuriel. I know the price of offering softness to a demon.
“You’re different than the ones I’ve heard stories about,” she says. “I could like you. As much as a demon could like a nephilim.”
I make myself press the blade into her neck, a warning. Against a human, it’d draw a trickle of blood. With a flick of my wrist, I could kill her body and send her soul back to Hell. A blessed blade alone can’t inflict a mortal wound, but it’s enough to banish a demon from the physical plane.
She’s unbothered by my threat, and I hate that we both know it’s not serious. Despite the heat that radiates from her, I shiver. She smells like the darkness after a candle’s been snuffed, like the close of a ritual, like dying light. I’ve never met a demon civil enough to talk to for any length of time, let alone one who wanted to flirt with me. I wonder whether this is always the form she takes or whether she’s chosen a body aligned with what I find attractive.
“I see what you want. Desire is my specialty, remember?” She says it without threat. “Can I touch you?” she asks.
That she asks for permission startles me. It’s not binding magic, not a trick, just a simple question. A demon’s never asked me such a gentle question before.
I manage to hold the unnatural intensity of her gaze. She lets me think, patient. I wonder whether succubi are like vampires, whether they need an innocent invitation, a welcome, before they can enact their violence. But her eyes hold the same open curiosity I feel, a hope that this meeting doesn’t have to play out the way we both know it should, that we can discard our roles—at least for now.
Against every instinct, I nod.
She reaches confidently for my free hand, heedless of the dagger, and sweeps her thumb over the skin of my inner wrist, pressing it into the bed. Her touch is feverishly warm, as if she’s recently emerged from hellfire.
“You deserve to feel good,” she says. “I can at least give you that. Make up for before.”
The dagger trembles in my grasp. Like the first night she spoke to me, she’s reined her aura in, its hunger defanged for now. I’m not under its influence, but I’m surprised to discover the truth in what she says, how much I want her.
Everything falls apart if I say yes, and I feel seconds away from ruin.
Her brow creases with concern. “I wouldn’t hurt you, but I understand. Of course it’s different for us,” she says, all lust and heat evaporating as if she’d merely been inhabiting a role. “But do me a favor.” She grasps my knife-wielding hand, and I let her also press it down into the bed. I’m pinned. She looms, and I’m hyperaware of my exposed chest and neck. “Take your pleasure if you want it,” she says, flashing a fanged yet unthreatening smile.
Then I blink, and the room is dark again, and the demon is gone.
Author Bio:
Tamara Jerée (they/them) is a graduate of the Purdue University MFA Program and the Odyssey Writing Workshop. Their short stories have appeared in the Shirley Jackson Award-winning anthologies Unfettered Hexes: Queer Tales of Insatiable Darkness and Professor Charlatan Bardot’s Travel Anthology. Their poem “goddess in forced repose” in Uncanny Magazine was nominated for the inaugural Ignyte Award. They’ve worked as an indie bookseller and a writer in the video games industry. The Fall That Saved Us (out 9/5/2023) is their debut novel.
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