Idle Hands Ch. 05

"Thursday, then, as a worst-case scenario. Good. Let's get started. The sooner I have a weapon the better I'll feel."

"This is to be used against Kincaid? That...that thing that chased us last night?" Yasna asked. Althea nodded her reply. "Then why a sword? Wouldn't something else be better? Guns? Grenades?" Her lips quirked in dark humor. "Maybe a flamethrower or a bazooka?"

Althea shook her head, helping Josh lift a brick of clay onto the workbench. She stripped off the shirt she was wearing, revealing a dark sports bra. "No good. Against the demon-spawn, we can't deal out death from a distance. Modern weapons don't work on them. Not to the extent we need. They're almost like zombies that way. Unless you remove the head, they always seem to heal themselves and come back for more. A sword is the best weapon. Or a really good ax. Some of my incubi brothers use them. I don't. It's always been swords for me."

She sighed. "I have a lovely one at home. Seventeenth century, Toledo steel, made by a master swordsmith in Spain named Domingo Montoya. I would give anything to have it here right now. But I don't. So I will have to make do with what I have available." She started sketching out the dimensions on a bit of paper. "It doesn't have to be fancy, Josh. Two edges, a pointy bit at the end, and a place to hold onto it. The most important part is the power. And the symbolism." She drifted off as a thought occurred to her, and she smiled.

"Oh, Yasna," she said, as the sound of an approaching car came through an open window. "That's Jeremy and the rest of them. After they get their things put away, can you ask everyone to come in here? I have something to do before Josh and I get too deep into this project."

*****

A few minutes later, they were all gathered in the workshop, the seven mortals looking curiously at the immortal sccubus.

"You asked to see us, Althea?" Rachel asked. Her voice sounded a little bit testy, and Josh smiled. His lovely wife looked vaguely aggravated, as if she had made plans that had gone unfulfilled.

"Have a nice afternoon?" he asked Alex quietly, making his voice low and threatening.

His son rolled his eyes towards him warily. "Yes, sir. I did."

"Good," he replied with a nod. "I'm glad. Otherwise I would have wondered if something was wrong with your mother. Don't worry, kid," he said with a crooked smile. "I'm in no position to be jealous or angry. Just don't wear her out so much that she doesn't have energy left for me."

"I don't think that's possible," his son whispered. His voice sounded slightly awed. "We were going to start for the fourth time when Yasna knocked on the door. I wasn't sure I could do it."

Josh snickered, then caught himself as Althea pinned him with a hard look, making him feel like a teenager who had been caught passing notes in study hall.

"I have been giving thought," she said, "about what to do about our Kincaid problem. I cannot protect all of you all the time, and neither can we all huddle here like frightened children until he comes bursting through the front door.

"You must be protected. Josh and I are crafting a sword which I will use to dispatch him, when the opportunity presents itself. But it has occurred to me that I can do something similar for all of you, albeit on a smaller scale.

"In my world, the spirit world, symbolism is important. The sword was the tool used to dispose of one's enemies for millennia. As such, it has symbolic weight which you will not find in a gun or any other modern weapon." A quick, blinding smile.

"But you have objects in your own lives which have their own symbolic importance. Which mean more to you than their mere physical form would suggest.

"Find them. Bring them to me. And with your help I will imbue them with the power you will need to drive away the demon-spawn, should he ever approach you.

"They should be small. But precious to you. And if at all possible, they should be items which could, as a matter of last resort, be used as weapons. They will have much more power that way. Both for yourselves, and against our enemy."

They scattered, heading towards the house, except for Josh, who remained where he was. Althea looked at him quizzically. "What's the matter, Josh? Feel like being gutted by that slime if he corners you in a dark alley?"

He shook his head. "I've got what I need right here."

In a few minutes, the family started to trickle back in. "All right," she said to Josh. "What's your choice?"

He pulled a small box out of a drawer. "This was my first wood-carving set. My folks gave it to me when I was eleven." He pulled a wickedly sharp knife out of the box and showed it to her. "What do we do?"

She wrapped her hand around his. "Just this." She closed her eyes, reaching within herself for her power. Then she moved towards him, flowing up his body like a cat. Her mouth opened, finding his in a long, slow, languorous kiss. When she pulled away he was smiling.

"Done," she said.

"But you didn't do anything," Maria protested. "Did you?"

"Maybe not to your eyes," she told the lovely young woman with a smile. "But if you were a succubus, you would have seen plenty."

One by one, she moved down the line.

For Alex, a stage dagger. As Althea blessed it, he and Maria exchanged a secret smile.

For Maria, a broom handle. Althea frowned slightly, but relented. "You'll have a hard time hiding it, dear. But it could serve as a staff if need be."

For Rachel, a gavel, which she had received from her parents when she had graduated law school.

For Jeremy, a small set of pruning shears, pulled from the trunk of his car.

For Sarah, a vicious-looking carving knife. "Lucifer's Tits," Althea said, fingering the serrated edge. "You could do some serious damage with this thing."

"I know," Sarah said cheerfully. As Althea's hand closed around her own, she pulled back slightly. "You don't...don't have to kiss me for this to work, do you?"

"No," Althea said regretfully. "But I really enjoy it."

To her immense surprise, Sarah laughed. "You're terrible," she said, and gathered her in a fond hug.

For Yasna, a scalpel, drawn from her medical bag. Althea whistled respectfully as she looked at it. "You're going to have to make some sort of sheath for this. Otherwise you'll slice yourself to ribbons if you ever have to carry it around."

"I can take care of that," Josh said. "I've got bits of leftover leather all over the place. It won't be any trouble at all."

"Do it for all of us," Rachel said. Althea looked at her. "Everyone but me and Maria, at least. Our weapons aren't very stabby. But if we need these to go out in public safely, we should have a way to get to them quickly." She shrugged. "No matter how effective they are, it won't do us any good if we have to dig through our purses to get them. If Josh can make sheaths we can hang from our belts, all the better."

Alex was fingering the dull edge of his prop dagger. "How does it work? No one is going to be scared of this. It's not even sharp."

"Not to your eyes, maybe. But to someone like Kincaid, it's scary.

"Understand," she said, glancing around at the crowded workroom. "Beings like Kincaid and myself exist in both the material and the spirit world at the same time. What I have done to these objects is similar to what I did last night, when I warded the house. But it is much more concentrated. Using your love for what these things represent, I have made them physically and spiritually repellent to a being like the demon-spawn. If he had to, he could still approach you and hurt you, but it would come at the cost of great pain."

"What if we used them to attack him?" Alex asked eagerly, and Althea heard Rachel suck in her breath in horror.

Althea shook her head. "Only as a last resort, dear one. If you are trapped, they will be a final means of defense. But the demon-spawn is still far, far stronger than you." She fixed him with a stern eye. "So don't go a-hunting, do you hear me?"

"Yes," he said, abashed, and she smiled at him.

"Althea?" Maria asked.

"Yes, love?"

"I've been meaning to ask. Where did you get...where did you get your name?" she asked, blushing over her beautiful dark face.

She looked at her quizzically. "From my parents, of course. 'Althea' means 'to heal.' My mother Lilith claimed that learning of her pregnancy cured her of her anger against God, after he cast her out of the garden."

"No, not that!" Maria said hurriedly, blushing even more, if it were possible. By the Almighty, what ailed the girl? "I meant your last name. I mean," she said hurriedly, "you probably didn't have last names back when you were born, right? So how did you choose one?"

"Oh." She smiled. "Althea Carpenter. Well, Maria, as the years went by and our kind grew fewer, we tried to blend in with humans, who were growing more and more numerous. But I never tired of thumbing my nose at human folly when I could. So I took my last name from the Carpenter of Nazareth."

Maria's eyes widened. A few steps away, Josh guffawed in laughter. "You mean..."

"Yep," she grinned. "I named myself after Jesus.

"Others did much the same thing. Our enemy, for instance."

Jeremy frowned. "Kincaid? What does that mean?"

"Not Kincaid. His first name. Mortimer." She glanced around the room. "Anyone take any French in school?"

She could see Yasna's lips moving as she translated, and was heartened by her participation. The young woman had been almost invisible during the conversation, as if she were still trying to convince herself that everything that was going on was real. "Mort-du-Mer? Still water?"

"Or Dead Sea," she said grimly. "It's a little bit more obscure than most. But the demon-spawn do love images of death."

"What a wanker," Yasna said. She smiled, the expression transforming her face into a thing of beauty. "I bet he gets all emo when he's in a bad mood and plays really bad goth music to cheer himself up." The family laughed, and Althea felt her heart clutch inside her chest. This was how Yasna was meant to be, not the timid, cringing woman she had seen so far.

"Of course," Althea continued, after the laughter died away, "some of my sisters are more...unconventional when it comes to names. My sister Lucifer, for instance."

"Wait," Jeremy said. "Your sister Lucifer?" Althea nodded. "But...isn't Lucifer...the devil?" His voice trailed off as he caught the furious look in her eye.

"No," she said flatly. She tried to rein in her anger at the ancient slander. "Lucifer means light-bearer, and was used to describe the dawn star. And Lucy was that and more." Her face softened. "Oh, I hope you all get to meet her someday. She is as merry as the day is long."

"But..." Rachel said slowly. Althea let her head turn, knowing what was coming next.

"I've heard you swear. 'By Lucifer's Balls.' You've said it," Rachel said, her tone almost accusatory. "I've heard you."

"My sister always did have an odd sense of humor." She shrugged. "It is no great strain on our power to take on a male form when we choose. Lucy was fond of doing so. Not myself," she continued. She gave an exaggerated shudder. "I don't know how men deal with those things. All floppy and dangly and bouncing around. Women's bodies are ever so much nicer."

"It's amazing," Sarah said distantly. "Just when you thought life couldn't get any weirder, it suddenly does. Gender-swapping succubi. Sure. Why not?"

"Look at it this way," Jeremy said to her encouragingly. "If Althea's sister ever comes to visit, maybe you can convince her to be a man for a while so you can find out what sex with a succubus is like."

"You're not helping."

"Oh, she would go for you in an instant, Sarah," Althea said. "You're just her type."

She could see her imagination piqued, despite herself. "Really?"

"Oh, yes. You should see her when she's a man." She sighed dreamily. "Tall, red-haired, little dimple in his chin. Kind of looks like that guy on 'Outlander.'"

"Sam Heughan?" Sarah squealed. She was addicted to the show. "Oh, God, she must be fucking gorgeous!"

"Do you have any other sisters, Althea?" Josh asked, trying to steer the conversation away from Sarah's dream man.

"Just one left," she said sadly. "Tera." She snickered to herself. "If any of us look like the classic stereotype of the succubus, it's my little sister. Tall, dark-haired, voluptuous. Cute little pair of red horns. I always wanted red horns. But I got white."

"You could always put an illusion on them," Rachel pointed out reasonably.

She made a rude noise. "But I would know. Enough. Go on," she said, waving her arms at them. She didn't want to talk about sisters she hadn't seen in years. Not when she had a blade to craft. "Scat! Josh and I have work to do here."

*****

She thought Josh might be worried she might have more on her mind than making a sword when she shooed everyone out of the workshop. But once everyone but he and Sarah was gone, she got right down to business, putting on protective clothing and helping him set up the materials.

"This would be easier if we just had some cast bronze already here," she fretted. "All we would have to do is grind it down and make a hilt."

"I know," he replied, pulling up clay blocks from underneath the worktable. He checked them carefully, finding they were still damp and moist inside their plastic coverings. "But I don't have any left, and it would take days to have some delivered. Days you say we don't have." He reached for a tool, but she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"You can do the hilt," she said. "But I have to do the blade myself. As much as I can should be by my own hand."

He nodded, but looked worried. "You know this isn't going to come out of the mold ready to use, right?" he asked. "There is grinding and sharpening and polishing."

She nodded. "I know. Trust me. This isn't my first sword. Or even my tenth. I've done this before." She began working on the clay, carving out a hollow where the liquid bronze would settle. When she was done, she would have to do it again, creating two halves of the mold. On the other side of the workshop, Josh had turned on the furnace, readying it for the copper and tin they would use to create the bronze alloy. "And to be honest, I'm not interested in making a museum piece. As long as it has two sharp edges, somewhere to grip it, and a pointy bit at the end, I'll be satisfied."

She was surprised to see that Sarah had stayed and was willing to assist. The young woman had been so jumpy around Althea she didn't think she would be inclined to stay in the same room with her. But she made herself useful, fetching tools and materials with commendable speed whenever asked. Over the course of the next few hours, Althea was given to understand she had often helped her father the same way when she had been younger, before her parents had separated.

By the time the mold and the metal were ready, the sun was going down and they had turned on the interior lights. Althea sprinkled the inside with fine sand and ash in a method which had been old when the phalanxes of Greek hoplites had been cutting-edge military tactics. She held her breath as Josh poured the liquid metal into the mold, hoping against hope it would hold.

It did.

As soon as the pouring was completed, she fitted the top of the mold over the bottom, taking care there were spaces for the release of the dangerous gasses which would form as the metal cooled and solidified. As she slotted the final bit into place, she saw Sarah looking at her curiously.

She raised her eyebrows and waited. "Well?"

"You're not...not what I expected," she said finally. She glanced over at her father, who was shutting down the furnace, which had filled the small building with choking heat.

"Hm. What did you expect?"

The young woman shrugged uncomfortably. "Something different. I mean, after what we did, what we had to do to get you back into your body..."

She stifled a grin. "Ah. I see. You expected a sex-crazed demon who would drag you into a series of orgies against your will. Right?"

"Well, I wouldn't put it that way..."

"Well, of course you wouldn't. Your parents raised you too well to say something so rude," she smiled. "And really, you're not that far off. I am sex-crazed. At least, from a modern point of view." She sighed tiredly. "Back in the old days, things were different. I won't say 'better,' because then I'll sound like a senile old fart who keeps insisting that everything has gone to hell since they were kids. But, by the Almighty, people have a stick up their asses when it comes to sex these days. You would not believe how much fun they used to have.

"Personally, I blame Emperor Constantine and Saint Augustine," she said conversationally as she helped clean up the work area. "If not for Constantine, the Christians would never have been more than another one of the squabbling Judaic sects that hung around the fringes of the Roman world. But he gave them legitimacy, and all the other native religions slowly faded away. And then Augustine..." she trailed off in disgust. "Half the problems modern Christianity has are due to that stuck-up, pompous, sanctimonious prig. He came up with original sin, predestination, all sorts of really terrible ideas. And he had a serious case of misogyny as well. He hated women. But since he was a bishop, people listened to him. And now, sixteen hundred years later, humans are still following his rules."

She realized that Josh and Sarah were both staring at her, open-mouthed. "You know," said Sarah, "eventually someone is going to call bullshit on you when you act like you knew all these people personally."

She smiled as she opened the door, allowing the two to proceed her out. "Maybe. But you're going to have a hell of a hard time proving it.

"And actually, no. I was nowhere near Europe when all that stuff was happening. The Roman Empire was falling apart, and I had no desire to get caught in the collapse.

"No, I had much more fun. I was in what is now known as India." She sighed in happy memory. "Now that was a place where a girl could let her hair down and relax."

"Watch out, Daddy," Sarah said as they climbed the back steps to the house. "Next thing you know she's going to tell us she wrote the Kama Sutra."

"Don't be silly, Sarah. I didn't write the Kama Sutra.

"I inspired it."

*****

Kincaid chewed and swallowed, feeling strength flow back into his body. With a negligent swipe of his teeth, he pulled another hunk of raw, dripping meat from the human femur he held in his hands.

Best use I could have possibly found for Fontein, he thought. The ex-cop had made the fatal mistake of coming to Kincaid's penthouse, perhaps trying to worm his way back into his good graces. Instead, he had found Kincaid, crazed with pain and fury after failing to kill the Carpenter bitch at the hospital. Fontein had barely had enough time to scream before Kincaid's claws had laid his throat open. Maddened, he had fallen on the warm corpse like a starving wolf, taking in food and power with every bite.

Now, Fontein's body lay in a dismembered heap. He had eaten the internal organs first; the heart, liver, and intestines dulling the savage edge of his hunger. His body was rapidly repairing itself. Still too slowly for his taste, but he would be back to his full strength in a matter of days, if not hours, thanks to the beefy ex-cop.

The pathetic pile of carrion is serving me better in death than he ever did in life, Kincaid snarled to himself. He was still furious over his inability to kill Althea Carpenter. The hateful succubus had been helpless, her body and spirit separated, and still she had somehow managed to elude him! The chase through the streets of downtown Chicago had been exhilarating. He had felt more alive than he had in years. He had been only moments away from laying his claws on her disgusting golden shell when he had been swept off the side of the truck like an annoying insect, his body smashed and broken.