The Sentimental Succubus

I took him in my arms. I was not afraid of him. Oh no. I raised my fingers to where his lips had touched my skin.

That warmth!

"Lavandé," he whispered against my chest. "I... I care for you very much. You know that, right?"

He cared for me? Of course he did, just as I cared for him. We would do anything for each other.

Then I felt the strongest sensation yet, a piercing pain deep in my chest. I broke our embrace and pushed a hand between my breasts.

"Lavandé?" He took hold of my shoulders as I stood there, grimacing in pain. "Lavandé? What's wrong?"

I knew I could no longer hide my pain from him. "I can feel something in my chest," I said through gritted teeth. "Something throbbing there, as if it's alive. I don't know what it is."

He laughed. "Oh Lavandé, that's just your heart!" he said. "My kiss did startle you, after all."

"But demons don't have hearts," I replied, scandalised. The pain was growing weaker now, supsiding into a dull ache.

"Really?"

He clearly didn't believe me. I took his hand and placed it against my chest. He turned red, but didn't pull away. "Can you feel what I'm talking about? Like something hitting me inside my chest."

"It feels just like a heartbeat to me," he said. "Very, very faint, but unmistakeable. A heartbeat going 'th-thump, th-thump, th-thump'."

I stared down at his hand in mine, clutched against my chest. That warmth, that strange warmth, rushed up inside me, overwhelming me. Dizzy, I heard that beating noise rising up from my chest, echoing in my ears. Th-thump, th-thump, th-thump, like he'd said. I was being lifted up into the air, as though I was flying. I looked up and saw myself reflected in his eyes. And then I knew.

At that moment I realised what all that warmth was, that feeling of floating, that bittersweet joy that filled me to overflowing, the warmth that brought the pain.

It was love. I loved him."

The courtroom fell utterly silent. Lavandé felt the eyes of everyone present burning into her. She bowed her head in shame.

Then Forneus leaped to her feet, her face exultant. "Condemned!" she shrieked. "Condemned by her own mouth!"

The prosecutor's outburst shattered the taut silence and the court at once descended into chaos. The public gallery was the first to roar with howls of anger and fear and disgust, but the disorder quickly spread to the jury as well. Onoskelis struck his gavel against his bench but when the banging remained unheard over the tumult he leaped to his feet and started shouting. The attendant devils and their helpers the imps struggled to regain order but it wasn't until the doors of the court burst open and the alastors came in and incinerated the first row of the public gallery that anything resembling order returned.

"Oh dear," murmured Abraxas, wringing his claws as fire and smoke filled the court. "Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..."

Lavandé stared down at the table. Ash was spreading across it, covering her hands. She shut her eyes at the sight. The hideous pain in her chest had grown so powerful that her whole body had gone numb.

Pain was all she knew, and so she didn't notice that the court had fallen silent with a cowed peace until Onoskelis cleared his throat and spoke.

"Well," said the judge. "It seems that there is no longer any need for-"

"You Horror," Lavandé broke in, her voice thick with pain. "Please. I haven't finished my statement yet."

"There's more?" Onoskelis exhaled and then said, "Very well. But I must warn you, Miss Mamorra, I have little doubt that anything you say further will merely compound your guilt."

"I just want to finish my story," said Lavandé, tired. "And be done with it."

"Very well," said Onoskelis, sitting back. "I doubt there are any further horrors you can reveal. If you would, Miss Mamorra."

Lavandé took a deep breath and continued. "So this warmth was love. I turned away. His eyes terrified me. Yes, I was frightened by a human. I took his hand.

"Let's go home," I said.

After phasing into his basement we quickly grew solid again. I looked around us at his room. How long had it been so neat and tidy? It no longer resembled the place I'd visited that night so many weeks ago. None of the items in the room were any different, and yet the removal of all the clutter had transformed it into a totally different place.

How had I not noticed?

The desk. The desk with his paper and drawing implements. The order had spread from there.

He was chuckling to himself. "You know, Lavandé, I'm glad you can phase through walls like that. Imagine if my parents caught us sneaking in. What would they say?"

I said nothing, still lost in my thoughts.

"I mean, I'd love to introduce you to them. It's a bit weird, don't you think, keeping your girlfriend hidden in the basement?"

"I'm a succubus," I murmured. His words lay dark on my heart and a dull black fire kindled there.

"Of course I know that. It's just that..."

"Just that what?" I slumped down onto his bed. I stared across the room at the opposite wall, seeing nothing. This place that had made me so happy to visit had suddenly turned alien.

"Just that-" His voice grew troubled.

I knew then I'd been dreaming since that first night he'd opened his eyes. Dreaming I was something I wasn't all these weeks, that we were something, something impossible.

"So you're not a dream."

I may as well have been a dream.

All those picture he'd drawn and was so proud of. The two of us walking together in sunshine. The two of us sitting together under a tree in a park. All those things he wanted. All those things I couldn't give him.

No, not a dream.

My chest grew heavy with despair. Pushing away the pain, I motioned for him to sit down beside me on his bed. He did.

I placed my hand on his and called him by his name. "I'm going now," I told him. "I... I will not return."

He laughed. The sound cut into me.

"Hey. Lavandé, you're joking, right?"

I shook my head.

The slow change of expression on his face, then, as he realised I was telling the truth was the most piteous thing I've ever seen. Piteous? Yes, I felt pity now. The contagion had spread through every part of me. Tenderness, affection, shame, guilt and, yes, pity, emotions born of my love for him.

The face I loved crumbled in despair and his eyes filled with tears.

Humans are so fragile, this one especially so. My own eyes grew hot. Could eyes grow hot? I'd never known such a thing!

He was weeping now, his hands covering his face. I drew closer, reached out for him. I wished to comfort him. But why? I was the one who had triggered this reaction in him! All of this was my fault. I felt guilt again, then, but this time it was a razor of black ice buried in my chest.

He raised his face from his hands. His eyes were red and swollen, his cheeks smeared with tears.

"Why, Lavandé?" he whispered.

Why? I made no reply and turned away. My eyes grew hotter, and then turned liquid. I dipped a finger beneath an eye and the tip came back wet.

How was such a thing possible?

"Lavandé," he said. His voice was hoarse, breaking in his despair. "Lavandé, please don't go. Lavandé, please. I- I love you."

That word, and with that word the truth, and with the truth the pain in my chest reached its zenith. I shuddered in horror, and with the horror came an uncontrollable rage. This suffering, this suffering triggered by his suffering, it wasn't fair, not fair! What had he done to me? All these emotions, the pain of this cloying, crushing human world? Why should I suffer like a human? His love had contaminated me, infected me.

I doubled over. That hideous cold fire flared like a nova in my chest, pulsing pain through my body.

I hated myself. I hated him. Oh, how I how I hated him!

He reached for me but I pushed him away and got to my feet. I strode across to his desk. The pictures. The pictures he'd drawn. This is where it had all started, the source of the contagion. The pain had begun when I'd seen myself drawn by his hand, portrayed in those loving lines. I'd looked upon love and been cursed with it.

I drew my fingers across the pages. Me dressed in a sundress, running in a field of flowers. Me sitting on his couch and laughing. Me and him, embracing, our lips pressed together.

I shuddered. My rage reached a blinding crescendo and I snatched up the papers and with a sob of despair I wreathed them in searing fire.

Crying out in anguish he leaped from the bed and fell across the desk, his hands scrabbling at the ashes falling from my fingers.

"Why?" he sobbed, raising his face to me, a face contorted in agony. "Why Lavandé? Why do this to me?"

My rage was gone. At the sight of his pain it had fled away like a filmy miasma. I was just left hollow, icy inside.

"Because I am a demon," I said.

Then I melted away into shadow and fled, his voice calling my name after me. But I could not escape what I carried inside me. My agony came with me. My eyes continued to melt away, that liquid called tears spilling from them for the first time - but not the last.

I hid myself in the deepest, darkest shadows, deep in the earth, far from the upper world, far from Hell, far from humans and demons both. There I curled into a ball, clutching my knees and my tail to my aching chest, and wept, enveloped in my pain.

His face remained with me, the way he'd cried my name, the despair in his eyes. I couldn't escape what I'd done.

The weeping ended at last. I don't remember how long I cried for. And curled up there, in the darkness, I began to hear the strangest sound.

Th-thump, th-thump, th-thump... like the steady beating of some drum.

I opened my swollen eyes with difficulty. I was still alone, here in the preternatural darkness at the roots of the earth. I sensed no other being.

Th-thump, th-thump, th-thump...

My chest heaved.

"Unmistakeable," he'd said. "Th-thump, th-thump, th-thump. A heartbeat."

I lay there, the beat resounding in my ears. A heart. The pulsing, pain-filled tumour called a heart. I had grown it just in time for it to be broken.

I'd destroyed his drawings, destroyed him again, rescued him just to destroy him, because I was afraid. My heart would never let me forget it. My heart would continue to beat, beat in my ears, beat this swirling pain about my body.

At length I rose. I shrugged my wings, stiff with my paralysis, and flew back alone through the darkness, back home to Hell. I went straight to the authorities and confessed my crimes, handed myself over to punishment. And so that is why I am now standing before you, asking that you grant me mercy by sentencing me to the ultimate penalty: total dissolution." Lavandé slumped back in her seat and lowered her gaze. "It's what I deserve."

"Very well," said Onoskelis. He shifted behind his bench, discomforted. He turned to the jury who had listened to Lavandé's final account in shocked silence. "Demons of the jury, we have heard Miss Mamorra's testimony. It is time for you to retire and to consider your verdict."

The jury, still in a daze, left the courtroom. Forneus sifted the papers on her desk, smiling to herself with her shark teeth. Abraxas looked across at Lavandé. The succubus did not stir from her seat.

"We should go, Miss Mamorra," said Abraxas.

"There's no point," said Lavandé. "They'll be straight back out."

Lavandé was proven right. Just as Onoskelis was getting up an imp hurried to him and he resumed the bench. The jury had returned.

"Miss Mamorra, please rise."

Lavandé rose, as did Abraxas beside her.

"Demons of the jury, how do you find the defendant?"

The speaker for the jury, a cacodemon, read from the piece of burning paper in his hand. "On the count of being seen by a human, we find the defendant guilty. On the count of feeling pity, we find the defendant guilty."

The crimes were read out. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty...

Lavandé relaxed, nodded at each of the verdicts.

At last the final verdict came. "On the count of Fraternisation with a Human in the First Degree, we find the defendant... guilty."

Lavandé closed her eyes, her hands resting against the desk. Relief suffused her. The beating of that hideous thing in her chest would soon be stopped and she would be free.

Onoskelis directed his gaze upon her. "Miss Mamorra, you have been found guilty on all counts. It is the decision of this court that in view of your flagrant disregard for the demonic protocols you be taken straight from this courtroom and undergo immediate dissolution."

Forneus coughed. "Uh, excuse me, Your Horror?"

Onoskelis looked at the prosecutor in surprise. "Yes, Miss Forneus?"

A thin smile appeared on her red lips. "The prosecution respectfully suggests that dissolution not be performed on account that the defendant seeks it willingly. As such, it would not serve as adequate punishment."

Lavandé felt panic rise in her. "But Your Horror, I-"

"Silence, Miss Mamorra. Miss Forneus is quite correct. In this particular case, a term of eternal imprisonment is a far more appropriate sentence."

Lavandé, gasping, fell to her knees. "No! No! Please, Your Horror!"

Onoskelis' eyes burned. "Silence! Lavandé Mamorra, having been found guilty of Fraternisation with a Human in the First Degree, we sentence you to be immediately taken from this place and..."

"Your Horror?" It was Abraxas' tiny voice.

"...transported to..."

"Your Horror?"

Onoskelis stopped. He glared down at the little defence counsel. "What is it, Mr Abraxas?"

"We wish to lodge an appeal."

"An appeal?" Forneus burst out laughing. "Your Horror, really?"

Onoskelis, his brow furrowing, considered the tiny demon. "An appeal, Mr. Abraxas? On what grounds?"

Abraxas shifted nervously in the judge's fiery gaze. "Your Horror, in cases of a capital nature the condemned may make a final appeal for clemency to the Lowest Court of Hell."

Silence fell over the courtroom.

"The Lowest Court?" Onoskelis rubbed his chin with a talon. "True, but it is highly irregular..."

"But well in accordance with the Demonic Protocols, Your Horror," said Abraxas.

Forneus dropped her carefully arranged papers. "Your Horror, you can't possibly be entertaining..."

"Miss Forneus, it is well within Miss Mamorra's rights to lodge an appeal." He turned to Lavandé still collapsed against the desk. "Do you wish to do so, Miss Mamorra?"

In a voice little more than a whisper, Lavandé said, "I do wish it."

No sooner were the words from her mouth when a circle of fire burst into being in the centre of the courtroom and imps went scattering for cover. There was a rushing sound and the courtroom shook as an elevator, glowing red, exploded out of the floor and flung open its chained doors with a resounding clang.

Lavandé stared at the elevator. With difficulty, she pulled herself onto her feet and turned to Abraxas. She placed a hand on the diminutive demon's shoulder.

"Thank you," she whispered

The shadow beneath Abraxas' hood smiled. "No, Miss Mamorra. Thank you. For believing in me. And good luck. I hope Miss Lucy takes pity on you and that you find what you seek."

Lavandé walked past the still flustered Forneus and with a nod of her head to Onoskelis she stepped inside the elevator, the doors shutting behind her. It was a solid room of glowing hot metal with just one button on the panel and next to it, the label: Nadir.

She pressed the button and the elevator, with a strident screeching, began its rapid descent.

---

The elevator slowed and came to a cacophonous stop. Lavandé's heart was beating hard as the doors began to open.

Her heart. Even now its beating tormented her.

Lavandé stepped out into a great open space. Glowing lava spilled down the walls in torrents painting the massive room red. The floor and ceiling were of utterly black volcanic glass and as she walked Lavandé glanced up at the copy of herself mirroring her every step.

She saw fear. Fear in her red, cat-irised eyes.

Few demons ever came to this place. It truly was the Nadir, the lowest point of Hell. Despite the lava the air was cold as interstellar ice.

With every fearful step Lavandé took the silhouetted rectangle of a desk situated in the centre of the huge room grew closer. Someone was sitting behind it, their head down, writing. Lavandé walked more quickly. It would be dangerous to keep Miss Lucy waiting.

Her clawed feet clicked on the glass and echoed throughout the room. Lavandé welcomed the sound. The sound distracted her from the increasingly rapid thumping in her chest.

As she got closer the sound of scratching joined the clicking of Lavandé's feet. Miss Lucy, head down, was writing. She did not look up until Lavandé was standing right before the desk. She stopped writing, then, and took a small woodcarving in the shape of a donkey and placed it on top of her notes.

Lavandé took a step back. Demons who had met her had always spoken of Miss Lucy's unearthly beauty, but words did not do that beauty any justice.

Miss Lucy had the statuesque and perfect body of an angel, although she had garbed it in a black suit with a black blouse. A crimson cravat wrapped about her neck provided the only relief of colour in her apparel. The pale whiteness of her skin was stark against the blazing redness of the hair that streamed down to her shoulders like a mirror of the lava-falls behind her. And her eyes were green, the colour of her pride, the overweening pride that had her exiled from Heaven. All demons knew the story.

Miss Lucy let those green eyes slip over Lavandé's form and she nodded. A smile, a disconcertingly simple smile, free of mockery and malevolence, appeared on her lipsticked lips.

"Lavandé Mamorra," murmured Miss Lucy. Her voice was deep but feminine and behind it echoed all of eternity. "Lavandé, Lavandé, Lavandé... whatever am I going to do with you?"

Lavandé fell to her knees. "Miss Lucy, I- I've come to appeal for clemency."

"Clemency?" Miss Lucy arched her eyebrows, her smile slipping away. "You do know where you are, do you not, Lavandé Mamorra?"

"I do, Miss Lucy." Lavandé found the courage to raise her head and look into the Mistress of Hell's eyes. Constellations blossomed and spun within them, but did she see any emotion in particular? It was impossible to say. There was no distance in those eyes. They looked right into her. "I- I had no other choice."

"Yes!" said Miss Lucy. She pointed at Lavandé and her smile reappeared. "Yes, Lavandé! You're quite correct. You had no choice. None of us are free to choose, after all." Miss Lucy stood up, then, and Lavandé saw how tall she really was. She was sporting a hump beneath the jacket: her angel wings, bound hard against her back. No demon had ever seen them.

Miss Lucy slipped around the desk, drawing her fingernails along its glassy surface. "Determinism, Lavandé. We have no choice but to do what the Power demands, and we have no choice but to accept our punishment for doing so." She stopped beside Lavandé and leaned over to look directly into her eyes. "Why don't you go and accept your punishment, Lavandé? Eternity is not so long, after all. The entire universe will be dust and ashes before you know it."

"But it's not fair," Lavandé whispered.

Miss Lucy laughed. "Nothing is fair, Lavandé. I learned that the day I stood up to the Power and refused to go along with his stupid little naming-game." She lifted a hand to the demoness's chest and pressed her palm against it. "But I'm not surprised you feel the sting of injustice so deep, since you're sporting nothing less than a living, beating heart."

Lavandé quailed under Miss Lucy's hand. Her heart raced faster and louder until the whole of the great room resounded with its deep echoing beat. Lavandé gasped at the pain spilling through her.