Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Other Books
Incubus Among Us Box Set (Shifter Romance)
MAC FLYNN
Text copyright 2015 by Mac Flynn
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission in writing from the author.
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Incubus Among Us #1
Chapter 1
One night can change your life. I know one did for me. But before there's a night, there has to be a day. For me that day was Hump Day, the most dreaded day of the week. Other people called it Wednesday, but for those of us in my office building it was Hump Day, the day we needed to overcome before the slide into the weekend.
My story starts in the early morning of that day. I shuffled into my cubicle in my little corner of our floor and my friend in the office, Ann, shuffled by. Her eyes were as bleary as mine and her mouth was slightly ajar. She paused at the entrance to my small domain and turned to me. "'morning, Liz" she groaned. That was my name, or rather the short form. Elizabeth Monroe, boring office girl extraordinaire.
I face-planted into my desk and sighed. "Don't remind me," I muttered.
Ann leaned her shoulder against my doorway as much to be comfortable as keep herself from falling over. "You ever wonder if somebody enjoys Wednesdays?"
"If they do it's because they like watching people suffer," I replied.
"What are you two doing?" Speaking of suffering and enjoying it, up came our resident floor manager, Mr. Vance Lennon. He was proof that a cute boss didn't always mean he was nice. On the contrary, his boyish good looks with his short brown hair, impeccable suit, and slim physique couldn't hide his cold blue eyes. Those same eyes looked at us with disdain and irritation. Most people dropped the second 'n' in his last name and replaced the 'o' with an 'i.'
Ann straightened and nearly toppled over. "We were, uh-"
"Comparing printers, Mr. Lenin," I spoke up. No one could tell the difference in the pronunciation. "We wanted to see if we could save the company ten dollars a year by switching because Ann likes to use landscape and I like the usual format."
Lennon's narrowed eyes flickered between us. "Well, make your decision and get back to work." He stalked off to harass our fellow workers.
Ann scowled at his back and jerked a thumb at him. "What crawls up his ass every morning?"
"I'd rather not wonder about his lifestyle choices and I really can't afford to lose my job, so we'd better finish our 'printer comparisons' and get to work," I advised her.
Ann shrugged. "All right, but I just wanted to know what you were doing about the Party-That-Isn't-A-Christmas-Party that's coming up in a few weeks."
I raised an eyebrow at her. "The same thing we do every year, Pinky. Try to take over the wall and slink out of there as soon as the boss isn't looking."
She cringed. "Actually, I kind-of-sort-of found a date."
I blinked at her. "Really?"
Ann scowled at me and put her hands on her hips. "What's so unbelievable about that?"
I raised my hand and counted down my five fingers. "Well, neither of us have found a date in three years, I didn't know you were looking, you never told me about the guy, and I didn't think you'd ditch me and that lovely wall for a guy."
She snorted. "Yeah, that eggshell-white is really fascinating, but yes, I did find a guy, and I didn't tell you about it because I didn't think it was serious until he asked me out for a third date last night."
"So you don't think it's serious until it's the third date?" I guessed.
"Do you?" she countered.
I shrugged. "I don't really have much experience with that whole 'date' thing that civilization believes is necessary to find a mate."
"Which translates to you don't have much experience dating guys, and we both know it," Ann replied.
I mused over her words for a whole two seconds before I nodded. "Yeah, pretty much."
She rolled her eyes, leaned over to pat me on the shoulder and waved goodbye to me. "I'll talk to you later about it." She left, and I was left with a very unpleasant Non-Denominational Festive Almost End of the Year Party.
Every year since I'd joined the company the party was the same. Ann and I were stuck holding up the wall while our fellow coworkers with significant or insignificant others would dance the night away. For our company and fellow coworkers the season was a time not of caring and giving, but of jealousy and showing-off. Now things were made all the worse because of my friend's bettering of her relationship position.
Don't get me wrong, I was happy she'd found someone. She deserved happiness. Ann was nice, friendly and kind, and the guy was probably the same. No, what got my goat was that stupid party. I wanted to escape it, but attendance, while not mandatory, was definitely encouraged. As in, you'd get a few marks down on your record if you didn't show up with a bright, chipper face and shake the hands of all the bosses and coworkers who, on any other night, you'd rather sock. A cheery occasion, indeed. Now I was left alone to fend for myself in the wilds of the wall. It would be both embarrassing and lonely.
Those thoughts and emotions haunted me the rest of the day. Ann didn't return to continue our chat and when five o'clock came around I joined the herd toward the elevators. At the parking garage beneath our ten-story building I got into my old car and puttered my way to my apartment. It was a clean building ten blocks from work. Too far to walk but close enough to mock me. The building was a wide, twenty-floor brick structure built in the forties, but renovated over the years to keep the place up to code. There was the usual ground-floor, linoleum-covered lobby with a check-in desk on the right and an elevator at the back wall. The stairs lay to the left of the elevator.
I parked on the street and walked up the stoop to our sturdy door. A light snow dusted the railing of the stoop and icicles hung from the eaves overhead. Puffs of air escaped my mouth as I buried my face in my purse looking for that blasted key in the bowels of that accessory.
Something jingled in my face. I glanced up and saw my neighbor and out-of-office best friend, Tiffany. She stood beside me with her apartment building key in her hand. "Long day?" she guessed.
My shoulders slumped. "Ugh, how did you know?"
"You're never able to find your keys on the lo
ng days," she explained. She unlocked the door and we clomped our way into the small foyer. "So what happened today?"
"Ann got a boyfriend and I'm the only one who's going to hold up the wall for that stupid party," I told her.
"Bummer. Want me to go as your date?" she suggested.
I snorted. "Don't tempt me."
She leaned close to me and lowered her voice. "Tempt. Tempt," she chanted.
I pushed her away and we climbed the stairs side-by-side. The elevator was out-of-order half the time and crowded the other half, so we usually went up the stairs. "It'd be tempting if I swung that way or wanted people to believe I swung that way, but I'd rather not scare off the boys."
She sighed and shook her head. "I think the problem is all the guys around us are boys. You think there are any men left in the world?"
"Ann probably caught the last one." We reached our floor, the third, and walked down the right side of the hall toward our doors. Our places shared a wall, and I stopped in front of my door that was farther down the hall than hers. "Maybe I can hire a guy for a few hours. Know a service like that?"
"Yeah, but the guy might not come with any clothes," she replied.
I rolled my eyes. "If I do anything stupid at the party I need to make sure I at least don't get fired for it."
"Well, how about we think up a few ideas over a few drinks?" she suggested.
My shoulders slumped and I turned my gaze from her. "You know I don't like alcohol."
Tiffany wrapped her arm around my shoulders and grinned. "Then we can discuss your current lack of relationship over a glass of beer and a cup of milk."
I sighed. "All right, but no late night. I've still got two more days of work to get through."
Chapter 2
It was midnight when I found myself at a corner table ignoring the blaring music and dark lighting of one of our favorite joints. I sat with my head nestled in one hand and my other hand toying with the tiny umbrella of my untouched milk drink. Tiffany stumbled off the dance floor exhausted from her thirteenth dance session and slid into the booth seat beside me.
"Having fun?" she yelled above the music.
I shrugged. "Yeah, I guess so," I replied.
"What?" she shouted.
I rolled my eyes and dropped my hand from my head. "I said I'm okay, but could we go home?" I yelled.
"Home? Why? It's not even eleven!" she argued.
"It's midnight, and I'm kind of tired!" I told her.
She glanced at her watch and her eyes widened. "Wow, did you know it was midnight?"
I grabbed her arm and pulled her from the booth. "Time to go home."
"All right, all right! Walk or taxi?" she asked me.
"Walk!"
My eardrums, vocal chords and various other parts of my sensitive body were glad to be out of that place. We stepped out into the dark, quiet night, or as dark and quiet as a night could be in a city with bright lights and millions of people. Long lines of the masses stood outside the doors waited for a chance to become part of the maximum occupancy group inside the club. I was glad when our steps took us far from the yelling, arguing, laughing, and jeering of the nightlife and into the quieter residential neighborhoods, one of which was where our apartment building was located.
I trudged down the sidewalk with Tiffany at my side and kicked the occasional tin can down the cracked sidewalk. Un-shoveled snow crunched beneath our feet and little puffs of air flew from our mouths. To my right was the road, and to my left was Tiffany and townhouses mixes with old apartment buildings. Between the buildings were long, narrow, dark alleys filled with trash cans and rats the size of the mangy cats that hunted them. The streetlights lit our way and cast our shadows beneath and behind us.
"You're really quiet tonight. Still upset about that party?" Tiffany wondered.
I shrugged. "Yeah, and I guess I've just been thinking about a lot of other stuff," I told her.
"About what?"
"About life. I just wonder if there's something more than this for us," I replied.
"Probably. There could be some guy out there just waiting to take one of us in his arms and tell us how much he needs us, or maybe there's a lotto ticket with our names and the winning numbers somewhere," she suggested. "The only problem is we have to go out there and find it."
"Can't a guy just come swooning into my arms and-" At that moment the silence of our night walk was interrupted by a black Buick that careened down the road toward us.
The passenger-side wheels jumped over the curb and nearly ran me down. I jumped to the side and knocked into Tiffany, who caught me in her arms before I fell to the hard sidewalk. The car didn't seem to notice us as it sped off down the road.
"God damn crazy drivers!" I yelled.
Above me Tiffany laughed. "Liz, I don't think you qualify as my swooning man," she teased.
I rolled my eyes and straightened. "Damn crazy drivers. The least they could do is wait until after Christmas before killing someone."
"They seemed pretty mad at you. You sure you didn't steal somebody's boyfriend away from them?" Tiffany wondered.
I snorted. "As if I could get any man to look at me, but let's get home before another driver decides I'm a turn lane."
"I guess, but you're not going to bed at this early hour, are you? You could go to my place and we could have a few more drinks and bemoan our jobs," Tiffany suggested.
I shrugged. "Why not? What's the fun of facing Thursday morning work without a hangover to distract me?" I mused.
Tiffany smiled, patted me on the back, and we walked on our way to home. "That's the spirit!"
"Speaking of spirits, what does your selection-" Once again our conversation was interrupted, but not by a homicidal maniac in a fancy car. No, this was the sound of something much more human, or so I thought at the time. It was a deep, pain-filled groan. Tiffany and I froze, and our eyes swept over the area. An alley lay to our left. The noise came from there.
Tiffany jumped behind me and grasped my shoulders. Her voice shook like my knees. "W-what was t-that?" she whispered.
"I-I don't know, but we should probably check it out," I suggested.
"Oh hell no. What if it's some serial killer recently broken out of prison who's shot full of holes and is in need of medical attention?" she pointed out.
I rolled my eyes and shrugged off her hands. "If it is then we can kick him in the bullet-holes and run."
"Let's let somebody else kick him in the bullet-holes and get home," she suggested.
"I'll go check it out, and if you hear me screaming you'll know it's a serial killer," I told her as I slunk toward the opening to the alley.
"Be careful!" Tiffany yelled to me, but she didn't follow.
I grasped the edge of the brick building on one side of the alley and peeked around the corner. The light from the streetlights barely reached a yard into the alley, but I was able to make out some dumpsters and broken boxes with all the usual assortment of trash. The white snow was blemished by brown and yellow water. Something moved. I leaned forward and squinted. Something, or somebody, sat on the other side of one of those large dumpsters that sat twenty feet into the alley.
"Hello?" I called out. The thing beyond the dumpster stiffened and the groaning stopped. I cautiously stepped into the alley. "Are you okay?"
The person shifted and I heard the familiar groan. I moved closer and craned my neck to peer into the darkness. My eyes widened when I beheld a handsome young man of about thirty. He had short black hair and a perfect tan. His clothes were simple, a black dress shirt and pants. They were clean but for the muck on them, and I thought I saw some stains on the front of the shirt. Round stains like those made by the bullets of prison guard guns.
The man lay with his back against the brick building. His eyes were closed so hard his eyelids looked pinched. His white teeth stood out in the dark as he ground them together, and one of his hands clutched his chest and tried to cover the round stains.
I knelt thre
e feet from him and looked him over for weapons. I didn't see anything he'd stolen from the prison guards on his escape. "Are you okay?" I whispered to him. His eyes opened and I swear they were red. Not a Hell-fire red, but a red-silk kind of red, the kind that was soft to the touch and reminded you of two lovers pressed together on a bed beneath a blanket of roses—
Where the hell did that comparison come from? I'm not usually the romantic type, as shown by my lack of a boyfriend, but here were all these crazy, voluptuous ideas popping into my brain. The ideas popped out when he winced and closed his eyes.
"I'm okay," he replied. He didn't sound okay. His voice was hoarse and he hissed through his ground teeth.
"Do you need a doctor? My friend and I could take you to the nearest hospital," I offered.
He shook his head. "No, this isn't permanent. I just-I just need a place to stay for the night," he told me.
I glanced around at the lovely mold and trash decor. "Well, I don't really recommend the Alley Hotel, so why don't you let me help you up and I can find a nice couch for you in my apartment building?"
His eyes opened, those beautiful blue-wait, blue? No more red? What did this guy have, multi-colored contacts? "You would do that for me?" he wondered.
I shrugged. "It's Christmas, or almost, so why not? You need help, and I can offer it, so let's get you up," I insisted.
"Liz!" Tiffany called from the head of the alley.
I rolled my eyes and glanced over my shoulder at her. "I'm fine, but there's a guy in here who needs our help."
Tiffany hesitantly stepped into the alley and over to me. She stayed in back of me and leaned over me to get a look at the man. "What's wrong with him?" she asked me.
The man chuckled, and the sound wasn't pleasant. It rattled in his chest and came out more bitter than amused. "I fell in with the wrong people," he explained.
"So you got beat up pretty bad?" she guessed.
"You could say that," he agreed.
"Well, beat up or shot we need to get you to our apartment. There's a nice couch in the rec room you can use," I offered.
With more strength than I would have guessed was in her Tiffany grabbed my shoulders, hefted me to my feet and dragged me to the opposite side of the dumpster. "Are you nuts? Why don't we just dump him off at the hospital and get home?" she hissed.
"My being nuts is a matter of opinion, but right now we should just help him get some place warm. Then we can decide what to do," I replied.