The Generator: The Succubae Seduction (58 page)

“Cozy place,” Areth says in her usually blunt way. “A little small and cramped, but at least you’re not a slob like
some
men and actually know how to clean.” She gives me a pointed look, but I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Thank you, gracious water fairy,” the man says, bowing to the golden woman on my shoulder. “Please be seated,” he says next, and there are chairs in the room I somehow missed seeing before. The man’s eyes are shadowed, his long stringy gray hair hanging down onto his shoulders, and his shoulders are stooped. Despite his obvious age, he moves with ease and alacrity. “We have another guest coming, but for now, there are a few things I think we need to discuss.”

“Then you know why we’re here,” I state, not really asking.

“Of course,” he says, a bit of mirth in his firm voice. “You’re here to kill me and take my sword.” Shock strikes me to the core at his words, and I open my mouth to protest, but his chuckle cuts me short. “Forgive an old man his ill humor, Lyden. You can’t see things as I do, and there is a long path between here and there. You’re here to break the curse, but I’m afraid it can’t be done.”

Depression replaces shock at his words. I’d been told that the curse couldn’t be lifted, but I’d still hoped, and hearing it from the person we thought could help. . . .

“Listen, son,” Shemhazau’s voice softens and I can hear genuine concern in it, “I said it couldn’t be broken, not that it couldn’t be defeated. How do you suppose I survived so long with Masamune?”

“If I have to choose between living in this place, or slowly going mad out there, I’ll choose to die first,” I tell him seriously, not liking the old man calling me ‘son’.

“Then it’s a good thing you won’t have to choose either one,” he tells me cheerily. “All you need to do is right an old wrong, steal a powerful talisman, and kill your old man.”

I’m beginning to wonder how crazy this guy is. “I don’t want to kill
anyone
!” I protest. “My father is long dead, anyway, and I don’t know how good a thief I make.”

“Ahh, the foibles of youth.” I’m really getting sick of his happy grin. “What if I told you that you could take out the man that got your parents, and get the talisman at the same time?”

Suspicion at his words worms its way in. Everything sounds too convenient. “What do you mean?” I ask, wondering what his angle is.

“I don’t understand,” Angela says at the same time. “What does any of that have to do with beating the curse?”

“I believe our other guest has arrived,” the man says, still grinning that infuriating smile. The old man gets to his feet, and moves to the door, opening it only a crack, before looking out. I can’t help but wonder at the juxtaposition of his knowledge of external events, and his paranoia. When he’s done verifying the person at the door, he opens it wider, and waves the person in.

Curly red hair is the first thing I notice, but I recognize the person immediately.

“Brooke?” I ask, confusion making my world reel. Then, with dawning horror, I begin to understand. “No, I will
NOT
kill her!” Shemhazau had said that I would have a chance to take out my parent’s killer, but I’ve already forgiven the mermaid assassin her part in that tragedy.

“Lyden?” her soft voice fills the air as she peers around the dim room. “I don’t understand what’s happening. A flying dolphin came up to us shortly after you left, and told me that I needed to come with it.”

“Relax, son,” the man says as he glides back to his chair. “She is not the one I meant, though she carries her own guilt for her actions. She will need to accompany you. I’m afraid your other two companions here will have to remain behind.”

“That’s not possible,” Angela nearly shouts as she jumps to her feet. Shemhazau looks at her, cringing away slightly, and I see one of his gray eyebrows arch. “I mean, they are tied together. Arethusa will die if they’re separated.”

“I hate that name,” the fairy mutters in my ear.

“Oh?” the enigmatic man says, looking to the little fairy still on my shoulder. “Is that so little one, or is there something you’re hiding.”

“I-I don’t know what you mean,” the pixie stammers. I feel her little hands grip my hair while she pulls herself closer to me, protectively. It takes me a second to realize he’s responding to Angela’s statement, and not the fact that she dislikes her full name.

“Leave her alone,” I state, my voice firm and full of command. No one treats one of my friends like that.

“I think you’d better tell him, little fairy, before I do.” This time the man’s voice is full of menace, and I find myself standing up, not willing to put up with his flip-flopping attitude any longer.

“No, Lyden, don’t,” Areth says directly into my ear, her voice full of resignation as she lifts away from my shoulder. “He’s right.”

“Areth?” I ask, now thoroughly confused.

“We’re not tied together, even though you took my maidenhead,” she tells me as she flutters before my wondering gaze. “I don’t understand why, but that first night, after Marchosias’s trap, I decided to test the limits of our connection, while you were otherwise occupied.”

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I protest. “What would’ve happened if you’d gone too far and couldn’t make it back?”

She gives me a sweet but sad smile before continuing. “I wanted to know how close I would have to stay to you after I felt you absorb my soul.” Something falls from her face, and it takes me a moment to realize she’s crying. “At first I was surprised that I wasn’t feeling any drain on my system as I travelled away from where you slept. When I got to the other side of that monstrous city you live in, I had to admit that something was odd. For some reason, I wasn’t tied to you as I should’ve been. I was free to continue to live my own life any way I chose.”

“But you came back,” I say softly, trying to grasp what she’s saying. Why is it that after I broke her cherry, we weren’t linked to one another? I’d felt the change at the time, so what happened?

“I almost didn’t,” she answers my statement. “Do you have any idea the kind of freedom that offered me? All our lives, fairies worry about every creature they come across, afraid that one of them may take our maidenhead and forever control us. I no longer needed to worry about that. I am freer than any fairy ever before.”

“Why did you return, then?” Brooke asks, and I can hear a note of anger in her voice. The small golden woman lied to us all, making life on Earth more difficult as we tried to accommodate our supposed link.

“I’m still not entirely sure.” Areth’s head comes up, and I can see pleading in her tiny bright eyes. “I saw how you treated those around you, Lyden, and I still felt close to you. You risked yourself back in that demon’s lair to save me, and then were willing to sacrifice your life to the Cyclopes, to save me again. I’d never met anyone who was so willing to put others before themselves, and you intrigued me. I know you didn’t particularly like me, so I pretended that. . . . I just didn’t want you to send me away!” She drops to the floor and I can tell she’s sobbing.

Angela moves to the fairy’s side, and scoops her up, glaring at me as though this whole situation was my doing.

“I don’t understand why we aren’t linked?” I state to no one in particular as I try to sort out my own emotions. Sure she had tricked me, but she had also been of help at times. At first I might have sent her away, back when she started to annoy us after saving Brooke, but despite my own words afterwards, I don’t think we’d have made it this far without her. Hell, she’d saved my life on more than one occasion.

“I believe I can answer that,” Shemhazau says. I jump, having completely forgotten about the scrawny man. We all look at him, even Areth, waiting for him to answer. After a few seconds of silence, I clear my throat, and he looks almost startled as he looks back at me. “What? Oh, right. So, anyway, like I said, I believe I can answer that question.”

“You said that already,” I tell him, feeling my annoyance rising again.

“I know what I said, and what I haven’t said, son,” his indignant reply comes back at me. I’m really getting annoyed with him calling me son. “And one thing I
haven’t
said is that while you did break her maidenhead, and you did take her entire soul into yourself, you didn’t leave her without a soul of her own.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Brooke says before I can. “If he took her whole soul, then how did he. . . .” she stops and her mouth forms an ‘O’ as her wide eyes look at me.

“What?” I demand, still confused.

“Lemme lay it straight for ya, homie,” the man’s attempt at street voice would be laughable, if the situation wasn’t more serious. “The pixie and you did it before you actually took her maidenhead, right?” I nod, remembering the masturbation session while she was still attached to the orb of light as well as barely making it into her anus when Marchosias forced us to perform in front of him. “At those times, your souls mixed. You got a bit of hers, and she yours. Now hold on, I’m getting there,” he says, holding up his hands to forestall me interrupting him. “When you finally took her maidenhead, every bit of soul that was in her at the time transferred to you. In truth, that’s all that was required to complete the demon’s trap, but you’re a good lad and didn’t stop there. Had you done so, then you would indeed be linked to each other. However, like I said, you’re a good lad and when you finished, you transferred some of your soul back to her. Since your soul had some of hers, she was able to take it, and use it for her own. Ya dig?”

The way he says it seems to make perfect sense, and I wonder that we didn’t figure it all out before, until I remember that I still don’t fully understand all of my abilities.

“I still don’t know why she came back,” I say out loud, not really expecting an answer, but wanting to hear my own voice.

“Because I’ve fallen in love with you, dolt!” A golden blur flashes to my face, and she stops, hovering close enough that I can’t focus on her features. I can make out that her hands are on her hips. Never a good sign when a woman does that to you.

“Which brings up another point,” Shemhazau says happily. “The real reason Generators were killed off so many centuries ago and why interbreeding has been outlawed.”

The crazy old man has my complete attention again, though I take a moment to reach out and carefully place Areth back on my shoulder. She huffs in my ear, and I can feel her fist strike me, but her heart isn’t in the blow.

“Not all Generators get their ability to garner power the way you do, Lyden. You owe that fun ability to your father. He was once a King of the Succubae. However, all Generators gather loyal followers. Loyalty can come in many shapes and sizes, but it’s not unheard of for a Generator to amass an army of very loyal friends.”

“And the Pillars couldn’t handle any challenge to their power,” Brooke says, understanding.

“Some of them, yes,” Shemhazau nods. “Gaia, and the Pillars of Light and Dark didn’t push for it, but the other three did. In the end, Light and Dark couldn’t bring themselves to care enough to oppose it, and Gaia wasn’t strong enough on her own.” He looks around the room. For the first time I catch a glimpse of his eyes. Light colored, but still too dim to make out clearly. “And the only way to produce Generators is through interbreeding.”

“So it’s safe to have mixed children?” Angela asks. There is no mistaking the hope in her voice.

“Of course not,” he replies with that large smile of his. “It’s still true that they could go mad, and with the unpredictability of their powers, that has the potential to cause massive trouble.” The succubus’s face drops as her hopes are dashed. “But it’s not as big a fear as the Pillars pretend it is.”

New hope light’s Angela’s eyes, and I see it reflected in Brooke’s green orbs. Somehow I think this latest revelation has just created a whole new level of complications for me. I think back about Sheila, and wonder what her decision will be.

“Now back to the real reason you’re here, son; the curse.” The way this insane man keeps changing subjects has my head spinning, and I find myself sitting unexpectedly, Areth squeaking in surprise in my ear. “The curse can’t be broken, but it can be augmented and lived with.”

“How?” Angela asks.

“I’m so glad you asked,” he states, almost like a T.V. personality. “It’ll take three things: Muramasa, which you have, Masamune, which I have,” with a flourish of his wrist, a blade that looks identical to mine—except the blade is pitch black, where mine is a shiny chrome—appears in his hand, “and a talisman to work between the two.”

“He can’t just hold Masamune to have the curse changed?” Areth asks.

“He could, but it would drive him insane as both blades would constantly war over his mind. He would be the battlefield between.” The old man shakes his head sadly. “You have a strong mind, Lyden as evidenced by the fact that you haven’t gone mad yet, but you would never withstand the force of both blades. The good news is that, in the words of Meatloaf, ‘Two out of three ain’t bad,’ and I just happen to know who has the needed talisman.”

“The man who killed my parents,” I say tonelessly.

Brooke jumps at my words, and it only then occurs to me that we are going to have to go after her old commander. I really must be off balance mentally for it to have taken me this long to figure that out.

“He
can’t
!” the redhead nearly screams. “If Lyden draws that blade again, I don’t think the real Lyden will come back. Commander Douglas is a renowned swordsman. I don’t know of anyone that can stand up to him and survive. Or anyone who ever has.”

“One man did, though barely,” Shemhazau says wistfully. “That is why you must accompany him, assassin.” For some reason, his voice fills with anger at the title as if he’s accusing Brooke with it.

“I’m no better with this hand,” she says, holding up her right hand with its missing and shortened fingers.

Shemhazau smiles as he approaches her, but I can see it doesn’t reach his eyes. Taking her maimed hand in his, he softly kisses each finger. I hear Brooke gasp with each touch of his lips. When he steps away, the assassin is staring at her hand. Each finger is whole, and looking healthy once more. The flesh of the new digits is a light pink color.