v2 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: In which shades of skin and shapes of water both receive unexpected commentary.

An electronic chime dinged as Una stepped through the sliding doors into the drugstore chain. She hadn’t felt this nervous since… Well, since the last time I was trying hard to look like a normal person, she realized. When was that, anyway? My last sermon, when I was trying to pass as Father Michael Belmont?

She had tinted sunglasses to distract from her eyes, and Susan’s floppy hat barely covering her horns. Her tail, as usual, coiled around her hips like a low-slung belt, cozy and contented. Still, the hat rode awkwardly high on Una’s head, pushed up by the bony ridges it concealed. The old trench coat she’d grabbed made her feel like she was in a noir film, or perhaps a miniatures war-gaming convention.

The cunningly designed boots let her cloven hooves slot into the ankle, then extended into a hard, light toe that felt like wearing a long slipper. They made her calves look even longer, but at least they didn’t have downy fur.

It felt impossible for her to stroll casually through the fluorescent lighting of the 24-hour drugstore when she looked like this. What are other people seeing? Maybe a tall, slender woman whose body curved out in all the right places, wearing a skin-tight leather suit under her coat… and red skin paint, maybe? That was enough to earn her stares.

Una glanced down at her cleavage, realized she’d left the top of her bike suit unzipped again, and pulled the zipper up. No need to expose so much of the girls, she thought. When did I pick up the habit of showing off cleavage?

Father Michael Belmont had been anything but an exhibitionist; he’d been negligent or downright uncomfortable with his physicality. But as Micki, she’d wore slinky, low-cut dresses with exuberance. I wasn’t quite as well-endowed at that point, but I thought I’d feel that way forever: excited for everyone to see me as who I was.

Perhaps that feeling had been “gender euphoria,” the sensation that the way she looked and moved through the world simply… felt right. She’d read that term in works by transgender authors, just prior to her fateful encounter with Thomas Spencer’s “extraction team.” What happened to that feeling? Maybe it’s the red skin, the bigger horns, the hooves… I’m expecting some old lady to scream “demon!” at any minute.

Then again, this was New York. Most people just didn’t care, or were too busy studying their phones. A disaffected teenager with lank black hair stared at her sleepily while he rang up her pile of sundries: sutures, bandages, antiseptic, antibacterial wipes, pads, flour, sugar, eggs, milk, bacon.

“Star Wars cosplay,” the cashier commented as he scanned an item.

“Huh?” Una had been staring at her food, wondering when the big drugstore chains had also become grocery stores.

“Are you supposed to be a Datho—Dathomir… I forget what they’re called. The red ones?”

Una shook her head. “No… I think I’d have to have some spikes on my face for that, right? I’m just… trying something out.”

“That must be nanotech, huh? Looks way better than makeup.” The cashier had finished bagging her items, but was leaning forward now, squinting at her cheeks. “Cool, you can barely tell it’s not real…”

“Yeah, it’s premium nanotech… or something like that!” Una flashed a quick grin, then remembered her canines were sharper than human standard. She grabbed the bag and hurried out of the store.

***

They bandaged Susan’s arm first. It really was healing at an unnatural rate, as if the trickles of golden energy wanted to sew her closed. The store-bought sutures seemed to help, although the center of the bite was a ragged indentation. I just hope I didn’t swallow… some of Susan’s arm, thought Una, before worrying that the thought didn’t bother her nearly as much as she’d expected.

“…probably a good sign,” Susan was saying.

Una blinked. “Sorry, what’s a good sign?”

Susan reached over and stroked her cheek affectionately. “My distracted one. Remember, I told you how that evil old nun, or lamia, or whatever she is, slashed my throat? It healed right away. This is taking far longer… and I’m relieved. The angelic energy isn’t all-powerful, it recedes.”

Susan stretched out her slender arms, inspecting their relative lack of muscle as evidence of her hypothesis. “I was quite desperate to get the overflowing essence out of me. But maybe I should have rearranged my furniture while I still had bodybuilder muscles!” She smirked, but Una could scent her worry.

“Did you like being so big and strong? You looked like an amazon warrior out of legend in those white robes.” Susan wore a bathrobe now, and the fluffy blue fabric swallowed her soft, slender form as much as it ever had.

“Hmmm. It was definitely different. Powerful and distracting. I wouldn’t mind using that form to wrestle with you…  we could see who’s stronger while you’re at full power!” Her grin was impish, and Una squirmed a little, pressing her thighs together. Susan couldn’t help but notice, and reached over to stroke Una’s tail, which had worked its way towards her side.

Una reacted with a small yelp and a shiver. “Well, if you’re dealing with this condition anyway, maybe at some point…”

Susan’s smile faded. “Hot though it might be, seems like it took two traumatic events in under 72 hours for the power to affect my body that way? And even when you bit me just now, I only felt a small surge. I suppose we could try waiting a week before stabbing myself in the stomach?” Una shook her head, blanching.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Susan continued. “And I don’t really want to accelerate any of this, especially since it affects me… mentally.” She looked uncomfortable.

“Would it help to talk about it?” Una’s gaze was serious and kind, the stare of someone accustomed to hearing many confessions over many years.

“I… I don’t know how to describe it.” Susan’s mouth wrinkled in distaste. “Everything seems clearer, and calmer. But I have strange impulses.”

Una waited, listening. Finally, Susan spoke again. “All right, I can show you. Especially since many of them seem to involve… you.”

The succubus watched as Susan rose and took a wineglass from a kitchen cabinet, then filled it with tap water, almost to the brim. She balanced it carefully; the liquid brimmed to the edge of the glass. Then she kneeled before Una, her eyes downcast.

Seconds ticked by before Una asked, “…am I supposed to do something?”

Susan looked up at her, and her eyes shimmered with moisture. “I wish I knew, mistress.”

Then Una remembered another time Susan had filled a container of water for her: the time they’d scried to find a hate-filled demon. How did I do it that time? She reached out and touched the water, remembering how a tingle of energy had traced its way up her arm.

Something like a static shock leaped from her finger to the surface of the water. The brimful glass did not overflow. Instead, water rose out of the glass. It poured impossibly upwards, then split into three streams that wound around themselves. In moments, three spheres of water hovered at eye level, becoming smooth as a laminar flow, as if each drawn inwards by a gravitational core. The three spheres revolved around each other at changing angles.

“What…” Una began. But Susan was reaching out with her other hand, a faint glow surrounding her fingers as they moved to intercept the spheres.

“Apospasma prasada fracta.” Susan spoke, with a hollow echo accompanying her voice; a rushing like wind filled Una’s ears. The glow from Susan’s fingers encompassed the spheres, and Una saw her eyes burning with the same light. “Submission.”

The spheres became still, shrunk, and vanished, leaving behind a fading haze of light. Susan slumped to the floor.

Before Una could jump to her side, Susan got up. “Did—did you catch the words I said?”

“I think so? It sounded like Sanskrit, and Greek…” She recited as best she could, and Susan recorded the words in a notebook.

“I’ll look that up later.” The young scholar’s mouth was set in a determined line. “But I think that’s enough damage for one day…” She lifted a hand to forestall Una’s apology. “That’s all on me. I take risks to understand what’s going on, but within limits.”

Dawn crept in, but the pair felt exhausted enough to collapse into each other’s arms on Susan’s pillow-strewn couch. Hours later, rising out of a dreamless sleep, Una cooked pancakes and bacon. They ate wrapped in blankets, and Una felt a twinge of regret when she recalled the days she’d lived here.

She’d spent only a week in Susan’s guest bedroom, but had fled when Thomas Spencer arrived, in search of a demon to exorcise. Maybe now that he’s gone, I could move back in, she thought. Maybe this is the normal life I’ve been dreaming about.

But a sobering thought pestered Una. What about Nezz? Assuming he’s still roaming the area, will Susan be safe?

She felt too weary to keep dwelling on decisions that she could postpone for hours or days. Susan and Una dozed some more after breakfast, woke and spent some time reading, and caught up on everything else they hadn’t talked about.

Susan’s expression kept darkening as Una related the full story of her imprisonment. At some moments, she looked like she wanted to strangle someone, and Susan rarely looked so angry. The story was a bad memory for her and a new shock for Susan. She recounted the abuse and manipulation she’d suffered at the hands of Spencer and his staff: ancient supernatural creatures disguised as nuns, Sherill’s brainwashed father, and for a time, Una herself.

Susan noticed her mistress lapsing into a troubling silence now and then; there were clearly parts Una wouldn’t talk about. Instead, the succubus lapsed into silence, staring at the wall or out the window.

“You’ve… been through an awful lot recently.” Susan took Una’s red hand in her own pale pair. “Sometimes time is healing, but maybe you should talk to someone?”

Una scoffed. “Talk to who? I don’t think there are demon therapists.”

“You’d be surprised. Everyone needs someone to talk to, and New York is a big place. I’m not saying a literal demon therapist, but well… specialists. Not like Dr. Avakian, or the hospital staff who treated you when…”

Susan trailed off before recounting how Una had been hospitalized—following an attack by two demon-swayed men who tried to force themselves on her.

The succubus lifted her hand away from Susan and rubbed her own temples, just beneath her horns. Her hand covered her uncanny yellow eyes.

“Sure, maybe,” she said after a time. “If there’s someone you’d truly recommend, I’d consider it. I trust you.”

Susan managed a weak smile when Una met her eyes. “I’ll make some calls. I’ve got to get some help for my own… condition, so it’s no extra trouble, really.”

The day had come and was in the process of departing already. It proved to be the sort of day where rest and recuperation from unexpected crises lead you towards the same corner of the couch, again and again.

Now the sun was setting, and Susan led Una in search of fresh air—not down to the street, where she’d worn an awkward disguise hours before, but back to the rooftop. They sat on the edge of the roof and watched the colors of the sky change. One of us can fly, Una thought, and the other seems to be invulnerable. I guess we can sit where we like.

“Thank you.” Susan draped one arm around Una’s neck. The succubus had finally pulled off the black leather bike suit. Instead, she’d borrowed even more clothing from Susan: a white V-neck athletic shirt, stretched tight over her chest, and a pair of black gym shorts.

“Thanks for what?” asked Una. “Crashing at your place again? Trying to devour your flesh?”

Susan stroked Una’s cheek. “No, I was thinking about how you helped me at great personal expense. While rocking my body with a massive orgasm. And how brave you were at the black site, and with the refugees… and before that, when you led Nezz away.”

Una whistled at a low pitch. “At least there’s been no sign of the archdemon since. Maybe that thing just crashed off into the wilderness somewhere… Although you’d think people would notice a building-sized demonic manifestation chewing up the ground?”

Susan tilted her head, quizzical. “You said you… defeated him, right? And that he ran off after that, but you didn’t mention anything else.”

“Bested him?” Una’s perfect forehead creased slightly. “If you mean I flew off and lost him, I suppose. I suspect he just couldn’t find me, maybe because of the altitude.”

“No,” Susan said, shaking her head. “At my parents’ house, you told me you proved your dominance over him, in a succubus kind of way. Sexually. That’s how you could absorb that essence of his, the nectar of control, right?”

It was Una’s turn to frown. “I mean… yeah. Didn’t I extract that from him at the compound… when I faced him in the basement? That was after I dealt with Spencer’s desire to control me sexually. The entire experience was incredibly chaotic. Maybe I’m misremembering something. But I think I’d know if I dominated Nezz. Did I really tell you that?”

Susan seemed to be on the verge of saying something, a wary look in her eye. Instead, she paused, then tugged Una close and kissed her. The two shared a deep and extended kiss, their lips gliding across each other tenderly. “I’m probably the one not getting things straight. I’ve never been good at straight.”

She sighed and leaned back against the warm surface of the rooftop. “I’m glad we had this time. But I suppose we’d better think about tomorrow. Everything lying before us.”

Una slid over to let her hips touch Susan’s side, and let her long calves dangle over the edge, the tips of her hooves grazing the brick wall of the building. “You want to make a list of unfinished business, like we used to at the parish?”

“Sure,” said Susan. “I’ll start. Our refugees, for a lack of a better term… the former test subjects from the black site. And John. I’m sure they’re in excellent hands, but I can’t help but worry… I mean, what exactly happened between him and Monsignor Albert? What has he gotten tangled up in?”

Una nodded. “I could try to find out, but it won’t be easy to show my pretty little red face down there to find out. When I went to the drugstore earlier, the kid at the register thought I was using some kind of nanotech makeup. But I don’t think that notion will keep me incognito with the Church, or Nezz. I’m hesitant to walk around on the street. Maybe I could fly down there at night?”

Susan peered at Una, then brushed a hand gently across her hair and the graceful arc of her right horn. “Hmm. Flying is a little dangerous inside the city’s airspace. However, there might be a few things we can do about your look.” Susan had an expression which Una knew meant her mental gears were turning. “You’re right. Your gorgeous burgundy skin will be tricky. What else is on our list?”

“You and your seed of the sacred tree,” Una noted with a sideways glance.

“Let me worry about that. I have research to do.” Susan’s clipped tone suggested no further discussion was needed.

Una nodded silently. “Then there’s Cassandra, and whatever happens with her family. She left with barely a goodbye, and before that she was…”

“Even more dour than usual?” Susan finished, and they both giggled. “Her family is… complicated. They live in a remote estate, and they’ve been known to summon the young’uns back to the family farm. Plus, they’re very strict about… well, they make my parents look like progressive feminists.”

Una grimaced. Serving the Church in a cosmopolitan city like New York was one thing; you could slip in some unorthodox views among liberal parishioners. Hell, it was part of why she’d relished the plum assignment as a pastor here, years ago. But Una imagined a rural farm home for generations of fanatic demon-killers was vastly more conservative; probably more so than Susan’s suburban upbringing with the formerly uptight Carol Miller.

Una felt Susan squeeze her shoulder lightly, so she responded. “Hmm… maybe you should be the one to reach out to Cassandra? You two seemed pretty… close last time I saw you together?”

Una thought she saw a faint blush creep across Susan’s cheeks. “Yeah, she likes me a lot. In a different way than you and I.” Susan let her hand trail fondly along Una’s back, down to her tail. “She’s an old-fashioned butch who enjoys working hard to please her femme in and out of bed.”

“And she’s all right with… our whole situation?” Una allowed her tail to do what it wanted to: curl around Susan’s wrist.

Susan murmured affirmatively into Una’s hair as she planted a soft kiss on the back of her lover’s neck. “We talked about it before we fucked the first time.” Susan’s free hand now traveled south along Una’s abs, reaching towards her hip bones, tracing gentle circles. “Cassandra understands my orientation—or rather, that I prefer many partners. And that I have a special bond with you.”

Una inhaled sharply as Susan’s fingers teased towards her shorts. “Is… our list done yet, Miss Miller?”

Susan laughed and ticked off her mental checklist. “One, the refugees, with John and Monsignor Albert. Two, my angel seed problem. Three, your desire to move around without drawing so much attention. Four, Nezz—” She paused, seeing a muddled look cross Una’s face again. “Let me worry about that one for right now.”

“In that case, I’ll take the next one: Five, Maria. What do you think is going on with those horns on her forehead? Am I really doing to her what Yael did to Father Michael?”

Susan pondered the question. If she had a pen up here, Una thought, she’d be tapping her lower lip right about now.

“Are you somehow transforming her into a succubus? That’s the question? I don’t think so—it took Yael an extended effort to transform you, and you haven’t been trying to do that. Probably something else, but you should keep an eye on her.” Una nodded.

“Six, Cassandra. Seven is figuring out what you and I are doing with each other…” Susan kissed Una softly on the cheek as she trailed off. Una turned towards her kiss, meeting Susan’s lips with her own as their eyes fluttered shut.

“So far you’re taking the even numbers and I’m doing odds,” she murmured close to the other girl’s lips, her eyes still closed. “So I can think of a few things I could do with you… butches aren’t the only ones who can work hard.” Una punctuated this remark with a teasing pinch to Susan’s hip; Susan squirmed playfully as they broke their kiss and Una scooted backwards a little to give Susan more room.

But Susan didn’t move towards her. She just adjusted her glasses, then coughed. “Actually, what I meant was… seven is figuring out sone living arrangement stuff.”

Una blinked. “Did you want me to stay in the guest bedroom again?” Even when they’d first moved in, she hadn’t spent too many nights sleeping there; as their connection grew, they ended up more and more in Susan’s bed.

“No…” and now Susan was blushing a little, looking impossibly cute. “What I mean is, I have your key to the loft in Brooklyn. You know, Jay Sigma’s place? I was wondering if… you’d be willing to stay there.”

Inwardly, Una froze. The Brooklyn loft held plenty of fond memories for her, not to mention the clothes, books and her personal items from her old life; it was where she’d spent her relatively happy weeks of self-discovery as Micki, even if she’d struggled with Yael over the fate of their shared body. But… what about Susan?

“Ah. You need some time alone? Or is it… you’re worried about something like the water glass happening again? That I’m an… angelifying influence on you?” Una couldn’t keep the note of rejection out of her voice. That’s not fair of me, she chided herself. I’m a big girl. I don’t need to have cuddles on the couch all the time… but…

Susan reached out and cupped Una’s chin in her palm; her thumb brushed tenderly along Una’s sharp canine as she replied. “Neither of those things is wrong exactly, but neither is true either. I have a lot to do, so do you… Evens and odds, right? And this angel stuff is… well, I do kind of need some privacy. There are other friends I have to catch up with, too.”

Una tried to fight off the hurt feeling. It wasn’t jealousy… not exactly. She knew Susan had plenty of sex partners, friends who she played with, in the parlance of her BDSM community. It’s just that I’m still freaked out and want to be held, she told herself. Susan must feel the same way sometimes: overwhelmed by changes, recent trauma and what we have to do next. But why doesn’t she want me nearby?

Una realized Susan was speaking again: “You can be here whenever you want, of course. You can always call me. I’m yours.” Susan gave her a hopeful look. “I just think we both need some… space sometimes?”

Una forced a smile; Susan leaned in for another kiss, which Una accepted warmly—even as she felt something within her recoil slightly from Susan’s suggestion. Space? After everything we’ve been through together? It felt like a hand squeezing her heart.