Dear Diary,
Denise emerged from the boss’s office this morning looking well fed and very satisfied with herself. To my finely tuned senses she appeared to be trailing sex, like the vapour trail of a plane. She winked at me as she walked past, and I had to laugh, guessing that Ian wouldn’t be firing her for her unplanned, unexplained week’s absence.
From the far side of the room, Dorothy scowled openly and murderously at the both of us. Ian himself didn’t emerge for some time, and when he did I could sense his fatigue. He smiled furtively at Denise, though, before heading off to his meeting.
I caught Dorothy eyeing me darkly, and I smiled brightly back at her. I’m looking forward to having her again, maybe even this week.
At lunchtime, we skipped lunch and reflected round the world to our favourite beach so that Denise could let her wings and tail out while we made love. (She’s been at her home since Saturday morning, trying to convince her family that she’s fine and generally trying to apologise for frightening them so badly by disappearing without a word.)
‘How are you adjusting to winglessness?’ I asked her as we relaxed afterwards.
‘I can still feel them in a way,’ she said. ‘I keep wanting to shake them loose, and I hate when people walk through where I think they are. It’s strange – I’ve only had them a week but I can’t imagine not having them.’
On Friday I managed to track Meri down. She’s living with some Spanish cardinal – she’s always had a thing for men of the cloth – who knows what she is but doesn’t care, despite that he preaches regularly about sexual abstinence and the importance of marriage before God.
Meri’s beautiful. I had a crush on her for years, used to follow her around and spy on her, until she caught me one day and gave me a thorough whipping – which had me in tears begging for mercy at the time, but the memory of it makes me tingle with excitement whenever I am around her.
Her wings and tail are a rich, deep emerald green, threaded with veins of gold like sunshine. Her long, black, wavy hair and olive skin give her a Mediterranean aspect, her dark eyes hinting at fiery passion tempered by cool intelligence.
Meridiana was the first succubus and is a maternal ancestor of all us succubi. Which means, of course, that Denise and I are related in some close way, perhaps even third or fourth cousins. But as succubi our powers are much diluted compared to Meri’s. Even when she’s trying her hardest to disguise herself as an ordinary human, her mere presence is intoxicating, infusing the air with lustful urgency.
I once saw a man lose control of himself and grab her for a kiss, his hands tearing frantically at her dress. A heartbeat later he fell to the ground, clutching his hands to his crotch. With an expression of bewildered pleasure on his face, he stared at her in awe as he convulsed ecstatically, and within a minute he was dead. Meri’s not usually so vindictive, but it was the end of a very troublesome day for her and she was already in a foul mood before getting assaulted by someone she wouldn’t normally look twice at.
Denise was completely in awe of Meri, tripping over her words whenever she spoke, blushing furiously every time Meri looked at her. I can’t hold it against her – after all, I used to be the same way. It was difficult not be jealous, though, watching the two of them flying together over Lake Constance on Saturday morning, even knowing that, romantically, Meri’s only interested in men.
However, Meri did show Denise how to hide her wings and tail inside the Mirror World. It’s quite a neat trick, and works just as well with other parts of the body. The difficult bit is doing it in a way that leaves your skin looking moderately scarred rather than horribly disfigured, and Denise has a long way to go to master that.
Francis James Franklin (Alina Meridon) 