Late Bloomer: A Succubus Comes of Age, page 13
“You have a washing machine, don’t you?” I asked. “Does that make you the odd one out?”
“I don’t do dry cleaning. Don’t forget, most of the people who can afford to be here aren’t individuals you’re likely to meet at a mini-mart downtown. Eden makes sure all needs get catered to, no matter how small.”
“Why isn’t anyone else out?”
“Most visitors tend to have late nights. The day doesn’t truly start until afternoon. It’s part of the reason I had Thomas swing by when he did yesterday; I hoped that by sending you out during quiet hours, you wouldn’t be as overwhelmed.”
“Oh.” I straightened at that. “That was very considerate of you.”
Lanfen tapped her forehead. “I can be a bit ditzy, but never let it be said I don’t have an eye for detail.” She turned her head to the right at an upcoming corner. “See that slope? Once we crest it, we’re practically there.”
I squeezed the fabric of my dress near my stomach, bracing myself for what was to come.
Fog clung close to the ground on the approach to Lilith’s demesne. The cobbles changed in color, from gray to nearly black. The light of distant lamps did little to illuminate the way, as the landscape appeared to drink their glow with a dithering hunger.
The area was nothing like the Eden I’d seen up to this point. Flowers were replaced by evergreens. Yew and juniper abounded here, forming formal hedge rows and spiraling topiaries centered upon a structure that looked built at the zenith of Ancient Rome.
Corinthian columns, judiciously carved from soapstone, were separated by heavy swaths of jewel-toned, royal blue fabric. Braziers, perched upon effigies of dancing nymphs, glowed with otherworldly light. It wasn’t fire, that much was clear. Instead, it cast rays against the surroundings like the refractions at the bottom of a pool.
The carriage stopped between two statues of Atlas, bearing the weight of worlds upon their backs. Lanfen stepped down first, offered her hand, and helped me do the same.
The pegasi trotted off without a single pat on the back, clearly having something better to do.
“Are you sure we’re allowed to be here?” I asked, my voice dropping to a near-whisper.
This place was quiet; deafeningly so. It made a library feel like a festival by comparison.
“We’re expected,” Lanfen said back normally. She waved me to her side, already several steps ahead. “Come on. Let’s not keep her waiting.”
We weren’t alone, as I came to find out. Female figures passed in distant corridors, the quiet punctuated by muffled conversations. Most of them had tails swishing behind freely, an already marked difference from the sisters I knew who kept their appendages much closer to their centers.
Some, I thought, looked familiar. They offered polite smiles when Lanfen and I passed. More than a few gave encouraging or nostalgic grins when they spotted my robe.
I didn’t know whether I felt at home here, or out of place. Unlike the building itself, these ladies were styled in crisp office wear, dazzling in semi-precious stones and their drop-pearl accessories, whereas I looked like a cautionary tale for the dangers of alcohol consumption.
“Do all of them work here?” I wondered aloud.
“Most do. Some are visiting from out of town. At least a couple are between assignments at the moment.”
“Do they have to check in if they’re not with clients?”
“Not if they don’t feel like it.” Lanfen swiped a drupe of grapes from a side table as we passed, plucking one in her mouth. “The only reason you needed an appointment made is because this is your first meeting. No succubus needs a reason to come here. Lilith’s estate is our sanctuary. You can even live here, if you wished.”
“What do people do here, if they work for Lilith directly?”
Lanfen offered me some fruit, but I shook my head, too queasy to down anything. She shrugged and continued leading me through a winding corridor.
“Secretarial work, mostly. We have an accounting department that handles anything you can think of; operating expenses, education funds for the girls still living in hostels, and payroll for third parties we contract work out to, just to list some examples. We’ve got an internal hr department to help resolve issues in-family, and external to help manage vendors before they snowball into pr issues. And if pr is struggling then legal gets involved. You do not want legal involved. Oh.” She came to a sudden stop, and regarded me with a sly look. “The basement is where we have the spa and yoga studio, all operated by our own. I highly recommend going at least once.”
“So if Eden is like a city, then Lilith’s place is the city within the city.”
“Precisely.” Lanfen stopped before the portal of a beaded curtain, strung with cut crystal. “I wouldn’t call this place downtown—we have one of those here already. But make no mistake about it, Lilith’s home is the true heart of Eden.” She pulled the beads aside with one hand, motioning me in with the other.
I swallowed hard, futilely tried to relax my shoulders, and stepped over the threshold.
A courtyard spread before my eyes, complete with inlaid marble and towering junipers. What took me by surprise was the sky; I could see the sun. It was a welcome sight after the past two days. I didn’t realize how much I missed it, or how long time felt here, until its gentle rays kissed my skin.
The sound of tinkling laughter drew my attention deeper. Lanfen nudged me from the back.
There, beneath a pavilion with a stained glass dome, lounged a handful of women, their conversation interspersed with outbreaks of mirth.
One noticed my approach, and tapped her nearest partner on the elbow. Four of the five quickly gathered their belongings and continued down the winding path beyond. A solitary figure, her back facing me, remained lounging in a chaise.
“Hey Boss Lady!” Lanfen called from over my shoulder. “I brought the bud.”
“That’s nice, dear,” Lilith replied. “But did you bring the girl?”
“Har-har. Here she is.”
I was practically pushed into the bench opposite the reclining figure.
Lilith was a buxom woman, her flesh full and glowing like polished mahogany beneath the sun. She exuded health, and appeared no older than someone in her thirties—but that wasn’t quite right.
Her gaze was intense, even when she didn’t make a point to stare, and felt ancient somehow, as though she could convey the weight of time the longer she looked in my direction.
The woman sat upright in a single, languid swing; her box braids, each ending in a golden bell, rang sweetly in her wake.
“You must be Gabby,” she declared, fingering a cigarette extender between two long digits. “How has Lanfen been treating you?”
“Very well… ma’am.”
“Ma’am?” Her eyes widened. She swayed back, beaming at my guardian. “Did you hear that? I haven’t been called ma’am in a minute! Sweet child, there’s no need for honorifics. We’re all family here.”
“Then what should I call you?”
“Take your pick,” she answered with a dry note. “Lilith does just fine. Clowns like Lanfen here will call me boss, lady, ‘hey you’, and more colorful epithets if you’re feeling frisky.”
I blanched. “That… doesn’t offend you?”
“As long as you don’t put any real venom behind it, I couldn’t care less. I’ve handled being called a demon by humans for millennia now—everything else is quaint by comparison.”
One of the women that left earlier returned with a tray in hand. She knelt at the table between us and set out a number of beverages, including tea, coffee, mineral water, and a carafe of juice.
“Help yourself to anything you like, Gabby.” Lilith eyed Lanfen, who was already reaching for her drink of choice, with unabashed amusement. “Don’t be shy, just like this one.”
“Shyness doesn’t wet my whistle,” Lanfen retorted.
“Then pour me some coffee while you’re at it.”
They bantered, or bickered, for a minute longer. All the while, I took in the presence before me.
Lilith felt feline in her movements. Even her breathing was measured in such a way that the rise and fall of her chest bore more in common with a lounging hunting cat than a woman.
Her long hair, with box braids done half way before falling in distinct ringlets, shone with the glossiness of sunlit water. There was something sanguine and imperceptibly… lethal. Every word was punctuated by a barely-there smirk, a zest for life that could just as easily transform into wrath.
I recalled what Lanfen told me the night before. Lilith was the land of Eden itself. She was primordial, and glorious—all wrapped up in the deceptively delicate form called woman.
She grabbed me by the wrists, and I jolted into present focus. There was something deeply disconcerting about looking into a smiling face, but being unable to decipher the eyes in it.
They changed colors, I noticed. Brown, to gray, to green, and back in no particular order.
“You sculpted Pygmalion?” Lilith asked me, clueing me into the topic of the moment.
I nodded before I fully registered the question, finding it difficult to pull away from her startling gaze. “I did.”
“My attendants mention it often when they come in from town. I was so curious that Hel fashioned a replica for my office. Immediately, I knew why it caught the girls’ attention.”
Lanfen nudged me with the tip of her boot from her rocking chair. “It’s her favorite paperweight.”
“It was my favorite paperweight,” Lilith corrected her. “We’ve gone completely paperless since then. Now it has a place of honor in the alcove across my desk.”
I blinked, not sure how to take that information. “If I’d known you liked it so much, I would’ve been happy to make a scale model for you.”
“One day you might, if you felt like it. Oh, I’d commission the piece from you, of course,” she insisted with a wave of her hand. “But it’ll have to wait a while yet. It takes time to settle into a routine after blooming, and I’m sure you’ll find better avenues to pursue at the start.”
And there it was, I thought—the reason for all of this.
Lilith leaned forward as though conspiring with a confidant, and not some younger succubus so far down the totem pole I couldn’t tell the top from the sky above us.
“Feel free to ask me anything. I usually get to meet the little ones several times before the big event, but since you’re an exceptionally late bloomer, we haven’t the same luxury. Be as blunt as you feel like. I won’t bite.”
“You could,” Lanfen couldn’t resist adding.
Lilith side-eyed her with an expression at once inviting and exasperated. “You, on the other hand, know better.”
Ask?
What could I possibly ask the Succubus Queen?
I knew why succubi were important in a paranormal universe. I understood we were more than glorified surrogates. Lanfen explained the reason behind the pomp and ceremony that went into the blooming ceremony. It seemed like I had everything I needed in order to do the deed.
And yet, I did want to ask this woman—the first woman—so many things. Irony is cruel in how hard I struggled to find the words to form the questions.
“Why?” I asked finally, wincing at how stupid I sounded.
“Why?”
“Why this?” I waved at the world around us, not sure how to get my intention across. “What made you decide to turn Eden into what it is now?”
Her brows arched a bit. Lilith tilted her head to the side, regarding me with a bemused grin.
“You ask, of course, with the assumption that Eden was quite different.”
“I highly doubt the Big Guy had a red-light district in mind for his city on a hill.”
She and Lanfen laughed as one.
“Yahweh? You’d be surprised by that one. He’s a capricious sort at the best of times. For all the artistic license humanity takes with historical records, the Old Testament was shockingly true to form. The sacrifices, the flood.” She sighed heavily. “Eden was made as a trophy. Age and sickness have no place in a garden where everything is in its prime. And it bored him, simple as that.”
“That doesn’t technically answer her question,” Lanfen pointed out.
“No?” she asked. “Put another way, he let me do as I pleased after he abandoned it. The man is much too petty to ever allow mortals back in himself—the saints would have an absolute field day, let me tell you—so I decided to take a swing at being the gardener. Not to toot my own horn, but I think I did rather well, don’t you?”
I shifted in my seat, unsure what to make of that.
Lilith reclined, set aside her smoking tool, and rested both arms over the back of her seat.
“I never wanted to start this business.”
My eyes drew towards her at that sentence, like she shot a grappling hook around my heart.
“I did want to experience motherhood,” she admitted freely enough. “As you might imagine, Adam and Eve would run into an inbreeding problem sooner rather than later without some outside intervention.”
I thought about the obvious fact; succubi don’t give birth to anything genetically our own. We’re uniquely immune to hereditary disorders.
“Do you know what parthenogenesis is?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a form of reproduction,” Lilith explained. “Mammals can’t fully realize it—it tends to crop up as tumors and other growths in women during the rare cases it manifests. But I’m not just any woman. I was made from the land of plenty, not an offshoot of a man’s rib.”
I raised my eyebrow, not quite catching her drift. “Are you saying you’re intersex?”
“Oh no.” She laughed. “Parthenogenesis is, simply put, giving birth without male fertilization. A virgin birth, you might say. The catch is that offspring born in this way are always female.”
“Okay.”
Lilith motioned to Lanfen with a tip of her head, and my jaw slackened in understanding.
“That’s how more succubi were created,” I stated, more than asked.
“All free women, without the burden of original sin,” Lilith confirmed with a nod. “Though the tails came as a surprise to me, along with the fact that none of my daughters can have offspring of their own, the way I did. Be that as it may, I loved them then, and I love you now—whether you grow a tail or not.”
Lanfen and I exchanged glances. She nodded slightly, giving weight to the woman’s proclamation.
“I don’t know how to feel right now,” I told them both. “From our earliest days, we’re told we don’t have a normal family. We don’t have fathers, or brothers, and the closest mother figures in our lives are the older aunts, and sisters; so many sisters.”
“What’s confusing about it, Gabby?” Lilith wondered.
“I-I just—” I crossed my arms over my knees, starting at my inward pointing toes. “Love is a really strange concept for me when all I’ve known are glorified roommates. Roommates that have taken very, very good care of me,” I felt the need to interject, “and are ten feet up everyone else’s business on the best days, but still.”
Lilith sighed, grabbing the drink Lanfen set out for her earlier. She didn’t seem dismissive of what I said. Rather tired, I thought.
“I like late bloomers,” Lilith began after a pause. “To a one, you’re conscientious, and tend to live in your own minds. Being able to talk at length, once you break out that shell you’ve built around you, is a gift I greatly cherish. But there is a downside to being one of the last men standing—to borrow a phrase—it’s the introversion, bordering isolation, that can warp our vision of the world.”
I wrinkled my nose at that. “You’re calling me warped?”
“Your perspective, dear. You are perfect as you are.” She stood up and stretched, pacing around the back of her seat. “I’m well aware that what I’ve built here is not a perfect system. The ignorance and mystery that surrounds young succubi living in hostels is for their own protection. Sadly, this means the later the bloomer, the more disenchanted they become. I know it’s hard,” she said at length, looking at me directly. “I know what it feels like, watching the people you knew grow and evolve without you. I know what it means to be left behind, and the sense of loss that percolates in the accompanying void. And as much as we may want to move forward, there comes a paralyzing fear. What if there’s something wrong? What if there’s a reason we haven’t progressed?”
It felt like she was in my head, reciting the content of my thoughts back to me. I slackened, watching her move along the pavilion’s edge, her fingers tousling curtains of ivy.
“Sweet child, there’s nothing wrong with you. In Eden, where all things are in their prime, it’s easy to forget that everything has its season. This is what it means to bloom. You aren’t expired, and you aren’t flawed. You’re coming into your own precisely when you’re ready—even if it feels sudden,” she added, looking over her shoulder to cast an understanding smile.
“What did you mean before? About not wanting to start your business?”
“Ah. That.” Lilith squared her shoulders, and clasped her hands behind her back. “Succubi were free to do what they liked, where they liked, with whomever they liked. If anything was exchanged between parties, it was up to the individuals involved. No rules. No regulations. But then people came to focus on our gifts, and concentrate on ways they could be exploited.”
She sat back down, staring into a darker time, the corners of her mouth curving down in a slight, but definite, frown.
“It’s an old story. When enemies are introduced to an ecosystem, their favored prey band together. My frightened children flocked to my side. To say I was outraged would be… an understatement.”
“The ground shook from her fury, so it’s said,” Lanfen interjected.
Lilith laughed. “I wouldn’t go that far. And yet, it’s not far from the truth either.” She exhaled deeply. “I wrangled the greater powers of our realms together, and laid down the ground rules. Succubi would help, but on terms highly favorable to us, and if anyone wished for our services they would first have to prove themselves worthy.”
