Vicky seemed to set aside her annoyance with him as she evaluated the information she was receiving and relayed it to him. “Head North-West for about two miles. That’s our latest reading, though it’s hard to pinpoint…use your instinct. Satellite is doing weird shit. It’s almost like the entire area is pulsing with vis. Star bullets are our best bet with this thing. If it is a succubus and you try to engage in hand-to-hand combat…you won’t win, Jackson.”

“Got it, V.”

“Good luck.”

Jackson switched off the communicator.

Moving swiftly, he swung his firearm to his back and let the vis inside of him do its thing, half-shifting into his more beastly, lupine form: tufts of fur itching out of his arms, legs filling out with the extra bulk of muscle, arching near his feet, his broad chest expanding, stretching the jersey knit of his uniform suit to contort to his new, fuller form. He felt his face change shape as well, with the beginning of a protruding snout, full of teeth biologically designed to snap brittle bone with next to no force, to tear flesh, to kill.

He was ready.

Now shaped into something between human and werewolf, a sensory overload nearly blinded him. His hackles rose to studded peaks as he reevaluated that odd, haunting scent that penetrated the woodsy air. Jackson felt connected to it, whatever it was, almost like he had smelt it before, in a memory that did not belong to him. Disturbingly, it gently fixated him, a carrot on a stick, focusing him, drawing him in.

But if the old myths were true, that succubus could command the fealty of all who possessed vis, then his goal was to ignore that call.

Those points were all that mattered. Ten thousand. That would shed him years off his contracted servitude to the PCA.

Without hesitation or looming second thoughts, he began to run. His cruiser might be faster than him at full speed, but it wouldn’t fare well once the thicket densened in its gnarled complexity. Besides, he was quieter on foot, his feet finding their home on this terrain, weaving through the forest on silent steps as his nose led him towards his prey.

He was approaching his target based on nothing, given that he had never, of course, come across something of this nature. All he had was a direction, a handful of fairy tales, and a single magazine stored with about a dozen star bullets.

Star bullets were the most effective force to administrate when up against any type of paranormal. Containing miniature wooden stakes, holy water, silver, iron, and micro-printed holy scriptures at their core, the ammunition could disable any vis-using paranormal. Containing three chambers to allow the embedment of the anti-paranormal articles, star bullets were the ammunition of choice for the PCA.

Sprinting through the wooded terrain, he felt a presence to his left. Yet as he banked and darted to catch up to the source, he felt the presence move further left. Then further so. It was as though whatever was there was playing with him. Its goal was to circle him and drive him to tornado through the chase, running in circles. Like an assehole.

Abruptly, Jackson stopped.

Whatever hovered close stopped just a fraction of a second later. There was a rustle, and then whatever was there shot off.

With a figure in sight, he made chase. Whoever it was had the stature of a woman, yet there was some kind of draping over their head. Hair, Jackson was late to realize. It hadn’t been obvious, even with his keen vision, with the way that the locks tossed behind her nearly to the forest floor like a flowing veil, white and waved like streaming starlight.

She was fast, whatever she was. She was faster than him, that much was obvious, as well as something that Jackson was unused to. It even seemed as though she paused every few moments, as though she were waiting for him to catch up.

Then she was darting into a clearing, a meadow of ferns with a miniscule abandoned cabin at the far edge of the forest, and Jackson came stumbling after her. Once she was centered in the open space, she finally turned to him.

When their eyes met, Jackson was caught, and held. She was a vision; a paradise mirage and Jackson felt as though he’d been stranded for a millenia. From beyond their locked eyes, he could see that she was naked, yet it didn’t strike him. His focus, and the way that she captured him, was far too intense for him to concern himself with social constructs.

The stunning creature, who could only be the succubs, was surely not a demon. Not with the way her eyes seemed to smile at him. They beckoned him closer, and he was a fly on the wind to protest. Not a demon, but a message from a divine holiness, here to bless him and clear his name of all his sins. Surely.

He wasn’t sure how it happened, or how he came to stand in front of her, but then he was there. Warning bells, like faint pulses hundreds of miles in the depths of an abyss, attempted to call out to him, to stop him from making a life-claiming mistake. But he ignored them, and they swept under.

Still, their gazes held. Disregarding all earlier thoughts of slaying the majestic being before him, he could only stare in awe, his mind numbing until he’d reached a tranquil state where he could focus on nothing else.

She pressed closer to him, or he pressed closer to her, and then their mouths were connecting in a ferocious kiss. It was a violent, bitter thing as she tore his mouth apart painfully, drawing blood. But Jackson didn’t care, as he was finally content in life.

What saved him from the horrendous trance that would have brought his death was pure luck. His rifle had fallen into his hands when sharp claws somehow dug into his shoulder, breaking the strap of the holster. Instinct from muscle memory had him snatch up the weapon, and his calm state of mind had his finger relax over the trigger, causing the rifle to go off.

The succubus shrieked, darting away and clutching at her now-wounded side, looking every bit the bloodied ghost. 

Instantly, whatever spell that she’d placed over him, impairing his common sense, snapped. He roared in frustration at being duped so blatantly, raised his weapon again, and shot.

She shrieked again, furious, her cries guttural and animalistic as her stance crouched to one of attack. 

But she was wounded, now, and her darting movement forward was slower.

The hazy aura around him still called to him, attempting to make connections in the depth of his mind and beg him to not harm the almighty being dying before him. Yet it was a matter of life or death that he ignored that call, and he did so with every single measurable effort. 

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he shot one last time. FInally, the beast fell and stayed there.

For the first time, Jackson now had time to analyze the kill. He took in her slight form, her nakedness, and most importantly, her wounds. His eyes stayed clear of her face, so enraptured was he the first time he had gazed upon her lovely, lethal eyes. 

And then he waited for her to die. 

It took a while for it to happen, and Jackson held his rifle at the ready the entire time. As with all paranormal, he was able to detect when vis creatures ceased to live, as all of their vis energy would leave them, which was a distinct moment he could detect, and then a calm would pass over them.

But because the air was pulsing with vis, dyed and bleeding heavily with it, Jackson didn’t wait a moment. He stood there waiting hours.

It was only then, after standing rigidly, counting the minutes until it was over, did he realize how lucky he was. She had been a powerful, omnipotent being whose supremacy he would not even begin to guess at. Jackson had obviously faced many vis-creatures before, yet he had never, ever doubted his own ability in being able to terminate them. A moment ago, he had still thought that.

Yet standing there, sweating over her dying body, only then did he realize what his kill had been. Luck. Sheer luck.

The sun was setting when he finally believed that the succubus was deceased.

Jackson took a breath, straightened, and replaced the rifle on his shoulder. After punching the manual completion mark of his mission on his task-watch, he turned to leave. The clean-up crew was probably five miles away, tops, hovering just outside the range of danger, waiting to swipe up the fallen paranormal and take the body back to their labs as specimen.

Once he had strode to the edge of the meadow, he stopped. 

Sniffed the air.

Turned.

His eyes scanned the area once more, and stopped on the run-down, abandoned cottage across the way. 

Sniffed again. There was something there. Something he had nearly missed.

He swallowed, realizing that the strange, ominous feeling had not dissipated from the woods. The feeling still hung in the air, soaking into him. Taunting his ignorance of its source.

With a burst of energy generated from his half-wolf form, he bounded over to the cottage in a mere few seconds. Wrenching the door open, he burst into the small dwelling. It was a small, open space; the kitchen cast-iron and frotched over with cobwebs, bits of stray, broken furniture mingled about. There was no lurking creature waiting to attack him, as he had been expecting, for what he sensed was a nearly-muted, skulking vis that hung in the atmosphere like a faint, uncomfortable whisper.

But there was no one here, he was suspicious to realize. At least, that was his next belief until he heard a noise from some of the furniture. It was an old bassinet, too antique to deem it of using condition, that emitted a tiny rumble.

Jackson drew his weapon. Hairs on end, he pointed the barrel to the bassinet as it shifted, revealing that it cradled something living.

Two infants emerged as they moved to stand, stuck together in the single carrier like peas in a pod, swaying about as they attempted to balance their squashed bodies with the rail of the bassinet. Both had pale, nearly-translucent opalescent skin and white hair brushing just to their shoulders. They were naked, aside from make-shift cloth diapers that seemed as though they’d been produced from drapery. They had pink-hued eyes, nearly red, yet on faces so young, Jackson couldn’t help but associate the color more with pastel.

For a moment, the two infants stared at him while Jackson could only stare back.

Then one of the infants moved to place his thumb in his mouth, dropped the rail, and fell backwards. A moment passed, and then the infant burst into tears. 

Jackson reacted on instinct. Sliding away his M16 to his back, as well as shifting back to his fully-human form to retract his claws, he rushed over to the instant and scooped them up.

“Shh,” he cooed softly. “I got you.”

The remaining infant in the bassinet threw his hands up, expecting to be picked up, too.

Jackson was about to move to do so, but then the door flew open and about twn human PCA field agents rushed in, taking in the site with confusion. This was followed by Henry Winslor, a Senior Special Agent at PCA and Jackson’s direct supervisor. 

The questions and conversations came flooding all at once. 

“Did the demon put up a fight, Jackson? Are those its offspring?” Winlsor wanted to know, assessing the infants with narrowed eyes.

“Shouldn’t we terminate them now?” asked a field agent, twitching around nervously as his gaze shifted back and forth between the two infants.

“Male or female?” another wanted to know.

One of them checked the remaining infant in the bassinet, who immediately started crying. In fact, both were in tears by the disturbance of the intruders.

“I got lucky,” Jackson said after a moment, speaking honestly, somewhat more disturbed by this new scene than the one he had witnessed moments ago with the succubus.

“This one’s male,” said one of the agent’s, holding the screaming infant as one would a sack of flour, tenderly so as not to cause spillage yet with no true care.

“Jackson? That one?” Winslor barked.

Jackson blinked, taking another moment to catch up, suddenly feeling a rush of reluctance to obey and quite unsure as to why.

“Male as well,” he announced after he had checked. 

“Incubi,” Winslor said reverently, looking at the small child in Jackson’s arm with a kind of wonder that Jackson sometimes spotted on PCA scientists, when they were dissecting a particularly unique paranormal, and therefore it was the kind of look that made his stomach turn.

“What should be done with them, sir?” Jackson nearly snapped, wanting nothing more in the moment than for the man to move his gaze away from the infant he held.

Winslor frowned thoughtfully, looking back and forth between the small boys.

“Take that one to the labs, make sure the doctors don’t immediately dissect it without observations first,” he said finally, pointing to the infant in the arms of the other agent. “And this one,” he said, turning to look at the incubus nestling in Jackson’s arms, finally calming. “Take this one to the stocks. We’ll give this one a home. See how it turns out before we terminate it.”