Jackson

23 Years Later

Clio’s little frame, as delicate as a crippled bird’s, sat crouched on the playroom floor, his back facing Jackson. He was humming to himself, a familiar Winnie the Pooh song about rain. “And the rain-rain-rain came down-down-down in rushing, rising rivulets. ‘Til the river crept out of its bed and crept right into Piglet’s.”

Jackson walked to him slowly, though even as he approached, he was unable to examine what Clio was so focused on as he sat in his crouch. Normally, Jackson might have been able to sniff out the wax and chemicals of crayon if the boy was coloring, likewise with anything else, though his senses were strangely suffocated at the moment, disturbingly out of reach. 

But he was too focused on Clio to care.

“What do you have there, bud?” Jackson wondered aloud.

Clio stopped humming immediately, all noise dying within the white, empty playroom. 

Slowly, he turned a quarter-way to face Jackson, and now that he did, Jackson could see his mouth ruddy and raw, dripping with blood and slivered slices of gore stuck to the edges of his round cheek, his eyes angelic and wide over the mess.

He held up something in his hands that he’d obviously been engrossed by, something red, shapeless, and undeniably beating. 

“Your heart,” Clio said, almost in exasperation, as though Jackson should have known this. 

Jackson blinked, then slowly dropped his gaze downward, to the red-rimmed inelegant hole in his chest where his heart should have been.

He screamed.

Then woke. 

Jackson sat up from the nightmare with a start, growling and panting, and snapping up to collect himself from the vivid remnants of the disturbing dream, the fragments of which still chased him even after he straddled reality for all it was worth.

“Ugh,” he groaned, rubbing his eyes.

Finally, the curse of the dream faded and his true surroundings gently settled around him. His reality was that of solitude. It was of days alone in the forest, avoiding civilization, sitting in a room that collected dust. It was waiting. It was planning.

Jackson was alone within a cabin in the forest in upstate New York. To be more specific, he was in the same forest he had ultimately discovered and slain the succubus who haunted these woods, and then found Clio. To be even more specific, he was in the same crushed cabin that had sat at the edge of the meadow, roof dipped in the middle, warped like a Dr. Suess illustration.

He’d fixed up that roof quite some years ago, so that it wasn’t prone to collapse, though he hadn’t truly meant to. He hadn’t meant to live within the cabin once he went in search of it.

He’d meant to burn it. 

And he wasn’t really ready to admit to himself why he hadn’t.

He had stumbled, drunk in his rage in his wolf form over twenty years ago, to the flimsy, lonely cabin. He had abandoned the PCA, escaping from them in the chaos of the attack, throwing his task-watch into the flames and knowing he would never wear their leash again, or he would fight to the end if they tried to make him. Here, he had run to. 

His fur had caught glass as he had jumped through a window, shattering what was left of it, ready to rip everything apart. But then his eyes fastened upon something old and broken in the shadows, stuck up on legs that caved on one side. It was the old, wooden bassinet. 

Regrettably, he’d hesitated. 

Clio, Clio, Clio.

He understood then, how his life would always be from now on. He would always desire the end, but at the very last second, he would never be unable to commit to it.

He darkly imagined how things would proceed once he did get his hands on the object of his obsession and equally the bane of his existence. Clio. 

Once he finally staked his claim and beheld Clio—and it would happen someday, even if that day was in a thousand years—just like he was unable to break down the bassinet, he would be unable to kill Clio. At least not immediately. At least no intentionally. 

They would be stuck with each other, perhaps for eternity. He wouldn’t let Clio go, despite the demon more than likely making his attempts to flee with his great wings. His eyes would gleam red and his tail would snap back and forth forever. Jackson would tear it off with his teeth. Rip. Bone snapping. Skin sliding away in uneven strips. The wings would come next. The demon’s screams would add to his anger as he pulled everything away, making a mess of the monster. 

And then Jackson would hover over him, jaws around the slender, pale neck, holding the little incubus down until the infinite time decided they’d had too much of it, and, despite their immortality, time would somehow claim them both, dragging them down into the hell in which they both had come from. Even then Jackson might be unable to unhinge his jaw and let go, as flames swallowed them. 

No. Letting go was something that had been taken from him.

Escaping from the PCA had come in an easy, snap decision. There was nothing there that he needed to protect, nothing left to save, his dream of living a free life with Markus, dead. His brother had been an innocent who’d never had a hand in this wretched mess. So in the PCA’s moment of vulnerability during the insurrection, he had fled.

He wasn’t sure how much damage the resistant group, Delta, had caused, though he knew they’d dealt the PCA a crippling blow, judging by the destruction he had witnessed. It would take quite a long time for them to reorganize themselves, if they ever did. 

He wondered what they thought about their missing incubus. 

Though Jackson had sometimes made the trek to the city, ears perked for news passed word-of-mouth. People would be talking if there was an incubus nearby. Though he had heard nothing. 

It was as though Clio had disappeared.

But his disappearance meant nothing. It was like a ghost hidden within fog. He knew the demon was out there somewhere, so he continued to hunt. 

When Clio had brought Jackson that fateful cup—the blood, as he had come to realize—it had changed him completely. In body, and spirit. His thoughts revolved around the incubus, which had been the obvious change, though his physicality had changed dramatically as well. He was faster, now, stronger. And, most usefully, he could dull down his pheromones to make his vis completely undetectable to the random, stray drones that might be searching for him. And who the fuck would think to look here of all places?

For now, the PCA couldn’t find him. 

Just as Jackson was rising, naked from his sleep, his attention snapped to the door. Someone was approaching. Human, by the smell.

This was followed by a knock. 

Jackson was already shifting, prowling forward on his wolf form, eyes focused on the wood that blocked the intruder.

He had never received a visitor. He should have recognized their approach, though the problem with dulling his own vis was that his own senses dulled, as well, so he’d been unable to detect the presence closing in on the space that he’d claimed.

When the knock came again, a voice followed. “I know you are there, Jackson. I can hear your growling,” came the rueful, nearly amused female voice. 

Jackson hesitated, surprised. He recognized the voice nearly immediately, though it had changed somewhat over the years, as it sounded deeper and well-worn. The owner must have wizened over the twenty years they’d been apart.

It was Violet, his old control-center operator from the PCA. 

So the PCA had found him. Of course they had.