Fortune Academy: Year Three - J.R. Thorn Page 0,79
only getting worse, darker and angrier as if I am supposed to be doing something to stop the darkness from coming. It’s trying to urge me, but to do what… I don’t know. My heart quickens with fear. If I don’t figure out what it means soon… the darkness will find me. Of that much I’m sure.
The rune. I feel like it’s supposed to help me, but at the same time, I know that it’s a beacon to a force I can’t even begin to describe. I’ve seen it in my dreams. I don’t dare close my eyes and face the nightmares again. When I do, dark claws rake the skies of my dreams. It’s a horrifying cloud of glittering blackness and it’s coming after me. It’s always been coming after me, but now time is running short. The edges of my vision are weakening, and no matter how many times I rub my eyes, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m slowly dying and the rest of the world will come tumbling after me.
Sleep so wasn’t happening and there was one thing worse than an insatiable itch across my abdomen, and that was the gnawing hunger that was making me see red. I found myself wandering the streets heading to the one place that could offer some small sense of relief to a succubus such as myself. If I didn’t get the sexual nourishment I needed soon, I would die. It was kind of ironic. A part of me felt like I was meant to be loyal to a select few, yet my nature compelled me to seek nourishment and filled me with a lustful need that pushed away any rationalization. My fingers slipped under the low hem of my shirt and scratched at the blasted runes that wouldn’t leave me alone with their incessant itching. I cast a glance at the sky, almost expecting the claws from my nightmares to streak through the low, sleepy clouds and come after me, but nothing happened.
Even if the nightmares were all in my head, I was still a succubus, and the starvation I’d been subjecting myself to was very real, and very dangerous. Sarah would find me in the afterlife and kill me all over again if I allowed myself to starve when all this time she was convinced that she could satiate my magical, sexual nourishment needs.
The last place in the world I wanted to be was a slum like Seattle’s Succubi Den. The tattered awning peeked through the foggy horizon surrounded by slanted buildings. Approaching it, I pulled my hoodie closer around my face, but my sensual gait betrayed what I was. I couldn’t hide my nature, and I hated how I was growing nauseatingly accustomed to handing over a hundred dollar bill to a round-faced succubus who leaned over a polished counter.
Fucking paying for it. So humiliating.
She'd started the business to help succubi and incubi who'd run into unique difficulties with their life-sucking magic, but finding enough willing participants to donate their life-force didn’t come for free. She probably thought I was sick, because I kept coming back. Sometimes the magical wells got clogged, be it a magical manifestation or an emotional one. We needed sex to survive, or at least we needed to feed off sexual energy. Pain tingled along my fingertips and was the first warning sign that I was getting close to my own mortal limit of enduring abstinence.
“Why do you keep coming back, hun?” the succubus named Lucy asked with a concerned knit to her brow. She gave me a once-over, noting my fingers still under my shirt scratching away like some kind of drug addict. Aside from my quirks, I was the perfect succubus. Her eyes roamed over my voluptuous boobs that only got in the way, and noted my plump lips. She sighed. “I know there's nothing wrong with your magic. I just can’t work out why you need a Den.”
I glared at her until she produced a golden key to my assigned bedroom. It was none of her business. When I took the key, I decided to humor her this time. Maybe she’d understand. “I've got a girlfriend,” I muttered.
She painted on a fake smile, but homosexuality in the succubi community was widely frowned upon. I didn’t expect judgment from a do-gooder like Lucy, but there was pity in her eyes.
By our nature, we could only feed on those of the opposite sex. To maintain a relationship with a same-sex partner