I Accidentally Summoned A Succubus

Blood.

There was a lot of it.

The piece of wood was sticking straight out from Marcus's side. It had missed the heart, but the angle meant something vital was hit. Liver, maybe. Aorta, if we were unlucky.

Raph was the first to move. His voice cracked as he fumbled for his phone. "I'm calling 911!"

I was already beside Marcus, crouched low with one knee in the wreckage. My hand wrapped tight around the wood. Not pulling. Just stabilizing. You don't remove impaled objects. Everyone who's read a single first aid manual knows that. Hell, anyone who's seen a halfway decent movie should know that.

"Oh my God," Linda cried frantically, rushing toward me. "James, he's dying! You have to get it out, he can't breathe!"

"Linda, stop—" I started, but I was too late. 

Linda yanked out the piece of wood with both hands and no hesitation, not a single thought behind those eyes. Just pure idiocracy. 

The piece came out with a wet, sick sound—like meat tearing off bone. Marcus gasped. Then went limp.

"NO!" Raph roared, sprinting over. "What the fuck did you do?! You never pull it out, he'll bleed out, you fucking idiot!"

Linda dropped the bloody wood like it burned her. "I was helping! I thought I was helping!" Her hands were shaking. Drenched in blood while she looked at them like she didn't recognize they were hers.

"Ambulance is coming," Jen whispered. Her voice was barely audible over the sound of Linda's shrieks. "Two minutes out. Two. Just—just stay calm, we need to keep him alive."

I pressed both palms over the wound, hard.

Blood pushed through my fingers anyway.

"Raph," I said, "tear me a towel."

He moved fast, yanking something from the arm of the couch. I shoved it down into the wound, adding more pressure.

Linda was still screaming. Louder now. Her body was jerking in half-steps like she couldn't figure out whether to run or collapse.

"I KILLED HIM—oh my God, I killed him, I didn't mean to, I swear—James, why isn't he waking up?!"

"Linda, shut up!" Raph yelled, grabbing her shoulders. "You're not helping. You're making it worse!"

"He was breathing!" she wailed. "He was breathing and I thought—you just said it was the liver!"

"Shut the fuck up!" Raph finally snapped, loud enough that even Jen flinched. "Shut up and sit the hell down before you do anything else stupid!"

She froze. Then she crumpled onto the floor like her strings had been cut.

This was what I'd always seen in her. The cracks. The nervous laughter. The manic highs followed by sudden dips into morbid self-deprecation. It wasn't just poor impulse control or attention-seeking. It was something deeper. Something unmedicated.

Borderline personality disorder? Possibly. Or bipolar II with mixed features. Either way, she wasn't built for crisis. She was built for spectacle.

But I wasn't paying attention to her anymore.

Because my hands were soaked. And Marcus wasn't breathing.

My mind was supposed to process these things faster than other people. Pattern recognition. Systems analysis. Cause and effect. That's what made me effective. Predictable. Safe. I'd built my entire life on logic holding steady.

And yet, none of it explained this.

Not the door blowing open like a bomb had gone off. Not the spontaneous synchronized pain. Not the moan that came from nowhere.

There was no gas leak. No unseen assailant. Nothing rational. No variable accounted for the door being ripped from its hinges by force and velocity.

I didn't believe in supernatural things. I believed in delusion. In power of suggestion. In self-induced hysteria. But the force that hit that door? That wasn't hysteria. That was real. That was physics.

And I couldn't explain it.

For the first time in years, my mind didn't have a theory.

Just questions.

And the sticky warmth of blood on my hands.

Sirens. Blue light painted the walls.

They were here. 

...

The paramedics took Marcus in on a gurney without a second glance, yelling stats and compressions and something about losing pulse. 

Raph and Jen were still in shock, but quiet now. Linda wasn't. She'd been crying in hiccups and gasps ever since we got into the ambulance. When they wouldn't let her ride with Marcus, she'd screamed. When they made her sit, she started again.

"Is he dead? I didn't mean to—I just thought—he wasn't breathing, I thought I was helping—"

"Linda," Raph said, his voice tight, "just stop. Please."

I sat in the corner, coat still bloodied, hands scrubbed raw from the ER sink. The dried flakes of red beneath my nails didn't bother me as much as the unknown.

Something had happened back there. Something unaccounted for.

Something I couldn't explain.

A nurse stepped in and told us to remain in the waiting area. The police would be arriving soon to take our statements.

Raph stood, rubbing his face. "Okay. Okay, look… we need to get our story straight."

Jen looked up from her place against the wall. "What?"

"If they think we attacked Marcus, this could turn into an attempted murder charge. We summoned a fucking sex demon, Jen. This shit doesn't play well on a legal record. We'll look stupid and clearly giulty. No one will believe what happened tonight, we need a new story."

Linda started hyperventilating again. "Oh God… oh God I can't… I can't do this, I can't breathe, what if they arrest us, what if they blame me…"

She was pulling on her hair now, hunched over in her chair like a rag doll unraveling. Her voice pitched higher and higher until it was no longer words, just a stream of gasping whimpers.

One of the nurses crossed the room. "Miss, I need you to calm down."

"She's going to have a meltdown," Jen muttered.

"Sedate her," Raph said. Not as a joke. Flat. Final. He was annoyed with her.

Before the nurse could respond, Linda sprang to her feet and crushed herself against me. Arms around my ribs, face pressed to my blood-dried shirt.

Everyone froze.

She went quiet.

The sudden silence was worse than her screaming.

Raph stared like he couldn't believe what he was seeing.

Linda didn't move.

She just clung to me like something in her had snapped and reset. Like I was the only thing in the room tethering her to gravity.

I didn't hug her back, but I didn't push her away either. For the first time in my life, I was confused. One recurring question sang in my head: 

What the hell broke that door!