Chapter 15 – Systems of Control

The waitress brought a round of rum and Cokes to the table – Bo's choice. Lauren watched the Succubus carefully. Bo fiddled around with her straw and took a long pull from her drink. "Okay. Who's ready for the backstory portion of our program?"

Kenzi made a big show about yawning. Everyone gave her a dirty look. "Oh come on, don't give me that. I can't be the only one who skims through stuff like plot and characterization to get to the juicy bits, right?"

"All due respect Kenzi, but the juicy bits mean more when they're part of a bigger story," Ciara said. "There is a good reason that Jane Austen has gone down in history for Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and not her early forays into Regency Period pornography."

"I don't know 'bout that Ciara." Hale smirked. "Knackered and Knickerless is one of my all-time favorites."

"Eh, it was okay," she replied. "But I preferred Corsets and Cocks."

"She wrote that about me, you know," Dyson said, pleased with himself.

Ciara gave him a sideways look. "You're Richard Standing?"

He picked at his fingernails and grinned, acting blasé. "Yes, I am."

Lauren almost spat out her drink. "Jane Austen wrote a porno about you? And your name was Dick Standing?"

"Porno makes it sound so dirty. It was more like literotica. And yes, she did." He winked. "She may have written a few classics in her time, but it was the adult novels sold in the back alleys of London that paid the bills."

"I hope you collected royalties out of it," Hale said.

"Where do you think I got the money for my summer cottage in the Scottish Highlands?"

Kenzi snorted. "Did she pay you by the word, the minute, or the inch?"

"No matter which of the three, I came out a very rich man," he winked.

"HEY!" Bo cut in. "I thought we were talking about me?"

Lauren's head swiveled from Dyson to Bo…her insatiable curiosity for all things Succubus was the only thing that could tear her attention from Dyson's old English porn career. "Sorry…we're listening now. Tell us, how did you come to be unaligned?"

Bo took a deep breath. "I was adopted, from an orphanage outside of Omaha. I still don't know who my real mother and father are, and my parents did not have any idea that I was Fae. We lived in a very small town in Nebraska. So, I'm technically American."

"Ugh." Ciara, Dyson, Hale and Lauren recoiled simultaneously.

"Yeah, I know I know. I've heard it all before. Anyway, I grew up in a very religious family, constantly being told that I was a sinner, born evil and I had to fight my inherently bad human nature. Not eating my green beans was a sin. Staying up past my bedtime was a sin. Playing doctor with my next door neighbor, Kyle, was a sin."

"Well yeah, to that last one," Ciara teased. "Dirty minded little girl, you were."

"Everything I did was a sin, everything I said made God cry, and sex before marriage was a one way ticket to hell. That's how I was brought up. Aside from the heavily religious background, I grew up thinking I was the same as everyone else. I had no idea there was anything wrong or different about me. Until I turned sixteen."

"That's when she became a maniacal sex fiend Chi Hoover."

"Shut up and let me tell the story, would you Kenz?"

"Sorry."

"I didn't know anything about sex. All I knew is that I felt a hunger that I'd never felt before. In fact, all I really knew about it came from the Penthouse magazines I accidentally found in my dad's sock drawer, and the movie Cruel Intentions."

"All the Sex Ed you'd ever need. Ryan Phillippe is like sex on a stick."

"Shut up Kenz."

"I was more of a Sarah Michelle Gellar fan…"

"Lauren!"

"Sorry," Lauren turned her head to hide a blush.

Bo frowned. "Back then I didn't realize that the cravings I had weren't normal. I thought I was just a horny teenager. And for a long time I was able to ignore those feelings of need, hunger, and pure desire."

Lauren tapped her chin with a finger, pondering. "That must have taken a preternatural level of self-control…particularly for a pubescent Succubus Fae."

"Hellfire and eternal damnation is a powerful deterrent. Like I said, I grew up religious."

"Still…you must have felt like you were in Hell anyway. I remain impressed."

"Don't be. I didn't hold out for long." Bo sighed. "When I was seventeen, I started dating my neighbor, Kyle. We'd lived next door to his family my entire life, and I had a big crush on him. He was a year older than me. A senior. One night, he parked his truck by the lake and we started fooling around."

"Uh oh," Lauren whispered.

"I didn't understand what was happening to me. I just felt this…HUNGER. An overwhelming need to consume him, feed off his energy, and suck him dry."

"And not in a good way," Kenzi chimed in. Bo stared daggers at her. "Yeah, I got it. 'Shut up Kenzi'. I'm shutting, I'm shutting."

"Instinct took over. I kissed him and pulled his chi from him…everything he had. It was the best damn thing I ever felt. When I was full and came back down to Earth, I looked down at Kyle. He wasn't moving, and he was barely even breathing. He had these marks all over his face where I'd kissed him. I freaked out…I didn't know what to do. All I knew is that he was hurt badly, and I was somehow responsible. I hopped into the front seat of the truck and drove to the closest hospital as fast as I could get that junker to go. I parked at the ER, flung him over my back and ran inside."

"Wait," Lauren interrupted. "If you sucked his chi, how was he still alive?"

"I'm getting to that. So, the doctors rushed Kyle into ICU and hooked him up to life support. I called his parents. And I straight up lied to them. I said we were at the drive in and I thought he'd had a seizure. They rushed over and I sat with them in the waiting room for three hours while we waited for news. Mr. and Mrs. Todd. I'd known them my entire life, and they were the nicest people you'd ever hope to meet. I couldn't even look at them, thinking I might have killed their son."

"Finally one of the doctors came out and told us Kyle was resting and in stable condition. The relief I felt in that moment…I'd never be able to describe it to you. Mr. and Mrs. Todd went in to see him, but I hung back. I didn't want Kyle to see me. A few minutes later Mr. Todd came out. White as a ghost. He grabbed my arm and pulled me out of the chair, down the hall, out of the ER doors and into the grass outside the hospital building. We were alone, and I had no idea what was going on. I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but it was something like this:

"Do you think this is funny? Huh? Get your kicks out of picking on us, Iike all the rest of them?"

"Sir?" I said.

"Me and my family, we're already second class citizens. And now we have to worry about fucking Fae teenagers getting their jollies out of attacking us!"

"Mr. Todd, I don't…"

"What are you, Light? Dark? You can bet your ass I'm taking this to the top…we trusted you! Your family! And they've been lying to us the whole time! They never bothered to mention that their daughter was a Succubus whore."

"HEY! What are you talking about?" I grabbed his arm, and before I knew what was happening I felt some of my energy slide through my fingers and flow into his arm. He stopped pacing and got this faraway look on his face. I pulled back, because I was afraid I'd hurt him too. But he just smiled.

"We're not human. We're not Fae. Being an Akvan is a bitch."

I thought he was on crack. I tried to keep calm. "Mr. Todd, what's Fae? And Akvan? And what did you mean when you called me a Succubus?"

"You really don't know?"

"No!"

Bo looked around at the Doc Squad members, one by one. "And that's how I found out that I was Fae. Outside a human hospital, from my Akvan neighbor, whose Akvan son I almost chi-sucked to death. I didn't believe him at first, until he took me to see The Sitka."

"The Sitka?" Lauren asked.

"She's the Light Fae leader of the Midwest Region." Dyson cut in. "Sitka is the name of a spruce."

"Crazy tree hugging hippies," Kenzi muttered.

"The Sitka offered me protection and training on how to control my powers, if I swore my fealty to the Light."

"So why didn't you?" Hale asked.

"Because I grew up in a household that was buried ten foot deep in doctrine, totally strict, under a black and white good and evil no-room-for-in-independent-thought religious structure. And I didn't want to trade one system of control for another."

Dyson looked at Bo, surprised by the answer. "You aren't as dim as you look."

"Gee thanks." Bo rolled her eyes. "After I turned down the Light, the Dark came calling. The Andarta was a bit more forceful. She threatened to kill my parents, unless I joined her side or left the region entirely."

"So you left," Lauren said.

"To protect my parents, yes. Mr. and Mrs. Todd got me in contact with an entire underground network of Akvans and unaligned Fae – there are hundreds of them all across North America. Through the Todds I was able to get in touch with an unaligned Succubus named Aoife, living off the grid in Manhattan."

"Aoife…" Dyson muttered.

"Do you know her?"

"No, but the name sounds familiar so I feel like I should."

"I stayed with her for almost three years. She was like a big sister to me. She taught me how to control my powers, and a few tricks of the trade like creating thralls and long distance Chi sucking."

"What happened to her?" Ciara asked.

"I don't know. I woke up one morning and there was a note on the kitchen table. She said she had to leave, but that I knew enough to survive on my own. I haven't heard from her since. She was my family, so losing her hurt like hell. I left New York and drifted around the country for a while, doing odd jobs and seasonal stuff. Eventually I got tired of the US and I crossed the border into Canada. I'm more of a cold weather gal anyway. Two years later I met my 'little sister'. Kenzi, you wanna take the story from here?"

"Moi?" Kenzi sat up on her stool. "You mean I'm allowed to talk now?"

"If you stay on topic and you keep the snark to a minimum," Lauren replied.

"Oh, why don't you go give a troll a rectal exam or something."

Actually, Lauren had done one just that afternoon. She'd worn eight layers of rubber gloves, and almost scrubbed the skin off of her knuckles cleaning them afterward. "How did you know about that?"

Kenzi's jaw dropped. "EW! DOC! TM-freakin-I! Anywho…" she clapped her hands together. "The Kenzi is talking, so sit back and listen up bitches..."