Read Online Incubus by Janet Elizabeth Jones - Free Book Online

so hot. Where had the snow gone? It felt like a summer day.
    The glen opened onto a clearing, and in the clearing was a tent, and outside the tent sat a woman dressed in a simple cotton dress. She was all alone. Dark-haired and dark-skinned, beautiful in a maternal, mature way, she fixed her gaze on him and smiled, even though he had yet to emerge from the trees.
    Meical turned away, intent on putting as much distance between him and any living thing as possible.He had to go and find himself a place to die. He had to. He couldn’t go on.
    â€œWould you care for something cool to drink?”
    Meical shivered, then broke into a sweat. Slowly he turned to find the woman only a few feet behind him. No mortal was that swift and silent. He narrowed his eyes and tried to discern what manner of being she was, but there was nothing familiar about her, nothing to grasp at all, nothing to identify. Cosmically speaking, she was as close to nothingness as she could be. Was she even real?
    Perhaps this was part of dying. She was a hallucination. Meical rolled his eyes. He might have hallucinated something more profound than a middle-aged siren out for some quality time with Mother Nature.
    But it was her very nothingness that gave her presence such a peculiar strength. Or perhaps it was the way her eyes lured him. Meical found himself following her back to her tent like a sheep to the fold. She smiled regally and motioned for him to sit in a chair opposite hers. He could have sworn the chair wasn’t there a moment ago.
    She slipped into the tent and returned with a glass of cold tea. Beads of condensation formed on the glass and sparkled in the sun as she placed it in his hands.
    Meical looked up to search her eyes. “Thank you.”
    She steadied his hands while he took a sip. His sensitive taste buds picked up on a taste that reminded him of something he’d drunk before, but he couldn’t be sure what it was. It tasted green, sweet and a little tangy.
    â€œIt’s good,” he said. “What kind of tea is it?”
    She had such a low, dulcet voice. “It’s an old family recipe. I would tell you the herbs I use, but that wouldn’t be fair to my ancestors.”
    He smiled and finished the entire glass without taking a breath. It made him feel invigorated and relaxed at the same time. Handing the glass back to her, he watched her set it aside on a table that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. No, it had been there. He just hadn’t noticed it until now.
    Meical sat back in his chair, surprised by the subtle contentment that flowed through him. “Good stuff, your tea.”
    She sat down across from him, resting her arms on the armrests as though the chair were a throne, and regarded him with a small smile.
    Meical thought he’d seen the height of exotic beauty in Queen Freya’s countenance. But this lady, in spite of her years, was more beautiful than his vampire queen. He liked to see older women wear their hair long. She had the hair for it, too, thick and as black as a raven’s wing. Her tawny almond-shaped eyes gave him the impression that she could take in the entirety of the clearing without shifting her gaze from his face. Eyes that missed nothing.
    Momentarily wary of this hospitable lady, Meical pushed himself out of his chair. “Thank you. Have a good day.”
    He sounded like a bloody human.
    â€œAre you going so soon?” she asked.
    He turned and sat down again, uncomfortable with her disappointment. “I have little time.”
    â€œPeople are in such a rush these days.” She looked away. “They used to call on me long ago. You wouldn’t know it to see me now. These days, I am forgotten, except for a loyal few.”
    All of which was entirely too surreal to be borne, and none of which had a thing to do with him. But what could he say? So sorry, but look at the time. I have to go off and die now.
    She spoke as though she were in her