Sebastian

could she ever find him?
    No time to think. No time to decide. If she didn't go now, she'd be trapped between that pool of water and the rust-colored sand.
    Travel lightly.
    Come to me.
    I want to be safe! I want to he loved! I want to he safe! I want to be loved!
    Lifting her skirt, she ran across that narrow piece of road and over the bridge, chanting the two things that mattered the most. When she reached the other side of the bridge, she looked around, trying to get some impression of what kind of place it was. But no matter how hard she looked, she couldn't tell.
    Because on this side of the bridge, the sun had already set.
    *
    Waking up groggy and pissed off, Sebastian struggled to extricate himself from the tangled sheets and tangled dreams. He sat on the side of the bed and ran a hand up and down his arm. He felt bloated, starving… strange. As if something were trying to birth itself inside him.
     
    Maybe he was sick. He hadn't felt quite like himself since he'd gotten away from Wizard City.
    Staggering into the bathroom, he turned on the water taps, then took care of morning necessaries while the tub filled with a few inches of water. The water was grudgingly tepid—a reminder that he hadn't tended the little potbelly stove that heated the water tank tucked into one corner of the bathroom.
    Cursing softly as he turned off the taps and got into the tub, he took a quick bath, scrubbing off the sour smell the dreams had left on his skin. Too bad soap and water couldn't clean his mood or wash away the jagged edges of whatever was chewing him up inside.
    After toweling himself dry, he went back into the bedroom and dressed in a moss-green shirt and black denim pants. The denim, while common enough in other landscapes, was another black-market item in the Den. His cousin Lee had given him two bolts of the stuff, which he'd traded to Mr. Finch in exchange for making a pair of pants and a jacket—and giving him enough credit at the shop for any clothes he might want over the next year.
    Stepping out of the bedroom, he stared at Teaser, who was standing by the couch. Then disgust welled up in him as he took a swift look around the room. This wasn't a lair for seduction. This wasn't a place suitable for an incubus. This place was rustic and cozy and so human he wanted to puke.
    "Good timing," Teaser said. "If I'd had to wait much longer, I would have gone out and peed in the wide-open."
    What difference would it make ? Sebastian thought as he strode to the kitchen while Teaser headed for the bathroom. Some of the alleys around the taverns stank like urinals. Why should a tree be any different from a stone wall? Didn't that just prove humans were animals? Were… prey?
    Those thoughts made him uneasy, so he concentrated on measuring out the koffea beans and grinding them. He managed to get the koffee started, but by the time Teaser came into the kitchen, he had his hands braced on the counter and was shaking so hard he thought his skin would split—and something hideous would writhe out of the abandoned cocoon.
    "Koffee!" Teaser rubbed his hands together and grinned.
    "I want to hunt," Sebastian growled, watching his hands curl into fists.
    Teaser's grin faded. "What?"
    "I want to hunt!" Sebastian turned his head and glared at Teaser. "That's what we do, isn't it? Find a female who's ripe for the picking and screw her until she's addicted to our kind of sex, then harvest that need for any goods or favors we can wring out of her until she's wrung dry or becomes too boring to tolerate. Isn't that what we do?"
    "It's what most of the succutits do, sure. And what a lot of the incubi do. But you don't. You never did."
    "Then it's time I started." Sebastian grabbed two mugs and set them on the counter near the stove.
    "Sebastian?" Teaser studied him, pale and wary. "What happened when you went to Wizard City?"
    "Nothing. I told you when we got to this place. The Justice Makers won't help us."
    "Yeah, you said that, but—"
    "What difference does it make?" Sebastian shouted. He felt angry, edgy, and he didn't know why. Felt like a part of himself was being ripped up by a vile darkness that wanted to fill him up until there was nothing else. But that part of himself kept struggling to survive. Wanted fiercely to survive. He just didn't know how to help it—or even if he wanted to help it. "I'm an incubus, just like you!"
    Teaser looked like a man who had just seen something he valued thrown to the ground and crushed