Free Incubus Moon by Andrew Cheney-Feid Page B

why he hadn’t left me for dead. Wasn’t that the Shadow Walker’s supposed mission, to take my life? He definitely knew that I was an incubus.
    More hands pounded on the door, the hinges straining under the siege.
    I tried to tug at my jeans in a useless attempt to pull them up, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. I’d been raped by a real-life monster in a sleazy Czech sex club, but I didn’t want the people on the other side of that door to see me with my battered, bare ass hanging out.
    Trouble was, I didn’t have the strength to do it.
    The pounding increased and the doorknob shook loose and clattered to the floor. It took all the strength I had to roll onto my side, which was when the door flew open to a blur of people stampeding in and staring down at me.
    The guy who’d cruised me earlier was among them. I tried to focus on him, but his face looked distorted, ghoulish. Everything around me held a bizarre, nightmarish haze to it.
    I was lifted and taken out into the cooler hallway, my limbs numb and inert against the many hands supporting the weight of my body. The passageways beyond stretched into infinity, the walls slanting at impossible angles. I was about to black out, or vomit, or both.
    “It will be alright,” Pavel said with greater panic in his voice, as he supported my head. “I will call Mark and Christie.”
    My mouth couldn’t form the words, couldn’t let Pavel know that it wasn’t alright, that it would never again be alright. Instead, I pitched to the side and released the contents of my stomach. Then darkness overwhelmed me.

CHAPTER 10
    In the weeks following our return to Los Angeles, Mark and Christie juggled hectic restaurant and new house remodeling schedules around babysitting me at their condo each night. I didn’t ask them to, but after the incident in Prague they’d insisted. They felt responsible. That had we all stayed together that evening, I wouldn’t have been attacked.
    “Hey, going into that place was my choice,” I explained to them for the umpteenth time.
    Christie smiled tightly and continued setting out the dining room table. I could see her lower lip quivering. She was on the verge of tears again and I couldn’t stand to see her cry. It made me feel bad about not feeling better.
    “C’mon, babe.” Mark set the last beer stein on the table and took his wife’s hand. “Let’s get Austin some of that great smelling chili you made for him. Extra onions, right, Buddy?”
    “And cheddar cheese, too!” I was being overly cheerful, but they needed this from me right now to help ease their misplaced sense of guilt.
    “That’s my man.” Mark said it with an exaggerated laugh. “Oh, and I picked up a six-pack of that beer you like. The one with the orange on the label.”
    I loved my friends and was beyond grateful to them for taking care of me. But if we were all truly going to get past this, then Mark andChristie had to come to terms with my having been raped and lay the blame squarely where it belonged: on the monster that had violated me.
    Did the fact that he’d left me alive mean that he wasn’t the Shadow Walker after all?
    I was no expert, but supernatural beasties didn’t tend to rob their victims—my watch and wallet had been taken—they viciously murdered them and vanished into the night in peals of malevolent laughter. At least that’s what horror films and novels had taught me.
    So who was he? Another incubus, or something else entirely?

    The return to my loft apartment proved rougher than I’d imagined.
    In addition to losing the reassurance of daily companionship, the place felt cold and confining and I jumped at every little noise, which turned out to have zero to do with the supernatural and everything to do with my obnoxious new neighbors.
    Yet here I was, about to meet Mark and Christie out for dinner to celebrate the progress on their restaurant project. This was my first real social outing in weeks and, I reminded myself. I wanted it to