“No.”
“But Sire, the heralds are dead and we do not know how or why. The impossible, the impermissible, the unforgivable has been done and we know nothing of this. Sire, we should find out before we invade, then we can inflict yet greater suffering and despair upon them.”
“Greater suffering and despair, I like the sound of that. What do you propose?”
“Sire, I suggest that I ask Deumos send the comeliest and most seductive of her Succubi to Washington, capital of the greatest nation on Earth. There is one there, peculiarly susceptible to her charms who might be seduced into telling us what we need to know. Think, Sire, of his grief when he learns his lusts have betrayed all humanity.”
Macdonald’s Restaurant, just off Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.
Former President William Jefferson Clinton jogged up to the restaurant and headed through the doors, his Secret Service detail following behind. He stopped to mop his forehead, his sides heaving with the exercise. He carefully did not look at the two Secret Service agents, he guessed that they were unmoved by his evening routine. In fact, he doubted if they were even breathing heavily. Fortunately, the place was empty, or nearly so. It pretty much always was this late at night.
“Can I help you Sir?” The young Latina girl behind the counter was too tired to recognize the former President.
“I’ll have a double quarter-pounder with extra cheese, two super-size portions of fries, oh and a small diet soda please.”
“Coming right up Sir.” The girl got her order from the pass and gave it to Clinton. He paid his bill and went to a table.
“Hi Sir, mind if a girl sits with you? Don’t want to be on my own this late at night.” Clinton glanced up. The woman waiting politely by his table had a mane of jet-black hair that fell in curls half way down her back. Great, luminous black eyes and a mouth that promised everything imaginable without saying a word. “I’m Sheba, please I won’t bother you, your such a big, strong man. I’m sure I’ll be safe with you.”
A few feet away, the two Secret Service agents registered the scene with horror. How in hell had she slipped in there? It was appalling, a total breech of security, one which the senior agent had to do something about.
“Hey Lady get away from here. Don’t you know who…” Sheba looked at him her eyes pleading for understanding. “Well, alright I suppose it’ll be OK.”
Clinton finished his snack, leaving the garbage to be thrown away by one of the Secret Service men. As he left the restaurant, the girl was trotting along beside him. Clinton kept throwing calculating glances at her, she was, perhaps, a little on the heavy side but that mouth was so enticing.
“This is so wonderful, what is it?” Sheba was stroking the great black wheeled vehicle that stood on the road.
“A Chevvy Suburban. It belongs to my bodyguards.” Clinton threw another calculating glance at Sheba. “Would you like to see inside.”
“Ohhh, yes please.” Sheba peered in, the front seat was like any other automobile, controls, a steering wheel, pedals on the floor. “How many horses does it take.”
“Three hundred and thirty five.” Sheba blinked trying to imagine the sight.
“The front’s standard, all the good stuff is in the back.” He turned to his Secret Service men. “Open up the back please?”
“But Sir..”
“Open it up please.” Clinton’s voice was insistent. The agent sighed and did as he was told. A lot of the equipment in the back was classified. “Isn’t that one of the new automatic shotguns?”
Clinton took the nod for an answer and reached in, picking the heavy weapon up. With slickness born of long practice, he spun around, racking the mechanism as he did. Then, with the barrel less than a foot from Sheba’s stomach, he pulled the trigger.
The long roaring burst drowned out her scream and the blasts of buckshot hurled her backwards across the sidewalk, rolling her over as she started to fall apart. The Secret Servicemen’s faces were expressions of utter horror at the scene, horror that was replaced by revulsion as the figure sprawled on the ground began to change, its flesh going black, horns growing from its head, a tail sprouting from under the absurdly-short skirt. Their reactions were, under the circumstances commendable. They stopped their dive for Clinton in mid-lunge, spun, drew their SIG-Sauer P-229s and each emptied all twelve rounds of. 357SIG into the writhing demon. Clinton had dropped the empty magazine of his shotgun, loaded another and a second roar finished the job. The demon was dead, its bright yellow blood spreading across the sidewalk.
“It was a demon.”
“Hey, Bill’s killed a demon.”
The whispers from the crowd grew as they recovered from the shock of the violent confrontation. One man, obviously the worse for drink, staggered up and smacked Clinton on the back. “Well done Bill. Have a drink.” Clinton grabbed the bottle in its brown paper bag and took a swig.
The senior of the secret servicemen was speaking on the radio. “Stay away from the body please, we don’t know what we’re dealing with here.” Then he turned to Clinton. “Well done sir, but, how did you know?”
Clinton grinned, the easy, friendly grin that won him elections. “I’ve been married to Hilary for thirty years. Believe me, after going through that, I have no trouble recognizing a fiend from hell.”
Chapter Four
Oval Office, White House, Washington D.C.
“Sir, newsflash just in, Former President Clinton has just killed a baldrick at the McDonalds just down the road.”
“Damn, that will cost us at least one more seat in the House.” President Bush looked pensive for a moment. “I don’t suppose we could get my pappy to whack one?”
His public relations advisor shrugged, if one turned up in the right place it could be arranged, probably. But that was asking too much. “No Sir, not that we can rely on anyway.”
Bush’s mouth twisted, a pity to be disappointed so late in the evening. “How did it happen anyway? How did Bill, I suppose we’ll have to call him Wild Bill now, manage it? And what were the Secret Service up to?”
“The details are very brief, Sir, apparently he just blasted the baldrick with an automatic shotgun. Doctor Surlethe, the National Science Advisor is waiting outside, perhaps he can give you some more details.”
A sigh wafted gently across the room, President Bush really didn’t like being briefed by scientists. They tended to use such long words. Like any good politician, Bush knew that the time taken to say a four-syllable word was greater than the attention span of the audience. “Trot him in.”
Bush leaned forward in his seat, giving the impression of studiously examining the papers on the Presidential desk. “Doctor Surlethe, good to see you. A great achievement by the former President, but one that raises a few questions I think?”
“Indeed so sir. Mr. Clinton was very lucky that the baldrick in question was a new type, one that apparently has some unnerving capabilities. In accordance with your instructions, we’ve started naming the baldrick types we encounter. For example, the we’ve designated the flying baldricks as harpies, the aquatic ones as leviathans and the land-based one as behemoths. The one killed by Mr. Clinton was human sized and gave every appearance of being a human female, a very seductive one. It changed appearance into what we assume was its real form only when blasted with several dozen rounds of double-ought buckshot and automatic pistol fire.”
“Wait a minute, this thing was able to simulate people’s appearance? It’s a shape shifter? That means it could be anybody, you, me, anybody could be killed and replaced by one of those things.”
“Yes Sir, although things may not be quite that bad. The other thing is that this baldrick, we’re going to call this type a succubus, just materialized by the former President’s table and started to speak to him. The Secret Service men thought they’d fouled up badly but nobody saw that thing before it was standing next to the former President and speaking. It’s as if it simply materialized there.”
“That’s appalling. It means nobody is safe, one could materialize here and now.”