Succubus Diaries

5-3

"Then, once they submit the form, it takes up to thirty days for payment to process. Make sense?" the nurse, Nadia, said with a bob of her head.

"Yeah, I think so…" I muttered, flipping through the forms on my clipboard. She'd been explaining how the clinic charged treatments to health insurance companies, or at least the ones that would pay for parahuman healing.

It all seemed a bit of a mess to me. Thankfully, working here meant I had full healthcare for me and up to five members of my family. I wondered if godparents counted.

"Don't worry." She laughed. "Most of it is handled by accounts. We just have to fill out the patient name and whatever medications and treatments they were given."

It had been two weeks since I'd started working at the clinic, and while I still wasn't allowed to work with patients, I was slowly building a routine.

I spent most mornings at home doing whatever class or homework was required. My afternoons were spent working on my magic, reading the various books Dad had found me on healing magic, and trying to build as many spells as I could.

I spent two days of the week at the clinic. So far, I'd just been following the nurses or Panacea around as they taught me where everything was, what forms I needed to fill out, and other day-to-day tasks.

Nadia was the one I was assigned to shadow most of the time. She was one of the younger nurses, and between her small stature, dark hair cut into a cute bob style, and abundance of energy, you would never have known she was in her twenties and not a teen.

"Oh!" Nadia spun around to face me, walking backwards down the corridor. "That reminds me, don't you have a training course coming up soon?"

"Yeah, next weekend." It was a course on basic first aid that Karen had insisted I take as soon as possible. She said it only took a few hours and was a useful certification to have.

"Well, she's not wrong," Nadia said, turning back around in time to avoid crashing into a door, as if reading my thoughts. "Even the cleaners have it. Y'know, just in case. Honestly, our job would be so much easier if more people knew just a little first aid. I wonder if we could get it taught in schools?"

"Some of them do, I think." Winslow certainly hadn't, and I had to wonder if that was Blackwell intentionally trying to sabotage things, or the school genuinely not being able to.

Stopping, Nadia frowned at me.

"Are you okay? You seem a bit distracted."

"Hmm?" Looking up from the clipboard I was carrying, I felt my cheeks flush. "No, sorry, it's fine! I was just trying to work this out."

I held the clipboard out for her to see. Panacea had asked me to ready some stuff for a cosmetic procedure she was doing later today, which meant mixing up more of that nutrient drink I'd been given after my run-in with the vampire.

It was much more than a milkshake, with extra protein, calcium, and other things the body needed.

When it came to cosmetic work, if the patient lacked enough mass, she would have them drink enough of it ahead of time to make up the difference, but she'd asked for nearly four liters of it for a single patient.

"The procedure number means it's a breast enlargement, right?" For patient privacy and speed, the most common procedures were assigned ID numbers. It made the paperwork much easier, but it also meant I was still trying to memorise most of them.

"But wouldn't that much mass make them… huge?"

As my blush deepened, Nadia laughed.

"It's our most requested procedure, and not all of us are as… blessed as you," she said with a pointed look. "So it depends on the starting point, but no, it's not as much as you think. I don't get it fully, but it's not a one to one conversion, some mass is lost and Panacea may not even use it all. It's just better to have too much than not enough. Besides," she said with a swing of her hips, "sometimes some people like to balance the mass out across their whole body."

"Oh…"

Stepping next to me, Nadia grew taller and put an arm around my shoulders. "Don't worry, I made the same mistake when I first started. Though, between you and me, we used to get an actress in here every other month, she would pay a fortune to have her looks changed to match whatever role she was chasing. In the end, we had to blacklist her when her requests started to get… weird."

"Define 'weird'." I gave her a disbelieving look. "'Cause I'm pretty sure your definition —"

Both of us stopped at the sound of glass breaking coming from the storeroom ahead of us, its door propped open, which was against the clinic rules.

Making a shushing gesture, Nadia snuck forward, her body shrinking until she was barely a few inches tall, her power letting her fly silently through the air, and I did my best to follow along without making a sound.

This close, we could hear someone shuffling about inside the storeroom, almost constantly muttering to themselves.

"Merchant," Nadia whispered from near my ear. "You up for this?"

Not wanting to risk making a noise, I nodded. Compared to vampires, mutated students, and godlike creatures, a junkie didn't really scare me.

"Okay, count to twenty, then open the door," she hissed before flying through the small gap between the door and the frame.

Taking a breath, the moment I hit twenty I pushed the door hard, slamming it against the wall and making the man inside jump.

He wasn't much to look at in his dirty and unkempt clothes. His skin was shiny with sweat and his dark eyes sunken. In all honesty, he looked like one strong breeze would knock him over.

His emotions were a mess, swirling and spiking in a way I'd never experienced before, and he stared at me in open shock.

"Don't move," I warned, almost growling.

Hands twitching, he looked over his shoulder at the solid wall behind him, as if he honestly thought he could escape through it, when Nadia suddenly appeared between him and the wall, growing to her full height so quickly it almost looked like she'd teleported.

She reached for the Merchant, but he was already moving, spooked by her sudden appearance and sprinting for me.

"Respite!"

I barely heard her shouted warning as I stepped back into the hallway. Reaching out, I grabbed the man by his shirt and lifted him off his feet, slamming him into the wall to knock the wind out of him.

He went limp immediately, and I let him fall to the floor.

"Well… that was easy," I muttered. The Merchant stayed down, groaning slightly as he caught his breath. His emotions were still spiking, and there was a faint smell of magic in the air.

"I'm so sorry!" Nadia said, rushing out into the hallway. She had a small plastic fob in her hand, her thumb pressing the panic button to summon the others. "I didn't think he'd be that fast, are you okay?"

I wanted to laugh but decided not to. Her concern was genuine, and I didn't want her to think I was ungrateful.

"I'm fine, really. It'll take more than —" I knew, right then, that I'd fucked up. I'd only looked away from the Merchant for a moment, but that had been enough for him, and I turned back to see he'd rolled over and was downing a blue liquid from a small glass tube.

The faint smell of magic that had clung to him surged violently, and he shot to his feet like he'd been fired from a cannon.

Without thinking, I shoved Nadia back into the store room, bringing my free arm up to shield my face as the Merchant opened his mouth and a jet of fire burst forth.

The flames hit like a punch to the gut, even as the fire licked at my clothes. Pulling my black wand from my pouch, I poured magic into it and fired off a spell of my own.

The Merchant took the spell to his chest, the force of it sending him flying down the corridor as security came running, but he was already out cold before he hit the floor.

Coughing, I patted my costume, thankful that whatever it was made from was apparently fire resistant.

"Nadia, are you okay?"

"Me!?" she shrieked, emerging from the store room and rushing to check on me. "What about you!?"

"I'm fine, I'm pretty resistant to fire." Even if dad and I hadn't added some protective enchantments to my cape costume, I was still a demon. It would take hotter fire than that to hurt me.

Checking again that I wasn't still on fire, I looked up in time to see the other nurses emptying the Merchant's pockets. One of them was holding a small glass vial filled with blue liquid. She turned it over in her hands a few times before giving the top an experimental pull.

"Wait!" She nearly jumped out of her skin at my shout, and I quickly took the vial from her.

"Trust me, you don't want to open that."

"You know what it is?" Nadia asked, looking over my shoulder.

"I've got a couple of ideas," I murmured, holding it up to the light. The liquid sparkled like glitter, the smell of magic unmistakable. Dad had said crystallised magic was a thing; was that what this was?

"I've got a better question," Karen growled from behind me, making me jump. For such a big woman, she was scarly quiet.

"How did he even get in here to begin with, and why was that door even open?"

The nurses were a sea of guilty faces, and I quickly spun around to face Karen, pocketing the vial at the same time.

She loomed over all of us, her eyes flashing angrily.

"Respite," she said with a calm so forced it was almost painful, "go see Panacea so she can make sure you're okay. Then I want you to take the rest of the day off. The rest of you, check the building for anything out of place. Understood?"

Not wanting to push my luck, I nodded silently and scurried off.

##

After a quick checkup, Panacea sent me home, but I wanted to make a quick detour first, which was why I was getting off the bus near John's cafe.

She had been annoyed about what happened, though not with me specifically.

The Merchants were a minor gang in the city. They didn't really hold territory like Empire Eighty-Eight or the ABB, and they had no real unified beliefs. Instead they tended to hang out in the areas no one else wanted, slinking away when the police or other gangs got fed up with them. They mostly focused on buying and selling drugs and likely would have been pushed out of the city years ago if not for the few capes they possessed.

Sneaking into hospitals or pharmacies to steal medicines or drugs was a common tactic of theirs, especially when they got desperate.

That's why the storerooms in the clinic were supposed to be kept closed and locked at all times and all the nurses had key fobs that gave them access. I didn't have one yet, as I was technically on probation.

Still, I would let Karen and Panacea focus on the how. I was much more concerned with the glass vial.

Dad had mentioned crystal magic once. He'd told me it was dangerous and addictive, but I needed more information, and I suspected I'd be more likely to get it from John.

The bell above the door rang as I pushed the door open, and John looked up with a smile.

"Ah, look who it is. What can I get you?"

Looking around, I suddenly felt nervous, like I was doing something wrong.

Pushing the feeling aside, I forced myself to keep walking.

"Just a tea please… also, can I ask you some questions? About magic?"

"I don't see why not," he said with a shrug. He pointed to a booth. "Take a seat, I'll bring your tea over in a minute."

I'd barely sat down when John walked over, a steaming cup of tea in his hands. Placing it on the table, he sat down opposite me. "So, what's all this about? I'm not sure how much I can help. I wasn't much good with magic myself."

"I know, but I was hoping you could tell me about this?" Carefully, I placed the vial on the counter.

Paling, John jerked back in his seat, eyeing the vial like he expected it to jump up and bite.

"Jesus, please tell me that's not yours. Your old man will do his nut if he sees you with that!"

"It's not mine!" I held my hands up in an effort to calm him down, and I explained about the clinic and the Merchant.

As I spoke, John picked up the vial, slowly turning it over in his hands.

"Well," he said eventually. "You're not wrong, it is crystal magic, pretty pure as well I think. Whoever had this… well, he's lucky it didn't kill him. Okay, here's what I can tell you —"

The explanation was pretty straightforward. Crystallised magic took a lot of time and effort to make, and while the high from it was incredible, it wasn't enough to justify its cost.

"If you want to melt your brain and have conversations with the furniture, there are cheaper ways to do it," John had said.

The real value, apparently, was that people with no magical ability could use it to boost their power for short periods, letting them cast a couple of weak spells or one really strong one. The effect tended to work better on those who already had magical abilities

"So what would happen if I drank it?" I had no intention of actually drinking it — I'd never seen the interest in drugs — I was just curious.

John gave me a long look, then tapped the vial, his voice perfectly calm. "Ever seen a roman candle? Though I'm sure in the brief moment before you died, you'd feel invincible. Then you'd go off like a bomb, only with more screaming, and if you survived, well… the way I hear it, you were at that school when that teacher tore a hole in reality. You'd likely end up like some of those students."

Gripping my tea with trembling hands, I tried not to think about how everyone's bodies had been torn and twisted and I really didn't want to think about that happening to me.

"Just from that little vial?"

"Aye, but that's the thing with drugs, purity and quantity makes all the difference. You're more sensitive than a human to this stuff and would only need a small amount to get high, while someone like me would need a stronger dose."

Sighing, he pocketed the vial. "I'll get rid of this for you, but why don't you tell me what you're planning?"

"I… don't know… I guess I just wanted to know more about it… now that I do… I don't… where would a Merchant even get it?"

"Don't go borrowing trouble."

"I won't, it's just…" That Merchant had broken into the clinic. He'd tried to set me on fire. What if that had been one of the other nurses, or a patient? The thought made me feel sick.

"You're too much like your Da, y'know," John said with a chuckle. "Speaking of, did your old man finally get you a mobile? Tell you what, leave your number with me and I'll ask around. I've still got some friends in places best left alone. If they find anything I'll pass it along. In return, I want you to promise you won't go running into trouble without a plan?"

"Shouldn't you be telling me to stay out of trouble?"

"I'm not your father." He scoffed. "We both know you're not gonna leave this alone. So just promise me you'll be smart about this. You don't wanna end up an old cripple like me. Oh, and never tell Danny-boy I helped you. He'd skin me alive for this."

"Okay." I held out a hand. "Deal."

AN: chapter written under commission for Koalakiller on .

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