Inbetween - Book 1 of the Guardian series

Chapter 2 - Inbetween

Dedicated to Elphie for knowing what a Selkie is :) 

________

Birth was a simple process in the way peeling a cut onion was a simple process. It just took time and patience. 

Apollo had gotten tired of both traits. He waited on the Cliff as the girl finally reached the destination. He'd been impatiently waiting for her birth since the day she'd been born as Amelia by following her around. When she'd been a child, this crazy girl who sped around on a bike with her pale brown hair tied back, leading games of 'Hunt the dragon', her legs and arms covered in sand, he had to admit she'd amused him.

Then when he'd heard her sing he'd decided to further amuse himself by telling her to keep singing. She'd done it. Not surprising when she'd started to call him her Angel. He wasn't an Angel. Those creatures, those beings that flitted from Beyond to Earth, Apollo wasn't sure if they could have ever even been human. 

Then she'd started to grow up and the Angel creatures came to take the parents away. Straight to the Beyond. This was the first point Apollo was supposed to protect her but suddenly, after witnessing her energy as a child, Apollo couldn't face her. He'd only come back to push Dylan to move, when it became clear she'd been targeted by a Succubus, one that fed off the 'depression' energy. Apollo had hoped this would shatter the depression. He'd been right, she had recovered, but not in the way he expected. Her entire life wrapped itself around the boy. 

So he gave up till it was time for her to be 'born'. He was tired, not heartless, and instead of using her life to amuse himself, he went back to the Inbetween to pass time. Wait.  Her childhood had been amusing, heart warming, but he knew that she would struggle from that moment on. Some part of Apollo couldn't face it. He'd seen a lot of fucked up things in his life but that didn't make it easier to see. 

This was the only moment he wasn't allowed to miss. Apollo wished he could have. This wasn't going to be pretty.

Amelia had grown up. He watched her stand there, squaring her shoulders in that hideous thing she'd been made to wear, all curves. The kind of body a Greek Goddess would have been idolised in but in this world, in this strange world, called 'fat'. The dress was too small, it clung to her in an unflattering way, particularly with the thin slip she'd had to wear under it so her body wasn't on display. Someone had curled her pale brown hair. Or did it naturally have that shape to it? He couldn't remember- she'd always had it in a pony tail as a child. 

The woman approached her, the Succubus, a sweet blonde thing in a fluffy white dress. She'd put baby rosebuds in her curls, looked the very picture of innocence, but it was the glow around her that gave her away. The closer she got to her prey, the more the glow increased, until it had Amelia unknowingly surrounded and enthralled. There was nothing she could do to escape it from this point. Amelia had been a target for this Succubus since she'd laid eyes on the man they both adored.

Apollo slid down from the tree he sat in and strode across the grassy slope up the cliff as the Succubus broke down Amelia's remaining willpower with petty insults, arguments, broke her energy down into a form the Succubus could drain and feed off. When it was all gone, when Amelia's energy had faded to the level it'd been when she was thirteen, the Succubus fed.  Succubus and Incubus were one of the pretty species, always a beautiful woman or man, but their feeding was anything but pretty. They used fangs, hidden in the roof of their mouths,  to open up their prey's flesh. Then something would extend into the human's body, a long feeler that grasped onto a vein and would feed directly from the blood source. Some Succubus and Incubus were very careful to not waste a drop- usually the 'good' ones, the ones that didn't want to kill someone. They fed and backed off. Their saliva would repair the damage fast.