A YOUNG SUCCUBUS NAMED DELICIA by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 36 – PARENTHOOD

04:19 (California Time)

Saturday, January 26, 1974

Patricia Love’s residence, Lindbrook Drive

Westwood District, Los Angeles

California, U.S.A.

The telepathic message hit her brain full force, waking Patricia up from her night relaxation period.

‘PATRICIA, WAKE UP! THIS IS JOHN: I HAVE GREAT NEWS!’ Taking a couple of seconds to return to full alertness, Patricia then touched with two fingers the polished black gem she had been wearing by its gold neck chain since her return from Japan, activating the alien mental communication device and thinking her response.

‘What is it, John? Is it about your two dragon eggs?’

‘Yes! They just hatched!’

‘They did? Do the hatchlings look healthy?’

‘They are and they proved to be famished. I am presently feeding them in the basement of the bar. Can you come?’

‘Of course I can! I wouldn’t miss this on my life. Just give me time to get dressed and I will teleport to your bar.’

‘Thank you, my friend! I will be expecting you.’

The telepathic link was then cut. Now excited herself by such a fantastic event, Patricia jumped out of bed and quickly dressed, putting on a set of jeans, T-shirt and running shoes. Once clothed, she concentrated for a moment, teleporting out of her home. She rematerialized in the main basement room of the ‘Friends’ Corner Bar’, where John Hideyoshi had been keeping inside a large incubator the two dragon eggs salvaged from the ancient underground base in Mount Fuji. When she arrived, she saw that the eggs, now broken open, had been taken out of their incubator and that two Dragon Wyrmlings were now resting on large cushions, with John giving them in turn portions of raw minced

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meat. John’s smile of happiness turned into a grin when he saw Patricia appear in the middle of the room.

‘’Aah, my dear friend! Let me present you my offsprings from my beloved Kannon: I named them respectively Susano and Amaterasu, in honor of my own parents.’’

Patricia approached the Wyrmlings slowly, in order not to scare them, while eyeing them with fascination. They were each the size of an adult condor and were covered with the same kind of golden, feather-like scales she had seen on John when he had been in his Dragon shape. Their wings, when extended, had to span a good two meters, if not more, while their body, including the tail, measured about 150 centimeters in length. Both Wyrmlings briefly stopped eating when she approached them and looked at her with their golden eyes, prompting Patricia to speak to them in Draconic.

‘’Hello, Susano and Amaterasu! I am Patricia, a friend of your father.’’

‘’They are still too young to know how to speak, Patricia, but they will learn quickly enough. Aren’t they beautiful?’’

‘’They certainly are, John. You must be proud as Hell.’’

‘’Oh, I am! With them, my race will be able to live on on this planet. However, I will soon need to find a more suitable place to raise them than in this basement, as they will grow quickly in size.’’

‘’Well, my time is already quite occupied, but I figure that I could help you find a new home for them. What kind of place would you need?’’

‘’Something in an isolated area, where I could also hide my gravity craft and fly it in and out without attracting attention. Right now, my craft is still on the roof of this building, hidden in a canvas tent, but I really need a better place to hide it before some Humans spot it.’’

‘’Hum, an old abandoned hangar, or a disused mine, maybe. I will start looking around the hill country north of the city: houses are sparse in those hills and I heard that there are also abandoned gold mines dating back from the California Gold Rush of the Nineteenth Century.’’

‘’Such places would effectively be of interest to me. As for buying such a property, I have plenty of gold I brought from the Mount Fuji Hitoana Cave.’’

‘’Then, I will devote the little free time I have left to such a search, my friend. Uh, do your Wyrmlings eat only meat?’’

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‘’Oh, no! They are actually omnivorous, but they especially like raw meat and fish. Right now, they will each eat about two pounds of meat or fish every day, but that quantity will increase quickly in the next weeks and months. They will attain their full adult size in about a hundred years and live on for about fifteen centuries or more.’’

‘’Fifteen centuries…’’ said softly Patricia while staring at the Wyrmlings. ‘’It will be good for me to have steady companions for this long on this Material Plane. Be assured that I will be there to help and support them all that time, even after you are gone.’’

‘’You decidedly are a true friend, Patricia.’’ replied John, sincerely touched by her words. ‘’Would you like to feed them a bit, so that they could start to get accustomed to you?’’

‘’I would love it, John.’’

Stepping forward, Patricia took the bowl of minced meat offered by John, then shaped a small ball of meat with one hand before offering it in the palm of her left hand to Amaterasu, who eagerly gobbled it. She then did the same with Susano, repeating the process another time before giving back the bowl to John.

‘’You may continue to feed them, John. I am unfortunately quite busy these days, as one of my friends is facing some severe legal problems.’’

‘’I heard about it. If you need my help in that matter, don’t hesitate to ask: I already owe you quite a few favors.’’

‘’What are friends for, if not to help each other?’’ replied Patricia before teleporting out of the basement. John

looked at the spot she had been, a bit

envious about her ability to teleport like

this. That certainly was one very practical power to possess.

15:53 (California Time)

Saturday, February 2, 1974

Murphy Ranch, Sullivan Ridge Fire Road, Rustic Canyon Pacific Palisades District, northern Los Angeles suburbs

Having rolled slowly up the narrow canyon road meandering on top of a crest line in the hills north of Los Angeles, Patricia finally arrived at the location a local inhabitant

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she had met earlier on had told her about. The main gate of what was known as the ‘Murphy Ranch’ still had a rusty iron gate in place. It was however partially opened and unlocked. Stepping out of her Firebird Trans-Am, Patricia pushed the gate open all the way, then got back in her car and rolled inside the property before stepping out again to close the iron gate behind her. With that done, she drove the short distance to the ranch house proper, a two-storey pink stucco building with a drive-through portico garage on one side. The house had obviously been deserted for many years, as it clearly showed utter neglect. while its windows were boarded shut with plywood sheets. From what she had been told, she knew that the Murphy Ranch had been built around 1933 by pro-Nazi sympathizers, who had planned to make it a self-sufficient refuge and meeting place for their group, complete with auxiliary generator, water reservoir and gardens. However, the place had been raided by the police in December 1941, after Germany had declared war to the United States, and the pro-Nazi sympathizers had then been arrested. The place was then bought in 1949 and was used as a refuge for artists until 1965. Since 1965 it stood abandoned and neglected, as the rusting ‘for sale’ sign on the main gate showed.

Entering the main ranch house and exploring it, Patricia soon concluded that, while in need of some serious renovations and cleanup

and being totally empty of furniture, it still was viable.

Going out through the back, she went next to a large

building fronted by an elevated concrete terrace and

with a peaked roof. That building proved as empty as

the first one but the outline of machinery bases on its

concrete floor told Patricia that it had been the old power generator house. Next to it was a partially crumbled building,

also empty. The next building she

visited on the ranch turned out to

be most interesting for her: it was

a long, large and high-ceiling barn

that had probably been meant to

shelter horses.

‘’Well, well, with some improvements and repairs to it, this would make a nice place for Susano and Amaterasu to grow up and shelter in.’’ Patricia said to herself

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while looking up at the wooden roof, which seemed intact. Going out of the barn, she noticed a partially hidden steel door visible at the basement level of the main ranch house. Walking across a debris-strewn courtyard overgrown with vegetation, Patricia went to the steel door and, with a little effort, was able to turn its handle and open it, creating a noise of rusty metal. Going down a few steps, she ended in an obscure, empty concrete room measuring maybe fifteen meters by six meters. By its stout construction, it was obvious that it had been meant to be some kind of bomb shelter. Another staircase at the opposite end opened inside the ranch house. Liking this place more by the minute, Patricia was about to start taking a series of pictures of the ranch with the 35mm still camera she had brought with her but had a better idea. Concentrating for a moment, she disappeared in the blink of an eye from the basement shelter. She was back nine minutes later with John Hideyoshi closely hugging her, having teleported with him from the ‘Friends’ Corner Bar’. Taking one step away from her, John looked around him in the dark shelter, using his natural night vision. Patricia spoke at once.

‘’This bomb shelter is situated just under the main ranch house. Let’s use that staircase over there, so that you can visit the house.’’

‘’Play the guide for me, my friend.’’ said John, in a good mood.

The tour of the ranch together took a good hour, with John asking Patricia to take pictures of the various buildings and grounds so that he could have the cost of renovating the place evaluated

later. Their last visit was to the

main bedroom on the upper floor

of the ranch house, from which

they were able to admire through

a window the view of the distant

Malibu and Santa Monica

coastline to the South. John nodded his head, visibly satisfied.

‘’This place is perfect. It is isolated from other houses and can be turned into a self-sufficient refuge and hiding place for my two dragons and my gravity craft. I will however have to build a higher perimeter fence, to stop hikers and other impromptu visitors from wandering in.’’

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‘’I know: I saw the graffitis they painted on the various buildings of the ranch. I would also counsel you to remove the trees and shrubs within at least fifty meters from the property lines, to protect the ranch from forest and brush fires. Such fires are frequent around here in the summer months. You also should be aware that a high voltage power line passes by a bit to the north of here. Susano and Amaterasu will need to be careful not to approach it. Finally, there is a military missile and radar site on top of a hill, a couple of miles to the north.’’

John gave an amused look at those last words.

‘’Could it be the site from which they fired a missile at us when we were coming back from Japan in my gravity craft?’’

‘’That’s very possible, John. What it means is that you will have to fly low to avoid detection by that radar.’’

‘’I will be careful, my friend, I promise. As for Susano and Amaterasu, I will make sure that they understand where not to go.’’

That made Patricia giggle.

‘’For young kids, that’s the best way to ensure that they WILL go to those places, John.’’

John sighed deeply in response.

‘’I know! Something tells me that I will be impossibly busy in the next months and years. Life will never be the same for me from now on.’’

Patricia gave him a tender smile while caressing the back of his head.

‘’But it will all be for a good cause. Your race now has a future beyond you on Earth. Maybe you will have grand-children before you pass away.’’

‘’That would be something I would dearly love to see, Patricia.’’ said softly John as he still stared at the coastline in the distance.

The next weeks and months went by in a blur for both John and Patricia. While John was able to quickly buy the Murphy Ranch from the City of Los Angeles for a reasonable price and then initiated at once extensive renovations on it, using the services of a building contractor he knew well, Patricia was kept busy by her university studies, her evening work at the ‘Pussycat Cabaret’ and her frequent, alternate dates with Peter Horowitz and Robert Purnell, plus occasional stints as impromptu babysitter for Susano and Amaterasu. Then came the time she and Robert Purnell had been expecting with trepidation and nervousness: Robert’s day in court.

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