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Xanthiilus breathed nicotine into his lungs and let the smoke slowly drift from his mouth.  The voice was light, feminine, and seductive.  Too seductive.  Xan looked up and found himself staring into brilliant purple eyes.  She was wearing a black dress, with a plunging V-neckline that dipped past her waist.  It was very obvious she was wearing no undergarments, and her ample bosom was spilling out.

“I’m sorry.”  Xan flicked the cigarette into the tracks.  It was a shame; it had barely been smoked.

She smiled in a flash of perfect white teeth.  “Thanks.  Cigarette smoke is just so not…sexy.”

Xan couldn’t take his eyes off her.  He breathed deep and inhaled her perfume.  It smelled like an amazing mix of flowers, trees, rivers…  Saleena drifted into his mind, swinging around her tree.  He hesitated.  The girl’s perfume smelled just Saleena.  A piece of this puzzling woman clicked into place.  Without thinking, he looked up.  He couldn’t stop himself from looking into those unnatural eyes.  He felt himself being pulled into those purple depths.

“What’s an incredible woman doing here, dressed like that in the cold?”

She smiled again.  “The cold doesn’t bother me.”  She rubbed a hand across her chest.  “Besides, most men don’t complain about this being cold.”

Xan laughed and shifted towards her.  He grabbed her hand, and pulled her down onto the bench.  “Where you headed?  The last train already left.”

“I’m headed wherever you are.”  She placed a hand just above Xan’s knee.

Xan smiled, and glanced down at her hand.  Her fingernails were painted black and looked like they had been filed into claws.  Not thinking about whether he would have taken her up on her offer or not, he stood slowly, hiding the sword he was drawing.  With a flourish of his cloak, he spun and leveled the sword at the girl’s heart.  Misty wings started to filter into existence behind him.  Xan stared into the purple eyes, the only thing remotely human that was left.  Her skin had melted away and changed.  She was scaly, with black horns protruding from her skull.  Large, bat-like wings sprouted from her back and trailed past her tail and down to her hoofed feet.  Sharp, pointed teeth were bared in a smile.

“I like to play rough, too,” she rasped.

Xan glared at her with glowing silver eyes, and long misty wings trailing from his back.  Small embers drifted from his shoulders, and his voice dripped with hatred.  “Succubus.”

“Oh, come now, put that sword away.  I don’t like playing with metal.  I would be interested in something else though.”  She smiled brazenly—or it would have been brazen, had she still possessed the face of a woman.  Instead, it was a twisted mockery, revealing pointed teeth and eyes filled with the gleam of hunger.

With a feral cry, Xan thrust the sword through her heart.  Mist billowed from him, eyes blazing and hair blowing frantically from the power he held.  Black smoke billowed out of the succubus’s chest, like oil rising in water.  The succubus’s mouth opened in a terrified scream as her body convulsed around the silver blade.  Faint hints of flame trailed from Xan’s shoulders, and the misty wings seemed to solidify into feathery wings for just a moment before returning to mist.  His eyes were as hard as glass, reflecting a silver light from within.  He pulled his sword violently from her chest, and turned away, sheathing it.  He felt the subtle catching of the engraved feather sliding into the sheath.  Her body was melting into a pool of black oil, dripping between the slats of wood onto the dirty concrete floor.

“You filth are all the same,” he spat.  His mouth felt dirty, like he had been chewing on mud.  “You do not know what I am.”  

He turned back to the succubus as her face slipped through the bench and disappeared into the black pool on the ground.  He reached into his cloak for another cigarette.  The pack was empty.

“I don’t know who I am.”