01- Succubus! Read online

  The brunette succubus sprinted away from me faster than an Olympic athlete, and the bolts of fire banked toward her running form. Ashley's six missiles were slightly slower to turn, and one of the flames smashed into the grass with a splatter of napalm. The other five scraped against the ground and began to close the distance. Charlotte didn’t look back over her shoulder as she ran, and it became apparent that she was taking a line toward the far side of the quad where the other monsters battled.

  My girlfriend jumped over the melee of wolf monsters fighting lizard and insect creatures, and then her wings kind of kicked upward to make her dive into the battle. I couldn’t see her from that distance and through the bulk of the warring kids, but the seeking flame bolts didn’t make the same diving move that Charlotte had. Instead they just crashed straight into the lines of the high school monsters.

  I had guessed that the flames would have been deadly from their magma-like glow and the spot of grass that seemed to have turned into a lava pit where the first missile landed, but I hadn’t really expected the kids to ignite as if they were scarecrows doused in gasoline and lit on fire with a grenade. Their bodies imploded with sparks of brilliant white-red light and then almost instantly turned into standing piles of ash.

  Charlotte sprang into the air a fraction of a second after the bolts of flame incinerated five of my schoolmates. The succubus girl held a pile of glass shards on her left hand, and she threw them in rapid succession across the quad at Ashley like a ninja would toss shuriken. I was half surprised and half proud of my girlfriend’s accuracy with the shimmering projectiles. The redheaded cheerleader hung in the air a good seventy feet away, but the shards of glass flew toward the black-winged girl as if they were aimed machine-gun fire.

  Ashley’s left wing slid around her torso and deflected the first barrage of flying shrapnel. The glass somehow bounced off the black feathers as if the wing was made out of steel. Charlotte seemed to have guessed that would happen, and two of the daggers sank into the cheerleader’s perfectly shaped legs right below the knees.

  “Hellspawn bitch whore!” the erinye shrieked and tossed a black globe of power through the air of the quad.

  This magic didn’t look as deadly as the earlier firebolts. Well, it still looked like a terrifying baseball of pure death-filled hatred, but it didn’t seem to have any sort of seeking ability. Charlotte used her own pink leathery wing as Ashley had just used her black-feathered one, except my girlfriend’s block of the baseball ‘o death actually launched the projectile back toward the redhead like a streaking comet.

  Ashley didn’t expect the return.

  The bolt of black flaming smoke smashed into the cheerleader’s chest between her Victoria’s Secret-model breasts and exploded into a cloud of fog. The girl screamed, and her floating body twisted briefly in the air before she plummeted to the ground. Ashley hit the grass hard a dozen feet from where I stood, but the ground was soft, and her shoulders seemed to take most of the impact.

  I didn’t know if I should continue to run toward the school exit or if I should try to meet up with Charlotte. The indecision, combined with the sensation of my sock-covered feet sinking into the soft grass, tied my brain up in knots, and I could do little more than stare like an idiot.

  Then my eyes found Ashley again, and I let out a gasp.

  The black-fire baseball had burnt away all the cheerleader’s clothes, and she lay naked on top of her folded black wings, with her legs spread toward me.

  My head spun as if I was seasick, my vision blurred like I was blinded by the sun, and I felt the padding of the grass through the knees of my school pants. I’d seen naked women before, I was eighteen and had access to the internet, but I’d never seen one in real life. Ashley wasn’t just an average girl either. She was the captain of the varsity cheerleading squad as well as one of the prettiest girls at school; that was saying a lot since nearly every single girl at my school could have appeared on a magazine cover.

  I tried to keep my eyes on the grass below me, but it seemed like my eyeballs were made of iron and Ashley’s body was a super-powerful rare-earth magnet. I couldn’t help but focus on her lean legs, the arch of her hip bones, the swell of her breasts, the pinkness of her pert nipples, and the neatly trimmed spot of matching red pubic hair above the opening to her--

  “Hey, Sterling!” I felt hands shake me, and I almost jumped out of my skin with surprise.

  “Ahhh!” I jerked my head away from Ashley’s figuratively and literally smoking body. Charlotte had somehow come to stand next to me, and she had placed both her hands on my shoulder.

  “I need to finish her off.” The succubus’ lips formed a smirk, and I could tell that my girlfriend knew I was ogling her archenemy.

  Guilt filled my stomach as I watched the brown-haired girl walk to the unconscious body of the cheerleader. I shouldn’t have looked at Ashley like that. I had a girlfriend now, and I loved Charlotte, had loved her from the moment I saw her. Ashley, Mia, Kelsey, and the hundreds of other girls at school were all beautiful, but none had captured my heart like the purple-winged succubus. I needed to apologize to her as soon as I got the chance.

  “Look out!” I yelled at her half a second after I noticed a squadron of black-winged hotties fly out of the second-story window of the distant class building. I didn’t recognize them, so they were probably freshmen or sophomores, but I did recognize the red lavabolts that the screaming dark angels were summoning.

  Charlotte dove away from Ashley’s naked body, and the ground between them exploded into fiery grass. These red missiles looked the same as the ones that the head cheerleader had summoned, but they didn’t seem to have the heat-seeking ability and just launched like arrows at my love.

  “Fuck! Run!” Charlotte picked me up like a rag doll, and my feet didn’t touch the ground for a good ten yards of her sprint.

  We got to the end of the grassy area ,and my shoeless feet pounded painfully on the concrete walkways of the quad. I heard the firebolts crash into the ground behind us, and I felt the heat of their blasts toast my wet socks. Charlotte had let go of my arm so that I might run faster, but it was apparent from the sounds behind us that I couldn’t outpace the magic that the beautiful winged girls were launching at us.

  My girlfriend grabbed my arm as soon as we reached the edge of the last building, and I felt my shoulder almost pull out of my socket. She had yanked me into the air again and then launched us both sideways behind the building with a massive beat of her left wing. I was so surprised that I didn’t even have a chance to yelp, and I suddenly found myself lying on top of the girl’s lithe body with my face pressed against her firm breasts.

  There was no time to enjoy the position though; Charlotte pushed me off of her and leapt to her feet using another beat of her purple bat wings. We stood fifty yards from the school exit now, and there was just a tall fence standing between us and the open road. The black-winged girls would continue to pursue us, but we could probably lose them among the buildings of our city.

  But there were three massive devils guarding the school exit.

  They stood almost eight feet tall, covered with lizard-like spikes and scales. I would have actually thought them dragon creatures, or maybe super-strong lizardman varieties, but their eyes burned with a coal fire, and their movements had always seemed closer to those of Mr. Roberts than the smooth, snake-like twitches of the lizardboys and girls in my school.

  Mr. Albert was the PE teacher, and although he had seemed like a hardass to the other kids in my class, he only rolled his fiery eyes when I made my pull-up attempts. Then he told me to go read in a corner.

  Mr. Jackson was the ancient history teacher, and I’d enjoyed his class in my freshman year. The devil-dragon-man was very passionate about Greek culture and had one day brought in his personal collection of vases with the two-dimensional artwork.

  Mr. Lafferty was one of the school counselors, and while he hadn’t advised me on my community college choice, he recalled my nam
e more often than anyone else I could ever remember. At least one in four times he actually used ‘Sherman’ instead of ‘kid’ or ‘guy’ or some other name.

  The three dragon-devils turned their burning eyes toward us, and then I noticed that they each had swords strapped to their scaled waists. They promptly pulled the blades from their sheaths. Each of the weapons was saw-edged, and a strange gray misty smoke clung to the surface of the metal. As if they had just been pulled from a vat of dry ice.

  “Abyss blades. Shit,” Charlotte cursed and gestured to a door on our side of the building. As I recalled, it was the side entrance to the main faculty lounge, but I had never been inside.

  “Run Sheldon!” My girlfriend was already sprinting toward the door, and I winced again when the balls of my feet slammed into the hard concrete.

  The door was locked, but the brown-haired succubus girl just growled a bit, and I heard something break by the knob. The door swung open, and she pushed me through. Her shove was harder than I would have expected, and I flew across the room before I landed in the soft embrace of a musty couch.

  “This won’t hold them for long.” There was a bar on the door, and Charlotte slid the thin piece of metal into place before she backed away.

  “Ummm, my name is Sherman.” I didn’t know why I was correcting her anymore, but it seemed like my girlfriend should be calling me by my actual name.

  “Right, sorry. I’m occupied with these assholes.”

  The knob twisted, and a trio of terrorizing growls sounded on the other side of the piece of metal. The bar bent against the weight of a sharp pull, and then I heard a snap on the other end. I guessed that one of the dragon-devils had yanked the handle off the door. It was a lucky break, and I guessed that it would be harder for the teachers to pull the door off without the knob.

  The sawed blade of a sword cut through the metal of the door like it was a tin can.

  “Shit!” both Charlotte and I said at once.

  “This way.” Her fingers enfolded with mine, and she nodded toward the only other door out of the room.

  I let her pull me into the hallway while I gazed at her hand. It had turned human-looking to touch me, and I realized that our relationship had reached another achievement level: Holding hands. Even though I felt terror gnawing at my stomach, and I was almost certain that both of us were going to die, I couldn’t help but smile at her gentle touch. This was all worth it. As long as I could hold her hand and recall the kiss she had given me on my cheek.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” I heard Ashley’s voice come from the opposite side of the building to the three reptilian devils. There was a giggle of a dozen girly voices, and I realized that we were really screwed.

  “Damn it,” Charlotte sighed and then glanced around the room at the end of the hallway. It was the main office of the school, and, other than a ringing phone line, there was no other sign of life in the cubicle space.

  “Ugh. Here, I guess.” She pulled me down another hallway. There was a thick wooden door with the blue bathroom logo, and the beautiful winged girl pushed open the door, pulled me inside, and closed the door after me.

  She slid closed the metal deadbolt on the door and engaged the tiny barrel lock at the top of the frame. It was a ridiculous gesture since the barrel thingy was like two inches long and maybe a quarter of an inch thick. Our enemies wouldn’t even know it was there when they kicked in the door.

  “Well, I guess I accomplished my mission,” Charlotte said with a sigh as she slid her wings against the wood of the thick door and sat on the tiled floor. The bathroom contained just a toilet and a sink, maybe only ten feet wide by eight feet long.

  “You were amazing,” I whispered to her. I should have felt beyond terrified, but my nerves felt as calm as a still lake.

  My stomach didn’t feel nauseous anymore. In fact, I felt a strange sense of fulfillment. A part of me had given up on life and love. I’d just accepted that I would always be alone. I would always be living a wonderful life vicariously through my videogames. People just didn’t like me, or even notice my existence. Even when I got out of college, I had planned on finding a simple office job and then living the rest of my life as a hermit.

  But today had changed all of my assumptions. When I first saw Charlotte three months ago, I had fallen in love with her. I knew I had probably been really creepy about my affection for the beautiful girl, but I also knew that it would have never mattered, since there was no way she would have ever been my girlfriend. Now I’d talked to her, I’d felt her lips on my cheek, I’d held her hand.

  She had told other girls that I was her boyfriend.

  “If only I could have gotten us to my house. We would have escaped.” The gorgeous girl sighed and then leaned the back of her head against the wood of the door.

  “They wouldn’t have followed us to your house?” I sat on the tile floor under the sink across from her.

  “Maybe. Probably. It wouldn’t have mattered. I would have opened a portal, and we could have left this realm.”

  “Uhh, what does that mean? You can do that?” I felt stupid for asking, but I didn’t want to spend the last seconds of our life in silence.

  “Yes, well, I need human blood to paint the rune circle. I’ve got gallons of the stuff in my fridge at home,” she sighed again, and I heard the sound of the distant lounge door giving up its life.

  “Human blood?” my voice squeaked when I asked the question.

  “Yeah. Human bloo--” her voice cut off as she looked at me with sudden interest.

  Or maybe it was hunger.

  “Ahhhh, how much blood do you need?” My voice was decidedly unmanly, and we both stood up together.

  I took a few steps away from the beautiful girl.

  “Oh, not that much. A pint or two should do it.” Her eyes glowed a faint purple, and her lips twisted into an unbelievably sexy smile.

  “A pint or two?” My back pressed against the cold wall of the bathroom.

  “Or three. Sometimes I mess up the runes and have to start over. Hold out your wrist, please.”

  “Umm, wait. Is t-t-t-there another w-w-way to do it? Does it have to be my bl-bl-blood?” I was more than a little terrified of seeing my own blood. I’d once cut my finger when chopping vegetables and had fainted.

  “You are the only human here. Unless you want to die? Do you want to die? Or would you rather come with me and live a while longer?” Her voice was unbelievably sexy, as if she was licking every part of my eardrum with her words.

  “No. I want to live,” I gasped and felt my erection push painfully against my school pants. This was not the right time to become aroused.

  “Goooooood,” she purred as she ran her soft-looking tongue over her full lips. “Now hold out your hand. Palm up. Hurry.”

  I followed her orders and raised my right palm. Her hands still looked human, but she slid her pointer finger across my wrist where the biggest group of veins seemed to be. Nothing happened for a moment, but then my skin parted with a perfect red line and blood began to swell to the surface with a surprising swiftness.

  I hadn’t even felt the cut. Or any pain. Her nails must have been vorpal sharp.

  “Ummm, you smell good.” Charlotte’s voice was a moan, and she dabbed the pad of her finger into my red life juice.

  “Ahhh, taste good too. I’m surprised a vampire hasn’t murdered you yet. O negative is rare.” The girl had licked the tip of her finger in a suggestive manner, and the intense pain from my crotch made me forget about the slit on my wrist, the blood dripping on the tiles, or the horde of devils searching for us.

  There was a ripping sound, and I looked down to see Charlotte yanking a big piece of cloth from her uniform skirt. The garment wasn’t as short as the cheerleader’s outfits, but the removal of the piece was enough to expose most of my love’s perfect legs and her knee-high socks. My head swam again, and I began to feel nauseous. I tried not to look at the blood pouring from my wrist, but it flowed o
ut like an angry waterfall now.

  The succubus ripped the cloth again and wrapped a smaller piece around her finger before she drenched it with my blood. She dropped to the tile of the bathroom in a crouch and drew a three-foot-diameter circle. Charlotte put a pentagram in the middle of the shape, and each of the points met the edge of the circle. It was a shape that I had seen in many video games and on metal band albums, but watching her paint it with my blood was all sorts of scary.

  There was a knock on the door.

  I almost gasped with fright, but Charlotte just ignored the sound, leapt to her feet, and wetted the cloth on her finger with more of my blood before she continued her drawing. The points of the pentagram were getting strange symbols painted above them. It almost looked like Latin writing, but the letters seemed to twist and turn when I tried to study them.

  “I can smell you in here!” Ashley’s pretty voice made a mocking sing-song from the other side of the door. “Just come out and I’ll make it quick. I really don’t want to fight in an icky bathroom.” There was another knock on the door.

  “Almost done,” Charlotte whispered to me. I nodded, but the world spun dramatically now. I could smell my own coppery blood, and the stench made me feel sicker than Mr. Roberts’ death odor had.

  Ashley started pounding on the door, and a patch of drywall fell from the ceiling by the sink. My heart was racing, and my vision started to blacken. The back of my sweaty head leaned against the cold tile, and I tried to focus on anything but the pounding of the door, the insane symbols that Charlotte was drawing, or the endless amount of blood waterfalling from my wrist.

  There was little else to focus on.

  “Kalan nanbaa arrritttoo iwwarrsheee byy fffaarlo attarrruiii maann icaaan iii teee.”

  I realized that I had forced my eyes shut, and I opened them to observe Charlotte standing in the middle of the pentagram. The beautiful girl was chanting over the sounds of the breaking bathroom door, and a reddish-purple glow seemed to be pulsing from her perfect skin. Her brown hair floated to the ceiling as if gravity was reversed. Little particles of thick, liquid-like crimson color also rose from the circle she had painted with my blood, and I saw a giant crack form in the door beyond my girlfriend.