Flame of the Succubus Read online

  When all else fails, follow the motherfucking red brick road.

  I wasn't the type to sit around and see what happened. Plus, there could be other things around here that wouldn't be as scared of me as the succubus. Like that Ryder.

  I took off my shirt and laid it over Everett's body and head. That was the best I could do for him.

  "Everett," I murmured.

  I headed over to the dark red path. I could go to the left or to the right.

  The succubus had flown to the right. I picked that direction and started walking.

  ***

  Since my phone was dead in this weird place, I couldn't tell the time, but I guessed that I had probably been walking for half an hour or so. The land was empty, devoid of any sign of life, except a single cactus-like plant I had passed ten minutes ago. The cactus had been three times my height, covered with a dark brown leathery skin, and what looked like rusty needles sticking out in place of spikes. I had taken a wide berth around the strange cactus, unsure if there were man-eating plants in this Abyss.

  I kept scanning the horizon, but it was as empty as before. The alien sound of someone coughing broke the silence, and I jerked my head to the left toward the sound. There was nobody on my left, but when I turned my head forward, someone dressed in dark rags squatted in the path just ahead of me.

  The fuck? You could see a long way on the flat ground, and I was absolutely positive that no one had been around. I slowed, shifting my stance ever so slightly in case this was another demon. Which it probably was.

  "Good evening, traveler," a hoarse voice called out. The bundle of rags shifted, and I could make out a gnarled face with yellow eyes and yellow teeth leering at me from underneath a mat of tangled gray hair. I supposed the creature in front of me was a man, or a man-demon, judging from shape of his face. Either that, or my bitch of a sixth-grade teacher had come back to haunt me.

  "Evening?" I asked, glancing up at the sky. I couldn't see any sun, moon, or stars. The sky had streaks of red, pink, and orange that hadn't changed during my whole time here, as if caught in an eternal sunset.

  "My favorite time of the day, right before the fog moves in," the disheveled man said, shrugging his sloping shoulders. "I don't suppose you would have any stones to spare?" He held out an ugly dark cup.

  Stones? I looked around the rocky landscape. There were little pebbles all over the ground. Or did he mean something else?

  I realized that the small black stone hanging from my neck was visible against my bare chest. I began to reach toward it reflexively, but I stopped myself.

  I was about to tell him to fuck off, but some sixth sense warned me that I would need all the help I could get in the Abyss. I wasn't giving him my memento, though.

  I rifled through my pockets. I had my wallet, some spare change, my car keys, and my phone. None of them would do me any good if I didn't make it back home.

  "How about these?" I showed him a handful of change.

  The short man frowned, but accepted the change. "I suppose these will do."

  As soon as I dropped the coins into his extended cup, he threw them into his mouth, biting noisily into the hard metal.

  I tried not to show my surprise. If he could bite through metal coins as if they were crackers, this weird man was dangerous.

  "Got anything else?" he asked.

  I shrugged and tossed him the rest of my change. He chomped down on those as well.

  "Anything bigger?"

  I sighed and tossed him my phone. It's not like it would help me here.

  The man's yellow eyes lit up as he bit into the phone like a candy bar.

  "Delightful!"

  I showed him my wallet, but the man snorted in disgust and swallowed the rest of my phone. He belched loudly.

  "So, I'm a bit lost here," I ventured. "Any chance you could point me the way home?"

  The man nodded. "Of course. Where's your home?"

  "The corner of Springfield and Clover?" It was worth a try.

  The man rubbed his chin. "Spring? Clover? Can't say we have much of either of those around these parts. Where did you say you were from, again?"

  I took a half-step backward. "I didn't."

  The man sniffed the air, and his eyes grew wide. "Is that human flesh I smell?"

  I tensed, ready to fight the metal-eating man, but he made no move to attack me.

  I was really confused now. The succubus thought I wasn't human, but this demon panhandler thought I was?

  "So what if I'm human?"

  The man shook his head. "Humans can't come to the Abyss. They can't cross between planes. Everyone knows that."

  "Right," I nodded, acting like I knew what he was talking about. Well, I had seen what had happened to Everett. He must have followed me somehow.

  "Unless…" the man began. He peered at me, squinting hard as if seeing something about me that I couldn't.

  "He could cross between the planes, even with his human origin." The man looked to the sky, a flash of fear flitting across his face.

  "He? Who's he?"

  The man ignored my question. "You're not from here, are you? Could it be?" He scrunched his face some more, somehow turning even uglier than before. He stared at the black stone hanging from my neck.

  I wasn't in much position to bargain with the strange man. I pointed at him. "You find me a way back home, and I'll get you all the phones you can eat."

  "Phone?"

  "The big rectangle you just ate."

  The man laughed. "If you are who I think you are, you won't be able to return home. Not unless you can overthrow the Emperor himself." He again looked to the empty sky, checking for something.

  "Emperor? Why would I need to overthrow some Emperor?" The man was making less and less sense. I had no interest in getting involved in local politics or power struggles. "But that succubus—I mean that woman came here from my world."

  "Woman?" The man frowned. "Doesn't matter. Follow me." He turned to walk down the path. "I'll take you to the nearest village."

  I chased after the man, unsure whether he was going to help me or not. I had already been going in that direction before he arrived, so it wasn't going to make things worse.

  The man looked at me with one eye and nodded. "So what's your name?"

  I hesitated. I knew next to nothing about demons and rocky worlds, but I vaguely recalled something about keeping your true name to yourself. My current name would be good enough.

  "Ward. Aidan Ward."

  The man bobbed his head up and down as we walked. "Pleased to meet your, Master Ward." He sniffed his nose. "You have quite the scent about you."

  Little insects were swirling around his matted hair, and the beggar was saying I was smelly?

  "What do I call you?" I asked, catching up to his side.

  "Call me Crowley."

  "What do you around here, Crowley?" I had a guess, which he confirmed with his next words.

  "Isn't it obvious? I'm a beggar."

  ***

  We walked in silence for another hour. Crowley ignored the rest of my questions.

  "I've decided," he finally said.

  "Decided?" I asked.

  "That I'll be leaving now."

  "I thought you were taking me to a village?"

  I stopped speaking as Crowley pointed to the distance, where a cluster of gray buildings stood. I could make out tiny dots, the size of pin heads, moving about the buildings.

  "Is that place safe?"

  "The Abyss? Safe?" Crowley barked in laughter, a half-animal, half-human sound. "No, to survive the Abyss you must grow stronger, much stronger than you are now." He peered again at me as if I was some strange alien, which I guess I was, from his perspective. "You crossed the planes, yet I can't sense the spark of any Flame in you. Curious."

  "It'd be less curious if you explained what's going on."

  Crowley merely turned and walked away. He raised a fist into the air and shook it, which I took to be the same thing as waving
. "If you survive the storm, I'll be seeing you again!"

  Storm? I watched him walk back the way we had come, then turned my attention to the village in the distance. There were maybe thirty or forty buildings in the village, and none of them were taller than two stories, with most being short single-story buildings.

  I had no idea the level of technology here, but I hadn't seen anything to suggest that there was electricity. I couldn't make out any lights in the buildings, even though the sky was darker now. The light hadn't faded from the everlasting sunset, but a thick black fog had emerged on the horizon.

  Ready for the worst, I made my way to the village.

  As I approached, one of the figures spotted me, then said something to the others. They vanished into their buildings.

  Damn, everyone was spooked no matter where I went. What was this Abyss really like? What were they afraid of?

  I walked up the path to the nearest building, a house made of rocks. I pounded on the stone slab that I took to be a door.

  No one answered.

  I moved to the next building. I pounded on the door.

  Again, no one answered.

  I moved to a third building. This time, I noticed that the doorway was open, a stone slab set to the side.

  I cautiously approached, stepping into the doorway.

  "Hello?" I said. "Can I come inside?"

  "Be my guest," a rough voice responded.

  I stepped fully into the building and looked towards the direction of the voice.

  I nearly jumped, then had to stop myself from both laughing or screaming.

  A man-shaped figure with a black cat head and furry hands was seated at a table in the unlit room. He ripped bloody red meat from what looked like a femur large enough to have come from a person. He wore a pair of brown shorts but had a bare furry chest and no shoes.

  "You're staring," the cat man said. "What is it? I forget to wipe the shit off my nose?"

  "No, no," I said, holding up my hands in a placating gesture. "I'm just glad to have someone to talk to." I jerked my head toward the open doorway. "The rest of them don't seem to take kindly to strangers."

  The cat man shrugged. "Strangers come and go all the time. Most find that it's safer to avoid them altogether."

  "What about you? You're not afraid of me?"

  The cat man bared his sharp fangs at me and hissed. "Everyone knows it's bad luck to cross a black cat." He stared at me while reaching for a smaller piece of bone with a chunk of meat on it. "Care for a bite?" he asked.

  I didn't know what the social rules were in this place, and I wasn't that interested in eating a mysterious piece of raw meat. But I needed answers. When in Rome…

  I nodded. It's not like I didn't enjoy a good rare steak. Or that's what I tried to convince myself.

  I caught the bone that the cat man tossed to me. I hesitated and took a bite of the chewy meat, ripping a solid chunk off the bone after some gnawing.

  "Not bad. Well marbled." I swallowed.

  The cat man smiled, again showing his sharp fangs. "As close to human flesh as you can find these days."

  I froze, suddenly hyper aware of the sharp claws extending from each of the cat man's fingers as well as the toes on his bare feet. The blood in my head pounded in anticipation of violence, and I curled my hands into fists. The cat man, though, turned to grab another bone for himself, as if nothing was amiss.

  I took a slow, deliberate breath, letting my pulse return to normal.

  "You're a Seeker." The cat man said it in a flat tone of voice. It was a statement, not a question.

  I raised an eyebrow without replying either way.

  "Your aura. Even I could sense it."

  I had a million questions to ask. Crowley had brought me here, but he hadn't really been that helpful. The cat man, though, seemed a bit more chatty. I didn't want to give the appearance of weakness, though.

  I nodded, instead. "Perhaps." I wasn't sure what a Seeker was, but there was one thing I was seeking, or rather one person. "I'm looking for…" I hesitated. "A succubus."

  It was an absurd statement. I didn't even know if they were called the same thing here, but the succubus was my only real clue for finding my way back home. I had to know how she had come to my world, and how she had come back to this so-called Abyss.

  I waited for the cat man to laugh at me, but he simply shrugged. "Succubus? One or two have been around here lately. The last was here about a week ago."

  I stepped forward eagerly for any hints of the missing succubus, my hand holding the bone falling to my side. "Did she have blonde hair? Leathery wings?"

  The cat man cocked his head at me. "Don't they all?" He made a hacking sound and spat something dark onto the floor at his side. "Never did like them much."

  So she had definitely been a succubus, and there was a good chance she had passed by the village before.

  I opened my mouth to ask another question, but a loud crack erupted from the village outside.

  I looked out the open doorway and spotted screaming humanoid figures emerging from the buildings and running. Most of the figures looked roughly human, although their skin ranged from pale blue to a light green, shades I had never seen on any human.

  I realized that everyone was running in the same direction, as if they were fleeing from something.

  I looked back at the cat man, but he casually discarded a bone and reached for a fresh one.

  "What's happening?" I asked.

  I ducked reflexively as something outside exploded with a deafening boom. A flash of bright yellow lit up the entire room like lightning. For a moment, I could see the pattern of darker stripes across the cat man's furry back.

  I pointed to the fleeing villagers. "Why's everyone running? Shouldn't we go, too?"

  The cat man rolled his green feline eyes. "I told you. I'm safe here. You, on the other hand…" The cat man opened his mouth wide. I couldn't tell if he was showing off all of his sharp teeth in a yawn or laugh. He pointed a clawed finger to his doorway. "I suggest you find some cover. That's the sound of gods fighting."

  CHAPTER 3

  Gods? Was the cat man shitting me? I raced out of the building in the general direction of the fleeing villagers.

  I looked behind me and couldn't believe what I was seeing.

  Two figures were flying in the sky, crashing into each other, breaking apart, then colliding again. I should have kept running but the spectacle was insane, and I couldn't take my eyes off it.

  One of them, possibly a woman, had long streaming red hair and a crimson robe that fluttered behind her as she flew. She held a dark staff, and streaks of colored lightning streamed out of one end.

  The other flying figure was a man dressed in black robes wielding two swords. The next instant he changed into a long, serpentine dragon with glittering black scales. The black dragon lunged at the woman in red with an open maw while spewing hot white flames.

  I had to close my eyes at the blinding explosion when the two collided. The shockwave arrived a second later, knocking me backward to the ground.

  The dragon recoiled, writhing in the sky in a sinuous pattern. It reared its head and screamed.

  A piece of the sky near the dragon tore open. A snout, then a small dragon head appeared. More openings, what looked like portals, appeared in the sky. Small black dragons, a fraction of the size of their summoner, crawled out of the torn pieces of sky.

  Was that the same kind of portal that had brought me here?

  A shout brought my attention to the other combatant. The woman in red pointed her staff at the dragon and yelled something I couldn't understand.

  More portals opened in the air around her, this time shimmering with a red light. Small humanoid figures, like some kind of flying imp or demon, crawled out of this second set of portals.

  Yeah, those definitely looked like the circle of light that had brought me here. I picked myself up and took an involuntary step forward before stopping myself.

  As muc
h as I wanted to find out how to go home, I was in no position to interfere between two battling gods.

  The sky quickly filled with more creatures, and in a few seconds, an army of black dragons covered half of the sky and ground, while an army of red imps filled the other half.

  The two forces collided, and the battle began in full, each god hurtling into the center of the fight.

  That's when I realized that some of the creatures were coming towards me and the fleeing villagers.

  I turned and ran, searching for cover or a weapon.

  A small black dragon pounced out of the air about ten yards in front of me, pinning one of the villagers to the ground. The dragon, about the size of a small horse, savaged the villager's face and chest, then raised its head high as it swallowed, dark blue liquid streaming from its mouth.

  I dashed forward, dodging to the left as a red imp attacked another villager.

  Up ahead, the villagers were heading for a mound in the earth and disappearing into the entrance of what must have been an underground cave. I shifted direction, running toward the cave as well.

  Some of the villagers remained at the entrance, holding spears or swords. I was closing in on the cave entrance when a body thudded to the ground in front of me, or rather, the remains of a body. The head and lower body were missing, leaving only a bloody torso with two outstretched arms. A moment later, some kind of sword fell into the ground, blade first.

  I snatched the sword by its handle, not stopping, and ran towards the villagers standing guard at the cave's entrance. I was close enough now to make out their features. They looked rather human, other than the unusual hues of their pale skin. The males standing guard had an exotic look to their faces, what I might have called softer features than what I was used to, but their expressions were anything but soft.

  They pointed their weapons at me as I approached but must have decided that I wasn't a threat, because they stepped aside to let me inside.

  I took three steps into the dark cavern and stopped. It was filled with the men, women, and children from the village. A half-dozen of the stronger looking men were standing guard at the front of the cave, but the rest of the villagers were old or young. Unless they had some secret supernatural strength, I doubted they could survive against the spillover from the battle between the gods in the sky.