Flame of the Succubus Read online

  The villagers had dark brown or black hair, but I spotted a flash of something brighter. Blonde hair.

  At the side of the cavern was the succubus I had followed into the Abyss.

  I pointed my sword at her. "You!" Only then did I glance at the weapon. It was a long thin blade, with a single edge and bits of rust marring the metal surface.

  The other villagers began to cry out. I quickly lowered the sword and stomped over to the succubus.

  "Who are you? Why'd you bring me here?" I asked.

  The succubus tried to step away, but her back was already against the cave's wall. She spread her wings, but they flapped uselessly against the cave wall. For a second, she looked like she would fight me, but she folded her wings behind herself and stepped toward me instead.

  "What did you do to me?" she asked.

  "Do to you? You're the one that tried to suck my life out."

  The men at the cave's entrance shouted a battle cry as they met a small black dragon, stabbing at it with spears and sword points. The dragon retreated but lingered. Another dragon joined it.

  "Nevermind," I said. "Can you fight? None of us will survive if we don't help." I pointed my sword to the dragons outside.

  I didn't know the first thing about handling a sword, but it was clear we would all need to pitch in to survive. By now, the black mist from earlier had covered the ground, creating a thick fog. We would be hidden from the bulk of the creatures in the sky. If we could fend off the ones that came upon us by chance, we might survive the bloody mess.

  The succubus hesitated, then her demeanor changed. She smiled, confident again, like the woman I had first met at the hospital. "As you wish, hero."

  She didn't have any visible weapons, but she moved towards the entrance with me at her side. I glanced at her sideways, checking out her profile. Her body curved out at her generous chest, back in to a slim waist, then out to her hips and the other way at her thighs, in an S-like shape. She had the figure of a supermodel, other than the wings on her back, horns on her head, and tail tucking out the bottom of her dress, that is.

  The men at the entrance shifted to make room for us.

  "What's the plan?" I asked. Everyone in the Abyss so far had understood me, although with everything I had seen so far, I wasn't sure if they spoke English or used some magical trick of translation.

  The villager closest to me, a blue-skinned man who I took to be the leader, jabbed his spear in the direction of the two dragons. The creatures waited patiently, their heads bobbing up and down. "Keep them out of the cave." He shrugged. "And don't die."

  I watched the dragons pace back and forth, acting more like hunting cats than the brash lizards I had seen in movies.

  Were the dragons waiting for more of their kind? How intelligent were they, anyway? If too many grouped up, they would overwhelm us quickly.

  "Should we attack?" I asked. "Before more show up?"

  The blue villager nodded. He pointed at the succubus. "The succubus should be able to take one on her own, no?"

  I looked in surprise at the succubus. She had seemed more afraid of me than our current situation. She shrugged. "I suppose I could."

  "Great," I said. "That leaves one dragon for the rest of us."

  "Yes," the blue villager said. "Cecil. Horath. You two stay and guard the entrance. The rest with me and the swordsman."

  Swordsman? Oh, right. I glanced at the rusty blade in my hand. I was a swordsman.

  With that, we charged the dragons, the succubus going to the left, four villagers and me going to the right.

  At first, I tried to stab with my sword from a safe distance, like the other villagers did with their spears. I was plenty happy to keep the snarling dragon as far away from me as possible.

  A few of the villagers managed to pierce the dragon's hide, but the wounds were shallow, and the dragon didn't slow.

  I risked a quick glance to the succubus on my left. She swiped the edge of one wing into her dragon's face, knocking it backward.

  The dragon in front of me lashed out, and I had to turn my attention back to it, knocking aside a set of claws with the sword. The dragon suddenly spun, its tail whirling about like a whip. A deadly looking barbed tip zipped through the air.

  The tail batted one of the villagers to the ground, who rolled on the ground screaming while clutching his abdomen.

  Something sharp stung my arm, and I looked down to find that the tip of the tail had grazed me as well. It was a light cut, more painful than dangerous, assuming I wasn't going to get poisoned or infected. But the sharp pain pissed me off more than I expected.

  Up until now, I had managed to keep my cool with everything that was happening, but in that moment of pain, something awakened inside me.

  Rage.

  Everything about my whole situation pissed me off. I was tired of being fucked with. I had been in a decent place. I had worked my butt off to land a job after serving time for a fucked-up situation. Then, some crazy demon girl had brought me to this shithole, where asshole gods were fucking over these villagers with me stuck right in the middle of it.

  I had a sneaking suspicion that Crowley had known what was coming all along, too. Another fucker.

  Now this dragon was trying to kill me. That pissed me off the most.

  Kill. Kill! KILL!

  The rage flared higher, then calmed back down, not gone, but coiled tightly inside me.

  I didn't know the first thing about fighting dragons or wielding swords, but in that moment, I knew that all I wanted to do was cut that fucker's head off, and what I wanted, I would have.

  I charged the dragon, holding the sword in two hands now, wound up like a batter readying his bat. The dragon was in the middle of slashing at another villager.

  I screamed, and the dragon turned its head. I swung hard, at a slight upward angle.

  I had been bracing myself for the impact of my rusty sword against the dragon's dark scales, but my sword sliced cleanly through the neck, about a foot behind the head.

  The dragon's body went slack and collapsed, hitting the ground as the same time as the decapitated head.

  Something black crawled up the length of my sword, and I dropped it in surprise, thinking it was some kind of magical attack.

  But when I took a closer look at the sword on the ground, it was the same as before, rust and all, with only a few patches of dark blood trickling down its edge.

  I blinked. I had been sure something had been crawling up the blade, as if coming out of my hand. Maybe it had been a splash of blood. It didn't matter. The dragon was dead.

  The memento around my neck also felt slightly warm against my chest, but when I touched it with my hand, it seemed normal.

  To my left, the succubus cried out, and when I turned to look, she had the dragon in a headlock. She twisted, and there was a loud crack. She dropped the dead dragon, its neck twisted at an awkward angle.

  I heaved a sigh of relief as I recovered my sword, then made my way back to the cave entrance. The fallen villager was dead by now, and the others brought his body back to the cave.

  The blue village leader motioned for the rest of us to stay quiet. I stood guard at the cave's entrance in silence along with the others, hoping that nothing else would find us. It was perhaps another hour before the sounds of fighting in the distance petered out. We must have been unlucky with the first two dragons, because no other creatures bothered us while we hid in the safety of the thick black fog.

  Finally, the blue village leader spoke. "It should be safe now."

  The others around him visibly relaxed. The leader bowed to me before speaking again.

  "We thank you for your assistance, Seeker."

  Seeker? Isn't that what the cat man had said, too? I briefly wondered if the cat man was still alive.

  I looked over to the succubus who was staring at me with a curious expression. She didn't seem afraid of me anymore.

  "You," I said, pointing to the succubus. "We need to talk."
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br />   Her purple eyes sparkled even though there was no light in the cavern. This time, though, my mind stayed clear.

  The succubus frowned, then nodded. "Yes. Yes, we do."

  CHAPTER 4

  The rest of the villagers returned to their homes. The leader, who introduced himself as Ferrin, offered to give us lodging for the night, but I wanted to talk to the succubus in private first. I didn't want too many prying ears learning the truth of my situation.

  After the last villager had disappeared into the thick fog, I turned to find the succubus seated on a low flat rock, her legs crossed. The hem of her dress rode high, revealing a pale, slim thigh. She watched me with a smirk as I took in her figure.

  "Enjoying the view?" she asked.

  I frowned slightly. "Don't mess with my mind." Of course, I enjoyed the view, even without any magic meddling with me. I had gotten a taste of her supple, youthful body already. "First things first. Can you take me back to Earth?"

  The smirk vanished from the succubus's face. "I can't."

  "You won't or you can't?"

  The succubus bit her lip. "I can't. There's a seal between the boundaries of our planes."

  I didn't know anything about seals and boundaries, but that didn't sound good. "Then how'd you show up at my hospital? Or come back here?"

  The succubus shook her head. "When the Obsidian Emperor sealed the paths between our planes, a few cracks remained. I got lucky and found one of the cracks. It will be gone, now that I've used it."

  "Can we find another of these cracks?"

  "Unlikely."

  It was that damn Emperor again, the one Crowley had mentioned. It sounded like I would have to change his mind about letting me go back home. But if the Emperor was anything like those gods I had just witnessed, I wasn't sure if he would stoop to listening to someone like me. I needed real leverage. Or some magical voodoo of my own.

  "So we're stuck here."

  The succubus giggled. "You're stuck. I'm not. I live here."

  I stared at the succubus for a minute, not speaking. This time I wasn't checking out her body. I was trying to figure out what to make of her. She shifted uncomfortably under my gaze, knowing I wasn't in the mood to flirt.

  Damn. Women, I could handle, but I wasn't sure how to start with a succubus. I watched as she bit her lip again, then brushed a lock of blonde hair out of her eyes.

  What if women and succubi weren't so different?

  "What's your name?" I asked. "You already know mine."

  She smiled at my question. "I'm Emberlyn." She uncrossed her legs, then crossed them the other way while smiling at me. "But you can call me Ember."

  "Alright, Ember. So what exactly were you doing on Earth?"

  "I was hungry."

  "Hungry?" I had a guess what she was hungry for. "For human souls?"

  Ember chuckled. "Not souls, silly. Flame."

  "Like fire?"

  Ember tilted her head. "Aren't you a Seeker? You used your Flame just now, during the fight."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about. What's this Seeker thing everyone keeps mentioning?"

  "You don't know anything?"

  "Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Care to enlighten me?"

  The succubus nodded. For some reason, she seemed eager to tell me more. What was she after? I had a growing suspicion that she wanted something from me, but I couldn't figure out what yet.

  "Seekers are warriors who walk the Path of the Flame. They gather Flame from their surroundings and grow the strength of their own inner Flame."

  "And what is Flame?"

  "It's what drives all life, all energy, all time forward. It's the lifeblood of the very planes."

  "And that's what you wanted from me? Why you came to Earth? Couldn't you get your so-called Flame here?"

  Ember shook her head. "Lesser demons can't cultivate our own Flame or gather it from the Abyss. We have our own way of feeding, instead. Succubi like me can only gather Flame by coupling with others." She gave me a grin with the last part of that sentence. "We draw the Flame out of others during moments of pleasure. Humans are the most delicious of all. Since we can't cultivate our own Flame, either, we have to feed constantly, searching for new sources of Flame."

  "They die, don't they?" I asked. I had read the stories and heard the urban legends. "When you take the Flame from your prey."

  Ember shrugged. "Ordinarily, yes. But you resisted my feeding. That's why you can't be a human. You also followed me into the Abyss."

  I was a hundred percent positive that I was a human. Then, again, she was right. How the hell had I survived and ended up here? Something she had said was strange.

  "You said I used my Flame just now. What did you mean?"

  "When you attacked the drakeling. I could sense your killing aura, like the ones the other Seekers have. I can't cultivate my own Flame, but I can still sense the aura of a Seeker in action."

  My killing aura? I had been pretty pissed when I had killed what she called a drakeling. Did she mean that rage I had felt? How I had forged it as a kind of weapon of its own?

  Come to think of it, I knew nothing about fighting with swords. Had my victory been a fluke? Or some other kind of power? I hoped for the latter. It was clear I would need to get stronger if I was going to survive this place.

  "Are Seekers powerful?" I asked.

  Ember nodded. "They can grow as strong as the gods you saw today."

  Gods? Those were Seekers? Another thought occurred to me. "What about the Obsidian Emperor? Is he a Seeker?"

  "Of course. Rumors are that he even came from your world."

  So humans could become Seekers? But then why did she think I wasn't a human? She was confusing me, but one this was clear. This was a way to get stronger. I had to find out more.

  "Can you teach me more about the Flame? About being a Seeker?" I asked.

  "No, I'm only a lesser demon. I can't cultivate, and I don't understand much beyond the basics."

  "Oh." I tried not to let my disappointment show. So much for that. I had one last question. "What about you? Why are you still here?" I indicated the cavern where we had stayed after the battle.

  "Hm?" Ember raised an eyebrow.

  "You could fly away to wherever you want. Why'd you stick around, even during the battle?" I doubted she was some kind of good Samaritan in demon form. Hell, she had tried to suck the life out of my body. Or Flame, same thing. She clearly had an agenda, and the only thing I could figure out was that it had to be related to me.

  "What do you want?" I asked. "More of my Flame?"

  "Yes!" Ember blurted out eagerly before covering her mouth. "I mean, not like before. But something about you…"

  I nodded, indicating that she should continue.

  "When we met in your world, however briefly, you did something to me," Ember said.

  My eyes flicked up and down the figure beneath the thin black dress.

  "Yes, I did, didn't I?"

  Ember shook her head, smiling. "No, what I mean is, even though you resisted me, something about me changed. Just now, when I fought the drakeling, I was testing myself. I think I'm stronger and faster than before. Then, when I sensed your killing aura, I knew for certain. Some of your Flame spilled over into me, even though we weren't engaged in, well…" Ember chuckled.

  I frowned, trying to make sense of the succubus's words. "I can make you stronger somehow. Reusable, too, unlike your other prey. That sounds convenient."

  Ember pouted. "You make it sound so unfriendly. We're connected. We share something." She walked over to me. I didn't move as she wrapped one arm around my waist. "I find you intriguing and brave, not to mention that you're easy on the eyes." She massaged my abs with her other hand, creeping downward to slip halfway down my pants.

  "You think you can turn me into your little pet, don't you?" I asked, with an amused expression. I wouldn't mind playing with her, but I had to set the ground rules. I wasn't going to be some demon's toy.

  "What, no,
of course not!" Ember said, removing her hand from my pants. She placed both hands on my shoulder and looked me in the eyes.

  When she spoke, something shifted in my gut. I wasn't sure what exactly happened, but it felt wrong. I tried to pinpoint what exactly was wrong. Then, I realized it. She had lied to me. Possibly for the first time.

  On a hunch, I tried asking something else. "How old are you, Ember?"

  Ember gave me a puzzled look.

  "Are you over eighteen?" I asked.

  She laughed. "Of course."

  I nodded. "So how old are you?"

  She pursed her mouth for a second, then licked her lips. "Nineteen."

  The same twisting sensation tickled my gut. "You're lying, aren't you?" I asked. "It's true what you said. We're connected somehow. I can tell when you're lying."

  Ember let go of me and stepped backward. "What?" she asked with wide eyes.

  "You were lying when you said you weren't trying to turn me into your pet."

  "No, I wasn't."

  My stomach churned as she protested. Yup. She was definitely lying.

  I shook my head. "Yes, you were." Then, I chuckled. "But you weren't lying about finding me intriguing, brave, and good-looking."

  Ember stared at me for a moment, then she laughed as well. "See? I was right about you. What now?"

  "We find out what's going on between you and me. And I want to find out more about this Seeker business, too. Know anyone that can help?"

  "I'm not sure. Seekers generally don't mingle with lesser demons or other lower creatures. They're also secretive about most of their training."

  "Let me guess. They form secret societies and elite clubs to feel all special?"

  Ember nodded. "Pretty much. Some of the sects have outposts in the larger cities for tournaments and recruiting. We could try asking around there."

  Before I could reply, a loud thumping sound from the cave's entrance drew our attention.

  I picked up my sword from the ground, ready to defend us. Ember spread her wings on my right.