Enclave

by Brandon Varnell

  “Come on.”

  Samantha continued dragging Tristin behind her. She could hear the blond man panting and whimpering. A pang of sympathy raced through her, but she quickly squashed it, remembering that this man was annoying and deserved getting shot in the backside. She should be thanking the marionette that had done it.

  “S-Samantha,” Tristin gasped, his feet scraping against concrete, stumbling, tripping, and forcing her to make up the difference by increasing the strength in her stride. “I don’t think... I can’t go on much farther.”

  “Just a little farther, Tristin. Then we’ll rest.”

  Times like these made her really hate her job, but Samantha tried to look at their predicament in a positive light. Every bad situation had a silver lining. Their situation was bad, yes, but it could be worse. Demons couldn’t sense them when they were inside of the barrier, which meant that if they could find a place to hide, they could rest and come up with a plan to escape.

  Even better, Mephisto was probably the one who cast the barrier. Demons couldn’t move once they had set up the barrier or they ran the risk of disrupting it. Creating a barrier like this required a constant stream of energy to be emitted from the demon who did the casting. It had to be strong and steady. It couldn’t fluctuate, which would happen if Mephisto moved from his spot. That meant the only thing they had to worry about were those marionettes and whatever other horrors the demon had in his legion.

  Shelter was found in an alley behind a church. It wasn’t a real church, but one of those Las Vegas churches that people eloped in. That was too bad, as Samantha would have liked to pray, even if her faith had been shaken by recent, ground breaking events.

  At least the place was decently clean. The ground was a little dusty, sure, and there was an odd smell coming from a sewer vent several meters away, but that seemed to be the worst of it. A door leading into the church stood a few feet from them. Perhaps they could slip inside. She didn’t want to remain outdoors. The red sky that formed from demonic barriers always gave her the creeps.

  “Here.” Samantha directed Tristin over to the wall. “Lay down on your stomach. I need to see the bullet wound.”

  Tristin, for once, did not respond with something marred by cheerful sarcasm, or just sarcasm in general. He merely whimpered and did as he was told.

  Not for the first time, Samantha compared Christian to Tristin. The two had arrived in her care only days apart, joining her Executioners in two different branches, and they couldn’t have been more different.

  Tristin was cheerful to the point of obnoxiousness. Right from the very beginning, he had been a problem child. He didn’t care for the Catholic Church. He didn’t believe in God or that Christ was the savor. He had no trouble going out, flirting with, and sexing up women for his own pleasure. She was even sure that he flaunted this fact because he knew they couldn’t do anything. They needed him. They needed all the help they could get. Every week he found a different batch of women to sleep with. Where he met them she didn’t know, nor did she care to, but it had been infuriating to call for him, only to find out that he’d gone out that night to get himself laid.

  Presenting a stark contrast to the cheerful sexual deviant was Christian. He was serious to the point where he seemed moody most of the time. Straight-laced and a strong believer in following the rules, Christian had thrown himself into his training, his tasks, and the Catholic Religion. He became everything a Warrior should be. He was not just a strong fighter but also a scholar and a man of God. The only thing that had bothered her about him was his unhealthy obsession for light novels and Japanese pop culture, but she could overlook that in light of his accomplishments and piousness.

  And yet it was Christian who ended up running away with a succubus, forsaking his duty for a monster. It was Christian who abandoned her when she needed him most. Furthermore, it was Tristin who was here, right now, having taken a bullet to the butt, whimpering in pain, who had helped her the most.

  How was that for ironic?

  “S-Samantha...”

  Samantha snapped out of her reverie and focused on the task at hand.

  “I’m here. Let me see your injury.”

  With Tristin’s help, Samantha managed to work the man out of his pants. If it weren’t for the small issue of them being trapped in a barrier with a high-class demon, Samantha was sure she’d have been blushing, or raging. Definitely raging. This was the first time in her entire life that she had ever seen a male’s lower half. Unlike a good deal of Executioners who’d lost their virginity, she had never bedded anyone.

  Samantha tried to ignore the fact that Tristin’s rear end was being practically shoved in her face. His skin was a lot paler down there than it was anywhere else. Probably because he never got any sun there. Leaking from a small wound in his left glute was blood. It trailed down the pale flesh, a tiny trickle.

  “This is the injury you’ve been whimpering and moaning about?” A large vein pulsed on her forehead. She could feel her right eye twitching with violent intentions. “This tiny, little, measly wound is what you’ve been crying over?”

  “Uh...” Tristin appeared to be at a loss for words. He also wasn’t whimpering anymore. “It, um, really hurt? Hehehe...”

  “Tristin,” Samantha said, her voice a terror inducing, sibilant hiss.

  “Um, yes?” Tristin’s reply was meek, afraid, perhaps even petrified. His body began to quiver, which was easily visible since his pants were hanging around his ankles, along with his boxers. Yeah, he knew he was screwed. And he knew that she knew that he knew he was screwed.

  “You and I are going to have a very long talk when we get back to base.”

  Tristin just gulped.

  ***

  The next morning brought with it a bright new day. At least, Lilith thought so. Sure, she couldn’t actually “see” the bright new day because, well, she was living in the middle of an enclave built underneath a park. It was hard to see true daylight when you were surrounded by rock, but that was a form of semantics she didn’t care to get into that morning.

  Sitting up in the king-sized bed that she and Christian had been given for the duration of their stay―they had no clue how long it would be—she and Christian shared breakfast in bed.

  “Here, Christian. Try this,” Lilith said, turning to face him as she tilted her head slightly. That was what she was supposed to have said, were her mouth not currently full of a French toast stick, or at least half of one. The other half was sticking out of her mouth, wiggling about as she moved her lips in what she hoped was an enticing manner. What her words actually came out sounding like was, “mer mimim. my miff,” or something close to that.

  Christian shook his head. “You know, the more time you spend here at the enclave, the crazier your ideas get.”

  At least he seemed to understand what she wanted, if his words were any indication. They still made her pout―or would have if her mouth wasn’t full of food. Surely he had to know why she was doing this. While not exactly a standard, this sort of thing happened in light novels all the time, though it was normally with pocky and not French toast.

  “Muu.” Lilith tried to put on a sulky look, but she was pretty sure she had failed because she still had a piece of French toast wriggling around in her mouth. “Mom om, mimim. Murry mup mam meaff.”

  “Alright, alright.”

  Christian had the audacity to laugh at her. The smile he gave her offset what could only be him mocking her, but only a little. She was so getting him back for laughing at her idea.

  Those were her thoughts, until he leaned over and placed the other end of the French toast in his mouth. He then began to nibbling on the food at a maddeningly slow pace. Each second that passed caused his face to move closer by an inch. An inch! Couldn’t he hurry this up? Was he that dead set on making her suffer?

  Torture her like this, would he? She was definitely going to get him. Christian wouldn’t know what hit him by the time she was done.

&nb
sp; Eventually, after an excruciating amount of time had passed, Christian made it all the way over to her. Joy overflowed, singing within her like a quire of angels. She was so happy that she closed her eyes. She would have puckered her lips, too, but with the French toast in her mouth, that was kind of impossible.

  So she sat there and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited.

  And then she waited some more. When there were no lips pressing against her, she opened her eyes and saw Christian, sitting on the bed, his face no longer inches from her own, swallowing the last bite of French toast.

  “That was good,” he said, smiling at her, his eyes alight in a way that would have sent his former commander, some lady named Samantha, into epidemic seizures. “Thanks for sharing your breakfast with me.”

  Lilith swallowed the food in her mouth and narrowed her eyes. “You were supposed to kiss me.”

  “Was I? Oops. My bad.”

  Christian’s innocent mien didn’t fool her one bit. She knew that he knew what she wanted, what her goal had been. Her mate was teasing her. He was actually messing with her. When did this happen? How did this happen? Had Christian become a flirt when she wasn’t looking? And did he know that she secretly enjoyed it?

  Maybe this was part of the bond. She knew that by connecting with Christian, she was given energy and a little of Christian’s strength and confidence flowed into her through it. Did that connection work both ways? Well, it had to, of course. When they were connected, she could sense the flow of thoughts between them, the link that was conceived when they were one. She felt what he felt and vice versa. That was what made it so powerful. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that Christian saw into her thoughts as well, that he knew of her desires. He might have even seen her mental checklist, which she had dubbed “Things I Want to do With a Man if I Ever Get the Chance.”

  This entire scenario was one of them.

  “I hope you don’t think I’m going to let you off just like that,” Lilith said, her tone going slightly dark. Christian didn’t get scared. Lilith knew she wasn’t that scary. And the purpose wasn’t to scare him anyway.

  “Oh? And what are you going to do about it?”

  “This!”

  With nary a thought, Lilith hurtled herself at Christian, crashing into him and knocking them both off the bed. Christian hit the ground, emitting a loud “oof!” as all the air was driven from his lungs. Lilith landed on top of him. She barely gave the young man enough time to suck in a breath of oxygen before she was on him, smashing her lips, her tongue shoving its way past his teeth to get to the warm cavern behind them.

  Rather than put up a struggle, Christian simply breathed through his nose. His arms tightened around her waist, pulling her to him. Lilith had to shift her legs, as they were still partly on the bed, but she was soon straddling his waist. She let her hands roam over his shirt, shamelessly feeling him up. She loved her mate’s body. It was hard as granite, firm and unyielding and muscular. Not to mention those abs...

  She would have loved him even if he had was ugly as sin, but she was truly glad that he wasn’t.

  In most normal circumstances, this would have been the point where their kiss heated up and they began ripping each other’s clothes off. Christian had to put an unfortunate stop to that before things got too far.

  “Sorry.” He at least had the decency to apologize, no doubt seeing the look on her face. “But I don’t think I can go a round with you this morning.”

  “Why?” Lilith asked, tilting her head, worried. “You’re not tired, are you? Am I draining you?”

  She had learned that one part of what made a succubus’s mate special was that the succubus they were compatible with did not drain them of their essence. They merely took the excess energy that all human beings produced naturally. But what if that wasn’t the case? Had she been lied to? But why would they lie about this?

  “No, no. Nothing like that,” Christian assured her, making her sigh in relieve. It was shorted-lived relief. She still didn’t know why he was refusing her.

  “Then why?”

  “Because I’m feeling a little...” Christian paused, his face scrunching up. He was probably searching for the most diplomatic response possible. “...raw,” he decided on, “down there.”

  “Raw?” Lilith felt lost. What did he mean by “feeling raw?” Raw normally meant something along the lines of uncooked or unprocessed meat, didn’t it? No, wait. It could also mean tender and painful. So, did that mean... “Oh,” she said, finally getting it. Her eyes widened. “Oh!”

  “Yeah...” Christian looked just a little embarrassed. Lilith felt much the same. “I... think we might have been going for a little too long last night.”

  Lilith understood what he was talking about. Last night they’d made love. Not all that unusual, all things considered, but last night they had made a lot of love. Four hours’ worth of it, in fact. That had to be a new world record. She didn’t know of any couple who’d lasted that long. Granted, she didn’t know any couple other than them, but her point still stood. Weren’t most women complaining about their man’s lack of stamina? Stacy always complained about “minute men.”

  Her Christian was no “minute man,” that was for sure. She didn’t know if his stamina on the battlefield helped increase his stamina in the bedroom, but he was always an energetic lover. That said, it seemed like they had made love so much that his crotch was actually hurting.

  “Then I guess we should get up,” Lilith said, a tad reluctant. She still wanted more, but she also knew that if they stayed that way, things would get out of control very quickly.

  “That’s probably for the best,” Christian agreed. So, with a sigh, Lilith stood up, then helped Christian to his feet.

  They took a shower, helping each other wash those hard to reach areas. It almost ended up becoming something more, but their willpower held―even if a few cracks formed, and they soon made their way into the shooting range.

  This was the first time Christian had been in the shooting range. When he saw all the weapons that lined the walls, a whistle escaped his lips.

  “Wow. This is really impressive. You don’t see many places that have such a variety of firearms.”

  “Was it not like this with the Executioners?”

  “Not really.” Christian shook his head. “The Executioners were never in the business of hording weapons. Ammo maybe, but not weapons. We had a weapons supplier who would send us standard equipment whenever we needed it. When an Executioner was worthy of it, the Science Division would make them custom weapons like my guns and swords.”

  “I see.” Lilith hummed. “So it’s not like here, where you have a bunch of weapons and choose the one for you. They fit you with a weapon they feel works best and will customize your weapons if you become good enough.”

  “More or less. Anyway, why don’t you show me the guns Heather explained to you and which one you two felt worked best.”

  “Okay.”

  Lilith led Christian over to the wall that had only handguns attached to it. She searched for a moment, her nose wrinkling and her eyes squinting as she tried to remember which gun they had decided she should learn to use. Most guns looked the same to her. They were just a bunch of L-shaped objects with a trigger. It was only after remembering the discussion she and Heather had shared about how to determine which type of gun was the best fit for her that she found the gun she was looking for.

  “That’s a Glock 19,” Christian determined after taking a moment to look at it. Lilith handed him the compact weapon. He turned it over in his hands. “This weapon is actually used by many of the female Assassins due to its reduced dimensions and versatility. I myself have never used one, but they’re supposed to have very little recoil. I know that the LAPD uses this gun as a backup weapon when on the field because of how easy it is to conceal.”

  “So it’s a good gun?” asked Lilith. She had actually heard all of this from Heather, but it was nice to
hear Christian confirm the other woman’s words. She trusted him more than she did some woman she had only met once.

  “Yes. It’s a good gun. Great for people who’ve never fired a gun before and specifically designed with women in mind. You could easily conceal this in your purse or something of that nature.” He stopped talking and looked up at her. “You said she hasn’t shown you how to use it yet?”

  “That’s right.” Lilith nodded in affirmation. “All she did was show me the guns on hand and help me find the one best suited for me.”

  “Right. In that case, why don’t we get started? Did she show you where they keep the ammunition?”

  “Um...” Lilith reflected on yesterday for a moment before the light bulb went off in her head. “She did! The ammo is over here!” She led him to a series of drawers embedded in the wall. After running her index finger up and down, humming and trying to remember which drawer had the ammo for the handguns, she eventually grabbed the second to last drawer and pulled it open. “Here they are.”

  All the ammo was neatly stored inside a set of boxes, organized by type. Lilith watched as Christian grabbed several clips of ammo, four in total, and then closed the drawer.

  “Come on,” he said, taking her hand with his free hand, the one not carrying the ammo, and leading over to the nearest shooting station.

  The stations were rather plane. Just a tiny cubicle large enough for maybe two people to stand in side by side. In front of the station was a square of cement rising out of the ground, acting like a table. It was the table that Christian set the guns and ammo on. He then turned to her and tried to adopt a pose like what people might expect to see on a teacher.

  “Okay, the first thing I’m going to show you is how to load and unload the ammo clips from your gun...”

  Thus began Christian’s instruction on how to properly use a gun. It was kind of boring, if Lilith were honest with herself. She just wasn’t interested in guns. They held no appeal for her. She still paid attention to everything he said, though, and not only because it was Christian speaking, but also because she knew it was important. If she planned on being useful and helping Christian, then she needed to know how to use a gun.