by Jack Porter
I found myself wanting to snap at him, telling him to speak for himself. As things were then, this was still the best night I’d had for ages even if it were to end right then and there.
Ironically, my quick bout of temper had the effect of cooling me down just enough. I slid the straps from Rachel’s shoulders, and she turned back toward me at the same time as she dropped the bra to the floor.
Melons, I thought. Big, pendulous melons, surprisingly even and well balanced. I found myself staring as if under hypnosis. She let me for a moment, then suddenly stepped in close and wrapped her arms around my back, pressing those warm, wonderful melons against my chest through my shirt.
But she wasn’t done there. She kissed me like I’d seldom been kissed before, pressing her lips firmly against my own and questing with her tongue. I clutched at her spasmodically and would have jammed my tongue in her mouth with everything I had if Azrael hadn’t offered another of his warnings.
“Steady,” he said. “Just a taste for the moment. I know you’re desperate, but think about her needs more than your own. Tease her, leave her wanting more, rather than diving all the way in.”
“Are you going to be looking over my shoulder every step of the way?” I demanded quite silently.
“Of course,” came his reply. “And, by the looks of things, it’s probably a good thing as well. You really need my advice.”
I didn’t have any comeback for that. He was right. So I did what I could to rein myself in, offering her just a single flick of my tongue and no more.
Rachel pulled away from me then, just a little, her expression slightly puzzled but also pleased. She gave a more genuine smile than she had in the past, and nodded, as if pleased with her decision. Then she began unbuttoning my shirt but paused to study the tattoos on my chest.
“Glyphs?” she asked.
I nodded. “Runes.”
“It’s all true then, isn’t it?” she asked. “That stuff you said about the demon?”
I nodded, and she seemed very pleased. “Good,” she said, and tugged at the sleeves of my shirt in just the right way that it joined her bra on the floor.
All at once, I thought about her comment about sleeping with a demon, and understood that this was more than just a sympathy shag. Rachel’s expression, the way she admired my collection of arcane items, and her interest in Azrael, it all made sense.
If she wasn’t an Ascender herself, then she at least shared the interest.
Rachel fully intended to sleep with me because of the demon within me. And for some reason, that knowledge cooled my passion.
But again, Azrael spoke in my mind. “Does it matter?” he asked.
As Rachel began fiddling with my belt, I decided that it did not. My lust returned with a vengeance, and with it came a full serving of impatience. I climbed out of my pants and slid my underwear down, and then I was standing naked in front of a woman for the first time in more than a year.
She eyed me up and down, pausing here and there, and I felt excruciatingly vulnerable. But she made no negative comment and kept smiling.
“Socks on?” she asked with a raised eyebrow, and I blurted out an apology.
“Sorry,” I said, and bent to fix the problem. But she put out a hand to stop me.
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I like to keep my feet warm as well.” With that, she stepped out of her panties, giving me my first look at her shaved pubic area.
I found myself thinking she was beautiful and regretting that my own saggy flesh fell so far short of the mark. But again, she didn’t seem to mind. She just took me by the hand and led me to the bed, pushing the covers aside as she climbed in. Then she took off her glasses and placed them carefully on the nightstand before kissing me again.
I pressed her soft, female flesh against me, luxuriating in the feel of her, and the next several minutes vanished into a world of different sensations. I kissed her all over, starting at her the base of her throat, moving over her collarbones before focusing on those magnificent, full breasts. Under Azrael’s guidance, I teased her pale nipples into taut peaks, and she seemed to like it because she arched a bit into me. That encouraged me to move my attention down to her hips. When I kissed her again and again where she had shaved, Rachel wriggled beneath me. But before I could explore even further, she pulled me back up and pushed me onto my back.
“Is your demon with you even now?” she asked, and I nodded in reply. “Good,” she said, and climbed on top.
With not even the slightest hint of uncertainty, Rachel reached down and stuffed me inside her all at once. She was soft and wet, but I’d barely had a chance to register anything before she began to ride me, going from zero to one hundred without any transition.
It was all I could do to hang on. So I did, clutching at her hips with all my strength, listening to the sound of the bed thump into the wall with her increasingly energetic motions, enjoying the hell out of myself at the same time as hoping she wouldn’t move too vigorously and make me fall out.
Of all the sexual experiences I’d had until then, this one with Rachel was by far the best, and with Azrael in my head forcing me to hold on, it was the longest lasting as well.
Rachel seemed to be enjoying herself as well. Within less than a minute, she started puffing and blowing like a horse, and even with my limited experience, I could tell she was getting close.
And then, something very strange happened. I became very aware of Azrael’s presence, but it wasn’t like he had taken over. It was still me, still Rachel, and nothing could deny it. It was just that Azrael seemed to make an adjustment, a little tweak that I didn’t fully understand, although it seemed to have the instant effect of ramping up the pleasure.
“When you are ready,” Azrael said, in his dry, aloof voice. “You will enjoy this.”
No shit, Sherlock, I thought. Like, wasn’t I enjoying it already?
Rachel bounced up and down on me twice, three times, then once more, and let out a scream of pleasure that I’m sure the neighbors on all sides would have heard. But she didn’t stop then, bouncing on me again and again, and then it was my turn.
I shuddered and groaned under Rachel’s ministrations, enjoying the best orgasm I’d ever had in my life. I thought it was over, thought that the last of my shuddering signaled the end, only to have Azrael’s voice say something unexpected in my head.
“Buckle up,” he said. “This is going to knock your socks off.”
I wondered what on earth he could be talking about, and then it hit me. With Rachel collapsing on top of me, I felt a huge surge of energy. It was like being hit by cosmic rays or some such, or the quickening, as if I’d just chopped off the head of a foe. It continued to build like I didn’t know what, until it seemed like I was surrounded by a field of pure power. It wouldn’t have surprised me to find that Rachel and I were floating ten feet off the bed, nor was I the only one to experience it.
Into the storm of new power, I heard Rachel’s voice. “What the hell?” she said.
At the same time, I could sense Azrael’s laughter in the back of my mind, and something told me what had happened.
Azrael the Incubus had just leveled up.
For long minutes, the sense of power continued. I felt like my hair was standing on end, and all over my skin, it was like goosebumps. I shuddered again, still holding on to Rachel for dear life, and eventually everything calmed back down to normal.
Rachel looked at me with an expression of surprise mixed with wonder.
“What was that?” she asked.
I grinned but didn’t tell her. Even though I thought I understood, at that time, it was little more than suspicion. Then I watched in growing horror as Rachel’s eyes rolled back up into her head, and she fell off me.
Just like Chad had done when he snorted Azrael’s powdered remains, Rachel started to seize.
Chapter 14
I panicked.
“What’s happening? What did you do?” I yelled at the demon inside
my head. At the same time, I lurched upright in the bed and grabbed hold of Rachel as if I could help. I had wanted to get laid very badly but was suddenly afraid of the cost. What if Rachel died like Chad? Was that the price of sleeping with someone who carried a demon around with them?
Would I have to cut Rachel up into pieces and take her to the pet crematorium?
It was a perverse, crazy thing to worry about, yet of the many things going around in my mind, it was the one that scared me more than most of the others. I didn’t want her to die and didn’t know if I could face having to chop her into bits.
“Calm down,” Azrael said, his voice filled with scorn. “She’ll be fine. She’s just going through her own transition.”
“Transition? What the fuck are you talking about?” I bellowed. At the same time, I did what I could to help the woman who was seizing on my bed, moving her into the recovery position and wondering what to do next. Mouth to mouth? No, that was if someone had stopped breathing. Chest compressions? I felt her neck and found her pulse easily enough.
All I could do was hold her in place and try to keep her from hurting herself.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said to her. “Don’t worry.” Even though I was as worried as it was possible to be.
“Yes, transition. It’s part of the binding process.”
If Azrael had been a separate entity, I would have stared at him with disbelief. “Are you trying to be difficult?” I demanded. “How about you start at the beginning and tell me what the fuck is going on!”
I felt a glimmer of annoyance from my demonic passenger.
“You really have no clue, do you?”
“Of course not! Why would I be asking these questions if I already knew the answers?”
“I thought you were some sort of Ascender expert,” Azrael replied, providing no useful information but raising my eyebrow another notch. “You’ve studied all the rituals, got the wounds engraved in your skin. Are you seriously telling me that you spent so much time studying how to bind an entity like me without comprehending what I can do?”
I sat there holding onto Rachel at the same time as I spat at the thing in my head. “You’ve gone through my memories. You know damn well what I know and what I do not!”
“I knew. I just didn’t believe it…”
I sensed Azrael draw a deep, metaphysical breath, and let it back out. “Well, where do I start?”
“How about at the beginning. Tell me how it all works. What have I gotten myself in to?”
“Very well,” Azrael replied. “As you understand, I am far from what I once was. As a demon, my power is much diminished. Where once I was second only to Lucifer–”
“Yeah, yeah, I get that part! What I don’t get–hang on.” I’d had a flash of inspiration. “You keep using all these words to explain things, but that’s not how my brain works. How about you translate everything you’re going to say into gamer terms?”
It was Azrael’s turn to sound uncertain. “What do you mean?”
“You talk about power. How about referring to it as levels? Like, the status levels that our society is built around. You once were a level one hundred demon. Now you’re level, what? One? Search through my memories. The information’s all there. Translate it like that and it’ll make more sense.”
The demon paused, and I turned my attention back to Rachel. She was still seizing, but it didn’t seem anywhere near as bad as what Chad had gone through.
“Hang in there,” I said. “I’m trying to figure out what’s going on.”
“When you first absorbed my essence, then yes, I was at level one. But now we have Rachel. Having sex with her has allowed me to level up. I am now at about level three, assuming my peak was level one hundred. But it works both ways. The leveling up process binds your partners to us, tapping into whatever demonic nature they have and bringing it to the fore. Rachel had achieved different levels on the legal and illegal status scales. Now, just as we have done, she has leveled up on the demonic scale as well.”
“What, you mean she is a level one demon herself?” I asked, incredulous. I hadn’t even thought that could have been a possibility.
“Demoness. And, yes.”
It was much to consider. “What about me?”
“I already told you. You are at level three.”
“Me? I thought you were now at level three.”
There was a pause. “It seems there is still a gap in your understanding. The binding you performed on me has changed both of us irrevocably. There is no you and me. We are one in the same. When I say I have powered up to level three, so have you.”
I sat there for a moment as the demon’s words sank in. “Holy shit.”
“Yes,” the Demon replied.
At the same time, I had a new, different thought. “So, what, we infected Rachel with a demoness?”
“Yes. In a manner of speaking.”
“So you’re like a demonic STD or something?”
“Well, I don’t know about being referred to as a disease, but the analogy is apt.”
All sorts of thoughts were going through my mind. As we had been speaking, Rachel’s seizure had eased, but that didn’t mean whatever she was going through had reached its end. It seemed to be just the beginning. As I watched her, she seemed to be changing. In front of my eyes, she turned from a beautiful goth girl with awesome, oversized boobs into something else entirely.
Her skin changed color from milky white into something more sinister. She gained a pinkish, reddish tinge all over. At each side of her forehead, she developed a pair of substantial goat horns.
That was shocking enough to see, but it was far from the greatest change she was going through. From her back near her shoulder blades, two massive bat wings erupted, becoming full-sized within the blink of an eye. It was so shocking and unexpected that I almost missed one final change.
Before my eyes, Rachel grew a tail, complete with a barbed end.
I couldn’t believe it. Before my eyes, Rachel had turned from a Goth girl into a full-fledged succubus.
She was still asleep. Nor did I dare to wake her.
“Holy shit,” I repeated.
“Yes,” Azrael said again in my mind.
But there was something that didn’t quite compute. “But why don’t I look like this? If I’m already a level three demon?”
“Oh, but you do. This is her spirit form, not her real one. She could wander the streets as you can, and nobody would be able to see any difference. It’s only because you have spirit sight, because you have bound with me, that you can see who she has become.”
“It’s like seeing your face in the mirror,” I said.
“Yes. But it’s your face as well.”
The implications were beyond what I could process. My brain was making connections all over the place, and all of a sudden, there was one that I had to speak out loud.
“You’re a damned vampire!” I said.
In my mind, Azrael laughed. “Yes,” he agreed. “Although, not quite. I do not kill people by draining them of blood, nor do I create other vampires by feeding them my own. But the principle is much the same, and I might indeed be the source of the stories so prevalent in fiction. I – we – can infect others, creating a plague of demons as we do, and gaining strength all the while. And those we create can create others, each of whom adds their strength to our own as well.”
“It’s like some demonic pyramid scheme,” I said, understanding now just how Azrael had once been the second most powerful demon in all of Hell. The more people he–we–infected, the stronger we would become.
“Exactly,” Azrael agreed.
The implications were astounding. I had gone from believing that because I couldn’t get laid, the demon in my head was useless. I’d also believed that he was largely without power. But now I could truly see the potential. With Azrael’s help, I really could become all powerful.
Except…
“But how does this help me?” I
asked him.
“The more powerful I become, the more I can share that power with you. It’s like what I did to clear up your complexion. Think of it in terms of character attributes. I have leveled up. That gives me the power to add points to your various attributes. Say I have one hundred points to give away. I can put all those points into one attribute, perhaps strength or durability, or spread them around. At the moment, you have a lot of attributes that are lacking. Strength, durability, constitution, healing, speed, pretty much everything physical. Even your height can be considered an attribute, and right now, you are down at the low end. But there is also the character side of things. Charisma, courage, wisdom, I can adjust all of these and more. It’s only your core personality that I can’t impact.”
To say I was astonished would have been an understatement. I was boggled. “So you’re saying that, because I had sex with Rachel, your power has increased. And because of that, you can upgrade me along virtually any dimension?”
“That’s about the size of it,” Azrael said. “But that is just the beginning. When I have leveled up enough, I will be able to do even more.”
Next to me, it seemed like Rachel was beginning to recover. She moved about like someone trying to wake after a deep sleep. For the time being, I ignored her.
“Well, don’t just sit there, do it!” I said. Then I had a thought. “But don’t drain yourself so completely this time.”
“What would you like me to adjust?”
“Um,” I said. I was looking through the catalogue of my own deficits. There was a lot I could have chosen. I mean, take your pick. With me, it really wasn’t difficult to find a characteristic that could be improved.
That said, there were few that were a given. I was very, very tired of being such a pushover, and being mostly ignored. And then there was the whole gamer angle.
I’d always thought that if I had better reflexes, I could have done a lot better.
“I want to be stronger. More capable. Better looking. Maybe spread the points between strength, reflexes, and attractiveness. Oh, and while you’re at it, give me a decent head of hair, and however much height you can manage with what’s left. Does that work?”
