by Eric Vall
“How’s it coming over there, guys?” I called out to the imp and the succubus in the other room.
“I’m having the time of my life,” Todd’s voice echoed back. “I even got the blonde one here to crack a smile at one of my jokes. It’s a Christmas miracle!”
When we had all finished, we adjourned to a small room that stood between the kitchen area of the store and the main show floor. I assumed that this was a breakroom of some sort because all that remained was a broken-down table and a few chairs that had legs missing. I summoned a green flame into my hands and looked deep down into my soul for anything that made me feel envious or disgusted.
It was actually harder than it was that first time back at the house. Everything was going smoothly. I had just had not one, but two, amazing sexual encounters with my succubi. Life was great for Jacob Ralston, but then I thought ahead to the coming battle. I thought about what would happen if I failed. If Earl took back the succubi to Hell with him. How he would subject them to tortures that I couldn’t even begin to fathom. It was pretty fucking disgusting. The green flame roared in my hands as the remnants of the two mirrors began to appear on the walls of the room.
“How do we get them to stick?” Liby asked.
“Is it possible to melt them into the walls?” I asked as I tried to keep my focus. “You know, use two powers at once?”
“Yes, it is possible,” Cupi mused. “As long as you can conjure up something deep inside you that is equally as passionate as whatever you’re thinking about for your other power.”
That was easy. While trying to keep the thoughts of my potential failure in my mind, I drifted back to the scene from earlier. Both of the succubi pressed against my body as they pleasured me. The sweet scent of Liby as our tongues explored each other’s mouths. Cupi’s short, soft hair in my hands.
The green flame remained in my left hand, but my right lit up with a vibrant red.
I raised my right arm into the air and tried to distribute the heat evenly across the shards. The plastic on the back began to dribble down the walls of the breakroom. I released both of my spells and held my breath hoping it would work. Todd and the succubi looked around in awe as they marveled at the house of a thousand tiny mirrors I had just created.
“Damn, I’m sexy,” Todd spoke to his own reflection as he tousled the small bit of wiry hair on his head.
The next few hours were spent with Todd reminding us of the various ways cultures have tried to capture demons and spirits through the years. We used a few sticks from outside and fabric from old clothes we found in the store to create some rough woven spirit traps. Todd had the succubi write some spells out on the walls in Latin, and I drew out a couple more traps and hid them under rugs, tables, and debris in hopes that Earl would unknowingly stumble onto them. Todd even found a bone from an animal carcass outside and turned it into an Inuit spirit trap.
When all was said and done, we must have set up fifty different traps taken from demonology from dozens of different cultures. Then all four of us collapsed onto the floor, exhausted. I glanced down at my watch. There was no time for rest right now because that silver-suited asshole would be here any minute.
“Hey guys,” I nodded to my group of friends. “It’s showtime.”
The four of us stood to our feet and gathered back to back inside of a Solomonic protection circle. Todd struck a fighting pose while Cupi and Liby both looked tense but brave. Meanwhile, I tried to play every single possible scenario through my head so that I could figure out what could go wrong or right during the fight. My thoughts were interrupted by a loud rapping on the door of the first floor.
“It’s open!” I yelled down the echoing corridor.
The next thing we knew, we heard a loud crash from below.
“See?” Todd mused. “He went with incineration. Earl chose wisely.”
As we heard the demon pimp’s footsteps reverberate through the desolate building, the smell of sulfur and burning wood shot through my nostrils and nearly made me vomit. The steps got closer and closer until the man with the slicked-back blonde hair was standing at the top of the staircase. His violet eyes stared us down as they simmered behind his fake smile.
“A protective circle? I’m a little hurt.” A sinister smile spread across Earl’s face. “But that’s fine. It’s going to be a lot more fun this way.”
Chapter 14
“You aren’t taking Cupi and Liby back, Earl,” I warned as I summoned red Hellfire into my hands.
“You had nearly three days to finish up your contract. Seventy-two entire hours.” The demon pimp ignored my words and instead focused his attention on Libidine and Cupiditas. “I saw the agreement myself. It’s not like he wanted you to do anything too strange or painful. Yet, here you are still thinking that there’s a way out of your duties.”
“We’re done with you, you torturous piece of shit!” Cupi spat at her former master.
“I always knew you had quite the tongue, Cupiditas. But I never knew it was so sharp.” His beady violet eyes darted over to the black-haired succubus. “How about you, Libidine? Are you ready to come home?”
“This is where I belong.” Libidine growled. “Jacob is ten times the master you are.”
“Okay, last chance girls.” Earl sighed. “Come with me quietly, and I might just make your friends’ deaths quick and painless.”
“You’ll have to come and get them, asshole,” I spat.
“Have it your way.” He grinned. “I hope you really don’t think your pathetic little protective circle is going to be effective against a demon of my strength.”
Earl snapped his fingers, and the entire outline of our protective circle caught fire. The demon pimp let out a sinister chuckle, and the floor began to swelter and glow beneath us. Seconds before we were engulfed by Earl’s Hellfire, I threw down a wall of purple below our feet. My shield held back the blast, but the four of us were sent flying into the air.
As they hung in the air, Cupiditas and Libidine’s backs erupted with a familiar purple flame, and their wings sprouted like springtime daisies popping out of the ground.
Todd tried to catch himself by curling into a ball as he acrobatically rolled across the room, but he still crashed into the wall of the shop comically.
Meanwhile, I used a green flame to transport myself safely back onto the ground behind the pimp.
Now we had this asshole surrounded.
Cupi unleashed a fury of Hellfire at the demon from above, and then Libidine swooped down and struck at him with the talon on her bat-like wing.
Earl let out a grunt from the impact of the attacks, but they didn’t seem to do much damage.
As he stumbled backward, I threw my hands down at the ground and cast a circle of green flame underneath the demon. His eyes widened in surprise as his lower half fell through the makeshift portal, and I closed my fist to collapse the emerald fire around Earl.
The demon pimp threw out his hands and cast a purple flame around the inner border of the circle, and the asshole grimaced as he struggled to keep the deadly spell from severing his spinal cord at the waist.
“You may have survived my crane kick last time, but now say hello to my little friends!” Todd shouted in a very bad Cuban accent as he fired a rapid succession of fireball blasts at the demon who stuck halfway out of the ground.
Earl just rolled his eyes at the imp’s effort. With one arm still outstretched to fight back the portal, Earl summoned silver fire with his free hand. Each of Todd’s projectiles caught fire and disintegrated before it came anywhere near reaching its target.
“Jacob!” Cupiditas called out as she and Liby plummeted toward her former master.
As the two succubi dive-bombed Earl, Liby’s hands lit up with yellow Hellfire and produced what looked to be a handful of small darts. She hurled the projectiles at Earl, and then Cupi used her powers to set them ablaze.
The pimp chuckled as he used his violet spell to widen my portal and duck out of the way of
the succubi’s attack, his slimy black hair disappearing through the jade fire behind him, and her flaming darts stuck into the ground just as the portal closed.
“What kind of spell was that?” I questioned the dark-haired woman.
“Hatred,” she hissed. “An easy one to summon when Earl is around.”
“Where did your portal send him?” Cupi asked as she reoriented her body and landed at my side.
“Right where we wanted him!” I laughed triumphantly.
I pointed to the Key of Solomon that was scratched into the side of the front counter. The demon’s body stood there, stuck in a comical contorted pose with his locks of blonde hair standing on end above his head. His eyes continued to glow with the red Hellfire that fueled his passion.
“How do you like that?” I exclaimed as Todd gave me a high five in victory.
“Your enthusiasm is admirable, Mr. Ralston,” Earl said through gritted teeth, “but your cockiness is beyond aggravating.”
Earl’s body began to tremble, and a black flame emerged from his eyes and started to travel down his face, eventually encasing his entire body.
The fire manifested itself into a slimy black goo that dripped off Earl’s body downward like beads of sweat. The droplets fell onto the floor and melted the hardwood with a hiss. Acid.
We weren’t going to wait for this asshole to slither his way out of this one. Todd tried to summon his fire once more while Cupiditas made a swishing motion with her arms and then hurled a massive blue flame at Earl. It smacked into the demon pimp and froze him in his place.
“Freezing fire!” the blonde succubus shouted.
The demon may have been unable to move, but the slimy material continued to ooze out of every pore on the pimp’s body. Earl’s frozen figure began to take a few shallow, restricted breaths before he tensed his body and sent the deadly goo spraying in every direction.
“Heads up!” I yelled as I summoned a flame shield over my friends and me.
The acidic black substance sizzled as it evaporated on the purple flames. Flecks of the goo were also flung onto the drawing of Solomon’s Key and melted it in enough places to break the circle. The demon’s body fell onto the ground with a thud, and he stood back up as he brushed the dust off his suit.
“Do you really think you’re the first person to try to trap me in the Key of Solomon?” he mused as he fixed his hair. “That’s one of the oldest tricks in the book. And a freezing spell? Please.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying, right?” I quipped.
He was still trying to play the “hard ass” card, but I could tell that Earl was starting to get tired. The shoulders of his gray suit jacket had started to move up and down with each winded breath he took. The pimp straightened his posture and shook his head back and forth.
“You were much more prepared for our battle than I thought, Mr. Ralston,” Earl hissed as he held out his left arm. “But I’m through playing around.”
As I watched, Earl’s red Hellfire magic spread around his body like a blanket. Then one of his left wrist bones tore through his skin and spilled a near-black crimson blood onto the hardwood floor as it protruded. The demon-pimp reached over with his right hand to the bone on his left wrist, broke it off as casually as someone would yank a piece of celery out of the bunch, and then held it out. Out of the tip of the wet bone shot a long, thin beam of red fire that hung limply down to the floor.
It was some sort of crazy-ass fire whip.
Earl began to jog toward our position as he dragged the fiery whip behind him, burning a sliver of a path through the floor as he ran. He snapped the whip forward, but its trajectory was caught in the air by another of Cupi’s freezing spells.
At the same time, Libidine threw out her hand toward a large oak cabinet across the room and set it ablaze in emerald flame, and it rose up into the air as it radiated jade light. The black haired succubus pulled her arm back toward her chest, and the cabinet was sent flying across the room toward the pimp.
Earl started to mount a counter-spell, but Todd scurried up to his position and leapt into the air. I created a series of purple walls like a staircase to help the imp climb, and when he reached the ceiling of the room, he dove onto Earl and slashed the fucker across his face with his claws.
At half-second after my imp pal sliced open Earl’s face, Cupi released her freezing magic, and Liby’s cabinet hit the pimp. All three of the attacks combined to knock Earl on his ass under a heap of heavy wood, and then I threw another blast of my own red Hellfire into the pile for good measure.
“Did we get him?” Todd asked as he rolled across the floor and sprang to his feet next to me.
“No,” I heard Earl laugh, and then the remnants of the cabinet glowed silver as it slowly disintegrated into thin air.
The pimp emerged from the rubble, cracked his neck, shook any rubble off his suit that remained, and then readied his whip. Even though he had just told us “no” the demon-asshole Earl was full-on panting now, and the slimy shimmer that was normally in his eyes had now disappeared.
Before I could hit him again with my magic, Earl lashed out with his weapon. The magic flame wrapped around Cupiditas’ arm before any of us could throw up a protective spell, and the blonde screamed as her forearm sizzled with the power of his weapon.
“Don’t hurt my woman!” I screamed out as I channeled a blast of the white flame toward the pimp.
Earl released his grip on the blonde succubus and tried to throw up a protective shield, but my magical blast was almost as bright red as the sun, and it hit his purple fire shield and then completely encircled the pimp.
For half a moment, I couldn’t see anything of Earl. I could only see the nova of fire burning him, and feel pain at the sides of my forehead. My vision was spinning, and I turned to look at Cupi’s arm as her old boss roasted.
“Are you oka--” I started to ask, but the two women and my friend were staring at me with their mouths open.
“Jacob,” Liby started. “You have--”
“Horns!” Cupi finished as she pointed at my forehead.
“Huh?” I asked as I reached up to my head. Sure enough I felt something solid coming out of my forehead. Two somethings actually, but I really didn’t have time to worry about it right now, since my blast of ultra-hot Hellfire was starting to wear off, and I had to make sure that Earl was dead.
“Okay, that really fucking hurt,” Earl wheezed as the heat from my fireball faded. The ends of his hair, were now unkept and completely singed off, and half of his suit was burned off. The pimp still held the whip in his hand, but its flames were burning weaker and weaker by the second. Now was our chance.
“Hold him so I can use the bottle!” I commanded the succubi.
“I’ll take his hands!” Libidine threw a ring of purple fire at Earl, and it snagged his left wrist and rooted itself in the air like a ghostly manacle.
“This will not hold me,” he growled as he raised his whip carrying right hand to cut into the purple fire.
Cupiditas muttered some words in Latin and then threw a ball of purple flames at the pimp’s feet before he could cut himself free. Earl was snared in two places now, but I knew his bonds weren’t going to last forever, so I used my telekinetic magic to throw the witch bottle at Earl.
And my aim was perfect.
Earl had been too busy focusing on his bindings, and he didn’t expect me to throw a simple-looking glass bottle at him. The trap smacked the demon-pimp-asshole right in the chest, and then the magic flowed out of the neck like fog.
Seconds after making contact with its target, the enchanted vessel levitated into the air and released a series of ectoplasmic silver strings out of its neck. The wires wrapped themselves around Earl’s wrists, ankles, and neck, and the man in the suit let out a gasp as he struggled for air.
“I’ve had just about enough of your games, Mr. Ralston,” the pimp panted, but the fear was now clear in his voice.
Then the smoky ghost-wires began
to tighten around him.
Earl let out a frantic scream as the pungent smell of sulfur grew in the abandoned building. Streams of red Hellfire traveled up the strings and ignited the bottle in a glow of crimson. It burned brightly for a moment, shattered into oblivion, and then the enchanted hair inside it went up in flames.
“Horns or not, we’re going to end this now,” he panted and lashed out with the whip.
“Plan C!” I barked to my friends as I dodged the attack.
All four of us unleashed on Earl. Cupi hurled fireballs at the man while Libidine used her telekinetic fire to pick up random objects to toss at him. Meanwhile, Todd was giggling maniacally as he threw tiny attacks of Hellfire at the pimp. The demon weakly tried to disintegrate Todd’s and Libidine’s projectiles while simultaneously dodging Cupi’s attacks, but the fight had taken its toll on him. Despite his best efforts, a good number of our shots connected with their mark, further injuring the pimp. Unfortunately, he was still strong enough that they didn’t do much damage. Instead they just tore holes into his already tattered suit and made the demon angrier.
I thought back to my connection with the succubi, clapped my hands together, and summoned up a white fireball that had to have been at least two feet in diameter. I released the attack on the demon pimp, and it caught him off guard. His body erupted in flames again, and he was tossed backward directly into the room full of mirrors we had created.
“Let’s finish him,” I said as we all stepped into the mirrored room.
Earl hadn’t taken much damage from the attack, but his suit was now tattered beyond repair. The demon pimp cautiously stood up to face us, but as he did so he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror and froze.
