Kiss Like a Fist_A Paranormal Harem Pulp Novel

by Jake Richter

  “Here!” Alex replied. “I’m over here!”

  The old man moved down the corridor and placed his hands on the glass box. “What’s happened?”

  “I don’t know–I–I’m trapped.”

  Alex’s grandfather pressed his hands around the outside of the box and something clicked. The walls of the box fell away and Alex was free.

  He stood and embraced his grandfather who drew back. “Now is not the time, my boy. You still have the map?”

  Alex nodded.

  “Then let’s go. The sickle is near.”

  “What about Ash and the others?”

  “We’ll come back for them. There’s no time to lose!”

  They ran down the corridor, flashing past the mirrors. They turned a corner and darted down over a walkway of stone lozenges. Alex’s grandfather stopped and turned.

  “The map, Alex.”

  Alex pulled out the map and his grandfather perused it and nodded. “It’s only a few hundred feet away.”

  He pivoted and signaled for Alex to follow him down over a wooden catwalk that spanned a subterranean river. Alex listened to the roar of the water, wondering how he was going to find his way back to Ash and the others.

  The duo dropped down from the catwalk and moved through an archway toward a stone door with a padlock on it.

  “We need the key,” Alex’s grandfather said.

  “The key?”

  Alex’s grandfather nodded. “The one item only you have.”

  Alex hesitated, and then reached into his pocket and pulled out the cartouche.

  “That’s it, my boy,” his grandfather said, smiling hugely. “I knew you’d find it.”

  Alex inserted the cartouche into the lock and was shocked to see that it fit perfectly. The door suddenly sprang open and there it was.

  Hanging in the middle of a circular room from a set of metal hooks that drooped from the ceiling.

  The sickle.

  The room was partially illuminated from shafts of light that seeped down through holes in the roof, which allowed Alex to move around the sickle, taking it all in.

  The staff was easily five feet long and was constructed of thick, burnished wood that shimmered in the half light. It had a glittering blade at the end crowned with a spike and when Alex reached out to touch it, it shocked him.

  “It did that to me the first time I touched,” Alex’s grandfather said. “That’s one of the reasons I didn’t grab it earlier. It stings, doesn’t it?”

  Alex froze and looked back at his grandfather who was grinning like a madman. “The old fucker never let me touch the thing while he was still alive.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “What do you think, asshole?” Alex’s grandfather said. His face split apart to reveal Grimwood, who sloughed off the faux skin of Alex’s grandfather he’d been wearing like a costume, to reveal his true self.

  “Didn’t know it was me, did you?”

  Alex stood there, thunderstruck.

  “Are you going to say anything?”

  “Would ‘fuck you’ be appropriate?” Alex asked.

  Grimwood smiled. Something moved at the back of the room and Dante appeared, rubbing his hands.

  “You don’t know how much hardship you’ve caused me, Alex.”

  “Where’s my grandfather? Where are Ash and the others?”

  “You’re already going there?”

  Alex nodded.

  “In various places, but they’re safe…for the moment. But once I get my hands on the sickle…”

  “You don’t have to do this. I mean, we could just take the sickle and give it to Ash and then things can just go back to the way they used to be.”

  “I wish it could be like that,” Grimwood said.

  “Why can’t it be?”

  “For starters, I’ve never been good at sharing. I’ve got bigger plans for myself, including using the sickle to become the next Abaddon, a destroyer of worlds.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you are one sick sonofabitch.”

  Grimwood chuckled. “Give me the fucking sickle and I promise to go easy on you and the others. I’ll only cast you down into the Lake of Fire for ten thousand years as opposed to the usual twenty thousand. How’s that sound?”

  Alex was silent, and Grimwood chuckled as he moved forward.

  “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Of course I do,” Grimwood replied.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m evil. I was born this way, baby.”

  Grimwood raised his hands and Alex remembered the object in his pocket.

  The silver one the size of a chicken egg that his grandfather had given him.

  He removed the object and held it out to Grimwood who smiled. “It’s going to take a lot more than that to stop me and—”

  Alex flung the object at Grimwood.

  BAROOOM!

  Grimwood was instantly engulfed in a wall of flames that swept over him. Alex drew back in terror, shielding his eyes from the pillar of fire that reached up to the roof. He instinctively grabbed the sickle, grimacing as the object sent a current of energy coursing through his arms.

  Pulling it up, he wheeled around and dashed past Grimwood and Dante, who was frantically trying to put the flames out.

  Dante threw himself at Alex who held the sickle up defensively. The tip brushed Dante and created an explosive force that propelled Dante back against the wall where his body slammed into the stone, disappearing from sight.

  Alex flew out of the room, thundering down another inner artery, listening to the sound of Grimwood howling and chanting what sounded like a twisted prayer. For a moment, Alex thought he heard the dark lord utter the word “succubus.”

  Grimwood’s words echoed off the wall of the castle and then Alex slid to a stop.

  He didn’t know where he was and was too scared to call out for help.

  He gripped the sickle tighter, moving across an intersection of corridors when he heard a sound. The kind of sound that something makes when it drags itself across stone.

  Snatches of conversation echoed from just up ahead, the murmurings of humans.

  Relieved, Alex assumed that he’d found Ash and the others and headed up, hooking a right into another hallway only to slide to a stop.

  Out in front of him, at end of the space, were a dozen creatures. They were beasts that looked like they’d come straight out of a lunatic’s fever dream.

  Succubi, he thought to himself.

  The succubus and her offspring, a writhing mass of shapely women with achingly beautiful faces, globular breasts, short leathery wings, and the scaled lower bodies of serpents.

  The ones his grandfather had warned him about.

  The women hissed and stabbed their fingers in Alex’s direction.

  The succubi were gathered at the end of a long dank corridor, effectively blocking the ever-shrinking portal in the wall of this ten-story building. It was Alex’s only way out of the sagging structure and his potential way off this godforsaken world.

  “Give us what we need!” the lead succubus shrieked. Her wings arched violently upward. She was tired of asking. “Give us the sickle!”

  Alex squeezed his eyes shut and moved the sickle between his hands, back and forth, back and forth. The object felt good and soon he was twirling it, swinging it so violently that it seemed to rip the air as it vibrated like a tuning fork.

  A pulse of violet light beamed from the spike on the end of the sickle and this seemed to enrage the succubi.

  Alex adopted a defensive posture. If he had to fight before he fled, so be it. He realized he’d have to take his chance. It was either fight his way through the succubi or head in the other direction to confront a possibly still-alive (and very pissed off) Grimwood.

  The lead succubus thrust up a hand, her mouth unhinging. “ATTACK!”

  Two red-headed succubi advanced, slithering across the stone, their arms telescoping out to rip Alex apa
rt, a human appetizer ready to be served bloody.

  Alex brought the sickle around, swiping it left and right, bringing it down and across the first red-headed succubus in one impossibly fast cutting motion. A thick rope of black blood spurted, the creature’s head leaving her shoulders.

  The head rolled like a discarded coin as Alex gut-stabbed the next monster, kicking her back, pivoting for the rest of the attackers.

  “COME GET SOME!” he shouted.

  The lead succubus glared daggers at Alex, one hand tracing the curve of her breasts. “Resistance will only increase your pain and our pleasure!”

  Alex smiled. “Tease!”

  The rest of the succubi charged him, surging forward, their bodies so tightly packed in the corridor that they gouged holes in the walls. They grabbed handfuls of the crumbling structure and hurled them at Alex.

  Alex deftly sidestepped and ducked under the incoming rock, whipping the sickle, turning the larger projectiles into pebbles. Then he went on the attack, leaping forward, slicing open throats, hacking and slashing, as the succubi fell in twos and threes. Alex wiped away the blood that freckled his brow and arms. Only two of the bitches remained.

  He shook blood from the end of the sickle. “Is that all you’ve got?”

  A blonde succubus flew past Alex’s head, her talon-like fingers barely missing him, tickling the edge of Alex’s neck.

  The succubus bounced off a wall and rolled over, her right arm shattered horribly, bone poking through blood-splotched pallid flesh. She found her legs and Alex lunged, lodging the sickle in her chest. He planted a foot on her shoulder to lever it free, turning as—

  WHAM!

  A fist came out of nowhere and slammed into Alex’s jaw, sending him tumbling back against the far wall.

  He sagged and then struggled back up, blinking away the cloudy vision and fireworks that accompanied the punch. He looked into the smoldering emerald eyes of the lead succubus, the one who’d sucker punched him. She was naked from the waist up, her green tongue darting between oversized teeth.

  “Give me the godsdamned sickle!” the succubus hissed.

  “Why do you want it so badly?” Alex asked.

  “It has the power over life and death.”

  Alex held the sickle up.

  The succubus gaped at the sickle as if it were an object of unparalleled beauty. She squealed in delight and reached for it and Alex pulled it back.

  The succubus’s eyes enlarged to twice their normal size. “I’M GOING TO SWALLOW YOU WHOLE!”

  Alex grinned. “Now that’s impossible.”

  Alex squeezed every muscle in his body as he gripped the sickle. Its energy coursed through him with a powerful kinetic transferring process. He could feel every cell in his body firing at the same time.

  The succubus moved up and down, squaring up on Alex who twirled the sickle like it was a quarterstaff.

  “Are you ready to cross over?!” the succubus howled.

  “I’m not crossing anywhere, bitch.”

  “Strong words for a small man.”

  Alex grinned. “Lady, just a few days ago I was a bartender, living paycheck to paycheck. Then I met a girl, and let me tell you, she’s a keeper. And when you find the right one well, you’re willing to go to any lengths to make her happy. Besides, if I get past you, maybe, just possibly, I can get a shot at saving the universe. I mention this only because as a guy who’s got nothing, ain’t got nothing to lose, I might be the baddest motherfucker you ever came across. So I’ll say it again: if you want some, come and get it.”

  The succubus hesitated then heaved herself at Alex.

  Alex dropped low and brought the sickle up as time and sound slowed.

  For a moment he was transported back in time, remembering how it all began, remembering the words his grandfather had always spoken in impossible situations: “When one door closes, another one opens.” Of course, his grandfather had uttered those words right before going out on an exploration from which he never returned, so there was that…

  Alex looked up and the succubus neared him as the sickle sliced through her body, bisecting the beast.

  The female demon flopped to the ground and Alex wheeled past her. He blitzed down the corridor and headed back around. Shouts echoed up ahead. He plunged forward and found himself back in the corridor of mirrors, where Ash and the others were visible, trapped in the glass boxes.

  Alex lifted the sickle and brought it down on the ground with a thunderous BOOM! that shattered all the glass in the corridor.

  Ash and the others looked up.

  “Holy shit,” Spence said. “Y-you found it?!”

  Alex nodded. “And I found Grimwood.”

  “Where is he?” Ash asked.

  “Back there.”

  “How did he react to you getting the sickle?” Camille asked.

  “He was pretty fired up,” Alex replied.

  Spence stared at the sickle. “You know what this means don’t you? You’ve got the sickle which makes you the head fucking honcho, my friend. You’re the Grim Reaper now!”

  “Not exactly,” Ash said.

  “There’s no time,” Alex said, waving his hand, signaling for the others to follow. They barreled down another hallway then descended a set of stone stairs, supremely on edge, waiting to be confronted by Grimwood or any of the other creatures that might be hiding within the castle walls.

  They neared the bottom of the stairs when a figure stumbled into view, face pulled back in a rictus of rage.

  Alex screamed because he knew who the figure was.

  It was his Aunt Esther.

  39

  Before Alex could speak a word to Esther, the old woman threw a punch.

  Her granite-hard fist connected powerfully with Alex’s jaw. He flew back on his ass and lost hold of the sickle, which went spinning away. Spence dove for it but Aunt Esther, moving like a wild animal, leaped on his back and tried to snatch it away.

  “Aunt Esther!” Alex shrieked.

  The old woman looked back, her mouth screwed up in anger.

  “What happened to you?”

  Aunt Esther stood and stalked toward Alex. “Grimwood happened,” she said in a slow, rasping voice.

  Alex backed up as Spence tossed the sickle to Ash.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Aunt Esther.”

  “But I want to hurt you!”

  Aunt Esther lunged and Alex side-stepped her. The old lady pivoted and Ash flipped the sickle to Alex, who caught it and brought it around. The tip touched Aunt Esther’s chest and knocked her back in a flash of light.

  She flopped to the ground and lay very still. Alex was horrified that he’d killed her.

  Then she moved.

  One hand, then another, until she’d finally elbowed herself up.

  Her expression had changed. Gone was the twisted face she’d sported earlier. “You did it,” she said, mustering a faint smile. “You brought me back.”

  “Great, glad everything worked out,” Spence said. “But now we need to figure out how to get the heck out of here.”

  “Give me the sickle,” Ash said.

  Alex handed it to her and she led everyone out onto the field that lay beyond the walls of the keep.

  Alex watched as Ash used the end of the sickle to draw a circle in the ground.

  “Everyone inside,” she said.

  Alex looked up. “What are you doing?”

  “Beaming us back up.”

  Alex and the others stepped into the circle as the edges erupted in flame, a pillar of fire that engulfed them. Alex was shocked that there was no heat from the fire.

  “It’s just a barrier,” Ash said.

  “From what?” Spence asked.

  “Him,” Ash bobbed her head in the direction of Grimwood, who was staggering out of the keep. Tendrils of blue light swirled about him as he shrieked something in a dark tongue. He twirled his hands, summoning up a ball of blue light, and the moment he flung it at Alex and the others,
Ash brought the sickle down.

  The instant the staff touched the ground, Alex and the others were picked up and pulled into the sky. The pressure was immense and Alex couldn’t breathe for a moment, his arms pressed to his sides, mouth pulling back in a silent scream and then—

  BOOM!

  Time and sound exploded as Alex and the others were launched into the nothingness, an expanse of complete and absolute blackness that was suddenly ripped by a searing white light.

  Alex covered his eyes and when he opened them he was back.

  Standing on a street corner.

  Ash and the others next to him.

  A cone of fire swirled around the sickle. Ash brought the sickle down and blew the flames away.

  Everyone stood in silence, catching looks from startled passersby.

  “So…who wants to go again?” Spence asked.

  Alex traded looks with his best friend then burst out in nervous laughter. He reached over and hugged Spence and the others because he knew it was finally over. Turning, he stared up at the sky. Everything looked as it should. There were no more signs of the Unwinding.

  “We did it,” Alex said.

  Ash nodded. “We saved your world.”

  “And yours,” Alex replied.

  “For the moment.” Ash smiled wearily.

  Alex kissed Ash long and deep, and then hugged Camille, Minnie, and Aunt Esther. Everyone moved down the street as people gave them a wide berth.

  Alex still had tons of questions, including the whereabouts of his grandmother and grandfather, but Ash assured him that soon she’d return to the Underworld and set things right. What mattered was that they’d recovered the sickle and defeated Grimwood.

  Grimwood and Dante stood on the top of an apartment building, peering down at Alex, Ash, and the others.

  Grimwood was soaked in sweat and every muscle in his body ached. The bitch and the bartender had bested him, but only for the moment.

  “The battle is lost,” Dante said.

  “But the war has yet to be truly waged,” Grimwood added. “The Unwinding has been stopped which means we have time now, Dante. All the time in the world to get the sickle back and make them pay for what they’ve done.”