The Succubus, the Demon and the Witch

by T. A. Moorman

  “Damn you, Demon,” Kierra stated with contempt. “And what about when we release him, genius? Or if someone flashes down here?”

  Rolling his eyes to the back of his head, he explained as if speaking with a child, “One, no one can flash directly in here, so we’ll hear whoever approaches in more than enough time for you change back. And far as the lil’ punk in there, he’s not leaving here alive, and dead men tell no tales.”

  “How the fuck do they put up with you?” she said on a guttural growl while reaching deep inside to that other part of her, the more masculine side. Bending down onto one knee, Kierra placed her hands on the ground for purchase. She began shifting; her soft, feminine hands became larger and more calloused. Tiny white claws became long and curved black ones. Her breasts became a large, masculine chest. The rest of her body stretched and became taller and larger in mass as leathery black wings sprouted from her back until she stood as a seven-foot-tall male with gleaming silver eyes, looking far more like a fallen warrior angel than a demon, other than the small horns jutting out from either side of his forehead. Kierra also flashed on a black, leather trench coat and pants, along with a pair of shit-kicker boots. In a tone that was more than a little rough around the edges, he spoke to the demon before him. “I don’t see how this is so much more intimidating, especially since a female can be even scarier than any male.”

  “And while a smart man would fear a female more, the fucker in there doesn’t strike me as very bright. He’d probably have been too busy staring at your tits than understanding how lethal you were.” Bowing slightly and gesturing his own massive arm towards the opening, Bran said, “After you.”

  Upon entering the cavernous room, the two quickly realized their new playmate was already wide awake. Taking one look at the foreboding pair, the techno mage went wide-eyed and literally pissed his pants. Strung as he was, both wrists bound in rubber handcuffs from the ceiling with his bare toes barely touching the ground, all he could do was squirm as he did his best to get farther away from them. Which proved to be a pointless endeavor.

  “Awe, isn’t that cute? He’s doing a little jig for us.” Bran snickered, which was a frightening sound coming from his demonic vocal cords. He whipped his tail from behind his body, then began wrapping it around the mage’s neck. Laughing outright when more than a few shocks went flowing into his tail, he said, “Really, you fucking twat?” Squeezing harder, he continued, “Your little parlor tricks have no effect on me, so save it. The only thing that might save your worthless hide is information. See, you fucking electro rods picked the wrong family to fuck with. But I know the techs aren’t the mastermind behind this elaborate fuck-up. Who’s pulling your strings, puppet?”

  Clearing his throat as the mage turned more than a tad bit blue, Kierra spoke up. “I don’t think he can talk if he’s dead.”

  Bran grunted before letting up and releasing his tail. “Speak. Who has my daughter?” At the mage’s befuddled look, Bran explained, “The princess, you fucking idiot. The girl you played a part in helping to kidnap from the orphanage.”

  “Didn’t know,” was the barely audible response he received.

  “Wrong answer.” Bran said in reply as he drew back his arm, then punched the mage dead center in the face with a fist that encompassed its entire circumference.

  Kierra muttered, “Fuck,” as the poor sap’s nose crunched on impact. “Right answer, wrong question.”

  “What?” Bran snapped.

  “Wrong questions, Mr. Emotional. Now step back for a second. If you kill him before we learn anything, the backlash from our wives won’t even be worth it.”

  Frustration truly wearing him thin, Bran snarled, “What the fuck do you mean, wrong questions?”

  “I mean the dumb fuck didn’t even know until now who it was they were snatching,” Kierra snapped back.

  “No one is stupid enough to go in blind for that type of a job.”

  With blood spilling from his split lip, barely able to hold his head up, the mage managed to say, “Did it for the challenge. Never knew…who she was.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me right now? You set up some kind of devices around not only the castle, but a hidden and supposedly well-guarded orphanage amongst other places, and you had no clue who was being taken?” Bran’s eyes bled red, then immediately went black as pitch.

  Just as he was getting ready to snap his tail out and squeeze the life out of the turd, causing said turd to squeal like a little bitch, Kierra grabbed it out of the air before it could make purchase, pulling him back. When Bran looked as though he were going to strangle him instead, Kierra shoved him into the wall, snarling in his face. “That’s the thing about techno mages. They’re the daredevils of technology. A good enough challenge is like crack to them. We’ve only seen the start of whatever it is they cooked up, so whatever it is has to be beyond complex. So like a human out for a score, where it comes from doesn’t fucking matter to them, and be damned the consequences. Let me throw your own words back in your face. I was born here in Underlayes, so I know all about his kind. You weren’t, so you don’t.”

  Receiving nothing more than a grunt in acquiesce, Kierra turned to stand before the mage. “Isn’t that right? What the fuck is your name?”

  “Law.”

  “Well, Law, that really does sound like a little boy’s name. Before you think we’re playing good demon, bad demon, think again. I want answers before you’re dead. So you’d better start handing out some answers. Who approached the techs with this challenge, and how many of you are involved?”

  Looking at Kierra with fear radiating off him in waves, the tech spoke up, “You’re going to kill me anyway. Why should I talk?”

  Seeming to think about that for a moment, Kierra barely stopped from laughing outright, settling for a twisted grin instead. “Let me put this in your terms since your kind likes challenges oh so much. Your odds of being torn limb from limb while still alive to feel every moment of exquisite pain, these walls ensuring every horrid shriek of yours remains trapped in your throat, are much greater if you tell us nothing. However, there is a molecule of a chance you could crawl out of here if you answer our questions. So, what will it be? ’Cause right now, you’re wasting our fucking time.”

  Stepping away from the wall ready to sink his claws into the idiot’s throat, Bran was brought up short by one of Kierra’s massive wings shooting out to hold him back. Ignoring Bran’s protest, Kierra’s other wing shot out to stab Law straight in his dick with one of the steel claws on the bottom, barely avoiding any major arteries in the process so he wouldn’t bleed out on them too soon. The tech’s eyes went unimaginably wide in both terror and pain, mouth open in a silent scream.

  Bran grunted in approval and quit attempting to get past Kierra, saying, “Maybe you’re not that much of a softie after all.”

  “I’m not a softie as a male or female,” Kierra replied with a dramatic eye roll. “Now, enough with the fucking games. We need information and we need it now. If you need me to reiterate the fact of your kind not tolerating pain very well, I gladly will. So, once I remove this claw, I advise you to start talking. Otherwise I’ll stick it somewhere else.” Retracting the claw and using a tone that conveyed the fact he would be more than happy to do just that, Kierra asked, “What the fuck is it you do know?”

  Panting and sinking as low as the chains would allow, Law couldn’t get a single word to form at first. But when he saw that same claw getting ready to advance towards his eye, words began spilling from his mouth on their own accord just as the tip touched his retina. “It was an elder witch from the Sekhmet House who came to a group of us out of the blue one night and bet us we couldn’t set up a group of monitors that would catch everything going on here at this castle, the orphanage, and a few other factions, even one that we didn’t know existed. We didn’t even know about the orphanage until then either. She wagered us we wouldn’t be able to set up tiny bugs to catch all the activities, comings and goings, and w
hatnot and set it to feedback to a whole other realm.”

  “And you fucking idiots went along with it?” Bran asked with an expression that showed how stupid he truly thought that was.

  “You don’t get it. It wasn’t just the challenge, but a chance to show the older mages we could do it, a chance to prove ourselves. No, we didn’t even realize the extent of it. I mean, come on, we’ll go down in the books for this one.”

  “Oh, you’re going down all right,” Kierra muttered, then asked in a louder, irritated tone, “Where exactly is the feedback going to?”

  Visibly shaking himself, Law answered, “Don’t know.” When Kierra’s steel claw began entering his retina, he retracted that answer. “Not exactly! The earth realm, an abandoned building in some place called Detroit. Some place that would go unnoticed by human eyes. I wasn’t with that set-up team. Each camera is connected to that mage, and to the monitor that goes with it, but we all didn’t have to be with the monitors to set them up once that connection was made.”

  “And what witch? The elders of that line are dead.” Bran seethed through his fangs.

  “One isn’t. Everyone thinks she’s dead.” That statement ended on a silent scream when Kierra jammed that claw farther into his eye upon hearing the truth in those words; and their implication, just as Bran heard a set of familiar footsteps echoing off the stalagmite walls headed right towards them.

  Things went downhill for the tech real quick when Bran shouted, “Kierra, get out of here.” Because when Kierra went to pull the claw out of the mage’s eyeball, not only did the whole thing come out with it, but the claw stuck in the mage’s eye socket that much deeper first. And in his skull.

  And as serendipity would have it, when Kierra flashed into their living quarters Anya was standing right there to see him looking guilty as fuck in his still fully male, demonic, gory glory with an eyeball dropping to the floor, just as Tialanna walked in on Bran standing before a very dead techno mage with only one eye left and something oozing from his groin like he was pissing blood.

  Then, even though the twins were in two entirely different areas of the castle, looking at two entirely different scenes, they simultaneously said to their mates, “What the fuck did you just do?”

  18

  It’s Getting Hot In Here

  Turned out the torture session Bran and Kierra had was more than pretty much unnecessary, besides taking the heat from Anya having to say anything about her vision, but quite possibly also taking away their element of surprise. Whenever one of the techs involved came to an untimely death, the monitor connected to them on the other side exploded. Maybe Tia would get lucky and their enemy would be none the wiser, would think something else might have happened to the mage, but that was highly unlikely. Because if it was indeed who they thought it was, the bitch was evil, not stupid.

  While their mates were busy using brute strength, brawn, and scare tactics, Tia and Anya, along with Ellysia, were using the muscle on the inside of their skulls instead. It was a highly known fact that techno mages were not the bravest faction around, but they also weren’t the dumbest. And given how young the tech they had within their confines had been, they were also more than sure the Elders of that race had no idea what was going on. So after making sure their niece would be fine, the three sisters went to pay the Elder techs a little visit.

  Not only were they right, but they learned a lot more information than Bran and Kierra had. As Tia, Ellysia, and Anya had predicted, when they went to inform the Elder techs of what their younger ones had been up to, the Elders were completely clueless. One thing techno mages did not do was get involved in any type of affair that would get them caught up in the crosshairs of any conflict not directly involving them. Not one that would lead to violence, something that indeed was not their forte.

  Once the Elders rounded up the younger ones to learn of their stupidity, they commanded them to create a phony feedback loop through the remaining cameras. It didn’t take long to find out every detail in their roles of the kidnapping before they went about their new orders. Which may not have been much, but sometimes a little goes a long way, and this was definitely one of those times. While the techs had no idea who it was they were helping to kidnap, when they informed the sisters who they were working for, it confirmed their greatest fear. Their Grandmother still lived and was still pulling their strings. It also confirmed they had been wasting their time bothering to hide Jelissa in the first place. Something Tia was still beating herself up about as she and her sisters layered themselves with weapons in the armory.

  “What the fuck!” Tia screamed as she hurled yet another throwing star at the wall in frustration. She couldn’t even figure out who she was pissed at more. “And those two boneheads we call ourselves mated to probably fucked up the only thing we had going for us.” Seeing no more stars in her little pile, she grabbed a dagger and threw that instead.

  “You keep throwing every damn thing at the walls and we won’t have anything left to take with us,” Anya said to Tia in a nonchalant tone as she continued sliding stars, knives, and daggers out of her sister’s reach. “Lighten up, because you know we can’t use magick on this bitch. We learned our lesson the hard way last time, or do you need to be reminded by having your ass handed right back to you? Again.” Anya gave her a pointed look as she said that last part, while snatching another dagger out of her twin’s already aiming hand.

  “Seriously, Tia, if you need to do something with your hands, how about you braid up your hair, or pin it up, or even do mine?” Elyssia chimed in. “I would like to have some weapons to take too.”

  “I know that!” Tia was perplexed when she went to throw the dagger she hadn’t even realized was no longer in her hand. When she looked down, she saw her twin had managed to slide everything else away from her too. She had the sudden urge to smack her with a fireball, thought better of it, and slumped down into one of the chairs instead.

  “Tia, pull your head out of your ass and finish gearing up. Everyone else is ready to go.” Anya went to stand behind Tia, gathering her hair into a bun that would keep it out of her way during the fight. “We’ve already been through the whole guilt trip about the orphanage and keeping the truth hidden for so long. That isn’t what this is about, not really, and all three of us know that. So what’s the real problem?”

  “The real problem is the simple fact that thanks to both your mate and mine, that bitch has got to know we’re on to her.” With nothing else to do with her hands, Tia started biting and picking at her nails, replying to Anya in an agitated voice, “So either she’s going to speed up whatever plan she has cooked up to use my daughter for, or she’s going to fucking kill her before we have a chance to get to her. Where the Hel is everybody anyway?”

  For a minute they both looked at her. Elyssia spoke up first with one blue eyebrow raised almost to her hairline. “They all snatched up some gear and got up out of here after one of the stars you threw went into someone’s arm, and another in someone’s eye. Good thing no one in here was easy to kill.”

  “Which puts us down one guard.” Anya pulled extra hard at Tia’s hair as she continued, “The one you got in the arm will heal quick enough, but not the one you got in the eye. And we need our numbers, Tia. While the mages were able to give us a location, they weren’t able to give us much else. Not the entire layout of the place, not how many others she’s got working with her, or any other info we really need before going in, but don’t have the time to get. They’re going to try and see if they can switch the feedback from at least one of those monitors, but that still only covers the one room all the monitors are sitting in.”

  “While, yeah, y’all completely and utterly fucked up by lying to us and having us think we were just a bunch of fucking mutts nobody gave a shit about. Ouch!” Deelah rubbed her arm where Genie pinched her. The two had apparently been standing in the doorway unnoticed for a while, listening in. Rolling her eyes to the top of her head, Deelah continued, “But that orpha
nage was not a complete waste of time.”

  Elyssia looked at the two young females she had played a major part in raising. She leaned back with her arms crossed under her breasts and asked, “And how long have you two been standing there like a couple of overgrown flies on the wall?”

  “Long enough to know you’re already down a guard and a half, so it’d be pretty damn dumb of you to not let us come.”

  Genie punched Deelah in the arm before speaking up. “Why do I ever let you open your mouth?”

  Deelah’s iridescent wolf eyes glared in outrage at that statement. “Bitch, you don’t let me do shit.”

  She had barely gotten that statement out of her mouth before Genie cut off her speech with the tune of a few subtle notes, her face and tone no longer shy as she spoke, but rather more gorgeous and forceful. “I’m not weak, Dee. I hold back because of how much I love you. But if we want in on this mission to find our sister, you need to chill out.” Genie hummed a couple of bars to release Deelah’s vocal chords before speaking to the royal sisters who were looking at the two of them like, what the fuck? “We want to come with you. I may be no good to you in a physical fight, but Deelah is, and I do have my assets.”

  “No,” Tialanna said with finality.

  “Hold on, wait. What do you mean no?” Genie shook her head, “We have just as much right to be there as any of you. With all due respect, all you did was give birth to her. We’ve been with her and loved her all her life. That makes us family, blood or not.”

  “Not so calm and collected now, are you, Genie?” Deelah mumbled under her breath as she watched Genie’s hair begin to lift with the magick building up inside her. Then more loudly and with a slight snarl she said, “Mind telling us why the fuck you think we won’t be joining in on this hunting party of yours? We only asked out of courtesy and respect, and that was her idea”—she pointed a clawed thumb towards Genie—“not mine.”