The woman knelt in front of me and reached one slender hand out. As her black-nailed finger touched my cheek, a flare of silver fire exploded from my skin. It burned like a thousand suns, and I screamed in pain. The woman drew her finger back as flames danced across her perfect skin. She glanced at her still burning finger and inhaled, her nostrils flaring wide. The fire died.
“Interesting,” she said, eyeing me coolly. “I shall enjoy this more knowing you are in love.” She licked her lips, dragging her tongue across them one sensual millimeter at a time. “So much more.”
“No,” I cried, and as the word left my mouth, a sense of what was going on brushed across my brain. This thing was trying to seduce me. I didn’t know why, but it was, and that couldn’t stand. After all, I was Mac fucking Brennan, and I didn’t get mind-fucked by monsters, let alone actually bent over and fucked.
My tattoos flared to life as I gritted my teeth and fought with everything I had to throw off her wiles. As I started to resist, her power washed over me, smothering me, drowning me. It was like I was a burning matchstick in a howling tornado. I shut my eyes, and in an effort to resist, I imaged myself surrounded by walls a thousand miles high.
I poured every ounce of my willpower into thickening my mental walls, but as soon as I envisioned them, cracks fractured the ground beneath my feet. The smell of lilacs filled my nose, and I called on the demon who had given me my power.
“Help, please!” I cried, but even as I did, I couldn’t find her. I was sure she was out there somewhere, but try as I might, I couldn’t reach beyond my crumbling panic room. “Please…”
“I always get what I want,” the purple woman said as her hand burst through the wall in front of me and grabbed me by the throat.
“No,” I said, reaching up to grab her, and as I did, the power faded from my tattoos, so they looked like nothing more than gaudy decoration.
“The more you fight, the more you struggle, the more I want you.” Her voice washed over my skin like warm massage oil and promises of things to come. “And I always get what I want. Always.”
Chapter 9
As my mental walls crumbled to dust around me, I found myself lying flat on my back in the middle of the dusty warehouse in my smiley face boxers. The weird thing was, even though my clothing was strewn around me, my situation felt perfectly natural. The purple woman stood over me, naked and perfect as the day is long. Her hair fell over her back like a crashing wave as she knelt down so the sweet touch of her body was only centimeters from mine.
As a coy grin melted across her pouty lips, she trailed one hand down from between her breasts, along her taut stomach, and finally down between her legs. She licked her lips and stared down into my eyes.
A thousand erotic thoughts ripped roughshod through my brain, filling me with visions of myself taking her in every way conceivable. The images morphed, becoming wilder by the second. In my mind, there were two of her, then three, then a dozen perfect, supple bodies caressing every inch of me, beckoning me to do whatever I wanted to them. They moved sensually around me like my very own harem.
Harem. The word struck me like a cold shower. I hadn’t liked when women were in harems. Hell, as far as I knew, I’d never desired to be more than a one girl kind of guy. So why was I thinking of harems? That didn’t seem like me. After all, I’d rescued someone from such a place. Someone important.
“I want you inside me,” she said, her words heady with lust, and as they washed over every inch of my body, I started to reach out to her. “If you want me, take me.”
I swallowed, trying to ignore the image of her tongue licking its way across my bare chest. My hands were just millimeters from her perfect breasts. Something about the way she arched herself toward me, worried me. It was like she needed me to touch her first. As that thought circled the drain in my quickly atrophying mind, she dropped down so her mouth was just above my crotch. Her warm breath stirred me to life even though I hadn’t needed any help in that department.
“Okay,” I breathed. The word slipped out of me in a nearly breathless yearning, and as it did, the tattoos along my cursed arm began to glow. A touch of clarity cut through my list as I reached out and wrapped my hand in her long, luscious hair. Touching her was better than anything that had ever happened to me ever. It was like biting into the most expensive truffle ever and finding it was filled with even better chocolate.
“Mmm,” she purred as I tightened my grip in her raven locks. “Go on, punish me. I’m a very bad girl.”
“I plan on it,” I said, drawing her mouth close to mine and staring into her lavender eyes. “But there’s something I need you to do first.”
“What’s that?” Her tongue flicked sensually between her teeth as she spoke. “What do you want me to do?”
“Die,” I snarled, flinging her roughly off of my body with all the strength I could manage. I called upon all my magic, filling the room with glaring crimson light. “Ignis!”
A raging fireball the size of a goddamned beach ball smashed into her perfect, delicate body and threw her skidding across the floor. The concrete beneath her turned molten and glowing as she smacked into the far wall, cracking it from floor to ceiling. She tried to move, tried to crawl to her feet, and as she did, I realized there was a silver heart in the core of my flames, a pulsing of radiance so brilliant, I could barely look at it.
A shriek straight out of the heart of Hell filled my ears. A cry of sheer terror tore from my mouth, and as that horrible, desperate sound faded from my lips, a flare of pure silver filled the room.
When my vision finally cleared, the purple lady was no longer there. A distorted, serpentine shadow had been burned across the wall where she’d been in a way that reminded me of pictures of where the nuclear blast in Hiroshima had etched the imprint of its victims in stone.
I lay there, chest heaving as the lust fell off of me like water off a duck’s back. I wasn’t sure what she’d been doing, but the moment the silver light had engulfed her, I could think. As I tried to crawl to my feet, my compatriots started to move like they’d never stopped at all. Well, that was good. I’d need their help for when she came crawling out of wherever she was.
Sure, it was possible she was dead, but I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case. Not after I’d seen werewolves shrug off getting torn in half. She was way more than a werewolf. Way more.
“Hurry up, Mac,” Jenna said, glancing over her shoulder at me. As soon as she saw me, she stopped and her mouth fell open. “Mac, what happened?” Her words came out in a flurry of concern as the others turned and stared at me in my boxers.
“You guys stopped moving, and we were attacked by a tyrannosaurus. Don’t worry, I blew it up,” I said because I didn’t feel like detailing my experience with Lady Lust. “But after what happened to Vitaly’s suit, I didn’t want to get my new clothes destroyed during the fight so I took ‘em off. Is there a problem?”
“What are you talking about?” Jenna stopped and stared at me for a long time. So long, in fact, I worried she’d been refrozen. Her face hardened into a mask of stone as she spun on her heel and stalked over to the imprint on the wall. “If we were frozen, that means Beleth was here, but if she was here, we should all be dead.” The way she said the words almost made me hope she was right and it hadn’t been Beleth because everything from her body language to her tone made me think I’d hurt her somehow, only I didn’t know why.
Vitaly had the decency to look away from me as Jenna ran her fingers over the imprint on the wall. Wendy, on the other hand, was still looking at me and making it pretty obvious she liked what she saw. It was a little weird because I wasn’t used to being man candy by any means, and while I was somewhat flattered by her attention, I was mostly embarrassed.
“My eyes are up here,” I said, grabbing my slacks off the ground and pulling them on as quickly as I could.
“You’re not my type,” she said as she eye-fucked me. “But I almost wish you were. C’est la vie.”
Wendy glanced over her shoulder and nodded ever so slightly. “It was. She’s gone now.”
“Awesome,” Jenna said, flinging the door open with so much force, the sound of it smacking against the wall echoed through the nearly empty warehouse.
“What’s she talking about?” I asked, buttoning up my shirt as I approached them. Even still, I could see Wendy still picturing me in my boxers. I wasn’t sure I appreciated it. I had a girlfriend after all, and when I told her about this little adventure, I was sure she would be barking mad.
“That imprint was left behind by Beleth. She’s basically a shape-shifting succubus.” Wendy smiled at me. “You must be one lucky guy if you fought her off.”
“Why is that?” I asked, cinching my tie in place.
“Only a person in love can withstand her advances,” Marvin said, peering up from over her shoulder and grinning at me. “Otherwise she’d have sucked your soul out through your dick. Still, it’d have been nice to see those tatas. I hear they’re exquisite.” He reached up and mimed squeezing the air with his wooden hands.
I was so dumbstruck by what the doll had said, I was unable to make any kind of reply, and not because of his lewd comments. No, it was because of what else he’d said. I was in love? Real love? Did that mean our feelings for each other were more than just a dumb werewolf imprint? My heart swelled as I considered it. That would be awesome, better than awesome, but then again, maybe I was wrong? For all I knew, the imprint could have mimicked the feeling of love close enough to stop the demoness’s advances.
“Is good that you have someone,” Vitaly said, slapping me hard on the shoulder. “Otherwise we all would be dead. Guess Vassago was right about you. I had thought him a liar when he said you were in love.”
I nodded dumbly, trying to figure out why my life had to be so goddamned complicated while ignoring his jab because I didn’t think he’d meant it in a mean way. Still, would it have been too much to, you know, not have amnesia and have feelings for a girl that were actually real and not bogged down by magical suspicions?
“Yeah, it’s great,” Jenna muttered, glaring at me as darkness filled her eyes. She blinked a couple times when she saw me looking at her before staring at her feet and mouthing something under her breath. When she looked up, her eyes were back to normal. “Let’s go.”
As I reached her side, I realized why she hadn’t gone in ahead, and it wasn’t because she was worried about Beleth attacking us or anything else. No it was much, much worse than that.
You know how they say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions? Well, it isn’t. No, the stairway down is paved with solid fucking gold and encrusted with enough gemstones to make even the gaudiest rapper’s grill jealous with envy.
Purple oil lamps filled the corridor, casting dancing shadows across the gilded staircase, and as I stared at it, a creeping sense of worry crawled into my belly and nested there. We were going to journey further into Hell, and there was no way that would end well. Especially, if Beleth turned out to be the “woman scorned” type.
“After you, lover-boy,” Jenna growled, flicking her hand toward the glittering stairway. “Try not to fall. I hear it’s a long way down.”
Chapter 10
We’d been walking down the golden staircase for over an hour, and it was seriously starting to piss me off. Not because it was a long journey through a dimly lit corridor headed ever downward, nor because it smelled like chocolate chip cookies and my mouth had been watering this entire time. Admittedly, those were both parts of it, but they were small parts.
It wasn’t even the physical effort of climbing down an unending staircase because even though my legs felt like jelly, I was getting used to hiking up and down ridiculous amounts of stairs. Not to brag, but I was proud of my stair climbing ability.
Sure, my body still hated me with every inch of its, well, body, but it was at least tolerating the whole stair thing. No, what was driving me absolutely insane was that every step on the hour-long journey had spoken.
“I’ll take out the garbage tomorrow,” the stair I’d just stepped on said. I glared at it with undisguised hatred before moving on to the next one.
“I’ll study in a minute,” it said, its monotone voice causing the urge to kill any and all things to rise to a near obscene level. I wasn’t sure if the others heard what I heard when I moved to a new step, but at least for me, the road to Hell was paved with laziness rather than good intentions, and it made me want to rip the whole thing out by its roots.
“No, I will not make out with you!” Marvin the doll cried, glaring at the step beneath them while Wendy stiffened. Her shoulders rippled with obvious tension while she steeled herself and moved on, ignoring the doll.
Part of me wondered if Marvin was reacting to the stair Wendy had stepped on, or if he was just being his douchebag self. He’d said things like that a couple times, and while I’d thought about asking, I was pretty sure the sound of my voice might make Jenna shoot me in the face. With every step she took, her entire body clenched like a fist and her eyes seemed ready to explode in fury. It made me all too glad Wendy’s tiny teenaged self was between me and her. Chivalrous, I know.
“There aren’t enough dirty clothes to run a full load. I’ll wait until there’s a few more,” the stair told me as I stepped onto it.
I sighed as we moved down the stairway. I was last in line and Vitaly led. Why? Because the Russian was virtually indestructible, and I appeared to be immune to Beleth’s charms. The idea was that if something came at us from the front, the Russian, at the very least, wouldn’t die. Unfortunately, that left me to guard the rear while Jenna and Wendy were sandwiched between us.
About the only thing I liked about that scenario was that Wendy was between Jenna and me because judging by the looks Jenna kept giving me, combined with how she was white-knuckling her pistol, I was pretty sure she wanted to shoot something. Call me selfish, but I didn’t want it to me.
While I didn’t remember a lick of what sort of history I had with her, I was starting to get the distinct impression it might have been a bit more than camaraderie. Admittedly, it made me feel bad on an intrinsically human level because I didn’t know what I’d do in her situation.
Imagine having a relationship with someone who got amnesia and totally forgot about you before falling in love with someone else? To make matters worse, I hadn’t even told her about my amnesia, so she was probably working under the assumption I was just an asshole. I mean, I was an asshole, but in this particular case, I sort of deserved a pass, no? I thought I did, but I was hesitant to play that card. Who knows what other problems that little revelation might bring? What if she came back and talked to Ricky? There was absolutely no scenario where that would wind up being a good thing.
“I’ll go to the gym tomorrow,” the next step said as I moved onto it. I was about to smack it upside its gilded head when Wendy stepped off the stairway, and I realized there was only one more step between me and freedom.
I lunged forward with barely contained glee, and as I did, what felt like a sledgehammer hit me right between the eyes. “Maybe another time. I have a headache.”
Pain exploded across my vision as I stumbled forward off the stairs gripping my head. I wasn’t sure if I was bleeding, but from what I could tell through the throbbing pain eviscerating my brain, it felt like it. As I crumbled to the ground in the rain-slicked grass and lay there curled in a ball, invisible sledgehammer-toting elves hacked at my brains. I wasn’t sure what sort of whammy the stairs had hit me with, but at least it wasn’t mutually exclusive. All my companions were strewn about me in the thick grass.
Vitaly recovered first, and as he made his way to each of us, and helped us to our feet, I realized we were in the middle of a graveyard, complete with creepy leaf
less trees and a full moon overhead.
“Well, I didn’t know there was a graveyard in Hell,” I mumbled, trying to make sense of where I was as I looked around the assortment of grotesque statues interspersed with the crumbling headstones. A skeletal bear with a mouth full of fangs stood only a few feet away, and as I moved forward through the waist-high grass, the blackened holes where its eyes should have been followed me.
“It’s not a real graveyard,” Wendy said, smoothing her red dress down in a vain attempt to get it to cover more of her legs as she moved through the grass toward the monstrous gate at the far end of the graveyard.
Purple fluid dripped off the spikes mounted to the gate at seemingly random angles. As the drops hit the ground, they hissed like freshly spilt acid, leaving the surrounding dirt blackened, bare, and scorched.
Standing in the center of the gate, next to a huge golden padlock covered in spider’s webs was an immense emerald statue of a toad covered in glistening warts. Hanging from each of its hands was a blackened scale that reminded me of pictures of the horseman of famine. The scale in the statue’s right hand was empty and was lifted into the air, while the one in its left hand lay on the ground, weighed down by a trio of broken, battered skulls. As I stared at it, an inhuman chill went through me. Those were real human skulls, so how had they gotten here?
“If it’s not a graveyard, what is it, and why are you walking toward that ugly ass toad?” Jenna asked, echoing my sentiments exactly. This place was scary as fuck. Every time I sucked in a breath, it felt like I was inhaling a mouthful of icy spiders, and even though there was no wind, the sound of it whistling through the headstones filled my ears.
Hopefully, Wendy would do whatever she was going to do soon. I wanted to leave so badly, I was actually considering leaving the kids to their demise. Seriously. The only problem with that plan, other than the tiny fact that I was Mac Brennan and not a giant pussy, was that the stairway behind us had vanished.
Seized: An Urban Fantasy Novel (The Thrice Cursed Mage Book 4) Page 7
