by Aaron Crash
The gunny turned on his heel and walked back to the elevator, away from the conveyor belt, the control center, all of that.
“Where are you going, you little bastard?” Arlo called after him.
“Doing what you taught me, you big bastard. I’m using my head.” Blaze said. “It’s pretty pinche obvious that you’re not there, that this Nauzea puta is messing with me, and I need to wait for my team. They have the snare sphere, after all.”
Back at the huge freight elevator’s lobby, the platform car was above him, but it was coming clattering down.
Nauzea, again, attacked his mind. You still feel the weight, do you not? The water, the ice, the miles above you. You are so far from air, Blaze Ramirez. You are so far from air.
A woman shuffled out of the darkness of one of the hexagonal corridors. A large gray cloak covered her. Clotted black blood stiffened the hems at her wrists and ankles.
The hood was covering part of her face, but he saw her mouth, a scabbed-over wound. It was the face from his vision, before the dragons attacked, when they’d been rocketing toward Hutchinson Prime.
Nauzea, herself, had come out to play.
Good. Blaze could bag himself another one of hell’s royalty and smoke a victory cigar early.
FOUR_
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Blaze was by the elevator, facing Nauzea, who stood framed in the entrance of the corridor. Around her everything was gloom and dust and rust. The only light came from Blaze’s fusion ax.
The archduchess’s scabbed mouth cracked open. Blood and pus dribbled down her pale, pointed chin. “I have done what my brothers could not.”
“What’s that? Ovulate?” Blaze raised his shotgun and fired. Nauzea disappeared, but she might not have been there at all. It was hard to tell. The evil puta was in his head, messing with him. Even the succubus might not have been real.
A voice whispered through the dust and emptiness of the mine. “I have made you retreat. You always charged forward with my brothers, even when the odds were against you. Here, you ran back to the elevator lobby to wait for your friends. But your friends are not coming.”
The elevator’s double doors opened, and the succubus stood there. But he’d seen her fly down the elevator shaft. Or had he? With all the mindfuckery, it was hard to tell.
The succubus threw her head back and screamed, “Yes, my mistress. Yes, I accept your wonderful tortures. I accept your agonizing kisses. I embrace your vision of my happy suffering.”
Nauzea’s power whisked two hydrogen shells out of Blaze’s bandolier. The shells slammed into the succubus’s eyes, embedding themselves there. She reached out her hands, and from her palms streamed fusion energy in long whips of star fire. She strode forward, wings flapping up a hurricane wind that slammed Blaze back against the wall.
The minute the succubus left the platform, the elevator shut and started up to collect another set of passengers.
That would be his team, coming for him. All he had to do was keep his wits about him, deal with the succubus, and not let Nauzea into his head.
Blaze attached his ax to his thigh and jacked a fresh shell into his shotgun. The succubus cleaved Ugly Betty in half with her fusion whip, ten feet long at least. Barrel, stock, and shells went clattering and bouncing across the floor.
“You killed Ugly Betty!” Blaze growled. “Now you’re going to pay.”
Another slash of her whip burned through his armor and into his arm, but luckily, Blaze spun and changed the angle, so he didn’t lose a limb. The succubus whirled the fusion whip and slashed it across the glass of a window, digging into the layers of protective plaster. The window cracked and threatened to break.
His armor could protect him from the vacuum of space, but he had doubts it would survive the pressure at the bottom of the frozen ocean. And he didn’t like his chances against the succubus underwater. But again, something swam by, and it looked almost lupin. Was it Cali? It could be. He’d triggered her Cali Bad Dog command.
That definitely could’ve been a werewolf in that cold, black saltwater.
Blaze grabbed his ax and triggered it. The sex demon’s whip licked out at him and he caught it on his ax. He was ready for the other whip to come lashing out as well. He didn’t need to beat the demon. No, he just needed to keep her busy.
The elevator was coming down. The glass in the window cracked farther. On the other side of the chamber, another of the strange shapes appeared. A lupine claw scratched at the window and then disappeared into the murky muck at the bottom of the half-frozen ocean.
Blaze whirled his ax from the left to the right and back to the left, deflecting the lashes of the whip. The hydrogen shells inside the skull of the demon burst open and star-fire energy blinded Blaze for a minute. One whip cracked into his armor and hit his thigh. The blow took him down for a second. The lash burned into his skin but didn’t destroy muscle. Her other whip slashed at another window. That glass cracked as well.
Through comms, a voice from his past burst through as clear as a bell. “Hey, Blaze, long time no see. Whatcha been doing with your badass self all these years? Is this a good time to talk?”
Blaze blinked. No way, it was Ian Blackburn from the Astral Corp. The voice was so unexpected, so completely out of the blue, that Blaze couldn’t think for a minute.
“Yeah, Blaze,” another guy said. Tanner McNair, from the same unit. Ian and Tanner had been there when the Onyx entity had possessed their commanding officer, but they’d been sleeping. Blaze was forced to kill the beloved Lieutenant Kent Jameson. Ian, Tanner, the others—no one believed him when he insisted that Jameson had been possessed by a demon. Blaze had been led away in chains, despised by his comrades.
Tanner laughed. “Didn’t expect to hear from us down here, did you?”
Blaze let out a scream and threw himself into the succubus, getting so close the pinche puta couldn’t use those fusion whips against him. He drove his ax haft into her gut, then into her throat, and whirled it around and slammed the ax into the beautiful red skin of her face.
The succubus stumbled backward. The fusion energy jetted up from her eyes to cover her long black horns with the star-fire energy. She lowered her head and went to charge him like a bull in heat.
Blaze slammed his fusion ax into that skull, splitting it up the middle, and those two hydrogen shells clattered out. But they immediately rose and slammed back into the eye sockets even as the gray brain matter inside the demon’s skull dripped down her face.
The succubus leaned back and cackled, “You’ve made me so pretty now, Blaze. Give us a kiss.” She grabbed his arm. The energy from the whip’s emitter blasted through his shoulder.
Blaze gasped at the agony of his ruined joint. Yeah, the Nauzea puta had said pain was in the mind. Well, fuck that. Right at that moment, the pain was in his pinche shoulder, and he felt himself losing consciousness.
The succubus bent to kiss him, brains covering her face.
She came close enough for him to read the make and model of those hydrogen shells. They were Winjester 1000 NUUs. Nice bullets. Highly illegal. Which was why they were Winjesters and not Winchesters.
The elevator’s double doors rattled open and Cali bounded out. She ripped through the succubus and threw her off Blaze.
As a werewolf, Cali was eight feet long, all claws, fangs, and eyes scarlet with unstoppable Onyx energy. She latched onto the demon and shook it like a terrier with a rat. She hurled the demon from her. Black blood splattered the entire room, covering the windows, even as more cracks appeared in the shielded glass.
The succubus whipped at the werewolf, but the fusion energy couldn’t hurt Cali. It smoked off her fur, making the room smell like a wet dog thrown into a campfire. Cali did take the whiplashes on her bracelets, trying to jam open the mechanism. Bill’s tech seemed to be working. The nanotech seemed to repair the damage, but Blaze wouldn’t know for sure until he tried to close them. Which he wasn’t about to do, not with the werewolf tearing
apart the demon.
The succubus howled and lashed at Cali pathetically, desperately.
Blaze got to his feet, but those voices, those ghostly voices, hit him again. Not in his head, telepathically, but through comms. Almost as if they were patched into his channel. That couldn’t be, could it?
“Ain’t you gonna say hi to us?” Ian asked.
“Yeah, Blaze, don’t be a dick,” Tanner added.
More voices joined the chorus. “Blaze was a dick, all right. Killed our CO. Remember?” That was Jared Dickey.
Chase Schultz came next, but then Chase always aped everyone. “Yeah, Jared is right. Blaze killed our CO.”
Logan Nutgrass laughed. “Bet he’s really surprised to hear from us.”
“But he won’t admit it,” Jacob Lau piled on. “Because he always had to be best at everything. He was always such an asshole.”
“Get out of my head!” Blaze screamed. This was unfair. Those guys, they were his buddies, his comrades in arms; he’d saved their lives, and they’d saved his. They were brothers. How could they be down at the bottom of some saltwater Slushee of an ocean in the backwaters of the Huaxia Quadrant?
Short answer? They couldn’t. It was all just Nauzea, messing with him.
But Ian, Tanner, Jared, Chase, Logan, and Jacob all laughed. “We’re not in your head, Blaze,” Ian said. “We’re down here with you. And soon, you’re going to join us. Whether you want to or not.”
Cali bit off one of the succubus’s hands and then the other. White bone showed through the ink of her blood. Her red skin was coated in dark ichor. The whips were gone, extinguished under the jaws of the beast.
The werewolf raked claws down the face of the succubus, clawing out the hydrogen shells and sending them spinning across the room.
The succubus scurried away, using its stumps and its wings, into a wall, where the glass was continuing to crack. The energy shields keeping the unbelievable pressure at bay flashed blue, but it was clear they were failing. The entire elevator lobby and the elevator were about to be flooded.
Cali whirled on Blaze and leapt at him. While she was in midair, Blaze triggered the Bad Cali Dog command. Cali changed from werewolf into woman, and she staggered into his arms. He held her while she shook.
“That was fucking close,” she gasped. “I was totally going to rip your head off.” She clutched him to her, riding the storm of adrenaline and endorphins. “On another note, the new bracelets seem to be working.”
“How are you feeling?” Blaze asked. Normally, after she wolfed out, she needed to rest. But like Elle, Cali was getting more accustomed to the Onyx.
“Fine, Blaze. Ready to fight some more. I’ve hardly worked up a sweat. And jeez, I’m just glad I’m not crying.”
“I don’t mind that you get weepy, Cali,” Blaze said.
The shredded succubus got to her feet, clicking the exposed bones of her arms together. “Oh, the pain, my friends, the divine agony. It is wondrous. Hurt me more. Hurt me more!”
Her eyes flashed, and then she grew bigger, rising above them. It seemed the harder they hit her, the tougher she got.
Blaze grabbed his ax in his working arm. He took two steps toward the demon, then staggered. He wasn’t going to be able to fight. He fell to the floor, then slammed his back against the wall. Even propped up under the treacherous, cracking window, staying conscious was taking a whole lotta energy.
Cali stooped and whipped the ax out of his hands. “I have this, Blaze. You need to run. The others are coming, but they aren’t going to be able to make it in time. I can hold her off. If it gets bad, I can trigger the bracelets.”
The succubus’s eyes flashed. Cali dropped the ax and turned, and Blaze blinked through the pain. The Mormon girl straddled him, lifted his chin, and stared down into his eyes. “I didn’t want Elle to get me, Blaze. It was you I wanted. If only I hadn’t been so damaged. If only you hadn’t met Trina.”
The succubus hissed out laughter. “Yes, kiss him, Wolf Girl. Undress him, lick the blood from his skin, show me your lust, which is just another facet of agony.”
“Obviously, bitch, you aren’t doing it right,” Blaze growled. He took hold of Cali’s arms. She was thin but strong. She looked at him with such lust in her eyes. The pain was making it hard to think. The chatter of his Astral Corps buddies in his ears had stopped, but their voices haunted him…after all these years. And then there was the memory of the charnel house he’d blown up with the grenade. All of it made it hard to focus.
Nauzea. It was the archduchess of torture. She could affect them without saying a word.
The windows cracked farther, and he could smell the sea on the other side. The energy shields flashed, then flickered, and the temperature plunged at least ten degrees.
It was the wrong time for this. But Cali was looking so fine, felt so good, and smelled even better, and then he was tasting her as they kissed.
This wasn’t an illusion. This was real life. And the succubus, brains leaking from its skull, dripping black blood from its wrists, continued to cackle. It made it better. Let the evil thing watch. He’d show that sex demon a thing or two.
“You go, Blaze,” Ian, Tanner, Jared, Chase, Logan, and Jacob all jeered. They could see him. How was that possible? Or had he gone completely insane?
The succubus lowered her horns. She was going to charge and impale first Cali and then Blaze. They’d be stuck together, pierced by the sex demon’s horns.
Blaze couldn’t care less. As long he got to kiss Cali and feel her body on him, he’d take any kind of death that demon could dish out.
FIVE_
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The elevator car rattled down, came to a shuddering halt, and the doors slid open. The entire team, except for Elle, was there in the freight elevator.
Bill and Fernando stood above Trina. The vampire held her plasma minigun, her favorite weapon, in translucent fists. Ling whirled his fusion nunchaku in deadly glowing arcs of pure star fire. He had his plasma bow across his back as well as the pistol grip of a weapon Blaze didn’t recognize right away.
“Cali, get the fuck off my boyfriend,” Trina said to the werewolf. Then she addressed the succubus. “As for you, big, red, and ugly, if you want to get off, I have something hot and phallic right here.” She’d bought the plasma minigun on Earth with the last of their money. The gun was as big as she was, but she was vamped out, so she had the strength to wield the weapon. Her hair, eyes, lips, and teeth were as black as pitch. Every vein was visible through her translucent skin. The six barrels of the plasma minigun whirled, and she opened fire on the succubus. At six thousand rounds a minute, the demon was pulverized into bones and body parts, but the shadowy essence of her Onyx energy remained.
Both Fernando and Bill were Clickers, giant insect people.
Fernando wore a bandolier of hydrogen shells and pouches, just like Elle used to wear. Two fusion pistols were in his smaller hands and strapped to the back of his nanofiber armor was his fusion spear. With his bigger right arm, he tossed out a snare sphere, blinking with green lights, and it rolled across the floor, right under the succubus being pummeled by the plasma fire.
Fernando’s brother Bill stood next to him. Lizzie had perfected Bill’s prosthetics limbs. As a demon, Xerxes had cut off the arms and legs on the left side of his body. But once Xerxes fled into their ship and became Lizzie, he had made amends by giving Bill a leg and two arms made of steel, enhanced with Onyx energy. Xerxes had also used his waning necrotechnological skills to make those limbs work with his nerves, and his arms could transform from hands into guns. His bigger left arm could transform into a fusion cannon as deadly as Blaze’s shotgun, while his smaller left arm became a plasma pistol.
Bill aimed both of his arm guns at the succubus, but Trina was doing fine skinning and deboning her with her six barrels of plasma death.
Ling finally deactivated his dual nunchakus and put them away. The fusion nunchakus were exceedingly interesting weapons
. A thick chain connected the flat metal of the fusion emitter to a handle that held the hydrogen shell. He had two pairs. When asked, Ling said he liked the challenge of fighting with his fusion nunchakus. He couldn’t lose focus for a second.
Five feet tall, Ling was a marsupial and had the pouch to prove it. Like a sloth, he had black-and-white fur, a pointed face, and three pink-fingered claws. Nanotech armor covered him.
Fernando growled out Onyx speak, casting a spell, and the snare sphere flashed, drinking in the Onyx soul of the succubus. The thing howled but was sucked into the magical orb. The lights on the orb turned from green to red. Once the magic was complete, Fernando collapsed, but his brother caught him. Even the simplest spells exhausted the Clicker doctor turned Onyx witch.
The smoldering corpse of the succubus, now devoid of Onyx, crumbled to the floor.
Trina let the minigun fall to the floor. She stomped over. Cali had already retreated off Blaze.
It was obvious the Mormon girl was embarrassed as she tried to explain herself. “Trina, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to happen. The succubus, it cast a spell… It was her evil, not mine. Please, I’m sorry.”
“I’ve seen you looking at him,” Trina growled. “And I can smell how hot your blood was. The demon might’ve made you do it, but you were enjoying yourself. How about I drink a little of your blood and we call it even?”
Blaze, still on the floor, trying to keep himself conscious, glanced into his display. Trina’s VHI was zero, since she was in her vampire form, but Bill had added a new setting. Her Onyx level was low and draining fast. She was losing control of herself and lapsing into a bloodthirsty creature of the night.
“Trina,” Blaze said. “Time for your shot.”
Trina narrowed her black eyes at the werewolf. “You stay away from him.” She took one of three stainless syringes from her bandolier and inserted the needle into her arm. The red serum inside the glass barrel glowed. She thumbed down the plunger, and her mojo level rose to above seventy-five percent. She nodded. “Much better. Okay, yes, we were fighting a sex demon. Sorry, when I get hungry, I get so fucking moody.”
