Penance_An Imp World Novel

by Debra Dunbar

  “The Ha-Satan. That’s Ni-Ni.” Leethu tapped her bottom lip with a fingernail. “She has a lot of responsibilities right now, but if she knew where I was, I’m sure she would come to help. And she does like to kill things. I can’t directly ask her to kill the summoner, but perhaps someone else could do it for me.”

  There was a thinly veiled question there, but I wasn’t about to go track down Satan and ask him, or her, to murder the summoner. Maybe I could e-mail Satan, or send her a letter or something.

  “But even then, I can’t help you,” Leethu told me. “I can’t help any of you escape. I’ve been given very specific instructions to keep all of you here and to prepare you for the sale.”

  So much for winning this demon over to our side.

  “I won’t tell you anything about our plans then. But just in case we manage to get out of here, let me know how I can get in touch with someone, and I’ll let them know you’re stuck here and need some help.”

  Her head whipped around and she stared at me. “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would you help me? I can’t help you in return.”

  “I know. I just…you need help. You’re as much a victim as we are. They’re forcing you to do these things to us. You don’t have any choice.”

  “You do realize that I’m a demon? Yes, I’m trapped here and I need to do as they command, but I’ve done worse in my lifetime. Under any other circumstance, I’d seduce you, tie you to me for the rest of your life, then take your soul for my own. They aren’t asking me to do anything I would normally find objectionable. It’s the fact that they are ordering me around that angers me, not what they want me to do.”

  I kept thinking of her as a sympathetic character, forgetting what her being a demon actually entailed. What was I thinking? Why in the world did I have sympathy for this creature that wouldn’t blink an eye about seducing me and taking my soul. Wait—seducing me? She had said she was a succubus, but seduction wasn’t the sort of thing I associated with demons. Tearing me limb-from-limb, yes. Flaying the skin off my back then dipping me in boiling oil, yes. Seducing me, and whatever kinky stuff “tying” was, no.

  “Why…why would you seduce me?” Suddenly the room seemed heavy and warm. I wanted to touch to this demon, feel her hands on my skin.

  “Because I’m a succubus. That’s what sex demons do. We seduce humans, fulfill their fantasies, then siphon their sexual energy.” Her dark eyes were full of promise as they met mine. “I tie my prey to me so they supply me with that energy for the rest of their lives. Every time they have sex, they think of me. Every time they masturbate, they think of me. And each time, I feed once more.”

  I shivered, wanting to scoot away and put some distance between us, but unable to move. I was trapped. And I got the feeling that if she kissed me, I’d be lost—just another among the thousands who lived only for her touch.

  A surprisingly sweet smile curled her lips. “Do not worry, Red Bird. Right now I cannot use my succubus skills of enchantment on you, take your sexual energy, tie you to me, or Own your soul. Sex with me would be just that—only sex. You are safe from me.” She reached out and touched my hair. “For now. Maybe if you survive your new owner long enough for me to escape, I’ll come for you. You’re very beautiful. I think your energy would be sweeter than any I’ve had in the last century.”

  My future wasn’t looking too good. Death at the hands of the guards trying to escape. Death at the hands of whoever bought me at this auction. Death by this succubus. At least with the succubus I’d know pleasure, although I got the impression her sort of pleasure would tip me into insanity.

  Abruptly she rose, then reached out a hand to me. I took it and let her help me up, noticing again that all my wounds had healed. My hair was still bright red, my skin still unblemished and unmarked.

  “Do not try to escape, Red Bird,” she told me. “The guards will kill you, and I would be very sad if you died.”

  “I’m going to die anyway,” I replied. “Does it matter whether it’s by them or by some sicko who likes to use a knife while he’s raping me?”

  She thought a moment then chuckled. “I guess not. Such a waste. Such a shame. Too bad you cannot be mine, Red Bird. Too bad.”

  She left to go repair the other girls’ injuries and I slid back down the wall to sit on the cold tile once more, my legs shaking as I clasped my hands around my knees. I did feel sorry for her, just as I would feel sorry for a murderous tiger pacing the bars of her cage. But releasing the tiger would most likely mean my death at her claws and fangs. As much as I wanted to save her, to save the others, I didn’t want to die.

  But I was going to die anyway. And if I had to pick a way to go out, a demon was probably no worse than a bullet to the head or a knife at my throat.

  Chapter 13

  I stayed in the bathroom, covering my ears when the screams began. Pockmarks had ordered the demon woman to fix our injuries, and that’s what she was doing. I could feel the sharp bite of her energy as she repaired bruised and damaged flesh, mended broken bones, all at a cost.

  But not me. I wasn’t sure if what she’d been trying to do to my hair had fixed my own injuries, succeeding there where it failed when it came to my stubborn red locks, or if there was something inside me that super-charged my healing. She’d thought I was part demon. Maybe I was, but it didn’t seem to do me a whole lot of good. I could hold my own against the demon woman in a fight, but didn’t seem to have any advantage over human men. I could heal my own injuries but couldn’t do a thing to help the others. Whatever supernatural skills I had, they weren’t any use in getting us out of here.

  There was another long scream, ending in a whimper. I pressed my hands over my ears wanting it all to go away. Why was this happening to me? What horrible thing had I done that I needed to suffer this? And what about the others? They were innocents, victims of a cruel fate that didn’t care if they were raped and tortured. Every one of those girls out there deserved a better future, especially given some of their lives to date. They all deserved better.

  So did that demon woman.

  Leethu. It was a beautiful name, silky and seductive with a deadly bite, just like she was. Deceptively small and frail. Strong and loyal. And lonely. So very lonely.

  I stood, pushing off the wall as I walked out into the room. Leethu had her hands on Pillow’s ribs. The girl was gasping and crying, begging as the silvery glow suffused her flesh. When the demon was done, she slumped, panting to the floor. Then Leethu turned to Mess.

  “No.” Mess backed away, cradling her broken wrist. “Don’t. Leave me alone.”

  “I’m sorry I lost my temper and hurt you.” The warm blue aura enveloped them both, so soft, so comforting. “I do not normally do such things. In self-defense, yes, but I had no reason to fear you or to hurt you. I give pleasure, not pain. It sorrows me that this is who I am becoming. Please let me fix your wrist. I will be as gentle as possible.”

  A sleepy, drugged expression came over the girl’s face. “I don’t want you to hurt me. No more hurting. No more.”

  Leethu reached out and took the girl’s arm, holding it gently. Then the light came from her fingers and Mess began to scream. When the demon was done, the girl’s wrist was fixed and all her bruises and cuts were healed, but there was a hollow, desperate look in her eyes as she scurried away. Leethu watched her, shoulders drooped.

  Lonely. Trapped. No one cared enough to come help her. Eventually they would, but there wasn’t anyone who loved her enough to be frantic with worry over her absence, who would turn the world inside-out to find her. No one who would come with feathered wings to her rescue.

  “Don’t let her do that to me again,” Mess said to me, her voice raw and ragged. “No more. No more men profiting off my body. No more being told who to have sex with, where to sleep, what to eat. I want to be in charge of me. For once, I want to be the one who decides what happens to me, not some man. And not some demon.”

  I wrapp
ed my arms around her, hugging her tight, promising her things I would never be able to deliver. “Soon. Soon that will all stop, and you’ll be free.”

  “Free.” She buried her face in my shoulder. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be strong anymore. It’s my turn. From now on I’m the one who gets to decide what happens to me. Promise me, Red. Promise me that I get to decide from now on.”

  I couldn’t promise that, not with the sale two days away and our chance of escape dwindling to zero. I couldn’t promise that, but I could hold her and tell her that soon she’d be free—we’d all be free. Then nothing would ever touch them again. I could lie.

  The demon woman looked around, checking to make sure we were all perfect and injury free, without a cut or bruise on us to mar our beauty, then with a sad smile my way, she left, locking the door behind her. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen her do this, lock and unlock the door without using a key. I remembered her welding the bathroom door shut behind us, then reversing the magic as she went to leave. Clearly her skills did stretch beyond seduction and the ability to alter human physical appearance. Clearly there was more to this demon woman that met the eye.

  We slowly made our way to the cots, everyone huddling together on Mess’s and Sugar’s with a few of us sitting nearby on the ground. There was a heavy sense of desperation in the air. We knew our chances for escape were pretty close to zero, that in just over a day we’d be sold at auction, split up. Even if one or two of us managed to escape, we’d never be able to find the others after they sold us.

  If. I doubted street pimps were going to be paying high dollar for girls at an elite auction with the sort of buffers against police interference Leethu had said she was providing. These were serial killers looking for a victim, or people who wanted a sex slave, or private clubs who wanted their own personal girl to take turns with. There would be no sting operation to save us, no undercover officer answering an internet ad and showing up at a sleazy hotel room to arrest us, no lazy pimp to escape when his back was turned. These clients would have us locked and chained, and probably kept in some cabin in the middle of nowhere. Once we were sold, there would be no hope. We had tonight and tomorrow to figure out what to do, and judging from the look on a few of the girls’ faces, many of them would rather die trying to escape than meet whatever fate held for them at the hands of their buyer.

  “We thought she’d murdered you,” Kitten whispered, putting out a tentative hand to touch my shoulder. “When she dragged you in there, and we heard the screaming, we thought she was killing you.”

  “And having sex with your corpse,” Sugar added. She laughed as the others turned their shocked gazes her way. “What? There was a bunch of screaming, then silence, then a weird sexy-time vibe. Don’t tell me I’m the only one who figured demon-lady was screwing Red’s dead body in there.”

  “You’re disgusting,” Pistol told her.

  “What did happen in there?” Mess asked. “The door was welded shut. We couldn’t come to help you.”

  “The woman is a demon. It’s not like we could have helped her,” Pillow pointed out.

  “She tried to change my hair color.” I picked up a lock and showed it to them. “Obviously it didn’t work.”

  “But she tried.” Pistol shivered. “I heard you screaming. I know how much agony you were in.”

  A few of the others nodded in sympathy. It had been agonizing, one of the most painful experiences of my life. I might not remember my past, but I was positive I’d never felt pain like that before.

  “She screamed too,” I told them. “I think it hurt her just as much as it hurt me.”

  “Good.” Sugar’s eyes narrowed. “Too bad it didn’t kill her.”

  “But what was…” Kitten blushed. “What was the other thing?”

  “Yeah,” Pillow added. “It got all quiet, then suddenly it was like I was rolling on Molly or something. Everyone felt it.”

  Yeah, I’d felt it too. “She’s a succubus. A sex demon. She screws humans and takes their sexual energy to feed on.”

  Kitten’s eyes were huge. Every one of the women stared at me.

  “Did she…did she…?” Kitten stuttered.

  “Did you guys seal the deal?” Sugar asked. “Lesbo sex with a demon? I guess not if you’re still standing and not dead on the bathroom floor.”

  I snorted. “Uh, no. We did not ‘seal the deal.’ She didn’t rape me. And I don’t think she necessarily kills people when she has sex with them. Besides, she told me she can’t kill us. There’s a clause or something in her summoning contract that says she can’t use her succubus mojo on us, take our sexual energy, take our souls, or kill us.” I looked around at the others. “Or help us escape.”

  “Damn.” Sugar grinned. “I was kinda hoping you’d seduced her and she was going to whisk us away to safety. Although since she’s a demon, she’d probably be just as likely to whisk us away to some lava pit in hell.”

  “Do you trust her?” Pistol asked, eyeing me like she wasn’t sure if I wasn’t secretly a demon also.

  “I trust her to be her. She’s a demon, and according to her she’s under the thumb of the boss—the man who summoned her. I don’t think she’d be completely on our side even if she wasn’t, though. I do believe she’d help us escape if she could, just to stick it to these guards.” I thought for a second. “Although she might just steal their souls, then do the same to us.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Sugar waved a hand. “She’s under a summoning. She can’t or won’t help us. And seems like bashing her brains in with a toilet lid again isn’t going to do more than knock her out for five or ten minutes.”

  “How hard did you hit her?” Mess grimaced. “I’ll admit I probably held back when I hit that guard. It’s one thing to punch someone, but I just couldn’t crush his skull or deal with the thought of brains splattered across the room.”

  “I broke her skull,” I admitted. “I put everything into it. She was a demon, and I wasn’t sure what it would take to stop her. Guess it takes more than a blow to the head.”

  “I doubt a bullet to the head would stop her,” Sugar commented. “We’re just going to have to try to sneak out when she’s not here. Or when she’s sleeping or something.”

  “How would we know when that is?” Kitten asked. “We can’t hear what they’re doing out there, and they said they’re not going to feed us anymore. What if they don’t open the door again until they come to take us out to the sale?”

  “Then we try to figure out a way to get the door open ourselves,” Pistol said. “Maybe use parts from the cots to take the hinges off or something. And if that doesn’t work, we try to get out when they come to move us for the sale.”

  “There’s a stage out there in the warehouse,” I reminded her. “And stacks of folding chairs. I think they hold the auction here, which won’t give us any time to escape during transportation.”

  “Can we get the door off the hinges, you think?” Kitten asked. “If we wait for the auction, we’ll be out of this room, but then we’d need to fight off a whole bunch of buyers in addition to the guards and the demon. I think our chances are better if we can get out before then.”

  Pistol stood up and went to look at the door. Sugar climbed up on the counter and looked at the air return ducts.

  “None of us are going to fit through these,” she announced. “Not even Lacy, and she’s built like a ten-year-old.”

  “These are pretty industrial sized hinges,” Pistol said. “We can try to get them off, though.”

  “Then let’s each take turns trying to unscrew the hinges,” I said. “Pistol can start first. The rest of us cover every inch of the walls in the space, tapping and poking holes with wires to see if we can maybe break through the drywall into the warehouse or another room that isn’t locked. Sugar, check the air returns in the bathroom and see if they’re any bigger. We need to find a way out of here, and we need to do it fast.”

  Super fast. We had tonight, tomorrow an
d tomorrow night, then we’d be out of options.

  Chapter 14

  The guards did return that night, not to bring us food but to examine the demon’s work in fixing us up, and to choose a new play toy for the evening.

  “Your pick,” Pockmarks told Catcalls. “How about the Russian girl? She looks like fun.”

  Tasha caught her breath. I moved to stand in front of Kitten and Pistol while Mess did the same to Sugar and Baa. Pillow and Lacy sat wide-eyed on their cots, frozen with fear.

  “No, I want the bitch that hit me,” Catcalls said, glaring at Mess. The girl sucked in a sharp breath, but set her jaw and lifted her chin. I stayed where I was, feeling as if I were in a giant chess game. Protect the pawns. Advance when my opponent’s intent is clear.

  Pockmarks gave the other guard a sharp look. “Think you might take it a bit far with that one. Screw that Mexican chick instead. She looks sturdy enough for what you like to do.”

  I wasn’t sure which “Mexican” chick he was referring to. Baa stood rigid behind Mess, unable to follow the conversation. I shifted to the side, trying to block Pillow and hoping Pistol could protect Kitten if needed.

  “She’ll just lay there and cry,” Catcalls complained. “I like one that’s got a little game, you know what I mean? There’s no fun in punching some unresponsive bag of meat. I like one that’s gonna give me some cause to land a few blows.”

  “Well, I don’t,” Pockmarks told him. “I don’t want to have to fight some chick to get my rocks off. Nice and quiet. Please and thank you. That’s what I want.”

  Would they take two of us tonight? A feisty girl like Pistol or Sugar or Mess for Catcalls to beat around and screw, and Lacy or Kitten or Tasha for Pockmarks? I hated the thought of any of my girls being subjected to these men, but with two out of this room, maybe there would be a better chance of one escaping. We just needed one to escape and bring help. Just one.