Incubus Kingpin (Rise of an Incubus Overlord Book 3)

by Jack Porter

  It was a sobering thought. If things hadn’t gone my way as well as they had, I could have ended up in one of these cells. Just like Piper.

  I wanted to ask Maggie more questions. There were at least sixteen other levels beneath the BDA building, and I wanted to know what they contained. Offices of the Agents, no doubt, but what else? Were there libraries full of divine publications? Rooms full of artifacts that had yet to be studied?

  Could there be demonic or angelic entities themselves within these rooms?

  But before I could suggest Azrael ask anything more, Travis paused and indicated one of the doors.

  “This is it,” he said.

  Without asking, he slid the top metal plate across and addressed the room’s occupant. “Heads up!” he said. “You’ve got visitors!”

  Then he stood back and gestured for Maggie and me to approach.

  Maggie deferred to me, and I took Travis’ place at the opening.

  Inside, the room looked very much like a prison cell. It contained just the barest of necessities, including a small, single cot, a wooden chair, and toilet facilities. Not a pleasant place to spend even a single day, and Piper had been there for weeks.

  But all that was secondary. Of greater importance was that this was indeed the right room. Piper had been sitting on the edge of the bed. As I looked at her, she stood, her expression changing quickly from one of surprise to one of hope, and then to abject glee. She understood exactly why I was there, and was more than ready and willing to do her part.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “Better than ever, now,” she replied with a grin.

  “Good. Are you ready to come home?”

  “Well, the food is terrible, and it can get a little boring in here,” she said. She offered a shrug and a grin. “And I have to say, life’s been a bit dull without you and the others. I’ve had enough of a break.”

  I could sense Travis’ increasing anxiety over what I was saying, but didn’t care about that.

  “And your wound? How is that?” I asked.

  In answer, Piper pulled up her shirt, showing me her flat, smooth abs – and a newly healed scar on her side. “Better than I expected. Although I figure Azrael might have had something to do with that.”

  She was right. The last thing I’d done before dropping Piper off at the hospital was ask Azrael to boost Piper’s healing. Judging by her scar, it seemed to have worked well.

  I smiled at Piper, then stepped back from the door and turned to Travis.

  “Open it,” I said.

  Travis stared at me with an expression of shock. “We’re not supposed to–” he began.

  “Do it,” Maggie said. “On my authority.”

  But this time, even that apparently wasn’t enough. Travis looked between the two of us, and shook his head.

  “I’m going to need supervisory approval,” Travis said, and the way his expression started to harden told me all I needed to know.

  Travis didn’t want to unlock Piper’s door. Nor did he expect his supervisor, whoever that was, to tell him to. He just didn’t have enough authority to stand up to Maggie all by himself.

  I glanced at Maggie, to give her a chance to come at Travis from another angle. But it seemed that she didn’t have anything left she could try. She returned my look with the smallest of shrugs, and that was enough.

  Perhaps I should have dealt with Travis first. I didn’t need to kill him. He wasn’t a real threat to me or mine. So a gentle tap on the forehead would have been enough to get him out of the way.

  But I was anxious to get Piper out of there. So I turned back to the door and opened the larger panel, the one that looked like it was probably used to deliver Piper’s food.

  “What are you doing?” Travis said.

  I didn’t look at him. “If you’re not going to open the door,” I said, “then I will.”

  With that, I reached in through the slot and grabbed the steel door. Then I set my feet and used my strength to good effect.

  I’d long since passed the point where I was on any normal scale. I couldn’t bench press a building, but I was pretty sure I would be able to pick up a car and use it as a battering ram if I needed to.

  And that was in my human form. In my demon form, I was much stronger.

  The steel door didn’t have a chance. With the sound of shrieking metal, it first buckled, twisting about my hand, and then the hinges gave way.

  The one in the middle gave up first, then the top, and I had to give the wreckage of the door a final tug before it let go completely.

  I tossed the door onto the floor, where it landed with a loud, metallic crash, and grinned broadly as I looked in on Piper.

  Travis was letting out a stream of shocked curses, but I ignored him. I had eyes and ears only for the woman in front of me.

  The time she had spent in this cell had left her pale, and the shaved side of her head had started to grow back. And the BDA had removed her earrings and the studs she kept in her eyebrows.

  But other than that, she looked as fit and healthy as ever.

  Piper wasn’t as given to displays of affection as Rachel or Sandy. But she moved toward me as if by instinct, wrapping her arms around me in a genuine embrace.

  “About time you showed up,” she breathed. “I was starting to wonder if you’d forgotten all about me.”

  “It would never happen,” I replied, at the same time sending a sneer toward Azrael, who had advised doing exactly that.

  The demon remained silent.

  “Come on,” I said, breaking apart from her. “We can say our hellos properly later. But for now, let’s get out of here.”

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t going to be that easy. Travis had finally recovered himself after my display of strength, and had drawn his weapon.

  “Don’t move!” he said. “You can’t take her out of there!”

  The man was tense and sweating, as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do. He’d just witnessed me rip a steel door off its hinges with my bare hands without breaking a sweat.

  I smiled and held up my hands as if trying to calm him down. But then I moved, fast, ducking under his firing line and lunging toward him, catching him just beneath his ribs with a swinging arm.

  It took the wind from his lungs, folded him over, and sent him sprawling. He came to rest against the far wall, his face pale with pain, his gun clattering onto the concrete floor, no longer in his grip.

  He was winded. Struggling to draw a breath. I straightened back up and said in a conversational voice, “Just stay there. I don’t want to have to hurt you any more than necessary.”

  When I glanced at Piper and Maggie. “Shall we go?” I said casually, more than a little pleased with myself.

  But down the other end of the corridor, my efforts had not gone unnoticed.

  The other guards were starting to react, although they hadn’t yet figured out what was happening, or what response they should make.

  I could have sped toward them and battered them all into oblivion, but instead chose to walk calmly with Maggie and Piper by my side.

  Unfortunately, Travis chose not to heed my words. He recovered his breath with a huge gulp of air and activated his communication device.

  “Lock it down!” he said. The words were enough to galvanize his colleagues. Someone hit a button, and before I could do anything, a huge sheet of heavy steel came crashing down, effectively cutting us off from our avenue of escape.

  I admit I was surprised. I hadn’t known that was going to happen. Hadn’t realized the BDA had put that much effort into building this place.

  I stared at the steel wall at the end of the corridor and wondered how much more difficult it would be to get through than the door.

  “Fuck,” I murmured.

  4

  I pounded on the steel barrier with my fists, but could do no more than dent it. This was a much more formidable barrier than the door I had torn off its hinges. This was a solid, thick wall made of
metal, with no easy handholds, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that it was several inches thick.

  I turned to Maggie. “I’m guessing you can’t order them to open this up?” I asked her.

  She glanced behind us, to the security guard, Travis, who was trying to regain his feet. I knew that she was wondering if she should try to use his communication device. But then she shook her head.

  “It’s a security lockdown,” she said. “Not my department.”

  Ignoring Travis as if he’d ceased to exist, I nodded. “What do you think, Azrael?” I asked.

  Before my demon could answer, someone else spoke through the speaker system in the corridor.

  “You are being watched,” the voice said. “Back away from the barrier. Lie on the ground, and place your hands on your heads. When you have complied, the barrier will open. You have thirty seconds to comply before the corridor fills with gas. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.”

  The BDA security guards were not fucking around. Maggie looked at me with an expression of panic, but Piper was much more confident.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  I grinned at her. The last thing I wanted was to be gassed, to give these people a chance to put me in a cell next to the assassin. Especially as I was exactly who these people were after.

  Getting caught didn’t fit well with what I had in mind for the future.

  So I gave Piper a grin. “Watch,” I said.

  And with that, I changed into my demon form.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, I grew from a comfortable six foot to nearly double that, becoming a monster from the darkest legends of history. I grew horns on my head, claws at the ends of my fingers, and enormous bat-like wings sprouted from my back.

  I also grew a demonic tale, a mouthful of fangs, and the hooves of a goat.

  I had transformed into an archetypal demon, a being of power and strength like no other. I felt I could reach out and punch a hole through the barrier as if it was paper, like I could rip it aside with the sweep of my hand. And I felt hot. As if my skin would burn at the touch, and that my eyes had turned into burning lumps of coal.

  My clothes fell off me, torn into pieces, and settled onto the floor. I heard Travis’ gasp of shock mixed with awe, and felt his fear almost as clearly as I felt Azrael’s sense of release.

  As for Maggie and Piper, their responses were quite different. Piper was looking at me with undisguised desire, and even Maggie couldn’t help but stare.

  I would have liked to take both women right there in the BDA building.

  “Do it,” Azrael said.

  But I had other things to take care of first.

  With the tips of my wings brushing the ceiling, I turned my attention to the barrier and let out a roar as I pounded at it with my fists.

  The barrier had been proof against my human strength, but it couldn’t stand up to my demonic self. It deformed under the weight of my strikes, holding together for one, two, three mighty punches, and then split beneath the fourth. From there, I gripped an edge of the steel and tore it wide open, pushing the barrier down and out of my way.

  Then I stood facing the remaining guards, who looked at me with matching expressions of shock and horror.

  But instead of freezing in place, they took defensive positions, raising their weapons.

  “Don’t move!” one yelled.

  It felt like a joke.

  So, I did exactly what they told me not to.

  With a lunge that catapulted me straight into their counter, I grabbed the first man by the neck. I squeezed, hard, crushing his spine and windpipe. He crumpled to the floor as I turned my attention on the others.

  In less than a heartbeat, the guards were all down, swept aside by my demonic strength as if they were nothing. Perhaps one or two of them still lived. As for the rest, they were nothing but paste.

  But the guards were just one part of the problem. We were seventeen floors underground, and the only way up was the elevator behind them.

  And I didn’t want to get trapped in such a small box.

  “Now what?” said Piper.

  Maggie answered. “If this was a full lockdown, the elevators will be frozen. But there’s no alarm, so I think the guards just locked down this wing.

  I turned to her. “So there is still more they can do? Still further levels of security?”

  Maggie nodded.

  I glanced back down the corridor to where Travis was still standing with his back against the wall, staring at us in shock. He still had his communication device, and had recovered enough to warn his colleagues once already.

  I had been working as a hitman for only a few weeks, and in that time had racked up a body count that Rambo would have been proud of. But it wasn’t like I enjoyed killing so much as it didn’t really affect me one way or the other.

  I’d left Travis alive because I didn’t see him as a threat. But if he could order more security, then I’d been mistaken.

  I reached down to one of the guard’s desks and tore off the side panel, a piece of wood about three feet square and an inch thick. I wound up and let rip, flinging the side panel like a frisbee.

  Travis never stood a chance. The piece of wood basically cut him in half, leaving a spray of blood across the wall that would have given Dexter Morgan the willies.

  Then I turned back to the elevator.

  “Let’s see what happens, shall we?” I asked, and hit the up button.

  We waited. In a surprisingly short time, the elevator uttered a ding, and the doors slid open, revealing a guard standing there. I reached in and grabbed him by the front of his shirt and wrenched him out of the way.

  “Urk,” he managed, before I threw them into the wall.

  But I had no intention of climbing into the elevator. Even if I’d wanted to, I doubted I would fit in my demon form, and I had no intention of reverting back to my normal self without a change of clothes.

  But that was a secondary consideration. More importantly, it didn’t seem wise to willingly confine myself–not to mention Piper and Maggie–in a small box that could turn into a prison simply by someone cutting the power.

  So instead, I ducked my head, climbed in, and spent a few seconds ripping the elevator into pieces until all that remained was a few stubborn remnants clinging to the cables in an otherwise wide open shaft. With one hand on the cable, I looked up and grinned in satisfaction.

  Then I turned back to the women.

  “Are you coming?” I asked.

  Piper reached for me and held tight, more than willing to trust her survival to me.

  But Maggie shook her head. “I’ll stay here,” she said. “If anyone asks, I’ll tell them you forced me to go along with your plans. Who knows? I might even be able to keep my job.”

  It was good enough for me.

  “Hang on tight,” I said to Piper. I couldn’t use my wings in such a confined space, but with my strength and agility, it didn’t matter. I bounded up the elevator shaft quicker than the elevator would have gone, and in a matter of seconds, we burst out through the roof of the building. From there, and with Piper still clinging to my back, I launched myself in the air.

  Piper cried out in ecstatic joy as we flew back to the mansion.

  5

  I would have liked to help Piper settle back in. To welcome her back to my growing coven in a way that the incubus in my head would have appreciated. But a lot had changed in the time since she’d been away, and I had more than one thing on my agenda.

  So I left Piper with Rachel and Sandy, then went to the room we had set up as my office.

  Megadeath had apparently used the control room downstairs for everything, but he had been no more than a contract killer. My needs were a bit different from his.

  So it had made sense to take over one of the unused bedrooms, move out the bed, nightstands, and other furnishings and replace them with a small boardroom table complete with half a dozen office chairs and a removable s
creen for when I needed it.

  It was a good set up. Especially for times like now, when I was talking to Dario Gambetti in our regular meeting.

  In the time since Piper had been taken, I had reinstated most of the businesses I had taken great pains to tear apart when Dario and I were at odds.

  But that had been before I introduced Dario to Sarah.

  Sarah was one of my conquests. But unlike Rachel, Sandy, and Piper, the three I thought of as “mine,” Sarah was one I’d asked to spread my demonic seed far and wide.

  She had proved… prolific. Almost as prolific as me. Because of her, Azrael’s strength had improved, and I had huge amounts of points at my disposal, ready to dump into whichever attribute I wished, both my own and those of my conquests.

  When I had arrived with Dario on her doorstep, she had willingly taken him to bed, and now he was my loyal servant as well.

  “I don’t know how you managed it,” Dario was saying. “But profits are actually up across the board. Before you came along, I was dealing with all sorts of issues, from trusted workers skimming off the top, absenteeism, and just plain inefficiency. I don’t know how, but almost every division is showing an increase in revenue by an average of thirty percent.”

  I didn’t say anything, but I knew exactly what had happened. It came down to loyalty once again. Sandy had set up a program sending not only willing Ascenders my way, but also key staff members from the various businesses I ran.

  The past few weeks, I had been very busy indeed, bringing forth succubus after succubus in the time-honored way.

  The secret to the increased revenue Dario was seeing was no more than loyalty.

  “Good,” I said. “And what about your superiors? Have you had any problems with them?”

  Dario shook his head. He seemed overtly enthusiastic, a far cry from the dry, accountant type he had been when I’d first met him.