“Killed me. Stabbed me right through the heart.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Abby mocked. “I knew there was something that I should’ve done.”
“I’m serious. All the S.B.A. members and citizens of Ravencharm would have been saved. One life for thousands is a fair deal. Your sister would have honored the agreement and left.”
Abby pinched Drake’s stomach and he flinched. “Yeah, because demons are the embodiment of trustworthiness.”
Drake chuckled again, and Abby heard him groan.
“Here, let me give you something for that,” she said, pulling herself up to his body and kissing him hungrily on the mouth.
Drake kissed her back, his arm moving down her hip and then across to her ass.
Drake was only wearing a hospital gown, while Abby was fully clothed. Feeling that she should even the odds a little, she simultaneously pulled off her top and wriggled out of her jeans so that she was left in her panties.
“Wow,” Drake said, his eyebrows lifting in surprise. “That was impressive. You were out of those clothes like greased lightning!”
“Like magic, huh?”
Abby ground down on Drake as they kissed, her hands running over his big, hard body while he explored her with his hands. There was no time and no inclination for any sort of foreplay. The tension that seemed to have filled the space between them, almost since they had first met, wouldn’t allow it now. Being wedged in the tiny hospital bed with barely any room to maneuver, Abby simply reached down and freed Drake’s hard cock from the folds of his gown. Grunting with desire, Drake pulled Abby’s underwear aside and then, in a sudden, desperate rush, Abby positioned herself and slid down on top of him.
They started fucking, slowly at first, but quickly speeding up until the metal frame of the hospital bed rattled against the wall. It was fierce and joyous fucking, instilled with a sort of ecstatic happiness that they had finally beaten down the last barrier that stood between them.
Over their heads, two halos came into being, and they burned brighter and brighter as Abby ground herself down on top of the injured Guardian, who appeared to have forgotten about his injuries. Abby, surprised at nothing anymore – it was hard to find anything very odd after spontaneously sprouting wings – noticed that Drake’s halo was glowing more brightly as his breathing became more ragged. It was so bright that she had to close her eyes as she rocked faster and faster on top of him.
“Oh gods,” she said, “Oh gods, oh gods! Yes, yes, yes! Oh, raven-fucking-yes!” Abby opened her eyes wide, just in time to see Drake’s halo flash and strobe and then start to grow dim. The big man tensed underneath her, his breath caught and then he slumped into the mattress.
Drake lay back, panting. “Whoa,” he said. “That was great. Better than great. But you just wait until I’m fully healed. I’ll melt those wings right off your back.”
Abby, still astride Drake, was staring forward, looking unseeingly at the wall.
“Abby?” Drake asked. “Are you all right? Did you have a good time?”
Abby shook herself. “What? Oh. Yeah. Yeah, the sex was fine.”
“Just fine?”
“I mean, it was great. It’s just – I think I know how to stop this attack.”
Drake woke up a little at this. “What? You do? How?”
Abby was still lost in thought. She climbed off Drake and sat on the edge of the bed while the big Guardian stroked her back.
“Damn it, if only I could remember where the volcano lair is!” she said.
Drake stroked his chin thoughtfully. He was growing out a bit of five o’clock shadow and Abby thought it suited him nicely.
“Is there anything, anything at all that you can remember about the place?” he asked.
“It was hot,” Abby said flatly.
“No raven shit.”
Abby pressed her knuckles into her eyes, willing the image of the demon lair into her head.
“There were tunnels everywhere – like a sort of giant anthill. There were a couple of rivers of boiling coffee… There were – there were these big black, obsidian-looking rocks,” she said. “They looked like massive shards of black glass embedded in the rock. They were beautiful in a way.”
Drake grabbed her wrist at this point. “These rocks,” he said, “these shards. Were they super smooth, translucent with flecks of yellow through them?”
Abby thought hard, trying her best to make her memories coalesce into a clear picture.
“You know what?” she said after a moment or two. “Yeah, I think little amber-yellow flecks were running through them.”
Drake squeezed her wrist and grinned. “I should have guessed it! I know this place.”
“You do?”
“Yes. It’s a tiny volcanic island that peaks out of the sea, about two miles northeast of where we are right now. You can see it easily on a clear day. In my teen-angel rebellious years, my buddies and I would fly out there and lick the obsidian shards to get buzzed – the flecks are natural caffeine deposits.”
Abby nodded slowly. “That explains the everlasting rivers of boiling coffee,” she said.
Drake nodded. “They must mine the caffeine out of the shards. That’s why they were happy to destroy our coffee plantations without trying to steal anything. They’ve basically got an unlimited supply of caffeine on that island.”
Abby had jumped up and was already back in jeans and pulling on her top. She patted her jeans down and then looked around frantically.
“Have you seen –” she started, but stopped when Drake held up her cellphone from where he had extricated it from the depths of the bed. Abby grabbed it, hugged it to her chest and stuck it in her back pocket. “I’m going to need this,” she said.
“To call the cavalry?”
“You’ll see,” Abby said. “I hope.”
“Abby?”
“Yeah?”
“We don’t have the numbers for any sort of attack. You realize that, right?”
Abby straightened her top and ran her fingers through her mussed hair. “I know.”
“And, even if we did, we don’t have nearly enough caffeine to face a horde of demons who have an unlimited store of the stuff.”
“I know.”
“Well then, what the hell are you so excited about?”
Abby looked at him, weighing whether to tell him her plan or not. She decided against it. “I have to talk to Miss Hightide,” she said.
Drake tried to pull himself up, but fell back into bed with a long groan.
“Stay here and rest,” Abby said, touching her hand briefly to his cheek. “This is a family thing.”
***
Abby, however, did not go and see Miss Hightide. She had planned to, but when she had stepped back out into the main space of B-Base she saw Miss Hightide and a number of the other senior members of the S.B.A. gathered around a large map. They were gesticulating and arguing among themselves in a way that announced that no clear decision had been reached as to what to do next. It seemed to Abby that councils were a great way of getting a lot of talking done without anything being accomplished.
She skirted the edge of the room and made it back to the exit. She ran down the underwater tunnel, up the stairs and yelled at the portly, eight-armed man who watched the door that she needed to get to the roof. Four arms pointed at a door off to her left.
Abby sprinted up the spiraling staircase and emerged, with legs burning, onto the roof of the lighthouse. The view was spectacular. Out in the distance, she could make out the island that Drake had been talking about, where her sister and the demons hid in plain sight.
It was then that Abby realized that she hadn’t asked Drake how to free her wings.
“Damn it!” she said.
“Damn what, human?” came a voice.
It was Radella.
The witch was standing in the doorway, her black dress whipping in the breeze off the ocean.
“I followed you up,” she said, answering
Abby’s quizzical look. “You looked about as furtive as anyone can look, sneaking around the hideout as you did. What are you doing up here?”
Abby pointed out to sea, at the nondescript island poking out of the water some two miles distant.
“That’s where they are, Radella,” she said.
“The demons?”
“Yeah.”
“And you’re going to do what exactly? Something moronic, I bet.”
Abby stepped up onto the railing of the lighthouse. One hundred feet below her, the waves smashed into the very hard, very fatal-looking rocks.
“I guess,” Abby said to the witch, “I’m taking a leap of faith.”
And she stepped off into the void.
Abby plummeted toward the rocks, the scream in her throat unable to get past the rushing wind as she fell. Then, as if in reaction to impending death, she felt her wings snap out of her back and catch the wind. With a single flap, Abby punched upward, narrowly avoiding turning into a smear of gore on the boulders by ten feet.
“Fuck a duck, that was close,” she said, her eyes wide. She puffed out her cheeks and then set her jaw. “All right, Casey, it’s time to take a trip down memory lane.”
***
Abby, being able to circle the entire volcano from the air, was quickly able to spot the entrance in the squat cone. After another rough landing, she found, to her delight, that there were no guards posted.
“A good start,” she whispered to herself as she approached the entranceway cut into the side of the mountain. She stopped and listened, and was able to make out the sound of chanting coming from within the volcano.
The passage looked to be some sort of expressway, as it deviated neither right nor left and took Abby down into the bowels of the demon lair. War chants echoed up the tunnel as she walked.
She emerged into the throne room. There was her sister sitting upon the ghastly, golden seat with her horde of demons gathered in front of her. Abby stepped out into the flickering firelight, sweat already starting to trickle down her face and sides in the oppressive heat of the volcano.
“Well, well, well,” Casey said, “if it isn’t my dear sister. I was beginning to wonder if you were going to show up. Did you bring a few friends with you?”
Abby shook her head. “I came alone,” she said.
“That’s a shame. I know a lot of my crew were hungry after last night’s fight.”
Abby was grabbed by two demon flunkies and dragged to the base of the throne.
“Do I dare hope that you’ve come to your senses and come to join me and my lovely bunch of fiery friends?” Casey asked with a sweet smile.
Abby looked down at her feet, acting ashamed and awkward, then looked up at her sister. “Um, yeah,” she replied. “Yeah, I think I’m ready to embrace the darkness. Lick some – I mean, eat some kittens and other assorted cute pets. Help you burn Ravencharm to the ground too, if you’re set on doing that.”
“Hmm, something tells me that you’re not being truthful, sister,” Casey said.
Abby reached into her back pocket. “I can prove it to you – hey, chill your demon nuts! I’m just getting my phone.”
The two demons who had grabbed her as she reached for her pocket looked up at Casey. The new mistress of the demons gave a little nod and they released Abby.
Abby punched in her passcode, noticing that the demon on her right was craning to see the six-digit combination.
“Hey, have some fucking manners, will you?” Abby said. “Where’s your goddamn phone etiquette?”
The demon looked guiltily away.
“Oh, shit,” Abby suddenly said brightly. “Would you look at this, Case? Remember this day?” Abby held her phone up so that Casey could see the picture on the screen.
Casey’s face went white.
“That’s right,” Abby said, turning to the demons, “my sister – your leader – loves ice-coffees.”
There was a cessation of noise around the hall as all the demons pricked up their ears.
Abby held the phone out to the demon who had tried to look at her passcode.
“Check it out, nosy,” Abby said innocently.
The demon looked at the picture of Casey sitting at a café and smiling with a tall ice-coffee in front of her and growled low in its throat.
Abby showed the picture to the demons nearest her.
“That’s a good thing to know, huh?” she said, still in the high-pitched, obliging voice that one adopts when they’re being maliciously helpful. “Good to know what your boss’s go-to caffeinated beverage is, if you need to get a few brownie points.”
“That was – that was just a one-time thing,” said Casey quickly, trying to retain her sangfroid. “It was an experiment. It happened years ago.”
“A one-time thing?” Abby said. “What about all these other pictures then?” And she started flipping through her photos, a reminiscent smile on her face, every now and again showing a bunch of demons a particularly nice shot of Casey with a big, icy, creamy coffee.
“Liar!” Casey snarled as many of the demons started muttering in their foul tongue and casting dark looks in her direction.
Abby pressed play on a video, turned the volume up and held it out to the front ranks of demons. In the silence of the cave, the video was clearly audible to at least the front half of the demon throng. The video was of Casey walking into a café – Abby, who was filming, coming behind.
“Hey, Miss Casey!” the barista behind the counter said with a cheery grin. “It’s good to see you. I’ll grab your usual iced-frappe!”
Casey made a lunge for the phone, got ahold of it and smashed it against the arm of the throne.
“It’s raven shit,” she shouted at the demons. “Absolute raven shit! You know demons don’t drink, or even touch, iced drinks!”
Abby backed away as the demons closed around the throne, like a shoal of sharks creeping toward a bleeding swimmer.
“That’s right,” Abby said, “Casey loves a nice, cold, icy brew. The colder the better!”
The demons pounced on Casey, grabbing her arms and legs and hair. She screamed.
“Good luck, sister,” Abby said grimly as the devilish crowd carried Casey away, screaming and kicking, into the shadows.
Abby backed out of the throng and made for the exit, but as she did so she bumped into a huge dark crimson red-eye demon. He was blocking the passageway which led to freedom.
Abby gulped but, before she could utter a word, the demon spoke.
“You are angel scum, but we will deal with you in your turn. You and the town of Ravencharm. Now, get you gone.”
Abby didn’t need telling twice.
***
By the time that Abby returned, cruising low down the coast to the lighthouse, most of the S.B.A. were gathered outside.
Abby landed with the grace and poise of a piano being tossed out of a window. Cursing, she got to her feet just in time to see Radella and Spiridon helping Drake out through the front door, with Miss Hightide following close behind.
In an expressionless voice, Abby reported her last encounter with Casey and the demons, ignoring their questions as she plowed through to the end of her tale.
“And then they dragged her away,” she finished. “The last thing I heard her say was something about me being the world’s greatest bitch, and that she’d see me in hell.” A tear pricked the corner of her eye.
Miss Hightide stepped forward. “The fact that you went alone into the lion’s den, that you survived, is nothing short of extraordinary, Abby Hall,” she said. “I can’t see the demons attacking now that they’re leaderless and, knowing that we’re aware of the location of their base, I suspect they will relocate. You have saved the lives of Ravencharm’s citizens, Abby. You have bought us some much-needed time. You –”
Miss Hightide stopped talking.
Out in the bay, a fishing trawl was anchored. From the mast flew a flag; a black background with a white coffee cup on it, with two spoon
s crossed behind it.
From their position on the cliff, the S.B.A. members could see a solitary rowboat heading into shore.
Spiridon took to the air to make sure that there was no other craft sneaking around, while the rest watched the rowboat land on the beach and a single figure walk up the sand toward them.
The figure, it transpired, was a petite blond female, and she was carrying the white flag of truce.
“Hello there,” she said when she was within hailing distance of the silent group of watchers. “Don’t fear. I mean you no harm.”
“Identify yourself, stranger,” Miss Hightide said.
“My name,” the blond woman said, “is Holland. Holland Hall.”
She turned to Abby and fixed her with eyes as green as the depths of the sea. “And I believe,” she said, “that you are my half-sister, Abby.”
END
Review
Please leave an honest review on Amazon. As an indie publisher, exposure and getting noticed is an uphill battle. And holy raven-tits, I’m excited to know want you thought about Caffeinated Magic Now back to Ravencharm …the demons are brewing up trouble again!
Caffeinated Magic: Supernatural Barista Academy Page 22
