Incubus Inc

by Randi Darren

  It reminded him of when he used to work for the church. Back when they would employ any method possible to combat the forces of darkness. When the gods and goddesses of the pantheon itself endorsed such things.

  When even a priestess would offer her maidenhead up to him as a price to fight the evil of the world. When the Torment of Lust was an ally and partner.

  Fighting next to paladins, witch hunters, and the clergy itself.

  But that was a long time ago.

  And this fight was now.

  Thirty-Five - Fire and Lightning -

  Flicking his blade out, Sam skewered a Black-kin through an eye. He jerked the weapon to the side, and the edge shattered through the monster’s skull before blowing out the man’s other eye.

  Moving forward over the blinded and partially lobotomized Black-kin, Sam tried to get closer to the Elemental.

  Before he could reach her, she snapped a hand out and a torrent of air smashed into Sam, sending him careening away.

  Bouncing off a Black-kin, Sam ended up going into a tumble and bowling through a tree of furry, muscular monster legs.

  Black-kin came crashing down atop him, some jumping at him, some just falling. Sam’s world became a furry nightmare of limbs, claws, and gnashing teeth.

  Wrapping himself in a cocoon of force, Sam shielded himself as best as he was able. Getting his feet under him, he could feel the weight of the mass of Black-kin bodies pressing down on his shield.

  Standing up, he strengthened the whole construct and then ran forward. Bursting out of the twisted ball of evil, Sam saw the Elemental across from him.

  She was working to rapidly form what looked to be a portal. He wasn’t sure what kind it was, but he was positive he needed to get it shut down. And quickly.

  Ripping the shield from around himself, he flung it at the Elemental.

  It snapped shut around the portal, snipping away the energy feed she’d been giving it. With a dampened rumble, the portal collapsed into itself, creating an ugly and rather violent explosion.

  The concussion was held in by the shield. At least for a breath.

  Then the Essence construct exploded as well, and the lingering after-effects of the failed portal ripped through the room.

  Falling to her knees, the Elemental was staring at her hands. In cutting off the source of power to the portal, Sam had inadvertently removed her left hand at the wrist.

  Shrieking with pain, the woman clasped the stump with her free hand and glared at Sam.

  Sam turned to one side and brought his sword around. The several Black-kin who’d been moving to encircle him backed off for a second, moving faster than Sam could keep up with at the moment.

  I have to keep the Elemental from escaping, but I also have to keep these Black-kin back. If they get their fangs in me, it’s over.

  I’ll get sent back to my plane to reform, and they’ll know I was here. Not to mention it’s likely I’ll lose the girls.

  Angered at that thought, Sam moved forward, the point of his blade held out in front of him.

  Lunging forward, he caught one of the Black-kin in the chest. Right where its heart would be. He didn’t think for one instant it’d kill the thing, but if he could get it down or incapacitated, it’d work. They’d be out of the fight. That’d be ideal simply for that reason alone.

  Bringing his weapon around and sliding his feet across the ground to the left, Sam managed to catch another Black-kin straight in the heart.

  Then he managed to get his back to a wall as he brought up a new Essence shield in his left hand. Holding the shield up on his left, he’d somehow brought the angles of attack available on him down to two instead of four.

  The biggest problem was that the longer this fight went, the less likely it was Sam would win.

  He was incredibly weak for a planar lord. He’d been without Essence for too long, and he hadn’t refilled his tanks with Life Essence.

  Drawing the pistol from his holster, Sam raised it up and began shooting every Black-kin he could aim at reasonably well. He was going for head shots since he doubted he’d get the chance to reload.

  A trio of monsters managed to get in close to him and leapt at him. All three at the same time.

  Giving up his position, since there was little else he could do, Sam Blinked forward.

  He appeared next to the Elemental and brought his sword down toward her head. If he could end her, he could escape this private corner of hell.

  As if sensing his presence, the woman dove to the side, her body practically flopping toward the ground.

  Sam’s blade neatly shaved all the muscles in her forearm away from the bone. The meat parted and hung limply at her elbow.

  Before Sam could right himself, he felt a massive blow against his shoulder. The force behind it was what he imagined being hit by a car would feel like. His head ringing and entire body aching, Sam stumbled off to one side.

  When he glanced at his arm, he found it was mostly torn away from the shoulder, hanging by a few meaty threads of flesh and muscle. It had been almost completely amputated.

  Clenching his teeth in a snarl, he realized he had but one chance from here.

  He wouldn’t have enough strength to repair his arm, fight the Black-kin, and kill the Elemental all at the same time.

  He could perhaps do one of those things.

  And ignoring the other two would most assuredly get him killed.

  Sam picked the Elemental.

  He leaped toward the woman on the ground and landed atop her.

  Before she could react, he smashed his face into hers and kissed her.

  Kissed her and then stabbed his tongue into her mouth. Sam did what any good Incubus would. He began devouring her from the inside out. Eating her very Life Essence.

  Stunned, paralyzed, and literally dying, the Elemental could do nothing. She lay beneath him, motionless, as she was emptied.

  Blows rained down all over Sam’s back, shoulders, and head, but nothing could shake him.

  Even as they stabbed him, slashed at him, and punched him, he steadily rebuilt his body. Repaired his arm and even the unhealed bullet wounds.

  Groaning, the Elemental shuddered beneath Sam. Then she managed to curl off a small fraction of her power, what remained of her life, and self-detonated her Elemental core.

  Sensing it as it happened, Sam rolled to one side and flung the withered husk that had been a beautiful woman toward the Black-kin.

  Snatching at a shield, Sam rolled up to the wall and put his back to it all.

  Before he could fully form the shield, the Elemental’s core split apart, and the magic that had held her together screamed out in a wave.

  The skin on his back, every bone in his chest, and the muscles throughout felt like they were dipped in molten iron.

  Heavy, hot, and unforgiving, the magic battered Sam against the wall. He was crushed against it as the force of the blast pinned him there and stole his breath away. Either from the pain or the intensity of it all, he wasn’t sure.

  After ten seconds passed and the pain only increased, Sam wasn’t sure of anything.

  Existence as a whole was little more than pain.

  Until finally, it wasn’t.

  Shivering from head to toe, Sam turned his head around and tried to see behind himself.

  Yet he couldn’t see anything.

  He groaned, and it felt like he couldn’t move his mouth or lips.

  Then his brain finally turned back on.

  I think I melted. Or… something very close to melted.

  Pushing Essence back into his body, Sam began to restore himself back to pristine condition. Not wanting to waste time, as he believed he had precious little, he spent far more than he would have needed to let it happen slowly.

  With a crack of thunder as his eardrums healed, Sam could suddenly feel, see, hear, and taste everything as he should.

  Everything tasted, smelled, and felt like burnt ash, however.

  Blinking several t
imes, he stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around. It felt like something wasn’t quite right in his head. But he didn’t have the time to fix it.

  Sirens were going off. Their loud and vibrating calls sounded in an alternating way that made his teeth ache.

  Rolling over, Sam looked around at the room.

  Everything was black soot and charred lumps of meat.

  Getting to his feet, Sam felt rather appreciative of the fact that he’d managed to get some of his shield up. It clearly hadn’t blocked all of the blast or the heat, but it’d done enough to keep him on the plane.

  He glanced back at the wall and saw a strange outline on it. After several seconds of staring at it, he realized what it was.

  An unburned section of wall in the shape of the body of a person lying down.

  I made a damn ash shadow. By the twisting nethers, what in the low hells and high heavens was she?

  Running a hand down over his face, Sam looked down at himself.

  He was absolutely naked.

  His pistol was a smoldering ruin nearby, and his sword looked like a glowing orange piece of iron rather than a weapon.

  That hot, huh?

  Looking around, Sam had a hard time blocking out the ongoing blaring of the siren.

  He growled as he looked up at the ceiling and where the sound was coming from. Forming a shield, Sam smashed it up into the spot it was all coming from.

  With a shriek of static, the siren went silent in the room.

  “Oh, thanks for that, Sameerixis. That was honestly starting to get to me,” said a voice. It sounded like it was coming through a drive-thru speaker.

  When he looked around, Sam didn’t see anyone alive. There was no one who could see him. Let alone anyone who could see him that would know his name.

  “Over here,” said the voice again, yet it didn’t come from anywhere. “Oh, that is… look to your left. Behind that wall. It’s a glamour. A big one.”

  Frowning, and feeling irritable and hungry, Sam walked over to the wall and put his hand on it. He could feel a raw, vast amount of power running underneath his fingertips.

  It wasn’t just a big glamour. It was an enchanted, independently powered, and massively layered glamour.

  “It’s so good to see you,” said the voice. It was too garbled for Sam to figure out who it was. “I didn’t think anyone was going to come for me. Let alone you.”

  With a grunt, Sam punched a hole right through the glamour.

  While the whole thing was incredibly powerful, it had a severe limitation.

  Jena had made it. And she was as lazy as ever.

  Crumbling from the point of impact outward, the massive glamour began to peel away from the wall. Falling apart into free-floating Essence as it went.

  Feeling like a curmudgeon, Sam began scooping up all the Essence as it broke off, and he gorged himself. He wasn’t about to let a free meal go by after everything that’d just happened.

  As the glamour blew apart, Sam saw who the speaker was.

  A white-haired young woman, pale as a ghost. Her eyes shimmered and danced with an electric blue color. There were no pupils in her eyes.

  She was absolutely naked, and she looked as if she were on the far side of starving to death, but not quite there.

  “Aster?” Sam asked. His voice sounded incredulous to his own ears.

  “Hi, how’s it going?” asked the woman.

  “I… aren’t you dead?” Sam asked.

  “I mean, I kinda look it,” Aster said, looking down at herself. She cupped her lack of a bust with her hands. “Even my boobs went away. I had a great rack. I look like a living skeleton now.”

  The last time he’d seen her, she’d been living a cozy life amongst the Elementals in Greece. The same ones who had made themselves the pantheon and preyed upon the mortals nearby.

  He’d never gotten the details, but she’d vanished one day, never to be heard from again.

  She’d been a beauty in her time. A young, vivacious woman who had always been keen on the times and what was going on with the mortals.

  That and technology.

  Even her speech right now sounded closer to Hillary or Abigail than someone her age.

  As more and more of the glamour fell away, Sam got a good look at her cell. Because that was what it was. It was clearly a holding cell.

  “The Torment of Lightning,” Aster said with a dark chuckle. “Locked away like a common criminal. As for how I ended up in this mess… well, it’s not really relevant. Jenaphila caught me and locked me up as you see me now.

  “They keep me as a damn battery.”

  Raising his brows at that, Sam could see a chair in the corner of the room. It was hooked into a multitude of cables and other things.

  “Speaking of dead, though, didn’t Jena kill you?” Aster asked.

  “She tried,” Sam said as he inspected the locking mechanism. Everything was layered over and over with Essence that would ground any attempts to utilize lightning or electricity as a source. “Somehow I think I got the better between you and I, though.”

  “Only till now, because you’re going to let me out,” Aster said. “Because if you don’t, I’ll have to tell Jena you survived.”

  “And I can’t let you out, because you might tell Jena I’m alive,” Sam responded equitably. “Which really only leaves one option, doesn’t it?”

  Aster stared at Sam, and he stared back.

  Long seconds ticked by as the two Torments regarded one another.

  Sighing, Aster groaned and shook her head.

  “Fine, fine. I’m sure we can come to some… arrangement. Feed me something and I’ll start looking like how I used to instead of a used-up scarecrow. I’m sure I can make it worth your while,” Aster said. The implication was obvious.

  Sam wanted it said directly though and in the clear, though.

  “Five hundred years?” Sam asked.

  Aster clicked her tongue, turning her head to one side. Her hair made a static hum as it slid across her shoulder.

  “Two hundred,” she countered.

  “Four-fifty,” Sam said. He had no reason to free her, and if he was going to, he wanted to make it worth his while. There was nothing preventing him from opening the door and draining her as easily as he had the Elemental. She had no power right now.

  “Ugh. Three hundred,” Aster said. “Be reasonable. One Torment to another. I’m worth it.”

  “Four hundred, no lower. I want what I want, and I have an appetite lately that has no end,” Sam said. “I cannot even begin to imagine what you’ll taste like.”

  “Four hundred? Sameerixis…” Aster whined. Seeing he wasn’t budging, she sighed and pressed her head to the plastic-looking wall. “Fine. Fine, okay. Four hundred years as a bonded. I pay my Essence upkeep through sex. We good?”

  A bonded servant was what they’d once called apprentices and employees.

  “I want you a minimum of six times a day,” Sam said, making that point clear. If he had a Torment on hand, he was going to feast on her. Relentlessly.

  Endlessly.

  “Six!? Sam! I don’t think I even had that much sex when I was in my hedonistic days over weeks let alone days,” Aster said, sounding surprised. “Two.”

  “Four, no lower,” Sam countered.

  “Hades’s nuts, Sam, I swe— Fine. Fine. Four and four hundred, but I get a salary equivalent to your highest-paid bonded. And as much electronics as I want. TV too—they don’t let me watch much. And movies. And junk food. Ice cream, too. On my plane and soul.”

  “On my plane and soul, agreed,” Sam said, and then he whipped the shield he’d been holding behind his back out in front of himself. Swiping the wall away in one go—the Torment of Lightning, the woman who had spawned the mythos of the lightning god himself and had been responsible for ancient mankind fearing the heavens—was free.

  And in Sam’s possession.

  Reaching out, he grabbed her by her skeletal forearm and pulled her
out of her cage. At the same time he wedged Essence into the trap that held her in her cell. Without him putting pressure on that Essence trap she wouldn’t be able to escape.

  The moment her bare feet hit the ground, the lights flickered and buzzed.

  As she took in a deep breath, Aster’s eyes glowed brightly for several seconds.

  “Oooooh, Sam. I can feel it. Its delicious,” she said in a breathy whisper. Her voice had a crackling to it as she clearly began to feed on everything around her. From the air itself.

  Stumbling to a wall socket, she fell to her knees. She picked up a twisted piece of metal from the ground, then licked it and promptly shoved it into one of the slots.

  An explosion of electricity shot up over the wall, showering the whole area in sparks.

  “Right… you enjoy your meal,” Sam said, turning to look the way he’d come.

  He could hear the faint sound of gunfire, but it was greatly diminished. It also seemed to be almost random.

  Sam pushed the door open and entered the hall. Looking one way and then the other, he saw no one.

  “Hello?” he shouted. “Anyone there?’

  “Over here,” called Irene from the right side.

  Walking over that way, he found Irene and Wren laid up against a wall.

  Irene’s guts were hanging out all over herself, and half her face looked as if it’d been blown apart by a grenade.

  “Hello,” she said, her one good eye watching him. “I’m afraid I didn’t fare as well as I expected. Those vampires are not like the vampires I know. At all.”

  Wren was curled up on herself next to Irene, taking sharp, shallow gasps. Her body armor was gone, and she was wearing only her underwear from the waist up. It looked like a single round had gone right through the middle of her chest, and blood was pouring out from both sides of her.

  “Some type of massive rifle hit her. She’s not dead, but… probably not long,” Irene said. “Her lungs are filling up with blood.”

  Sam got down next to Wren and grabbed her by a shoulder. He cleared the blood from her lungs in a rush of Essence and then patched the leak that was causing it. It was the best he could do for her right now.

  The lights dimmed, and several of the overhead fixtures simply burst before they brightened again.