The imp kicked Jez in the stomach. Pain curled through her as the air was knocked out of her, causing her to loosen her grip on the imp as she doubled over. She rested her hands on her knees as she tried to suck in a new breath.
The imp’s smug laughter sounded from nearby. “I fulfilled my promise to Lilith, I delivered the message. And now I’ve paid a debt I owed to one of the bounty demons as well. It’s a good day all the way around.”
When Jez could finally draw a breath, the stench of fresh sewage crossed with rotting flesh filled her lungs and stung her eyes. She stumbled backward, trying to put distance between her and the demon, but by the intensity of the stink she knew it was already too late.
The sweeping laser lights showed the crowd of humans still streamed toward the exits. The bluesy music continued to play like a macabre accompaniment to the human screams, sounds of breaking wood, and screeching metal.
Jez dodged around overturned tables and chairs, trying to lose herself in the crowd of stampeding humans.
As she neared the exit door, her survival instincts screamed and her gut clenched, surging adrenaline through her body as she whirled to look behind her.
A flicker of movement was all the warning she had before red-hot pain sliced through her shoulder and left arm and she found herself flying backward. Her back smacked against something hard, and her breath whooshed out for the second time in a few minutes.
She gasped against the pain, even as her brain belatedly told her she’d been slammed against the wall. A few long seconds later, she glanced up into the glowing red eyes of the bounty demon.
Fear and frustration warred inside her belly as she struggled against the poison-tipped demon’s claws that were sunk inside her arm and shoulder, pinning her back against the wall. Her movements were sluggish, which told her the poison had already begun to affect her.
“Jezebeth, follower of Lilith. Finally, we meet.” The demon’s hot, rotten breath huffed against her face with each cultured word. It towered over her, the laser lights flashing off its thousands of jagged sharklike teeth. Mottled black skin covered every inch of the demon and maggots and worms crawled along its flesh in a constant sea of putrid motion.
A pestilence demon.
Jez tried to ignore the shiver of revulsion as some of the maggots slid off the demon’s hands and crawled onto the bare skin of her shoulder.
She shoved aside her fear, glared up into the demon’s glowing red eyes and raised her chin. “You’d better hope Lilith never finds you. She’ll rip you into tiny little shreds to send back to your master.”
The demon laughed. “The size of the reward that Semiazas has on you will go a long way toward protecting me from the anger of the queen of the whores, little one. Besides, you’ll be dead long before that.” He opened his mouth revealing ten rows of razor sharp teeth, and Jez tensed as she waited for the deathblow.
A sizzling sound drowned out the music, and the stench of burning flesh filled her lungs just before the demon’s jaws snapped closed like a deadly animal trap just an inch from her nose. The demon let out a high-pitched squeal and wrenched his claws out of Jez’s flesh.
White-hot pain sliced through her, and she crumpled to the floor as she was freed from the demon’s grip.
“Run!” shouted a very deep voice.
Not about to argue and waste her chance to escape, Jez scrambled toward the door on all fours, trying to ignore the sudden rush of warmth down her arm as blood gushed out of her wound.
Another loud squeal from the demon made her glance back as she pushed to her feet.
A human male nearly as tall as the demon stood holding a Super Soaker toy gun Rambo style in front of him. There was no trace of fear in his gaze as he pumped the gun and then shot a stream of liquid toward the demon.
A sound like a thousand skillets of frying bacon filled the air along with another keening sound from the demon. The demon convulsed as plumes of black acrid smoke rose toward the ceiling in lazy curls.
The man turned his head toward Jez as if he sensed her scrutiny. Their gazes locked and Jez jumped like a guilty child caught eavesdropping. “I said run, damn it!”
The terse command jogged her out of her reverie, and she turned and stumbled out the door along with the last few straggling humans.
Cold night air hit her blood-soaked clothes, and Jez gritted her teeth against the sudden round of gooseflesh that marched across every inch of her skin. She envisioned herself whole and healthy and wearing long sleeves, tennis shoes, and jeans.
When no familiar warm tingling signaled her body changing forms, Jez huffed out a breath as frustration churned inside her belly. “Damn.”
As a succubus, blood loss and cold alone wouldn’t kill her, but those would make her more vulnerable to those who
could
kill her. Besides, it was her fault the human was inside facing off with a pestilence demon. But she couldn’t do anything to help him in her present condition.
Jez stumbled out toward the rapidly emptying parking lot happy to find two men sitting in the bed of a large pickup truck, bottles of beers clutched in their hands. Since their truck was blocked in by the exiting traffic, they seemed to be making the best of it.
She picked up her pace, jogging toward them, cursing the tight corset and the larger-than-life breasts that bounced painfully with every step.
Both men’s heads swiveled toward her and she slowed to a brisk walk, smiling at them. She hoped they’d had enough beers and were distracted enough by her oversized boobs to make them look past the gaping shoulder wound and her bloody clothes.
“You need a ride, miss?”
Jez couldn’t tell which of them made the offer, but at this point, it didn’t really matter. She reached the truck and scrambled up into the bed, shivering as her bare legs hit the cold metal. “Actually, I’m freezing and hoped you boys could warm me up.”
The men smiled at each other and then back at her, not bothering to move from their seated positions on opposite sides of the truck railing. “What did you have in mind?”
In answer, she stepped toward the first man and straddled him just as she had with her dinner. She grabbed his face in both her hands, the slight stubble scraping against her palms as she kissed him hard.
He opened his mouth and she took the opportunity to slip her tongue inside, using several thousand years of experience to keep him fully engaged. He returned the kiss, and his beer bottle clattered loudly against the bed of the truck as his arms came around her holding her close.
Jez didn’t have time for a slow surge of energy, she was losing blood fast, and the human who’d helped her could already be dead. She ground against the man beneath her, kissing him hard and deep, allowing his energy to flow into her in a quick rush.
When he swayed against her and his hold on her loosened, she pulled back and stood.
He blinked hard as if coming out of a trance and then slid down into the bed of the truck like a rag doll. “Damn,” was all he managed to say past the wide grin on his face.
Jez rotated her arm and winced at the pain still there. Although, she was glad to note she could move the arm at all and that the rush of blood had slowed to a trickle. Her fingers were still numb from the poison, but nothing she couldn’t heal totally if she had more time and some full-on sex.
“Hey, what about me, beautiful?” asked the second man in the truck.
Jez flexed her hand and shrugged. She could definitely use a little more energy, and the man would experience less of an energy hangover from her than he would from drinking a case of beer. She leaned forward, giving him a full view of her over-impressive cleavage and allowed him a quick look before she cupped his cheek and pressed her lips to his.
He opened for her immediately and stood to pull her against him, dropping the bottle just as his friend had.
Jez stood on her tiptoes as his energy flowed into her. In only a few seconds he swayed against her, and she guided him down to the bed of the truck where he flopped over, smiling up at her.
“Thanks,” he slurred with a smile as his eyes slipped closed.
“No, thank
you
.” She rolled her injured shoulder noting the improved healing and the reduced effects of the pestilence demon’s poison. Not fully healed, but good enough to go back and save the Good Samaritan’s ass.
Not bothering to waste her siphoned energy to change form, Jez hopped down off the truck, wincing as it jarred her still-injured arm. A quick jog took her back to the door she’d left just a few minutes ago, and she took a deep breath for courage before she stepped back inside the club.
Sounds of battle told her the human still lived. She breathed a sigh of relief as she used the darkened interior to her advantage and kept to the shadows along the side wall until she could sneak behind the long mahogany bar. From there, she was able to kneel on a box of clean bar towels, which put her at the perfect height to peek above the bar to see the action unfolding in between the dance platforms.
The human stood facing off with the pestilence demon just as she’d left him, making her wonder what other tricks he had up his sleeve besides the obvious holy water in a Super Soaker trick.
Movement behind the man caught Jez’s attention, and she turned to look just as the imp head butted the back of the human’s legs, making him lurch forward to land hard on his knees with a loud curse.
The pestilence demon laughed and straightened, even though his hide still sizzled and smoked. “I’ll eat your soul, human!”
Jez bit back her cry of warning since it would only get her caught. Instead she rolled off the box and landed hard on her ass as she racked her brain for any way to help. As a succubus, she was the definite example of lover, not fighter, but she had to do something. The human had saved her, after all.
More sizzling sounds and one definitive “fuck you” from the human told her he was still alive, but she didn’t have much time.
Her gaze landed on the bottles of liquor filling the mirrored shelves behind the bar and a slow smile spread across her face as she glanced back at the box of bar towels.
She grabbed a half-filled bottle of Jack Daniel’s and twisted off the top before stuffing the edge of one of the bar towels inside it far enough to begin to soak up the liquid. Working quickly and listening for any sign she’d been found, Jez grabbed all the bottles she could reach from her hiding spot and filled them with bar towels.
She risked being seen by standing and grabbing two of the still-lit table candles that sat on the bar and pulled them down onto the floor with her.
“Please let this work like it does in the movies.” With her hands trembling, she grabbed the first two bottles and held the protruding end of their bar towels over the flames.
When they caught fire and the flame began to spread, she stood and threw first one and then the other in the general direction of the demon, but as far away from the human as she could.
For a long few seconds, nothing happened except the crash of splintering glass, and then the flame met the liquid and there was a satisfying flash and fireball.
Jez resisted the urge to pump her arm in the air in victory and instead grabbed two more bottles as another satisfying high-pitched squeal sounded from the pestilence demon.
She lit the bottle bombs in her hands, stood, and with her good arm, chucked them one after the other in the same general direction.
The man had regained his feet and stumbled back closer toward the bar, bringing the pestilence demon with him, their battle still ongoing. She winced as she noticed a few bleeding wounds where flying glass from the bottle bombs had hit him.
The second bottle bomb hit a few inches away from the imp, and the resulting fireball lit the small demon like a Fourth of July sparkler.
Its scream of gurgling anguish was cut short when a loud pop drowned out all other noise as the imp’s physical form was destroyed and he was sucked back to Hell.
“Serves you right, you little bastard,” she muttered as she grabbed more bottles, prepared to keep up the barrage until she could either do the same to the pestilence demon or figure a way out of this mess.
She lit another two and tossed them between the human and the demon. When the fireballs exploded, she gave in to the urge to whoop as she lit another two bar towels.
In her peripheral vision, she noticed the human pull out a small gun from his backpack and take aim at the pestilence demon. Over the music and the demon’s screaming, Jez never heard the retort of the gun, but five pink darts hit the demon in quick succession, protruding from his skin like odd piercings.
Jez watched in fascination as the demon’s form sizzled and slowly expanded as if he were doing a remake of the blueberry girl from Willy Wonka. She definitely didn’t want to be around when he “popped.”
Movement caught her attention, and she glanced up in time to see the human jump onto the bar in front of her.
“You gonna throw those?”
Jez jumped when he grabbed the two already-lit bottle bombs in front of her and tossed them toward the demon before he dove over the bar, nearly knocking her on her ass.
She scowled as she realized she’d gotten distracted and almost let the bottles explode in her face.
The sound of two explosions one after another rent the air and startled Jez. She sat frozen for a long moment, sizing up the human. Up close his eyes were the soft gray of storm clouds, and they alternately sparked with intelligence and curiosity.
He picked up two more bottle bombs, lit them, and tossed them blind over the bar in the general direction of the demon before he grabbed her around the waist, dragging her with him as he rushed toward the end of the bar and along the shadowed edges of the walls.
“Hey,” she protested as she scrambled to try and gain her feet. “I can walk, you know. Put me down.”