by E. M. Hardy
“What took you so long, bitch?”
“Whatever, slut. I’m here now, with the door open, so move your ass and stop letting the heat in.”
Glenn peered over at the two hugging women, giving each other light cheek-to-cheek air-kisses. The tall, curvy blonde in the skimpy tube-top stared at Glenn from above her dark shades, giving him a once-over, clearly not impressed by what she saw. Glenn nodded in reply—a gesture that the woman completely ignored as she raised her shades and let her companion through the door.
“Hi, Kris,” waved a shorter brunette in a loose, airy skirt sporting thick glasses and braided hair.
“Hey there, Sam. I’m guessing you got my messages this morning?”
“Yes! I’m so excited!”
Kristina rewarded the newcomer with a warm smile and an affectionate hug—a far more subdued and restrained response when compared to the blonde.
The woman’s fashion choice caught Glenn by complete surprise. Laser treatments and gene therapy fixed practically every bodily problem out there. And if you really wanted to change things up, you could always get your eye pulled out and replaced with a vat-grown copy manufactured from your own body’s stem cells. Or if you got the cash and didn’t mind installing a small power generator inside your skull, just throw in a cybernetic eye.
So why glasses?
Glenn stood up from his seat, waiting for Kristina to introduce him to her friends. She was just about to do so when the blonde stepped right up into Glenn’s face.
“This the guy you were talking about?” She asked her question as she walked around Glenn, pointedly examining him as he stood rooted to the spot. The glasses-wearing brunette followed suit, curling her lips up to her nose as she joined her taller mate in studying Glenn from head to toe. Glenn gulped, not quite sure what to do under such scrutiny.
“Yep. Don’t let the goofy look fool you; he knows what he’s doing, especially when he’s in his ‘special’ form.”
“Ooooh. You weren’t kidding about that then? You’re such a slut.”
“Yeah, bitch, no exaggeration. I was literal with everything that I said.”
“Wriggly, wormy, with a mind of its own?”
“Yes, even that. And I mean literally has a mind of its own.”
“Definitely curious now…”
Glenn coughed to hide his embarrassment from being examined like a slab of meat. “Um… hi. I’m Glenn. Glenn Olson.” He felt weird having to introduce himself first as if he was the one visiting and not the other way around.
“Hazel Thompson,” replied the blonde curtly as she stepped back, apparently seeing him in a new light after hearing Kristina’s enthusiastic endorsement. For his part, he examined her character sheet, wondering how many life points she had on her.
Hazel Thompson
Life Points: 830/1,100 (approximate)
Glenn’s eyes widened in surprise. He felt his stomach gurgle, his prick stiffen, at the thought of how much he could get from her… if she agreed to have sex with him.
“Hi Glenn. I’m Samantha Walsh,” answered the brunette, narrowing her eyes and adjusting her glasses as she shifted her attention to his face. “You’re really an incubus?”
“Apparently,” Glenn replied while scratching his chin and mentally closing Hazel’s stat sheet. “I was pretty normal the day before, then I just woke up and blam—I suddenly need sex to stay alive.”
Samantha just nodded with a frown while Hazel barked out a sharp laugh. “Are you serious?” She then turned to Kristina, trying to rope her friend into the joke, then stopped dead as Kristina replied with a nod of her own. “You are serious.”
“Not entirely sure if he needs to bang to stay alive, but that seems to be true for his case. And let me tell you, I didn’t imagine the big, blue demon from last night.”
“You mean when he was just about to rape you, right?” Samantha remarked drily, poking at Glenn’s body with a weirdly focused pout on her face.
Glenn winced as he tried coming up with a diplomatic response. “It… it really wasn’t like that.”
“Huh. So you weren’t trying to sexually assault my friend when she woke up in the middle of the night to a naked guy looming over her, her clothes all ripped up?” Glenn could feel the rising heat in the diminutive woman’s accusation as she stepped back, her arms crossed and eyes glaring at him from behind her glasses.
Glenn gulped once more, finding he couldn’t say anything to refute her charges.
Kristina watched the two of them for a few more minutes before stepping in between them. “It’s the hunger of an incubus,” she said as she laid a gentle hand on Samantha’s shoulder. “Once it reaches a certain point, he loses control of himself. He then gets this imperative to feed, to replenish his life points whatever way he can.”
“You’re defending him,” Samantha shot back, switching her glare towards her friend. “I can’t believe you’re defending him!”
She shrugged in response. “To be fair, he managed to regain control of himself at the last second. Whatever happened last night was something I let happen.”
Both Samantha and Hazel just stared at their friend, gob-smacked into silence. Hazel was the first to react, barking out a laugh. “Hot damn, girl! Pigs must be flying right now, because I cannot believe I’m listening to Kristina fucking Hooper saying those words right now!”
Kristina reacted with a naughty grin right before turning to Glenn. “Show them.”
Glenn gulped and nodded, breathing deep to steady himself.
Ynnistoria, he thought inwardly to his implant. Activate shapeshifting.
Ynnistoria: Activating now, Glenn.
Glenn watched his HUD as a small pop-up window alerted him to his new status.
Shapeshift activated! 100 Life Points drained! (311 remaining)
Glenn noted how his life points dropped from 411 to 311 right before he started to feel the change come over him. This was the first time he willingly triggered shapeshift, being in full control of his faculties while doing so, and he winced when his body began contorting.
The bones of his body cracked and stretched, joints widening as demonic muscle began filling them out. His pale, doughy flesh charred into a deep, dark blue—his eyes turning into two orbs of pure black. His fingernails sharpened into claws even as two pointed bovine horns jutted out from his temples. The base of his spine shifted, elongating to form a long tail that curled this way and that.
It really wasn’t as painful as it looked… just disturbing to think about.
He did forget, however, that his clothes didn’t survive the transformation. His shirt and pants ripped apart during the whole scene, eventually falling off his overgrown body. Suddenly mindful of his modesty, he quickly cupped his genitals with both hands to shield himself from the two wide-eyed newcomers.
Not that it helped, because his two hands weren’t enough to completely cover the tip of his writhing member as it dangled between his legs.
Hazel sputtered, Samantha stood gaping, and Kristina just laughed out loud at the dumbstruck expressions on the faces of her friends.
“Ho. Lee. SHIT,” Hazel exclaimed out loud, taking a step back in surprise. “And here I thought you were just tripping or… or just pulling me along for shits and giggles.”
“He really was a demon,” Samantha muttered to herself, unconsciously reaching out to touch Glenn’s body. “Unbound, unfettered by bindings of any sort. And this body… a taint of some kind is in there, but still fully alive and unpossessed. How curious!”
The small brunette’s words caught Glenn’s attention, especially when he noted her reaction. She wasn’t shocked or surprised like Hazel was. She was instead actually curious, poking and prodding Glenn’s demonic body with a finger.
She also had a strange dark shadow around her aura. Glenn focused, calling up his HUD to examine the woman so closely studying him with complete and utter fascination.
Samantha Walsh
Life Points: 230/400* (approximate)
*Total Life Points reduced by Infernal Compact
“Uh… Samantha, was it?”
“That’s my name. What do you want?”
“What’s an infernal compact?”
Samantha froze up in the middle of scrutinizing Glenn, her already-pale face turning ashen with his one innocent question.
Kristina and Hazel, however, turned their full attention toward their friend. “Sam,” Kristina growled out. “Please don’t tell me you went ahead and attempted a ritual on your own.” Hazel’s eyes narrowed as she followed along Kristina’s words, her lips compressing into a tight line.
Samantha gulped, slowly shaking her head to refute the accusation. Her two friends, however, just glared at her until she sighed and sadly shook her head. “I… yeah. Sorry about that. I was just messing around with these new books I got off auction and—”
Kristina and Hazel shut Samantha up by pulling her into a hug. “Tell us what happened.”
Glenn scratched his head with his demon claws. He looked around, grabbed one of his jackets, and tied it around his waist to create a makeshift loincloth. By the time he was done, the three girls were seated around a table.
“…which is why I’ve got a familiar of my own back at home. It’s this cute cat that just walks around, following me and stuff. It allows me to cast a little magic, like this one.”
Samantha waved her fingers around, and a little blue orb of light materialized from her fingertips.
Hazel and Samantha’s eyes widened like saucers, oohing at the sight. Glenn, however, was too busy focusing on Samantha’s life points.
Samantha Walsh
Life Points: 220/400* (approximate)
*Total Life Points reduced by Infernal Compact
“Sorry for interrupting, Samantha, but do you realize that your spells cost life points?”
That little bit caught the attention of all three women, whipping their heads toward him.
“I mean, they use up a portion of your vitality. You just lost ten life points casting that small flame.”
“Impossible!” Samantha cut back hotly. “My familiar, Teema, told me that my spells draw on the magic of the world!”
Glenn studied Samantha for a few moments, carefully considering what he was going to say next. “Just for clarification: do you feel really tired after using too many spells? Light-headed, sluggish, reflexes slow, and finding it really hard to concentrate?”
Samantha opened her mouth to retort, then snapped it shut before nodding.
“Also another question: did you notice yourself feeling less energetic, more lethargic after agreeing to a pact with your familiar?”
Samantha’s brows furrowed in concern even as she nodded.
Glenn matched her nod before responding. “I’m examining your stats menu right now, Samantha, and your maximum life points are abnormally low at the 400 mark. For comparison, Kristina maxes out at 700 with Hazel at 1,100.”
“Hah!” interrupted Hazel, pointing a finger at Kristina. “Loser!”
“Shut it,” growled Kris. “We’re talking about Sam here.”
“Oh… right.” Chastised, Hazel backed down, but not before sticking her tongue out at Kristina. Kris replied with a raised middle finger before turning back to Glenn. “You mentioned something about an infernal compact?”
“Yeah,” he replied with a nod, his bull horns swaying up and down with his head. “I noticed this weird dark shadow around Samantha’s outline, and my interface pointed out that her total life points have been reduced by this Infernal Compact. Not entirely sure what it means, though.”
Samantha followed along, listening intently to Glenn’s explanation, before breaking out loud with a curse. “Shit. I might have contracted with an imp, not a familiar.”
“Is… there a difference?” Glenn ventured, curious.
She nodded in reply, pushing her glasses up the ridge of her nose with one finger as they slid down. “I’ve gone through a couple of texts in the past, and familiars are supposed to help new witches familiarize themselves with magical powers. Imps, however, are tricksters that love messing around with humans whenever they can. I can run a few other rituals to check if Teema is an imp. And if she is an imp possessing the cat I prepared for my familiar, and it’s stringing me along for a ride…”
Samantha’s eyes burned now, an evil smile forming on her lips. “…I can invoke quite a few unpleasant clauses in the contract.”
She then focused back on Glenn, her smile dissolving into a grimace. “If you’re right and my familiar turns out to be an imp in disguise… well, I guess thanks are in order.”
Glenn smiled, a few fangs peeking out of his lips to accommodate the gesture. “If I’ve helped out, then you’re very welcome, Samantha. Is there anything else I can help you with?”
Kristina snickered at that, to Hazel and Samantha’s puzzlement. “Nothing, nothing,” she replied in between fits of giggles. “An insider joke concerning Glenn’s day job. He works in customer support, you know.”
“A demon working a CS job? That’s… a weird image to process.” Hazel thought about it for a few moments, then joined Kristina in her giggles.
“Right? Hilarious, ain’t it?”
Samantha just huffed, shaking her head. “So much for my mental image of an incubus.”
That’s when something clicked inside Glenn’s head. “Wait… you’re a witch!”
Samantha just raised a brow. “Got a problem?”
“No, it’s just… I didn’t know witches existed. I mean, witches with magical powers.”
“And I never thought incubi could walk around pretty without someone holding the leash with spell-wrought bindings, but here we are.”
Glenn reacted instantly to the heat in Samantha’s voice, backing down and raising a palm in surrender. “Right. Um, sorry if that came out wrong.”
Kristina intervened, putting a gentle hand on top of Samantha’s stiff shoulders. “Put the claws away, Sam. Glenn here is new to this whole thing. Hell, Sam and I barely know up from down when it comes to your witchy rituals.”
“Yeah, and you promised us that you wouldn’t do any of the unsafe stuff,” Hazel butted in with an enthusiastic nod. “I know you just needed two other buddies to fulfill whatever witchy requirements you need to fulfill, but we still don’t want you getting into anything unsafe.”
“Summoning a familiar isn’t unsafe!” Sam shot back.
“Until you make a mistake and summon an imp by accident,” interrupted Kristina, crossing her arms while pouting.
“That’s… ugh. That’s actually a fair point,” sniffed Samantha, pointedly avoiding Kristina’s glare. “Be that as it may, I still have no idea how an unbound incubus like Glenn can walk so freely. What little I know about demons indicates that they should require a vessel to manifest themselves. Demonic possession, not demonic manifestation or transformation or anything like that.”
A strange sense of surprise coursed through his mind, starting from the base of his neck where the synaptic implant was located. The feeling left as quickly as it arrived, and he simply cocked his head in confusion at the abrupt sensation.
Hey, Ynnistoria…
Ynnistoria: Yes, Glenn? How may I help you?
Glenn was just about to ask his digital assistant what the feeling was about, but a prod at his belly brought his attention back to reality.
That prod came from Samantha, who was leaning in and squinting through her glasses as she examined his body. She mumbled to herself while she circled around him, taking in everything about him from his pointed bovine horns to the flickering tail jutting out of his spine.
“Very interesting…” she muttered to herself, continually poking and prodding Glenn. “Firm, fleshy, and very much responsive. Not stressed or torn like a classic case of forced possession. Doesn’t even
feel that evil, to be honest. You should be oozing spite and malice if you were.”
“Um… thanks? I—WOAH!”
Glenn couldn’t help but gasp when he felt a hand dart inside his makeshift loincloth, wrap around his flickering member and give it a good tug.
“Haze!” Samantha scolded, scowling and furrowing her brow for good measure.
“It’s so cute and squirmy that I just couldn’t help reaching out and grabbing it,” cooed the woman in question, letting go of Glenn Junior with a giggle. “Especially when it’s peeking out from under that jacket.”
Glenn just sighed and adjusted his makeshift loincloth, pulling it around to better cover his groin.
Kris opened her mouth, closed it, and hummed as she nodded. “Yeah, it is rather interesting, but cute isn’t the first word I’d choose.”
Sam’s frown lightened up before disappearing completely as her eyes glared holes at Glenn’s crotch. “And since we’re on the topic here, do you mind if I examine it a little further?”
“Oh, Samantha, you naughty, naughty girl!” crowed Hazel.
“No, it’s not like that!” stammered Samantha, stiffening her spine in indignation even as she fought back the red creeping up her ears. “Based on the texts I’ve read, demons are supposed to be spirits that possess human bodies. They either take control of a vulnerable vessel or they wind up bound into one by someone who knows the right rituals.
“Some of the more malicious demons twist the bodies into grotesque forms, but nothing as concrete and dramatic as Glenn here is. Not that I’m an authority on demonology or anything, but it’s the first time I’ve heard of something like this happening.
“And besides…” She eyed him up and down, hesitating but eventually focusing on his crotch once more. “I haven’t heard of an incubus needing to um… modify themselves to such an extent. They assume the form of regular humans, not turn into towering demons with… with penises like that.”