“That’s what I thought… okay, now where was I?” He gripped onto his blade again as I saw my cat, Emily walk in behind him. Random as fuck, I know. “Oh right, this.”
He swung.
A cell phone rang, and it wasn’t mine.
It was loud enough that he lost his grip on my hair, probably distracted by the unexpected call. Hell, it was almost as if he didn’t know he had the phone on him, or that the ring tone was set to the maximum volume. Whatever, I’ll take any edge I get, Deus ex Machina or not.
I broke free, my foot rose up, and cracked his balls open.
He dropped to the floor holding the family jewels, squealing as I opened my top freezer, and hoped that at least that was in working order.
It was, my hands firmly grasped on the closest heavy swingable object that was near me at the time, a big bag of ice cubes. I delivered a big, fuck off, smack across his face with the bag. The blow pushed him backward, ripping open the bag at the same time. A handful of cubes launched in every direction from the impact.
He roared and yelled in pain, then looked right at me with the most evil-looking glare I’d seen in a man. A fight with a pissed-off man from hell was unavoidable, he was armed with a blade, I was armed with an empty bag of ice. That’s when a hand from behind him grabbed onto his shoulder, spun him around and socked him in the face. At first, I thought it was the person that opened the door and allowed Emily to waltz back inside, after all cats don’t open front doors by themselves.
I was about to be proven wrong.
Emily wasn’t a cat anymore.
She was a fully grown human woman, naked, and delivering a flurry of martial art kicks and punches that put Lucifer down for the count. Her fists looked as though they were made of lightning bolts, her hair rustled about as if winds were blowing through it.
Taking advantage of the new twist, I leaped onto his trembling body and watched in pleasure as he screamed at the pain. I took hold of his blade and held his face down with my free hand. My, my, my how the tables had turned.
“Lucifer, eh?” I said, raising the blade up high. “Give Satan my regards.”
I sunk the blade into his neck, splaying it apart. Jets of blood squirted across my face and onto the floor. There was still a bit of life in his body, so I continued to carve away through bone, muscles, and flesh. The blood continued to splash upward, small droplets of it rained off my nose.
The beast within me laughed manically at the carnage. I couldn’t help but laugh again once I was done. I mopped some of the blood up from the floor, using his severed head as I chugged the beer he did not finish. Note to self: use a real mop to clean up blood.
I wasn’t sure of what to make of the situation once I was done with Lucifer. I stood up and looked at Emily, who looked at me silently during my uncontrollable rage-out session. The cat came back the next day, but she was a lot different than what I recalled. My grandfather spent a lot of time telling stories of Japanese legends, Demons, Oni, and one of my favorite ones as a little girl, the Bakeneko a demon cat.
The legends talked about demonic shape-shifting cats that were able to appear as young girls, blending into the human world to cause mischief and problems while learning how to speak like a human. The girl before me fit that description, cat ears up top of her head of silver, grey and black hair. Her being naked made it impossible for her to hide her long fluffy tail that almost bore the same color of her hair. She didn’t appear to look Japanese however in her human form, more like Eurasian.
She took a step back as I took three forward, I knew a thief when I saw one. “Where’s my shit?” I demanded.
She held her hands out, then retreated into my room, so I chased her, nearly tripping over the crap I haven’t gotten around to dealing with. “Now, now, now,” she pleaded. “Let’s calm down.”
“For what?” I entered my room, she was quickly getting dressed in attire that didn’t belong to me, further proof she was the one that broke in. She must have left a change of clothes to wear after transforming into her human form while I wasn’t home.
Her nakedness was covered up with jeans and black sweater and matching black beanie with holes cut into it for her ears to pop through. It looked like those cute cat ear caps I’ve seen some younger girls walk around in. Plain sight hiding, smart. There were no signs of her tail, must have been tucked in tight within her pant leg.
“You don’t really plan on killing me, right?” she said. “I did save your life, so you owe me.”
“You took my stuff, and now I owe you? Bitch, please… I didn’t need your help, I had him right where I wanted him.” My hands began to glow with embers of flames.
Her nimble hands folded and then quickly made a series of finger and hand gestures, each one left behind blue waves that looked like calming waters from a flowing river. Her body shifted into a martial arts stance, I saw daggers made of ice materialize into her hands when her ritual was over. Daggers… upon a closer inspection they looked more like a pair of kunai, weapons of a ninja.
I grinned at her. “Nice talents you got there, Emily.”
“Water puts out flames, think twice before fighting me,” she smirked. “Wait, who’s Emily?”
I crossed my flaming arms. “It’s my name for you. Such a well-deserved one as well…”
She looked at me with her cat eyes. “Your elemental stance hasn’t changed. You can’t win a fight against me, let me walk, and nobody else gets hurt.”
I face-palmed. “Look, just give me my stuff back, and there’ll be no further problems with me. And trust me, girly, you don’t want problems with me.”
“Sorry, Reika, I got a paycheck to collect from that stuff.”
Paycheck… that katana was worth a lot of cash. Like hell I was going to let her walk out of this place and profit off my misery. I went to attack, trying my best not to burn my fucking apartment down. She was fast, just like a cat, leaping and soaring about, slashing me with her frozen kunai, kicking, and sending shivering waves of water through the air that put out the flames on my body.
I lost what little advantage I had when I slipped on a sheet of ice that magically appeared below my feet, I never wiped out so hard in my life. I heard Emily laugh at me all the way to the front door of my place. I thought about chasing her, but what was the point? I already slipped three more times trying to get to my feet, and she was long gone by the time I shut and locked the front door.
I stuck my head out the window and gazed down at the nighttime streets and sidewalks below. I didn’t see anyone leave the lobby, of course not, she probably reverted into her cat form and vanished into the garden outside to meow at another unsuspecting human that would take her into their home, so that she could repeat the process.
A real-life cat burglar, fuck me sideways.
Chapter Seven
Date night at last. Ryan and I were dressed to kill.
I wore a tight-fitting, jet-black, sleeveless cocktail dress along with my red scarf, black patterned stockings, and sexy heel shoes. Ryan had a rather expensive white dress shirt, slacks, and designer belt. Madison Square Gardens was packed to capacity; the humid air from having so many people inside could be felt as you entered, along with the pulsing waves of the music blasting. Lights from the stage flashed rapidly enough to give photosensitive people a fierce seizure.
We downed our overpriced drinks that were being served before we took our rightful place front row, enjoying the concert standing shoulder to shoulder with all the chumps that paid almost twenty-thousand dollars for their tickets. Yes, twenty grand, that’s a whole fucking years’ worth of pay for us. Whatever Lexi wanted to show me, show us, was worth forty grand in total. The anticipation for her arrival on stage was thicker than the humid air we were all breathing in.
Lexi hadn’t hit the stage just yet. Lesser singers and groups had opened the night, artists we didn’t really care for, though their music was great to dance and jam to. With the alcohol flowing through our bodies we got down and dirty with our moves.
Ryan’s hands were all over my hips that swayed back and forth to the music. I loved it, as did the spot between my thighs. Those that were around us whistled and hooted at our moves as others danced to compete against us. They weren’t shit as they lacked the high sexual energy that the two of us exchanged during our dance, like his hip thrusts, my grinding, and our make-out session during the intermission.
There was another thirty minutes left before Lexi was set to take center stage, thirty minutes we needed to kill, ideally not dancing, we did enough of that already. I wanted something more, I wanted to give Ryan something that all the men that got super hard watching me groove wished they could get from me.
I unlocked my lips away from his and whispered into his ear. “Wanna fuck?”
The grin that appeared on his face was so cute. “In the washroom?”
“Hey, Mario did say it was okay to do that as long as we’re not on the clock.”
“And we’re not on the clock.”
I grabbed a hold of his wrist and practically dragged him with me past the sea of drunken, or high as fuck, bodies that encircled us. We exited the main area entering lifeless hallways, with the festivities going on and Lexi about to hit the stage in a few, there were fewer people in the washroom. I pulled him into the women’s washroom, fuck the men’s one, I knew that place would be a lot grimier.
I pushed him against the walls of the handicapped stall, locking the door behind us. If there was a disabled person that needed it, they’re going to have to wait. I needed this, badly. I was stuck in the hospital for three months and been out for one month. That’s four fucking months without sex, I’m twenty-nine years old I couldn’t take the wait much longer. My stressed-out body needed the recharge.
We began to make out again, our tongues danced to the beats of the music bleeding through the walls. His hands held onto my ass, my hands unbuckled his belt and pants, pushing them to the floor. He was hard, I was wet.
I lifted my dress up, assumed the perfect position given the limited space we had to work with, and allowed him to deal with the undergarments. We made a lot of noise and a bit of a mess in the aftermath of our deed. It was so worth it, I never came so fast in my life.
I needed more.
I pushed him onto the seat and rode him for the second round.
The dress I wore was a good call on my part, easy access and easy to dress back up. I double-checked to ensure that all evidence of our encounter was destroyed, and that none of it made it onto our clothing, that would just be awkward as fuck to explain if someone pointed it out.
Speaking of awkward, Ryan stumbled three times trying to get to his feet, and that was when he had his pants off. Things only got worse as I had to get him dressed to head back out. I looked into his eyes; his pupils were in a daze and his breathing was shallow.
“Hey, stay with me,” I said, giving him a gentle slap across his face.
“I’m here…”
“I know that pussy was sinfully good, but we got to get back.” I headed to the stall door and unlocked it. “I’ll leave first and make sure the coast is clear, all right?”
“Yeah…” His speech was sluggish too.
“I’ll text you when to leave.”
I left the stall quickly and stopped in front of the mirror to ensure my hair and rose-gold, smoky, eye makeup was still on point. It was, hair was a bit frizzled, but that could have been from the dancing from earlier, in any case, time was running out. I entered the hallways verifying that there was nobody around to ask questions as to why we both left the women’s washroom together.
Out from my purse came my phone as my thumbs quickly typed a message to Ryan, giving him the all clear. One minute later, there was no sign of Ryan, or a reply for that matter. At first, I thought it was just the reception as we were deep inside the stadium. The bars on my phone said otherwise, reception was good, the texting app confirmed that the message was indeed sent.
I tried again.
Nothing, fuck me. We were out of time, I heard Lexi’s voice blare into the mic, she had taken the stage and was getting ready to sing. Round two was probably a mistake, a very orgasmic mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.
Frustrated, I stormed back into the washroom only to discover he was inches away from the door. His face was flushed, his gaze wandered aimlessly, and he moved with a limp.
“C’mon, what the fuck,” I said, guiding him back out.
“I’m good… I’m good.”
“You’re drunk, aren’t you?”
It took us five minutes to travel from the washrooms back into the loud and bustling arena. At least one or two songs were missed as a result. We were almost back to our seats as Lexi began to sing Enlightenment, a couple of fluttering butterflies took flight in my stomach as a result. She said something about me joining her on stage during or after that song when we spoke at her place. Yet there I was dragging my blacked-out, drunken date back to our seats.
I felt the floor rumble beneath my feet. The apparatus above on the ceiling swayed and vibrated, the speakers on stage bounced back and forth, music equipment fell over as a concern and panic began to echo out from the voices of everyone inside. The rumbling grew stronger, I lost my grip on Ryan, his limp body crashing to the floor. I knelt to get a better look at him as panic-stricken people tried to stampede past us, the ceiling and walls were coming apart as the rumbling intensified.
A loud crash roared, a section of the ceiling crumbled and fell around us, pinning the people that were directly under it to the ground. I shielded Ryan’s body the best I could, paying no attention to the rest of the chaos around me. I wanted to say it was an earthquake… only New York doesn’t have fault lines nearby. The tremors began to subside, and I rose up to assess the aftermath within the darkness and smoke of the area.
Lexi was still on stage.
Singing.
She looked directly into my eyes as I stood amongst the rumble and hundreds of unmoving bodies at my feet. Those that were unharmed left the area and chaos. There was screaming and panicking amongst the rising smoke and dust. Lexi continued to sing to her now one member of the audience, me. A personal serenade.
As her angelic voice brought the song to an end, Lexi lifted her hand up and her fingers cocked backward in a come-hither motion, aimed straight at me.
“Join us,” she said.
The beast within me wanted to comply. I felt my newly recharged body flow with vigorous power, new talents that I had never used floated to the surface. The beast demanded I unleash it. It demanded I embrace the chaos and suffering before her.
“Join us,” Lexi reiterated.
She raised her hands in the air with a passionate smile on her face. Bat-like wings sprouted out from her back, tearing the fabric of the crimson colored corset she wore in the process, sending a tiny stream of blood that ran down her back onto her long crimson dress. Her wings began to stretch out, as if they had been under a lot of pressure. Lexi’s head tilted back down and faced me. No, my mistake. She faced the body of a downed stagehand, I think it was the DJ playing her background music. He rose up to his feet like an undead zombie from the stage.
A second body rose up amongst the rubble around me. He looked like a security guard judging by his uniform, but the plant-like vines and skin that looked like it was made of rock said otherwise. The vines that covered his arms extended down and into the surface, almost digging their way underground. They smiled at Lexi, she smiled back at them, as if they completed a long day worth of work.
“Reika, please,” Lexi called out to me. “You’re the last one—”
I freely allowed the evilness within me to arise and breathe. Spiraling pillars of flames surrounded my body, my fists became engulfed, and my feet, enhanced by my talents, moved across the uneven debris, and toppled over concert chairs. I didn’t climb up onto the stage, instead I leaped into the air then came crashing down upon it, the impact released small waves of flames around a three-sixty-degree radius.
I
joined Lexi on stage, but it was under my terms. What I should have done was grab Ryan and run, you know, the right thing, something I had not done throughout most of my life. I wanted answers, I wanted to know who the hell I was, and who the hell where they. They had those answers, I just knew it. The flames that covered my body sent them a powerful message, give it to me or I’ll burn it out of them.
Lexi stared at me with a welcoming smile, I had to look away after a while, it was so majestic, hypnotizing, and I swear she was probably eye fucking me. Lexi’s wings began to flutter as waves of heat began to emit from her arms, flames sprung up across her arms. Her delicate skin was unaffected, Lexi had talents just like me. I wanted to believe she was an ally, but the stagehand that stepped closer to me, cracking his balled-up fists said otherwise.
He looked at me up and down, left to right. Anger was in his face, anger that caused Lexi to grimace on noticing. His arms froze over, and his fist quickly became decorated with sharp jagged icicles.
Lexi’s arm grasped onto his shoulder yanking him back. “We need her,” she said to the man.
“She’s a threat,” he replied, and jerked his shoulder out from her grasp. “You’ve done your part, now let’s stay the course.”
And just like that, he charged at me with his fist held up to punch me. I laughed at first, firmly believing that the ice would melt when it met my flaming veil. I was wrong. I should have remembered what Emily had said.
The first blow he decked me with landed right into my chest. The hit was painful, and I felt my breathing stop for two seconds as my head began to process the fact that I was now looking up at the damaged and darkened ceiling. There was no major damage done to my body surprisingly, perhaps the flaming veil reduced the impact of his element. The iciness of his fists increased; sharp, long-ass icicles protruded like frozen brass knuckles. If that punch knocked my ass down I didn’t want to know what the next in his state would do.
He stood snickering. The words that slipped out of his mouth put a level of fear in my mind I had not felt… in ages. “Hello, Reika, it’s been a while.”
Kiss of the Demon Girl Page 5