by Eric Vall
The slots spun around and landed with three “bar” symbols in a diagonal pattern. A shrill bell rang as blue letters spelled out the word “winner” across the screen and the credits indicator ticked upward with the ding of a bell at each ten cent interval. Libidine giggled happily as she bounced up and down.
“Hey dudette, can you hoist me up and give the ‘ol Toddster a shot?” the imp laughed from below.
“Sure thing!” Libidine giggled.
The succubus lifted the bag up and set in on top of her lap inconspicuously. Todd peeked his horned head out briefly to look around and see if the coast was clear. When he realized it was, he rubbed his hands together greedily, reached out, and pushed the button to play a dollar.
The slots whirled around on their base and came to a stop with three clouds in a row and two “wild” symbols on the top left and bottom right. The credits indicator sang as the original ten dollars I had put in was now up to eighty-five.
“It just needed an imp’s touch,” Todd pretended to brush dirt off his shoulder triumphantly. “Okay, you can set me down now. I just wanted to touchy-touchy.”
Libidine sat the duffel bag back on the floor and cracked her knuckles.
“I’m going for the big one.” Liby smirked as her finger lingered over the max bet button.
“Nice,” Todd said from below, and we all leaned forward to watch the dark-haired beauty play.
The succubus pushed her finger down and bet the maximum of thirty dollars on this single spin. As the slots stopped, they displayed three “bonus” symbols lined up across the top. The red light atop the machine sprang to life with the sound of a shrill siren. On the screen, the bonus game began with a flurry of cartoon angels coming down and singing to increase the multipliers on the slots. They kept singing and singing until Libidine’s screen had two different multipliers at times twenty each. The slots stopped in their tracks, and the screens filled up with wild symbols. Libidine screamed with joy when the screen lit up with the words “Jackpot!” and began to show how much she had won.
“Jackpot?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “How much is that?”
The ticker on the counter was now at over two-thousand dollars total, but it wasn’t stopping. The chorus of angels on the screen continued to grow louder and louder alongside the growing numbers, and it was now up to nearly six-thousand.
The commotion from our slot machine had drawn the attention of almost everyone in our immediate vicinity, and we now had a crowd of spectators huddled around, who murmured about when they thought it was going to end.
“Holy shit, bro!” Todd was now glued to the screen in awe.
When the counter on the slot machine finally came to a halt, it read five figures. Ten thousand dollars.
“Whoooaaaaa,” Todd hissed, but his voice was pretty much lost when the surrounding crowd cheered.
“I’m just lucky, I guess.” Libidine shrugged.
“Oh. My. God.” I said as I nearly tumbled backwards onto an empty stool behind me. “Am I dreaming?”
“We’re rich, Jacob!” Todd exclaimed from the bag.
My head began to spin as I took in the sounds of the casino around me and tried to wrap my mind around what had just occurred. Cupiditas wrapped her arms around my neck and gave me a passionate kiss, and then Libidine also hugged and kissed me. Several people from the crowd around us came over to shake my hand and congratulate me on my winnings. Eventually, a representative from the Excalibur had to come over and confirm that the machine was correct.
The man cashed out the machine and handed the slip of paper to Libidine, who just looked at it with a proud smile.
My heart pounded in my chest as I struggled to breathe. Ten thousand dollars. That was nearly two years’ worth of rent. That was a new engine for my broken car, or a down payment on a new one. I only had a few hundred bucks in my bank account, but now I was going to have five figures.
And that was only if we stopped gambling right now.
And there was no way in hell we were going to stop.
“Jacob, we have to play everything!” Todd called out from inside his bag. “If Liby can win big on these slots, then who knows what we can do if we keep going! We can’t let this streak end!”
“Uh-- Uh, yeah!” I tried to reorient myself.
This whole experience had to have been a dream. I had two super-sexy women who not only wanted me, but lusted after me as if I was their only desire in the entire universe. Now I had won ten-thousand dollars? I actually pinched my left bicep to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, since I feared that any minute now I was going to wake up back in my shitty apartment, in my shitty bed, alone. I just knew it. I gave myself a minute to soak in the exhilaration of the moment, and then I turned to the dark-haired succubus in front of the machine.
“Do you want to keep going?” I asked. “You seem to be the luckiest charm of all.”
“I’ll do whatever you want me to do, Jacob,” Liby purred and batted her violet eyes at me.
Yep. I had to be dreaming.
“Roulette!” Todd exclaimed. “That’s where I lost all my money last time.”
“Last time, we didn’t have all this sexy demon women luck on our side.” I smiled. “I feel like we can’t lose no matter what we do.”
“We can’t.” Cupiditas smirked. “And roulette sounds like a blast.”
“Then the decision is made,” Liby grinned. “On to the roulette table!”
As we walked across the casino floor, we looked like a crew that was ready to bring down the house. Even though our imp sat hidden in our bag, he was still dressed to the nines and made whistling sounds at the attractive women who passed us by. Most of them responded by recoiling in disgust, but then looked around confused as they tried to find the source of the sound.
We waltzed up to the roulette table, each with a drink in our hand. If we were going to make our already incredible day even better, then I needed to just cut loose like Liby had done earlier. I pulled out two handfuls of chips and handed them to the dealer. His eyes widened with surprise as he looked down at my bet, which was about six-hundred in total.
“What do you wish to place a bet on?” he asked.
“Bro, always bet on red,” Todd whispered from the duffel bag.
“Isn’t is always bet on black?” I laughed.
“Naw bro,” he laughed. “It’s my lucky skin color.”
“Sure thing,” I chuckled as I turned to the croupier. “I want to make a couple bets. These ten can go on number six. And I want to divy these up between even, red, and low.”
“Uh, Jacob?” I felt Todd tugging on the leg of my trousers. “Isn’t that like, all the money we came in here with?”
“Oh, Todd.” I smiled as I looked down at the dapper demon. “When I win, I’m going to split the winnings four ways, and you can do whatever you want with that money, no questions asked.”
Todd made a zipping motion with his hand across his lips as he smiled devilishly.
The dealer placed my chips down on their respective spaces nonchalantly. Little did he know, I was the luckiest man alive right now, and it was all thanks to these two beautiful creatures that stood beside me.
He placed the small marble-like ball into the roulette wheel and then flicked it across the track. The ball raced around its basin for what felt like an eternity, but then finally started to slow its momentum. It bounced across the metal walls of the wheel as it threatened to land in something that would fuck up my day pretty badly. I was half-tempted to use my emerald flames to ensure it landed in the right spot, but I really didn’t want to use my powers to cheat. I was already lucky enough. The tension mounted as the ball came to a halt, and the dealer looked down to check it out.
“Red six!” he exclaimed in disbelief, and the entire table erupted in cheers.
“I never doubted you for a second!” Todd yelled as he hugged my leg in joy.
“How much did you win?” Libidine asked excitedly.
I
couldn’t breathe. If my calculations were correct, then I’d just earned twenty-one thousand dollars on my straight bet alone. The outside bets added a twelve hundred more, bringing my grand total to twenty-two thousand, two-hundred. My entire body was shaking with excitement.
“Guys,” I looked up at the succubi, shook my head, and smiled. “I’m gonna have to buy you all a nice steak dinner after this. I just won more today than I make in an entire year!”
“Hooray!” Liby cheered as she jumped up and down. The movement made her fantastic breasts bounce enthusiastically, and every man in the casino must have turned to gawk at her.
“I’m so happy that you are happy,” Cupi hugged me, and then the two women showered me with kisses.
“This is crazy, bro,” Todd said. “Most people get trapped in Vegas and lose all their money, but we have made so much. Think about all the weed and snacks we can buy now!”
“Yeah, man,” I said, even though it was getting hard to think. My chest felt like it was about to explode. I knew I wasn’t rich, but I was over thirty grand up, and it had only been half an hour since we started gambling. With these two beautiful women and my best friend at my side, I knew that there was nothing that could bring me down.
Except for Earl.
He was going to be coming for Liby and Cupi soon, and I still didn’t really know how to stop him.
Then I remembered what Todd had just said to me, and I felt like a lightning bolt of genius struck the top of my skull.
“Guys, I think I have an idea to beat Earl,” I said. “Todd said Vegas is a trap, right? So we are going to set a trap for Earl. Then, we are going to destroy him.”
Chapter 13
“Believe it or not, demon traps are a dime a dozen,” Cupiditas mused as she thumbed through one of Todd’s old paranormal books.
“Seriously, bro.” Todd nodded in agreement and held up a book of his own. “I could flip this thing open to a random page and there’d probably be instructions on how to capture a demon. Even in the section on circumcision.”
“Humans are odd.” Libidine shrugged. “They talk so much about how we demons are the cause of all of Earth Realm’s problems, but they’re the ones that keep summoning us here and trying to make us their own.”
“I can’t say I blame them,” I laughed. “Look at how great things got for me when you two showed up.”
Satisfied with our casino winnings, we had returned to our suite in the Excalibur so that we could formulate a plan. The looming battle with Earl was going to be tough, but if we could weaken him or catch him in a demon trap, we might just stand a chance. Thankfully, we had our own three-foot tall walking paranormal encyclopedia, his entire library to consult, and two hot succubi women to verify our findings.
“So the Key of Solomon is going to be our best bet, right?” I asked the blonde and the imp as they continued to study the texts.
“Not necessarily,” Cupi replied. “They are the most common and well-known type of protective circle, but that’s good and bad.”
“How so?” I questioned.
“King Solomon came up with the magic thousands of years ago.” She stared me down with her violet eyes. “Which means that demons have had thousands of years to figure out how to counter it. It will still work on our former master, but we’ll have to work quickly if we want to take him out before he squirms his way out of it.”
“Then we just have to throw everything and the kitchen sink at this guy.” I nodded.
“In the meantime, should Jacob and I be practicing?” Libidine piped up. “Neither of us know how to create these magic circles.”
“Here ya go.” Todd pulled out a crumpled-up piece of paper and outstretched his hand. “This is the one Cupi drew for you in the car earlier. It’s basically paint by the numbers at this point!”
Cupiditas and Todd spent the next hour looking through the paranormal books and scribbling down the spells they wanted to try out on a piece of paper.
Meanwhile, the dark-haired succubus and I sat at the dining room table and did our best to try to match the intricate designs of the Key of Solomon. After the last point was drawn on the star, I held up the piece of paper to admire my work. It was a rough copy, but it at least shared some resemblance with the original drawing. I looked over at Liby, who stuck out her tongue as she drew.
“Ohhh, here’s a good one,” Todd exclaimed as he tapped the book he was currently looking at. “Witch Bottles, bro.”
“Those are always fun!” Libidine laughed. “Particularly the preparation phase.”
“Witch Bottles?” I looked up at the imp on the couch.
“The gist is, you take some DNA from the person that the evil entity is after and put it in a bottle. Toenails, blood, semen, hair, whatever. Then you enchant the bottle. The demon gets too close, thinking he’s found his target, and boom!” Todd clapped his hands together. “He’s trapped, and you burn that bitch like he’s the guest of honor at a comedy roast!”
“Just one question,” Liby asked with her hand raised. “Can I help extract the bodily fluids?”
“Me too!” Cupi exclaimed as she bounced up and down on the couch excitedly.
“I think I’m gonna barf.” Todd held a hand over his mouth and pretended to hold back vomit. “When we get there, you do whatever it is you gotta do. Just make sure that I’m not present when it happens. No homo.”
I rolled my eyes at Todd’s comment. “I’ll keep that in mind. Have you guys found anything else?”
“A mirror trap,” Cupiditas said as she rapped her finger on the page.
“What is that?” I asked. “Like, Bloody Mary?”
“No, no,” Todd hopped in. “Demons are obsessed with their own reflections. The bigger the ego, the more they enjoy looking at themselves in the mirror, and Earl’s ego is at least as big as Todd Jr.”
“Todd J--” Cupi started to ask, but I interrupted her.
“Whatever it is you’re about to ask, I can promise you don’t want to know the answer,” I laughed.
“Speak for yourself, bro.” The imp shrugged.
“That is actually a great idea, Todd!” Liby smiled. “If we created a room full of mirrors, then it would freeze our former master in his tracks. He’d be too distracted by his own image--”
“And we could throw everything we had at him without any resistance!” Cupi finished.
Todd stuck his hands together and bowed. “Exactly. You are learning well, my young apprentices.”
“So we definitely need a place with bathrooms,” I suggested. “If we could smash some of those wall-length mirrors and then attach them to the walls, it would create a sort of makeshift house of mirrors. And then Earl would be so obsessed with his reflection that he’d be petrified!”
“But wait, there’s more!” Todd flipped through the pages of the book gleefully. “If you buy three demon traps today, we’ll include three more, free of charge!”
“How many more of these things are there?” I asked.
“Oh, there are hundreds,” Todd smirked. “I think we’ll be fine with what we’ve got here, but it never hurts to have a couple backups. Not to mention, those are the ones that have been tested the most.”
Todd spend the next hour or so explaining the various ways that people have tried to capture demons through history. He talked about woven spirit traps, bone traps, dreamcatchers, amulets, runes, and just about everything else he knew off the top of his head. They might not be as effective as the powerful magic of King Solomon, but he was right, it would be wise to have some backup.
“Now that I’ve endowed upon you the sage-like wisdom of the Toddster,” the imp cackled, “all we have left to do is find an abandoned building and get to work.”
“I know just where to look.” I nodded. “All the stuff I’ve read about Vegas tells tourists to avoid the north part of the strip around the Stratosphere. There’s a lot of abandoned buildings and sketchy one-night-stand motels out there. It’s perfect.”
“
Well, what are we waiting for?” Todd ran over to the duffel bag and hopped inside. “Onward, to certain death!”
I raised my eyebrow at the imp as I picked up the bag and slung it over my shoulder.
“Err--” He paused. “I mean, onward to near-certain death!”
The four of us made our way through the winding seventies corridors of the Excalibur. Soon we had passed through the main lobby and out to the valet service.
“We had the yellow--” I began, but the valet put up a hand to stop me.
“Yellow Volvo. I remember,” he laughed as he grabbed our keys and went off to find the car.
“She’s a beauty,” Todd giggled from the bag. “Nobody ever forgets my baby.”
“She certainly is unforgettable,” I chuckled.
The valet brought the yellow sedan back to our position, and I tipped him a hundred-dollar bill as I walked around to get into the car. Lola was sputtering and shaking, but she was still in one piece and ready to hit the road.
“Are we ready for this?” I asked my friends.
“As ready as we ever will be.” Cupi shrugged cautiously.
I put the car into drive, and we headed off towards our final battle with Earl.
We had only driven for half an hour or so before the bustling beauty of Vegas became decrepit and filthy.
“This is definitely the part of town that they don’t show you in all the brochures!” Todd exclaimed as we slowly drove through the sizzling street lamps of one of the city’s more sketchy areas.
Each building we passed looked to be in disrepair. Prostitutes stood along every street corner we saw, beckoning for us to stop and hire them. Along the right side of the road were hotels that were available to rent by the hour, probably a joint venture with the women we had passed. Todd and I weren’t too phased by this scene since our apartment wasn’t exactly in the Hamptons. Gunshots and angry prostitutes were something we heard on a nightly basis. There was even that one time where Todd had to go out into the hallway with a baseball bat to scare off some dude that was trying to break in. My roommate was as laid back as you could be, but he could be ferocious when he was provoked. Especially when you threatened the one thing he loved the most, his weed.