01- Succubus!

by Michael-Scott Earle

Then I saw Ashley, Kelsey, and Mia float into the air above the heads of the crowd.

  Oh shit, I had forgotten about their wings.

  “They are gaining on us! Leave me behind! Save yourself!” I yelled over the sound of the fire alarm to the woman who I loved.

  I meant the words. My skin had already felt a kiss from the beautiful purple-eyed succubus. I’d heard her claim me as her boyfriend to other girls. How much better could my life actually get? If I died protecting her, then it would be a true hero’s death, and I welcomed the opportunity.

  “Shut up, idiot!” she yelled as she stopped her wings and glided us down to the tile of the hallway.

  “You are too fucking slow. I’m going to have to fight them here,” she growled and pushed me behind her wings.

  Charlotte had sounded scared of Ashley a few moments ago, but now her wonderful face looked committed to the act of battle. I took a step back from her and bumped into someone.

  I turned to see Jake standing there. He was on the football team, and his thick pelt of hair, combined with his wide stance, had always made me think of him as some sort of sasquatch. He turned to glare at me, but then his big eyes focused on the approaching attack formation of the three erinyes.

  “Holy shit! Flying babes!” Jake’s deep voice boomed like a timpani drum over the symphony of the fire alarm. He pointed, and I saw half of the kids behind Charlotte turn to watch the three girls dive toward the woman I loved.

  Ashley came in first, and her arms had taken on the same kind of taloned form that Charlotte's had in the basement. The redhead’s sleek body formed a pointed javelin, but the succubus spun out of the way in the last fraction of a second. The dark-angel cheerleader dove past as if my girlfriend was a professional matador and had used her purple wings as a distracting cape.

  Mia landed and swept her long talons at Charlotte’s face, but my girlfriend ducked under the clawed slap, and then shot up with a floating uppercut that hit the black-haired erinye at the base of her jaw. Charlotte actually lifted into the air with the attack, and Mia was spun backwards from the powerful impact as if she was a flipped coin.

  It looked just like a Darkstalkers fighting game move that Lilith would have delivered, and I almost cheered from the sidelines, but I didn’t, because I was also terrified of the onslaught.

  Kelsey dashed toward Charlotte’s back, but my girlfriend seemed to guess that the blonde cheerleader was coming, and the succubus spun around to deliver a perfect roundhouse kick to the beautiful girl’s face. I heard Kelsey’s skull crack, or maybe it was her teeth, over the sound of the fire alarm, and the third erinye flew into the crowd of monster students as if she weighed less than a pound.

  “You’ll pay for th--” Ashley had started to say, but Charlotte was standing right above Mia’s prone body, and the succubus brought her foot down onto the raven-haired cheerleader’s back. The sound of Mia’s spine shattering, and her scream of pain, had cut off Ashley’s sentence.

  “Demon bitch!” Ashley’s eyes seemed to turn into pits of fire, and the redhead dashed toward Charlotte with a blur of movement that I couldn’t comprehend.

  My girlfriend took a defensive stance, and her arms moved to block the various attacks that Ashley aimed at her. First there were a series of cutting scratches that Charlotte pulled away from, and then there were jabs combined with roundhouse punches. Each of these my succubus managed to parry with her forearms. Then Ashley threw out kicks that exhibited her cheerleading expertise; each of these was a display of amazing leg strength and flexibility. The redhead’s short skirt flapped up with each kick to expose the entire length of her long legs, and if I hadn’t had been so conflicted about Ashley trying to cave my girlfriend’s face in with each strike, I might have been really aroused.

  Charlotte had knocked the first four kicks away from her own face, but when Ashley launched the fifth, my girlfriend crouched down and swept out her own perfectly shaped leg. The side of her foot caught the black-winged devil cheerleader on the knee, and I saw the erinye's supporting leg buckle. Ashley screamed, but, instead of falling down to the ground on the broken leg, her black wings beat in the air.

  The redhead launched toward the ceiling and then came down on my love with both of her knees aimed at Charlotte’s back. My girlfriend attempted to roll out of the way, but Ashley seemed to have expected it, and the two girls collided into a ball of claws, hair, wings, and screeching.

  None of my schoolmates had said anything during the short battle, but the crowd shifted away from the two wrestling girls when they rolled near the edge of the cleared hallway space. I noticed that there were half a dozen other gray-skinned devil-looking creatures in the crowd, but a quick scan didn’t reveal anyone that I would have thought was a demon. Then again, I didn’t really know who would have been an ally of Charlotte.

  The girls’ tumbling stopped with Ashley sitting on my love’s stomach like she was riding a bucking bronco. The redhead grabbed both of Charlotte’s wrists with her hands, and it looked as if she was actually the stronger of the two. The cheerleader leaned forward, and it became apparent that my love couldn’t keep her arms up against the force of the black-winged devil girl.

  Charlotte did have a tail though, and Ashley didn’t. The purple leathery appendage suddenly snaked over Ashley’s shoulder, and the scorpion tip pressed into the dark angel’s slender neck. The sting didn’t seem to bother the girl on top, and a wide smile came to her red lips.

  “Idiot, your poison doesn’t work on me,” Ashley growled, and her arms seemed to gain sudden strength. “I’ve been wondering if you were a demon ever since you got here. Now I’m going to drink the life from your twitching body. Another one of Satan’s soldiers wiped from the map. You are close to losing, but at least you won’t be alive to watch your lord kneel before us.”

  The redhead had forced Charlotte’s arms down to the polished tiles of the hallway, and the cheerleader angled her mouth toward my girlfriend’s exposed neck. Charlotte’s teeth gnashed, and she made a sudden biting motion toward the black-winged girl, but Ashley was too quick and pulled her own perfect face out of the way. It was only a temporary victory though, and the redhead made another biting attempt half a second later.

  I needed to do something. It was obvious that Ashley was ten seconds away from biting Charlotte on the neck or shoulder. I didn’t know exactly what would happen if an erinye chomped someone, but I couldn’t just stand here and watch my new girlfriend get gnawed to death by the head cheerleader.

  What could I do? I didn’t know how to fight. If this was a video game, then I knew I could kick everyone’s ass, but this was real life. I didn’t even workout, and while I wasn’t overweight, I couldn’t really manage more than a few push-ups. I’d gotten winded just running down the hallway. None of that mattered though. Ashley’s mouth was diving toward Charlotte’s throat, and if I didn’t help, my soul mate was going to die.

  Was I a stalker or a hero?

  Was I a creep? A nerd just fantasizing about my dream girl?

  Would I ever make anything of my life? No one had ever seemed to care about me. My parents couldn’t even remember my name half the time, but then this beautiful girl had pulled me behind her so that she might protect me. She should have just left me and escaped. She hadn’t though. Charlotte had stayed by my side.

  “Get off her!” The scream uncoiled from my lungs like a fiery whip. The command seared my throat, and my entire body suddenly felt strange. This wasn’t terror. It was another feeling that made every muscle in my body weigh a hundred times more.

  I had tried to step toward Ashley. I had wanted to push her off the pinned succubus woman, but I couldn’t move. My arms wouldn’t work.

  The only thing I could do was scream.

  “Herrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” It felt like a monster was clawing out of my throat, and a flood of tears poured out of my eyes from the incredible pain.

  The tiled floor of the hallway dented like a bowl, the
surrounding walls caved, and all the lights in the ceiling above me shattered into a rain of diamond-coated electricity. My schoolmates felt the energy, and the crowd of them watching the fight fell away from me as if they were tossed dominos.

  Ashley seemed to have borne the brunt of my strange shout, and the black-winged supermodel had brought her hands up to her ears to protect herself from my scream. She had forgotten about Charlotte, and the succubus pushed the redhead away with her hands and then kicked the girl with both her feet.

  The head cheerleader flew across the hallway as if she was attached to a movie wire set, and she made a small crater in the tiled wall a few feet from me. She collapsed on the floor with a dead bounce, and I saw her ears begin to leak blood.

  I couldn’t stop screaming.

  I couldn’t move.

  I couldn’t-- Suddenly Charlotte’s hands were on my shoulders, and her purple eyes distracted me. My voice cut off with a very unmanly whine, and a wave of intense dizziness assaulted me. I really wanted a drink of water, and to lie down, and to eat five hamburgers, all at the same time.

  “What the fuck?” Jake was still standing next to me, and I saw the big hairy beast hold his arms out to stare at them in amazement.

  Murmurs of shock rang through the hallways, and the crowd of students all looked down at their bodies. Then they looked at the kids standing next to them. I didn’t understand what had caused their surprise until Charlotte whispered.

  “I can see them.”

  “Huh?” I gasped, and then I felt her arm circle my shoulders to keep me standing.

  “I can see them,” she hissed urgently in my ear. “Did you do that, Seth?”

  “I don’t know. I feel really tired.”

  “How can this be?” Jake’s voice asked from beside me.

  “I can see you bro, woah!” Tommy the vampire stood next to his friend, and he pointed at the hair on Jake’s arm. “You are a sasquatch!”

  “And you are a vampire.” Jake’s voice was dark and deep.

  “I know bro, crazy. We’ve been friends for what? Three years? I never would have guessed,” Tommy’s mouth turned into a smirk that exposed his twin fangs.

  “I should have guessed.” Jake’s giant fist suddenly shot out and smashed into Tommy’s face. The vampire’s head exploded like an overripe watermelon that had just been hit by a freight train, and a shower of brain, skull fragments, and blood descended on the gathered school kids.

  Silence cut through the hallways as the gathered creatures stared stupidly at the headless corpse of Tommy the vampire.

  Then the war erupted at my school.

  Chapter 5

  “Come on, Shane!” Charlotte screamed and pulled on my arm.

  The bleeding upper half of a lizard man flew across the hallway, and I ducked under the bloody mass. The entire corridor had erupted into a chaos of monster combat, and there wasn’t any square foot of peace that I could see.

  A werewolf named Brandon chomped on the arm of a devil named Andrew. A weretiger named Paul wrestled with a troll named Hank. Jacob the oni was biting through the stomach of Sakura the tengu.

  And I saw Stacey, the hottest vampire girl at the school, get her arm ripped off by the angel hunk Jason. The two of them had been dating for the last year and were Homecoming Queen and King.

  Then a pair of werewolf girls, Rachel and Monique, jumped on Jason. The white-winged football quarterback fell down with a shriek of pain and a puff of bloody feathers, and I felt some sort of weird satisfaction that the two girls had avenged their vampire friend.

  Blood, screams, cries, and panic filled my awareness like a boiled-over pot of water.

  “Stop standing around, Skyler!” My girlfriend yanked on my arm again and pulled me into the thick of combat.

  “Wait! Where are we going?” I screamed as an ogre tried to kick Charlotte in the face.

  “We need to get out of here!” she dodged the clumsy kick by stepping to the side and then stabbed her clawed fingers into the ogre’s groin. The big, wart-covered, green-haired monster screamed in agony and then bent over to clutch the gaping hole in his jeans. The succubus seemed to have expected the move, and her clawed talons were already waiting for his exposed neck. His throat opened like a gutted fish, and the tall ogre flopped onto the tiled floor with the twitch of death spasms.

  “Watch out!” I shouted to the brown-haired girl.

  A pair of dark-skinned elves fought a white-furred yeti, and the trio suddenly decided to turn their attention to my girlfriend. The two elves were Raymond and Demitri, but I had never really seen them hang out at school together. Raymond dove toward Charlotte’s legs, and Demitri threw a wild haymaker at her face. The yeti was named Eddy, and I had always thought him a really nice guy, but now he seemed to be circling around my girlfriend while the two drow distracted her.

  It almost seemed as if Charlotte was fighting with children. The succubus casually stuck her left foot out and caught Raymond in the face with a frontal kick. He had already been diving toward her, so it almost looked like my girlfriend had just decided to use his nose as a step. She casually brushed aside Demitri’s clumsy punch with a twist of her right wrist, and then she drove her sharp nails into his eye sockets as easily as if I would dip my hand into bathwater.

  “You want some of this, asshole?” Charlotte shouted at Eddy as she ripped the front half of Demitri’s face away from the rest of his skull with a wet snap.

  Eddy’s big blue eyes opened, and he shook his white furry head.

  “Good,” she said as she tossed most of Demitri’s face onto the tile and stepped over his dead drow body.

  A single bloody angel wing flew through the air and stuck to the ceiling. A blast of fire erupted when a draco toasted a group of goblins. A naga slid at Charlotte, but the succubus pulled me behind a minotaur fighting with a vampire and an insect-looking devil. It felt as if we had trucked across a thousand yards of battle, but then I realized we had only made it a few classroom doors away from where my girlfriend had thrown Ashley.

  “Charlotte!” The screech cut over the sound of the battle and the fire alarm.

  We both spun to see the red-haired devil cheerleader levitate into the air with a beat of her dark wings. She was only thirty, maybe forty feet away. All she needed to do was swoop towards us and Charlotte would have to battle her in the thick, chaotic melee.

  “In here, Steve!” I saw my girlfriend yank open a thick classroom door and dart inside.

  I took the three steps after her and ducked under a spray of sticky web that Jenna the spider girl shot out at a dog-faced-looking celestial creature. The webbing hadn’t hit me, and I kind of felt surprised that none of my school mates had tried to murder me. I would have figured that I was an easy target.

  “This won’t hold her forever,” Charlotte said as she slammed the metal door behind me and engaged the lock.

  “Why is everyone fighting each other?” It was probably a dumb question, but I didn’t understand why seeing each other in their non-human forms meant that they should begin a deadly battle.

  “When we drop our human forms, it means we intend to battle for our side. It is the rules.”

  “Rules? This is crazy? Who makes the rules?”

  “You’ve seen us your entire life, but now you suddenly think it’s crazy?” she smirked at me while she jerked a classroom desk off the floor. The chair-table combination popped into the air as if it weighed less than half a pound, but it easily shattered most of the glass in the far windows.

  “But why fight now? Why do you all see each other?” I asked her as she picked up another desk and threw it out of the classroom. There was a clear spot now for us to escape into the quad.

  “Run now. Talk later, Stanley.”

  “Sherman,” I corrected.

  “Shit, that is right. Sorry, I will remember next time.” She winked at me, and my heart almost cartwheeled out of my chest.

  Okay. Everything was worth it.

  A slam sound
ed against the door, and we sprung away from that side of the room.

  Another slam, and a dent formed in the middle of the door.

  “Shit. She is strong. You don’t have a car do you?” she asked as she ran toward the broken window.

  “No, just a bicycle.”

  “That won't help us escape. I don’t think I can beat her. Hurry!” She had dived out of the window and beckoned to me from the outside.

  I carefully stepped out of the window and tried to avoid the broken glass on the ground. I had another set of shoes at home, but the pair at school had been my favorite, and I didn’t even think that we were going to swing by my place. Charlotte had mentioned her own house, and I wondered what would happen if we got there.

  Would we be able to kiss again? The thought made my mind spin with pleasure, but then I heard the door boom behind me. I shouldn’t be thinking about anything besides escaping the school with my life still clinging to my body parts.

  “Shit. They are fighting out here as well.” She gestured to the other side of the quad. I could see the battle raging where the other school buildings sat. The melee had spilled out into the quad through broken windows, and I guessed that the building over there hadn’t heard my fire alarm, so whatever had happened to let them see each other’s true form must have occurred during the class session.

  We ran toward the school exit and almost made it across the grassy area of the quad space, but then the familiar shriek sounded behind us. Charlotte and I turned in time to see Ashley launch herself into the air.

  We were also in time to see one of the desks flying toward us at warp speed.

  “Oaaafff!” I felt the air leave my chest when the succubus pushed me away from her. The desk smashed into the grass where we had stood half a second earlier, and I saw it bounce another ten feet into the air.

  “Die!” Ashley gestured with her hands from the air, and half a dozen bolts of red fire sprang to life from her fingers.

  I had never seen real magic. Sure, there had been the stuff on TV, or in the movies, but the fire shooting out of Ashley’s taloned hands looked like jet rocket shock diamonds. The individual streaks of magma dove toward Charlotte like hunting falcons.