02- Satan!

by Michael-Scott Earle

  “The Veyron Super Sport has vented carbon fiber reinforced silicon carbide disc brakes with aluminum monobloc callipers.” She pushed on the left pedal again, and I knew I would have flown out the front windshield if I hadn’t put the harness on. Then she took another tight turn and gunned the massive sixteen-cylinder engine. My head was flung back into the headrest, and my vision started to darken.

  “The rear wing also works like a parachute to help stop. Like this.”

  She hammered on the brakes, and I screamed as I felt my insides slam against my ribs, my ribs slam against my skin, and my skin press against the harness. The car didn’t even make a screeching noise as it stopped. It just ceased to move as if it were attached to some sort of magnet.

  Then she accelerated again, and I felt like I was a pebble leaving a slingshot.

  “It has a Haldex system all-wheel drive and specially designed run-flat racing tires. Notice how it doesn’t lose traction when it turns?” The succubus yanked the steering wheel to the right again, and my stomach spasmed with terror.

  “Meeeerrrwaaahh!” I tried to ask her to slow down, but it felt like an elephant was sitting on my chest.

  “The Super Sport Record Edition was unveiled in 2010. It is the fastest production vehicle ever made.”

  The car growled angrily as it gobbled up the pavement of the parking garage. I glanced out the window, but it looked as if we were doing hyperdrive travel like in a science fiction TV show. I could only see the stream of garage lights and red paint.

  “Only five were ever made, well, on Earth at least. Satan can have whatever car he wants whenever he wants it. This model retailed for one point eight million dollars. So…”

  She slammed on the brakes again, and my ass actually lifted off the leather seat. It felt as if my head was trying to pull free of my neck.

  “You picked a good one. But yeah, it would have killed you.” Charlotte pulled on the parking brake, opened the door, and exited the supercar without sparing it a second glance.

  “Get out. We are here,” she commanded as she shut her door.

  “Ahhh,” I moaned and took a few breaths. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I didn’t know if I needed to vomit, faint, or cry. I raised trembling hands to the seatbelt harness and fumbled it open. I moved to open the door, but Charlotte was a half a second ahead of me and opened it as I started to move. I fell out of the Bugatti like a sack of clumsy potatoes and gave a sigh of relief when I felt my hands touch solid ground.

  “We just have to take this elevator down to the lobby and then take another one down to the penthouse.” Charlotte helped me stand and pointed to a set of four doors a few feet from where she’d parked the car.

  “Okay,” I inhaled a deep breath after I spoke. It felt wonderful to be alive.

  Even if I realized that I would soon meet Satan.

  Charlotte walked to the elevators and hit the down button. Then she crossed her gore-covered arms over her gore-covered school uniform shirt and tapped her foot impatiently.

  “I’m surprised we haven’t seen anyone else,” I said as I watched the numbers on the elevator descend from “999.”

  “There are guards in the lobby. It will either be balors or mariliths. Either way, they will want to kill both of us. So I will try to distract them, and you will run to the next elevator.”

  The elevator dinged, and the succubus suddenly shifted into a battle stance. Her tail swung out, her hands turned into claws, and I saw her hair pull back from her face as if it were alive. The lift door opened, but it was empty, and she pulled me into the lift with a clawed hand.

  “What are balors?” The name was familiar to me because of all the comics, video games, and anime, but I didn’t know if the real balors were the same as in fiction.

  “Giant demons with wings, fire swords, and fire whips.”

  “That doesn’t sound good,” I whispered.

  “No. They are very powerful. Some of them descend to become demon lords. They end up serving Satan as lords of fiefdoms in Hell.”

  “What about the other one? The Mary--”

  “Mariliths. They are like the nagas that you saw at school. They are all women, with six arms and the lower bodies of snakes.”

  “Oh, okay. Well, they don’t sound as dangerous as the balors.”

  “Maybe. Nagas are to them what house cats are to sabertooth tigers. Mariliths are combat experts, and they carry an endless supply of weapons for each of their six arms. They don’t use magic, unlike balors, but I’d rather fight balors than mariliths.”

  Charlotte sighed as she spoke, and I felt my heart begin to race again.

  “Are succubi really powerful? It seems like you are strong.”

  “Nope. A few are, like Lilith, Tera, and Eve, but most of us are weak.”

  “But you fought against Ashley, and you killed Joro. It seems that--”

  “I’m nothing, Sherman. Just one of Satan’s succubi assassins. He has hundreds of thousands of my kind, maybe more. We are his spies and sometimes assassins, but most of us have very few fighting skills. I’ve just gotten lucky.” I couldn’t get a feel for any emotion in Charlotte’s voice, but her words angered me.

  “You aren’t ‘nothing,’ Charlotte. You are everything to me. I think you are wonderful, and I’ve really enjoyed the time we have spent together so far. I wish that you weren’t taking me to Satan, not just because I don’t want to die, but because I want to spend the rest of m-m-my life w-w-with you.” My voice stuttered a bit at the end, and I felt my throat close after the words had escaped my mouth.

  She turned her head to look at me, and our eyes met. She didn’t say anything for a few moments, and I couldn’t read any emotion in her glowing red eyes.

  “Stupid boy. Idiot human,” she finally said as she shook her head and turned back toward the elevator door.

  My heart plummeted to my stomach, and my throat constricted around my esophagus so much that I thought I was about to choke. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’d seen enough movies and read enough comics to know that the guy didn’t get the girl by admitting his feelings. I started to blink a bunch, and I cursed myself. Ugh. Now I was going to cry. I was such a loser. No wonder Charlotte didn’t like me.

  Fingers wrapped around my left hand, and I almost jumped with surprise. Charlotte was looking straight ahead at the door to the elevator, so I kept my neck fixed in place and looked down turning just my eyeballs. Her right hand was human looking, but still covered with dried spider gore.

  Her fingers slipped between mine, and our palms touched.

  My eyes darted up to stare at the metal doors of the elevator. We had held hands before, but it was while we were escaping from danger at school, and I had kind of assumed that she had grabbed my hand to pull me along. What did this mean? Charlotte had told me that she didn’t really like me, but that she kind of liked kissing me, but she also didn’t want a relationship with me, but there was no mistaking that she had reached out to hold my hand.

  I opened my mouth to ask what she was feeling, but then closed it. Talking now might ruin the moment. It was possible that she didn’t realize she was holding my hand, or maybe she just wanted to make sure I didn’t run in the wrong direction when the doors opened. She seemed insistent that I make it to Satan alive. I was probably looking too much into this. I was just her mission.

  “When I tell you to run to the elevator, do it. Understand?” Her voice was a soft purr, and I felt goose bumps descend my neck.

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t try to stay back and help me with anything. Just run to the elevator, hit the button to go down, and jump in when it opens. When you are inside, hit the bottom button for Satan’s penthouse.”

  “I’m not going to leave you behind,” I said.

  “You won’t. I’ll be okay. We need to buy some time. I’m too fast for them to catch, but I can’t really go toe to toe with any demon species that might be guarding Satan’s lobby.”

  “This is dumb, why can’t Sa
tan let us pass? Doesn’t he want you to bring me to him? Couldn’t he just tell his guards to leave us alone?”

  “That isn’t how Lord Satan works, Sherman. There always has to be chaos and a battle. Just do as I ask, okay?” She turned to look at me. The combination of her beautiful smile and the sensation of her fingers wrapped around mine made the metal elevator spin.

  “Okay. I’ll do as you ask,” I said with a sigh.

  “Good boy,” she purred again, and I tried to think about men playing baseball.

  Then the elevator dinged a surprisingly happy chime, and the doors opened to the lobby of Satan’s tower.

  Chapter 5

  Charlotte let go of my hand and stepped out of the elevator first. I moved to follow her, but she held up the palm of her right hand as a signal to stop, and I followed her command. Her hand lost its smooth creamy skin, and her nails elongated into claws, while her forearm took on the leathery-scaled appearance of a bird’s foot. I had never seen the process up close before, and I stared in fascination.

  “Hmmm, I don’t see anyone. That is strange.” She took a last glance around the lobby, and then one of her razor-sharp fingers gestured for me to follow her out of the lift.

  “Maybe Satan told them to let us pass?” I asked as I glanced around the lobby.

  The space was nice looking. It had kind of a Roman theme going, with multisided columns, decorative molding where the stone walls met the ceiling and floor, and smooth-looking marble everywhere. Of course, most architecture I had seen like that was white, while the lobby of Satan’s tower was dark black with various shades of even darker black.

  There was one piece of decoration that had color: A massive fountain in the middle of the lobby. It stood maybe thirty feet high, and perhaps the same across. The fountain was filled with stone sculptures of naked succubi in various erotic positions. Some were touching themselves, some were touching each other, and most wore looks of ecstasy that I’d only seen in my naughtiest of dreams. The beautiful obsidian sculptures were unbelievably lifelike, and the only thing that kept me from getting really aroused by the scene was the liquid that leapt joyfully out of the fountain.

  It was blood.

  A lot of blood.

  A whole lot of thick, spraying blood.

  It shot out of the top of the fountain in a high stream. It trickled down every nook and cranny of the sculptured ledges, and it flowed over the stone skin of the succubi as if they were taking a red shower. As I took more steps around the fountain, I had the notion that the women in various states of ecstasy might have actually been enjoying the shower of blood flowing over them as much as the sexual acts they performed on each other. It was all sorts of weird, and I felt confused by the arousal, disgust, and terror that radiated through every muscle in my body.

  One of the sexy succubus statues moved.

  Or, at least, I thought it moved. I couldn’t really take the whole erotic sculpture in at once, and I could have sworn that one of the winged stone statues that performed cunnilingus on another statue turned her head to look at me. Her face had a wicked grin, but she didn’t move again, so I guessed that I had imagined it.

  Then another statue shifted on the other side of the fountain. I had thought that this woman was making out with another of the statues, but now she was also turning to gaze at me with lust-filled eyes.

  “Huh. Looks like no one is here,” Charlotte whispered from behind me.

  “Didn’t you think we’d encounter guards?” I asked the girl, but I kept my eyes on the statue.

  “Yes, but perhaps we are lucky. The elevators are on the other side, let’s get moving.” The succubus pulled on my arm, and I took one last look at the fountain.

  Another one of the statues moved. The stone succubus figure had been sitting on a ledge of a fountain with her legs spread and her hand… well, I saw her move her hand from between her legs to settle on a spot on the outside of her thigh. Then her face turned toward me, and her mouth changed from an open ‘O’ look of arousal to a sneer.

  “Charlotte, the statues are moving.”

  “Huh?” We were walking past the fountain, and she turned her head to glance where I pointed.

  “The stone succubi in the fountain. They are moving,” I explained.

  “They look like statues to me.”

  “Maybe they are supposed to move?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “If Satan calls me, then I normally fly directly into the penthouse. I never enter through the lobby.”

  “Okay, maybe it is fine,” I said, and I turned back to follow the beautiful succubus across the long lobby floor.

  We walked for a few more seconds, and I saw Charlotte glance back toward the fountain again. Her glowing red eyes opened in surprise, and I was suddenly sliding across the tile floor. My girlfriend had pushed me out of the way of a spear that impaled the smooth marble tile where I had been standing a moment before.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk, Charlotte,” a voice purred from where I guessed the spear had been thrown.

  I looked to see a group of four blood-soaked succubi climbing down from the red spray of the fountain. Their ebony skin reflected the lights and blood-red color as they moved, and it looked as if they were walking mirrors. Whoever had thrown the spear had almost hit me from a good fifty yards away, and if my girlfriend hadn’t glanced back at that precise moment, I would have been turned into a kebab.

  “Sherman, run to the elevator,” Charlotte growled as she stepped to block me from her four sisters.

  “Why are other succubi attacking you? Is this a Hell thing? I thought that Satan didn’t use them as guards?” I blubbered as I stumbled to my feet.

  “Those aren’t succubi.”

  The four ebony-stone women laughed, and their skin started to vibrate like the surface of a lake after a stone is thrown. Then their images shifted in unison to reveal a strange cross between a tiger and woman. They walked on two legs, wore the kind of clothes a belly dancer would, and had sleek feminine muscles under striped fur, tiger faces complete with fanged teeth, and curved horns.

  “They are rakshasis. Shape-changer demons with magic,” Charlotte whispered, and there was no mistaking the fear in her voice.

  “Nice human you have there, Charlotte,” the furry tiger woman demon at the front purred. She had a thick Indian accent. She swayed her hips as she walked toward us, and her suggestive outfit combined with the fur and tiger face made me question my notions of what I had thought was attractive.

  “He is Lord Satan’s. I am delivering him.”

  “Oh, we know. We’ve heard all about Samuel. That was why we came to the lobby, killed the balors that Lord Satan placed here, and waited for your arrival.”

  “His name is Sherman,” Charlotte said.

  “Doesn’t matter. We can feel his magic. Give him to us and we’ll let you leave,” the tiger demon said.

  “Perhaps I’d consider, but if I return to Lord Satan empty handed, he’ll do worse to me than you will,” Charlotte’s left hand touched my chest, and she pushed me farther away from the four female demons.

  “Then we will take Steven and kill you quickly, so that you won’t suffer.” The rakshasis’ hands begin to glow a bright teal color.

  “Run to the elevator. Now!” Charlotte screamed at me, and I sprinted as fast as my skinny legs could carry me toward the edge of the lobby.

  There was a burst of exploding magic behind me. It sounded like a hundred pieces of paper being ripped apart at the same time, and blue light filled the dark space of the lobby. I heard demonic screams behind me, and I wanted to turn and see if Charlotte was okay, but I also feared what I would see if I did turn. Charlotte has been worried about balors guarding the foyer, but these tiger women had been powerful enough to kill those demons. I didn’t have to be a genius to realize that a succubus would be outmatched.

  And here I was, running away like a coward while my girlfriend fought to save me.

  The air shimmered in front of
me like a disturbed pool of water, and the waves of mirage formed a feminine body. I tried to twist around the rakshasi that appeared before me, but the demon moved quicker than a blur, and I felt a furry hand close around my throat. I was lifted from the ground, and I choked out a surprised yelp.

  “Awwww! The kitten was trying to escape,” the tiger woman purred. “I think he doesn’t want to be friends with us.” She pulled me close to her fanged mouth, and a wet, sandpapery tongue slid over my face and glasses.

  “He tastes good. So powerful. We will feast upon your flesh and our magic will multiply.”

  “Ack!” I tried to ask them to just let Charlotte go, but I couldn’t get a word out through the grip around my esophagus.

  The furry woman yanked me around as she walked away from the side of the lobby. I’d almost reached the elevators, but I realized that even if I had made it there, it probably would have taken too many precious seconds for the doors to open.

  I also didn’t want to leave without Charlotte.

  I saw my girlfriend darting through the air of the lobby like a dark hummingbird. The three rakshasis were spread across the tile floor, and they launched fiery balls of magic at my girlfriend as easily as Ryu or Ken from Street Fighter would throw their Hadokens. Charlotte swooped, dove, spun, and strafed as she tried to get close enough to attack the three tiger demons, but I could tell with my fading vision that the balls of teal fire were getting closer to hitting her.

  Then one did.

  Charlotte’s beautiful body exploded into a pyre of bright blue flames. She screamed, and the cry of agony filled every part of my body with anguish. Then my love plummeted from the air like a shooting star and crashed into the blood-filled fountain below the polished black statues that were styled as her species.

  “That was easy. Guess her reputation was overblown.”

  “Muuufffftt!” I swung my hand out to try and punch the woman who held me, but I might as well have been a two year old trying to box with Ronda Rousey. My fist couldn’t even connect with her big feline nose.

  The three rakshasis walked calmly toward the blood fountain, but the demon that carried me growled out a word that I didn’t understand. They looked back toward my captor with angry faces, but then nodded before they faded away like three pillars of smoke.