by Jen Ponce
“Hold still or I’ll spank you,” he said and this time I smiled. Now he was getting it.
“How will you spank me with my ass pressed all tight against you?” I asked sweetly.
“After we’re untied, I’ll make sure you feel the sting of my hand. Until then, be still. You aggravate it and we’ll end up stuck together longer.”
Lust roiled through me, curling down through my belly and into my pussy. I hadn’t been this turned on in a long fucking time and I couldn’t believe it had happened now, this way, and with this stranger. And, oh how I wanted to feel his hand on my ass. The sting of the slap. The way my butt would feel as if it were on fire afterward … a long time afterward if he did it correctly.
It’d been too long since I’d done anything like that, and I couldn’t remember when I stopped bringing people home. After a while, sex had become a chore, like dishwashing or vacuuming. I just quit.
Now I didn’t want to stop, though I knew I’d better soon. I had work in the morning … well, later this morning. “We’ll be done by eight, won’t we? Have to take a shower before I go to the day job.”
He reached between my legs, slipping fingers between my lips to feel where his cock stretched my entrance. I moaned, groin tingling as he rubbed my clit between his fingers. “Yes. Until then, let me make you come again.”
That wouldn’t be hard. I’d never had trouble with orgasms, but I swear it had never been this ridiculously easy. “You …” I moaned. “You have to be doing this to me.”
He jerked back with his hips and the pressure, the sensation, the sharp, bright thrill of pain as he tugged make me cry out again. “Never with one such as you.”
“One … such as … me?” I swear my eyes had rolled back in my head it felt so good.
“One not Hell bound.” He pinched my nipple, hard, and I arched into him. “Such an easy slut,” he murmured and the orgasm that had been building tumbled over the edges once more. Rough sex and dirty talk?
“Where have you been all my life?” I panted after a long, long while of just mindless sensation.
“Trapped in that fucking medallion.”
I sighed, my eyes sliding shut. “Right. Sorry. At least the bastard’s dead.”
I felt his hand on my face, brushing my sweaty hair back from my temple. “Thank you for getting me out of there.”
“You’re welcome. If I’d known, I would’ve been releasing your peeps sooner.” Sleep was creeping up on me hard, now and I yawned.
“Why?”
“Why what?” I mumbled.
“Why release us? We’re demons, after all.”
“If this is what demons are like, sign me up,” I muttered and then slid into a deep, dreamless sleep.
6
When I woke up, he was gone, leaving behind a very tired, sore, and wet me. Well, not wet as much as sticky. I hobbled to the shower, loving every bit of the stiffness as I showered him off. Everything about last night … okay, early this morning, had been amazeballs. Everything but the fact that he’d left before giving me the spanking he’d promised.
Damn it.
I didn’t even have his phone number because Hell, did hellhounds even have phones?
I dressed, grabbed an energy drink out of the fridge along with some dilled cheese curds, and hoofed it downstairs and out the door in plenty of time to make it to work. Curses, Charms, & Incantations was a magic shop that catered to air and earth witches. We carried both blanked and filled runestones, books, boxes and more. Herbs hung from the ceiling in profusion, filling the space with an eclectic offering of everything from sage to sandalwood to dragon’s blood to lavender to lemon to … Let’s just say it smelled like confusion and magic and leave it at that.
My friend Alice was already there, her shift overlapping mine by three hours. CCI stayed open twenty-four hours since magic happened both in and outside normal business hours. Plus, it gave the night-dwelling creatures a chance to spend their money, which made the boss happy.
I slipped into the back to don my apron and tie my hair back. No way did I want it to fall over my shoulder at the wrong moment and catch fire in the Bunsen burner’s flame as it had a few months ago. I’d smelled like burnt hair for the rest of my shift.
I went out to the front and began filling small cloth bags with herbs, each one containing the needed ingredients for a specific spell. The bags would then go into labeled bins so customers would know what kind of spell they were buying. We often created spells and potions for folks who either didn’t have the magic or the skills to do it themselves. Technically, we weren’t supposed to, but Keepers so rarely came into the shop, we risked it. It wasn’t like those fuckers were afraid witches could break their stranglehold on Bolger, not packing demon power as they were. They would have no more power than the witches if they weren’t enslaving demons.
Demonizing demons and then enslaving them. The bastards.
“You okay?” Alice asked as she bounced by on her way to help another customer, and I realized I’d been squeezing the shit out of a sprig of lavender.
“Yep,” I said, though she was already out of earshot.
The bell over the door tinkled. I opened my mouth to welcome whoever it was and saw my dad standing just inside the doorway looking uncertain. I sighed and set aside the crushed lavender to go to him. “What’s up?”
He gave me his usual absent, lopsided smile. “Hey sweetheart. Looking good.” He gave me a perfunctory hug, then glanced about the room like he always did when he came in. “Busy?”
There was a sum total of two people in the shop, so no, but I bit back the snark. “Not yet. It’ll probably pick up closer to noon.”
“Right, right.” He nodded.
“You okay?” I asked, echoing Alice’s words.
“I need your help.” After a moment, he said, “Well, a friend of yours does. Remember Laydi? You went to school with her when you were twelve. Lived in the same apartment building—”
“Dad, I know who Laydi is. I see her almost every time I come by your place to visit. What’s up?”
“Her boy. He, uh, needs help.”
I raised my eyebrows, waiting.
He gave another casual glance around that, I realized, wasn’t so casual at all. “He’s been possessed,” he whispered.
A thrill ran through me. Possession. A demon. “Have they told anyone?”
He shook his head. “They know what happens when the magi learn about a possession.”
Right. Everyone knew. A magus would come in, take the witch away and usually return their body in a bag. “What do you want me to do?”
“I thought you might go to your grandmother and—”
“No. Absolutely not. She would demand something in return for her help. Last time she made me sit through that shitty dinner with all those stuck up magi. I had to stab one of them with a fork because he got too grabby and then had to listen to her screech at me for half an hour because he bled on her carpet.” What in the world was Laydi wrapped up in that her kid had gotten himself possessed? As far as I knew, summoning demons was a complicated process and you had to know at least part of their name to call them. What did a little kid know about that?
“Please, Korri. He’s only twelve.”
“How the Hell did it happen?”
He looked around again, motioning with his hand that I was being too loud. “They don’t know. He and a bunch of his friends had been playing downstairs in the basement. They found a box full of toys, or so they said.” He shook his head. “It’s bad. Poor kid is being burned from the inside out. Slowly roasted.”
“I just got on shift, Dad.” I didn’t want to lose my job or flake out on Alice, but if the kid was being roasted from the inside out, he didn’t have long to live. “Shit. Let me call Poppy. She could cover for me. And I’m not going to Grandmother. It would take too long.”
His brow furrowed, but it was too late for him to argue, I was already dialing. Once I’d explained it to Poppy, she said she’
d cover for me for a couple hours. I told Alice I had a family emergency and that I’d be back shortly. Since it wasn’t busy, she didn’t care, and I left my apron behind to follow Dad to his place.
His building was more rundown than mine, but it was also more charming in a scruffy sort of way. Gargoyles leered down at us, the brickwork was intricate, the design pleasing to the eye. Mine was a tall, manufactured rectangle. This place had character in spades and clubs.
He took me up to the second floor and knocked on the door. A haggard, tearful woman answered, her eyes probing my face desperately as if hoping to find answers there. “We didn’t call any demon, Korri. You’ve got to believe me.”
“Hey, stop,” I said, discomfort making me feel awkward. “I’m not a Keeper. It’s just me, your Health and Safety lab partner, remember?”
My pitiful attempt at lightening the mood fell on deaf ears. She grabbed my hands and dragged me into her place. The smell hit immediately, the stench of brimstone and burnt tar filling my nose. I followed the aroma to a tiny bedroom filled with a bed, toys, and a small dresser.
The boy was on all fours on the bed and when he saw me, he growled.
I growled back.
Red eyes blinked from the child’s face, red eyes that held more intelligence and awareness than any child’s should. “What do you do here, magus?” the demon rasped from the boy’s throat.
I tried to ignore Laydi’s whimper. “I could ask you the same thing.”
The demon howled and Laydi shrieked in fear, lunging for her kid. I grabbed her, struggling with her for a minute before pushing her gently out the door. “I’ll take care of him. Go. Go,” I said again when she looked like she’d protest. “Get some hot cocoa for him. I hear being possessed makes you cold.” I’d heard nothing of the kind, but it gave her a purpose. She stopped shoving at me and let me shut the door in her face.
When I turned back, the demon stood an inch away, staring up at me with gleeful evil. “I am here to eat this child from the inside out.”
“Why?”
The child’s brow wrinkled. “Because I can.”
“Where is it?” I walked past him, trying my damnedest not to appear scared of it. I lifted the covers, then got on all fours to peer under the bed. “What holds you here?”
“What holds me here? What are you on about, magus? Let me consume your flesh.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously? A little dramatic, isn’t it? ‘Consume your flesh.’ Grr. Argh.” I stood and poked around in the toy box, recoiling when I saw the medallion twisted around the neck of a doll. The doll’s eyes had been gouged out. “Did you do this?”
The demon chuckled.
I unwrapped the medallion, studying the crystal. This one was a deep orange. I’d seen this color once before, on one of my grandmother’s many guests at the party where I’d stabbed Mr. Grabby Hands. Fun times. I placed the medallion on the floor and pulled my knife out of my boot.
“What are you up to?”
“This,” I said, bringing the hilt down onto the crystal. With a snap of power, the demon slithered out of the boy’s body through his mouth and poured itself out onto the floor beside me. It was more of a suggestion than a shape.
“You freed me.”
“Yep. Now you can stop tormenting this poor family.” I crossed the room to the boy, who was bent over retching. “You didn’t do any permanent damage, did you?”
“I …” The demon came closer and the boy screamed, which caused a chain reaction of noise outside the door. “Hush, child. I will heal you.” The black shape touched the boy’s shoulder and after a minute, the boy’s face relaxed and he sighed the way someone did when their pain was suddenly eased. “There. All better. And he won’t remember a thing,” it added as the kid toppled into my arms looking dazed. “Now. What do you want?”
“What do you mean?”
“For freeing me, magus. Your kind always has a price.” It fairly hissed the words, undulating as if in agitation.
“First of all, not a magus. Not fully. Secondly, all I want is for you to go away and not possess nosy little witch boys or girls again. Okay?”
The demon just stood there. It didn’t have a face, so I had no way of knowing what it was thinking.
“Go. His mom wants to see him, but she doesn’t need to see you.”
“If this is a trick …”
“Not a trick. Promise.”
It vanished with a small pop of displaced air.
I picked up the broken medallion and led the boy to the door. As soon as it swung open, Laydi was there to gather him up in her arms, sobbing into his hair while he stood there with a small smile on his lips like he was riding a particularly good high.
“See this everyone?” I held up the medallion. “This is the shit you stay away from. Not the medallion, necessarily, but anything with crystals that glow. You see one, don’t pick it up, don’t touch it, and definitely don’t bleed on it. Just call me or my dad. Okay? Neither of us will tell the Keepers, but you have to be sure you don’t talk about it either. Mums the word or your entire family will be at risk. Okay?”
Laydi nodded vigorously, the other people in the room doing the same, staring at the medallion with superstitious fear. Some, I knew, had seen higher-level magi wearing them. I wondered if this was how I got the word out: one family at a time. Except what good would that do? Even if all the witches knew the magi were using demons to enhance their magic, they couldn’t stop them. They didn’t have the power or the money.
The deck was stacked firmly against them all.
Fuck.
I’d have to figure out another way. I couldn’t bring the Lodge down on my own, but perhaps I could build a demon army. The one I’d just released had asked what I wanted. What if I asked them to kill a magus and free one of their own? What if I asked them to kill as many magi as they could before getting caught?
If I ever saw the hellhound again, I would ask him if it would work.
I walked out with Daddy, pausing in front of his door so he could awkwardly hug me. “Thanks, Korri.”
“No problem.”
“How did you know what to do?”
I studied the medallion, wondering if there was a way to find out who it had belonged to. “Accident.” I held up the necklace so he could see the broken crystal that had held the demon. “What if I told you the magi were using demons to boost their power?”
His eyes grew wide. “That’s a very dangerous statement.”
I nodded. I knew it. Didn’t make it any less true, though. “What did Mom tell you about the medallion she was supposed to get from Grandmother?”
“Your mama would never enslave any creature—”
“I know that. But what if they don’t tell them what’s in the necklace? At least not right away? Mama would have had years of work before she could have risen to the second tier. Who’s to say that any of the lower-level magi even know anything about the demons?”
Daddy shook his head. “No. No. Isolde would have told me if something like this was going on.”
“She might not have been high enough level to know. They aren’t exactly a forthcoming bunch. Magi grow strong on their secrets. This might be the biggest secret of all.” I studied the remaining shards of the crystal, the intricate scrollwork on the amulet itself, and wondered who it had belonged to and how it had ended up in the basement. From the dust, it had been there a long while.
Had Mama put it down there? Why?
“Thank you for helping out your friend, Korri, but I have no interest in speculating what the magi are up to and what they are or aren’t wearing around their necks.” He pulled me in for a perfunctory hug and then unlocked the door to his apartment. “I’m going to have some tea and watch my program.”
“Daddy, if the magi are using—”
“No, Korri Jean. I don’t want to know. You and your friends, you think you’re doing something good for the WD but you’re just stirring up the magi with your protests and riots and wh
at have you. It won’t change anything, and it’ll probably make it worse. It has made it worse,” he continued when he saw I was going to interject. “Remember last year? When you blocked the Keepers from taking Jesper Kessley?”
“They made up bogus charges against her. You know as well as I do that if they took her, she wouldn’t have come back alive.”
“You condemned her neighbors to search and seizure, to arrest. How exactly did that help? If you save one witch only to hurt more, then did you really do anything good?”
We’d had this argument before, and it had hurt and pissed me off then too. And, like then, I could see him sliding away from the conversation, from me. He hadn’t been present with me since my mama died, almost as if he blamed me for her death.
“You better get back to work,” he said, and shut the door in my face with a not quite apologetic smile.
I stood for a moment staring at his door, at the number 246, the same number we’d had since Grandmother had kicked us out of her home the night Granddad died. We’d been happy here even if we didn’t have a lot of money. Happy until Mama had died, anyway. Then Daddy had drifted away, drifted right into a bottle for a long while, forgot he wasn’t dead too.
I wasn’t sure if he knew, even now, that he was alive.
Or that I was.
And wasn’t that just pitiful?
7
I went down to the basement, wanting to make sure there weren’t any other ‘toys’ for the kids to find. The place was musty, dank, and smelled like old shit. I shined my phone’s light in the corners, finding a bunch of concerning black mold, piled construction materials from a long-ago project, and evidence of squatters.
Finally, behind a support beam tucked into a dark corner, I found a small wooden crate. The lid laying off to one side had the three stacked triangles of the Conventus burned into it. Inside were several ritualistic objects: an athame with another crystal on its hilt though it didn’t glow like the one the boy had found, a glass ball, a wand with yet another dull crystal, a scrying mirror, a summoner’s pendulum and three books about … I studied their spines. “Runecraft, the Art of the Chaote, and Practical Demonology.” The demonology book would earn anyone found with it an automatic ten-year prison sentence.