by Frost, L. L.
SUCCUBUS UNDONE: UNDONE
SUCCUBUS HAREM PART 43
Copyright © 2021 by L.L. Frost
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the writer, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by L.L. Frost
Book design by L.L. Frost
Printed in the United States of America.
First Printing, 2021
Contents
The Monster
Third Time’s the Charm
Playtime is Over
Not Laughing
Life After Burning
Tethered
Mountain Guard
Forest of Bones
Spark
Triumphant Return
Reunion
From the Author
Also by L. L. Frost
About the Author
For a heartbeat, I stare at where Tobias existed only moments before. Not even his suit remains. Only the lingering heat of where our fingers brushed. Pain knifes through me, followed by relief that at least he disintegrated, unlike Julian. It means he’ll be able to return from the demon plane.
My fingers curl against my palm, trying to hold onto that small warmth for a second longer before self-preservation kicks in. I twist back, elbow flying up to crack against Detective Sharpe’s head.
With a grunt of pain, his hold on me falters.
It’s all I need to wiggle free and crawl toward the counter, screaming, “Jax! Barrier!”
There’s only one reason Victor Hesse would take out Tobias before destroying my sigil. He’s coming, and he will kill everyone here.
The witch appears from the kitchen, holding one of the old oven doors as a shield as he darts behind the counter. “I don’t have a connection!”
“What do you mean you don’t have a connection?” I shout back. “What about all those bombs you’ve dropped?”
“The ley lines follow Xander or Reese around.” He peeks out from behind the counter, then ducks back into hiding. “I’m trying, but it takes me longer to establish a link.”
“Then just use me!” I scramble across the floor, the skin between my shoulder blades itching at being exposed.
Relief fills Jax’s voice. “That should work!”
As I near the counter, a bullet digs up the floor in front of me, and a customer hiding beneath the booth nearby screams.
Undeterred, I continue forward. Victor Hesse just proved he’s a crack shot. He doesn’t want me dead. He just wants to strip away everyone around me and remove my reason to continue fighting.
I reach the counter and duck behind it next to Jax. Martha and Kelly huddle together behind him, closer to the espresso machine, their eyes wide, but their expressions determined.
Giving them a nod of encouragement, I reach for Jax’s hands. “Put up a barrier.”
He releases the oven door to link his fingers with mine, but uncertainty fills his eyes. “I power things and purify them through an overflow of magic, Adie. I don’t do this fine-tuned stuff.”
“And I don’t feed on ley line magic.” My lips pull back from my teeth in a bitter snarl. “Time to add a new skill to your repertoire.”
Nodding, he grips my hands tighter.
Something brushes against the magic spindled inside me, and a ring of acknowledgment vibrates in my bones. With a gentle tug, Jax pulls the ley line magic I hold to the surface.
Sparks crackle between our palms, then zigzag across our fingers, growing faster and faster until a ball of energy hums between us. I can feel the purpose it still holds to heal me, to help me live, and I can feel Jax’s natural instinct to turn it toward purification. Somewhere in the middle lies what we need.
“Protect those in the bakery,” I whisper, eyes on the ball of magic. “Guard them against harm.”
“Ward against evil,” Jax says. “Ward against death.”
I latch onto the word death, remembering the last time I saw Victor Hesse, how the mortifer demon had felt, his scent, the sound of his voice.
Stop Victor Hesse. The command rings through me as Jax releases my hands.
The crackling ball of magic falls to the floor between us and shatters into thousands of sparks that roll outward. They crawl along the floor and up the wall, then across the ceiling, dragging a part of my consciousness with them.
I can feel the bakery in the same way I’ve sometimes felt the house where we live, and it awakens with a similar, alien sentience. I know where Tally and Iris are upstairs, hiding in the break room, where Sophia and Jesse crouch in the kitchen, where each of my customers huddle in fear.
Eyes wide with wonder, Jax looks around at the gently glowing structure. “Do you feel that?”
I smile at Jax. “You did good.”
He shakes his head. “No, this wasn’t me. This was you.”
From the hollow left by the beast comes a gentle flutter of awareness and acceptance.
Is that the ley line? Or something new I’ll have to dig out from inside of me?
The flutter stills, as if aware of my thoughts, and guilt shoots through me. Whatever this is, it doesn’t feel demonic, but it doesn’t feel bad or necessarily separate from me, either. It just feels new.
Reaching inside, I find the place the sensation came from and gently stroke it until the flutter returns.
The two-way door slowly pushes open, and Sophia and Tally peek around the edge of the door, their eyes wide.
“Did it stop?” Sophia asks, apprehension darkening her green eyes.
“We put up a barrier, but it’s not over.” I feel that in my gut, and in the way the bottle hanging between my breasts pulses. Victor Hesse is almost here. I catch Sophia’s gaze. “Take care of the customers.”
She bites her plump, lower lip before nodding and stepping all the way out of the kitchen. Shoulders tense, she creeps past the safety of the counter and over to the first human hidden beneath a table. She murmurs to them in a soothing voice, and soon, the human lays down, eyes closing and body relaxing.
I rise from my hiding place and stride back to the broken window.
Detective Sharpe stares at me from his hiding space on the floor below the picture window. Then, his sharp eyes move to the empty place where Tobias had fallen before his attention shifts to Sophia as she quietly puts all the humans to sleep.
Finally, he looks back at me. “You’re not human.”
Studying his eyes, I once again search for that splash of magic that would mark him as fae-touched like Reese. But whatever’s going on with Detective Sharpe isn’t so obvious.
I look back out at the empty sidewalk. “I’d say you aren’t entirely human, either. You probably see strange things all the time and make up justifications to explain to yourself why what you saw is completely normal. But people like you don’t get to have normal lives, Detective Sharpe. People like you usually just disappear for the betterment of everyone else.” I glance over my shoulder at the room of sleeping humans. “They won’t remember what happened here today. I suggest you pretend not to remember, either.”
“It’s not that easy,” he growls as he pushes to his feet. “My duty is to uphold the law, no matter what.”
“Whose law?” I
lift an eyebrow. “Certainly not one that controls me.”
Movement draws my attention down the street, to a tall, skeleton-thin figure striding toward us, a black trench coat billowing behind him like a cape. Victor Hesse isn’t pretending to be human anymore. He’s committed fully to the war he chose to wage. Gone is his top hat and suit. Now he wears the skull of an akuzal, and the feathers lining the collar of his coat look suspiciously like those from a succubus.
Detective Sharpe follows my line of sight. “Who is he?”
“Victor Hesse.” Anger rushes through me, and my hands curl into fists. “He’s the monster behind everything you accused Kellen of being.”
The detective reaches into his jacket and pulls out a handgun. “What is he?”
“I don’t know,” I answer truthfully. “He used to be a mortifer. They’re demons who eat corpses. But he’s evolved into something else.”
He takes that in stride, cataloging the information away for later. “What does he want?”
“Me.” The bottle that contains the beast vibrates as if it wants to fly to its master, and I press a hand over it. “I helped take out his mass-murdering partner, so he wants a replacement.”
“What’s so special about you?” he asks without judgment. “Are you some big, bad demon, too?”
I shake my head. “Just a succubus who wants to sell cupcakes and be left alone.”
“Oh, come now, Ms. Pond,” Victor Hesse calls, his voice crackling like breaking bones. “Don’t sell yourself so short. Not just any succubus could have survived being part of my creation.” He stops in front of the broken window, his milky-blue eyes fixing on me. “Believe me, I’ve tried with others. You’re unique, as I knew you would be.”
My stomach drops, and I lurch forward a step, only to come up short. “I’m going to make you pay for every person you’ve killed.”
He grins wide, his dry, blackened lips cracking to reveal rotting meat beneath. “I’m going to enjoy you coming to heel at my side.”
His gaze shifts over the window before he lifts a finger toward the bullet hole in front of me.
His finger stops an inch from contact, and his smile broadens to display gray teeth caked with decaying flesh. “You do continue to surprise me, Ms. Pond. I’m enjoying this game far more than I expected. It will make the final outcome all the sweeter.”
He glances toward the billows of black smoke that rise into the sky from a block over and sighs. “I just wish you could have seen Mr. Cassius’s demise as clearly as you watched Mr. König’s.” His eyes jump back to me. “Did it cause you pain? Watching him disappear? Did it hurt more than when I killed Julian?”
My lips peel back from my teeth. “Stay here longer and Emil will rip you apart himself.”
Victor Hesse cocks his head to the side. “It’s odd, don’t you think? That someone as powerful as a demon of destruction hasn’t already regained his corporeal form?”
Trepidation shoots through me. “What did you do?”
“Oh, I wish I could take credit, but I was simply a means of delivery in this.” He looks the opposite way down the street from Club Fulcrum. “I wonder how Mr. König is doing?” He fakes a shiver, rubbing at his skeletal arms. “Winter must be hard right now, without you feeding from him. How will he take the loss of his companions?” He gives me a sly look. “I imagine it will be quite explosive, unless someone steps in to stop it.”
My heart lurches with panic, and I stride for the door, Victor Hesse following me pace for pace.
A strong hand wraps around my bicep, stopping me from rushing to Emil’s side, and I whip around to hiss at Detective Sharpe.
His hold on me doesn’t budge. “You’re playing right into his hands.” He nods to the door, where Victor Hesse waits. “Whatever is keeping him out, I’m guessing it doesn’t extend past this building.”
“Should I head to the next event without you, Ms. Pond?” Victor Hesse calls through the glass door. “I don’t want to miss the show.”
I strain against the detective’s hold. “What are you planning?”
“It’s not my plan.” He runs long, stick-like fingers over the barrier. “Well, not all my plan. I simply got the cogs moving faster.”
He reaches into his jacket to pull out a familiar black jar and unscrews the top as he continues, “The great and powerful elders are so afraid, they just keep pulling back farther and farther, hiding in the shadows while this world barrels forward.”
He dips a finger into the jar and pulls out a wiggling black tendril of slime. “Every demon who threatens to expose us must be locked away, Ms. Pond. They will keep us hiding until there is nothing left.” He traces an oozing black symbol over the door. “But we shouldn’t have to hide. You and I are going to change that.”
Worried, I back away from the door, dragging the detective with me. “Jax, what’s he doing?”
“I don’t know.” Jax appears next to us, studying the symbol, before he shakes his head. “It’s not something I recognize. If Xander were here...”
“Everyone, go hide in the pantry.” I yank my arm free of the detective’s hold and turn to find Sophia. “Take the humans. Lock yourselves inside.”
She nods and blurs into a green streak of motion, the humans vanishing one-by-one from the front room.
Detective Sharpe takes a wide-legged stance and raises his weapon, pointing it at Victor Hesse.
I stare at him in surprise. “You should hide, too, Detective.”
“My name’s Gavin,” he grunts. “And I don’t run from murderers, human or not.”
“Nice to meet you, Gavin.” I take up a stance beside him. “My friends call me Adie.”
“I’m Jax,” the witch says as he steps up on my other side.
“Tally.” My friend waves from beside Jax as gossamer wings lift from her shoulders.
“Sophia.” My cousin appears on Gavin’s other side.
I stare at them in surprise. “I told you all to hide.”
“We’re family,” Martha says from behind me. “We stand together.”
I glance over my shoulder to see the imps at our backs, Jesse holding a wooden spoon like a sword, while Martha and Iris lift sheet pans like shields and Kelly wields a broom.
My heart swells with pride, and I face forward, my wings slipping free from hiding.
Victor Hesse stares at us, a malicious glee shining from his dead eyes as he completes his drawing, and the door explodes inward.
“Isn’t this just heartwarming?” Victor Hesse sneers as he steps through the shattered opening.
His movements slow as the weakened barrier tries to repel him, but the spell was attached to the building, and it can’t bridge a gap as wide as the blown out doorway.
“Jax.” I reach for the witch’s hand only to find him already reaching for mine.
As our fingers link together, the magic inside me jumps down our connection, and Jax lifts his free hand. Raw magic jumps from his fingers. Not the organized ball of crackling energy he usually throws around, though. No, there’s no time for that. Instead, the magic splatters outward in a net of power that shoots toward mortifer demon.
Victor Hesse turns to the side, lifting his arm, and the magic rolls around him like water crashing around an immovable rock before it fizzles out altogether.
Dry cackles come from him as he straightens and pulls the akuzal’s skull down over his face, his milky-blue glow coming from the shadows of its eye sockets. “I expected more from your famous witches. Is that the best they can offer?”
Jax tugs harder on the magic inside me, and the next net he casts out crackles and pops with power.
This time, Victor Hesse doesn’t even flinch as he holds up a hand, fingers spread wide. Something red pulses and glows at the center of his hand, a mark carved into his rotting flesh. The net halts in mid-air for a heartbeat, then flings back toward us.
Panic shoots through me, and I release Jax to dart into the net’s path, spreading my wings wide to protect those w
ho stand behind me. The threads of magic slam into me, hissing and sizzling against my skin, and I drop to one knee as pain eats through me.
Jax falls to his knees at my side, trying to stop the spell he created, but as he said before, he’s no good at the fine-tuned stuff, and it slips free of his grasp to wrap tighter around me.
A sharp crack fills the air, followed by another, and Victor Hesse stumbles a step back toward the entrance. Detective Sharpe keeps shooting, the bullets pelting against the mortifer demon without harming him. But they offer the distraction Tally and Sofia need as they dart forward from opposite sides.
In a blur of motion, Victor Hesse’s fist swings, knocking Tally from the air. She flies across the room, her body crashing into one of the booths and toppling over the table.
Before she even lands, Victor Hesse catches Sophia, plucking her out of hyper-speed. His hand wraps around her throat, lifting her high off the ground. Her legs kick for purchase as she clutches at his skeletal arm, and choked noises come from her gaping mouth as her eyes bug out.
Jax flinches, half rising to go to Tally, before he shakes his head and returns to pulling at the net that contains me.
A screech of anger comes from behind me before Jesse darts past. The tiny imp flings herself at the larger demon, the spoon in her hand slamming into his chest handle first.
Victor Hesse grunts, then reaches down to grab Jesse by the hair and tosses her aside. She slams against the wall, her small body losing shape.
Terrified, I pull at the strings of magic that cut into my flesh as I struggle to rise, to protect my friends.
The other imps charge forward, swinging their makeshift weapons, but he swats them aside with frightening ease before he gives Sophia a hard shake. Something snaps, and Sophia’s body falls limp within his hold before slowly disintegrating in a shower of green glitter.