Succubus Lord 9 Read online

  “Holy fuck!” the imp gasped. “How is this guy still following us? I thought you went all Darth Vader on his ass, Jakey?”

  I glanced back and saw a figure in shining white armor hurtling toward us upon a pair of massive feathery wings.

  Metatron.

  “I did!” I argued. “I figured cutting his fucking hand off would have been enough!”

  “Did you tell him you were his father?” the imp asked.

  “What?” I shot back with a raised eyebrow. “Why the fuck would I do that?”

  Todd slapped his hand on his forehead as if he had an epiphany.

  “There’s your problem, bro,” he explained. “You just went for the physical mutilation and not the emotional one.”

  “Well, I’ll be sure to try that next time,” I sighed. “Just make sure we stay on the road, okay?”

  Metatron launched another flurry of Divine Light at our vehicle, and our bodies were thrown violently to the side as Lola swerved to dodge them. The portal was now only a few feet away, but Metatron was gaining on us quickly.

  My heart thumped in my chest as the adrenaline ran through my veins and Back in Black blared in my ears.

  “Aw, shit,” Todd groaned. “Everybody hold on!”

  There was the sound of a spell hitting the pavement behind us, and suddenly Lola’s back end was knocked up into the air. We all braced ourselves, but thankfully the vehicle still had enough momentum to keep it moving forward.

  As we passed through the portal, the whole world went white. My body felt like it was being encompassed by some sort of deep, warm, tingling sensation, and the light around us was so intense I thought for a second my retinas were burning.

  Then the world returned to normal.

  At least, as normal as it could be when your car was flipping forward, end-over-end, over a landscape of clouds.

  “I hope you liked what I had for lunch, bro,” Todd gagged, “because I think we’re all about to see it again.”

  I closed my eyes and called forth my green Hellfire. I surrounded the vehicle with the telekinetic spell, but nothing seemed to happen. The Demonic magic was too weak up here in Divine territory, but if I didn’t do something fast, we were going to lose our getaway car.

  And, even more importantly, Raphael.

  I closed my eyes and tried to summon up every single disgusting thought I could muster. I thought about how this whole situation could have been avoided, how I should have never been brought to trial, and how Beelzebub had his bastards out there ruining my good name. This whole fucking thing was a waste of time, time I could be spending building up my army and preparing for the impending invasion of the Fourth Circle.

  I felt the green Hellfire spread across my entire body, and then Lola came to a sudden halt.

  “Holy shit, bro,” Todd panted from the driver’s seat. “You caught us.”

  “Never doubted myself for a minute,” I chuckled awkwardly.

  I lowered the vehicle down onto the cloudy surface as quickly and delicately as I could, and then we sped off once more.

  “Son of a bitch,” Eligor growled. “This guy’s relentless!”

  I glanced back to see Metatron emerge through the glowing white portal, still hellbent on capturing us.

  “We just need to keep him off our tail until we reach the Pearly Gates,” I explained. “Then Raph can cast his spell, and we’ll be back on Earth in no time.”

  “Uh … ” Ariel said somberly. “That might be an issue. Raphael is out, guys.”

  I whipped around in my seat and saw that the Archangel’s eyes were closed, and his body was heaving with deep, shallow breaths.

  “Shit!” I growled. “Stay with us, Raph.”

  “I’m almost there,” Todd announced. “We just need to keep Megatron off us for a few more minutes.”

  “I’ll handle flyboy up there,” Eligor announced and summoned lime green Hellfire into her hands.

  “How the shit are you gonna do that?” Todd asked in a panic. “We’re driving on a giant fucking cloud!”

  “Exactly,” the knight explained. “And clouds are giant balls of mist, right?”

  “Say … ” Todd pondered aloud. “How the fuck is it holding a whole car if that’s--”

  “Don’t think too hard about it,” Eligor shot back. “Just get us out of here.”

  Todd swerved out of the way of another one of Metatron’s blasts, and I looked back to see the landscape become encased in lime green Hellfire.

  Suddenly, two giant geysers of water shot up from the ground and surrounded Metatron on both sides.

  Eligor clapped her hands shut, and the roaring spouts of liquid closed in on the Archangel.

  Metatron’s body was caught up in the watery twister as his armored form was tossed and tumbled like clothes in a washing machine.

  The blonde knight in the back seat held onto her spell for as long as she could, until the geyser was nearly out of sight.

  “Excellent work, Goldilocks,” Todd mused as we approached the backside of the Pearly Gates. “Now everybody hang on!”

  The imp slammed his foot down on the gas pedal as far as it would go, and Lola lurched forward at the breakneck speed of one-hundred and fifty miles per hour. As the shiny metal of the gates grew closer, I threw out a glowing hand of purple and encased Lola’s fender with a protective spell.

  We slammed into the gates, and they burst open without incident. Vapor trails were shooting up from beneath the wheels of Lola as we peeled out of Heaven, and Saint Peter shook his fists and yelled second-grade profanities at us as we shot past.

  “Uh, guys,” Todd muttered in a panic. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re running out of cloud. Is Raphey awake yet?”

  “No,” Eligor sighed. “And what do you mean we’re running out of cloud?”

  I looked back at Raphael and saw he was now breathing much more slowly than normal. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the white blur of Metatron off in the distance, heading in our direction. Then I glanced ahead and saw that Todd was right. A few miles in front of us, the cloudy landscape gave way to a dark abyss.

  We needed to get Raph conscious, and we needed to do it quickly.

  “Keep driving, Todd,” I ordered.

  “Are you fucking crazy, bro?” he gasped. “We don’t know what’s down there? That could be a portal to purgatory or the Ninth Circle of Hell or Grandma Georgina’s outhouse for all we fucking know!”

  “Just keep driving!” I shot back. “Eligor, use your powers to see if you can wake him up.”

  The knight gave me an understanding nod, and then she threw her glowing hand out the window. Bits of mist began to gather into her hand until she had a full-on ball of water in her hands. Then she hauled back and tossed the liquid onto Raphael’s face.

  The Archangel’s eyes sprung open as he sat to attention.

  “W-what’d I-” he began.

  “We’re through the Pearly Gates,” I explained as I watched Metatron growing nearer. “Teleport us out of here, now!”

  “I’ll try,” Raph said weakly, and then he summoned a bit of Divine Light into his hand.

  The Archangel closed his eyes as the glowing white light spread across his body and onto the seat around him. However, that’s as far as it got.

  “Come on, Raphael,” Ariel encouraged him. “Keep it up! You can do this!”

  The light spread a few more inches across the interior of the vehicle, but it wasn’t nearly enough.

  “Fuuuuuuuckkk me,” Todd groaned. “We’re gonna go over in t-minus ten, nine, eight--”

  Before he finished the countdown, the nose of Lola went over the edge of the cloud. My body felt weightless as the world seemed to drop out from underneath to reveal a vast abyss of darkness.

  “I thought you said we had ten seconds?” Eligor screamed.

  “Math was never my best subject, okay?” Todd retorted as his eyes grew wide.

  “Raph, come on!” I pleaded with the Archangel.


  “Feel the burn, Raph!” Ariel encouraged once more. “Focus all your energy from your body into your spell!”

  Energy. That was it. Raph’s Divine Light was like a power source, and the Archangel was in desperate need of a recharge.

  We just needed to be the chargers.

  “Ariel!” I commanded the redhead. “Stab him with your enchanted daggers.”

  “You want her to do what?” Raphael gasped.

  “Just trust me on this,” I explained as I summoned a small ball of my own Divine Light into my hands. “If all Divine magic works anything like my own, it can be powered up by siphoning off the magic from other spellcasters. It’s like asphalt absorbing the heat of the sun and getting hotter. Make sense?”

  “Not completely,” Ariel admitted, “but I trust your judgement.”

  The car was now plummeting at full speed, and the darkness below was beginning to surround us. We had to act fast.

  “On three,” I commanded the angel. “One … two … three!”

  I blasted a small beam of Divine magic directly into the Archangel’s stomach. At the same time, Ariel called forth her hand-mounted daggers and stabbed them into Raphael’s leg.

  The Archangel let out a yelp of pain, but then his cries slowly grew into a scream of determination. His spell’s power began to increase, and soon the entire vehicle was engulfed in the blinding white light.

  “Yes!” I couldn’t help but declare. “It worked!”

  At this moment, Metatron’s figure came over the clouds and began to hurtle down toward us.

  I extended both of my middle fingers into the air, pointed them in the Archangel’s direction, and then the world when white.

  Chapter 10

  As the blinding white light faded out from my vision, our surroundings became more clear. We were currently parked in front of a two-car garage attached to a large white and red, Spanish villa-style mansion. There were a few acres of lush green grass off to the side, with rosewood trees interspersed every fifty feet or so.

  It had worked. We were back on Earth.

  We were home.

  “We did it,” I half-laughed, half-sighed. “Good work, Raph. Raph?”

  I looked back and saw the Archangel was now completely passed out, and his chest was moving ever so slowly as blood poured from the wound on his abdomen.

  Ariel put two fingers on the Archangel’s neck and gasped.

  “His pulse is really weak,” she gulped. “He needs medical attention now.”

  I threw open the door of the vehicle and ran over to the passenger-side rear. The door had already been opened, so I reached in, tossed one of Raph’s arms around my shoulder, and helped to stand him up.

  Ariel took his other side, and then we hurriedly made our way to the front door.

  Todd returned to his imp form as he scurried ahead of us, threw open the door, and held it in place.

  “Wounded Archangel, coming through!” he called back into the halls of the mansion.

  Ariel and I passed through the threshold and quickly moved into the living room.

  Ira’s sub, Liby, and Sia were all sitting on the couch chatting happily when we entered.

  “Sia, we need your help,” I explained. “Raphael is hurt bad.”

  Both of the succubi jumped up with in a flash, and Ariel and I laid the Archangel down onto the leather piece of furniture.

  “He looks quite rough,” Sia observed as she summoned her golden healing flames into her hand. “May I ask what happened?”

  “The night of my life,” Ira’s sub cooed. “That’s what it looks like to me!”

  Superbia placed her glowing hand against Raphael’s wound, and its warm shimmer spread like wildfire. Within seconds, the bright red blood began to coagulate and turn into a scab. Then the skin around the wound slowly started to pull itself back together until it looked like there was nothing there at all.

  “There,” Sia sighed. “The bleeding is stopped. But, just for good measure … ”

  She closed her eyes again, and her healing spell spread all the way across Raphael’s body. His bruises and scrapes healed in seconds flat, and even the blood on his clothing dried up and flaked off into the air.

  “Please don’t die on me, Raphey,” Todd pleaded as he ran into the room. “We need you, bro. Plus, you still owe me fifty bucks!”

  I shot the imp a questioning glare, and he pursed his lips devilishly.

  “But mostly that first thing,” he said with a firm nod.

  “We broke out of Heaven,” I explained to my succubi. “Raphael was injured by Metatron.”

  “Broke out of Heaven?” Libidine said in shock. “How is that even possible?”

  “We had a great helper,” I explained and pointed to the redhead beside me. “This is Ariel. She’s an angel who decided to join us.”

  Libidine stepped forward and extended her hand happily.

  “Pleased to meet you, Ariel.” She grinned as she shook the redhead’s hand. “It’s always great to have some fresh meat on the team.”

  “I don’t think she’s got one of those, Lib,” Todd whispered loud enough for everyone to hear. “We’d see it through those yoga pants.”

  Ariel let out a slight giggle, and then Liby’s cheeks went red.

  “I could have worded that better,” the dark-haired succubus admitted. “Anyway, welcome to the team.”

  Superbia finally decast her healing spell and stood up from tending Raphael.

  “He’ll be fine,” the madame explained, “but he’ll need to rest for awhile. Now, let’s work on you.”

  “Oh thank God,” I sighed as I plopped down on one of the nearby chairs.

  “I don’t think he’s the one you should be thanking right now,” Eligor muttered. “We wouldn’t be in this mess right now if it wasn’t for the Exalted One.”

  “What exactly happened in Heaven?” Sia asked again as she walked over and placed a glowing gold hand on my arm. “I thought you two were going to be on trial.”

  I explained everything to my succubi while the madame worked on healing me. I told them all about the trial, how it looked like we had all the momentum after Cupi and Invidia’s testimony, but then things took a turn for the worse with the Ascended Soul and the video evidence. I told them about how Ariel had helped us escape, the beating we gave Metatron, and the way we Dukes of Hazzard-ed it off the cloud at the end.

  “That sounds like quite the trial,” Sia admitted.

  “All those brutal fights?” the sub purred. “All those cuts and bruises and beatings? That really does sound like Heaven.”

  “Do you have any clue as to where this wannabe cult will strike next?” Libidine asked curiously.

  “Not a clue,” I sighed. “All I know is they dress up like my cultists and go around killing people in the name of ‘The Exalted One and his herald, Jacob Ralston.’”

  “That sounds very familiar,” Superbia admitted as she stroked her petite chin, “but definitely not the Cult of Beelzebub. They’re much less subtle in their ways. In fact, that’s where Oliver and Jane are right now, out battling a sect that’s been trying to force its way onto our turf.”

  “Who else could it be?” I demanded. “He’s the one who’s out to get me, and Raph told me all this behind the scenes manipulation shit is right up his alley.”

  “If he was really serious on wanting to ‘get you,’” a familiar, seductive voice purred from the other room, “he would have just hired me.”

  I turned around to see a beautiful woman leaning against the doorway of the dining room. She had the slim figure of an acrobat, with long brown hair that flowed gracefully in battle. The woman was wearing a dark purple wrap-around top with matching colored pants whose fabric was somewhat flowy.

  It was the Rakshasi assassin, Aruna.

  Eligor drew her divine sword, and Ariel summoned forth her claws.

  “It’s alright,” I promised them. “She’s a friend.”

  “This time,” Aruna said coyly, “but
only because the redhead is paying me well. I must admit, though, I do like these new additions you’ve made to your team. They’ve got a lot of spunk.”

  “Just this one,” Todd explained matter-of-factly as he pointed at Eligor. “I don’t think Jakey’s had sex with Ariel yet.”

  Everyone in the room turned to look at the imp, and then realization spread across his face.

  “Ohhhhhh,” he mumbled foolishly. “You’re talking about being spunky, not love juice. I gotcha.”

  “Right,” Aruna said with a roll of her eyes.

  I turned to Sia and gestured back to the Rakshasi.

  “Why did you hire her?” I asked. “Not that I don’t appreciate the company, but we had things under control.”

  “We needed a contingency plan,” Sia said with a shrug. “I didn’t know how things were going to go with your trial, so I hired Aruna. You should be glad I did. We may not need to send her on a rescue mission to Heaven, but we could certainly use her to help track down your slanderers.”

  “Did I hear you say ‘track?’” the assassin purred. “I’m always down for a good cat and mouse game.”

  “That is correct,” Superbia announced as she switched to a more professional tone. “Someone is slandering Jacob’s good name, we think it might be--”

  “Beelzebub,” Aruna finished as she grabbed an apple off the marble counter. “I heard the whole story.”

  “Oh,” Sia said, somewhat flustered. “Then you should know Jacob is going to need--”

  “A person to help hunt down these bastards, kill them, and then get one of them to squeal,” the Rakshasi finished. “Look, Superbia, you already paid me. Just tell me what you need me to do, and I will make it happen.”

  “Unfortunately, right now I just need you to hold tight and await further instructions,” the redhead explained.

  Aruna took a bite of the apple and gulped it down as she cocked her head and shrugged.

  “Fine with me,” she mused, “but realize I charge by the day.”

  “Such dishonor,” Eligor said as she clicked her tongue.