Succubus Lord 9 Page 25

  The first cultist went down as Aruna’s jaws clamped around his right arm and dragged him violently to the ground. The other two bastards tried to blast the Aruna-gator with their enchanted flames, but her ectoplasmic magic simply absorbed it harmlessly.

  More importantly, their attention was no longer on me.

  I summoned the yellow fire of hatred into my left hand and then launched a flurry of enchanted shuriken at the cultist on the left. The tiny, circular razors tore through his flesh like a swarm of angry bees, and he went down hard.

  The last cultist standing spun around to face me just in time to get a face-full of my shuriken. He screamed horrifically as he was turned into a fucking pincushion, and then he stumbled backward, right toward the pool. The man tripped over his own feet, fell back into the water, and then disappeared beneath the waves.

  The Aruna-gator snapped its head toward the commotion and caught the trapped cultist’s arm as it whipped its head around.

  “Oh fuck!” the man gasped in agony. “Nonononononono!”

  Aruna dragged the fucker by his broken arm over to the pool, flung him into the water like a rag doll, and then plopped over the edge. Next, there was the sound of horror-filled screams interspersed with snapping bones and violent splashing as the Aruna-gator tore the man limb-from-limb. Finally, the water went silent and red.

  There was a flash of ectoplasm, and then the human form of Aruna emerged from the depths. She shook herself off like a wet dog before she strutted over to my position.

  “That pool’s been through a lot in the last few days,” she purred and whipped out her bhuj weapon. “How many more of these men do you think there are?”

  “I have no idea,” I admitted as I surveyed the battlefield.

  Metatron was taking on a handful of cultists off to our left, and Eligor was fighting just in the air to our right.

  The blonde knight used her elemental powers to literally move the Earth beneath the cultists’ very feet. As soon as they were on new ground, the attackers took a step forward, and Ariel’s “leapfrogs” activated.

  Small metal casings sprung up behind the men, and then there was a blinding flash of white so strong I could see it through my closed eyelids. I could only imagine what it had done to the guys who’d just seen it from two feet away.

  I didn’t have to imagine for very long, because when I opened up my eyes, I saw everything I needed to see.

  There, where the cultists eyes should have been, were two pillars of billowing smoke. The men fumbled at their now-empty eye sockets, and then were ended swiftly by Eligor’s blade against their throats.

  All the way across the yard, near the house, Libidine was attacking the cultists with acrobatic grace. The succubus had both of her hands aglow with yellow Hellfire as she spun around like a top and struck her enemies in the face.

  “I think they’ve all got it handled,” I chuckled, but then I noticed another flash of green Hellfire.

  Seven more cultists stepped through the portal and unleashed a slew of spells in our direction.

  Aruna and I dashed out of the way in opposite directions just as the enchanted projectiles struck the sod beneath our feet, and then we both went on the offensive.

  The Rakshashi tossed her chakram at the crowd with a mighty heave, but it was met almost instantly with a blast of blue Hellfire. The circular blade was instantly frozen in the air, but that was exactly what Aruna was hoping for.

  The assassin’s body was engulfed with black ectoplasm, and then she turned into a tiny rabbit.

  Now, I just needed a distraction.

  I threw out a cast of green Hellfire around a nearby tree, ripped it out of the ground with a spray of sod and sand, and then hurled it at the cultists.

  One of the men whipped around and caught the incoming log with his own emerald fire, but the other six remained focused on Aruna and me.

  I instantly recognized the man who had single-handedly caught the tree, with his short-top gray hair and chiseled features.

  It was Russo Cancio, the leader of the Order of the Exalted.

  They must be running out of men, if they were desperate enough to send their leader after us.

  I rolled out of the way of another blast of red Hellfire and came up swinging with my own shot of yellow.

  The deadly shuriken blasted toward the cultist on the far left and took out his legs with a spray of blood. As he was falling to the ground, I threw up a small barrier of purple flames, and his face smashed into the rock-hard wall violently. His body twisted as it bounced off, and then it landed on the ground, motionless.

  By this time, Aruna had closed the gap. The Rakshasi turned back into her human form, ran the blade of her bhuj through the first cultist’s throat, and then spun around and struck a second enemy in the throat with the weapon’s blunt end.

  Her attack caused the man to release his blue Hellfire, and her magical chakram was now free.

  Another cultist tried to blast the assassin, but she swiftly flipped over his head as he unleashed his attack. The Rakshasi landed at the end of the line and then held out her hand as if she was calling out to an unseen object.

  Russo and two of the cultists must have figured out what she was doing, because they ducked down and rolled out of the way.

  The other two, however, weren’t so lucky.

  Aruna’s chakram flew back toward her extended hand. It zipped past the two remaining cultists in a blur, and then a river of blood flew out of their throats as it sliced them open.

  The men fell to their knees and gasped for breath, but it was too late.

  Just then, Cancio whipped the tree around like a giant club and smashed it into Aruna’s body.

  “No!” I screamed angrily as I watched the unconscious Rakshasi tumble across the landscape.

  I charged at the three remaining cultists with my sword drawn and red Hellfire at the ready.

  Cancio took a swing at me with the enchanted tree, but I was able to duck out of the way.

  I used my momentum to push myself off the ground and out of the way of another incoming fireball, but that must have been what they were expecting.

  A blast of blue Hellfire hurled toward me, and I was forced to throw up a small violet barrier to keep myself from being frozen in place. However, the attack was able to halt my momentum, and I felt myself falling back toward the ground.

  There was another hiss of Hellfire as a glowing green portal opened up just beneath my feet.

  I didn’t know where that thing was leading to, and I sure as fuck wasn’t about to find out. I tucked my knees back into my chest, pressed the soles of my feet against my own purple shield, and propelled myself backward. As I tumbled through the air, I heard the wind swishing around me, and I knew what was coming.

  Cancio’s tree smashed into the side of my body, and the world went white for a second as searing-hot pain shot through my ribs.

  I rolled across the grass, but I was able to catch myself and flip up onto my knees.

  The tree was coming down on me from above, and I quickly threw up a barrier of purple flames to block. I felt the reverberation of the impact in my very soul, and I swore I saw a shockwave shoot out from around my body as I held strong.

  The two remaining cultists unleashed everything they had on my position, and I was forced to use my other hand to cast a protection spell around the rest of my body.

  Cancio continued to hammer at my shield as violently as he could, and I wondered how much longer I could keep this up.

  Both of my hands were currently being used for protective spells. If I wanted to fight back, I would have to expose myself.

  Or would I?

  I had an idea, but it would require me to get really, really angry. With my current situation, however, that should be no issue whatsoever.

  I’d had about enough of the Order of the Exalted. They’d spent the last six months going around and tarnishing the good reputation I’d built up, and now that we were back on Earth, they’d tried t
o kill my friends and me. I wanted nothing more than to see these assholes’ heads on the pikes around my castle, and I was going to stop at nothing to make it happen.

  Suddenly, I felt Hellfire engulf my body. I glanced down to see my torso and legs were completely covered by silver Hellfire, but my hands were still casting the purple protective spell.

  I was fucking triple-casting, and now these guys were really fucked.

  I pictured the bull-headed daggers in the cultists’ pockets. I pictured them melting into a silvery sludge and then turning themselves inside out so that, instead of hanging down harmlessly, they’d stab themselves up into the bastards’ guts. I felt the silver fire tingle across my body as I created the mental image.

  Then I heard all three of the cultists let out a yelp of pain, and their attacks ceased.

  I quickly decast my purple Hellfire, threw a wave of green over my body, and teleported myself over so I was directly behind the fuckers. Before any of them could respond, I stabbed the Unhallowed Sword through one of the grunts and blasted a basketball-sized hole through the chest of another.

  I lashed out at Russo Cancio, but he apparently still had a little bit of fight left in him.

  He ducked under my swing, ripped the dagger out of his gut, and took a stab at me.

  I deflected the attack with a shield of purple, and his dagger blade snapped at the hilt. Then I summoned red Hellfire into my hand and slugged him in the face.

  Cancio grunted in pain as the entire right side of his face was singed, but he was still going strong. He took another stab at me with his broken blade, but I simply sidestepped out of the way, grabbed his wrist, and twisted it so he’d release his weapon.

  “I didn’t give you permission to remove that thing,” I growled at the cult leader.

  Cancio looked at me with confusion in his eyes, and then it turned into a look of absolute horror.

  I summoned silver Hellfire into my hands, engulfed his broken dagger with its shimmer, and then threw the liquified metal directly into his open wound.

  The man began to flail wildly under my grip, but there was nothing he could do. I commanded the molten steel to enter his bloodstream and fill him with the essence of the very weapon he’d used to kill so many innocent people. Finally, I gave Russo Cancio a shove.

  He tried to raise his flaming red hands in defense, but his fate was sealed.

  I commanded the molten metal to return to me, as quickly as possible.

  Cancio screamed as his flesh began to bubble intensely, and then bits of sharpened metal tore out of his body from the inside. The metal tore through just about every inch of the fucker’s body, and his blood sprayed onto my feet as he was reduced to nothing but a mutilated pulp.

  I stepped back and took a few deep breaths. I’d had some creative kills in my time as a demon hunter and Demon King, but this one took the cake.

  “FATALITY!” I heard Todd snicker from behind me.

  I turned around and saw that Todd, Raph, Ariel, and Sia were now in the backyard.

  Their weapons and clothes were all covered with blood, but otherwise they looked fine.

  As I observed the rest of the battlefield, I realized it was over. All of the cultists, including their leader, were laying dead all around the yard.

  “Holy fuck,” I whistled. “Did we kill the entire Order of the Exalted?”

  “More or less,” Metatron noted as he, Aruna, who looked relatively unscathed from Cancio’s earlier attack, Liby, and Eligor walked up to me. “Everyone who tried to assault your home is dead. Surely, there are more members of the Order out there, but with Cancio now gone, it will take them decades to regroup.”

  “If they even can regroup,” Raphael added.

  “That’s it, then?” I asked rhetorically. “The Order is gone, and my name is cleared?”

  “As long as you honor our deal,” Metatron said with a nod. “You act as our guy on the inside, and the Divine will stay off your case.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I couldn’t help but chuckle with relief. “I guess I’ll be adding ‘undercover spy’ to my list of--”

  “Telefono!” Angelo Martatelli’s ghost called out from the house.

  “What’s he on about?” Eligor asked as she placed her hands on her hips.

  “Telefono!” Martatelli repeated, somewhat annoyed. “Jacob! Telefono!”

  “Hey there, pal,” Todd growled as he pretended to roll up his sleeves and walk toward the house, “nobody calls my buddy that kinda slur!”

  “He’s saying there’s a telephone call for Jacob,” Superbia corrected.

  “Who the fuck is calling me at this time of night?” I pondered. “Whoever it is, it can wait.”

  “Jacob!” the spectre called out again. “Madre!”

  “He says it’s your mother,” Sia translated as she quirked an eyebrow.

  “Ohhhh,” Todd snickered. “Maria Ralston is on the phone? I wanna talk to her. She hasn’t heard the smooth, soothing voice of the Toddster in years. Other than in her fantasies, of course.”

  “I’m gonna ignore that,” I warned the imp, “but only once.”

  “MILF!” Todd prodded as I ran back toward the house.

  I gave the imp the finger, and his cackle rang in my ears as I approached the door. I had no idea why my mom would be calling at this time of the day, unless it was an emergency.

  I threw open the sliding glass door, entered the house, and saw Angelo floating next to my phone on the coffee table.

  It was vibrating like crazy, and when I picked it up, I saw that I had already missed five calls from my parents. Panic began to set in as my mind raced with possibilities.

  Did Dad have another heart attack? Were they in a car accident? Was my deadbeat brother back in town?

  I pressed the small green “answer” button, took a deep breath, and held the phone to my ear.

  “Mom?” I asked in a fluster. “What’s wrong? Is everything--”

  “You’re a really hard man to reach, King Ralston,” a deep, nasally voice cackled from the other side. “But I figured your parents might be able to tell me how to find you.”

  My heart sank into my stomach as I recognized the voice instantly.

  It was Beelzebub.

  Chapter 17

  “So, I must ask,” Beelzebub’s voice asked from the other side of the phone, “how many did my men take out? I figured they wouldn’t be able to kill you on their own, but please tell me they at least squashed that annoying imp.”

  “Todd’s fine,” I growled into the microphone. “Where are my parents, you bastard? If you touch a single hair on their heads, I’ll--”

  “So brutish,” the King of the Eighth Circle sneered. “Always jumping right to violence. I can see why Azazel was so intimidated by you, he couldn’t dare have anyone in Hell who was more boorish than he was.”

  “Where the fuck are they, you cloak-wearing piece of shit?” I demanded.

  “Relax, King Ralston,” the demon cackled. “They’re perfectly fine. Why would I kill them before I could get your attention? Of course, now that I have it, I can’t make any promises … say hello to your son for me, Mr. and Mrs. Ralston.”

  “Jacob? Call the police!” I heard my mom cry from off in the distance.

  “We’ll be fine, son,” my dad chimed in unconvincingly. “Don’t do anything stupid!”

  “There?” Beelzebub was now back on the phone. “Satisfied? They’re alive and well.”

  “Where are you, Beelzebub?” I hissed. “And what the fuck do you want from me?”

  “I don’t want anything from you, King Ralston,” the Lord of the Flies retorted smugly. “I want you. I’m going to text you a set of coordinates. That’s where your parents and I will be, and that’s where you’ll come. You will come alone. If you don’t, I’ll slit their throats and force you to watch as their life drains from their very eyes.”

  “When I find you, I’m going to--”

  “I hope you realize the severity of what
I just said,” Beelzebub mused. “No friends. No Archangels. No succubi. I have eyes and ears everywhere, King Ralston. If I even get so much of a hint that you’re bringing along company, you’ll find nothing at these coordinates but your parents’ corpses.”

  “I’ll come alone,” I agreed. “It’ll be way more satisfying to kick your ass without any help, anyway.”

  “Always the enthusiastic one,” the Demon King said with a click of his tongue. “I hope you get out here soon. You’d hate to keep us waiting.”

  Before I could say anything snarky back, the other end of the line beeped and went to dial tone.

  “Va tutto bene, amico mio,” Angelo said sympathetically.

  The spectre attempted to give me a reassuring pat on the back, but his hand passed through my body as if it wasn’t there.

  “Jacob?” Superbia asked as she stepped through the door. “Is everything alright?”

  “Did Maria ask about me?” Todd asked hopefully as he entered just behind the succubus. “Did she sound like she was wearing something sexy?”

  The rest of the team were right behind Todd and the madame, and soon we were all crammed into the living room of my mansion.

  “G-guys … ” I stammered. “That was Beelzebub. He has my parents.”

  The team let out a collective gasp.

  “Then let’s go kick his ass,” Libidine growled. “We’ll call up your cultists,grab Shadow, and--”

  “He told me to come alone,” I explained with a sigh. “If I don’t, he’s going to kill them.”

  “But if you go alone, he’ll certainly kill you,” Raphael warned. “As you found out in Cortez, the Lord of the Flies is no pushover.”

  “I could totally come with you, bro,” Todd announced. “I can turn all invisible imp, untie your parents, and then run off with them while you kick Brundlefly’s ass. After stealing a kiss from the damsel in distress, of course.”

  “That’s too risky,” I explained. “If you so much as sneeze or kick up a cloud of sand when we’re out there, he’ll know. And then he’ll kill my parents. I have to go alone.”

  “At least let me send one of my SWAT officers with you,” Metatron pleaded. “I have a guy, Zachariah, who is a brilliant marksman. He could hide up in a rock formation far away and cover you from afar.”