Firecracker Ch. 02

"Fuck me." He meant to shout it, but it came out as a dusty whimper. He couldn't even hear his own words over the sound and fury of the circling Iblis.

But K'taal heard him. It stopped it's furious circle-stalking. It stood in front of him and reared onto it's hind four legs. The three-pronged beak opened, showing a hideous lamprey circle of teeth that seemed to go on forever. He remembered not to breathe in, just a moment too late, and the screech made Isaac physically weak, paralyzing his limbs, spiking his head with agony. The air from K'taal's lungs was cold and acrid, drying the lining of Isaac's lungs, making him cough and fall to his knees. The only warmth he felt was the dribble of fear-piss down his leg.

It's skin was wet and icy. Slick as an eel, but not a fraction as soft. Isaac cried out with revulsion, trying to recoil his skin away from that slick corpse-cold. His cheek was scraping against the dirt road, he struggled to get on his hands and knees, anything but prone. Somewhere, somehow, in the terror-blank of his mind, Isaac remembered. I have to trap it. I have to trap it or-.

He couldn't even keep that fragment straight, not with something huge and sharp and cold stabbing at the small of his back.

He bit his scream between painted lips. He writhed onto his back, his limbs slow and heavy, using K'taal's wet rotten hide to slip inside his grip. "Fuck me!" This time it came out a snarl. He reached up with both hands, grasping thick hollow quills for support. Isaac couldn't lay his hands willingly on that black frost-rimed skin. He would go insane.

The thick shadowlimbs tore his legs apart, pushed one knee up to his chest. "Oh fuck." Isaac whimpered. "Oh F—"

He wasn't able to scream when the Iblis first entered him. He greyed out momentarily from the shock. When he opened his eyes, he could see the thing thrusting over him. It wasn't the pain. It was the coldness. The coldness was killing him, freezing him from the inside out.

"Gotcha." Isaac gasped. "I fucking got you."

It was the last thing he ever wanted to do, and he knew it would hurt.

Isaac let out a scream of anticipation, and clenched down with his ass.

K'taal screamed back. This wasn't a bone-cold rush of poison air. This was a startled painful screech. The humped oilblack harbinger that had killed seven people wasn't just afraid. It was terrified. The gigantic hurting cock in his ass didn't seem as big, as hard, and it wasn't a fraction as cold.

"Yeah? Getting a little hot for ya?" Isaac clawed at the sleek hide of the shadowbeast. Where his fingers went, the skin scorched and blistered. "Little too hot for you? Too fucking bad!" He squeezed his asshole hard as he could, gasping with pain, while the Iblis screeched and reared, trying to recoil away.

"Isaac, let go!" Willem was shouting. When did he get here? The Iblis tried to just turn tail and run. It turned completely around, trying to twist and jerk out of the half-incubus that had trapped it. Isaac was holding him too hard. They were stuck together, like mating dogs. It screeched and whimpered with pain, shuddering it's many limbs. The bone-crest clacked and rattled as it dragged the halfling behind it for half a dozen meters, skinning Isaac's back raw.

Isaac barely felt the pain of his skinned back. "It's too strong!" He shouted to Willem. Softer, he said. "Come here, K'taal. Don't you like me?" He redoubled his Glammour, binding the Iblis to him in strands of an invisible net, hotter than coals, sharper than wire.

When he hugged the repulsive black body to him with arms, legs, and tail. The beast squirmed and sobbed with anguish even while desperately thrusting it's thoroughly softened (?melted?) cock. The air was rank with rotting scorched flesh. Isaac could feel something building up in his bones, in the center of his chest, where his optic nerves crossed in the fleshy bridge between the halves of his brain, in his gut, in the heels of his feet and the knuckles of his hands. It wasn't an orgasm. His limp cock flopped between the two of them like a worm. It was something unspoken and glorious that he rushed towards. Something powerful.

"C'mere baby." Isaac crooned. Mocking the writhing Iblis in his arms. "I'll give you some sugar."

"Isaac!" Willem screamed.

Isaac kicked himself on top of the struggling demon, and exploded. He reached the peak of the not-gasm, and the world was suddenly nothing but fire. Fire from his eyes, his skin, his hands, his mouth. Consuming him, part of him. He was fire. And for the briefest moment, he knew what it was like to be a pure demon, insubstantial, an aspect of inferno.

And he liked it.

--

Willem was the closest thing on modern planet earth to a classically-trained demoneater.

His mother had taught him an eclectic mixture of techniques from cultures and schools of thought from around the world. From focusing chakras, to performing a ruqyah, to using sonic frequencies as a deterrent. He had been tutored for a year each by three other demoneaters, from Japan, Russia, and Iran. As well as taking lessons from demonologists too numerous to count.

Yet even as he saw what happened in front of his own eyes, he struggled to believe it. Nowhere-never, had he learned how an incubus—a half-incubus at that—could do what his Isaac was doing.

"Isaac!" His throat was raw from smoke. His body was streaked with blue paint, not a sacrifice's broken circles, but spirals of warding runes within protective overlapping circles. Circular chains of protection for himself, the demoneater. Meanwhile, he had practically strung Isaac up with a dinner bell 'round his neck.

Although, apparently not defenseless.

Isaac rolled on top of the chittering, terrified Iblis. Willem had personally seen the damage an Iblis could do to humans, but some how, some way, Isaac was basically unharmed. He could feel the heat blistering from the halfling's body nearly ten yards away, out of the range of K'taal's thrashing wings and legs. The ground was torn up, a stunted prairie tree was splintered, boulders torn up, but his boyfriend was clenching onto the wounded demon like a vise and all K'taal was doing was taking it, screaming all the while.

It was the only reason he wasn't already in there. If he broke Isaac's Glammour, the halfling was dead.

Suddenly, there was fire. There was no concussive blast. Only the howling wind-suck as the flames ate up the oxygen, and K'taal was free. Flames licked it's body, black flesh sloughing off against every branch and stone, as it stumbled, blind and keening from the inferno.

Right into the inferno's boyfriend.

"Min!" He spoke the words of their covenant in the low tongue. The bastardized mongrel language of demon and man. The words had power that the demon- and man-tongues lacked.

K'taal was burning, wounded, pinned by the Afreet Willem kept in his stomach. But that didn't mean it was over. He spoke the now-familiar low incantation. The phrase that kept him fireproof.

Willem had a demon to swallow. Enchilada hated this part. Hated it so badly that the wisp finally broke the bond between them. Willem barely noticed him go. Barely noticed the pale bleeding body of his lover shivering in the circle of scorched earth.

"You fucker." Willem unhinged his jaw. There wouldn't be any more speech for K'taal. Low or otherwise.

"Mercy." The burning thing pleaded. "Mercy." It's voice was the rasp of millstones. The splintering of bones. The crumbling of forgotten idols. It smelled like rotting flesh as it burned. A smell as strong as a concrete wall. As it begged, the milky heat-scarred eyes popped and leaked down it's long beak. The vitreous fluid was fibrous and smelled like sulfur.

Willem bound that beak shut by a chain threaded with white snakeskin. He punctured those milky staring eyes that were intact, buried his fingers to the third knuckle.

His grip set, he began to feed. The waves of pleasure and agony racked him. The flambéed Iblis tasted as foul as he smelled. It struggled the whole while. Down to the last twitching foot. When the demoneater was finished, he could barely stand, and the stars were fading.

But Willem doubted if any meal had ever satisfied him more.

--

Isaac heard their voices dimly, as if through a caul. Words were so indistinct, made even harder to hear by the noise from the engine.

He was still naked, but now he was curled up in the backseat of the SUV, covered by a creased brown leather jacket. The smell of it comforted him, despite an uneasy pang of déjà vu.

"That's the largest demon I've swallowed in a while." Isaac heard the voice first, the words took a moment to stick. It was just such a relief to hear that voice, though he couldn't quite reason out why. "The motel is just a little further up this road, I'll get a cab to pick up my car from the campsite. Thank you for driving us, I don't think I'm good to drive."

"Sure. But I want to stay with you until he wakes up. Boss is going to have questions. And I don't like to face her empty-handed." Jo's voice was the softest Isaac had heard it, yet. "The boy handled himself well. And he's the only reason there aren't eleven bodybags in that ambulance instead of seven. That's going to count for a lot with her."

"I wish you had just taken him somewhere safe. That took hours, and he's in bad shape. I think he inhaled some of K'taal's breath, and-"

Isaac tried to sit up, and grunted. His entire body felt like a bruise. Every part of him was strained and aching. His stomach felt like it was twisting inside out. He lay back down. Surrendering after the first attempt. He could barely hear Willem's words through the pounding in his temples.

"Hey... Hey, you're awake. You're okay now." Willem didn't look much better than he did. His cheeks were smeared with blue paint, the pattern long since rubbed away. He had deep grey creases under his eyes, dark enough to be bruises. The whites of his eyes were badly bloodshot. It looked like staying awake was a huge effort for him.

"Am... I?" Isaac whispered, his voice was hoarse, almost gone. Everything felt so dim. So fuzzy. The movement of the car made him nauseous. His lips were numb, like they had been shot up with Novocain. Speaking took an effort, and everything was sliding in and out of focus. He forgot the rest of his question. His head felt so heavy. He used the fingers of his left hand to tilt his own head back. "Am... am... W-Will?" His voice cracked on the last word.

"Damn it." Willem's fingers felt warm. Normally they didn't. Normally they felt so cool, soothing. When Willem held up his head, Isaac didn't have to strain the muscles of his neck and shoulders. He felt Willem's thumb pulling open his eyelid. He let out a feeble whine of annoyance, batting at the offending hand.

"Fuck. Hey, hey, stay with me, Iz. The motel is just up the road. I'll take care of you there. You're gonna be okay."

Jo-Ann 'Bad Wound' Whelk kept her eyes on the road. "What's wrong with him?"

Isaac let his head fall back to the upholstered seat. The hollow feeling in his gut didn't really matter. But he couldn't seem to get warm. He feebly pawed at the leather jacket, trying to pull it closer. His teeth were chittering. He could barely hear Will reply. "He isn't just poisoned. Whatever he did, however he did it, he's got nothing left. He's starving."

As the sky bled pale, the SUV pulled into the motel parking lot. As the car idled, Isaac raised his body up from the upholstery of the seat. His arms were shaky, his muscles had all the strength of old rotted rubber bands. He couldn't see. He blinked. Over and over, trying to see through the scrim of shadows falling over his vision like soft moth wings.

"Can't." His lips and tongue felt like they were filled with sand. He tried to work some saliva into his mouth. He couldn't feel his tongue touch the inside of his mouth. He could only hear the swiping sound inside his head, minute and dry and desperate. He didn't feel the breeze when Willem opened up the back door. Didn't see the door open.

Willem gently manhandled the poisoned halfling out of the backseat. Isaac moaned painfully as Willem's arm cupped his scraped back. Whelk had cleaned the wounds while he was unconscious. His sense of smell seemed to be the only thing not affected by the poison. He could smell Willem as the older man hefted him up. The smell was distinct for him, he would recognize it anywhere.

Starving, poisoned, and barely conscious, it didn't matter. Willem had him.

"I'll come to you as soon as he's fed and stabilized, Jo."

The tiny woman getting out of the SUV shook her head, the bun ticking back and forth at the base of her neck. "You're useless after you swallow them, Will. Especially the big ones. Get your rest. I'm in room nine."

"Thanks, Jo-Ann."

Isaac blinked and blinked. Trying to clear the fluttering shadowwings from his vision. He was still blinking when Willem carried him over the threshold. Willem's arms under his knees, around his scraped shoulders felt feverishly warm. Isaac could hear a dim clicking sound. Is that my teeth?

It was.

"You're lucky." Didn't feel that way. "You didn't fill your lungs all the way. If you had, your veins would be black by now." As it was, the veins in his arms and temples were taking on an unpleasant bulging quality. Isaac felt something brush his forehead. A kiss.

Then he felt the bed under him. Willem quickly pulled the coverlets down over the shivering halfling. Isaac moaned. He couldn't get warm. He could hear the bathtub gurgle, then roar through the thin wall. Where was Willem?"

Isaac only had to mew once with fear before the older man was at his side again, stroking sweaty hair out of Isaac's dull black eyes. His tail lay limp on the coverlet between his legs. At Willem's touch, the tips of his tail twitched feebly.

"I wish this was over." Willem whispered. He carefully picked Isaac up. The halfling's collarbones were wings again. He weighed about as much as a rag doll. "But this isn't going to be fun."

They were in the bathroom. Willem emptied a clear tube of pink rock salt into the tub. The salt was mined from the Himalayas, and had been triple-blessed by five flavors of holy man from all around the world. It was the only surefire cure for Iblis venom.

Unfortunately, a half-incubus wasn't immune to that kind of firepower. Willem carefully lowered Isaac into the tub. "I'm so sorry." He whispered. He kept his left hand under Isaac's head, keeping his face above water.

The instant Isaac came in contact with the water, venom started to seep out of his pores. His veins lost their unhealthy grey tinge, the mottled whites of his eyes cleared. Red blood seeped back into his lips, eyelids, and fingernails. The water billowed with clouds of black inky Iblis venom.

Willem checked an old-fashioned silver stopwatch anxiously. Isaac started to moan. He struggled and thrashed, splashing grey water everywhere. He tried to climb out. "It hurts!" He babbled, his mouth no longer numb. "Willem, Will, Will it BURNS!"

Willem's hands, forced him down into the firewater. All real heat had lost it's sting for Isaac, but the black water around him was scalding him, killing him. He was weak and emaciated from whatever he had done to the Iblis. Too weak to fight against the demoneater holding him still.

"I'm sorry!" Willem choked. "You have to get it out. All of it. Just a few seconds longer, Iz. Just a few more!"

Isaac went stiff in the water, sobbing and shaking with the effort of holding still. His skin had to be melting off of his bones. The water was molten and evil and Willem was holding him down. "I have to get your face."

"No!" Isaac begged, he tried to sit up again, but Willem pushed him down.

"I am so sorry Isaac." Willem grabbed a cloth from the grey water and lay it over Isaac's face, pressing his hand down over the half-demon's mouth to muffle the agonized scream and puff of black steam.

Even on Willem's hands, the saltwater felt caustic, like strong bleach. "Fifteen seconds, Iz, just a little longer." He yanked the drainplug a few seconds early. The water was the color of ink, as it drained it left a chalky black ring on the inside of the plastic tub.

Isaac wasn't struggling anymore. His ribs were rising and falling in the inky water, shallow, quick, like a sick dog. Willem snatched the rag off his face and twisted the knob open. The shower curtain wasn't drawn, so hot water needled down on the both of them, pooling on the small white tiles of the bathroom floor.

Black beads of venom ripened and trickled down Isaac's leeched-white skin. The scummy water was sucked down the drain and the unsalted water washed off the last of the black poison and burning salt.

Willem shrugged out of his shirt and jeans He stepped into the tub, feeling the water pelt his back. He made sure his feet had a good grip on the pebbled no-slip floor of the tub, and he pulled Isaac up. The halfling was semiconscious. He had a weak grip on Willem's arms, trying to stabilize himself.

Willem turned so Isaac took the brunt of the spray, making sure that the water washed away every trace of venom and salt from Isaac's hair, feathers, and tail. From the raw scraped skin down his back.

Isaac's lidded eyes fluttered open. The whites of his eyes were clear and healthy, but his irises were black. An undifferentiated flat void.

"W-Will?"

"How do you feel? You must be hungry, don't worry I'm gonna—"

"Shh..." Isaac slumped into his arms. More from being unsteady than anything. Willem twisted the knob shut. It was quiet in the puddled bathroom, save for the water dripping from their bodies. He could hear the engines of the cars on the highway, hear Isaac's labored breathing. He had a ball of lead in his gut. He knew what Isaac was going to say.

Where were you?

Why didn't you come for me?

Don't touch me.

"I think I love you."

The five small words hung between them. Willem started to say something, but shut his mouth when Isaac spoke.

"I... I'll figure that out later, when I can think. Re-regardless, you... brought me back." Isaac's words were slow and a little slurred, broken by a big yawn. "So stop... Stop punishing yourself."

Willem let out a shaky little laugh as the heavy sick feeling in his gut melted away. At least a bit. He kissed Isaac between his horns. "You're too goddamn good for me. Too good for this world."

"Please... I kn-know you're tired..." Isaac yawned hugely, and Willem could see that his canines, normally slight points, had elongated into something like fangs. "But I'm so hungry."

The halfling was as light as a bundle of sticks. A faggot Willem mused. Isaac was mumbling something. He could only hear snatches of it. "Already used Glammour on that thing... Don't wanna do it again... I think I exploded... Should we look into that?"

"Sure we will, Firecracker." Willem kissed him on the mouth and set him on the bed. He crawled onto the bed, and cradled Isaac's head on his stomach. "But first, time for nom."

"Nom-nom-nom." Isaac said sleepily, turning his head. Willem did his best not to hiss when the halfling scraped the head of his cock on one of those fangs. "Soh'rhy." It sounded sincere. Or at least as sincere as somebody could sound with a mouthful of dick.

Isaac had only ever gotten tipsy before. But he felt that being poisoned was a lot like being drunk, except without the fun parts.

Willem's cock was perfect. It reminded him of how his used to look, before the day he had grown horns. With every suck and slurp, he felt a little more awake, a little less numb. It wasn't an entirely good thing. His body felt sore in places he didn't even know he could be sore. His ass hurt, and he was so tired.

"Hey..." Willem yawned hugely. "Did you fall asleep?"