Succubus Summoning 210

"Do you know why I'm the one accompanying you on this search?" Nÿte asked Phil.

Phil shook his head.

They were down in the tunnels below the castle. Their only illumination was provided by a small globe of yellow light that orbited Phil like a planetary body. A basic light spell. One most first year warlocks knew. He'd summoned it as Nÿte had led him down some stairs and into the pitch-black cellar system. It was a weak light source. The walls were mostly hidden in thick clotted shadows. To Phil's imagination the darkness seemed to have a tangible presence, as if it was composed of substance rather than the absence of light. He was even a little afraid the darkness might reach out and take his fragile ball of light like wolves taking down a lamb.

"The others want to have fun with our intruders without upsetting you," Nÿte said.

"By fun, you mean kill them?" Phil asked.

"It is the customary way of dealing with invading warlocks," Nÿte said.

"Even after I asked them to help them," Phil said, dejected.

Nÿte smiled. Her porcelain-pale face was luminous in the gloom of the tunnel.

"Succubi are manipulative creatures," she said. "We're good at finding ways of disregarding our master's wishes and doing what we want."

"And you want to kill the invaders, even though they're my friends from college," Phil said.

This whole master thing seemed poorly named.

"They do. It doesn't appeal to me," Nÿte said. "Novices, out of their element—it isn't very sporting."

"So that's why they paired you with me," Phil said.

Nÿte smiled.

The darkness pressed all around them. He thought he glimpsed figures in the corner of his eye and his imagination painted pin-ups of sultry naked beauties with full, sensual lips and voluptuous exposed breasts. When he turned to look at them directly they vanished to be replaced by formless, abyss-black darkness. It wasn't just his eyes playing tricks on him. He heard things as well. Whispers. Or maybe it was the susurration of water flowing on the other side of the wall.

No. Whispers. He thought he could pick out words, but not clearly enough to understand their meaning. Even though he didn't understand them, there was a suggestion of seduction and lewdness that tickled his loins.

"This is one of the more dangerous areas of the castle," Nÿte said as they continued down the tunnel.

Phil was only partially paying attention. The whispers distracted him. He concentrated on trying to decipher their meaning. It was important, he sensed. Profound. Understanding would bring him true bliss.

"The other reason they sent you down here with me is because we didn't think we'd be able to reach the novice in time," Nÿte continued. "I'm surprised they haven't already been overwhelmed."

There was a commotion up ahead. Light flickered amongst the clotted shadows.

"Sparqblaast!" a youthful voice cried out in triumph.

Light flashed and a percussive blast ricocheted off the stonework.

"Ha ha. Take that you skanky hos."

"Ah," Nÿte said. "That would explain it." Her finely chiselled features twisted up in disgust. "Too immature and most obnoxious."

Phil wasn't paying attention. The whispers had increased in volume. They sounded so close too, like soft sultry lips were whispering them right into his ears. He strained to dissect their meaning. The sounds triggered a warm flow of blood to his sex and filled his thoughts with carnal images. He stopped walking and focused on the seductive voices. If only he could understand their true meaning. He felt sure it would increase his pleasure still further.

He felt the soft pressure of what felt like large boobs against his back. That gentle pressure expanded until it felt as though the whole of his back was enveloped in a warm layer of silky darkness. He felt warm hands knead his neck and shoulders, melting the tension within them.

"Lie back," sultry voices whispered in his ear. "Lie back and relax. Let us take care of you. Pamper you."

Phil rocked on his feet. He felt the strong urge to let go and fall back into the soft darkness. The shadows, as solid and sticky as tar, flowed around his sides and began to engulf him.

Nÿte grabbed the front of Phil's robe and pulled him out of the sticky darkness. She directed a stern glance over Phil's shoulder and the shadows melted back into the wall with disappointed sighs.

"Whereas you are on the right side of maturity and naive enough to be suggestible," Nÿte said.

Phil blinked in confusion and then felt a warm blush of embarrassment on his cheeks as he realised what had happened. He glanced over his shoulder. There was nothing there but impenetrable darkness, and yet...

Was that his imagination or could he see the vague contours of sultry faces? They pouted sensual lips and blew kisses at him.

"It's no disgrace at your level," Nÿte said. "The tellani'nsara are one of the stronger lust elementals. Few can resist their charms for long."

A dirty smile blemished her otherwise regal features.

"We'll summon up a pair later and I'll let them play with you under more controlled circumstances."

Another loud bang reverberated down the tunnel. Azure energy crackled along the walls.

Nÿte gave a distasteful frown. "First we should help your friend before his activities attracts the attention of things for which his youthfulness provides no immunity."

The carried on towards the commotion. Phil saw it was Joey Chalk. Standing next to him was his daemon—a squat long-limbed thing with large, upward-pointing tusks. Both were being orbited by a pair of yellow globs. The weak light leant Chalk a grotesque visage as his piggy face twisted up in eager snarls as he blasted coloured light out of his knuckles.

"Hey Joey," Phil said.

Chalk turned, pointed a fist at Phil and said, "Sparqblaast." His hand jerked back as if recoiling from firing a bullet. A blue blast roared towards Phil. He was barely able to get a defensive shield up in time.

"What the fuck!" Phil said as the blast impacted against his shield and dissipated in dancing blue sparks.

"I saw what your hos did to John Brennan," Chalk said. "They're not going to get me."

He fired another bolt of blue energy at Phil. The shield took the blast, but his skull still felt like a bell struck by a hammer.

"We came down here to help you!" Phil called out.

Chalk paused. His close-set eyes squinted at Phil.

"This place is really dangerous," Phil said. "What are you doing here?"

"We came here for Gary," Chalk said. "Your other ho, the one with green hair that dresses like a slutty nurse, has him. We're going to get him back before she has a chance to suck out his soul."

Gary Dever? Here? Phil looked over at Nÿte.

The succubus looked thoughtful. "They must have used a soul divination spell," she mused.

"Yeah, we did. So there's no point trying to lie." Chalk's fist crackled with blue energy. "We know he's here and we're not going to leave until you hand him over."

Nÿte sniffed the air and glanced down the tunnel ahead of them. "We should leave now. So far your young age and lack of interest in sex has protected you from the tellani'nsara. But the tuell'daqhabbala are rising up out of the Cloaqal depths and they like nothing better than violating tender young boyflesh. They are dangerous to you."

Chalk sneered. "There's nothing dangerous here. This is the Circle of Lust. Everyone knows it's the weakest circle of hell."

"We should do as she says," Phil said. He wasn't sure if he qualified as 'tender young boyflesh' and didn't want to hang around long enough to find out.

Chalk wasn't in any mood to move. He walked up to Nÿte and looked her up and down.

"Why did you pick a succubus for your daemon anyway?" he asked Phil. "Aside from a few cheap glamours they're useless in a fight. Why would anyone bother with such a weak daemon?"

"You'll find out when you're older," Nÿte said with a smug smile.

Chalk snorted. "Why I reckon Spleenfucka here," he motioned to his tusked daemon behind him, "could splat her without any effort at all."

The tusked daemon's eyes widened. It glanced at Nÿte in alarm.

"We should make them fight," Chalk said. "Then you'd see how useless succubi are."

The tusked daemon shook its head. Nÿte smiled at it. The daemon blanched.

Chalk didn't notice. He continued to look scornfully at Nÿte. "Nah, it wouldn't be worth it. It would be a waste of Spleenfucka's abilities. Why I bet I could beat her on my own," Chalk said.

Nÿte arched an eyebrow.

"She might have got John, but I'm a disciple of Wrath. No one fucks with us."

He got up in Nÿte's face like a boxer trying to intimidate their opponent at a pre-fight press conference. Given that he was a good few inches shorter than her and she was completely unfazed by his antics, it came off as more comical than threatening.

"That's very nice," Nÿte said. "But I think it's time we got out of these tunnels."

Chalk looked at Phil in disgust. "Do you always let your daemon speak for you? That's real pussy behaviour. You should keep her in line. Give her the pimp hand. Like this."

Chalk slapped Nÿte, hard, on the side of her face.

There was a sudden pause as if the world had taken a harsh intake of breath. The echo of palm striking cheek reverberated down the darkened corridor. Nÿte turned her face back and...

... and Phil was running back down the darkened corridor as fast as his legs would carry him. He was not alone. The long-limbed goblin daemon was alongside him. They both pulled up at what felt like minimum safe distance.

"Most," the daemon said. "Most succubi. Not all. And not that one. Definitely not that one." It shuddered.

Far away down the dark tunnel a little ball of yellow light winked out. The passageway slipped into impenetrable shadow. Phil stood in a small circle of yellow light with the tusked daemon. Out in the darkness they heard Joey Chalk cry out. The cry was abruptly cut off and replaced with unsettling liquid sounds.

"Most is not the same as all," the daemon said, shaking his head. "You humans always struggle with that one."

The daemon no longer looked quite so daemonic. It had morphed into the form of a young man in jeans and a T-shirt.

"Hey, you're a Kullockian rage daemon," Phil said. The daemon looked just like Carnivrillarofax, except maybe a couple of years younger.

The daemon nodded. It offered his hand. "Sepulcarafax," he said.

"Phil." He shook hands and then wondered if that was a good idea. He'd seen Carnivrillarofax tear arms out of sockets as if they were noting more than paper decorations. "Um, you're not going to kill me, are you?"

Sepulcarafax laughed incredulously. "Nÿte's already pissed. Can you imagine what she'd do to me if I killed one of her pets? No way. We rage daemons might like getting angry and rowdy, but we're not crazy."

Phil was relieved he wasn't the only one that found Nÿte utterly terrifying.

Sepulcarafax peered down the tunnel.

"You humans don't have good vision in the dark do you?"

"No." Phil saw an impenetrable wall of darkness. Anything could have been on the other side of it.

Sepulcarafax winced. "Probably for the best."

Phil couldn't see what Nÿte was doing, but the sounds he heard made his teeth shiver.

"Poor bastard," Sepulcarafax said.

"We were supposed to help him find his way back to Earth," Phil said.

His conscience was telling him he should go back and order Nÿte to stop. Then he remembered her face—a brief glimpse of eyes that burned like cold dead stars and a white face like countless death masks compacted into the purest representation of icy rage.

And that smile...

Phil remained where he was.

"I don't think it's worked out too well," he said.

"Not your fault," Sepulcarafax said. "That's always been his problem—lashes out at the people who try to help him."

Sepulcarafax flinched again. Phil heard sounds like hooks going through wet meat.

"It would have happened sooner or later," Sepulcarafax said. "Dude had severe issues. I mean I think he thought we were Pokémon or something. Whenever we encountered a new warlock he'd always look at their daemon and ask the same thing: 'Reckon you could take them?'"

"I thought Wrath daemons liked fighting."

"We like beating up the things we know we can beat up. Some of the Pride daemons might go in for the honour of a close-fought fight. Everyone else thinks they're weird."

Phil heard more unsettling sounds. He couldn't describe them exactly—Blade on meat? Bone scraping against bone—only the visceral shivers they triggered in his brain. His bowels felt watery. He talked to Sepulcarafax to take his mind off them.

"Hey, as you're a Kullockian rage daemon, do you know Carnivrillarofax?"

Sepulcarafax gave him a very strange look.

Yeah, it was a stupid question really. Like an American asking a random Englishmen if he happened to know another random Englishmen because they both happened to live in London.

Eventually the noises stopped and were replaced by the familiar clicking of Nÿte's high heels on stone flagstones as she walked to them. She entered the small circle of light and Phil saw she was plastered in blood and gore from head to toe. She looked as though she'd spent the last half hour rolling around in freshly eviscerated animal carcasses. Despite this—or maybe even because of it—she exuded a powerful and feral sex appeal that tugged at Phil.

"You're giving off that fear scent again," Nÿte said to him. There was an unhealthy gleam in her black eyes. "I find it so arousing." Wan blue sparks flickered from the black collar around her throat.

Of course Phil was giving off that fear smell. Near as he could tell, Nÿte had torn Chalk to pieces and wiped those pieces all over her body like they were tissues. He sidled away along the wall as Nÿte took a step towards him.

"You've got something on your..." Phil touched his cheek.

Nÿte wiped a hand across the cheek Phil indicated and a fragment of bloody skull with part of the scalp still attached fell onto the floor.

"I thought killing him didn't appeal to you," Phil said.

"He challenged me," Nÿte said. "I was duty-bound to accept."

She beckoned Sepulcarafax over and dropped what looked like a blood-stained orb into his hands. Pale white light shone out between his fingers.

"This might sound weird," Sepulcarafax said as he looked down at the orb, "but I was hoping he'd figure it out before it came to this."

"It was always going to be his future," Nÿte said. "If not me, something else. A weak master is no use to a daemon."

"True, true," Sepulcarafax agreed. "Still, I dunno, it doesn't feel very satisfying when they're this young. Too easy."

"Stupidity was his problem, not age," Nÿte said.

She turned to Phil.

"And you shouldn't feel sorry for him at all," Nÿte said. "I sensed his fantasies. He wanted to drill a hole in the back of your skull and ram his cock into it."

"Ugh, that's sort of gross," Phil said. He inched away along the wall.

"I think he saw it in a film," Nÿte said. "He also fantasised about getting Sepulcarafax to rape me and Verdé while he watched."

"That would have been difficult," Sepulcarafax said.

"Rage daemons don't do sex," Nÿte said.

"No bits," Sepulcarafax explained. He still kept a wary eye on Nÿte.

"That's not an insurmountable obstacle to one with mastery of the arts of pleasure." Nÿte smiled. She made a circle out of her thumb and forefinger. Her tail arced up and thrust in and out of the makeshift hoop. The bulbous tip of her tail was bloody and strands of tissue clung to the point as though it had been driven into and then ripped out of something soft and fleshy.

Phil hadn't seen a daemon turn white with fear before. It was usually the humans that were supposed to do that.

Nÿte turned her attention to Phil. There was an unhealthy gleam in her black eyes.

"That was most exhilarating," she said. She closed her eyes and stretched her arms and back. "Mmm. The smell of blood when shed. The feel of it against my skin. To lose oneself in the frenzy of primal emotions is so intoxicating."

Her eyes flicked open. She stared directly at Phil. She rubbed a bloody hand against her latex-covered crotch. Her pale cheeks might have reddened. It was hard to tell amongst all the blood.

"I feel so incredibly turned on right now," she said. She reached down and unzipped her crotch.

"Um, I'll be off then," Sepulcarafax said. While Nÿte's attention was on Phil he snuck away down the tunnel as fast as he could manage without actually breaking out into a run.

The zip in Nÿte's crotch was fully open. The smell of her arousal cut through even the stench of torn apart vitals and wrapped around Phil like a hot fist. It was as if Nÿte's aura had expanded like a summer thunderstorm to envelop him.

"Yes, we need to fuck right now," Nÿte said, her voice tailing off in an erotic sigh.

* * * *

Herbie Higgins had also cast his own form of the soul divination spell. Unlike Darvill he was heading straight for the exit.

He liked Gary Dever. He could be annoying sometimes, but most of the time he was a decent guy. And as a member of one of the Favoured Families Dever had access to knowledge and privileges that was useful to a lowly Outreach like Higgins.

Was Dever a bloke you'd risk going to hell to rescue? Herbie guessed so. You had to stand up for your mates. But that had been before they were all separated and scattered across the Second Circle of Lust. With the other three, and especially with Darvill—who was probably the strongest warlock in their class except for maybe Rowling—Herbie would have given it a go.

Not now.

Now he was taking the sensible option and heading straight for the exit. He felt shitty about it, but they couldn't help Dever if they were dead. The best he could do was maybe find one of Wargsnouts' security patrols and see if they could help with yanking the others out.

He had to find the exit first.

This area of the castle or mansion was a little weird. He thought they'd entered the Circle of Lust. This was where the succubi, incubi and other assorted sex daemons hung out. He'd been expecting the sensual depravities of a high-class brothel or a luxurious harem from ages past. Instead he'd ended up in some kind of creepy nursery. He walked through playrooms where boxes of toys and old wooden rocking horses were covered in cobwebs and hadn't been used in some time.

At least no one was home. It seemed like he'd been fortunate enough to be teleported to an abandoned area of the building. He was even starting to think he might be super lucky enough to make it to the exit without encountering any Lust daemons when—frustratingly—he got lost.

Something was fucking with his perception. Or maybe even with the rooms and corridors. When he tried to retrace his steps he found himself in rooms and hallways he hadn't seen before.

"Someone's playing games with us, buddy," Herbie said to the minor nebrit sitting on his shoulder.

The minor nebrit, not being much of a speaker, gnashed its teeth together and sprayed spittle.

Herbie heard someone or something approach. He ducked away into an alcove, which opened out into a storeroom or maybe some kind of playroom. Brightly painted murals of cartoon figures covered the walls. He placed his back to one of the walls and hid as the unseen entity approached. They were singing, he realised, some kind of childish nursery rhyme.

It was a child, or at least superficially resembled one. A girl skipped through the archway. She was wearing a blue dress and her cornflower-blue hair stuck up in spikes. If it wasn't for her horns, tail and little blue bat wings Herbie would have thought that somehow a child had ended up getting lost in hell with him.

Must be some kind of low-ranking lust imp, he thought. Or possibly a fully-fledged succubus that specialised in tempting paedophiles. She didn't look too scary.