DEMON DOOR (#2 GHOST PORTAL series)

TEN

"Fucking dammit! So close!" A voice, as low and creepy as the growl Avery had heard, blew over from across the way from where Avery lay face-down on the concrete.

A feminine, raspy, eerily enchanting tone, it was. Like a sexy witch or a tempting vampiress puckering her lips before revealing her fangs.

Avery cringed, cramming his fists against the ground to push himself off. Whatever or whoever this was, it was the wrong time to start fantasizing over its strangely sultry voice. And what he imagined would be a strangely hot body to match it.

He lifted, gaining some strength from no longer being locked up in a realm that wanted to eat him whole. He wiped his hands on his pants, and squinted towards the darkness in the back of the basement, where he'd heard the voice coming from.

A figure outlined in a sinister red glow appeared before him. It was too dark to decipher its face, but Avery sensed the malice reverberating off its body in waves.

"Who are you?" He cocked his head, taking in the defined, ladylike silhouette of this person—if it was a person. At that point, Avery wasn't sure if humans were the dominant species on this planet anymore. Blue beings, red beings, ghosts, and apparently there were monsters in other realms—

The figure took one step forward, and Avery took one back, a string of shivers coursing up his arms. This thing was powerful. He got a whiff of its energy, hot and lava-like, even from the several feet that separated them. Even without seeing it—seeing her, her womanly curves were proof of that—he could tell she wasn't someone to mess with.

His knees quaked as the being took another step, then another, arriving into a patch of light sprinkling in from the basement's red glow. A patch of light that fully illuminated it, her.

Avery's knees cracked as he fell forward and onto them, hard. The second time in too little time; but this time, not from weakness or exhaustion.

From shock.

The red outlined woman who'd made herself visible before him was Jessamine.

Not the Jessamine he'd known, though. First off, that wasn't her voice she was speaking with. Not that he hadn't found her timbre seductive, but this one was much deeper, much more melodic, with a spiciness to it he didn't recognize. She was wearing all black—shiny leather leggings, ankle-height booties, a body-tight, long-sleeved shirt with a plunging front, and a lacy black bra showing at the edges, holding up Jessamine's breasts and squishing them together.

Avery gulped. If it had been just that physical transformation, he might have been able to justify the sudden tightness in his pants at the sight of her. A siren, a suave temptress of darkness; she was hot.

But the red rimming around her once gentle green eyes threw him off. As did her hair, longer, sleeker, darker. There was an auburn hue to the strands as she moved them to throw them over her shoulder. And her posture—perked, proud. She radiated malice and cruelty, and it sent shards to pierce into Avery's belly.

That wasn't Jessamine. That was... them. The demons.

She'd been away from him for less than a day, and it was as if it had been months and she'd undergone a complete make-over. A dark make-over; the stubborn but cute, sweet-natured Jessamine he'd met was long gone, hidden beneath the layers of pallid skin and glowing red. If she was even still in there.

As she grinned at him, likely pleased at the expression of shock on his face, he noticed blotches on her cheeks. Crimson blotches that looked like blood, as if she'd smeared herself with the substance as a sort of war-paint. And her lips—they were blood red. As in, bloody red, stained with actual blood. Similar stains stamped over the tops of her boobs, and over her fingers and hands.