Hell Raiser

Boring Excitement

"So... what do we do now?" asks Violet, twirling strands of purple hair around her finger.

"Now, we wait," I reply. "After all," I say, "not much we can do in the mean time." A sigh escapes my lips. I think wistfully of good, strong vodka burning it's way down my throat. I think I might have a drinking problem... "Eh."

"What?"

I glance at Violet, her bare feet on the dash, wearing jeggings and a bone white blouse. Her hair is unbound, flowing freely. And... she's biting a rosebud lip...

"What?" I ask, looking into eyes that glisten like the open sea.

"I don't know, you just..."

"Just what?" My voice comes out cold and hard.

"You seem different."

I sigh heavily. I hate this part of a story. Some unimportant-important character―usually of the opposite sex―says they notice an alteration that would eventually be no more obvious than elephant in a fridge. "Yes... aren't you jumping the gun a bit on this?" Her look is one of befuddlement. "Oh, never mind."

"Hmmm... don't you have anything for us to do? Like..." She trails off, looking behind her. Her eyes widen.

I throw a glance to the mirror before winnowing the entire car forward a few yards. "Jesus fucking Christ, holy shit!" Behind us, is the ugliest, most putrid, most fucked up thing I've ever seen.

"Violet, when I get out of the car, jump into the driver seat and get the fuck out of here." She just nodded.

Getting out of the car and standing on the melting asphalt, I try to hold in my grimace as I lay my eyes upon a succubus. No, sorry, the succubus, that fucked with me a year ago. Violet hits the gas as soon as the supercharger starts to suck in air

"You look good," it says, reddened skin showing under her black collar.

I try to stay calm, slipping my hands into my pockets, thinking about hot cars and even hotter women. It's barely working. "You look horrible yourself." I force amusement to glint in my eyes.

"Oh, I thought you liked me like this, after all, you went to such lengths to make me this way." She catches my confusion before I throw it into a dark, dark corner. Her's was a crow's laugh. "So, you didn't know?" Her gaze narrows and eyes blister with fury. "You blew up the building. I was in the fucking thing!"

I can barely control it, trying to wrench it down, but, a choked laugh caresses its way into the air between the ghastly woman and myself. She scowls and I howl and roar, leaning back and putting my hands on my knees as my mirth starts to subside. I was still grinning when horrible burnt bones tore through her back, blood blacker than night flowing down as the bone extended forming wings, and, what looked like acid, began to pour out of those hateful bones, and the smell of just sheer wrongness hits me like Dwarven war hammer. I stagger back at the stench. Actually, staggered. For a moment, I thought she might have been a drakaina all that time in the sheets.

But I remember what Solomon had said about defining the drakes from demons. When a dragon summons its wings in its human form, the bones split the flesh as they did on a demon, but when they were extended, a drake's wings are smothered with a flame the colour of their scales. With that fire, the wing's tissue is forged. With a demon's wings, the similarities stop even before they are conceived, but in this case, it ends at full extension. For demons, if they even have wings, their bones are covered in a toxic liquid that threads itself through the skeletal frame, dripping and killing the earth with each bead. Poison is their membrane. Venom is their blood. Darkness is their husk of an imitation of a soul.

What humour the gods must have, to have my ex a true succubus, feeding on sex to sustain itself.

I would have laughed, would have smiled cruelly and darkly, had I not caught her stare of unflinching hunger. I smirk, amusement disguising disgust as I speak, "Been a while since your last feed?"

"First I will fuck you, taking your power when you inevitably climax, then I will kill you, and then that purple bitch." My breathing hitches and the mask cracks. "Or maybe I'll make her watch me fuck you, then kill her in front of you." Her grin is lupine. My rage starts to rise, to build.

"Do not touch Violet, you beastly whore."

"Oh?" She raises a brow. "So, the little purple bitch has a name. And such a predictable one at that. I'll take extra time ripping her to sh―"

I explode before she finishes, dark, thick, unrelenting smoke sucking in all the light of the world, and that whore stumbles as I throw that power at her in force. But I get no pleasure from it. My rage is consuming, without end.

As the darkness spreads, I feel it brush upon the black, speared gates, the magic pushing it back.

I push harder, the roaring, screaming wind turning the flora black with poisoned darkness.

"STOP! STOP! STOP!" The demonic wretch is forced to her knees as the darkness crushes her face against the concrete, an audible crack singing through the torrent of black like Symphony & Metal. Her sobs of pain and fear fuel my power, rage turning to joy.

Suddenly, the darkness vanishes, replaced by blinding light and a blade blacker than my darkness.

The owner glares at me, and before I can dash backwards, black iron shackles are latched onto my wrists, my ankles. I bellow in agony.

The owner of the sword steps closer, armour even darker, his skin golden, silver-blonde hair short, no longer masking the tattooed thorns on his face, that run down his neck. They run under his armour to coil under the rose permanently over his heart.

"Hello, Rhodamus," he says. The pommel of his sword renders me unconscious before I can respond.