Succubus Lord 16, page 20
Several of the bastards screeched as they hit my wall of flames and instantly burst into ashes, but the rest swooped around my shield and continued heading for their other targets.
I just hoped my friends were gonna be able to hold their own.
And I really hoped Todd would come out of this fight without needing psychiatric help.
I increased the intensity of my spell, and the cave spiders disappeared in a puff of smoke. Then I began to move forward, but I was careful not to release my spell.
It wasn’t the spiders I wanted, though.
It was the Twins.
“Oh, look, brother!” Alistor observed with a crazed grin. “Our other brother wants to play. Permission to tear him limb-from-limb?”
“What are you asking me for?” Apocrus snickered as he leaned back against the wall of the cave and inspected his nails. “Father said we should do ‘whatever is necessary,’ didn’t he?”
Through my purple and red flames, I could see Alistor’s expression of pure glee as he stepped toward me. The Nephilim unbuckled the fabric belt of his robe, tossed it to the side, and then let the garment fall loose from his body. Underneath, he wore nothing but a pair of trunks, similar to something you’d see on a pro wrestler. Alistor might have been short and stocky, but he was built like a fucking tank.
No big deal. I’d dealt with plenty of bruisers before. Nothing I couldn’t handle.
Alistor cackled as he surrounded his body with yellow Hellfire. Instantly, large, kite-shaped plates rose out of his shoulder blades and created a trail all the way over his shoulders and chest. The same glowing yellow plates then popped out and ran proximal down the sides of his arm, where they came to a deadly, pick-like point.
He looked like a fucking human stegosaurus.
“This is gonna be fun, ‘bro,’” Alistor mused as he hauled back his fist.
“You’re telling me,” I mocked, and then I commanded my barrier to lurch forward.
The purple and red flames clamped down around Alistor’s body, but their progress was stopped by the demon’s yellow spines, so I increased their intensity for good measure.
However, the fucker just laughed in my face.
“Cute trick,” he taunted. “It might work on a lesser demon, but it ain’t gonna work on me.”
Alistor stomped his foot into the ground, and the spines enlarged on his body. As they did so, they tossed the barrier off him like it was a sheet trying to hold down a fucking elephant.
So, I decast my spell, drew the Sword of Saints, and lunged at the fucker’s head.
Alistor crossed his arms as he brought them up and caught my blade between his glowing yellow spikes. Then he shoved the sword upward and took a horizontal strike at my stomach.
I threw down a blast of purple and blocked the deadly spikes seconds before they disemboweled me. I took a shot at Alistor with red Hellfire at point-blank range, but he simply turned around and blocked the attack with his spines.
Without warning, the fucker stabbed his spikes into the ground and then used them to stabilize himself as he threw up his hind end and kicked me like a mule.
My body was launched backward, directly into the swarming cave spiders.
I slammed into the ceiling of the tunnel, plummeted to the ground hard, and then felt the legs of the spiders crawling across me as they descended on my body.
Fuck.
I felt the impact of the cave spiders’ fangs as they attempted to pierce through my Caliginian armor, but thankfully the black metal held. However, I wasn’t gonna test my luck for long.
I summoned bronze Hellfire into my hand, slammed it into the ground, and then felt damn near ten pounds fall off my body as the spiders were shaken free of their hold. As I leapt to my feet, though, Alistor was coming in for the skewer.
I sidestepped his attack, summoned yellow Hellfire into my hand, and launched a handful of glowing shuriken into his face.
The Nephilim recoiled and grunted as the deadly disks left dozens of small gashes in his face, but it was far from the killing blow I was hoping it would be.
He attempted to take my legs out from under me with a quick sweep of his spikes, but I was too quick.
I floated up into the air, brought my feet up, and then slammed the flat of my boots into his face.
Alistor growled at the initial blow, and then once again when his head slammed into the wall so hard it left a small crater. He shook off the attack, though, and came at me with primal rage in his eyes. The fucker held out both his spikes as he ran, and I knew he was intent on skewering me with their points.
That was exactly what I wanted him to do.
I threw out a portal of green Hellfire directly in front of the bastard’s trajectory, and then his spikes disappeared into the glowing emerald swirl. I forced them to reappear just behind his head, but Alistor was just able to duck out of the way of his own attack before it turned his skull into a shish-kabob.
While he was crouched down, I summoned silver fire around the metal ball on my belt and commanded it to liquify. Next, I formed it into a metallic rope, threw it around Alistor’s neck, and used it to pin him back against the wall. Then I tightened the metal noose around his windpipe as I approached, and the fucker could do nothing but grasp desperately at his throat.
“Clever,” he wheezed as he struggled for breath. “But not clever enough.”
Suddenly, something hard smacked against the back of my head, and I wobbled forward as pain shot through my entire spinal column. I could already feel blood running down the wound, and my vision was starting to tunnel around the edges. Before I could make another move, my legs were knocked out from underneath me. I tried to catch myself on my wings, but the same hard object slammed into my back and sent me to the ground.
I engulfed my body in emerald Hellfire, pictured the threshold of the chamber, and then went weightless as my body was transported through space and time.
When I reappeared in the doorway, Apocrus was already halfway to my position.
I called the metal noose away from Alistor’s throat, commanded it to form into my warhammer, and then held it at the ready.
Now that I wasn’t prone on my stomach, I could see what had happened.
Apocrus wielded a pure black bo staff in his hands. The thing was as thick as a fucking sapling tree and appeared to be made out of pure brimstone.
No fucking wonder I felt like I had a concussion.
I knocked away Apocrus’ first strike with pinpoint precision, but he swiftly smacked my leg with the other end of his weapon. As I fell down on one knee, I threw up a shield of purple and dispelled the next blow. Then I caught the next strike with my right arm, but even though it was armored, it felt like my fucking arm had been run over by a semi-truck.
I tossed out a shot of emerald at Apocrus’ feet, but he flipped over it without so much as breaking a sweat.
“You’re not disciplined, Jacob,” the Nephilim taunted, “you don’t have the proper training from father that we do.”
“Stop calling him ‘father,’” I shot back, “it makes you sound like you’re fucking ten. Or somebody who should be wearing chino shorts and a scarf. Same difference, really.”
Just then, Alistor walked up beside his brother. His throat was black and blue from my attempted strangulation, and his eyes were narrowed with pure hatred.
“Tough talk for a guy who’s about to get his shit kicked in,” the Nephilim warned in a now-raspy voice.
“I’m getting bored, brother,” Apocrus sighed. “Look at him. If we don’t kill him first, then he’ll just black out from the concussion. Tell you what… I’ll go bag our prize, and you can finish him off? Alright?”
“With fucking pleasure.” Alistor grinned as he cracked his knuckles.
Apocrus twirled his bo staff around, placed it on his back, and shot me a wink. The Nephilim then turned around, headed back into the room, and left Alistor and I alone in the tunnels just outside.
As much as I hated to admit it, the fucker was right. If I didn’t get healed up soon, I was going to pass out. And once that happened, it was curtains.
I needed to get to Sia, and fast.
From the limited amount of time I’d had to analyze the twins, I’d at least figured out their fighting styles.
Apocrus was more of an agile fighter, with quick, efficient blows and lots of fancy flips and twirls.
Alistor, on the other hand? He was all about brute force, through and through.
And that was something I could use to my advantage.
The Nephilim charged me with his large yellow spikes, and I did something I never thought I’d do.
I retreated.
I turned around and dashed back through the hallway as quickly as I could, back to the spot where the three tunnels forked.
“Fucking coward!” Alistor called out as he ran after me. “I knew you were fucking yellow!”
Perfect. I wanted him to think he had me on the ropes.
When I finally arrived at the intersection of tunnels, I paused and looked around as if I were hopelessly lost.
“Fuck,” I mumbled to myself for effect.
“Ya lost?” Alistor growled. “I’ll help you find your way… Straight to father’s wall, where your head will make a great trophy.”
The Nephilim lashed out at me with his spiked weapons, but I was ready.
I dodged to the right, surrounded my hammer with silver flames, and then commanded it to elongate. The moldable weapon wrapped around both of Alistor’s arm spikes, and I used it to pick up the fucker and launch him down the tunnel to my right.
His body flew through the air deep into the tunnel, illuminated only by the glow from both of our spells. Finally, once he got a grip on the situation, he deactivated his yellow fire of hatred and fell away from my trap.
I instantly called bronze Hellfire into my second hand, surrounded the hammer with its glow, and forced my weapon to vibrate violently. Then I yanked back the hand with the silver spell and called my warhammer back to my hands.
However, as it returned to me, I pushed it up against the ceiling of the tunnel.
Dust flew in the hammer’s wake as it rocked the entire passageway to its core, and rocks fell haphazardly from the ceiling and walls of the tunnel as its structural integrity was compromised.
Alistor must have realized what was happening, because his roar of frustration echoed through the tunnel as the yellow light began to run back toward me.
Too bad he was way too late.
The tunnel collapsed around Alistor, and there was nothing he could do but fall down in place and try to shield himself from the debris. Within seconds, the entire fucking thing came down on his head.
I let out a deep sigh of relief.
I didn’t know if that would be enough to kill the bastard, but that was sure as fuck gonna slow him down.
The edges of my vision were getting narrower and narrower by the second, so I hobbled back toward Mary’s chambers as quickly as I could. When I finally arrived at the room, I took a second to absorb the pure chaos going on inside of it.
There were still hundreds of the fucking cave spiders. They were everywhere. In the air. On the walls and ceiling. Even all around Mary’s bookshelves.
Thankfully, the nun herself was back against the far wall, with Sia, Invidia, Gula, and my cultists in a circle around her.
Gula was blasting shots of red Hellfire at the spiders from afar, and she stopped only occasionally to slice up the creatures that got too close.
Oliver and Jane were double-teaming the spiders with multiple different colors of Hellfire. Jane would send out giant waves of blue flames to freeze the fuckers, and then Ollie picked them off with a handful of yellow daggers.
At the same time, Invidia’s double-sided dagger was soaring through the air, guided by the succubus’ telekinetic green flames. The small weapon knocked spiders out of the sky by the dozen and splattered their guts across the walls of the room as the blade cut them down.
Then there was Superbia. The petite madame shot off giant blasts of black flames onto the swarm, which then suffocated underneath the dark spell. Once they were dead, the redheaded succubus would discard the bodies with a shot of red Hellfire before she moved onto the next one.
Across the room, Isabella was doing her best gymnast impression. The BPI Agent fired off her dual pistols at the cave spiders as she cartwheeled around the room. Every now and again, one of the poor critters would get too close, and Isabella had to put them down with the serrated edge of her gun.
I couldn’t really see Aruna in her Tarantula Hawk form, but I could definitely see the spider bodies she was leaving behind. A small ectoplasmic glow floated above the chaos and darted in and out of the swarm. Every time it did so, several more of the creatures would fall.
She was doing just fine.
Todd was still underneath the table, and he was now spinning around like a top as he unleashed Hellfire haphazardly in all directions. The roar of his flames was accompanied only by his ear-piercing, girlish screech, which I could hear clearly all the way over here.
That just left Apocrus.
He was currently engaged with Metatron, and it looked like the Archangel wasn’t doing so hot against his Nephilim opponent.
Apocrus acrobatically twirled around the blonde man, and he lashed out every second or two with his bo staff. Metatron was able to deflect a handful of the blows, but for every one he blocked, he absorbed ten more.
I needed to get over there and help him, ASAP.
But none of that was gonna matter if I didn’t get healed up right now.
So, I formed my warhammer back into the ball on my belt, summoned green flames into my hand, and then surrounded myself with the jade glow. The world went black for a second as I transported through space and time, and then I reappeared right next to Mary.
“Sweet Joseph!” the nun gasped as I appeared.
“Sia!” I called out, and then I fell to my knees. “I-I could really use some of that golden touch right about now.”
Superbia looked back over her shoulder and let out a terrified gasp.
“You’re hurt!” she observed. “Badly.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.” I joked, but the lights were beginning to go out.
My vision was now down to nearly pinpricks, and I could slowly feel myself drifting away.
Suddenly, a warm, tingling sensation brought me back to reality, and the wound on the back of my head went numb as the skin sealed itself shut. My vision expanded back to its normal state, and I could see I was now fully encased in Superbia’s healing spell. When all was said and done, I even felt the dull aches from my earlier fight with Metatron fading away.
“There,” Sia noted as she turned back toward the incoming swarm, “good as new.”
“Just in time, too,” Oliver chuckled. “We’ve been hitting these creatures diligently, but they show no signs of stopping.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Jane grumbled and then tossed out a handful of yellow spears. “I didn’t even know there were this many cave spiders in the universe.”
Even though my friends had taken out so many of these fucking arachnids, they were still coming through by the dozens.
We needed to up the ante.
“Gula?” I questioned. “Do you think you can give me a boost? I’ve got an idea… ”
Without another moment’s hesitation, Gula’s brown Hellfire surrounded my body. So, I summoned red flames into my hands, focused as deeply as I possibly could, and then got to work.
I spread my wings and shot up into the ceiling, directly into the center of the swarming arachnids. The droning buzz of their wings beat in my eardrums almost painfully as they threatened to drown out my thoughts.
However, my thoughts were very clear.
I wanted to eradicate each and every one of these fuckers.
I opened my eyes, clapped my hands together, and created a gargantuan flamethrower with my spell.
The white-hot fire roared across the room and engulfed the entire ceiling in its deadly spray. The creatures hissed and screeched as they were fried to a crisp, and then their ashes fluttered down in a macabre rainfall.
I spun around and continued my assault, and within seconds, the entire space around me was clear of the spiders.
The moment was not meant to last, though.
No sooner than I’d cleared the ceiling, and it was full of cave spiders once more.
I floated back down, landed next to my friends, and let out a deep sigh.
“There’s too many of these things,” I admitted. “If we stay here, we’re going to be overrun.”
“Tell me you’re not thinking of going back the way we came?” Gula remarked. “The Vatican Secret Police would be on us in seconds.”
“What about the other tunnels?” Vidia asked as she sliced another arachnid with her dagger. “Do we know where those go?”
“Where it goes,” I corrected her. “I kinda brought one of the tunnels down on Alistor’s head, so… ”
Suddenly, I saw the spectral figure of Angelo Martatelli dash by as he swatted at the spiders around his head.
“Cazzo!” he growled. “A fanabla, esseri malvagi!”
The spectre stumbled over to where Todd was hiding underneath the table. He passed through the roaring flames without even noticing, and his clothes caught fire. The Renaissance scientist then bumped into the tabletop while still aflame, and the entire thing caught fire.
“Hey!” Todd gasped. “Watch the fireballs, Super Mario!”
“Togliermi queste cose!” Martatelli demanded.
Martatelli bumped into the table once more, but this time, it was with enough force to tip the whole thing over.
The entire chamber was filled with a high-pitched scream, followed by the imp rocketing out from behind his blown cover. Todd zipped over to our position, wrapped his tiny arms around my leg like a koala, and shuddered in terror.
“M-My l-life just flashed before my eyes, bro,” the imp stammered. “I never thought I’d be taken out by a rogue tortellini.”
“If it makes you feel any better, we’re gonna blow this popsicle stand,” I admitted. “Just as soon as we figure out where the fuck we can go.”
