Succubus Lord 19, page 29
The spiked ball bounced off my barrier harmlessly, and I retaliated by swooping down at the fucker and taking a swing at him with my sword. My attack was knocked away in a flash of purple flames, and then the fucker slammed his fist into my cheek.
I parried his next punch with my arm, slammed my foot into his shin, and brought Natas down on one knee. Next, I quickly summoned my silver Hellfire around the ball on my belt and commanded it to turn into a spear.
Unfortunately, Natas was prepared.
He rolled to the left as the deadly liquid metal swished past his head, and the next thing I knew a red fireball slammed into my stomach and sent my back on my ass.
“Father’s favorite, my ass!” Natas screamed as he brought his ball and chain down on my head.
I blocked it with a quicky conjured shield of purple, and then I countered by slashing my sword across his exposed abdomen.
Natas roared with pain as a spray of crimson splattered out from his stomach, and then he jumped backward and checked his wound.
I hadn’t gotten him very deep, but I’d definitely cut into him enough to expose the muscle beneath his flesh.
“Father’s favorite, huh?” I chuckled before I rolled away from another attack. “He has a weird way of showing it.”
“Shut the fuck up,” my brother growled. “All we’ve had to hear about for the last three years is ‘Jacob this’ and ‘Jacob that.’ The Seven Sons of Satan were better demons than you’ll ever be.”
“That’s where your problem is, then,” I noted as I parried his next attack with my blade. “I’m not a demon. I’m a fucking Nephilim.”
As I taunted my brother, I summoned Divine light into my hand and blasted him with a small beam of the Heavenly magic. Natas screamed as the white-hot light tore through his right shoulder and left a burnt, smoldering hole in its wake, and his arm went limp since the muscles were now literally disintegrated out of his body.
However, he didn’t give up.
“Fuck you, Jacob!” Natas roared as he slammed his fist into my face.
I felt the iron taste of blood in my mouth as I stumbled toward the edge of the roof, and then a sharp pain bloomed in my side as his ball-and-chain slammed into my ribs. My body was tossed off the building and up over the crowd of demons below, but I quickly caught myself with my wings.
As I swooped back up to meet Natas, the bastard jumped like a frog into the air once more. He came at me with his weapon, which I quickly dispelled with my protective magic.
In a flash, I drew the goat-headed dagger from my belt and stabbed it at his eye, but Natas got up a protective shield before I could make contact.
Fuck. Now that I was on the other side of this “purple Hellfire” shit, I could see just how annoying it was.
Suddenly, Natas threw his legs around my waist and pulled me into his body tight. The fucker brought his meaty fist down on my face, but I was quick to knock it away with my protective spell.
However, the fucker wasn’t letting up.
I swooped, twirled, and dove in an attempt to get Natas off me, but he just clung on like a monkey and continued to deliver body blow after body blow. Sharp, searing pain shot through my body with each one he actually managed to land, and I started to worry I was about to suffer a literal death by a thousand cuts.
“Not on my watch, asshole,” I snarled.
The next time Natas brought back his fist, I dual-wielded bronze and purple Hellfire in my hands. I tossed up a shield right in front of his fist and then commanded it to vibrate violently at a subatomic level the second he made contact.
There was a wet snap as all the bones and tendons in Natas’ left arm shattered, and the Nephilim screamed as he backflipped away from me in a rush.
As he flipped through the air, I tossed out a handful of spinning red-and-yellow shuriken, and the projectiles struck him square in the chest, exploded, and sent him careening down onto a nearby rooftop.
I sheathed the Sword of Saints and my dagger before I summoned silver flames and commanded the ball on my belt to transform into my warhammer. Next, I rocketed down at Natas like a bat out of Hell, with my hammer above my head and ready to take him out.
He got up a shield of purple seconds before I would have shattered his skull, but the impact from the blow still caused the roof beneath him to crater.
As I raised my weapon to strike once more, Natas crouched down and used all the power in his lanky legs to jump up into me. The fucker let out a roar of pain as he slammed into my stomach with his wounded shoulder, and I flew backwards helplessly. A fireball slammed into my back from behind as I spun out of control, and I let out a scream as it singed the flesh of my wings.
Still, when I finally regained control of my momentum, I was in one piece.
Which was more than Natas was gonna be able to say in a minute here.
The fucker had already proven himself to be weak to Divine magic, so now all I had to do was go big or go home. As I dive-bombed my brother, I summoned Divine energy into my hand, ran it across the length of my warhammer, and ignited it with the Heavenly power.
Natas let out a roar as he sprang up into the air and launched a red fireball at me, but I just knocked it away with my enchanted hammer.
I spun around in the air and tried to slam my weapon into the bastard’s side, but he was quick to block it with a purple shield.
Which, of course, was exactly what I wanted.
The second my attack was parried, I summoned silver flames into my hand, commanded my warhammer to liquify, and sent it around the edges of his shield. The still-glowing liquid metal stabbed into Natas at several points in his body, and the Nephilim shrieked as the Divine light burned his flesh with its searing-hot intensity.
I commanded the Divine liquid to reform as my hammer in my hand, and then I readied for the final assault.
Natas’ body now looked like human swiss cheese. He stumbled around as the wind passed through him like a sail, and his mouth hung open in shock.
“Looks like it’s just Daddy and his favorite now,” I growled, and then I slammed my Divine weapon into the side of his head.
Natas’ flesh seared off his skull when the metal touched his face, and then there was a sickly pop as his spine was snapped like a twig. My brother’s burnt head was knocked loose from his body, and it flew off into the crowd like a fly ball at a baseball game.
I fell to my knees as I deactivated the hammer and took a deep breath.
That was it. The Seventh Son of Satan was dead, and now nothing stood between me and the pentagram inside that apartment.
Now, I just needed Cupi, and I could make the final push.
I flew up into the air and then scanned the battle below.
I watched as Isabella and several of her fellow BPI Agents riddled demons with bullets, alongside the assassins who stabbed and snapped their way through the crowd. Aruna was fighting alongside the rest of her guild members, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the Rakshasi as she decapitated a Nethercrawler with her bhuj before she spun around and sliced open the throat of a nearby Tartaruchi with her chakram.
Then there were the angels, who were cutting down the demon grunts as if they were made of cardboard. Raphael led the charge as he pumped demons full of lead with his FAMAS, and several of his brethren used similar divine-weapons to mow down their attackers.
My Demon Lords and generals, however, were the stars of the show, and my heart swelled with pride as I watched all seventeen of them fight together like a well-oiled machine.
Eclipse skewered a Tartaruchi on her naginata and then tossed it up into the air, where it was promptly assaulted with Tris’ Tommy gun bullets. Todd blinded a few of the Nethercrawlers with his black Hellfire, and then Gula and Deja used the opportunity to cut them down with their blades.
Inpulsa, Mirage, and Libidine were taking out demons in large waves, since all three of them were equipped with powerful crowd-control magic. Inpulsa’s dark blast of black and yellow Hellfire sent a lightning bolt into the crowd of Nethercrawlers, and it then splintered off as it lit them up like a Christmas tree. The green-skinned fuckers shrieked in agony as they were fried from the inside out, and their lifeless corpses collapsed onto the ground.
At the same time, Mirage used her green Hellfire to create a giant pendulum blade. The curly-haired Demon Lord slashed the blade across the crowd in broad, heavy strokes, and they fell as their heads were cut from their bodies while their innards spilled out onto the ground.
Then there was Liby, who worked in time with Cupiditas. Cupi caught a few of the Nethercrawlers in her blue freezing spell, and then Liby would take them out with a handful of glowing yellow spears.
Ariel cartwheeled around the battlefield as she stabbed her Divine claws into a Tartaruchi’s back, flipped around, and threw it straight into another opponent. As the fucker fell to the ground, the redheaded angel leapt forward and sliced off its arm with a swipe of her claws.
Caorthannach and Sia were right next to each other, and the two combatants couldn’t have made a better pair. Sia caught several Tartaruchi in her black flames, where she then lifted them up into the air and held them in place. Cao would then summon her lava-like Hellfire, toss a handful of searing-hot magma into the fuckers’ faces, and watch as they writhed and screamed in agony.
Finally, there was Lunacio and Ira, who just laid there and allowed their enemies to tear at them without putting up anything of a fight.
Oh, well. At least they were causing some sort of distraction.
I swooped down, snatched Cupi up in my arms, and lifted her into the sky.
“Sorry, Liby,” I announced to the Sister of Lust. “I gotta borrow her for a minute.”
“Hold on!” Libidine protested as she lit up a Nethercrawler with a fireball. “Don’t you think for a second I’m going to let you two go alone.”
Liby killed her nearest opponent before she jumped into the air and took to the sky beside us. The Sister of Lust then scanned the crowd for a second, darted down to Superbia, and lifted the former madame up into the air as well.
“What are you doing, Libidine?” Sia questioned.
“We’re going to need you, Sister,” the dark-haired Demon Lord explained. “If we wish to remove the carving from the floor.”
“I’m coming, too, bro!” Todd huffed as he shot over beside us. “I’m like, ninety-nine percent sure I left all my old Pokémon cards in there. Those have gotta be worth something by now.”
As the five of us flew toward the run-down apartment building, another blast of Divine light from Metatron’s eye lit up the red sky with a blinding flash.
“Ya know,” I grumbled. “A bunch of our battles would have been over a lot quicker if he’d always just done that.”
“Megatron can’t become Gigatron on a whim, Jakey,” Todd argued. “And if you want him to go all Galvatron like he’s doing now? Forget about it, bro… Takes too much effort without Orson Welles. Rest in Peace, King of the Nerds. Rest in Peace.”
“Now…” I pondered aloud as I scanned the side of the building. “Which one was ours?”
“Third floor, fifth apartment on the right,” Todd confirmed.
“How do you remember that?” Libidine questioned.
“Easy, Lib.” The imp shrugged. “It’s where I always told the dudes on the paranormal message boards to look for me if I ever got snatched up by the BPI.”
“You gave away our address to a bunch of strangers on the internet?” I grumbled.
“They’re totally trustworthy, bro,” Todd scoffed. “If you can’t trust ‘Illuminatibigfoot96,’ then who can you trust?”
I counted the windows on the third floor, and I started on the left and moved to the right. Sure enough, five windows down I saw the familiar image of a half-broken-down balcony, full of rusted metal and with several missing bolts.
“There it is!” I declared. “I hope whoever lives there now isn’t home.”
“If they are, I’m sure they’ll understand,” Cupi noted. “It’s not like their whole complex is being swarmed by horrific monsters from the pits of Hell, or anything like that.”
We flew over to the rusted balcony and landed on it softly, and then I used my green Hellfire to prop open the window. The five of us jumped into the building as quickly as we could, and instantly I smelled the faint, familiar scent… Incense and weed.
Yep, this was our old apartment, alright.
It had the same run-down furniture we’d left when we lived here, as well as the leaky sink and faded paint on the walls. The only different thing, however, was the giant carpet that now covered the hardwood floor.
“It appears your landlord couldn’t get it to buff out,” Sia observed. “So, he simply covered the pentagram up with this atrocious shag carpet.”
“It doesn’t even match the drapes, bro,” Todd snickered as he gestured to the gross, gray curtains on the window.
“This whole place is a mess,” a silver-tongued voice suddenly declared. “I cannot believe a literal Demon Prince lived here for so long without protest… Actually, sure I can. That bitch of a Succubus Queen manipulated you into thinking it was for the better.”
A shadowy figure appeared from the corner of the room, but we all already knew who it was.
Lucifer stepped forward out of the darkness, clad in the bright crimson armor he’d made my Nephilim brothers wear in the past. The armor had three large number “sixes” engraved into its metal, one on each shoulder and one giant one on the chest. The Devil’s hair was slicked back against his taut noggin, and his eyes were aglow with red Hellfire as he approached.
What really caught my attention, however, was what was in his hand.
It was a claymore sword made out of pure, pitch-black metal.
The Unhallowed Sword. The weapon I’d lost somewhere in the depths of the Eighth Circle.
“So, you did decide to show up,” I growled as I grabbed onto the hilt of my own weapon. “Or is this just another one of your pansy-ass illusions?”
“No, Jacob…” The Devil clicked his tongue. “I am really here. I figured you’d cut down Natas fairly easily, but I wanted to make sure you were actually an opponent who was worthy of my time.”
“I could say the same thing for you,” I snorted as I pulled my blade from its sheath. “Considering you’re always too much of a pussy to face me yourself.”
“Well…” Lucifer shrugged nonchalantly. “I suppose we will see, then, son. I’m afraid that, favorite child or not, I’ve come way too far to let you fuck up my plans now. This is the end for you, my child.”
I summoned Divine light into my hand, ran it across the Sword of Saints, and then enchanted it with the glowing white magic.
“Come and get it, then, ‘Dad,’” I declared as I took a fighting stance.
Chapter 19
“You know, it’s funny,” the Devil seethed through his silver tongue. “I wanted you to be my right-hand demon. I thought you were going to be the one to finally help me bring down Heaven and bring that goodie two-shoes up there to his knees… Yet here we are, at odds once more. I suppose you have too much of your mother in you.”
“Damn straight,” I spat as I tightened the grip on my sword.
“I think Jakey’s mom had a little too much of you in her, Lucy,” Todd snickered. “That’s how we got into this mess in the first place.”
“Silence, imp!” Lucifer growled as he summoned red flames into his hand. “I’ve had enough of your pathetic attempts at humor.”
“Attempts?” Todd snorted. “Everyone loves my jokes! I’m like Ross on Frien—”
Before he could finish his sentence, there was a flash of red Hellfire, and Todd screamed like Goofy as he flew over and slammed into the wall of the apartment.
“Todd!” Sia gasped as she threw her healing spell around the imp, but the Devil had made his point.
Lucifer charged at me, and I had seconds to get up my own blade before the Unhallowed Sword came crashing down on my head. The Devil remained stone-faced and cold as he pushed his weapon further and further down toward my skull, and I knew he would overpower me if I didn’t do something fast.
I tossed out a portal of green Hellfire underneath my body, fell through, and then reappeared right behind the bastard.
Right as the black blade stabbed into my shoulder.
“Gah!” I screamed as the blade pierced straight through my enchanted armor and then out the other side.
“The armor of Shadow People,” Lucifer spat as he leaned in close. “It may work against lesser demons like your brothers, but it’s worthless against me, son.”
Now that the fucker was up close and personal, I used the opportunity to surround the ball on my belt with silver flames and transform it into a metal rope. I commanded the rope to wrap around my father’s legs, and then I yanked him to the ground and began to drag him across the room.
Lucifer let out a frustrated grunt as he fell, but he quickly surrounded his body with bronze flames. As he did so, he shook my enchanted metal at a subatomic level, and it exploded across the room and painted the walls with molten, liquid silver.
As the Devil stood back to his feet, I felt the warm embrace of Sia’s healing spell on my back. The wound on my shoulder healed itself shut just as my father launched a blast of blue flames in my direction, and I deflected it with a flash of purple.
“Don’t worry about me, Sia!” I called out to my friends. “I can handle this loser. You just worry about the thing we came here for.”
“Right,” Superbia said in a voice full of fear.
Lucifer enchanted the Unhallowed Sword with bronze flames and then came at me like a monkey on crack. I used my own blade and my purple Hellfire to block his attacks, but the intensity of their vibration sent waves of pain through my very bones and threatened to splinter them inside my body.
I guess the literal Devil really was as strong as they made him out to be.
