Oh! Hello! What is this? Is it a collaboration between myself and Lisa Lopez? Is it an erotic fantasy of demonic possession, set in a world of adventure, war, and dark magic? Why, yes. It is. By now you'll know that trying new things and pushing my writing in strange directions is sort of what happens here.
So, when Lisa said she wanted to write a fantasy story about a woman who is forced to serve a demon's sexual urges, well, that's where that old Hamlin weirdness couldn't help but assert itself. Seeing as we're working on a much larger story together, it seemed like fun to give it a go with something wildly different from the upcoming novel.
The result, I have to say, is one of the most fun novellas I've done since Doppelgänger. That one kind of stretched my wings on the fantasy front, but with this one, we're diving headfirst into creating a new world of our own.
The Demon Chain is a fantastic combination of Lisa's characters and imaginative setting, with the dirty noncon and reluctance of a Hamlin story, complete with the inner struggle against dark desires. Throw in some epic, spellcasting badassery and a heart-rending love story to round things out, and we've got ourselves a tale to tell.
Thousands of years ago, seven ancient demons of incredible power were sealed away within seven magical artifacts. The demon chains were forged to contain their evil powers, but even the greatest of magic couldn't harness them fully. In time, the chains passed into legend and were forgotten by most.
In the ruins of Dar'Kasha, Jalissa hunts for lost treasures. She's a pilferer, a scavenger, wandering the world in search of artifacts to sell. When she uncovers a hidden chamber, the treasure she finds within is one that will exact a terrible price on her, instead.
Within this forgotten room, in the dusty fingers of a desiccated skeleton, is a gem-laden chain that glows with its own magical light. The thing seems to sing to her, to call to her, urging her to bear it from the darkness. What Jalissa doesn't realize, is that she's just carried forth an ancient evil. And it's one that's begun to consume her soul from the moment she touched it.
Now, she's in a race against time, fighting the demon's compulsions and her own temptation. She finds herself in the company of a less-than-competent mage, with the demon's power growing as it uses her body to feed. Before it can consume her, she'll need to find a way to free herself from its vile hold or perish in the attempt.
Chapter One: The Ruins
Jalissa stumbled into the ruined stone building, desperate for cover from the storm. Three days of dry weather had made poking about the jungle-covered ruins an excellent foray, but eventually, it had to end. The storm came up with little warning and blinding speed, dumping a deluge of rain and deafening thunder down on her within seconds.
None of the other crumbling heaps of ancient buildings had anything resembling a roof, but this one did. It was a godsend in the sudden downpour. Only a few dried flakes of what must have been a once grand set of gigantic doors lay strewn across the entrance, which was growing darker by the second.
Jalissa set her pack down and fumbled inside. The contents were blessedly dry. She set aside the carefully wrapped gems she’d been able to find, as well as the two little idols that would fetch a good price at the market in Canilia. This latest scavenging hadn’t been the most profitable, but at least it wasn’t a total loss. She located her catch-flint, flicked the little metal box back and forth until it sparked, and then lit one of the tallow torches from her pack.
The flickering glow threw menacing shadows across the old, weathered stone floor and walls of the place. The little bubble of light didn’t reach far. She replaced the items in the pack, shouldered it, and made a quick circuit of the room. On the walls, faded artwork was mostly unrecognizable. What was left didn’t provide much of a clue to the structure’s purpose. Since it had a well-constructed stone roof, which had remained intact over the centuries, she supposed that it must have been a place of some importance. Little remained of the rest of the city but broken rock, swallowed by the jungle.
On the far wall, she found the only remaining piece of evidence, and it was valuable. Inlayed in the stone was a pattern of gems, laid out in the symbol for infinity. The gems glittered red under the dancing flame of her torch, and they were breathtaking. All the centuries gone, yet these beautiful stones remained? It seemed impossible. Surely other adventurers and looters had picked this place clean through the years. How had no one managed to find this?
Torch in one hand, she slid her knife from her belt and tested the edges of one of the gems. The stone around it flecked away against her work. She carefully dug at the edges of the gem, sweat beading on her brow in the suffocating heat of the enclosed space. Finally, the first of the red stones came free. She nearly dropped it as it popped out with a crack. She shoved it in a pocket for the moment and went to work on the next. This one was lodged in tighter than the other and she had to work delicately to get enough of the surrounding stone wall away to get her knife under the edge.
She managed it after a time, but as she began to work the blade around the edge something clicked in the wall. She stepped back and then turned to run back out into the storm as the building began to vibrate, and then began to shake.
“Shit!” she cursed and darted, certain that the place was about to collapse.
She hadn’t gone ten paces before the shaking slowed and then suddenly stopped. She paused, one hand on the doorway, as the rain and thunder pelted the world outside. Looking back, she could feel a rush of stale air buffet her face, blowing back her hair. It carried with it the scent of… death, she thought. Still, she took a step back toward the wall, and then another, until the torchlight fell upon an even darker opening. Where once the back wall had stood, cradling the red gems, now there was an empty hole where the wall had slid back and away to reveal an entrance. Or an exit?
She thrust the torch into the portal, watching the licking flames beat back the darkness, but there was naught therein but more blackness. Jalissa hesitated, waving the torch back and forth, but no answers were forthcoming. She gave the stormy entrance behind her another look, and then stepped inside. The darkness within was like a cloying thing, clinging to her skin, devouring the light of the torch like a hungry kithrok that had been denied its kill.
The light in her hand barely broke through it, but she took another step. The feeling of the place made her skin crawl and the sweat on that skin made her itch with the instinct to turn around and run. One didn’t go ruin hunting by being easily scared, though, and she wouldn’t allow herself to be now. The greatest treasures often lay in the darkest places. But then, so did vamprats, lich spiders, and willow vipers.
She took another step and her foot kicked against something soft. A moment later a cloud of dust struck her face and she coughed. She leaned down, bringing the torch to the ground. The thing was a skeleton, dressed in ancient rags. Her intrusion had turned the rags into dust. She was breathing in the remains of ancient clothing and of death.
The torchlight showed her something else, though, something that glittered as none of the red gems had. Wrapped in the bony fingers of the corpse was a heavy, silver chain, and all along its length were gems of onyx and red. The stones seemed to shine from the inside with their own pale light, which was magnified by that of her torch.
“Holy shit,” she whispered and even the small sound echoed around her in the darkness.
She touched the chain and the brittle fingers fell apart, as though offering her their prize. A prize that this lost adventurer had died for. What had prevented his escape? Impossible to tell after all this time. He could have been injured before he entered, poisoned, betrayed. So many possibilities.
So many ways to die.
She picked up the chain and held it up to the torchlight. No stranger to hunting ruins, Jalissa had seen her share of ancient treasures. She’d held gold coins from the ancient kingdom of Li’ath-Kit-Kenan. She’d retrieved crowns and tiara’s from Silith Brele. Gems, weapons, parchments, scrolls, even a vial of death magic that she’d sold to a black-robed mage. The little chain and its gemstones, though, were something wholly new. Looking at the stones was entrancing, as though they were singing a song in her head.
It was with an effort that she pulled her eyes away from them and stuffed the chain into her pocket as she stood. She slowly padded in one direction until she came to a wall, then followed it around, measuring off the space. The room was small, barely twenty paces square. The only other thing of note was a hewn altar of solid rock, placed at the center. On the altar were shards of glass that didn’t seem to hold any value.
Jalissa made for the muted gray light of the room’s entrance and felt like a weight had lifted off of her the moment she was back in the main room. She examined the wall around the entrance, but couldn’t find any way to close the portal and retrieve the remaining gems. She shrugged off the pack and removed the contents again, wrapping the single red gem and the silver chain, then placing everything back. Outside, the vicious storm seemed to be blowing away.
She stood by the entrance, watching the dark sheet of rain as it swallowed the sky, moving into the distance. Eventually, the sun broke through, low in the sky now. For a moment, she considered camping here, but a glance back at that dark portal changed her mind. Something about it just made her uneasy. Better a night in the jungle than next to that. She shivered and left the ruin.
Chapter Two: The Compulsion
The city of Canilia was built against the natural barrier of a high mountain range. On one side of the range lay dense rainforest, while on the opposite side, in the rain shadow, sat the city. Cut straight through the range was what was known as simply, “the pass,” the site of a long dried-up river, that had cut its way through the mountains over millennia. The resulting pass was like a giant had cleaved the mountains in two, leaving a wide road-like traverse from one end to the next. Canilia had lain a roadway through that pass, where resources could be carted in from the rainforest.
The west end of Canilia was a filthy place, but cleaner than most slums in the ramshackle nest of viperous cities that made up Unlious, the country Jalissa called home. Decades of war, punctuated by short years of truce, had left indelible marks on every part of Unlious. Most of the cities were more slum than anything else at this point, the majority of the wealthy citizens having moved into the upper ends, what had come to be known as “fortress zones,” where they could hide from their fellow man behind guarded walls.
The market of Canilia was a place of pirates and smugglers, which also brought in the other dregs. Whores plied their trade openly, while the beggars and street urchins huddled in the shadows of the dilapidated buildings. It was into one of these buildings that Jalissa entered with one hand on the hilt of her knife. In the market, you always had one hand on your knife.
From the outside, the shop was as unassuming as the rest of the tumbledown buildings. It didn’t even have a sign. It didn’t need one. Everyone in Canilia knew the place, no matter their station. All around the outer wall were shelves holding vials and flasks, filled with powders and liquids in so many different colors that they would have made a rainbow jealous. Some of those glowed, while others seemed to suck the very light from the room.
The floor of the shop housed tables and stands, each of them neat and organized to perfection. On those tables and stands were glass cases, locked, containing gems, small arms, and other less descript items. An unfamiliar patron might have mistaken those items for nothing more than what they appeared. However, Jalissa knew that each of those things held some kind of power. That power ranged from mundane to lethal. Among those tables were arrayed stands of cloaks, light armor, and tunics.
On the far end stood a long, polished, wooden countertop. Hanging on the wall behind this were larger swords, spears, and other instruments of violence. Between the counter and the wall stood a man, who at first glance was little more than a frail man in a drab brown robe. His skin was weathered like old parchment and the fingernails on the hand holding a gem up to the light were yellowed from smoke, as well as working with chemicals and powders. Those things were part of his trade, and that trade was the reason that he could blatantly display so many valuable artifacts openly in a place like the Canilian market.
To call Eldris Witchfire’s craft "a trade" was to do it a disservice. It would have, in fact, been wholly inaccurate. A trade was something that a person might be proficient in, even renowned for. They used their trade for their livelihood or took it up as a hobby. Many people plied more than one trade. Eldris’s craft was simply what he was. There was no greater mage of warding in the entire country, perhaps even within the next three kingdoms.
No one knew if the man had an actual surname, at least no one alive who was willing to talk about it. He was known as Witchfire, because of his part in fending off the last invasion on Canilia. That had been decades ago, before Jalissa had been born. His wardings, powerful even then, had burned men by the thousands as they laid siege to the fortress zone around the city’s innermost keep. According to the stories, Eldris had stood atop the walls, alone, and laughed as men died by the score, burning alive as his green fire melted their flesh and turned their bones to ash.
In that single night, more men had died from his warding than in the previous month of the war. The event secured the last truce, which held to this day. The old man’s skills may have slipped in that time. No one knew. Nobody wanted to test it by thieving from his shop. Thus, Jalissa entered it much as she had on so many occasions. Uneasy, and in a hurry to get her business done as quickly as possible.
“Jalissa,” Eldris called as she entered, without even taking his eyeglass off of the jewel he examined.
“Eldris,” she said back, by now used to the fact that he knew exactly who was entering his shop before they’d even stepped inside.
Used to it, she was, but not comfortable with it. One was never comfortable here.
“You’ve brought me something special?” he asked, setting the jewel down and giving her his attention.
“Just the usual,” she said, shrugging off the pack and rooting through it.
She produced the gemstones she’d acquired in the ruins and arrayed them on the counter for his inspection. The two small idols she set next to them. The chain, she held onto for last. Eldris glanced over the gems and idols, his brows knitting, and then the look passed. Jalissa was silent as he took up each gem, inspected it with his glass, and then carefully examined the idols.
“Worthwhile vessels,” he said, nodding. “I’ll give you 500 lains for the lot.”
“500?” Jalissa spat, sounding offended.
For the next several minutes, she haggled with him, as was their custom. They finally settled on 650 lains for her haul, both of them satisfied, but putting forth a mask of displeasure that both of them recognized as a lie. That was the way of it, though.
“What else do you have?” Eldris asked, swiping away the gems and idols. “There’s something more you’re not showing me. I can feel it.”
Jalissa grinned and said, “There is one more thing.”
She pulled the chain, wrapped in a cloth, from her pocket and set it on the counter, and unwrapped it. Eldris recoiled so violently from it that his back hit the wall and sent numerous items from the display clattering loudly to the floor. He threw up his hands and drew something in the air with practiced quickness. A green rune flared in front of him and the whole place seemed to darken. The reaction caused Jalissa to take a step back in response.
“Neesa and all the gods! Where did you get that?” Eldris exclaimed.
“In the ruins on the other side of the pass. What is it?”
“Did you touch it?” Eldris asked, his voice fearful as Jalissa had never heard it. “Did you touch the damn thing with your hand?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
Eldris stared at the thing as though it were a willow viper prepared to strike. It was the look of a man who knows that death is staring back at him. He shuddered.
“Then it’s already too late,” he said. “You may as well put it away.”
“What are you on about?” she demanded, her heart seeming frozen in her chest.
“Put it away!” he hissed.
Jalissa swiped the chain off of the counter with a trembling hand and stuffed it back in her pocket.
“It’s a demon chain,” Eldris said, visibly relaxing now that the thing was no longer in sight.
“A demon chain?”
“Old magic, older than most,” he said, shaking his head. He actually looked sad as he said, “I’ve enjoyed your visits, Jalissa. I’m sorry.”
“What is it?” she demanded again, the fear rising, apparent in her voice.
“Seven such chains were made, long ago, to contain seven demons,” Eldris said. “You’ve heard of the Black Fields, yes?”
Jalissa nodded. Everyone had heard of the Black Fields. They stretched over miles, the sight of what had once been the kingdom of Rutheran. Now, all that remained of that once-great civilization were those empty fields, which were not really empty. They writhed with something black, like a sea of tar. Every now and again, they would spew forth some horror, which would assault the walls that had been built around the place. The mages that guarded that wall would lose a number of their ranks to kill whatever it was, and then the fields would go quiet again. Until the next horror.
“Rutheran’s king was given what’s purported to be a demon chain. That was the end of Rutheran,” Eldris said. “What became of the other six, no one knew. Now, you’ve uncovered one. From what I can tell just from my sense of the thing, it’s already part of you. Do you feel… less? Drained somehow?”
Jalissa had felt a bit tired, but weariness was nothing new. She’d just spent days in the jungle, crawling through ruins, after all. She was always tired after an excursion.
“A little tired,” she admitted. “That’s normal, right?”
“I can feel a consumption from it, almost a pull,” Eldris said.
Jalissa recalled the way the chain seemed to sing in her head when she looked at it, as if it was drawing her in.
“When I looked at it,” she said, “I felt like it was… pulling at me.”
“That’s because it was,” Eldris said. “While I can’t be absolutely certain without examining it more closely, I’d say that it’s Succubi’s chain.”
At Jalissa’s continuing, perplexed look he continued, “Succubi was an ancient demon that stole life to feed her rebirth. She could not, of course, draw life herself. She was not corporeal. Rather, she inhabited a body and used it to draw the life from others, consuming them, either in part or wholly. Ultimately, enough stolen life would give her form, and allow her to enter the physical world herself. You, I’m not at all pleased to say, are now her host.”
“You’re saying I’m…”
“Possessed?” Eldris finished. “Yes. That is what I’m saying.”
“Fuck you!” Jalissa spat, filled with terror. “How do I get it out?”
She brushed at her clothes, looking herself over, as though she could physically wipe away the demon.
“You don’t,” Eldris said. “At least, I’ve never heard of it happening. It’s been so long since anyone’s dealt with something like this, though, that it’s impossible for me to say.”
“Do you know someone?” she asked, panicking, reaching for him.
She cried out as her hands came up against a ward, which flared green in front of the old man.
“Don’t!” he commanded. “There’s nothing I can do.”
He paused, thinking, then said, “Wait here.”
As if I could fucking move, without pissing myself!
Eldris vanished into the back of his shop, while Jalissa stood quaking. A moment later he returned and laid a coin on the table, along with a cinched, brown sack.
“She’ll go away if I pay her?” Jalissa asked, incredulous.
“The bag is your payment for the gems and idols. I’ve added some extra as a parting gift. Go get yourself drunk. Go whoring. Do something enjoyable with the time you have left. I wouldn’t recommend trying to kill yourself. At best, someone else would pick the thing up. At worst, you’d just come back.”
“Neesa take you, Eldris!” she spat.
The old man sighed and said, “The coin is warded. Hold onto it. It’s a sanity ward for those under a compulsion spell. I don’t imagine that you’ll be able to resist her altogether, but the ward should allow you to retain… something of yourself while she devours your soul.”
“I wish you were a fucking liar,” she said.
“In this case, I wish I was, too. You’ve been a good client, Jalissa. I’ll miss you.”
“What if I throw it away? What if I give it to someone else?” she said, scrabbling.
Eldris shook his head and said, “No good. I don’t imagine you’ll be able to get rid of it. She won’t let you.”
Jalissa wanted to prove him wrong, needed to. She pulled the chain from her pocket and made to throw it on the floor, to stamp on it, to shatter the gems and crush them into dust. Her arm moved, but her hand held the thing in her fist, refusing to release her grip. She tried again, but her fingers held it wrapped so tightly that her nails dug into her palms. She held it and stared in horror at the old man, her eyes pleading. He only shook his head.
“Fuck!” she spat.
“If there were a stronger word, it would be more fitting.”
“You’re saying that there’s nothing I can do?” she begged.
“I’m saying that I do not know of anything you can do. The demon chains were made to keep their horrible powers contained, but the strongest magic of the old kingdoms couldn’t harness them fully. The only place that I can think of that might have the slightest hint of an answer is the College of High Sorcery.”
“That’s days away! How long do I have?” Jalissa implored.
“I can’t say,” Eldris admitted. “The more you give in to the compulsion, the faster it will happen. The more you can resist, the longer you have. It’s not exactly a science. I wouldn’t hesitate to find a ship across the sea and a fast horse on the other side.”
“Eldris,” she whispered. “Thank you. I’m... I’m sorry I got angry.”
“Understandable,” he said, shrugging. “Now, would you kindly take that thing out of my shop, out of this city, and as far away from me as possible?”
Jalissa nodded, swiped the money and the coin off the counter, pocketed them, turned to go, and then stopped. She turned back and had the oddest, most out-of-place desire. She’d just been given a death sentence and told that a demon was consuming her soul. And yet…
“Eldris,” she said.
“Yes?”
Jalissa did not want to say the words that she could feel about to roll off of her tongue. They were the most wildly inappropriate words for this moment, and they were utterly ludicrous. She said them anyway.
“Are you sure I can’t suck your cock?”
Eldris paled and he drew another ward, this one red. She could feel the power of it from this far, like a wall of heat that caused sweat to bead on her skin.
“Get out, Jalissa. Don’t come back.”
Jalissa felt her lips curl up in a sneer, like she was a puppet in a mummer’s show, with little strings directing her movement. Eldris raised his hands again and they were glowing, green like the fires that had earned him his name. The feeling of compulsion faded.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” she said, and then turned and ran from the shop.
Standing on the street, with the press of people passing by, Jalissa was struck by the absurdity of her misfortune. She’d just offered a blowjob to a man nearly three times her age. As the thought flitted through her mind, with it came a peal of dark and seductive laughter, like an echo from across a room. She nearly shouted at the laughter but caught herself. She pulled out the coin and turned it over in her hand, as she slipped the bag of money into her shirt. Then, the coin vanished into another hidden pocket. With one hand on her knife, Jalissa beat a hasty path to the harbor.
The low docks of Canilia were built along the shores of a deep bay, which opened out onto the Sorry Sea. The sea was so named because it was just that, a sorry excuse for a sea. It was, in truth, not much of a sea at all. It was, however, a large enough body of water that one needed a stout ship to cross it. If that ship traveled far enough north, it would eventually reach a real sea, and then an ocean. Jalissa did not need to travel that far, though. She only needed to cross the Sorry Sea to the Port of Elenthia.
The docks smelled of fish, spilled wine, and the reek of bodily fluids. The low docks were the port for middling merchants, those that were engaged in piracy, or smugglers. Further north, in the Great Bay, lay the high docks, where the city’s wealthy merchants unloaded their cargo. The high docks were protected by the Crown’s Man-O-Wars, while the low docks were patrolled (in a sense) by the constabulary’s less formidable craft. These were essentially in place to accept the bribes that allowed the smugglers and pirates to use the docks.
Booking passage across the Sorry Sea was not a difficult thing. A few farriers made their living running back and forth across the sea, a journey of about half a day in good weather. Today, the weather was good.
Jalissa consulted the board at the ferry. This late in the day, there were no more of them going out. However, there was a departure just after sunrise tomorrow. She purchased a ticket and then wove through the crowd to a nearby lodge. The sign swinging above the door read The Lookout. Likely more than half of those that visited the establishment couldn’t even read the sign. Jalissa entered, rented a room, received a key, and made her way to the upper story.
The small room wasn’t filthy, and the sheets on the little bed were clean. Satisfied with the accommodation, she used the room’s key to unlock the safe and stowed her pack. With just enough coin to pay a bath fee, she left and locked the room.
After all the days in the sweltering jungle heat, with only cool streams to wash in, the heat of an actual bath was a luxury well worth the money. Once she was clean, she replaced her grimy clothes with fresh ones, bundled up the previous ones, and tucked them under her arm. She returned to her lodgings and put away the clothes, then walked down to the common room.
While she tucked into a plate of food that was far better than she’d expected and drank a glass of wine that was far worse than advertised, she quietly scanned the room. It was a habit to be watchful in a place like this, no better than the market, especially for a woman. It was even more so for an attractive woman. Jalissa had fended off more than one unwelcome sexual partner in places like this.
Savoring the meal, and displeased with the wine, she was joined at the table by a brutish man in a cotton tunic. His arms were covered in badly done tattoos and his head was bald. The most surprising thing about him was his smell. He didn’t smell bad.
“Lovely,” he greeted her, as if it were her name.
“Ugly,” she shot back.
The man chuckled.
“I seen worse,” he said and gave her a predatory grin. He was missing one tooth.
“I’ve seen better,” she countered.
“Ain’t seen much more prettier ’n you,” he added.
“You don’t get out of the city much.”
She popped a grape into her mouth and chewed, her other hand resting on her knife. The man’s eyes flicked to it, back to her face, and then moved down to her chest.
“Fancy a bit of good company tonight, Lovely?” he asked her tits.
“Did you see an invitation?”
He nodded his head at her breasts.
“Those aren’t an invitation,” she said.
“Looks like one to me,” he remarked.
Jalissa, suddenly confused, followed his eyes down to her chest. Her tunic was unlaced, and she was showing off quite a bit of her ample assets. Had she forgotten to lace it up after the bath? No. She distinctly remembered doing it. When had she undone it? Why was she smiling? Oh, shit!
“Maybe I like to invite… trouble,” she heard herself say.
Her mind recoiled at the words as the man grinned back.
“Pleasure to meet ya’,” he said. “You can call me Trouble.”
Jalissa thought it was lame and had a very pithy response on the tip of her tongue. Instead of her witty reply, though, she said, “Funny. I was going to say the same thing, and then ask if you’d like to get into Trouble.”
He chuckled at the stupid joke as Jalissa blushed. Her fingers brushed the hilt of the knife and with a disgusted knot in her stomach, she realized that they were curling around it like she was jerking it off. And she couldn’t stop herself. His eyes followed her movement and his grin widened at the implication.
“I think I would like to get in Trouble,” he said. “I won’t even need a knife to penetrate you.”
Jalissa shuddered with revulsion, even as her hand continued the movement and her own smile turned seductive.
“Promise?” she heard herself whisper.
“By Neesa and the four hells,” he whispered back.
Jalissa did not want her legs to move, but they did. They scooted the chair back and they made her stand, and then she leaned over the table and gave him an enticing view of her breasts.
“That’s a promise I’m going to hold you to,” she said.
The man pushed back his own chair, excitement at his good fortune evident. She followed him from the room and up the stairs, screaming inside her head for her body to stop, willing her hand to draw the knife, but she was a prisoner in her own body. She stumbled as she exerted her will against the movement, her feet dragging. The man glanced at her, likely assuming she’d drank too much of the piss wine. But then her feet were moving again, and a second later he unlocked a door with his own key.
She followed him in. Once the door was shut, he immediately rounded on her and began to tug at the remaining laces on her tunic. Her hands helped him along, much to his delight, and then she pulled the tunic off and flung it aside. His eyes locked on her bare tits and his calloused hands soon followed, groping and mauling them roughly.
At least he didn’t try to kiss me.
She fought against the compulsion with everything she had and managed to wiggle away from him, but he seemed to think it was some kind of game and came after her. Jalissa tried to make her leg kick him in the balls, but instead, she managed to trip herself and give him the opening he needed to sweep her up and toss her on the bed. He pulled off one of her boots and then the other. Her traitorous hands worked at the laces on her trousers, undid them, and then he pulled those off, too.
“Fuck me, but that’s a sight,” he said and began to remove his own clothes.
Jalissa could see his hard cock tenting his trousers, and then it was out in the open, thick and ready. He pulled her legs apart and his smile broadened.
“Shaved like a proper whore, too,” he remarked and wet his fingers.
Jalissa yelped as he stuffed his fingers between her legs and roughly mashed them against her pussy. It was wet and it was hot. The horror and shame of it made her blush like a virgin.
“Wet as the Sorry Sea, ain’t ya’?” he said, chuckling. “I got what you need, Lovely.”
Jalissa did not need or want what he had, but instead of fighting, she sat up and wrapped her hand around his dick. A moment later, it was in her mouth. Her lips closed around it and swallowed it with a desperation that she didn’t feel. No, she did feel it, she realized. It wasn’t coming from her, though. It was coming from that… thing. The thing inside of her was hungry, the hunger of a thousand years of starvation and want. She moaned needily as she sucked this strange brute’s cock as she’d never sucked cock before.
The man gasped in surprise at her ferocity and gripped her head in his big hands, as though hanging on for his life as she worked on his penis with her tongue and lips, fucking her own face on it. Drool pooled in her mouth, squelched, and ran from the corners of her tightly sealed lips. It dripped onto her tits and then it began to run in small rivers as she inhaled that engorged cock like the most well-paid whore in the market.
“Gods!” he exclaimed. “Best you back off or yer gonna drain me dry before we even got to the good part!”
Jalissa did not stop. She continued to assault his cock, cradling and squeezing his balls in her hand as she purred, whined, and then moaned around his well-wet shaft. His body bucked and his dick jerked in her mouth. The first blast of his cum rocketed into her mouth and her own body quivered with delight, even as her mind reeled with horror. She was not a swallower, but the demon didn’t care what she was. The demon was hungry.
She swallowed the first shot, then the second, gulping it down as though it were the promised, delicious wine that the innkeeper had offered with her meal. On the third blast of semen, something in the man changed. His grip loosened and he convulsed. Rather than the expected groan of relief and pleasure, he made a pained grunt, and then he shuddered violently.
“What…” he whispered, terror in his voice.
His hands fell limp at his sides, but his cock continued dispensing more cum, more than her experience with the stuff had ever felt. It kept flowing and his body continued to jerk and twist. As she watched from her prison, all the color seemed to drain from his skin and it turned white, then gray. Finally, her mouth released his shriveled organ. He fell to the floor and with a feeling of dread she saw that the once thickly muscled body was nothing more than an emaciated husk.
As she watched, the husk that had once been a man crumbled into dusty powder on the floor. Her own mouth gave a satisfied purr of pure pleasure and then her body trembled. She moaned loudly and then gasped, falling back on the bed. Detached from herself, she could only watch her own hand move between her legs and begin to vigorously masturbate her soaking pussy. She cried out and then an orgasm unlike any she’d ever felt obliterated her conscious thought. For a moment, she and that other were one, both of them overcome with the mind-melting pleasure of that feeling.
She could feel her spine pop as her back arched so far off of the bed that she felt like she might fold in half. The unreal, otherworldly intensity of that powerful cum was like staring into the face of Neesa herself. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she could hear herself giggling and gasping as she convulsed on the bed.
By the time she could move again, the compulsion had faded, and she was herself. She tested her arms and was able to move them, then her legs. She had control. A disturbing feeling, a presence. sat in the back of her mind. It felt sated, like a sleepy kitten that had just filled its belly with too much milk. It felt vile.
Every part of Jalissa’s body tingled with the afterglow of that incredible feeling and, though she had control of her body, it still resisted her efforts to sit up. For a few minutes, she stared at the ceiling and allowed the feeling to slip away. It didn’t happen without some reluctance. That long, pulsing wave of pure pleasure had been more intoxicating than the finest wine she’d ever drunk.
At last, she was able to sit up and look down at the layer of gray ash on the wood floor that had been a person, only minutes ago. Jalissa had killed before. It had never been without purpose or reason, purely in her own defense. Those times had been hard, though it became easier with each one. This time felt different. It felt wrong.
Despite knowing that she hadn’t actually done it herself, there was a burden of guilt as she looked at the ashes. She couldn’t understand how it happened. One moment the big bastard was having the time of his life, and the next he was being consumed, drained of everything he was until nothing remained but that layer of gray dust. With the feeling of guilt came the absurdity of it. She’d killed a man with… with a blowjob.
Numbly, she picked up her discarded clothes and dressed, careful not to disturb the dust. Somehow, it felt disrespectful. She left the man’s clothes where they’d fallen, padded to the door, and swiftly stepped back out. In the morning, when they came looking for him, what would someone make of the dust and the discarded belongings? Surely others had seen them leave together. How could they possibly make the connection between the dust and the man? She didn’t believe they would.
Jalissa stumbled back to her room in a daze and locked herself inside. She drew the thin blanket on the bed around herself and huddled in the dark. It had never seemed more menacing. Tonight, she lifted the glass on the bedside lantern, lit it, and fell asleep, watching the shadows dance on the walls. They looked like the demonic fires that she knew were devouring her from the inside.
Enjoying this story? Pick up the entire book to follow Jalissa's descent to the brink of madness and learn her fate. Will she give in to Succubi's temptations? What new horrors await on the road to the College of High Sorcery? Find out in the 27.5K word novella, The Demon Chain by Tori Hamlin and Lisa X Lopez.