Malcubus Ch. 01: Cherry

"Right. For magical spells. Still getting my head around that." I looked at the road for a while, playing the responsible driver, before speaking again. "That wasn't a threat, was it? You're not going to, I don't know, invoke my full name to steal my soul?"

She giggled. "Your s- you've got a funny sense of humour, master."

"I do?"

"I certainly hope so, or you're even more out of your depth than I thought, which is just adorable." She stroked my arm affectionately. "Of all the demons of every vice, I'm about the only one you don't have to keep a watchful eye on. Speaking of which, have you decided what you're going to do with me today?"

I had not. Looking back it seems ridiculous that I was going to work that morning. Sure, I needed my job, but my life's script had just been flipped so hard it rewrote itself to be nothing but sex scenes. Compared to the enchanting, terrifying and relentlessly sexual creature in my passenger seat, minimum wage labour should have been even less tempting than usual. I guess that was my problem -- temptation. I don't think I was afraid for my soul or anything, but change is scary. I wanted to keep up the pretence of normality for just a few more hours, perhaps, before losing that crutch forever.

"I'm not sure, and I think it depends," I said, "on how well you can blend in."

"Oh, I understand the value of discretion," she winked, squeezing her breast blatantly.

"You see, that's what I'm talking about," I said. "You know what a computer is and you talk like, well, you don't even have an accent... but you've never been in a car and I don't even know for sure whether you understand the nudity taboo."

"Calm down, master."

"Look, I just want to know whether I can leave you at the library for a few hours without you, I don't know, seducing a priest or eviscerating a toddler or holding a black mass in honour of -- "

"Pull over, master," she whispered, slipping an arm around my shoulders. The gesture was almost as comforting as it was terrifying. When I found a park along the side of the road she pressed up against me in a hug, head pressed against my side, a gesture as tender as it was chaste. My boner still strained against the seatbelt.

"There's nothing to be worried about," she said quietly, soft against me. "I'm bound to you, Eric: always and forever. I'm here to serve you, to pleasure you, to be yours. You don't need to stress about me; because of me, you'll never need to stress again."

Her hair smelled like summer rain and peaches. "That's... that sounds nice, Rosmerta, it really does. But you are, well, a demon, aren't you?"

She kissed me on the shoulder, making me shiver. "I'm your demon, Eric. Now that you've bound me, that's more important."

"Does that mean you're not going to, um, kill anyone? Do anything demonic?"

She lifted her head up to lock eyes with me. It was like staring into the maw of a hurricane; this close, her eyes were things massive and majestic, more like a landscape than another person. "It means I hold your will, your nature, your desires above my own. And I'm pretty sure you're not a demon of Wrath," she said, tapping my nose, "so no massacres, don't worry." She backed off from me a little, keeping her arms around me affectionately. "Are you seriously asking if you can trust me?"

She was acting like we both knew something important, and I had no idea what it was. "Uh, I don't want to keep retreading the same ground, but... you are a demon." This was becoming as awkward as my last relationship.

Rosmerta looked befuddled, but clucked her tongue and moved past it. "Am I not being clear? I'm bound to you -- why would I ever do something that could cause you harm? I'll be your lover, your confidante, your doting servant, the instrument of your sin, your eager fuckslave -- "

I choked a little on my saliva.

"- but not your enemy." She leaned up towards me and pecked my stunned lips, then gave a grin bright enough to restart my stopped heart. "Feel better?"

Most parts of me did. Some parts of my logical mind were unconvinced, and my dick was about to commit mutiny and take command of my whole body, but overall I felt better. "Some. I..." The dashboard clock ticked forward another minute. "Shit, I guess I kind of have to take it or leave it, don't I? I'm gonna drop you at the mall across the road from my work. They've got a decent public library where I'd really prefer you to stay -- you can catch up on history, get someone to teach you how to use a computer..."

"That sounds great!" she said, clapping. "I've got so many questions about this century, but I didn't want to bore you with them."

"You wouldn't bore me -- but the library will be good, it'll be safe for you. And... here, I'll give you money for lunch."

Her face perked up further at the word 'lunch', but she waved away my wallet. "I'm not in the mood for mortal food, don't worry." She nodded down towards where my seatbelt trapped my groin. "I'm only hungry for one thing, and waiting will make it all the tastier."

Not sure how to deal with that, but with my heart soaring in my chest, I nodded and pulled back into traffic. The drive was only a few minutes longer, and I spent most of it giving Rosmerta guidelines for blending in at the sleepy public library. Clothes yes, loud questioning of strangers no, mentioning Hell or demons definitely no, that sort of thing. She seemed a bit bemused by the whole thing, reassuring me that she knew the basics norms of mortal society, although she wasn't particularly clear on how. Maybe Hell was one big mall.

I pulled up close to the entrance in the mall parking lot, looked over at 'my' succubus, and blew air out through my teeth.

"What?"

"Just... trying to trust you," I said. "I want to, I really -- you have no idea. But, hell, I have trouble trusting my tute buddies to do their share of the assignment."

Rosmerta looked at me with pursed lips for an uncomfortably long time, to the point where I felt like I should say something further just to break the awkward silence. Then she shook her head and smiled at me ruefully. "Fire and brimstone, Eric. You really didn't know what you were doing, did you?"

"You only just met me, so I'll warn you: I never know what I'm doing."

"Getting that impression. Alright, how about this?" she asked, bending down to the passenger seat foot well and coming back up holding a coil of thick chain bound in rubber. "Bike chain, right?"

"Yea- wait, you know what a bike chain is?" Was cycling a tool of the devil?

"Watch this," Rosmerta said, holding the chain up in front of her. The next few actions took place very quickly, before any of it could really sink in. First she slid a fingernail along the green rubber coating, slicing through it and pulling it away in one motion. She reached in to grab two of the links in the chain that she'd revealed, holding them daintily with just two fingers each. And then her wrists just twitched and there was a hard smack like a cricket bat connecting, and my bike chain was in two pieces.

Rosmerta shook the snapped link off and twirled a half-chain idly around her finger while smiling at me serenely. "Not to disparage your manly muscles, but if I wanted to run away and do whatever my will dictated, I could. It's not like you could stop me."

I was silent.

The demon put the chain pieces back in the foot well. "You can trust me or not, Eric, I'll serve you either way. But if you really doubt the strength of our bound, you shouldn't think you have any other hold over me."

After a few moments I swallowed. It took a couple of tries. "I think I get it. Either I believe you or I don't. If I believe you, fine and dandy. If I don't believe you... then I should just accept that you're free to do whatever you want."

"And look at how few hellfires I've lit since being summoned," she said cheerily. "You're my master, master; whether you believe it or not, I'm still gonna make your dreams come true." She nodded pointedly at the dash clock. "Now, can I go read about all the latest mortal shenanigans or not?"

Well, I was hardly about to keep her in the car with physical force, so I nodded. "I'll pick you up after my shift -- shit, they're probably gonna keep me late. Call it 4:30pm, I'll come in and get you at the library entrance. Okay?"

"I'm a big girl, daddy," she said huskily. "I promise I'll be good."

I wasn't sure if my libido could handle seeing her naughty. "Good. Please be... just don't get into too much trouble," I said.

It was almost awkward, waiting for her to go. She sat there looking at me for several seconds, judging and questioning and reassuring and wanting me with her eyes, and I was just wondering whether I should lean in for a hug or something when she bent over with pursed lips. The succubus didn't go for my cheek or even lips, though. Instead she bent all the way over and planted a hard kiss on the zipper of my work pants, pressing her lips against my bulge. "I'll miss you," she whispered with her head in my lap.

And then the door opened, and she was gone.

***

ROSMERTA

This mall serves a fairly small suburban community, and is thus modest: more grocery chains than clothing stores, and the hardware depot across the parking lot is almost as big as the whole mall complex itself. Nestled at one corner of the squat, block-ugly building is the public library. Inside, a few senior citizens browse the shelves, a mother shepherds her two school-dodging children towards the kid's section, and a couple of soul-crushingly bored public employees restock shelves. It's cold; fat air conditioning units hum and wheeze, and the air bites with a sterile chill.

The demon acts against this by her mere presence. The seat where she's read for the past two hours is warm to the touch, and the ambient temperature of her little nook has climbed up to 'comfortable'.

Rosmerta, Spawn of the Flooded Flame and Resplendent Courtesan of the Palace of Scented Silk, has become quite comfortable indeed. Now, and only now, her mind begins to wander.

She has had much to process. The night spent meditating at the centre of her Master's summoning circle gave her time to become accustomed to the sensations of a physical body, from simple things like mass and inertia to stranger elements, such as a cardiovascular system. Self-reflection had diverted her from spending too much of the evening staring at her Master. Sleeping in a drooling bundle just outside the circle's wards, He certainly hadn't looked like an arch-mage or eschatological savant. He looked like, well, a dumb kid. And yet she felt His essence marking her very soul, binding them together as surely as sin itself. It was incredible, historic, terrifying -- and when He had awoken, Rosmerta's newborn life had become truly exciting.

She had not anticipated the intensity of her new body's sexual desire, for one thing. Lust really does feel different when filtered through Fundamental meat, as it turned out. This morning she had contained herself and comported herself with remarkable restraint, as far as a demon of Lust was capable of -- but not for much longer. He too is a virgin. Soon His labours will end, and he will return for her, and they will discover the joys of sin together. Simply thinking about it makes her wet.

The books are a comforting distraction, if an incomplete one. A demon can never be wholly ignorant of humanity, any more than a shadow can be independent of its caster or a text divorced from its author. That being true, however, there are many mortals doing many things, and all at such a fixed rate of time. In the twisted chronoscape of the Umbra, following a linear history is somewhere between boring and entirely futile. Now that she too is swept up in time's currents, it is amusing to see what new depths mankind has sunk to.

Amusing, but not quite enough so to occupy her for the whole of her Master's shift.

The Lust burning within her has distracting physical effects, inextricable from the mortal form she has taken. Her nipples remain hard, tingles fire down her thighs when she crosses and uncrosses her legs, and she can't help but reach inside the track pants to stroke herself every few minutes. A climax is impossible, of course, but it feels good nonetheless.

Not good enough; she needs more. She needs more, and her Master is not here to satisfy her, to fuel her, to fill her with sin until power flames in her soul. She wants it, she needs it, and she can get it nowhere else.

If Rosmerta wasn't so deeply bound to Eric Jared Cooper, she would be feeling pretty frustrated by him right now.

Soulbound or not, a demon of Lust is hardly a devoted monogamist. Although the library is fairly quiet at this time of day, with only the prohibitively old and prohibitively young in attendance, her eyes wander and find prey.

The boy and girl wearing library name tags around their necks are of an appropriate age. Both wearing mirrored expressions of dutiful boredom, the female sits behind the help desk while the male stocks shelves. After a moment's contemplation of the new feelings in her nethers, Rosmerta decides to test the limits of the soulbond and walks towards the male.

Anthony Cruz is 24 years old. He is not a regular employee of the library, but his mother (who is) has fallen ill and he is sufficiently directionless in life that he has no difficulty covering her shifts. He has taken worse jobs for less pay, but it is hardly demanding or stimulating work -- at least until the cute redhead who'd been reading in the corner walks up and says hello.

"Hi," he says back, stunned. Wearing a faded t-shirt and stained sweat pants, she is the most beautiful woman he has ever spoken to.

"Anthony, right?" Rosmerta says, waving. "Nametags are handy."

"Uh, um... yeah. I'm Anthony. Can I help you with anything?" He is off-kilter already, but her stare makes him even more uncomfortable. He feels like she's dissecting his every word, his every movement and facial expression.

"You're a pretty handsome guy, right Anthony?" Rosmerta asks. "I mean, you're not stunning or anything, but you've had girlfriends, right?"

He doesn't know what to say to that, and so says nothing for several seconds before stammering out "I guess."

Rosmerta purses her lips. "That's what I thought." And yet -- staring at his eyes, seeing the curve of modest muscles beneath his shirt, watching the bulge grow in his pants without his notice -- the succubus feels nothing in her soul. Certainly her arousal is undiminished, but neither does it grow. This man is merely another mortal, not a meal.

It was impossible to mistake the touch of soul-binding for anything else, but this confirms it even further.

"Are- do I know you?" he asks. And she is certainly standing quite close; she needs to smell him, after all. He does not smell anywhere near as delectable as her Master.

"Very unlikely," she says. "Do you mind if I -- " she reaches out and strokes his bicep, squeezing with scientific detachment. "Mm. Superior to Him from a technical perspective, but..." She shrugs and steps back before Anthony gropes her in return, or goes completely cross-eyed. "Sorry, Anthony. Any other life -- any other spell, really -- I'd have you, but it appears He's fiddled with my wiring. Probably unintentional, I don't think He would know how to do it, but maybe He really is just playing very dumb..."

Anthony cuts through the most confusing conversation of his life to act with genuine courage. "Am I crazier than you," he asks with desperately faked confidence, "or are you hitting on me?"

"I'm afraid I'll have to disappoint you there," the succubus says, and her apologetic smile is almost cute enough to make up for the heartbreak. "Are you going to be angry if I explicitly reject you?"

"I'm, um, mostly just really confused," he admits. He has only just noticed the small bumps atop the mad girl's bust, and most of his brainpower is thus diverted to the image of this woman without a bra.

"Don't worry about that, everyone up here is," she tells him. "Come on, I'd like your input for the next part." She turns and walks to the end of the aisle, and what can he do but follow her? He'd follow her into traffic at this rate. No bra, his brain mumbles.

Rosmerta stops at the mouth of the aisle and nods towards the help desk near the library's entrance. Right under a fat air conditioner shivers Anthony's co-worker, currently explaining return policies to an elderly man. She is young, brunette, and would be pretty (in a homely sort of way) if not for the acne along one cheek.

"What's her name?" Rosie asks, pointing. Although Anthony takes a moment to take stock and respond, the girl doesn't notice their staring.

"Uh, that's Makenzie. She, uh, this is her first job out of school," the man says.

"What do you think of her?"

"I'm sorry?"

"I know you're trying to look down my shirt, Anthony, and you're welcome to, but if you can't focus I'll leave you alone. What do you think of Makenzie?"

The man recovers with admirable speed. "...what do you mean, exactly? She works here with me. I don't know her that well."

"You think she's cute enough, right? Not unattractive? You would be willing to have sex with her?"

Anthony's jaw works up and down a few times. "Look, is this a prank?"

"I'm sorry?"

He takes a step back. "This is some sort of setup. I haven't done anything, okay? I was just doing my job and you come up here and, and ask me..."

"I think you would have sex with her," Rosmerta says, and turns back to gaze at the worker. "I would have sex with her," she notes distantly. "I'd gain no Lust from the act, not without His help... but I would enjoy it anyway. I wonder why I feel that way about her, and not you."

Anthony has no idea what is going on, and her mad words don't diminish his attraction to her, but he flushes bright red. Rosie notices after a moment and bites her lip apologetically. "I've offended you -- that wasn't my intention. Say, I've got a bit of time to kill -- I'll make it up to you."

Anthony, not daring to hope that he heard her correctly, nods vigorously.

Rosmerta jerks her thumb towards the help desk. "But, seriously. Are you at all attracted to Makenzie over there? Not asking you to propose or anything, just making sure my own tastes aren't completely out of the mainstream."

Anthony swallows a few times and once more does the courageous thing. "Really? Okay, look: sure. Makenzie's cute enough. I'm not saying anything, not saying I'd do anything, just that I'm not gonna, you know." He looks down at the floor. "Your tastes aren't out of... well, people love who they love, right?"

"I'm not meant to be able to do that," Rosmerta muses, "but who knows how deeply He's messed me up. Oh, right -- making it up to you. What if Makenzie wanted to fuck you?"

He blanches. "That's -- shit, this is a set-up. Who put you up to this? Come on, just tell me why you're doing this!"

"No-one, and because I'm bored. If I wasn't chatting with you I'd just be sitting in a puddle waiting for Him," she answers honestly. "Anthony, if Makenzie liked you and was open to being wined and dined, would you?"

"Um." He clenched and unclenched his fists. "If she was, and I didn't have to worry about this weird bullshit? Sure. I'm, uh, not so good with the wines, but..."

"Just an expression. Look, do you want me to put in a good word for you or not?"

"Oh god. No, please, don't say anything to her!" He steps forward to block her view of the help desk.

Rosmerta rolls her eyes. "You're just like Him, with the worrying. I'm not about to go up and say 'Anthony and I think your face would look nice with a dick fucking it' -- "

He snorts a laugh, accidentally, unconsciously. He doesn't know what's real anymore, real people don't talk like this. "Please don't -- don't do -- "