Suddenly A Succubus
Chapter 38.2

When Amara and Chloé arrived back at the cafeteria, everything seemed pretty much the same. Students were still sitting around tables and picking at food, which made Amara realize how hungry she was. “Can we get some food? I’m starving, I haven’t had real food in ages.”

They walked over to the serving line, where a girl with bright, unnaturally red hair stood behind the counter. She was leaning over a container of soup, holding the side while she stirred the savory contents. When she looked up, Amara noticed her eyes briefly linger on her cleavage, then her shoulder, but she quickly diverted her attention higher.

“Oh! Uh, Amara, right? Wow, they weren’t kidding about your abilities. How’s your shoulder?” the red-haired girl asked.

“All better, thanks. Why do you ask?”

Chloé spoke up next. “This is Ruby, she’s the one who patched you up after you fainted earlier.”

“They told me you’d heal completely if you just had sex, and I was pretty skeptical. But, hey, seeing is believing. I’m glad you’re better!” Ruby pulled out a spoon to taste the soup and grimaced in dissatisfaction.

“Something wrong?” Amara asked.

“This place just has shitty burners. I made enough soup for everyone but it’s taking ages to heat up.”

With a smirk, Amara raised her hand and snapped her fingers. A flurry of sparks appeared, and within moments, the soup was piping hot and bubbling. “That should be better. Let me know if it cools down again!”

“I, uh…” Ruby blinked several times as she processed the chain of events. The pulse in her aura was undeniable. “Thanks?”

After piling their plates with food, and grabbing a bowl of soup, Amara and Chloé walked into the dining hall to look for their friends. They eventually found Vee, Tessa, and Nick sitting at a table off to the side, and Vee jumped up to wave them down.

Tessa wanted to start tackling the problem at hand, but Vee shushed her and redirected the conversation to Chloé, wanting to make sure she was okay. The conversation eventually switched over to general small talk, everyone taking turns to chip in while they slowly finished their food. For the first time in what felt like ages, they were all together again, and everything was out in the open.

Despite how nice it was to be home again, and surrounded by friends, it was impossible for Amara to ignore the attention she was getting. Even just walking through the tables earlier, nearly everyone was trying to hide their attempts to look at her. She could hardly blame them; even though Vee had explained that she was an angel, Amara was still the only one that was visibly not human. Plus, her choice of outfit was working like a charm. It was incredibly easy to catch everyone that was checking her out, and she hoped she would have her pick of the lot whenever she needed to feed again.

When they finished eating, Amara even volunteered to run everyone’s trays back to the kitchen. She wanted an excuse to flaunt her body, to playfully flick her tail as she walked around, and she loved feeling everyone’s eyes on her.

After Amara returned, Nick jumped in surprise and reached into his bag. “Shit, I totally forgot, but I have all your stuff, both of you,” he said to both Amara and Vee. Soon enough, he’d pulled out two sets of keys and two phones.

Amara snatched up her phone immediately, thrilled to have it back. She unlocked it, happy to see that Nick had kept it charged, then immediately panicked when she saw dozens of missed texts and messages from her mother. “Nick! Were you just ignoring my phone all week? My mom is freaking out!”

Nick sheepishly scratched the back of his neck as he averted his eyes. “I didn’t know your unlock code, so I couldn’t send a text pretending to be you! I tried to smooth things over by texting her myself, saying that you’ve been really busy with school, but that only works for so long.”

“Ugh, I’m gonna be in so much trouble. I’m supposed to be home from break by now!” Amara started scrolling through all her missed text messages as she tried to figure out what exactly was happening. The first few were from Nick and Tessa, back when she’d first gone missing, but most of them were from her mother, Evelyn.

Earlier in the week, she’d been trying to figure out when Amara was planning on coming home. Sometimes students frontloaded all their finals to start vacation early, and her mom didn’t know when Amara’s tests were. Additionally, since Amara had skipped coming home for Thanksgiving, her mom was extra excited to spend Christmas with her. This also meant, of course, that she wouldn’t be able to use Nick as another excuse for missing a holiday.

As time had progressed, her messages had become more emotional. On some days she seemed quite upset, rightfully so, but would then apologize or mention having talked to Nick. Later in the week she’d pivoted to concern, wondering if Amara had gotten wrapped up in something she was too scared to tell her about. The more recent texts were unusually calm and supportive, with her mother stressing that she would always love Amara, and stressing that she wouldn’t be mad if something had gone wrong at school. Reading through all the texts, Amara felt terrible. She loved her mom with all her heart, and hated seeing her this distraught.

“Do you want to give her a call?” Vee asked quietly, gently grabbing Amara’s wrist.

“What would I even say? Had I caught this sooner, I might have been able to make something up, but nothing I say at this point will excuse ignoring her for over a week.” Amara buried her face in her hands, trying to think of a believable cover story, but she couldn’t organize her thoughts. “Ugh, I don’t have the energy to think about this right now, not while there’s a madman breaking down the walls between reality.”

“Hey, Evelyn is really understanding, and she loves you. I’m sure she’ll understand once you have a chance to talk to her,” Nick said. “For now, should we start tackling the aforementioned madman?”

“Yeah, probably.” Amara went to tuck her phone in a pocket, then quickly remembered her lack of clothes. She gave the phone back to Nick, and once he’d put it back in his backpack, the group split into two teams. Nick and Chloé started wandering the cafeteria, making a list of everyone present and trying to put together a picture of how everyone was feeling. Vee, Tessa, and Amara stayed at their table, ready to start thinking of a plan.

Amara did her best to explain her previous encounter with Brandon. The skeletal hand, the strange ethereal chains, and the way he used them to exert control over her and the reapers. One of the most frustrating aspects was not knowing the limits of his abilities; when Amara had confronted him, she hadn’t exactly been at full strength. For all she knew, a big enough orgy might make her strong enough to knock him out with a single punch, but there was no way to tell.

“Ugh, I can’t believe that slimeball survived the ritual,” Amara said. She then quietly added “I had a chance to finish him off, you know.”

“What stopped you?” Vee asked with a hint of genuine curiosity.

“Nothing, really. I think I was just scared.” Amara paused for a moment, thinking back to her fight with Vee. “I’d just finished feeding on the three of them, and I had so much power running through my veins. But, after what happened on Halloween… I’m always a little nervous about losing control. What happens to me if I start killing like that? Everyone else I fought that night was already dead, but I still learned some pretty scary things.”

She held out a hand, curling it into a fist as she lost herself in her thoughts. “It’s unnerving knowing how easily I can crush a human’s spine with my bare hands.”

“Hey, that fucker deserves it,” Tessa said. “I don’t think I would have spared him had I been you, but it’s too late to look back now. He’s here, and we need to stop him. That being said, I have a theory on how he might have survived in Purgatory.”

“I’m all ears,” Vee said, leaning forward. Amara did the same, eager to change the topic.

“So, we know that Wellington was carving runes into all the cultists. They were told the runes were to make them stronger and faster, which is true, but that was most likely a side effect of their true purpose. The real plan was to summon an army of demons, and each demon needed a host. However, while I can’t be certain without examining the runes, I have a feeling they were mostly used to prepare the host bodies for possession. Demons are powerful creatures, and attempting to possess a weaker body might just kill it.”

“So, how does that explain how Brandon survived?” Amara asked.

“Well, it’s based on something Vee just told me. She said that, while you two were in Purgatory, you didn’t really see any ghosts.”

“Huh.” Amara paused, thinking back to their time in Purgatory. She had never thought about it until now, but Vee was absolutely right. They had never seen anything other than the reapers and the weird glimpses of the people back on Earth.

“So, here’s my thought.” Tessa slid closer, gesturing with her hands as she talked. “Brandon is covered in these runes, which prepare him for possession. However, he never gets introduced to a demon, because he’s too fixated on Amara, and then we disrupt the ritual. The portal freaks out because they did a shit job making it, and instead of being sucked into Hell, Brandon gets thrown into Purgatory. However, his body has already been prepped for possession, and suddenly he’s surrounded by a bunch of spirits with unfinished business. They swarm him, but ghosts are nowhere near as powerful as demons. They’re unable to override his consciousness, he turns the table on them, and now he has the collective energy of a fuckton of ghosts.”

Amara listened intently, turning over Tessa’s words in her head. “I guess that makes sense. That would also explain why his voice sounded like a bunch of different voices at once. I don’t think it really explains why his magic looks like chains.”

Tessa shrugged. “Hey, this is just a guess. I could be completely wrong. Maybe it’s just a weird, symbolic representation of how he views the world? Magic is weird, and something it just does shit.”

“This is all very interesting, and I mean no offense by this, but how does this help us stop him?” Vee asked.

“Well, I… haven’t quite gotten that far yet,” Tessa said sheepishly. “With this kind of stuff, often you can’t start speculating on a solution until you understand how the problem is built. Like, how exactly does the possession work? If it’s a one-time effect, then he’s stuck like this. However, what if the runes need to be continuously active? That might mean we could disrupt his abilities by destroying the runes on his body. We can’t really know for sure.”

The three of them started speculating on possible solutions, running through a list of Vee’s and Amara’s abilities to try and put together a plan. The lack of information was incredibly unhelpful, and none of them felt particularly enthusiastic about any of their proposed plans.