Suddenly A Succubus
Chapter 36.3

With the fight over, Vee now felt the sting of her injuries. A cursory inspection revealed that nothing was significantly damaged, and she was sure a bit of magic would have her back in fighting shape in no time. For now, her steps were cautious and stiff as she pushed through the front entrance of the building.

Approaching the dining hall, the predictable sounds of panic and confusion filled Vee’s ears. She rounded the last corner to see a sizeable collection of people, perhaps around a couple dozen, all reacting to the events differently.

Scanning over the crowd, Vee didn’t see anyone that desperately needed healing. There were certainly a few students with bumps and bruises, and Nick was off to the side with a small first aid kit, but that was the worst of it. Tessa was standing next to him, trying to calm down a student that was clearly in the middle of a panic attack. Vee kept looking around, seeing a few familiar faces, but her eyes eventually came to rest on the girl with the dark blue peacoat sitting on a table in the corner.

Chloé!

Vee sighed in relief seeing her friend safe, and she walked over as quickly as she could. Chloé was hugging her knees to her chest, her chin buried in her scarf, and her focus seemed to be a million miles away.

“Chloé! You’re okay!” Vee said, crawling onto the table next to her. She wrapped her arms around Chloé and squeezed her tight.

“Y-yeah, I guess…” Chloé muttered. After a brief pause, she looked up at Vee. “So, you… you’re different too?”

Vee’s heart broke as she heard the pain in Chloé’s words. She settled down in front of her, looking down at the table as she searched for the right words. “…Yeah. I’m an angel.”

“Oh.” Chloé buried herself deeper in her scarf. “How long have you known?”

The implications of her question were obvious; she wanted to know how long Vee had been lying to her. “I’ve always known. My Church pulled me aside when I was little and told me everything, and they spent my entire life stressing that I had to keep it a secret. I didn’t even tell the others until I… well, until my hand was forced.”

“Forced? What do you—”

A scream interrupted Chloé’s question, and Vee quickly turned around. She saw a student pointing in fear at the entrance, and Vee worried a reaper might have gotten inside. She jumped to her feet, a prayer on her lips, and looked down the hallway. As she saw what the student was pointing at, she sighed in relief, but she understood why the student was scared. The arrival of a demon usually wasn’t something to celebrate.

Amara was limping towards the dining hall, and it looked as if she’d fallen in a meat grinder. She was covered in countless bruises, welts, and cuts, with blood dripping from several large gashses. One of her eyes was swollen shut, causing even more blood to run down her face, and she flicked her tail towards the crowd. It moved in front of her, tossing a reaper’s skull onto the ground, where it clattered to a rest. Amara took a deep breath, her body shaking, and then she spoke with a haunting smirk on her face.

“One down. Three to go.”

“Amara!” Vee ran forward, grabbing one of Amara’s arms to try and prop her up. “Fucking hell, are you okay? What happened?”

“I kicked its ass, that’s what happened,” Amara said, failing to hold back a laugh that clearly hurt. “They’re not so fucking tough when they’re alone.”

From behind Vee, another student moved closer and spoke up. “I think we deserve an explanation. What is going on here?! What are those creatures, what are all of you?” Looking back, Vee got a good look at the person speaking. She had curly black hair with the ends dyed red, and a fire in her voice as she demanded answers.

With the focus of the group now entirely on Amara, this girl’s comment seemed to rile everyone up. All the students present started asking questions of their own, their voices a chaotic mess. Vee tried to signal for everyone to calm down, but there was too much panic in the air for her to gain control of the situation. She looked back to Amara, unsure what to do, and saw that Amara seemed ready to snap.

Hellfire was gathering above her horns, condensing into a precarious ball of fire that grew hotter with each passing second. Vee nervously took a step back, then watched as Amara launched the fire into the air, where it exploded with a deafening blast.

“SHUT UP!” Amara yelled.

The noise immediately silenced everyone, and Amara stepped forward. “You want to know what’s happening, Naomi? You want to know what fresh hell we’ve been living through the last few months? I’m a fucking demon! I burned down the Palace! I stopped Wellington’s fucking cult! I’m the reason we’re… we’re all…”

Amara fell to her knees, then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she collapsed to the floor.

In an instant, Vee was by her side. She carefully rolled Amara to her back, then leaned in to make sure she was breathing. Surprisingly, another student kneeled down on the other side of her, the same girl with the bright red hair that Vee had rescued earlier.

“Is she still breathing?” the girl asked.

“Faintly, but yeah. I’ve never seen her this beat up before,” Vee said.

The red-haired girl turned to look behind her. “Nick! First aid kit!”

Nick nodded, then zipped up a small bag next to him and tossed it over. The girl caught it, opened it up, and started treating Amara’s injuries. After a confused look from Vee, she spoke up again. “Ruby. Nursing student.”

Vee nodded in acknowledgement. “Thanks, Ruby.”

“Though, my classes didn’t exactly cover, um… demons? She looks like a demon.” Ruby’s hands moved quickly, carefully wiping blood off Amara’s injuries as she inspected the injuries. “How different is her physiology? Is bandaging her up even going to do anything?”

“I honestly can’t say,” Vee said. She helped roll Amara onto her side as Ruby examined the wound on her back. “She still eats and sleeps like the rest of us, so I’m tempted to say that this will help. Honestly, the fact that she’s not recovering on her own is troubling. What she really needs right now is to have sex.”

Ruby paused, staring up at Vee with a blank expression. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Sorry, should’ve clarified; yes, she’s a demon. Specifically, a succubus. Everything she does is fueled by sex.”

“And here I thought today couldn’t get any fucking weirder…” Ruby muttered, shaking her head. “This wound on her back is the worst one. I’m gonna bandage this up, ‘cuz that’s something I understand. Ordinarily I’d say that sex right now is the worst possible idea, but there are fucking bone dragons outside, and you’re, what, a fucking angel? This fucking campus, I swear to god. Shit, wait, should I not say that? Is that offensive? Is God real? No, shut up, Ruby, just focus on the bandages. Bandages make sense.”

It only took a minute for Ruby to finish bandaging Amara’s shoulder, and Vee let her rant the entire time she worked. As soon as they laid back down, Vee stood up and shouted for everyone’s attention again. The panic from earlier hadn’t returned, thankfully.

“Okay, look, I’m sure you all have a lot of questions. We don’t really know how much time we have, but for the time being, we’re safe, so I can at least go over the basics.” Vee took a breath to continue talking and was painfully reminded of her own injuries. She winced briefly, then pulled a chair closer and spun it around. She leaned forward, one arm on the back of the chair, while her other hand hiked up her shirt.

“Hey, let me get that for you,” Ruby said.

“It’s fine, Ruby. I promise.” Vee closed her eyes briefly, then muttered a small prayer. A soft glow appeared around her hand, and she moved it to her side to start healing her injuries. As she let the magic work, she spoke up again. “We don’t entirely know what the things outside are, but we’ve been calling them reapers. They live in Purgatory, but right now they’re being controlled by a psychopathic ex-student that used to be in that cult you’ve all heard about.”

From the back of the crowd, a masculine voice spoke up. “And what about you and your friend? She said she was a demon! Are we safe around her?” People stepped out of the way to give the speaker room, and Vee saw who was speaking.

He was quite tall, Vee guessed at least six feet, and was wearing a letterman’s jacket. He had dark skin and incredibly short, curly black hair. He was doing his best to put on a brave face, but Vee could tell he was nervous; he was holding another student’s hand more tightly than he likely needed to. The second guy had lighter skin, with messy brown hair and square glasses, and appeared to be nudging the athlete forward.

Vee spoke up again. “I’m an angel, and Amara here is a demon, but she’s no threat to any of you.”

“And what about the cult?” Naomi said, holding out her phone. “What really happened to them?”

“The people in the cult were selling their souls to demons. They thought they were achieving some kind of magical ascension, but Mr. Wellington was really just using them in a bid for personal power. We managed to stop the ritual and send all the demons back to Hell, but almost everyone in the cult died in the process.” After a quick stretch, Vee felt that her injuries were healed enough, and she cut off her magic.

“It’s true,” another voice said, this one off to the side. As the crowd shifted again, Vee saw three people standing together; Mr. Luxnor and the two students they had talked to after the ritual. The guy speaking had short, dirty blonde hair and a matching goatee. “We’re only alive because they stopped Mr. Wellington at the last moment.”

“So, you were lying,” Naomi said, moving over to the ex-cultist. “Everything you said was an elaborate cover up!”

“What were we supposed to do? If we say nothing, then dozens of people go missing without an explanation, but we also can’t share the full truth without looking like a bunch of maniacs! We did our best to find a healthy middle ground so there’d at least be some closure,” the blonde student said.

Vee was about to interject when Tessa beat her to it. “Naomi, I know you’ve been looking into this, but there are bigger forces at play.” Her next words seemed to be aimed at the whole crowd, but were still clearly meant for Naomi. “Whatever happens here, the most important thing is that we keep our mouths shut. The reapers, Purgatory, angels and demons, it all has to stay a secret, you got that? No posting pictures, no tweets, complete radio silence.”

“You have no right to silence us,” Naomi said. “People deserve to know what’s happening here!” A tense silence fell over the crowd, and Tessa narrowed her eyes at Naomi.

“Naomi, what did you do?” Tessa asked, her voice unusually serious.

“I’ve already posted pictures of those things. I’m not going to let you bury this.”

In a blur, Tessa closed the distance between her and Naomi. She shoved Naomi down on a table, then her switchblade flew into the air as her tattoos flared. The blade pointed itself at Naomi’s neck as Tessa started shouting. “You delete them this fucking instant! You take them down or I’ll feed you to a reaper!”

Vee ran forward in a panic. She’d never seen Tessa get this upset, and the panic in her voice was more than obvious. Tessa was scared of something. “Tess, for fuck’s sake, let her go!” Vee wrapped her arms around Tessa’s shoulders and pulled her away from Naomi, who was gasping in terror on the cafeteria table. The knife continued hovering at her neck until Nick ran forward and grabbed it, giving a worried look to Vee.

Another student ran forward, this one a girl with long dreadlocks wearing a purple athletic jacket. She helped Naomi to her feet, then watched in concern as Vee continued holding Tessa back.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Tessa?!” Naomi said. “Fine, I’ll delete the fucking post, but you owe me an explanation later.”

After a few seconds on her phone, Naomi held up the screen to show Tessa that the post was being deleted. Vee was able to see one of the pictures for a moment before it disappeared; it showed a reaper collapsed on the ground, and Amara’s tail was faintly visible as well. With the pictures now deleted, Tessa stopped struggling, and Vee let her go.

Tessa huffed in frustration, then stormed off to a back room. Vee thought about chasing after her, but Nick stopped her. “I’ll handle her, Vee. You stay with the crowd; we shouldn’t leave them alone. Remember, we’re the only four that are even remotely qualified for this.”

Vee nodded, then let Nick chase after Tessa. A new student spoke up from the crowd. “What about that girl? Is she human?”

“Yes, Tessa’s human. She’s just a witch.” Vee sighed as she sat down again. When she looked up, the student had walked closer, and she got a better look at him. He had pale beige skin and his hair had been dyed bright blue, which was so striking Vee had trouble noticing much else.

“So, what are we supposed to do? Just sit around and kill time while those monsters destroy the campus?” the blue-haired student asked.

“Look, I know this is confusing, but the most important thing is for everyone to stay calm. Those creatures will not hesitate to kill us, and the student controlling them is just as heartless, if not more so. My friends and I will be able to make this right, we just need time to collect ourselves. Can we just, I dunno, get the cafeteria up and running? I haven’t had a hot meal in over a week and I’m starving.”

Surprisingly, Ruby appeared again and started walking to the kitchen. “Got it!”

“Is there anything you don’t do?” Vee asked.

“I literally do, like, two things, and they both happened to be relevant. Don’t sweat it,” Ruby said with a smile.

“Okay, great.” Vee thought for a moment, cycling through ideas of what else needed to happen. She remembered that the cafeteria had a sizeable student lounge on the bottom floor, filled with couches and comfortable places to rest. “I’m going to move Amara downstairs so she can rest. Whatever you all do, just don’t leave the building.”

A voice from the crowd spoke up. “Why should we listen to you?”

“Amara killed one of those things with her bare hands! You seriously think we have a better option?” another voice responded.

Vee was quickly losing patience with the crowd, and instead focused on picking up Amara. It was more difficult than she intended to pick Amara up, as her wings were still out, but thankfully another student knelt down to help. Together, they managed to gather her wings around her so Vee could carry her safely. The student, this one a girl with bright, naturally red hair, ran ahead to hold open the door that led downstairs.

Before leaving, another thought crossed Vee’s mind, and she turned to the crowd again. “Oh, and one more thing. I know this is going to sound weird, but if any of you are planning on having sex, can you let me know? Amara’s a succubus, and if that happens near her, it would help her recover faster.”

The crowd, as tense as they were, seemed unanimously confused by Vee’s request. They all went quiet for a moment, a few of them nodding absentmindedly, before she turned to leave.

It only took a few minutes to get downstairs. The bottom level of the cafeteria had a small bistro, as well as a large collection of booths, chairs, couches, and tables. It was a great place for students to gather and study, and it was unusual seeing it so empty. Vee quickly moved to the biggest couch she could find and gently laid Amara down. The girl helping out had even managed to find a blanket, though Vee had no idea where from, and draped it over Amara while Vee collapsed into an armchair nearby.

The other student also pulled up a chair, then sat down herself. “How bad is it?” she asked.

Vee took a minute before answering. Her face was buried in her hands, and after a heavy breath, she leaned back. “It’s… I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

“That would help, wouldn’t it?” the girl said, extending a hand. “I’m Kylie. Amara’s worked with me before, helped me get some pictures of my cheerleading routines. She saved my life today. One of those monsters was just outside my building and she kept it busy while I ran.”

“Nice to meet you, Kylie. Sorry it’s not under better circumstances.” Vee leaned forward to shake her hand, but didn’t linger long. She could already feel her body growing stiff and sore.

“Look, I’m not going to pretend that I understand what’s happening here, but is there anything else I can do to help?” Kylie asked. “You seem pretty exhausted, and I’m sure dealing with that crowd upstairs didn’t help matters.”

Vee could feel her patience wearing thin, but she didn’t dare take it out on Kylie, she was just trying to help. “I need food, and something to drink, if that’s not too much to ask.”

“On it!”

Before Kylie made it to the stairs, Vee spoke up again. “Oh, and can you find Chloé and send her down here?”

“Who’s Chloé?”

“Blue coat, glasses, she was sitting on a table last time I saw her.”

“Oh, charity girl! Can do!”

Another minute, and Vee was finally alone. It was the first chance she’d had to decompress since they first faced off against Brandon, and the exhaustion hit her like a truck. She needed to focus on recovering, which meant no more magic, and she muttered a quick prayer to release all the magic empowering her. It was a strange sensation, feeling all her senses dull, and it further emphasized just how tired she was.

Once she’d adjusted to her mundane capabilities again, she slid off the armchair and knelt next to Amara. She leaned forward, resting her head on her chest, and listened to her breath. The gentle rise and fall of Amara’s body reminded Vee that she was still alive, and Vee needed every bit of comfort she could get.

Vee closed her eyes, focusing on Amara’s breathing, and tried to match it. For some reason, after everything they’d been through the last week, it felt right to be here with her.

Her focus was broken when a voice spoke up from the hallway. “Vee?”

Hearing Chloé’s voice, Vee jumped back to her feet and walked over. She pulled Chloé in for a hug, squeezing her tight, but she could feel that Chloé wasn’t returning the hug as enthusiastically. “C’mere, take my seat. How are you doing?”

“It’s… I dunno.” Chloé settled in, pulling her legs close as she buried her face in her scarf again. “I’m happy you’re all safe, I’ve been worried sick for the last week. You and Amara were missing, Tessa and Nick were lying and trying to pretend you were just sick, but when I went inside Amara’s apartment, I saw all this weird damage and I was so confused, and I—”

The longer Chloé talked, the more Vee sensed that she was on the verge of crying. Vee pulled a chair closer, settled in, and stopped her before she could spiral. “Hey. The important thing is that you’re alive, right? I can’t speak for Amara, but I feel absolutely terrible that you got sucked into all of it. If you want, I can explain everything that’s been going on the last few months, at least from my perspective.”

Chloé sniffed and nodded slowly. “T-that sounds nice.”

Vee took her hand, then settled in and started talking.

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