Lorelei was, in fact, out of her mind with pleasure for hours. She had felt the first rush of Alex's desire when Rachel tackled him at school. She felt his longing for her rise in a spiral throughout the day. Lorelei recognized the taste of love in his desire from the beginning. She had tasted it there before today, but every minute he was with the angel only made it stronger.
Rachel played her part beautifully, too. Lorelei could probably have done better herself, but there was no need to nit pick it. No need to worry about technique or artistic flourish when sincerity, consistency and intensity alone could get the job done. Who cared if Lorelei would have chosen a scalpel for a task that Rachel accomplished with a steamroller. Alex was wildly, deeply in love with someone who felt the same about him and had the beauty, the energy and the divine spark to deliver him to extreme heights of pleasure.
Those heights were shared entirely with Lorelei. Taylor had been good enough to see Lorelei through the first throes of flirtation, but Lorelei knew enough to politely and affectionately – very affectionately – usher Taylor out in anticipation of the blissful insanity yet to come. This wasn't the sort of thing Lorelei could share with Taylor. She suspected, rightly, that she would barely be able to interact with her environment when her master and the angel made love, let alone acknowledge and involve another person in her body's sensual reactions.
Taylor had seen Lorelei through the needs of her body caused by Rachel's first flirtations with Alex. She had stayed on her intimate task long enough to steady Lorelei so she could make appropriate arrangements on the phone. And then, after a short exchange of further intimacies later, she was gone.
Lorelei had the house to herself.
She lay in her master's bed, clad only in the short, slinky black nightgown she'd thrown on to see Taylor out, and rode the waves of ecstasy her master provided. With only the first coupling between Alex and Rachel, Lorelei was left writhing on her side, her hands furiously stroking the tremendous heat between her legs, while bone, sinew and black and red skin sprouted from her back at the shoulder blades.
Lorelei had hoped to share that particular moment with Alex. It might have disturbed him, but at the same time, he loved her and knew her for what she was. The growing itself might not have been such a pleasant sight, but he would have thrilled at the return of her beautiful, terrible demon's wings. Lorelei would have liked to fly, but more than that, she wanted to thrash and cum and feel loved in her master's bed, even with him miles away. But she could enjoy his scent all over the bed.
The sensations she was experiencing was every bit as good as having Alex herself. Not better, but certainly not worse. If there were a single worry about jealousy over sharing Alex with the angel, it was banished by her long series of uncontrolled orgasms. They would be able to share him just fine, she understood. And with the ritual binding of Rachel to Alex complete, the angel would certainly not object to Alex's other trysts. Now there was more than just Rachel's innate lack of jealousy to enable Alex there; she would genuinely enjoy his adventures just as much as Lorelei did.
In the space between Alex and Rachel's romps – she'd lost track of whether it would be their fourth or fifth shared climax now – Lorelei glanced at Alex's clock. She couldn't help but laugh in self-indulgence. Alex's love and need for Rachel was quite on par with his feelings for Lorelei. The relationships were very different, but there was no discernible difference in intensity. Lorelei heartily approved.
It meant they would be at this for hours. Lorelei was in for a long, wonderful night of –
Huge, clawed, terrible white hands crashed through the bedroom window. They moved with speed and certainty. Lorelei was seized by the arm and leg and pulled like a rag doll out of the broken window. Then she was dropped to the sidewalk two floors below.
The blows fell upon her all at once: a longsword, an axe, and a flail. There was a baton and pepper spray and a searing pain that could only come from sorcery. Little enough of it dug very deeply into her skin. A succubus of Lorelei's stature was quite resilient. Her master's ongoing pleasure gave her a steady torrent of power. Still, she was disoriented and quite wounded, and the blows kept coming. Most of them fell with inhuman strength. Lorelei tried to use her wings to block them, but she couldn't block them all.
Instinct and determination took over. Her tail lashed out, grabbing an attacker behind her and flinging him onto his back. Lorelei caught the baton before it fell again. She slashed out with her other hand, talons growing out of her nails. Fire erupted out of the scars she left in the vampire; he fell back and burned.
It was all eerily, unnaturally quiet. The street was engulfed in fog. More sorcery at work.
The longsword came down across her back again. She buckled, but withstood it. Something small and immensely forceful struck her in the cheek, sending her reeling. A bullet, it had to be, fired from only a few feet away by someone in a cowboy hat. The bullet didn't penetrate her skin, but the pain was immense.
Another figure stepped between Lorelei and the shooter, hulking and brutish, wielding the flail. Lorelei spewed flames all over him. He shrieked in pain and fell back, but someone behind the circling corpses was already there with a fire extinguisher. Two people, actually. One of them blasted her victim. The other blasted Lorelei herself.
She twisted and moved, trying to get her bearings. The blows continued. Lorelei did her best to dodge what she could and shrug off what she could not. The pain mounted. She needed an escape. Her wings spread out.
Lorelei looked up to see Harrow clinging to the side of Alex's building. His fist came down on her head, knocking her to her knees. He slashed across the bare skin of her shoulders with his claws, drawing from her a shriek of agony that somehow didn't carry out into the street. His fist stopped coming. All the others resumed.
Like every succubus, Lorelei was born to lead men to their destruction. Her victims were never men or women of benevolence or even indifference; it would be hard for any knowing voice to claim those Lorelei destroyed deserved to be treated with kindness. But Lorelei had been born to act without mercy, to feel neither affection nor pity, and to serve those who worked tirelessly to thwart the will of the divine in the mortal world and beyond.
Her last thoughts were a silent plea to that divine presence to ensure the safety of the young man she so sincerely loved. Hell's most accomplished succubus knew she had no right to pray. She knew, but did it anyway.
The last thing she saw, just as the cacophony of blows to her body ended, was a pale man in a pin-striped suit with the sort of machinegun Lorelei hadn't seen in decades. He leveled it at her. Fire and smoke and lead erupted from the gun.
Her world went black.
************
"Wow... hhh... I love you," Alex gasped.
"Say it again," Rachel grinned, looking down at him. She glistened with sweat and beamed in the afterglow of another successfully completed round of intercourse.
"I love you," he repeated breathlessly. "But I need... I need..."
"I know what you need," the angel straddling his hips said enticingly.
"...water."
"Water? Bah. You don't need water. You need more of me."
"I need that, too. But no. Need water." He reached up to gesture randomly with one hand. "It's this whole cellular respiration thing that we mere mortals have to do."
"Pff. That sounds like more of your silly science."
"Can't have sex without it."
"Oh. That's a problem," Rachel conceded. She lifted herself off of him, then pushed him back down as he tried to rise. "Stay. I'll get it for you."
"Oh my God," Alex said as she stepped toward the refrigerator.
"What?" Rachel asked, looking back over her shoulder. It required her to turn one of her wings down.
"That ass," he answered, looking amazed.
The angel giggled. She made sure her wings weren't blocking his view as she posed a bit to show off her backside. "You like?"
Alex smiled back at her. "It's amazing."
"All yours," Rachel winked. "Just like the rest of me." She sauntered over to the refrigerator, making sure to sway for him as she walked. She posed and tossed him a sultry glance as she opened the refrigerator, posed again to pull out a water bottle, and then came strutting back. To her delight, he was plainly more fascinated by the view of her from the front.
Rachel twisted the cap off of the bottle. "No one's ever made me feel this beautif—"
She vanished in a puff of scented smoke. The water bottle fell to the floor where she had stood.
Alex was bolt upright in an instant. "Rachel!?" He quickly slipped out of bed, looking around frantically. The scent of the smoke instantly made him think of the cemetery chapel and their first, terrifying meeting.
He rushed over to his leather jacket on the chair near the door. Alex tore out his cell phone, dialed Lorelei's number, waited with his eyes wide in near panic, and heard no answer.
************
Rachel stood in a small room lit up by candles. It looked like someone's apartment. To one side of her was a lovely young woman in a black dress and tall Doc Marten boots. Her hair was black and curled, her skin pale and smooth. On the other side of her was a pretty woman of similar age, but in torn black jeans, a dark t-shirt promoting a band with a logo Rachel didn't recognize, and jewelry with a consistent theme of leather and metal studs. Her short red hair clearly wasn't natural.
Neither of them looked terribly friendly. "Hello, nurse," the redhead breathed.
"Oh fucking hell," Rachel sighed, "not this shit again."
The other woman frowned. "Yeah, I don't think I'm buying the whole 'angel' look with the swearing and the lapdancing in class thing. Lemme guess, you were just getting nasty with a nice guy, about six feet tall, hung like a horse, should probably just now be getting out of his Monday night Intro to Lit class rather than shagging otherworldly trollops?"
Rachel blinked. "The fuck are you supposed to be, the truancy police? I thought they didn't do that shit in college!"
"I'll go get her some clothes," the redhead mumbled. "She keeps talking dirty like that while she's naked, I'm gonna be really distracted."
************
He didn't park in the garage. Not with the outside window broken. Alex parked his motorcycle outside, jumped off, and came running up to the gate entrance to his home while fighting to get his helmet off. Along the way, he couldn't help but notice that the walkway was littered with a thick white spray, shell casings and blood.
He stopped. Alex had made it through two sessions of first aid and two classes of his Administration of Justice classes since signing up for them last week. The one thing that both the cops teaching the justice classes and the instructor for first aid said over and over again was that a first responder has to be careful on coming upon a scene, lest the responder become another victim.
Alex took a deep breath. He forced himself to slow down. Lorelei was either fine, or she wasn't, but odds were that two seconds weren't going to make a difference on that either way. Not after he'd had to ride home from downtown, dodging traffic all the way.
He kept moving in, but slowly. If Lorelei and Rachel were both gone, he wouldn't be able to rest until he found them. Not that he knew where to look. He'd have looked into how they were both summoned up by that priest, but there just weren't any leads there. It wasn't like Alex knew any better than Lorelei or Rachel where to find crazy magic dudes.
Lydia. He'd have to start there. Probably out of his league, but he'd have to start there. They probably paid for dinner at the restaurant with plastic, and that would leave behind a name. Alex didn't know how he'd get that, but he'd have to find a way. Or maybe he could go back to the church where they brought Gorge. There was an angel there. Maybe he'd help.
Alex would have to call up the guys. Jason was smart. The guys were smart. They'd help him figure this out.
He opened the door to receive a punch in the face. Darkness and stars both exploded in his vision. He was rocked backward and then tripped by someone's leg. Alex fell onto his back on the concrete in front of his building's main door.
Someone reached down to grab him by the lapels of his jacket. Someone large and strong in a black trench coat. He had a blade in his hand, like one of those ones the Romans used. He brought the pommel down at Alex's head, which the young man just narrowly turned from. Alex flung his helmet up to crack it hard against the guy's skull. His assailant staggered away.
There was a blonde woman in a corset and black leather pants over him an instant later. She sprayed something at his face from a small plastic thing in her hand. Scorching hot pain overtook his eyes. He could hardly breathe. Alex grunted and growled in pain, reflexively trying to cover his face.
"Pepper spray, Natalia? Really?" someone asked. Alex tried to throw a kick at the voice. It didn't hit anything.
"As if you were doing better, Talon," the woman responded.
"A lucky shot. He won't catch me like that again."
"Why's the demon just watching the sky like that?"
"I watch for threats beyond your ken, corpse," said a voice that sounded like a distant roar yet couldn't have been too far off. "You deserve no further explanation. Is he warded from clairvoyant sights?"
"Before the first blow fell," said a new voice.
"Then finish this quickly," the otherworldly voice ordered. "Our good timing may not hold long."
Something hard and round and painful hit Alex in the head. He reeled, turning away from it. The object came down on his head again.
Unlike in the movies, it often took more than a couple of solid blows to knock someone out.