Succubus Summoning 205

Phil awoke to the smell of lavender and spring. Verdé's soft lips were pressed against his in a kiss. She exhaled and warm, fragrant air flowed back into him like a fresh spring breeze. He felt the embers of his spirit rekindle and spark back into life. Verdé looked down at him with her bright green eyes and smiled. Her long silky green hair flowed down over her shoulders.

"I don't think it's going to hold, Verdé."

Rosa leant against a wall, a frown on her cheerleader-cute face. Phil knew this room. He recognised the velvet canopy above him. The two succubi had taken him back to his room in the castle. Pink-tinged light poured in through the narrow window and the air was filled with fragrant perfumes and other musky scents.

"I think he's broken," Rosa continued. "It's only your energy keeping him going. His is all gone."

With a sinking feeling, Phil realised Rosa was right. The spark was already fading. The warmth from Verdé's kiss was leaking out of him, leaving behind cold grey ash.

"I can keep him alive until Cέrμləa brings Nurse Honey here," Verdé said.

"What can she do though?" Rosa said. "The warlock has reached his limit. Mamǝḵā Bēyˁṯān's rules are inviolable."

Phil heard clicking sounds, like iron spikes striking hard stone. They drew closer until the door was pushed open and Nÿte walked into the room. She was dressed in her usual dominatrix-wear—the tight black leather contrasting with her pale, almost white, skin. Her face was colder than Phil had ever seen it. Expressionless. A mask, perfect in its beauty, carved from ivory.

She looked at Phil, then from Verdé to Rosa. "Who did this?"

Phil detected no emotion in her voice, it was as flat and as expressionless as the mask of her face, and yet her words felt like ice condensing on the inside of his ears.

"An arachne, we think," Verdé said. "We found him hanging in a web cocoon in the showers of that silly school."

"Someone sent an arachne to kill a novice?"

Nÿte looked at Verdé then Rosa. Her face remained a perfect mask. No emotion escaped its finally drawn lines.

Apart from her eyes. They blazed like black holes.

"Yeah, that's what I thought too," Rosa said. "Not very fair or sporting, is it."

"No, it isn't."

Phil ached all over. His hands and feet felt like they'd been welded to weights and he felt as cold as if he'd spent the night lying naked on frozen tundra. That was nothing compared to the coldness he saw in Nÿte's black eyes right then. It was the coldness of deep space, of universes collapsing into entropy, of lightless places that had never once felt a sun's caress.

Nÿte turned around and walked out of the room. Her heels clicked on the stone floor like coffin nails being driven into fresh wood.

"Hmm, I was going to have some fun with her later in the Nightshade suite," Verdé said. "I think I'll pass today."

"Sensible," Rosa agreed.

Verdé placed her soft lips against Phil's and blew more warm air into him. The warmth brought succour to his aching limbs, but he knew it was only a temporary relief. He felt like a sack of cold ash.

"I found her!" A high-pitched girlish voice came from the doorway as Cέrμləa, in her usual form of a young girl in a cornflower-blue dress, rushed in.

She took one look at Phil and her eyes widened and she put a hand to her mouth.

If a daemon is shocked at how you look then that must mean you're really fucked up, Phil thought. He tried to speak and failed. His tongue felt like a piece of dried-up meat.

"Poor warlock," she said.

Nurse Honey walked in behind her, calm and collected in her latex fetish nurse's outfit.

"Tsk," she said on seeing Phil's emaciated form.

"Is there anything you can do?" Verdé asked.

Nurse Honey walked to the side of the bed. She placed one white-gloved hand on his chin and the other around his temples. She turned his head and peered intently into each eye. The bottom hand moved down and lightly stroked Phil's flaccid penis. There was no response. Not even a twitch. A gorgeous blonde was leaning over him, her large round breasts straining beneath tight white rubber, and he felt no arousal at all. He must be dead.

Nurse Honey tsked again. She leant over and wrapped her mouth over Phil's in a kiss. Unlike Verdé, she inhaled and for a brief moment Phil felt like every particle of his being was caught in the grip of some kind of irresistible attraction. Then she released him and he sank back on the bed.

Nurse Honey frowned. "The daemon has left him alive but beyond the reach of most restorative arts. It has been carried out with such precision it must have been a condition of the contract."

"So that's it, he's toast?" Rosa queried.

"I can't replenish him," Nurse Honey said. "He's already saturated with my energies. My body would simply absorb him."

Phil supposed he'd escaped that fate. L'mactia, the arachne, had got to him first and left him so empty his cock was stone-dead. No erection meant no sex and no sex meant Mamǝḵā Bēyˁṯān couldn't suck out his soul. Dying terrified him, but he knew it could be worse.

"Toast," Rosa said. "Shame. He was one of the better ones."

"There's only one thing I can do for him," Nurse Honey said.

She climbed up on the bed and her rubber nurse's outfit squeaked as she straddled him. Phil looked up at the underside of mountainous round peaks covered in clinging white latex and still didn't feel a single twitch. She couldn't do anything to him without sex, could she?

"There's no need to be afraid, little warlock," Nurse Honey said. "You don't have to die. I'll give you life everlasting...in my body."

The white rubber around her flat stomach started to ripple like waves on a lake. The flesh beneath started to liquefy. Still with the same beatific smile, Nurse Honey started to lower her heavy-breasted body down on him. Where her body touched his withered flesh he felt luxurious warmth and a strange sensation, as if he was sinking into her. It felt pleasant...until he heard the screams of the perpetually damned souls within her, welcoming another to their endless torment.

Phil's eyes widened. "No...no," he said weakly, trying ineffectually to push her off him with even weaker arms.

Nurse Honey closed her eyes and gave an orgasmic sigh as she lay on top of him and started to absorb him into her body. Wings that looked as though they'd been painted with glossy white latex unfurled from her back. Her soft breasts pressed against Phil's wasted chest and seemed to melt against him like fresh scoops of ice cream on a summer's day. He felt more warmth and that strange sinking sensation as she drew him up into her suddenly soft body. As comfortable as it felt, he knew the roiling pandemonium that awaited him beneath. He stared at the other succubi in fearful panic.

"No," Verdé said. She leant over Phil's head, her pretty face set.

"You'd rather leave him to die?" Nurse Honey said. She closed her eyes and her mouth formed an

o

of pleasure as more of her molten chest covered Phil.

"It's not about what I want," Verdé said. "It's what our warlock wants. Look at him. He doesn't want this."

"Mamǝḵā Bēyˁṯān," Cέrμləa said, her voice calm and authoritative beyond her girlish appearance. "We agreed. Verdé was his first. She has final say."

"Yes, forgive me, you are correct." Mamǝḵā Bēyˁṯān nodded. She smiled down at Phil. Her molten flesh drew back and reformed into her large, latex-covered breasts. Her wings folded back up and vanished into her back. She sat up and dismounted, releasing Phil from the sticky clutch of her body. Unfortunately she took the warmth away with her, leaving Phil feeling even colder than before.

"What will you do?" she asked. "He doesn't have long."

"I'll take him to my garden," Verdé said. "I'll claim him there, if he wishes. If he gets frightened by the prospect of death and changes his mind, I can give him to one of the plants. They'll keep his soul intact in perpetuity. His choice. As it should be."

"Nothing about this is as it should be," Cέrμləa said, again sounding far older and wise than her girlish appearance would suggest.

"That's the world for you," Rosa said. She span a ball of fire on her finger like a basketball. "Never pans out like it should. Another warlock will come along."

"I wanted to go to Earth," Cέrμləa said, pulling a young girl pout much more in keeping with her young girl appearance.

"You will," Rosa said. She put an arm around her and they walked out of the room.

"Your garden?" Nurse Honey asked.

Verdé nodded. A look passed between the two succubi and Nurse Honey gave a little nod to signify her comprehension.

Nurse Honey leant down close enough for her soft lips to brush against Phil's ear. He felt her warm breath. "Don't lose what you are," she whispered.

She blew lightly into Phil's ear and it felt like the warm air was diffusing all the way through his body. He felt like a crumpled up paper bag being inflated. Feeling returned to his extremities. A few of the ashes within him sparked back into life. They wouldn't burn for long, he knew, but he felt as though he'd taken a few steps back from Death's Door. It still loomed before him, but he was no longer at the point of toppling over the threshold.

Why?

Nurse Honey planted a moist kiss on Phil's cheek and then stepped back. Verdé scooped his emaciated form up off the bed and carried him to the window. In his present state he must weigh about as much as a dry bundle of sticks. She hopped up onto the ledge.

"Foolish girl," Nurse Honey said behind them as Verdé launched off into the swirling pink sky.

Phil felt scented wind rush through his hair as Verdé's wings carried them both over the castle grounds and then above the lush, verdant growth of her garden. Phil glanced down into a tangled riot of brilliant greens. Near the castle the plants formed an exotic, but seemingly well-tended garden. Further away and the ordered hedgerows and beds blurred into a knotted jungle as the grounds became wilder and darker, until they'd left the garden behind and were now flying over an ancient and wilder place.

"I haven't given up," Verdé said. Her face was cryptic, impossible to read. "I don't think you have either."

Phil wished his body had picked up the same memo.

Verdé flew over a primordial section of the forest. The foliage was so dense here it formed an impenetrable green carpet. Phil couldn't even see how far the lightless depths of the forest floor lay beneath them. The ground rose ahead of them. Phil couldn't tell whether he was looking at a mountain covered in trees or a section of forest so ancient the trees themselves had attained the form of living mountains.

Verdé descended right into the primeval heart of the forest. The canopy parted for her as if she was an irresistible gale. Once through the dense tangle of foliage her wings opened out behind her, slowing their descent until they landed gently on the forest floor.

This wasn't a garden, Phil thought, it was a jungle. Giant twisted trunks loomed over them. Untamed and unmanaged growth sprouted all around them in verdant profusion. Some of these trees looked as though they'd been around to witness the birth of creation. Despite the oppressive weight of countless centuries, the air was filled with a thick stew of fecund odours, as though the plants at heart were still as sprightly as spring saplings.

Verdé stood before a massive clump of tangled trunks thicker around then the width of a car. Phil watched in awe as thick dark wood parted with creaking sounds. Thick boughs that previously seemed as immovable as mountains untangled and pulled aside. Shafts of sunlight pierced the canopy beyond and revealed a clearing as silent and solemn as an empty cathedral.

What Phil saw took his breath away. In the centre of the clearing a gigantic white statue rose up out of the forest floor and towered up to the green canopy far above them. Verdé's wings unfurled and—still carrying Phil—she took to the air again. She spiralled up around the statue with languid flaps.

Phil saw the statue was of a woman, naked if it hadn't been for the thick vegetation that crawled over the ancient stone like ivy. The verdant growth clothed the statue in a living dress, as if the forest extending as far as the eye could see in all directions was the train to a bridal gown worn by a god.

They flew higher and Phil saw the vast hemispheres of exposed stone breasts. The statue stood with arms outstretched and palms turned upwards toward the sun. Phil was struck by how much the tranquil face of the statue resembled Verdé. Not her exactly, but maybe one of her ancestors. Did succubi have ancestors?

Verdé looped around the statue and then swooped down towards the space between the stone curves of the statue's naked breasts. Vegetation had climbed up the cleavage and grown outwards to form a natural throne positioned between the great stone breasts like a pendent. Verdé sat him in that seat. Then she straddled his lap and held him close for a long kiss.

Phil felt more embers flicker back to life within him. They would not burn long, but they would burn bright. Was that Verdé's plan, to claim him with one final moment of passion beneath the stone gaze of one of her hallowed ancestors?

Verdé broke off the kiss. Gracefully, she dived backwards and swooped back into the air with a few beats of her leathery wings. Phil watched as she landed on the outstretched palm of the statue's left hand. There she crouched, her head bowed, almost as though she was praying or making supplication to an ancient deity.

Phil was starting to get the unwelcome suspicion he'd been left here as an offering when the living chair beneath him suddenly unravelled. With nothing left to support him he plunged down into the stone channel of the statue's cleavage. The dizzying terror of his fall was quickly replaced with more sinister concerns as he realised his descent was being

guided

. Vines and creepers clutched at him, preventing him from falling too quickly. He fell flat onto a giant green leaf that folded around him like a hammock and broke his fall. The leaf sagged downwards and spilled him out onto another leaf below it. Beneath the living dress of the statue Phil tumbled from leaf to leaf until he was deposited in a long, curved blade that spiralled down like a chute.

Phil saw what waited for him at the bottom. It was a green-skinned girl with boobs the size of ripe watermelons. Long green ivy formed her hair and she sat on the rim of a bulbous green pot with a lurid pink interior.

One of Verdé's plant girls. With the last of his dwindling strength he scrabbled at the green chute, trying desperately to check his descent. The surface of the leaf was waxy smooth. Phil couldn't grasp hold of anything. He tumbled out of the chute and was deposited on another flat leaf that began to tilt downwards like a trapdoor.

The girl beneath him wasn't sitting on the rim of a pot, the bulbous structure was the lower half of her body. Some kind of pitcher plant hybrid, Phil realised, although the entrance to her pot was lined with a thick cushion of moist pink flesh. It contracted and dilated hungrily as Phil slid inexorably towards the waiting pit.

No Verdé, Phil thought. He knew what she intended for him now. Verdé's garden was filled with carnivorous plant girls. One had nearly captured him when he'd tried to escape the castle. Verdé's plants caught wayward souls...and held them for eternity.

That was no better than being left to Mamǝḵā Bēyˁṯān.

He dropped. One foot landed on the cushion of flesh lining the entrance to the pot, the other fell right inside. Phil felt a thick syrupy liquid squish between his toes.

Digestive juices? he thought with a chill.

He tried to tilt far enough he'd overbalance and tip over the edge. The plant girl was positioned right at the crotch of the statue. Phil doubted he'd survive the fall to the ground below, but death was probably preferable than what the plant girl had planned for him.

He didn't succeed. The girl already had her arms around him in an embrace. The entrance to her pot gaped wider and now his other foot was inside.

"Mmm, what piece of meat has fallen into Ûmūn Šag's lap?"

Phil's toes scrabbled against the walls of the pot. The lining was soft, spongy and dripping with slippery fluids. He sank deeper. His feet, ankles and then his calves were submerged in the warm, gloopy liquid pooled at the bottom of her pitcher. More fluids, sickly sweet-smelling, were exuded from the soft meat lining the walls and dribbled down to join the rising level of in the pot.

No!

Phil's panic found an extra reserve of energy. He clamped his hands against the rim of the pot. He was inside up to just above his waist, but with his arms braced was unlikely to fall further.

"Ooh, a live one," Ûmūn Šag said. "It's so rare they give me a live one."

The soft meat lining the entrance pressed around him as the maw contracted. The stretchy bag beneath him expanded as Ûmūn Šag tried to suck him all the way in. Phil gritted his teeth and held on even though his stick-thin arms trembled from the exertion. His feet kicked out inside her.

"And a wriggler," Ûmūn Šag said with an amused smile. "I know just how to deal with wrigglers."

The cushioned entrance closed around his waist. Phil's cock and crotch rubbed against moist pads of flesh as the pitcher plant girl turned and manipulated his body into a more comfortable position for her.

And him.

His jaw dropped open as an opening opened up in the plush lining and sucked his cock into a tight tunnel packed with soft undulating flesh.

"I fuck the fear right out of them."

Ûmūn Šag wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight enough for the round swells of her breasts to press against his naked chest. She controlled his movements with squeezes of her pot. His hips moved back and forth and his hardening cock plunged in and out of the dripping opening just beneath the lip of her pitcher. Every so often she would give his cock a teasing little squeeze, provoking another surge of blood to race to his crotch as his erection expanded.

A spell. It had saved him before.

Phil whispered the start, but was unable to finish as Ûmūn Šag grabbed the back of his head and smothered his words in a soft, sticky kiss. He tasted sugar—a sweetness like the ripest fruit from the finest orchard. Ûmūn Šag's throat moved and Phil's mouth was flooded with delectable nectar. It slid down his throat and spread a pleasant warmth that left Phil's muscles feeling all floppy and relaxed.

No, no. Fight it.

Ûmūn Šag pressed him up against her inner lining. His hard-on plunged deep inside her and she squeezed it with slow, gentle undulations. Phil would have come if L'mactia had left him anything within the dried-up remnants of his balls.

Ûmūn Šag broke off her nectar-filled kiss and looked at him with concern on her face. "Why meat, you're barely more than dried-up sticks. This will not do."

Phil sank deeper into the pot and she pushed his head down until his face was sliding against the smooth skin of a her bulging breasts. She placed hands on either side of his head and moved him until the rubbery tip of one of her nipples slipped between his lips. He tasted the sweetness of the liquid her nipple exuded between his parched lips.

Not again, Phil thought. Couldn't they just kill him in a way that at least preserved some of his dignity.

One of Ûmūn Šag's arms formed a bar behind his neck. Her other hand was placed on the back of his head and kept him pressed up against the soft curve of her breast. Her nipple squirted a stream of liquid into his mouth. Phil drank. It was that or drown. Then his lips were moving of their own accord, sucking on her teat. It was the taste—delicious like a blend of fresh, exotic tropical fruits. He had to have more.