The Entrance Exam

I am potential. I am hominoid, instantiated on the main drag of Rust, Stewardland. No one notices me appear--the examiner's charms take care of that--but they notice me. They couldn't not. The sky is dark, but the sidewalk is well-lit by lamps, and I am not hiding. I present myself as I begin walking. To some I am swaying, fluid, sensual; to others I am poised, chiseled, rock-confident. I broadcast my appeal: it is all I have.

My body barely feels real still as I descend on the gentleman locking up the hardware store. I sense glass under my palm as I plant a new-formed hand on the door. My other hand takes his collar. He has nowhere to go, and he doesn't want to go anywhere. I lean in without hesitation.

He is delicious, a new flavor, an alien sensation. Exactly what I want. Exactly what I

need

, to walk this path. I breathe him in. His lips brush mine, and I realize I have lips. A shock of energy flows down my throat, reifying me. The door hardens against my palm, his collar resists my tug. I feel the pavement against my feet. My chest brushes his as I press into the kiss. I have nipples, and they tingle.

We have an audience. One older woman passes without a second glance, but the younger guys with their bikes and boomboxes gape. I press my tongue between the hardware guy's lips, licking up the dregs. I thought I entered this world hungry. That hunger was a premonition. A hint. A fraction of a granule of a concept for the hunger that followed. My body screams for more as the dazzled hardware guy sinks to his knees, task forgotten.

I round on the bike dudes.

I think I might have a voice, but I'm not ready to test it. I have a finger, and it curls just so as I extend my arm. They understand "come here."

I take a collar in each hand and pull them to me. Their bikes lie in the lamplight as we retreat into the shadows behind the Nation's. We are still visible, but anyone who wants to watch is welcome. They'll be added to the queue.

"Fuck's wrong with you, lady," says one of the bike guys as I tear his belt to shreds, my fingers briefly blade-like.

"No ladies here," says the other, reaching for my chest, fingers fluttering over what he perceives as a strong masculine pec. Guess he's into guys.

I get my hands inside their jeans, feeling the immediate thrill of cock. Cock. I have one, and the gay bicyclist is rubbing it through the leather pants I seem to be wearing. The other sees a different me, a different motion. I am not in full control of the illusion; my body is still barely mine. Shaping will come later.

We rub each other like this for a bit--too long, I worry--and then I sink to my knees.

"Oh fuck," says the one I start blowing. I can't guess at what these dudes think is happening. All I know is the cock in my mouth and the cock in my hand. The energy welling up in my partners. The deep need to receive their release. I can drool, so I do; I become a slobbery mess, face-fucking myself on strange cock. "Oh fuck," he says again, and he shoots into me.

His load is rich and I feel my mouth react to it like water for the thirsty. It fills me and nourishes me. My fangs quiver. I take all his cum and more, pulling at the straw, draining him dry. He fades back against the dumpster. His friend comes on my face as he watches me lick my lips, and I keep licking. I wipe thick strands of jizz from the forehead and cheeks I've been given, taking extra care to make sure every drop ends up inside me.

The hunger slightly abated, I return to the main street and continue my northward march. Rust is not a party town--a semi-suburb centered on a row of car repair shops, fast-food restaurants, dive bars, and ethnic grocers--and as I cast about for my next partner I realize I've been handed the hard version of the exam. But even though there are no massive crowds, I see stragglers here and there.

I pick out a lady in office wear, a professional sweat, skirt, and tights combo, standing under the streetlight across Central. Or maybe she picks me out. I sweep toward her; she stammers as I approach.

"Shh," I breathe, taking her hand.

There is an abandoned lot between the Burger King and the Popeyes, an old car sales lot gone to seed. She gets on her hands and knees in the brush. Her desire, her willingness inflames me. My body fills out, weaving me a tight pair of abs and hips for thrusting. The woman reaches back to pull her own skirt up over her ass. I deliver a smack that causes her to hiss and her tights to dissipate into smoke.

"Look at you," I say. "On your hands and knees, in an overgrown parking lot, begging for my cock."

"I don't care what you have," she replies, her voice low and raspy, "just put

something

in me,

now

."

I do. I am tempted to start with a finger, to drag this out further. The greater her urgency, the greater my score. But time saved is time earned, and she needs no foreplay--none of my partners would, ever again--and I enter her with a snug and satisfying ease. She moans, then whimpers. I return the vocalization, mirroring her sentiment, feeding her, fattening her up for me. She feels good on my cock, tight, wet, engaged. I fuck her for a good twenty seconds before she explodes, squirting all over the gravel and weeds. My leather-clad legs glisten with her sheen. She collapses with a sigh, and I drink her sigh as gravity pulls her off of me.

With a thought, I am clean again, and presentable. I enter the Popeyes. The staff instantly identify that I am not a customer, and they eye me with naked need. I hop up onto the counter, ass first, then swivel around to dangle my legs on the employee side.

"Eat up," I say, and they fall to, dislodging my clothes. One of them kneels between my legs, lapping at my pussy. One worships my thighs. The third leans forward to kiss me, offering herself to my mouth. I drink her first, then catch myself reveling too long in pleasure and pull the other two into me through my hole. They are all too eager, the first expiring with a smug lick of my clit and the second putting themself into me and shooting almost immediately.

I squeeze down hard on their cock as it spurts, and then I squeeze down on my desire to drag this out. I am not here for pleasure, pleasurable though my task is. By my internal sense of time, I have mere minutes left, and I am not done.

The tire shop is empty, as are the hippie grocery, the massage parlor, and the Starsource restaurant. But the sex shop next to motel is open, of course, and I find my next partners there: a swinging couple and the proprietor, all three simply too eager to take it up the ass. I fill each of them in turn as they fondle each other and me, and they pass with smiles on their faces.

With every step, I am less potential, more something else, something new. My form solidifies, heavy and corporeal, enduringly pleasing despite its bounds and constraints--it is

mine

. The broad shoulders, square jaw, and cock recede into the world I'd come from. I will be able to summon them intentionally someday, if I am successful tonight. But for now I am soft, and curvy; I have gorgeous dark hair, which hangs in a thick, silky curtain around my face, and I want nothing more than another petitioner to fill my pussy.

I stalk the sleepy streets of Rust looking for the final ingredient: the last spark, load, or wild gaze needed to complete my task. I find it at the library: a tired-looking woman restocking the shelves long after closing.

She almost tries to stop me as I enter. I wasn't supposed to be there, I could come back tomorrow at noon. Her protestations do not last; she wants me. She drops the books she is holding and steps back into the stacks, a smoldering invitation in her eyes. I follow her and she presses me up against a shelf, spreading my legs wide, fingers finding my cunt. She pumps me a few times.

"Not every night we get demons in Rust," she murmurs.

"How did you know?" I ask.

She laughs at that. "Hobby demonologist," she says, not relenting with her fingers. "Also you phased through the wall. That was a bit of a tell."

"You're charm-resistant," I notice. None of my other partners could have noticed details like that. Between automatic glamers and suggestions and the human brain's propensity to simply provide more "rational" explanations for supernatural incursions, I have avoided suspicion so far. This woman is different.

"No point working in a library if you're not going to even

try

some of the Renaissance era wards you come across in the occult section."

I don't understand all her words, but I understand that she knew things she shouldn't. No matter. Soon I will devour her. She will be just the latest in the trail of bodies I've left in my wake. I am burning with need as I struggle to pull myself away from my own bodily sensations and seal the deal. I lean in to kiss her as she begins thumbing circles on my clit.

She turns her mouth aside.

"I'll give you something," she says, "but not everything."

She gives me an orgasm, and then another. She crouches down and runs her tongue over my labia. I exult in the pleasure. The concepts of these things are not new to me--as potential, I lived within a galaxy of abyssal lust, my nascent mind composed almost entirely of sex acts and scenarios--but the feeling of them, especially the feeling of receiving them, is exciting. I love my body. I love the pleasure this librarian is giving it--and I love the third orgasm she gives me.

She gives me her pussy to finger as I please, and she cums sweetly in my hands. But she continues to refuse my kiss, and I cannot draw her into me through any of the other acts we engage in. She gives, and gives, but she does not surrender her soul.

"It is not mine to give," she says softly, patting my cheek after. We are lying amid the wreckage of the library stacks. I am crying. I've failed. The time limit has come and gone. "Just your luck, huh? You needed to take me."

I nod, unsure what will come next. Will I return to potential, losing the body I'd been granted for the exam? Will I be stuck here in the material layer without powers, without backing? Will I simply die?

"Ah, fuck it. Liezhelle, I'm just messing with you."

My name--my

true name

--hits me like a ton of bricks. Before I can recover, the woman's body sizzles and dissolves into a viscous red liquid. This flows upward off the floor in sickening pulses, gradually congealing into the form of a small red imp, two feet tall, clawed appendages, enormous tits, a snub nose and a mess of silvery hair forced into two braided buns. I choke back a gasp and bite my lip.

"Examiner?"

"Truth is you already hit quota with that needy chick in the parking lot," says the imp, materializing a clipboard and quill. "But you did it in record time, and then you just kept stunting in the Popeyes, and my colleagues and I decided to prank you, keep you humble."

"So this means...?"

"Yes, yes, you passed. Congrats, hon."

She scratches a few notes on her clipboard, and then the nearest wall flickers and crumbles away into a gaping fiery portal. Through it I can see the burning fields of my homeland and the walls and spires of a storied institute: Stewardland Division's Sex Academy.

My tears evaporate as I step forward and feel the flames of Hell tickle my face. My back itches in three places, then cracks. My wings and tail pry themselves into existence as my fingertips lengthen, hardening into spikes. My skull creaks and then crawls. Horns burst through my forehead before bending back over the crown of my head. I smile as I feel the final changes take place, as my body settles. I behold my new school, the next step along my path. Examiner hands me my welcome packet, then zips behind me to deliver a swift kick in the ass. I am sent tumbling through the portal, and I can't be happier.

Some demons are succubi born.

Others have to take the entrance exam.