Logan found the servant’s entrance Amber had directed him too and staggered out into the warm night air of the courtyard with the bucket of meat she had managed to acquire from the kitchen. He made no attempt at stealth. The guards at the first gatehouse watched, amused, as Logan staggered and mumbled his way closer.

“Where you going?” one of them asked.

“Check on m’ beast.” Logan slurred.

“He’s fine,” the guard replied. “Go on back inside… sir.”

Logan looked at the man. “You ever seen what happens when a Hell Hound gets stir crazy? You want to?”

The guards looked at each other and shook their heads. Logan held up the bucket and grinned. “The secret is to mix booze in with the meat.”

They all had a laugh and let him pass through. Logan made his way to the cage where Coyote was being held.

"Is it time?"

"Almost," Logan responded as he dumped the meat slurry into a trough and reached down to ease open the deadbolt on the cage door. "Everything hinges on the ladies now."

"Ladies, plural?" Coyote asked. "Cousin, what have you been up to?"

Logan shrugged. "To borrow a catchphrase from my Marine brothers and sisters, improvise, adapt, and overcome."

"And hope," Coyote added.

"Yeah, that too." Logan sighed.

 

*****

 

Amber watched the cups rattle on the platter she held in her trembling hands. Her feet felt like blocks of stone. Every step forward was a monumental act of will as she approached the door.

Logan’s words ran circles in her mind. Speak slowly when you have to speak at all. Stick to the truth whenever possible. Remember to breathe, and, most of all, remember that you are fighting for your freedom. You can do this!

“I can do this,” she breathed, too quickly. Amber tried to slow her racing pulse but it was too much. Panic made her knees weak and she fell to the floor.

I can’t do it!

The sheer madness of what they were trying to do was overwhelming. She wasn’t brave. She wasn’t anything or anyone that mattered. Even in life, she had been nothing more than a party girl living day-to-day for the next good time. A failure, then and now. The Baroness would punish her in ways too horrible to imagine.

Amber bit down on her knuckle to stifle a sob. The pain helped drive back the darkness closing in around her vision. Behind and all around her was the yawning, bottomless pit that had become her entire existence since her death.

And yet, just ahead there was a light, the merest whisper of hope. It was faint in the darkness of her mind and as gossamer and fragile as spun glass. The smallest pressure would shatter it into broken, glittering shards. It would be so easy to let go and embrace her weakness and cowardice. To just be the worthless serving girl the Baroness had forged her into. Just be…

A mindless pet to be used and abused for the sick pleasure of her Harem… forever.

I’m no one, she had told him.

Not true, Logan had replied with a gentle smile.

Amber took a deep breath and stood up on shaky legs. I am not no one, she told the frightened serving girl that lived in her mind. I am not worthless. And I would rather return to mist than be a slave for one motherfucking minute longer!

She was still terrified but her hands stopped shaking. It was enough. Taking a deep breath, she steadied the platter in one hand, gripped the wine pitcher in the other, and stepped through the door onto the bridge spanning across to the roof of the slave tower.

The guard patrolling the roof watched her approach. Amber offered a shy smile and glanced up from the floor. She held the platter of cups out.

“The Baroness is feeling generous and bade me offer a taste of the celebration.”

The man leered at her. “Just the wine or something else?”

“Just wine, sir.” She replied in a soft voice. And nothing else ever again! The sudden surge of righteous anger, fierce and hot, caught her by surprise, but she welcomed it. It gave her strength Amber would not have even imagined herself capable of only ten minutes ago.

Her hand was perfectly steady as she poured the wine. “Enjoy the wine, sir,” she said with a steady smile and absolute calm.

Steps led her down to the third level and to the guard standing sentry outside the door of the slave cages inside. He too was more than happy to accept a cup of good wine. Onward to the second floor and the final level of slave pens.

This one she remembered was special. As the guard was accepting his cup of wine, Amber looked up and cocked her head. “Did you hear that, sir?”

“Hear what?” the guard asked as he took a sip and chuckled. “Ooh, this has some bite to it!”

“I thought I heard something from the other side of the door,” Amber said.

“Yeah?” The guard unlocked the door and looked inside. He spoke to someone inside. “Hey now, just what do you think you’re doing?”

Amber watched him walk into the room, having already forgotten the serving girl at his back. “Enjoy the wine, sir,” she whispered under her breath. “It will be your last taste.”

Quietly, she closed the door behind him and started down the steps to the barracks on the first floor where the rest of the guard slept and diced when off duty. Most were asleep though two looked up curiously as she descended the stairs. Amber tapped the now empty tray against the stone. The chiming of metal woke those asleep. She smiled at them all and held up the still mostly full pitcher.

“A taste of wine from the celebration?” she asked as men and women scrambled for empty cups.

 

*****

 

“Hey now, just what do you think you’re doing?”

Beauty lay back against the bars and moaned. Her legs were spread and her hands wandered across the wondrous curves of her naked body. “So hungry,” she purred.

“Oh damn,” the guard muttered as his eyes threatened to bug out of his head. “Oh, man.”

“Please,” she begged in a sultry voice. “Just a taste?”

The guard groaned and reached down to readjust his trousers. It had been so very long since the Baroness had allowed him any pleasures of the flesh! The temptation of a gorgeous demon, helpless and horny, was almost irresistible.

Almost.

“No way I’m letting you out of that cage.”

“Ok,” Beauty nodded eagerly.

He watched in open-mouthed disbelief as the Succubus turned around in her tiny cage and pressed her beautiful behind against the bars of the cage! Both her sex and the rosebud of her ass seemed to wink at him in invitation.

“Ok then!” He grinned, knocked back the last of his wine, and set the cup down to begin fumbling his trousers open. “Now don’t you move!” he laughed. “Well, other than back and forth.”

Still chuckling at his own joke, the guard knelt to get in position behind her. He never saw her foot fly through the bars. The blow struck his chest hard enough to lift him into the air and send him hurtling backward to crash against another cage.

The room was spinning. Pain radiating out of his chest making it impossible to catch his breath, cry out for help, or stop the man in the cage behind him from wrapping his hands around the guard's neck and slamming his skull against the bars, again and again.

The guard’s last awareness was the voice of the alluring demon girl. It no longer sounded sultry.

“Get keys. Time to fight.”

 

*****

 

Logan cursed beneath his breath to see one of the watch approach.

“What are you doing out here, sir?”

“Feeding my hound.”

“At this hour?”

“Look at this monster,” Logan gestured at the cage. “And think about it howling all night long for food.”

The guard looked. Logan suddenly wrapped meaty arms around his neck and squeezed until the man stopped moving.

"Well, we’re committed now," Logan thought as he dragged the body into the shadows of the wall and confiscated sword, dagger, and pistol. "We can only hope the girls can."

"Look at the tower," Coyote said.

Logan turned and look. On the roof of the slave tower was a lone figure standing in the glow of a lantern. Mahogany hair tumbled in the wind.

A fierce grin spread across his face. “Hell yes, Amber!”

"We move?"

“It’s on, Cousin,” Logan replied out loud. “Give me a count of twenty after I pass through the second gatehouse and then do your thing.”

"About time!"

Logan started back toward the castle courtyard. When he reached the inner gatehouse, both guards looked at him and at the sword in his hands.

“Found this.” Logan held it out.

“Where?” One asked and reached for it.

Logan drove the point into his chest and spun to slice the throat of the other guard with his dagger. A second stab silenced the first guard permanently. “In your guts, you son-of-a-bitch,” Logan replied to the corpse.

He watched as a hulking shadow shot out of the pens and across the main courtyard to the primary gatehouse blocking the entrance from the road. A short, sharp scream of pain echoed into the night and was suddenly cut short. Like this gatehouse, he knew there was a hand crank that opened the metal barricade that no real Hell Hound could hope to comprehend. It proved no challenge to the Native American spirit of trickery.

Logan watched it crank open. It was not a quiet operation. Guards patrolling the top of the walls cried out in alarm. A bell rang out shattering the quiet of the night. A roar of voices answered as Alan and his people charged into the courtyard from the road outside.

A guard shouted down at where he stood in the shadow of the inner gatehouse. “We are attacked! Seal the gate!”

“How about no?” Logan fired his pistol. The man cried out and tumbled over the outside of the wall. Two more pistols lay at his feet. He tucked one into his belt, grabbed the other, and left the blades of the dead gate guards where his motley invasion force could find them.

Back in the main courtyard, another shot rang out. Someone screamed in pain. Two hundred pounds of Hell Hound was suddenly on the high walls tearing through another guard in a blur of motion and shadow.

A quick glance confirmed the assault was well underway. The greatest danger was still ahead in the main keep but there was still one more thing that Logan could not ignore for a moment longer.

Beauty.

He raced across the inner courtyard toward the slave tower. A bullet cracked out of the darkness and gouged the dirt at his feet. He didn’t even slow to look for the shooter.

Beauty. I’m coming!

He burst through the front door, dagger and pistol in either hand, ready to take on any who stood in his way. Only to find two familiar faces and a handful of ragged souls calmly going about the business of sending souls back to mist.

Amber stood in the middle of them pointing from guard to guard, still writhing on the floor from the scorpion poison he and Beauty had so painstakingly gathered and harvested so many days ago. The same poison Amber had lanced the wine with.

“Yes,” she said as she pointed to one of them. Beauty stepped forward and ended the man.

“No,” the servant girl said of another and Logan watched as the man in question was dragged away and bound.

All of this he noticed only in passing. All he really saw was Beauty. Their eyes met. The dagger and pistol fell from his hands as they rushed across the room and into each other's arms.

“I’m so sorry!” he managed before her lips found his. Then there was only the taste and smell of her and the perfect feeling of her body pressed against his.

When they could bring themselves to pull back, she looked up at him with those gorgeous, glowing yellow cat eyes. “Logan late.”

Relieved laughter burst out of his mouth. A pressure he did not even know was there eased in his chest. “Yeah, things got… complicated.” He looked at her as if to memorize every detail of her face. “I am so sorry for what they did to you.”

She smiled and reached up to caress the worry lines from his face. “Knew you would come.” Her expression turned fierce. “Now we finish this.”

“Damned right we do.” He turned to Amber and grinned. “And just what are you doing, young lady?”

Amber blushed but, for the first time, she met his eyes boldly. “Not all of these men and women are bad people. I thought they deserved the same chance you gave me.”

“You’re a treasure, Amber. You thought right.” He looked around the room. “Everyone, this is it. One way or another, it ends tonight. Are you with me?”

“Yes!” they all replied.

“Are you with me?” Logan demanded again and they cried out with one voice.

“Yes!”

Logan bared his teeth at them. “Then let’s go kill those demon sons-of-bitches!”

With a collective roar of fury, Logan led them up the stairs, to the roof, and across the bridge to the upper door of the main keep. Below, Coyote was leading Alan’s people in a charge through the front entrance. As planned, they charged into the heart of the enemy’s stronghold in a two-pronged assault.

On the second floor, he stopped at a particular bedroom door and threw off the lock bar holding it shut. A few hard kicks shattered the metal lock. The door swung open to reveal an auburn-haired amazon dressed in a halter and skirt ripped from bedsheets, wielding a broken dagger, and eager to inflict violence. Logan smiled and tossed her a sword.

“That might suit you better.”

She smiled back. “I’ll take two.”

A few remaining guards tried to stop them and were cut down for their foolishness. By his quick count, Logan guessed that all that remained of Graveek’s defenders were in the great hall. The final battle was at hand.

They circled down the stairs. The door leading to the Great Hall was just ahead. He led them through and into swirling, screaming chaos.

The battle raged at the back of the hall. Baroness Graveek stood behind the shield of her harem on the raised platform. Alan’s people surged at them like an angry ocean tide. Both sides fought with a ragged assortment of weapons. Alan’s people had only what he had provided or picked up along the way. Greek's harem had what weapons had been available when the alarm bells began to ring.

No, not just weapons, Logan realized with a shock of comprehension.

Baroness Graveek stood behind her wall of blades, silver eyes blazing with fury. As he watched, she snarled and swept her hand across the enraged souls fighting to reach her. Souls that convulsed, screamed in agony and fell. Another wave of her hand and still more cried out in intense, shuddering pleasure, only to be run through as they writhed in helpless, sexual bliss.

“What the fuck?” he muttered.

"Magic." Coyote’s voice echoed in his head. "What else? Welcome to the party!"

“Fuck me,” Logan growled. He turned to Beauty. “We have got to break that shield wall before they slaughter our people. I have an idea.”

“A bad one?” she replied in a sarcastic voice.

“Probably.” He back up three steps. “On the count of three, get me into the air.”

To her credit, the Succubus did not bother to argue the strange request. She simply nodded and cupped her hands together to catch his foot.

“One, two, three!”

Logan ran at her. His foot landed in her open hands and he was flying. Right up to the iron chandelier hanging overhead. Weight and momentum carried him forward in a long swing. At the last moment, he let go and sailed over the heads of the enemy line to crash into the far wall. A hard push sent him hurtling in the opposite direction like a human missile to crash into the back of the left flank of the enemy. Human and demon alike were sent tumbling to vanish beneath the seething tide of attackers.

He tried to leap to his feet but was too slow. White-hot pain bloomed in his shoulder as a long blade drove through his flesh and out the other side. Logan staggered back off the blade in a spray of blood.

De Sade blinked in surprise at the blood dripping from the end of his sword. “You’re alive?”

“Surprise, asshole,” Logan growled and drew his sword.

De Sade grinned and waved the bloody blade at him in a fencing pose. “No matter. It just means I get to be the one to kill you!”

Logan squared off with him… then pulled his pistol and shot de Sade in the belly. The man looked down at the misting hole in his torso with an expression of bafflement. “What… what…” he muttered and then fell to the floor.

“Like I said, surprise asshole. That was for Karen, you piece of shit.”

The battle was nearly over. The last of Graveek’s harem had fallen before the combined assault of so many. Graveek herself was locked in furious melee with Beauty and Coyote.

And winning.

Logan had never imagined someone could be as quick as the Baroness was. She was a blur of deadly precision, wielding two blades as if each had a will of its own. A third weapon, her tail, struck out like a viper to entangle and confuse her attackers.

He waded into the fight, even knowing he was hopelessly outclassed by the Elder demon. Almost immediately, as if by magic, cuts opened up across his arm and chest. Graveek was so fast he didn’t even realize he had been wounded until he stumbled back spilling blood across the floor.

“Graveek is mine!”

Boudica leaped onto the platform with a sword in either hand and an expression of pure hate. Half naked in tattered swaths of scarlet cloth and long, auburn, braid flying behind her, she looked like an Old Testament angel of retribution. Logan had no chance to even think of an objection. Beauty darted in on Graveeks exposed flank. The three females crashed together in a windstorm of blade, skill, and murderous intent. Faced with such fury and precision, there was nothing he or Coyote could do to help except stay out of the way.

Nothing he had ever seen, on the battlefields of Earth or in Hell, came even close by comparison. One woman and two Succubus tore at each other. Mist and smoke billowed out into the room. Blades and claws cut, stabbed, and crashed together in an unbroken song of metal and murder.

Graveek's left hand was suddenly sheared off at the wrist. She fell back against the wall and began to slide down to the floor, cradling the billowing stump of her missing hand against her ample chest. She looked at Logan, and at the scarlet stain of blood leaking out of his many wounds. Her silver eyes flew open in shock.

“It’s you! She did it.” Graveek began to cackle with bitter laughter. “The crazy bitch finally did it! Twice blooded, twice blessed! Destroyer of worlds…”

“What are saying?” Logan demanded. “What “she” are you babbling about?” He looked up at movement. “No, don’t!”

Graveek didn’t even have time to scream before Boudica swept her sword through the demon’s neck with a scream of pure, berserker rage and her head from plum colored shoulders.

“Now it’s finished.” Boudica smiled at him and fell to the floor, bleeding out in a cloud of mist.