After another round of shower sex and the shamefully fastest blowjob of my life, I didn’t want to go hunting tonight. Lumi tuckered me out, my bed feeling ten times more comfortable, especially with naked Lumi on it. She said Trista would call when they were ready, but by the time 11pm came around the corner, Lumi and I had knocked out. A quick two hour nap felt restless, my body used to retiring for the night once my head hit the pillows. The sound of Lumi’s phone going off stirred me awake, and when she picked it up and I heard Trista on the line, I was half tempted to postpone our outing.

But I couldn’t fall back, not when I made her a promise…

Lumi yawned. “Perfect timing, Trista. Why couldn’t you call before we had sex?” she said to herself after she ended the call.

I smiled. “That wouldn’t work out, either. We’d be too exhausted to mess around then.”

“We’re exhausted now!” She giggled. “Besides, it’s perfect—hot shower sex after a workout, then we fall asleep in each other’s arms until morning. It’s what we did back home. You’d train me for a couple hours at night, and then we’d enjoy each other right before bed.”

“Did I train all of my women to fight?”

“You sure did. That was on the top of your priorities list. You wanted us to be able to defend ourselves in your absence.”

“Well, the shoe is on the other foot, now,” I said, cupping her beautiful face. “It’s your turn to guide me.”

“It’s dangerous out there, sugar bun. Whatever you do, stick with me!”

Lumi and I got dressed, and then headed out the door to meet Ruby, Wren, and Trista.

The rendezvous point Trista picked out brought back bittersweet memories. It was where I took Sasha out on our date. Correction—it was where I took Persallus out on a date. Past the fountain and near the bridge where we kissed. I couldn’t stop staring at it as Lumi and I waited for the rest of my domain, the thought of her tricking me like that made me heat up with rage.

Lumi noticed and walked closer to me, her hand on my chest and her eyes staring up at me caringly. “This is where Persallus took you, right? It looks familiar.”

I pivoted my head down to her. “Were you watching our entire date?”

“Most of it. I couldn’t stalk you when you went into buildings!”

“So you must know that she’s a great actress.”

“That’s nothing. You should see the lie some demons act out for years. You’d think that they forgot they were demons. Pretending to be sweet innocent girls, or doting husbands, or loving parents.”

“And that’s what we are here to do, right? End this vicious cycle of terrorizing lives?”

“Limiting human interference will help both demons and humans. This pact war went way off the rails.”

“I still find it odd how angels aren’t doing much about it.”

“They have their hands tied. The number of demons greatly surpasses the number of angels. You gotta’ remember that a lot of fallen angels aren’t about the business of trying to go back to heaven. They’ve accepted their fate, some clipped of wings, some demoted further than that. Depends on the gravity of their sin.”

“What’s worse than getting your wings clipped?”

“Being demoted to a human.”

“Shit. That’s an actual thing?”

“Mhm!”

“I’m guessing that doesn’t apply to demons, right?”

“Nope. But we do have ranks and classes.”

“Speaking of class, you sure are keeping it classy,” Trista said, the pink haired girl nowhere to be seen. Not until a red ring with inlays emerged out of thin air, circling the ground like a magic show. I took a step back, Lumi reassuring me that it was just a domestic portal. Three shadowy silhouettes of people emerged, and soon, I saw my three girls right in front of me.

“Holy crap,” I whispered astonished. “So this is what you meant by opening a local portal, huh?”

Ruby smiled. “First time reaction of humans seeing demon portals never gets old.”

Trista walked up to me, sizing me up and down with her skeptical eyes. “Wearing white on your first night out?” she asked me, talking about my hoodie.

“Yeah, kinda snatched whatever I could get my hands on on the way out.” It wasn’t until she asked me about my outfit did I study theirs. Trista had on a forest green turtleneck on with a dark plaid skirt. Ruby wore a tight black jumpsuit, giving off sexy mercenary vibes. And her sister had on a black crop top, shorts, and fishnet tights.

Lumi was wearing a deep purple blouse and black shorts.

“You’ll learn to wear dark colors. We open rings like this all the time, and it’s best we don’t draw any witnesses our way.”

“You’re the one to speak!” Lumi hissed. “Remember that one time you opened a portal in the middle of a packed mall?”

Trista deadpanned her. “That was a miscalculation on my part…”

“Really? Because from what I could remember, Donut King was about to close in five minutes, and your excuse was ‘we wouldn’t make it on time on foot!’”

Trista tossed her hands up in the air sheepishly. “All right, so we all make mistakes! That sweet tooth was killing me. And that magic trick excuse was brilliant. You can’t deny that.”

“Speaking of accidents, you took the quicker route, and were still late?” Lumi huffed.

“We stopped by the Beagle Hut on 5th,” Ruby said with a cute smile. “You know how much of a piggy Trista could be!”

“First hand,” Lumi said, pinning her hands to her sides.

“Dark colors, got it. I’ll keep that in mind.” I turned to the goth girl who hadn’t made herself known, standing by herself quietly. “Hey, Wren,” I greeted her, Wren still standing there with a sour look on her face and her arms crossed under her breasts.

“Can we move this along?”

“We have a faction party close by,” Trista said. “From the family of Grimess.”

“Oh, I hate them!” Lumi seethed. “Always sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”

“They are known for targeting women, the younger, the better,” Ruby said with a cheeky grin. “A bunch of hungry hungry hippos who make even Trista seem humble.”

“They are nasty, sugar bun! They have the son, and sometimes the daughter, lure them into a cabin in the woods, and they kill them like cattle.”

“Are these true demons?”

“No,” Wren said. “I hope that’s not a problem, Samael.”

“It’s Isaac,” I reminded her. “Where is this cabin?”

“It’s not just one cabin, it’s a few,” Ruby said. “Whenever their cover is blown, they move to another hideout. They never stick to one place for long.”

“And tonight, Remmy was spotted lurking around these parts.”

“Wait, you mean this park?”

Lumi nodded. “It gets thicker south of here.”

“A nice unkempt, deserted part in the city—a perfect ground for storing meals,” Trista said.

“And Tisling Park is the perfect place to hunt,” Ruby verified, and I had a firsthand experience of how true that was.

“All right! Seeing as this is hubby’s first hunt, we should all stick together!”

“Drop the training wheels,” Wren said as she approached us. “You know that’s not how we operate. Sticking as a group makes us more susceptible to being spotted. And the last thing we need is giving Celeste a hint that we’re on her tail. We split up, as always. We will cover more ground sectioning off in the woods.”

“But—”

“Lumi, if you’re so worried about our master, you go with him. The rest of us will trail off.”

“Aww, why does Lumi get a hot stud as a chaperone partner?” Ruby complained.

“Because I’m his familiar!”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you tossed that excuse a few times in the underworld. The prince summoned me! I am his favorite!” Ruby teased in a haughty voice.

“And it’s true!”

“Just because he created you doesn’t mean that you’re his favorite.”

“All right, girlies, this isn’t the time to bicker,” Trista said in a motherly voice. “Isaac is for all of us. I’m sure he has no favorites.”

“Well, if he did, it’s definitely not Ruby. The same girl who called him her sex slave.”

“Why don’t you hack up a fur ball in some corner, huh?”

I shouldn’t be laughing on the inside, but I was…

They were fighting over me, what a rare treat…

“I’m moving ahead,” Wren said, taking the lead into the thick parts of the park.

“Hmph,” Lumi huffed, snatching me by my arm and tugging me along.

I waved at Ruby apologetically. “Heh, maybe next time!”

The tug of war between Lumi and Ruby was something I forecasted might happen, seeing as both girls were on the clingy and feisty side. Which of course, I didn’t mind. My mom was right—Jessica wasn’t much of a first girlfriend. It felt like we hooked up because we were both tired of being alone. We had little in common, Jessica into fashion and trends, and I was, well, a nerd. She was on the apex of the food chain, which was way more than what could be said for me. Even so, I didn’t feel intimidated, just disappointed that things couldn’t work out. Despite what my mother thought, we did get intimate, but honestly, I felt nothing. There’d been no real emotions there, unlike how I’d been with Lumi.

Lumi was mine—there was a spark, a connection, and loyalty. It radiated from her since the moment we met, and thinking about it now, it’s scary. But, in a good way. It meant that I couldn’t let her down. It meant that I had to do my best in this first trial. Not only for her, but for Ruby, Trista, and even Wren.

Even though the girl still hated my guts.

“Trista is expecting you to use your specialty to kill demons, but there are other ways of finishing them off,” Lumi started. “One, the ol’ fashion decapitation. Demons can’t come back from that. Make sure to sever the head completely off. And two, bleeding them dry.”

“Bleeding them dry? Like, making sure they reach a bloodlust bar of zero?”

“Yup! They can’t smoke out when they are weak.”

“Smoke out? You mean demons could leave their host any time?”

“Mhm!”

“Eh, decapitation seems easier.”

She giggled. “It’s actually not. At least not for your higher ranked demons.”

“Crap, I felt like we should have brought flashlights,” I said, trying to make out shadows as Lumi and I walked down the dry terrain.

“Covert mission, sugar bun!”

“I know, but it’s getting really dark. I can barely see anything.” The crickets were out, and so were the owls. They sang with the sound of our feet crunching against the autumn leaves on the ground, my eyes roaming around and in between tucks of darkness. At some point they stopped singing, and only one pair of feet echoed back in my ears.

The feeling of being alone tightened my stomach. When I looked around, I was swallowed in darkness, with Lumi nowhere to be seen. “Lumi?” I whispered. “Lumi?!”

Shit, I was just with her a second ago! Where the hell did she run off to?

Crap, this was unreal. I knew Lumi wouldn’t trail off without me. This had to be something else… something demonic…

The scene was an uncharacteristic type of darkness… almost felt like a lucid dream. The trees danced like waves in the ocean, and the full moon was brighter than the fucking sun, but gave little light to the environment. I started to feel light headed, the air around me growing thicker by the second. I called out Lumi again and bucked it, running right into a ghastly figure in the foreground.

The sight of her and her total nudity stopped me dead in my tracks. She was slightly shorter than me, making her a very tall woman. Pale skin, bony frame, hollow cheeks, long pasty black hair… She looked like that girl from The Ring, even had the same eerie vibe to her.

“Help me,” she croaked. “Please…”

I was speechless. At first, she didn’t strike me as a victim, but I couldn’t be too sure. Her skin did look a bit dirty, and her meek complexion tossed a few red flags in my head. Predator or prey? Demons were known to play tricks on humans, right? This could be one of those tricks…

“She’s gonna come, and slice me up like she did my mamma…”

“I’m sorry, I—”

“Please, take me with you…”

“All right. But I need to find my girlfriend first. She’s lost somewhere in the woods. Once I find her, I’ll come back for you, all right? Just, stay here.”

“No, she will find me… I DON’T WANT TO DIE!” she screeched.

“I won’t be far.”

“TAKE ME, NOW!”

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