Chapter 5

In The Pit

The view from several hundred feet above the Berkeley Pit should have been breathtaking. The lights from the city of Butte sparkled like a bank of landbound stars, and the shadows of the nearby mountains were slumbering giants, each of them dreaming of Ragnarok when they could awaken and do battle with the gods of old.

However, Dana couldn’t help but pay more attention to the fact that Lily was being far too quiet tonight. After arriving at the hotel, the succubus had announced it was time to go. Her usual chatter had been replaced by an ominous quiet, and it was only when they were close to the pit that Lily had spoken up about a good place to hide the motorcycle. Now that she rode in the demon’s arms, Dana half expected a joke about heights or being dropped.

Instead, all she had for company was the wind in her ears.

Down below, the pit was a blot of ink on the landscape, a shade of black that confused the eye into thinking there was nothing there at all. Lily descended in a tight circle, her body clad in black leather. Dana was in black jeans and a black jacket she had bought at a local thrift store with cash, a last minute purchase that she thought would help with their infiltration.

Up close, the pit smelled of many things, none of them pleasant. Dana wrinkled her nose in disgust as they glided silently over the water and landed on a narrow strip of land underneath a steep cliff.

“We can get in from here,” Lily said, a chill in her voice.

“Sounds good.” Dana reached into her pockets and pulled out a pair of waterproof flashlights and some swim goggles. She strapped the goggles to her head and made sure that none of her hair was trapped beneath. The goggles might not even work, but she hated the idea of being dragged through the darkness below, unable to see where they were going.

The air was thick with the smell of rust and decay, and when she knelt by the water’s edge, she felt a slight twinge in her stomach. There was another odor there that didn’t equate with anything that she knew.

“Ready?” Lily asked.

“As I’m ever going to be.” She waded out into the water right behind the succubus. It was only a few feet from shore that the ledge they stood on dropped out, and they were now both suspended in the water. Despite being fully dressed, Dana noticed that she didn’t really sink beneath the water itself. Also, her skin was starting to itch. “So where to?”

Lily grabbed Dana’s wrist with her tail. “Just kick as hard as you can.” With that, she dove underneath the water. Dana took a deep breath out of habit and followed, kicking her feet and using her free arm to pseudo paddle.

Once they had gone far enough under the water’s surface, Lily turned on her flashlight. Dana followed suit and saw that they were right up against a large stone wall that disappeared into the darkness below. Large grooves had been carved into the stone, and Lily was upside down, and using her hands to pull them even deeper into the Stygian darkness.

The flashlight beams didn’t reach very far, and a tiny bead of red water was in the goggle of her left eye. She didn’t know how deep they were now, but could already feel the pressure squeezing the goggles tightly against her face.

Minutes passed, and the wall disappeared. They hovered in front of a large opening, and Lily swam into it, her wings acting like giant fins to propel them forward. Dana’s whole body itched now, and she fought the urge to scratch. Even worse, she was becoming disoriented, the world around her starting to tumble about as she bounced along the stone ceiling of the cave they were in.

Thoughts of Alex floated in front of her mind, and then Tick Tock. She pointed her beam down, wondering if the motorcycle had followed them. Unable to see it, she tried to descend, only to be yanked back upward by Lily’s tail. Disgruntled, she dropped her flashlight and watched it sink into the poisonous depths below until it vanished, hoping to see the mimic in the beam of the light.

What if Tick Tock was hurt? She fought the succubus, but got pulled along all the same. The stone ceiling disappeared and suddenly they were in a large, air filled chamber, but she couldn’t see anything through the blue tint of her goggles.

“You’re a pain in the ass,” Lily muttered, then dragged Dana to shore. There was a large, metallic cube the size of a barn sitting on the edge of the lake with circular glowing glyphs on every side of it. The succubus dragged them up onto land.

Dana tried to stand, but couldn’t. Her equilibrium was trashed, and in the beam of Lily’s light, she saw that her skin was red and peeling in several places like a third degree sunburn. She had known a girl back in summer camp who had gotten one. Sally? Sally Mal? Sally Sally had a cow, stayed out too long, so inside now.

She giggled.

“Fuck me,” Lily muttered, dragging Dana away from the water. “Try not to breathe in here. Even I can taste how poisonous the air is, I think it will burn the shit out of your lungs. You can even see where they’ve put up runes to keep the walls from degrading over time. This place is fucking nasty.”

Dana groaned and flailed about as if drunk. The cube sat in front of a very large door next to a small hatch, and Lily turned the wheel on the hatch and then pulled Dana inside. It was like an airlock—once the hatch was sealed, fresh air poured in through the vents above. There was a pair of benches and a half wall separated the room from a shower.

“You good?” Lily asked.

“Urgh,” Dana replied, then pulled off her goggles. Her fingernails felt soft to the touch, and one slid off and stuck to her goggles, which had become slimy. She held her hand up in front of her face and saw that fresh skin had reappeared near her wrists.

“Get those clothes off,” Lily ordered, and Dana obeyed. She removed all of her clothes with Lily’s help and tossed them on the floor. Lily turned on one of the showers and dragged Dana into the stream of water.

Steam filled Dana’s lungs, and a coughing fit struck. She spat out a glob of something shiny that tasted like a dirty penny.

“Nasty.” Lily, now wearing nothing but her boots, smacked Dana on the back. “Okay, so maybe dragging you into an acidic lake was stupid of me.”

“Mef.” Dana hacked up more of the substance, sounding very much like an asthmatic smoker.

“Shit, I’m glad we’re past the stealthy part. You’re making plenty of noise.” There was a large bottle of soap, which Lily poured all over Dana. “I don’t think we were spotted and I doubt this room is being watched. The air in the landing area is so acidic, I doubt they could have cameras watching it, and I think we’re about five hundred feet down. That cube out there is what the Order uses to get here, as well as to transport stuff down. It’s made of some mega rare material and is protected by all those magical wards. Still, they have to scrub it down every now and then, and this room is for washing off all the shit they get exposed to outside.” Lily pointed to the opposite wall where a bunch of hazmat suits had been hung up. “See what I mean? This is why security is so lax. Even if you get past the lake, you could suffocate out there.”

Dana retched, and this time, a large black glob came up that shimmered like mercury. Her hands were shaking now, and she tried to scratch at the large blisters on her legs.

“Okay, I didn’t think we were going to do this, but…” Lily yanked Dana to her feet and forced their mouths together. Lily’s tongue was hot in Dana’s mouth, and she felt a jolt of energy as a bit of fresh cum was passed along.

Her whole body burned as if on fire. Fresh skin knitted itself back together, and the burns on her body faded away under the steam of the shower. Dana broke the kiss and coughed, sending another large glob of the liquid metal that had been poisoning her body onto the floor where it could circle the drain.

The room around her stabilized, and she tackled the succubus, pressing her against the wall beneath the shower’s stream.

“Not even gonna buy me dinner firs—oh!” Lily’s hands pressed against the tiles of the shower as Dana knelt down to bury her face in the succubus’ exposed pussy. Her tongue slid along Lily’s trim vulva and then into her snatch. She was hungry for the cinnamon-sweet taste of the demon, and she slid her arms between Lily’s legs and grabbed her ass with both hands.

Then she lifted. It was as if the succubus weighed nothing at all, and she stood up straight and pinned Lily against the wall.

“Oh, I love it when you’re this feisty,” Lily declared as she ran her fingers through Dana’s hair.

“Mmf!” Dana replied, then shoved a finger up Lily’s ass. She couldn’t help herself—it was an urge to inhale the very essence of the sexual being before her, to possess her body and make her tremble with lust.

For a second, she was eating out the succubus in the shower. The next moment, she was living a similar memory with Alex. Back in college, the two of them had just finished a late night run at the gym and, for whatever reason, had begun fooling around in the shower. She had pinned Alex against the wall in this same manner without the lifting, and had sucked and fingered her to a quiet climax before someone else had wandered in to change.

There was no fear of that here, however, and as if reading her mind, Lily now wore the visage of Dana’s late girlfriend. Her dark skin glistened beneath the hot spray of the shower, and she grabbed Dana by the ears and yanked her in.

“Mmm, yes, that’s it baby, use that tongue to get me off.” Alex’s voice was husky and echoed off the shower walls. Dana now had a finger up her ass and two up her snatch, and the dark-skinned beauty in her arms let out a low grunt that became a quiet howl, her hips bucking as an orgasm rocked through her. She slapped her hands against the wall with a loud, wet smack, and then pushed Dana away so that she could slide back to the ground.

If not for the boots, the illusion would have been perfect. Even so, Alex kissed her roughly, then grabbed her by the hair and twisted her around so that she was bent over the half wall that separated the shower from the rest of the room.

“Ordinarily I would take my time, but we’re in a bit of a hurry,” Alex said. Dana clamped her fingers onto the cold brick wall as she felt something enormous press against her pussy. She took a peek over her shoulder and saw that the demon’s tail was pressing into her. It was just enough to break the illusion, so she looked away and pretended it was just Alex using a strap-on.

The intense pressure made it feel like her hips were widening, and the wide part of the tail finally passed through her vaginal opening and slid the rest of the way inside, pulsating inside of her.

Dana groaned and squeezed the wall with her hands. Alex put her hands on Dana’s hips and fucked her slowly, the tail expanding and contracting in time with Dana’s inner walls. A rhythm had established itself inside her core, and the succubus was playing her like a finely tuned instrument.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Alex said, and then Dana felt pressure on her ass. A pair of fingers pushed into her asshole, and she arched her back in pleasure as the fingers and the tail alternated. Her entire pelvic region was like a raw nerve right now, and it caused a flood of heat through her whole body.

Parts of the wall crumbled beneath her fingers as she dug her nails into it, and she fought the urge to take a bite out of the brickwork itself. She was building to a massive orgasm right now, and she growled in both frustration and pleasure as her libido soared.

The fingers in her ass suddenly felt thicker, as if they had merged and turned into a dildo. A low growl built up in Dana’s belly, and she sank her fingers into the half wall as her rear end was pushed into the air, her feet dangling over the ground. When she screamed, a fine spray of silver filled the air like a mist and immediately fell to the ground. Alex pounded her into that half wall for a second and third orgasm, and Dana finally fell flat against the top of the wall, her eyes rolling back in her head.

“Okay, okay…I’m good now…” She opened her eyes to see that she had left long gouges in the brick surface beneath her hands, and there was a pool of metallic fluid underneath her. Her body had managed to reject the heavy metals present in the lake, casting them out through all of her pores.

“You sure?” Alex asked.

“Yeah. You can remove that thing from my ass now.”

Lily’s laughter filled the shower. “Boy, if I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard or said that…”

“You’ve never said that. Heard it maybe. You’ve made a couple bucks at most.” Dana grunted as both her ass and pussy emptied, and then pushed herself off the wall and back into the shower. Despite the constant stream of water, the heavy metals her body had rejected were still swirled along the floor, and she was careful to avoid stepping in them.

Lily grabbed Dana’s clothes and rinsed them in the hot spray, careful to squeeze them dry. She used her tail like a giant clothesline and flapped her wings, causing a steady stream of air over everything.

“That’s an interesting trick,” Dana said, then picked up her shoes and stood behind Lily. A ring of fire had formed between Lily’s horns as she panted with exertion, creating a hot breeze. It still took the better part of twenty minutes before her clothes were dry, but it was far preferable to walking around in squishy shoes.

There was a separate door leading out of the cleaning room, so once Dana was dressed, they went through it. Beyond was a long, stone corridor with a pair of wide depressions set into the floor that contained holes that made her think of a cog railroad line. Long glowing panels had been installed along the walls and ceiling, and behind them, the giant doors leading to the dock area were sealed shut with a series of locking mechanisms. It looked big enough for the cube to fit through without any problems.

“So, they just bring that whole room in here?” Dana asked.

“Yep. Cyrus has only been here a couple of times, but they have to ride down in that big cube. There’s no other way in or out, which makes this the perfect location to store anything. Before the pit filled with water, they built this part of it to house unclassified magic. These things can be dangerous, but you definitely don’t want to house them just anywhere. There is a research team who decides how harmless they are, and then they either remain here or get passed along.” Lily hopped into one of the depressions and walked along it, stepping over the grooves. Her appearance had changed to resemble one of the women from the Order who had chased them back in Fort Collins. “Could someone like me get in and out? Sure. But that would require intimate knowledge of where to go once beneath the surface. The lake is a bad place, and even a determined warlock would struggle to find a safe way in.”

“I’m sure,” Dana agreed, scratching a phantom itch. She felt better now that her head was on straight. “So where to from here? This place seems huge.”

“I think it goes down the pit. The ground is sloped here, and…yeah, right there.” Lily pointed at a nearby door that had a number on it. “This is one of the storage rooms. We just need to find the research pod to find out where those marbles are and then we can split.”

“You don’t just have a map in your head or something?”

Lily laughed, her voice echoing off the walls. “All I have are some vague memories. Cyrus telling some other guy to send the items to the pit, and then a connected memory of riding that moving cube thing here when he was younger to deliver some beat-to-shit...Plymouth?” She frowned. “Think it was a Plymouth.”

“There was an enchanted car down here?” Dana could see another door a fair distance away still. The doors were about a hundred feet apart. “And how did they fit a car through these doors? They’re normal size.”

“I have no idea,” Lily admitted. “All I have is some old memories to go off of. I have to admit, I’m very curious why the research station is so far inside this thing, I would have figured they would want it up front?”

“I hate this place. It’s like an aircraft hangar without any joy.” Dana scowled at the ceiling. “And if this place is so secure, why aren’t there any cameras?”

“Here.” Lily handed over a piece of paper and a pen. “Why don’t you write down all your questions now so that we can ask somebody who knows later?”

“You’re being bitchy,” Dana replied, ignoring the paper which turned into a puff of smoke. “Even more so than usual. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’d rather be fucked with an elephant’s dick wrapped in barbed-wire.” Lily’s lip curled into a sneer. “Just having a bad day. Maybe I’m on the rag.”

“That’s been one benefit of being dead,” Dana replied dryly.

This got a chuckle from Lily, and they continued on in silence. It was nearly twenty minutes of a long, curved tunnel that continued downward. The numbers on the doors steadily climbed, and it wasn’t until they were in the upper sixties that they reached a set of double doors with no numbers.

“Hmm.” Dana walked up to the door and put her ear to it. “Don’t hear anything on the other—”

Lily shoved the door open and Dana fell inside. Past the doors was a well-lit lobby with a man sitting behind a desk monitoring a bank of computer screens. The screens were alternating between night vision images from around the pit, and he spun in his chair when he heard them.

“Where did you just come from?” he asked, reaching in his pocket for his wand. He wore a dark sweater over black jeans, and his hood had been pulled up.

“It’s a long story, but Master Cyrus sent us.” Lily said, then reached into her pocket. At the mention of Cyrus, the man relaxed a bit. “He sent us to retrieve something from the Fort Collins incident, apparently he needs to check on something.” She pulled an envelope out of her pocket and held it out. “Here are our orders.”

Frowning, he stepped around the desk to accept it.

“That doesn’t make sense, I—” his eyes rolled up in his head and he fell, revealing Lily’s tail behind him. Dana caught him before he could hit the floor, and they dragged him back behind the counter.

“Clever,” Dana remarked.

“Always am,” Lily muttered, then placed her hand on his face. A few minutes passed before she removed it and turned to the bank of monitors. “Looks like we need to go further in. He’s just the desk bitch.”

“Why do they have all these cameras?” Dana wondered, looking at the monitors. There were so many of them, and they looked out all along the land surrounding the pit. However, she noticed that she didn’t see any monitors watching the tunnel they had walked in on.

“Duh. To watch for trespassers.” Lily was searching the man’s pockets now. She came up with a keycard and a candy bar, which she stuck in her pocket.

“Then why not anything inside? If they have surveillance like this, then why not—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, fine!” Lily grabbed the desk guard’s head again and closed her eyes. A dark stain blossomed in the front of his pants before she let go of him. “Okay, so that’s interesting.”

“Did you just kill him?” Dana asked.

“No, couldn’t. This guy is lame, just beats his meat too often while fantasizing about someone else who works here. Coincidentally, that’s how I got this little nugget of info from him. Wait for it…” She held up a hand and then pointed at the man’s crotch. “Ha, there it is! Anyway, they minimize electronics down here. Haunted items can drain electricity to gain in power, which is fairly common knowledge, and they don’t want some of the resident spirits wreaking havoc. Any electrical lines that go out there cause the systems in here to short out all the time, so they disconnected everything. Those glowing panels are some imported enchanted marble slabs from Jordan. No, the real reason for no cameras is kind of exciting. Apparently, that thing that lives at the bottom of the pit sometimes summons things.”

“Wait, what? I thought you said it wasn’t awake?”

“Awake is a relative term for something smeared across time and space.” Lily pointed to a series of glowing bars off to the side of the monitor. “Think of it more like a dream. Occasionally, whatever this thing is thinking of bleeds over into the real world sometimes, and when it does, it roams the hallways for a while before disappearing. These bars over here will start to flicker if it’s been detected. They’re hooked up to some electromagnetic sensors along the corridor.”

“Don’t understand why they have bars but no monitors.”

“Because apparently seeing or hearing it will drive you insane, even through a monitor.” Lily had a wild look on her face. “And that sounds so fucking cool! I am insanely curious now what it looks like, aren’t you?”

Dana had zero desire to mess with such a creature. Ever since dying and discovering that magical creatures existed, her life (and death) had been literally turned upside down. The last thing she needed was some kind of elder god nonsense that led to an eternity of insanity. “Can we just get our stuff and go?”

“Spoilsport.” Lily stuck the card in a door on the other side of the room and knelt down. A scanner opened up and she pressed her face to it. It beeped twice and the door unlocked.

“Retina scan?” Dana asked.

“Yep. Could just rip an eye out of his head, but apparently we’re in a hurry, so just a little shapeshifter magic.” She walked through the door and then down the hall. There was a series of rooms followed by a long hallway, but she went to the third door on the left and swiped the card through.

“Where does that go?” Dana asked, pointing at the hallway.

“Dorms. There’s about twenty people who live here year-round. They maintain the place and do research.” Lily pushed the door open. “And voila!”

On the other side of the door was a laboratory. Clearly labeled boxes had been spread around the room, but each one had the same label at the bottom.

Collected from Unearthly Delights

“These are all magic items?” Dana wondered out loud.

“Nope. They don’t have time to test this shit on site, so they just bring it all here.” Lily picked up a nearby box and looked at the label. She set it down and repeated the process with the next one. “I am very grateful that they are organized. Why don’t you put on one of those lab coats? That way, if someone comes in, they won’t question it. And if they do, just act like you’re supposed to be here, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” Dana put on one of the lab coats hanging by the door. She wasn’t certain why someone would care about wearing such a thing while examining potential magic objects, but Lily’s logic was sound. She opened a nearby box and checked inside to verify that the contents matched the label. Lily was right, the Order was thorough. As she set the box down, she felt the floor rumble beneath her feet. “What was that?”

“What was what?” Lily had pulled a bong out of one of the boxes and pretended to smoke a bowl now that she had Dana’s attention. When she opened her mouth, a hazy cloud of smoke emerged, and her eyes were all bloodshot.

“Seriously?”

“Demons love to blaze it,” Lily replied, then stuck out her tongue when smoke came out her ears.

“If I was alive, I would hate you so much right now.”

Dana continued her search, but moved slowly, pausing every now and then to see if she could feel the rumbling once more. Were they far enough down that it was just some kind of small tectonic movement? Or maybe the thing below the pit decided to stretch? She found a thick file full of paperwork and flipped through it and was surprised to see a sketch of the pearl necklace Ratu had drawn for her inside. She pulled it out and flipped the paper over. The word Dragon Seed had been scrawled on the back, followed by a question mark. Interesting. When she put it back, she found some additional paperwork on it, and read through it quickly. Apparently, the Order didn’t have the necklace either, but were very concerned about it being out in the wild. “And you’re sure that the marbles are here?”

“Nope. Just a vague memory of Cyrus seeing them as they were collected. Guy out front isn’t part of the chain of custody, so if they aren’t here, then we will have to look somewhere else. I really hope they haven’t been catalogued and stored in one of the big rooms, because those could take us days to search.”

“Really? Days?”

“Yes, days. Do you think they just leave stuff sitting out on the shelves? Wards everywhere, some objects are sealed in concrete so people can’t just grab them and bail. I think that Plymouth may have been sealed in concrete. Seems a bit extreme to me, but whatever.”

“I thought you said this is where they tried to store the non-scary stuff.”

“Scary is a relative term. This place is built under a poisonous lake next to a being of immense power who may someday wake up and decide to eat half of Montana. The Order relies on people never knowing this place exists, and if they do, never letting them know what may be stored here. By themselves, most of these objects are never going to just wander off and kill a bunch of people, and a good chunk of them are…” Lily trailed off and cocked her head. “Okay, that time I felt it.”

“What would make the ground rumble?” Dana knelt down and put her ear to the floor. There was a steady hum punctuated with loud clicks. She immediately regretted not doing this earlier.

“Oh shit, the cube!” Lily grabbed the boxes closer to her and dug through them. “The cube is going up to let someone in!”

“Shouldn’t we be going then?”

“We’ve got half an hour for the cube to go up, and half an hour for it to come back. I’m more worried about sneaking past whoever is coming down once we—aha!” Lily ripped the lid off of a box and stuck her hand inside. When she pulled it out, she held a small cloth sack. “I did it! I found your fucking marbles!”

“C’mon, let’s go!” Dana was already moving into the hall and Lily was close behind. They only made it a few feet when one of the other doors swung open behind them.

Lily pushed Dana against the nearest door, then swiped the key card through the reader and followed her inside when the door opened. The room was dark, but the lights came on automatically once they were inside. Unlike the previous lab, it was almost completely empty with a series of diagnostic devices set up around the perimeter of the room.

It was what was in the middle of the room that caught Dana’s attention.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck…” Lily whispered, her ear to the door. She sat there for another minute, then looked over at Dana. “I don’t think they saw us. We should be good to go.”

“Lily? What am I looking at?”

In the center of the room was a motorcycle that had been twisted like a pretzel. Parts of it had been dismantled and were strewn around the room with bits of rock and rust twisted up in the metal, and it could have been any other motorcycle in the world if not for the fact that she had spent an entire year restoring it.

“Huh?” The succubus looked at the bike. “You’re looking at a hot mess is what you’re looking at. C’mon, let’s go!”

Dana stepped toward the wreck, her hands on her chest. There was no mistaking it, this was Alex’s bike. She knelt down and touched the cold metal with her fingers, the chrome riddled with scratches. “This is my bike, Lily. How is it down here?”

“It can’t be your bike. We parked the bike on the way here, remember? It’s not like they grabbed it and beat us down here, don’t be ridicul—” the door opened and a man and a woman wearing glasses walked in. The man held a clipboard and the woman had a cup of coffee, and everybody froze when they saw each other.

Dana gave a casual wave. After all, she was supposed to be here. “Evening.”

“Oh, didn’t expect to see anybody,” the man said, then switched the clipboard to his left hand. “Brother Bastien.” He extended his right hand for Lily to shake it.

“Tell me about this bike,” Lily said in her haughtiest tone while shaking his hand. The woman looked at Bastien, who just shrugged.

“We’re not sure. Turned up about a week ago, down by the observation platform. Nobody knows how it got there, and—” he dropped his clipboard when Lily’s tail struck the woman, and almost had his free hand in his own pocket before she got him next. Both of them slumped to the floor, unmoving.

“A week?” Dana asked. “How has it been here for a week?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Lily read Bastien’s dreams for a couple of minutes. “Shit. These two were part of a team of five, but they’re here early on account of a pre-research booty call. We need to go, right now.”

Dana beat Lily to the door and they ran into the front lobby together. On the monitors, she could see a small cluster of cars parked near the edge of the pit, and there was a phone at the desk that rang incessantly.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me…hello?” Lily’s voice was now that of the desk guard. “Yes, Master Cyrus. Was helping move something heavy…yes, I will put everyone on full alert, see you shortly.” She hung up the phone and looked at Dana with dread in her eyes.