Chapter 157

The scythes slashed wide and Erin only avoided their touch by flapping her wings, wings that seemed to give lift completely out of proportion with their size. Dragged back unceremoniously on her rear the succubus came mere inches from being sliced to ribbons.

She looked down at herself, surprised to see herself whole. Then she snarled, eyes flashing with anger.

“I’ve changed my mind, my intent was to accost you in your sleep each night, but now I’m going to cut off your arms and legs and make you my bed Rain, you’ll be a limbless mattress for me to sleep on, and every day and every night I will drain you, drain you until there is nothing left and I am as a god.”

“If you think you’re capable then try.”

The succubus took a step forward but paused as shadows curled up around her, a cat head amongst centipedes. A look of fright passed her gaze as she looked at the stuff, clearly recalling just what it had done to her.

“Weak.” growled Rain.

Erin screamed her outrage and lunged for Rain, darting around the dark, her hands reaching for his neck.

Rain took an easy step back, twisted, then torqued up from his hips, a massive fist smashed into Erin’s head instantly snapping her neck once again and sending her through the wall, across the street and through the building on the other side.

Rain stepped up to the hole in the wall and raised his arms, a horde of wolf teeth flung from his fur and streamed into the hole the succubus had made in the building opposite.

He tilted his head, ears twitching as he listened carefully, eyes narrowing at the dark hole across the street. He sensed nothing, although he did find the succubus had been sent through multiple interior walls. The night outside was empty and silent, the soft pitter patter of raindrops the only sign of life, the rooftops of the slums lit by the faint glow of the many coloured moon.

He waited.

Was she gone?

He was about to turn away when a red streak lunged up at him from the street below, freighting into his chest like an out of control carriage. The air was blown out of his lungs as his rib cage creaked dangerously, the sharp cold feeling of bone fracturing all he had time to register before he was launched through the ceiling, plaster, wood, and tile exploding around him as he went vertical, driven up by Erin’s rise.

He came out in the thin air above Warwick’s compound, having a high view of the square of buildings on top the flat roofs of the slums, then a higher view still as Erin rose. Was she trying the same drop tactic as in Lynthia? He wouldn’t let her have her way.

Hundreds of serrated fangs and teeth rose from his fur all over his body and began travelling in every direction, turning his fur into barbed mincer for flesh.

He was rewarded by a scream of pain and the succubus shoving him away.

Which left him far up in the air well above the compound. Not good.

He instantly retracted the fangs and teeth as huge owl wings bloomed from his back, not to flap but to catch the air even as he activated his Feather Fall Skill, everything and anything to reduce the impact.

As happened last time he couldn’t actually tell if either made any difference at all as he was just too heavy and he dropped out of the sky like a lead brick.

BOOM!

His feet hit the grass of the compound square ... and then simply went through it. The grass cratered below him and he exploded through the roof and into the room below, part of the original building. He had only a fraction of a second to register it however as he plummeted down into the next room, then the next, floorboards fountain apart around his falling body.

In the end the only reason he managed to arrest his fall was the huge owl wings. They crashed against the floorboards in such a way that they supported his weight across a surface area as his body punched through, slowing him as he dropped through room and after room until he finally jolted to stop half way through a room’s floor. Black owl wings filled the room his upper half remained in even as his legs dangled in the room below.

“A much better attempt than last time Rain, but I still feel it’s a bit lacking.”

He showed up to see Erin descending down the holes he had punched down through the building, tiny wings flapping gently to keep her hovering.

“Did you think this was everything that I could summon?”

Erin had time to blink before the tiger monster he had dropped into one of the floors he had passed through pounced, lunging with a feline roar at the floating succubus.

She hissed and tried to dive out of the way as the great black tiger lunged for, claws reaching.

She almost made it, but her tail fell into the tiger’s teeth and with a snap a tail of red flesh was flying through the air, disintegrating as the tiger bit at it.

Erin flew higher, out of reach, and clucked her tongue, holding up the other half of her severed tail in one hand.

“This is the stuff that almost killed me when I tried to absorb it, it truly is quite troublesome.”

“Even for a succubus?” growled Rain, dragging himself free and onto the floorboards.

“It wouldn’t be what it is if another kind of predator could prey on it, obviously.”

As she spoke she flicked a finger on her free hand and it transformed into a talon. She swiftly and carefully sliced off the writhing tip of her tail that was still reacting to the touch of the predation and had fresh flesh bulge out from the stump, rushing forth into a freshly grown tail.

“Another kind of predator? A weaker inferior predator?” said Rain, tilting his head to the side as he looked up at her.

She lifted a hand in front of her face.

“That thing you did, with the scythes, how did it go?”

Her arm suddenly rippled, red flesh shivering as it moved from shoulder to her wrist, flesh moving out as the metacarpals that made up her palms bulged then ripped through the tops of her hands, bone expanding and growing, becoming a set of four bone white scythes on each hand, each scythe over two foot long, their edges scalpel sharp.

She examined the shapes and hummed.

“You can try get a rise out of me if you wish Rain, but trust that it will mean the removal of your eyes and ears and tongue as well as your limbs when I make you into my mattress. You will simply be a lump of blind flesh with a dick for me to become a succubus god with.”

The owl wings lying across the floor suddenly disintegrated, the huge feathers reshaping into teeth that slipped together, becoming a half dozen huge sets of bone wolf teeth reminiscent of Rain’s own.

The snapping teeth eagerly shot up at the succubus above even as Rain sprinted for the door, smashing it aside with a brush of his arm he bounced off the wall before diving for the stairwell. What had been twice repaired now took an even harder beating, steps splintering apart as Rain stormed up before diving out on the floor below the compound.

There Erin erupted from the floorboards to find Rain waiting, scythe covered fist aiming for her head.

She twisted in mid air, flipping on end, and the scythes sliced through her feet, cutting them off at the ankles.

Erin howled and dove between Rain’s legs, raking her own bone scythes into his thighs leaving cuts that ran red.

The succubus’s severed feet fell against the floorboards with a heavy thud.

Erin stared at him from across the shadowed room, breathing heavy.

“Cutting your feet off seems to have bothered you. Did you quite like your feet?”

He stared her down as a black morass emerged from his foot and he stepped on her severed flesh, disintegrating it into pools of blood.

If looks could kill the stare the succubus was giving him from the shadows should have turned him to ash on the spot.

“It must be strange for you, as a succubus, you go around draining everything you can from your prey, but with me you simply can’t do that. But, I on the other hand, can eat you just fine.”

He took a step toward her, the half dozen floating sets of wolf teeth rising up behind him.

“And when I eat you I will grow just a little bit stronger, and a little bit bigger. Does that make me a succubus Erin?

Another step.

“A succubus that preys on other succubi?”

Another step.

The sound of wriggling flesh being discarded and hitting the floorboards was his reply, then the wet slick sound of her feet regrowing.

“You know my sisters would find you unbelievably cute back in hell, we would fight to collar you as a pet. Our pet dog. But here and now I really really just want to kill you.”

“That’s fine, I was just playing for time.

“Huh?”

The wall behind exploded as a centipedal cat headed nightmare smashed through, it’s domesticated cat head yowling its anger as centipal tentacle arms whipped through the air in a storm of death.