Suddenly A Succubus

By the time Vee was free to go, the sun was already close to setting. She pulled her hood over her head, doing her best to avoid eye contact with anyone as she walked home. When she arrived, she caught herself staring at the front door, unable to picture herself walking through it. The thought of going inside, of being alone, sounded terrible. She pulled out her phone.

Vee: Hey, can I come over? Are you still sick?

Amara: I'm all better! I'll leave the door open :)

She happily left her porch, picking up the pace as she walked. Tears threatened to fall, but thankfully Amara lived close. After only a few minutes, she was closing the door behind her and pulling off her shoes.

Amara ran over, giving her a soft hug. "What's happening babe? It's been so long since we hung out!"

Vee couldn't respond, her mind was racing, and all she could do was look at Amara. She could feel the emotions building up, the heat growing in her face.

"Vee? Talk to me, what's going on?" Amara's tone grew serious, her hands landing on Vee's shoulders as she lowered her voice.

"I... I don't..." Attempting to speak broke what little control Vee had left. She fell forward, her arms wrapping around Amara as the tears started falling.

Minutes passed, neither saying anything as she buried her face in Amara's shirt. Her breathing was erratic, her body occasionally twitching as she released all the frustration of the day.

"It's... it's Derek..." Vee managed to say.

"What did he do? Did he hurt you?!" Amara had a fire in her voice, as if she were ready to go to war.

"No, nothing like that." Vee said, wiping her nose on her sleeve. "He... he says I attacked him! That I set him on fire!"

Amara's face turned white, the shock more than apparent. "I... that's... that's absurd! You would never do that!"

I wouldn't. But a demon would.

She tried to shake her thoughts loose. "I saw him, briefly, at the station. Whatever happened, he's in bad shape."

Amara froze, her face betraying her confusion. "Wait, station? As in the police station?"

"He filed an official report. I was there all day, answering questions and shit..." Vee moved to the couch, shrinking into a corner as she continued sniffling.

"Okay, well, obviously you didn't do this. What do you think happened?" Amara sat down, draping one arm around Vee's shoulders. While the gesture was meant to be comforting, Vee could feel the tension in her friend's body.

I think the succubus knows I'm onto her.

The thought lingered, and Vee was unable to shake it loose this time. What other explanation was there? The succubus was trying to frame her, to warn her against continuing her hunt.

Despite Amara holding her, Vee felt hopelessly alone.

What if I told Amara everything? Would she believe me?

She leaned into Amara, wordlessly looking for what little comfort she could get.

It would be so easy! 'Hey, Amara, this is gonna sound weird, but I'm an Angel! A soul-sucking demon is trying to frame me!'

Despite her desperation, Vee couldn't bring herself to say anything. The church had warned her, time and time again, never to share her holy mission with humans. Either they don't believe you, or worse, they do. They become obsessed with divinity, the afterlife, worshipping you to gain favor and salvation.

Her friendship with Amara was genuine, one of the few things her divine lineage hadn't tainted, and she refused to give that up.

Minutes passed, the silence only broken by Vee's sniffling. She was glad Amara lived the closest of her friends; Tessa had a bad habit of being too flippant, and Chloé wasn't the most reliable in stressful situations. Amara had always been safe and comfortable, eager to help however she could.

"What happens now?" Amara said, breaking the silence. "They obviously don't have any evidence, since you didn't do anything."

"I...can't say for sure, but it seems like nothing is going to stick. Like you said, there aren't any witnesses, there's no evidence, and Derek was clearly drunk. They're probably only taking him seriously because... well, you know."

Amara nodded with acknowledgment. Derek's family was notoriously wealthy, and his father was the most influential person on the school's board of directors. Derek took full advantage of his position, and had essentially turned the campus into his own personal playground. Students and faculty alike bent over backwards to keep him happy, while those who stood in his way frequently regretted it. Supposedly, the last teacher to give him a poor grade had lost tenure within a year.

"Even if nothing happens, with how popular Derek is... school is gonna be a living hell. He's going to make sure everyone thinks I attacked him in cold blood."

"Hey, whatever happens, we're here for you." Amara shifted to look Vee in the eyes, "I'm here for you. I swear I'll find a way to fix this."

There was an unusual determination in Amara's voice. While Vee appreciated the concern, and had always known Amara to be protective, she was slightly taken aback by the reaction.

"Thanks Amara." Vee leaned closer, hugging her friend tight. "I knew I could count on you."

---

"No! Absolutely Not!"

"Tessa, this is all my fault! What other choice do I have?"

"Uh, the sensible one? The one that keeps you safe?" Tessa started pacing back and forth, her hands gesturing wildly. "I can't believe you'd even consider it!"

"I told you, didn't I? That went fine." Amara crossed her arms, her tail twitching in frustration.

"I'm a witch, Amara! I already knew magic and demons were real! And even then, are you forgetting that I almost left you there? I was terrified!"

"I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but I have to try! What would you have me do? Nothing?"

Tessa moved closer, grabbing Amara's shoulders as her voice grew softer. "That's not what I'm saying. We just have to be careful about this."

Amara stayed quiet, moving her eyes to the floor to avoid looking at her friend.

"Look, this is a shit situation, I get it," Tessa continued, "but there's more at stake here. Our secrecy is what keeps us alive, in a very literal sense. You've heard of witch hunts, right?"

"Weren't those all made up by colonists to justify killing women they didn't like?" Amara asked.

"I mean, yeah, but the first one? The first one was legit. It got a lot of attention, and people realized that witch hunts drove communities apart, created a vacuum of power for whoever could control the narrative. Things are a lot better now, but that hatred can still be stoked under the right circumstances."

"Vee's our friend! She's one of the smartest, kindest people I know!"

"Her family is also super religious! Did you know she's got some kind of grant from her church? You think they're going to give out money to people who are down to fuck with witches and demons?"

"I... I didn't know that. Seriously?" Amara finally looked Tessa in the eyes, surprise in her voice.

"She doesn't like to talk about it, and I don't even know what it's for. I only found out because I was at her place when a payment came in." Tessa moved her hands to Amara's face, keeping their eyes locked. "Look, I want to help Vee just as much as you, but there's a right way to do it. I'm asking you to trust me."

Amara couldn't find the words to respond, and instead kept looking into Tessa's eyes. The same vulnerability she had seen before had returned, only this time it was laced with fear. She had a sneaking suspicion that Tessa wasn't telling her everything, but her words seemed honest enough.

"Alright, fine. I won't tell her." Amara sighed in resignation. Who was she to doubt Tessa's wisdom? Amara had only known about her lineage for a few weeks, but Tessa seemed to be speaking from significant experience.

There was another small pause before Tessa spoke again. "What about you? Obviously everything about this is fucked, but you haven't talked about, y'know... Derek attacked you."

"I'm... torn. It was terrifying, absolutely, but I also got out completely unscathed." Amara paused, taking a deep breath as she thought back to this morning. "You know what's weird? The thing that shook me to my senses was when he called me Vee. As far as he's concerned, he was trying to attack her, not me. My blood boils every time I think about it, but there's this tiny part of me that's... almost glad this happened?"

"Amara, what the fuck are you on about? Do you even hear yourself right now?"

"I know how it sounds, and that's not what I mean. I keep coming back to the same thought, over and over. What if he'd found her instead? He's obviously the type to do this shit, and if it's going to happen, I'd rather it happens to me than her. I was able to fight him off, but Vee..."

Tessa clearly wanted to say something, but it took a few moments before she did. "Fuck. I hadn't thought about that." She pulled Amara in for a hug, squeezing her tight.

"I'll make this right. For Vee." Amara whispered. She squeezed back, doing her best not to hurt her friend.

She felt Tessa nod, then pull back from her. "So, you can actually summon fire now?"

Amara looked up at Tessa, shifting her focus. "Oh, yeah! It's pretty neat, if a little scary at times. Wanna see?"

Tessa nodded enthusiastically, turning off the flashlight on her phone as she pocketed it. "Uh, obviously! My phone is close to dying anyways."

Holding out her palm, Amara turned her focus inward. She was able to find the connection much quicker now, and soon a small flame sat in her hand. "Just be careful, it's not normal fire."

The firelight reflected in Tessa's eyes as she moved closer. There was caution in her steps, but it was clear she was fascinated. "Can I just say how jealous I am? You get stronger by fucking, talk about getting lucky."

The flame moved higher, growing slightly brighter as Amara fed it more energy. She moved it back and forth, watching as it illuminated the room around them.

The two girls were currently under the cafeteria, as they had been trying to find more magic circles. With only a brief investigation, they had discovered an old storage room filled with discarded kitchen hardware. Industrial fridges, freezer chests, deep fryers, all sorts of massive steel contraptions. Some of this equipment had been pinning down a large throw rug, and they had found a magic circle underneath.

The most peculiar thing about the room were the breaks in the floor. The entire place had cracks in the foundation, through which dozens of different plants were growing. Most of them were quite small, but the sheer variety on display was impressive. As the firelight grew, the amount of plant life in the room finally hit them both.

When Tessa finally pulled her eyes away from the flame, she looked around and whistled. "Damn, this place looks like it's seen a few apocalypses. How long can you keep that flame going? We need to start moving this shit so we can see the circle."

"Uh, maybe a bit? I just figured it out today, remember. You get started, I'm going to try and get the lights on." Amara walked back to the entrance, flipping the light switch up and down a few times.

I wonder if they purposely fucked with the lights to keep people out. Who would want to wander around in a dark room filled with half-broken freezers?

She kept searching, tracing the walls in hopes of finding another light switch, or maybe a breaker. As she walked further away from Tessa, she kept focusing on her connection with the flame. It still floated roughly 10 feet up in the air, and it grew more difficult to maintain as the distance increased. Although she didn't have any physical muscles flexing to support the fire, she could feel the strain building, and managed to find the breaker just before dropping the flame.

"We have light! How's the heavy lifting going?" Amara asked, returning to her friend.

"I moved some smaller stuff, but the rest of this crap isn't moving without both of us." She gestured to a few large appliances still sitting on the rug.

"You can't just, y'know, float them away?" Amara tapped the side of her head and wiggled her fingers.

"My telekinesis has limitations, you know. Like I said last time, that energy has to come from somewhere."

"Alright alright, this one first?" Amara pointed at an ancient soda fountain, and the two of them got to work. While Tessa's telekinesis was unable to lift the whole thing, she still used it for her half of the lifting. Amara chuckled as they worked; it looked like Tessa was lazily supervising while a ghost helped her do the dirty work. As they worked, she found herself wondering how long Tessa had been a witch.

Presumably a while? She's had her tattoos since at least freshman year, and they didn't seem very fresh then. Were her parents witches? Wait, who are her parents? Holy shit, I don't know anything about one of my closest friends.

It took close to half an hour to finally clear the rug, at which point the two of them draped it over a nearby appliance. With the circle now uncovered, Tessa pulled out her notebook and started looking around.

"So, have we learned anything yet? I feel like we've found quite a few circles, but I don't really know what you've been doing with them."

"The first step of science, Amara, is gathering data. I've been familiarizing myself with all the symbols, the connections, the ways the circles are built. So far, they've all been pretty consistent, but I'm getting better at telling them apart."

Amara jumped to sit on a nearby freezer, pulling out her phone as she settled in. "But this all started because you felt... what did you call them, shifts? Changes in the magic around campus? Any clues on that yet?"

"I definitely have a few theories, but nothing concrete." Tessa started chewing on her lip ring as she looked over her notes. "Although..." She shifted, moving closer to a spot on the edge of the circle.

She started flipping through her book, hunting for a specific page. Amara leaned in, eager to see what she might have found.

"I knew it!" Tessa pointed at one particular symbol. "Someone's been fucking with the circles! Look, the rune here is newer, and the signature doesn't quite match."

"Signature? I'm still not a witch, Tessa."

"It's... how to put this... the context is wrong. Like, if we were talking and I suddenly said 'Thou art mistaken'. The language of magic has changed over time, which can help with identification."

"So, can you tell what it's for? The new bit?"

Tessa traced her hand over the symbol, comparing it to some writing in her journal. "It's a subtle change. Either it's trying to recalibrate the circle, or it's trying to weaken it. I bet if I..." She trailed off, mumbling to herself as the tattoos on her head lit up again.

Her fingers stopped moving on the rune. It pulsed slowly for a moment, but soon its glow spread to other parts of the circle. The whole thing now pulsed, several times in succession, before Amara felt a charge move through the air.

She braced herself, then watched as something burst out of the circle on the floor. It was moving fast, but Amara managed to spring backwards over her perch to avoid it. The sound of scraping metal filled her ears, and she jumped back again to avoid a large fridge as it tipped over. By the time she made it to the far wall, the chaos seemed to have stopped, and she finally looked around.

The far corner of the storage room, where the circle had been, was now covered with a thick blanket of deep green vines. The smallest ones were as thick as Amara's fingers, but many of them were much bigger. They had wrapped around most of the nearby appliances, and she could see that the nearby fridge wasn't the only one that had tipped over. The one thing she couldn't see was Tessa.

"Tessa! Are you okay? Where are you?" Amara paused, trying to listen for her friend. She soon heard a muffled response, too quiet to understand, but enough to start searching.

Moving closer to the vines, she tried touching one to check for movement or danger. It didn't seem to react, so Amara felt comfortable pushing further. She climbed over appliances and vines, looking for any sign of where Tessa had ended up.

"Keep talking! I can hear you, but it's faint." Another muffled response told Amara she was closer.

After another few minutes of climbing, she found herself closing in on the far corner of the room. The girls had pushed everything towards the center, which had left the walls completely open, and vines now clung to those walls eagerly. It was in this corner that she finally found Tessa. She was completely immobilized beneath a thick blanket of vines, though parts of her were still visible.

"Alright, I'm here. Let's see if we can get you out of this mess!" Amara moved closer, standing over Tessa as she reached for the vines covering her face. They were smaller, but she was caught off guard by how much they resisted her attempts to pull them off.

It took a few moments of heavy pulling, but soon Amara had freed most of her friend's face.

"Thank fuck, it was getting hard to breathe under that." Tessa looked around at the storage room, then at herself. "How the fuck did you avoid this shit?"

"I was further away from the circle, and I could tell something was about to happen. There was a weird shift in the air." Amara sat down on some nearby vines, looking for other ways of freeing Tessa.

"Well lucky you! Now are you gonna get me out of here, or what?" Tessa was straining, doing her best to break free, but nothing seemed to be happening.

"I'm open to ideas if you have any. I was barely able to move those small vines off your face, and everything else looks to be twice as thick." Amara kept testing different vines, hoping to find ones that she could pull at. "I don't suppose we could reverse the circle? Put everything back?"

Tessa threw a dirty look at Amara. "No, the circle doesn't have a built-in 'undo' feature." Her words dripped with bitter sarcasm.

"Hey, I'll never know if I don't ask." Amara stuck her tongue out at Tessa.

The two girls looked at each other, each sighing with resignation. They knew they were in for another long night.