A Demon’s Guide to Wooing a Witch -
: Chapter 31
Waking up with Calladia in his arms was Astaroth’s new favorite thing. Of course, every moment with her brought a new favorite thing. The soft skin behind her ear, the groan she made when she was convinced she couldn’t possibly orgasm again (only to discover she could), the discovery that she was ticklish, but though her ribs would elicit giggles, attacking her feet was risking death. She was a puzzle box, constantly revealing new secrets, and he hoarded them like a greedy dragon.
She was soft and relaxed, her face pressed against his pectoral and an arm and leg slung possessively over him. A wet patch on his skin under her lax mouth suggested she’d been drooling. He’d never found drool so delightful.
Maybe humans were on to something with this nightly sleeping thing. They weren’t wasting time; they were optimizing cuddles.
The sun was peering through the gaps in the curtains though, and the day was going to be a busy one. He reluctantly called her name.
She lifted her head, bleary-eyed and adorably tousled. “Wha—?”
He wiped his thumb over her lower lip, collecting a trace of saliva. “Time to wake up, warrior queen.”
His queen pouted, then dove back down, ramming her nose into his chest. “No,” she told his armpit.
Astaroth jostled her. “Come on,” he coaxed. “There are arses to be kicked and demons to defeat. You wouldn’t want to miss a fight, would you?”
She was stubbornly silent. Right when he was about to consider extreme measures—feet tickling would certainly get her up, though Lucifer knew if his testicles would survive the endeavor—she let out a gusty sigh. “Fine.”
He watched as she got out of bed and stretched, her body a long, elegant line. Her bikini tan lines were still fading from the summer, and it amused him that her bottom and breasts were paler than the rest of her. Giving in to temptation, he leaned over and lightly spanked her.
She yawned. “I’m up, I’m up. You don’t have to whip me like a pony.”
Now that was an intriguing idea. He wondered if there were any sex toy shops in Glimmer Falls. “Would you be interested in whipping sometime? Giving or receiving?” She would be a menace with a flogger, but he also liked the idea of tying her up and spanking her until her bum was rosy and she was begging him to shag her.
She rolled her eyes. “Let’s revisit that after coffee.”
She slouched off to the loo like W. B. Yeats’s beast in search of Bethlehem. What a grump. Astaroth grinned as he got up and did his own stretching. Then he pulled out his phone and called Tansy for a delivery.
When Calladia emerged from her shower to see coffee and a breakfast sandwich waiting for her, she looked like she might cry. “You angel.”
He nearly choked. “Not quite.”
“You terrible, wonderful demon,” she corrected, rushing for the caffeine.
After eating, Astaroth hit the bath area for his morning preparations. He’d stocked up on a few changes of clothes the previous day, and once he was clean, he laid options on the bed.
“Trouble deciding?” Calladia asked, rubbing her damp hair with a towel. She’d dressed in jeans and a yellow T-shirt that said Fear My Fists in a cursive script dotted with flowers.
“I need to send the right message.”
“Pretty sure ‘fully clothed’ is enough of a message.”
Astaroth shook his head. “This is my triumphant return from banishment, and I’m facing the high council, so I need to look powerful. But I’m also campaigning for hybrid rights, so I’ve got to look accessible to the public.”
Calladia looked down at her shirt. “Should I have put more thought into this?”
“It’s perfect,” he said. “Jeans are more protective than leggings during a fight, and the shirt is an overt threat. Plus, the yellow is the exact shade of your house, which will tell Moloch you’re out for vengeance.”
“Wow.” Calladia looked startled. “I didn’t do it intentionally or anything.”
“You have good instincts.” Astaroth decided on black jeans and motorcycle boots and paired them with a long-sleeved red satin shirt that moved like liquid over his muscles. He accessorized with spiky silver rings—a more fashionable version of brass knuckles. He wished he had his cane sword to finish the look, but alas, he’d need to make do.
He turned to Calladia with his arms out. “What do you think?”
Her eyes trailed over him in what could only be termed a leer. “I think I’d like to get you back in bed.”
His cock stirred. “An interesting proposition. Do we have time?”
Calladia checked her watch. “Themmie, Oz, and Mariel headed out an hour ago to start putting up signs, and Lilith and Sandranella have been stirring demons up for a protest march since yesterday. They ought to be gathering now, and we have forty minutes before you’re supposed to make your appearance and lead the march to the high council chambers.”
“I can work with that.” Astaroth reached for the fly of his jeans.
A portal opened in the middle of the room, and Themmie tumbled through, wings smoking. “Ambush!” she screeched.
Calladia grabbed her water bottle and dumped it over the pixie, extinguishing the embers that had settled on Themmie’s wings. “Are you all right?” Calladia asked.
Themmie shook her wings out, then inspected them over her shoulder. “Yep, superficial damage. They’ll heal right up.” Her cheek was smudged with soot, and embers had burned holes in her Pixie Pride T-shirt.
“What do you mean, an ambush?” Astaroth asked.
Ozroth stuck his head through the portal. “It means get over here,” he shouted. “Moloch and his followers ambushed the protestors.”
Fuck. If the protestors didn’t get a chance to gain public attention or confront the high council, there was only one option. Fight Moloch and his allies. Finish this battle, once and for all.
Astaroth grabbed the fireplace poker and headed for the portal, Calladia by his side. “Ready?” she asked, yarn stretched between her fingers.
He nodded. “Let’s do this.”
The street was packed with demons, many of whom carried glittery neon signs with various slogans: horns off my rights, hybrids can be heroes, diversity = strength. Someone was screaming a chant. “Two, four, six, eight, Moloch, don’t discriminate!” Astaroth saw many familiar faces, both hybrid and full-blood, and among the ones he didn’t know, he spotted a variety of horn sizes, ear shapes, and other traits that indicated mixed heritage.
A fireball streaked past, narrowly missing a demon. It crashed into the side of a building, igniting the black-and-red vines climbing the stone wall. A demoness tossed a bucket of water on the flames, extinguishing them, and a new chant went up. “Two, four, six, eight, don’t send us to a fiery fate!”
“That’s got to be Themmie’s doing,” Calladia said from beside Astaroth. “She loves chants.”
Astaroth took in the scene and recognized exactly what had happened. The protestors had gathered in a public square a block away—chosen because it was centrally located and had multiple access points—and then started the march early. Moloch had clearly been keeping tabs on the activity, because his troops had ambushed them on the narrowest stretch of the route—this cobbled street that connected the square to a major thoroughfare leading to council chambers.
Astaroth skirted the fray, scanning for enemies. Both ends of the street were blocked by a mix of heavily armed demons and stone gargoyles. A movement on a rooftop caught his attention, and he dodged just in time to avoid a boulder that had been flung by a demon’s shoulder-mounted trebuchet. It hit a barrel next to him, exploding it in a spray of potent liquid. A splash hit Astaroth’s cheek, reeking of alcohol.
A demon wearing a stained apron emerged from a nearby doorway. “My firewine!” he wailed. “Please, stop this fighting.”
“Tell that to Moloch of the Nine,” Astaroth shouted over the din, keeping an eye on the trebuchet demon. “This was a peaceful protest until he had his supporters attack.”
“A protest against what?” The demon flinched when a protestor crashed into another barrel.
“Moloch wants to strip hybrids of rights. He wants to close the demon plane to outsiders and institute a dictatorship, returning us to the fundamentalist values of the Middle Ages.”
“Oh. Not great.” The demon looked between Astaroth and the rioting crowd. “But my wine . . .”
“Hang the wine,” Astaroth snapped. “Your community is in danger.”
The demon on the roof was winding up again, but before Astaroth could formulate a plan, Calladia scooped up a hand-sized rock from the curb bordering the street and threw it overhand. It hit the demon square between the eyes, and he toppled off the roof.
“Nice shot,” Astaroth said.
“I knew I joined Little League for a reason,” Calladia said.
A stocky demoness retrieved the portable trebuchet from the fallen demon and lifted it to her shoulder, and a hybrid with pointy ears and moss-green hair loaded a stone into it. Arming the protestors was a good start, but they couldn’t win from a vulnerable position, and Moloch and his supporters were clearly willing to kill.
Moloch himself wasn’t anywhere in sight, and the fireballs whizzing past were on the small side, so Astaroth suspected they were being launched by lesser warriors. It made sense. If the attack succeeded, Moloch could claim credit. If it didn’t, he could truthfully state he was never there.
A fireball hit a nearby pixie-demon hybrid on the arm, and she screamed as her sleeve caught fire. Her small wings fluttered but couldn’t get her off the ground. Thankfully, someone doused her with water, but this had to stop immediately. Demonic fireballs were superheated, and while a direct hit wouldn’t kill a full-blooded demon, mortal hybrids might die.
“Can you cast a spell?” Astaroth asked Calladia. “Something to break through the front lines so we can get out of this death trap?”
She held up a string. “On it.”
Astaroth positioned himself in front of her as she wove the spell. He spotted Ozroth smashing a demon’s face into a wall while Themmie dropped rocks on another’s head. Mariel stood in the shadows near Ozroth, lips moving as her hands inscribed elegant arcs in the air. Vines peeled away from a nearby building, shot toward one of the demons blocking the exit, and picked him up before flinging him over the rooftops. The werewolf pack was there, too, howling as they led an assault against the guards.
Calladia recited a spell, and three stone gargoyles were launched into the air, their screams like grinding gravel. With their heavy bodies no longer in the way, protestors sprinted toward the remaining demons blocking the exit. As the crowd surged, the danger of being trampled underfoot grew.
“Can you levitate me?” Astaroth asked Calladia.
More gargoyles at the rear went sailing. Calladia threw that knotted string aside, then pulled out another. “How high?”
“Speech-making high.”
The firewine brewer was cowering behind a barrel. At that, he popped his head out. “Who are you anyway?”
Astaroth’s smile was grim. “You’re about to find out.”
The ground shifted under him, and he staggered before an invisible hand righted him. No, not the ground—Calladia’s spell. Soon he was floating above the crowd. “I am Astaroth of the Nine,” Astaroth shouted, “and I am here to fight for the rights of all demons.”
Faces turned toward him, followed by exclamations.
“Didn’t that bloke get booted off the council?”
“I thought he was dead.”
“Is he flying?”
“Moloch of the Nine plans to round up all hybrids,” Astaroth continued, flourishing the fireplace poker. “He won’t be satisfied with imprisoning them. As you see here, he’s willing to kill them.”
Another fireball punctuated the sentence, shooting toward Astaroth’s face before abruptly veering away. When he looked down, he saw Mariel standing beside Calladia, hands outstretched and a determined look on her face. The witches were on defense.
“He will not keep us down,” Astaroth said. “We will not lay down our lives or our cause here. We will take this fight straight to the steps of the high council!”
A cheer went up. At that moment, the front lines of protestors finally broke through the ranks of Moloch’s supporters.
Astaroth looked at Calladia. “You can let me down now.”
Calladia shook her head. “This is a heck of an aesthetic, Astaroth. We’re floating your badass self to council chambers.”
Well, if it was an aesthetic . . . Astaroth nodded and straightened his posture, extending his arms. “Vocal amplification?” he asked.
“On it,” Mariel said. “Almost zero percent chance of accidentally exploding you.”
Astaroth wasn’t going to think about that too closely. He was risking death already; if Mariel blew him up, at least it would be quick and dramatic, and everyone loved a martyr.
He cleared his throat, twitching when the sound echoed. Explosion avoided, thankfully. “Demons,” he called, Mariel’s spell amplifying the words as if he were shouting into a megaphone. “Join us! Fight for the rights of every demon, regardless of heritage!”
Calladia was moving him through the air above the surging crowd, keeping him apace of the protestors. Heads popped out from nearby windows, their faces turned to him.
“Moloch wants to destroy hybrids,” he continued. “After that, he will come for those with liberal leanings. He won’t stop until this is a conservative dictatorship. We can stop him today. We must stop him.”
“Yeah!” someone shouted.
They reached the main thoroughfare, where more bystanders had begun to gather, gawking at the proceedings.
“I am Astaroth of the Nine,” he declared, “and I am here to end Moloch’s tyranny.”
“Why should we believe you?” someone called out. “You’ve been on the council as long as him.”
Astaroth took a deep breath. There was no going back. “I have hidden the truth for far too long out of fear of losing my position,” he said. “I regret that. Now I declare, with pride and a commitment to fight for our rights, that I am a human-demon hybrid.”
Bystanders and protestors burst into a frenzy of shouts and cheers. He could see the gossip spreading into the distance, surging through the crowd like a tidal wave.
He looked down at Calladia, who gave him a grin and a thumbs-up. He smiled back before bellowing orders. “To the high council chambers! The fight has only begun.”
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