“Yes, General…YES!”

To the Army General trying to find her G-spot it sounded like he was hitting all the right buttons, but it was an illusion. Jezebel’s thighs smacked into the side of the rickety, wooden desk with every thrust, but that was about it.

The General’s eyes were glazed over, sweat covered his body, and his only ambition in life was to fuck the shit out of her. He’d forgotten everything else: the situation in the city, the readiness of his forces in the FOB surrounding them, and even his wife and kids at home. That was the nature of an Infernal of the Fourth Choir. It was a parasitic relationship disguised as a symbiotic one. The General got pleasure while unknowingly giving his lust-filled æther to her, but in reality, she was sucking more than his balls dry. She could keep this up for hours, even days, all while the General continued to waste away. When she had him completely under her spell, he’d crack bones, filet flesh, and dehydrate himself to death pleasuring her.

Or at least that was how this was supposed to work. Things tended to get a little weird when your immediate supervisor got impaled and burned alive, and the big boss got his fucking head chopped off. The resulting death and destruction took out her whole network of human traffickers, call girls, informants, and people who just owed her favors. A three-hundred-foot-tall archangel also put his armored boot through her place of power, which released years of carefully stored energy back into the world.

Unlike her bosses, she’d survived the battle a little worse for wear. The Guardians knew how to fight, and she’d sacrificed chunks of herself to win. Step one was to regrow those lost bits. That took a while as she wandered the city trying to gather æther. As a general rule, people were down to fuck after natural, or supernatural, disasters. God was literally twat blocking her, so she went hunting.

She’d come up through the ranks like all the other Internals who made their way to Eden. She knew how to find a good mark, seduce him, and then work her magic. The problem was her magic wasn’t working like it was supposed to. She could still gobble up the æther, but other enchantments she tried to do weren’t working. That led to her having to fake it until she made it with several partners. She didn’t like having to act, so with the General she’d used something a little different.

She fought back a sigh as her tits stuck to the slip-resistance, black covering on the General’s desk. The man going to town on her ass didn’t notice thanks to a little concoction she’d whipped up and slipped into the wine. Worst of all, she didn’t think she’d gotten the dosage right. She hadn’t done something like this since the American Civil War, so she was a little rusty.

“Oh yeah, baby. Almost there…almost there…almost AHHHH.” She felt the General give an awkward jerk behind her.

She looked over her shoulder and smiled. The man wasn’t giving her his O-Face. It was a grimace of pain, and his he was grabbing his left arm.

“Come on baby, give it to me.” She concealed a smile as the General’s brain and body were pulled in two different directions.

He knew he was having a heart attack, but she had a firm grip on his lust. The result was a discombobulated exchange where the General kept trying to pull out and call for help, but his body kept thrusting forward in a mad rush to climax.

“You can do it, baby.” She urged him on. The sounded of her voice and the grinding of her hips against him pushing him over the limit.

The man’s jaw went slack, his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he slipped out of her as he fell straight backward onto the hard, linoleum surface of his office floor. Jezebel waited a second to make herself a little more presentable. She pulled her breasts off the table, and grimaced as they gave a sucking sound when they came free of the slip-resistance cover. She pushed her dress back down over her hips, pulled her panties up, and straightened everything so it wasn’t all twisted up.

It was still obvious what had gone on here. It reeked like three hours of fucking in the room, and even though she’d straightened the dress there were wrinkles and more than a few stains on it. Lastly, she grabbed her six-inch, fire-engine-red heels and held them in her hand. She gave one last look to the man twitching on the ground and blew him a kiss. She could tell he was already gone. The smell of fresh shit was perforating the room.

She downed the rest of the poisoned wine. It wouldn’t affect her Infernal nature as much as a human, and chanted a short spell to dispel any lingering evidence of her act. Once that was complete, she was in the clear from the point of human law.

“HELP!” She put her acting pants back on and screamed bloody murder. “Someone please…HELP!”

There was only a short delay. The General’s Chief of Staff, a loyal major, who’d planned to ride the Two-Star General’s coattails to the top rushed into the room.

“Shit!” His eyes went immediately to Jezebel, and she saw the wheels turning.

The Major knew all about the General’s family life, and she could tell he had a hardened soul as she gazed into his eyes. He was contemplating whether to kill her and dispose of the body. It would be easy in all the carnage that plagued the city.

The General looked like natural causes, but if she tore this guy to pieces there was no hiding that.

The Major’s hand drifted toward his sidearm, and Jezebel did all she could to act like an innocent prostitute until the final second.

“Sir, what’s going on?” Two armed men with MP on their arm rushed into the room. “Holy shit…” They stopped dead in their tracks.

“Someone help him!” Jezebel screamed. She thought she deserved an Oscar for her performance, and her restraint in not ripping the Major’s arms off and shoving them up his ass. It gave a whole new meaning to double-fisting.

“Call it in!” The Major stepped in and took charge. He kneeled over the General and felt his pulse. “Stupid bastard,” he muttered under his breath, but Jezebel heard him. “You two,” he pointed to the MPS, “get her out of here.”

“Sir, we need to…”

“The General’s had a heart attack in an embarrassing circumstance,” the Major snapped back. “Do you want his wife and kids to know about this?” Both MP’s shook their heads. “Get her out of here,” then he pointed at Jezebel, “you keep your fucking mouth shut or we’ll find you. Understood?”

Jezebel just nodded her head repeatedly like a frightened girl caught in an unthinkable situation.

“Everyone, MOVE!” The Major prompted them into action.

The MP’s took her roughly by the arm and led her out the back. They made a call and waited for an armored Humvee to arrive. From there they took her to the front gate, where they were waved through no questions asked. They drove her a few miles to a gas station where they stopped to let her off. She could tell both male MPs wanted to fuck her, and so did the female who showed up with the Humvee. She drank up the æther from the three of them during the drive and thought about quickies behind the dumpster, but ultimately decided against it.

When they arrived, she threw open the door, stumbled clumsily, fell, and looked up at the Humvee in fear. One of the guys looked like he was about to chase her down, but decided against it when he saw the look on her face, which was the whole point of the little charade.

“Keep your mouth shut!” he ordered instead while pointing threateningly at her. He held her eyes for a moment, and then shut the door and drove off.

Jezebel stood up shakily and stood there until the the Humvee was out of sight. Then her whole demeanor changed. She shed her call-girl persona and became an Infernal again.

“Asshats,” she spat in the direction of the Humvee, turned around, and almost walked right into someone she thought was dead. “G…G…Gerry?”

“Jezebel.” Gerry nodded.

“If it isn’t Skankarella. Where are your twelve STD-riddle dwarves?” The Soulless Vicky stepped out from behind Gerry, and Jezebel involuntarily snarled at her.

“Check your snatch, bitch.” Her fingers started to extend into claws as she got riled up.

“Ladies.” Gerry spoke the one word and the feud ended. Jezebel could feel the power in the word.

“How?”

“Luck mostly,” Gerry knew she was asking about his survival.

“But Seere is…?”

“Yes.” Gerry nodded.

“So…?”

“I’m in charge now.” Gerry’s word was law, and Jezebel immediately accepted it.

“More than in charge,” Vicky smiled knowingly. “Boss man can kill Guardians with a snap of his fingers.”

“Vicky…”

“Sorry, Boss, but that’s fucking cool.” The Soulless grinned proudly, and Jezebel wondered if she’d finally be able to bed the Dux.

she took a closer look,

“I’m consolidating our forces,” Gerry continued. “You were the first to pop up on my scrying spell. Come back with me, we’ll find the others, and we’ll move onto step two.”

“Well I can save you a step there, My Lord.” Jezebel thought being formal was the best course of action right now until she figured out the nature of the new dynamic. “I can take you to Jeb. Lono died during the fighting, but Jeb and I’ve been working together to regain our power since your presumed demise. It’s been rough going,” she stated honestly, “but we’ve made headways.”

“Like…” Vicky scowled.

“I just fucked the human commander to death. Does that count?” Jezebel smiled, Vicky rolled her eyes, but Gerry nodded appreciatively.

“Take me to Jeb, and then we’ll work on getting your power back to appropriate levels. You’re looking a little ragged.”

Jezebel tried not to take that personally, but it was hard for an Infernal of her Choir to take physical criticism. They were supposed to be the pinnacle of attractiveness and sexual desire. Ultimately, she just shrugged it off because she knew there was only one way for her to get her full power back in the time frame Gerry was suggesting. She licked her lips at the thought of it.

It had been decades since she’d taken an æther -filled load from a Dux.

***

“Money…get away….get a good job with more pay and you’re OK…” The lyrics of Pink Floyd’s Money drifted through the open windows of a lake house north of Charlotte, and not too far from the refugee camp.

It was amazing that five miles away a mass of humanity had been stuffed together to live like herded animals in tents when such opulence, with fantastic views, was so close by. It was over four thousand square feet, three floors, six bedrooms, four baths, and a veranda that caught the sunset just right. All for the list price of just south of three million.

“Money…it’s a gas…grab that cash with both hands and make a stash…” Jeb smiled at the second line of the song.

As an Infernal of the First Choir, and powered by greed, Jeb loved everything about this song, and its topic. He especially liked that peculiar line. He sipped a thousand dollar glass of scotch and savored the moment.

He’d been in Eden for a little bit, and he’d tried to make the stash of cash every opportunity he could, but over time the methods changed. First, it had been stage coaches hauling locked chests full of gold. That had been a good time for the Infernal when his territory was the fledgling American West. He’d tried his luck as a famous gunslinger every few decades. Legends were still told about him, but eventually he had to ‘die’. It would draw too much attention, and although his Dux at the time was lax, he wasn’t that lax that he’d forget about their true mission from Seere.

After the Wild West had become less wild, the money ended up in banks. People still robbed the banks, and it was a fad there for a while, but all of those famous robbers had died or were killed off during the last century. What Jeb hadn’t seen coming was the stock market collapse and the Great Depression.

His assets took a big hit during the Thirties, but he had a gift for finding new opportunities by exploiting people. He’d invested heavily in weapons manufacturing before and during WW2, and then infrastructure in the 50s. Real Estate was also a big money maker as people sought the American Dream, and he didn’t make the same mistake twice. He pulled out of the junk bonds propped up by bad real estate before the 2008 collapse. He’d actually been one of the people that shorted the market and made out big.

Today, money wasn’t in banks or in stage coach chests, it was digital. Money was ones and zeroes that he could manipulate anywhere in the world. It didn’t matter that Satan and the Archangel Michael stomped on the second biggest financial city in the country. The money was in cyber space. While the infrastructure destruction, human loss of life, and the disruption it would cause would be costly, Jeb wasn’t worse off for it.

Jeb didn’t even consider the people living in tent cities. He planned to ride this out in luxury until orders came his way. He plopped down in a chair, kicked his feet up on the railing, and watched the sun’s light begin to spread across the calm waters of the lake.

No sooner had his head hit the pad on the back of the chair did his tablet ping annoyingly. The tablet was tied into the state-of-the-art security system the house was equipped with, so he couldn’t ignore it, but he was still an Infernal. He lazily picked up the tablet and hit the alert to see a camera’s view of a familiar face.

“Come on in,” he called, and his voice carried down to the expansive foyer Jezebel was standing in. “How’d it go? Did you get the codes?”

There was a rustle of wind, and the other Infernal was snatching the scotch right out of his hand and plopping into an adjacent chair.

“Nope. I ended up killing the general.”

Jeb sighed, but this outcome wasn’t unexpected. He wanted to be able to get into the military systems and get as much information as possible. He could use that information to increase his influence at the defense contractor he was invested in, by leveraging more contracts with the DOD. Authorizations would also have been able to get him past any checkpoints or random stops the military would be doing throughout the area for the foreseeable future. Freedom of movement would have been nice, but it wasn’t essential. He had other ways to get from Point A to Point B.

“But on the other hand…” Jezebel pounded the scotch.

“…She found me.” A second voice announced behind Jeb, and made the Infernal jump into the air and shift halfway into his combat form.

Green mist sprouted from his flesh that began to morph and unravel. His true face, a sunken mess of angled bone that didn’t include his horns, lips carved back in a wicked smiles, and scars crisscrossing everything. He nearly lashed out despite his brain identifying who it was, because it wasn’t possible that this man was alive.

“M…My Lord,” Jeb stumbled over his words as he turned to face Gerry.

The Dux didn’t look any different than when Jeb had last seen him…minus the sword sticking out of his chest and Divine fire consuming his flesh. Other than that…nothing.

“How…?”

“None of your concern.” Gerry’s eyes swept the mansion. “This will do.”

“What will do, My Lord?” Jeb felt himself falling back into his roll of trusted lieutenant naturally, and he hated himself for it.

The thought crept up, but he pushed it back down. Those types of thoughts were dangerous; especially, if a Dux knew what you were thinking.

Thankfully, Gerry seemed to remain oblivious to the spurt of mutinous intent. “This will be our new headquarters. We need to get out of the camp and into something more appropriate. Call Vicky and get our people moving.”

Jeb didn’t even feel the pang of regret as his private home was requisitioned. “Yes, My Lord. Let me show you to the master suite.” Jeb bowed and led the way.

Jeb knew even though the Dux was alive, that didn’t mean the angel who killed him wasn’t going to try again.