Losing My Religion

Part 2, Chapter 10

Amber

“This will be the first of your demon-slaying missions,” my mother said.

I nodded out of habit, still processing what I'd just heard. 

Even once I’d processed it, I remained in denial. Demons are those things she tells me about that are evil, right? Not like Lily or Katie… But actual demons.

She continued her explanation, unconcerned with my silence. “The contractor is a priest and an old acquaintance of mine. His son has been possessed by a demon and we have been tasked with slaying that demon, at any cost necessary.”

Nod. Not like Lily,.. She’s asking me to kill a real demon, like an evil one, not Lily.

“Apparently the previous organization he hired was rather unsuccessful, and the demon evaded. As such, I will be lending you some of my spell materials, including for invisibility and, of course, demon radar.”

Nod nod nod. She wants me to… to murder someone. But they’re evil right?

“Otherwise, this will be a test to see if you can truly succeed me, meaning I will not offer any more assistance. Good luck.”

I nodded. 

I didn’t process walking out of the office and through the halls to my bedroom but I ended up there all the same. 

I stared at the wall, resisting the urge to keep nodding.

She just asked me to…

I dialed a number into my phone.

A woman’s voice answered me, “Hello?”

“Lily, my mother just paid me to murder you.”

Lily

There were a lot of things you could find out about the person you were dating that would give you pause. 

There were people who chewed with their mouths open, people who never put the toilet seat down, people that snored, and an infinite number more. Given that I’d already dated Amber once, and that we’d been living together already, it seemed unlikely that I’d encounter one of these things, something that makes you go ‘huh, maybe this isn’t going to work out’.

But, really, wasn’t your girlfriend being tasked with assassinating you a little bit more concerning than finding out she had an annoying habit?

“Lily?” Her voice rang in my ear, echoed a moment later by Sophia, who was watching me and no doubt saw something in the expression on my face.

“I’m here… I think. So… um… I would prefer if you didn’t?”

“I’m not going to fucking murder you!” She screamed, loud enough for me to move the phone away from my ear, and loud enough for Sophia to hear.

“What’s this about Amber murdering you?”

I put Amber on speaker.

“No one is murdering anyone! My mom got a job from Lily’s d–” She cut herself off, but it was too late, I’d already understood.

My mouth hung open and I turned to stare into Sophia’s eyes. Surely, I’ll find surprise in Sophia’s expression. She knows my dad, so it must be surprising that he’d hire a witch to kill me, right?

She was wincing.

As I already had more times than I cared to count, I made my way into Sophia’s arms, guiding her to sit on my bed. She took my phone with one hand and used the other to comfort me, stroking my back. I stared emptily into space, completely lost, half-listening to the rest of the conversation.

“I’m sorry, I meant to break it to her gentler, but I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to do, I thought I had months to help Katie at least, if not until she turned eighteen! No one is here to hug me, where’s my help?!”

Sophia sighed. “I’m sorry, Amber, you’re right… This situation just sucks. I’ll give you that hug as soon as I see you, so come home to us as soon as you can.”

“It's… It was a rush job, so there’s not much time I can stall on it. I could pretend to fail, say I couldn’t find her, but I… this was inevitable, and I don’t have much hope for good things happening if I purposely fail the job.”

Sophia leaned back, taking us down to lay back on my bed. 

I resisted the urge to bury my face in the sheets, to hide from reality. “What if you just grabbed Katie and ran?”

Amber groaned, the sound distorting and crackling over the poor quality of the call. “I… Our mother might send someone after us, if not chase us herself… Hell, if she knew I ran from her she would certainly send someone after me, given all the knowledge she’s given me.”

Sophia chimed in, the only one out of us remaining calm, “What if you pretended you did the job? What kind of proof does she expect?”

A hissing sound came out of the phone, but I couldn’t tell if it was Amber or static, “There’s not really any proof standards for this kind of thing. Most demons have some kind of shapeshifting, making body parts insufficient…” 

Her tone grew more and more confident, as she began getting absorbed in explaining magical mumbo jumbo, and that was great. I was happy my girlfriend was feeling confident, but I could not listen to her explain why bringing my severed body parts back to her mother was insufficient proof. 

I started giggling, trying to keep it quiet enough not to interrupt her still-ongoing explanation.

“So, really, it’s mostly on the reputation of an individual demon hunter because no one is going to waste the materials to cast radar again, and–” She cut herself off, “What’s so funny?”

I pictured her puzzled face, trying to figure out why I found my own murder hilarious and I just lost it, bursting into unrestrained laughter. 

Sophia gazed at me, concerned, but I waved her off, trying to reassure her that I was okay – relatively speaking.

“It’s just–” I tried to speak through lingering giggles, “Can you imagine six months ago, trying to explain to me what was happening right now: that I’m a succubus who is dating two women, and one of my girlfriends is talking about whether or not it would be a good idea to bring my decapitated head back to her mother?!” I burst into another round of giggles, falling out of Sophia’s embrace, and laying on my bed, rolling back and forth.

“Is she okay? What is going on over there?”

“She’s… lost it.”

“I’m fine,” I insisted, mostly sobering up, “So is that the plan, pretend you killed me and move up the schedule for helping Katie?”

“I… I guess?” Amber’s voice was conflicted, “It’s not a permanent solution… We’ll see. I need to talk to Katie, she should be home from school now.”

“Alright, love you, bye!” I shouted towards my phone, which was still in Sophia’s hand.

Sophia turned off speaker mode and whispered into the receiver, possibly unaware I could still hear her, “Don’t do anything reckless, okay?” She nodded at what Amber said and hung up the call. 

We both sighed and laid in my bed, hugging each other loosely. 

What a mess…

Amber

Once I’d explained to Katie what was going on, she stared at the floor from her desk chair, silently mulling over what I’d said.

“She really straight up asked you to murder her?”

I frowned, “No, she didn’t ask me, she commanded me.”

Katie snorted. “Why would her dad hire us? How would her dad hire us?”

“She said something about him being connected, so…” I shrugged, “There was also someone he hired first, but Chris and I ended up disrupting them I guess, by showing up at Lily’s house looking for her.” I shivered, thinking about what would’ve happened had we not been there. 

“Damn, I don’t know anything about the demon hunting economy, who even pays for it?”

I scratched my head, resisting the urge to pace around. “Demon haters? Territorial witches with a grudge? Religious weirdos?”

Our eyes went wide at the same moment.

“Shit!” She cursed.

“That church…” 

“I wonder if that’s where the people you intercepted were from…?”

My face scrunched up. I was reluctant to accept that Lily had been in danger any time she’d visited her church, just one accident away from being discovered. “She…” I sighed and sat on Katie’s bed.

Katie got up and walked over, sitting next to me and curling an arm around my back. “C’mon tell big sis Katie how you feel…”

I sighed again, ignoring her teasing. “I… We’re dating, and–”

“You what?!” She leaned away, staring at me, face full of incredulity. 

“Um… after I apologized to her, she ended up asking out me and her friend, Sophia, and we both accepted.”

“Damn, I thought she was going to kill you after you apologized, not…” Her eyes met mine, “Sorry,” She shrugged.

I huffed a laugh, “It’s fine, I thought the same. Her other girlfriend isn’t as fond of me though, I think she’s mad on Lily’s behalf.”

“Yea, I can imagine…” Katie’s head tilted, “Is she hot?”

“What, no!” I shook my head, “We’re supposed to be talking about you anyways, how to protect you from Mom.”

She shook her head. “Nope, you were about to tell me about your feelings.”

I groaned, “Fine… I’m worried about her because I like her a lot, and I don’t want the threat of demon hunters hanging over her,” I scowled, “Now it’s time to discuss how to protect you.”

She sent me a sly smile, swaying back and forth next to me, bumping her shoulder into mine. “It’s not like I’d be completely safe from her anywhere, unless I went to Hell,” she laughed, “Like, the best thing for now probably is just keeping quiet about it, I doubt she would immediately try to have me killed, anyways…”

I stared at my little sister skeptically. And then what she’d said hit me, “Oh my god, you’re right!”

“About what, that Mom wouldn’t kill me?”

“No!” my eyes lit up with excitement, “You need to go to Hell!”

Lily

Sophia and I were sprawled out on my bed, her hand absentmindedly brushing through my hair. It occasionally got caught in the tangles of my waves, but despite the fact that I could shapeshift my hair to be straighter, I never did, wanting my body to remain mostly static. 

We remained silent, my mind still stuck on the revelation that my father would hire a demon hunter to go after me.

And the fact that Amber was a demon hunter in-training. It seemed obvious in retrospect, she’d already told us her mother was training her and that her mother used to hunt demons but… 

I supposed I didn’t really know anything about what demon hunters were like in real life, so any preconceptions I had were bogus. In fiction, demon hunters would use either swords or guns, but using swords against regenerating magical creatures was a terrible idea, and since a law had been passed thirty years ago to make it illegal to own a gun, I doubted the witches had a big supply of them, if they had any at all.

Another of my worries was my schoolwork. Despite the studying I’d done with Sophia, I was still behind, and I’d been struggling in my studies to begin with.

I’d chosen theology as my new major because I hadn’t had anything better to choose by the end of the previous semester, and although I enjoyed it more than business, I still felt lost when it came to where to take my life. I had no idea what a succubus with a theology degree was supposed to do to make a living, and I felt myself missing Mom more than I ever had.

I wonder if Mom was from Hell?

I considered visiting her grave, but as much as I wanted to, the dangers easily outweighed the benefits. And that sucked, not being allowed to even see my mom’s grave, just because some asshole decided to put a hit out of me. And for what? Like sure, I’d boinked a few of my friends, and maybe that would be considered sinful by some people, but it was our business. Why did my dad care so much about what I did with my life?

I sighed.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?”

I resisted the urge to make a satisfied noise at Sophia’s use of a pet name, and instead leaned into her hand’s movements as her fingers ghosted over my scalp. “What do you know about Hell?”

Maybe we can take a quick vacation to Hell during the three day weekend… Going to Hell, going to the beaches, same thing right? I snorted. As if…

"The books I read were by stealthy demons living among humans, and I was only able to figure them out because they wrote some sections in human languages, not that it was easy. The rare ones that did mention Hell went on unhinged rants about ‘too much regulation’ or something – I didn’t have the context to understand it.” 

“The only practical info I got was that demons all knew how to get to Hell,” she shrugged, “Maybe every demon got taught by their parents how to go to Hell, or maybe it’s some kind of instinctual thing you have to tap into, I don’t know.”

“Hmmm… But it’s not like biblical Hell, with fire and brimstone and evil people?”

“I don’t think so, I think it’s more like… an alternate dimension or something?”

“Huh.”

My phone started buzzing and I picked it up.

“Hey, Amber, what’s up?”

“Lily, you’re going to Hell!”