Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 5 Chapter 10 Catching Up By Amethyst

Michelle and Rebecca were standing far enough away from Rebecca that she couldn’t whammy them with Succubus super pheromones, a wise move, especially if they had been dealing with a real Succubus. They were both wearing swimsuits of all things, rather than the outfits that Sarah had enchanted for them for Demon hunting and Lisa was ready to pull the trigger when I called out. At the sound of my voice though both of their heads turned toward me so fast that I thought they might get whiplash.

Although their swimsuits looked dirty and a little worse-for-wear, the girls looked the same as when we had been separated, though Michelle was in her cute and fuzzy cat-girl form. Lisa’s hair was even still the same electric blue that she had magically changed it to before we left Toronto for our ill-fated plane trip. It was so good to see those familiar and friendly faces that I could feel tears coming to my eyes but I knew that I needed to calm them both down and get their attention off of Rebecca and on me.

For a few long seconds, they just stared at me in a mix of disbelief and uncertainty. Lisa still had her shotgun trained on Rebecca though as she asked in a mix of happiness and confusion, “Shannon? Is that really you?”

“It’s me,” I told them with my best model smile as I walked slowly toward them. “You can put down the gun, Lisa. That’s not a Demon. Think about it, use your senses. Does she have a demonic aura like Khinara or any of the other Demons that we’ve encountered since your magick awoke?”

Lisa looked uncertainly from me to Rebecca, her face scrunching up in focus even as she said, “But it…”

“She’s right, there’s no aura. We should hear her out, Lissy,” Michelle interrupted, gently pushing down the barrel of Lisa’s gun so it was pointed at the ground.

I was almost to the pair by that point, trying to keep my walk casual and non-threatening. “Look, I know that she looks like a Succubus but she isn’t really. A lot has happened since we got separated and I’ll be happy to explain to you both once Rebecca has regenerated and can change back to her human form,” I told them calmly. Then I called out, “Hey, Beks! Are you okay over there?!”

Michelle’s eyes went wide and she gasped out, “That’s Becca? But that’s not…”

Thankfully Rebecca was moving and I could almost hear her groan before she snapped back at me, “Of course, I’m not fucking okay! Michelle’s fucking girlfriend fucking shot me! I must have fallen forty fucking feet! God fucking dammit!”

At the sound of Rebecca’s profanity-laden angry response, Michelle’s cute little kitty nose scrunched up as she let out a groan and shook her head. “Okay, yeah, that’s totally Becca. I’d recognize those F-bombs anywhere.”

“Stop whining! You’re still alive and you’ll be all healed up in no time!” I shot back to my fellow pseudo Succubus, trying to keep my tone light and teasing despite the extra volume.

Lisa couldn’t decide who to focus on, her stunned and confused expression kept switching from me to Michelle and Rebecca. Finally, she shouldered her gun and sighed. “Well, damn. I’m not sure what to find more disturbing about this situation; that that seems to be Rebecca, that I shot her, or that the two of you seem to be getting along.”

“As I said, a lot has happened since we got here,” I told them carefully. “I’ll tell you both the whole story once we’re safely away from here. Those goons that were chasing you should be out for a while but I’d rather put some distance between us.”

It took Rebecca over fifteen minutes to heal from her fall and the damage to her wing so she could revert to human form. I supposed that we could try shifting when injured but I wasn’t sure what kind of effect that might have on us so we had both decided to play it safe and heal completely after injuries before becoming human again. She also kept her distance during that time so she wouldn’t accidentally hit Lisa or Michelle with the pheromones or mental whammy and turn them into lust zombies.

From what I had learned from Xuriel’s memories, she had never learned how to turn those particular features off while in Succubus mode. The best that she could do was to focus on a single person to just affect them instead of an entire group, much as the three Succubae that Ziralin, Ellie, and I had encountered at the Alpha Kappa Phi sorority house had with the three of us. She had suspected that real Succubae could turn the ability off and that having it always on while using her Succubus abilities was a part of the curse, a little extra twist of the knife, courtesy of Izhara.

That wouldn’t have surprised me at all since Demons love that kind of shit, at least the ones that I’d encountered. Also, Aarianna had never used the ability during our battle, even though it would have given her an edge. It was probably because she was so pissed off. After all, she had certainly been feeding, and leaving a trail of mutilated male corpses in her wake while doing it. She had likely used the pheromones and mental whammy to help her with that.

Whenever Xuriel had to meet with the other Sentinels she had done so in human mode, keeping her features well hidden, though she had been tempted to whammy Torphael occasionally. Frankly, I couldn’t blame Xuriel for that since from her own memories of him and what he’d done to Ziralin when he granted her his power, it was pretty obvious that the guy was an arrogant ass. Still, not being able to turn these abilities completely off could make things awkward if we had to use these forms around the others often, or during a fight. The only one in our group who wasn’t attracted to women was Jennifer.

Once Rebecca was done healing she returned to human form. As we walked, Michelle and Lisa just stared at the gorgeous auburn-haired girl who looked practically nothing like her old self. I knew that they had a ton of questions but I managed to convince them to wait until we were somewhere a good distance away, where we could safely set up the entrance for one of the portable bunkers.

Soon we were settled into my bunker and eating a light meal of granola bars and some fruit and berries that Rebecca and I had picked a couple of nights ago while leaving our hiding place in the village to get a little exercise. Then I said, “Okay, this is a long story so I’m gonna have to start at the beginning…”

The words had barely started to leave my mouth when Lisa blurted out, “Okay, how the hell did Rebecca turn into a Succubus? I thought you said she was going to turn back to her human form but she’s still Gorgeous McHottie.” She turned to see Michelle giving her a hard look and her face flushed. “What?! C’mon, Kitten, we’ve both got eyes. She’s as hot as Shannon is now!”

“Lissy, if that really is Rebecca, then there’s only one way she could have become like that since coming here. Shannon used magick to do it,” Michelle said with a frown.

“Nope. Shannon hasn’t had any magick since we got here. I was cursed by a demonic witch,” Rebecca taunted me playfully while sticking out her tongue. She had come a long way in the past couple of weeks and we were to the point where we could do some friendly teasing with one another now. The fact that she was telling the complete truth while purposely making sure to make it sound like a joke at my expense, which it was, only made the other girls cast dubious glances my way though.

“I thought we were calling it a blessing, Beks” I complained. I really didn’t like thinking of her change as a curse.

“Okay, just sayin’, but the two of you getting along is kinda freaking me out. And this is coming from the person who was trying to make it happen in the fucking first place,” Michelle griped. “Why’d you change her, Shannon? I thought that you were against using magick like that. You weren’t even sure if you could do it and you said that it could cause more problems for her than it would fix.”

I let out a long sigh and gave Rebecca a dirty look for stirring shit up before I spoke. “Becca was telling the truth. Until we ran into those goons chasing you I haven’t had any magick energy to work with since we arrived on this Plane. I used up everything I had stored getting us here and there’s no ambient magick energy here. I have no idea how those people had magick artefacts but I drained every last drop of magick energy that I could from them, not that it was much.”

“Yeah, I haven’t sensed any either since we got here, not until those guys jumped us last week,” Lisa agreed. “And I had to use most of mine in a fight the moment that we got here. So if you didn’t magick her then how...”

“I am responsible for Becca’s new body but I didn’t use the type of magick that we’ve used before to do it. I did it because we had no magick to defend ourselves, we both needed to survive, and because it could give Becca the body that she wanted.” I turned to Rebecca with a sigh and said, “Show them, Beks.”

Rebecca nodded and rolled up her right sleeve to reveal the blue and black butterfly mark on her shoulder. The other girls let out a collective gasp as their eyes went wide. “Is that a… it looks like a Demon Brand. I can feel it with my magick sense, but there’s no demonic energy at all,” Lisa said in a hushed and almost frightened tone. Given her personal experiences with Demons and their Brands, I couldn’t really blame her.

“That’s because I’m the one who branded her,” I told them solemnly. “I shared my own curse with her. Xuriel thought that it would be a kindness.”

“Wait! You’ve been cursed?! And Xuriel is here?! Shit, why isn’t she helping us?!” Michelle blurted in a panic.

“Okay, see, this is why I wanted to start at the beginning,” I practically groaned as I rubbed at the headache that was forming. “Please, I’ll tell you everything. Just let me start from when we got here so you can follow everything, and don’t interrupt.”

It took a while but I managed to tell the whole story without interruption. Michelle seemed glad that I had used my new abilities to help Rebecca while Lisa was fascinated with the idea of us being able to mimic Succubae, not that she wanted the ability for herself. She never wanted a curse of any kind embedded into her flesh again, even if it was me giving it. She was mostly just relieved at Xuriel’s assurance that the curse didn’t make us Demons, that we were just convincing copies. Of course, that also got them both wanting to see my merged Celestial Mark/Demon Brand.

“She’s not gonna show you guys,” Rebecca warned. “She’s all self-conscious about it.”

I appreciated Rebecca trying to get them off the topic but that only seemed to encourage Michelle further. “What? Is it, like really bad? It can’t be that bad. I mean, only people with magick can see it, right? And we know that they don’t show up on camera so it won’t affect your career. It’s not somewhere really personal, is it? We won’t laugh or anything, Shannon, I promise.”

“Fine,” I grumbled, my face bright red as I turned around, lowered my leggings, and raised my shirt just enough to expose the area of my lower back just above my butt.

“Okay, yeah, totally not where I would get ink if I had the choice,” Lisa offered sympathetically. “It actually looks pretty cool though. It makes you look like a bit of a badass.”

I readjusted my clothes and sat back down, my face still as red as my hair. “It’s your turn for storytime now,” I told them.

With that, Lisa and Michelle began trading off telling us what had happened with them since they had arrived. They had problems right out of the gate. They had appeared on a remote stretch of beach along the ocean, practically right on top of the nest of some sort of giant sea serpent/armadillo type thing. Lisa had used up all of her magick just fending the irate mother off as they ran for their lives.

Until just over a week ago they had been wandering along the shoreline avoiding other nests and searching for some signs of the rest of us, or at the very least intelligent life. The Makers’ goon patrol had found them while they were swimming near the shore, trying to get somewhat clean until they could get a proper bath or shower. They hadn’t expected to be very long and had left everything in Lisa’s porta-bunker except for their towels and the swimsuits and Rosetta Stone pendants that they were wearing.

The goons had used those stun blaster things on them and when Lisa had fallen down screaming Michelle had gone straight into her cat-girl mode to try to protect her. There were too many of them though and Michelle was knocked out by more conventional means in the fight that followed. When she woke up they were in a cage and being treated like wild animals. The damn goons even treated the slaves better than them, none of the goons would get very close to their cage and they were only fed scraps once a day.

For the next eight days, they listened and learned. The picture was pretty bleak; the goons were returning to Kavarik, which I assumed was the city over the mountains, raiding villages and collecting slaves as they went for their boss, Sah Lortae. He was one of the Makers, the rare people of this world who could use the ‘earth power’, and just like in the middle ages on Earth, those select few who had power did whatever they wanted to the majority who didn’t.

The slaves would be used to mine okka, something that they heard the slaves talk about a lot. Lisa suspected that it was some sort of crystal on this Plane that formed from ambient magick energy drifting upward from the planet’s core. Apparently, the Makers were the only ones in this world who could draw on that magick energy and manipulate it to create magical items.

Earlier that night, one of the goons had come close enough to their cage for Lisa to act. They had been talking to their boss over some sort of enchanted mirror that let them hear and see one another. Sah Lortae had wanted to see the two ‘rare and unusual animals’ and when the goon came close enough to give their boss a good view of the girls Lisa had sucked the magick energy from his weapon, armor, and the communication artefact.

While the goon had run off in a panic to report what had happened to their compatriots Lisa had used the stolen magick energy to summon her porta-bunker entrance from where it had been left at the beach. She stepped inside, Michelle held it on the outside of the bars so it was facing outward, and then Lisa just walked right out. After that Michelle just had to teleport to her.

Since Michelle was immune to their weapons and would be fine as long as she could keep her distance she had Lisa step back inside the bunker while she ran for her life, clutching the cloth that it was imbued into. And while she was doing that Lisa got some weapons of their own in case they needed to stop and make a stand. Michelle planned to do that once she emerged out of the woods but when Lisa emerged from the cloth portal she saw Rebecca flying toward them and reacted.

“And that’s when you fucking shot me,” Rebecca grumbled.

It wasn’t long after that when we decided to sleep for the night. I wanted to get up early and enchant some clothes to keep me and Rebecca warm when we crossed through those mountains. Not only was Ziralin on the other side but Lisa and I would be able to refuel there if we could find enough of those okka things or assholes to de-magick. This could be our ticket to finding the others and getting out of here.

I was a bit worried about Michelle and Lisa though. They were both exhausted and hadn’t had near enough to eat or drink for over a week and they were a bit shaken from their ordeal. Instead of going to sleep in their own bunkers, they brought their bedding into mine. It was a bit crowded but we made it work.

After what they had gone through for the last week though, I couldn’t blame them for not wanting to be alone and it was good to have them with us. They both had trouble falling asleep though, and I had woken up a couple of times when one of them cried out in their sleep. Both times, my eyes met Rebecca’s. She was worried too; I could see it as she watched over Michelle.