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 4 Changes By Amethyst

I knelt in the black sand for a moment trying to catch my breath as the pain faded from my head and lower back. Once my head had cleared, it didn’t take much thinking to realize what the pain in my lower back had been, it was my cursed mark. My face flushed at the thought that I now had a supernatural tramp stamp, even if only those sensitive to magick could see it. I even knew what it looked like; a silvery blue heart bound in black chains with black bat-like wings stretching out to my sides.

I staggered to my feet and tried to put it out of my mind as I turned back toward Rebecca, whose head swiftly snapped around from where she had been staring to look in the opposite direction again. I could see her more clearly now that twilight was fading and the sun was visible on the horizon. Something about the sun didn’t seem right but I couldn’t figure out what it was at the moment and just filed the thought away for later as I approached my reluctant traveling companion.

“You done talking to yourself?” Rebecca jabbed. I could practically hear the sneer in her voice.

How was I going to explain this? Because yeah, saying, “I was talking to the spirit of my ancient ancestor who was a Celestial cursed by a Demon and has been haunting our family for thousands of years to give me her power,” was going to sound just so mentally stable. I settled with telling her, “I wasn’t talking to myself but I’ll explain what that was about later. The… ahh… being that I was talking to offered a solution to a couple of our problems.” I could have said that she awakened my true power but talking with Rebecca was like navigating a verbal minefield and I didn’t want to sound like some sort of cliché manga protagonist or something.

“Which problems?” she asked with a sniff. I couldn’t tell if it was because she was just being dismissive or she was still crying and trying to hide the fact. It was probably both since she followed up with, “We have plenty of problems, but unless this imaginary ‘being’ of yours can change the fact that I’m stuck alone on an alien world with you, I’m not really interested.”

“This isn’t exactly my dream vacation either,” I snapped back.

“Well, unless your little hallucination gave you a tutorial on how ‘magic works differently’ here then I don’t see how you’re going to be useful for anything, little miss model. We wouldn’t want you to break a nail or something. Oh wait, you can lead us to your jock girlfriend. Won’t that be great, then I can be stuck here alone with two people that I hate,” she spat at me angrily.

I stomped irately toward her, quickly closing the distance between us until I was standing over her glaring. “Whatever your problem with me and my friends is, you need to get the fuck over it! I’ve never done anything to you except try to be nice and offer to be a friend, and right now I’m the only person who can help you! Now, do you want to be a fucking girl or not?!”

She was staring up at me in confusion and terror and it took me a moment to realize why. I was looming over her in full Succubus mode; horns, claws, wings, long spaded tail, and the whole shebang. “Okay, yeah, I’m going to have to learn to control this when I get upset or magical accidents will be the least of my problems,” I thought to myself bitterly. I quickly looked away and sighed before attempting to speak calmly. “Look, I’m sorry. I literally just got this ability like five minutes ago, and I have a jumble of another person’s memories in my head only giving me a vague idea of how to control it.”

“You’re so beautiful,” she said, sighing as she gazed up at me adoringly.

“Annnnd cue the super pheromones and mental whammy, because of course Rebecca would be into girls and I would have those too. Geeze, I hope that I don’t need to live on male tantric energy,” I grumbled to myself. New old memories came to the fore of my mind and I was relieved to find out that since I wasn’t a real Succubus, just a convincing copy with the same abilities, I could survive on normal food. I could of course absorb the tantric energy of men and convert it to magick energy but I didn’t need it to live like a real Succubus would.

Well, that would give me a way to get some magick on this world, if it came to that. Not that I had any intention of doing so. The idea totally squicked me out for one thing. For another, I couldn’t even be sure that there were men on this planet aside from Mason, and having sex with my best friend’s boyfriend would be all kinds of wrong, no matter what the reason. Yeah, I was not going there, I would find out how magick worked on this world and use it that way, hopefully before we found the others.

I cleared my head and looked back at Rebecca, who was still gazing dreamily at me. Wow, she was so much more cooperative like this but it kinda creeped me out. I wasn’t really sure if this was an improvement over her being perpetually pissed at me or not. Best to get this over with though, since I suspected that I needed to be in my full Succubus form to place a curse. With that in mind, I asked Rebecca, “Do you truly wish to have a female body?”

“More than anything,” she replied nodding eagerly, not taking her eyes off of me. Then she suddenly looked uncertain as she timidly asked, “Do you like girls?”

Wow, she was seriously under the influence if she didn’t remember that I had a girlfriend, she was hating on both of us enough. I put those slightly bitter thoughts aside though and pushed onward. “Rebecca, I can give you a… blessing. It will give you the body that you wish to have but I will need to place a mark on your body somewhere, like a tattoo. Where would you like it?”

“I don’t know,” Rebecca replied uncertainly before adding almost flirtatiously, “where would you like to see it on me?”

Nope, this wasn’t getting awkward at all. I needed to get this over with, for both our sakes. “This may hurt a little bit, Rebecca,” I told her as I closed my eyes and felt for the negativity inside her as I would look for magick energy to gather. It took me a couple of minutes to figure out the trick to it, with a bit of help from Xuriel’s memories, but soon I was able to sense what I was looking for.

Beneath the surface of Rebecca’s mind that was so focused on her blind lust and desire for me at the moment, there was so much pain, anger, loneliness, and raw grief that it threatened to overwhelm me. I began to draw it into myself, equal parts of each, hoping to lighten her emotional burden and gathering that energy in the palm of my hand. As I did so I could feel a stronger connection form between us and once I felt that I could hold no more of that emotional darkness in my hand I gently placed that hand upon her shoulder, focusing on the mark that I had in mind and imparting the same curse that I had upon her.

For a time Rebecca’s screams rang out across the desert sands as the ‘blessing’ altered her body. The change was agonizingly slow and with each scream I felt a new stab of guilt until at last she had screamed herself hoarse and fell to the ground in a heap, breathing raggedly and whimpering as she lost consciousness. The transformation had put a lot of strain on her body and she was going to need rest, food, and water if she was going to recover.

With Rebecca in that state, I didn’t think that we were going to get anymore traveling done that day so I would need to set up camp and get her out of the open before the sun got too high. I went to retrieve my backpack from where it had fallen from my back when I had gone all Succubus and my wings had emerged. Thankfully, only the straps were damaged and I thought that I could fix them enough to make the pack usable again.

Too bad the same couldn’t be said for my hoodie and bra. The back of both of them had ripped apart under the strain of my wings popping out, but at least I was still covered in the front. The only thing that had saved my jeans was that they were low-rise jeans and my tail had emerged above the waistline of them.

I briefly considered trying to shift back to my normal form but it wasn’t like anyone was here to see me except Rebecca and she already seemed to believe that I was some sort of Demon, judging from the way she had acted toward me since we had first met. My new additional appendages felt strange though, having a tail and wings is a bit weird. A look behind me showed that both were a striking red-gold color, while my inch-long claws were a startling black. My compact, fished from my purse inside the backpack, showed that other than those features and the most adorable little golden devil horns emerging from just above my hairline, I still looked like myself in this form at least.

I returned the compact to my purse and the purse to my backpack as I started to check the other contents. That was when I heard something, and it wasn’t coming from Rebecca. I quickly turned to get a look at the source and immediately cursed. “Shit!”

In the light of dawn, there was a huge creature approaching. It was dark and scaly with an almost feline shape to it, except that the tail was more like a lizard’s than a cat’s. It was easily twelve feet long, not counting the tail, and had powerful-looking jaws filled with oversized razor-sharp teeth and a pair of nearly two-foot-long tusks. Its nostrils were little more than slits on the end of its muzzle and its ears were either very small or non-existent. It moved low to the ground, and probably would have blended in with the black sand if it hadn’t been for the stark white of those tusks, the curved horn jutting from its forehead, and the small plates of bone, cartilage, or something similar that covered most of its upper face and head and protected its eyes.

That thing was a predator, there was no doubt in my mind, and it was heading right for Rebecca. I immediately reached for my magick, only to be disappointed as I barely had enough stored to light a candle and there was nothing here to draw on. All that I had right now was my new abilities and I had no idea how to fight something like that.

I charged the creature, counting on the speed and strength that I knew Succubae possessed and tried to hit it as hard as I could. I closed the gap in an instant, my fist connecting with one of the plates on the side of its head with enough force to crack it, and sent the thing rolling away from the force of the impact with a startled high-pitched yelp. Okay, strength and speed confirmed.

The creature, I think I’m going to call it a tuskreaper, was back on its feet quickly, regarding me cautiously and beginning to circle as it looked for an opening or weakness. I kept myself between it and Rebecca as I tried to figure out what else I might have to work with. “Okay, so what abilities do Succubae have? I doubt that I’m going to be able to charm it and even with my new strength and speed in this form I’m not sure that I want to go toe-to-toe with that thing. There’s regeneration but I’d rather avoid having to use that particular ability. I’m probably agile and can fly but even if I can figure out how to do that, the minute that I leave the ground it’ll go after Rebecca.”

“I can’t feel any negativity coming off that thing, it’s just a big bundle of instincts and hunger, so curses are probably out too. I need to find a weak spot,” I concluded. I carefully looked over the tuskreaper and how it moved. I had surprised it when I first hit it, but how? “The way that it’s watching me I’m pretty sure that its vision is fairly sharp, but maybe those plates around the eyes limit its peripheral vision while protecting its eyes. Maybe it can’t hear well, or at all, and it relies mostly on sight and smell, or some other sense that I’m not aware of.”

“Screw it, the eyes have it,” I decided. I rushed toward the tuskreaper, startling it a bit since it was supposed to be the predator in this situation. It probably wasn’t familiar with anything like me though so it gave me a bit of an advantage. At the moment I was ready to take any advantage that I could get.

I leaped into the air as I closed the distance getting some good air and feeling my wings extend to catch the air. That was a really strange feeling but I didn’t have much time to think about it right then as my glide put me on top of the creature’s back. I had wanted to go for the eyes but hadn’t expected to get so much air so now I had to make due. So I did the only thing that made sense, I held on tight and started using my claws.

To a creature as big as a tuskreaper my claws were probably an annoyance at best. I certainly couldn’t cut deep enough to do any real damage, especially with the way it was bucking trying to get me off of it. This was why I liked magick, I could fight things from a safe distance and I didn’t need to worry about being eaten, impaled, or getting thrown off a creature’s back like a novice bull rider.

On a positive note, the longer that I was staying on its back the more pissed the tuskreaper was getting. Pissed is a negative emotion and I could use that. The angrier it got the more negativity that I had to work with, so I dug my claws in deep and held on for dear life. We were both starting to tire when I felt the connection click into place.

“Thank Goddess,” I muttered as I slammed the dark energy home. “Just die already!”

Perhaps I should have been more specific but I wasn’t really thinking much about being able to get off before I threw up or it threw me. So I totally wasn’t expecting to be sent flying when the tuskreaper exploded. I must have flown a good forty feet, not using my new wings, before crashing into the ground and bouncing through the sand another twenty feet.

The wing on my right side hurt and I was fairly sure that it was broken somewhere but I could already feel it starting to heal, so that was pretty cool. What wasn’t cool was that I was covered from head to toe in tuskreaper guts and sand. The smell and taste made me lose my lunch. “This sucks,” I grumbled as I finally got shakily to my feet and walked back to check on Rebecca, who of course was still fresh as a daisy.

I took a moment to scowl at the tuskreaper’s fully intact head roughly ten feet away and then removed the pair of collapsible tent poles from my backpack. After driving each of them deep into the sand, roughly three feet apart, I then pulled out the only other contents of the pack besides my purse. The three-by-five-foot piece of simple grey canvas material had attached nylon laces that would allow me to secure it tightly between the two poles.

It wasn’t a lean-to or anything like that, nope it was sort of a portable doorway. Sarah had used some sort of Celestial spacial magick to imbue a small pocket dimension into these pieces of canvas and we each had one in case we were separated. The space wasn’t much bigger than mine and Ellie’s bedroom and looked fairly drab on the inside but it was shelter from the elements and there was plenty of food, water, and other supplies to last a person several months. There were also a few weapons, my Hunting outfit, several changes of clothes, and a large foam camping mattress with bedding.

My first goal was a bottle of water and after a nice long sip to get the taste of guts and vomit out of my mouth I went back outside and stripped off all of my clothes, using them and the remainder of the water to clean the gore and sand off of me as best I could. Damn, I was glad that I’d been wearing a hoodie, even if it had been backless, it had prevented the gore and sand from getting in my hair and it and the jeans had protected most of my body as well.

What gore and sand there was on my body did feel really gross but at least I was able to clean it off without too much trouble. Though I did have to wash my face very well. That thing’s innards tasted worse than they smelled and I may have lost my lunch earlier but it had been worth it to get that taste out of my mouth and I didn’t want to risk tasting it again. Sadly, my clothes, except for maybe my panties, were all a lost cause. Even if my hoodie hadn’t been shredded in the back, all that blood was never going to come out.

Since my wing still felt like it was healing and I needed the strength boost to carry Rebecca into the shelter, I decided to stay in my new Succubus form for the moment. I would have to be making physical contact with Rebecca anyway to take her inside and I didn’t think that she would be too keen on that if she were conscious. Sarah had made it so that only we or something that we were touching could enter the pocket rooms that she had created, to anything else the doorway would act like regular, if very sturdy, canvas so that people or wild animals couldn’t wander in and surprise us in the middle of the night.

As I carried Rebecca to the doorway and then inside I gave her a good once over. Shit, those clothes were going to have to come off. She had grown both up and out quite a bit and her clothes were tight enough in some places that they were starting to cut off her circulation. It was basically the same thing that had happened to me when I first changed and Sarah had had to destroy my clothes. I should have checked earlier, but I was busy with the tuskreaper.

She had been wearing jeans and a hoodie like I was, that was all I had ever seen her wear really. The jeans were several sizes too small with her new curves, but the hoodie had a zipper and was oversized so it would still be wearable if a bit tight in the chest. I carefully removed that and her still usable shoes and socks first after placing her on the foam mattress. Then, using my claws, I quickly cut off her jeans and the way too tight t-shirt and bra that she had been wearing under the hoodie, being careful not to cut her skin in the process. Her underwear had ripped at the seams from her expanding hips so I tried to ignore them as I rubbed some circulation back into her legs.

She had turned out fairly well, very sexy with a typical succubus body even in her human form, not that I could throw stones about that since I was in the same boat. My clothes hadn’t felt uncomfortable at all since I changed except for the wings having to burst through the back of them. She looked closer to fifteen than fourteen and had long wavy auburn hair, a very pretty face that only remotely resembled her old one, and a flawless peaches and cream complexion. She was nearly as tall, curvy, and endowed as I was now too, so I was hoping that she might be able to wear some of my spare clothes.

It was as I was considering that possibility and massaging her legs that Rebecca woke up and jerked away from me. “What the fuck are you doing?!” And then she noticed my wings and horns and backed away further in fear, so scared that she didn’t seem to notice when her own Succubus features emerged. Well, damn, maybe I should have taken the time to get dressed.