CHAPTER 185

The spirit exploded into shards of light and drifted out into the night.

"Holy shit," Beth muttered, dropping the remnants of her flower pot. Around them, the shadows were now keeping their distance. "If we can charge them up out here, we can hurt them."

"Urk," replied Dana, trying to stand. Her legs weren't regenerating fast enough, and something was wrong in her chest. She coughed a few times and then took a deep breath. "We need...a bigger charge."

"I'm not sure where we're going to get one," Beth said, then winced when Cerberus roared. "It looks like you cleared the house a bit, but there are too many of them. We're outnumbered."

"Yeah, well..." Dana picked up a piece of glass and chuckled. "Tink is gonna be...pissed." She tossed the glass on the ground and dragged herself over to Naia's frozen fountain to pull herself up. The spirits still gave them a wide berth, and she shook her head. "I think this may be it. The home is trashed and that douche Marco is going to take the Grimoire. Going to be a hard sell on...house sitting again."

Beth's eyes shimmered in the blazing light of the Underworld. "I can't believe it. It's like this was all planned. Do you think the shadow was working with the faerie queen?"

"Does it...matter if he...what the hell?" Dana caught some movement through the gateway and was surprised to see Lily shoot through the opening, closing her wings for long enough to fly beneath the arch, then extending them again to carry her the rest of the way up the hill. She landed gracefully on Naia's fountain, then brushed a significant amount of soot off her face.

"You guys throw one hell of a party." She picked Dana up by the collar of her shirt and planted a kiss on her. Cum, hot and delicious, flowed down Dana's throat, and she felt her legs stretch and pop as the joints and bones went back into place. When Lily broke the kiss, she set Dana down with a grin. "Daddy is going to be so pissed."

"Lily, where have you been?" Beth asked.

She smirked, held up a finger for silence, then waited. Everyone looked at each other in confusion, and then a loud roar startled them. It came from down the hill, and the spirit platoon milling around the gate turned around and readied their weapons.

"What was that?" Dana asked.

"Help." They all looked down the hill in time to see a swarm of dark shapes descending on the phantom castle. Hundreds of angry demons of different shapes and sizes charged the walls of the castle wielding pitchforks, swords, and even a giant one with a whip of flames. There were yells of alarm, and the spirits who had been waiting by the gate seemed confused on which direction to go.

"Friends of yours?" Beth asked.

"Demons don't do friends," declared the succubus. "But any chance to raise a little hell, and they'll take it."

"Lily." Beth put her hand on Lily's shoulder. "The Jabberwock has been possessed. We need Cerberus to help us fight it."

Lily frowned. "Hmm. Cerberus might be able to come on this side of the gate, but not very far. The demons can't come through at all, but that's for the best. The only reason they're here is that I expected the shadow to pull something, but the sheer numbers of spirits he brought..." She shook her head. "I'll see what I can do about the Jabberwock. But all these damn ghosts? Not sure how to handle that. I may have shifted the tide, but the storm still rages on."

Storm. Dana looked at Quetzalli, then down the hill at where the spirits were building up. If she could secure the necessary power, she could power up the spirits down there as well, which might allow them to be attacked. So many thoughts were going through her head right now, and she commanded them to slow down and give her a moment to process. It didn't help that Mike's semen now sat in her belly like a hot coal, and she was suddenly very aware of how attractive all three of the women with her were.

She shook her head and closed her eyes, replaying her memories from the last couple of weeks in fast forward. There was something about a storm, something Quetzalli had said. She could picture them now, standing on the edge of the cliff, the drones in the air. The breeze had caught a tuft of the dragon's hair and pulled it away from her face, and she was staring at a distant thundercloud forming on the horizon.

"They don't like to share their skies, you know?" Quetzalli had said. "They can be very territorial."

"Quetzalli!" Dana grabbed the dragon by the shoulders, startling her. "What controls the weather in the greenhouse?"

"Hmm? Oh, it's very fascinating. The water cycle—"

"No, not the water cycle." Dana thought back to all the drone crashes, the issues with fluctuating EM fields. This whole time, she had thought it was a manifestation related to the fact that the greenhouse defied the laws of physics, but what if the actual problem wasn't a magical phenomenon, but a living one? "What lives in the skies of the greenhouse and makes the thunder clouds?"

Quetzalli's features scrunched up. "Technically, it doesn't make the clouds, they do occur naturally, you know, but it will whip some up to stay hidden. It goes by many names depending on culture, but I believe that you would just call it a thunderbird."

"A thunderbird? As in lightning and thunder?"

Quetzalli rolled her eyes. "Obviously, thunder is just a by product of lightning, therefore—"

Dana ran toward the garage, leaving everyone behind. Once inside, she saw that the whole place had been ransacked like everywhere else, and when she got down to her bedroom, she groaned. The room itself had been torn apart, but below her workbench, she saw the protective case that held the drones was still in place. She pulled it out, then noticed some shadows from the corner of her eyes. Without looking inside, she raced back upstairs, the fire in her body now raging out of control.