*Knock knock knock!*

After waiting a minute, I knocked at the door again, but there was no answer. I was going to peer in through a window, but...

"Can I help you?"

I turned. A short, curvy woman with brown hair and glasses was approaching the house from across the street. "Patty Calloway?" I asked her.

She stepped up. "Yes?"

I thrust the romance novel at her. "Just returning your book."

Her face broke into a grin. "Oh, I've been missing that! I...umm..." Then her eyes went wide. "Umm, I mean that's...not mine..."

I gave her a flat look. "Uh huh...where's Eros?"

Her eyes went even wider. "Um...umm...who?"

There was a loud clatter from inside the house, followed by a deep grunt and a higher-pitched yell. Demie! She had gone around the back.

"Eros!" Patty quickly opened the door to see her flipped-over coffee table and Demie and Eros fighting. Eros still looked like Fabio, and seemed to be winning...he had pinned Demie to the floor with his knee while his arms held hers immobile. Even with her shape-shifting, he seemed to be adapting just as fast.

"Tom..." Demie looked up at me.

Right, Plan B. I grabbed Patty from behind and put her into a headlock.

"Eros!" Patty yelled again.

He looked up. "Let her go, Tom," he growled menacingly. But he couldn't come at me, or Demie would be all over him.

"You first," I told him firmly.

"Fine, fine." He disengaged from Demie and stood back. "I know you're not going to hurt an innocent woman, nerd."

"Gukhh!"

I had squeezed, cutting off Patty's oxygen. "If she's your summoner, then she killed someone already, so she's not innocent. I'm gonna ask you nicely, Eros: what'd you do with Otie?"

"Who?"

"GGHKK!" Patty was pulling at my arm now, unable to breathe.

"My brother, asshole! Looks like me?"

His eyes flickered to Patty's reddening face and back to mine. "I'm right here, bro." Then he transformed into Otie, which meant that he looked just like me.

I lessened my grip so that Patty could breathe, but I covered her mouth with my hand. She might know this one. In my best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression I said, "Chill out...?"

Eros blinked, confused.

"...dickwad," I completed the line from Terminator 2, Otie's favorite movie. "Did you kill him?"

Eros' features shifted back to Fabio's. "Yeah, he had the primal matter I needed to get away. Sorry, man." He gave me an 'aw shucks' look.

"I should send you right back to Hell for killing Otie and Tillie..."

"Who?"

"Oh, for FUCK'S SAKE!" I tightened my grip again.

"Hnngghh!" Patty gurgled.

Eros held up his hands. "Right, right, the siren. Had to make sure the changeling -- Otie -- was all gone, and killing his girlfriend confirmed that. What can I say? I'm a demon, man! Now would you let her go?"

Demie stepped up next to me. "Hate to be the party crasher, but she's looking kinda blue, Tom."

"Oh, shit." I gently let the unconscious woman down to the floor and made sure that she was still breathing.

Eros just stood there, looking petulant. "First my pet project falls through, and now this. If you're not going to kill Patty, then what do we do now?"

I pulled out my phone. "Now we call the Enforcer."

Eros stiffened. "She will kill Patty."

"Mom says she won't," Demie informed him, "at least not while we need you."

His mouth quirked. "You...need me?"

I hung up the phone. "Enforcer's on the way," I informed Demie before turning back to Eros. "Your mother told us that The Deal's been compromised, by someone other than you. Something to do with a baby. She still hasn't told us everything; says it's a secret. We need to go to some safehouse named Gehenna, and she insists that we need the whole family, plus the Enforcer."

Eros stroked his prominent Fabio chin. "A baby? Weird."

---

Across the street, Abel softly, lovingly, stroked his cock into his roommate Chrissie's pussy in the missionary position. The slim ash blonde woman orgasmed again, her stomach muscles cramping up from overuse as she squirted a mixture of their combined cum onto the bed once more. A repetitive squelching sound could be heard as Abel continued to thrust into her overflowing vagina. They had been fucking and making love for hours at Patty's direction.

"Abel, I..." she began.

"Yes, Chrissie? Huff huff..."

"...I hate you."

"Cumming!" He reared up, his raw cock dribbling the seminal remains from his spent prostate along with the last of the sperm his body could dredge up from his depleted testicles.

"Huhh! Ohhgaahd!" Chrissie arched her back as another orgasm washed over her.

The two of them collapsed, Abel still lying on top of her. After a few moments, he fell asleep.

Deep inside Chrissie's fertile body, the young man's hours-long deluge of sperm finally made its way deep enough to find one of her eggs. As one of his wigglers penetrated the membrane and deposited its genetic material inside, she murmured, "Hate...you..." Then she, too, passed out.

---

With all three demons at hand, the six of us, including Shepherd, myself, and the Enforcer, approached a red door off of an alleyway. There was no sign indicating what it was for, and for some reason I had trouble focusing on it.

Eudora glanced at my confused face. "It has a glamour on it to keep the 'normies' out. Come on." She pulled it open.

"The mortals'll have some trouble with the dimensional pressure, too," the Enforcer commented.

Then we stepped into Gehenna.

...

Apparently I was, indeed, having some problems. One minute we were going down some metal stairs, and the next we seemed to be in a dance club. I didn't recognize the music, though it sounded like a Klingon dirge. I seemed to be missing a period of time, kinda like that time after I ate a pot cookie. "Where...?"

"Tom's disconnecting again," the Enforcer commented as she took my face in her hands. "Focus on my eyes."

I did. The muscular, dark-haired woman had nice hazel-colored irises. I realized that she looked a bit concerned. "I'm...good," I told her.

"You sure?" She kept examining my face.

"No?"

She gave a wry smile. "That'll have to do."

Demie strode up. "Bartender said Cassandra's been here recently," she tilted her head toward the hairy, two-legged beast behind the bar. "Wasn't sure where she went, though, but he gave me a couple entities to follow up with."

...

Then we were in a large room with two beds...a hotel in Gehenna? Another time shift! I shook my head. "Dimensional pressure, you said?" The others looked at me with sympathy...well, everyone except Shepherd, who was laying down on one of the beds, asleep, and Eros, who was seated in a chair, his arms across his broad chest.

"So, Mom, you gonna tell us what this is really about?" he asked.

She glanced over at Shepherd and then the Enforcer. The athletic woman nodded. The redheaded demon pulled up another chair. "Have a seat, everyone."

My vision swam and I blinked it away. With this lost time, I had no idea how long we'd been in Gehenna.

---

My Dear Tom,

You said that you would return after your errand. It's been weeks now, and I've gone from worry to despair. I must not give up hope, though. I did that once before, and I've regretted it ever since.

My earliest memory was of my mother making a dress for me. It was so pretty! "Men are wicked," she would tell me, recounting how my father disappointed her before abandoning us. I believed her, and lived my life accordingly, but when I came of age, the suitors started arriving. However, they all learned my secret and became upset. People will gossip, and I was left alone.

One day I took the razor that so often removed the hated whiskers from my face and shaved my life away. The blade was so sharp that I didn't even feel it, thank God, and I went to sleep, never to wake.

Except I did awake, to you, and my new form, bereft of its gross matter, was shaped as I had always wanted it to be. You filled me with your warmth and, satisfied, I thought that I would move on to the next world, only to find that I had somehow accompanied you to your abode.

You know what happened next: I was drawn to this woman, Vicky, and borrowed her body. Once again you filled me with your warmth, though this time it stayed, and grew.

I trust that you will one day return, and I will miss you, but thank you...thank you for making me truly feel like a woman.

Love,
Beatrice

---

Beatrice pushed the envelope under the door of apartment 1304 and stood up. Her breasts bounced a little and she winced; they had been a bit sensitive lately. Her breasts? Just borrowed, she knew, and sighed. "Be well, Vicky, and you too," she said as she caressed her midsection and closed her green eyes.

A glow emanated from the woman's body, and her brow furrowed. Then the light dissipated, and Vicky opened her gray eyes. She looked down at her arms, still holding her midsection.

"Fuck, I'm pregnant."

To be continued...

Chapter 45

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