Beneath the Surface

14

I will not let it go this time. The thought was like fury raging through her veins as she slipped out of the Ghost Zone and back into the borrowed room she currently inhabited. It ended tonight, one way or the other. She would have him, willing or no, and she would eat his soul no matter what. Her eyes flared yellow as she considered what might make his emotions ripen and peak, providing her that much more energy to drink in as she took him.

Perhaps she would reveal to him as she held him within her that his little witch, his true love, and she snorted at the clichéd phrase, was trapped in the Ghost Zone even now. Waiting, always waiting for him to come save her. She smiled grimly. No. he would be joining her; it was the only answer. He would join her as a full ghost, and she would join him not long after.

Once the halfa was dead, she would make sure to take care of the little witch. Immortality would be a blessing and let her pay the human back for making her task more difficult, more miserable than it need be. Imagine, the nerve of the creature to call her by a mortal girl's name.

"I will take his power," she said defiantly to her reflected human image as she stared into her mirror. "I will stop for nothing, whether I take him or not." She bit off the words, anger lining her eyes as she willed them back to the cornflower blue that belonged on the mortal girl Charlie instead of the succubus she truly was.

A moment later a lovely girl with eyes like the sky was staring back at her, and she smiled, pleased. "Better. Much better." The pretty eyes narrowed and Charlie took a breath, nostrils flaring as she felt along the lines that bound her to Danny. They were so weak that they were almost nonexistent, and she frowned, running more power down them.

He was in his room. Good. No time like the present, she decided. She closed her eyes and willed a tendril of power into the walls of his room, careful to add in boundaries for the floor and ceiling, confines that most spell casters forgot unless experience had been a harsh teacher. There would be no mistakes, there would be lost chances. Silence would reign. It would be so, and Charlie smiled as power fed into the walls, sheathing them in a sound proof casing that would hold until she let it down.

She took one last glance back at the mirror and nodded. "I will take it all, and if it isn't enough, I will devour the whole damned town."

She would stop at nothing to achieve immortality.

xXx

"Dude, that's a little too lifelike," Danny muttered from the corner of his room where he crouched with Tucker, watching the facsimile the technomage had made sleep in his bed. It was hot and uncomfortable where they were; Tucker had cast a shield spell that involved blood and chalk and subsequently cut them off from the rest of the room.

A pocket of space where nothing could pass in or out, not even a breeze to cool them off as they waited, Danny human for the moment at Tucker's insistence. Something about the levels of ectoenergy within his active ghost form negating the concealment spell and possibly—probably—keying Charlie into the fact that the Danny sleeping in his bed was not Danny at all. In fact, that Danny was not much more than a handful of mud, a few twigs and an earthworm.

Tucker snorted. "Should I have left out the bellybutton to make her wonder? Or maybe adding another arm, a third nipple, maybe, would have made you feel better."

Danny elbowed his best friend where he knelt, but gently. This was taxing enough already without picking fights, so Danny only sighed deeply. "It's really good, Tuck. You're good at this."

"I know," was all the reply that Danny got, and he stared at his friend with considering eyes. No, this was definitely not the techno geek he'd known in high school. This was a self assured, independent and self-sufficient man.

He sighed again and tugged at the collar of his shirt, a black long sleeved thing that he had worn on Tucker's recommendation. The request had been followed by a lengthy explanation that it was easier to blend like colors into shadow, which was why Danny's jeans were so dark they were nearly black, and he'd traded in his running shoes for black boots. Tucker had followed his own advice, mostly, with matching dark, dark blue jeans. His shirt, however, was a shade of red that was hardly ever found outside of vampire movies; the color of blood, rich and ruby red. Long sleeved again, and with a mocked turtleneck collar that barely snuck out from the tops of Tucker's true concession to the shadow walking spell. A black trench coat that fluttered at his knees when he moved.

He'd kept his beret, bright red, and his PDA flashed in the darkness as Tucker fiddled with it despite Danny's increasingly desperate requests for Tucker to please turn it off for just five minutes. It was a lost cause, Danny knew it, but still couldn't help but make the request. He was so bored that he was tempted to rip the gadget from Tucker's hands and play with it himself.

"She's coming; I just felt her snap a spell of silence around your room," Tucker said as Danny's current attempt to lose it fell on deaf ears as the gadget flickered once more. Then it was gone, whisked away to a pocket of the trench coat as Tucker pulled out a clear crystal strung on silver chain and balanced the book Danny had given him across a knee. The knob of Danny's door jiggled once, twice, and the turned as Danny fought to control the harsh glare as his eyes flashed green at the sight of Charlie standing in his doorway staring smugly in at the sleeping figure she believe to be the ghost boy she was after.

She was dressed for sex; there was no other way to term it. A pale rose scrap of material that fit her body like a glove, dipping low enough that her breasts were barely hidden, high enough at the hips to show the pale expanse of skin up to her waist. Lace across her flat stomach, pale and white between the rosy silk or satin. She smoothed her hands down her body from best to thigh, eyes hungry as she stared at the sleeping golem.

"Now?" Danny whispered so quietly that the question barely made it past his lips. Tucker's head shook sharply, his hand coming up to grab the ghost's arm before Danny could shoot out from their hiding place.

"Not yet," he whispered fiercely, trusting in the spell Charlie had laid over the bedroom to blend with his own and protect them from being revealed. "Let her do her thing; she'll expend energy, power. It'll be easier to find a way to stop her that way."

Danny's mouth gaped open as his eyes flashed back to blue and blinked several times. "You mean, let her seduce me? It?" He snorted. "Whatever. But that?"

Tucker nodded. "Trust me, it's our best chance."

Danny flicked his fingers at his friends. "Nah, you're just a voyeur." Tucker shrugged and Danny smacked his arm. "Make it believable."

Tucker grinned ferally. "Trust me, Danny." unfortunately, the way he'd said it made Danny less inclined to trust Tucker with anything right then.

But he didn't have much of a choice, and Danny let his gaze be drawn back to the succubus who was even now walking quietly to the bed, a predatory grin on her face as she drew a knee up to settled down on the bed, the other leg following so that she was prowling up its length like a jungle cat, blue eyes half lidded and dark as she drew alongside the golem.

True to Tucker's word, he was making it good, right down to the startled way the mock Danny shot up straight, eyes wide and more than a little freaked until it realized that there was no monster creeping from beneath the bed. No, only a half naked slip of a girl who was staring at him like he was the tastiest dessert in the universe. He responded in kind, and Danny grimaced, trying to watch as an outsider instead of feeling like he was watching himself in a very bad porn.

"Charlie?" he mumbled, eyes still blurred with sleep, and she nodded, making Danny blink slowly, confused, before his eyes widened as he realized what she was wearing. "What are you doing here?" he blurted, and shifted as the real Danny watched in acute embarrassment.

"I came here for you," was all the succubus said before moving forward to lean over the golem, pressing her mouth to his and pushing him back on the bed, hands stronger than expected against his shoulders. He shifted with her and Danny looked away, more than sure that he didn't want to watch as the mimic gave in to the seduction.

"Tucker," he hissed lowly, warningly as the other knelt with the crystal still dangling from his fingers as he watched. Tucker only shot a glance up at Danny and rolled his eyes before he turned back to the bed, watching and waiting. Resolutely Danny followed suit.

The golem had managed to roll Charlie underneath him and was trying to divest her of her of her clothing with fingers much more sure than Danny thought his own would have been if he'd been above the girl, looking down at her. He could only push that thought out of his mind as he felt Tucker tensing next to him, gradually, but surely. Readying himself for an attack.

It was an attack of sorts, and Tucker was already more than a little tired as he held the golem together, keeping it fro shifting back to water, dirt and wiggling earthworms. On top of that he was being forced to control it, completely and utterly, unwilling to fuel a form of consciousness on it with a bit of Danny's blood. That might have opened Danny up to attacks from the succubus, even if it wasn't him himself that was in the middle of a very intimate moment.

She was powerful. Powerful enough to have begun draining power from Danny even in her human form while mounting a simulacrum. Better safe than sorry, and Tucker felt a bead of sweat slide down his temple to dangle from his jaw before dropping and dotting a damned spot on his trench coat. The crystal swayed and he focused his thoughts back through it, instructing the golem to take one of the thin straps of the negligee Charlie wore and slide it down her shoulder, trailing it with kisses.

It was what he would do.

He smirked in the darkness where Danny couldn't see him. It was what he had done on a few occasions. Danny would flip if he found out that Tucker had told him what he wanted to hear to get the answers he needed. Another thread of will brought the negligee down to the succubus' waist, and Tucker could feel the glamour she radiated, power so thick that if he and Danny hadn't been safe behind the shield he had erected they would have suffocated underneath the weight of it.

The only safe one was the creature lying with her, hands sliding across pale skin that glowed more with each passing second as Charlie divested herself of her own power to ensure that she reached her goal. Tucker narrowed his eyes as he felt a new surge of power from Charlie, apprehension loud in the back of his head. She was powerful, maybe too powerful. Every time he thought she was tapped out she came up with yet another scrap of power to toss at the simulacrum.

He knew she'd been feeding when Danny wasn't easily accessible, and he knew that she most likely had power stored elsewhere. No doubt she had invested a great deal into whatever magics were keeping Sam trapped in the Ghost Zone, and forcing the unwilling silences whenever she tried to communicate. And even behind the shield with his best friend standing next to him, Tucker could feel the threads of broken power between the halfa and the succubus, reaching out and trying to reconnect with the severed end on Charlie's side.

A miracle that she hadn't noticed it yet. She would, there would be no stopping it if Tucker let it go much farther. She'd know the second she gave the golem entrance and tried to begin draining its life force. The best she could do was to come up with a handful of energy from the earthworms, and a mouthful of mud from the rest.

"Now?" The impatient voice from next to him as Danny held himself steady, wanting badly to go fight.

Tucker shook his head, looking over to see that Danny was balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to break through the spell that shielded them and attack the succubus. "Not yet."

"Then when?" came the harsh question, more like a growl than anything else.

"She'll decide when. I want to weaken her as much as possible."

And yet there seemed no true sign of weakening from the succubus, even as her fingers found the waistband of the sweatpants he had instructed the golem to dress in before sending it to sleep in Danny's bed. Tucker felt more than saw when Danny looked away, but Tucker stared resolutely, jaw clenched as he willed the simulacrum to take control of the situation and at least get under the sheet that was scrounged at the foot of the bed.

"Tucker…" Strangled this time, and Tucker spared a moment of sympathy for his best friend.

"Now, Danny," Tucker whispered as he felt Charlie break through the golem with magic as she realized that, despite its appearance and willingness, it wasn't what she had thought it was.

"Now?" Danny echoed, surprise etched in his blue eyes.

Tucker nodded as the golem shattered into a shower of dirt, mud, pieces of earthworm dotting the muck as it flew across the room. He stood fluidly as he heard Danny's knuckles crack as his hands clenched into fists, and then Tucker allowed the barrier between them and the creature to drop, revealing the two of them, half ghost and technomage, standing there waiting.

Charlie lifted herself from the bed, blue eyes narrowed in anger, still flush from the attentions she had received, naked and nearly glowing. She stood there, picking a piece of twig from her hair almost casually as she turned to face them. She smiled, and it made Tucker shiver at the pure malice in it, though Danny was only made more angry at the sight.

In the space between one heartbeat and another Danny grabbed on to the power inside him that made him a hybrid and shifted to his ghost form in a bright white blue flash of light. Now green eyes blazing, he faced the monster down with a steady gaze, jaw knotted in fury.

Charlie smirked at him.

"Daughter of Lilith," Danny said darkly, feeling as the words were swallowed up by the spell of silence that Tucker had said Charlie had cast on his room.

She had indeed, the silence echoed as her eyes flashed at him, more angry now than they had been before. She smiled, baring her teeth as she did so. "Son of Adam," she hissed out, and Danny could only watch as her eyes shifted to yellow, her skin paled to a translucent pearl, her hair shot out from her skull even as it lightened to nearly white.

Taloned fingers, and Danny wondered how he could ever have been attracted to her; how he ever could have missed the fact that her humanity was stolen from countless moral lives she had taken and devoured. His fingers tightened more and his hands ached with the fists he'd made, letting ectoenergy flow through him and light them into blazes of sickly green ghost fire. He raised one to her, fingers out and beckoning as he plastered a lazy smile across his face.

"Come on, then," he said to her, and all hell broke loose.

xXx

Sam was breathing heavily and nearly unconscious by the time she gave in to the need for rest. She had no choice; even a single attempt further would knock her out, maybe kill her if she tapped into too much of her innate power trying to fuel a damned spell into strength enough to break through barrier. It was hopeless. Beyond hopeless, but she had to try.

Her lungs burned as her chest rose and fell, desperate for a little more air, a little more oxygen. Despite having done nothing physical Sam felt her entire body burning with the strain of exertion. You'll never see a fat mage, she thought wildly to herself as she willed the pain away, knowing that it wasn't going anywhere at all.

Without a second thought Sam let her body collapse back against the cool stone, feeling it begin to numb her aching joints, seep into her throbbing skull and dull the pain that pounded in time with her heartbeat. Her eyes burned as tears pooled in them to trickle down her dust streaked cheeks, and she wiped at them furiously, despising the weakness that showed in the way her hand trembled. It was useless; she was trapped.

"I will not give in," the said softly, fiercely into the echoing silence around her. Another breath, and another, and another. "I will not give in," she whispered again, more softly this time, and closed her eyes letting her magic see for her. It ran across the barrier, turning it into a glowing yellow thing in her minds eye until it had circumvented the entire rock.

There were no weaknesses, and Sam bit back an anguished cry. Fatigue washed over her, and Sam let her eyes slip closed.

When she opened them again her entire body was cold, and she felt like the temperature around her had fallen by tens of degrees, leaving her covered in gooseflesh and shivering with a cold that had seeped into her bones. Her tears had dried on her face and she shot up frantically, noticing only that her body ached instead of screamed at the movement. A moments thought and Sam was arrowing a fine needle of magic at the barrier, willing it to fall so that she could warn Danny.

And in the back of her mind she wondered if she even needed to warn him. She'd slept, but for how long? Was it already over? Had Charlie already stolen his life? Because with the barrier still up, her own magic still helplessly, hopelessly trapped within the death curse that hovered around the succubus… She knew that Charlie still lived.

And the temperature fell again with an almost audible snapping of power through the soles of her feet.

With a muttered curse Sam dropped back to her knees, pressing her hands along the ragged ground and pushing a small trickle of power into it, looking for what had snapped. She found it; a shred of power left that she read as a crude warming spell, one that required far less power than some of the more sophisticated spells Sam had seen and practiced. But a shred, what was left after that minute amount had been withdrawn, bled away and then snapped.

Sam stood, eyes bright and brilliant as she looked at the almost translucent wall between her and the rest of the Ghost Zone. If the smallest spell had been used, then Charlie was spending her magic on the seduction. There was still time. And if Charlie was wasting the smaller spells, it wouldn't be long before the barrier wavered enough for her to break through.

It wasn't; she felt the pulses through the shield minutes later at most, and watched it carefully with a hastily laid spell of true sight, the ripples and wrinkles to the barrier growing more distorted with each pulse of power draining away. It made no sense to Sam, that Charlie would be using enough power to destroy all of her other spells just to seduce Danny, but a small part of her was terribly pleased with the fact that Danny must have been putting up a hell of a fight for the succubus to resort to such desperate measures to bring him to her bed. Or maybe she was just killing him slowly.

A new series of pulsed washed over the dome, making it flicker for several moments before it solidified again, and Sam smiled darkly as she began drawing in the ambient magic that had gather while she was unconscious. The barrier was falling, and when it did she would be ready. More than ready, if she had her way. If there was even the tiniest chance that Sam could do damage on Charlie she was going to.

When it fell Sam drew every last vestige of power she had gathered into a shining blade of magic, slicing it through the last vestiges of power and dropping to her knees as she sent her mind flying out to seek Danny. The pain of rock shards slicing in didn't faze her, only hardened her will to find Danny, to warn him if she could, help him if she was too late. Oh, how she prayed that it wasn't too late.

But the confusion that washed over her when she finally opened her eyes was almost blinding. Danny, darting and flying around his room with Tucker in the shadows of a corner, on his knees and frantically leafing through the book Danny had given him. It made no sense.

"Your left, Danny!" Tucker yelled, and Sam watched as Danny phased to the right only to have a shining lance of light smash into him when he solidified again. "No," Tucker said on a groan. "Your other left."

Sam could only raise an eyebrow as she turned further to her own left and realized that it wasn't a ghost battle. Or at least, it wasn't Danny fighting against another ghost. No, it was Charlie, in her succubus form, pale skin shining and eyes glowing brightly as she sent another shock of power towards Danny, who nimbly split himself in two to let the attack fly harmlessly between the two of him.

A flash of blinding green energy flew from Danny's outstretched hands, blurring white as it burned into a renewed attack Charlie sent flying Danny's way, and Sam's heart lurched in her chest as she realized that Danny was being pushed back from it. He hit the wall and sagged against it, a hand to his side where green blood dripped, and Sam gasped as Charlie narrowed her eyes and smiled smugly at him.

"You can't even hope to beat me, child," she said haughtily over the gasping breaths he took. It was a good act, but Sam could see the way that Charlie's own shoulders were heaving, and she knew that this was where the power that kept her contained had gone to. To help Charlie overpower Danny, to beat him in a fight that would be to the death.

Danny launched himself from the wall and more ectoblasts surged from his hands. "A little help would be great, Tucker!" Danny shouted as everything he fired at Charlie impacted on a hastily formed shield inches in front of her. Danny tossed one of his own up and winced as two blades of light crashed into them, sending him skidding back through the air.

"Danny," Sam breathed as he turned himself intangible to save his legs from hitting his bed, a thing that would have sent him tumbling through the air with no way to defend himself against the still coming attacks.

Danny cried out as he was too slow to raise a new shield and more green blood flew from a sudden slash to his left shoulder. he brought his right hand up to cradle the wound, wincing as blood flowed past his white gloves to drip on the floor. "Tucker!" he shouted. "Come on!"

Tucker shot an angry glance up from where he was furiously paging through the book. "What do you want me to do?" he cried back, vehemence and worry mingled in his voice. "She's freaking immortal! Paper cut her to death?"

Then Tucker's jade green eyes took on a considering slant and stacks of paper detached themselves from every book and pad around the room, barring the one on Tucker's lap, and flew in spinning slices towards the succubus. There were hundreds, thousands, and Sam watched as they flew against yet another shield, then pushed a little harder and made it through to score hundreds upon hundreds of tiny cuts across the creature's glowing white skin.

Charlie screamed in rage and pain and Sam took a step forward, one hand out to try and help, but not sure what she could; the little power she had left after forcing past the shield and projecting herself all the way from the far depths of the Ghost Zone already fading more rapidly than she wanted to admit. Another howl of rage and the paper burned to cinder where the pieces protruded from across Charlie's body. Dam took a step back as the pieces of burnt paper flew off of her and Sam dusted it from her face and arms without thinking.

And then she blinked, the battle nearly forgotten as Danny called, "How do I kill her?"

"I don't know." Tucker's miserable response fell on deaf ears as Sam looked down at herself and realized that where her skin wasn't covered by the black bikini, it was covered by black ash. It was on her, toughing her, and Sam breathed a gasping, desperate laugh as her eyes flew up to her friends, to the man floating above her, glowing green eyes locked on to the succubus who was glaring up at him hatefully. The man who was the boy she had fallen in love with a long time before.

"She's immortal, Danny, we can't kill her," Tucker shouted into the melee. "We can only stop her."

Sam took a breath, stepped forward from the shadow she herself had been hiding in. The floor creaked beneath her and three sets of eyes flew to her, one an angry golden yellow, one a brilliant green that looked at her in worry and relief. And one bottle green blurred through the lenses of glasses. She held a hand out to her friends, and then waved the other at the succubus, letting a trickle of her own power fly and send stinging, searing heat along the cuts that already dripped with black ichor, marring the pale skin.

"Sam, get out of here!" was Danny's first response to her sudden appearance, and then she caught Tucker's head shaking back and forth.

"She's projecting, Danny. I can see her!" Tucker cried, surging to his feet, the spell book forgotten momentarily.

Sam closed her eyes. This made things so much easier if Tucker could see her. If his eyes could see, then his ears could hear, and then both would know the answer to their problem. A momentary smile as she gathered what little power she had left, and Sam knew that she was skirting dangerous territory as it began bleeding her own life away to fuel the words she screamed as Charlie prepared another attack, this time on Sam herself instead of Danny.

"She's not lilin!"

Within seconds Sam was back on her knees in the Ghost Zone, blood staining the rock immediately around them as her body wavered on the edge of consciousness for a long lingering moment. The sudden nausea that overwhelmed her and made her wretch emptily against the rock told her that she had overstepped her bounds, the blackness that seeped in from the edges of her vision told her that if she woke up, she was going to have the hangover from hell.

If she woke up.

Sam really hoped she did. It was the last thing she thought as the darkness claimed her.