Chapter 10 – Demonic Arts.

The woman named Elise quickly provided me with an address. It wasn't far from here, just a few minutes of running, and we were in another mansion.

This one however is practically empty, I can feel five maybe six people in the mansion, another ten are scattered around the grounds, probably security guards.

Moving fast, I jump about twenty feet and fall onto a porch, opening the door and entering the mansion. This place has the appetizing smell of a goat man, heading to where the smell is most intense, I find myself in an office again.

Opening the office door I find my target in a little sexual activity with a young blonde, hearing the noise he looks in my direction.

Seeing Elise naked in my arms, his eyes widen, and he's about to say something when I shoot my stinger towards her, hitting her shoulder and throwing him backwards away from the young woman.

Retracting my stinger, I approach the girl and put her to sleep. Putting Elise down, I approached Richard, who was holding her shoulder as he looked at me in a mixture of anger and fear.

Elise went directly to Richard's desk, opening one of the drawers and pulling out a book with a black leather cover. With no details other than a golden cross.

'' Here master, this is the book where the rituals are contained.'' Looking at the book and after that at the man in front of me, a slight smile spreads across my face.

After flipping through a few pages, I have a slight impression of the book. Most written rituals only detail how to perform offering rituals in exchange for power, wealth, or life extension.

Richard in front of me for example seems adept at sexual rituals, and life-draining rituals. Since, despite being sixty, his outward appearance is only thirty.

Still this is not what I want to find, although these rituals are useful for humans, in my case where power and eternal life are already guaranteed they are practically useless.

Also, as Elise said, Richard is the only one in his group who knows how to control hellfire, so he must have a book describing such things.

Stabbing Richard with my stinger and giving him a dose of poison that will paralyze him for half an hour, I start rummaging through his office.

Elise and I then start to search the office, after a few minutes of searching five books are in front of me, three of them are manuals on demonic arts.

Two of them are about demonic rituals, one of them is quite interesting. With demonic fire as a bond, he can remove someone's ability and make it his. As a side effect, the person will feel a constant burning sensation throughout the body. Which is the effect of having hellfire burning your soul as a punishment.

Quite useful of a ritual, if it can be used on vampires I can acquire interesting abilities. While not every vampire develops a special ability, the odds are still in my favor.

In the demonic arts books, one called my attention, art of domination: Infernal Slave. Using your blood to draw a mark on your victim's body, you infuse your demonic fire into her. Your victim then becomes your slave. One of the advantages of such a mark is the connection with the victim's soul, so when she wants to betray or plan anything against her master the mark will warn me and therefore.

If she tries to betray me or disobey, I can choose between causing her pain or just burning the person into oblivion. Looking at this nice technique and at my two small snacks in front of me, an idea starts to form in me.

By stabbing Elise, I inject enough poison to make her pass out for three days, I do the same with Richard.

With Richard as my first guinea pig, I rip off his shirt, using my stinger without injecting venom, drawing the image of a scorpion on his chest, then spitting some of my vampire venom into his chest and smearing it over the drawing as a last step. I conjure some demonic fire and place it in his chest.

Before I can stabilize the fire, however, Richard's soul starts to burn. Although I could avoid killing him, the damage was already done, so I simply used him as a guinea pig while improving my fire suppression art.

After a few minutes, only Richard's physical shell existed in this world. Looking at his body just makes him burn.

This time I pick up Elise, repeat the same process, I did before. This time, however, controlling the flame with all my attention. At the end of the process, a red scorpion stands out on Elise's white skin, bending over her body I take a bite on her left breast, giving light licks while I spread my venom in place of the bite and on her beautiful nipples, I repeat the process in her right breast, then her neck.

Her heart is racing, the pounding is intense and echoing all over the place, catching her body in my arms I throw myself into the night shadows, in three days my experiment will start, although I'll probably have to watch Elise for a few months and see if she will acquire any skills.

If she doesn't have a useful slave yet.

Three days went by quickly, I haven't left Elise's side in all this time, it was interesting to see the vampire transformation effect at work, Elise went from being an exuberant human. To what could be considered a goddess in human form, every irregularity or defect in her body was corrected, what was beautiful became perfect. It was a total transformation.

The mark I left on her body however did not disappear, although the scorpion now almost seems to be alive, it was something completely different to look at.

A few moments after her last heartbeat, Elise finally opened her crimson red eyes, as I watch her, she looks around her curiously.

Focusing on me, she assumes a defensive posture, probably her newly awakened vampire senses informing her how dangerous the being in front of her is.

I can feel the instinctual fear giving way to arrogance and defiance through her brand, assuming an attacking stance as she prepares to lunge towards me and attack me.

With a single thought of mine, however, Elise is now on the ground, the heat coming straight from the flames of hell burning her mark and making her scream.

The first part of my experiment is complete, and I now have a nice pet or ritual item, only the future and how useful it can be will tell me.