A Demon's Heart

Her father glanced at the page she was on, made a face and straightened his glasses on his pudgy nose. He shook his head and gave her a puzzled look. "That is certainly the woman, but her partner seems to have stepped right out of the flame," he admitted.

Shenia felt a shiver go through her. "This must not be the page," she said as she started to flip through the book again and tried in vain to find another picture of the dancing couple. Her father shook his head, making some of his unruly salt and pepper hair fall into his eyes. "There was only one picture in there of the couple," he told her.

"But it can't be, you can't just erase charcoal cleanly from a book that's generations old," she insisted.

"Its gone despite your logic," her father said calmly as he continued perfecting his clay version of his daughter. "Perhaps the fire consumed him and left the woman."

"What fire?" she demanded.

"Didn't you look at the statue carefully? Didn't you notice what the two of them are doing?"

"They're dancing together," she answered softly. Her father laughed even as he shook his head again. "They're not dancing, darling. The man looks so disgusted because the woman is burning and she is smiling because she does not even seem to notice it."

"What? Burning? Who would make such a statue?"

"I'm not sure who made it, but my friend said that the fire is symbolic of the woman's sins eating her from the inside," he said.

Shenia frowned deeply. "Well, what was the thing originally supposed to look like?"

"Look at the woman's face in the picture, since that's all that's left and see if her expression is any different," he suggested.

She looked down at the woman's smiling face and saw that it was different. In the picture, her smile looked genuine while on the statue she looked as if she was forcing the expression to stay on her lips no matter what happened. "She's not burning here, is she?"

"No," her father answered. "My friend said that in a letter he found addressed to his grandfather, he explained that when he tried to render the happy dance in the metal it wouldn't cooperate and it seemed to shape itself," he explained.

"Your friend seems to know a lot about this author," she said.

He smiled. "He knows those things, but he never knew his name because nothing is signed."

She shook her head as she stood up to get another glass of lemonade from her mother, but she froze when she looked at the clay that her father was shaping. He was too busy looking at her to notice what his hands were doing and so he flattened out all her features and began to make a new face without noticing.

The face that emerged from his efforts was one that was very familiar to her, it was the one that had haunted her dreams in the guise of her dance partner in her dreams and turned up missing from the drawing book. She stifled her gasp with a hand over her mouth, but her father noticed anyway and looked down at what he was doing.

He recognized the face after a moment of thinking about it, but when he looked up to tell his daughter that the clay had once again shaped itself she was gone. She had fled the house, knocking down several of the statuettes as she passed, and jumped on her motorbike without even saying goodbye to her mother who was sitting on the porch with a few of her friends. Her mother only shook her head.

Shenia was back home again in less than two minutes because she was driving so fast and because she was driving without the music that usually distracted her by making her want to sing and show the world how multi-talented she was. When she got to her door, she turned the bike off, let it drop, and plunged her key into the door as she prayed that it would not get stuck on such a weird day.

She opened the door without any problem and ran up the stairs to her room, shoving the beaded curtains aside so that she would not have to hear too much of their racket. Once in her room, she tore the sheet off of the statue and studied it even as her heart beat twice as fast as normal because she was so sure that the man would reach out for her even as the woman he held wept. To her disappointment, and relief, the statue did not move and she sat down on the floor as she wondered why such daft thoughts had entered her mind.

Perhaps there was a way to erase charcoal cleanly from an old art book and her father had shaped the face of the man because they were talking about him and his woman so much. She convinced herself of those two things so well that she was up and breathing normally again after only a few moments.

She went back outside, put her motorbike in her garage and closed her door as her nosy neighbors peered at her from behind their blinds. She knew they were looking so she waved before she closed and locked the door, thinking that they had bought their blinds because they were sure that no one could see them looking.

When that was done, she went back up the stairs and laid down in her bed for a little nap that would replace the sleep she had lost that morning. She resolved that she would call her parents whenever she woke up and explain away her hasty departure from their place with some probable lie. She knew that her father was not too worried because he was used to her doing far stranger things than leaving without saying goodbye, but her mother would be obsessing over the fact that there had to be something wrong for her to leave in such a hurry.

When she laid down, it took her a while to fall asleep, but when she did she fell directly into another dream. That time, her dream was taking place in her own bedroom as she lay helpless to stop it or cry out to the neighbors who had been watching her when she pulled up to her house after her scare.

In the dream, she was laying on her bed as if paralyzed as the statue in the corner began to move as if it were breathing. The metal changed colours and became flesh, but even as the man moved towards her the woman he had let go of gained her balance and began pulling him back to the statue so that he would stay next to her. Her feet were still attached to the base of the statue for they had failed to grow flesh, so she could do nothing when he pulled away from her and walked unsteadily towards the bed.

She reached for him however, stretching her body so much that she lost her balance and sent the base of the statue toppling forward. Her Knight ignored her as she scratched at his ankles and screamed out unintelligible curses as he climbed into the bed.

He laid on top of Shenia and turned her still face towards him as he kissed her lips. As he kissed her, he licked them even as he dipped his tongue into her mouth and tasted the sugary sweetness that he knew would be there. He moaned against her as her body began to react to him involuntarily as her eyes remained closed and her breathing remained calm as if she were slumbering against him as her lust moved her.

She kissed him back gently and could feel him shift on top of her, allowing her to feel his excitement as he rubbed his naked skin on her fully clothed body. He suddenly moved off of her, making her body cry out in protest, and kneeled on the bed as he began to rip her clothes off of her. It was pretty easy since she was only wearing a pair of jeans and a thin sweater. She had not even bothered to cover her beautiful, large breasts with a bra and her panties barely covered her large bottom.

He slid her panties down her legs as he gripped them with his teeth. When he got them off of her he held them in his teeth for a moment so that he could relish the delicious odor that her womanhood left in them. After he had gotten his fill of her musk, he threw the panties to the side and began kissing in a path that started at her ankles, skipped her mound, and ended at her lips.

They kissed each other as he pressed his stiff penis against her and she raised her hips to encourage him to enter her. Instead, he started kissing back down her body and that time he licked her clit so deeply that she could not stifle a scream as her body bucked with desire. He was smiling as he licked her again with a similar reaction even as he reached down between his own legs and began to stroke his throbbing member.

As he pleasured himself, he allowed his tongue to dip into her with a rhythm that matched his stroking and immediately set her afire. She was pushing her hips at him, silently demanding that he push his tongue into her deeper as she moaned, but he refused to lick anything but the entrance. Her juices were flowing easily with her anticipation and after a while he dipped his tongue in deeper so that he could taste what he had smelled in her panties.

He smiled when the musky liquid touched his tongue for he swore that it tasted even better than it smelled and he pushed his tongue in deeper so that he could have more of the delicious fluid. Shenia moaned loudly on the bed, praying that she would never wake up from her wonderful dream, and he continued to shove his tongue into her as she opened her legs wider.

It felt exactly like the dream that she had had two nights before, when the tongue had entered her without warning, crowding out her two ambitious fingers. She was glad that his tongue was not disembodied, but she was sure that she would not have cared as her body began to vibrate with the orgasm that had been slowly building since he had kissed her.

As soon as she was about to explode, he pulled his tongue away from her and slid himself into position above her. As her body cried out for more, he plunged his rock hard phallus into her slick tunnel and she went straight over the edge.

Even as she was screaming out in her delight, her eyes began to open and she cursed because she was sure that she was waking up. Her eyes were not fully open yet, but she still felt the fullness inside her and the weight of a man as he pushed himself inside her with all his might. Her eyes popped open and she saw the man, the man whose face she had seen on the statue and in the clay that had father would have sworn shaped herself.

He no longer looked at all angry or full of hatred for his features were twisted with pure ecstasy as he pulled himself out a little and plunged back into her with a ferocity that would have hurt some women. She was used to rough sex, but even she gasped as the pain of the thrust hit her and the pleasure behind it began to overwhelm her. He continued thrusting in and out of her happily, though a bit more gently, even as he kept his eyes closed and his mouth open in a moan that never escaped his throat.

She could not even think about fighting him as she was suddenly brought to another earth shattering climax as he vibrated on top of her. Her entire body was shaking and as she screamed his breathing became heavier and he began to thrust into her harder. She continued to scream for his pumping had become frantic, as if he was desperate for a release, and the pleasure of it would not let her down from the heights of her orgasm until he was done.

His breathing became ragged as tiny droplets of sweat began to form on his forehead and as they fell on her breasts they seemed to enflame her even more. Her vagina was aching, the pleasure of the orgasm turning to pain, and he finally exploded inside of her at the very moment when she was sure that she could take no more of the throbbing heat.

When he fell on top her, depleted, she closed her eyes and was sure that the both of them would faint from the over-excitement of their hungry bodies. She was a little surprised when she felt his lips wrap themselves around her nipple and she opened her eyes just as he began to suck it very gently.

"Who are you?" she demanded, her voice a weak whisper.

He let her nipple slip from his lips and he licked them. "My name is Ladon," he answered just as softly.

"What do you want from me, Ladon?"

"I want nothing save the right to love you forever," he informed her.

Before Shenia could say anything in response to the comment, as if there was anything she could say, the woman that he had been clutching when he was a statue stood up. Her feet had turned to flesh and she was so close to the bed, looking very angry and ferocious, that Shenia was sure that she would strangle the both of them. "You have no right to love her, Ladon," she said in a voice that was half human, half throaty snarl.

"Why don't I, Lilith?" the man demanded.

"She is not one of us and you know it," she accused. "You may play with her for seven days and then you have to return to us in the hell where you belong," she said before her cruel face and form disappeared in a huge, black puff of smoke.

"Lilith?" she asked when the woman was gone.

"She is not the high demon from Hebrew mythology, she simply wishes she was," Ladon answered as if that was supposed to reassure her.

"Then what is she?"

"She is a very low demon on the scale in hell and she used to be my wife," he answered as he looked into her eyes. "But I no longer want her or the life I have with her, I will renounce everything in that life if you will just allow me to stay here with you."

"Why would you want to stay here?" Shenia asked despite the tears that were slowly rolling down her cheeks.

"Because I love you, Nia, I want to be possessed by you," he told her.

She stared at the creature who looked like a man, but had just admitted to being a demon in the same breath that he had used to claim he loved her. "But demons don't have hearts," she said more to herself than to him.

"I have a heart," he said as he rolled off of her, took her hand and placed it over the spot where his heart should have been.

"I don't feel anything," she informed him.

"You can't feel it like you feel yours, my darling, it doesn't beat it whispers."

"Whispers?" she repeated incredulously and when he only nodded she pressed her ear to his chest so that she could hear whatever sound it made and thought she did indeed hear it whispering within him. "Is it saying anything?" she inquired.

He smiled as he nodded. "Listen carefully."

She closed her eyes tightly and tried to listen carefully and thought she heard it saying something that sounded like her name and she recoiled. "You cannot stay here, Ladon," she said as she jumped out of the bed.

Instead of becoming angry and using some queer power to bind her, as she was sure any demon would have, he simply stared at her in bewilderment and began to cry. "But I love you, Nia," he insisted.

She bit her lip as she come closer to him and touched her finger to his face so that she could catch some of the liquid that poured from his gray eyes and splashed onto his dark chocolate skin. He watched her, and made no move to hide his tears, as she put her finger in her mouth to test the authenticity of the tears. "They taste real," she said aloud.

"They are real," he cried. "I love you, Nia and all I want is for you to tell me I can stay so that I don't have to go back to that horrible woman I was holding in seven days."

She shook her head. "Even if I tell you that you can stay, won't they come back for you anyway?" she asked.

"There is a way that they can't take me back," he said, "but it could kill me," he admitted.

"Could it kill me too?"

"It would do you no harm as an innocent, beautiful mortal," he assured her.

"I'd just lose you," she concluded.

He nodded as he starred at her eyes, taking her nakedness for granted. "I love you, Nia."

"Stop calling me that," she said suddenly. "Only my father calls me that and made him stop when I was sixteen."

"I know," Ladon answered sadly.

Shenia looked at him suspiciously. "How do you know?"

"I know because your imagination created me, my love, you forged me into being with your own hands and you taught me how to live with your own heart."

"How could that be? My father said..."

"Your father said what he knows," he answered before she could finish. "The artist truly did make that metal statue without knowing what he was making, but it took years for me to penetrate it and imbue it with my life force so that I could hide from the horrid demon that my wife had become."

"And she came in later?" she asked.

He nodded. "She put her life force in it in order to torture me, but when your father took the statue and brought it here I recognized you and began to try and come to you just as I had in your dreams."

"How did you get in my dreams in the first place?" she demanded as she remembered the first dream she had had of him, when she was sixteen.

"I came into your dreams when you cried out for a lover that would never abuse you the way your first did. I was running through the dream world looking for somewhere to hide and when I found you I couldn't keep myself away."

"And you feel in love with me through my dreams?"

"Yes, my Nia," he said. "Within your dreams, you changed me from the demon I once was and shaped me into a being who could only live with you in his arms and a heart that sung your name," he told her.

"But, Ladon, you must understand that dreams are not real. You were not real to me until a little while ago and you should not be here."

Ladon shook his head and his eyes twinkled as he smiled at her. "My love, you must understand that your dreams might be the most real part of you and there is only a thin veil of gold glitter separating them from what you call reality. With that in mind, I tell you that I have as much right to be here as you do."

Shenia opened her mouth to speak, to deny what he said or to somehow make another reason why he could not stay with her, but she somehow knew that he was right so she closed her mouth and wondered what he would do next. He only smiled at her and held his arms out to her when she looked at him so she walked over to him and laid herself down beside him so that he could wrap her up in his embrace. She sighed at the warmth she felt next to him and wondered if the cold she felt from the statue had been Lilith's only and not attached to him in any way.

All thoughts of Lilith, the statue, and anything else for that matter disappeared when he put her head against his chest and allowed her to hear the queer sound of his heart whispering her name in its chant of devotion. His smile brightened as his fingers tangled themselves in her short, soft locks and he fell asleep with the sweet smell of her breath cooling his chest and her own steady heart beating out a rhythm on his naked skin.

In their dream world, the two of them were walking hand in hand through a garden as the song of spring played itself over and over. They heard birds singing, butterflies flapping their proud wings and various creatures scampering about very close to their bare feet in the lush green grass.

As they walked about, the sun managed to bath them in a radiant light without flying their already dark skin or bothering their minds as they wondered on a plane even higher than the one they were walking in. They were two lovers walking in a garden, but before long they were met by an enlarged version of Lilith with red eyes and a snake's tongue that darted in and out of her mouth as she informed Ladon that his seven days of bliss were up.

She then began to drag the dark skinned, bald Knight away from Shenia even as he screamed and reached for the love of his life and his heart screamed her name. His love tried to snatch him away from his demon wife, but she could do nothing.

"What do I have to do?" Shenia asked as soon as her eyes were open.

"I will show you," Ladon said as her sense of urgency woke him too.

He got out of the bed, walked to the place where the statue had once stood and picked up something else that she had not noticed when she had done her incomplete inspection of the statue that seemed to be giving her the dreams. She admitted that she thought that they had been the strangest, most real dreams that she had not endured since she was very young until she found out from Ladon that they were not dreams at all.