Asmodeus - Demon of Lust: Pt. 08

"Wait," I say, "One of us has to keep up our disguise. What if we need to interact with Mr Carrington again? I can't exactly tell him that I've dyed my hair and worked on my tan since he last saw us."

My hand leaves a dark print on his skin where the salt removes the clay of his disguise. I like the thought of leaving a mark on my King, a symbol of my claim over him. The mark is only temporary of course, and will disappear when he eventually washes his disguise away, but my handprint is rendered faithfully out of his real skin, almost as if it is physical evidence of our connection.

For once, he listens to me and with a heavy sigh, steps away from the tub. He doesn't replace his clothing however; he just leans against the vanity in all his masculine glory and watches me bathe. I want to relax and lie in the tub for a while longer but I find that I cannot while he stands there. My cheeks heat under his gaze and I redouble my efforts to get out quickly. I'm not uncomfortable per se, just so conscious of his all encompassing presence in the small heated room. I wonder, vaguely, if conversation would make this better or worse. Asmodeus does not throw words around haphazardly; he means everything he says. He seems to understand the power in words - their indelible nature - and he chooses them wisely. As a person who has always said spoken her mind, often regardless of the consequences, I find the change as unsettlingly beautiful as an exotic animal. And, for a woman who usually talks a lot, I find that the silences between tend to be surprisingly lovely.

The salt water bath was just what I needed; my skin is so clean it tingles and I'm pleasantly sleepy. It feels great be myself again, though strange also, with the alabaster-skinned stranger in bed beside me. I've never been with this disguised Asmodeus in my own skin before. It's almost as if he's still playing dress-up where I have taken off my own costume. His heat radiates through me from the point where his arm rests against mine, reminding me where his mask conceals that he is still my Demon King. I roll onto my side to face him and smile at how relaxed he is. In a way it's also as if he has become his disguise, and will own the personality to match for however long he wears it.

"You know, most couples wouldn't do this," I tell him.

"Do what, Selena?"

I love the absolute attention he gives me; hanging on every word, no matter how mundane.

"Be together the night before their wedding," I reply, running a hand down his beautifully sculpted body, "Its bad luck, you know."

"We are not most couples," he chuckles, gripping my thigh possessively.

"No we're not," I agree, my heart pounding yet again. God, he is so fucking sexy.

"What should a bride do on the night before her wedding?" he asks, his voice light and teasing.

"Fret about her big day and sleep alone," I say and regret it instantly. "But I'm tired of sleeping alone."

"As am I, my love. I would never be so foolish as to leave your side for the sake of human superstition."

"Good," I reply as I snuggle closer to him and close my eyes, "Because I want you to keep me warm tonight... After you show me exactly how you intend on convincing my family and friends to show up tomorrow."

"You must sleep, it is late."

He smiles, kissing my forehead like I'm a child he is saying goodnight to and I want to punch him. As soon as he tells me to sleep, I find that I cannot. It is late though; the full moon shines bright outside, her light slicing through a gap between the curtains of a large window adjacent to the bed. I'm not sleepy anymore; I want to rip the curtains down and bathe in that light. I want to dance naked under the silvery eye of the beautiful goddess I was named after. I'm too wired to simply sleep, yet Asmodeus suggests it as if it is the simplest thing in the world.

"You never answered my question," I say, sitting up. I won't sleep just because he tells me to and I can't sleep before he explains how he's going to convince my family to attend the wedding. I'm assuming it involves some sort of demonic compulsion, but without a definite answer, I know my musings will just drive me crazy.

"I believe I just have," he replies factually.

"Wait, what? No you didn't!" I say, punching him lightly on the arm.

He laughs at that but says nothing. I know he's waiting for me to figure it out for myself.

"All you said was that I need to sleep -" I start, then groan, "Shit, do I have to be asleep for this master plan of yours to work?"

"Yes."

"Fuck! I wanted to be a part of it."

I want to be the one to convince them; I want them to want to come for me and not because Asmodeus has coerced them. I don't know how I would have pulled that off, but it's what I want.

"Oh, you will Selena. Your involvement is essential."

My heart jumps with excitement.

"How?" I ask, bouncing on my knees a little. The bed springs groan in protest and Asmodeus watches me with amusement lightening his features. He sits up and pulls close to me, meeting my gaze.

"Through their dreams, my love. We will speak to them while they sleep."

I'm speechless for a moment; staring at the breathtaking sight which fills my entire field of vision. He looks so normal but the gift he offers is nothing short of extraordinary and his beautiful eyes are so sincere, so selfless that I feel unworthy of their intensity. In this moment, I truly believe that he is incapable of being evil. Cruel? Maybe. Passionate? Definitely. But never evil. His expression is so utterly unique that I know I will never see it in another human; we're all just too selfish. I look away and release a shaky laugh.

"Well why didn't you say so?" My voice wavers a little, but I keep my composure, "Let's do this."

I lay down again, squeezing my eyes shut.

I take a deep breath and dive into the darkness behind my eyelids, willing the images I find there into dreams. But they remain shadows and my eyes flicker restlessly as an uncomfortable weight presses against them. I'm clearly not sleepy; this is the problem. I find the very effort it takes to attempt sleep is what has me subconsciously scowling. This isn't working. I open my eyes and turn towards Asmodeus, unsurprised to find him watching me.

"Sleep, Selena," he says, stroking my hair.

"I can't," I whine back, leaning into his touch with a heavy sigh.

He moves his hand from my hair onto my face and brushes my lids closed. With my vision darkened, my other senses become hyper aware of him again. My heart races as I feel the heat of his skin against mine and hear his soft breathing. This is definitely not conducive to a quick sleep.

"Breathe deep, my love," he instructs, placing a hand over my heart as if willing it to stop racing.

His touch is electrifying but his voice is wonderfully relaxing. I could quite happily drown under that voice. He uses it to tell me a story.

"I have gone by uncountable names over the span of my life and taken innumerable shapes. I have been both male and female; a slave to the beliefs of humans."

More than a little shocked at that, I open my eyes and mouth to ask him the first question that springs to my lips.

"Close your eyes."

I do, saying nothing and willing the tension out of my shoulders with the release of a long-held breath.

"The beliefs of the many often over-shadow the beliefs of the few. The power of the human collective truly is a remarkable thing. The immortals shift and change according to whims of humans. We become anything they need us to be, reflecting their virtues and desires through forms of their choosing. Early humans gave me no name, but worshipped me in forms which changed over time. I have been men, women, animals and a multitude of shapes which combined the three. Hinduism gave me my first name, Kamadeva, at the dawn of what is known as the Kali Yuga. After the rise of Egyptian culture, I became known as Bes. The Chinese called me Baimei Shen, the Aztec named me Xochiphilli and the Nords named me Freyr. When Christianity rose following the fall of the Roman Empire, I became as I am now. Almost all my shapes have been the most widely recognised sex deities of the time."

My eyes are heavy and my brain is foggy but that doesn't mean I've failed to notice his deliberate exclusion of one very relevant culture. I know Elysia is Greek and that the culture was far too prominent to hold no sway over Asmodeus' given shape.

"Which Greek god were you?" I whisper, my eyes still shut under the weight of my eminent sleep. How quickly his voice has relaxed me.

"Hush," he rumbles, "I was getting to that."

"Hmm..." I moan in agreement, too sleepy to voice my approval. I fight to stay awake and listen to his story, but Gods help me I can feel myself slipping. I focus long enough to realise that he has already started speaking.

"- Dionysus or Bacchus, with a cult of female followers. I was betrothed to a mortal named Ariadne, who was the daughter of a sadistic king. He wished to sacrifice her to a monster conceived by his own wife. Ariadne aided a hero in his quest to slay the beast but was abandoned by him once he had used her to win his crown. Betrayed by the man she loved, I found her weeping his loss and granted her immortality. Had I known then that I would be creating my own nemesis, perhaps I would have walked another path. Truly, I cannot blame her, for she is what I turned her into. A woman scorned twice is a forced to be reckoned with. When I left her for Elysia, her contempt for me festered. She became a creature of hatred - the first demoness. She killed you and in the centuries that I suffered, Roman religion gave me another attribute, naming me Penthos the mournful and her Poena the punisher. It took her centuries to find our son Pan, as he was known, at which time religion was changing again. The Hebrews called her Lilith, the night witch, and she destroyed not only Pan but all worship of him too. Christian beliefs provided me with this powerful frame and my wrath was too great to behold."

Hearing the pain and anger warring in his voice, I open my eyes again - sleep be damned - and attempt to comfort my lover. I rub a palm down his heaving chest but his disquiet only seems to intensify. The rooms melts away until he is all I see and yet, it is not my demon king who remains within my embrace. An achingly beautiful woman lies in his place, pale and luminescent as a full moon. Her hair is bronze, glinting under an unknown light source. Delicate filigree tattoos colour her skin, the ink golden. Her skin shifts just as Asmodeus' does, although only between white and grey. Her eyes are closed in a peaceful sleep and I can't help thinking that she must be an angel. That is, until she opens her eyes.

They are the colour of deepest space, a purple black so cold that their stare cuts right through me. The power of her empty eyes is so horrific that it seems to steal the very air from my lungs. I gasp for a breath, only to realise that this terrible angel has wrapped her elegant fingers around my neck. I claw at her face desperately, ripping my fingernails against her unyielding skin and all the while she laughs a sound which reminds me ravens screaming. To no avail, I will my power to save me. I am prey to her, nothing more than carrion and she will devour my body once my spirit flees.

"No!" I hear the roar, "You will not take her again!"

All at once, the creature choking me disappears in a curl of silver smoke. Suddenly able to breathe again, my body launches off the bed. I inhale a huge lungful of my attacker's strange essence and almost choke on it. Asmodeus is at my side a second later and holds me as I wheeze in breath after agonising breath. He wears his own skin here, portrayed in this dream as he truly is.

"I am sorry, my Selena," Asmodeus croaks, remorse dragging his voice down, "This is my doing. I should have cleared my mind before you succumbed to sleep."

"I'm asleep?" I rasp, when my lungs allow voice.

"You have entered my dreams, a dangerous place while she lurks here. I was foolish to bring you."

"Lilith?" I whisper, afraid that saying her name out loud will summon her once more, "She's alive?"

"Only here," he growls, face darkening as he taps his temple, "She is two millennia dead and yet still she plagues my existence."

"She's so... strong," I say, shuddering as the remnant of her hold closes my throat once more, "She couldn't really kill me here, could she?"

"In a dream she has the power to crush your spirit so completely that you would sleep until your body dies. She has strengthened with my fears. Now that I have you, my darkest fear is that you will be taken from me," he says, and his face sets with grim determination, "She will not have you this time."

Wordlessly, I embrace my love, both needing to comfort him and be comforted. I hold him so tight it hurts as he encompasses me within his strong arms. I feel so safe here, as if I am protected from everything, even the dream witch who just tried to kill me. Even she cannot harm me here.

When we break apart, I reach for his hand as I take in our dreamscape. As if to reflect his mood, Asmodeus' dream is dark and hostile. It's not hard to imagine Lilith lurking in the shadows, just waiting for her chance to pull me into oblivion. A smoky mist swirls at our feet as Asmodeus leads me to an unseen destination. When he looks back at me, his red eyes seem to spark in the darkness and his silver hair looks like a crown of glory atop his head. He looks like he belongs here and now that I think about it, I suppose he does. He is a mythical creature walking through the land of dreams.

Following directions only he can see, my lover stops walking and pulls me to his side. We stand at the edge of a precipice; the seemingly endless expanse stretched before us is made even more treacherous by the sheer drop which precedes it. The mist which fills it isn't dark like the vapour surrounding us but silver with thousands of throbbing, weaving threads of gold floating within. It is mesmerising to watch and I am captivated so thoroughly that it seems as if the gold threads are swimming behind my eyes.

A sudden heart-stopping jerk brings me back to reality - well, this dream reality anyway. Asmodeus pulls hard on my shoulders and crushes me against his chest protectively. Before I can protest, some earth gives way beneath my feet and I realise how close I came to falling. So hypnotised was I by the golden threads that I almost walked off a cliff.

"That is twice now I have endangered you. We must leave."

His voice his firm and his expression resolved but I'm not leaving without a fight.

"No! You promised me that I could help convince my family. I'm staying until I do that."

"Selena..." he groans, disapprovingly.

"I'm staying. We can hurry this up and get out of here or we can spend even more time arguing," I smile a little and turn to face him, "Who knows what kind of trouble I'll get into if we waste any more time?"

He snorts a laugh and takes my hand in his, kissing the palm and lacing our fingers together.

"You can be very persuasive," he grumbles.

"It's a gift," I reply, as we walk together to the edge of the cliff.

"Alright," I say, "What are we looking at?"

"Human dreams," he answers, reaching into the abyss with a clawed hand and summoning a golden thread to us.

As it grows closer, it expands until it resembles thick rope. Each weave of the rope hums with energy and I watch with utter fascination as images dart through them, like little surges of electricity through copper wire. Asmodeus catches the rope as it comes closer still and inspects it.

"A female, who goes by the name Layla dreams of her life before the one she now leads." He explains, his eyes still scrutinising the threads. He draws the rope even closer still and with his power he separates the threads into individual strands and expands the images coursing through them.

"This," he observes, expanding the silently laughing image of a handsome dark skinned man from the woman's dream, "Is Mark, Layla's former lover and mentor. It has been decades since Mark has laughed with her like this; I feel her longing for this ease between them to return."

Underneath this golden thread, a bronze thread writhes violently and wraps itself around Layla's sweet dream, infecting it with fear. In this nightmare, Mark turns into a monster who hunts a woman with an innocence about her which says that she is only just old enough to be considered a woman. With ebony hair and chocolate eyes, she looks a lot like me. The creature Mark catches her, holding her tight in his arms and for a moment it seems that she forgets what he is. Then he presses his lips to her throat as if to kiss her and I hear a lush tearing, followed by Layla's gurgled scream. Her blood flows thick and fast, spilling past the corners of Mark's dark lips. Layla meanwhile, loses the vibrancy in her warm brown skin until it turns ashen and her eyelids flutter shut. I watch in horror, wanting to comfort this stranger so like me, seduced by an otherworldly creature. Lucky for her though, this nightmare is just that and will be banished the moment she wakes up.

The nightmare changes as another bronze thread consumes the previous one and plays out a new heartbreaking scene. Layla, now hard and pale with none of her innocence still intact, looks over a graveyard under the shade of an old marble catacomb entrance. Below her, a large family buries their loved one.

"The coffin is empty," Asmodeus says, "Layla is witnessing her own funeral."

"What a strange dream," I whisper, too fascinated to look away.

"Who's that?" I ask, pointing at a devastated young woman, whose grief is so great that she sinks to her knees before Layla's empty coffin and dissolves into a flood of tears.

"Her twin sister," he replies, "Her name is Sandra."

"Layla and Sandra?" I ask, confused. The names strike a chord with me, but I can't find the elusive revelation they will surely bring. I'm pretty sure I don't know any Laylas and the only Sandra I know is my grandmoth-

"Holy shit!" I exclaim, as realisation dawns on me.

"You may know the surviving sister as Sandra Ma, who lost her twin Layla when they were eighteen. Layla and Sandra were their simple names, they were born Laghima and-"

"Singaramal," I gasp, astounded by the possibility that I am visiting the strange dreams of my long dead great aunt.

"Wait," I whisper, heart pounding, "How are we even seeing her dreams? She's dead."

"She is very much alive Selena."

"What?! No way! This is incredible!" I shout, eyes darting through the threads of my supposedly long lost relative, "What happened to her?! How'd she disappear and why hasn't she returned if she's still alive? She's what, seventy-two now?"

"Indeed she is, Selena. But she cannot return to her family."

"Why not?"

"She is an immortal, my love. The body you see in her dream is the one she still possesses."

"Wait, what?" I ask, struggling to process revelation after stunning revelation.

"Arkamun, born three millennia before your grandmother, began using the name Markus after the rise of Christianity. He posed as a farm hand when your grandmother was a teenager and fell in love with her sister. Layla joined him and was never again seen by her family. He turned her into what she is now."

"A vampire?" I can't believe that I'm actually expecting confirmation for such a ridiculous question.

"Yes."

"And how is it that he is what he is?"

"Pan inadvertently created him, gifting his lineage to a mortal woman who would birth the first vampire."