Damien Night Ch. 07

"My soul? So are you going to turn into a little red-skinned man with black horns and a pitchfork?" She was giggling despite the little knot of hurt in her chest; truly insane. When her eyes lit on him, however, he was looking at her curiously with a little frown. "You can't be serious."

"Well not in the sense you're thinking." He said casually.

NO!

He was laughing softly and it took her a few minutes to realize she hadn't said it out loud. No, she was patiently waiting for him to explain what he meant instead of trying to leave. What was wrong with her?

"Curiosity gets me in trouble all the time." He commented in a nostalgic tone.

"Well this is not something I need to be curious about." She started trying to get up, but her body did not want to cooperate much to her dismay.

"But you are curious." He knelt down; smoldering green eyes level with hers and his voice smooth as silk in a cool breeze. How the hell did demons become equated with red-skinned goat men? Her stomach flipped in her torso threatening to unload whatever it was she ate last.

"What do you mean 'not in the sense I'm thinking'?"

He said there was no proof of God and now he wanted her soul? Demons lie. That's what they do, but she fucking asked anyway? What the fuck was wrong with her?

"Because you'd kick yourself forever if you didn't...well for a few years anyway." He seemed to be getting a great deal of amusement out of this situation. "I'm not a demon, Annabel. I might masquerade as the myth, and there is a good chance someone like me started it, but I'm just a creature like you."

"Yeah don't start that 'cut me do I not bleed' bullshit, because you don't. And demons lie." She managed to prop herself up on her elbows, but it still left her feeling woozy.

"I don't lie. Why would I? I have to remember that shit 50, 100, even 1000 years from now." At least he stopped laughing.

"Well I won't be here 100 years from now." She said bitterly, giving into the way the room spun and lying back against the comfort of the mattress.

"Yes you will." He stood and turned, showing off those strange tattoos, and his ass, as he walked away.

"And how is that, Damien?"

"Because you're going to say yes."

It was a lie to say the thought of living longer than even 100 years didn't make her think stupid things. All this time she'd avoided any idea of what he might give her. You don't make deals with demons or whatever the fuck he was.

Yeah, and Hell...

"Not sure where hell came from. My world isn't anything like that." He brushed his hand against the strange violet wood of the closet door and it opened. "It's quiet...well maybe it would be hell to you. There is no sound there."

"Your world?"

Damien disappeared into the closet.

"Oh you'll need every year you get from me to understand it all. There are so many worlds...all right here." He poked his head out of the closet to point at the ground in front of him before disappearing again.

"So if there is no Hell what do you want with my soul?"

He came back out wearing a pair of black pajama pants and carrying something wrapped in a deep blue shimmering fabric with silver embroidery on it. He set it on the bed beside her.

"It's you."

"Right, the soul is everything you are...blah, blah, blah."
"No. To hell with the soul. I used the word because it is the closest thing I suppose. It's your connection to this world, the people in it, the things around it, animals, air, quarks, whatever. It's also the reason you die. It's the tie to the conveyor belt that dumps you off somewhere I can't go. I don't want you to leave."

"Oh?" Annabel frowned, unsure what to say. He wasn't looking at her as he rattled all that off, carefully unwrapping the pretty package between them as he spoke. Something stuck: somewhere he couldn't go.

Heaven?

"Maybe." Damien said softly. Not having to say anything was strange.

"And if I give up this connection you're talking about..." She asked out loud. "Where will I go?"

"With me."

He now had the fabric laid out. Silver embroidery laid out a set of his runes across the 2 foot long rectangle of dark blue cloth, a simple silver dagger with a one inch cross guard and twisted metal handle lay beside it, and he held what looked to be a short dark wooden dowel that was burned black and somewhat sharpened at one end.

"Forever?"

He looked up from what he was doing, "Forever is a long time."

"So I give up a chance at heaven to hang out with you until you get tired of me?"

"No, you give up a chance at an unknown world to learn everything you can about what you are and what I am, and, hell, anything else we want to do." He grinned then took a long hard look at the dowel in his hand which proceeded to smoke slightly, a thin stream of cloudy gray seeping upward into nothing.

"And when you get tired of me?" She pressed.

He looked at her for a moment, his brows crinkling together as he thought. "I'll give you back your connections. I can't say you'll want them by then, but there's your deal."

Some small voice of reason was screaming 'no' in her head, but she lost a firm hold with reason about a week ago. What was the alternative? She walks out the door, he keeps her only means of protection, and something less pleasant gets a hold of her?

"But it's not just that is it?" He had lowered himself to his knees beside the bed, his arms crossed in front of him with his chin resting on the mattress and the charcoal pencil dangling been the index and middle fingers of his right hand. He looked almost vulnerable at that moment.

"Not being able to think in private is mildly unfair."

"Only to you."

Annabel shook her head and stared up at the ceiling wondering how the hell she was supposed to make a decision like this. There had never been a god telling her anything. Honestly, Damien was the closest thing to God she'd ever seen, and now he offered her a chance she would always wonder about for the rest of her godforsaken life. It wasn't like she had a connection with anything else on this crap planet anyway.

"That's not entirely true." Damien broke into her silent revelry.

"Huh?" She tilted her head to look at him again.

"Everyone is connected. You may not feel it now, but you'll feel it when it's gone." He said somberly, rising as he spoke.

"Why tell me that if you want me to go with you?" She asked, still thinking of him as the demon attempting to win her for his master.

"It's the rule. You have to know what you are giving up before you can give it up. I didn't make it...just have to follow it." He said with a frown.

"So there are rules to taking souls...interesting. I always thought you would be free to say whatever the hell you wanted." She laughed sardonically.

"Yes. For some reason there are." Damien's tone was more of a grumble. "And don't ask me how you'll feel it. My kind is connected to nothing...generally."

The last word was added after he looked at her a moment. Somehow they were connected, crazy as it seemed. Annabel took a deep breath knowing there was no going back from this, but also knowing she had no clue what exactly she was giving up and never would.

"It's yours."

A weight settled across her chest, one that made her want to panic simultaneously with the knowledge that there was no point. The prerequisites had been fulfilled. She was his.

Damien kneeled on the edge of the bed and he walked on all fours like a cat until he straddled her hips. He grasped the sheet that covered her between his thumb and forefinger and began to slip it off her breasts.

"What are you doing?" There was an alarm in her voice as she held fast to the thin protection though it was futile now and she knew it.

"Preparing a space to write. Let go."

Annabel did as he asked and the soft fabric slipped down her waist leaving her more naked than she had ever been in her entire life. Damien laid the cool silken cloth across her breasts and lifted the blackened stick of wood.

"Shouldn't you have told me this wasn't going to be pleasant before I said yes?" Annabel said as she fought the urge to squirm from under him.

"I figured that was a given."

The wood was not overly warm against her skin as he started to copy the runes from the cloth, but that wasn't what had her on edge. She could feel the intention building. Somehow not even Damien knew the extent of this decision so he managed to skirt a rule without even knowing it. She swore the universe shuddered at the first stroke of black, but a deal was a deal and even the knowledge of the beginning of time couldn't undo what the two of them had just done.

"I should have thought this through more."

"Oh you're saying that now?" Damien completed the first rune of six, and Annabel had the sudden need to claw onto something as if the entire world had just tipped sideways and she was doomed to slide off into nothing. "Apparently you thought it through enough. A deal was struck."

"What do you mean?" She asked as she watched him draw the next lines with the same care one might give to holding an angry bottle of nitroglycerin.

He had his bottom lip between his white teeth as he hit sharp corners and ended with a swirl before lifting the writing implement.

"The rules are very specific. I can't manipulate you in any way. You have to give this up under your own volition." He set back to lettering in that bizarre language on a seemingly random point of her abdomen.

I have to be that stupid,she thought to herself bringing her knees up behind him no longer able to resist the urge to fight.

"Don't. Move." He hissed. "I fuck this up and we are both screwed."

Annabel squeezed her eyes shut and tried to breath.

"How the hell am I supposed to stay still? The wrongness of the situation is somewhat overwhelming."

"Well of course it is. We are going against nature." He was very calm and matter of fact which was just a little irritating. It was, of course, too late to start wondering what the hell she'd been thinking.

Every mark somehow tore at something inside her. Damien hadn't lied. He said she would feel the connection when she lost it, and that he had no idea how she'd feel it. A futile wish that he could have warned her came and left. This loss had no words and she would have said yes anyway. She had no clue what she was losing and still didn't.

Annabel felt the sting of salt on her skin as tears slipped from the corners of her eyes while she stared at the stark white ceiling above her. She was a bird that had taken the bait and would sing from the bars of her cage forever. And then the weight of forever pressed down on her and she wanted to scream but there was no room to breathe.

"It's almost over, Annabel. Just a moment more." Damien whispered. "One rune for the Earth, one for fire, one for water, and one for air. One for the light and the last for the dark...for me."

His voice was a methodical chant and she concentrated on it as he finished whatever it was he did. There was no pain only an awful emptiness pushing against any warmth she had ever felt in life. Damien's voice, the chanting description of the magic he worked, lulled her away from her regret as the world slipped away through her tears.

"Somehow I thought there would be more fanfare with that."

Annabel had just noticed the lengthened silence when he spoke. When she looked up she was surprised to find a haggard version of the demigod she was used to. Dark rings now rested beneath his emerald eyes and he was staring on the charcoal drawing stick he held in his hand.

"I guess that's why demons don't actually collect souls." She said in a faraway voice.

"We must have once because the instructions were there."

He climbed off her, standing unsteady once he slid off the edge of the bed. She would have asked him if managed to do it, but there was no doubt. Everything had changed and whatever he had done had nearly killed him from the look of it. Now all that was left was to figure out where they went from here.

Annabel sat up without difficulty looked down at the runes across her torso. They were fading except for the last just beneath her breasts, the one he named the dark for him. She watched curiously as she flexed her limbs noticing her strength had completely returned where his was completely gone.

"I guess they are a 'one and done' kind of thing."

"Those that have completed the purpose they were written for fade." Damien folded the charcoal writing implement back into the dark blue shimmering silk as he spoke. "The last binds you to me and will remain until I release you."

Up until that moment the shit she'd dealt with had a measure of difficulty she was not prepared for and still not sure how to handle, but the effects were long-term and she decided to just take it one day at a time. That wasn't everything unfortunately. She watched Damien hit his knees at the side of the bed before the pain slammed into her: a fire bloomed deep inside from her center beneath the rune that remained. She screamed, clutching her body in some futile effort to protect herself. The next minute the pain was gone and she was floating. For a second she thought she was dead until it occurred to her that the soft sobs she heard were her own.

"Holy fuck what was that?!" Damien yelped from beside her. He was barely supporting himself on the edge of the bed and his skin had gone the color of soured milk.

Annabel's stomach turned and she brought a trembling hand to her forehead. She grabbed the headboard and hauled herself upright again to get another look at her stomach. The color had change to a smooth dull black over the powdery jet black of the burned wood streaked across her skin. It looked like one of Damien's tattoos.

Damien turned to sit on the edge of the bed and his eyes slid over to her.

"So that's what that feels like."

"What what feels like?" She asked, hoping like hell there wasn't going to be any more surprises.

"One of these." He pointed to a random rune on his body.

"Really? You have at least 10 of the damn things and you didn't know that was going to happen?" She snapped.

"Until just now I couldn't feel pain, at least not the way you feel it." His voice was worn. Well shit neither of them had benefited in any way from this exchange. It would make sense if the devil was playing tricks.

Damien started laughing and shaking his head.

"What? Maybe we just figured out there is a God and I just fucked myself." Annabel bit out.

He flashed her rueful grin and she knew exactly what he was thinking without him saying a word.

"No, it seems there are a few benefits to this I was unaware of."

"Like what?" Annabel grumbled wishing she'd had a choice between the pain and the disconnected emptiness she now faced. Pain hands down, though only if she had to bare it for the short time she did. Maybe. That did really fucking hurt.

Damien looked at her then at the little nightstand to the side of the bed. The dark solid wood sat unassuming holding a simple lamp and some random papers. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly, the quintessential Cheshire cat, and the sturdy block lifted and smashed a hole in the far wall leaving a path of random things people might store in a nightstand behind it.

"Holy shit!" Annabel grabbed the thick down comforter and pulled it protectively against her chest with visions of Damien going stark raving evil. "Why can you do that now?"

"My connection with this world has always been tenuous limiting what I can do in it. Apparently what I took from you changed that. I'm curious what my limit is." He seemed to shrink however, climbing back into the bed beside her and resting his back against the dark headboard. "Thinking isn't one of my strong points." He said after a few moments then he looked at her. "I have an awful feeling in my stomach. Is that you?"

"You feel everything I feel?" Her death grip on the comforter relaxed.

"It would seem...or I'm dealing with feelings." He was shaking his head.

"There's a dread...like we've done something that somehow affects the whole world." She said.

"Maybe you're just being dramatic."

Annabel stood up and started throwing her clothes on.

"Where are you going?"

"I just need to think. Something I should have done before I did this, but, really, what the hell are consequences now?"

He made no move to stop her. It didn't matter in truth. She was his in a way no human had belonged to another in more years than any sentient being could remember. He could find her, bring her back, send her into nothing...whatever he wished. The rush of that power and the things he could suddenly conflicted with something else. She could leave. He needed Aaron.