The Things That Bind Us- Damirae

Chapter Ten

...That was not hell.

Raven trusted she knew that much. A red childhood in these pits left a vivid image in Raven's mind; they were a long way from Kansas...if by Kansas you meant the steaming heap of sin known as Trigon's realm.

Cold, unrelenting metal met her neck. Raven's feet were planted. A passing car sent her hair sprawling over her eyes.

"Where are we?" Damian asked.

Raven had thought him attractive, drawn him in to her arms, and perhaps she'd allowed herself to forget how dangerous he was. The blade could have sliced through her neck before she'd even blinked under the street lamps. He was a killer. Sophisticated, thorough. Klarion had told her the stories. The massacres. He was exhilarating, she knew, but the callousness that sometimes flattened his eyes, it was frightening.

Raven looked up in to the twilight of a blue moon and and assortment of planets brazenly suspended overhead, like a magnified marble collection. She looked down the stretch of asphalt that she could decipher neither beginning nor end of. Lining the motorway were shops, their signs swirling a multitude of languages- the angelic tongue too- as they swayed in some barely tangible wave. This dark sky bore no clouds, only speckles of silver setting the background for the bowling-ball celestial bodies.

Damian had asked a rather good question that she didn't have an answer for.

It was paradoxical. You couldn't open a portal to an unknown place. There were laws of magic- the supernatural equivalents to the laws of physics.

"I swear-"

"What is your word worth?" Damian bit back, sword not shifting an inch.

She glanced at him in the corner of her eyes. He'd slit her throat before she could pronounce any formal spell. A repulsive burst of magic would only send the sword slashing through her. What then? Hypnosis? Emotional manipulation?

She looked in to his eyes and knew that it wouldn't work. Raven didn't imagine that sex and some casual flirting had created enough of an attachment between them- if any at all- to stop him from painting the pavement with her blood; only a human vegetable wouldn't feel some mental probing.

"Listen, I don't know where we are, or how we're here. But killing me will only leave you stranded here- wherever 'here' is."

Unwinding his tense jaw, Damian resheathed the katana. He was reassured in her bodily responses: dilated pupils, increased heart rate- he had made her afraid. Damian wouldn't have to worry about being defenceless against this demon. The moon that hovered far overhead was bright. The rest of the sky was blacker than the Earth's view of the heavens- none of the cloudy navy. He wondered what kind of creatures this sky watched over.

A beep beep gave him the answer needed.

A car, lean and hellishly fast (as in, flames billowing from behind it) slammed to a stop in front of them, real casual like. The tinted window rolled down to reveal a read interior and-

"Well hello there, I thought I felt a chill sweep the realm."

"Uncle Lucifer!"

Raven breathed a sigh of relief.

Lucifer the Morningstar, cool as a cucumber and perfectly debonaire, let his sunglasses droop a centimetre lower to survey the man with his own, two, red eyes. The Devil smirked.

"Hop in kids." The door nearest to them popped open.

The red leather awaited them.

Damian glanced at his companion; she raised an eyebrow and tilted her head towards the car. He climbed in before her, laying his sword on his lap. Raven closed the door with a soft thud.