Love & Exorcisms | 18+ | COMPLETE |

- Chapter 62 -

Kiiji

All the candles in the room guttered. The temperature dropped, and Kiiji felt it like a heavy blanket of ice dropping over him. Typical demonic theatrics. He wasn't surprised that Thanatos was trying it. The problem was, this particular demon had the strength and cruelty to back up his display. This wasn't just an attempt at being frightening to hide one's weakness.

Thanatos was a threat: one of the greatest threats ever faced by the Echelons, and certainly the greatest to the world of humans.

And he was finally awake: one of the ancient Kings of Hell.

He crouched on the bed, giving off a faint sickly yellow glow in phosphorescent patches of moldering skin. Pale and sunken, his pupil-less eyes still saw too much. Samara's breath was shuddering, and Kiiji could smell the fear coming off of her. He wanted to shake her, beg her to hold it together.

But she had good reason to be afraid. Even Kiiji had to fight the urge not to vanish.

The demon opened its mouth, revealing rows of rotten blackened teeth and a gray tongue. The room was accosted with the heavy scent of damp earth and old wood. It put Kiiji in mind of the old cemeteries, awash after flooding with caskets half-out of the earth, damp and rotting in the sun.

From that horrific mouth came a chuckle, deep and masculine. Thanatos, the Pale Rider, lifted a bony hand and shook his finger in reproach. "Oh, now, reaper," he taunted. "What a dangerous edge you walk. Yet you've already interfered, so many times. Not so different from your sister now, are you? The both of you sniffing about, watching, wanting oh-so-terribly to stick your nose in."

Furious heat rushed through him. He felt as if he could set ablaze. Lijiali...his sister...why... "Is Lijiali here? In this city?" he demanded. If she was...if Lijiali had descended from on high and was here...

He'd suspected it. He'd feared she would come, but had hoped it wouldn't come to that. Reapers weren't supposed to interfere. But when they did...

It was because they believed the balance of the worlds was at stake.

Again, the demon chuckled. "Oh now, now. I won't go ruining surprises." Those pearly white eyes rolled in his head and Kiiji suppressed a shudder. He'd been walking among humans so long he had even begun to pick up their odd exhibitions of fear. But Thanatos had his eyes on Samara now, who stood stiff and still like a woman facing the gallows. The demon growled, "Well? Are you done struggling?"

Samara shook her head rapidly. Kiiji felt like cheering for her, Don't show fear! Don't let him intimidate you! But she had every reason to be afriad. They both did.

"No," she said softly. "No, I'll never stop fighting you-"

Although he had no pupils, by his motion Kiiji could tell that Thanatos rolled his eyes. "The others will play sweet little games with you, Samara. I don't play games."

He rose up, standing on the bed. He wore wispy bits of decaying white cloth that moved around him slowly, as if suspended in water. Kiiji stepped back. He shouldn't be there...the risk...what if he called for Damian...but it would interfere...he couldn't interfere...

Thanatos leaned down, seized Samara's chin in his cold, sponge-like fingers, and hissed, "I'm done waiting."

And like dark, thick slime, Thanatos dissolved and slithered down the girl's throat.

Samara shuddered, seizing and choking. She fell to her knees, clutching at her throat, struggling to breath as the demon overtook her. Kiiji watched in horror, Damian's name on the tip of his tongue. Call him, call him, call him! And forfeit his life for interference, for disrupting what his kind would call "the natural progression of things?" Damned laws...damned treatise...