There was a store that was wedged between two taller buildings, it looked squeezed, as if the neighbours were closing in slowly. The sign was old, some letters had become illegible in the peeling paint and the windows were dirty, the frightening artifacts on display were clearly antique. There was no theme to them or colour coordination and they were crammed together messily rather than artistically arranged.
He pushed the door open and a bell rang. The building was far longer than it was wide, almost a corridor with shelving spanning both sides. The tall bookshelves that framed the walls, had a slight layer of dust coating the wood and it seemed as though the place had been completely abandoned. But, there the woman stood, a wooden cane in her hand, awaiting his arrival.
He made his way to the elder and they cut right to the chase. They spoke in hushed voices as if they were scared someone would hear them. She told him everything over again, like she had not so long ago. Her words began to map themselves out on an invisible spreadsheet in his mind.
He wanted to know everything, he wanted to change everything.
A gun sat heavy in his belt holster and when his hand clasped it, he felt the cool metal that brought a sense of sovereignty. He wanted to kill and he had all the tools he required to do it.
But before he arms himself for the beginning of the apocalypse, he desired to understand how to end it.
"How do we kill him?" Zayn asked and the old, brittle lady who owned Dornwhich's Alternative Spirituality and Demonology library, sighed as she gripped her cane tightly.
"You need to take away it's only reason for living."
***
Nina can't really remember just how she got home. She only remembers being dropped off alongside her ashamed Grandmother by Zayn, who promised to be back shortly. The memory was blurred, and Nina doesn't know if that was due to the heavy rainfall or her salty tears.
She does though, remember Zayn's words perfectly. They replayed over and over in the back of her mind like a broken record player, scratching and etching their words all throughout her mind and even onto her skin. And, they hurt, Everything hurts.
She knew just what she had to do. She just didn't know what the demon would require for her life in return. Or if he would even consider her offer.
A piano could be heard as it played darkly and slowly, carrying it's rhythm from the downstairs office, and up all the way to Nina's room. Grandmother Mary secluded herself away once again. She couldn't bare to look at Nina, and Nina refused to ever look into her pale grey eyes ever again.
The girl sat on the edge of her bed. She still was wearing her blue raincoat and dirty shoes, not bothering to get changed or brush out the tangled knots in her long hair. All she could do is sit and cry as she stared outside her bedroom window, and if she wasn't doing that, she was gnawing at the insides of her mouth nervously. She felt like she was being watched and it terrified her to the core.
She started to taste the metallic of blood.
Her legs began to bounce nervously as her tear stains began to dry up. Nina worried and she wondered just where Grayson was. She had texted him a while before but he had yet to respond. She needed her brother the most she had ever needed him.
Grayson was her safety and her shelter when any storm hits. Being his sister in her life, Nina owed Grayson more than she could ever give. There had always been some unmentioned tie to the siblings. Maybe it was because of the absence of their parents, or the abandoned shell of their Grandmother who was never mentally there to raise them.
The siblings had raised each other. Grayson raised Nina, and to her hopes, Nina raised Grayson.
She prayed he was safe. She hoped he could carry on if she does indeed, die.
Nina turns her phone screen on for, what seemed like, the hundredth time that night, but her home screen was still empty. No reply.
"What could he even be doing?" She mumbled, throwing her phone to the side and laying back into her warm bedsheets. It was when she looked up at her ceiling that it finally clicked in her head. Whilst in George's car, before she had cut him off, he had mentioned he was hosting a party tonight. Grayson had to be there! It made sense why he wasn't responding.
She will wait for Grayson to come home after the party.
Tiredness had consumed her. It wasn't the kind of tired that needs a good night's sleep, it was one that yearned for her pain to reside and to never return. Her eyes stung from crying all day and her cheeks felt like every tear stain had burned their journey upon her pale flesh. Her pain felt like it once was a heavy jacket but it had now become heavy bones. Moments passed as she still laid in bed staring at her white walls, her heavy eyelids kept drooping closed but as the darkness came, she always forced them open. Each time she did so, it became harder to continue.
Again, her eyelids fell, until she didn't open them once more...
Hell wasn't the caves of doom that she had imagined. There wasn't any piercing cries of torture or satanic sacrifices, but rather the burning down of her own home. The world was much darker here, much more rotten as everything looked abandoned, but never-less it still looked the same.
This hallway looked much like her own, but flames had engulfed them and the wooden panels of the floors had begun to cave in under the fire. Nina began to panic and the smoke began to fill her lungs. Every-time her lungs demanded air and she breathed in, she gagged as only thick smog filled it's place. She started to run.
The fire licked her skin as she ran down the stairs, dodging the blaze that only became more dangerous with every second that passed. Her skin felt raw and her chest began to collapse within itself as she finally made her way to the door, crying to be freed. Her tears were no match against the heat of everlasting flames that were flaring with attractive brilliancy.
With gratitude, she ran to the end of her driveway that met with the forest entry. She falls to the dirt, gasping as she the digs her hands into the ashes of her home that sent up glowing embers into the sky, only to feel the kiss of refreshing air. The inferno was gone and her body laid in the dirty floor of the earth's ground. The sunset was glowing orange ahead. There was no rain in this world.
The shadows of passing clouds and the effects of sunset turning into moonlight, all offer such totally different colouring and picturesque effects that an artistic eye is never tired of. Hell was alluring, but dangerous in it's very own beauty. As she got lost staring up into the moonlight, she felt a droplet fall onto her face, the water sliding down her face, coldly.
The droplets then came in few numbers, until they fell all at once. Thrashing upon her shaking frame. She picked herself up and stood, the dirt now turning into a thick mud around her. Nina then looked to her house that was once burning down in orange flames, but it wasn't anymore. It looked the same as it ever did. There was no fire. There were no ashes.
Her heart began to beat fast, quickening her breathing once more and then a tall shadow appeared before her. It morphed and sharpened, soon turning into the figure of a man. She screamed.
An ominous laugh that came from him startled Nina out of her abysmal nightmare; but it seemed this wasn't a nightmare, it was real life.
Her cheeks were wet and her body was bathed in a cold sweat. The man licked his rosy lips, all the while staring at Nina like she was a fragile morsel. She took a step backwards only to find herself meeting the bark of a tall pine tree. She was trapped as the demon began to close in on her, cornering her with no where else to go.
"Stay away!" She demanded. The evil glint in his forest-green eyes pushed away her idea of offering any alternative for her life in return. He looked as if he was ready to kill, and that there was nothing she could do to stop him from doing so.
The demon only tusked, smirking as he edged his way closer to the frightened girl. "Now, who are you to be giving me commands? If I recall correctly, I own you."
"Please!" She cried as he was now in arms reach. "Don't kill me-"
The demon clasped his hand around her dainty neck, cutting her off. Her milky-white skin, now turning crimson as she struggled to breathe. He watched her slowly edge her way to death with pained eyes. She didn't want it this way. She always pictured herself dying as a wrinkled woman, who drifted off to sleep for her last night.
The demon hated it when the humans died too soon, but he had to punish them. They were dirty, their ways were filthy and wanton. If they refused his lesson, he sliced them, if they fought back, he sliced deeper. He was firm and fair; they were whiny and without morals.
But he didn't want to hurt her, he didn't want to break her bones. He only wanted to hold her delicately like she was a piece of glass, unworthy of being shattered by his rough hands.
His tight grip loosened and she gasped for air. Her scarlet cheeks slowly returning back to their pale state as he only brushed the skin of her neck elegantly. Nina was still pinned between the tree and his chest as he then hid his face in the crook of her neck. She felt the warmth of the demon's breath against her flesh as he began to softly brush his lips against it.
She started to squirm in his grasp, but his hold began to tighten again, warning her not to move any further. She froze.
"P-please." She cried. "S-stop."
He didn't stop. His silky tongue licked at her skin and his strong hands moved from the grip around her neck. His fingers now, curling and pulling on her hair, demanding her head to go back as it hit the tree and exposed more flesh of her neck for him to explore. Every time Nina closed her eyes he bashed her head backward onto the oak demanding she open them. She didn't want to, she closed them over and over, anything rather than watch his face light up with with power and lust. There was love flickering in the demon's cruel eyes, so inappropriate for the setting.
She continuously, pathetically pleaded for him to stop, until it finally worked. The demon became frustrated with her cries, ripping his mouth away from her neck and admiring his work. He then tore his eyes away from his masterpiece and to the artwork in which was her face that had been painted with salty tear tracks. She sobbed. "Please, don't kill me."
She was scared. Terrified. She was in the deepest, darkest layer of Hell, being consumed in the arms of Lucifer himself.
He laughed. High and dismissive, right in her face. Nina's heart dropped, he wasn't going to spare her.
"I'm not going to kill you." He spoke, his voice becoming soft and velvety as he brushed her sticky cheeks, soothingly. "I wouldn't want to ruin my most prized possession."
Nina shuddered at his words, her jaw clenching as she tried not to thrash in his strong grip. She feared that if she made one wrong move, he would just snap her into a million pieces. Nina didn't understand what he meant, she wasn't a possession and she definitely wasn't valuable. She feared most, what he wished to do with her if the demon doesn't intend to kill her.
Nina's curiosity gets the best of her, as she spits her next words into his face. "What do you want from me?"
The demon only smiled. His eyes a little too glossy to be normal, like he was looking at her in fondness. Rain falls in crazy, chaotic drops, the gusting wind carrying them in wild vortices one moment and in diagonal sheets the next. It runs down his face as a thin layer and drenching his dark hair entirely. He then digs his nails forcefully into her left cheek and watches the way Nina's blood begins to rise in the cuts he had caused. He loved the crimson hue it brought to her pale face.
"You are rightfully mine." He said, green eyes mapping out every inch of her face and burning it into the back of his mind for later. "I intend to take you when the time comes, and have you by my side forevermore. You as mine, I as yours."
He dug his nails in deeper, blood now seeping down her face. Her scream was stifled. She could hear him panting, the pleasure in his breath, like an animal in heat. He was not stealing but rather claiming what was to be rightfully his.
Her body had lost all its strength. Nina's mind shattered and the rest of her followed suit. Without the hatred she held for the demon, her fear would have crumbled and just given into him. But the burning hatred fought her weakness. It was all so wrong! Nina would rather die than be his personal convenience for the rest of eternity. She will never give in to his powers, she will never rightfully be his! She sniffled and put on a strong face. She slowed down her tears and glared into his eyes. As green met green, the demon could see that same hatred that burned in her own.
"Never." She hissed. "I would rather die."
The demon tutted and shook his head. Taking a step away, he clasped his hands together behind his back. "Shame."
"Such a waste of such beauty." He spoke, leaving Nina standing, breathless against the tree. "But, if that is what you wish... it will be done."
"–After I kill your Brother, of course."
All at once Nina's heart freezes and the scenery around her starts to blur like a poorly shot action photograph. What starts as a contortion of her stomach becomes a feeling of being smothered by an invisible hand. Her breathing becomes erratic, deep, then shallow. Every muscle in her body had knotted up as the realisation flooded in. Grayson.
Ben and Sophia. Grayson and Jessica.
They were next on the demons hit-list, how could she have not realised sooner?
"No!" She screamed.
The stress had begun to dance throughout her mind like ink on paper. She took in a deep and ragged breath before placing one foot forward, demanding it to remove her from her place against the tree. The paralysing hurt spread throughout her body like icy, liquid metal when she finally tore herself away. Nina clenched her fists as she hesitantly took each step, edging her way closer to the demon. She was dangerously close to the predator, like a moth to a flame.
She noticed her feet tremble and Nina's legs twitched, fighting the impulse to whirl around and sprint away into the damp abyss of the forest's chambers, far away from the demon. Fire in the form of water stung her green eyes, threatening their attack. She crunched her teeth over the flesh of the inside of her mouth, harder than she ever had. Salty blood filled her mouth. Slowly, her legs began to crumble beneath her weight, she fell to the demons feet, crying and pleading for her brother's life.
This was no longer about her life, but more importantly Grayson's.
"Please! Don't kill him!" She begged, looking up to the man like he was some form of a savour. But he wasn't a savour or an angel of hope, he was a beacon of death that seemed to follow her wherever she went. "Please...Don't hurt him."
The demon looked to her with pity filled eyes. He lent down to her height and dug his knees into the mud, not caring one bit about his once-clean attire. He placed his frighteningly warm hands upon Nina's own, which were shivering intensely. "And, what would you do in return for his life to be spared?"
This was it. Just as Zayn had told her, the demon had a soft spot for a deal. Here he is offering the life of Grayson on a plate to Nina, requiring she would graciously offer silver platter of her own to him. Nina's life didn't matter to her anymore. It was worth dying to know Grayson could live. She sobbed like she had done all day, not flinching her hands out of his grip like her heart desperately pleaded for her to do so. "Anything!"
The evil in the demon's mind, rubbed his hands together in that classic way villains do, he wasn't about to pretend to be anything other than what he was. He loved the fear in her eyes. He enjoyed it.
"Anything?" He asked, amusement in his tone.
She cried louder, his eyes had an evil glint within them that told her she couldn't back out now.
"Anything..."
The demon was nothing more than a visionary with a dream. He doesn't care what you think of him as long as you obey. He acknowledges that he has odd methods, but they work. He knows what life should be like and understands that many things and creatures are inferior to him. In his position, he finds it amusing to observe the life wither out of the body of a sinner, but he finds it even more entertaining to watch the way they will do anything rather than die.
He had never met a human who would put another's life over their very own. Nina O'Donnell was a strange human, and the demon wanted to know more. He wanted to know the very layout of her thoughts and he wanted to be able to trace every etch of of her body onto a map, just from his memory.
He smiled. "In return for your brother's life, I require you to be mine forevermore. You will be compliant and obey every one of my orders."
Nina shuddered, already accepting her fate as she nodded tiredly.
"In a weeks time when I return to my own world, you will come with me and we will be wedded, allowing me to take you. The way it should be, morally and virtuously."
Her blood boiled and her eyes scowled into the demon's own. She wouldn't let him paint her body in his dirty touches. Her stomach feels sick at the thought of him cowering over her, claiming his territory like a wild dog. But, there was nothing she could do. This was for Grayson only.
"What's the catch?" She asked.
He smugly laughed. "That you stay pure in the meantime. Nobody is to touch you the way I only should."
"–Is that a deal?" He said, ignoring the way her eyes resembled an everlasting fire that was fuelled by hatred only. "Hmm?"
Her mind told her to refuse, to spit in his face and laugh, but her heart told her to meekly agree. And that's exactly what she did when she whispered, "Yes."
The demon smiled, getting exactly what he wanted. To bind the deal, he softly held the back of her head, revealing the rest of her face in the pale moonlight. The rain pitter-pattered along her pale skin gracefully, weary to wash away her beauty. The demon leaned in, placing his warm lips against her own.
She cried into her first kiss.
When he finally pulled away, he licked his lips to memorialise the way she tasted in the mean time. He then stood up and began to walk away from his favourite possession, who still sat in the dirt, crying helplessly.
As he walked away, Nina spoke once more.
"You're evil!" She cried. "You're the devil!"
He smiled but she couldn't see the malice in his grin when he spoke as his back was now facing her.
"The devil is not evil. The only evil ones are us."
He turned to her once more, before disappearing into the forest's darkness.
"–But love, you can just call me Harry."