Marked

by A.N. Meade

banished the demon, who had been helping Damian, but Damian would never give up his pursuit. It was not that he loved her so unconditionally, but rather that he desired so to possess her. He believed that he owned her. There was a time that he had. In her first incarnation on this earth, he had bought her, like a person would purchase livestock.

  From the beginning she had fought to be free of him. Thanks to his agreement with the demon, he had always found her. Whenever she had tried to run, he never failed to find her. Now she did not run, but instead stood there in front of him, defiant. She would not enter into a war of words with him if she could help it. He was eloquent, strategic, and more educated. More than any of his intellectual attributes, he could read every inflection of her voice. He knew her fears, and he would feed upon them ravenously given half the chance.

  Her stillness took him by surprise, but it did not stop him. He advanced several steps of his own, so that he could better judge her face as he spoke. “What a pretty prison it is that you have made for yourself. The gardens are beautiful. You always loved roses. Do you remember?” He tilted his head a little to the right, lifting his sculpted brow just slightly. His attention fell to a small pink bud that he spun between his fingertips.

  She did not want to remember anything about her life with him. What had been brought to her memory of it already was nearly more than she could bear. Her breath quickened, the closer he came to her. She tried to still her body, but she could not. The thought crossed her mind to run. She wanted to run. Every cell in her body bounced with the energy to attempt escape. Some primal part of her mind screamed at her, Run. Get away from him! He will kill us and eat us! It was a ridiculous thought, or was it?

  He smiled fully and truly, his fangs flashing with glints of moonlight that broke through the clouds. She wondered if he could read her thoughts, or perhaps it was that he had recognized the fear in her eyes. Whatever the case, he was close to her now. It shouldn’t have made her more afraid, but it did. Logically she knew that at one foot or at one hundred, he could kill her in seconds. She had felt the strength he possessed. She had felt his rage, and the pleasure he took in causing her pain. It was just like the great owl and the mouse, he was the owl and she was the mouse. It did not matter if she ran. It did not matter if she was perfectly still. He had her in his sights and he was hungry. She could not stop him. She could not fight him. She closed her eyes, the only hope she had was that at the last moment he might change his mind. Like the owl, he did not. She felt the heat of his breath on her forehead, she felt the pressure of his hands sliding down her forearms, and his fingers interlace with hers. She tried to pull her hands away, but he gripped her fingers so forcefully that tears began to well up in her eyes.

  He bore down on her, mercilessly continuing his one sided conversation. “It was the pink roses, I believe, that you liked best. Isn’t that right?”

  Her fingers ached and the pain lent a sharp focus to her thoughts. She did remember. She could see the roses from her window in the south tower. Their addition to the grounds had been a primarily English influence. Most of them were red or white, but her favorites were the pink roses. They reminded her of stories she had heard of girls who were happy. They reminded her of her little sister, whose cheeks held the same hue when she laughed. More than anything, the roses made her feel hopeful, that despite all the ugliness she had known that there was beauty in this world.

  She longed to walk among the roses in the garden, but he had denied her even that simple pleasure. He would bring her single rose from time to time, cut off, so that in a few days’ time it would wither and die. She had begged of him some earth to keep in a jar. This small thing he had allowed her, and it was one of her most sacred treasures. She had always tried to get the cut rose to grow and had failed all but once. One day, just before Damian had left out on a raid, he sent up a rose for her. Receiving the rose was always bittersweet. She loved them, but their arrival meant that he would soon come to her. He was cruel, but his company was the only human interaction that she was allowed. The roses were beautiful, and were the only tangible proof she had that Mother Nature was real and alive, and wild, and free. It was everything that she wanted to be. She would mourn them when they died, every one equal to the sorrow she felt when they withered away. She was more than overjoyed when one took root. She put it in the window and watered it out of her own daily water. It almost felt like a friend of sorts for all those weeks that he was away. She thought to hide it, but there would be no point. He searched her room each time without fail, to make sure his wishes concerning her were carried out. If she had hidden the rose, he would be sure of its significance to her. She knew her only chance of keeping it was to pretend as if it did not matter to her. He came back and found it, as she knew he would.

  Seeing the rose blooming there in the window sent him into a rage. “Stupid girl!” he yelled as he grabbed the stem of the rose in his hand. “You are a queen, and you continue in the foolish notions of a peasant!” The petals fell against her feet as he continued yelling and shaking the rose violently. “You continue on as a child, finding whatever way that you can to be disobedient to me. You occupy your mind with entertaining yourself instead of pleasing your husband.” He flung the rose and the small vase of earth out the window.

  She could hear the vase breaking against the stones that protruded from the walls. Something in her snapped, and she began to speak before she had the chance to stop herself. “Even when I was a child, I have never been as a child would be. You know that is true. I have never been afforded the chance to be ignorant, or foolish. You know how I have submitted myself to you and your rule of me, and how you have enjoyed tormenting me. How can I endure this?” The tears that had been welling in her eyes began to spill down her cheeks in two solid streams. “I am convinced that you are a demon, or the devil himself. Why don’t you just kill me and be done with it?”

  He touched his hand to her face softly. She could feel the warmth and the wetness of his blood. The rose had cut his palm. He deserved it. She almost smiled from the satisfaction, but she did not. She had learned to guard her expressions better than that by now. “Would you like that, my beauty?” He dug his fingertips in beneath her jaw, lifting her face and forcing her gaze on him. “Then you would be free of me.” He brought his lips down to meet hers in the softest of kisses. “Let me tell you something, my love, I will never let you go, never.”

  His kisses fell gently down the side of her face and neck. She could feel pain with each one, sharp and immediate, as if each were a blow from his fist. He could wrench the tears from her eyes with whispers and kisses as surely as if he had beaten her. He liked to cause her this pain the most. She could blame him when he hit her, and when he locked her away. This was a different kind of pain. He could taste her disdain, and in anticipation he pulled her closer. She hated him, but he had made sure that his touch would be her only comfort, and only when he chose to give it. He liked to feel her need for him, and to know what it did to her heart to acknowledge it. He loved the fight in her, and better than the fight was how he could force her to relinquish it.

  Aimee closed her eyes so that he could not see the tears welling up again, threatening to spill over. No! She thought. This isn’t real. I won’t let you hurt me anymore. She knew that this was a dream, some kind of twisted nightmare, and she fought to find her way out of it.

  He pressed his lips to hers, and for a moment she waivered. God help her, she waivered. For just a moment, all the evil he had done her was of no consequence. There was only their physical need, and it was as basic as that.

  The sound of her name brought her back to consciousness. “Aimee!” Marc was shaking her shoulders. His face was intent. He was completely focused on saving her. He had to wake her up. Slowly, she began to realize that she was here with Marc, who had woken her from this terrible dream. Her hands gripped the sheets in two balled fists. The back of her body was drenched in damp sweat. Marc was looking at her as she came to herself.
Aimee had rarely seen Marc’s face so drawn in concern. As she became aware of herself, low in her body it was apparent that her arousal had translated. She was embarrassed, and the heat climbed up her face. She didn’t know how to look at him. She wondered what secrets she had told while her mind wandered in slumber. Aimee could not help but wonder if she had been screaming, or crying. She wondered if she had expressed her fear, or worse, her longing. The thought turned her stomach. She must be evil, or at least horribly malfunctioning to feel those things that she could not admit fully even to herself. Aimee had never generally been one to cry easily, but after that nightmare, she felt so horribly and completely hopeless that to cry was all she had the power to do.

  Marc wrapped his arms around her, rocking her back and forth as he held her until her crying calmed. “What is it, my darling that has brought you to such despair?” Marc brushed back the wild tangle of hair, so he could see Aimee’s face clearly.

  “It was just a nightmare. It’s over now, you don’t have to worry.” Aimee looked into Marc’s eyes and smiled as genuinely as she