Rubbing my throat, I turned my attention back to the open door. I gasped, knowing who stood there, contemplating me with amusement in his eyes.
I’d expected him to look like the Exiled minions, for some reason. I thought, for sure, that he would either be some red demon with pointy horns and a long tail or oddly bent and grotesque like Malakai. But, heaven help me, as he stood before me, a knot rose in my belly. The very same knot I’d feel in Ethan’s presence. A strange longing invaded me and I couldn’t tear my eyes from him.
Raven hair fell slightly above his eyes, his strength was visible through his black t-shirt and his jeans were just tight enough to make me feel uncomfortably warm. My face flushed under his gaze then he flashed a smile and I couldn’t stop staring at his perfect white teeth. Holy crap. Or was it unholy crap? Surely he couldn’t be who I thought he was.
He walked over to me with the angelic grace I’d come to expect. By the time I blinked, he was standing before me, fingertips grazing my throat, easing the constricted feeling.
“Samantha.” He whispered my name so only I could hear it. My palms began to sweat and my mouth dried. I tried to prop myself up against the wall when my knees threatened to release me. I tried to look anywhere other than directly at him, but I couldn’t stop staring, mouth gaped open with inexperienced embarrassment flooding through me.
“You needn’t be alarmed. I won’t hurt you.” At his words song lyrics raced through my head talking of beautiful lies and perfect denials. He smiled, reading my thoughts.
When I could finally speak, I spoke his name like it was a sin. “Damien.”
He put his forehead against mine and closed his eyes. “How I’ve wanted to hear you whisper my name.”
As he ran his fingers down my face, I could feel Malena’s hatred bore through me. Maybe it wasn’t Sebastian she was in love with after all.
Chapter 4
He stepped back, noticing the blood on my shirt. “Who did this?” As he questioned, he ran his long fingers over my shoulders, speeding up my natural healing process. When no one answered, his eyes grew dark. “I asked a question, Malena.”
“She was brought here with those wounds.” The attempt to put strength in her voice failed.
“Find the two that brought her here and kill them.”
“Dami—”
“Now, Malena. And get her a new shirt.” He interrupted, never taking his eyes off mine. “And take Malakai with you.”
Without a word, Malakai backed out of the room following her. With a wave of his hand, Damien closed the door gently and cleared his throat.
“I must admit, Samantha, I didn’t realize I’d be so...affected by your presence.”
You and me both.
He smiled at my thoughts and put my hand between his. “I am sorry for all of this. Dramatics are in my nature, if you haven’t heard. As soon as I heard you agree to my request, I needed to get you here. Had I known you would be injured and shackled, I would have, of course, attended to your travels myself.”
Such a beautiful lie to believe in…
My head knew he was lying, but I couldn’t get my heart to agree and his eyes dared me to question him. Still, I remained silent, thankful to be held up by the wall at my back.
It was getting hot, too hot, in this room. Sweat pooled at my brow and as I moved to wipe it away, he reached up, wiped it away with him thumb, brought it to his mouth and licked it off. Every move he made confused me. It was so different from everything I’d heard from the other Faithful. This devil was a gentleman. This devil wasn’t the boogeyman, far from it. He was sex, pure, raw. The kind only found in movies that made me blush.
“I am sure you have many questions as to why, exactly, I brought you here. About what it is I want of you.”
My hand reached to touch his cheek and he closed his eyes. “How can you look like this? Aren’t you, like, a million years old?”
His laugh was sincere. “More than that.”
“I…I…I just don’t understand. I need to get back. Ethan will be worried about me.” Darkness was spreading throughout my body and I needed to quell it. Even if Ethan was distant, I needed to feel him close.
Impatience flitted across his face. “So, you’re brought here, by the devil himself no less, and you want to run back to the boy who can’t, or won’t, protect you properly? That’s disappointing, Samantha. He’s not out looking for you, you know.”
He took the bitten apple from my hand and held it to my lips. My teeth sunk into it and he smiled. Images of Ethan sitting on his bed, head hung low filled my head. Why was Ethan so far away? Why wasn’t he trying to find me?
Resigned and too exhausted to fight, my shoulders slumped and I dropped my arms to my sides. “I’m just, all, just mixed up right now. I’m tired of being pulled in all directions.”
“You want to be angry?”
“Yes.” I knew anger was there, I just couldn’t reach it.
“But you can’t? It’s there, fighting against the calm but it won’t escape. Does it hurt?”
“Yes.” I hadn’t been aware of the pain until he mentioned it.
“I don’t know what that feels like.” He said it out loud but was obviously talking to himself. Grabbing my hands, he walked me to the middle of the room. “Come. Let’s sit for a minute while you sort out your thoughts. I can wait.”
Somehow, an armchair appeared behind each of us. I settled in slowly as he guided me into my seat before taking the one behind him. Stretching his long legs in front of him before placing an ankle on his knee, he leaned back, fingers settled on his pursed lips. I suddenly felt exposed, like he knew everything about me, like he was trespassing.
“Stop that.” Quiet courage found my voice.
“Stop what?” A sarcastic smile curled at the corners of his mouth throwing me off for a minute.
I put my hands to my head. “Stop intruding. Get out of my head.”
“Interesting.”
“What?” Even the one word question was almost too much for me. God, I’m so tired.
“Interesting you can tell I’m in there. Usually I can poke around undetected. You are different.”
“Well, just stop it.” Like a switch had been flipped, my need to rest waned and my strength returned. “You have a proposal?” I forced indifference into my voice.
He clearly wasn’t happy. “You talk like your being here, like my interest in striking this deal, is of no consequence to you.” Obviously exasperated, he stood and began to pace the room. My skin tingled and heated up every time he walked in from of me. It was a conflict of wants and needs and it took everything I had to keep control.
I looked to the floor. “Please, just tell me what you have in mind and get me back home.” My deference was making me ill.
“I make you uncomfortable. And yet you want to return home—you aren’t comfortable there either.” It wasn’t a question, more of an out-loud thought process as he stood looking away from me. “Fine. Have it your way.” Is he actually pouting?
Sitting once again across from me, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “I must begin from the beginning.”
“Where else would you begin?”
“Don’t get cheeky.”
“Cheeky?”
“Yes, Samantha. Cheeky. Sarcastic. Smart mouthed.”
Crossing my arms over my chest, I leaned further into the chair. “I know what cheeky means,” I muttered under my breath.
“Are you quite finished? The faster you let me get on with it the faster you can go home to your boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I snapped. He’s not allowed to be.
“Samantha!” He thundered my name so I felt it in my bones.
As we glared at each other he regained his composure and he continued. “As I was saying, I am sure you know the story of Creation? How God created the world in seven days, blah, blah, blah?”
When I nodded in agreement, he smiled. “Ok, so I don’t have to go through all
that mess. What isn’t taught is how and why God created me. He knew with all of his perfection, with the perfection of the Garden, of his humans” – my eyebrows raised as he said the word, as if there was something nasty in his mouth – “that there needed to be a counterbalance. And that is where I came in. I was created to house despair. A vessel, if you will, to hold onto all the sadness that He knew was inevitable.”
He looked lost in thought, almost sad, but he waved it all away. “It wasn’t a bad, well, job you might call it. I wasn’t treated poorly and I had a purpose. He made sure I was shown appreciation and all that nonsense. But you must remember, because I was created for this purpose, I am unlike any of the other Fallen. I cannot choose. I have remained and will remain an Exiled for as long as the earth rotates through space. I create chaos. I inflict pain: physical and mental, emotional. And I take it away. If I did not, I would not exist. You understand that? That I do not have a choice? That I was never afforded free will? That all I do is everything I can to survive?”
He was pleading with me, I realized immediately. The look on his face wasn’t hard to read. He was telling the truth and he wanted me to believe him. “I understand.”
Leaning back in his chair, examining his fingernails, he continued quietly. “And I became angry. He gave free will to them, to the humans he’d created and yet he allowed me none of it. It was unfair, I see that now, but there I was, blindly taking the pain away from every hangnail and stubbed toe. Of course there was no disappointment in the Garden. Oh no – He made sure of that.”
“With you.”
“Yes, Samantha. With me. And even though I was becoming angry, I couldn’t place the origin of my distaste… until Sebastian came calling.
“Sebastian wanted more. He wanted the free will God handed humans. But only very few of us were allowed to interact with them, myself included. You know, stubbed toe and all.” A haunted smile drifted across his face.
“Sebastian began whispering all of his hatred in my ears like a bug. Everywhere I turned, he was there, spewing more of his distaste, and eventually – it didn’t take long, I am afraid to say – I was following along with his thought process. After all, his hatred caused him pain, whether or not he is or was willing to admit it. I knew his pain better than he did and I internalized his words. Soon he and I came up with a plan.”
I reached forward for his hand. The look of hesitation humanized him. When his hand touched mine, I was jolted by the powerful need that filled the room and I could tell by the shiver that ran through him, he felt it too. Attempting to dampen it, I encouraged him to continue.
“Was that when you took the fall for his ideas? The snake, the apple?” I remembered the small bit Jesse told me the day he first began training me.
“Yes.” Pulling his hand from mine, he stroked it gently, staring at where my fingers had rested. He cleared his throat and walked over to a window that wasn’t there a minute ago. “Remember, out of the two of us, I was the only one allowed to have contact with the humans.”
“He must’ve known, you must’ve known, you’d be banished from Heaven.”
“To be fair, neither of us knew the punishment. The Wrath of God had been spoken about for ages. And that day, the day I offered Eve the apple, I knew the full scope of it. Later, with the floods, man knew and forever became afraid.”
“But I thought he doomed you to crawl on your belly, as a snake, forever?”
“Ha! That’s just a metaphor. As you can see, I’m no snake.” As he spoke, his eyes glowed red. I squirmed in my chair, not quite sure what to say or do. I was conflicted. I wanted to get the hell out of there but on the other hand, I felt more comfortable and at ease than I had since this all began.
“I was doomed to walk the earth with no real home. What I didn’t expect was that Adam and Eve would be banished from the Garden and I would be banished from Heaven. And with all that Knowledge they’d acquired, they sure made a mess of things.” He laughed at some private joke.
“What about hell?”
“Hell?”
“You live there.”
“Ha! Hell is now. Look around you. Watch the news: terrorists, hurricanes, earthquakes, wars. Hell is here - on earth, more so now than ever before.”
“That’s not true. There is good in the world. There is love. There is hope.”
“Keep believing all that garbage and you’ll end up in Sebastian’s grasp faster than you can blink. And we can’t have that. We can’t have you fall into his clutches. Now that you’re here, I know it to be true. I can feel it.”
“If you can take away pain then there must be some hope for you. There must be some good that will allow you to be forgiven.”
“You don’t get it. I am the one who betrayed Christ. I am Judas. I am the one who nailed His wrists and feet. I am the one who placed the crown of thorns on His head. I will never be forgiven. I will never again see the light of heaven. It has been spoken and it has been so and will be for eternity.”
I walked over to him and placed my hand on his shoulder, feeling the need to take his pain from him, like I’d done with Ethan over and over again. For a moment he stood stock still as I siphoned away what was tearing through him. Darkness grew inside me and I could feel the air begin to turn. It was more powerful than I could understand. For an instant, I felt invincible. A low hum filled the space and I could feel him, finally, beginning to relax.
When I released my hand from him, he turned to me. Our gaze locked for what seemed like an eternity before he leaned in and kissed me, softly at first, then with all the raw emotion we both felt.
Chapter 5
Shocked, we quickly pulled away from each other. My fingers flew to my lips and I willed myself to continue to feel what had just happened.
“What was that?”
“You and I. We are the same, Samantha,” he said, shaking his head.
I concentrated hard, trying not to ramble. I failed. “What? No, no, no. You’re the, well, you’re the devil and I’m a Faithful. This…” I waved my hand between us. “Isn’t supposed to happen. I am supposed to be with Ethan. I mean, once we figure out how to actually be together. And besides, I’m a healer, too. And I meant, what did I just feel?”
“I know what you meant.”
“Then answer my question!” I threw my hands in the air.
Awe crept into his eyes. “You’re here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He has finally sent you to me.”
“He who? Please. You’re scaring me. More than I already was.”
“God. It had been foretold but...” He trailed off, lost in thought.
“Damien, please. Explain this to me. It was foretold I would maintain balance, it was foretold I would come and defeat Sebastian, it was foretold I would make choices others couldn’t and now you’re saying it was foretold that I would be here - with you. It’s too much. If what you’re saying, what everyone has been saying is true then I don’t have free will either, or the choices you speak of. Please, just help me understand.” I was frightened because I knew he felt what I felt. It was blurring my feelings for Ethan.
And it wasn’t right.
But it warmed me to the darkest parts of myself.
But I was meant to be with Ethan.
Wasn’t I?
“You took my pain.”
I blew him off. “I’m a healer. That’s what I do. Ethan can do it too.”
He grabbed my face, ignoring the wince that escaped from my lips. “No. No, Samantha. Ethan fills you with light in order to ease your pain. You take the pain from him, from others, from me, and feed off of it. Don’t you understand at least that? Don’t you see the difference?”
The thought disgusted me as I turned my head free from his grasp. “No. Unlike you, Damien, I feel no joy from taking the pain from others.”
He stepped back and looked at the floor. “Oh, you do. You just don’t realize it yet. You haven’t yet been able to pinpoint the emotions you feel
when you are filling yourself with pain. You become exhilarated. You become stronger, faster. More in tune with nature. One day you’ll realize it’s the only comfort you’ll know. It feeds you and keeps you whole. You will realize the seduction of it and you will crave it.” His eyes locked on mine once again. “Just as I do.”
Shaking my head, I wondered if he was right. I realized, suddenly, I knew the answer. “No.”
“You need it, Samantha. You need all that pain and suffering to keep you going. Hope makes you uncomfortable.”
No.
“You embraced pain when you defeated Sebastian.”
“I didn’t defeat him.”
“You won that battle. If you’d embraced all of it, all the darkness surrounding you, you might have killed him once and for all.”
Could it be that easy? “But I need the light to keep balance.”
“That is true. But if you and I worked together, channeled it together, we could erase his existence. Then you and I could live in some sort of harmony - me ruling the Darkness and you balancing the Light.”
That doesn’t make sense. Who would rule Light if I could do no more than even out each side?
“So that’s your plan? We band together to get rid of him?” That can’t be it.
“Not originally, no. But in light of what’s just transpired, it makes the most sense.”
I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what he was suggesting. “Why do you want to do this? Why now?”
Sensing my unease, he was careful to keep his distance. “You mentioned balance. That’s all I want, too. Balance. And Sebastian is getting too crafty at tipping the scales in his favor. Look, it might not be a good life to some but it’s all I’ve known. And I am tired of him controlling the actions of the Exiled. I’ve become the figurehead. Who are humans afraid of? Certainly not Sebastian, they don’t even know who he is! And yet, he is the one they should be most afraid of.
“They paint pictures of me with horns and a tail. Red with flames, eyes filled with evil. For centuries, I’ve been the boogeyman good little Christian children fear. I fill the souls of murderers, warmongers and the like. I am not that soul. Sebastian is.”
Darkness Betrayed (Torn) Page 3