Guardian of the Abyss

by Shannon Phoenix

  Then when he huffed and turned his back on her, she stared at him. He sank down into his stone form too quickly for her to follow. One moment he was standing, the next he was stone. The part that bothered her, though, was the question of where his wings were. They seemed to... disappear at will. How bizarre!

  Eagerly, she reached out and grabbed the fish. Fish or not, it was food and her stomach was screaming from hunger. Biting into it, she ate several mouthfuls before her manners won over her hunger. What was she thinking eating when she hadn't even thanked him? What was wrong with her!

  Taking a deep breath, uncertain of how he would react to her overture, she went over with her fish and sat down against the wall in front of him. She wondered how often anyone touched him. Did demons touch each other like humans did? Probably not, unless they were torturing each other. Did demons torture each other? Shaking her curiosity away, she reached up and laid her palm about where she thought his cheek was, or would be.

  "Thank you," she said with as much sincerity as she could infuse into it. She was pretty sure he didn't understand English--or pretended not to, anyway. Something else entirely unexpected.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then just as she was about to start eating again, he shifted, the glow from his body filling their home, such as it was, with warmth. "Vos es exspetata," he said.

  She had no idea what it meant, but it sounded a bit like Latin to her. Of course he spoke Latin... he was a demon. That was one part of the mystery solved. On the other hand, it sounded as if he was accepting her gesture of truce.

  She offered the fish to him, just to check.

  He made a face and pulled away. "Haud," he grunted.

  Definitely Latin, she knew then. 'Haud' was 'no' in Latin. Well, since they might be in hell together, they just as well get along. At least a little.

  "Sarah," she said, putting her hand on her chest. After all, all the movies and books said that was the way to go about introductions when you don't speak someone's language. Doing it again, she pointed at him, "What's your name?"

  From the squatting position he had been in, he sat back onto the cavern floor. Then he scratched his head. "Eh... Villiam." Then he shook his head. "Haud." He looked at his hands, then heaved a heavy sigh. "Eh...mmm... Abaddon." He got a pleased look. "Etiam, Abaddon." He gestured at her. "Sarah," he said. He gestured to himself, "Abaddon."

  Sarah's fish was forgotten. Holy criminy, she was imprisoned in hell with the demon overlord. She'd tried a stint as a Protestant, and they were fascinated by end times stuff as described in the Revelation. Abaddon was the big boss demon, trapped in the abyss, who would be released for the end times to rule for a while. He would break into the courtyard of heaven and overrun the saints.

  And she was trying to make friends with him. She was surely damned, especially since the hurt look on his face was tugging at her heart-strings as she fought between fear and an unwanted compassion for him. Weren't demons absolute, pure evil? Didn't they pervert everything and torture people?

  She was too sick to think about it. She couldn't get past her fear, and she should never had tried this. Everything was all mixed up. He was so beautiful, and he seemed so fragile for such a huge... person. Well, emotionally at least. Of course, evil could masquerade as a creature of light. Hadn't she heard that all of her life? And wasn't Abaddon supposed to be charismatic? He would appear to rescue the entire world and everyone would love him. Then he would make war on heaven.

  She understood the charismatic part. He was sweet in his own way. Or was it all an act? For what possible purpose? In the larger scheme of life, she was nobody. Sure, she was wealthier than most, but that was her father's money that she had inherited. She was no one politically or otherwise.

  He got up and went out, splashing into the water before she could get her befuddled brain together enough to act. Why was she so stuck in these old teachings? She wanted to make her own mind up, but she was mired in things she had thought she'd let go of years ago.

  She had little interest in her food now. She ate it, uncertain of when she would eat again, but her heart ached. Although he had covered it up quickly, she had seen the hurt in his face. She finally curled up on the cold, damp floor. She thought about praying, but in the end, did not. The god she'd been raised to believe in had never answered her prayers before.

  He sure wasn't going to answer them when they came from hell itself.

  Chapter 5

  Abaddon shouldn't have been surprised. His makers had named him that on purpose. They had found it highly amusing. And later when they had dumped him into the sea, they had told him it was fitting because of his name and the myth of the Biblica. It wasn't really a name, it was more a designation. In Koine Greek, the language they'd used to name him, Abaddon meant 'Destroyer'. Some of the gargoyles were named for mythical characters; some mythical characters were named to demonize gargoyles. The character in the Biblica was named Abaddon because it was 'The Destroyer' and had nothing to do with Abaddon himself... but the stigma couldn't be avoided.

  Once, he had been a simple human blacksmith's apprentice named Villiam. He had discovered one day, to his horror, that he had powers he didn't know about and couldn't control. After burning down the smithy with the smith still inside it, he had run away.

  By and by he had been discovered by a coven of sorcerers. They had wanted an untrained sorcerer to convert into a guardian. Villiam, with his size and what they thought was a lack of brains, had fit their bill perfectly.

  They had bent his body and reformed his entire nature, until he could become a stone statue. During the day, they wanted him to watch over their synagogue. At the time, he had thought Jewish sorcerers were a contradiction in terms. He had discovered over his years as a gargoyle, that it was pretty common. Churches of any religion were a good place for sorcerers to hide, regardless of whether they were of the light or dark, and so they did.

  And young Villiam kept out the thieves that tried to come retrieve their things--including sometimes their children--back from the 'priests'. At first he had accepted their statements that he was protecting the synagogue from evil. Observation had led to his eventual defection, though. He had torn their control collar off and fled after the many years of torture that came from his mistake of admitting his loss of faith in them.

  When he had been taken by the Deathwalkers over a thousand years later, they had been controlled by a rakshasa. The rakshasa had turned him over to his makers in magical bonds. The sorcerers had dumped him into the ocean, where he had sunk. He had quickly discovered that saltwater prevented him from turning invisible and he could no longer be weightless.

  He had wandered, trying to find his way to land. He had fallen into this prison and tried to climb out. But his attempts had killed the coral, and he had felt the snuffing out of their tiny lives. He'd quit trying to get out, resigned to his fate. He could kill, but he understood the inherent importance of the coral to the world. He couldn't destroy it with good conscience, understanding its greater value and feeling its sentient collective nature.

  Well, no longer was he resigned to his fate. Now he longed to embrace it. He longed to sit there on the ocean floor and let the water wear away his stone form until he lived no longer. He was cut off from accessing the Earth by the water. Even the sand beneath him was too soaked in it for him to pass through it safely. He was cut off from the wind. From the connection his people had through both.

  He was cut off from all hope for the future, and now he had to see the frequent fear in the face of the woman he had been foolish enough to save. He clenched his fists. He'd squandered his chance to escape on a woman who was dying anyhow. He was just as much of an idiot as he'd been told he was for all of those interminable years.

  In those few split seconds he'd had to make his decision, he had made the wrong one. He hadn't known she would die anyway.

  Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice whispered to him. When he'd been human, he'd thought it was the voice of God. N
ow, it was a voice he rarely heard, and usually ignored. Now it whispered that he could save her, if he chose to. He could help her.

  And it was true; he could save the dying ember of life within her. He could save it in another form.

  "Never," he answered that voice. "I will never do that to her."

  He went inside and picked her up. She was already wracked by shivers. The tiny little convulsions made him want to protect her, nourish her, nurture her. He pulled her into his embrace, sitting up again as he had earlier. His wings were too thin to protect her from the coldness of the floor, as he had soon discovered.

  He sat with her on his lap for a great period of time. Too long, he feared. The sounds she made as she brought air in and out seemed labored to him, and something inside him fought the notion of her being extinguished. Humans were so very, very fragile.

  When her sounds changed and he knew she would awaken, he considered putting her down. Yet he refused to run away like a chastised boy simply for doing what was necessary to keep her alive.

  She roused and he felt her look up at him. He was startled when she placed her hand on the side of his face and turned it towards her. She said something unintelligible, then his name. Hearing his name said the way she said it made him want to wrap around her and never let her go.

  Her smile was sad, gentle. Her hand stroked his cheek gently, then her eyes switched to following her own motions. Her fingers ran down his cheek to his chin, then up to his lips. Once there, they slowed, running lightly around his lips. He watched her as she touched him, her eyes riveted to her searching fingers.

  She whispered a quiet, low word, and then leaned forward. Her lips met his, and he knew then that she was out of her mind. She was ill and it had affected her thinking. His mind told him to go outside. Put her down, jump into the frigid water, and wait for her mind to come back and his penis to subside somewhat.

  His arms tightened around her as his mutinous body reacted to the soft sweetness of her lips against his. His penis, already fascinated by her, hardened to the point that he couldn't control it even with skin across it in loincloth form, tightened to rein it in.

  Her hand slid around the back of his head, pulling him more tightly against her lips. A low sound rumbled from him, surprising him. Her tongue was slipping across his lips, her teeth grazing slightly. He slipped his own tongue out, wanting to feel more closely the softness of her lips.

  What his mind had forgotten about kissing wasn't much... so far as he could recall, he'd known very little about it. The few encounters he'd had, had all been forced upon him and the women he'd lain with by the sorcerers. This time was very different, and his body rose to the challenge in more ways than one.

  He wanted to rip the shreds of clothing she had on and throw them away. He wanted to be on her and inside her and to hear the low moans she was making forever.

  His wings began to vibrate, an early warning that they were about to snap out to their full length in reaction to his emotional state. Panic surged through him and he jerked back, fighting the primal instinct. He had already broken his wings many times since being dumped into the ocean. The rest of his body could heal almost instantly and without pain once out of the water.

  His wings were another story altogether. If broken or torn, it was brutal agony. If he weren't under water, he could simply speed up their rate of molecular vibration and they would pass harmlessly through objects around him.

  He held her upper arms as he struggled to get control over his wings. Finally, they snapped into his back, and he found himself staring into large, shocked brown eyes. And in that instant, he knew he was the evil, vile monster he'd been accused of. A good, decent man would let her die and reincarnate as a human in another lifetime somewhere else.

  But he couldn't let her die. That spark of life that burned so brightly in her, the daring, the sheer joy she took in life couldn't be allowed to die. He wouldn't allow it to die. It was too pure, too exquisite to be extinguished.

  First, though, he had to deal with the hurt he saw rising in her eyes. He ran a gentle finger down her cheek as she had done to him earlier. Then he pulled her against him. Tucking her head into the crook of his neck, he told her why he couldn't take advantage of her compromised state.

  "I know you don't understand me, sugar, but I can't do this. It's not right. When I lived with the sorcerers, they would bring women in to me. Then they'd whip their families until we laid together. They wanted a race of gargoyles, and they tried and tried to make new ones without success. We were forced to either endure laying together as man and wife, or to watch the endless torture of their families." He held her closer as memories he had tried his whole life to forget became all too present once more.

  He felt tears run down his face, and was glad she couldn't see them. Men weren't supposed to cry; he remembered that. "I'm about to do something to you that you'll never forgive me for," he continued; "something we'll both regret. But at least you'll live to regret it and hate me for it."

  She lifted her head and he looked away. Gently, she turned his face towards her, and he resisted for a moment, ashamed to let her see his tears.

  Her eyes pierced into him as she studied him. Her fingers gently wiped away the mineral-rich black wetness on his cheeks, then her hands pulled his head down. Rather than kiss him this time, she pulled his face into the crook of her own shoulder.

  And for the first time in his very, very long life, Abaddon cried for the women he'd had to lay with against both of their wills, the lives he'd had to take, and all the terrible tragedies he had brought into the world.

  He wept most of all for what he was about to do.

  Presently, he realized how inappropriate it was to cry on the shoulder of the woman whose very nature he was about alter forever. He pulled back, and tenderly pressed his forehead against hers, looking into her eyes. "I'm not sorry for what I'm going to do," he told her honestly, gently. "I'm sorry that I can't give you a choice, and I'm sorry that it will make you hate me. I know at first it will seem like a fate worse than death, but one day, you'll find it's livable. I hope."

  Then he kissed her on the forehead before gently turning her on his lap. There wasn't a lot he could do for her, but there was one thing that he hoped she might find comforting. Turning his right hand's fingernails into claws, he began to run them through her tangled hair.

  Chapter 6

  Sarah felt him begin to brush her hair, and decided not to look to see how he was doing it. She had a great deal to think about, and for the moment, she felt refreshingly alert. She also felt like a complete fool. What had she been thinking to kiss him like that?

  If she were underwater, she would have thought that she was suffering from nitrogen narcosis, but since she believed herself in hell, she decided that just being in hell played tricks on the mind. The worst trick of all was the fact that it had been the best kiss of her life, hands down, no contest.

  She hadn't understood a word he'd said. Not a single one. Yet she had heard and even sensed his sorrow, his regret, and his apology. She wasn't sure if he was sorry for kissing her, or sorry for stopping, though. She shouldn't be sorry he had stopped, but she was. The worst part for her was that she really, really wished he hadn't stopped. In fact, she wished he would throw her down on the ground--wet, slimy, and cold as it was--and take her straight to heaven.

  Terrible metaphor for someone in hell, she supposed, but she liked the irony of it.

  She sat on his warm lap as he meticulously and patiently worked every knot out of her hair. In fact, his patience was much greater than hers, especially as hunger rose and the general sense of malaise began to return. She had been feeling so bad lately that, if she wasn't already dead, she'd think she was dying.

  At length he was finished, and she laid back against him, relieved. Hunger notwithstanding, she was soon asleep as his warmth seeped into her again.

  When she woke, the water was dark, so she elected to label it nighttime. When the water gave off a bit
of light, it was day, and when it was dark, it was night. She rolled over to see Abaddon, glowing slightly in the gloom. He was working diligently on something on the floor.

  Sitting up, she rubbed her eyes. He looked over at her and smiled. Standing up, he rinsed his hands in the small pool above the largest body of water. Water constantly ran down from stones above it, and it was from that running water she was able to drink. She didn't know, nor care, that the water ran through the stones through a long circuitous route, which purified it enough for drinking. She just knew it was remarkably convenient for a multitude of uses.

  He brought her a cooked fish, then went back to what he was doing. Curious, she walked over to check it out. He was picking up sand from a small pile on the ground. Then his palms would glow as if with compressed light. His eyes squished tightly closed, he muttered for a few seconds, then began to press the sand onto something he was making.

  Hours passed and she grew bored. Then exhaustion set in and she went to sleep. When she awoke, she saw what he had been making. It looked like a statue of the bottom of a fish jumping out of the water. She assumed he would finish the top half of it when he came back. It was incredible work, and she wondered how he could do it without tools.

  Then she remembered that this was hell. He probably didn't need tools in his own environment. Master of all he surveyed, and all that. She looked over at the water, already knowing by the fact that she could see somewhat, that it was day. She idly wondered what caused the glow. Was it the portal to the next level of hell, where they had daily burning torture sessions?

  The gloomy, terrifying thought made her turn away and curl back up. This place was depressing, and without Abaddon, doubly so. She didn't want to think about the possibility of him off burning someone on the next level of hell, so she went back to sleep, instead.