Slave To The Demon

by Ruby McKenzie

  “I love you, Skrike,” she whispered. “I promised you tonight—I promised…”

  Skriker smiled, but there was a little sadness in the gentle upward curve of his lips.

  Rose’s brow furrowed. “What is it?”

  His mouth twisted then, and the next words he spoke nearly left her paralyzed, made her heart leap forcibly into her throat and sit there, pounding. “I love you, too, Rose. But sometimes I wish I didn’t.”

  She was still, unable to move, for a long time. Then, slowly, she lifted her hand and brushed her long fingers across his cheek, her nails tickling against the rough platinum stubble that had begun to prick its way along his jaw in the last day or two.

  His words had been like boulders, crashing down some pristine hillside before her, taking out everything in their path as they plummeted down to crush her. “What?” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I—”

  He shook his head slowly, averting his eyes. “It’s like I told you back at that motel in Gallup after I took out that skinwalker. You will never truly know how much I love you. It’s the bald-faced fucking truth. But loving you sucks sometimes, because it hurts. Worse than a knife in the gut. Worse than a shotgun slug to each knee. Hurts like a motherfucking bitch.”

  He looked back at her and chuckled; it was a husky, bitter sound. “I’d melt into you every day if only you’d let me. I would put a goddamned ring on your finger and let you make a real, honest man out of me—and you’re the only girl who ever could. Funny thing is you have never really let me in all the way. Perhaps, that has something to do with your daddy...” He paused and sighed heavily.

  “These three days you’ve given me, where you have let me take command and really lead you wherever I wanted to go?” This is the closest you have ever been to really letting me get under your skin, and then just before the last day I have with you like this, when it finally is going to end? Your daddy shows up in your head again, in one form or another—and the guilt follows. And I am so tired of your guilt.”

  She could only lie there silently, staring at him with tears shimmering in her eyes.

  He sat up and tucked his knees against his chest, hugging them as he continued to speak. “I wanted to fuck you in that dead church, in front of all of those goddamned angel statues, because part of me hoped the angel Alexius could see it. As crazy as that sounds, as bugfuck nuts as I’d be to fuck your brains out willingly where that psycho could descend at any moment and take my head off with that flaming sword of his, I wanted to do it ” Skriker let out a cold laugh, as though he knew how foolish an act like that would be.

  “Sure, I’ve always been a bit of a daredevil, no pun intended. I ride motorcycles like a bat outta hell, I fight in the cage like I have nothing left to live for and I’m sick of being immortal. But with that whole thing, first screwing you like a piece of fuck toy meat, then making love to you, all in that beautiful ruined church, was me making a point, Rose. A point saying, ‘Fuck you, Heaven, fuck you, World! It’s just us against you, and we don’t give a shit about what you think. Look at me, look at us—look at how much Rosie loves me. Look at how much.’”

  Now there was a thin film of tears shimmering along the rims of his eyes; he raked them away with the back of his hand. “It pisses me off sometimes, how guilty you seem to feel when I’m fucking you. I know that you said this whole thing was supposed to strike that down, but Rose…I can feel your guilt.”

  She began to cry for real, the tears rolling fat and hot down her scarred cheeks.

  He kissed the soft moist pillows of her lips, lapping her tears away.

  Rose pushed up against him, pressing her face against his chest, her tears a stinging torment. All at once, the guilt was not only overwhelming, it was suffocating.

  Skriker gently hooked his fingers into the fragrant tumble of her curls, holding her close against him.

  She listened to his heart beating against her cheek as if it were religion. “I’d die for you,” she whispered. He kissed the top of her head, stroking her long sleek back, and she clung to him, weeping, cherishing that thumping tremor against his ribs; a primal song that made her heart ache in the most beautiful way.

  “You’d die for me,” Skriker murmured sadly, “but why won’t you live for me?”

  Rose choked on her sobs, snot and saliva clogging her mouth and nose and throat, her fingers clutching desperately at his back, as if trying to pull him closer and merge into him.

  Inexplicably, she, the proud warrior angel’s daughter was stuck by an inconsolable fear: that somehow she would lose him, whether it be to some monster on the hunt, or to the sunset horizon that had swallowed so many proud men as they chased some ironclad dream across the skies. No, it would never be to another woman—this she knew very well, but in a big way the world itself had always been Skriker’s mistress, seducing him with the brutal ostentatious beauty of her open roads and glittering cityscapes.

  This she knew and knew quite well, because she was in all truth, the same way. Every lover before Skriker had lost her, this most aloof of hearts and to the same usurper…the open road, the shimmering metropolis, the forest and the field. Pure freedom, freedom into whose arms she could so openly run; the violence and gore of the hunt, the thrill of the chase that was like the ultimate orgasm.

  But now…Now?

  “Shh…honey girl, it’s okay,” Skriker whispered, lifting her chin and gingerly stroking her nose and wet face with gentle fingertips. He grabbed a velvet scarf that had been left slung over the headboard—a remnant of the three-day long gift she'd bestowed and daubed her eyes with its velvet folds.

  Rose took it from him and blew her nose on it, and he laughed huskily. Sexiest sound in the world, and suddenly she wanted to capture it in a silk-lined box, along with the tremor of his beating heart, and keep it safe forever.

  “Eeew…angel snot,” he chuckled, and gently picked a stray curl from her forehead.

  Rose smiled through her tears, and when he bent to kiss her, she pushed against him with the desperate eagerness of a woman lost in the desert and dying of thirst, who has just found a hidden oasis pool shimmering in the baking sands.

  Skriker gathered her close, and as they made slow, achingly tender love in his bed, the dark grey night clouds shifted away from the face of the moon outside the window, letting the cool pale light filter in, turning their mingled skin to molten silver.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  RUBY MCKENZIE is the nom de plume of an award-winning, cult-followed comic book creator, writer, and illustrator who decided one day that she wanted to write some dirty books for fun. She lives in Southern California.