Demon Mine

by Marina Simcoe

  His eyelids dropped, hiding those frightening, glowing eyes from me. He inhaled deeply, his arms circled behind my back, and he pulled me into his chest. He buried his face in my neck and exhaled.

  “Sorry, Alyssa. I’m so sorry!”

  “For what? You did nothing wrong…”

  “I scared you. I fed off you… I took from you… I couldn’t resist it.” He whispered against my neck, full of regret and self-loathing.

  “But you did! You stopped.” I leaned away from him slightly and took his face in both of my hands, finding his eyes with mine. I breathed a sigh of relief. His eyes were back to their normal colour now, that cool serene blue of the winter sky. “Why did you stop, Sytrius? Why did you stop kissing me?”

  “You were scared,” he answered simply.

  I cocked my head.

  “See? You are in control! Well, at least one of us is.” I smiled brightly at him, referring to my climbing him shamelessly just seconds ago. His ability to see how quickly I got turned on by him made our situation only more awkward. Admitting it and joking about it could make things less embarrassing for me, couldn’t it?

  “I have to apologize, Sytrius. It was a dangerous experiment: your virtue was in jeopardy there for a moment,” I joked, still smiling at him.

  He didn’t respond to my attempts to lighten the mood this time. His eyebrows furrowed; he was still deep inside his head somewhere. Something was bothering him. I was still sitting in his lap, each knee on either side of his thighs, my arms thrown loosely around his neck. I was close to him. It felt comfortable, even natural to be so close to him, but then I realized what was missing. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was not feeling turned on around him. There was no lust, no horny feelings whatsoever. Not even a little sexy excitement. Nothing! I could have been sitting in the lap of my grandpa right now, the way I felt.

  “You took my sexy feelings from me, didn’t you?”

  “I did,” he admitted, looking at me tentatively. I understood then why he was so quiet. He had fed off me. He took something directly from inside of me and was trying to figure out the implications of his actions now.

  For all his many years spent on Earth, he knew very little about human culture and ethics. He was still learning what was right and what was wrong. I had made a big deal about him feeding off my feelings before. I forbade him even to skim any of my sexual emotions until last night. He was waiting for me to let him know if what he did was acceptable.

  I was his compass in navigating the complicated code of human ethics. Except that most of the time, I was just as lost as he was. The rules of human society could not always apply to our situation. The best I could do was to focus on how his actions affected me, personally, how they made me feel, without relying on any specific frame of reference.

  I thought about it for a second. I did not feel invaded or violated. Actually, I felt a little clearer in the head now that the ever-present “horniness” was gone. The chilling sensation was gone from my face too, and I decided that the sensation itself was not unpleasant. My aversion to it must have stemmed from the last time I felt it, when Grand Master of incubi sucked the life out of me, almost killing me in the process.

  “Okay, Sytrius,” I delivered my verdict. “You took it. It didn’t turn out to be as big a deal as I thought it was before. I’m not upset. We were making out and you got a little …carried away. The most important thing here is that you stopped as soon as I pulled away. You stopped immediately when you sensed that I was uncomfortable… Actually, it is the most important thing here! You learned the importance of consent!” I finished brightly, happy with myself that I was able to deliver a lesson on morality after all.

  “Besides,” I continued, “the added bonus is that I’m not horny anymore! It is refreshing to feel my normal self around you for once!” I remembered his burning eyes. “Do you know that your eyes were glowing red? Weren’t they supposed to have the usual blue sparkles?”

  He seemed to lighten up too, little by little. I knew he would eventually; he could never stay gloomy if I was in a good mood.

  “Like this?” he asked, smiling as the little blue lights began their shimmering dance inside his eyes.

  “Just like this…” I answered, immediately being mesmerized by his light show. “This is the most amazing thing, Sytrius!” I laughed and the stream of sparkles in his eyes seemed to surge in sync with the bursts of my laughter. “It is beautiful!”

  “These are the reflections of all your happy, positive emotions that I’m skimming right now. They are delicious, but they cannot sustain me for long. The true nourishment for the incubi was meant to be the sexual energy. Sexual emotions in humans show mostly in different shades of red. They also make our eyes glow red when we take or skim them.”

  “What do you feel when you take them?”

  “The regular positive emotions feel different compared to the sexual ones. It’s like snacking on crumbs throughout the day versus having a meal. When I consume sexual energy, your sexual energy… it’s a whole different feeling… The feeling of fullness. Satisfaction. The belief that the hunger can be fully sated one day, and the constant torture will end. It’s like being given a full drink of clear cool water after having to lick drops in the desert for centuries. The enjoyment is indescribable. The sensation is powerful. The world stops and you don’t want it to end!”

  “Does it mean you’re no longer hungry?”

  “I’m always hungry.” He shook his head with a smile. “That doesn’t change. The intensity of hunger changes, though. I am less hungry now.” His smile grew larger, and I saw the teasing dimples show up. “With better nourishment, my mental and physical abilities improve too. I can think faster, analyze better and remember more.”

  “Well, it is a win-win situation then. You can eat up all my sexual tension I have around you, and I can use having a smart, strong demon by my side!” I laughed again and jumped off his lap on my way to the bathroom. “We may as well get ready to go now. I don’t feel sleepy anymore.”

  Chapter Twenty Three. Plans.

  I had a quick shower and was packing the few possessions I had into the plastic bag, listening to the water running in the bathroom where Sytrius was taking a shower now.

  The images of streams of hot soapy water running along the hard muscles of his chest and abs and then down that sexy V of his lower stomach were flashing through my mind, shooting the tingly arrows of excitement through my body again.

  Of course, I didn’t think that I would remain blissfully unaffected by him from now on. I did hope, however, that since he took my sexy feelings for him just minutes ago that I would at least have some time of peace and quiet before my hormones kicked in again! Oh well, I would have to learn to live with it somehow.

  It was still early morning, I had only slept for a few hours, but I felt no longer sleepy and was anxious to keep going. If Sytrius continued driving without making any long stops, we should be in Toronto around noon tomorrow.

  Going through the options available to me over and over again, I was beginning to believe that the best plan for me would be to go to Belarus with Sytrius after all. Staying in Canada or even going to the United Sates would be only a matter of time before the Council captured me again. Alone, I wouldn’t be able to fight them when they came for me, and without Sytrius keeping me company at the base this time, I wouldn’t last there a day.

  He never offered for me to come along to Europe, and I realized that for him to take me would only mean more problems. I would slow him down. I had no ID, no passport to leave the country. Still, I decided I should at least try and ask him to take me. The worst that could happen was that he would say no to me, but maybe he could offer some alternative solution at least.

  I thought about Sarah and her family, my only family in Canada that I would be leaving behind.

  Something nagged at the back of my mind, something from my phone conversation with Jim, something that I filed away immediately, unable
to deal with too many things at once…

  Now I remembered what else he said when I called, besides me being dead… He said to tell “my boyfriend” to stop calling them. Jim knew that I had no boyfriend when I “died”. And when I called, he didn’t think that he was talking to me, he thought he was talking to an impostor. He was talking about the boyfriend of the impostor… Somebody else, a man, must have called him about me before my call!

  Suddenly, I really wanted to be out of this motel room and on the road again!

  I looked at the windows nervously and then made sure the door to the room was locked before I remembered Sytrius walking through the massive wall of solid rock. The flimsy motel door would never prevent a bunch of incubi from entering the room!

  I jumped to my feet and banged on the bathroom door: “Sytrius! Sytrius! We need to go!”

  The door opened immediately; Sytrius already had his boots and pants on and was pulling on his t-shirt over his head. I only glanced quickly at the washboard abs flexing in front of me, too distracted to fully appreciate the view, and rushed to explain my recollection of the conversation with Jim to him.

  He listened for a fraction of a second before he took my jacket off the bed and silently put it on me. He then grabbed his own jacket under his arm, took the plastic bag with my things and took hold of my arm. His navy blue duffel bag was already in the car.

  Sytrius stepped to the door then and did the weirdest thing: he leaned his upper body forward and pushed his face through the door, I guessed to make sure that it was safe to go outside. He then opened the door and pulled me along into the dark cold morning.

  “Do you think they are after us?” I kept looking nervously over my shoulder through the rear window of the car, not sure myself what I was expecting to see. A vehicle following us? A mob of demons gaining on us? “Do you think they know where we are?”

  “Try to calm down, Alyssa, please. You are too agitated and scared.” Sytrius didn’t say much since we left the motel. He just drove the car with his hands gripping the wheel tightly and his eyes fixed on the dark highway in front of us. His silent focus only made me more nervous.

  “Of course I’m scared! I have the right to be scared! You’re not the one who will be turned into a sex slave again if they capture you!”

  “They won’t capture you, I promise,” he said firmly. “I don’t think they will do anything more than that phone call. You were there long enough for them to get a replacement already. Even if they haven’t replaced you yet, they will soon. No need for them to spend valuable energy and resources chasing you across the country.”

  His voice was calm and even, but he still looked too tense for me to calm down myself. I couldn’t even focus long enough on the fate of “the replacement”.

  It was so wrong! Some secret agreement between demons and a few chosen mysterious humans, who must have been powerful enough to cover up numerous kidnappings of unsuspecting women. The few victims sacrificed to protect many. It was so unfair that their lives were cut short, as if they meant nothing.

  It was not right that I was supposed to share the same fate if it wasn’t for Sytrius’s sudden change of heart. It was absolutely unfair that I was now on the run across the country, like a common criminal, when the crime was actually committed against me. And it just outright sucked that I could do nothing about it. The best I could do was to continue running, as fast and as far as I could.

  It was now or never. I decided to ask Sytrius to take me with him after all. Fear was giving me the courage to bring it up, finally. What was the possibility of his rejection in the face of the real danger of being captured again and most certainly killed this time?

  “Sytrius, how long until you think you can leave the country?”

  His eyes shot in my direction for a moment before settling on the road again.

  “In a couple of days. The travelling papers should be ready by then. We will have to stay in a hotel for a night or two when we get to Toronto. Shouldn’t be longer that that.”

  “Can that Andrew guy somehow make a passport for me too? Is there any chance I could come with you?” I looked straight ahead onto the road, waiting for his reply.

  “I was hoping you would,” he said simply. “His name is Andras, and he is getting a passport for you too. I should have them both, yours and mine, in a couple of days.”

  “What!” I turned my whole body towards him now. “You ordered a passport for me too? You knew I’d come with you? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He shrugged his shoulder.

  “I’ve noticed you feel better about big decisions like that if they come from you. So I waited for you to come up with the idea on your own before I told you it myself. In any case, I was never going to leave you behind, Alyssa. I ordered your passport along with mine still back when you were sleeping at my place in the mountains.”

  “You wanted it to be my idea, eh? You truly are a quick learner!” I shook my head.

  A sense of tremendous relief flooded me – I would get to live another day. I may yet survive this. I did have an escape plan after all, thanks to Sytrius. I might have come up with the idea to go with him on my own, but he made sure it was possible to do.

  I also decided to ignore the little warm feeling of happiness budding inside of me at the thought of not having to say goodbye to him just yet.

  Chapter Twenty Four. Toronto.

  The sense of relief stayed with me for the rest of the day, putting me back into a much better mood. My practical self, who thrived on predictability and liked to plan everything months and years in advance, had been eaten alive by uncertainty without a plan for my basic survival. Now that there was at least some plan in place for my nearest future, the anxiety eased and my mood lifted.

  I watched through the car window as the snowy fields of Saskatchewan and Manitoba were replaced by the snowy forests of Ontario and remembered how I always wanted to drive across the country one day, all the way from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, to see this big beautiful country of mine up close and personal.

  Of course, I could have never imagined then that I would have somebody like Sytrius for a travel companion.

  I studied his face whenever I thought he wasn’t looking, wishing I could see what he was feeling too.

  “How do human emotions look?” I asked him.

  “Beautiful,” he answered quickly, without having to think about it. “All of them are beautiful, but some are more spectacular than others. I see them in light and colour. It’s magnificent.”

  “And how do they taste?”

  “Like chicken!” He smiled brightly at me, flashing his pair of dimples.

  “Seriously!” I pretended to be angry and failed. His smile was extremely contagious, and my own lips began to curve up too.

  “Seriously?” He looked at the road ahead. “Sweet, fresh, delicious. Mostly though, it’s about how they make me feel the moment they enter my body: satisfied, renewed, elated…” He glanced at me briefly. “…Aroused.”

  Suddenly shy, I lowered my eyes to my lap quickly. He never talked about his own arousal before. I knew he liked it when I felt turned on, but I assumed that he still saw me mostly like a source of emotions to feed on. Obviously it was important to him that I allowed him to feed off me, and I felt his sincere appreciation. It explained the friendly affection he must have felt for me, the way he cared for me and protected me. I knew I read too much into it sometimes; it was hard not to feel cherished and even loved when he treated me with so much care and attention. He said he couldn’t feel love for anyone, yet he behaved like the most loving boyfriend towards me. It did mess with my head, and I had to set myself straight every now and then.

  I mostly assumed, though, that I was the only one feeling the sexual attraction between us. Knowing that he also could feel it opened a whole new can of worms I wasn’t sure I could handle.

  As far as his sexuality was concerned, I still felt confused. I remembered the feeling of his hard erection pre
ssed against me when he hugged me in my cell. On the other hand, the actual intercourse never happened in the arena, and I never remembered any of the men there ever get excited that way…

  “You said you couldn’t procreate…” I reminded him awkwardly.

  “No, I can’t.” He shook his head. “I can’t create life. It’s the gift that only humans have.”

  “But you get turned on by human emotions?”

  “I feel the arousal in human emotions, especially when I consume them.”

  “Oh, okay.” I nodded. That was in line with my understanding of demons so far, they experienced the emotions that they consumed, when they consumed them.

  “I also discovered recently,” He continued with a grin, “that I get turned on by a certain human too.”

  “Okay then…” I wasn’t looking at him, hoping he wouldn’t notice my blushing cheeks, even as I knew that he would see my embarrassment tinted with the same damn arousal he was talking about rising inside me.

  Oh no! That was bad, that was so very, very bad. It was hard enough to deal with my own lust for him when I thought that he might be asexual and therefore unaffected by me in that way. Now, I had the image of his massive hard-on from my dream in my head again!

  “It’s been a very long time since I felt this way about a woman, Alyssa. In fact, I don’t remember if I ever felt this way at all. I went through the whole Handler training without being aroused once, but there is something about you that’s waking my heart and my body…”

  ”Don’t,” I stopped him. “Please don’t say anything more.” The memory of his erection pressed firmly against my lower stomach entered my mind again… “I just can’t handle it, Sytrius. I can’t drive for another day and a half with you right next to me, thinking about your ‘arousal’ and fantasizing about you. It’s just so distracting … and unsettling being constantly turned on…”

  I didn’t mean to be irritated with him; after all, it wasn’t his fault that I couldn’t deal with my attraction to him, but I couldn’t help the frustration I felt. My gaze fell on his gloved hands holding the wheel, and an idea came to me.