by Anne Conley
So when her next conscious thought after counting backward from ten was a classroom, complete with teacher and four grown men slumped in tiny desks, she was surprised. She’d definitely been expecting something different.
The men were beautiful, and it took her a minute to realize two of them were her would-be kidnappers and one was from the horrible dream with the airplane. They sat in desks behind another, equally beautiful man with auburn hair and green eyes. At the moment, she was just observing it all, trying desperately to wrap her mind around the strange vision. There was a ‘teacher’ standing in front of the man in the front row, pointing his finger and chiding him. To his credit, the man looked duly chagrined. The older man had white hair and wore a corduroy jacket—one of those with the patches at the elbows—over a pair of tweed slacks. A pipe stuck out of his pocket, and the beard he wore was neat and tidy. It took a while before words started sinking in.
“…disappointed beyond belief. I had no idea you would go against my wishes like this.” Extending his focus to all the men in the room, he continued. “All of you, meddling in affairs that have nothing to do with you. I’m so very disheartened right now. It’s like you don’t trust me to know what’s best. Haven’t I always treated my creations with fairness, and you’ve always trusted me to do the right thing, even if I seemed to be wrong?”
Cynthia had a feeling of peace when she looked at the Teacher. She couldn’t explain it, but just looking at him, hearing him speak, filled her with light. It was weird, and she tried to shake it off but couldn’t. And she found she didn’t really want to. He felt good. Made her warm. Secure.
The fourth man in the back seat held a defiant look to his eyes, while the other three ducked their heads in shame. Looking at the fourth man, the Teacher continued. “And you… I know what you’re thinking, and you can stop right now. It’s not going to happen the way you think it will.”
Before he could go any further, the door burst open with a crash and Cynthia was surprised to see Damien barreling in, his face a mask of fury she’d never seen before and it sent a chill straight through her, her prior warmth dissipating.
“You did this! How could you? You told me I could have her, and you did this.” Tears of frustration streamed down his face, and Cynthia struggled to understand what was happening as he got in the Teacher’s face. To his credit, the Teacher didn’t back down.
“No, I didn’t. If you hadn’t have meddled with your brothers affairs so often, they wouldn’t have felt the need to retaliate with Cynthia.”
Her ears perked up as soon as she realized they were talking about her. This was such an odd dream, one she could attribute to any number of things—the tumor, the anesthesia, last night’s epic love-making with Damien. But she focused on the events unfolding in front of her instead of why she was seeing them.
The auburn-haired man spoke up then. “I did it.” His voice was quiet, but it held conviction—an unrepentance which struck her as odd. Who would so disregard the man who exuded so much warmth and peace standing in front of them? It was like slapping your grandpa.
Damien reeled back as if slapped, turning to the man. “You did? You can’t! You heal.”
“I can, and I did. What you did to Grace was unforgiveable to me. All of us. We don’t want you to have her, it’s that simple. When she wouldn’t listen to Gabe and Uri, it was the only logical way to end this.”
“I’m the Deceiver! It’s my job to do what I did. That’s what I was created for!” Disbelief laced Damien’s words, and Cynthia was captivated, a niggle of something tickling her brain. Turning back to the Teacher, he went on, his voice a controlled rage. “You made me like this, how can you let this happen? All I ever wanted was to do things the way you wanted me to. I can’t help it if you regretted your decision to create me and then abandoned me. It’s all your fault!”
The blond sitting behind the redhead stood up, aiming an elegant finger at Damien. “You’re evil, Deceiver, and we are only doing what we think is best for Cynthia. We’re trying to protect her from the Devil.” Gesturing to the Teacher, he said, “He doesn’t seem to think so, because of some misguided faith in your inherent goodness, but we call it like we see it. You tried to take our women from us, so we’re only repaying the favor.” The Teacher quirked an eyebrow at the blond, the only outward signal that he was annoyed by the comment, but an undercurrent of anger emanated from him before Cynthia was distracted once again by Damien.
Yanking at his hair, Damien’s face was flushed and he roared in anger. “It’s not your place!” He was in full-on panic mode, and Cynthia watched her ever-controlled lover lose it.
Horror spread through her veins like ice water as Damien shifted into the evilness of her dreams. His skin turned black while his eyes glowed red, and dark, iridescent scales sprouted from wings shifting out of the skin on his back. Suddenly, in a blink of an eye that happened in slow-motion, Damien took the form of an obsidian angel, wings spread with a dark, angry aura.
The other four men in the room tensed, eyes flashing, no, glowing, in the room. Cynthia noticed the others’ eyes for the first time—blue, brown, green, and an impossible silver color—all glowing with a predatory vengeance. The Teacher stood idly, looking on with a slightly bored expression on his face as if He found the battle of good versus evil to be a part of everyday life.
The Teacher outstretched a hand, placating the men with an invisible touch. To Damien, the demon-looking thing in front of him, he said, “I told you I would choose a woman for you to fall for. It’s working, you’ve fallen, and you’re turning human. But you also have to work for her, just like these boys.” He spoke as if speaking to an indulgent child, which Cynthia supposed Damien was. “Uriel and Michael had to work through their own preconceived notions of the women I chose for them. Gabriel had to overcome his own self-doubt, and Rafael had to win his love’s heart.” Releasing the others from the spell he’d seemingly cast over them, he turned fully to Damien. “You must overcome all of these.”
Suddenly, Cynthia knew.
She understood, beyond a doubt, that Damien was the Devil, the Teacher was God, and the other men were angels Damien had somehow tried to thwart. The knowledge came to Cynthia in a flash of brilliance, nearly knocking her out of her seat. She was a pawn in some celestial arm-wrestle and was witnessing a cosmic pissing contest beyond her control.
The dark-haired, silver-eyed man was the only one to stand, and as he did, his arm bulged under a tattoo she hadn’t noticed before. She gasped as she saw it was a snake, and it moved, writhing on his bicep as if trying to get free.
Cynthia didn’t like snakes much.
“Michael, sit down.” The Teacher’s voice was commanding, and Michael sat immediately, but his face still focused on Damien, the dark angel who flapped agitated in the front of the room. The Teacher turned to him. “I can fix this. You know I will, but you need to control yourself.” His eyes tracked back to where Cynthia sat, and for the first time since she’d entered the room, she felt like He saw her. A small smile graced his ageless features, and she sensed his power as a weightlessness infused her limbs. She floated up, helpless to stop herself as she passed through the ceiling tiles. “Of course, it’s been rather easy for you up until this point. Now, you’ve got some work to do with her.” His voice had a soothing effect as she left the room, the sound dwindling in her consciousness. “She knows, now…”
Then, a garish slamming sensation had her coming to wakefulness amid a flurry of noise and activity. As her spirit became one again with her body, her senses came back to her, and she opened her eyes to a myriad of faces. Doctors and nurses all crowded around her, their faces different masks of surprise and disbelief.
“You’re alive,” a lady whispered.
Cynthia knew exactly what had happened. She’d been dead, experienced the afterlife, and come back. It happened all the time and was written about in books she’d always scoffed at. But now, it was her.
Her eyes scanned the room, f
inding Damien standing behind everyone, looking rakishly handsome with his tousled black hair. Dark purple circles were etched under his red-rimmed eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
While she was being poked and prodded amid exclamations of “That’s incredible,” and “Unbelievable,” Cynthia recounted her dream.
But it had been no dream.
In her daze, she watched Damien straighten as another doctor came in, this one looking remarkably like the Teacher from her vision. In fact, as she stared at his scrubs with the stars and moons on them, she looked at the name stitched into his coat, T. Boss, MD, and knew He was God.
He shooed everyone out with a vague waving of his hands, and they complied. Then He turned to her. “You’ve had quite the experience, but no one will remember. At least no one on staff here. You’ve been given a second chance at life, your incisions miraculously healed, and your tumor gone. Use it wisely.” And then he disappeared.
Cynthia blinked in the room, completely taken aback by the sudden stillness. Damien still stood in the corner, as if she couldn’t see him, and she watched as he shook himself and then slowly walked toward her. For once, he was hesitant, unsure, and unbelievably sexy with his awkwardness.
But she knew.
Cynthia sat up on the side of the bed as Damien reached her. When his warm hands settled on her shoulders, her first inclination was to melt into his heat, to kiss him with a joyous abandon, to feel his arms cradling her—but she couldn’t.
“I thought I’d lost you.” His voice a husky whisper, full of longing that hurt her heart to hear. It was a tortured sound that tugged her insides.
“I know,” she said simply. Words wouldn’t come to her.
He pulled her into a hug, and she was helpless to resist. She would allow him one last hug. One last fierce, bone-crushing hug. A hug which wrapped her in possessive safety, comfort—from the Devil. She tried to push him away, but he only tightened his grip on her.
“Damien, I know,” she repeated, her voice resigned. He stiffened.
“Know what?” he asked carefully.
She swallowed. “What you are.”
His grip tightened as if he wasn’t going to let her go, and he sighed. “Oh,” he replied, his face buried in her hair. He inhaled once, an impossibly deep sniff in, as if committing her aroma to memory. “Please don’t do this…” His anguished plea nearly undid her, but his deceptiveness overruled.
Suddenly, all of his vagaries came back to her, and they made sense. He didn’t have a home to take her to, his job as a deal-maker, the way he showed up uncannily when she needed him. It was all too much, especially on top of her miraculous recovery. “I can’t do this. I can’t be with… who you are.”
He pulled away from her then, still holding her arms tightly. Looking into her eyes, she saw a fiery storm there. “You. Are. Mine.”
A tear tracked down her cheek. “I can’t.” Unapologetic, she turned away from his face as all the hurt he felt poured into his features. She couldn’t look at him.
Her parents burst into the room, and Damien leapt away from her as if burnt. Like they didn’t see him, her mother and father rushed to her side as he stepped away, waving to her with his fingers before he, too, disappeared.
The next two weeks went by hellishly slow for Cynthia, trapped in her apartment with two hovering parents, a well-meaning best friend, and her own mind. Her mother had cooked and frozen enough meals for an army to eat for a year, stacking them all so efficiently in her freezer, she’d had to get rid of her ice cream. Her father had fixed every imagined fault in her place, from the faucet that dripped once every seven and a half minutes to squeaky door hinges, to replacing all of her lightbulbs with super-efficient, long-life ones. When he ran out of things to “fix”, he bought Cynthia a new sixty-inch plasma TV and leather recliner and parked his butt.
Evelyn helped her unpack everything she’d previously packed in her attempt to ease everyone’s life after her death, peppering her with questions she refused to answer. She didn’t see the need to talk about everything; she was already stuck with her thoughts. She didn’t need to bring another level of reality to them by speaking them aloud.
In hopes of recreating the vision of peace she’d encountered in the hospital, Cynthia had visited church with Evelyn. Nothing. The purity of the faith was lost with all the falderal: the stained glass only seemed garish, the statuary too elaborate, the sermon staged. It probably helped those who didn’t know the truth to be firmer in their faith, but it didn’t help her recapture what she’d felt in her vision.
Cynthia’s vision, which is how she referred to it in her head, had dispelled every pre-conceived notion she’d ever had about religion—pearly gates, fluffy clouds, angels with wings. The Archangels. Cynthia had researched the names the Teacher had mentioned in his conversation: Uriel, Gabriel, Rafael, and Michael were all archangels, creations of God, as was Satan, who had been an angel until he displeased God and was cast down. She had been in the same room with God’s most trusted creations—The Four Winds, and had sex with Old Scratch himself.
Satan had been created to deceive, and that’s what he did. Only, he did it too well and got carried away, which was why God had made him master of the underworld. Apparently, though, according to her vision, Damien was still under God’s holy thumb, and God had chosen a woman for him to fall in love with—Cynthia.
But why her? Why had Cynthia been chosen to be the bride of the underworld? What had she ever done to make her worthy to be evil’s one true love?
As always, her traitorous mind replayed their night together. She’d discovered a wildness she didn’t know existed. She had been so taken up in the moment with Damien and the way he made her feel, he could have asked anything of her. And she would have done it. Willingly and with pleasure. Damien had made her feel cherished, he’d said he loved her, that she made him different. And she’d believed him. But that’s why he was what he was. He was incredibly good at what he did.
He deceived people.
How could she trust he wasn’t deceiving her? And if he wasn’t, and had actually fallen for her like her vision implied, what exactly did that mean? Would she have to spend her eternity in Hell? With the rest of the damned?
She forced thoughts of making love to Damien out of her mind and focused on every bad thing she’d ever done. It didn’t take long. She’d stolen a pack of gum when she was nine from a convenience store. But Evelyn had been right next to her, doing the same thing, and she wasn’t Evil’s chosen bride. Although, Evelyn was a Christian and hadn’t spent her life denying the existence of God. Was that it? Could her disbelief have been what brought her to the attention of the holiest of holies? Could it be the fragrance? Falsifying, as it were, the physical effects of love to make people fall in love via a contrived method? Was that what had made her the perfect bride for Beelzebub?
Cynthia could change it all. Starting now, she would be a penitent Christian. She would put a halt to the testing of the fragrance. She could even go by that convenience store, fess up, and pay for the gum, twenty years later. Would doing all of that make her fall out of love with Damien?
Because the hard truth of the matter was, she loved him. Even if he was evil, had caused millions of people misery, balanced out all of the good in the world with his own malevolence, she loved him. Cynthia had seen a different side to the Devil. She’d seen him nurture her when she’d had her seizure, he’d protected her at the club from random men with lecherous thoughts, and he’d loved her like no man before him.
But she wasn’t going to go down this path with him. She couldn’t. Because he wasn’t a man.
He’d been calling her, leaving increasingly insistent messages, all of which she ignored. Then blocked.
After taking her mother to her follow-up appointment with the surgeon, Cynthia finally convinced her to go home. The surgeon declared the surgery a success, the tumor disappearing a miracle, and Cynthia cured. Cancer-free.
“You can’t
ever do that to me again, Cynthia Marie Peterson,” her mother chided her for the hundredth time. She wouldn’t. Seeing the pain she’d caused her parents by not letting them worry for her was a burden she certainly didn’t want to relive. She saw the toll it had taken on both of her parents, and regret filled her soul. Even though she’d been trying to protect them, the fact that she’d hidden such a major thing from them left them with feelings of distrust and despair she didn’t wish on anyone.
“I promise, Mom. I won’t.” She hugged her mother, and then her father, before seeing them out the door. Evelyn had already left, after the same chiding, but was pleased Cynthia was going to visit her church on Sunday.
She was ready to get her life back on track, in the right direction. Shutting the door on her visitors, she turned to her empty apartment and took stock. Tomorrow, she would talk to her boss about pulling the plug on the fragrance; she just needed to come up with a valid reason. She didn’t think the sake of her soul would work for him.
And she needed to find a way to get Damien out of her mind, because he was there, every second of every minute of every hour of every day. She heard him whistling Sympathy for the Devil outside her window at night, never really sure if it was her imagination or not. She dreamed about him, reliving memories of their talks, their laughter, their lovemaking. She saw his face out of the corner of her eye at random times, but when she turned to look, he was gone. If he was ever there.
Yeah, she needed to forget about him. Cynthia just wasn’t sure it was possible.
Damien understood her feelings, truly he did. Cynthia was scared, she knew who he was, and suddenly believed, so she understood her perceptions of his inherent evil tendencies. He’d tried calling her, but she ignored his increasingly frantic phone calls. He made a fool out of himself on her voicemail inbox, and she had disregarded everything he said. He couldn’t blame her. He would probably do the same thing if he were in her shoes. But he needed her to listen.