by Cryptic Fawn
He studied Elsi's still face intently for a long moment, her eyes that usually sparked the knight's temper, locked away behind closed lids. He supposed he could give the woman a little credit. She probably should be dead.
~~~
Two goddamn days later and the witch hadn't moved, moaned or twitched even once. Nothing.
Tenuxhal felt like kicking a puppy.
This has been as much fun as scrubbing his eyes clean with salt. Having Elsi here was as good as being alone, only more annoying, because the knight was stuck here waiting, not knowing if the woman was going to wake up at all. And half afraid that if she did wake up, she would end up like a fucking vegetable. It was a real concern. Head injuries were tricky things, even for beings like them. Demon energy wasn’t enough for the kind of healing Beelzebubs former army required in their ever continuing war against Heaven. They were fast, powerful warriors, but shitty healers. Couldn’t have it both ways.
Tenuxhal growled and relinquished himself waiting once again, the only thing keeping him from killing the witch now being the promise of taking Elsi's life in a fair fight. With nothing else to entertain him, he tossed himself onto a couch, the Black Citadel had a lot of them and stared at the ceiling. After a few minutes of looking up into the gloom of the monotonous black paint, it was on every fucking wall, silver eyes glazed over and his mind began to wander.
...
Tenuxhal had never really cared for anything besides his own strength. Emotions and feelings like caring for others were of no use to anything in Hell, and most certainly not to him. In fact, they were a hindrance to survival and progression. Tenuxhal would have been further ahead if he hadn't had to share his food with his own minions as a newborn demon.
It was a very rare demon or knight that showed any real feelings of warmth. Some of them seem to develop a nurturing manner about them that just didn’t make sense, considering their species was the furthest thing from nurturing. And though the knight's grasp on the concept of love far exceeded his reach, Tenuxhal still just couldn’t understand or see the point in it.
Either way, it seemed the more development the demon, the more abilities it had to feel something similar to friendship and love. However, Tenuxhal was far more troubled by his own state of affairs regarding his prey, Elsi. The one human Beelzebub had failed to kill.
Stupid asshole.
Beelzebub pissed on him, others mocked him, and that woman just... just gave him that look! Tenuxhal felt like he had little control. His pride, prey, and meaning of existence had all been taken away. His vision was beginning to turn red. The monster inside him, the destructive rage that verged on insanity, was starting to wake up again and he had to leave, now. Elsi was at serious risk he if didn't leave.
He leapt off of the couch, stormed out of the room, and slammed shut the giant door so hard the sound echoed through the room and down the hall. He was more than halfway down the long passage when he realized that he had no idea where he was even going, until he looked at the walls on either side of him. He was headed on a well-worn route heading straight to the throne room where that smug bastard had sat high and mighty as he looked down on his army of demon knights. Beelzebub was long gone, locked away in Heaven and under strict watch, but even the ever defiant Tenuxhal had become only somewhat conditioned under the older demons rule. And for the past several months he had found himself repeating the same actions he was used to doing, the same ones he did before his fellow warriors had all perished.
He slammed his fist deep into the wall and roared in frustration. But the action did little to quell his anger, and did even less to soothe him. He would have happily given his left nut to blow away some weaker demons, even another Knight would have been great, but even that simple pleasure had been taken away.
Tenuxhal turned around and stalked down the hallway in a red rage.
~~~
It had been three days since the knight had procured his piece of witch real estate and Tenuxhal was beginning to realize that there has been a mistake in his thinking.
He had himself something of a mystery where Rhoads was concerned. He wanted to destroy and consume her more than anything, but that also meant exterminating the one thing he desires most. So he was just going to have to enjoy every delicious moment of their future battles and hope that he will eventually be satisfied the time Elsi reached her full potential and Tenuxhal finally ended her miserable life.
He realized that the whole "killing Elsi" thing might soon become a moot point anyway. The woman had finally moved, but she wasn't faring well. One of her wounds had become infected and she burned with fever, her brown hair, soaked with sweat, lying pasted against her forehead.
Tenuxhal had raced back to the medical labs as soon as Elsi's worsened condition had become apparent, and he practically torn the place apart, looking through different vials of healing liquids and medical materials. He grabbed several towels of various sizes and anything else he could possibly use to defeat the infection and ease the fever.
That had been hours ago. He stood over her now, listening to her breath. Elsi was dying by inches, but struggling so hard to live, to keep existing. Tenuxhal felt that too. Everything in Hell was a struggle.
In this brief moment of inner calm, even Tenuxhal respect the strength the witch possessed, and her unbreakable will to survive. Very well, then. As long as Rhoads continued to fight, Tenuxhal would continue to look after her. She wasn't dead yet.
...
Elsi was shivering violently, her breaths coming in short pained gasps. She was so cold it hurt. Her eyes were squeezed tightly together. She had cracked them open just for a second, and had no plans to ever do it again. If she did, she knew everything would start to spin, bringing nausea along for the ride.
For the one brief moment when she had half-remembered who she was, and realized where she was and just who the hell she was with, she had to fight extra hard against vomiting out of fear, and she was positive that expelling the contents from her stomach all over the place would be frowned upon. Her fevered mind was a pollution of incoherent images, but eventually she felt herself slipping back down into nothingness. It was her only way to escape Tenuxhal. She welcomed it.
~~~
Tenuxhal watches his bedridden charge - the unconscious addition to his Hell - his brows furrowed in a moment of deep contemplation.
The knight regarded himself as a man of action, and his primary concern was now in keeping the severely wounded witch alive. He vaguely noted that he wasn’t initially as annoyed as he thought he’d be. Taking care of this half-dead creature gave him something to do, something new to focus on. He shouldn’t be bothered with it, but it was a change from his routine of training alone, a substandard method when you didn’t even have a worth sparring partner to engage, or in his case, any sparring partner.
The human didn’t look so good. She was pale and feverish. Sweat had broken out in fine shimmering beads on her forehead and slicked her body. She shivered constantly, sometimes almost jerking convulsively. Her breathing was ragged, a huffing sound. Her body was working to take deep breaths, then exhaling hard as if trying to vent the heat trapped inside. The witch was really struggling. It was dawning on Tenuxhal that she might really not make it now, and there would be no epic fight, no glorious defeat. That thought truly irritated him.
The blankets weren’t helping, and he was getting sick of the goddamn pathetic sounds of the wretched thing in his bed. For a long moment, Tenuxhal just stared at Elsi, thinking. He finally released a long and tired sigh as he came to an awkward and unsatisfying decision. Fuck.
It was a good goddamn thing that there weren’t any other knights left to see this. Tenuxhal lifted the corner of the blankets back from the shivering form just long enough to slip into the bed himself. The short shock of cold air elicited a gasp and a pathetic whimper of complaint from the woman.
“Tch, shit it, Rhoads. Quit your whining. I’ve got better things to do than this, you know.”
&n
bsp; He was sure the witch didn’t actually hear him, but as soon as he aligned himself and pressed his bare, scaly chest against Elsi’s equally naked back, he knew that she was at least semi-aware, because the woman responded by pressing hard against him, apparently reveling in the warmth from the knights body. His long hair, no longer tied in a braid, laid splayed out behind him.
“Heh.” His ears twitched.
He found the irony highly amusing; Elsi was so desperate to escape the torment of the fever, that she didn’t seem to even care, or rather, she likely didn’t even know, that she was trying to push herself harder into the chest of of a half-naked male three feet taller than her, and Tenuxhal, her sworn enemy, to boot. He laughed at the thought. Which part of that revelation would the woman find more humiliating? The knight knew that Elsi would freak out if her fever broke and Tenuxhal was still there.
Well then, this was a giant no-brainer.
He pulled the blankets up over both of their shoulders and reached one heavily muscled arm around Elsi’s side, cautious of the weight of it against her broken ribs. The difference in their height resulted in his hand coming to rest low on Elsi’s round stomach, settling on the soft space beneath her belly button. The knight noticed the way their bodies moulded comfortably together. He snorted, and then just as quickly let the thought flit away, inconsequential.
Tenuxhal closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and scrunched his nose up as Elsi twitched and her wild curly hair tickled his face. The close contact filled him with Elsi’s scent, and an odd mix of blood, feverish sweat and the faint residual smell of recently washed hair that he hadn’t noticed before. What was that strange sweet smell anyway? It was foreign but not unpleasant. Elsi shifted against him again, the sensation suddenly and unexpectedly travelling down Tenuxhals body, electric heat cresting and pooling in his groin.
"Sh-shit. Quite moving around, woman. Unless you want my dick jammed in your back all night. Tch." Tenuxhal didn't realize that he was blushing several shades of black as he reprimanded Elsi.
This feeling of physical closeness without pain was new to Tenuxhal. If it wasn't a fist in his jaw, a blade in his back, or hand wrapped around his throat, he hadn't experienced it. The gentle touch of another body, so intimate, still, and warm against his own was alien to him. He knew of it, these touches, but he had lusted only for battle and strength in his short time as a knight, finding neither the time nor interest for the inferior whores of Hell. He wouldn't sully his hands or his dick in some futile quest for carnal pleasure with those weak and distasteful wenches.
But here in this bed, while his mind all but refused to acknowledge the pleasure of the sensation, the semi he was sporting told the truth that his body was, at the very least, enjoying the contact. Elsi groaned again, and without even realizing it, Tenuxhal instinctively tightened his arm, pulling her closer until Elsi finally sighed and stilled.
Whether it was from the need to preserve the image he had of himself or not, Tenuxhal quickly shoved aside bothersome thoughts of gentleness and erections and stamped them out, preferring to slide into more comfortable behavioural patterns; like finding ways to fuck with his prey.
Oh yes. This was way too good to pass up. What an excellent way to taunt the woman to make her fight seriously the next time they clashed. Tenuxhal had a flare for pushing buttons. He smiled broadly at the thought and let his head sink into the pillow, staring at the soft, fine, chocolate hairs on the back of Elsi's neck, fighting the sudden urge to bite into it possessively. It was raw instinct. This human, this Rhoads, was on his turf, on his terms, in his care, and in his bed.
At least for now, for all intents and purposes, he owned Elsi Rhoads. The smile stretched impossibly wider. His prey was here and under his control. There was only one word he could think of that could describe the deep, pleasurable feeling that settled throughout his body. Satisfied.
He let his eyes slide closed, tilted his head into an awkward position so his giant horns didn’t stab Elsi or his pillow, and growled quietly in contentment, looking every bit the cat curled up in a morbid fit of ecstasy around the lifeless and eviscerated body of a bird.
Six
Tenuxhal woke up many hours later to the unusual feel of warm, moist air on his face. He cracked open an annoyed eyelid, the one that wasn't pressed into the surface of the pillow, and had to fight to focus on the blur in front of him. Why was that? He blinked as the full picture came into view. If he'd had a human heart, it would have stopped beating. Not an inch from the tip of his nose was Elsi's.
The human must have turned herself over at some point. What was this shit? Tenuxhal berated himself. How in the hell had he become so soft that the witch could manage to flip herself over without even waking him? Even though Elsi was severely injured and no real threat. Was Tenuxhal really that comfortable with the woman? Had he learned nothing about underestimating his enemies? Or had he just been here alone for so long, save for weak demons, that his survival instincts had completely dulled? Both scenarios irritated him, even more so given his natural post-nap ill humour.
His thoughts abruptly snapped back to his current situation. The woman had her arms tucked upwards against her breasts, hands curled up just under her chin. Tenuxhal glanced down without moving his head. From the shape of the covers, Elsi seemed to be mostly in the fetal position.
He brought his eyes back up to the face, so quiet in repose, in front of him. He had never actually seen Elsi this close up for very long. They were always moving too swiftly in battle, faces contorted in anger, covered in blood, flying and teleporting, twisting and blocking, clashing for brief moments before distancing themselves and then clashing again. The only time he'd gotten a real good look at the bitches face for any length of time, it had been bathed in the glow of yellow from the Infernal Tempest forming in Tenuxhal's palm. And he'd still only really noticed those damn eyes and the satisfying fear in them.
But now, Elsi looked peaceful and relaxed, but for the slight ever-present scowl that seemed to be stitched into her brow, the only thing telling of the pain that nagged at her even in unconsciousness. She was young, hardly an adult, still girlish with smooth features and a round face, what human men would probably consider beautiful. The lipstick she was wearing when he first attacked her was all but gone, most likely rubbed off in the heat of battle.
Feeling oddly playful, Tenuxhal cautiously brought his face forward, closing the small space until the tip of their noses touched, then he wriggled it just to see what, if any, reaction he could get. Elsi didn't disappoint. The ticklish sensation made her wrinkle her nose and sniff. Even this little sign of irritation was enough to please the knight to no end, and he grinned fully, teeth and all, his own scowl lines momentarily disappearing as if fleeing from this foreign expression. A smile with no malice in it. Just a boyish jubilance at finding something innocently amusing.
Without warning, Elsi's hand shot up, smacking Tenuxhal hard enough in the mouth in the process to cause him to sink a sharp fang into his lip. He muffled a cry with his free hand, and for an endless moment, forcibly squashed the anger that stirred inside him, and the instinctive urge to smack the woman back twice as hard. Instead, he closed his eyes and waited for Elsi to wake up. He supposed he kind of deserved that any way for being such a prick. Hell, that was the best shot the human had gotten in so far. Heh.
No matter. He would just add it to Rhoads's tab. And when the time came, oh, he would make her pay.
~~~
Elsi was bathed in pain. But the explosion in her head seemed to be settling slowly into a mere vicious pounding, a far cry from the intolerable screaming and tearing agony that it had been before. Whenever that was. Her concept of time seemed to have flown out the window at some point, and her location was a complete mystery as well. Who cared? Where she was and how she'd gotten here was less important than how much pain she was in. Pulsing shock waves beat relentlessly against the insides of her skull, keeping a sadistic rhythm with her heart. It was far too hard to think.<
br />
True consciousness returned slowly, ebbing in and out like gentle ocean waves, pulling her unwillingly, painfully closer to the outside world. Long hours passed and she was becoming more aware piece by piece, able to focus for brief moments on the things around her and not just the throbbing in her head. She was lying on her right side, the ground was soft, and she was warm. Warm. She had been so cold before. She was covered with something... blankets. This was a bed maybe? Yes. Good. She was cooking with gas now.
With monumental effort, she pried open one recalcitrant eyelid just enough to let some light filter through her lashes and reach overly sensitive eyes. She winced even in the low, silvery light of the room. That was as good as things were going to get for now.
It took a long time before her half-lidded eye would cooperate and focus on anything at all, and she struggled to bring into focus a world that was just a blur of wet eyelashes and a wash of dull colours cast in shadows. Elsi wanted to know where she was, but she couldn't really see much of her surroundings because something bulky seemed to be in the way. She blinked away the moisture from glazed eyes and found that she could finally make out most of the bleary shape in front of her face. It was a person.
"Morning, honey."
Now, Elsi did have a human heart, and she was pretty sure it stopped beating.
Her reasoning skills were slow and dulled, but this, this low voice, silky yet grating, this face in front of her... she knew. And she feared.
The knight waited to let the situation sink in (the witch was known for being a bit dull at times) before he punctuated the greeting with a slight upward tilt of his head and quick forward motion, and planted a moist kiss firmly on Elsi's lips. He pulled back to observe the results of his actions, with a wide toothy grin, one that was both happy and vicious.