Torturous Love : Version 3 - 6. TL3: Chapter 6

Tobias yelped, snatched up the knife from the chopping board, already knowing it would do him no good whatsoever, and scrambled for the pantry door as Kiorl came around the end of the long counter. Shindae was still halfway through his interrupted introduction, half rising from his stool, as Tobias slipped inside the cold-store and pulled the door shut with a thud. From the kitchen beyond there was shouting, voices raised but indistinct, a wash of various levels of surprise, hurt, indignation, resentment, shock, and then the scrape of what Tobias knew, not because he was an empath but because he’d worked in a tavern, was a wooden chair on stone, and the splintering of said chair over someone’s head.

“You fucker!”

After a pause, there was a soft knocking at the door, and Tobias suddenly realised how incredibly cold he was, crouching in the pantry, surrounded by blocks of blue ice he was fairly certain by now were actually enchanted.

“You can come out now,” said a third voice. “I talked sense into them.”

“You hit me over the head with a chair!”

“It worked didn’t it?” Shindae’s smooth voice was already filled with mirth once more. “Anyway, I think he was aiming for us both. This is why we don’t let you have ranged weapons, Sitka.”

“Shut up, bud.” Sitka’s voice returned, speaking low and softly, like the way Tobias’s father used to talk to wary animals. “Look, we’ll all be on the other side of the bar, and I promise Kiorl will control his temper. Come out, you’ve gotta be freezing.”

Tobias waited for a while, until he counted the scrape and sigh of people settling onto furniture and worked out that unless someone else had slithered in, the demons had in fact done as they had promised. He pushed the pantry door with his shoulder, and crept out into the kitchen.

On the other side of the long stone counter, Shindae now sat with Kiorl, who speared him with narrowed eyes, and a person – who must have been Sitka – who had dusky, plum-black skin, eyes like polished onyx, and spiralled horns like a ram. He was wearing half of a set of pauldrons, a leather bracer on his other arm, and an easy smile which revealed two very sharp teeth.

He’s just a kid.

Fucking empaths.

I wonder if he’ll ever finish cooking, and feed us?

“Kiorl, you wanna say something to our new housemate?” Sitka prompted.

“Stay out of my fucking head.” The panther turned to glare at the horned demon. “You ever try that stunt again, I’ll turn you into a stain on the fucking floor.” Kiorl spared Tobias a last, lingering, hateful glare, and stalked from the room.

“Well, that could have gone worse.” Shindae commented with a shrug. “You do know he could have killed us both, right?”

“Kiorl’s a pushover when he’s not pulling rank.”

“Never let him hear you say that, bud.” Shindae turned to Tobias. “If you’re wondering where Zai is, he left word that he’d gone to Stores-”

“Again,” Sitka interjected.

“-and then he was going to the office to get some time off. To spend with you.”

Tobias gaped, not caring that his omelette was burning.

“Zai has a job?” he uttered, and the other two demons laughed heartily.

Tobias scraped his failed first omelette into a carved opening in the wall which Sitka told him was ‘for the trash’, and began to slice another garlicky onion into translucent rounds. The scent of frying made his stomach rumble loudly.

“When was the last time you ate?

“Yesterday… I think. No, the day before. Sunday night.” Tobias frowned. “What day is it?”

“Buck mese is nearly over,” Shindae rubbed his scalp with two lava stained fingers, “but the Summas festival isn’t for another tenday.”

“It’s Nonae. You never could keep a calender straight in your head.” Sitka smiled. “So did Zai not tell you where he was going?”

“Zai didn’t...”

He didn’t tell you anything. He’s never told you anything useful, other than to let you know that he owned you now. He left you helpless.

Tobias scowled at his inner voice, poured the beaten eggs into the frying pan, and didn’t look up.

“Zai’s an enforcer; and a high ranking one too. Sometimes he works for the Palace directly. His job is to ensure that people who draw the Prince’s ire know how much they displeased him.” The inside of Sitka’s mind was suddenly awash with an image of some street somewhere under a blue sky, the cobbles drenched with fresh blood, and Zai – snarling, eyes brighter than the sun, scarier than Tobias had ever seen him – holding some other demon with green skin and teeth instead of eyes up by what Tobias assumed was its throat. “Your mate is a scary bastard when he wants to be.”

“My… what?”

Tobias watched as the two demons shared a private smile. Or, what would have been a private smile if Tobias hadn’t been able to see inside their heads. Shindae was feeling smug, faintly jealous as a peek of lust rose through his general demeanour, and Sitka was openly imagining what Tobias looked like naked.

“Stop that!”

Sitka laughed, then ducked behind his friend to escape Tobias’s glare.

“So Kiorl wasn’t having a temporary break with sanity. You are an empath.”

Zai sure knows how to pick ‘em. I wonder what his secret is?

Tobias stared back at the lava covered demon, as he felt Shindae’s thoughts taking on a clearer shape.

You can hear me?

Tobias didn’t react.

Ohhh… you are good. How long have you been hiding this secret, boy?

“I said not to call me that!” Tobias snapped, realising he’d given himself away too late. “Shit.”

Shindae smiled, and Sitka shrugged, his curling horns touching his shoulders.

“In the house, it’s not such a big deal. We know, and we don’t really talk about it. Everywhere else, being an empath is not looked on very favourably.”

“Though Nassau will know about you already,” Shindae added. “Heck, he probably knew you were here the moment you arrived.”

“The fact that the Prince is an empath is also not well known. Most people think he can just see the future. Sometimes I think that’s why Zinkara Rumah is his favourite house, though he’s not been by in what feels like a hundred years, because he doesn’t need to hide who he is.” Sitka tilted his head when he frowned, and Tobias couldn’t help but be reminded of a friendly and inquisitive ram they’d owned when he was a child. “You’re going to have to work on your shielding though. I doubt you want to be privy to all the things the rest of us feel all the time. There are some things that shouldn’t be shared.”

“Like Inai’s leftovers.” Shindae quipped.

Tobias’s stomach grumbled loudly again as he transferred his omelette to a thick slab of smooth wood which would serve perfectly well as a plate, he didn’t eat it and stared at the dirty pans instead.

“Oh, don’t worry about those. Just put them in the sink and the house will do them.”

“What?”

Shindae came around the long bar, and took the pan, bowl, and utensils from Tobias’s unresisting hands.

“Zinkara Rumah looks after us well. Eat your food.”

“Good thing too, or this place would be awful.” Sitka grinned. He was still watching Tobias’s plate with an eager expression. “So you do a lot of this foodie thing?”

“I was a cook, before...”

“Before Zai came and whisked you off your feet?”

Before a demon came to kill you, broke you, hurt you, raped you, tortured you…

I don’t want to think about that.

And you know he’s going to come back from wherever he’s gone and do it all over again.

Shut up!

Tobias pushed the plate across the counter at the horned demon.

“I’m not hungry.”

Tobias turned on his heel, stuffed his hands into the pockets of his stiff trousers, and stalked off back to the narrow stairway he’d come down on. Now he followed it all the way up, past the long corridor from which he could access Zai’s bedroom – it’s supposed to be our room now, dammit – and into a tight spiral without handholds which opened out onto what he instantly knew was the roof of the house. The campfire stars seemed so close that he could reach out and touch them, but the view of the land fell away much more sharply than the scale of the house from the outside had suggested. Tobias walked to the unprotected edge of the sleek black roof and stood looking out over the bowl of the valley, his attention drawn to the sprawling mass of the Palace in the centre of Hell.

“If you jump, you’ll still die.”

Kiorl’s voice made Tobias flinch violently, and he stepped back from the edge before spinning around, wondering if he could flee in time.

“You’re not immortal. Just in case you were wondering.” The big black panther lounged on a red velvet chaise with gold trim which had clearly seen better days. “Zai would be rather upset if you died, I think.”

“But you’re happy to try and kill me?”

The panther’s blue eyes narrowed to evil slits, and his ears twisted backwards in a clear sign of displeasure.

“I overreacted. I won’t touch you, but you’d best learn to stay out of my head.” Kiorl sighed in exasperation, clearly trying not to be intimidating. It was not a skill he was very good at. “Come away from the edge, would you Tobias? I don’t want to have to tell Zai I watched his mate jump to his death.”

Sitka called Zai that too. What are they on about?

“Mate?” he queried softly, stepping towards the rough circle of mismatched old furniture.

“He wouldn’t have collared you if you were just a toy. Bold move on his part, and potentially stupid. Time will tell.”

Tobias received a sense of intense longing from the feline demon, a deep loss and isolation that he could barely grasp, but as Kiorl looked directly at him, Tobias managed to step back without using his feet, and extract himself from Kiorl’s mind.

“The boys are right, by the way. Whatever you cooked smelt great.”

“I….”

I’m never going to get to finish my training. I’ll never learn a new recipe again. I’ll have to make the same food forever, and I never got a chance to try that sweet pastry I tasted last summer.

“You don’t talk a lot, do you?” Silent and brooding, you the two of you will get along just fine.

Tobias didn’t like to think of the trouble that listening in on Kiorl’s inner thoughts might get him in, so he sat down on the seat farthest from the demon and asked the question which had been preying most on his mind.

“Why did Zai bring me here?”

“Let me be clear; I’m not an empath. And trying to work out why anyone does what your mate has done is a waste of my time. Why would he want to be with a human? Beats me, but handful of demons all over the Inner Circle have tried mated life at some point or other – some far more successfully than others, mind you – so I can see that it made sense to him.

“You’re an empath, which is rare. He’s an empath and demon, which is rarer. And he’s a twisted fucker, which you must be a little bit too.” He looks so sodding normal though, even for a human. “So obviously Zai’s decided you’re more fun alive than dead, and he’s brought you home to keep playing.”

“You said I wasn’t a toy.”

“Not just a toy. No fleeting mortal soul can ever be anything but an interesting and temporary diversion for an immortal. But like I said, some are more successful than others.”

Tobias didn’t want to ask the question, and he hadn’t finished speaking before Kiorl’s mind began answering him.

The mates of demons who didn’t make it faded like sun-bleached paintwork, peeling from the side of an old barn. Shambling and unprotected, they died with no one to mourn or miss them. Tobias shuddered away from the image, and wrapped his arms around himself as he realised how cold he’d suddenly become despite the hot breeze that wafted over the rooftop.

“And no one has asked Nassau for his gift in many, many years. No one dares. Not since Mattias.” And there was the sense of loneliness again, longing for the past which had rolled away like an ocean never to return, a sorrow so deep that Tobias could only sense it as an all encompassing miasma of sadness.

“Was he very special to you?” Tobias asked in the softest tone he could manage.

“We never got on. I found him irritating, but he loved Nassau, and Nassau adored him with every fibre of his being. He’s not been the same since.”

Tobias stared at the demon, then blinked, and twisted round to look at the Palace once again. The emotions he’d been feeling weren’t Kiorl’s, but belonged to someone else, someone who wasn’t even there. Tobias couldn’t imagine how much pain someone must be in to broadcast their feelings out over such an enormous distance. He shivered involuntarily.

“You can ask Zai yourself what he intends to do with you. He’s on his way.” Kiorl gestured to the path Tobias had arrived on, and the fast moving grey shape which swarmed along it. “I suspect he got his request for leave accepted too. You’d best go.”

He couldn’t think of anything useful to say to the powerful demon, so Tobias just nodded tightly, crossed to the door which lead to the stairs, and fled silently. He didn’t even know if he wanted to see Zai, but the demon was at least familiar if not safe, and Tobias needed something to be familiar.

He paused at the foot of the stairs, unsure where Zai would be, and heard the rich, complex voice of the demon from below. Tobias turned sharply to descend the stairs and smacked directly into a hard, cool slab of a person. He staggered back, blinking at the sight of green-toned scales, and stared up at the half-snake as his mind was suddenly filled with a hissing, slithering, twisted hunger which made him want to scream. He stepped back, tripped on the stair behind him, and was caught by the naga’s thick tail. He fought instinctively, but the snake coiled around his thighs tightly.

“Who are you?” the demon hissed.

Tobias quivered in terror at the sheer size of the snake-man who towered over him, and squeezed like a fist. He could feel the flavour of the naga’s mind – a slippery, vicious thing full of latent violence and the ability to lull his victims into a false sense of security.

“What are you doing here?”

Zai!

Tobias wished he still had hold of the knife from the kitchen though he had no idea if it would even penetrate the naga’s thick scales. He wished he hadn’t stopped, hadn’t tripped, hadn’t been alone along enough to leave himself vulnerable.

ZAI!

Tobias felt Zai’s presence just at the same moment as he remembered about the Chain of Possession he wore, and what Zai said it could do. The naga coiled his body in order to bring Tobias close to his face, and the moment he laid his huge hand on Tobias’s neck and shoulder, Tobias felt the force spring from the necklace like a thrown punch. And then Zai was there, a blurr of fur and leather streaking across his vision as he was dropped. Tobias didn’t see the scuffle, but by the time he was back on his feet, it was over, and Zai had the naga flat on the floor, his massive tail pinned by Zai’s claws as the horned demon snarled.

“You fucking reprehensible little upstart. You think you can lay hands on someone I am protecting without consequence?” Zai’s growl made Tobias shiver, even though he knew that all of the demon’s anger was centred very firmly on the naga. “Do not forget that you are allowed here only by the grace of those more powerful than you, Inai.”

“I wasn’t gonna...”

“DO NOT LIE TO ME!” Tobias winced as he heard and crunch of one of the naga’s bones snapping under Zai’s boot. “Have you learnt nothing in the last three decades, you miserable shit?”

“I am sorry, y’sire.” Inai’s words were laden with intense regret, and Tobias knew that for all his predatory, twisted hunger, the naga was truly sorry. He reached out and touched gingerly at Zai’s flinty sharpness.

Zai, don’t hurt him any more. He’s plenty sorry.

“Apologize to Tobias.”

Inai clearly didn’t answer quick enough, and hissed sharply between his teeth as Zai crunched down with his boot on the already broken bone in his tail.

“Sorry! I’m sorry!”

“Slither away Inai. I catch you looking at my mate again and I’ll eat your eyes.”

Tobias waited, breathing hard, until he and Zai were alone in the long corridor once more. The demon turned to smile at him, and Tobias shook with happy relief.

You’re happy to see him?

He saved me.

He tortured you! Oh, I give up!

“You didn’t have to do that. I mean, you didn’t need to hurt him so badly.”

“Yeah I did. Inai’s top of the pecking order of his clique, and snakes gossip worse than anyone. Word’ll get around, and no one’s gonna even think about overstepping the mark and touching you again.”

Tobias frowned.

“Did you really have to threaten to eat his eyes?” The mental image repulsed him, and Tobias shivered as Zai came close.

“Sure. Inai’s a hypnotist, that’d come in handy. If you kill another demon, you absorb their power. But if you want their abilities, you have to eat them.” Zai grinned in an evil manner, and Tobias knew he had to ask.

“You ever killed another demon?” The inside of Zai’s mind flooded with images in response. “I mean, someone who weren’t ordered to kill?”

There was a clear snap of regret and shame, and Zai snarled quickly as he exhaled.

“Yes.”

Tobias was sensible enough not to press for more detail. He fought silently in his head with his desire to touch the demon, and realised too late that Zai could feel everything. Simultaneously he tried to lean into and flinch away from Zai’s arm around his shoulders, and then he sensed the deep relief the demon felt at his company, and Tobias collapsed against him.

“Z-Z-Zai….”

“Hey, oh Sweetling. What happened while I was gone? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left, I should have been back sooner. The guys are nice once you get to know them.”

Tobias’s stomach interrupted them by rumbling once more.

“Did you eat anything?”

I burnt one omelette and gave the other to Sitka.

“Do you want to eat first, or look at your new wardrobe?”

“My… What?”

“C’mon.” Zai took his hand and dragged him along the corridor, past half a dozen doors which looked the same, and into their room. It took Tobias a moment to remember where he was, and then he saw the image of himself sleeping in the big dish-shaped bed, seen through Zai’s eyes, coloured with some soft texture he couldn’t make out. “You like the clothes?”

“Yes. Thank you?” Tobias frowned. Zai was fiddling with a pouch at his waist, and his mind was an incoherent bubble of excitement. “Zai, what have you done?”

“I borrowed the Bag of Holding from Sitka. He’s got the only one ever found, lucky sod, and Nassau let him keep it. It’s about the most useful thing in the ‘verse. I went to Stores and picked up everything I figured you might want. I mean, if you don’t like it, I can take it back...” Zai began tripping over his own words as he opened the Bag, and began to pull out things which couldn’t have possibly fitted inside the tiny space.

Tobias stared in shock, and blinked, but even more interesting than the magic apparitions, were the visions from the inside of Zai’s head. He’d spent the day wandering through the biggest, most crowded room of stuff Tobias had even seen, touching everything, choosing certain objects, and thinking about him the entire time. When he focused again, their room looked subtly different: there was now a plain but very solid chest of drawers next to the wardrobe, and Tobias opened a drawer to find it filled with clothes – most of which were of the sorts he recognised but had never been wealthy enough to own. Thick knitted jumpers, shirts woven of fine cotton and silks, heavy well-tailored trousers, more socks than he could count, several pairs of the blue jeans he currently wore, and dozens of other things besides.

Please, dear gods, I really hope he likes it.

“This is all for me?”

“Yes.” Zai’s voice was heavy and meaningful. “This is your home too. I want you to feel….” Like you belong here. I want to hope that you could learn to like it here, with me. That I won’t always be a monster to you.

“Zai….”

The demon covered the softness of the moment by glancing away, and busying himself once more with the Bag of Holding. He withdrew an oil cloth roll about as long as Tobias’s arm.

“I got you this too. Scavenger friend of mine went and picked it up on special order for me. I thought you’d like it.” Zai grinned mischievously. “After all, you’re the one who knows how to use knives.”

Frowning, Tobias took the heavy package, picked apart the knotted strap, and unrolled it in the bed. Held in separate stitched leather sleeves, were a dozen knives each with different blades, all handled with wood or smoothed and carved antler. The longest measured from Tobias’s elbow to his wrist with a bulbous shaped tip, and a cutting edge that looked sharper than Zai’s fangs. Tobias took the littlest knife with a sharp point and a slightly convex blade and weighed it in his hand. It was warm, comfortable, and already he remembered the scent of tart fresh apples, standing in the kitchen with the wooden bucket of windfalls, peeling the fruit ready for the moist, spicy cake his mother had made for special occasions.

“You’re not scared I’ll stab you in your sleep?”

“No.”

And he wasn’t. Tobias saw inside Zai’s head, and the demon was absolutely certain that his answer was true and that Tobias wouldn’t try and hurt him.

But he’s going to hurt you, you can see him thinking about it…. And you’re going to let him, you sick fuck. Tobias clenched the knife hard in his fist until his knuckles went white and his arm shook with the effort. Maybe the Pastor was right about you all along. You are a freak.

“I’m going to go make dinner.” Tobias announced to no one in particular, scooped up the knife roll, and stalked down the stairs.

And hopefully Zai will show me back to our room later because I still can’t remember which door it is.

Tobias cooked without thinking about it. He chose his ingredients by scent and texture, matching them up in his mind to the things they seemed most familiar with, finding substitutes for butter and chives, and vegetables which – whilst he wasn’t sure what they were – were certainly edible tubers and therefore could take the place of potatoes, even though they were bright purple. He pulled pans and glazed stoneware dishes from cupboards, then emptied them and began to rearrange the set-up to his own liking. From what Shindae had said, no one else cooked, and Tobias decided that if he was going to spend the rest of his life here, then the cutlery was going to reside in a more accessible drawer. There was one moment of surprise, as he washed dirt from the not-potatoes, as he realised the dirty pans from earlier had vanished, and after a short search were revealed to have been cleaned, dried, and hung back on the hooks where he had found them. The kitchen began to fill with the rich scents of Tobias’s cooking, the fire burning gently below the huge blackened saucepan, and Tobias began to listen with his mind to the conversation he could hear from the room across from the kitchen. He couldn’t make out the words that were said, but snatches of thoughts came to him, along with the emotions of their owners.

For someone who says he thinks he's in love, he seems miserable. That was Shindae’s normally jovial mind, and he seemed softly confused and worried for his friend.

Haven’t I always maintained that mating with humans was a bad idea? Kiorl’s smug self-satisfied tones made Tobias shiver and quickly turn his attention somewhere else.

Zai snarled defensively, and Tobias knew the black panther must have said something similar out loud.

He was my choice!

Was he? Zai’s inner voice muttered uneasily. You just followed the Northern Wind and picked the first pretty thing that crossed your path in the dark. And you were desperate for something to change. Do you love him?

How could I even know if I did?

There was a flash of anger from the grey demon, then an answering snap from Kiorl, and Tobias felt fear sweep briefly through the other three demons as the argument rose and was settled within moments.

Zai, audibly disgruntled, said something gracious to Kiorl, and Tobias felt the demon’s pang of regret as though his heart had been struck. Zai was missing those nights they’d spent in Old Man Riley’s house, because they’d been alone, and unjudged by anyone except each other, and suddenly Tobias realised that bringing him here was forcing Zai to defend himself in ways he hadn’t ever considered.

It’s costing him to be with me.

To be with you? What the fuck does that even mean?

Tobias shook his head, because he had no answers.

I never used to swear this much before.

Indeed.

That was a good omelette. Sitka, recovered from Zai and Kiorl’s fight, was back to thinking with his stomach. I wonder if I ask nicely, will he make me another one? I can’t remember the last time the house smelt this good.

Tobias reached out to the slippery, slithering mind of the naga, and found to his surprise that Inai was still nursing his bruised ego. There were no thoughts of vengeance though, and Tobias relaxed, lifted the lid from the hanging saucepan to check the dinner, placed enough shallow, carved wooden bowls on the long counter to serve them all with, and walked from the kitchen into the big sitting room opposite.

The one thing his empathic skills hadn’t allowed him to do, was see how the demons were arranged in the room, and with the crashing tempers, he had expected to find them on their feet, visibly tense and stressed, and therefore it was a bit of a shock to find the five demons arranged around the room on a variety of over-stuffed couches and easy chairs, looking as though there was nothing more stressful happening than simple conversation about the weather. Sitka and Shindae even had part of a deck of very strange cards arranged on the cushions between them. Tobias felt suddenly conscious of the fact he had flour down his front as five sets of inhuman eyes turned to look at him.

Zai is clearly more powerful than the everyday monster. You’re mated to a powerful demon – whatever that means – act like it!

Tobias glared at Inai, then smiled at the general assembly.

“Dinner is served.” He half turned, then snapped over his shoulder. “And you all have to use cutlery.”

To his total lack of surprise, Sitka was first to be seated, knife and fork eagerly grasped in either hand, smiling in the same endearingly charming way Tobias’s little sister did when she wanted something.

Except that he’s a demon with horns and eyes liked polished darkness… Tobias felt like he’d been kicked in the stomach, so he turned back to the fire, and began ladling out generous portions of thick meaty stew with fat and crispy dumplings.

“Thank you, Tobias.” Zai touched his fingers as he took the bowl he’d been offered, and Tobias knew it was a deliberate contact. Zai wanted to know how he felt, cared about how he felt, and Tobias couldn’t help the rush of gratitude that swept through him.

“You’re welcome. Eat.” He turned to the big green scaled Naga, who had coiled his lower body so that he was sitting on a platform of his own anatomy, but hadn’t reached for a bowl. “Eat.”

“I don’t usually-.”

Tobias’s sudden snarl was as vicious as Zai’s, and the naga took up the bowl and the fork quickly, ducking his head in apology.

Fuck, he’s sexy when he’s mad.

Tobias glared at his ash-furred companion, then served himself out a portion of stew, and walked around the bar to eat with the other demons of the house.