Fallen Pride - 14. Chapter 14

The room was being attacked by giants with enormous hammers. Lahja was sure of it. They wouldn’t stop banging, wouldn’t leave him alone, and the noise was making his brain ache. He just wanted to stay safe and warm in his bed, surrounded by fluffy blankets and silence. But the rhythmic thumping went on and on.

“Go ‘way….” he mumbled, largely incoherently. His mouth appeared to be full of fluff which made it hard to talk.

“Lahja!” A voice he knew, full of hard edges. Lahja dragged the covers over his head.

“No. Leave me be….”

“Oh for fuck’s sake!” The door slammed open. There were four quick strides across the room, and his blankets were unceremonious yanked from the bed and dumped on the floor. “Get up Lahja! Ye Gods….” Kiorl’s voice retreated slightly, distaste colouring his words. “You smell like the inside of a distillery. What in hell was Jeremiah giving you?”

“Go ‘way,” Lahja repeated ineffectually.

“You need a shower, like right now. You were supposed to meet me at the West portal two hours ago.”

“No.” Lahja grabbed for his covers, but the cloth he tugged on was attached to the big panther. The angel opened one eye to find the black cat leaning over him, his blue eyes hard, his pupils reduced to mere slits. His teeth seemed white and super sharp when he spoke.

“Just because you got drunk does not mean you get to act like a petulant child. Shower. Now.”

Lahja didn’t want to get up, but Kiorl’s magic hefted him out of bed, and the stone floor was cold. He stood, shaking, wrapped his arms around himself, and willed his body to quit feeling so awful. There was no reason for it, after all, the last thing he’d done after kissing Jahke was walk home with the demons he thought of as his friends, and gone to sleep in his big and comfortable bed. By no rights should his vision still be swimming.

Kiorl pushed him towards the door, and suddenly his stomach lurched in a way a simple internal organ shouldn’t have been able to do, and Lahja practically ran to the bathroom, and barely made it to the toilet bowl before everything he’d eaten over the previous day exited his body in reverse. He’d never experienced anything so vile in his life, and was grateful enough when Kiorl handed him a large glass of water to mutter his thanks, though he didn’t look at the big panther.

“Have a shower, get dressed, and meet me downstairs. We have work to do.”

“But-.”

“But what?” Kiorl snapped. For the first time that day, Lahja blinked hard and looked at the major demon. Everything about Kiorl always spoke of his power and command, but now there was a thread of something else Lahja couldn’t identify. The look in Kiorl’s electric blue eyes made him shiver.

“Nothing,” Lahja muttered.

“Too fucking right. Don’t make me come back here looking for you.”

Kiorl turned and walked away. The moment the bathroom door closed behind him, Lahja felt his body twisting, and he threw up again.

*

“Seriously Jem? You got him drunk!”

Jeremiah glared at Kiorl over the top of his newspaper. It was probably out of date, and might have come from a slightly different universe than he was originally from, but at least it was in English, and printed on reassuringly thin paper. Anyone else who glared at the most senior member of the Royal Court could have hoped to get killed rather quickly, but Jeremiah was different. He glared at everyone. Even after a decade underground, people were still engineering situations so Sathriel and Jeremiah never came into contact with one another. Just in case.

“It’s a bar, Kiorl. Mostly getting drunk is what people do. And he’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

“Obviously….” Sitka smirked as he sauntered past.

Kiorl reached out with a hand of power and tripped the black demon where he stood without a word.

“He’s never been under any kind of influence before. It didn’t occur to you that some moderation might be in order?”

“It was three drinks. Put your claws away.” Jeremiah arched an eyebrow at him. “I don’t detect a hint of jealousy in your tone, do I Kiorl? Nothing stopped you from joining us. I always have your favourite glass ready behind the bar, you know that.”

Kiorl’s tail cracked like a whip, but he didn’t say anything. He just slumped down into his throne, his favourite chair, and wound the long appendage around his hand to stop the twitching motions from giving him away. He couldn’t however, do anything about his ears.

“Be nice Jem.” Sitka had recovered himself, brushing bits of granite dust from his loin cloth. “After all, if Kiorl had come, I’m not sure the evening would have ended quite the same way.”

“What?”

“Well it was hard enough for the rest of us to walk home fully clothed after watching that display….”

Kiorl snarled. He didn’t need to be an empath or a mind reader to know he wasn’t going to like what he was about to be told.

“Don’t worry Kiorl,” Sitka said with a bright smile, “some of us know how to treat the new guy gently. I gave him Jahke.”

“I swear that boy is permanently up for anything,” Jeremiah chipped in with a shake of his head.

“I always had my reasons for choosing him,” Sitka replied. “Anyway, they looked like they had fun. Jahke said it was great.” The onyx eyed demon frowned at the blank but angry expression on the major demon’s face. “A kiss, Kiorl. Lahja asked for one.”

“Right.” Kiorl fingered the reliquary at his waist, and put a lot of effort into not simply smashing it into a thousand pieces.

Just as he was about to speak again, he heard footsteps on the stairs. Lahja, clean, and dressed, his hair damp, stood in the doorway. Kiorl wondered if anyone else noticed the way the air behind him bent and shimmered. Kiorl had never seen the angel without his big cloak, and though the shirt he wore had long sleeves and deep cuffs. The neck was open, and the sight of his pale skin distracted his anger.

“Morning Lahja.” Jeremiah smiled, but went back to his paper. With a glare from Kiorl, Sitka vanished into the rest of the house.

“We’re late.” Kiorl pushed himself out of his chair, and strode past Lahja without pausing. The other demon ran to catch him up.

They didn’t speak on the way to the portal, and Kiorl wasn’t surprised. He couldn’t help but imagine what the others had witnessed, and it stung to think that whilst he had ben moping around in his rooms in the palace, the boy he wanted had been exploring his own sexual desires. But he was grateful at least that Sitka had suggested Jahke, and the moment they returned to the house, he was going to find the kinky little fawn and get every detail from him. Jahke was good at his job in Records, but the boy’s natural talent was cocksucker extraordinaire, and it was not usually hard for Kiorl to persuade him to kiss and tell.

When they reached the portal, Kiorl ignored the guard, ignored his planned outing, and dialled a different location for their expedition Upstairs. If Lahja could kiss Jahke in public, Kiorl decided he was more than ready enough to witness what a real demon did when they went to recruit. He was sick of using so little power.

Lahja’s hand slipped into his own, and Kiorl stared down at their joined flesh.

“Ready?” the angel asked with his head on one side.

Best not to mention it’s the first time he’s voluntarily touched you without being asked first. Kiorl’s inner voice reminded him. Just act natural.

There was a moment, brief, fleeting, over all too quickly before they were engulfed by the star studded blackness of the way, where Lahja smiled at him. A soft smile, a nice smile, a smile which one might give to a friend he cared about.

It was a trick of the light.

Was it?

He’s never looked at me like that before, Kiorl told himself.

If you don’t act soon, his inner voice spoke like Nassau, He may not ever look at you like that again. Kissing Jahke is akin to a gateway drug, and there are plenty of beautiful boys he could choose instead of you.

Kiorl kept a firm grip on Lahja’s hand as they stepped out of The Way and into a field waist deep in strands of waving golden barley. The breeze picked up Kiorl’s hair, blowing the dark strands into meaningless sigils and patterns in the air. Everything felt fresh and full of life, so different from the dry heat of home, and Kiorl shivered slightly.

“Where are we?” Lahja asked.

“Somewhere in one of the Mid West Americas, I think.” Kiorl answered without caring much, lifted his muzzle and scented the air. This way, come on.”

He could smell the two humans, long before they came into sight. Kiorl’s senses were too fine to miss the vibrations in the ground, the whooshing of their blood in their bodies. As they drew closer, the sound of voices told Kiorl he had chosen well, and that the two boys in the field were just the right sort of age for what he wanted. The moment he saw them, he cast his glamour like a cloak over the pair, and everything became still.

“What did you do?” Lahja frowned, but walked up to the slightly older of the two blond-haired boys. His brown eyes and freckled features followed the angel as he moved. “Can he see me?”

“Yes, but his mind doesn’t want him to do anything about it.” Kiorl had already approached the smaller boy, and parted his slack lips with his thumb. The teenager gazed up at him dreamily, his expression slightly vacant, and Kiorl knew he needed to act quickly. “Bring that one over here.”

He thought, just for a moment, about enjoying the boy himself. It had been, for Kiorl at least, a very long time since he had felt even remotely satisfied. But one glance at Lahja, and he knew that screwing either of the farm hands wasn’t going to bring him any relief. He ripped the humans clothes, and turned him around to rid him of his rough work jeans as Lahja came close, guiding the other lust-drunk boy by the hand, as though he needed to be gentle with him. He gaped at Kiorl as the panther snatched him away and pulled down his trousers swiftly.

“What are you doing?”

“Collecting souls,” Kiorl replied quickly.

“Kiorl! Don’t!”

Kiorl snarled.

“We’re demons, Lahja. This is what we do. We hurt people.” He punctuated his sentence by slapping the younger teenager around the face hard enough to make the boy stagger and drop to his knees despite his plaint state. “We torture them and take their souls.”

“But… before.” Lahja’s eyes were wide with panic, and Kiorl wondered what such as expression looked like on his face.

“Before I was being nice to you. Now you’re getting in the way of doing a good job. If you’re not going to help, then watch.”

Kiorl took the older human by the throat and kissed him hard, wrapping his fingers around his genitals. Squeezing softly, he felt the boy grow heavy in his hand. He stepped back with a smile, pushed the young man to his knees in the field, turning him to face the other figure as he did so. Lust took over, and Kiorl kept his hand wrapped around the back of the boy’s neck as he parted the other teenager’s cheeks, and began to drive his cock into the unprepared hole.

Pain stabbed at the cloak of glamour, and the smaller human cried out, his fingers grabbing at the barley and the dirt under his hands, but he did not try and get away. His mind was still caught in the net of Kiorl’s will.

“Why?”

Lahja’s question caught him off guard, and Kiorl turned to him with a frown.

“Huh?”

“Why like this?” Lahja gestured to the tableau being prepared before him with a dismissive gesture. “How is this better?”

“It’s not done yet.”

Kiorl smiled to himself. The physical pain of rape, or anything else, was bad. Sometimes it was enough to turn a soul by itself, but mental torture was much, much better. Kiorl used strong hands to position the two boys who had starting rutting in the field under his command, hit the smaller boy a few times, leaving bruises which were hard to mistake, then wrapped the older human’s hands around the other’s slender neck.

“Now, we pull back, just enough.”

Kiorl stood behind the boys, and reeled in the smothering blanket of his glamour, thread by thread, until the younger of the two boys was screaming in real fear and pain, his cries shaken by the pounding of his body, warped and muffled by the fingers around his throat. Kiorl spooled his power back as he felt the other boy begin to approach the point of orgasm, just enough to keep him in control but grant his victim lucidity, though not speech. As the horror of what he was doing flooded through him, Kiorl looked away from the scene he had created to watch Lahja.

The pale demon stood as still and silent as a statue, but his eyes were wide, and Kiorl could hear his heart beating powerfully in his chest. His wide blue eyes were fixed on the sight of the two boys fucking, unable not to watch the repeated joining of their flesh. Kiorl handed Lahja the reliquary, and the angel stepped closer without a word.

Kiorl had let enough power slip away that he needed to pour his desires directly through the boy as he reached orgasm, and made him squeeze the life from his friend as he finished raping his body. The younger boy’s soul followed from his open mouth as he gasped his last breath, and Lahja bent automatically, supported his chin with two fingers and collected the rich swirl of power and life as smoothly as Kiorl would have done. As he snapped the container shut, Kiorl swept away the last of his power, and together the two demons stood and watched as the full realisation of horror overcame the boy.

He knelt in the corn, shaking, crying, shouting, his spent seed dripping from his friend’s hole, his cock shrinking back into his crotch. He was sick, messily so, and then he scrambled to his feet and ran. He hadn’t looked once at the panther or the fallen angel who stood there over the broken body whose soul they had stolen.

Kiorl looked sideways at his companion.

Lahja stood holding the soul in one hand, and he looked just as proud as Kiorl might have done for a job well done. There was something in his eyes Kiorl recognised very well indeed; lust. Not for the death, or the torture, or the rape, but lust nonetheless. Lust for the power over others, the ability to bend them to his desires, and take what he wanted. Kiorl wondered how long it would be before Lahja recognised what he felt.

“What will happen to him?” The angel spared a glance in the direction the other boy had run.

“Either he will be mad with the grief and guilt, and kill himself.” Kiorl smirked. His soul would be theirs easily. “Or what he did will haunt him in a different way, he’ll dream about how good it felt, and maybe one day he’ll do it again.”

“You’re hoping for the second option, aren’t you?”

“Oh yes. Successful murderer rapists make for great recruiters,” Kiorl purred with pride. “And that is a good soul, very strong. Nassau will be proud of us.”

“Really?”

Kiorl wished he could have missed the excitement in Lahja’s tone, or the way the boy’s eyes lit up when he’d spoken the Prince’s name, but he couldn’t. They left the body of their victim, and started back across the corn field to where they’d arrived. Lahja practically skipped.

Great work. Kiorl growled at himself silently. All that effort, and he didn’t freak out or anything, and it’s all for nought.

Chin up. His inner voice was trying to sound soothing, and failed. He could have shouted at you again.

But he doesn’t want me.

Kiorl took Lahja’s hand as he prepared the portal stone for their travel. The pale demon smiled at him briefly, but his eyes were unfocused. Kiorl laid his ears back and closed his eyes.

After all that, it’s Nassau he wants anyway. Fuck.