Fallen Pride - 17. Chapter 17

Lahja woke with a start, and stared up at the canopy above his bed. He’d been asleep, he was sure of it, but instead of darkness or the visions of Heaven which had been at first a welcome reminder of home, painted on the inside of his eyelids had been a twisted version of the evening in Snakes and Snakes. He’d had the concept of dreams explained to him before, but everything he’d seen in the night thus far had been a memory, perfect in every detail. This had not.

He’d finished his drink, made to leave, then watched Kiaza and Jeremiah drinking each other down. When Sitka had asked him in his nonchalant tone if he’d wanted to kiss someone, it hadn’t been Jahke who had taken his hand and lead him to the back of the bar. Lahja watched the inside of his mind carefully, because he remembered kissing Jahke, the boy’s super sweet pink lips were not easy to forget, but replayed in his mind’s eye was a kiss which had never been.

I dreamt about kissing Kiorl. Lahja laid a hand over his chest, feeling his heart beat under his palm. It was really good.

He glanced down at his body under the blankets, and swallowed dryly. Warmth, desire, and the need to do something radiated from his crotch. Lahja flicked up the edge of the blanket, and looked at himself.

Do not offer parts of your body to sin.

Lahja scowled. Never before had he heard the words of Scripture in his head and felt annoyed by them. He considered the stiff length of his penis, watching it bob in time with his pulse, in a detached sort of manner.

Do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

But I’m not mortal, Lahja replied. I’m a demon, an immortal. He slid his hand down his front until was almost touching himself, and smiled. The laws of God do not apply to me.

There was no answer from his subconscious, but a small voice Lahja knew was his own breathed into the quiet room.

If I do this, then I am what everyone says I am. I will be damned.

Lahja thought about Jeremiah, who had come to hell by choice to find the slinky snake who he so desired, and Jahke who’d been stolen away but come to love his life underground far more than the one he’d lived on earth. He thought about Kiorl, the way the big, black demon had obviously desired him as he’d stripped away his clothes and stood naked for Lahja’s pleasure. He shivered.

Would it really be so bad to be damned?

Lahja moved his hand, and hissed at each point of pleasure as he wrapped his fingers around the length of his erection for the very first time. His eyes slid closed.

There was a knock on the door.

The angel flinched and pulled away, then sat up in bed as the knock came again, harder this time.

“Yes?”

“Lahja?” Kiaza’s voice was soft and low. “Can I come in?”

“Yes.”

Lahja wrapped himself very firmly in his blankets as the snake entered, wearing his usual outfit of next-to-nothing. He smiled warmly.

“I’m not disturbing you?”

“No!” Lahja winced, the pain of the half-lie like being hit around the head which something hard and heavy. “It’s fine.”

“Jeremiah told me what he said to you yesterday. I hope you don’t mind.”

“I didn’t figure the two of you kept secrets from each other,” Lahja remarked.

It hadn’t been his finest moment, but Lahja was grateful the former human had got him off the rooftop and into his room. When Kiorl had departed, Lahja had been left alone with the fresh soul swirling around his body, and examining the flavour of the life they had eaten had near consumed him until Jeremiah had spoken. The young man had told him all about how he and Kiaza had met, though Lahja had the distinct feeling there were rather large holes in his story where Jeremiah didn’t share the explicit details of their copulation.

Now he looked at the happy, smiling snake and wondered if what Jeremiah supposed was true. A major demon, aeons old, was used to coping on their own. Kiorl had been alone, in one way or another, for longer than Lahja could imagine. Admitting he wanted or needed someone else was not only difficult, but as foreign to Kiorl as almost everything still was to Lahja.

“Did the two of you talk?” Kiaza asked. Then his bright green gaze fell on the clothes Kiorl had abandoned. Lahja had picked them up, held the scent and texture of the big panther close, then folded everything neatly. and placed them next to his bed. The snake smirked. “You did more than talk, I see.”

“Just… looking,” Lahja admitted.

“Looking is good,” Kiaza grinned. “After all, the first step to desire is seeing something you want.”

“It is?”

“Oh yeah. You should get dressed. Kiorl’s been pacing a hole in the carpet for the last hour. Best not keep him waiting for breakfast much longer.”

*

Kiorl snuck a glance across the table, and found Lahja smiling at him. The angel dipped his gaze and a soft blush coloured his cheeks as he went back to his breakfast. Though Kiorl had paid attention to the fallen angel’s diet, such attention had not been reciprocated. The first morning they’d sat together, Lahja had wrinkled his nose at Kiorl’s carpaccio of fresh and bloody meats. He’d sprinkled the plate liberally with ultra-fine slices of a tangy layered vegetable Tobias called onions, but there was no disguising the differences between his plate and Lahja’s selection of mixed fruits.

“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who didn’t eat meat before,” Kiorl commented carefully. “Apart from the elementals, and they don’t really eat like we do.”

“What do they eat?”

“They recharge,” Jahke said from his favoured position at the breakfast bar. “Icean said he used to go Upstairs and find a glacier somewhere to lie on for a while. His brother the flame just walks out to the walls and sticks his hand in, apparently. I’ve never seen him do it.”

“And nor do you want to.” Kiorl frowned. “Elementals lose their shape when they recharge, and they’re not always in huge amounts of control. Don’t stand too close.”

“Noted.” Lahja took another slice of a bright, crispy, red fruit, and bit it. Kiorl couldn’t look away. “So what do you want to do today?”

“Do you want to learn some more magic?” Kiorl asked.

It had been a week since he and Lahja had stood together in the angel’s room and the boy had watched him strip. Each morning they had eaten together, and Lahja held Kiorl’s hand as often as possible. Other touches were brief, fleeting, and twice Kiorl had needed to snatch himself away from the power Lahja was still getting used to wielding before he got hurt. They’d been upstairs to explore different places, and Lahja was fascinated by watching humans in their daily interactions. Kiorl sat beside him, happy to simply wait in his presence and explain things the angel didn’t understand.

He and Kiaza and had taken Lahja to the palace gardens. With varied amounts of success they encouraged the new demon to stretch his magical powers. It had been a very long time since either of them had needed to really concentrate on their abilities. It showed in their haphazard approach to teaching.

“What do normal demons do?”

“Huh?”

“Well, when you’re not at Court, and not going on adventures upstairs, what is it everybody does?”

“Read,” Jahke offered.

“Have sex in the shower,” Sitka interrupted unhelpfully.

“Drink?” Jeremiah suggested.

“You guys aren’t nearly as useful as you’d like to think you are.” Kiorl snarled with a flick of his tail. “Would you like to come see the palace?”

“Yes please.”

They walked hand in hand along the paths of hell, and Kiorl led the angel to the big basalt doors which still bore the shiny marks from where Vruuaska in a rage had melted them when he’d burst into the palace in search of his mate.

There were places in the palace no one else went, and Kiorl took secret passages known only to himself, Nassau and Kiaza, discovered when they were children. They were paths even Sathriel didn’t know, where they had played and hidden, kept secret from Nassau’s brothers. Kiorl could slip through the palace totally unobserved. He took Lahja along a left hand corridor which angled sharply downwards and twisted as it went, and smiled as the angel gripped his hand tightly. They were let out into an almost perfectly spherical chamber. Kiorl shouldered a section of wall, which slid aside to reveal a narrow passage lit from the ceiling with a soft glow, it’s walls tiled in intricate patterns. There was the sound of water.

“Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. Even Nassau never comes down here.” Kiorl smiled. As much as he loved his oldest friend, it was nice to know there was a place where Nassau wouldn’t disturb him. The panther didn’t know if it was something to do with the water or the design of the room, but he never felt Nassau’s presence pressing on his mind down here. “This is my favourite place in the whole world.”

The passage they had been following ended abruptly, opening out into a glorious space with a high vaulted ceiling. There were embellished sconces lining the tiled walls, throwing their naphtha light across the multi coloured tiles, making everything gleam. But the thing which made Lahja stop so quickly he tugged Kiorl backwards by the hand was the pool. Enormous and square, it was lit from below, glowing blue, and the mosaic which patterned the floor showed hell as it had been in the beginning; Sathriel in all his glory and surrounded by the twelve children he had made to rule under him. Kiorl gazed at the figure, picked out in miniature, which represented Zai’s former self, and frowned. He was glad Sathriel’s plan had failed, because even three Princes, rather than one, had been deeply unstable. Twelve would have been a waking nightmare.

Kiorl slipped out of Lahja’s grasp as he approached the stone edge of the swimming pool. The water was almost as smooth and still as glass.

“Contrary to popular opinion,” Kiorl began as he grasped his tabard by the back of the neck and stripped it off. “Cats love water.”

He grinned, took two paces, and dove into the pool with his hands clasped over his head. Kiorl loved to swim, but as he surfaced again, pulling his hair out of his eyes, he decided the best thing about swimming was treading water and watching Lahja peel out of his clothes. The boy didn’t look at him. He placed his shirt, trousers, and boots right alongside the tabard Kiorl had unceremoniously dumped, and slid quickly into the water. Kiorl didn’t have much opportunity to look at his naked body, but already he knew he liked what he saw.

“It’s really warm!” Lahja exclaimed.

“Yup. Heated by the fires below.” Kiorl swam back to the side where Lahja was holding on tightly. “You do know how to swim, right?”

“Three months ago, I didn’t know how to breathe!” the angel snapped. “I’ll learn.”

“That’s the spirit.” Kiorl held out a hand to the boy, and Lahja grabbed onto him with a speed which revealed his fear of drowning. “Don’t worry, I got you. Just hold onto me, and kick your legs. OW!” Kiorl gnashed his fangs as Lahja’s heel caught him sharply, perilously close to his sheathed cock. “Kick your legs gently.”

“Sorry.”

“Just don’t do it again,” Kiorl warned with wide eyes. Lahja had gone back to holding the side with one hand, looking nervous. Kiorl flicked his ears forward and softened his expression. “Don’t worry. C’mere… just trust me.”

Kiorl slipped his hands along Lahja’s arms under water until he held onto the angel, his fingers resting alongside his ribs, feeling Lahja’s heartbeat so close under his palm it took all his concentration not to get lost in the sensation of smooth wet skin under his hands. He swam backwards gently as Lahja tread water, bringing the angel with him towards the centre of the big pool.

“Lie back.”

“What? No, I’ll drown.” Lahja’s eyes were full of panic, but there was no sense of the impending light which Kiorl was sure would force him to let go.

“No you won’t. Trust me. Lie back.”

“But…” Lahja paused, and Kiorl saw him glance down at their bodies through the water. Refraction made it hard to see perfectly, but there was no disguising their naked state.

“Lie back,” Kiorl smiled. “I can’t promise not to look….”

Lahja let go of the grip he’d maintained on Kiorl’s bicep, and his hand came to rest once again on the bleached fur on Kiorl’s face. The panther pressed into the contact with a purr. The noise made Lahja smile.

The moment the angel laid back in the water, he panicked, just like every first time swimmer did, and there was so much splashing Kiorl didn’t get a good look at him. He called towels out of thin air as the angel hung onto the side, and shook himself like an animal, water droplets spraying from his fur. Lahja shivered in the sudden cold out of the water, and Kiorl wanted desperately to simply wrap the pale boy in his arms and never let go.

They walked back to the house hand in hand, and Kiorl smiled all the way.

*

“Guys? Aren’t you ready yet?” Shindae stuck his head around the doorway of the den and frowned. “C’mon!”

Kiorl looked up from the unfocussed view of the book he’d been looking at over Lahja’s delicate shoulder. The words hadn’t interested him, but the texture of the angel’s skin had been entrancing.

“What’s going on?”

Kiaza joined the fire demon, dressed in his best grey silk ensemble, his scales newly shed and polished.

“Kiorl! Seriously? Nassau said he wanted us all to go Upstairs.” Kiaza shook his head in despair. “It’s Vruuaska’s birthday.”

Lahja glanced over at the big fluffy feral demon who sat grooming his paws and looking nonchalant. He frowned at Kiorl.

“Demons have birthday’s?”

“No, not all demons. Vruuaska’s sort of special,” the panther replied

“Because he’s a Son of Ifrit?” Lahja queried.

“Well remembered. He was summoned on a specific day in a certain place, and by a particular person.”

“Atoki?”

“That’s me.” Nami slid into the room and wove his fingers instantly into the big horned demon’s thick mane. “Hey baby.”

Kiorl didn’t miss the way Lahja looked away as the pair kissed deeply. Not everyone understood Atoki’s passion for his mate in such an animalistic state, but Lahja’s pale cheeks coloured gently, and Kiorl knew his embarrassment wasn’t only for witnessing their kiss. He thought back to the way Lahja had looked after he and Kiorl had shared the eating of the soul, the hint of delight and power in his eyes, and he wondered if there was anything he could do to make Lahja look like that again.

“Have fun upstairs. Happy birthday.”

“You’re not coming too?” Lahja looked surprised.

“He can’t,” Kiorl explained. It had been months, but he still forgot Lahja didn’t know so many of the basic laws which governed their existence. “Atoki is human, or used to be. He can’t travel between dimensions like we can.”

“Oh….” Lahja gazed at Nami with sad eyes. “Don’t you miss it?”

“Sometimes. But I wouldn’t go Upstairs tonight for all the power in the Palace. Not to where you’re off to.”

Lahja turned back to Kiorl.

“Where are we going?”

Shindae laughed and bumped his knuckles against Vruuaska’s muzzle as the big demon grinned. The two fire demons shared a glowing smile.

“On a night like this, there’s only one place we should be.”