Torturous Love : Version 3 - 2. Torturous Love V3: Chapter 2

The demon felt it when his prey lost consciousness, the minute resistance of his body faded, and the pain, humiliation, and fear which had fed his pleasure vanished so abruptly that Zai snarled fruitlessly into the chill night air. He rolled the young man over, and stroked a hand over his torso appreciatively, his claws catching on the edges of already torn skin. There was the boy’s heartbeat, faint and soft… and receding under his touch. Frantically, the grey furred demon took Tobias’s face in his hands, cradling his jaw, watching the blood run from his neck.

“No! Nononono! You’re not dying on me now.” But he couldn’t waste any more time on talking, and as quick as his natural abilities would allow, Zai set about with his tongue to heal the young man who’d brought him such dazzling ecstasy.

His blood was sweet and complex, and Zai couldn’t place the flavour, though it was hauntingly familiar. Once the wounds in his neck were closed, the new skin slightly shiny and pinker than the surrounding paleness, Zai turned his attention to the rest of the boy. Once his chest was healed, Tobias’s heartbeat was stronger and more regular, so Zai set about the long job of fixing the bones in his hands and the pulled and twisted ligaments in his ankle. Inch by inch, he licked his way over his prey, healing everything including the stretched and sensitive muscles of his sphincter, and removed the rest of Tobias’s tattered and useless clothing. Then Zai sat back on his heels to look at the boy he’d tortured.

Passed out in the moonlight, Tobias seemed young. He was not a child, but not a man with shoulders hardened and bent by long hours of heavy work, and for a moment Zai wondered if he’d chosen wrongly. There were demons in hell who liked their prey with the innocence that only childhood could grant, but Zai had always much preferred other proclivities.

How could it be wrong? He told himself silently. He is like you, an empath. A very rare treat indeed.

Zai stroked the young man’s cheek gently, then his dark brown hair, which looked like it had been cut with a bread knife by someone with only the very faintest clue what they were doing, and caught himself wondering what Tobias would look like if he smiled.

Keep wishing…

The demon dressed himself slowly, only taking his eyes from the boy to buckle his belt and boots, combed his hair with his fingers, shrugged into his jacket and smoothed the fabric over himself before reaching for his great cloak. His fingers paused at the texture of something in his pocket, and Zai drew the length of thin, bright silver chain from his pocket. He stared at it thoughtfully.

You were playing with the Chain of Possession when you first saw him.

Indeed.

Maybe it means something? His inner voice suggested.

I hate symbolism.

But the Prince loves his riddles. Maybe there was a reason it turned up in your room.

Zai stared at the pale, lithe, beautiful body of the young man he’d nearly killed.

Maybe that’s the reason.

The demon bent, and looped the Chain around the boy’s throat. The links were so fine that they moved like liquid, and the short length of flowing metal became the exact right length to lie comfortably over the boy’s clavicle, and bonded with itself the moment Zai let it go. He felt the thread of power running from him as he stood – the sense of the young man’s nearness – and Zai knew he could pull on that thread very hard if he wanted to. The night air was cold, but in the far East, the sky was already lightening from deepest indigo to soft blue – too little a distinction for human eyes – but Zai knew the dawn would be upon them all to soon. He wrapped his great cloak around the body of his prisoner and hefted him into his arms.

Zai did not much fancy the idea of laying to waste an entire sleeping town, such actions brought the kind of swift and painful retribution he himself was usually employed to give out, and so he took the boy in the direction in which he’d been travelling when Zai had interrupted him. Zai cast out his empathic senses, feeling for the soft lights of mortal lives in the farmlands beyond the woods, felt a house packed tight with people, each of them dreaming to themselves, then turned North into the wind and felt a single soul, soft in the way that Zai had learnt meant old, sleeping fitfully. He headed that way.

The farmhouse was slightly more than a shack, but less than a cabin, nestled in between ancient trees, and adjoined by a series of ramshackle pens and shelters which held a cowering selection of livestock. All animals vanished as much as they could when a demon walked upon the land, and even though these creatures couldn’t leave, they knew better than to announce his presence. Zai pushed open the door of the little house to find a single room, complete with bed, a table with two mismatched handmade chairs, a fireplace in dire need of cleaning out but bearing a black grate and a heavy metal griddle, and a rough stone sink with a bucket. In the bed, wrapped in a threadbare sheet, was an old man.

Zai snarled to himself, and placed his prey down gently on the table. The movement was enough to stir him, a half mumbled word that meant nothing and a soft groan, and then he slept on. The old man roused fitfully, but Zai didn’t give him a chance to speak. The demon crossed the little house in four long strides, and snapped the humans neck without pausing. He threw the body over his shoulder, the weight meaningless against his natural strength, and strode from the house. At the far end of the mess of animal pens was a neglected looking vegetable garden, and a large, stinking muck heap. Zai tossed the corpse onto it and sneered: demon he might be, but never would he, or any of the others he lived with, allow their residence to become so soiled. Back in the house, he wiped his boots on the already filthy mat before taking them off, and went to the tall cupboard by the bed where he was surprised to find a stack of thick blankets which looked as if they had never been used.

Saving things for best, Zai sighed to himself, and spread several blankets out over the mattress. Kiorl does that, though he doesn’t think anyone knows. Zai wondered what the major demon of his household would say if he brought his prey home.

Home? So now you’re keeping him?

He’s wearing the Chain. I can’t just leave him here. Zai frowned as he realised that he hadn’t thought his actions through.

Maybe you should have had a plan before you made sure he didn’t die.

Zai hissed at himself and moved to pick up the boy once more. He laid him on the bed, draped another blanket around his narrow frame, then tucked himself in behind the young man and dragged the last blanket up over his head. It would be dawn soon, and Zai didn’t want to risk his eyes. In the musty darkness under the wool he ran his free hand over Tobias’s body, pausing on the high point of is hip bone, and then moved to feel his heart.

The wind rattled the window-glass against its frame, and Zai smiled.

“Blow, Northern wind, and bring me my sweetling...”

The demon tucked his horned head down behind the young man’s neck, curled his long, tuft-ended tail around his own thigh, yawned briefly, and closed his yellow eyes to sleep.

*

There was birdsong. It was so natural, normal, innocent, that at first Tobias just dragged the blanket over his head and rolled over, hoping he could just go back to sleep for a little while before his sister or his brothers came looking for him. He didn’t want to rouse, dress in his only neat and clean outfit, and go to church with his family only to have to listen as the pastor damned every sin whilst all the congregation would be able to think of were all the things they’d done in the past week which God would punish them for. Tobias didn’t need the whole town’s trespasses, he had enough momentary wonderings to damn himself several times already.

You have to get up, he told himself firmly, you have to get the Forgotten Cookies before the oven is stoked for the bread.

And then he opened his eyes.

Well, his mind said, or there’s that. No Forgotten Cookies for you.

There was enough light coming through the blanket to see by, and Tobias found himself staring at the body of the demon, richly dressed, clearly sleeping, and with a second blanket drawn over his eyes. Tobias stared at what he could see of the monsters face.

He sleeps with his mouth open. Tobias considered this. He has a lot of very sharp teeth.

What are you still doing staring at it? RUN!

Tobias waited another half-dozen heartbeats, then twisted around, sprang from the bed, and ran for the door. He knew he was naked, and he didn’t much care, because he had to get away from the thing that had injured him. And there was no time to think about those injuries, or the fact that he was no longer in pain, because he was out the door, running past a pig pen – his presence raising squeals and bellows of hunger from within as the animals brayed for their breakfast – watching the landscape opening up as one he recognised. Hope bloomed in his chest, he could run home from here and be safe, and then his foot turned on a sharp stone, and he fell, yelping in pain, to the ground. The morning dew had been burnt off by the sun already, and Tobias squinted upwards to realise that it was late in the day, and he would have already been missed.

They’ll come look for me. My father will send someone too see if I’ve been seen…

And the demon will kill your brothers, or your little sister. You’re not far from the house, and he would send her over here to check up on the old guy and ask after you. And that thing will kill her – or worse – he won’t.

Tobias screwed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth against the sob that rose through his gullet. He pressed his fingers over his eyes, then his hand moved over his face, touching the skin around his lips that the demon had healed with its tongue, and he felt something cold around his neck. He tugged at the chain, expecting to break it, and felt a dark anger rise in his mind.

Don’t do that.

Tobias glared back at the house he’d run from, but there was no movement. Experimentally, he wrapped the chain round two fingers of each hand, and put all his energy into trying to wrench it apart.

There was a snarl inside his mind, anger, annoyance and aggravation all touched by the rich flavour of the demon’s mind. Tobias half hoped the demon would be in pain, then felt instantly guilty, and then stared at himself in internal horror for his concern over the feelings of a demon. He pulled at the chain again.

“I said, don’t do that!” The words were not shouted, but spoken crisp, clear as day, and full of power from the entrance to the little house. The demon stood there, a blanket over its head, clearly squinting as it looked at him from underneath.

He’s scared of the sun. Tobias thought. Keep running.

He stood, turned away, and took a single step.

Before his foot landed on the ground, Tobias was jerked backwards and off his feet as though a rope had been put around his throat and pulled by a cart horse.

“Get back here.”

Tobias turned to glare at the demon in the doorway.

“No!”

He made to stand, but was yanked once more by his neck, hard to enough to make him cough and splutter, and to be dragged half a length across the ground.

He could feel the demon’s anger growing with his defiance, and the force of it scared him.

Then the demon was speaking in his head again, his voice flinty and hard as iron.

I can drag you all the way back here, kicking and screaming as much as you like. And I will. And then I will break every bone in your legs for the trouble.

Tobias sat up, and stared at the beast. In the shadow under the blanket, all he could make out were the demon’s eyes, brighter than the sun, watching him closely.

On your feet, Tobias.

He sniffed, dragged his knuckles over his eyes and nose to rub away the tears that prickled at him, and stood up shakily. Every step that he took back towards the house was a physical and mental effort and his inner voice screamed at him. He was, voluntarily, going back to a creature who had hurt him, who had nearly killed him, and who had done things to him he couldn’t even explain inside the relative privacy for his own head. The thought of returning made him sick, and he stopped a dozen yards from the door to heave old blood and stomach bile onto the ground.

The animals, hungry as they were, had stopped screaming for their food, and as Tobias stepped over the threshold, the demon wrapped it’s huge black cloak around his shoulders. Tobias wanted to shrug it off and throw it away, to stand defiant and proud before the creature who had hurt him, but he was too cold and too miserable. The demon shut the door and skulked in its shadow.

“That’s better. Come now, back to bed with you. I’m exhausted.”

Tobias blinked, and looked around the small room, recognising the furniture, the layout, the little trinkets above the fireplace.

“This is Old Man Riley’s place.”

“It was.”

“Did you torture him too?”

“No-” the demon’s thought’s flowed faster than his words, and we’re coloured by his emotions, so even though his voice said “-I just killed him.” in a nonchalant tone, Tobias heard the warmth and softness in his inner ear along with-

You’re special.

Tobias sat on the edge of the bed, and watched the demon out of the corner of one eye as he resumed the position Tobias had awoken to find him in.

“Sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

You’re talking to a demon, his mind told him in a perturbed tone. Why are you so calm?

“Liar. I can see inside your head, remember Tobias? I know you’re tired. Sleep.”

Tobias made himself lie on the bed on his back, staring at the ceiling, the dusty corner where a spider had weaved a long abandoned web, not really seeing any of it. The demon was warm next to him, comfortingly so, and then it touched him, and Tobias flinched without meaning too.

“What’s that… you have a tail?” He stared at the appendage as it wrapped itself twice around his calf just below his knee – tight enough to feel secure, but not enough to be painful.

“Your eyes don’t work so well in the dark, mine aren’t so good in the sunshine.” The demon said by way of an explanation. “And stop calling me ‘demon’ in that head of yours. I have a name.”

Tobias opened his mouth to speak, then stopped himself.

You’re about to ask a demon his name, like it means something. The same way you asked the farrier’s new lad his name, hoping he might be more like you and less into impressing every skirt in town. You’re fucked up Tobias.

He resolved not to ask, and shut his mouth again, pulling a blanket up over himself, wishing he could forget that the demon had a hold on his body now too. There was such a long silence that Tobias began to think the demon might have fallen asleep, and then;

“Zai.”

“Pardon?”

Acid yellow eyes stared out at him from under the blanket for a moment.

“My name, it’s Zai.”

“Oh...”

The demon turned his back on the young man, tail still firmly attached to his leg, and fell asleep.

For a while Tobias allowed his mind to spool backwards through time, reliving the horrors of the previous night, melding them with imagined scenes of what might become of his family if they found the demon. He didn’t want to imagine his little sister murdered, and after the third time his mind had shown him another version of the same image, Tobias clamped his imagination shut. There were other things to think about now.

Of the million questions in Tobias’s head ‘why me?’ was the chief among them. Why had the demon picked him, of all the people in town, of all the people in Wessex, to torture? And having tortured him, why was he still alive?

You heard him, he says you’re special. And that’s got to be an improvement on ‘sinner’.

Tobias scowled as he remembered sitting in Sunday school, what seemed like an aeon ago, listening with his head hung as the teacher had read passages from Leviticus to his peers, explaining with far too much passion that only the love between a man and woman was real and sacred, and that everything else was corruption and the work of the devil. ‘For a man to lie with a man would be as to lie down with an animal’ she’d said, and the girls had tittered and the boys had made rude gestures at each other. Tobias had tried not to blush, and the following day when the farmer from two valleys over had come to barter for grain and hay, Tobias had known that the way he thought would repulse everyone else if they’d known. The farmer had clapped him on the shoulder before he left, told Tobias’s father that he ‘had a good lad there, y’know’ and afterwards Tobias had gone to the seriously depleted hayloft and prayed and begged for God to change him and wipe his mind of the thoughts which made him unforgivable.

Tobias looked around the little house, at the things which Old Riley had accumulated, wondering what the old man would have wanted done with them after he died. He was glad that the demon hadn’t made him suffer. For a while he examined the pattern of slashes and whorls in the glaze of a large water jug which sat on the windowsill, just so that he could focus on anything other than the inside of his head.

The inside of your place has always been a rubbish place. Too full of other people’s feelings.

It must be so quiet for everyone else, Tobias sighed.

Yeah, and they fill it by thinking about having sex.

Don’t remind me…

About the fact that the pastor’s wife day dreams about the choirmaster while her husband is in the pulpit, or the fact that the couple who run the cheese-mongers have attempted to have sex in every room in their shop?

Tobias shuddered.

He’d never had a word to describe his ability. He knew exactly what his father had called it when he was a child though. The broad shouldered farmer had growled and thundered and begged the old pastor to lift the devil’s curse from his son, and Tobias had wanted to take back everything he’d said that day. The old pastor had reassured his father that Tobias was just highly observant, and told him to make the boy work harder to tire him out, but Tobias had seen the way the man had looked at him ever after, distrust written over his features as he’d genuflected to ward away the evil he was sure resided within the child.

I suppose I should be grateful that he never told father he thought I was possessed.

Would your father have thought that a lashing with the belt worked for that too, do you think? His inner voice said snidely.

Tobias growled.

Of course, now I really am possessed. He glanced over at the sleeping demon, the soft lines of his open mouth against his sharp fangs, and sighed. I heard him in my head. I could feel what he was feeling. And I could feel what my emotions did to him too.

Well, maybe that’s why you’re special, his inner voice commented dryly.

I’m a freak.

Yes.

Hey! Tobias scowled at himself. You’re supposed to be on my side. Tobias knew other people did not talk to themselves like he did, but the only person around to judge him was a demon, and probably had rather different standards for normal behaviour anyway.

Clearly. He introduced himself by trying to kill you.

But he didn’t.

He’s going to hurt you again when he wakes up. You know he will. And he can heal you. He’s going to keep hurting you and healing you until you go completely mad.

My pain made him feel so good.

The memory of that bright ribbon of ecstasy was alluring and bold, and Tobias let himself be fanned by the demon’s intense joy. But then he felt his view of the memory twist – observing his own mind instead of the demon’s – and he saw the pain, spiky, dark, a multitude of colours Tobias couldn’t even describe – which had brought the demon such pleasure.

He got his pleasure by laying you open - in more ways than one - by making you bleed and breaking your bones. Tobias blinked hard against his tears as he spoke to himself. His fun is to make you feel the worst you’ve ever felt, or are you choosing to forget that he forced himself inside you and defiled your body? And he’s going to do it again.

Tobias blinked in the gloom, wondering when it had got so late, wishing the window faced west so that he could watch the sunset. They’d been having such good weather for the beginning of autumn, and Tobias always enjoyed watching the sun turn into liquid fire over the sky whenever he got the chance to escape from the kitchen.

The sun’s going down. He’ll be awake soon.

He’s going to hurt me again. Tobias looked across at the fat wooden block where a couple of sharp butchery knifes waited to be used again, then shook his head. No.

You’d rather he raped you again?

No! Tobias shivered all over. But it’s not like I can just get up and grab the knife anyway. And who says being stabbed would be enough to kill him?

I didn’t mean him.

Tobias stopped breathing for a long moment as he realised what his inner voice was suggesting.

What am I supposed to do? Hit myself in the head until I black out? That’s not a great plan.

He looks like a deep sleeper, and he’s got really sharp claws.

Tobias rolled his shoulder to get a better look at the demon. Most of him was still hidden under the blanket, but one hand rested, palm up on the bed between them. Tobias stared at the sharp claws, his mind’s eye seeing where they’d been – in the gouges of his skin, dipped in his blood, pressing through his entrance and into the most private space in his body. He did not want that again.

The young man took the demon’s hand, soft, warm, and heavy in his own, and turned it over to lie across his other wrist. The demon slept on, his chest rising and falling in time with Tobias’s own. Tobias held tight to two of the creature’s fingers, the same fingers he’d been intimately invaded with, and dragged the sharp claws diagonally across his wrist.

Pain blossomed instantly, but Tobias barely made a sound. His blood pooled – very dark against his pale skin – then began to flow freely and quickly over his arm, beginning an ever widening stain on the blankets. Tobias watched the life drain out of his body.

At least he doesn’t get to kill you.

Tobias shook his head at the voice and closed his eyes. His wrist had stopped hurting, but the blood still flowed. The wool stuffed mattress was becoming sodden where his hand rested.

No.

No what?

No, I don’t want to die. Shit!

Tobias fought to gain control of his other hand, but his limbs felt sluggish and heavy. He prodded the sleeping demon weakly, but the beast simply snorted and slept on. Tobias growled at himself, and managed to wrap his fingers around one of the slim, pointed horns which jutted from the demon’s temple. He tugged as hard as he could.

“I don’t want to die.”

“Yeah, yeah...” the demon shook in an irritated way, exactly like Tobias knew both his brother’s did when they didn’t want to wake up.

“I don’t want to die.”

“You ain’t dying...” the demon muttered sleepily.

Tobias panted, his heart was slow, his eyes were heavy.

No, dammit. Live you idiot!

He wrenched the demon’s horn harder than was comfortable for either of them.

“What?” the demon awoke with an exploding snarl, then paused. “Tobias?”

“Z-Z-Zai! I don’t wanna….”