My eyelids fluttered as I regained consciousness. Where the hell am I? I asked the cavernous ceiling of stalactites above. The air was humid and thick with the smell of smoke, but Goosebumps covered my skin despite the heat.
“Welcome,” a low, hoarse voice greeted her, sending my pulse buzzing with fear as I rolled into a crouch behind the platform.
My mind was reeling as I gasped deep lungfuls of the acrid atmosphere, absorbing the man before me. He was dressed only in a loose pair of salwar trousers that pulled into cuffs just below his knees. His skin was scarred, and his eyes were a piercing emerald green beneath his mess of ashen-blonde hair.
“Who are you?” I demanded, muted by the vivacious sounds of the steam being released nearby.
“Why did you bring me here?”
I glanced around; realizing I was in, of all things, a cathedral. High ceilings, pews down each side of the aisle, a crucifix above my head. In the shadowy distance on either side I could just make out a few holes resembling stain glass windows, though no light shone through them.
“But… how?” This was holy ground. Hellspawn incinerated on holy ground.
The man smiled at my recognition before violently shoving the contents of the altar to the ground. Wine splashed on the marble floor, pooling blood red. The silver cross clanged to the floor, barely holding itself together.
After smiling at his work, he climbed atop the altar, his flesh steaming where it touched the smooth surface. After he was settled, sitting cross-legged and staring down at me from his makeshift throne, his eyes caught mine.
“We meet at last, Zoe Lennox,” he murmured, picking up a small piece of bread left over from that morning’s communion. A sudden huff of amusement escaped him.
“But...this is holy ground—” I argued weakly, pulling against the rope that bound my wrists together. My skin burned in protest. I caught sight of where I was tied, with intricate and cursed knots, to the base of the altar.
“So I broke the rules,” he shrugged, grinning, one eyebrow quirked up tauntingly. It instantly made me hate him even more, mainly because I had always wanted to be able to do that. “Isn't that what we do best?”
“I don't understand...” I was verging on tears now, much to my regret, crushed beneath the gravity of the situation. If he wasn’t affected by blessed ground, my weapons would be useless.“Why have you brought me here?”
He leaned forward in his seat, his eyes blazing dangerously. “I took you because I wanted to,” he justified simply, “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”
I squared my shoulders, still resting on my knees, and stared up at him with my own eyes blazing.“Well, it seems you’ve got this backwards. If you want to get a girl alone you take her to dinner, bring her flowers, and then bind her hands and kidnap her in the middle of the night.”
The Hellspawn paused, staring at me in wonder. His eyes narrowed until they were two dangerous pinpoints. Despite myself, I flinched against his stare. His victorious grin grew wider as he reclined against the back of his throne once more.
“The prophets have been whispering, Amor,” he crooned, inspecting his blackened fingernails in boastful arrogance. “The key approaches,” he recited, “and its nurturers shall be rewarded.”
My memory snagged on the word ‘key’, but there was no time to dwell on it as the man got up and circled around the back of the altar. Over the recesses of his shoulder blades, two large, oval scars shone in the dim glow of the coals.
“Before all this,” he continued, staring down at me as I tried again, unsuccessfully, to rip away my bindings. “Before the oh-so-righteous Wonders decided they need to control us, do you know what the earth was like?”
I gripped the edge of the altar as tightly as possible, wondering where in the hell this was going, and turned back to face him. “Of course.”
“Then, please,” he slipped back up onto the altar, cocking his head to the side and watching me with those stunning green eyes. “Enlighten me.”
The conflict going on within my mind was a familiar one, except this time, rather than feeling a sense of habitual goodness, my better judgment told me I should be afraid. Yet I found herself slowly rising to my feet, observing the fair-haired Fallen One vigilantly.
“The world was in complete chaos,” I answered assertively, reciting the story I had been told over and over again as a child. “So God sent an archangel to earth to bless warriors. They were given the skills they would need in order to defeat the cursed Hellspawn.”
He looked at her, genuinely surprised. Though he smiled again, it didn’t make his eyes glimmer this time. “Is that so?”
I stood motionless as he stalked around me, studying me from every angle. He stepped towards me, until only a fraction of space was between us. Every cell in my body screamed danger, but I was held in place by one tiny, minute voice in the back of my mind that made my entire body fizzle in a strange way.
“Yes,” I snapped, trying to keep my eyes on him at all times as he continued his circle around me. “I’m surprised you didn’t know the story, what with being such an educated man and all.”
His face relaxed back into an indifferent disguise and he against the altar, his skin turning a bright red in protest. “And what makes you think I’m educated.”
“The scars,” I answered instantly. My eyes roamed over his bare skin, which was covered in swirling marks that were not at all natural. Some looked like they had been burned into his flesh, while others looked carved by hand.
I looked at him with something akin to pity, and it flung him into a terrifying onset of rage. He had jumped off the platform, lifting me by the throat and shoving me against the wall before I even had a chance to move.
His thumb dug into my esophagus, cutting off my air supply. My fingers grappled at his hand as my face began to purple.
“I see right through you, little girl,” he spat the word like it was poison. “You won't succeed.”
He glared at me only another moment, before his features slid into a look of thorough boredom and he released me. In the fall, my head cracked against a sharp, stone Nightshade blossom, and my arm fell across the remains of a glass platter. With a coughing shriek, I pulled my arm in to my chest and rolled onto my side, wheezing a cold and bitter laugh.
“There you go again,” I coughed and sputtered before rolling to face him. He was staring down at me with an expression so bewildered that it made me cackle all over again. “We have to know each other for at least a couple weeks before things get rough in the bedroom.”
He rolled his eyes, a flicker of a smile on the corners of his mouth. After a few more moments of listening to my ragged breathing, he jumped back onto the altar, looming over me with his elbows on his knees. He was playing with a silver lighter, flicking the lid back and forth through each tiny burst of flame. On the side, it was engraved with a word. I squinted through the gloom to read it: ‘Hope’. There was something familiar about it, but Audrey couldn't quite name it.
His emerald eyes swept over my torn arm, then rolled in exasperation as he reached down and ran his fingertips along it. I gasped at the touch, expecting the raw skin to sear with pain at his touch, but it merely tickled as it would anywhere else.
Not daring to sit up, I angled my elbow up a little to look along where the injury had been—it had disappeared. I blinked, absolutely clueless on how to even begin to comprehend this strange, fickle man who now extended a hand to help me up.
Fury bubbled in my chest like acid. I reached behind myself and pushed back from him, glowering as fiercely as Lucifer had the day he fell from Heaven.
“You,” I snapped, “are the most bi-polar son of a bitch I've ever met.”
I pulled myself up at the opposite end of the small space to where he sat, surveying her, and he laughed.
“Well, you got the bitch part right.”
He stood on top of the altar, walking gingerly across it, leaving seared footprints as he did, before jumping down and disappearing behind a thick maroon curtain, leaving me trapped and alone.
I scowled into the darkness after him, before realization hit and I realized this might not be a temporary arrangement. Please, God, I willed, help me.
“Prayers won’t help you, Amor,” his voice came out of the darkness; I couldn't be sure from which direction.
I startled, jumping a bit. This only earned me a light chuckle form the darkness. I rolled my eyes and took the rope that bound me to the altar. Half knowing it was useless and half knowing I had to try anyway, I braced my feet against the altar and pulled until I felt blood trickle down my arms. The knots didn’t loosen at all; if anything, I made them tighter.
I curled up on the hard, cold floor, imagining all the ways I would torture the damned man after I got out of here. I’d start with holy water…
I vaguely wondered how long it would take the others to notice I was gone, and if they’d have any idea where I'd disappeared to. I hoped I had left something behind, some bread crumbs for them to follow.
Hope... the lighter.
I sprang upright.
“He's been in my apartment,” I told the darkness in shock.
“So what if I have?”
“Jesus!” I jumped again, hearing his light chuckle as my head smacked against edge of the altar.
“Try again, Amor.”
I tried to reach up and rub the sore spot on my head, but my hand barely reached. Again, I scowled at the darkness. “Look, either come out where I can see you or shut the hell up.”
“And if I don’t?”
I didn’t respond, just groaned and leaned against the altar, my head feeling better when it was in contact with the cold marble. I crossed my legs and leaned on them, balled fists joined at my side in frustration.
Something suddenly occurred to her; the beat in her chest doubled in pace.
“If you think that damned prophecy is about me,” I called into the void, “why don’t you just kill me?”
A silhouette emerged from the hidden extent of the room, his skin sizzling as he walked atop the altar again. Even as he came into view, I couldn't decipher his expression. He looked almost hurt.
“And why would I want to that?”
I rubbed my forehead with overwrought fingertips and fought against the lump in my throat. “You don’t make any sense,” I whispered, not trusting the pitch of my voice to remain constant long enough for even just a sentence. “It would just be easier if you killed me and got it over with. Clearly.”
He stepped closer and perched on the arm of his makeshift throne. “It’s too early in the game to see how this all pans out," he told her. She looked up at his apple-green eyes and saw naked sincerity. "There are other theories, too, you know.”
I took a deep breath as my anxiety subsided. My fingers smudged away a few tears that had managed to escape and he looked completely taken off guard.
“You're comforted by this,” he noted aloud, a line appearing between his eyes.
“Of course I am,” I shifted slightly, very aware that my skirt was riding up and frustrated that I couldn’t pull it back down.
“Why?” He asked, incredulous.
“Because,” I slowly rose to my feet again, ignoring the painful protests of my skin as the rope bit into my wrists. “that means I won’t die. Not today.”
He cocked his head to one side and folded his arms, apparently intrigued. His eyes were even brighter now, dancing in the soft light of the cathedral. “You’re quite surprising, Zoe Lennox.”
His words hung in my mind like bubbles of oil suspended in water, slowly rising to the surface, but the question they formed was cut off by the sharp sound of clashing swords.
(c) Sarah Goebel 2011
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