Death Comes Inside Her

Chapter 1

Aios

Gnarled trees open into a dark clearing as I propel myself toward the door. It’s been a hundred years since the priest sealed the portal behind me, locking me out of one of my many earthly playgrounds.

I claimed this particular earthly dwelling in a soul trade with the man who built it after he took to drinking and gambling and would have put his family on the street if not for making a deal with me.

Collecting human souls has been a hobby for centuries, but it’s been so long since I indulged. The minor pleasure it once brought me long ago faded.

Yet today, I felt the pull, heard the words of the summoning, and knew the door had reopened.

I’m on it within a breath. The entry seal breaks under my palm with a crack like bone snapping, then it swings wide. The warmth of humanity pours out, sending excitement racing through me as I step through.

At the last minute, I feel something familiar latch onto my heels.

Varek. A sniveling little sub-demon that follows me around like an annoying younger brother.

“Let go of me!” I hiss as we emerge on the other side, feeling the air drag through my throat.

He obeys, as usual. That’s why he’s still alive.

A demon of my standing has many sub-demons, but I find most of them useless and have vaporized thousands over the years.

This old dwelling place was a place I toyed with humans, indulging my evil powers for my own entertainment.

Demons get bored, too. My entire existence has been inflicting pain and ruin. Pain and ruin.

It gets dull after so many centuries.

Still, it’s all I know, and today, whatever unfortunate soul has summoned me back here will understand just how skilled I am at destroying soft, stupid humans. Once we seal the pact, I will invent new, painful ways to bring about the end of their earthly existence.

I snarl as I steady my newly-formed body, my bones growing sinuous muscle as the skull that sits on top of my neck solidifies once again.

Some sorcerer has performed the ritual and called me forth. There will be an exchange for the reopening of my playground, something they want and something I will take in return. It’s celestial law, and something even the Big Man down the dark stairs doesn’t question.

I glance over my shoulder, seeing that the entry has already disappeared. There remains only a blank wall beside a tall mirror that hung in that very place the last time I was here.

The wood floor is smoother under my feet, especially down the center, but the echoes of long-faded screams and pleas for mercy still linger in the stale air.

I recognize the yellowed wallpaper. The furniture is mostly gone, but the bones of the old mansion are still in place, though someone has let it go to ruin.

The scent of mildew and damp neglect permeate the walls.

A once grand plantation-style dwelling with white pillars across the front is now cracking and crumbling.

“Master... My voice burns,” Varak whines, his hands clutching his throat.

“Then stop using it,” I tell him coldly.

Demons in the underworld do not require rudimentary speech to communicate. In the other plane, our voices aren’t bound by lungs or larynx, tongue or teeth. But here, things are different. Many of the natural laws of the human world apply, even to us.

Like the way my breeding apparatus suddenly stirs to life, hardening, lengthening, standing out fourteen inches from between my legs, barbed and sentient. We are connected, of course, but it also has its own mind, its own will.

Find her…It hisses as a low burning in the length has my fingers twitching to soothe myself.

It’s called mating, a rarity for my kind. We live with constant hunger, it’s part of our hell. We can eat but are never full. We can drink wine but never feel the stupor. We bask in flame but still feel cold.

But nothing matches the deep hole of insatiable desire for a mate that we will never find.

“Master…” Varak stares up at my naked member from his place on the floor, a look of terror, shock and awe on his mole-like face. Sub-demons like Varak have no use for such appendages. “Shall I provide you relief?” He sniffs rubbing his rodent like digits together.

“The only relief you can provide is the pleasure I will take in banishing you into an eternity of nothingness. Now, stop talking and stop looking at my phallus you jealous imp.”

The only thing worse than death for a demon creature is the netherworld limbo that neither exists nor doesn’t exist.

I land the back of my bony hand against his head, knocking him backward. His eyes still locked onto my mating appendage send me into a fury.

I’ve never hardened like this before. But there’s a scent here. Something on the air my cock clearly caught it before me.

Something that teases and tantalizes, that causes that ever-present hunger to start to throb in the pit of my belly.

I breathe deeply and settle my eyes on my reflection in the mirror.

A hundred years since I last saw myself in this form, but perfection is timeless. Demons are not known for their fragile egos or human like insecurity.

I take a second to admire myself. Gray flesh stretched taut over seven feet of muscle and sinew.

I clench a fist, staring at my taloned fingers, and fondly remember the last time I tore a human’s innards out of his screaming throat.

As I flex my neck, I see the tendons shift beneath skin that thins and finally ends entirely at my jaw.

My mating member flexes in the glass, the blunt head turning deep crimson and pulsing, I sense its own inner thoughts. It’s hopeful. For what I’m not sure because finding my one and only mate amongst the billions of beings alive and dead is less likely than hell turning into an organic food co-op.

I give one final look, admiring my skull. What a skull. Bone as white as alabaster, dark eye sockets flickering with fire, a tongue that shifts and twists inside my jaw, split at the end like the tongue of a snake.

And like a snake, it tastes the air and scents… That something again.

It’s overwhelming. Fresh and pure, tangling around my throat.

“If I need you, I’ll tell you,” I snarl at Varak. “Otherwise, you blend in and stay silent.”

He melts back into the dark, his body taking on a translucency that allows him to nearly disappear.

The estate stirs as I stroll through moonlit rooms I remember well, and I can feel it waking up around me.

On a celestial level, it’s still mine, but a hundred years is a long time for humanity. Who knows who holds the deed now?

Stepping into a dusty hall, the scent grows stronger, hitting me in the chest where a heart should be.

Blood. Fresh, metallic, and alive, riding the air like a fucking invitation. My body answers before thought can catch it, and I feel the hunger battle me for control. I understand the hope in my cock now.

The scent pulls me toward the grand stairs. Sweetness and copper over warm skin. It slices through every bit of restraint I built in the dark, my feet carrying me forward.

I turn out of the doorway into the foyer, dust dancing in the moonlight as I catch movement and jerk my head around.

She's halfway down the staircase when I see her.

Barefoot, wearing a thin white slip that's plastered to her body like the fabric is caressing every curve.

One hand is pressed to her chest, and there's a bead of blood trembling at her fingertip.

I watch it drop, and she watches it fall too, following my gaze as it hisses when it hits the wooden step.

Sleek golden hair breaks over her shoulders, sucking the little light in the space around her like a vortex. She’s so young, with the curves of a woman but the innocence of a child. Her nose is dotted with fifty-six of what humans call freckles. My demon eyes count them in a fraction of a second.

“Freckles,” I hiss.

Such an odd word.

I slow time, re-counting those little dots as a wave of jealousy burns through me that they’re part of her.

She draws a sharp breath as I return time to its normal pace here. Her gasp is caught in her throat as eyes the color of ice and sky lock onto my form, but she doesn't run. She just stares, wide blue irises fixed on me like she expected me.

Interesting.

Mortals normally flee or scream when they see me. Usually both. I’ve learned to stay slow, to keep my movements controlled if I want a human to stay long enough to be useful. But I sense no fear from her.

Well, maybe a little, I mean my cock is front and center and fucking glowing red and growing right in front of her. It’s even scaring me a bit if I’m being honest.

But, there’s fascination too. And something else. Something I don’t have a name for.

"Did you open the door, little witch?" My voice comes out low and smooth. Her pupils dilate as she focuses on my face. Heat crawls up her pale, freckled cheeks.

So small. So delicate. And yet… There is strength.

"I found a book..." The words are hesitant. She holds her bleeding finger tight as she continues. "It said to use blood, so I did. But I didn't think it would work."

I climb the stairs until we're eye level, and I get a better look at her.

She’s too young to be here alone. Soft skin, with full lips too mature for her youthful body, parted just a little as her chest rises and falls.

Her hair, it steals something from inside me. Something that normally desires to destroy beauty.

I’ve been in the darkness for so long, something this color feels…like a revelation. It’s not white or yellow. It’s as though pearls and gold were spun into luminescent threads, brushed out, and blessed the world with tresses too beautiful for this world.

Demons appreciate beauty, whatever the tales might suggest otherwise. We enjoy corrupting it, we enjoy destroying it, we enjoy toying with it until it turns ugly and dark. But this female, this goes beyond mere beauty. It’s something deeper, something that defies logic.