The Devil's Deal

The wind curled around me as though it consisted of arms, clutching at me like I was a fragile child. Tears dribbled down my cheeks as I watched him, my heart beating as though frantically trying to escape its place in my chest. He stood there with a dark, almost seductive smirk tugging at his thin lips and with his hands clasped in front of him, the wind rolling against his back as though it was controlled by his deathly hands.

The name Asmodeus ran through my head over and over, and I struggled with myself to figure out why it seemed so familiar. My chest was heaving as my thoughts raced, my crystal blue eyes staring at him with a mixture of fear and desperateness lurking in their depths. “A deal?” I heard the words before I realized that I had spoken them, my voice like a dull whisper against the roaring of the wind.

He smiled widely at me, the look of death consuming his features as his whitened teeth glistened. His green eyes shone with candid amusement, alight like wisps of flames that had arisen from the depths of Hell. The wind seemed to caress his raven hair, and as he twirled his fingers the wind stopped rushing and fell to a silent stop. My mouth dropped open with adamant terror and disbelief, entranced by his figure and the aura of darkness that surrounded him.

A deep chuckle left his lips. “And I thought that mortals had more brains than this.” He sighed mockingly, the corners of his lips lifting up into a devilish smirk that uncovered his lie. “Or maybe I just picked the wrong one.”

I shivered in the cold, blood dribbling down the side of my cheek. Tendrils of dampened hair clung to my cheeks as I watched him, my chest constricted so tightly that I could barely breathe. He clicked his teeth together in apparent disappointment, taking another daunting step towards me with his emerald eyes flaring in the light. “What sort of deal?” I asked croakily, my voice almost stolen by the wind as I watched him through wary, broken eyes.

Desperateness was building up inside my like an eclipse of heat, and I was all too aware of my brother’s mangled body that lay beside me. At that moment I couldn’t determine reality from fantasy, and my mind franticly wondered whether I was already dead. The air was as icy as death itself, and his eyes appeared to be from the darkest of all nightmares.

I wanted to be alive. I was selfish and terrified but I wanted to be sure that I was breathing life’s air, and that the images that surrounded me all equated to a fucked up version of what I had already been living. His eyes seemed to watch me in curiosity, a flicker of amusement lurking in their depths.

“I’ll ensure your brother’s life.” My breath caught in my throat, my eyes widening in maddened hope. I flicked my gaze over to his bloodied body, a tear dribbling down my cheek at the sight of him so fragile. His eyes were shut as though he was sleeping like a baby, and all I wanted to do was hold him in my arms and hear his heartbeat vibrating against my body.

His eyes watched me humorously, my despair and bloodied tears failing to falter his cold demeanor. He watched me like I was an animal; a game to him, as though I was a puppet and he held my strings. “And in return,” he drawled, his cold eyes glued to my face, “you’ll give yourself to me.”

My stomach lurched at his words and my nose curled up in disgust, the sadness disappearing and dragging with it an onset of fury. “You want me to be your toy?” I spat, my small hands clenching in fists as I watched him. “What do you want, sex? Is that what you’re after?”

He flinched back as though he’d been struck, his eyes widening significantly as his mouth curled up into a sneer. Disgust overwhelmed his features so powerfully that it made me feel like a dirty, rotten animal, and my strong stance wavered as I recoiled away from him. “I would never lower myself that far, Human,” he sneered, the name coming from his lips like the lowest of insults. “You disgust me.”

A shiver erupted through me at the intensity of his words, and his eyes hardened into a steely gaze as he watched me. “If you agree, you answer to me. Anything I ask you will do, otherwise I can end this deal in the snap of my fingers.” His fingers folded over one another, taunting me to show me the truth of his words. His eyes began to sparkle with mirth, his lips curling up into a demonic smile as he waited for my response.

“And if I don’t?” I countered, silently terrified of his response. His words made it sound as though I would be a slave to him and the thought of that made my heart clench in repulsion and dread. Although the sane part of me refused to believe it, I knew with every part of me that he was something to fear and that he had power that I could never overthrow. His aura wept with insanity and gloom and it filled me up like poison of the strongest kind, slowly killing every rational part of me.

“Your brother will die, and so will you.”

I flinched. “You tricked me. You never said that I was going to die!” I was shouting now and it seemed as though my words were entertaining him even further, the mention of my death filling him with stark ecstasy that made him seem even more inhuman. “You bastard,” I spat, and his eyes flickered at the word. “That’s not a choice. That’s not a fair deal.”

He snarled at me and took a step forward, lifting his hands in the air. With his eyes never leaving mine he snapped his fingers, and a scream sounded so loudly that I staggered in terror.

The scream echoed in my ears and it felt like I was dying, because I could hear that it was his and it was tearing me apart. “Noah!” I cried, staggering towards him as I watched his face contort with pain.

“Make your choice,” he said roughly, the screams building up around him like walls. His eyes were watching me coldly; his fingers clenched together in what could be anger or anticipation.

I couldn’t watch him die, and I wasn’t ready to give my life up either. I hated him in that moment because he held my world in his hands and he was squeezing it with his fingers, testing my selfishness and my flaws. By the sparkle in his eyes he knew that he had me, and I clenched my eyes shut in disbelief as tears dribbled down my cheeks.

The screaming stopped. My world was dark. I shivered as I felt him behind me, his mouth in the crook of my neck and his nose caressing my skin ominously, causing my body to clench in fear. Goosebumps formed on my skin as bile rose in my throat, my body flinching away from him as his warm breath tickled the back of my neck. “Say it, Kayla,” he breathed, and I felt him smile darkly against my neck. My breathing was shallow as I stood there frozen by horror, my eyes still clenched tightly shut as the nightmare swirled around me.

“I’ll do it.”

The light disappeared and I fell to my knees, feeling a rippling pain shooting through my body. I could no longer feel his presence surrounding me, and the thought filled me with a shimmer of crazed joy as my eyes clouded over with tears. With shaky hands I lowered my hand to my stomach, the wetness of blood licking against my skin as I collapsed onto the ground.

Glass surrounded me and I could hear Noah’s whimpering, so I pulled myself towards him and gathered him in my arms, relieved when he wasn’t torn away.

With the sound of an ambulance filling my ears I closed my eyes and allowed the tears to dribble down my cheeks as I disappeared.