Samael and the Human

“Oh come on Sammy, just a quick rinse off so my mum doesn’t guess we were in the lake together,” I wheeze as I slide on the damp tiles, tired from racing him.

Dragging his shirt in defeat, Sam slowly makes his way into the line of showers. He shakes his head like a wet dog and looks up at me, hazel eyes smirking. He gives a sly smile and closes the gap between us, pinning me to the tile wall. My back shudders in protest against the freezing surface.

“She is bound to find out eventually. You are 20 Ri, you can date who you want. You can be in love with who you want,” he softly grips my jaw and smiles, “Even the towns returning mystery.”

His smile fades and his eyes close. He’s gone and saddened himself again. I frown and kiss his knuckles. I copy his hand and pull him in by his jaw. I press a soft kiss to his lips and then tug him into the nearest shower stall.

As I let his torso warm mine, my back is yet again greeted with arctic tiles. Goosebumps run up my spine, but I’m not cold. Sam’s speckled eyes open again. He looks at me once and then turns the shower on. I hear the handle pushed to its limits and the water begins to fall: lukewarm, then straight to steam.

“Riley,” Sam whispers my name and closes the gap between us once more.

His hands trace my skin, over and over in soft spirals. I allow myself the sweet moment: time alone, being away from it all. I focus on Sam and how happy it makes me just to kiss him. I love the jagged breath he can’t help when I kiss his neck. And I love how when he’s had enough of me in control, he reunites our lips.

Too suddenly he stops moving, pulls away, and becomes deadly still, like a predator waiting to strike. I open my mouth to ask what’s wrong but he squeezes my hand, staring at the wall behind me. The shower now seems deafening, each droplet making its own roar. His eyes whip back to mine, there’s something wrong. They show me his feeling of desperation and… sorrow?

“Do not touch her,” he says strongly, but I hardly hear with the roaring in my ears.

This isn’t directed at me. I can’t stop looking into his eyes, the eyes that have changed since he was a child. His beautiful new eyes that he promised he would tell me about. I begin to shake, purely of fear. I’m afraid and I don’t even know why.

Sam is ripped out of my grip and he growls. There’s a man on each of his arms, one hugging his torso, and one coming at him with a black hood whilst he fights. Each of these men shirtless and in grey dress slacks. I can’t make sense of this. And I can’t move to his side, there’s one right in front of me.

He snaps so quickly at me I don’t even think to react. A hard, black line tightly connects me to the shower handle for hot water. The son of a bitch zip tied me to the wall. He shoots me a wicked grin and runs up to the mob, like it’s a game to him.

I can finally hear solid thuds coming from the pile of men on Sam. I watch as fist after elbow connect with Sam’s body. He continues to try to work his way out of their holds fall while keeping his eyes on me. They continually appear to grow sadder with my every effort to reach him.

“To his knees, my brothers,” a distant voice says and I jump.

Its owner steps from the shadows and stands menacingly high over Sam. This man wearing a suit jacket it seems. He kicks Sam’s stomach with the point of his boot. Sam’s eyes go wide and flutter, losing sight of me. He collapses to his knees with a horrifying clap of the tiles.

“Sam?” I call pleadingly, but his eyes remain shut.

The shadow man barks something in a language I’ve never heard, a language so beautiful even with his ragged voice. His puppets drag Sam from my view, probably only a couple feet from the shower stall. I begin pulling at the handle with more ferocity and turn to get a better look at it when I hear a sickening crack. A loud clap follows, I know Sam has fallen completely.

“Mark him Raphael,” a monster snarls.

“Do it Raffie, burn and brand the damned,” another laughs with cruelty.

Whispering begins from just outside the shower, a nightmarish chant that you’d expect from the monsters under you bed. The solid thuds restart, louder this time, with more force. I hear Sam groan and cough. The single drain on the tile floor in front of the shower suddenly isn’t so unused. A fiery crimson liquid webs through the stark white tiles and drips rapidly through the drain.

I sputter out a sob and then choke it back. Turning away from the horrific contrast just feet from me, I claw at the zip tie. It’s so tight I can’t feel my hand. I give up on trying squeezing out of it. The dumbest idea comes to mind, but I have no options at this point. Placing both my feet on the wall, I let all my weight hang from it and then some. Pushing with my feet I put as much force on it as I can and suddenly I’m falling. I slide on my ass right out of the stall with the shower handle and pieces of the wall zip tied to my wrist.

Without hesitation I bounce to my feet at charge at the heap of men. I growl and whip my tied wrist at the man called Raphael, the leader. The metal connects to his shoulder and the chanting stops. The men keep their hold on Sam, unsure of what to do.

“Kill,” Raphael glares at me with eyes that trigger a memory and quickly walks away without looking back.

Sam isn’t moving under their grips. I need Sam. And I also need to hurt them, for hurting Sam. My free right hand lashes at the nearest man. I rake my nails down his face and kick him between the legs. As he goes down, I knee him in the nose and whip my chained weapon at the next. I swing my nails and the shower handle blindly as the fists and feet begin to connect to my body, not Sam’s.

Brutal blows bring me to one knee. I swing the heavy handle at their shins. The man furthest from me catches my bound wrist and holds it tight to his stomach. I struggle to free it, and my attention to this; my loss of focus. The bottom of a shoe connects with my lower back sending me to the ground. Another brutal blow, this time to the ribs, causes me to veer right and I land chest to chest on Sam.

I don’t feel him move or react beneath my limp weight. Tilting my head, I try to get a look at his face when the toe of a shiny dress shoe smashes into my eye and cheekbone. I hear every ounce of oxygen leave my body in a short gasp. Squeezing my eyes shut, I slide half off Sam.

I don’t feel any more blows then. I don’t hear any more bones breaking. Best of all I don’t sense the presence of any more monsters. I could open my eyes and check, but I truly doubt I can see clearly with what I’ve sustained.

“Sammy,” his name echoes brokenly from my swollen lip.

I peel my one able eye open and excruciatingly slowly, I sit up. Blood pulses from the dozens of lacerations on each limb and beneath his skin in heavy patches. A site on his chest catches my eye. On his left pectoral, just where you’d expect the heart to lie, an intricate burn mark has been freshly placed. An ‘X’ made of wings, wings so detailed they couldn’t belong to any animal, lays smoldered into his muscular chest.

“Sammy,” I say with so much pain behind my voice, pain for what’s happened to Sam.

I lean down and press a bleeding kiss to his cheek and move my hand to his chest, to find his heartbeat. Just before I rest it there, I hear a short ragged breath.

“Ri,” his dark eyelashes flutter, then stronger, “Riley?”

I shove my face into the crook of his neck ignoring the pain it causes me. Pain radiates from my ribs with each short breath. Sam’s arms slide around me and one of his hands splints the ache in my side.

“My eyes… I was like them,” he says quietly, speaking with difficulty and multiple breaths.

The ticking in my head attaches confusion to word sentence he sputters. I don’t understand this, anything that’s happened. I don’t see how this much violence could amount in such little time. Why did any of that just happen? Why were we randomly jumped by the strangest men?

He shifts his shoulder so that we’re face to face. Sam’s sandy brown hair tangles in my mess of blonde on the bloodied tiles. The corner of his mouth tilts up with much strain, giving me a weak, very broken smile. His defined jaw now appears crooked.

“I am damned, and damned from the damned,” he closes his hazel eyes and seems to focus.

His hand appears in front of my face with a perfect, sleek black feather.

“The real Sammy,” Sam whispers and I let the dots of my vision drag me to a black abyss.