Demon's Embrace

by Devereaux, V. J.

  “Two more quotes and then I’m done.”

  “‘Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine’. And… ‘Once we used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding out we must learn a very great deal more about ‘and’.”

  Her wry delivery evoked a few appreciative chuckles from the audience.

  Miri smiled. “As some of you may know, in physics we’ve discovered there are particles so small that the very act of observing them changes their behavior.”

  The physics students nodded.

  “Yet there is also a theory that psychics are all charlatans because the very act of describing what they see changes the behavior of the organism they address. Or because they cannot predict random chance, the fall of the die or the numbers of the lottery, any better than a physicist – who, by the way, can’t predict them either.”

  People sat up and began to pay attention. As did Ashtoreth.

  This was turning out to be more than just a little bit of a surprise.

  Hearing her now heartened him. Maybe he was on the right track. He hadn’t been certain that this Professor Reynolds could help him in his quest.

  “Which is the charlatan?” she continued, “We can’t describe how a psychic works so we dismiss them, nor can we describe how or why the Big Bang occurred and yet we don’t dismiss that… Or at least most of us sane, rational people don’t.”

  She looked out over the audience with a mischievous, engaging grin and Ash’s heart shifted a little. Which was ridiculous, those were thoughts best left to his brothers.

  “That is what this lecture is about, thinking differently about accepted truths or learning to think in new ways. That is the definition of metaphysics.”

  Behind her, the images on the screen shifted and changed.

  “For example… A few years ago a young girl needed a science experiment for a school project. She went to her father – a highly respected scientist – for a suggestion. He suggested one most of them struggled with, a simple way to remove the carbon we humans pour into the atmosphere every day. Unhampered by complicated notions she conceived an experiment that consisted of an air pump purchased from a pet store, a test tube and a single chemical. Where all the big scientists failed, she succeeded.”

  She paused, smiled wryly. “How simple.”

  “We can conceive of the idea of string theory or the notion time is simply a series of interrelated plates, each unique and individual, layered one over another and already laid out. Another equally valid theory that says time consists of multiple possibilities or branches. Each of those possibilities hares off in their own direction, the only constant being the sentience who experiences that as their reality while thousands of our other ‘selves’ branch off to experience those others. Given that, why is it so hard to believe there might be individuals who can ‘see’ or ‘experience’ those branches, the particular path you are on, and some who might actually be able to step through into those alternate ‘planes of existence’? What was it Arthur C. Clarke said – although he’d probably be very annoyed with me for the comparison – ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’?”

  “And what is magic after all?”

  With a smile, Miri ignited the magician’s flash paper in her hand and gestured.

  Fire burst from her palm to gasps from the audience.

  “Something we can’t explain. Let’s explore the boundaries of myth and magic together and try to show you new ways to think, to experience the world around you.”

  Ashtoreth straightened. This was the reason why he’d come. Suddenly he had more than a little hope, he had a great deal of it.

  She was making magic logical.

  Knowing this culture and what this society believed about such things, he’d expected this to be a diatribe, a dissertation decrying anything remotely connected to ‘magic’. Yet he’d come because it was said that Dr. M. Reynolds was the leading expert on what his people called the ethereal planes and what physics described as time and space theory.

  Given the importance of his quest, he needed whatever encouragement he could find.

  Over the next two hours his spirit lifted more and more. He was almost sorry when the lecture was over.

  Chapter Two

  Miri certainly hadn’t forgotten the tall, extraordinarily handsome man who stood at the back of the room – that would have been impossible – nor did she miss him when he detached himself from the shadows at the end of her lecture to thread his way down the aisle between the students. His long legs ate up the distance between them. Unlike the usual perception though, he didn’t seem to come down to size as he approached instead he almost seemed to appear even taller as he drew closer to her. Perhaps it was his confidence. There was just something about him that seemed bigger than life.

  Heads turned as he passed. The girls shot melting looks at him giggled among themselves.

  Miri couldn’t blame them, as he drew near he looked even more gorgeous than he had at a distance. His cheekbones were high, his nose long and almost perfectly straight despite the scar across it. His eyebrows arched high above deeply slanted eyes. His mouth was lush, beautiful. A scar bisected one arched eyebrow, while yet another tugged slightly at his upper lip. Somehow they only enhanced his looks and increased that aura of danger. Long hair, a deep glossy black touched with streaks of silver, was secured at the nape of his neck with a leather thong.

  He not only radiated sex, he practically glowed with it, so intensely Miri found herself responding to it instinctively, her breasts and nipples aching, her pussy growing wet.

  To her surprise, she found she craved a nibble along that slightly full lower lip.

  Up close, his eyes were a brown so dark as to be nearly black with glints of gold and red – probably a trick of the light – floating in them like sparks. When his handsome sculpted face was still his features appeared intimidating and there was a dangerous, predatory quality about him that spoke not of threat but of skill. The muscles beneath his snug t-shirt were honed and he moved lithely, like a panther, smooth, dark and sleek. She found herself feeling very like much like prey, a willing prey that longed to be devoured, as his gaze was directed and focused on her.

  His face, his body, the way he carried himself, all fascinated her. The sheer strength in him, the straightness of his back, the economy of movement, all cried warrior to her.

  But that face.

  His were the chiseled features of some ancient warrior god from the Far East carved from some obdurate stone, harsh and forbidding. Those dark slanted eyes were incredible, piercing.

  The students departed in flurries, some of the girls covered their mouths to hide their nervous smiles as they glanced back at him.

  Miri fought a similar impulse. Just looking at him, she wanted to say, Take me, ravish me. Not that she would but she thought about it.

  Instead, she greeted him with a smile as she slung her laptop case over her shoulder and walked toward the steps down from the stage to meet him.

  Ash moved through the crowd very much aware of the eyes on him. He’d become accustomed to the attention. It was the part of the allure of his kind. If they only knew the truth of him, who and what he was, what he’d become, he wondered if they’d feel the same. The attraction they felt though was as much a part of him as his height or the color of his skin, but only one here attracted him and that was the woman on the stage.

  This mission was important and he never forgot that, duty and honor had been bred into his blood, sinew and bone, but this woman with her otherworldly eyes, her bright intelligence and her incredible body, drew him as no other had. The closer he came to her, the stronger the draw. His body responded automatically, his cock stiffened in his jeans.

  He watched as she leaned over a little from the stage to answer a student’s question as she walked, one graceful hand holding back her brilliant hair. She smiled and it lit those
lovely sea-foam eyes. Glints of golden sunlight seemed to sparkle in them like the sun through an ocean wave, depthless and beautiful. Incredible.

  His heart turned over in his chest.

  Again he reminded himself his reaction was ridiculous. He knew what he was, who he was. What he’d become.

  Damaged. Dangerous.

  The students departed but Ash followed Miri Reynolds. She walked gracefully in heels that emphasized the curve and shape of her lovely legs.

  Automatically, he offered a hand to steady her down the narrow steps. He watched the way she moved, the skirt as it floated around her legs. Up close, her shapely body was even more enticing as the pretty dress shifted over full breasts then nipped in to the curve of her waist. He caught a touch of her scent, fresh, like a breath of the sea and island flowers. It was like something he remembered from his youth.

  “Professor Reynolds,” he said, “A very interesting lecture.”

  Miri had been watching as he paced her. She reached for the offered hand.

  A hint of some unfamiliar accent tinged his words, it was exotic, enticing. His voice was deep, low, as seductive as dark chocolate, as warm as a rich red wine. It went through Miri in much the same way, as a rush of heat that spiraled straight to her pussy. The muscles there flexed as if his cock was already inside her. Her breath seemed to clog in her chest.

  Then he smiled and the harshness of his features lightened instantly, softening it. That smile changed his face completely. It lit his dark eyes, warmed and softened them. He suddenly became even more appealing, engaging and oddly charming. The transformation was incredible.

  Her heart caught, tripped a little to see it.

  “Miri,” she said, suddenly breathless. “I’m glad you liked it.”

  In all her life, she’d never had such an instant attraction to a man.

  Inclining her head and trying not to melt just being close to him, she took the offered hand.

  His grip was strong but not painful as he steadied her, he clearly felt he had nothing to prove. His hand was so warm.

  She had only a moment to think that.

  At the instant their hands touched, the moment their fingers closed around each other, a stunning, almost electric jolt of knowledge, of vision, shot through her.

  Her hand locked around his as if it had fused there.

  In near panic, Miri tried to fight the sudden flash of insight she knew was coming, to close off what she Saw, to shove it back in a mental box before anyone became aware of what was happening. It was too much for her though, a mix of pure psychic perception, recognition on some deep level she didn’t understand and pure unadulterated sex that jolted from her heart straight to her core. It staggered her, battered her silent.

  A thousand images exploded through her mind, all of them impossible yet undeniable. Her Sight was never wrong.

  Ash felt it as an almost electric jolt that raced through him as their hands joined, a brilliant bolt of pleasure that raced through him.

  In that instant, in that frozen moment in time, he knew exactly who Miri Reynolds was and what she would be to him someday, perhaps, if she and the Gods were willing. It was something he’d never expected, had given up believing would be possible for him centuries before. He was too damaged, his soul too wounded. That was for his brothers.

  Hope shimmered, impossibly, and yet, even warrior that he was, the ‘perhaps’ was the most terrifying part.

  This woman, whether she accepted it or not, was destined to be his true mate, his match. His heart and soul, if she chose.

  And she could chose other. The Gods granted all free will.

  Even so every part of him went instinctually into protective mode. More was happening here than this amazing connection and he knew it.

  In shock he watched her beautiful, brilliant green eyes brighten and even as the color of them deepened. Her pupils contracted until they were pinpoints. Her gaze became somehow bottomless, mystical, as deep and full of mystery as the ever-changing seas of his childhood home. Those eyes could swallow you up, pull you down into their endless green depths. It would be like drowning, sweet, soft and pleasant.

  Ash shivered to see it, he knew that numinous gaze of old.

  Hers were the eyes of the moon, of the sea between the stars. A seer’s eyes, the eyes of an oracle.

  He looked down at her.

  As she lifted her gaze to meet his in her mind’s eye, Miri could see two of him, one layered over the other. One was the extraordinarily beautiful man who stood before her while the other was even more so. Beautifully, heartbreakingly, preternaturally gorgeous.

  But not human.

  Enormous wings arched high around him while the sword of her earlier imaginings hung in a scabbard at his hip. In vision he drew that sword two-handed as he set himself to protect her. That other self was strong, proud, determined, a warrior, it had been bred into him, was intrinsic to his very being.

  More images streamed through her, it felt as if she drowned in them.

  In his other form, he seemed taller. Perhaps it was the wings.

  His skin was the color of banked coals, a deep radiant scarlet. It gleamed with shimmers of gold that slid beneath and through it like sunlight through flame. Lovely.

  Bared to her Sight, the power of his body was unmistakable, the muscles of his chest and arms strongly defined, his abs taut. There was power in that form, in his gorgeous body. Short horns curved from his forehead. A tail lashed lithely around and behind him like a panther’s.

  He radiated sex and the promise of fulfillment.

  That ephemeral self was naked, nothing was hidden from her not even his desire for her, his cock was rampant, rigid.

  Need, want and desire roared through her veins like an incoming tide as her body reacted instinctively to the closeness of his presence, to the warmth of his hand in hers, to the beauty of him, of his body.

  Wings, horns, it didn’t matter, he was incredible.

  She burned, her body was on fire, nipples tight, pussy aching…

  As she fought the visions that threatened to overwhelm her, she clutched at his hand all the more tightly as an anchor against what she saw.

  Not here, not now, she pleaded mentally.

  If anyone saw, if they learned what she could do, what she was? She’d lose everything. Her reputation would be destroyed, she’d be dismissed as a nut, a crackpot.

  Dazed, Miri said, “Who… What are you?”

  “I’m not a thing,” he said, tightly. “My name is Ashtoreth.”

  Miri blinked, startled once again at the name and the sharpness of his tone. She recognized it from her studies of myth and mythology.

  “As in the demon Ashtoreth?” she blurted.

  Those words jolted. Ash stiffened out of long habit. The way she said them were like a dagger to his heart. No others could have cut as deeply.

  Only the priests of old, the ones who’d tortured him, had referred to him that way, as a creature, something else, something other, a thing to be hunted down, tormented, and then slaughtered like a mad dog.

  Coming from Miri Reynolds, those words stung all the more sharply. Ash’s awareness of her was too deep, too sharp.

  To his shock, she visibly jolted in reaction to his pain and shook her head as if to deny what she Saw. Those sea-foam eyes were stunned, shocked. They glimmered with unshed tears.

  Startled, Ash steadied her as he looked down into her bottomless green eyes.

  Memories, though, raced through his mind in response to what she’d said.

  Suddenly Miri could See it as she saw him. The images in his mind burst through her, hammered at her, the blows harsh and cruel.

  A village.

  Soldiers tore through it, savaged those within it. Slaughtering wantonly they set cottages on fire, then cut down those who tried to escape and those who tried to defend. They hacked with their swords, cut at the women and children as they tried to flee the devouring flames.

  In that vision the man before
her was so young. He was magnificent in his fury and despair as he rode to fight, to defend those who depended on him. His swords spun around his hands, so much like her first imagined image of him, his knees tight around the horse as he guided it with them. Young as he was, warrior that he was, he charged into the enemy. They scattered before him, but not before he recognized some of the dead, and grief burned through him.

  Another memory. He was chained, bent and bowed with what they did to him. She nearly cried out in horror at what she saw.

  In vision his magnificent body was bound to a timber frame, stretched within it. He arched beneath the lash of magic and whip, the rack holding him helpless as the lash traced a line of fire across his strongly muscled chest to match the dozen or more that had gone before. His skin tore. The whip left a trail of blood across his body. She could feel the burn of it as if it fell across her own. In her vision his eyes flashed with fury, and with despair, brilliantly gold, flecked with sparks of fire, his jaw locked against the agony that cut through him like a knife. As if she were part of him, she knew that no matter what they did to him, he wouldn’t say the words they wanted him to say. He wouldn’t confess to such horrors, not and condemn his brothers to an even worse fate than his.

  They would use knives on him and burning coals, those dark-cloaked pious priests. Steel and fire burned him, the iron of the shackles that bound him scored his wrists and ankles, another agony all their own.

  He’d known his ultimate fate for they’d told him of it – to be bound to a cross upside down and burned even as he hung. Yet even in the face of that terrible fate a part of him had yearned for death, for an end to his pain.

  It was suffering and horror, an agony of both body and soul.

  His pain tore at her.

  “I’m sorry,” Miri whispered, “so sorry… Please, forgive me…I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

  Ash looked at her, appalled.