Caught in the Devils' Hand

by Ruby Duvall

  Hissing as the pain in her shoulder began to seep down her arm, she realized that her stab wound was more serious than she thought. She was losing too much blood. Standing up a bit unsteadily, she stumbled to the door and flung it open, taking only a second to glance at the witch and make sure she was still unconscious.

  She closed the door behind her, incredibly grateful for the fresh air outside, though the limp vines of Majo’s magic were still sliding over her shoulders. She hobbled a few steps away, the pain in her stubbed foot returning, and breathed in a great gulp of air once she was free of the slimy vines.

  “Shumei!” a familiar voice called. Her heart shot to her throat as the adrenaline began to pump anew through her veins. She quickly turned a circle, trying to peer through the light mist still lingering in the valley, but she didn’t see Akiji anywhere. She had known he would be looking for her today. His father was still ordering hangover medicine every week, after all. She couldn’t deliver medicine to him anymore though. Nor to anyone. She could no longer live in this village, even though she knew that everyone would suffer without her. Majo would come after her.

  She ducked onto the path that looped around the village and hurried in the direction of her home, needing to stop there for a precious minute to collect her brother and a few medicines for her wound.

  She hoped that Vallen would answer her call quickly today.

  She began to round a sharp corner, lightly jogging, and passed behind Master Takebe’s home. His wife, already standing after a couple of days of rest, was outside collecting some firewood from their personal pile.

  “Shumei?” she asked softly, watching as the bleeding, limping girl jogged by without a single word. Shumei shook her head, silently signaling to the older woman that she couldn’t stop. She passed a few more houses and turned a second sharp corner, only to gasp and then cry out as she nearly bumped into Akiji.

  “Found ya…” he ground out.

  “A-Akiji!” she cried out. She tried to take a few hasty steps back, but she was too rattled for one morning to move quickly enough. He grabbed one of her arms. His face was tight with either anger or concern—she couldn’t tell yet.

  “What happened to your shoulder?” he asked, jerking her closer, which brought a gasp of pain since it tugged on the wound. His eyes widened. “Was it the sex demon?! Where is he?!” Akiji demanded, asking too many questions and jumping to too many conclusions for her to even know where to start. He looked around as if the supposed perpetrator were still hanging around.

  “Let go of me,” she said, her strength gone after so many scares in so little time.

  “No, I’ll never let go!” he yelled. She flinched, wondering where his anger was coming from today. “You’ve evaded me for the last time, you d-damned whore!” His rage was as clear as day, so violent that he couldn’t even speak without stuttering.

  “Why would you call me that?” she asked, afraid that he knew the truth. She told herself that it no longer mattered whether he knew or not, for she had to escape the village anyway, but if he knew, it might push him over the edge.

  “I found a note on my door this morning,” he began, and she looked down at his hand expectantly. She could see the edges of a crumpled bit of paper poking out from the bottom of his fist. “Someone was good enough to tell me…that the one woman I desired as my wife…the only one in the village I loved above all others…the one woman whom I swore to care and provide for…was fucking a demon of her own free will.” The last came out in the harshest of notes she had ever heard from his mouth. His voice was incredibly rough…there was anger, of course, but underlying it all was an immense pain.

  She had no idea what to say. She didn’t even know how to make her face look, and so it showed in her features that what he said was true. His gentle but firm grip suddenly became cruelly tight as the pain in his voice passed over his face. She gasped, knowing there would be a large bruise on her arm.

  “Why?” he asked, his eyes watering. She felt a pang of guilt and pity and knew that there was no way to answer him without lying.

  He deserved an honest answer.

  “When I look at you,” she whispered, “I don’t feel any happiness or passion. All I feel is fear. You frighten me.” He clenched his teeth, his breathing rapid.

  “And this—this demon does not frighten you? He brings you happiness and passion?” he said through his teeth.

  “Yes,” was her shaky answer. The slap across her face was abrupt, too fast for her to dodge it, and it whipped her head to the side. There was an immediate sting in her mouth, and she knew that she had cut her lip on her own teeth. She took in a fast breath, blinking rapidly but unable to keep in the tear that fell from her eye.

  “I loved you!” he screamed into her face. She felt blood drip down her chin from her cut lip and slowly turned her head toward him.

  “It wasn’t love,” she answered, looking straight at him. “You wanted to be in control of the only person you could look down on. You lusted after me, after the power you could have over me. It was not love.” His eyes widened, his whole body shaking with fury.

  “How dare you dictate my feelings to me!” he hollered. His free hand came up again, and though she tried to duck away, he grabbed her by the front of her neck and pulled her closer, squeezing too hard for her to breathe naturally. She thought of using her magic again but she was already so exhausted. She didn’t know what would happen to her if she tried it for a second time. She might fall unconscious, and who knew what would happen to her while she was at her most vulnerable.

  “You’re…hurting me,” she wheezed out.

  “I was willing to forget what happened the other day. I was willing to help you with your work, to give you children, to give you everything I could to make you love me!” He dragged her against him and fisted his hand in her hair, much too tightly to be anything but painful. She sucked in a breath of air, but that was all she could do before he leaned forward to kiss her.

  This time, she let him.

  His lips, hard and rough, bruised as they attacked her unresponsive mouth. The second they touched her, she felt something snap, like a long string wrapped around her soul and leading off in another direction. The tension in the string, which she hadn’t known was there, was suddenly slack. In her head, she heard a gasp that was not her own, followed by the sound of thunder.

  Akiji lifted his mouth, his chin smeared with the blood from her still bleeding lip, and looked to the sky. Evidently, he had heard the thunder too. He looked back at her though and his eyes dropped to her mouth.

  “It wasn’t love you wanted, Akiji…not from me, anyway,” she said, ignoring the pain in her lip. He looked back at her eyes, his expression incredulous.

  “You wanted to be the powerful one. You wanted to have control, but not over me…over your father. You hate him,” she surmised.

  “You know nothing about what I want!” he spat, and he dived again at her lips for another kiss, this one much more brutal. She was forced to open her mouth and let in his tongue. She could have bitten it, but that would only make things worse. She tried to wriggle away from him, but her strength was gone.

  She needed Vallen.

  She heard a soft thump, and suddenly Akiji’s face was heavy against her, his lips mashed against her own. His hand in her hair released its tight grip, and he fell away from her, slumping down onto the ground like a doll. Standing behind him was the person she had been hoping to see the most that awful morning.

  “Vallen,” she sighed gratefully, tears of relief run freely down her cheeks. A long, wicked-looking sword that sported serrated teeth was tightly gripped in his hand. He must have used the blunt hilt of the sword to knock out Akiji, she realized. He wore his usual outfit, consisting of richly made, plain black clothes, and looked especially pale in the early morning mist.

  His eyebrows turned up at the sight she made. Her shoulder was badly wounded, her lip bloody, her cheek red. He could guess who, sparing a brief glance at the
man on the ground. She was crying too and looked to be extremely tired, as if she had stayed up all night. He desperately wanted to pull her into his arms, to kiss the pain away and tell her that everything would be all right, but in that moment, there was only one thing more important than comforting her. It was the only thing that would ever stop him from holding her.

  “The deal is broken, Shumei,” he said slowly as he sheathed his sword.

  He had to know first…

  “I know…I let him kiss me.” She watched him as he took a step closer to her.

  “Why?” He had to know the reason.

  She swallowed hard, remembering how Akiji had used that simple question only moments earlier. She sniffed, wiping at her eyes.

  “Because I wanted to break the deal. Because I want to be with you,” she lowered her face, her voice breaking.

  He held his breath.

  “Because I love you,” she croaked, followed by a high sob.

  His chest swelled with joy and he couldn’t breathe normally. He wanted to roar his exultation to the sky as a triumphant smile burst onto his face. He felt like his chains had been cast aside, like his heart was whole again, beating warmly and steadily for the first time in hundreds of years.

  He swept her up into his arms, his hold gentle and fierce at the same time. His arms were wrapped around her torso to avoid hurting her shoulder and he pressed kisses to her cheek, her temple and her forehead. Her left arm remained limp, but she wrapped her right arm around his shoulders.

  “I love you as well,” he said gruffly, his lips close to her ear. Bringing his head back, he looked down at her face and was mesmerized to see a smile upon it. It was a big, happy, face-splitting grin, and despite her red cheek and bloody chin, he realized he had never seen her look more beautiful.

  They both heard a moan and looked down to the ground at the same time, watching as Akiji shifted slightly on the ground. She looked back at Vallen and wasn’t surprised to see anger on his face, his jaw stiff.

  “Let him be. We need to leave very quickly. I can explain once we’ve left the village behind,” she said, feeling a pang in her heart at the thought of leaving everyone. After all, there were some people who would still need her. Ikuro would need some medicines for her as yet unborn baby, Master Takebe’s wife might run out of the medicine for the injury on her leg, and many people would have spring colds soon.

  She couldn’t stay though. No one would let her live here peacefully anymore.

  “We shall collect your brother and make our exit then,” he announced, picking her up in his arms.

  “I can walk, Vallen,” she protested mildly.

  “You were limping two days ago, your shoulder is bleeding profusely and you look exhausted. Let me carry you, love,” he winked, his voice a caress. She smiled again, unable to help herself. She gasped, though, as he quickly lit into a sprint, his steps even and long. She wasn’t even jostled that much. In just a couple of minutes, they arrived at her hut and had fortunately avoided detection.

  “Oka! Grab your things, quickly!” she called, trying to speak in a loud whisper as she ducked inside the hut. Oka was stirring what would’ve been their breakfast, two logs lit underneath the pot, and he turned in surprise when she came limping through the door.

  “S-sister!” he squeaked, seeing the blood on her face and shoulder.

  “No time for explanations now. Vallen is taking us away.” She threw the last of the water in their washing bowl onto the flames of the small fire. “Gather your things while I look for some medicine for this wound. Be quick, Oka…just a minute, okay?” she gasped out. She heard him squeak again and turned to see that Vallen had followed them inside.

  “A-are you him?” he asked, his finger pointing shakily at the tall, imposing male in their home. Vallen let out a puff of air that was probably a laugh and nodded.

  “Oka, now!” she said desperately. She reached up with her good arm and pulled a basket off the shelves. Then opening her medicine bag, she gasped as she found that the spell book was still there.

  She had actually forgotten about it.

  There was no time now, so she stuffed some medicine into the bag and then closed it again, palming a roll of clean cloth to use as a bandage later.

  By the time she turned around, Oka was holding a small bag of his things, standing next to Vallen and ready to go, though he was looking a bit fearfully at Vallen rather than at her.

  “It’s time to go,” she said. Vallen reached up and used two fingers to produce a loud, high whistle. The answering neigh signaled that his horse was coming.

  Ushering them all outside, he watched as his horse arrived, galloping into view from the path behind her house.

  Shumei, for a second, had thought that they wouldn’t all fit onto the animal’s back, but just looking at the monstrous size of the horse, she knew she was wrong. Vallen lifted her up first and then set Oka in front of her.

  “Hold tightly to the pommel, young Oka,” he ordered.

  “Hey, what’s going on here?” a man’s voice yelled. Shumei gasped and looked behind them. Her nearest neighbor, the married man she knew to be having an extramarital affair, had come out of his house. Then she saw behind him where several more people were standing, their mouths open with shock as they took in the strange scene before them.

  “I’m leaving, Master Akito, and I may never come back,” she announced. Vallen wasted no time and pulled himself into the saddle, his pelvis fitting snugly around the softness of her backside. “And by the way, shame on you for cheating on your wife.” Akito stood there, spluttering, and even more people were showing up now.

  “Let’s go, Vallen. We’ve wasted enough time as it is,” she said softly, feeling a strange urgency as a feeling of dread twisted inside her stomach.

  “As you wish, love,” he whispered in her ear, seeming to relish the new pet name. He nudged his horse’s flanks, galvanizing the horse into a gallop. They took the path behind her hut and were soon out of sight.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Vallen could tell that Shumei was anxious to put some distance between them and the village. When they came to the stream that cut across the path leading to her medicine field, he steered the horse to follow it and though the horse had to move slowly to keep its footing, anyone who might follow them would have a tougher time tracking them.

  They followed the stream south for quite a distance, stopping just once for a few precious minutes to tend her wound, but very little was spoken. His curiosity burned intensely as to where she had gotten her wound. Eventually, the stream crossed a road so overgrown that the road was covered with more patches of new spring grass and fallen tree limbs than with any uncovered dirt. The horse agilely picked its way through the debris, though they slowed down considerably.

  Shumei felt as if two heavy weights were pushing down on her eyelids. The adrenaline and the sense of urgency she had felt in her gut half an hour ago had faded and they had been the only things keeping her exhaustion at bay. Moreover, sitting in Vallen’s embrace with her brother securely tucked in front of her made her feel incredibly safe. The solid chest against her back and the faint puffs of Vallen’s breathing against her hair made her feel at ease. She couldn’t fight the impending sleep that dragged her from consciousness.

  Vallen felt his lover start to sag in his arms and though he was worried for a split second that she had lost too much blood, he remembered the fatigued look on her face when he had first found her that morning. She hadn’t yet explained, but he had the feeling that she had used her magic and since she had little experience with it and absolutely no training, he realized that she must have worn herself out. It happened with lots of young amateurs in the dark court.

  “This is the farthest I’ve ever been from home,” Oka said, his voice startling in the still quiet of the forest. His older sister was still asleep against Vallen’s chest.

  “This is where the adventure begins,” Vallen commented, nudging the horse with his heels
as they cleared some debris and rounded a sharp corner.

  “She’s asleep, right?” Oka said softly, turning around slowly to look at his sister’s slumbering face.

  “Seems like it,” he replied. He watched the young boy turn around again and waited for the inevitable question.

  “Where are you taking us?”

  “To my estate, another few hours from here.”

  “Why do we have to leave?”

  “You’d have to ask Shumei, young Oka.” He adjusted the woman against his chest, making sure that she didn’t get a cramp in her neck.

  “What’s going to happen when we get to your house?”

  “Some of that depends on what your sister has to say, but there, we’ll be safe for a while and we can plan what to do next.” Oka fell silent for a moment, but he knew another question was burning inside the young boy’s brain. He watched Oka’s shoulders tense up and then abruptly relax a couple of times and he realized that the boy was trying to work up the nerve to ask him something.

  “What is on your mind, young Oka? Whatever it is you wish to ask, feel free,” he encouraged, having heard enough of Oka to know that he was a good child.

  “What are your intentions toward my sister?” the boy suddenly blurted out.

  Vallen was actually a bit taken aback at the question, not because of the question itself but because of the way the question was worded. The boy sounded much older than he looked.

  “Well?” Oka prodded, half-turning again. Vallen couldn’t help the smile that broke onto his face, already liking the boy.

  “I love her. I intend to make her happy, Oka,” he answered, unable to give the boy anything more definite to go on since all their lives were uncertain at the moment. Oka fell silent again, seemingly content with the demon’s answers.

  Another few minutes had passed when Shumei shifted in her sleep, turning her head to press her forehead against Vallen’s neck. She made a satisfied sigh very softly and he realized that this was the first time he had ever held her while she slept. He pressed a gentle, silent kiss to her temple, smiling to himself.