Initially, he worried about Alyssa and how she would take the necessity to uproot herself and her family regularly. However, she seemed to enjoy travelling as long as it was done on her terms, of course, with ample time for planning and preparation.
With their lives and freedom being secure now, she finally had the peace she craved and the time to recover from any lingering effects of her nearly 15 months in captivity. She still had bad dreams about it now and then, but he always made sure to be there for her when they came, to chase them away before they had a chance to turn into nightmares.
The months that they spent in Canada working with the kidnapped women helped her find a new confidence within. She had always been a great listener. Now, she had learned to speak her mind more often. She was able to hold her own during any argument, especially when she was advocating on behalf of others. Women gravitated to her, and demons respected her. Sytrius loved her resilience, her compassion, her fierce loyalty, and he discovered more things to love about her every day.
She turned in her sleep and spread her arms with a little sweet moan from the back of her throat. His attention focused on what she was dreaming about at that moment.
In her dream she was walking through a tall green grass in a large field surrounded by a dense forest. The open palms of her hands brushed the soft silky tops of the grass that reached up to her hips. The warm sunlight washed over her figure walking through the meadow, wrapping her in a soft hazy glow. She stretched lazily, spread her arms wide and let herself fall backwards, sinking into the green sea of grass. Her smiling face turned up towards the sun…
Sytrius.
He heard her call for him.
Alyssa. His temptation. His addiction. His salvation. His sole source of nourishment and his main source of happiness. He was told that a demon could never resist the summons of his mistress, and it was the one rule that he was not interested in breaking.
Sytrius.
The call came again. He closed his eyes and surrendered to her pull, letting it guide him to her.
“I’m here, my angel,” he whispered into her ear as the soft luscious grass of her dream tickled the side of his face. “I’ll always be here.”
THE END
Coming Soon
The Real Thing
“There he is! Look!” shouted somebody in the crowd, and I cranked my neck up, following everyone else around me.
The biggest of the billboards across from us shimmered with dancing lights, and his masked face appeared on the screen.
Marcus The Magnificent. The up-and-coming magician, or illusionist, as I heard they preferred to be called. The newest Internet sensation, according to my brother, who was generally easily influenced and liked everything new and shiny.
Marcus The Magnificent was the opening act of this year’s show in Times Square, followed by the concert and the traditional ball drop.
Marcus was going to walk between the rooftops of two buildings on Times Square, on nothing but air.
I heard gasps in the crowd and realized that it got significantly quieter around me. The noise had subdued. I strained my eyes to see a dark figure standing on the edge of the roof hundreds of feet above us.
From down here, I could only see his dark silhouette, backlit by several spotlights. I could just make out the long mane of his dark hair whipping in the wind and the outline of his long coat.
However, I could see him much more clearly on the screen above us. He was dressed in black: a long trench coat, leather pants and tall heavy boots. His straight, jet-black hair was much longer than I had seen on any man in person. It must be reaching down to his waist, at least. His hair was unbound, and the long strands lashed in the wind across his face. A black half-mask covered the upper half of his face, from the top of his forehead down past the cheekbones.
He stood on the very edge of the roof, on the outer side of the railings, with the tips of his leather boots extending past the edge. There was no introduction, not even a pre-show to create tension and build anticipation. He didn’t say anything and didn’t even care to wait until all attention was on him. He simply lifted one leg and shifted his weight onto it, moving off the roof and into the abyss.
The crowd gasped as one physical entity. The breath caught in my own throat, as I half expected him to fly over the edge and hit the ground in a bloody mess.
He didn’t fall. He remained where he was, suspended in the air, half the way between the sky and the earth. He pushed off the roof and took another step forward, slowly but without any hesitation. Then another step. And another.
In slow, measured steps, he made his way across the sky, between two buildings, above the hundreds of people below. The cold winter wind caught the ends of his trench coat and made them flap violently against his boots. The hair flew across his face, completely obstructing his eyes at times. Nothing seemed to faze him. He kept taking slow, confident steps on nothing but air for support.
The crowd below seemed to have found its voice again. People shouted encouragements and offered their guesses on how the illusion was accomplished. Most snapped pictures and took bad videos with their cellphones.
“Isn’t it cool, dude?” I heard excited voice of my brother shouting in my ear.
“He should have put his hair into a ponytail,” came the aloof voice of Lily. “It’s a mess. How can he see where he is going?”
“He is so hot! Angela, isn’t he hot?” Emily hugged me by the shoulders.
“It’s the mask,” boomed Mikey’s deep voice next to me. “Everyone looks hot in a black mask. Even I would look hot and mysterious if I wore one.”
“Sure you would, honey!” laughed Emily and got on her tiptoes to place a quick kiss on Mikey’s chin. It was as far as she could reach even standing on her tiptoes; well over six feet high, Mikey was way taller than her and towered over all of us.
I didn’t say anything. I kept watching Marcus as he walked on air. It was a perfectly done illusion. So perfect, in fact, that it didn’t even feel like an illusion at all. It felt real. I had an elated feeling of wonder and awe, as if in the presence of real magic, and I was afraid to breathe, lest I scare it away.
I watched his face, trying to make out his expression behind the mask. What was he thinking at this moment? What would it feel like to create a miracle in front of thousands of people?
The camera zoomed in on his face at that instant, and I got a clear view of his eyes through the slits of the mask. Suddenly, I knew exactly what he was feeling. His eyes said it all: he was bored!
His head was tilted slightly to the side and his eyes weren’t focused on anything in particular. He wasn’t looking at the edge of the opposite roof – his destination – nor was he looking down, watching his steps. His eyes had that distracted look, as if he was stuck in traffic or standing in a grocery checkout line, waiting for the time to pass.
How could he not feel what everyone else was feeling at this moment? My own skin buzzed with excitement for him! He was literally on the top of the world right now! He should be enjoying the highest of high possible in his occupation! Surely weeks or even months of planning were spent to bring him to this point. He was pulling off the perfect illusion in front of hundreds of thousands of live spectators and numerous TV cameras. Why did he look like he would rather be somewhere else?
Once the question entered my mind, it refused to leave. Instead, it continued to buzz at the back of my mind all through the night, like an annoying fly, demanding to be answered.
And this was how it all began. That night in Times Square started my obsession with Marcus The Magnificent – The Great Illusionist – that led me to the discovery that he was not an illusionist at all. He was in fact the biggest fraud of them all. He was The Real Thing.
About The Author
Marina Simcoe likes to write larger-than-life love stories with characters, who may or may not be entirely human, because she firmly believes that our contemporary world could always use a little bit of extraordinar
y!
She has lots of fun exploring how her out-of-this-world characters with their own beliefs, values and aspirations fit into our everyday life.
She lives in Canada with her very own sexy demon, their three little angels and a cat, who might be The Lucifer himself.
For more illustrations of all of her books please visit Marina Simcoe Author page on Facebook.
Demon Mine Page 36
