Once a Demon

by Dina James

  Kyle nodded lightly, then shook his head. “Well, no, not truly,” he clarified. “Our father made us in his image, as he had been made. Although he had been given a heart, his envy and hatred of Man twisted it. When he created his own children, he had to duplicate his own form, though he made the hearts he gave us small, hard and virtually useless so that we might never discover we had one. If we did, he feared we would begin to question him, as he had questioned his own Father. We would no longer truly be demons. We would become obsolete in a sense. I was the lord of his demons, and I had discovered my heart, though I did not know it yet.”

  Kyle took a sip from his glass and waited. He could sense her question, but let her phrase it for herself.

  “So what did you do?” Katrina asked.

  “The only thing I could think to do,” Kyle replied. “I went to see her, one last time, to tell her she didn’t have to worry about seeing me again, if that’s what she wanted. I had no wish to harm her, or see her come to harm, or have her be afraid of me.”

  Kyle ran a finger absently around the rim of his crystal goblet.

  “She was waiting for me, and chastised me for being late to accompany her to the church. She had to make her offering upon the altar to Saint Joseph,” he said, his voice steady though it was clear the words hurt him to say as he relived the memory. “She thought I’d forgotten and, in truth, I had. But I went with her, and when we arrived, we stopped outside the churchyard.

  “She told me everything she’d been thinking. Her thoughts had always been sacrosanct to me - I had never pried into them or allowed myself to hear them. I remember realizing that at that moment, as she spoke. She told me her feelings. All I could do was listen. I’d dropped to my knees when she reached to touch my face and, when I looked up at her, all I could do was apologize and beg her forgiveness for causing her grief.”

  Kyle hesitated then, but Katrina heard him force himself to continue.

  “She asked me to please rise, as I was making her uncomfortable kneeling on the ground. I offered to come with her into the church, even knowing I could not, though for her I would try. If only she would forgive me for everything . . . for being what I was. I told her that I hadn’t ever lied to her - as ridiculous as that sounds coming from a demon in a mortal body.”

  Kyle paused again, and Katrina could see him visibly struggling to maintain his composure. She waited patiently until he found it and continued.

  “She kissed me then, leaning down to do so,” he said softly. “Right there in front of anyone who cared to look. Her. An unmarried, pious woman, virtuous and sweet, kissing a son of the devil she spent her life avoiding. Oh, it was chaste, even for that time, but still. The bravery. The audacity. And the moment it ended, I heard inhuman laughter.”

  Katrina bit her lip again to keep from asking questions, but she had a fair idea as to what happened next. After all, Kyle was here, and his Catrine wasn’t.

  Kyle was silent as well, looking unseeingly into his glass. After a long moment, he looked up at Katrina. His pale, sea-green eyes were filled with obvious anguish, but no tears fell. None could. He didn’t have any to shed.

  “We had been found out, some time before. A young initiate, a low-ranking demon trying to earn a name for himself, had been spying on me - on us - and reporting back to my father. I hadn’t had a clue about it. I’d been focused solely on my need of her, and not how reckless or careless I was being. I only cared about being with her.” He sighed, then continued.

  “Nothing happened immediately; nothing could at that moment. It was a holy day. That didn’t change matters, however, only postponed how quickly my father could act. Still, we went on as if we hadn’t a care in the world. We enjoyed the day together. Catrine made her offering, and we spent time talking about things no human should ever know about. There were things I was glad to tell her, and questions I was happy to answer. She spent the day with me as though I were a man. And when night fell, she spent that with me too, in her father’s orchard with only a fire and her two dogs to chaperone us. I think she knew there would be literal Hell to pay for being with me, and had decided I was worth it. As I’ve said, she was a brave and unique woman.”

  “Was?” Katrina made herself say.

  Kyle nodded stoically. “We talked long into the night, and she told me a great many things. She told me—” Kyle broke off, unable to continue. He closed his eyes and finished his drink before looking directly into Katrina’s eyes.

  “She told me she loved me,” he said, his voice strong and firm. “Even knowing what I was and knowing that a life together was impossible in all ways. She let me hold her then. I never had, before that night. I’d never once tried to touch her, not even lightly. I was always content to just look at her, be in her presence and listen to her voice. Not once had I asked her for anything, but that night I did. I asked her to let me feel her in my arms, and she allowed me to hold her until midnight when the holy day was over. Then they came for me, and it all ended.”

  “Who came?” Katrina asked, wanting to hold his hand but not daring to. His demeanour had changed back to the dark and imposing one she knew. She didn’t want to disturb him further. Kyle could be dangerous enough when he was calm, she’d been told.

  “The one who had spied on us and others. With them they brought a severed human head that my father spoke through. I told you, he cannot leave physically, but there are ways he can enter the mortal realm briefly.”

  Kyle studied the golden ring he wore on his right little finger, twisting it absently.

  “I was given a choice,” he continued, his voice now devoid of any feeling or warmth. “Admit I loved her, or be ordered out of existence. There are very few things that can kill a demon, but one of them is being ordered out of existence by Lucifer. This is what we term ‘The Annihilation’.

  “I didn’t understand at the time why they offered me such a seemingly easy choice - say I loved her or be ordered out of existence. I was suspicious. Nothing is ever as it appears, especially when offered by Lucifer. I took a moment to try to figure out what tricks my father could be up to. Catrine naturally took this for hesitation on my part - I was a demon after all - and she imagined I would betray her. She pleaded with me, and with my father. She just kept begging me to say that I loved her.

  “My father offered to let her choose my fate instead of leaving it for me to choose. However, as brave as she was, she was not prepared to take on the Devil, whom she’d been brought up to fear her whole life. Staring a talking severed head straight in its dead eyes wasn’t something she could do either, even if I could have prepared her for it. It had taken her long enough to decide she could live with loving a self-admitted, willing servant of Lucifer. But all this was too much for her. Or so I thought.”

  “What did she do?” Katrina prompted when Kyle lost himself again in his memories.

  He got up from his chair and paced to the balustrade, looking out into the dark garden.

  Katrina got up and went after him, sliding her arms around his lean waist. Kyle stiffened, but her embrace only tightened in spite of her fear. She leaned her head against his back and spoke, gentle but firm.

  “Kyle, tell me. What did she do?”

  “Release me and I will answer you,” Kyle replied. It took more control than he wanted to admit not to shove her away. She was only trying to comfort him. But she was not his.

  Though his tone was even, Katrina heard the dire warning in it and slowly let her arms drop from around his waist. She took a step back, horrified at her audacity but unwilling to draw attention to her mistake by apologizing for it. She was in a different world now, a dangerous world; she had to remember that.

  Instead she offered him a nod, as he so often offered to her, and he continued.

  “She confessed herself, to him and all present, unashamedly,” Kyle said quietly. “And dared my father to fault her for it, for ‘love is never wrong’, she told him.”

  “She’s right,” Katrina said as she return
ed to her seat. “It isn’t. It’s the one thing that keeps me sane when Nikolai talks about things that just make my mind boggle. I don’t suppose your father took too kindly to that.”

  The understatement made Kyle burst out in laughter.

  “No,” he admitted with a shake of his head though he kept his eyes on the dark of the garden. “No, he didn’t. He killed her. Or rather, he had Kihirin do it. Right in front of me. I was held in my mortal form, trapped by a power greater than my own. It took the entire power of seven of them, plus what my father could spare, to restrain me and keep me in form. I couldn’t even go to her as Kihirin drained her life. He was in mortal form and used a scythe to slit her throat. She kept her eyes on me as he prepared to do it, telling me the whole time that she loved me and it was worth it. When she was all but gone, they released me. I went immediately to her.”

  Kyle’s voice had again lost some of its might, and Katrina wanted to embrace him again, but she didn’t dare. Kyle wasn’t like Nikolai at all, and neither could nor would be soothed by a hug and a kiss.

  “She knew, though, didn’t she? That you were with her?” Katrina asked in a whisper, knowing Kyle’s keen ears would hear her.

  “Yes,” Kyle replied softly, “she knew. They never had any intention of letting us alone - letting us be with one another. They’d always planned to stop us in whatever way they could, and I was a fool to think I was indispensable. At that moment, I didn’t care about any consequence that would come of the proclamation my father wanted me to make. I professed for her, and told her what I should have told her the moment I knew it. ‘I love you,’ I said. She smiled and made me promise to remember the day we had together, the holy day, and I promised her I would never forget. Then she died in my arms, and I could do nothing but watch.

  “And as her soul left her body, I tried to stop it, even though my power had already been stripped. I was as powerless as a mortal, and I couldn’t do anything to stop her death.”

  Katrina tried not to let her tears fall, but she couldn’t help it.

  Kyle turned around to regard her, and she hastily wiped her eyes. He crossed the veranda to the table she was again seated at, took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to her.

  “Shh,” he said as she accepted it hesitantly.

  A fleeting thought of warning crossed her mind about accepting something offered by a demon, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade her. Besides, he’d helped her and Nik before. But why? Demons never did anything selfless, did they?

  She was so caught up in her own thoughts that she almost didn’t hear what he was saying.

  “If Nikolai returns to see you’ve wept, he’ll never again allow me in your house, and you made such a fuss to have me here.”

  Katrina laughed as she dried her eyes and blew her nose. “So she died.”

  “Yes,” Kyle said softly. “She died for love of me. Because she loved me. That is why, my lady Katrina, I choose to be ‘alone’, as you say.”

  “But you professed for her like they wanted,” Katrina said to him with anguished eyes. She sniffed once more and dabbed at her nose with the handkerchief. “And . . . and . . . if you’d done that to begin with, she wouldn’t have been killed!”

  Kyle simply looked at her and Katrina cringed at the stupidity of what she’d just said. Now that was “movie stuff. It was Lucifer, after all, and he wasn’t exactly an honest guy.

  “What happened then?” she asked, mostly to cover up her silly accusation.

  “I had become human,” Kyle said with a shrug. “Though this was yet unknown to me and to the others who stood by. A demon cannot love, ever. If a demon finds his heart and professes love, he will become mortal. Human. Demons cannot love, therefore they become something else. When I professed for Catrine, I became human. The mortal I’d been in possession of, his soul and mine fused. Two souls cannot share one body without fusing. As the mortal’s soul was already damned by his own hand, and mine was given to me by my father, Lucifer thought it his property and took it for his own, leaving me—”

  “A body without a soul,” Katrina said with him.

  “Yes,” Kyle affirmed. “In his words, ‘forced to live off the blood of those I betrayed him for’. Worse, I betrayed him for love of a mortal — something he cannot abide. He took back what he’d given me, though he had no right to it. Looking back, I should have entrusted it to my Catrine. I should have given her my soul as well as my heart.”

  Kyle bent down to look Katrina firmly in the eye.

  “Remember that, Katrina,” he said gently. “When you’re at your wits’ end with Nikolai, and the Council and the Destrati, and immortals and souls. When you grow weary of the War Between the Sides, remember that it all comes down to one thing and that is love. It was love that began it, and someday, it will be love that ends it. Remember.”

  Katrina nodded and sniffed, wiping her eyes with the flat of her hand. She smiled, showing him she was all right.

  Kyle reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. “My thanks for being my confessor,” he said as he let her hand fall gently back to her side. “And I do offer my apologies that I cannot wait for Nikolai’s return, but there are things I must see to.”

  He bowed to her and disappeared, and Katrina returned to her seat to wait for her husband.

  She sat and thought deeply about all Kyle had said, and though she wouldn’t share Kyle’s confession with anyone else -confessors kept their confidences, no matter how horrible or terrifying — she could at least bring up the questions in her mind to Nikolai.

  She had a lot of them.

  Kyle smiled to feel the familiar presence arrive at his home.

  “If I thought you were going to abuse the privilege of unrestricted entry into my home,” he said as he turned to greet Katrina, “I would have rescinded it. How thoughtless of me.”

  “Then why haven’t you corrected it by now?” Katrina asked innocently.

  “Because I mistakenly had faith that Nikolai would have the very good sense to respect my preferences to be left in peace and not send you here whenever you grew bored of your role,” Kyle replied as he took a sip from his glass. “You always seem to show up at my dinner hour as well. I do not think it coincidence that you disrupt my solitude and my sustenance.”

  Katrina could hear the pleasure and teasing he was trying to keep from his tone and smiled at him.

  “We expected you for Hallowe’en,” she chided gently. “I mean, ‘All Hallows’ Eve’, as Nik calls it. Should I have personally delivered an engraved invitation? With bows and ribbons on thick vellum with four envelopes?”

  “Are you implying that I’m pretentious?” Kyle answered with a question of his own. “Or that I’m rude for not attending?”

  Katrina let the silence and her innocent expression answer for her.

  Kyle hid a smile. “Silly mortal holiday,” he murmured. “Taken from origins long forgotten by nearly everyone. And I was not about to play ‘vampire’ to frighten children - if indeed they would be frightened of my ‘real fangs’ in this day and age -for your amusement.”

  “It was a party for charity, Kyle,” Katrina reasoned.

  “A charity to which I made a donation in your honour,” Kyle replied, duplicating her tone. “I don’t believe my presence is required for anything else.”

  “Well, I do,” Katrina said flatly, but then paused. She bit her lip. “The church you told me about: Catrine’s church. Is it still around?”

  “Yes,” Kyle confirmed. “Why?”

  “Can we go? I mean, will you take me there?” Katrina asked.

  “You wouldn’t like it. It’s nothing but an old churchyard now.”

  “Just take me, OK? I want to see it.”

  “No. I’m not Nikolai,” he reminded her. “You can’t just barge in here uninvited and order me about and expect to get your way. Nor can you ply me with your affections like you can him.”

  Katrina’s scowl deepened.

  Kyle returned
her look with a bored, blank expression. Then sighed. “Humans. You have to see to believe, don’t you? Very well then.”

  Before Katrina could answer him, they were there. It was dark and cold, and the wind, though gentle, blew through her. Immortal didn’t mean that she didn’t feel the cold, and it was bitter. She chided herself inwardly. What did she expect in November?

  A light dusting of snow made the churchyard look like something Tim Burton would film.

  “I told you that it was nothing but a churchyard now,” Kyle said. His long chestnut ponytail was unruffled by the wind, as were his clothes. He, at least, looked somewhat dressed for the weather. Kyle manifested a long wool coat for Katrina, and she smiled in gratitude.

  “You said ‘churchyard’, not ‘graveyard’,” she pointed out. “Where’s the church?”

  Kyle smiled. “Back then, the dead were all buried in churchyards,” he said. “The church itself has long been demolished. I was very glad when it was deconsecrated. It meant that I could visit.”

  Katrina smiled too and cocked her head at the grave markers. “Let’s go visit,” she urged.

  Kyle led her to the stone monument of the Guardian of Hopes and Dreams that watched eternally over Catrine’s resting place.

  “Nice,” Katrina said quietly, gesturing to the huge gargoyle that served as a gravestone for Kyle’s lost love. “Subtle.”

  “Sarcasm doesn’t become you,” Kyle said, also speaking in a low tone. “Besides, if you knew the purpose of a gargoyle, you wouldn’t be surprised why I chose this one for her.”

  “They’re said to scare off evil spirits,” Katrina replied. “But I’ve never seen one like this. Why is it chained?”

  “The Guardian of Hopes and Dreams is forever chained to the pedestal of destiny,” Kyle replied softly. “Or so his description said when I found him. There’s a lot of symbolism in this piece that speaks of what dreams we must hold on to, and which—” Kyle gestured to the ground below the monument “—we must let go.”

  Katrina put a comforting hand on Kyle’s arm, but jerked it back when she heard laughter.