Claimed by the Demon Knight: Book One

by Cryptic Fawn

  The young woman's mouth opened and she gasped. Her brain was in total gridlock. She didn't even have the sense to wipe the demons glistening saliva from her lips. The utterly surreal and entirely unwholesome situation was just too much for the already overtaxed body and mind of Elsi Rhoads and she did what any young, hot-blooded female warrior would do in her place.

  She passed out.

  Tenuxhal let his head fall back as far as it would go and laughed out loud, a manic sound, frighteningly similar to the way it had been when he'd killed that freak that had bested him in battle for his position as a knight and taken back his rightful place as one of the most powerful demon knights in Beelzebubs army. It took him several minutes to contain his mirth. He hadn't planned that out at all. It had just seemed the most natural thing to do at that moment. And the woman's reaction had been...outstanding.

  "Tch. You're too much, Rhoads." The knight grinned to himself, and reaching up, tousled Elsi's already disheveled hair in what looked like an affectionate manner, mindful of the injury, before wiping away a stray tear of amusement, that had traced a path down his own cheek. He closed his eyes and purred internally. Now that had been entertaining.

  It looked like this was going to be fun. Seemed he had made the right call after all.

  ~~~

  It was only an hour later when Tenuxhal awoke again. Testing Elsi's forehead with his palm, he found that the witch's temperature felt closer to whatever was normal for a human. Rhoads didn't stir at the touch, but her face seemed to speak of sleep now more than it did unconsciousness. Satisfied with the woman's condition, and confident that she wasn't going anywhere, Tenuxhal quietly worked his way out from under the sheets and stood, stretching himself entirely, arms extended upwards, joints popping under the pressure of taut muscles. He released a bone-cracking yawn, trying not to be too loud about it, but it still approached the likeness of a muffled lion's roar.

  God, he was stiff. He needed to get out and burn off some restless energy. The human was doing better now, and her color was starting to come back. But she'd probably sleep for several more hours at least. Plenty of time for Tenuxhal to make a meal of a few weaklings, train for a bit, and, oh, the witch would need to eat, so he'd have to go scrounge up some food and drink. Luckily Beelzebub had left behind a fully stocked energy preserved food supply. So the food would technically last forever, or at least as long as the woman held up. But Tenuxhal would be damned if he knew how to prepare any of it.

  ~~~

  She had to call up all her strength just to sit up, but finally managed the monumental task and levered herself upright, arms braced behind her. She cringed as her head and ribs warned her in unison that she shouldn't be moving this way, and she let himself carefully slide back down, then rolled onto her side, the one with the least number of injured ribs.

  "Welcome back to the land of the living, witch. 'Bout fucking time, too," a voice said with no small amount of malice.

  Elsi opened her eyes and raised her head at the sound of the smooth tenor that had a taunting and cheerful quality to it, and shot the speaker a look of disbelief and annoyance. Land of the living? She mumbled her heated response mostly into her pillow.

  "...Fucking Hell." Asshole.

  "Tch. Just a joke, witch. Lighten up." His mouth held a slight smile, but his silver eyes glinted warningly.

  You're in my house now.

  Tenuxhal may have been gentle when playing nursemaid, but now that the witch was awake and soon to be mobile again, he wasn't having any of it. He wouldn't give Rhoads an inch if he could help it. One inch was all this human needed to start running off at the mouth. No. Tenuxhal would make it very clear who was in charge in his domain. It was time Rhoads learned a little about respect. The question was, how hard was she going to make it on herself? The knight chuckled to himself. If he knew Rhoads, and he thought he did, the human would make it very, very hard.

  Good stuff.

  ~~~

  Well, that was an absolutely stupid idea.

  Elsi was sitting up unsteadily, her legs hanging over the side of the bed, her body wrapped in a white sheet. Tenuxhal stood in front of her with a plate in his hand. Elsi had taken the proffered food, a simple piece of bread and some water, and had managed to swallow a small bit of each. Tenuxhal grunted at her, and Elsi shook her head. She didn't want anymore.

  Being upright and eating whilst suffering from a combined skull fracture and severe concussion could never be a good combination in anyone's book, and Elsi had to brace herself as a wave of dizziness suddenly washed through her, bringing with it the unnerving feeling of something being inherently wrong, something bad stirring insidiously inside her.

  The vague feeling quickly focused itself and Elsi promptly, and without any sort of polite warning, lurched forward and threw up all over Tenuxhal's feet.

  The knight's expression was frozen into a myriad of disbelief, shock, and disgust, his teeth exposed in outrage. In a flash, he ripped Zareiete from his hip and in one swift movement it was pressed flat against Elsi's cheek, the tip of it resting against her ear.

  Elsi didn't have the internal resources to even notice the blade as she panted from the exertion and then coughed harshly as the foul tasting bile burned her throat and mouth. When the young adult managed to raise her head just enough that she could see Tenuxhal's face when she glanced up, a thousand words couldn't adequately describe the expression that she saw there, and the blur of emotions that passed over it. A few could cover the basics though. Utterly shocked. And murderous.

  Elsi couldn't care less at the moment about the knight's emotional state of mind, distressed as it was. She was wholly preoccupied with not going through a repeat performance as the taste and texture worked its way around her mouth. The exquisite burning sensation scalded her throat and, oh God, it had gotten up her nose too. She could smell and taste it in her nose. Her eyes watered and her stomach roiled again. She sucked up several deep breaths as she hunched in front of her captor.

  Tenuxhal's eyes were wild and he was vibrating with the effort not to behead Rhoads then and there and just be done with the whole fucking nuisance.

  Both warriors were panting, one fighting for control, and the other struggling to keep her stomach from turning inside out.

  "You fucking bitch!"

  "M'sorry 'bout that," she mumbled half-heartedly.

  "You... you fucking puked... you... FUUUCK!" Tenuxhal focused his psychotic glare on Elsi, only to find himself staring ineffectively at the back of Rhoads's head, watching her take in heaving breaths as the witch fought to keep from repeating her faux pas.

  Elsi cringed further as the crude narrative increased in decibels somewhere just above her, and closed her eyes against the caterwauling noise. Then there was another noise, strangled and guttural, and a swishing sound as the side of the blade disappeared from her neck, and instead slashed murderously through empty air until it collided with the solid rock wall, grating and sparking, and showering the room and Elsi in bits of rock and dust. A final disgusted snarl and the knight turned abruptly and abandoned the room as if it were on fire, not even bothering to slam the door behind him, much to Elsi's relief. One more loud noise and her skull would surely rend itself into pieces.

  Exhausted, head throbbing painfully, she carefully eased herself back down onto the bed, ignoring the unpleasant sensation of bits of grit against her bare side. She pulled the covers over her head, trying to drown out light and noise, though there was little of either in this place. It was a pointless task. The racquet in her head was more than enough to keep her awake.

  A few moments later she became uncomfortably aware of the sound of rumbling somewhere close by, the whine of a Infernal Tempest after tempest being released inside the walls of the Black Citadel, followed by thundering echoes of heavy concrete exploding and falling as Tenuxhal systematically destroyed what was left of several of the towers inside the grounds. All that anger was because of Elsi. It made her shudder and be reluctantly thankful
for Tenuxhals' incredible, yet inexplicable efforts to redirect his rage and aggression. Being fried into a witch-shaped piece of charcoal was not something Elsi wanted to experience, ever.

  She took solace in one fact as she slipped into an uncomfortable sleep. There wasn't much puke on the floor to clean up.

  Most of it had landed on Tenuxhal's feet.

  ~~~

  Under the dark sky, Tenuxhal growled in disgust and used another handful of the harsh desert sands to violently scrub away the last remnants of vomit from his black boots, retching uncontrollably as he did so at the sour smell of bile.

  Disgusting vile stuff. He needed something to erase the memory of it from his senses. What could he do? He didn't particularly feel the urge to feed, and destroying things wasn't working in the slightest to ease his fury. He sure as hell wasn't going back in that room anytime soon. He couldn't handle seeing the vomit on the floor. And on that note, Rhoads could fucking well clean up her own mess.

  Then he remembered the drinks. Beelzebub didn't drink, fucking teetotaller... but some of the others knights did.

  There was a large stash of vodka preserved in storage, along with the rest of the food. One bottle would surely do. And when he was done with the bottle, he would break it over that burnett head.

  Tenuxhal bared his teeth at nothing and grinned at the idea. It quickly turned into a snarl and a dark frown as another whiff of the sickly scent caught in his sensitive nose. He shook his head and snorted ineffectually in an attempt to expel the pungent scent, then he stomped off with purpose across the sand to get himself thoroughly plastered.

  ~~~

  The next time the witch awoke, a tray of food sat beside the bed, Tenuxhal conspicuously absent. Elsi sat up slowly. Energy was nice and all, but she still needed to eat. She was shaky and painfully weak. She looked at the tray. More bread and water. Delightful. When it came to his culinary skills, the knight certainly had a flair for boring. Elsi was going to starve to death in this wasted place if she didn't get some real food soon.

  She reached for a piece of bread, and something on the floor caught her attention. A white towel lay strewed across the spot where she'd lost her guts earlier, as if it had been tossed there haphazardly, from a distance. Elsi raised one long, brown brow, then snorted. It seemed rather ironic, and Elsi couldn't help but laugh at the notion that when she'd finally found Tenuxhal's Achilles heel, it was not something she could ever produce on a whim, or would ever want to.

  Seven

  After spending a few days trapped in bed, with the knight hounding her, Elsi was convinced of one thing...

  ...That Tenuxhal could start a fight in an empty house.

  Elsi sat up in her bed, less dizzy than before, and regarded the demon she'd come to know all too well. The knight lounged across the room, well-muscled red limbs stretched out comfortably along the entire length of the dark gray couch, freshly opened bottle of vodka resting upright on his bare chest, reinforced by the tips of strong fingers and claws. He lay like that, comfortable, careless, white hair tousled perfectly, looking for all the world like a debauched rock star. His large steer horns only adding to the ridiculous look.

  To watch him as he was now, Elsi thought, and not know him, one might think he looked like a little kid, full of mischief, youthful laziness, and cockiness, all wrapped up into an undeniably boyishly handsome package. On the one hand, yes, he did possess those traits. On the other hand, when he angered, he worked himself into a frenzy, becoming a sadistic, brutal, lethal, cold, calculating, taunting, menacing, homicidal chaotic sonofabitch.

  That was the demon Elsi had come to know, and being unarmed in his presence was unacceptable.

  "Where's my staff?" She asked.

  "I took it. Why?" said the man from across the room. Tenuxhal didn't even deign to open his eyes.

  "Uhh... it would be nice to be able to defend myself."

  "You got nothing to worry about witch. Regular demons don’t come around here. Too damn scared." Silver eyes opened and slid sideways, sly and mocking.

  "I meant from you," she snapped, and if Tenuxhal heard her mumble 'asshole,' he didn't acknowledge it.

  "Che. You aren't worth killing as you are now. I ain't interested in the weak." He turned his gaze away and took a long, lazy pull from his bottle to emphasize his disinterest and display his contempt.

  Elsi felt the heat in her face as she flushed, her temper beginning to rise. She knew what the demon meant. As much as she loathed the feeling, she was an invalid right now. But still. What a dick.

  Tenuxhal reached back and stretched languidly before raising his knees and feet up then bringing them down, rocking himself forward in a fluid motion into a sitting position, twisting as he did, so that he faced forward on the couch.

  "You don't seem to realize the position you're in, human. Just because I'm letting you heal, don't go thinking that means I've forgiven you."

  "What?"

  "I came back for a good fight, and you didn't keep up your end of the bargain."

  "Screw you."

  "You ruined my fight."

  "You ruined my weekend."

  Even the air in the room seemed to still in wary anticipation of what was surely to come, as the two warriors glared icily at one another. Elsi knew she shouldn't be so quick to talkback. She was already in deep enough shit. She felt the knights energy rise in warning, clashing against her own, the friction between them becoming more intense until Elsi winced and shifted uncomfortably, her very movement conceding defeat. Ten flashed a quick grin.

  "Heh. Your weekend should be the least of your concerns. Or haven't you figured it out yet, witch?"

  He took another quick sip of vodka and stood up, placing the half downed bottle on a small table. Elsi watched him from her bed with a unimpressed scowl, nervousness building quietly on the inside, as the demon rose and sauntered in a casual fashion towards her, flaunting himself, confident, bold, hands in his pockets as he stopped at the very edge the bed, all eight feet of him looming over the prone Elsi.

  "Rest assured witch, I am going to kill you. And when I do, you will be at full power, and the sound of my sword running through your heart will be the last thing you hear." He grinned, revealing his oversized and very sharp canines. A ridiculously long pink tongue quickly ran over his front teeth.

  Elsi's expression faltered at the very real nature of the threat, and her composure crumbled easily in her unhealthy state.

  "Stay away from me you psycho fucking monster!", she spat, fear and disgust hopelessly intermingled.

  The feral grin fell away in an instant. "Monster?", he said tightly. A muscle at the corner of the knight's eye twitched and it took Elsi only a fraction of a second to realize that she had said the entirely wrong thing.

  “Was that supposed to be an insult?”

  "Y-you assholes tore up my town, tried to murder my friends, tried to take over the world, you..." She was stuttering, tripping over her tongue in her haste to explain herself, excuse her poor choice of words. Why though? Elsi had no reason to apologize to her enemies, least of all Tenuxhal. It was the lightheaded feeling that was creeping in around her that was the cause. It made her weak in mind as well as body. She fucking hated feeling like this, especially in front of this arrogant fuck.

  What she wouldn't give to be healthy again and have her full powers back. She had a mountain of stuff she wanted to return to Tenuxhal, with interest.

  Tenuxhal cut her off sharply, voice rising in pitch and intensity, mirroring his emotions, and he bolted forward. He stopped just short of throwing himself onto the bed, and leaned towards Elsi, his arms braced against the mattress.

  "Wrong, you stupid bitch!"

  Elsi recoiled, pushing herself away as quickly as her sore and torn muscles would allow, shuffling across the bed until her back met the solid wall, causing pain to flair out through her ribs. Even then she pushed.

  "Beelzebub tried to take over the world. Not us! We were just hired help. And we didn't hav
e much of a fucking choice!" His eyes opened white and wide in his head, suddenly distant as if he were reliving an old nightmare. "You helped Beelzebub or he'd make sure you end up as someone’s dinner!”

  He was yelling now, searing silver eyes returning to Elsi's with ferocious intensity, and each thought punctuated by the sound of fabric tearing as his hands clenched spasmodically and his sharp nails clawed at the bed, gouging it until its edge lay in shredded ruins.

  Elsi had nothing at all to say to Tenuxhals's outburst. She didn't particularly want to acknowledge what she'd just heard, as if it might incline her to feel something less than bitter hatred towards the bastardized demon in front of her. She couldn't meet those pissed off silver eyes, or stand to see the suddenly victimized and abused expression of a veteran of war. It didn't fit there. And the demon didn't deserve to wear it.

  Elsi dropped her gaze until it fixed somewhere just passed Tenuxhal's giant claymore, and scowled impartially. A stone-faced woman who'd just been scolded.

  Tenuxhal huffed and tried to reign in his anger before he blasted the human through the very wall that she now huddled against for protection. Tenuxhal took a slow steadying breath to calm himself.

  "Demons, Rhoads, exist in Hell. Which is exactly where you are, right now, at this very moment."

  Elsi blinked. This was some kind of fucking moment for Tenuxhal to be sure. Was he... was he actually lecturing Elsi about Hell and demons, as if she didn't already have a clue about all of that shit? This was necessary information all witches had to know. Elsi swallowed down a wandering ribbon of bile that was snaking its way up her throat, a product of the situation, her fear, her dizziness, and her proximity to her captor.

  She'd been stabbed many times before. It had always been... uncomfortable. This was far worse.

  Tenuxhal tapped the centre of his own exposed chest. Apparently he wasn't finished by a long shot.