“This bottle could fetch thousands of euros today,” the man observed, staring through the whisky in his glass at the light of the chandelier.
“Maybe, if I had any intentions of selling it.” Raim took a sip of the amber liquid himself.
Normally, he preferred the taste of wine to any hard liquor. Wine gave him the illusion of relaxation. The intense burn of the nearly-century-old whisky right now was more fitting, though. There was nothing relaxing about dealing with The Priory.
“Why are you here?” he repeated, keeping The Elder’s emotions in focus.
The man set the glass on the side table, leaning back in his chair.
“In a way, I’ve come to say goodbye.”
Another goodbye?
Not that parting with The Elder brought up the same emotions as saying goodbye to Caryss did. In fact, as far as The Elder was concerned, Raim had hardly any emotions at all.
“The doctors gave me six months to live,” the man continued. “Cancer . . .” He pocked at his chest with his thumb in several places, as if stubbing the tumours inside.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Raim replied evenly. All humans died. It was simply the matter of when and how.
“I’ve decided, however, that I won’t be needing more than two of those months,” The Elder added unexpectedly.
“Are you planning to end your own life?”
“My death is imminent. I am simply planning to take control of how it will happen.” The Elder steepled his fingers in front of him, an odd smile playing on his face. “I’ve also decided to make it worthwhile by taking all of you with me.”
The Elder paused, as if giving Raim some time to absorb his words.
After a moment of confusion, understanding flooded Raim, prickling his skin with cold.
“The soros urn.”
His mind quickly flashed back to that dreadful day he was summoned by The Priory’s Elder, over six hundred years ago.
The summoner was strong. That was the only time in history when an Incubus was fully brought under the power of a human. And that Incubus happened to be Raim. Completely exhausted by the futile attempts to resist, he had accepted the man as his Master. Under his orders, Raim had read and translated the carvings on the soros urn from the language of his world. The Priory Monks recorded their meaning for the eternity.
That day, Raim also made himself the only demon who ever escaped the bond of his Master after it had been formed. His ever-present rage proved to be stronger than the hold of the chants. The aggression exploded inside him, giving him the burst of strength to loosen the bond that held him a slave. He used that moment to kill the summoner and break the circle to escape.
No one dared to summon Raim again after that. There was no point for him to hide behind a human name either, since his had already been recorded for all of The Priory to know for the centuries to come.
The treaty that Raim signed with them shortly after was an attempt on the part of both parties to find a way to co-exists. However, by finding the one undamaged urn first and taking it into their possession, the members of The Priory gained an upper hand. From then on, they had the means to end Incubi’s existence on Earth at any moment, simply by touching the urn.
They held this threat over Raim’s head ever since.
“You’re a foolish human.” Raim shook his head.
“Most would consider my sacrifice heroic,” The Elder argued with a pretentions air. “I will finally accomplish what no one has dared to do before—touch the soros urn and put an end to all Incubi on Earth.
“You will take all of your Priory with you, too.” That was what the writings, engraved on the urn, warned about. The touch of a human or a demon would banish the Incubi blood from this world. Every last drop . . .
The engravings also stated that the humans responsible would perish, too.
“If you touch the urn, all of us will be gone, including every one of your precious Priory.”
“Not necessarily. The carvings read ‘those who touch and those in charge of the urn will vanish.’”
“Right. The Priory is in charge.”
“I am The Elder of the Priory, responsible for the whole organization and therefore in charge of the urn. If I touch it—alone—I will be the only one who’ll die.”
“Is that what you told them?” Raim scoffed. “Is that how you’ve managed to convince the rest of your Brothers to back your plan?”
“My Brothers didn’t need to be convinced. There are quite a few of us who believe that demons must be cleansed off the face of the Earth, no matter the cost. We’ve had the means to be rid of you—fully and completely—for generations. Yet, the cowards before me never used this power to do what’s right.”
“’Quite a few’ doesn’t mean ‘all.’” Raim noted the righteous conviction within The Elder waver at his words, proving his assumption correct. “You didn’t share your plan of self-destruction with everyone, did you?”
The Elder remained silent just long enough for Raim to see the truth inside him.
“You are about to murder everyone in your organization, without the knowledge or consent of those who would lose their lives.” Raim folded his arms over his chest. “Personally, you would only be giving up a few months of pain and suffering of dying the slow death yourself. And you’re trying to present your plan as a noble sacrifice on your part?”
Even after a millennium of watching humans, the extent of the evil some of them where capable of astounded him.
The Elder shifted in his chair, regaining his composure.
“The results will justify the means. You and your kind are the abomination that does not belong to this world. Look at you . . .” he gestured at Raim’s bare torso, a grimace of clear disdain distorted The Elder’s features, making scanning his emotions unnecessary. “Beaming with youth and health. You are more than a dozen times my age, yet it is me who is standing at the edge of a grave. You will keep on living, never having to worry about what I’m dealing with or what I’m about to go through—”
“You wish for an eternity?” Raim huffed a bitter laugh, lifting his glass for another drink. “Are you envious of my curse, human?”
“If the curse is what made you impervious to decease and death, then—”
“Silence!” Raim slammed the glass on top of the side stand. The crystal shuttered, littering the surface with shards and spilling the priceless whiskey.
Shocked, The Elder swallowed the words Raim could not let him utter out loud.
No one, be he a friend or a foe, deserved this curse. The human was foolish enough to envy him, but Raim couldn’t bear for anyone to wish for that upon themselves, in his presence. Some words when said out loud carried the consequences neither of them could predict or prevent.
Obviously, The Elder failed to understand any of it.
“I am going to change it all, demon.” He straightened in his seat, glaring at Raim. “Promptly and completely.”
Raim scanned his emotions carefully once again. This time the resentment was at full bloom. The Elder’s undisguised hatred for Raim and all of the Incubi rose to the surface—thick and toxic.
“My initial plan was to let your Incubi earn their Forgiveness, since they all dove right into that—eager and willing. Then, once they have turned mortal, we would have exterminated them all, the way one gets rid of dangerous pests in their house. That would have taken time I no longer have, however. Besides, the assumption we’ve had for a while now has recently been confirmed—there is more of your blood out there, and I want them all gone.”
“More of our blood?” Raim wondered if the man’s sanity had partially departed him already.
“Your kind has been breeding, spreading your tainted demon blood all over our world for centuries.”
“Your memory is playing tricks on you.” Raim shook his head. “The first demon-human offspring is not even two years old yet. There have been a few more born since, I’ve heard, but all are still infants. Are you afrai
d of babies, Father?”
“They won’t be babies forever, but they will live for centuries. Merging two worlds by breeding apparently gives the offspring abilities impossible to predict and therefore even harder to control for us than your kind.”
“How do you know that? It’s your fear that speaks in you—”
“One of our own had strayed from the principles of The Priory. He created a separate, unsanctioned by us organization, all members of which are now dead, including its founder—Monk Steffen Keller. We have been conducting an extensive investigation into his dealings and operations. He had a supplier in Toronto, Canada, whose warehouse perished in a fire over a year ago, under unexplained circumstances.”
The Elder paused to catch his breath, his illness more apparent now in the rapid rise and fall of his chest and the sweat beading on his pale forehead.
“I can’t say I’m sorry, either about the death of your Monk or the loss of that warehouse,” Raim stated coolly.
“I did not expect you to be. We were unable to identify the person responsible for the fire, only that it was started by unnatural means. However, the incident prompted me to investigate closely a number of other, unexplained events that has been swept under the carpet, so to say, throughout the history. Specifically, those involving walking through walls, something your kind is capable of doing.” The Elder lifted an eyebrow, as if waiting for Raim to confirm. Since the Priory had been well aware of this ability of Incubi, The Elder was probably just taking a break—talking obviously exhausted him, physically.
“Our investigation led to the discovery of Incubi offspring,” he continued. “For centuries, they have been living all over the world, breeding with humans, over and over, to the point that it would be impossible to accurately identify those with the demon blood in them, now.” Disgust thickened in The Elder’s emotions, a feverish blush coloured his pale sunken cheeks. Hatred, as strong as passion rose in a black, gloomy bloom marring all colours inside him.
The toxic hate seemed potent enough to taint the old man’s perception. Raim had walked this Earth for centuries, never did he hear anything about the demon offspring until the one born two years ago to Sytry and his woman, Alyssa.
“The soros stone urn, however, will kill them all with ease.” Pressing his hands into the carved armrests, The Elder rose from his chair. “One touch, and all with Incubi blood in them would perish, stopping the spread of the demon plague on Earth in seconds. A human bred by a demon gives birth to a cambion—the abomination that does not belong to any world and therefore must die.”
“If the Incubi offspring really existed and have bred for centuries, wouldn’t their descendants be more human than demon by now?”
“Even a smidge of demon blood in them makes them no longer human,” The Elder replied firmly. “They are not like us.”
Raim considered for a moment what death would mean for the Incubi. Nearly all of them have been Forgiven by now. Their curse had ended. Their punishment had been completed. As mortals, they would die and meet with the Devine again. Then they would be given peace they had earned.
Not he, though.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” He asked The Elder, who stood in front of him, leaning on his walking stick for support. “Why going through the trouble of showing up here in person?”
“It was not that much of a trouble,” the man waved him off. “I’ve heard you’re back in Switzerland. It was a short enough drive.”
“Why?” Raim insisted.
The Elder’s pale eyes narrowed, he let his hatred slither through them.
“Because I wanted to see your face, Raim. I could not miss the moment you realize that your days in this world are numbered, that your centuries-long work of protecting your kind will be undone by a frail, dying man in seconds. But most of all, I wanted to give you the taste of mortality. So you’ll know what it’s like to spend whatever little time you have in fear, dreading what’s to come and unable to do anything to stop it—the closest a demon would come to feeling the agony of death.”
“I can simply kill you right now, and none of it will happen.”
“If you do,” The Elder smirked. “The cleansing will happen tomorrow morning, at sunrise. If I don’t return to The Priory by then, another Brother will complete my mission by touching the soros urn himself. Go ahead, kill me. The choice is yours, but I know you care about your kind much more than you want me to believe. All of your Incubi have paired up by now. In two-months time, all of them would most certainly earn their Forgiveness and will die as humans do. If you kill me now and bring their end early, they will suffer in whatever Hell you have all come from, with you. In two months, you will be most certainly the last Unforgiven left.”
Holding his gaze in challenge, The Elder waited. Not getting a response, he moved to the door, with a new bounce in his step, despite the cane. “I’ll leave you now, Raim. So you can spend your last two months in the hell on earth I’ve just created for you.”
“For a human, you have been rather perceptive and even wise at times, Father.” Raim’s words made The Elder pause on his way out. “But you are still merely a man. One thing you are terribly wrong about is that I do not fear leaving this world. The true agony of death falls not on those who go, but on those who stay. My own end does not scare me.”
Raim pushed away from the wall he had been leaning on.
“Why would I cling to this world the way you do?” He advanced on The Elder, who flinched and shuffled back. “I have spent over a millennium here, with but a handful of moments worth to remember. I have watched generations of you come and go, civilizations rise and fall. Most of what I’ve learned about your kind disgusts me. You are a bunch of pathetic, self-aware, bloodthirsty animals, deriving pleasure in destroying each other. I’m sick of this world, repulsed by its inhabitants. None of you deserve even the short lives that you get. Nothing and no one holds me here. So go, Father, do what you have set out to do.” Raim led the way to the exit. “I will not stop you, but not because I’m afraid or because I care, but simply because you’re finally offering me a way out of this filthy place you call Earth.”
He yanked the front door open, ignoring the startled stares of The Elder’s escort on the other side.
“Now, get the fuck out of my house.”
HE LET THE ELDER GO, unharmed. As fed up as he was with this world, he chose to take the two months he was offered and give the others enough time to be Forgiven.
He lied when he said he didn’t care. It was unnatural and difficult for Incubi to create a lie, but not impossible. After a millennium of practice, Raim had learned how to do that as convincingly as humans did.
Two months.
Should he warn the others? He decided not to, granting them the gift of blissful ignorance instead. Thinking about all of the Incubi soon being free from this world and back in the arms of the Devine filled him with lightness of relief. It was the best outcome for his race, one he hadn’t even dared to dream of. All he could hope for now was that their human partners’ loyalty would last for two months longer, sparing the Incubi the agony of heartache before the end. Surely, even the treacherous hearts of human women could keep their feelings in for that long. One could only hope.
Suddenly, the eternity he always thought he had, shrunk to just two miserly months. Was there really nothing he would miss from this world?
Absolutely nothing came to mind that would resonate with any hint of sadness or regret when he thought about leaving it behind. A myriad of faces of people whose paths he had crossed over the centuries rushed through his brain. Most were dead, the rest didn’t matter.
Nothing and no one he would miss.
Except that something buzzed at the back of his mind. Not a person or an object, but a question—annoying with persistency of an unfinished business.
He gave his teardrop amulet of soros stone to Olyena in the eleventh century. Four hundred years later, he saw she was still wearing it. Yet it was not aroun
d the neck of her corpse on the execution pyre, two hundred years ago. Neither could he find it in the ashes and ambers at her feet then.
The last time he saw his amulet, it was on the chest of a human woman still living, just over two years ago, on a windy road in Rocky Mountains.
Doctor Neri, his excellent memory helpfully supplied her name.
A fierce woman with ink-black hair, gathered into a tight knot on the back of her head. Without having ever touched her, somehow Raim knew exactly how her hair would feel when running free between his fingers.
Suddenly, Raim realized what he wanted to do during his last two months on Earth—getting this one question answered.
How did Delilah Neri come into the possession of his amulet?
AVAILABLE HERE
More by Marina Simcoe
Demons, 5-book Series
Demon Mine
The Forgotten
Grand Master
The Last Unforgiven - Cursed
The Last Unforgiven - Freed
Stand Alone Novels Set in Demons World
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To Love A Monster
Madame Tan’s Freakshow
Call of Water – 2020
Midnight Coven Author Group
Wicked Warlock (Cursed Coven)
Tempted by Fae, Anthology. Available only until August 2020
Science-Fiction Romance
Experiment
Enduring (Valos Of Sonhadra)
My Holiday Tails - 2020
Gravity (Dark Anomaly Trilogy) – 2020/2021
About the Author
MARINA SIMCOE LOVES to write romance 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 the extraordinary.
She has lots of fun exploring how her out-of-this-world characters with their own beliefs, values, and aspirations fit into our every-day life.
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