Damned By His Touch

2. Chapter

Lucifer

The wheels of the carriage glided quietly along the road covered in bone dust, but inside the cabin the silence was almost suffocating. I sat across from her, wrapped in shadows, watching the strange figure fate had thrown into my path. The red glow of the runes on my arm pulsed slowly, lighting her face. She was still soaked, her clothes hanging in torn pieces, yet her posture remained unbroken.

I did not know her name. I knew nothing about her, and that angered me. In Hell every soul is an open book to me, but this girl was a blank page.

A flaw in the system.

"You know, staring like that would earn you a slap back there," she said suddenly. Her voice was hoarse from screaming, but that sharp insolent edge was still there, the same one that had irritated me at the gate.

"Back there you no longer exist, little girl," I replied coolly, leaning forward so my gaze pinned her in place. "Here you belong to me. Every breath you take, every thought you have exists only because I allow it. Do not push your luck. My patience ran out thousands of years ago."

"Then do me a favor and stare at the wall instead," she shot back immediately, turning her head away in defiance.

I clenched my jaw. Her very presence stirred my blood. Her mind was still an impenetrable white wall, and Cerberus's reaction gnawed at my curiosity like acid.

When the carriage finally stopped before the obsidian gates of my palace, Pandemonium, I did not wait for servants. I opened the door, grabbed her chains, and pulled her out into the dark night.

My palace towered above us, its black spires piercing the heavy infernal sky like the fingers of the damned. She stopped for a moment. I saw her pupils widen as she looked along the endless torchlit corridors.

But instead of fear, something else appeared on her face.

Pure contempt.

"Nice place," she said sarcastically. "A little dark, a little cold. Exactly what I imagined for someone as heartless as you."

"I'm glad you like it, little girl," I muttered as I dragged her deeper inside. "Because you will be staying here for a while. Or at least in the lowest part of it."

I did not take her toward the guest chambers.

A mystery I could not understand could not be left free.

As we walked through the prison wing, the guards and servants froze where they stood. I had never brought a woman into my palace. Never. The air tightened around us as we descended the spiral stairs to the depths where even the memory of light did not exist.

We stopped in front of a heavy iron door.

One of my most isolated cells.

Inside there was nothing but bare stone walls and a thin straw mattress.

"You will have plenty of time here to think about who you really are," I said as I unlocked the shackles with one sharp motion and shoved her roughly into the cell.

She stumbled but managed to stay on her feet.

Immediately she turned around, and before I could react she was already at the doorway trying to push past me. I blocked her path. My body was an immovable wall in front of her. I could feel the closeness of her, the cold dampness rising from her clothes.

"Let me out," she hissed, trying to shove me aside. Her hands were cold against my chest, right where the runes burned hottest.

"No," I answered, my voice deeper than before. "You will stay here until you break. Until you tell the truth about your sins."

"There is nothing to tell," she shouted, and I saw the first crack appear behind her defiance. Her eyes darted nervously across the narrow walls of the cell. "I can't stand being trapped. Lucifer, please... don't lock me in here."

She said my name.

For the first time not with sarcasm, but almost like a plea.

For a moment I hesitated.

But my suspicion was stronger.

I grabbed the heavy iron door.

"Learn to beg properly. Then maybe I will come back for you, little girl."

I slammed the door shut.

The metallic click of the lock echoed through the silent corridor. I stood there for a moment, my hand still resting on the iron. Inside I could hear her start pounding on the door.

"Let me out. You damn bastard. Don't leave me here."

Her shouting slowly turned into screams.

I shook my head and walked back toward the throne hall.

Just another human soul, I told myself. Just another hysterical prisoner pretending to be innocent.

But her screams echoed inside my skull, and only my pride stopped me from turning back.