Hellfired

Said the Devil's Son

"It's mate or die, do you understand?!"

"I will not mate with you. Never!"

Arien's smaller hand tugged at his bulging forearm as her mouth was forced open due to his tightened grip. Her lungs demanded air, but everything faded away as her consciousness started to slip.

He didn't let go.

"–se- plea … help–"

If she was a normal werewolf, she'd manifest her claws and s***h through Rayven's hand. Or better yet, she'd shift into her wolf form and attack him with her sharp teeth.

However, as the weakest omega of the pack who couldn't even shift, she could only fight him with her blunt nails.

Pathetic.

Desperate, she tripled her effort. She took back her words earlier. Her fear of being killed by Rayven's hand grew tenfold as his sharp eyes seemed to glint with pure malice and fury. She'd fainted, and he'd do whatever he wanted to her body. She didn't want that.

'The disgusting piece of–'

Arien's left hand managed to land on his face. She didn't know what she was doing, either trying to pluck his eye out or smash his nose broken.

Rayven growled and wrenched her hand away from his face. His cold fury was the last thing she saw, for darkness claimed her. She feared the worst.

Thankfully, he let her go.

Arien slid to the floor, dropping like a rag doll with drool on the corner of her mouth. Breathe heaving, she curled her hands to hide their tremble as her sight cleared gradually.

She was still alive.

"We'll check it out tomorrow. You better pray it's not a Demon Rune, because otherwise," Rayven paused, "Well, you know what will happen if it is."

Arien's tears fell like rivers, streaming down her red face. He almost killed her. It wasn't the first time, although it was the closest she was to death.

And he left. As if nothing was wrong. But she was still alive.

She was still alive … and what for?

Was there any meaning to her wretched life?

Why was she here? Why couldn't she run away from here?

From him?

Crying out her heart, Arien curled into herself. Pathetic. What a perfect word to describe her.

She was hurt. Physically and mentally. Everything hurt, and she couldn't take it anymore.

All because she couldn't shift into her wolf form.

Because she was fated to be Rayven's mate.

Because–

'A touch, a wish, and your demon is at your beck and call,' a Summoner had said back then when she was just a pup and wondered about the other kind of people in this world. It was so simple, and she used to be jealous and appalled.

To make a whole other kind of creature – a demon! – to obey every command one has; she was sick even thinking about it.

Yet, Arien wanted it.

She wanted it now, willing the strange single line on her arm to just be 'it' and … with trembling fingers, she pressed the charred line on her skin, wishing – praying – that, 'Please, I just want to be happy.'

At first, nothing seemed to happen. Her stomach plummeted, and she pressed harder, willing it to work. All her thought that it was indeed a Demon Rune turned out to be nothing.

It was nothing.

No one could save her.

And then the pain hit, and she barely bit back a scream.

A wave of heat washed out from the charred line on her skin and through her body, only it kept building and building, searing through her like wildfire, an inferno – a supernova – and she was going to explode.

She was going to burn to ashes, nothing left of her, nothing but fire fire fire–

Then it was all gone.

Arien gasped in a great lungful of air and jerked backwards. Her head cracked against the cold mirror, and the fresh pain was a splash of freezing water on her nerves, bringing her back down to Earth. She blinked furiously, trying desperately to get her bearings as the world swam back into focus.

It was about then that she realised she wasn't alone anymore.

A man was standing in front of her slumped figure, looking down at her with an expression of complete surprise. He was tall, well-dressed in all black and handsome, with dark eyes that looked completely human – no horns, tail, or any of the usual identifying marks. In fact, there seemed to be nothing demonic about him at all, what's with the eye-catching pink and blue sneakers he wore.

"What is the meaning of this?" He demanded loudly in a heavy Russian accent.

"Are you my demon?" Arien blurted out before she could help herself.

The man screwed up his nose at her like he'd smelled something bad. "A demon? Me? Absolutely not!" he scoffed.

Arien's heart jumped with horror. He was just a guy. A human and not a werewolf guy she somehow managed to summon here. "How can you be here? You need to go back to where you be–"

"Excuse you!" the man said in a too-loud voice, arching one perfect eyebrow. "First and foremost, you need to tell me who you are and how you managed to bring me. I was in the middle of something, you know."

"I'm sorry, but I don't know either."

"No, you're the one who summoned me, right?"

Tearful eyes darted right and left; Arien searched for something that could explain his sudden appearance besides the obvious. "Like I said, I don't know. I just pressed the line," she showed it to him, "And wish for something, then you're here. Please don't ask me how, that's all I know."

"Well, you must be lying. That's all you Summoners do anyway."

"I'm not …" Arien inhaled a deep breath, trying to make sense of the situation here. "I'm not a Summoner."

"There, you lie again."

"I'm a Werewolf."

"I hate liars!" He looked right into her, and she caught the faintest flicker of red in his dark eyes.

Arien swallowed heavily, her heart loud in her ears. "You said you weren't a demon," she croaked.

"That's because I'm not. I'm the Devil's son, and since my father is not a demon, per se, neither am I." He adjusted his cufflinks primly. "Well, I don't know about my mother, but hopefully she's not a demon. Damn, I really should talk about her with my prick of a father sometime soon."

Arien's brain flatlined. "No. You can't be. That's impossible," she breathed.

He looked annoyed. "I assure you, my father likes to sleep with you humans. Both Werewolf and Summoner, he's not picky. In fact, he left me with the despicable demons in Hell to pine after a human, can you believe it? He hasn't been back home since, let's see …" he made a show of counting it with his pianist's finger, "Since you people on Earth dropped the nukes, so four thousand years ago."

"You mean seventy eight years ago?"

"That's what I said."

Arien gawked at him.

"You can call me Case by the way."

She tasted the name, thinking it didn't fit the son of the Devil very well. "Case?"

"Cassius Morningstar. Prince of Hell. The Antichrist. Angel of the Bottomless Pit. The Adversary. Destroyer of Kings. Lord of Darkness … well, you get the picture." He waved a dismissive hand. "But like I said, call me Case."

"Case."

"What?"

"Let me see your arm."

He reeled back, not liking the thought of it. However, after a silent consideration, he complied. Case removed his suit, showing his jet-black vest and shirt underneath. Then, he undid the cufflink, rolling his left sleeve to display what she had suspected.

A bold, straight black line was burned on his forearm. The same one as hers.

"Oh, you have the same thing," he observed, saying it lightly as if it had no meaning. It took a moment for him to fully realise what that indicated. "Wait, you mean I'm your slave? Is that it?!"

Arien hurried to correct him. "No! Not a slave, no!"

"Then what?" Case sounded so distressed that she thought he was going to hyperventilate.

"It's just that I'm your Summoner and you're my Demon."

"Then, what's with the command to make you happy?"

This time, Arien was the one who couldn't answer him right away. She knew fairly well how it felt to be a slave; Rayven practically treated her as such. However, to condone someone else – even someone of the Demon kind – as one, she couldn't even stomach the thought.

"It's not a command," she whispered, too softly for him.

"Say what?"

"I'd never use a command. You're not my slave, it's just …" Arien hesitated, but a flash of Rayven's fury was enough to push the words out. "I just want to get out of here and be happy."

Case was silent, merely gazing at her through his dark eyes. "Happiness is not something you ask of a demon, do you understand?"

Arien felt her chest tighten, ribs constricting against her broken heart. Gone was her tiny sliver of hope.

"But, I'll come back for you, okay? I just need to do something downstairs. Hell is not exactly a nice place to be left alone without order, you see."

She doubted that he'd come back for her. No one ever did that except Rayven and the suffering he always brought to her.

But Case wasn't done. "I'll come back, and I don't lie. I'd never lie."

Before Arien could say or do anything else, there was a whump, a rush of displaced air, and the space behind his back were lit with spreading flame. It took her a few dizzy seconds to realise that they were shaped like a pair of wings.

Case disappeared in a burst of fire.