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“I gave the bastard a little leeway in the end. Could feel him fighting sooo hard to get back control. It was fuckin’ hilarious.”
Caelan says it, but there is none of the sadistic amusement in his voice I would usually expect. Perhaps it’s more a statement of how it felt at the time. I get the impression he doesn’t feel quite the same anymore.
“I wanted to see what he would do.” Caelan shrugs. “Tried to kill himself, turns out. He was just stabbing away, jamming the same massive ass carving knife I’d had him kill everyone else with into his abdomen over and over, frantic as all shit. Thought that was funny as fuck too.”
Although he’s keeping his voice impassive, his accent is creeping in, and he’s dropping even more swear words than usual. He’s obviously upset.
“Don’t ever fucking tell Elias I said this,” Caelan says, changing tact. He looks directly at me, instead of avoiding my gaze as he’s otherwise been doing this whole time, and I nod. “I was too cocky,” he admits. “The damn prick is right. Sometimes my arrogance gets the better of me. And I’ve never hated any fact more in my fucking existence. The fact is, I wasstupid.”
“How so?”
“I stayed right there, in his body, reveling in all of it. ’Cause, like, I know damn well how long it takes a human to die. I’d just drop the body like a sack of shit right before the final moment, yeah? Chasing that high of being right there as he died in abject misery and suffering.”
Caelan pauses, his face like thunder. “Yeah. I didn’t get out. Fucker pierced his heart at some point. I was too giddy and cocky and busy goading him that I didn’t evennotice…whatever. And the thing is, he was powerful too. For a human, I mean. It drew me to him in the first place, I wanted to knock him down a few pegs. He was powerful in the way some of your kind are more attuned to other planes and can play with, like,magicalenergies or whatever bullshit terminology they wanna use. Like, he wasn’t a sorcerer or nothing. But back in days when y’all did that shit, he could’ve been. You know?”
I nod, not sure I understand, but grasping the basic sentiment.
“I can’t even tell you why. And that’s killed me for years. Jus’ a perfect storm of absolute bullshit circumstances. I was still in the body when it died. It caught me off guard. All that rage and torment and despair makes for a powerful curse. Messy, not even intentional, it wouldn’t normally touch a creature like me, but his last driving desire was to bring me down with him and keep me sealed away so I couldn’t do what I did to him to anyone else.” He laughs bitterly. “Don’t think it worked out like he intended, but sure asshitfucked me over.”
“So, you were trapped in his human form?” I look him up and down. “Am I having sex with acorpse?”
That question startles and bemuses Caelan enough to get him to laugh more genuinely. “Nah, doll. I’m still me, not just piloting that sack of shit around.”
“But the scars…”
Bad question. I’ve never seen Caelan shut down so fast. “Those aren’t whathedid. Don’t you worry your pretty head about that.”
I suppose that makes sense. Caelan said the human had stabbed himself in the abdomen, while his scars are more violent slashes than inward stabs. I stop that train of thought. It makes my heart ache to think of what else must have happened to Caelan to give him those.
“You know what he did leave me?” Caelan growls. “That fucking fragment of his soul, or whatever it was that got all tangled up and fused into mine… it remembers. I had to... I had to, have to,fucking—” He doesn’t know how to express it, and he snarls in frustration.
“Everything I fucking did! And he made mefeel it!Demons don’t feel. I didn’t feel. I fed off that shit. But there was this filthy, disgusting thing in me… part of me,me… that experienced that agony from the human perspective and you can never, ever, ever understand how abhorrent that is…” He pauses.
‘I’m sorry’ feels like such a hollow sentiment in the wake of all his pain and rage and sorrow. I swallow. “What did you do?”
“I hated everything about humans more than ever. About… myself. And I wanted to make them pay, as if their pain would get rid of mine. For a long, long time, I didn’t stop. Those things I did to him. I did worse again in revenge. Tell me, Shannon, do you still love me after that?”
“Caelan…” I squeeze my eyes and shake my head. “You’re not like that now, though. Right? People change.”
He snorts, a bitter, unpleasant sound. “You think so?”
“Yes. I’m… I’m not thrilled about your past, not going to lie, but I do love you. I love who you are now, the version of you I know. And that’s what matters, isn’t it?”
“I could tear you to pieces.”
“But you know I trust that you won’t,” I say firmly, praying my trust isn’t misplaced. I don’t think it is. He’s talked like this before, when we did our knife play scene that first time, and that turned out fine.But when he’s acting like this, he is… he is still a demon.
“You and Elias are the same. Stupid damn idiots willing to give me a chance.”
I wonder how much prying is wise, but I end up asking anyway, just to try to steer the conversation into safer waters. “What did Elias do?”
Caelan pauses a moment. “He was the one to snap me out of it. Having someone else like me around made things easier.”
I stay quiet a moment, my pulse still thudding too loud in my ears. Tentatively, I take Caelan’s hand. “I’m glad he did.”
“It’s not easy. Ain’t ever fuckin’easy. But it’s… whatever.”
“I’m sorry.”
