by Lorena
"Is this what you needed, sir?"
Trowa regarded the knife that had just been pulled out of the cooling barrel, the steam of quenched fire swirling around it in a ghostly haze. The iron looked filthy. Unnatural. Discolored as iron just hammered into shape in the blacksmith's forge could be. The boy stared at the intricately carved cross handle, feeling his eyes sting and his vision blur. With a stifled snort of disgust, he quickly averted his face.
"Yes, it is. Thank you," he muttered, the disbelief still causing his voice to quaver.
"Very well, sir. I'll have this ready for you in about an hour."
Trowa nodded and numbly walked off. The heat of the forge was unbearable, and he felt his clothes cling to his skin in damp patches all over as he hurried out into the sun. In the middle of the street he stood, turning his face up to the clear sky, feeling his eyes burn and the tears trail their way down his cheeks. He raised an arm and drew a hand across his face.
He could still hear Sally's voice in his mind, protesting vehemently, insisting of other ways to end Quatre's torment.
But it wouldn't do. Trowa had read the book, read between the lines, hoping to find something there. He tried to grasp the workings of a demon—a creature of legend—tried to comprehend its mind, understand its purpose. He stayed at Sally's cottage for as long as he could, his eyes burning from the strain as they remained glued painfully to the yellowed, discolored paper and faded ink. His head throbbed with a dull, insistent pain that he ignored.
Logic and superstition vied furiously for dominance during those long, agonizing hours spent immersed in the ancient book. Trowa could feel his mind and spirit shiver and split into two warring poles. Reason argued in a voice that dripped with cold, harsh facts, holding his face between its spectral hands and forcing him to look into eyes that glinted with the starkness of natural laws and human principle. Superstition hissed insistently in his ear, its voice soft and trembling, weighed down by legends, myths, and tales nurtured and shaped by the more primitive workings of the human mind and heart. It covered the boy's hands with its faint, skeletal fingers in a surreal moment of reassurance.
Trowa fought against both forces, his own heart insisting on the basic precepts of compassion and affection. Those, above all else, were what Quatre needed, he'd said quietly. Those should guide his steps that evening. Whatever course of action needed to be followed would be dictated by those two simple principles.
But all the same, he felt himself torn still, his spirit shaken by opposing factions that were threatening to drive him mad.
Naïve, a quiet voice had murmured in his mind. Trowa thought that he could sense invisible lips curl into a derisive smirk. Simplistic and naïve. There are forces in the world that couldn't be handled in such an elementary fashion.
He'd fought off the notion, of course—resisted it in his own feeble, puny way. But what glared at him so insistently couldn't be so easily overlooked, and it didn't take long for his resolve to crumble and for him to embrace, however reluctantly, the only resolution that offered the finality that the problem so desperately needed.
Solutions offered by simple folk remedies were merely deterrents that didn't guarantee a recurrence in the hauntings further down the road.
Sammael—Asmodeus—whatever name the demon was given—had perhaps already been haunting Quatre before the forced marriages had begun. Quatre's cryptic reference to Trowa's absence being a cause of these misfortunes had given Trowa some inkling regarding that. Somehow—along the road—Quatre had rendered himself vulnerable to the demon's attentions. It was merely a matter of conjecture as to what it was the boy had done to deserve this kind of unexpected and unnatural response.
"But what was it?" Trowa muttered under his breath as he walked off, directionless, purposeless—his mind completely immersed in his musings. "What did he do?"
The signs of decline had been exhibited by the boy before, even during the horrendous ordeal of being dragged to jail and being forced to run away in vain hopes of protecting his family. Duo, Hilde, and Sally had attested to that. Quatre had exhibited signs of strain, yes, but Trowa was convinced that they were likely more of the kind that was a natural effect of the nightmare that had spiraled out of control.
He did remember their first meeting—remembered it as clearly as though it had happened just yesterday. He remembered the signs of exhaustion. But they were nothing compared to the obvious signs of waste that completely marred the unfortunate boy's person in their most recent meeting just that morning. Quatre's very life, it seemed, was being slowly sucked dry, drained out of a boy whose crime had likely been nothing more than loneliness.
Yes, loneliness.
Trowa's heart crumbled at the realization. Perhaps it was loneliness that had brought all this on his friend. Quatre was sheltered, completely under his family's mercy. His future was rigidly dictated by his father, his voice having no more value than the dirt that caked the cobblestones. Stripped of his rights by virtue of his birth and social standing, it wouldn't be a great surprise if Quatre were to feel that crippling sense of isolation and loneliness.
"He would be vulnerable," Trowa sighed, his eyes glued to the ground as he ambled mindlessly down the streets of the village, careless as to where his feet would eventually lead him.
The demon—whatever it was that was haunting him (Trowa could barely keep himself from smirking his incredulity at entertaining the notion of demons)—had likely waited for the moment for Quatre to give form to a potential lover in order for it to take full advantage of the power it had over the boy. It needed a specific physical form in order for it to interact with its intended victim. In all those marriages, Quatre hadn’t shown any indications of fondness toward his hapless spouses. The affection wasn’t there, which kept the demon—the thing—from laying its parasitical hands on the boy. It was his indifference which momentarily saved him though with more tragic repercussions on his own family.
And what of now?
"I saw you before you saw me," Quatre had told him. "I watched you pass by my house those few days after Geoffrey died. I saw you walk with Duo and the others. I saw the way you looked at my house as though you were trying to find me standing by one of the windows. I suspected as much that it was you. I felt it. And I thought you were the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
Trowa couldn't help but wince at the remembrance of those words, his conscience now taking a severe beating at the thought that his presence, more than his initial absence, had caused a great deal more damage to his friend. Had he stayed away—had he remained in the city—how badly could things have turned out? Quatre would likely be spared—unless, of course, he'd found himself pining after someone else, which would only be cause for the demon to take advantage of that attraction in order to get to the boy physically.
He shook his head bitterly. "It doesn't matter," he whispered to the warm breeze that had begun to blow. "Quatre would still be used till he dies." He drew a deep, tattered breath through clenched teeth at this thought.
The need for a lover. That was all it took for Quatre to fall prey, and Trowa felt sickened. The pleasurable warmth of holding someone close—never in his life would he think that it would be cause of so much misery.
His thoughts strayed to the dagger that was now being fashioned for him, following specific instructions he'd laid out. He remembered his resolve, and his spirits went cold.
“I have to do this,” he muttered, pinching his eyes shut in a vain effort to stave off the lingering image of Sally arguing tearfully with him. “Quatre’s suffered enough. I’m not about to let him go on like this.”
The consequences, though…
He felt the tears well up again, and he dashed them off his face impatiently, pulling the hood of his cloak farther down to obscure his features from the scrutiny of curious passersby.
Catherine would never forgive him. He knew that all too well. The others would feel just as strongly. Sally herself was partially deceived—at the moment she knew of only part of his plans, and already she’d viewed it as extremely dangerous. Trowa hated manipulating his friend, but he knew that it was his only recourse. After all, there was no other way if this plague were to be stopped for good.
“They’ll understand,” he sighed.
Trowa offered a small, wistful smile as he watched his friend chatter away from across the table, his eyes periodically darting to the ancient wall clock that ticked agonizingly slowly from one end of the dimly-lit room.
The Winner home was a sepulcher. No other sound or movement interrupted the hollow silence of the place save for Quatre’s cheerful conversation and constant shuffling around as he insisted on serving his friend. Several times during the course of dinner, Trowa thought he’d heard the vague, distant sounds of laughter or singing from some dark, forgotten parts of the abandoned domicile. He merely shrugged them off in spite of the raised hairs in the back of his neck, attributing them to the normal echoes that reverberated throughout large, untenanted structures.
Get yourself together, he chided himself as he took a sip of his wine. There’s no place for an overactive imagination tonight.
“It’s not my best, but I know I’ll improve in time,” Quatre said almost breathlessly, ending a long-winded soliloquy on his virtues as a cook. He’d apparently just recently learned—even before he sent the rest of the household away (which only served to feed Trowa’s suspicion that he’d been planning to do just that for some time now)—and was now nervously showcasing his fledgling talents to his companion.
“I think it’s all wonderful, Quatre.”
“You think so?”
“Why would I lie to you?”
The boy regarded him for a second of anxious silence, the subtle little shifting of his body indicative of a restlessness that he couldn’t squelch. Quatre’d cleaned himself and had dressed up in some of his finery for Trowa, and he sat before his friend, the erratic flickering of the candle’s light softening the brutal edges of his wan, dwindling form, the shadows mercifully hiding some of the hollow, sunken areas and lending the boy a quiet, pensive glow. In the dimness of the room, Quatre’s eyes had taken on a little of the old life with which Trowa had long grown familiar. That helped ease the taller boy’s own anxieties regarding the evening’s events. For a delicate, fleeting moment, it seemed, he was once again in the company of the boy he knew.
And his heart broke at the thought of whatever chances they both might have with each other being abruptly cut off before they’d even really begun.
But seeing the painful wearing down of Quatre’s body and spirit validated Trowa’s resolve. Logic and superstition be damned. What was required for his friend to be released of this burden was mercy, pure and simple.
It’ll be all right. I know it will. He forced another smile at his friend.
“I’m glad you like it then,” Quatre finally said, laughing lightly, his voice trembling a little. He swallowed and nodded at Trowa’s empty plate. “Would you—would you like some more?”
Trowa dreaded that moment, but he steeled himself and broadened his smile. “Yes, please. Thank you.”
The other boy stood up and hurried into the kitchen. Trowa took this moment to fish around his pocket and pull out a small little sachet, which he immediately opened up and whose contents he carefully emptied into Quatre’s goblet. He was once again seated before his friend returned, taking a sip of his own drink with his stomach in virtual knots.
Trowa paced around the room, his hands balled into tight, sweaty fists as he waited.
“Damn it, Duo, hurry,” he whispered into the darkness, straining his ears in the silence. A glance at the clock informed him that time was running short, and he swore that he’d have his friend’s hide if things didn’t go well with him tonight.
Dinner had long concluded—that is, it had concluded when Quatre finally succumbed to the effects of the drugs, and he was lying asleep on the old sofa in the sitting-room, clad in his finery still, with Trowa throwing on his cloak as protection against the evening chill. And at the moment, Trowa was merely waiting for Duo’s prearranged arrival.
He stopped his pacing several times if only to fall on his knees beside the thin, slumbering figure on the sofa and to clasp pale, limp hands in his or run gentle fingers through lifeless hair as he whispered words of reassurance and affection in Quatre’s ear. He remembered his friend’s words earlier that day—the confession that was wrenched out of him under strange and awkward circumstances. Quatre’s admission of his love for Trowa, though spurred on by a misguided belief, was nonetheless sincere, and the other boy felt painfully moved by it all.
“It was never one-sided,” he murmured, smiling a little before leaning down to place a kiss on Quatre’s cheek. He pulled away if only to press his lips against the other’s in a show not only of affection but more so a farewell.
The sound of hoofbeats and rumbling wheels arrested his attention, and he sighed his relief. A glance at the clock showed that he had quite a bit of time left. His spirits lifted.
“Trowa!” Duo called out as he banged on the door. “I’m here! Come on and hurry!”
Trowa quickly stood up and ran to the door, flinging it open and hurrying back to Quatre with a wave of his hand. “Help me carry him.”
Duo entered just as he reached the sofa, tugging at Quatre’s cloak more tightly around the boy before picking up the limp form in his arms with Duo’s help.
“Do you know where to take him?” he asked as the two hurried out into the darkness outside, where the young farmer’s cart and horse awaited. He ran to the rear and gently laid Quatre down on the cart, grateful to Duo for lining the vehicle with fabric-covered hay. The ride wouldn’t be too harsh on the sleeping boy.
“I do. I should be back in two hours to help.”
“Thanks. And be sure to tell the girls to keep an eye on him. Whatever happens, Duo, they shouldn’t let him out of their sight.”
“They know what to do.” Duo paused as he regarded his friend, shaking his head incredulously. “I can’t believe you’re doing this.”
“Neither can I,” Trowa laughed lifelessly. “But this is for Quatre.”
Duo placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder, squeezing gently. “Wait for me, all right?”
“I’ll leave the front door open.”
Duo nodded and nimbly leapt back up on the cart, picking up the reins and immediately spurring the horse on. Trowa stood silently in the night as he watched his friend bore Quatre away and into safety. He sighed.
“I’m sorry, Duo,” he said quietly. His friend would be back in two hours—after securing Quatre at an inn in another village, where Hilde and Sally were waiting as per his instructions. But he’d be back too late to do anything. It was, as with Sally earlier that day, a necessary deception.
Once the cart had been swallowed up by the shadows, its low rumbling fading off into the distance, the boy turned his heels and walked back into the house, fishing out a rusty set of old keys from his pocket—keys that he’d taken from Quatre the moment Quatre succumbed to the sleeping powder. He stepped indoors and immediately locked the front door, listening to the jangling of keys echo hollowly throughout the empty house. And, picking up the candle, Trowa proceeded to go to every single room, locking all doors and securing all windows, ignoring the faint, spectral voices that laughed and sang in the night.
Trowa waited in the empty chamber beside Quatre’s room—one that didn’t have a window or a fireplace or any other means of escape save for the door that led to the blackened hallway outside. He sat on the bed, listening and waiting, watching the candle burn its way to a mere stump. From a distant part of the house, he heard the old clock chime the hour, and at this point, he’d completely lost track of what it was.
He went over his plan in his mind again and again, searing it completely into his being so that everything he’d be doing would be instinctive, which would work more to his advantage. Depending on how the demon would respond to Quatre’s absence, he felt that he really wouldn’t have the luxury of thinking things over when the need came.
He also went over what he’d read in Sally’s book, using his own judgment and intuition in piecing together some pieces of the puzzle that still hadn’t fixed themselves.
Demons haunting domiciles, he was grateful to learn, were largely attached to the house that they were tormenting. That incident with Quatre running away had proven it. The boy wasn’t followed, after all. The demon, perhaps upon seeing the boy missing, had taken out its wrath on two of his sisters instead, which had forced the boy home with the terrifying notion that another day more away from his house would mean more deaths of innocent people—family members, to be more precise.
And some incubi would flit from home to home, finding new victims every time and moving on once they’d had their “fill,” and the hapless victims had been—literally—loved to death. But there were those who were just as much a part of the house they were haunting as the very stone on which the foundation was built. And in this instance, as far as Trowa understood, the demon was the kind that wandered from home to home as it pleased.
As the boy stared at the yellow glow of the candle’s tiny flame, he tried desperately to restrain himself from responding to another unexpected confession that Quatre had made earlier that evening—made during dinner, when the boy happily repeated his feelings for his friend.
“One of my sisters told me once,” he’d said, lowering his voice to a shy, conspiratorial whisper, “that saying your prayers or wishes to a shooting star will guarantee that your prayers will be heard and answered. I did just that—before my first marriage—I sat by my window night after night, waiting for something to happen. And when I saw this star fall from the sky, I prayed that I’d find someone before my father decided to marry me off. I never felt so stupid in my life till then—but I was, what, thirteen? I’m embarrassed to admit to behaving like a silly schoolgirl.”
Trowa was startled by that. He could only imagine that the so-called shooting star that his friend had glimpsed was the demon’s non-human form as it prowled the evening sky. He felt his face drain itself of blood as he remained silent, encouraging the other boy to tell his story.
“It didn’t work, of course,” Quatre sighed, shrugging. “I should’ve known.” He paused and glanced back at his companion. “ After all, I didn’t see you right after, and—that was when it all began. But things are better now,” he hastily added, reaching out and resting a bony hand on Trowa’s. “You did come—late, yes, but you’re still here. And you love me. I never thought that you would, but you do.” He smiled, the happiness that tried to fight its way to the forefront tempered by the more obvious and cruel signs of waste, and Trowa could barely see that light of joy flicker weakly in Quatre’s eyes.
He sighed shakily as he fought to rein in his emotions, allowing the oppressive silence blanket him as he continued to wait.
“That was what you meant then,” he whispered in the dimness. “It all makes sense now.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when he heard a board creak, and he stiffened, straining his ears some more. His eyes darted to the closed door, and he slowly stood up, drawing the hood up to obscure his face.
Duo urged his horse on, glancing over his shoulder periodically to check on Quatre. The boy remained senseless on the makeshift mattress in the cart.
The night swallowed him, the lantern dangling beside him swaying erratically from the frantic pace that he was trying desperately to maintain. He needed to get to the other village as soon as he could. Trowa needed his help. And Quatre needed to be kept at a safe distance from St. Giles.
Duo had been traveling close to an hour now, and he fervently prayed that his friend was safe. He hated traveling at night. The roads were always unreliable, and twice since he’d first started, he had to pause in his tracks to gauge the accuracy of the direction he’d taken.
He continued to drive on for another twenty or so minutes when his attention was arrested by the sound of approaching hoofbeats. And he wouldn’t have given them much thought had he not heard a familiar voice call out in the darkness.
“Duo? Is that you?”
“Hilde?”
“Duo? Duo!”
“I’m—I’m here!” the astonished farmer called out, reining in his horse. He stayed put, staring in amazement at the darkness before him until the shadowy figures of two riders mounted on a horse appeared.
“Hilde! Sally!” he cried, frowning. “What the devil are you two doing out here? It’s dangerous! You should be waiting for me at the inn!”
“We had to look for you,” Sally replied when she and her friend approached the cart, their figures breaking out of the shadows. Behind her sat Hilde, who looked deathly pale.
“Why? Trowa said for you to wait for me there!”
“Oh, God—Trowa isn’t with you?” Sally asked, blanching, as her eyes strayed to the cart.
“No—he told me that he’ll be waiting for me at Quatre’s home. I just needed to bring Quatre over to…”
“That’s not what he told me,” Sally cut in, her agitation escalating now. “He said that he’d be coming with you and Quatre, and we’d be helping him with...”
“What? You must’ve heard him wrong.”
“No. I’m sure of it.”
“Then he must’ve changed his plans. He looked pretty distracted when I left him.”
“Duo, we need to go get him,” Sally insisted. “I had a feeling that he’d be doing something completely…”
A sudden cry that broke the silence cut her off, and all three were immediately fighting to get on the cart, from where the unearthly shrieks were coming. Quatre, almost as though in the throes of a horrific nightmare, was thrashing around, his eyes wide and unseeing as he screamed.
“My God, what’s happening to him?” Hilde cried as she clambered up and threw herself on top of Quatre and attempted to hold him down as he continued to buck and flail around. Near her Sally was trying to do the same, desperately anchoring down and letting out little cries of amazement at almost being thrown off. Quatre seemed to be imbibed with a strength that belied his shrunken frame as he screamed and called out.
Duo tried to help out as he threw himself on his friend’s legs as well, hushing the boy.
“What’s going on?” Hilde continued to cry out.
Duo could barely make out words at first. Quatre was screaming for someone, calling out to him—for him to come. With a sickening turn of his stomach, he realized that his friend was offering himself to someone, alternately pleading and demanding to be taken, all the while calling and calling and calling. His words came out in a hysterical, nightmarish, incoherent stream, and he continued to thrash wildly under his friends.
“Something—something’s happening back there,” Sally gasped, turning to look at Duo with a look of absolute terror. “I know it—something’s happening to Trowa! Duo, we’ve got to get back to St. Giles!”
“No—not with Quatre with us! We can’t take him back!”
“We have to!”
Duo pressed his lips to a thin, tight line.
It was undeniable. There was movement in the other room—the sound of someone walking around. The sounds had started from the general direction of the stairs and made their way to Quatre’s room. Trowa held his breath as he listened to a voice speak, calling out, its intensity and volume increasing just as the movement increased as well.
It had discovered Quatre’s flight and was now growing agitated.
Trowa could barely stifle a smirk. “Go on,” he whispered. “Rant and howl for your lover. You’ll never find him.”
And sure enough, the voice had raised itself to a spine-tingling, guttural howl, the demon’s voice almost shaking the entire house on its crumbling foundation. The voice sounded unnatural—sepulchral. And Trowa couldn’t help but shiver and wrap his arms around himself as he listened.
He waited for a few more seconds as the agitated creature began to tear the room apart, and the sounds of ripping fabric and furniture breaking filling the silence. All the while the demon let out ghastly shrieks.
It needed its so-called nourishment. It needed to touch Quatre. And for Trowa’s plan to work, it needed to expend whatever was left of its energy first before he’d make his presence known.
The sounds of breaking eventually stopped, but the cries didn’t. In fact, they merely subsided to low, animalistic moans. That was Trowa’s cue. Saying a quiet prayer, he took in a deep breath and proceeded to walk noisily around the room, moving things around and coughing loudly.
The response was instantaneous. The creature fell silent in the next room, and with a grunt, it ran out and tore its way to the small chamber where Trowa waited, taking his place behind the door just as it was flung violently open, almost crushing him.
The boy remained silent and waited till the figure strode into the room, hurrying to the other end, before he shut the door and locked it, jerking the key until it broke inside the lock, trapping both of them inside. He turned around just as the creature turned around to look at him. Trowa’s breath caught in his throat.
“Will you be all right?”
“We will—just go! Now!” Sally cried impatiently, waving Duo off.
The young farmer leapt off the cart and made a mad dash toward Sally’s horse, mounting it in a second and tearing off into the night without another moment’s hesitation.
And as he rode madly on, he could still see Hilde and Sally in the cart, desperately holding their friend down, calling out to him in frantic voices as they tried to soothe him with their fingers in his hair. Quatre seemed to be lost to the girls, though, and while his struggles had lessened somewhat, he continued to call out for Trowa, his voice sounding more and more animalistic and primal. His words tore through the still evening air, rending the silence with pleas of surrender that bordered on madness.
Trowa was staring at himself. Standing directly across the room from him, clad in black from head to foot, the thick, heavy cloak that enveloped him just as devoid of any color as the rest of his costume, stood Quatre’s demon lover. They regarded each other in surprise at first, with Trowa feeling a sudden shot of coldness course through his body and forcing himself to stand firm. The thing that stared back at him was his mirror image in the most basic way, yes, but there were notable differences that made the boy shudder.
The other Trowa was unnaturally pale—white. There seemed to be no sign of blood anywhere in his body, which only served to heighten the surrealness of the moment. The hair that draped lazily over part of his face was the exact color as the original, but it didn’t have a sheen as natural hair did. It was dull and almost hazy, almost as though it absorbed light and not reflected it. The eyes were a bright, harsh green hue, again devoid of sheen and life. They seemed to stare vaguely at the boy, with the thing’s expression assuming a blank, almost dead look.
Trowa could sense that it had weakened, and it would continue to weaken the longer it remained away from Quatre’s presence. He felt a stab of triumph at the notion. But he also knew that that wouldn’t be enough. His hand went to the dagger that hung down his side, covered from view by the cloak he wore.
“Quatre,” it said, its voice filling the air of the small room with a low, throaty rumble. Trowa’s hair stood on end as he fought to keep himself from being cowed by the terrifying presence before him.
“He’s gone,” he replied calmly, quietly. The coldness lingered in his system. “You’ve got no one. There isn’t anyone left in this house for you to take your anger out on. Nobody to kill as retribution.”
The thing continued to regard him calmly, silently—looking more and more mannequin-like as it stood, unmoving and pale and unnaturally placid.
Trowa stepped forward, dropping the keys on the floor and flinching a little as they clattered at his feet.
“Except, of course, for me,” he added in a lower timbre. He allowed a little smirk to come through as he slowly pulled back his hood. “If you want to make Quatre pay, I’m here.”
The thing stared at him, and he could see its body trembling—most likely from need and deprivation. He allowed its eyes to rake over him, taking in every inch with a deliberateness that spoke volumes in spite of the deadened expression—which only served to heighten the boy’s growing revulsion in the pit of his stomach.
He was watching his mirror image ravish him with eyes that were his. It was grotesque. It was obscene. And it took him all he had to remain rooted in place as his mirror image slowly walked up to him, stopping a few inches away, staring deeply and hungrily in his eyes. Trowa felt ill. It was almost as though he were staring at his own corpse.
“You’re offering yourself?” it murmured, raising a hand to lightly touch Trowa’s cheek with a cold finger.
“You have a choice,” the boy replied, appealing to the creature’s basest instincts, which, really, were the nature of its existence. Lust and anger. He saw them both there, naked and exposed for him to toy. And he did, dangling himself before the thing’s gaping, hungry jaws. “You can either kill me like you did with Quatre’s sisters…”
He paused, drawing out the temptation for as long as he could in spite of the sickening twinge in his gut. The creature watched him expectantly, its hand now moving to his throat and wrapping its white fingers around it. The boy could feel his own jugular pulse against the slight pressure.
The thing leaned forward, lightly brushing Trowa’s lips with its own. It continued to tremble almost pathetically.
“And the other?” it whispered now, moving away and fanning his face with its cold breath.
Quatre’s struggles weakened even more, and Sally, exhausted from the strain, fought to keep her hold on the boy. Beside her, Hilde was panting, letting out a small, choked sob on occasion as she tried to help their friend snap out of what could only be called a kind of trance.
“It’s come,” Sally whispered, pinching her eyes shut. “The monster’s here.”
“What’re you talking about?”
She opened her eyes to find Hilde regarding her in some confusion, tears trailing down flushed cheeks, hair disheveled from the struggles.
Sally could only shake her head weakly. “It’s let go of Quatre. But—my God, Hilde, Trowa’s alone with it.”
“The only way for you to break that door down is for you to gain your strength back,” Trowa whispered in return. He, too, was now trembling. His heart stopped for a moment as he waited, knowing what the result would be (silently laughing at the creature’s predictability), the nausea maintaining its assault in his system.
The thing neither frowned nor smiled. Its approbation made itself known more in the more subtle shifting of facial muscles as it absorbed his words, causing its trembling to increase in intensity, the nature and the degree of its needs laying themselves before the boy in the way the fingers momentarily tightened around his throat before releasing him as the hand worked its way behind his neck, grasping him there instead and bringing his forward until his mouth was pressed almost painfully against that of his double.
Trowa felt himself half-carried, half-dragged across the floor, his face still pressed against the other’s. The back of his legs struck something, and before he knew it, he was tumbling backward, the thing’s weight pushing down on him, immobilizing him on the bed.
The draining seemed to happen almost instantaneously. As cold hands fumbled for his clothes, Trowa was already beginning to feel himself weaken, his strength ebbing gradually with every touch, with every kiss, with every taste.
Conflicting feelings of satisfaction and self-repugnance battled within him as he allowed himself to be taken, his strength seeping out of him as the thing that continued to divest him of his clothing gained every ounce of what he lost. The creature’s hunger was intense. It had been deprived, its own strength evaporating during that previous moment of rage, and it was claiming it all back. It tore through Trowa’s clothes, leaving him lying in virtual rags as it tugged and pulled away, covering each inch of exposed flesh with cold, bone-numbing kisses.
Trowa felt his body respond well enough to the stimulation, but the sensations seemed so distant—so detached from the moment. It was as though he were watching someone else get ravished, the tall, lanky frame sprawled provocatively on the antique coverlet as fabric fell victim to groping, clawing fingers.
It could be attributed to the crippling exhaustion that was now overpowering him. He could barely focus, his vision fading in and out. His mouth moved, but he could barely make a sound in his throat.
Wait till the right moment, he told himself. Even his mind’s voice sounded so weak. He let out a small gasp at the sudden pressure on his groin.
“He’s all right.”
The two girls, sweat-drenched and utterly exhausted, knelt beside their stricken friend. Quatre had now completely stopped his struggles, and he seemed to have sunk back into a deep, restless sleep. His breathing was irregular, and he moved his head from side to side, a quiet murmur escaping his lips every once in a while. Hilde patted his forehead with a handkerchief.
“He doesn’t have a fever, thank God,” she sighed, glancing up at Sally. “I think we can move him now.”
The other girl nodded, and she immediately stood up and hurried to the driver’s seat. “I’ll take you two to the inn. Have someone call the physician once you get there.”
“What—me? Where are you going?”
The cart jerked forward and was soon rumbling its way to the next village.
“I’m going back to Duo and Trowa.”
Back in Sally’s cottage that afternoon, Trowa had worked desperately to read between the lines. He fought hard to see more, and in the lengthening shadows of the waning day, he found what he needed.
No, it wasn’t the proverbial chink in the demon’s armor. It wasn’t an indication of its weakness.
It was, instead, his own resolution and a validation of his deeper connection with his friend. As his eyes wandered over ancient text, he’d felt his heart stir in ways he’d never known, and it didn’t take much to understand what it all meant.
His foggy vision could barely make out the figure that hovered above him now, bending down to cover his body with its own, enveloping him with its own rapidly strengthening makeup, the lips being pressed against his serving as a kind of conduit through which he was now being emptied. He felt its hands struggling to undo his trousers. The room spun above him.
In those waning hours spent in Sally’s cottage, he’d come to terms with his own fledgling attachment to Quatre. Not yet fully formed, it nonetheless was as strong as any long-established connection could be.
He loved his friend, yes, as both a friend as well as a potential lover. And with that realization came the unyielding resolve to right what had long been wrong…
Trowa’s hand weakly groped around, and it found the dagger lying uncomfortably under him, buried under his tattered clothes. He winced as he felt fingers rake across his bare skin.
…even if it meant making the greatest sacrifice one could ever make for the sake of another.
“I’m sorry, Catherine,” he whispered. “But I can’t let Quatre go through another day of this.”
When the victim of this opportunistic demon exhibits signs of rapid deterioration, it is perhaps the only reasonable—as well as merciful—method of release for one to kill the victim with a single blow to the heart, using a cross-shaped dagger made of iron. The sudden release of the victim's soul will shatter all bonds created by the demon, causing him to lose all potency and the ability to attack in the future.
Gripping the dagger’s handle as firmly as he could manage under the circumstances, Trowa waited for the moment when he felt that those bonds mentioned had established themselves a little more. The creature had shifted its attentions from Quatre to him, and that, above all else, was what he needed to see happen. Quatre was now free.
Duo arrived at the Winner house in time to see a small, scattered group of terrified neighbors milling around. He jumped off the horse and staggered to the front door, shoving his way past the people. The door was locked just as he feared. He pounded on it.
“Trowa!” he cried. “Open the door!”
“No one’s been answering our calls, Mr. Maxwell,” an old man said nearby, watching him with large, desperate eyes.
“Is someone in there?”
“There is,” a woman replied, wringing her hands. “We heard a lot of screaming and crashing—and then it was all quiet before we heard even more screaming, and—oh, sir, it was horrible!”
Duo swallowed, feeling his insides knotted as he ran back to the door to pound more loudly.
“Trowa! Goddamnit, open the door!”
He started to kick at the dark, thick wood as well, the racket rending the air until he thought he could hear it echo lightly up and down the alleyways.
“Mr. Maxwell! Over here! Someone’s just broken through one of the windows at the back of the house!” a man shouted, motioning for him to follow him.
The boy responded quickly enough, outpacing the man as he hurtled on, expertly dodging those who either stood in the way or were moving much too slowly. He turned a couple of corners and found the broken window, around which stood a small group of people. One of them was already struggling to undo the latch from the inside, and a second later found the large windows flung outward, allowing bodies to go through, and people began to clamber through.
Duo followed them, almost throwing himself through the opening. He stumbled but quickly picked himself up and was soon running through the lower hallways, calling out Trowa’s name in frantic tones. He could barely see in the darkness, but he didn’t care. He simply groped his way around, using whatever faint bits of light happened to filter through some of the windows to guide him until he found the stairs.
He bounded up, sweating and flushed and completely panic-stricken.
“Trowa, you idiot,” he hissed under his breath as he ran past open rooms, momentarily peering inside before hurrying off to the next. “You’d better damn well be all right when I find you.” A bitter sting of tears arose from that thought, and he had to wipe his face with his sleeve on occasion.
He eventually found one room that was locked from the inside, and on seeing the faint, yellow glow of candlelight from the gap under the doorway, he knew he was there. He pounded on the door.
“It’s Duo! Trowa, open the door!”
He heard nothing, and he pounded on the wood with a fury that he’d never before known. “Damn it to hell, Trowa! You’d better be alive when I break through the door!” The last four words barely made their way out his throat when he was overcome with tears, and he began to look around for something to use.
“Mr. Maxwell!” a voice cried as he heard footsteps hurry up toward him. “Here!”
He turned around and found an ax being held out to him, which he took with a grateful and hopeless smile.
The abandoned house was soon overrun with the sounds of excited, fearful voices and the harsher noise of wood being furiously reduced to useless splinters as Duo threw himself into his work, hacking madly away at the door, praying to every saint for strength and for Trowa’s safety.
And after several seconds of this, those same noises were soon followed by a hysterical cry that dissolved into loud, angry sobs and a string of incoherent curses.
“Will you remember all those?”
“I will. Don’t worry. Just go on and forget about everything.”
Catherine sighed, nodding. She looked incredibly pale and drawn. She seemed to have lost a good deal of weight as well. Her spirits were subdued as she went about collecting her belongings and carrying them out to the cart that awaited her outside her cottage.
“The garden…”
Sally shook her head and waved her hand. “I know what to do with the garden. Please. Go.”
“I can’t help it,” Catherine stammering, offering her friend a faint smile as Sally took her hands in hers and squeezed them gently. “It’s—Trowa was very fond of…” Here she broke off as she burst into tears yet again. Sally sighed heavily as she drew her close for an embrace.
“The physicians looking after him are very skilled,” she half-whispered, her own eyes welling up with tears.
“He’s so stupid. So stupid!”
Sally smiled wistfully. “Perhaps.”
“How could he even think of doing that to himself?”
“I don’t think it’s for us to understand, Catherine.”
The girl’s sobs had subsided after a little while, and she was merely leaning against her friend in a wretched slump, her body now racked with erratic hiccoughs. Sally continued to soothe her with words and a hand gently massaging her back and shoulders.
Catherine presently pulled away, wiping her face with her handkerchief. “I’d better go,” she muttered and turned away, hurrying to the cart, where she was helped up by the driver hired to take her to a distant town, where Trowa had been taken for surgery.
She glanced over her shoulder when the cart rumbled off, watching Sally’s figure standing by the cottage’s front door dwindle in the distance. And right before the cart turned a corner, effectively obscuring the cottage from view, she saw her friend raise a hand in farewell.
The injuries Trowa had sustained had been critical, but they weren’t enough to kill him. In those grave moments of conversation during his recovery, he’d confessed that he was aiming for his heart, but the struggle that ensued between him and his double had simply brought the dagger to a much lower target, burying itself in his midsection instead.
The demon suddenly felt its ghastly connection with him severed by that act of violence, weakening it again, but it wasn’t enough to render it impotent as Trowa had wanted. Bleeding and faint, therefore, the boy lunged after the thing, driving the dagger into its heart as he fell on it, dragging it down to the floor with him. And with that final effort, he’d succeeded in destroying the creature’s physical form, and with his own death staring him in the face, he was certain that he’d completely stripped the demon of its ability to prey. He slipped into unconsciousness with his thoughts settling on Quatre and the reassurance that his friend, at last, would now be able to be at peace.
It took him several months before he had the strength to return home with his sister and Duo. His injury had healed somewhat, but he’d been ordered to stay away from work for a good long while in order to facilitate a speedier recovery. Catherine therefore applied once again to their uncle for some assistance, to which he’d responded with a comforting affirmative. And right after receiving her uncle’s promise for aid, Catherine was blessed with the arrival of a good enough sum on which she and her brother could live for the time being.
And so brother and sister kept each other company, with Catherine fussing over Trowa as only she could, ensuring his comfort and his safety while the boy slowly recovered. Hilde, Sally, and Duo visited on occasion, sharing news of the outside world and updates on Quatre, who’d been taken in by one of his sisters in a town that lay far west in the gentler climes. Like Trowa, he’d been spending several months isolated from the rest of the world while he recovered from his ordeal.
He was closely monitored at Duo’s request, and his sister was more than happy to oblige, sending him regular messages on her brother’s health and recovering strength.
“He’s happier now,” she’d once said, “but not happy enough. I’m sure you know what it is of which I speak.”
Duo could only smile and shake his head. “I do,” he murmured. “I do.”
Five years had now passed, with Trowa watching the changing seasons with growing reassurance that the threat that had almost killed Quatre was now gone—if not from the world, at least from their lives. How potent were demons, after all?
But there had been no signs of a return, and after nervously watching the night sky for shooting stars for a long time, Trowa finally allowed himself to be convinced of the success, however partial, of his near-sacrifice.
He still lived in St. Giles, now working as an assistant to Mr. Tomlinson, who welcomed him back with grateful prayers for his good fortune. He often found himself traveling with his employer, but he also requested just as many days to be left in the village to look after things there.
“He didn’t say much to that,” the young man said with a self-conscious smile as he sat at the table while Hilde bustled around, putting together the daily basket of baked goods he purchased from her.
“And it’s as well he shouldn’t!” his friend laughed gaily, pausing in her work to turn around and stretch, placing both hands on the small of her back.
Her bulging stomach always looked too large for her, Trowa thought, and he couldn’t help but chuckle at the sight of the small figure hobbling around and looking very, very pregnant. He, Sally, and Catherine had placed bets on whether or not Duo and Hilde were expecting twins, and they were closely monitoring their friend as she neared the final months of her pregnancy. She no longer traveled around to sell her goods, naturally. That, of course, meant (to her customers’ delight) more time spent on embellishing her treats with more icing or candied fruit or powdered sugar or whatever other additions she deigned to give her offerings.
“I thought that he’d be upset, especially after talking all this time about this client he has in the north,” Trowa replied, standing up when Hilde finally shuffled over to him, beaming as she handed over the basket now packed with the most aromatic bread and cakes.
“Oh, come now,” she chided, elbowing him with a brilliant gleam in her eyes. “He’s a lot more charitable than that, you know. Especially toward newlyweds.”
Trowa colored deeply, and he laughed. “I suppose you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right! I’m always right! Just don’t tell Duo that, though.”
Trowa leaned down and gave his friend a grateful kiss before heading out. It had been a long, tiring day at work, and he was eager to be home, to spend a quiet, restful evening in the arms of his spouse.
He was going to stop by Catherine’s cottage, but he knew that she and her long-suffering suitor would be having a quiet dinner to themselves. She’d warned him as much earlier that day when he stopped by to say hello on his way to work, to which he’d given his own little bit of advice.
“Cathy,” he’d sighed, “whatever you do, be kind to the poor man. He deserves to be canonized at this point for having to wait this long and—well—having to put up with your humor.”
“Go away,” his sister said, snapping a rag at his chest.
Trowa felt himself relax at the sight of his own cottage before him. Tucked away in the outskirts of the village, he and Quatre had chosen this for themselves, desiring nothing else but peace, tranquility, and privacy, especially after what had happened five years ago. A quick glance over the entire area revealed a good deal of work still needed to be done by way of improving the garden and the cottage itself, but Trowa knew that it would be something to which they’d be looking forward. Anything that validated their decision to spend the rest of their lives together had always taken precedence over everything else, and right now, they couldn’t be any happier.
Trowa walked up the still-bare garden path toward the door, the dying sun infusing his home with soft pastels that heralded the quieter evening hours, and he smiled fondly.
And when Quatre stepped out to meet him, looking resplendent and cheerful as he was born to be, Trowa knew that things couldn’t get any better than this. He pulled his husband close for a kiss and a whispered intimacy before walking indoors.
Notes:
In a lot of the demon lore I’ve read, a demon doesn’t have to have a particularly compelling reason for attaching itself to a victim. In the book of Tobit, the demon had fallen in love with Sarah and simply didn’t want to see her with anyone else, hence the deaths of her husbands. The Liderc from Hungary took advantage of lonely women who’d either lost their husbands and lovers or were separated from them for one reason or another. It took the shape of these men in order to seduce its victims, moving on to the next house once its current victim wastes away and dies. The Skoggra from Sweden is a woodland fairy, and it can overpower a man it happens to fancy and cause him to waste away as well.