#heartvu

…

They came knocking on her door, which should have alerted her family that there was something amiss to begin with. There shouldn’t have been anyone for miles. 

She was sitting in her room with her mother when she heard it. 

A grunt. Then a thud. The shuffling of footsteps into their house. “Daddy?” She gasped, as fear shot through her. 

“Stay here. Don’t make a sound,” were her mother’s last words to her before exiting the room. A shriek followed this time, the sound of struggle, then the piercing blood rattling scream of death. That’s when they came for her, when her life changed irreparably. 

The door blew open - their dark faces with frightening expressions looming in front of her. The evil in their eyes, the knife in the man’s hand, dripping on the floor. 

She saw it from behind them- the colour of red pooling on the floor, her mother’s glassy eyes staring back from the middle of it. Her father, crumpled and lifeless on the ground. 

Suddenly, their hands were on her body, bruises fast blooming from where they were grabbing at her. The blade strung against her throat. She remembers her sobs, her struggling; useless tears streaming down her face. She remembers the hopelessness that coursed through her, the definite feeling of anticipating your life being snuffed out. 

Helpless, alone, afraid . Everyone she had ever known, gone in an instant, dead at the hands of these men. 

That’s when he came to her. Not a man, but a menace- a feeling, or a darkness perhaps. More of a shadow than a being. Though her memory is shrouded in terror–  the glimpses of his face, the sharp dagger of his fangs, the intensity and violence in his eyes- the images stayed etched in her mind. 

The way his voice came, rumbling from his chest, into her being, directed at her assailants.  

“ I could smell your sick, twisted thoughts for miles .” 

In retrospect, they felt him before they heard him. (So did she- a feeling that’s stayed in her heart, in her body for years. ) Perhaps it was because she was a child- just a tiny thing- so he appeared larger than life, terrifying to some… But one seldom remembers the terror of their own saviour. 

He loomed over them, tall and dark, their heads barely reaching his chest. That’s all it took for them to drop her weightless body onto the floor, turning to flee for their lives. Her limbs scraped the wood as she clambered into a corner, her breath heavy in her chest, too stunned to properly register the sight that came next. 

They hadn’t gotten far before he reached out his impossibly long arms and grabbed them by their throats, lifting their bodies high off the ground. The sounds of their struggles resounded in the room (and they stayed with her long after), choking under his grasp. 

“ You think of yourselves as predators, do you?” A curl of disgust played out on his lips as he watched them writhe unsympathetically. “... Nothing but animals. ” 

The crackle of their bones was sharp as he snapped their necks in a simple flexure of his wrist. He flung them over into a corner, and she flinched away at the smack of their bodies against the wall. If she felt the red, wet splatters on her skin, she doesn’t remember it. 

“Worthless.” 

He turned to her then, gazing down at her, the green of his eyes piercing into her. She felt a chill run through her body, tensing with fear. 

Then… nothing. 

The next thing she remembers is waking up at dawn on the foot of the shrine, shivering in her nightgown as the maidens ushered her in. 

She felt groggy, pain aching every inch of her bones, eyes disoriented as if they opened again after a lifetime of darkness. Her once warm life with her parents in the woods now nothing but a memory, stolen from her by those invaders, and this new one bestowed by him . He had saved her; a being of another world, terrifyingly beautiful, and made for destruction.

And ever since the morning she’d woken up at the door of the shrine, she’d bound herself to him. 

…

She watches herself in the mirrored walls now- a woman in the place of the girl who was shivering in the corner of that little cabin. Would he recognize her? Would he remember her that distraught, bruised face and see it in her? Had he recognized that it was her who left flowers at the foot of his shrine every morning, the one who whispered his name most reverently every night? 

Her hands clutch at her robes nervously because in all her enthusiasm she hadn’t stopped to consider what he would think. What did he expect from a sacrifice and what would be her fate? But she barely has time to process her thoughts as she feels a sudden shift in the atmosphere. 

Her heart thrums in her chest. Just moments ago the maidens had shut the door behind her, leaving her in this too-dark room. But now it feels darker, the air harsher, a sense of gravity leaving from beneath her feet while a pressure weighs heavily on the rest of her body. 

That is how he finds her, over a decade after saving her from death as a little girl- He sees a young woman in an elaborate robe, incense clinging to her skin, hair pinned back, readied in every way to be his sacrifice. Except for the same haunting grey eyes that he remembers. 

“Demon,” she whispers, “my savior.” 

She keeps her head bowed, not daring to look directly at him. Even from this angle, she can see how enormous he is, nearly double her size, his body taut and rippling with muscle. Her head barely reaches the height of his hip, her body merely the size of one of his legs. 

“You. ” His voice is a thing of darkness and it fills the room, flows around her and makes her shiver. The memories from that night flood through her mind again. She can’t help but look up in the direction of his voice, and the first thing she’s met with is the glow of his eyes, narrowed at her. His jaw is sharp, as deadly as his claws, his expression intense and emotionless all at once. 

She can hardly breathe, adrenaline pumping through her veins now. This is what she begged for, she reminds herself. But that doesn’t stop the fear from overwhelming her senses, freezing and silencing her. 

The demon wraps a hand around her center, picking her up effortlessly from the ground as she gasps in his palm. She must be smaller than she was a moment ago, she thinks. Or maybe he’s grown bigger. She can’t tell. All she knows is that she is in an impossible situation with a being that is not made of the same flesh and blood that she is. 

His eyes scan her, observing her now. As innocent as the day he slaughtered the beasts that came to steal her, and yet… different somehow. Through the thin fabric of her robes, he can see the way her breasts have blossomed, the curve of her hips rounded out, the chub on her cheeks chiselled away to reveal her elegant cheekbones and pointed chin. 

Interesting how humans change with time, he thinks, so different from him as an immortal being. No longer the little lamb he freed that day, but a soft maiden with the face of an angel. A thing too perfect, too young to be a sacrifice. No elder would have freely allowed this, he thinks. 

He recognizes her from all her years of devotion to the shrine. All her whispered prayers to him in the night. The purity of her thoughts. The faithfulness to her religion. She’s innocent and virginal still, it’s in her face, the nervousness radiating off of her- it’s in the way she smells, untouched and pure. 

Well it doesn’t matter what an elder would allow or not; a sacrifice is a sacrifice, a token for consumption. But it’s her soul that stops him. He’s never gone hungry too long, the monsters roaming the earth in human form, reeking of ugliness always kept him full. But she’s nearly flawless, a sharp contrast from the stained souls that he usually devours. …Except, of course, for her beating heart, a squishy, revolting human thing. 

He trails a single claw along her unblemished face, cutting into the skin under her eye, blooming crimson across her porcelain skin. An almost insignificant flaw against her perfection, but it only makes her more appealing in a way. She gasps, shutting her eyes at how the wound stings. 

“Interesting choice for a sacrifice.” He ponders aloud. She meets his gaze again, her lower lip quivering. He looks at her expectantly, and there is so much she hoped to say. How long has she spent dreaming of this moment? Of seeing him again? 

But all she can do now is choke on her own breath, her words coming out in little squeaks and incoherent noises. Obviously trying, and failing, to communicate with him, too frightened to form words. She squeezes her eyes shut, but her body responds to his presence— it is a frightening thing, larger than him or the cold glint in his eyes… It is the energy he commands, his invulnerable aura. 

It amuses him, the way she reacts to him; so delightfully human… so afraid. He grabs at her more tightly, making her whimper and clamp her mouth shut. “Speak, human.” 

She’s breathing heavily, shaking, unsure if her voice still exists but too afraid to ignore his command. 

“D- did you hear my calls for you?” She asks, stuttering, thinking back to all the times throughout her life when she kneeled by the window toward the nothingness of the night, praying to him to come back to her. Never once had she gotten a response. Instead, she kept busy by reading through the scriptures of his origin and the accounts of his time on Earth. From what she’s learned, he feeds on the souls of only the darkest and most vile humans. But the viciousness and brutality through which he does so leaves terror trailing behind his scenes. 

“... I heard them.” He answers, without apology. 

“And you never came back for me.” She whispers, tears beading along the corners of her eyes. He dismisses her so casually, as if it all meant nothing to him. Even now as she stands before him, ready to give up everything to be near him, she means nothing. “ Why? ” She despairs.

“I do not answer the beck and call of your kind, human.” It irritates him that she even expected it. “ I am not your savior.”

“ B-but Demon,”- 

“Do you know what they call me?” He asks, a curious glimmer in his eyes.

Her teeth dig into her lower lip. “Y-you’re the mightiest, most indestructible,”- 

“... My name, ” he snaps, “Surely you would have learnt that through your years of devotion.” 

She racks her brain for it- he’s been called so many things, a beast, a monster, a titan, a vile creature. But none of them were true. “A-attack demon,” she hiccups, crushed by the callousness in his gaze and overwhelmed by the mix of reverence and fear. 

He hums, the slightest hint of approval in his tone. “ The demon of demons … A beast that devours flesh,”  he murmurs.

“No,” she cries, her impassioned voice finally rearing its head at his insulting insinuation. “A beast would never have saved me.” She looks at him with reverence. “You gave me my life that night. And now I am here to give it back to you.” To devote herself to him. To be back by his side. 

“You want to give yourself to me? ” His voice slithers over her like a sinful creature, a hint of mirth shaping the edges. She nods, innocently, trying to still her trembling. As amusing as her dedication is, her ignorance and naivete are beginning to annoy him. Irritation laces his fingertips as his grip turns crushing around her narrow waist. “...And do you know what that means?” 

The displeasure stings, fresh tears spilling from her eyes. She’d done everything right , devoted her life to prayer, to him, studied all the myths, begged to be his, even dressed up the way she was told would please him. Yet, he seemed sickened by the mere sight of her. An ache travels through her, a desperate need to please him, to repay him. 

“...That I will serve you. Only you. For the rest of my life.”

His mouth wraps in a smile again, a beautiful sardonic thing, mocking her. “Serve me?” 

He drops her to the floor, and she collapses onto the ground below him. She pushes herself up and watches as his body shrinks, just slightly, still impossibly large, but now into a form more of a titan than an otherworldly being. 

There’s a flash of movement, too quick for her to comprehend. She hears the rip of her garments, her robes disintegrating under his hands, the cold air slapping against her bare, exposed skin.

“You think you have what it takes to serve me?” 

She shudders, more at the detachment in his gaze than anything else. She’s on her hands before him now, naked, showing more to him than any other has ever seen of her. 

His eyes scan the length of her body, and his rough, clawed hand reaches out to curve around her left breast. His long nail scrapes her delicate skin as he squeezes her roughly. She lets out a whimper. “What if it’s your body that I want?” 

He pins her to the ground, and she winces as her naked chest slams painfully against the floor, her knees digging into the cold ground, his palms heavy around her hands as he holds her down. 

“What if I want what’s between your legs?” His voice is rich, deep, and it seeps into her bones and causes an unfamiliar heat within. “From the back like this?” He asks, and she can feel the pressure of him on her bottom, her skin hot and heavy, where she has never felt another. “Or on your knees?” 

His hand curves around her neck, pushing her deeper into the floor as he looms over her on all fours, like an animal, grip tight enough to make her gasp for her next breath. 

“What if I want to taste you?” His pointed tongue licks out at her cheek, flicking over the blood beading on her face from where he cut her earlier. Tears trail down the same path, mixing with the crimson. It tastes sweeter this way, he thinks, unbidden, as he hears her hiccup, delicate sniffles escaping her small body. 

Still, she nods for him. “I’m yours,” she responds, barely a sound.  

It’s obeisance he hasn’t seen before, a submission that isn’t borne from fear but something that smells far more alluring. It enrages himself as much as it tempts him. Lips brushing against her ear, he grumbles, “And what if I want to ruin you?” 

She shuts her eyes, shaking softly at the vehemence of his words. She’d lived a sheltered life, and these concepts are foreign to her. But when he says the words she can almost feel what he means, a desperate aching shame wash over her body. His voice is a deep, terrifying rumble, but it makes her hot, fills her with a new dimension of desire, something horrible and unholy. 

So in spite of her fear, in spite of her trepidation, she follows the dark longing inside of her, a darkness that has belonged to him since he saved her,