L U S T
Maria had always had a weakness for fine linens. It’s not like Hell cared if you slept well or not. It was something she always admired the humans, the ways they could be stupid enough to sit around and think of things like fine linens. If they even understood a fraction of what the world around them really was, they wouldn’t be able to keep their teeth from chattering long enough to keep a thought from shaking out their skull. The silken sheets caressed her naked skin like lovers kisses, sensual and soft. Her hand maiden stood in the corner, hands tucked behind her back as she watched Ria with an expression of awe.
Maria smiled, “Why do you hide in the corner, come - sit with me. Have you ever felt sheets this soft before?” Her Italian was flawless, the girl blinking in surprise. “Oh, so because I am fucking a Spanish Commander I can’t speak Italian?”
The girl’s face twisted in fear that she had offended the Lady, offering her hands up as she stepped forward to speak. “N-no. Of course not...I guess I just don’t understand why you kept me alive.”
“Oh, you young thing. Come - please, sit with me.” Maria sat upright, patting the bed beside her. The girl blinked, like she was trying to remember something she had forgotten. Suddenly her unease slipped away, the adoration returning to her eyes as they beheld Maria. The girl sat beside Maria, giggling from being so close to her. Maria reached to tuck a stray hair behind the girls ear, caressing her cheek as she withdrew her hand. “I chose to keep you because you are beautiful, and I am tired of fucking the same person every night. I would kill him, but he still holds use to me - so instead I plan on fucking you while we finish this war.”
If the girl was surprised by Maria’s frankness she gave no indication, melting like a candle beneath her touch. Maria smiled, looking down at the girl with a hunger in her eyes. There was nothing more intoxicating than the gaze of a lover, especially a new one. She lowered her lips, the girl struggling to steady her breath. Maria roughly grabbed her chin, pulling the girl’s lips to her own. The girl was powerless to her influence, lust flooding her senses. Maria smiled, smelling the girls lust swell from inside her.
Then the screams began.
Ripping through the castle like sirens of death one right after another, Maria recognized the sound. It was the cacophony of a savage massacre. Tossing aside the handmaiden, Maria grabbed her dress that had been lain across the chaise lounge. Wrapping it around herself as she walked, the door opened before she could reach it - her Spanish lover tumbling through it. Horror struck his expression, eyes wide from what he’d witnessed.
“My love, what is it? Are you alright?” Maria said as she went to him, wrapping an arm around him to help lead him to a chair. Her touch seemed to revitalized him, the shock dissipating as the look of awe overcame him.
“Mi amante - you’re safe. Thank God, I don’t know what I would have done if something had happened to you.” He spoke, Maria resisting to roll her eyes. Honestly you hear it enough times when you’re an immortal being, it does become tiresome at times. Maria smiled, stroking his face gently.
“Tell me, what did you see?” Maria asked again.
Lux was very bored.
Sometime ago, he’d finished off the current morsel of human he’d been using to relieve some… tension, when he realized Ria had been gone well over her allotted ‘alone time’. She was currently transfixed when some ass hat Spanish war mongrel and he simply had no idea why. The thing wasn’t unattractive, or at least it upheld a certain amount of charm that Lux required from humans. What he couldn’t understand is why Ria would want to leave their home to fornicate with a human multiple times.
He should be used to it by now, being left alone in her depressing castle with only humans to keep him company. He was currently on the outs with Wrath, or he’d have a hand clenched around his heart and a cock up his ass by now. And he supposed Sloth was around…
But really, Lux wanted Ria. His other half, the color to his shade, the white to his black. And he knew her favorite way for him to introduce himself to her conquests.
A Spanish Commander, that was really all he knew. Some human in a fancy hat that was allowed to call the shots because of it. Lux wasted no time slipping into a local tavern- one of those places covered in human vomit, blood, and cum. Disgusting, but in a sort of beautiful, tantalizing way that had him coming again and again. The humans that frequented these sorts of places were always hungry for whatever he would give them, so they tended to be the places that he want to for information.
All it really took was one blow job to get the information. One blow job… and the heart of the human that received it. There was no way he was going to allow that disgustingly portly man to walk away with tales of his tongue and throat skills.
The castle was gaudy- in the sort of way that Ria would have loved. He wanted to vomit at the site of its tall turrets and lavishly ornamented windows. Spacious, bright, and disgustingly open.
As he walked up the long drive dotted with colorful rose bushes and ornaments, Baphet lingered out from his inked tattoos and slipped into goat form beside him. Lux ran a finger along the goats horns, the inky black of their forms silhouettes in the fire light of the road.
“I’d like to carnage the whole place. Flip it upside down and shake it till she appears” The goat was apart of him, but Lux loved the purr of his own voice on a dark night. Baphet didn’t respond, though Lux did feel a little tingling of excitement for the enjoyment yet to come.
He knocked at the front door. Assuming Ria had been here for the whole time she’d been gone, the cast of humans at her beck and call would be well trained by now. A stuttering candlelight filled the adjacent windows as someone ran to answer.
The man was tall, slim, and lacking in any sort of backbone. He quivered as he opened the door, his body looking like it would blow away at the wind that rushed in.
“Can we help you sir?” His voice even quivered, the miserable thing. The human risked a glanced away from Lux’s own to stare in horror down as Baph. Luc would never understand why his goat got more attention than him, surely he was the one to fear?
So Lux coughed, clearing his throat, and earned the attention of the man yet again. This time his eyes were vacant black pits, devoid of any humanoid features.
“I am looking for my sister”
Ten minutes later, Lux sat atop the grand piano in the parlor room. The door man lay on the floor below, his genitalia shoved up inside his mouth as he bled out. Lux was surprised he was still alive, but then human did have a knack for taking longer to finish off then they needed to. The maid who had run out at the sound of the mans scream was currently laying across his lap, dress streaked in blood and chest heaving. She looked almost pretty against the black of the grand piano, her pale skin sweating already from fear.
“I think if you stay quiet, it’ll all be okay” He murmured at her as he gazed into her eyes, his own having returned to their icy blue, “I really only get angry when people look away from me. So just stay here and keep looking at me like that darling”
Baph had slipped back into his arm as they’d entered the house, not one to be interested in human lavishments. Lux was slightly confused that no one else had come looking for them, what if a man dying with his cock in his mouth on the ground and a petrified girl in his lap, but humans always seemed to be disappointing him these days. And also, Ria was probably off putting on some show for the house.
He got what he wanted, a few minutes later, as some man came walking- then running- through the parlor. Yelling and screaming, causing a loud fuss. The good girl on Lux’s lap never moved her eyes, though he began wailing more. It was Ria’s man, the Spanish oaf she was captivated with at the moment. He was screaming at Lux about the blood, the now dead man on the ground, the girl…
“I am looking for my sister” Lux held his gaze as he moved the girl and hopped from the piano, “I believe you are the one she is fucking?”
Lux always found that Ria’s hold held on a bit longer, like she clung to them even when she wasn’t present. This man wanted to protect her still, deny her presence… but Lux was slipping closer to him and had a good hold of his mind now.
He slipped a hand up the commanders night shirt, slipping between the loose ruffles to his bare chest, “I think we should put on a bit of a show for our darling girl, don’t you agree?”. Lux ran his other hand up the mans arm and over his waste, lingering on hip bones, “I think, young make a pretty mural on this walls, or an ornament for the dining table…”
He slipped a hand lower, grabbing the man's soft cock through his trousers and rolling it slightly, “We could mount this somewhere for her to find, somewhere shed recognize it easily. Or possibly just leave it on her bedside table?” The spanish man’s breath hitched in fear, but he made no move to break Lux’s hold on him. Humans easy, broken little things.
Just as Lux was about to slip his hand under the cloth, something hard banged against his back and pushed him forward. He started- not from pain, but confusion- and released his mental hold on Ria’s lover. Behind him, the pliant girl from earlier wielded a candlestick pathetically.
“Oh, no. That was a bad move darling” Baph shifted out of Lux’s skin in a flourish on inky black fur, melding himself over Lux’s pale skin and shifting them easily into a tall form of nightmares. He towered over the courageous girl, goat horns curling towards her nostrils flaring. Her scream was cut short as he laid his power down upon her, ripping her body apart in moments.
It was only after that Lux realized Ria’s human had run off as soon as he’d been freed.
Ria didn’t have to look hard to find Lux, she just had to follow the screams and carnage. He always loved breaking her things, it was a fixation. An obsession really, a compulsive need to ruin anything she might love so he would be the only thing left. She found him standing over freshly gutted body with his back turned to her, Baph beside him with his horns glistening from the blood that painted them. The thread between them intensified, like a magnetic force that pulled one to the other. She watched as his shoulders settle in recognition of his presence, crossing her arms across her torso as she spoke.
“Well done, you’ve managed to overpower mindless beings who don’t have a fraction of your strength while simultaneously ruining the first castle with decent linens that I’ve found in months. What am I supposed to do? Steal the sheets like some chambermaid? You honestly find every opportunity to ruin a good thing, don’t you?” She sounded like a bratty older sister reprimanding her sibling for rummaging in her room. “What do you want?”
The thing on the ground withered pathetically, still alive despite the monumental amount of red pouring out of it. Lux perked up at the sound of his sisters voice, his head and Baphs twisted at the same time to look at their other half.
“Ria” He cooed softly, smiling dazzling white teeth slick with blood, “I miss you. That is all”
Ria offered no reaction to Lux, rather looking at the slaughter that surrounded them with disgust. “No, you wanted to ruin things for me so you could have my attention all to yourself. Don’t you have better things to occupy yourself with? What about that angry fellow you fancy so much?”
Lux hummed as he walked towards her, Baph slipping back into the tattoos on his forearms liky inky tendrels, “Apparently I am dead to him, or whatever. Ira has no goddamn patience when it comes to seduction techniques. Either way, you’ve been gone months and haven’t even visited once. You are supposed to check on family, not leave them for half wit humans to get your rocks off.”
Ria rolled her eyes, slinking across the blood stained hall until she reached her brother. Her lips sneered as she spoke, running a finger along Lux’s jawline turning his chin so he faced her squarely. Ria’s voice was low and careful, like she was biting back venom as she spoke. “And this is how you retaliate? Storming the castle and ruining my things. Write a letter. Send a messenger. Something in between nothing and a massacre.”
Lux rolled his eyes, allowing her to take his head and even leaning into it slightly, “The door man was rude to me. Then your ‘man’ decided to run away when the possibly only interesting thing in this castle hit me with a candle stick. So I decided that they all needed to go, including your Commander. He’s a pathetic little thing though so I’ll be doing you a favor. We can find you something with a straighter backbone in Italy.”
“When will you understand, sweet brother.” Ria’s voice sang sweetly, looking into his frosted eyes with soft affection. In an instant, her fingers went from along his jaw to wrapped around his pretty little neck. Ria squeezed, tilting her head as she watched his flesh pucker beneath her touch. Not that it would really hurt him - as much as she might like it to. “You do not call the shots, not anymore.”
Her lips lowered to his ear, breath heavy on his skin when she spoke. “I do.”
The smirk that spread across his face pulled his skin against hers, their temperature equally cool against each other. He slowly let out a moan, tilting his neck back so that her hand put more pressure on his jugular, “you only get to call the shots if you’re around, sister. Give me more attention and I’ll listen to you more”
Ria resisted the urge to rip out his jugular then and there, she’d just be the one to have to clean him up after. She released him as she twisted her face in disgust at his gleeful perverse indulgence. There was no sense in hurting him, he only seemed to like it. Looking over the macabre scene around them Ria sighed with exasperation.
“I mean honestly Lux, you’re a fucking child.” Her voice sounded as if she might cry, her fingers running over the blood splattered decor. In the momentary silence she heard a muffled breath hiding just around the corner. She appeared at the end of the hall in an instant, reaching into the velvet curtains to pull out her sniveling excuse for a lover for the last several months. His eyes widened with horror, Ria clucking her tongue as she secured her grip around his neck with one hand, gently caressing his cheek with the other. “You are right about one thing, however.”
She threw the man to Lux’s feet. “I’ll need something with a straighter back bone. This ones grown to bore me.”
Lux looked down at the trash deposited at his feet, the humans vexatious sobs sitting his last nerve alit. He crouched, long legs folding until he could look the thing in the eye.
“Commander?” The snivelling stopped for a moment, bleary human eyes struggling to hold his own demonic goat ones, “I suggest you shut the fuck up” Lux stabbed elongated nails into the back of the mans neck, peircing into his flesh as he instantly irrerupted in screams. He ripped deep enough to grab spine, wiggling and digging his nails deeper till he could fully grip the column properly. The commander was nothing more than a gurgling pile of pleas as Lux braced his other arm on the Commanders shoulder and used the leverage to rip the mans spine out of his back.
“For you, sister. I promise you a better specimen someday."
Some 200 Hundred years later. New York City, New York. The Golden Palace
Lux enjoyed coming to the Golden Palace for three reasons; usually, Ava or Ira were down for a fast fuck before he went home, it was easy to find some sniveling human to quell his need for punishment, and the place was a beckon to the underwolf of New York.
Everyone that came into Ava’s club was either sinning or soon-to-sin. Liquored or drugged up, lost in the lust of wealth, diamonds, and fancy leather. The music blared out their inner thoughts, their mortal brains seemed to shut down for a moment and completely move on the drive of need. Lux could actually stand them like this, mindless cattle to what they desired. He appreciated seeing humans as they should have been- before some fucker decided that morality and good vs. evil had a place in the worthless brain of a hairless ape.
He swirled his empty drink, the ice lubricating the sides of the cup and reminding him how hot is was in here. The smell of sweat and cologne mixed in the air above the writhing pile of bodies below, the crowd transfixed to the music as they jirated against each other. He liked to watch- especially from the balcony above, they all seemed like a hive mind to lust. Beautiful, even, if you ignored their mortality. Sometimes Lux wished he could just punish them all to continue like this for the rest of eternity (though he wasn’t so sure that was a punishment at all).
Ria wasn’t here yet, that was for sure. Lux had a vague sense of where she was at all times- a good and bad things for them both. He wasn’t sure if any of the others had arrived either- Ava for sure, though he wouldn’t be found until most of the mass of humans at left. Ira…. was probably pissed at him again and needed to lick the many wounds Lux had left after their last hate fuck. He left his eyes sift over the crowd, trying to focus on more of the sins then humans- since Ira was ignoring him and Ava was busy, Lux felt like digging his nails into Prides back tonight. Perry was as elusive as he was powerful, two qualities that made him that much more appetizing. Though Lux was required to punish humans, he never wanted to spend more than the allotted hour of time with them. A Sin was a much better fuck then anything a mortal could offer up.
The hypnotic dark synthetic chords pulsated throughout the dance floor, their bodies moving as one - a living organism in itself. Ria could smell their carnal desires from the moment her chaffeur stopped in front of the club. All of them ...they wanted to be touched, to be felt, to be desired. Their neediness was like an aphrodisiac for Ria. The only thing she ever wanted was to be adored and worshipped surrounded by luxury. No better place to find those things than in The Golden Palace.
The chauffeur rounded to her side of the bentley, bowing slightly as he opened the door. One red bottomed heel stepped out, just her ankle exposed and already turning heads. It was compulsive, Ria could turn off her beguiling aura but why would she? She loved the looks. Her features were stunning, her hair mesmerizing - the dullards standing outside waiting for a chance to get inside were putty in her hands. Sometimes it felt a little cheap, poor things didn’t know any better.
Ria gave a little wave with a winning smile, people snapping pictures on their phone like she was some celebrity. The chauffeur gave the keys to the valet, taking his place behind Ria as her security detail. Ria always liked having some big lug around to handle the weaker mortals. She didn’t have the patience to hold back her strength when they behaved like such children. Glancing back over her shoulder to him she smiled, “Try to keep up, love.”
The doors were opened for her without hesitation, they all knew better than to question Ria. She entered the club like she owned it, one hand on her hips as they sashayed toward the heart of the crowd. Mortals parted around her, those caught in her pull finding themselves fixated on her beauty. Any other night Ria might have indulged one of them, but tonight she came for one reason only.
Stopping in the middle of the dance floor Ria lifting her gaze to the balcony overlooking the grand ballroom. She knew he was there before she even saw him, no matter the time or distance Lux would always be there. His lips were curled into an expression of amusement, drink in hand and having a good time. How easy it must be to have such simple desires….
Ria glanced around for the other sins, surely if the rest of them were here, Inividia wouldn’t be far behind. Petty thing couldn't stand to be left out. Ava was bound to be around somewhere, which meant Acedia would be close as well. Not that Ria usually seeked out her fellow Princes of Hell. In fact, she made it her mission to avoid them - well, most of them. However Belial’s death had Ria in a friendlier state than usual. So far the only one she saw was her darling brother, so he’d have to do for now.
“This all seems rather tame for your taste.” She said once she reached him, stiff martini in hand.
Lux huffed at his sister, used to her usual grand entrances and extravagance. Some days he indulged, some days he ripped it all to shreds to watch her scream. For now he’d let her have her pretty things without staining them red.
“I was just enjoying the view, picking out tonight's meal, waiting for some real entertainment to show up. Seems I got here…early” He sneered, setting down his empty glance on a passing waiters tray and snapping at it to indicate another, “We seem to be the only Sin interesting in keeping up our patrons.”
Ria gave a petty smile, turning into her glass to face the mortals dancing below. If any sin was ruling the club tonight it was them, the room was thick with lust. Swirling the last of her drink before the waiter Lux barked at as an indication to bring her another as well. Ria leaned against the railing, grinning with mild contempt. “Getting all fussy waiting for one of your vile lovers to appear? Tsk, tsk forlorn does not become you brother.”
“They are vile aren’t they...” He leaned in next to her, shoulders brushing as he looked down at his previous view, “But it's either them or the humans- and I firmly believe a sin is the better of the two. Who did you come with tonight? Any pimped out millionaire I need to be made aware of?”
Ria laughed, “Oh, am I to be making you aware of any millionaires I plan to be bedding?”
The waiter returned with their drinks, Ria taking both and closing the distance between her and Lux. Pushing the glass into his hand gently as a peace offering, Ria rested her head on Lux’s shoulder with gentle affection. “Come now, Lux. Let’s not argue.”
Lux snorted but accepted the drink, letting her lean on him as he sipped the whiskey and stared down at the crowd, “No arguing then, fine. How about a little…” He trailed off and waggled his fingers at the crowd, “Showmanship? Let the others know who really controls a crowd like this?”
A wicked smile split across Ria’s lips, playfully smacking Lux’s chest.
“You are an absolute scoundrel, you know that? The most vile.” She paused before widening her smile, thrumming her fingers across his sternum. “But I suppose had we not done Lucy’s work back in the 19th century, who knows if bohemianism would have ever occurred. I couldn’t possibly say no to inciting what could very well be the next big movement for art and culture itself.”
“You never know, this could be the dawning of the new DaDa movement” His grinned matched hers, though with a tad more ferocity. Lust didn’t often work together- too wrapped up in fighting or fucking, sometimes both. But every so often, stars aligned that they were both bored and calm enough to work their fantastic powers together. Those moments were usually at the forefront of something big. The Renaissance- for instance- hadn’t figured out the proper proportions of a dick before Lux and Ria had decided to vacation in Italy for a few years in the 15th century. Instead of sharing a home like they normally did and tearing each other apart, they’d both taken opposite sides of the city and awakened the passions of a few select humans. Those humans finally figured out how to draw a pair of breasts to the accurate size and stopped putting adult looking babies in all their paintings. Lux was pretty sure they had saved art all together.
Ria ran her fingers through Lux’s hair sweetly before twining her fingers through his turning to mortals below. Leaning into Lux as she threw back her martini in one long drink, Ria made eye contact with the help who remained frozen in fear and awe around them. She gave one a cheeky little wink before holding out her empty glasses, not bothering to look if someone grabbed it before she let go. Two dived from across the room, colliding into one another but somehow still catching her glass. A giggle bubbled out of Ria, her face lit up with utter delight. “If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be. - Marquis De Sade.”
She waved her free hand at her brother, wriggling her fingers with anticipation. “Truly, the French really get us.”
Lux laughed delightedly, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulled her attention back towards the dancing bodies below, “So, then, shall we?”
Without waiting for her reply, Lux tugged her towards the staircase and descended into the bodies below. Though the air above had been hot, sweaty, and full of the restrained smell of human desire, the air down here was tenfold. He inhaled, sucking in the sin like a drug and let loose a hysterical laugh. “Oh, fuck. I am feeling this Ria. Come, let's make every single one of these apes screw like animals right here.”
Ria could feel the yearning of those around her, their carnal desires thick around them. It was intoxicating, their thirst intoxicating. Her hands ran over the fabric covering Lux’s chest, “You always know how to bring out the devil inside, don’t you?”
A slender hand snaked around his neck, Ria rolling her torso as she threw her hair back over her shoulder. Pulsating technicolor lights danced across her skin, eyes glittering with excitement. The chord that bound them hummed pleasantly. Lux and Ria could fight each other all they wanted but there was no truer bliss than the pure uncut lust. Their touch sent ripples throughout the room, the bodies around them suddenly moving with a savage passion.
As her hips wound the room pulsated to their movement, hands reaching for somebody - anybody. The design of their amulet was more than just symbolism. Limbs folded over one another, the humans writhing against each other. Center of it all was Lust incarnate. Ria raised her arms over her head, exhaling slowly as she traced her hands along her figure. Their pheromones were sweeter than any flower, more intoxicating than any drug. It was euphoria.
Anyone worth a damn in that club tonight would know the second they walked into the building, Lust reigned tonight.
P R I D E
You can take them apart and put them back together however you want. That’s what Perry liked about humans, he decided, bending down over a four foot glass table and coming up not nearly as numb as the creatures he’d brought back to his space. Then again, he thinks, they’re also entirely too simple. Evident in the way he gives them all the intrinsic motivation and self confidence in the world and they still manage to do absolutely nothing worthy of his interest. Lord knows Perry had enough blow, sex, and liquor to last a lifetime and really only his siblings did that right.
Still, that small caveat aside, he couldn’t pass up an opportunity. Predictable or otherwise. Perry enjoyed the humans as much as a demon actually could and figured a moment of blissful arrogance was more than an even trade for their bodies. Hell, the blonde piece in his room upstairs was just on his dick a few minutes ago; working, sucking, didn’t know a thing about what he was and didn’t care so long as she could just take it. He liked that about humans, too. How even in this world full of right and wrong and morality, at their core, they were sickeningly malleable and therefore useful. You just had to do a little digging and find out what they wanted.
The man splayed out on Perry’s kitchen floor wanted success. Fame. Money. But more than that, he wanted to be somebody, which made it entirely too easy for Perry to dig his heels in and sway them into coming back to his place with honey laced words and a little flex of his power. The mortal man’s aspirations of superiority over other humans made little to no sense in the grand scheme of things. After all, the queen ant was still an ant regardless of her status or size. Destined to be squished under the foot of something larger. However, the fun wasn’t in dissecting their lives or their motives; Perry had long since given up on that. He just took what they had to give him and adjusted accordingly. Simple.
Usually.
“It’s your face,” Perry grins between sips, “that’s what got me.” Warm satisfaction seeped through every part of him, eyes witch bright and stuck on his male guest. Beaming with a roguish kind of excitement that had him wound tight and ready to split at the seams. When he finally makes it to the kitchen he sinks down onto the floor so they’re both on the same level. The drink in his glass sloshes over the edge when he leans back against the kitchen island and makes a motion to emphasize his point. “And your shoulders. It’s like you were bred for war or something… cannon fodder, ” he snaps, “that’s the word. Or maybe not. I never got involved in the technical aspects of war, just inflated some egos and dipped, you know?”
The man, some amateur boxer, doesn’t respond, only lays on the floor and hitches from the effort of breathing. The lull in conversation is filled by the sound of his gurgling. Soft sounds. Like that small noise in the back of a room that everyone forgot about. The deliberate undoing of something once done. Perry just pulls one knee up and folds both arms across it to rest his chin, his watch glinting almost mockingly against the kitchen lights. Minutes removed from rattling off of the man’s jaw like a second set of teeth. A sign of seriousness always lost on Perry’s guise of honest pretense.
“Impeccable breeding,” Perry barely breathes, visually pleased but slightly dejected nonetheless, “and i spilled it all over my damn floors.” He hadn’t intended to incapacitate the man this early and starts to wonder if he’d just wasted an opportunity to add another piece to his collection. Pinned and prone against the floor, the man’s plasma and viscera stained the walls like a bootleg Seurat piece. Perry can’t see the guy’s face very well from the way he’s got it turned, but has the perfect view of the wound on his neck and the way it spills like an opened aorta, pooling and spreading in any and every direction, bringing the thick aroma of meat and nickel with it. The rise and fall of his chest going from frantic to slow to nonexistent.
No, Perry decides, he’ll just fix him up and put him in the back with the lesser specimens in his possession. Plus he’d already taken a liking to this one; Andrew? Anton? An- something or the other. He had the physical proportions of a god and eyes black enough to swallow light. More importantly, though, Perry liked that sharp feeling he got in his chest whenever a mortal felt good about themselves. Felt pride in something. A threat if Perry had ever heard of one; the only thing better than winding them up was the way his mind went all fuzzy at the thought of tearing them back down. He’d gotten into this man’s head like a parasite. A disease. Lodged in his body. Rough hands pushing and tearing through him until they came out on the other side with his feeble heart in a closed fist. The best part was that they’d always let Perry into their minds even without his powers of suggestion. Always welcoming his presence and confusing his work with something great within themselves; led astray by their desire to be free of the constraints of this world; to think of themselves as something bigger, faster, stronger. Better. As if better was even on the table for them. Perry was better. They were just there.
In any case, he’d given the man a reprieve from the world in the form of underserved superiority and it was time to collect.
The woman upstairs was a different matter. Perry had thought about keeping her around if she could learn to relax her throat and make a little eye contact. Which was probably a losing battle once he thought about it. Spending so much time around demons had kinda skewed his image of humans, knowing objectively that a mouth was a mouth while also living with the fact that nothing really compared to Ira’s unbridled violence, Lux’s bottomless depravity, Ria’s vicious kind of beauty, or any of the demons, honestly. She was pretty, though, he’d give her that. Pale and mossy eyed like a doe. She would’ve been a nice pet to keep around if he didn’t value his personal space so much, or the silence that comes with blunt force trauma.
The air is different upstairs, like a vacuum. Thick. Sweaty. A fatalistic mix of smoke and mischief clinging sticky-sweet to immortal esophageal, but Perry takes it in all the same. On the bed her pastels cut like a scythe through his opioid aesthetic and he kind of hates it. She’s the only accent of color in the sea of greys turning into the deepest blacks, offset against the white-hot glow of the tv on mute and silken sheets the same charcoal hue he’d seamlessly adopted. When she shifts the rosy tint to her cheek almost stirs something warm inside him.
Almost.
“Hey,” she grins, popping up from the bed. She hadn’t bothered to get dressed the entire time Perry was gone. Just saunters towards him, voice soft with stupidity when she asks, “where’s Anthony?”
“That’s his fucking name.”
“I – yeah, where’s he at?”
“Downstairs, hanging out,” Perry replies without missing a beat, watches the way the apprehension in her stance lessons when he adds, “waiting for you, obviously. I'm gonna hop in the shower real quick-”
“Oh, god,” she breathes, not quite proud but definitely miles from ashamed. Almost relieved when she folds her arms across her chest and stares up at him, wondering, “he really had no idea, huh? He’s kinda insecure underneath it all; he’d fuck you up if he knew what was taking us so long up here.”
The guy had found out, which was a small part of the reason as to why he was currently laying in a puddle on Perry’s kitchen floor, but the ins-and-outs didn’t really matter. Nothing a jacket and a quick trip to the sink couldn’t cover up.
“I kinda wanted him to see us, though,” she purrs, the expression in her soft eyes conveying nothing but an eagerness to sin, “i want him to walk up here and get mad and break all this nice stuff.”
Perry snorts. “You wanted him to walk?”
“It’d be so sexy,” she says, extending an arm out for him to pull her closer. Perry could’ve buried his fingers between her second and third ribs, watched her mouth curve around broken syllables as the sound was left raw and untouched and pooling in the bottom of her lungs. Instead he reaches out and lets his hand drift against her skin for a second. Trails up her neck until his knuckles press against her chin, stepping closer and easing her head up. Her skin’s still warm from the water. Tender and grossly compliant in his hand as competing desires simmered underneath their collective gazes and his own mouth curls up into a perverse smirk.
“You sure you don’t wanna get dressed?” Perry challenges, “he’s not gonna be distracted forever. Soon he’s gonna come up here looking for you and see you like this.”
She doesn’t say anything. Just rises up on her toes to kiss him and Perry reciprocates with equal parts hunger and amusement, at an impasse as to whether he wanted her or the dead thing downstairs. Perry supposes he could take her now. Her breaths are starting to come out ragged. Back arching with encouragement. He could grab a fistfull of her hair and put her on her knees in a second, forehead to the ground in mock repentance, that silver necklace twisting and bouncing off her chest with every thrust of his hips. He doesn’t even realise his nails are digging hard enough to leave cuts until she eases back for a second, prying him off.
“You know your neck is wet?” she says, looking down at her fingertips before craning her neck around to get a better look at his own. Perry reaches around and slides an open palm against the skin on the back of his neck, feigns polite surprise when it comes back slightly red stained. Her eyes widen in an instant. “Oh my god, are you bleeding?”
“That’s what stops you? Seriously.”
“Shut up,” she huffs, grabbing his shoulder and turning him around. It only takes her a second to realise it’s not his own. There’s no cut or scratch, and she mulls it over in silence for a moment, wondering whether it was Perry or her own eyes deceiving her. He really should’ve taken that shower first.
She’s lost some of the edge to her spine when she looks him over and asks, “are you alright?”
“I’m great.”
“Then why would that be there?”
“Does it matter?” Perry asks honestly, curiously. He could lie, but she feels different now. Not the vibrant, hot energy from before, eager to forget any and everything except the feel of his body against hers. She looks like she woke up in a new city with no recollection of how she got there. Slightly shrunken. Mouth open. Just looking at him. Her self assuredness slides away like sand in his palms and he doesn’t hide the smirk that forms.
“Alright, fine, i’m not playing this game tonight,” she decides, turning away on a dime and collecting her clothes off the floor in a flurry of growing frustration. “I’m leaving.”
“That’s fine. Do you.”
That one must’ve caught her off guard from the way she whirls around, “at least acknowledge that that’s weird.”
“What’s weird?”
“The blood on your neck that you claim ‘doesn’t matter’. If it doesn’t matter then what happened? Why is it there?”
“I think what I do on my own time is my business,” Perry barely gets the words out before her incredulous expression breaks through his act and he just has to laugh. “Look, hey,” he says, reaching for her only to have her swerve away. “You’re concerned about the wrong thing, honestly.”
“Just don’t say anything else, okay? I am not the issue,” she starts before taking a breath and dropping the sentence. He can tell she wants to say more, ask him something, but the lack of information keeps her focused on dressing herself instead of chewing him out. Which only makes Perry more interested. The seed of doubt was always the first step to breaking humans down. Spiritually, anyway.
She gets dressed and pushes past him without a word, looking back in thought only to catch herself and grumble under her breath. He can hear her heels clicking. Can tell she’s taking the steps two at a time as she goes down the stairs. “Can I say something?” he calls, and her resounding no echoes through the halls.
“Well since you can’t silence me in my own home,” Perry echoes back, louder, sliding his hand along the railing as he trails after her from a respectable distance, “I just wanted to ask that you not mess with anything in the kitchen.”
“Like I give a fuck about your kitchen, you weirdo.” (Which is a lie, because she complimented it several times before Anthony got distracted by a phone call and left them alone to be homewreckers and harlots.)
“I’m just saying, you seem upset is all, so don’t take it out on my things,” Perry clarifies, cheeks sore from the smile on his face. He can hear her shouting for Anthony to hurry up and come on so they could leave and it’s not until she pulls her phone out and threatens to call the cops that he sighs and decides intervene. Dissatisfaction washes over him like a wave. The constant disappointment in humans and their repetitive behaviors and their limited capabilities. She could have offered him a challenge. Instead her face shifts from confusion to anger to fear and back again, desperately trying to process the crime scene in front of her and choose the right course of action. To flee or to fight, to help or to harm. And in the seconds it takes her to hesitate Perry’s already there, crossing the space between them in barely two strides and holding her firmly against the nearest wall, not hard enough to harm but enough to make her anguished struggles irrelevant.
He hates them because he can qualify them. Measure them. In the midst of their passion, their flaws and their vices, humans were still an empty shell waiting for his power to fill them up with something worth living for. He’d crushed them under his foot for ages. Hoping. Pining. For one of them to compare to his fevered savagery – not just leech off of it – and none had come close. None had even tried. None of them could.
A fucking waste.
“Always so eager to call the police. Where’s your sense of pride?” Perry wonders out loud, perhaps a little too seriously. She orders him to let her go and he justs places a hand over her mouth, smile bordering on lazy when he leans in close enough to bump noses.
“Let’s ignore the fact that i’ve never looked over my shoulder for any human, just for a second,” he says, humored by her sheer audacity, “Every day you wake up and look in the mirror without gagging at the sight of yourself is a gift from me. The only reason you even see yourself as worthy enough to struggle right now is because i haven’t completely lost interest in you.”
“That being said,” he continues, “Call the police. Who would listen, huh? Tell me who would believe you,” The words tumble out in a warm purr, so many things hidden under the mask of calmness, spurred on by the way she sinks her teeth into his palm and shakes against his grip. He can feel the words taking root in her mind nonetheless. Feels the slack in her body as the idea takes hold of her from sole to synapse; an insidious inner voice telling her that she is nothing, she is weak, and who would believe her story anyway? Absolutely Nobody.
It’s quick. The way humility sinks in and erases any traces of her own needs, her own wants. Perry unconvers her mouth and the sobs come out strangled, as if there wasn’t enough air in the room to support her. “Oh my god,” her chokes, “oh my god, who… how would I even begin to-”
“You can’t,” Perry repeats, easing back slightly, “You couldn’t. You don’t have it in you.”
“No one would hear me out. No one would listen.”
“Listen to what?” he asks. Perry takes her face in both his hands and she seizes both his wrists, fingers barely curling around skin because she wouldn’t dare impose herself. Not when her emotional state was splitting like a crack exposed to the heat of day. Fragile. Shaky. Looking for something to make it all make sense again.
“He’s dead… I think. He’s-.”
“You think or you know?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on,” she leans into him when he loosens his hold, buries her face in his chest and wets his shirt with her tears. That’s all it took, really. A touch and a moment of doubt to leech all the certainty away from them, to make the memories seem blurry and torn at the edges.
“That’s okay,” Perry whispers, “he’s okay.” Wraps his arms around her and let’s her cry it out. Echoes of reassurance promising that it’s not as bad as it seems. And if it was would you even know?
She wasn’t the one he wanted. Especially not now. But at this point the clean up required to kill her only seemed tedious compared to a little subtle persuasion. Hell. Maybe she’d think about him one day. The guy who may or may not have murdered the boyfriend she may or may not have cared about. Maybe she’d mull over their brief fling and come back only confident about the fact that she’d fucked Perry at one point or another.
When there’s no fight left he shrugs her off and she paws at her face without a glance to spare for the scene in the kitchen. Grabs her purse off the ground with a shaky hand. Waiting for direction. “You should go home and get some rest, get your mind right,” he suggests, slinking an arm around her shoulder and leading her towards the door, “You need an uber?”
Perry tries to be cool after she leaves, but he can’t shake the feeling that she’s won their little game and kills her later that day.
( THE GOLDEN PALACE .)
The honeymoon period of malice and gore had run dry and left him fiending, unquestionably, for the next vice to drown in.
Perry’s not exactly sure what that would be. Just knows he’ll know it when he sees it at the Golden Palace. Seemed everybody over there was cut from a darker cloth than most and the thought alone has him momentarily disinterested in the humans that pass him by on the street. Unfazed by the steam that drifted from restaurant fronts and acrid cigarette smoke hanging in the air. Just listens to the wet sound of their heartbeats echoing in his ears as he walks in step to the rhythm.
Humans gathered at The Golden Palace like silver coins for the taking, their easily influenced minds and bodies lost to liquor and animal attraction. Blissfully unaware that there was a deeper, better ecstasy to be had on another plane they’d never reach. Perry can already feel the bass thrumming in his chest as he passes the humans waiting to get in. Can feel their hungry eyes on his form when the doors open up and he’s granted entry with a dismissive flick of the bouncers hand.
Mortals part like grass under his foot but it’s not due to any power of his own. Perry’s more than content to feel their pride and gratification permeate the air untouched by his own hand. There would be plenty of time for that later on. Instead he watches them writhe to the music, bathed in the pulsing synth and spurred on by what he could only assume was Lux and Ria’s doing. Humans were handsy by nature, but in this state they were easily his favorite kind of animal; all loins and tongue. The lights bleed from blue to red to purple and back again, dancing across their exposed flesh and breaking up their shapes. Looking every bit like ravenous ghosts in the club. One grabs Perry by the collar and pulls him close, body hot and sweaty when he presses greedy hands against him.
Perry glides through the crowd, several dance partners down and suddenly bored with the humans. There’s an itch in the back of his mind. Strengthened by every eager look and grab. Says they’re feeling too good about themselves and it’s about time he did something about that, but he reigns it in for the time being.
“Another dry spell, huh?” Perry muses once he makes his way to the bar, smirking down at the sight of wrath on the counter. Downing a bottle like it was water. Perry took the time to pour himself a drink before looking back at Ira. “Couldn’t be me,” he shrugs before slinking off.
W R A T H
Irritation. It’s a static electricity that makes the hair on his arms stand and keeps the fuzz of nicotine from taking over his mind. His jaw grinds in a desperate need to lapse into some semblance of disdain. He’s angrier than usual. The side effect of being on the outs with Lux.
Again.
It speaks to his masochism kink that he bothers fighting with Lux at all. Mainly because Lux doesn’t care. He could get his rocks off anywhere, with any one, but Ira’s tastes were much more … p a r t i c u l a r.
Smoke curls against the night sky as boring and uninteresting as the mouth that’s currently wrapped around his dick. He’s gotten to the end of his cigarette and still nothing. Not the familiar haze of calmed anxieties or the warm pump of sex fueled adrenaline.
He’s empty.
Ira drops the butt to the ground and watches the embers quietly die before resting his head back against the brick wall. His eyes roll in the realization that at some point, he has to do something. Existence is a tedious, tedious thing. He’s sure he heard that from Ace, at some point or another.
“Get off,” he finally says. His voice is rough from disuse. Funny, what little changes not having Lux around brings.
The human obeys, but his grip on Ira’s hips tightens and fear flashes across his expression. Fucking ridiculous. He can’t live like this. This is the true meaning of hell. “Give me a second try! I can -”
Rage. It’s fueled by sexual frustration and regular frustration and everything else - before Ira even really knows it he has one hand in the guys hair, another on his neck, and oh. What a beautiful sound breaking bones make.
There’s an airy chuckle from down the alley and Ira let’s the body drop with a twitch of an emotion that might be indifference before tucking himself back in his jeans and doing the zip. His gaze flashes to a familiar face - demon, any semblance of a heart long gone. She’s grinning at him. “Bad time, boss?”
“What do you want, Tagen?” Ira asks. He doesn’t have time for … well, things he doesn’t want to have time for. She approaches him with a swagger that is wasted as she goes for the bag that is swung around her shoulder. From inside, she withdraws two capsules.
They’re glass, etched with runes and clasped with iron, long turned black from the essences captured inside of them. Evil always leaves a mark, like a flame without enough room to burn.
Ira takes them both, watching as the thick black smog throws itself against the edges, trying to bash its way out. The glass doesn’t so much as wiggle, the capsules feel light in his hands, which means they low level. Likely not even worth the trouble Tagen put in to capture them.
“One soul,” Ira offers. It’s generous.
“A piece?” Tagen asks.
“For both,” he simplifies. “Take it or leave it.”
Her brows draw together, though she doesn’t dare reach for the capsules she’s already handed over. If she pouts, he thinks he’ll rip her head off. “Last week I got three.”
“This week you get one,” he says, sliding the tubes into his pocket. He considers the body on the ground and decides it’s not worth his time to move it. He has places to be, anyway. When he looks up, Tagen is still standing there. His eyebrow lifts. “The fuck you want?”
“Uh, more,” she says. Like it’s obvious. Like it’s what she deserves. Like he’s in a good mood.
Ira feels the static of anger crawling up his spine and thinks about how he could paint the entire alley with her dark red blood and she’d finally get the fame she always wanted on the 6AM news. “Get the fuck out of my face before I shove you down one of these capsules myself.”
If there was anything Ira hated more than humans, it was demons. Sticky, needy, hungry little things. “The Champion’s” reign had brought more of them crawling to the surface than ever before, driven by a desire to prove themselves to their new leader. Coming after Sins as if they stood a chance in their entire meaningless existence. They were profitable for business, but not good for much else.
“You’re a dick,” Tagen said. Ira bared his teeth and she finally took a step back. She knew she’d fucked up, stepped over a line, so when she finally disappeared it was empty handed. He didn’t care one way or another, but he knew she would be back. Like an addict, desperate for another hit.
He pressed his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose and finally made his way to a place Greed called home. Perhaps then, he could put the worthlessness of his day away.
Luxury was never a taste Ira had acquired, but somehow The Golden Palace managed to feed all of them. The lust for each other, the greed for wealth, the gluttony to have it all. The pride of believing they couldn’t lose. The envy of wanting more than they’d already gotten. The sloth that settled in once their hunger was stated. The wrath that burned through them when they lost.
Ava’s palace was built to destroy a man from the inside out.
It dripped with debauchery and … sex.
Salt to the wound of his un-catered libido, Ira snagged an entire body of whiskey from behind the bar before sitting himself atop it, unscrewing the lid and consuming it like a deserted man starving from thirst.
He was having a really bad time. Ria and Lux getting along for once was not doing anything to make it any better.