Page 12 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

T H R E E

“ L et the guard take him.”

I turn my glare from the armed guard and pass it to the man at my side, instead.

He stands patiently, waiting for me to obey.

No mask. Stray is getting heavy as hell, but I don’t want to hand him over.

We’ve just arrived at some walled estate in the middle of the mountainous woods, a small militia force here guarding a fancy as fuck mansion.

This can’t be where Phantasmus lives, it’s so not his vibe?—

I barely hear him sigh before my face is seized, palm cupping beneath my jawbone, lifting me a few solid inches from the ground and leaving me to choke and dangle on his hand.

The motion is effortless for him, even in human form, and the hazel eyes burn a coldly disapproving look at me as I try to keep my swaying balance on the precipice of his palm.

The guard moves in, and I can do nothing to stop him from scooping Stray out of my arms and into his own.

Phantasmus turns his wrist, spinning me in the air—my hands now at his wrist to try and heave my weight up and off him, but one little wrist is captured in his spare hand and brought behind my back before he sets me on my feet and gathers the other one, too.

Arms locked behind me, the front door is opened and I’m shoved inside.

Wooden floors, elegant walls, tall ceilings, a second floor balcony to the right and curved staircase leading up to it. Couches and a coffee table, out ahead. He drags my stumbling form along carelessly.

“S-Stop, please , you don’t have to do this, Phantas… stop !”

“No need for formalities anymore. You took my mask off, remember? Phantasmus is who I am in hell. Now you get the true me, sweet little Hope,” he says with a sneer. Then, in an answering tone, “Cillian. Or, Cill.”

The nickname ‘kill’ seems uncomfortably appropriate.

Fear ticks in me and I shift my torso, trying to buck his hold off, trying to break free as he brings me further into the home. Red flickers at my vision when I do though, and I try to breathe through it.

Ph— Cillian , laughs at me. He chides me in a teasing tone, “Now isn’t the time to be scared. We need you cognizant for the next bit.”

That only makes the darkness swell even more.

His nose brushes the cup of my ear, and I try to flinch away but he follows, still dragging me through the entryway. “Awwwe…does she need help calming down? I can help with that…you don’t even have to ask… I don’t mind. ”

A second hand grips at my waist, halting our steps and pulling my ass against his waist meaningfully.

I shriek and jerk away, but he laughs and pulls me back to grind harder, teeth nipping at my earlobe now.

Something clicks in my mind that he’s serious about this, and if I lean into it, then maybe…

I let a shudder shake my body from top down, grimacing in a pinched tone, resisting him just a little less.

Cillian hums approvingly into my ear, pulling us forward again until we’ve reached the couch and laid me down.

Pinned on my back, he nips and kisses at my neck, my shoulder, his hips grinding against me and excitement growing tangibly between us.

His fingers clench at my waist, back around my ass, down my thigh, reaching in and rubbing at himself through his jeans.

I can’t help my shivers and shakes, trying to appear as frightened-frozen as I can, fearfully resigned, as he works himself up for a few minutes.

The grinding passes across my clit too, and it does get a reaction out of me, which I both play into and try to resist.

He chuckles heatedly into my ear.

After a few ‘resisted’ reciprocated grinds onto him, when I gently tug my hand from the one pinning it to the couch, he lets me.

I swallow loudly, and he bites at my neck while my hand trails down toward his waist. Pants open, cock exposed beneath his palm, he moans and laughs in want when my hand approaches and asks to take over.

“ Good little lamb… ” he praises in to my neck, drawing his tongue wide across my throat.

I force myself to touch it. To be nice. To work the little bit he offers me until he feels safe to let me work a little more.

Until I can stroke across the full length, getting a sense for its shape and location.

Until I wriggle my waist and silently ask for more room, which he gives by sitting up a little and lifting some of his weight from me.

Another sly compliment is on his lips when I deliver my best attempt at a three-inch punch, straight up into one of his nuts.

His words garble into a burst of pained air, slightly doubling in at the sudden nauseating pain, but it doesn’t seem to be enough.

I follow it up with a swift punch at his throat, too, which makes him spit and choke into my face as I shove him over and off of me. He falls off the side of the couch, into the coffee table, and I spring to my feet and start running .

This time I don’t bother to resist it. There’s no use.

Plus, he said he wanted me cognizant for those plans, so screw him .

I let the red run into my vision, distorting the elegant vintage walls with decay and gore, running through halls and rooms and bursting through doors, up a back flight of stairs, into another room.

I can hear his footsteps rushing behind me, hear him goading me, calling out to me from down the hall and around corners, far more talkative as a human.

“I’m so glad you’re still putting up a fight—I didn’t want it to come that easily.”

“ Run, lamb, run!”

“You look so pretty when you’re fleeing from me.”

“How are you going to hide in my own home, silly little Hope??”

I rush into a dilapidated bedroom of sorts, glancing around at the mold and festering bodies, seeing a stone bathroom through the single open door here, realizing I’ve reached a dead end.

The tall wardrobe calls to me first, but that’s always my hiding spot back home—and it’ll be the first place he looks, too.

I scan the room again to try and find somewhere else, spotting the curtained bay window and biting my lip.

It’s chewed through from moths, ragged and sparse, but more than likely intact in the real world.

I don’t like it, but I feel like I don’t have time to re-think—I rush to partially closed window curtains, and very carefully slip between them to cause as little movement as I can.

I curl up on the wide window ledge, back pressed to the cold glass, shoes tucked up beneath myself, knees to my chest, hands over my mouth to hold my breathlessness in and keep the stench out.

Silence.

More silence.

Footsteps.

Silence.

How long do I stay hiding? … Another minute passes, and I slowly creep out from behind the curtain.

The floor is silent, dusting of ash on the ground muffling my steps, and I creep to th e edge of the doorway to huddle against the wall and listen.

I slowly turn the handle, opening it just an inch, to hear a bit better.

Is anyone coming? Is he right around the corner?

I hear a quiet rattling of bones a few rooms down. He’s searching, quietly . Fuck.

A glint of light at the corner of my vision makes my pulse skyrocket, and I whip around to wonder how he possibly got in the room with me, behind me, when instead I find white robes and a golden spear.

My entire body melts in relief, some color returning the room in a brief flash. “ C-Cornelius…! ”

Unflapping, feet floating across the ground, he drifts to me and softly tosses the spear to the side where it glistens and fades into nothingness. He touches down next to me, crouching and reaching to cup my face in both his hands.

“ You found me ,” I croak in a whisper.

He smiles, warm and bright. A small chuckle echoes through his throat as he takes in my face.

“Yes, love, I found you. Come here—” He draws me in, and I go willingly, embracing him tightly with relieved tears starting to fall from my eyes.

His arms wrap around my back, stroking my hair softly.

“You’re safe… I’ve got you now …I’ve got you, right here… You’re safe now…”

There’s an odd sort of tilt in his voice—maybe his throat is pressed into my shoulder too much?

The hug finishes, and as we unfurl from one another his hands find my temples. He’s about to calm me, draw my energy, make me relax so I can return to the real world. I shake my head between his hands, though. “D-Don’t, no, I’ll be alone.”

A look of pitying sympathy knits into his brows, his head tilting a bit. The thumbs stroke along the underside of my eyes, along my cheekbones. “You will never be alone again, love. I promise you that. Don’t you trust me?”

I lick my dry lips, then close my eyes and nod a few times. He’s right, I do.

“Good lamb. Breathe for me…come back to me.”

I let out a breath, feeling a soft rush of soothing warmth draw past my face and through his fingertips. It feels like the kiss of a summer breeze, when Cornelius does it. Always so delicate, and gentle. I try not to think back to the ripping heat from the time he’d killed me…

I can feel the hell fade away from around me, smell it disappear from the air, and when I breathe out again after it’s gone, my closed eyes narrow to feel his hands still across me.

Winking them open, I find a familiar figure crouched before me.

Brown hair, dark lashes, olive skin. He huffs a quiet laugh at my surprise, and the thumb strokes across me again.

My gaze flicks down his form, the impressive suit I’m used to seeing him in through the computer screen.

“Wh…What are you doing here? I-In person, in the real world, C-Cor…?”

“I…” He gives me a baffled look, brows pinched and head tipping slightly to the side. A hand slips down from my cheek to comfortingly squeeze at my arm. “You thought…oh…ohhh, sweet thing, no. I-I'm so sorry. You're mistaken…”

Something is wrong. The sweet sympathy in his voice feels sugary. Forced. Fake.

I narrow my eyes, confused and concerned.

Footsteps begin to echo out into the hallway, and we both glance at the slightly-open door.

The safeguarding grip at my arm ticks so slightly more secure, in a way that lifts the hairs on the back of my neck.

I begin to breathe his name in a worried tone, but it’s too soft, to slow.

“You don’t need to be afraid of Cillian, sweetheart.”

I shake my head. The footsteps continue to echo, closer, so I only mouth the word: What?

How does he even know Cillian’s name??

A hallway floorboard creaks—the footfalls pause.

Cornelius’s other arm drifts from my temple as he carefully and protectively arranges us, pulling me slightly away from the wall and tucking my back to his chest. His other arm belts around my waist, locking in as well, and as my breathing trips to a hyperventilation and my fingers try to pry his hold away, his cheek pillows against the top of my head and a laugh tickles at my back from where it echoes out of his chest.

“Darling, darling darling darling—Cillian won’t hurt you. I promise. I told him not to,” Cornelius says through his gentle laughter. “I'm the one who asked him to bring you here.”

In the hall, between hesitant footsteps, “Here little lamb…come out, come out…I'll be gennntle… I promise …”

Despite the rising surge of fear in me, there isn’t any red in my vision. This isn’t the right kind of fear, I suppose. The fear that someone you trusted has been lying to you, or misleading you, or…I don’t even know.

“You’re safe, Hope. I’ve got you, now. Cillian belongs to me ,” Cornelius says in an hollow attempt at comfort. “And he only does what I tell him to.”

A whimpering shudder ekes from my throat as my mind refuses to put the pieces together. Because if Cillian does what Cornelius says, and Cillian essentially kidnapped me, and Cillian is also the same person or figure as Phantasmus, then….then… then that means …

The chuckle from him now is from deep in his core. It twists to a wistful sigh at the end, cheek and nose stroking against the hair at the back of my head. He somewhat whispers, but doesn’t sound to be really trying to keep us hidden as he says, “I’ve waited so long for this…for you…”

My frightened shaking lends itself to trying to get out of his arms now, and as he feels me begin to struggle I hear him hum in a shrugging sort of tone.

One hand reaches to the edge of the door, tossing it open as the other shoves hard at my back to send me ambling forward through the doorway and into the hall, exposed.

I swallow my shriek, for some reason still trying to be stealthy.

My legs flounder and palms slam onto the floor as I try to catch myself—looking up only in time to see the shroud of a figure in the darkness and its glowing, golden eyes turn to fixate on me.

Cillian chuckles and steps forward out of the shadow, looking suddenly so normal.

“ Found you. ”

I scramble back a little, eyes flicking through the doorway to watch Cornelius rise to his feet, adjusting the suit-coat and looking down at me.

I stare at those hard, brown eyes and the small line of an entertained smile on his lips before my feet scrape against the wooden floor of the hall, and I turn to toss myself upright. I stand, and take off running.