Page 49 of Fear No Hell

Calliope

“Lilith,” he moans, his head tipping back, his throat flexing with the sound of his pleading. “Please, Lilith, I need you.”

He has no idea what his begging does to me. How crazed his submission makes me, especially in the realm of our creation. But he will.

“Samael, my pet,” I purr as I lean forward and lap at the blood spilling from where his teeth are dug into his lower lip. “Tell me what you need.”

“I need you to let me fuck you,” he begs.

“You want to breed me, my love? Fill me up with your seed until it’s flowing out of me in rivers? Until it takes root in my womb and we bring more of our children into this world?”

“Fuck,” he hisses. His obsidian eyes flash with fire as he flexes beneath me in a rapid, uncoordinated jerk. “Yes, fuck yes, Lilith, please!”

My lips curl in a lusty smirk. “Well, then—” I wrap my fingers around his hard cock and slide it through my wetness until he’s notched at my entrance. “Fuck me, sweet boy.”

A broken scream rips out of me as he flexes his claws into my hips, digging them into my flesh until blood is running down over my legs, flowing over his hands, and thrusts hard into me—

***

“Lila.”

There’s pressure around my lower body. Arthur. It must be Arthur holding me down. I flail wildly, thrashing against however Arthur has pinned my legs this time, pushing against the press of hands against my shoulders.

Where am I?

“Lila!” The voice repeats, sharper this time and so very familiar. “I need you to open your eyes, okay, sweetness?”

Open my eyes? What is he talking about? My eyes are open.

But the world is black.

“Sweetness, you were having a nightmare.”

Sam. It’s my Sam.

I stop thrashing. The minute I stop moving, I realize I’m not actually trapped. It's the sheet holding my legs—I can feel the soft cotton of it against my thighs—and Sam’s hands bracing my shoulders.

“Can you open your eyes for me?” The bed shifts as he sits, sending me rolling toward him. His arms come around me, lifting me into his lap, one hand cupped behind my head. “Please let me see those gorgeous eyes. Just so I know you’re okay.”

My eyelids feel like they weigh a million pounds. I want to open them, though. I want to see Sam.

Dim lamplight starts filtering in. Vague shadows form around me, insubstantial at first before quickly taking on definition and texture.

“There you go, sweetness.” Sam curls me in closer to him. “You scared the shit out of me.”

“What?” I blink dumbly. “Why?”

“You were screaming bloody murder. It took me a few seconds to get down here, and you didn’t stop screaming once the entire time.”

“It wasn-I don’t know why.” I draw away slowly, taking the time to orient myself since my head is still spinning. “I don’t think it was that kind of scream.”

If Sam’s eyebrows weren’t still pinched in worry, he might have laughed. Instead, he simply sighs and threads his fingers through my hair. “Maybe not. But if you ever screamed like that during-while we were-when I was—”

Although I adore hearing him stammer and having the chance to ogle him as he gets worked up, I want to hear what he has to say more. “During sex,” I finish for him.

His face is an adorable shade of flaming red, reminding me of just how inexperienced Sam is.

My sweet, little virgin. Once upon a time, I might have attributed that thought to a dark voice inside me.

Things have changed in the last several weeks, and I’ve started realizing what those thoughts actually are: they’re me.

Not a separate kernel of darkness. Just me in all of my multitudes.

It’s a soothing realization to recognize I don’t have to be one thing alone, a muse and nothing else.

I can be angry. I can be sexual. I can be anything I want, including whatever I’m turning into. This transformation, unaccounted for as it is, unexpected as it is, is liberating in its own way. Terrifying, yes, but liberating.

“If you ever made that noise d-during sex, I would absolutely think it was a demand for me to stop whatever I was doing.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “That was not a sexy scream. That was a ‘Ghostface is leaving me for dead’ scream.”

“Ghostface—” My face crinkles in confusion, but he waves the question away quickly.

“’90’s slasher villain. It’s not important.”

“Oh. Okay. Sure.”

“So… you want to tell me what you were dreaming about?”

“Honestly, I don’t remember much besides blood and sex.” The pieces of my dream are floating away more quickly than I can grasp onto them, leaving me confused, turned on, and scared. Glorious combination, that. “You were begging me for… something. I don’t remember what.”

“Hey, don’t stress—”

The soothing revelation of accepting every part of me vanishes with that one half sentence.

“I can’t help but stress out about it!” I interrupt him, lurching out of his arms and the bed in one swift, inelegant move.

“I’m transforming into something—we both know it—and we don’t even know what I’m changing into.

The best we can find are oblique references to some ancient dark goddess, but I’m not her, so we’re somehow even more confused now than we were when it was just me having red eyes and claws for the first time in my life.

” I’m pacing now, my voice rising with each step.

“And none of it, not the tattoos signifying magic I don’t understand, the fucked up dreams, the bloodlust, the physical transformations, none of it would scare me if it weren’t for you. ”

My verbal rampage cuts off whatever he’s parting his mouth to say.

“You’re the best thing to ever happen to me, Sam.

You’re so good to me it hurts, and maybe the me before Arthur would deserve you, but the me who turned your basement into a dungeon, who has made you an accomplice to six months of brutality…

there’s no way this version of me deserves you. ” I suck in a breath and keep going.

“And in my dreams, you’re something different.

You’re still you, but you’re changing. Physical transformations and shadows and darkness.

I see little bits of it spilling over into you in real life too.

I can’t—I won’t—be responsible for ruining you, Sam, or making you into something evil.

I just can’t do that to you.” I freeze, my eyes locked on the far wall of my bedroom. “Should I leave?”

“Wait, what?” Sam barks from behind me.

“Am I hurting you by staying here?” I bury my face in my hands and speak the rest of the thought into my palms. “Should I set you free from whatever I’m doing to you?” I go silent, my back to Sam.

There's a minute of silence followed by: “Can I talk now?”

I snort out a watery laugh at his disgruntled question and nod.

“Why do you think you’re ruining me?”

It’s a simple question and one I’m positive I rambled out an answer to.

“I need you to look at me, Lila.”

There’s a subtle demand in his voice that has me turning before I can decide it’s what I want to do. The sight that greets me is haunting. The Sam standing in front of me is confident and self-assured, assertive in a way I’ve never seen him act around me when he’s not in doctor mode.

“I’m gonna ask again. Why do you think you’re ruining me?”

“Because—”

“Because the me in your dreams is darker than the me you’re used to getting?”

I gape at him in shock.

“For some reason, you seem to think darkness is bad, which I’m guessing is some holdover from when you were a muse.

But darkness isn’t bad. It’s different, yeah, and poorly understood, especially by those who think of the world in terms of a duality.

Good and evil. Right and wrong." He spreads his hands wide in front of him before dropping them back to his sides. "I know evil, and I know darkness, and I know the difference between them. Darkness breeds strength and self-possession. It keeps toxicity and selfishness and tyrannical authority, which are the real wrongs in this world, in check through whatever means are necessary. The only people who think darkness is ‘evil’ are the people who don’t understand it. It’s not good or evil, and it’s not wrong.

It’s the absence of light, not the absence of goodness. That’s it.”

His long legs eat up the distance between us until he’s standing inches away from me. Not touching me but so close.

“Lila, I know what real evil looks like. I saw the man I thought was my father raping you before I turned 10. I lost my leg because of him. I spent months, years, thinking I was going insane because of it. Because I knew I saw you that day, and nobody would believe me. I was involuntarily committed not once but twice because of it. I tried to commit suicide when I was 15 because living seemed like it was too much goddamn effort when I was surrounded by people who didn’t understand me at all.

My life ruined me, and it was because of Arthur and his evil. ”

My cheeks are wet, the Sam in front of me blurry as he spills his life into my hands. When did I start crying?

He takes another small step into me and seizes my chin to tilt my face up towards him.

“But you? Dark as you think you are? You are the best thing to ever happen to me. No matter what you think I’m becoming because of you.

You make me happy. You make me better. I’m good to you—and, as a note, we should probably talk about why you think anybody should be anything but good to you—because I’m not going to treat the woman I love any way other than like a fucking goddess.

” He inhales deeply, and, when he speaks again, his words tremble for the first time since he started talking.

“You asked whether you should leave? I’m begging you not to if the only reason you’re offering is because you think you’re ruining me.

I don’t want to do this life without you, sweetness.

I would rather be whatever you’re dreaming I’m turning into than be what I’ve always been without you. Please. Please don’t leave.”

“What if I hurt you?” And there it is. The million-dollar question. The one that haunts my dreams every night, even in the face of the unfailing pleasure he brings me.

“Then my life would be worth something knowing I was anything for you.” He leans his head down, presses his forehead to mine. “Please, sweetness, don’t leave me just because you feel like you should.”

That’s when I see the sheen of tears glazing his eyes. The panic. And I know deep down, somewhere spiritual where my magic lingers, that I can’t leave. I don’t want to leave him. Maybe that makes me selfish. I don’t care, not when he’s begging me to choose him.

“Okay,” I breathe.

“Okay? Like—"

“Okay, I’m not leaving.”

And then my sweet doctor is crying, and I’m kissing him, his tears salty against my lips as he whispers beautiful, incomprehensible words that sound like thanks.

And when we crawl into my bed, he closes his arms around me, holding me to his chest, like he’s scared I’ll leave even after I told him I was staying.

I feel seen. Warm, safe, protected, and loved. And, as I fall into a dreamless sleep for the first time in months, I realize I will slaughter anyone who tries to take my Sam away from me.

I love him.