‘Fine. You wanted to tie me up.’ Kharon confirmed. ‘Did I not tell you that it’s impossible? Did I not tell you that it is a very bad idea?’

He pulled the girl closer to himself, fixed her eyes on her. The ferocity in his eyes came down but the fire had been burning still. The demon was angry.

‘I beg you…stop it. I wanted to tie you up because I can’t get your face out of my head! I can’t get your hands, pressing my waist out of my mind… I can’t forget these feelings. Your voice… Oh my God, your voice! I’m getting crazy when I hear it! That’s why I wanted to tie you up to! A night ins’t enough for me…Isn’t enough.’

Vic was sobbing, showing her true face, baring her desires, letting the demon sink into her ocean of first-born feeling.

‘Did you want to be my girl?’ the demon asked coolly.

Vic nodded her head, trying to calm down.

‘It is impossible. All the people are equal for me and the price is the same for everyone. You cannot bargain with me. The terms were established, and I think only Lucifer is within his right to change anything.’

‘A night is nothing.’ Vic repeated insistently. ‘I wanna get all not only sex.’

‘Sorry.’ Kharon smiled and dropped to the bed.

He unbuttoned his shirt and gave the girl a mysterious look. Being numb she gazed at his body. The man touched the bed sheet, gesturing her to lie near him. As if she were high, Vic was gazing his bare torso, at the moves of his eyes, hands, mouth, quirked at the corners. Her breathing was becoming heavy, the heart was beating stronger.

‘What’s it with me?’ she asked quietly, making herself turn away from Kharon.

Next second he jumped up, pulled off the shirt and the girl appeared in his mind-numbing embraces. She was losing her mind slowly and silly.

‘It’s called Lust, dear. My favourite sin,’ Kharon was whispering, ‘A night is in return of your life. Admit it…’

There were the gentle hands, velvet lips, words, soft embraces, kisses…

‘Listen,’ Vic said with no opening her eyes. ‘No. it’s a wrong deal.’

Kharon started back from her and the severity, appeared on his face, made the girl be nervous again.

‘A wrong deal?’ he asked in surprise.

Getting angry, the demon couldn’t believe his ears. He seemed to be growing before her eyes, some smoke was supposed to be behind his back while his face was getting coloured in red wine. The girl was enveloped by desperation.

‘I can kill you. Just for nothing. Just right now. Then you’ll get nothing at all! Can you feel your legs getting full of cement? Can you feel it getting frozen, depriving you of moving? Two minutes and it’ll cover your lungs, filling them with hardened concrete… Just two minutes left.’

Her heart was beating as if it was mad because of fear. It was so terrible to recognize your own body with each second to stop reacting to nerve impulses, feel your own legs getting hardened and then they stopped feeling, and you were going to fall somewhere down. At that time a sinister look of a creature, came from inferno, was devouring your face with suffering on it.

‘A minute left… Now it’s a stomach.’ The demon was staring at the girl. ‘I am so tired of your games. Come to me, go away, a good deal, a bad deal. Whom have you found in me, a Seraphim? You, a human child! How dare you, offspring, disturb me from my deeds? Bargain with me?’

A simple fear couldn’t describe the girl’s feelings. There was fear agony and despair. The demon didn’t touch her, and a real hell started its existence inside her. A lump in her throat prevented her from making any sound and thoughts about mercy was eternally turning in her head.

Suddenly everything stopped. The heaviness, tonnes of cements left her body, agony died down. But anger didn’t leave Kharon. He silently watched the girl, grasping the air. She was crying because of offence and weakness, impossibility to get what her heart had been yearning.

‘God forgive me…’ Victoria got on her knees, put her hands over her face and burst into hysteria. ‘What am I doing? God, I beg you… Our Father, which art in heaven! Hallowed be thy name…’

She was praying, clinging onto her tears, burrowed her forehead into the floor. Kharon was looking at the crazy picture, then hunkered down and took the girl by the hand.

‘Our Father? Seriously?’ he asked severely, ‘do you really think it works?’

‘I’m agonized!’ the girl wept. ‘My feelings for you… I’m betraying God! If you exist, then He exists! I want Him to get you out of my head! I don’t wanna think of you anymore, I don’t wanna see you anymore. I don’t wanna you touch me anymore… But I can’t master unruly my feelings… God will help me!’

‘God?’ Kharon kindly looked at Victoria and with implausible grin. ‘Victoria,’ he kissed her, pressing her to himself. ‘You will not call me again. You will not do, even try to do any magic on me. You will not even think of me until you are ready to give me what I’m asking… or I shall have to kill you.’

Kharon didn’t stop kissing the girl, her tears, her lips and cheeks. She was listening to his forbidding and by every second, by his every word she understood her be getting worse and worse.

‘I shall not see you anymore, good-bye’ the demon whispered.

Victoria opened her red eyes: she was alone. Suddenly she was broken through with electricity. It was a dawn, mess was in the room like tornado and earthquake had been there, the pentacle was in the floor, candle wax was everywhere, pages were thrown about… Vic was sitting on the floor and weeping.

Was Kharon right? Was it a lust or a love seed for something forbidden? Was it love for a creature which didn’t deserve to be loved actually? That man… He was so charming, so handsome and attractive to be the truth. The heart fell in love with an ideal skin at that time her mind endlessly whispered about true essence. He just mocked her. You and a thousand-year-old demon? Love? Who do you think you are, dear?

Reality. Welcome back. How many people begged God make them face the reality? To show them what was really going on in the world? Victoria begged God take her out of harm’s way where her heart was bogged down. But He didn’t hear her. Probably because she was so quietly asking Him, and she didn’t really want the reality. Uncertainty confused the minds without bringing stability.

Crying, wiping her tears away, hating herself, Victoria was washing the floor, destroying the trace of the Sabbath. She put the candle ends into the cases, placed the scan pages. Broken-hearted, with sunrays caressed the earth, Victoria went to bed. There was emptiness again. No dreams. No visions. Inanimation…

13

^th

June 2013 (Thursday)

Pale-face students were running everywhere, whispering, shaking the cheat sheets, praying. It was a philosophy final examination.

Victoria was sitting near the auditorium with a book, answers for test questions, carefully reading everything that she had had to read within 5 years. She needed just a few theses, just a little about philosophers, two more pages.

‘How’re you getting on?’ Igor, course mate, came up to her.

‘Don’t ask me.’ Vic waved. ‘I remember nothing. If I pass by some miracle, then it’ll be a real miracle. You? Have you learnt?’

‘Partially. I think I’ll say something. That’s a philosophy!’ he smiled. ‘After a party is coming up in case of successful examination…’

‘Successful examination?’ Vic smirked. ‘We’re not even in the auditorium.’

‘Don’t be such a pessimist. We all pass! As you will do!’

‘I hope you can foresee… What about the party?’

‘So, there’s a café at Sokolniky. We’ll pass the exam and then go there.’

‘Are we chipping in?’

‘No. Pay-your-own-way, or you can discuss with guys. Someone doesn’t drink and, I’m sure, they won’t chip in.’

‘Right you are!’ Vic smiled. ‘Fine, if I get through the exam, then I’m in.’