‘No offence?’ the woman stopped in the doorframe and looked at her daughter. ‘What’s up with you? Are you ill?’

‘No, I’m fine. I’m tired…a little.’

‘Damn it! The most terrible sound for any resuscitationist!’

They both heard an argute sound line, affronting the ear. Olga Vladimirovna jumped out of the staffroom, Victoria followed her.

In the same ward the peacefully sleeping old lady’s heart stopped beating and the apparatus rang about it through the whole department, calling for the doctors to resuscitate.

‘Defibrillator, epinephrine…’ the doctors cries, nurses were rushing near, answering all the orders.

Victoria leaned on the wall, looked and worried about the poor old lady.

‘Time of death is 7 past 7…’ she heard the sentence after that you exactly understood the deepest and, perhaps, the most heartless meaning of the phrase “that’s all”.

The old woman was connected from the apparatus, the data was being written and the doctors were upset.

‘Sveta, call her relatives, they have to call to Pathology lab…’ Vic’s mother ordered to the nurse.

‘Olga Vladimirovna, she had no relatives.’

‘No one?’ The doctor surprised.

‘No one. Then shall I do as usual?’

‘Yes.’ Olga Vladimirovna looked at her daughter, ‘you shouldn’t be here. Go home. I’ll be at home after dinner. Thanks for bringing the papers.’

The girl took a deep sigh, turned around and left. She was a little bit sad because her mother had made a doctor way in life and she still kept on doing it. It was clear, that she did it successfully and by now she gained a reputation of a God-given doctor. The only pity was that when people did their career, they couldn’t do their family at the same time.

Victoria came back home dropped off to sleep…

In the middle of the night, she opened her eyes and with no understanding why, she started whispering something in unknown language.

Ebenus, opprobrium, conticinium, lacrimose, venetum, abominamentum, reflabriventi, basiator, zodium, horripilato, perfluus, flammosus, universus, gloria, tabifluus, damnatio, martyrium, infidelitas, securitas, necrosis.

As she said the last word, the killing silence came. It was too silent so Victoria could hear her blood stream rushing inside. The breeze was blowing, also silent as well as everything was around. The girl was so much scared that her breathing almost stopped. You shouldn’t be a wiseman to understand that something was going wrong. When everything that had moved in chronical way, suddenly got frozen in a paralytic horror was strange at least.

Victoria was in her bed and kept her eyes wide open, looking at the ceiling, with no idea what was going on. She was afraid of even moving.

‘Within two months and a half…’ she heard a heavy man voice, throwing out imperturbable power.

Despite of its heaviness and powerfulness the voice was hypnotically attractive and so pleasant as if it had touched a back with silky flaps. One could listen to that voice for hours, could fall in love with it and lose mind. But Victoria, on top of every sweet feeling, had an animal fear: the voice had nothing to do with Kharon.

‘Yes, for two months and a half,’ the man confirmed, ‘I’ve been listening to you summoning me.’

Victoria finally pulled herself together and lifted up her head to look at the guest. The man silhouette was sitting at her computer table.

‘So, I am here!’ the man sharply bounced out of the chair and rushed to the scared to death girl. Victoria gave a start and covered herself with the blanket. A second silence and a laugh could be heard. The girl closed her eyes and whispered the same pray, the only one she knew.

‘That’s funny… “hallowed be thy name…”’

The voice was under her blanket. Victoria understood that it didn’t come under the cloth, but she was sure for 380 percent that whom voice belonged to, was with her under the blanket.

Victoria screamed with all her might, flew out of the bed and tried to run out of the room. Near the door in thick darkness she bumped into a tall man and fell with crash on the floor.

‘No, please!’ the girl closed her eyes, trying to calm down the starting hysteria.

She’d never been so scared in her entire life. Even that first time when Kharon came to her she hadn’t been scared so much.

Suddenly, through her closed eyes, Victoria felt the room getting lightened. It was not like during the day, but it wasn’t so dark that you could hardly see your hand before you.

Praying, crossing herself, begging not to touch her, Vic opened her eyes at her own risk. Too close to her face she saw a man face. In surprise she stepped back, asking her heart beating not so fast. The green-brown eyes with barely noticed burgundy were staring at her.

Victoria saw nothing but those terribly beautiful eyes. About two minutes later the girl dared to range her eyes round the guest: light-brown hair was on his eyes, scarcely noticeable squint, his lips were curled in an engaged smirk, straight nose like if it was artificial. His face was too ideal.

The stranger was burning the girl away with his heavy staring.

Victoria was silent, hypnotized by his piercing stare. The drop-in creature was silent, too, carefully examining the girl’s freckled face.

The man moved and Victoria shivered, before she could bat an eye his hand was touching her hear.

‘What an unusual ginger colour…’ he whispered seeing the strand of hair in his hand. ‘A setting of a dying sun… He was good to create such beauty… Why have you stopped whispering your funny pray?’

The man shifted his gaze at the girl, at her eyes. She didn’t move, still sitting on the floor with bated breath.

‘You…’ she said under her breath, ‘Are you an incubus?’

The man smiled, shifted his gaze at her quivering lips.

‘No, Sunshine, I am not. Have you been waiting for an incubus, while your lips have been whispering my name? Do you know my name?’ he bended his body closer to her.

Victoria smelled something pleasant and tender like if there had been no threat and nothing of supernatural. It was a smell of blooming nature, a subtle aroma of cedar fir-needles, making heavier the composition: the main one made Vic understand that the man in front of her wasn’t just a man.

The stranger moved to her at maximum distance, looking at her burning cheeks.

Victoria wasn’t breathing. Each move of the guest made her completely forget about her own physiology. She just got frozen and gazed at the man.

‘…Lucifer…’ she whispered gravel-voiced.

The man smirked and raised up. He looked around the room, doubled down on the chair near the table. Having grasped the one he settled in near the bed, where the scared the hell Victoria was sitting near.

‘Why are you so surprised, Sunshine?’ he asked, setting his ring on his left hand.

It was a big signet-ring with some patterns. But they weren’t just patterns. Even Victoria who knew nothing of runes, recognized that there were ancient, maybe unknown sings and symbols on the ring.

‘It’s stuffy here,’ the man looked round again and undid two buttons of his shirt. ‘Like in hell… Kidding. That is you, people, who think it’s an eternal sizzler there.’

‘Is that not so?’ suddenly the girl asked.

‘An eternal sizzler is on the Sun… But I’m not sure about eternal. We have a normal, stable conception of nature and natural science.’

‘You mean that you don’t fry anyone on the frying-pan with pitchforks?’ Vic allowed her to smile.

Lucifer gave her a rapid smile and came down to the girl on the floor, closer to her olive eyes.

‘Deuces have a lot of work,’ he whispered, staring at her neck, ‘there are pitchforks and frying-pans… Putting it in a metaphorical way, of course.’

He was so close to her ear that his lips were almost touching her earlaps. Victoria closed her eyes, for the nth time having forgotten of the oxygen.