|||Prologue - Requiem Prelude |||Author - Aki1

He looked so vulnerable as he slept, almost like easy, motionless prey. His breathing was slow, making him seem like just a shade shy of the perfect epitome of serenity as she phased gracefully straight through the glass of the window.

Her nimble feet touched the carpeted floor soundlessly; her almost feral gaze was upon his slumbering form with every step she took, every step that only increased her inner hunger as she approached him. She paused at his bedside, staring down at him with both appreciation and dismay...admiring his blissful, ignorant peace...displeased at how... human...he looked.

Her elegant lips curled into a frown.

'Cursed be your father's miserable soul in the fires of hell...you look nothing like him at all...'

She reached out a slender hand accented by sharp nails painted a seamless black, touching the bare skin near the shoulder of the boy who lay face- down, half of his face hidden in the depths of the pillow and still unchanged, still unaware of her presence.

'Yet you exude his very weakness...'

The nail plunged into the exposed skin out of its own volition. The boy stiffened beneath her, a strained moan escaping his lips as his closed eyes tightened in a wince of unwanted pain.

She sneered at his suffering, placing her other hand on his quivering shoulder as she continued her self-imposed task with quick, sure strokes...each of the characters embedded in the boy's back glowed the moment it was completed, shining a fiery red before the inner light subsided and the blood rushing to come out congealed before it could even flow.

'You, so innocent...know nothing of how it feels to be rejected by him...for that bane of women, that...' She nearly shuddered as she thought of it. '*Human*...'

She struck in anger at the writings she made, quickly and furiously as she worked on the small of his back, her own irate passion fueling her strokes.

'I take my vengeance through his wretched son - !'

She ended the carvings with a graceful curve that gradually eased her blood- coated nail from his shivering body. She pressed a couple of fingers of her free hand against his nape, watching with quiet, sinister joy as he fell back limply onto the relatively pristine white sheets below him. Her reddish eyes surveyed her work in pride and satisfaction, and a sense of sadistic pleasure as she saw what she had done.

With a soundless laugh the demon raised the offending finger to her lips, tasting the tang of his blood on her painted nail.

'You are mine now...you will be mine forever...'

After a final glance she stepped back from the bed, heading for the window and phasing through it as she left the young man back to his albeit disturbed sleep. Bat-like wings emerged from between her shoulder blades as she took flight, an unseen apparition against the inky black sky.