CHAPTER III : 666 Years of Torture

When Damien let go of me, his lips all shiny and smirking and smug, I was forced to grip the crap outta the wall so that I wouldn’t foomp down on my arse like a numbnuts retard.

I had just been face-fucked by a Demon.

I’m pretty sure I humped him back.

I wanted to make use of his colossal bed really fucking bad.

Damien crossed his fit arms across his tight, fit chest and arched an eyebrow.

"I have arthritis," I lied, resisting the urge to touch my mouth. It felt all swollen and sizzling.

He seemed mildly interested. "Yeah? What kind?"

There was more than one kind? Jeeze. "Uh...the kind that hurts my joints?"

"Right. And that’s only the start lover boy." He leaned in close and – I swear he actually did this – licked the side of my neck. For real.

I warbled out some stupid nonsense.

"Think of how good I’ll make you feel once you’re done crafting," he whispered, his hot breath scribbling all over my cooling flesh. My stomach tightened and did some crazy dance moves. "I’ll thank you real slow baby."

I’d like to think that if the phone hadn’t blared at that precise moment, I would have flung Damien a kilometre away from me and been like, "Piss off man-whore, I’m crafting you jack shit!" Whether either of us would be dressed at that point was a whole different story. I mean can I help it if the guy oozes shagtastic?

Damien released me and stalked over to the phone, muttering under his breath. I flopped down into the nearest chair and told my body that Demons were shitty, especially when they threatened and insulted my friends, kidnapped me and were now attempting to bribe me into concocting an Elixir most foul. My body told me that Demons were hard in all the right places, could make a face-fuck feel as good as a blow-job and were so sexy that an orgasm was imminent just on ogling the thing’s biceps. If I actually got to see Damien naked I’d probably have an aneurysm right on the spot.

I told my body to piss off and got my sulk on.

Meanwhile, it appeared that Damien was in a bit of a situation. "It wasn’t like I planned on using magic," he was snarling into the cordless. "It just fucking happened! Yeah, I know what the penalty is dwarf dick! I didn’t go into that Apothecary thinking yeah I’ll knock 'em out and swipe the Crafter. I know the damn rules, alright? I like to do the flogging, not fucking be flogged."

Was he in trouble?

"I was attacked!" He paced around the coffee table, raking an impatient hand through his vivid hair. It was hard not to watch him. Well okay no it wasn’t but it was hard not to look like a total fucktard while doing it. Vacant eyes and a glazed expression really didn’t do much to compliment my features. "The Apothecary owner was this crazy fat bint and she tried to suffocate me with the biggest rack I ever saw and I couldn’t get her off ‘cause she was a couple acres wide-"

"Hey pal, she’s not fat or crazy," I interjected huffily.

Damien gave me an incredulous look and demanded, "In what world?"

"She’s just...a lotta woman. Like in those old naked Renaissance paintings."

He rolled his eyes and went back regaling the tale of how Auntie Swaroopakuntala whooped his ass. I felt a great deal of pride then; Auntie Swaroopakuntala was the bomb. Even Demons feared her and her bountiful bosom.

"I’ve put up with a lot of trollshit to get this position," Damien went on as I eagerly listened in. "Well fuck it’s been six hundred and sixty-six years. I’m not about to give up now – I’ll take the damn penalty and you know it."

When Damien hung up, I was quick on the uptake.

"Did you just get in trouble?"

Damien continued to make tracks around the table. It seemed to me that the phone call had riled him up and now he had a lot of pent up energy. Too bad he was a kidnapping, conniving fucko, else I might’ve been happy to lend him a hand...or a mouth...to help rid some of that excess flow. I was pretty into flow afterall.

Course, on the other hand, if a buff, studley, forceful Demon wanted to rope me into a few hours of hot, rough, slutty man-sex then there wasn’t much a wiry Earthling like me could do about it now was there?

"I told you I wasn’t supposed to do magic didn’t I? I got in shit for wiping you guys out."

A terrible thought eclipsed my rampant-running fantasies. "Uh say...that wasn’t Satan on the phone was it?"

Damien rolled his eyes. "No it was Glongnir."

"Glognir."

"Yeah, my lawyer. He’s an Ogre. You know how they can get."

Yeah uh huh. "He called to rag you ‘cause you fucked up?"

Damien threw me an extremely dirty look. I liked it extremely a lot. "Like I wasn’t justified. That blimp bag of nuts practically killed me! You guys are lucky all you lost was a few hours."

"And you’re lucky you’re not leaking cerebrospinal fluid out your ears," I retorted, feeling smug. Auntie Swaroopakuntala had laid five kinds of beatdown on Damien’s arrogant, threatening ass. "Auntie Swaroopakuntala is tough. She could’ve pounded you into Demon dust."

Damien stopped his pacing and made smoky, smirky eyes at me. "And yet I have you here, alone and ready to do exactly what I want."

He emphasized ‘alone’ and ‘want’ in a way that made me feel too hot to trot. I cleared my throat, shifted around some and hastily changed the subject. "So what’s this position you were talking about?"

Damien slumped back down onto the loveseat and did that sprawled out, liquidy thing. "You really wanna know?"

"Well shits ahoy, I’m asking aren’t I?" I scowled. "This here is kidnapping most foul. You’re deep in illegal activities pal. The least you can do is fill in the blanks."

He smirked some more. "Actually the least I can do is nothing."

Talk about irritation junction. I changed tactics. "I can’t exactly help you if I don’t know all the details," I wheedled in what I figured was a suave fashion. "I might frig your Elixir up in some fundamental way. Are you willing to take that risk?"

"Oh so now you’re planning on helping me, are you?"

Eh screw diplomacy. "Just tell me what the crap’s going on punkface!"

"I’ll bet you’re wild in the sack," Damien drawled out, amused.

I think I might have stopped breathing, though I know I didn’t stop salivating. There was a pathetic silence as I attempted to get myself sorted. Then I played it cool. "So you’re not gonna tell me anything, is that it? I’m just supposed to do whatever you want, no questions asked?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

What a conceited patch of crotch rot! "I’m not brewing some sketchy potion that I know jack shit about," I snapped. "Watch me chump, I’m stubborn."

Damien sighed in a harassed, I-don’t-have-time-for-this-bullshit sort of way and decided to placate me. "I need to get into Heaven, alright?"

Well I definitely wasn’t expecting that. Genocide and epidemics yeah, Lah Lah Land not so much. "What for? You need a change of scenery?"

"I’m required to behead an Angel and bring the head back to my boss."

Okay, so this was more of what I’d been expecting. Still, I couldn’t help but goggle. "Say you’re shitting me."

"Do I look like I’m shitting you?"

I couldn’t say that he did. "Well I’m not about to help you do that! You think I wanna risk my eternity for you?"

Damien sighed again, like I was being an unreasonable little snot-rag. "See why I didn’t wanna tell you? I knew you’d spazz."

"Your mama’s spazzing," I lamely retorted. "What do you mean required, exactly?"

"Just that. This is all part of my final test. That’s why I’m not allowed to use any magic, other then the actual spell you’ll be crafting because that’s the only way Demons are able to enter Heaven."

I was probably going to regret asking but after all this build-up and drama, how could I not? "And if you pass your...test, then what?"

"Then I’ll finally become a Demon fucking Overlord," Damien declared with great satisfaction. "I’ve been working my ass off these past six hundred and sixty-six years. That’s how long it takes a Slave Driver to get a friggin’ promotion. It’s been a goddamn long haul, lemme tell you that."

I think I must’ve been kinda stunned because my mouth was open but nothing was coming out.

"Gets you right in the guts, don’t it? Six six six my ass," Damien scoffed, mistaking my shock. Well okay, so the six hundred and sixty-six year deal was a shitty haul but so was the casual murder of a frigging angel as well as all this Overlord business. Seriously, Damien was taking badass hot-guy to a whole new level.

"Hey, you getting ready for later?" Damien gestured to my gaping mouth and made an obscene gesture.

I suppose I couldn’t have been in too much shock or disgusted outrage since the very idea of putting my mouth anywhere on his packin’ bod was practically enough for my rocket to start launching pre-fuel. "Well it’s not every day I’m forced to take part in some kind of celestial slaughter," I cried defensively, striving to keep my body’s pervacious levels on the down-low.

"Like they don’t got it made up there," Damien sneered "They’re due for some carnage I say. I’ve been busting my balls to get here, what do I care about a little more murder?"

I probably should have been focusing on his lack of morals but hey, I’m a twenty-two year old guy whose only action of late has been of the Lone Ranger persuasion, so my thoughts were mostly revolving around...mmmm busting balls.

Self-restraint around walking porn like Damien had gone the way of the sabre-toothed tiger by this point, and all points before.

For someone who had been reluctant to share info with me, Damien was now taking to whinging like Auntie Swaroopakuntala had taken to poutine. "You think it’s easy being an Overlord in training? Yeah, so I’ve always loved to torture but when you’re forced to do it, the fun goes fast. Makes it work. Fucking trollshit regulations. If you gotta dish out ten thousand flogs a day, you gonna enjoy that? Shits no!"

Flogging?

I had memories of Ulsef and his spanky ways. Damien wasn’t going to get freaky on me was he?

"Flogging," I managed, pale-faced. "You mean like...uh flogging?"

Damien grinned real sexy. "Worried I might kink up your ass?"

"Like there’s any point in arguing about something that’ll never happen," I shot back, talking smack. A foetus could see how much I wanted to sex things up with the guy, spanking barred. "Er...what else did you have to do?"

"Same old, same old," Damien said on a sigh, sounding like an old fart reminiscing about ‘ye olde tymes’. "Administer at least ten thousand flogs daily. Start a bloody ass war resulting in upwards of fifty thousand dead monthly. Slaughter a few thousand kittens, puppies, babies, or any other cute little fluffy thing every day. Torture everyone from the ninth and tenth centaury weekly. Compete in all biweekly Brutality Battles and Torture Tournaments. I’m telling you, these years have been packed to bumblefuck. You think I ever get to rest? You think I ever get to do a random spot of evisceration or some massive torching for the fun of it like how I used to? Hell no! It’s all this bureaucratic, red-tape, policy trollshit. Not like the old days where a couple solid Hell curses and a few billion savages could get you far."

I continued to gawk at him like a dumbfuck. I was torn between being extremely appalled and being...well being extremely appalled pretty much covered it. "You didn’t...you know...to a little brown and white spotty puppy named Skeletor about sixteen years back did you?"

"Skeletor?" Damien snorted, deeply amused.

"I was really into He-Man when I was a little kid," I mumbled, feeling sickness rippled around inside my stomach.

"Christ. I never offed your mutt so you can chill, okay? Mostly I stick to poor countries for that shit. It’s a helluva lot more satisfying when some little gutter orphan loses the only thing they got to love instead of some brat whose ‘rents’ll just buy them a new pet."

This left me speechless.

Damien propped his feet up on the coffee table and slouched down some more. "Yeah yeah, I’m a sick motherfucker, that’s right. You think I haven’t heard it all before?"

"Orphan kids?"

"Look, if pissers like me didn’t exist than you wouldn’t be looking so hot now would you? It’s how the world works, fuck I didn’t come up with this shitty system."

There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that since, yeah, it was true. Compared to Damien, I was practically Florence friggin’ Nightingale. "So all that flogging you do..."

Damien slowly licked his lips at me and looked real slutty. "Still hung up on the flogging eh?"

"Like I’d be into that weird-ass Hell crap! I just wanted to know who you, uh, flog down there."

"Damned souls and sinners mostly. The occasional wayward human. Hell beasts to maintain order and you know, for shits and giggles..." Damien shrugged. "I don’t ask a lot of questions when it comes to torturing. It’s my job."

This did not bode well for my immediate future. "Right. Well uh...it sure is getting late. I guess I’d better be heading off-"

"Yeah, nice try pal." Damien checked his watch. I scrutinized my own so that I wasn’t salivating over his biceps because fuck his muscles had muscles. I supposed it was all the flogging he did, seeing as how he wasn’t too picky and all. "We still got a couple of hours to chill. I’ll want to you start crafting around ten – that’ll give you plenty of time to get things in order by the Witching Hour."

"The Witching Hour?" I snorted loudly. "What are you - Wiccan?"

Damien threw me a highly disgusted look. "Do I look like I prance around in fields of heather with my granola-fucking lesbian spiritual partner?"

I sniggered before I could help myself because it was just so true. Auntie Swaroopakuntala and I had to deal with Wiccans on a regular basis and with that bunch it was all aligning chakras this and flaxseed soy shakes that. It pissed us off. I mean fuck it, there just wasn’t a natural, herbal, vegan alternative to worm gizzards and cougar spleens – could I help that shit? Like it was my fault that spell books written centuries ago weren’t politically fucking correct. "Yeah alright – you really don’t."

"So there’s nothing much else to do," Damien remarked, his voice lowering to do that smouldering, throaty thing. "You wanna fool around?"

That cut me off snickering, and air flowage and heart beating too.

"I’ll give you a little taste of things to come." The emphases placed on the last word was about as subtle as what was going on inside my pants.

"Not interested," I flat-out lied in a voice that didn’t sound too squeaky, at least not by hamster standards.

Damien laughed a good one and gestured in the general direction of my crotch. "Keeping vials in your pants then?"

I was highly, among other things, insulted at the very insinuation, no matter how true it might have been. I mean seriously. Did he think that I had no self-control, no sense of self-restraint in the face of such undeniable sexiness? Did he think that being hot and ripped and all fuckerrific automatically negated six hundred and sixty-six years of being the biggest torturing shithead this planet’s ever known? I had some morals at least half of the time dammit!

So I sat up nice and tall, looked the vile Hell spawn right in his soulless (though alluringly sexy) eyes and informed him that there was no way I was going to brew his stupid, evil, heathen, Angel-decapitating potion, astronomically fantastic shagging or not.

Damien continued to look amused, the buff bastard. "Do you really think that you talking smack is gonna stop me?"

I folded my arms across my chest and arched my eyebrow, totally playing the 'up-one cool factor' game. "Do you really think you talking smack can force me?"

"I’m not the kinda guy who talks, Spencer." He grinned wolfishly. "You don’t wanna see me pissed, trust me."

Well Christ, he wasn’t even a guy!

"Now get that tight little ass over before I give it a good flogging."

I vaulted to my feet, goaded on by his terrorizing words and the ensuing traumatizing memories of Ulsef and his attempts to coerce me into S&M. "Don’t you dare, asswipe!"

Damien was on his feet and stalking towards me before I’d even finished speaking. For the first time since he’d entered the Apothecary, he looked truly hacked off. "You’re giving me orders?" His voice was scarcely higher than a whisper and the threat behind it was enough to set my prick to puncture.

"Nuh uh, who me, no way man, would I that, chillax dude," I babbled as I took cover behind another wingchair. I yammered frantically some more, trying my best not to focus on Damien’s pissed face and instead fumbled around my pockets for something, anything, that wasn’t a wadded up tissue or a pack of gum.

I seemed to be in luck because I really was keeping a vial in my pocket, besides the obvious one. I didn’t know how a vial had ended up in my cargos but figured that maybe I’d absentmindedly misplaced it after a Crafting. In any case, I was glad to have it. I yanked it out, pulled out the rubber stopper and flung the contents into Damien’s face just as he strode around the sofa towards me.

The murky blue liquid slimed down Damien’s angular face and began effervescing loudly. I realized then, seconds too late, what had been inside the vial.

"What the fuck did you do that for?"

Shitsticks.