Please Note: A Moment's Temptation is a recently started co-authoring project between Kanilla and I. This first chapter is her doing, and I am working on the second. Trust me, she's awesome.

One

The little town of Dale had, for the better part of the past two weeks, been experiencing endless downpours. The rain left the roads slick, and even the bravest children avoided jumping in the puddles that grew larger every day. Today, March 17th, was another sad, bleak day, but this surprised no one, and least of all Iova Pike.

From his seat at the back of the classroom he had a clear view of the grounds outside, empty now. Apart from the rain splashing against the ground nothing moved out there. The sound of rain on the window was pleasant and helped him tune out the teacher’s jabbering. Mrs. Baker was the kind of woman whose voice was unusually high pitched for a grown up, and most of the time Iova couldn’t help feeling irritated whenever he was in her classes. Though, at the moment he paid her no mind, and his light grey eyes stared through the glass without focusing on anything in particular. Since he left bed this morning an uneasy feeling had lodged itself in his stomach, and instead of vanishing as it usually did it had slowly grown until Iova was tapping his pencil against his desk or pulling anxiously at the sleeve of his sweater to distract himself from it.

He’d tried to read the sentences in his text book backwards and he’d tried to make lists (because he liked doing that). During lunch he’d been unable to swallow down the sandwiches he made earlier, all because of the heavy rock in his stomach. He felt hungry, but the thought of eating made him wrinkle his nose.

Nothing seemed to work. Now that the school hours were coming to an end Iova was counting the minutes inside his head while sneaking glances at the clock above the door every now and then.

“-stop here for today.”

His concentration broke as the sound of shoes, rustling clothes and books being closed reached his ears. He turned his head, warily, and noticed that half the class was already on its way through the door while the rest packed their things with practiced speed. A look at the clock told him that it was 14:30. He was unaware of the sigh of relief he breathed.

His classmates were always in such a hurry to leave for someplace else, to hang out with their friends at the mall or drive around in the new, shiny cars that so many of them had gotten for their birthdays. Standing by the window he could see them run or mess around with each other, and girls reached out for their boyfriends to hold their hands or snog themselves out of breath. Iova watched them with a small frown on his pale, freckled face, a contrast to the relieved, adventure-seeking teenagers outside.

Was it someone else’s birthday too today? He wondered and pressed a hand flat against the cool glass. Were they going to take their friends out and celebrate, or drink themselves wasted and be hung over for school tomorrow?

Today marked Iova’s 17th birthday, but the occasion did not give him any bubbly or fuzzy feelings. Quite the contrary, actually. It was silly to celebrate that you’d grown a year older, and even sillier that people bought you things that you otherwise would have to save money for on your own.

Iova looked away from the window and started putting his books back into his backpack. The teachers had gone easy on them this week, and therefore there was hardly any homework to speak of. There was no point in slacking, because it most definitely would come back to bite you in the ass if you did. So he stuck every last one of his school books into his backpack, closed it and reached for the rain coat hanging over his chair. It had left a puddle on the floor beneath. Just as he swung his backpack onto his shoulder and began to head for the door he was stopped by Mrs. Baker’s squeaky voice.

“Pike, are your parents coming tomorrow?” she questioned.

Iova stared at her blankly. He couldn’t for the life of him remember why she should be asking him this question, so he gave a shrug.

“What for?”

Mrs. Baker sighed heavily and rubbed a temple with her knobby fingers before giving him a look he interpreted as concerned.

“The parent-teacher conference, Pike. You did mention it to them, right?”

Oh, that.

“I did, but they can’t come, Mrs. Baker,” he said slowly. She was not going to like this, but that didn’t particularly bother him. He politely kept his eyes down as he talked, but they strayed to look at the clock.

14:41.

“I worry for you, young man. This is the third time they aren’t showing. I know they both travel a lot, but this concerns your future!” She sounded exasperated, and Iova wished she would be done with it already and let him go. “I will have to make a phone call to them, Pike. You are a good boy, but they are neglecting you.”

“No need to- they’ll be in China until next Monday. Can I go now?”

“Yes. Be careful on your way home.”

“I will, Mrs.”

Iova could feel her eyes on his back as he left, but it was the heavy feeling in his stomach that made him walk faster. His blue rubber boots squeaked against the linoleum, and the sound echoed in the empty hallway. The floor was wet and slippery, as expected, and he had to hold on to the railing not to slip when he made his way downstairs. The school corridors felt empty and much too large now that everyone had left, and Iova didn’t like how it made him feel so small.

The moment he exited the building he was wrapped in cold, biting air and a shower of rain that splashed onto his cheeks and got in his mouth. He bent his head to avoid the worst of it and brushed the already wet, red fringe out of his eyes. The wind rendered any umbrella useless, which he very well knew, so he hadn’t brought his to school. He walked slowly across the school grounds, in no rush to get anywhere, and by the time school was out of sight his pants were drenched and uncomfortable to wear. They glued themselves to his thin legs, as though he was wearing a second skin. He grimaced. It didn’t make him feel any better that every car driving by splashed him with the dirty water from the puddles that had gathered along the side walk.

Now, where to go?

The most obvious choice would be home.

But Iova didn’t feel like going back to a house that was likely to be empty and be shut in there for the rest of the day with nothing to do but homework or watching the rain. For once he wished that his parents would actually spend some time in the big, fancy house that they had worked so hard to buy. Wishing was meaningless, he thought and snorted. His parents were too self-absorbed to spend much time with their two sons, which usually suited him just fine. There was no reason to expect that his older brother, Matthew, was in either.

Who knew what that guy spent his spare time doing? Iova suspected that Matthew was nothing like the perfect son their parents thought him to be. But Iova had no interest in his brother’s private life, so he didn’t meddle. If only Matthew had felt the same way, he thought and felt a tad annoyed.

He walked around town, aimlessly, for what felt like hours. Iova was soaked through and through, and his face had grown numb from the chilly temperature. His fingers were stiff and wouldn’t move very well, but he stuck them in his pockets and rubbed the fingertips against one another to keep the blood circulating. He needed to take shelter before he got sick, and the mall was just nearby. From where he stood it looked like a big, blurry shadow that loomed over the people coming and leaving through the entrance. No one looked his way when he walked through the wide doorway and pulled back the hood of his rain coat.

His hair was short, cut right beneath the ears, but that did not stop it from curling whenever it got wet. One glance at a mirror standing outside a clothing store made him notice just how wild his hair had gotten after the long walk. He tried to brush it down against his head with his fingers, but it kept bouncing back up and defied him until he simply gave up. Iova stared at the mirror with an unhappy expression. If not for his nose, one might have mistaken him for a girl from a distance. He was short, about the same height as most of the girls in his class (or shorter, in some cases), and even when he was dressed in a big rain coat you could tell that he was thin and puny-looking.

He had watched the boys in his class grow taller and fill out in the matter of months, but his own body’s growth appeared to have either slowed down or completely stopped. He was short, a measly 1.63 centimeters, and his arms and legs were a little too thin and weak. No matter how much he’d tried he could not seem to gain any muscle. The lack of progress had lead him to give up exercise to wait for the natural development instead. It was a rather depressing thought, but at least people had a harder time noticing him when he was like this.

A couple stopped right next to him, oblivious of his presence, and the girl giggled and put her arms around her boyfriend’s neck to draw him down for a kiss. Iova saw the smirk on the guy’s lips, and for a moment his eyes were fixed on the arm that sneaked around the girl’s waist and pulled her closer. The sloppy, wet sounds that followed had him frowning in mild disgust, and watching the two teenagers try to suck each other’s tongues out did little to make it better. It looked horribly messy- there was saliva on the girl’s lips when she broke the kiss, and he thought he saw a drop of it on her chin as well.

Iova had a hard time understanding how making out could be enjoyable with all that excess saliva and clashing of tongues. He had yet to experience his first kiss, but he was in no hurry to find a person to share it with. Romance held no interest to him. Heavens knew that he had seen enough teenagers make drama and intrigues over that very thing. He didn’t look away when the girl noticed him, and she didn’t look the least bit bothered by being watched by a scrawny, red haired boy.

Iova shuddered when she playfully stuck out her tongue at him.

He heard the girl giggling and whispering something to her boyfriend when he turned his back to them and walked away. There was goose flesh on his arms, likely from wearing cold, drenched clothes, and he couldn’t stop shivering. The sign of a café caught his attention, but a quick search of his pockets told him that he was broke. If he had known he was coming here he’d have brought his wallet. Iova leaned forward and rested his elbows on top of the railing outside a photography store.

Various pictures of little kids and family portraits were displayed behind the window, and Iova stared at them, trying to measure if the happiness they showed was real.

The hand that clamped down on his shoulder out of nowhere made him jump and turn on his heels, ready to make a run for it. His heart beat harder, his muscles tensed. But as he came face to face with the person he felt some of the tension ebb away.

“What are you hanging around here for when you’re soaked, you idiot?”

Matthew was two years older than him and physically much, much larger. Iova leaned his head back a bit to meet his brother’s blue eyes, and he closed his mouth to keep the rude comments to himself. Maybe it was because of his glare- either way Matthew removed his hand and took a step back to give him some space.

“You’ll get sick.”

“Maybe,” Iova said quickly. Seeing that Matthew was hanging with two of his friends (Iova couldn’t remember their names) made him nervous. It wouldn’t be unlike his brother to humiliate him before others.

“So why are you here? You don’t even like the mall,” Matthew said dryly, and Iova felt his stomach clench in response.

‘Don’t get angry. He’s ripping the piss again, that’s all’, he told himself.

“No reason.”

There was a tense atmosphere between the two of them, and Iova tried to think of an excuse that would let him leave quickly. However, Matthew broke it by turning to face his friends.

“I’ll see you guys later, okay? My idiotic little brother needs a ride home. Mum would kill me if he got pneumonia and died, you know.”

What was going on? Iova felt confused at this turn of events. Had Matthew just offered to ditch his friends to help him? The suspicion was written on his face when Matthew turned back around, but if his brother noticed he didn’t mention it. Iova was nudged forward by a hand between his shoulder blades, which nearly resulted in him tripping in his own numb feet. Matthew grabbed a fistful of the raincoat and pulled him back before he could make a complete fool of himself.

“Geez, watch it, will you?”

The two of them didn’t speak a word to each other, and Iova followed a couple of steps behind him with his head bowed and his hands in his pockets. There was a vague discomfort spreading throughout his body, one that didn’t have anything to do with being cold and wet, but he couldn’t tell why. It left him with a churning stomach and a slight nausea.

“Get in.”

He blinked- he hadn’t even noticed that they had stopped.

Matthew had already buckled himself up when Iova sank into the seat and shut the door. The radio was turned on, and loud, obnoxious pop hammered against his eardrums. Glancing at his brother he saw him nodding his head along to the beat while getting the car started. Apparently Matthew’s eardrums were already too damaged for him to be bothered by the volume.

It was a short drive, but being stuck inside the car Matthew had been given for his 19th birthday made the ride feel considerably longer. It was a Humvee, a kind of car Iova never had liked because it was large, bulky and green and meant for other things than obeying the whims of a teenager. He looked out the window and tried to resist the urge to cover his ears. It was a relief when he could finally unbuckle and leave the damned thing. Matthew turned off the music, and Iova was ready to bolt when his brother talked.

“There’s a package for you in the kitchen. Mum says hello.”

Iova frowned, but Matthew was already leaving the driveway and would probably be gone for hours. The large garden looked sad and soppy, and the grass lay flat against the ground because of the constant downpour. He locked himself in and kicked off his rubber boots. They landed on the floor with a wet clash and created tiny puddles of rain water. He ignored them and hung his jacket on a knob.

“Need to change…,” he mumbled, and the clothes were discarded piece by piece on his way to the kitchen. His parents weren’t coming home for days, and Matthew couldn’t care less, so there was no one to complain about the mess he’d made.

As promised, a package was standing on the kitchen table, and he recognized the curly hand writing on the note that followed as his mother’s.

‘Happy birthday, honey.

You know we’re sorry that we can’t be there. There is an envelope in the cupboard for you.

Enjoy your day, okay?

Love, mum and dad.’

He crumpled the note and left it on the table. The package was wrapped so securely that there might be glass inside, and Iova had a hard time opening it even with the use of scissors. The content turned out to be something quite different from glass. He picked up a packet of Chinese sweets (at least it looked like sweets), and beneath it were various other kinds too. His parents had sent him sweets for his birthday? They must have forgotten that Matthew was the sweet tooth in the family.

It stung a little, but he couldn’t find the energy to be upset with them. How were they to know what their youngest son liked or disliked when they never spent more than two weeks straight in their own home? He pursed his lips, annoyed, and left the package there.

There was goose flesh on his arms, and he felt cold from walking around in only boxers.

Iova walked into the living room and picked up a blanket from the couch. It felt soft and nice on his skin. He sat down and leaned back, curling his arms and legs to his chest with the blanket wrapped safely around him. The sleepiness was grabbing hold of him all too quickly, and before he knew it he was sleeping a deep, dreamless sleep.

Six hours later it was the burning pain in his stomach that woke Iova. His mouth opened and let out a hoarse gasp, and his fingers dug into the skin on his stomach, desperately trying to make it go away. Waking so abruptly left him groggy and incoherent- he only knew that it hurt, and it hurt bad. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

'What the hell is this?'

His skin was stinging and burning, but it was nothing compared to what his stomach was putting him through right now. Iova buried his face in the couch and grit his teeth; the couch muffled the cry.

Then, as if nothing had happened at all, the pain vanished.

Iova uncurled from the fetal position and rolled onto his back. A thin layer of sweat covered his forehead and throat, the skin still burning as if from a fever. But he was perfectly healthy, wasn’t he? Or had he gotten sick because he got wet earlier? He was confused.

“Shit.”

There was a huge, black pattern on his stomach that looked like someone had carved it into the skin with a pen. Scribbles and unknown letters circled around his bellybutton in symmetrical patterns and shapes, and he could read none of it, apart from the large, beautifully written letters that formed his own name. He scrambled to his feet and stared down at the monstrous thing with wide eyes.

Could it be…?

Iova swallowed hard as he let his fingertips brush over the black scribbles.

For years now it had been invisible, even to his own eyes, and he’d forgotten what it meant. But the seal had run out of time, or so he assumed, because Iova had reached his 17th birthday. His mouth went dry at the thought of what awaited him.

The black marks pulsated with a weak glow now, and he could tell that they were fading again. And this time they would not just become invisible, they would completely disappear. And the moment the bells tolled midnight, it would be the end of everything, because those were the terms of the contract he had made.

“I don’t want to die.” His voice was merely a whisper. “It’s too soon.”

With the fading of the seal he could feel the magick slowly waking up, dazed from its five year long comatose. Tendrils of magick vibrated through his nerves and veins; Iova felt it as tiny pin pricks coming from inside, and he knew from experience that the prickling sensation would grow stronger until it forced its way out of his body. He sweated despite feeling cold. Just thinking about the magick that had ruined his life before made him panic.

He remembered how he, as a child, had shattered every window in the large house simply because he was angry. He remembered the blank looks on his classmates' faces after his magick tampered with their memories, just because he'd been ashamed when they laughed at him for spilling his juice all over himself. There were so many occasions where it had responded to his emotions, be it happiness or rage, shame or sadness, and he'd been unable to do anything to suppress it.

This magick that he'd been born with had toyed with him and pulled his strings for years and years, driving him up against an invisible wall.

For five years the seal had allowed him to live peacefully like a normal human, and the thought of giving it all up now seemed unbearable. He hadn’t…He hadn’t lived yet, not like he wanted to. His mind was fumbling for a way out of the situation, a way that he wouldn’t have to fulfill his end of the bargain that sealed the magick in the first place.

He could…

There really was no way.

A lump formed in his throat.

Unless…Unless his contractor had forgotten about him. It was possible, wasn’t it? He tossed the blanket away and hurried to the stairs, ascending them two steps at a time in his hurry to get to his room. No lights were on upstairs, but Iova could walk the way to his room with his eyes closed. His heart beat frantically inside his ribcage, driving the adrenaline through his veins.

He tore open the door to his room and reached out for the light switch…then stopped dead in his tracks. The feeling settling in his stomach was one of dread and sharp fear mixed together.

Sitting right there on his bed was a figure clad in black, legs crossed and hands folded neatly on its lap. It had the looks of a man, but was anything but human, and though it was dark in here Iova couldn’t possibly forget a face like that. Silky, black hair was draped over one shoulder in a loose pony tail, and his contractor’s lips curled into a satisfied, smug smirk that sent little shivers down Iova’s spine.

The demon’s presence had frozen him to the spot; dumbstruck with fear, but it was the pair of deep purple eyes that had him holding his breath. They stared, unwavering and unblinking, and Iova could not avert his eyes.

“Laycus,” he whispered. “You came.”

The demon’s smirk grew wider.

Iova couldn’t breathe. The seal on his bare stomach ached in response to the demon’s close presence.

“Happy birthday, Iova Pike,” the demon said in a deep, smooth purr. “Although, it seems like you are the one who’ll be giving me a present.”

My life, Iova thought, I’ll be giving him my life.

This was, without doubt, the worst birthday he’d ever had.