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Charlie stood in a place she had never before been — a vast reception chamber, full of shadows except for a single beam of light in front of her, stabbing straight down. She barely had time to acknowledge her surroundings (high pale walls decorated with sparkles of rubies like drops of blood, a glass ceiling soaring overhead) before the sight in front of her completely captured her attention.
Under that dazzling spotlight the Radio Demon sat enthroned in majesty, seated on a gorgeous high-backed chair of crimson leather and scrolled gold . Fringed epaulets adorned the shoulders of his suit and a full spread of black stag’s horns rose atop his head. In his left hand he clasped his Staff of Power, its supernatural Eye glowing as brightly red as his own and seemingly fixed upon her.
“Darling.” His voice seemed to echo in both higher and lower registers as he smiled kindly down at her and extended his right hand. “Welcome! Come! Join me!”
A second spotlight slashed down. For the first time Charlie noticed the second throne to Alastor’s right: violet leather and silver, not a hair shorter than his own and sporting pale angel wings on its upper curve. And she knew that if she took his hand she would be elevated to that throne —
So it’s a deal, then?
Horrified, she took a full step back.
“No! I —I can’t —”
Alastor’s smile never faltered. “Why ever not?”
Possible consequences cascaded through her mind, none of them ending well. “I — Dad wouldn’t like it if we —”
Alastor chuckled deep in his throat, eyes shifting to radio dials as he cocked his head at her. “Nobody lives forever, Princess,” he intoned, “not even Rulers of Hell.”
Something drew Charlie’s eyes down his slim body.
Blood!
There was a hole in Alastor’s narrow belly and dark purple blood all over his suit... running across the leather of his throne... dripping down onto the marble floor beneath his feet and spreading in a rapidly growing pool toward the carpet, which was indigo blue and imprinted with stars of brightest gold.
Deadly cold settled in the pit of Charlie’s stomach. She looked up to his face again and saw his familiar maniacal grin, undimmed in spite of his mortal wound.
“No one lives forever...” This time the words seemed to flit and flicker out of the layers of darkness around her, like innumerable bats on the wing. “Even me, my oh-so-precious Charlie... so choose wisely...”
And then the shadows were bats, blacker than Alastor’s own sins and breaking up, swarming round Charlie’s shoulders. She screamed and ducked, both arms raised to shelter her head —
“Darling?”
She turned to flee, but found her feet rooted to the gorgeous carpet even as the blood flowed around them and a moan rose in her throat —
“Charlie!” A strong hand on her right shoulder, gently shaking her. “Wake up! You’re having a nightmare!”
“Wha —?”
Charlie jerked awake, heart pounding and eyes flying wide open. For an instant she thought: So dark! I’m still back there, Al is still dying —
— but she was safely in her own bed, in her room at the Hotel, with Alastor lying beside her and gazing down into her face at extremely close range, with eyes that lent a crimson glow to the silence of the night.
“My dear...” He tut-tutted and tightened his right arm around her waist, holding her closer as his other hand left her shoulder and began stroking her hair. “There, there — you’re awake now. You’re perfectly safe.”
With you?
Her heart was still hammering in her chest, but she twined her legs with his and leaned into the contact, trying to even out her breathing.
Alastor leaned closer still —
Charlie’s heart hitched.
— and for someone so relentlessly wicked, pressed a surprisingly chaste kiss to her forehead. His grey lips chilled and burned her at the same time.
“Al...”
He raised his head, leaving a brand on her skin. “Go back to sleep, Charlie.”
“Did you just — um —”
A mysterious smile curved his lips, and he leaned in again, this time to kiss her mouth.
Charlie froze like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Her stomach fluttered, her heart kicked back into full gear again, and her eyes flew open wide.
But again, the touch of Alastor’s lips was undemanding. Not without warmth, but definitely not carnal. It seemed to offer much without asking anything — and that set off all kinds of alarms in Charlie’s mind.
It lasted two seconds, maybe three. When he drew back, with a wider smile full of razor-sharp teeth, Charlie stared up at him and tried to find the right words.
What finally came out was: “Did you... I mean...” She could feel herself blushing. “D-do you want to...?”
Alastor laughed outright, gaily. “What? No, certainly not!” Charlie blinked at him, and he continued: “I’m afraid such games of love and lust have never held any appeal for me.”
A flashbulb went off in Charlie’s head and she took a stab in the dark. “So you’re... ace?”
He cocked his head. “I beg your pardon?”
“I mean, asexual.”
“Ah! Yes, I suppose so.”
Charlie’s mind flashed to Vaggie and her heart sank. “And you want... romance? With me?”
That’s impossible! She thought of Vaggie’s deeply rooted distrust of all men, well grounded in bitter experiences in the living world. Vaggie would NEVER—
“I don’t want that either,” Alastor said both decisively and dismissively.
Charlie looked down their bodies, pressed so close together, and felt like an idiot for not asking these questions sooner. “Then what’s this?”
“This thing we’re doing?” Alastor’s smile managed to be both ominous and wry. “Call it what you will, darling — I think of it as some mutual comfort on a cold, lonely night.”
Bullshit, Charlie thought. There’s a lot more than that going on — something I can’t quite figure out —
— yet.
But for now she couldn’t see any lie in what he was saying. Even his vocal filter was almost gone, usually a sign that he was speaking something close to the truth — or as close as Alastor ever got to the truth, anyway.
Still, sirens were going off in her head...
... and in her heart.
I’ve got to be careful — one bad step and —
Standing at the edge of a metaphorical cliff and looking down into seething darkness, she remembered: But I’ve got wings to catch me if I fall.
“A friendly arrangement,” Alastor said, as his left hand curved lightly around her cheek.
If he wanted to, he could easily break my neck. Or worse.
“Now go back to sleep, sweetheart — and I wish you the most pleasant of dreams.”
What came to Charlie, oddly enough, was a memory — another of the weekly occasions when Alastor had silently appeared in her room and stretched himself out on her bed beside her, holding her until she fell asleep. She’d woken at some undefined hour of the night to find him sleeping, actually sleeping, beside her.
And when she gazed at his arrow-sharp face she saw it graced with a peace that she had never seen there before. Alastor, the dreaded and dreadful Radio Demon, had fallen asleep beside the Princess of Hell, and for the moment all his guards appeared to be down.
It might have been another illusion, another lie. Certainly he was capable of so very many. But in that instant Charlie had wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around him and see a drowsy smile flicker across his pale narrow features.
She hadn’t succumbed to temptation. She had known what a monumental line she would have been crossing.
If I don’t hold him back, then it’s not really cheating, is it?
Then, as now, she had closed her eyes obediently and let herself slip into warm, soothing darkness.
If this was all a lie, it was one she could manage to live with — somehow.
THE END