Page 1 of Savior
Gila Bend, Arizona
On his knees in the cooling desert sand, the night is still and silent. Black candles flicker in the darkness before him. The light emanating from the small flames, is barely enough to illuminate the photo in the center of the circle. Smoke from the burning herbs rises in ribbons, snaking into his engorged nostrils as he sucks in another deep breath. Hunching slightly forward, he braces himself…
The crack of the Palo Verde switch whipping across the torn flesh of his back, echoes into the night. Twenty-five self-inflicted lashes… And she still wasn’t purged from his system.
Closing his eyes on the photo, he drops the switch and grabs for the knife sheathed at his side, and drags the sharp edge of the blade across his chest. A strangled grunt of frustration escapes him as he grips the blade in his opposite hand, slicing across his flesh once more. Unsatisfied by the ritual, he drives the blade through the center of the photo, staking it into the desert.
With two fingers, wrapped tightly in the few stolen strands of long black hair, he swipes across the blood trickling down his torso, then dips them into the ring of salt around him. Bringing his hand back to his marred flesh, he presses his salt encrusted fingers into the V-shaped wound, willing the stinging pain and the blood-letting, to purify him of his unwanted desires for the woman in the photo. The woman who belonged to another. The woman, whom he had no business feeling anything for.
Carnal lust was one thing. That was natural. Excusable... Yet he recklessly allowed himself to slip… To feel something more… Opened a door that should have remained forever locked, as it had been before. With good reason.
Now, the guilt was crushing. It made him feel weak and resentful of himself. His mind and body betraying him. He didn’t intend to play with this fire, but in doing so, it ignited a forbidden desire within him that he could not tolerate, let alone afford to feel. Not with all he had yet to do... All he had to undo…
Chanting in his mind for the Darkness to kill his yearning for her, to resolidify the ice around his blackened heart, he places his two fingers into the flame of the nearest black candle. Burning the strands of her hair from his fingers and absorbing the pain from the licking flame. The putrid smell wafts through the air.
“Damien…”
He glances over his bloody shoulder, glaring at the man whose audacity dared interrupt his ritual.
“The Prez is asking for you.”
With an unseen sneer, he returns to his dark work, removing the knife staked through the photo. With one last look at the woman, he places a corner into the flame, and watches it burn. Bubbling and curling in his fingers, until the fire has consumed it completely. The blackened ashes flitter away on a slight breeze across the desert.
With an impatient jerk of his shoulders, he pulls his shirt back on and refastens the buttons. Blood already seeping into the fabric, causing it to stick uncomfortably to his torn skin. Rising to his feet, he grabs the cut and slips it back on, before turning and walking towards the large Pueblo Revival in the distance.
His President wanted an update. To know how the plan was progressing. What the next phase will be and when everything would be executed.
Damien had had a plan. And it was working. Until she happened… Until her lover, his enemy, spoke of things that just couldn’t be.
Reaching into his leather cut, he removes a lighter and the pack of hand rolled coffin nails. Flicking the box open, he extracts a cigarette between his teeth, and with a snap of his wrist and a flick of his thumb, the lighter pings open on its hinges, already alight. For a moment, he stares at the trusty flame dancing at the end of his life long habit. A habit, for the first time in his life, he was considering kicking. The inclination to do so, annoys him further, and he lights the end, pulling a long, much needed drag into his burning lungs.
His President would not be pleased. Though, neither was Damien. Not with what he was told by their enemy. That information was a game changer. And if true, he’d have to hit the brakes and change course immediately… Immediately, and in secret. Her life would depend on it. And damn his soul to the Hell he already knew he was destined to, he fucking cared.
It made him sick to look at his President. Ever since the explosion, seven years ago, that left him with third degree burns over ninety percent of his body. The sick feeling that had once come from a place of pity and remorse, was now laced with a growing mixture of hate and disgust. In the dim light of the office, his President’s face reminded him of melted cheese sliding off a slice of pizza. That revolting sound he made when sucking saliva back into his drooling, deformed mouth, irked Damien in a way that hadn’t before. So did that handkerchief, ever present in his equally scarred and gnarled fist, to wipe at the continuous stream of spit leaking from that mouth. The deformed lower lip where the fire melted his flesh, fusing it to his chin in a permanent, grotesque grimace.
“What happened to your face?” his President rasps. The irony of that question doesn’t miss Damien. He brings his hand up to stroke the still tender bruise along his jaw.
“Prick managed to get a lucky shot in when I had him dangling from the rafters in that shed.” Damien replies. “It’s nothing.”
“Tell me the good news, then… Do you have her?”
“There’s been a change in plans.”
“What change?” he slurps, dabbing his chin. “I thought you said the woman was the key to ruining him? It’s always a fucking woman.”
“We don’t need her to make him suffer.”
“You got a better idea?”
“I will.”
The slobbering creature hoists himself up out of the leather chair, his hunched form slowly making his way closer to him. “What’s changed?”
Damien stares back with matched suspicion. “I have questions… For you.”
“What you have, is a lifelong debt owed to me!” he hisses, wiping at that discolored, misshapen mouth again.
“Tell me about the girls… Specifically, the little red head.”
