In Which Ash Gets Really, Really, REALLY Pissed Off.

"Evie," he said.

"Ash." She was staring wide-eyed at him, the spell entirely broken. She suddenly began to struggle in earnest, and he caught the tang of her sudden terror. "Get off. Get off! Get off me!" Perfect. Now she was going to panic. Ash released her, watched her dart away and cover herself. His heart began to pound as well as he watched, his face blank and expressionless. She collapsed to her knees, panting and unable to calm herself. He'd seen it before, had been unmoved every time. Now...right now, it suddenly seemed obscene. Weak. Was she so damaged that she couldn't control her reactions?

Worse. He felt a foreign emotion bubble up like bile. She was staring at him in horror. Shock. Disgust. As if he were an abomination.

It hurt. He cursed himself for the fool he was, to have indulged in a fantasy for even one instant. Even knowing it had been a fantasy, could never be more than a fantasy, it still burned in his throat like acid. Like betrayal.

"You knew what I am," he said quietly, crossing his arms. "You gave yourself to me, Evie. If you are going to accuse me of enchanting you or raping you, I swear by the two worlds colliding that I will-"

"Judy," she gasped, her voice ugly and on the verge of breaking. "Did you rape her?"

An irrational desire to wound her rose in him, and he answered, "Yes." He saw her flinch as if struck, and continued cruelly, his voice empty of emotion and any hint of remorse. "It's effective. I raped them all, Evie. Mind, body, soul. I broke them. I tortured them. I crushed their wills. I ripped their souls from them. I sold them to demons crueler than I. They serve as familiars, their souls blackened beyond redemption, until the line energy they are forced to hold drives them finally to insanity, and they are discarded and unmourned. Is that what you wished to hear?"

He watched her collapse, shivering, and his anger grew. "And...and you would have..."

"Yes," he replied. "I would have done the same to you, Evie." He thought of the night she had escaped, how he would have punished her for defying him and forcing him to burn himself to claim her. Oh, yes, he'd have done all of that, and more. "Then," he added, almost as an afterthought, but he wasn't sure that she'd registered that.

She stared up at him in horror, as if she had had no idea that he was capable of such cruelty. He felt incredulous at her shock, and was suddenly angry enough to kill her. He could, he thought. She was his, in his domain without any protection from his wrath. He had only to fling her mutilated body to reality to fulfill his part of their bargain. There was nothing to stop him.

"This is what I am, Yvette Therese Sinclaire." He began to approach, one inevitable step after another. "You claimed me, and marked me. Do you renounce me now?"

She was frozen as he reached her, and he jerked her up and against him. "Do you?" he asked, feeling her shy away from the strength in his trembling grasp. He ripped aside the blanket she hid behind.

"Ash-" she pleaded. "Don't!"

NOW she wanted to plead with him? Now? He shoved her hard, and she stumbled backward, knocking over a vase as she struck the wall hard. He was on her in an instant, one hand on her throat, pinning her with his body. "Say you do, Yvette Therese Sinclaire. Renounce your claim," he hissed at her, forgetting she wasn't a demon, forgetting that she hadn't known what she was doing, what her words had meant. She had claimed him as a lover, and now she was denying the claim, denying him. It was worse than a betrayal, it was utterly humiliating. He would renounce her in turn, make her less than she was, make her lower than the twisted spawn that roamed the wasted surface of the Ever After. "It will be effortless to break you. You have given so much of yourself to me already."

"No!" she cried, struggling helplessly. Even now, she had no idea what she had done, and it infuriated him even more.

"Did you trust me, Evie? Did you think yourself safe? I have no mercy, Evie. I can crush you, and I would do so without remorse. I can slip inside your mind and take hold of your will. I could make you do anything I wanted. I could make you love me, Evie, love me so blindly that you would die for me. I could rape you, body and soul, and you would beg me for it." He leaned closer to smile a blood-chilling smile. "As Judy did."

"Stop it!" she shouted desperately. She redoubled her struggles, tried to pull his hands away from her throat.

"I would take pleasure in your pain," he whispered viciously in her ear, and sent the burning heat of his anger into her through the mark. He coated her in his blazing aura, crushing it against hers as she screamed in pain. He invaded her sex with his fingers. "You cannot imagine what I could do to you. There is absolutely nothing you could do to stop me."

"Stop it!" She shouted, writhing and trapped. "You've m-made your point, damnit!"

"Have I?" he asked, his anger burning like cold fire. He brought his fingers to her face, the mingled scents of their shared pleasure now tainted by her insult. "You gave yourself to me willingly, Yvette Therese Sinclaire. You demanded I do the same. I am tired of your games, witch!"

"You're tired of games?" she shouted back, eyes blazing with sudden fury. "Well, I am tired of being your goddamn plaything, Kaviaeshmedaeva!"

His eyes widened at the insult, and narrowed with renewed outrage. "Plaything?" he growled, unwittingly squeezing her throat hard enough that she began to struggle for breath. How dare she? "After what you...what we..." He was lost for words. After the ritual, after the dance, after the give and take, the...the fragile trust...? To call it simply a game, to reduce him to a common demon seducing a common familiar, after what they had just shared?

"And what game are you playing with me now?" he demanded suddenly. "Fine, you wish to play demon and summoner again, witch? I'll show you how that game ends!"

"I'm not..." She clutched at his fingers around her throat, perhaps only now realizing that she had pushed him too far. "God, no!"

"Do you know what it feels like to lose your soul, Yvette Therese Sinclaire?" he asked darkly, and his hand once again hovered over her mark. He would steal her soul. And then he would exile it, banish it to somewhere lonely and cold, awaiting a forgiveness that would never come. "Let me show you."

She screamed in mortal terror as he began the process of ripping her soul from the moorings of her flesh. In the breath between one instant and the next, he felt her hand at his chest, her fingers pressing his scar. And somehow, even though the charmed silver, she sent his power back into him through her mark. A searing, agonizing pain ripped through his entire being. He screamed and reeled away, stumbling and knocking over a cabinet, crashing sideways and gouging a deep cut into his shoulder. He fell, gasping, smelling the reek of burnt amber and his own seared flesh. He felt real fear for the first time in centuries as magic, her magic, crackled through him furiously, undirected, ebbing away only because he regained enough wit to trap it and purge it..

He heard her fall, heard her sobbing, and suddenly understood that what he had written off as impossible was true. Evie wasn't just a witch who could kindle demon magic. She was a true demon woman, and she had just about killed him. Her instincts had sensed his attack, had reacted with all the fury a demon woman could command, had bypassed the ley lines and simply sucked the power she'd needed to repell him straight from his attack, and perhaps from the air itself. She had kindled the link between them even through the fetters that bound her, and had driven the energy straight into his soul, as he had done to her.

Had she not been bound by silver, he'd be a pile of ashes.