"Yet, no matter how deeply I go down into myself, my God is dark, and like a webbing made of a hundred roots that drink in silence."

Rainer Maria Rilke

…

The Crossroads Demon

In the sweet soundlessness of night, the roar of a train could be heard in the distance. Giant and steep steel ground upon steel, letting out the screech of a sirens' wail as the vast black locomotive began to slow its pace. Steam filled the clean summer air as the great beast shuddered, moaning and shaking until its wheels came to a completed halt. The station was lit with two dim lamplights, the only thin branches of sunlight that crept into the void of the night. A woman dressed in shadows perched upon on a bench, waiting as her handmaiden stood nearby. The handmaiden was keeping watch over several stacked suitcases, with loyalty like a dog that wore a pronged collar, pulled tight by a leather leash.

The woman wore a veil over her face; a newly embroidered netting that had replaced the tattered remains of the one she had worn earlier in the night. Her hair was twirled into delicate rose-like twists upon her head, pinned tightly against her pale scalp. Her lips stuck out sorely from beneath the veil; blood red against flesh as white as the moon. She was a statue, cold and unforgiving. She was an empty shell, a tomb where the dead lay hidden, deep within their marble graves.

She was Aphrodite. A living gravestone, a hollowed out wooden goblet that held the most precious of wines. Yet within the carved cup lay a tiny hole, so all of the wine spilled out through the bottom; as did her emotions, her sadness that left a trail of sweet poison from the wooden edges of her mind. Wine as red as blood leaked like tears from her very life force that every human longed to keep…a cup brimming with her own mortality. Yet she was no longer its keeper. She was merely the keeper of darkness, of melancholy; and there was no end to this reddened path of misery that she, herself had created.

A tall figure stepped off of the train and into the dimness of light, followed by the dainty figure of a woman. The man moved with the deftness of a panther in the black of a jungle; with an arrogance that bled into the air with each stride. The woman on the bench did not look up; her eyes were averted, staring off into somewhere…a place that could not be found. A distant memory, perhaps…anything besides the cruel reality in which she now found herself irrevocably trapped in. She dreamt of a time where she had truly felt free, when she could lift her eyes to the sky and feel heat dancing upon her skin. But the time for that had long passed; for it had crumbled within her very hands.

She barely took notice when the striking figure stopped in front of her, with emerald eyes that gleamed beneath the faded light of the lamps.

"Anias," he spoke; his voice smooth, sauntering, and rich like darkened silk. "I'll just assume you heard of my arrival, and are now running back to your father. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time you've done such a thing." The man chuckled. His jawline was cut, and his lips formed a smirk as he folded immense arms. Anias looked up at him, narrowing her eyes through the mesh shield of the veil.

"I won't stand for your ignorance, Ryker. You waste my time with your words. You have nothing to hurt me with, nothing to bind me with…not anymore." Her words were flattened and deadly, as if his mere presence caused her to spit poison out into the hot summer air.

"Anymore," he repeated, his voice taking on a sinister twist of tone. "Why, no more assignments for me? No more husbands of yours that you need me to kill?"

Anias stood up abruptly, inches away from Ryker who stood powerfully over her. She glared up at him menacingly, as if his words had pierced the structure of her very soul.

"You disgusting German inbred," she snarled through her veil, her eyes lit with the fire of a thousand suns. "You think you can take the past and use it against me? I have more power in one fucking finger than you have in your entire being!"

Ryker's face stayed expressionless. The delicate woman stayed a few paces behind him, straying in the comfort of his shadow.

"To think," he began, motioning a large hand in a circular gesture, "that I did it for your Erik. That I did it for love! Don't you remember the night you begged him to do it? And you got your filthy wish. Except the blood lay on my hands. I did it for him, and only him. Never for you. I always found you…well, quite the egotistical harlot."

Anias lifted a hand to smack him across his face. Instead, he caught her by the wrist, squeezing it tight with a skilled and nimble hand. Simone cowered behind the suitcases, too horrified to even make a sound…although she listened intently to the words that he spoke, for she had never heard them spill out of the Duchess's lips before.

Ryker laughed. It was haughty and condescending, seeming to echo for miles in the air of the train station that lay motionless and darkened…a smeared charcoal painting.

"A man's blood on my hands means nothing, you see…but your blood…that would be quite a catch," he whispered menacingly, gripping her wrist even tighter. Anias cried out, as if his venomous hold on her had shed blood from the smoothness of her white skin.

Ryker pulled her close to his face, baring his teeth at her like a black wolf in the deep of the woods. "You," he sniggered, reveling in the fear that now filled her eyes. "Now you, I'd love to kill. And you would most certainly deserve it! And that would be…righteous, now wouldn't it?"

"Let me go, you sick bastard! You're all the same, you're in love with your own bloodshed…I would just be another filth to add to your pile, wouldn't I? But I am not some merchant or peasant that can just be thrown into a ditch. My father would catch you and hang you. He…he would…" her voice faded off as his lips curved into a devilish smile. He threw back his head, laughing again.

"That is, if your father could find me. Or, I might find him first and tell him of your vivaciously twisted and elusive past! Doing dealings with the devil…hiring a mercenary to murder your betrothed? Wouldn't that be oh so very…interesting? And I liked him. That is, when he refrained from speaking."

He still held her wrist in a vice-like grip, his fingers pressing into her flesh and tingeing it purple…as purple as the lavender field that lay miles beyond the train station; a field in which she would never enter; a place in which she would never understand.

"You wouldn't dare. It would put your beloved Erik at risk as well," she hissed at him, pulling uselessly at her wrist. Ryker howled yet again, and Anias winced as he twisted her wrist slightly. "Oh, so you want to try me, sweet Anias? You think you can slither out of anything because of your precious nobility, is that it? I'm sure I can make that the most flawlessly written out scandal. Let me think," he paused, running his free hand through thick black curls that draped far down his back. "Duchess Estienne plots the sweet and innocent Duke's death so that she may lay with a mercenary…but interestingly enough, she ultimately decides to discard him like a piece of waste! How ironic, wouldn't you say?"

"Let me fucking go! What do you want? Money? I'll pay you off just like I did last time. Just let me fucking go!" She was raising her voice now, and it was shrill as it seeped from her blood red lips. Ryker smiled, releasing her…relishing and memorizing the pain that was laced within her cries.

"Listen closely, my dear…for I do have instructions for you! My demands must be met, otherwise…I shall spare no expense upon releasing your little secret."

She shrank back from him, holding her wrist to her chest; a wounded animal. Her eyes still glinted with a fierce hatred from behind her veil, but she fell silent as his words cut the night air; a cunning black blade pulled fast from its sheath.

He leaned toward her, inches from her horrified expression; towering over her with his beast of a form. "Leave," he whispered, pulling his lips away from his teeth. Anias could have sworn for an instant, she saw fangs hanging beneath his upper lip as he sneered. "Leave here, and never return. If you are to return, well…I shall do one of two things. One, I might just decide to kill you. And yes, I would love to be covered in your blood. I've dreamt of it, you see…many a night! But my second option, perhaps, is the most appropriate for you…to let you live in this Hell that you've created. But the secret," he leaned in closer, widening his eyes that almost now seemed yellow, "shall be revealed. For I shall tell your father, face to face! Understand?"

Anias was silent. She shrank back from his form until her legs knocked into the bench, and she fell forcibly down onto its surface. She stared up at him from where she now sat, her limbs weak and bloodless; her fingers tingling with pain…and with great fear.

"I am leaving. Why do you think I am here? I am going back to Paris. I…I shan't return."

She paused for a moment, rubbing her wrist that seemed to pulsate as if his fingers left a brand upon her, burning her flesh within each moment that passed…each second she dare stay alive in this darkened world.

"Well, that is convenient for me, now isn't it?" Ryker purred, smiling widely at her now shriveled form. He had taken her power. She would have nothing left, after this moment. She would have nothing and no one to live for. Only herself.

Suddenly, the train let out a scream, pouring steam out from every soot stained crevice. Anias jumped up, straightening her skirts as much as she could, given her encounter with a demon. She looked him in the eyes once more; they almost glowed from the shadows in which he stood; half lit, half darkness…and she said nothing. Her tongue was numb from his words, from his threats, from the cold grip he had taken upon her wrist. Anias turned her face forward, gathering up her skirts and hastily boarded the train. Simone trailed anxiously behind her, dragging suitcases that seemed much too large for her tiny form. Her shaved head shone against the lamplight, yet soon grew dark as she entered the shadows, boarding the train behind her beloved Duchess.

Ryker watched the train until its steely skeletal form disappeared from the station. He felt tight arms around his waist, and he turned to the woman who had stood behind him for the entirety of his interrogation.

"Ryker," the woman whispered gently. Her hair fell in enchanting golden waves down her back; it was like seeing the sun on a moonless night. "Someone could have seen you. Please…please be careful, my love."

He lifted her pale chin with a finger, smiling at her gently. "I would never let anything happen to you. You are the sun that lives in my sky; you make the plants upon my riverbanks grow. I could not live if not for your ardent love. Therefore I shall protect you until my dying breath."

"It is not I, that I am worried about," she responded carefully, looking up into his emerald eyes. "It is you, darling. I worry about you day and night."

"Do not fear for me, my love," he whispered, kissing her behind her ear. "For I am no ordinary man."

"I know," she murmured, averting her eyes from his. "But it is more than that. I worry about your soul, dear love. I worry about the threats you make; that they might come back upon you with the harshest blade."

He kneaded his fingers behind her neck tenderly, touching his nose to her nose in the half-lit station light. "I am the blade that comes for men at night, sweet rose. I am the voice that whispers in the dark. I am the revenge that God strikes upon men; I am the demon they fear around every corner."

"Demons," she repeated, raising her eyebrows at him. "Yet I have never heard of a demon who loves."

"Then you do not know all demons, my darling. God has given them the choice to love; most just choose not to. It is…easier that way."

She pulled him tighter around the waist, resting her face against his chest to listen to his heartbeat. "But you do not want it easier, do you?"

"No," he said smoothly, caressing the small of her back. "I do not. For I love you, and only you."

"A demon who loves," she murmured, reaching a hand up to stroke a thick pink scar along the side of his neck. "God must have made him so rare, so beautiful. But that must mean he possesses a weakness? This…blade in the darkness?"

"One weakness, my sweet. And that is you."

Ryker pulled her into a tender kiss, savoring each soft taste of her lips with the tip of his tongue. He broke their kiss after a moment had passed, taking her hand in his.

"Come, my angel. We must see a dear friend of mine."

"Just a friend?" she raised her eyebrows teasingly, and a smile curled at the corners of his mouth.

"A brother," he corrected, and his eyes glimmered fiercely at the word.

And the towering man led the woman into darkness, away from the train station where fate had sealed itself; where blood lay upon the ground, but no eye could see…and no ear could hear the cries that had been spilled. The pair melted into the night, with only a flash of emerald green from the eyes of the man that loathed, that murdered…that loved. He led the woman with bloodied hands, yet she did not see…he led her with cries from men, screaming out into the darkened wood…yet she did not hear.

…

Author's Note: Thank you to all of my wonderful readers for continuing to read this story. I want to thank my lurkers (I am appreciative for all of you as well). Any feedback, comments, or emotions are must appreciated :)