The Seductress

Part II

A Deal With Lucifer

and Birthday Wishes

The days passed by in countless seconds. Ginny found herself awakening by the doorbell. Hurrying forward as she scurried into her robes, tightening them around her before she opened the door. To her surprise, there was nobody at the door. Looking down, she found herself looking down at a small, petite wrapped box with a pink bow smudged at the top. A smile threatened to fill her face.

He remembered, she whispered to herself softly.

October fifteenth was here once again. Her birthday. And Draco had sent her a present. Her birthday. She closed her eyes and fluttered them open once more, not daring it to believe it true -- that she was the age eighteen.

She moved the box to her chest and shut the door behind her as she entered the house, tugging at the bow and watching it as it fell, sprawling it's pink, plastic ribbons on the floor tiles. Her breath trembled as she tore open the wrapping, watching as the several bits of it crumbled into pieces on the floor. She felt as if she was fourteen again, giving herself up to him, feeling his body slide, writhe in sweat across hers. She could almost feel his breath sighing at her breath again, his features, the way his lips tumbled in a tremor across her naked back, and his saliva crawling down her eyelids.

She remembered how he licked her eyelids, and made her eyelashes damp so he could brush the particles of spit off, one by one. The withering memory closed again as she opened the top cover of the box.

~

The Seductress was swinging in her freedom, a rush of her legs, the escape of reality -- she could feel her hair sway at the ends, she could feel her fingers tingle at the wooden swing that made her feel as if she was an angel, her wings fluttering to the sky---

"Virginia!" the voice of her mother was a chord, a string, an echo as she swung. pretending not to hear her. It was far too difficult to hear a human on a day like this, the day of eternity. She would never let anything spoil her chance of being an angel --

---and breaking, feather by feather.

"Virginia, come here right now! Get off that silly swing!" her mother demanded in a sing-song voice.

Virginia set herself off her swings and prepared herself for her mother, picking at the bow at her hair, tugging down the ends of her dress so that all creases were disposed, and walked forward to her redheaded mother, who towered over her with a small smile.

"Do you know what day it is, little Virginia?" her mother cooed.

"It's my eighth birthday," Virginia promptly replied in a dead-prone voice.

"And I got you something special. I've been saving for it all year, Virginia. Don't you want to see it?"

Virginia dug her fingernails into her palms. "Yes, mother," she seethed out of her teeth, even though she secretly wished to sink a knife into her mother's skull and let it twirl around as she burned.

Her mother was not to be undaunted, however. She turned around and picked up a small, white box from the ground. "You'll love this," she promised. "It's from Egypt. It's from the 1700's."

Virginia felt herself lick her lips, letting the moist, sickening drought of her tongue dry all the edges of her tissue and bone of the curve of her lips. "17OO's," she repeated.

"Yes." Her mother said no more as she handed the plain, white box that seemed dusty at the ends.

Virginia shoved the dust off neatly at first, and pulled off the cover in one, swift motion.

It was a doll. Her face began to fall until she saw the doll's face -- a sweet, angelic rounded face, with the prettiest blue eyes that shone in a glassy reflection, with a pink dress, legs the color of ivory, arms the same color, hair as red as blood pouring down into a pool of black, and slender fingers that seemed artistically figured. The doll seemed to real, so fragile that she felt that if she touched it, she would break it.

"You can touch it," her mother instructed. "It's yours to play with. But don't break it."

Virginia touched the pupils of the doll's eyes, and felt a burning sensation lingering at her fingertips...

"Mother!" Virginia cried, shoving the doll to her, withdrawing from her own arms. "The doll's eyes are like fire, mother, do something!"

Her mother gazed at her, aghast. "I thought you would like it!"

"Mother! It's eyes are moving!" Virginia protested.

Her mother gave an angry snarl. "Now listen here, Virginia. I paid good money for this doll." She pushed the doll into Virginia's chest firmly. "And you're going to keep it in your room."

And with that, Virginia was forced to turn around and head to the house -- and looked back at her mother shaking her head behind her in bewilderment, and yearned for the swings that were still hanging loosely by the chains in their wooden, freed haven. But when she turned back, she saw that the doll had just turned her head back too, and she now had a smile stitched across her face.

And somehow, Virginia knew it hadn't been there before.

~

"Oh," Ginny whispered, the longing sense of the word pondering off of her tongue. A dread-filled agony rose in her chest as she observed the beautiful doll.

"You're the most sweetest thing I've ever laid my eyes on," Ginny whispered, touching the doll's glassy, enticing eyes first. They felt cool and collected beneath her fingers -- for a second, she could've sworn something like fire had stung beneath her, but she felt it crash sideways and convinced herself it was only her paranoia again. Draco has outdone himself, she thought, putting the doll back into the tissues that had secured it around her in the box.

"I'll name you ---" Ginny pondered to think, her mouth parting--

What she was going to say had vanished from her mind.

She felt her chest curl in stone, her lips freeze in melted water.

There was a demand she had to follow.

The doll was expecting her to.

"...Innocence," she said.

And she could've sworn the doll had whispered it all along with her.

~

The book upturned, opening forward. As if an invisible hand was writing upon it, scribbled words were beginning to scrawl through the blank pages of it's hearth.

~

The Seductress

page 890

Lucifer turned to her with a wavering smile. "What do you offer me? And what do I offer you?"

Virginia clung into her red dress, her voice dead-prone. "I have killed my lover."

"Have you, really?" Lucifer questioned in a disbelieving voice. "Well, well."

"I can offer you many things," The Seductress prompted, smiling at him, licking her lips so that they were a moist, clear pinkish-flushed strip of skin and tissue. The curve of her bones seemed to move as she walked toward him in silence. When she reached the gap between them, she dared to put a palm at his chest, trying to feel his non-existent heart.

"And what do I give you for those many things?" he asked, breathless in spite of himself. The color of red eyes, the flush of her lips, the red in her cheeks and the beautiful, woven, blood-stained fabric she wore. It was a most unusual dress, small and tiny, and barely reached beyond her knees. He got the emotion that it belonged to someone else, as it didn't sink into her like second skin as most of her other clothes did.

"Absolutely," Virginia spoke at last, after a moment's pause, her lips upturning in a cruel tremor -- "Nothing."

~

Sorry for the lack of Draco/Ginny.

I am getting there :)...

Now, for things to ponder:

1) What is the purpose of the doll?

2) What does Draco have to do?

3) ...who is Lucifer, exactly? Is he the Lucifer? Or is he completely different?

I love to shock people, you know.

Till next time,

-S.A. Court