a/n: At 3:00 or so in the morning I woke up due to some odd dreams, so I couldn't get back to sleep. I started listening to Vanessa Carlton's Harmonium. When I got to Private Radio I figured everything out from my tangled mess of dream-thoughts and this concept floated through my mind. Since I wouldn't sleep anyway, I decided to write it down. Here it is! And Satan has a lot of names, I notised.
"Do you accept these terms?"
"I accept them," Vladislaus said, and cut his hand with the knife, wincing at the sting yet smiling in triumph just the same. Finally. He'd live forever.
Lucifer cut his own hand and held it out to him. Vladislaus hesitated, only for a moment, and took it to close the bargain they'd made.
A sort of sick horror came over him and he suddenly had a feeling of loss, of unspeakable weakness. It was something he couldn't quite place.
"As I drain you of emotion," Lucifer said calmly, maliciously, "you will drain others of their blood. As you lose your soul to me, they will lose their lives to you. You are nosferatu. A vampire."
"Y-you didn't say that," gasped Vladislaus, falling to his knees.
"I said there would be consequences, didn't I?" Lucifer retorted with an ugly grimace, enjoying the scene as though a play unfolding before his unholy eyes. "I just didn't specify which ones."
Pain ripped across his back and flesh parted, the bloody wings tearing out. Vladislaus experienced the agony slowly and gave a shudder. "W-what am I? He asked, panicked. "What is happening to me?"
"Forever is a long time," Lucifer said smugly. "You'll need to be well-equipped."
"In this inhuman form?" pleaded Vladislaus. "It's fit for nothing but killing!"
"You'll do little else," came the cold reply.
Vladislaus' eyes widened. He was shaking his head and backing up slowly, as though his body knew to escape despite how his mind knew he was trapped by his own doings. "But- but what about…?"
"Your emotions?" laughed Satan. "What do you care for them? You have no heart!"
Vladislaus stood, staggered back and fell as he thought it over. It took him little time to realise his fate. "Oh, God, " he whispered, pain half blinding him.
For a moment anger seemed to course through Satan's veins. He gripped the helpless figure by the head and said, "There are no Gods here! Not for one in Hell- God has abandoned you. He has left you to burn! You'd be in a lake of fire now if it weren't for me! Aren't you glad for me? What I've done?"
Vladislaus' eyes rolled back into his head as though he were reading his own mind. By the moan that escaped his lips, it looked like he did not like what he read. The immortal words that had been worked into his brain as a young man in the Order of the Dragon were called forth: Our Father, who art in Heaven….
Lucifer put even more pressure on his tortured head until he thought it would split. "Not your father anymore. Your father is in Hell. You are the son of the Devil," and he offered no forgiveness or redemption. Only a cruel smile.
"And your father you will obey," he finished, stepping back among his horde of demons, who screamed with pleasure at the sight of Vladislaus' anguish. The Earth swallowed them whole, and left Vladislaus alone in the night. But there was to be no peace for him.
Wounds sealing, injuries healing, just as the Morningstar has promised, Vladislaus crawled to the lake's edge to see what he looked like- to see if the liar had, at least, kept part of the bargain, ensuring his looks and youth would remain.
Vladislaus started at the unbroken, unblemished surface of the water with dry lips, gazing upon only the moon's reflection and the detached beauty it graced the lake with.
He dropped his head and clamped his hands over his ears, wishing to drown out any noise. In a few hours the sun would rise, and he did not know what he would do then. If someone had stumbled across that particular area then, they would have heard his despairing voice whisper to the world and to himself:
"Son of the Devil? Oh, God, what have I done?"