The Watcher

“Tamper with my mind.”

“Will you behave?”

I nodded, blinking back tears. I would not cry in front of him.

“I have wanted you for a long time. Ever since that day I found you and Michael in the woods, I had to have you. Even though we had banished him, he still got to be with you. He wouldn’t let you out of his sight, so we had to be careful, keep what we did secret so he would never know.”

“I didn’t want you—”

“You did,” he insisted, his dark eyes gleaming at me in the candlelight. “You just didn’t know it.”

“No, I loved Michael. I still do.”

“You were my lover. You gave birth to my son.”

“Your son.” Images of the birth came back to me then as I struggled to breathe. The child was huge, far too big for my human frame. I remembered there had been the agony of my flesh tearing inside, but the pain itself I could not remember. It had killed me. All this time, Michael thought the monster he felt so responsible for had been his child, a result of his sins. Something that horrible could only be conceived one way…through coercion or worse.

It was never his!

“Michael killed him,” Damiel snarled. “Not this time. I want that chance again. A chance to be a father…and I want you to be its mother.”

The pain in my head throbbing, I struggled to get up, glancing around the room. There had to be a way out of here. Damiel’s hand gripped my arm and he lifted me up to my feet as though I were weightless.

“Did you hear me? You’re going to have my child.” His mouth turned into a crooked smile as he petted my forehead.

Across the room, a candle flickered. It had almost burned out. I pushed his hand away. “Giving birth to that…that monster killed me!”

“That was unfortunate. I don’t expect it to be easy, but medicine has advanced significantly over the last thousand years. You might even survive it. If you’re good.”

I don’t know why that last statement affected me so much, but I freaked out, screaming and pounding his chest with my fists, trying to get my fingers into his eyes. “You enthralled me, you bastard! I never wanted you!”

He swiftly grabbed both my hands in one of his. I scarcely saw him move. “Now, now, none of that. If you’re not good to me, I won’t be good to you.”

I froze, and my breath caught in my chest.

“Holding your breath won’t work either.” He threw me onto the bed, and my head hit the headboard with a sharp crack. I actually saw stars.

In spite of the pain, I scrambled to sit up, but he lunged on top of me and held me down with one strong arm as I tried to wriggle free. His body weight pi

“Hold still,” he warned. I squirmed and resisted with all my might, for all the good it did me. He laughed, and when he touched my face the muscles in my arms and legs went limp. I struggled, concentrating with everything I had to move even one finger, but it was futile. Each one could have weighed a hundred pounds.

“That should do it,” he said, half to himself, and backed away.

The horror of what he pla

“No one can hear you.” His voice was an eerily calm contrast to mine. “I only did what I did because you wouldn’t hold still. Don’t make me silence you as well.”

I stopped yelling and refused to look at him.

Damiel sat beside me on the bed, taking my limp, frozen hand in his. “I only wanted you to look at me the way you’d look at him. Just once.”

A hard, bitter lump formed in my throat. I didn’t want this to be my first sexual experience. It was supposed to be special, with Michael (if that were even possible), not some crazy act of violence and revenge. What if I did get pregnant? Then what? Michael could never know about it. It was for the best that I’d broken things off. He couldn’t see me now, not like this.

Was that how I handled it when it happened before? Did I want to believe the child was Michael’s so much that I convinced both of us it was? Back then, it would have been a possibility. It would have destroyed Michael to know what Damiel had done to me. I must have lied to save him then, but it didn’t work. Instead, I took the secret to my grave, and Michael died thinking that birthing his offspring had killed me, that he had killed his own son, when all along it was Damiel’s.

Damiel spoke, pulling me out of my reverie. “I chose this body because I thought you might prefer someone closer to your own age. I think I chose well.”

“Fuck off!” I shouted. “I won’t have your offspring. I’ll abort. This is the twenty-first century!”

He threw back his head and laughed. “Impossible. First of all, do you think I couldn’t stop anyone who tried to kill my child? There’s nothing they could do in the womb to destroy it, not that wouldn’t destroy you first.”

A shudder ran through me. I had almost preferred my mind being taken over to this. At least I wouldn’t have to feel it as much. With luck, I’d never remember it.

“Now,” he said, “I can do this nicely or not so nicely. You decide.”

“Uh…nicely?”

“What are you going to give me in exchange, then?” He was touching the backs of my arms with his fingers, giving me shivers again. Even though I couldn’t move, I could feel everything—perhaps more so. I wished I could bite his fingers off.

I wanted to ask what the hell I could give him that he wasn’t already taking, but I refrained. “Your son?”

“That is inevitable. I mean other than that?”

His hands wandered over my chest now, cupping my breasts through my clothes. I tried to squirm, without luck. I had to resort to internal flinching instead. The same dark smoke that had filled the air around us earlier returned, along with the spi

“Tell me how much you want me.”

I swallowed, afraid to say anything to encourage him. “Stop that,” I said.

“Stop what?” he asked, like a cat playing with a terrified bird.

“Making me feel this way.”

“Your choice.” With a quick movement, he lifted his hands away and the glamour of his energy subsided. All the fear and revulsion returned. Instead of boyish and handsome, he looked harsh and cruel. “It would have been easier for you the other way. I thought you’d want to enjoy your first time.”

“I might have if I were with someone else.” I put as much venom as I could into my voice. It was bad enough being forced to have sex with a demon, but actually enjoying it would betoo much to endure. Was that what he’d done to me before?

“Would you prefer my real form?” He laughed at that. Not a warm laugh—it was cold, fiendish.

I didn’t want to think about what his real form was, probably something black and slimy like his minions outside, or worse, Azazel. “Well, since you went to all the trouble of getting this one,” I said, hoping he wasn’t bluffing, that he hadn’t pla

“Fair enough. But if you give me the least bit of trouble…”

He was touching me again and this time his hands were cold. Instead of shivers of pleasure, I shuddered with horror.

He had just unbuttoned my blouse when I heard a piercing, inhuman cry come from outside. Damiel cocked his head to listen.

“Well, well, it seems we have company,” he said with an expression of delight. “This pillow talk has been lovely, but it’s time to get down to business now.”

I strained to move my head, trying to see something, anything, in the darkness, hoping against hope that Michael didn’t try to come. Swiftly, Damiel undid my jeans and straddled me. I squirmed and resisted with all my might and one of my legs moved ever so slightly. It was a small improvement, but not enough.