Synopsis: This is the eleventh chapter of an ongoing story. While I recommend reading from the beginning, here is a brief synopsis for those who want to jump right in or need a reminder where we left off: Saliah is a nearly all powerful demoness who feeds off moral corruption, and who had the majority of her powers unwillingly locked away inside an urn. Jack came across the urn by chance and instantly became Saliah's focus. She feeds off him with the ultimate goal of having him free her from the urn's grip. To better understand the urn and Saliah, Jack turned to his beautiful, brilliant, college professor Amanda Carpenter. She translated some of the urn's text and warned Jack that Saliah was not all she seemed. Saliah got to Amanda before she could complete the translation and, through threats and bribes (five beautiful, mind-controlled, college girls), convinced Amanda to betray Jack, telling him that Saliah would become vulnerable only if Jack could make Saliah fall in love with him.
Saliah's plan worked better than she had imagined, Jack actually impressing her with his attempts at seduction.
Meanwhile, Becky, a secretary from Jack's old job, has been tricked into thinking that Jack is wealthy beyond measure and having his child will entitle her to a huge share of that wealth.
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Chapter 11 - Truths
Jack slumbered. His head cradled on a silk pillow, and his fragile ribcage slowly rising and falling with each breath. Her Khan would laugh if he could see her now. Had he been there, he could have taken Jack in his arms as though welcoming a brother, and then squeezed the life from Jack without so must as exerting himself.
Her Khan had been a man that other men sang stories of, admired, envied. Jack was a man who other men forgot. And yet she watched him breathing in his sleep, wondering what other delights his mind could invent for her, for their, pleasure.
She slipped out of bed, and into the ether. The warm scent of devastation guided her movements and she re-emerged in the world with a gentle sigh. Her satin dress burst into flames. The heat around her was enough to melt steel and it slowly warmed Saliah's skin to a gentle glow. Smoke and ash from hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of trees, turned the air around her into a blanket that glowed in harmony with the inferno of the forest fire.
She walked slowly. Tree trunks exploded every few moments as the water of their sap boiled to steam. The forest floor was a bed of charcoal as the air's oxygen was devoured by trees and branches and leaves, leaving not enough to fully consume the chunks of wood that rained down.
It was so much easier to think when she was surrounded by such beauty, and she walked casually, smelling the rich depths of burning wood and life, feeling the crunch of glittering charcoal under fer feet.
What was she to do?
No, that was the wrong question. The right question was "why?". Why had she made Amanda lie to Jack in that way? She could have simply told him that releasing the spells on the urn would destroy her or give him total dominion over her. It was a perfectly simple lie that would have made Jack's goal align with her own. Instead, she'd told Amanda to have Jack seduce her.
At the time it had seemed like it was the slower path, but a completely reliable and joyous one. But now she had to admit to herself that there had, perhaps, been a truth hidden in her plan that she hadn't been aware of: she'd wanted to be seduced. She'd wanted the thrill of surprise. She'd wanted a companion who was not simply food.
She hissed at the sky and the tongues of fire leaping into the smoke-black air. What was wrong with her? All she had ever wanted was power. The pure, sweet, taste of corruption flowing into her veins and coursing through the fabric of her being. Yet stripped of that power for centuries, and on the eve of regaining it, she was suddenly asking herself what she would do with it.
Would it truly be so bad, so dangerous, to offer Jack a chance? It had taken her Khan a lifetime to conquer, and loot, and learn enough to shield the urn from her. Even then, he had only been successful because she was taken off guard. Her Khan had been a titan of a man whom the world would never see the equal of, but compared to her, he had been a nothing.
At worst she would make her task slightly harder, though not much more so. Was there not a thrill to be had in having to exert a few fleeting moments of true effort in order to win?
It was perhaps the most foolish choice she had ever made, yet it offered such delicious fun, she simply could not resist. With one final deep breath of the flames around her, Saliah slipped back into the ether.
When the water of the master bedroom's shower hit her, the stream of water exploded into steam against her skin. Ash and soot cascaded down her body threatening to clog the shower's drain.
When she was washed and fresh, she slid a red dress down the curves of her body and the wrinkles in the fabric vanished against her still iron hot skin.
She found Jack awake sitting at the edge of the mansion's pool. The back yard was manicured and styled in a European fashion, though it would have looked much better consumed by flame.
"You were gone when I woke up, sleep well?" he asked, and she joined him. A buffet of breakfast delights filled the small round table between them. The morning sun low in the sky and sending ripples of gold off the pool's surface.
"You impressed me yesterday, Jack. That is not something that has often happened."
He smiled. He likely thought it was a secret smile, a coy expression that could mean anything, but men were so simple at times.
"I'm going to ask you a question Jack, and it is without any doubt the most important question anyone ever has, or ever will, ask you. I give you a piece of wisdom... Honesty in your answer will give you more pleasure, satisfaction, and contentment than you could possibly imagine. Dishonesty will lead to a life of suffering."
He straightened at that. "The answer doesn't matter... Don't tell me what you think I want to hear. Tell me the truth," she said, paused, watched the pulse of his heart through the color of his neck, and after a few moment's prelude, "Did you love the games we played with Kerri and Natasha?"
To his credit, he considered his answer. "I did... But why?"
She relished these moments with other men. When she would finally tell them the truth. By then of course they almost always understood. It was like they had spent years being slowly tattooed across the back and though they couldn't see the worlds or ever feel the shape in total, a slow, burning, pain had written the word "evil", and they'd all slowly, gradually, come to the realization of what it had said.
As she prepared herself for the reveal she felt a tightness, an uncertainty, it wasn't just the fact she knew this was the wrong move, but it was that she might be honest and have him reject her. The first time she had ever opened herself to a man who was not yet a simple husk, and he might reject her... like her Khan...
She let a flicker of rage burn that weakness away. She had decided on what she would do, and it was cowardice to divert in the moment because of apprehension.
"I've only ever been partially honest with you. My Eye, trapped in that cursed urn, is like a focus. Ownership of the Eye lets me feed off the corruption of the mortal owner. I use my powers to offer corrupting temptations not for your benefit Jack, not for any of the others who have owned it over countless eons, but because I feed whenever you're corrupted."
His eyes widened, his breathing raced, his cheeks flushed, but then he swallowed and answered. "Saliah, eater of sins."
"Eater of sins," she said slowly. "But I knew that you knew my name already. That professor of yours, Amanda Carpenter, told you days ago. What you don't know is that I got to her, bribed her, and her telling you to try and seduce me was my instruction to her."
"She?" Jack started, stopped, and looked up to the sky letting out a long lungful of air. "How did you know?"
