Sixty One. Eat Your Heart Out Proteus

I thought I heard Jase calling to me, the only ray of light in this endless blackness that’s been keeping me dumb and docile for what has felt like an eternity. I know he’s there. I can feel him, right at my side, holding my hand…

I still can’t manage to open my eyes though, and soon his hand falls away and the blackness wins out, that cold and empty void where **he** is always waiting...

“Wake up, Cassandra.” Ravenna’s voice echoes in my ears and the sharp sting of sulfur floods my nostrils, finally giving me the energy to come to. “He wants you to feel this.”

My eyes are barely open, my mind foggy with confusion, when the knife drives down into my flesh. It is white hot pain, and I find myself screaming, staring teary eyed at the rune-marked blade jutting out from my upper arm – not my chest as I expected.

“Bind this spirit to one flesh and restore unto me what was stolen,” Ravenna chants, and the corrupted Omega rune etched into her jagged blade starts glowing red hot as she draws it slowly down the artery in my arm, unleashing further pain and what should be a spurt of blood. It’s not. What flows free is a haze of reddish smoke and sparks.

Ravenna closes her eyes and breathes in deep that smoke, and my brow furrows in puzzlement. “I thought you needed to eat my heart to get to Proteus’s powers,” I force out shakily.

“No, I lied about that. My power resided in your lifeblood, your moving, breathing essence. I am still going to eat your heart tonight though,” Ravenna’s voice has deepened with every word of this speech. It is an all too familiar voice reverberating through those lips, and when her eyes snap open they are black like tar, no pupil, no iris, and no white to them at all. Just liquidy pits reflecting my terrified image. I’m not dealing with Ravenna now. It’s Proteus. “I left that core of your humanity intact for centuries, because it beats such a beautiful rhythm, fluttering with fear. Still, I’ve decided you don’t need it anymore. It belongs to me. It always has, and that you dared even loan it to another man, some mortal…” The demon-driven witch seizes hold of me by the jaw. “That makes me angry, Cassandra. You owe me your fealty, your devotion. I granted your every wish. I gave you eternity. I gave you time in whatever pretty figure caught your eye. I let you feel their every joy, their every memory and connection.”

“That is all a lie,” I denounce. “I ran from you and tried to find life again. I cared for those women, and I thought of them as my true friends, soulmates even, and all you’ve ever done is take them from me.” Just like he took Ravenna. How long has he been possessing her this time? Did he creep inside that body while I was under, or has he been there the whole time?

“So ungrateful. I am the most gracious of masters to my familiars. I give life. I give pleasure.” He kisses me, a disgusting twisting of Ravenna’s tongue between my lips that does indeed set my brain almost delirious with bliss, all while making my heart clench and my skin crawl. I force myself not to return it, keeping rigid and stiff. The demon seems annoyed by this, seizing hold of my cheeks, as those pitch black eyes rove lazily over my face and body. “You taste as sweet as always, Cassandra. You have impeccable taste,” he praises, stroking at my skin. “Each vessel you choose, so different, but perfect, a unique work of art. A shame I cannot keep this one too. Her soul is long gone though, ascended on into the afterlife. Ah well. Your soul will soon be back inside its birdcage, and that is all that matters.”

“Ravenna, come back. You need to fight him! You need to keep your promise to Jase. You need to use this power to undo the Blood Moon curse and save your husband!”

The black eyes sink back into the deep brown of Ravenna Bellamy's stare, but all she does is sigh at me in annoyance. “Oh please, Cassandra, you still haven’t caught on to me yet? I was lying to trick you, obviously. My husband is a tool to me, an errand boy I took to bed primarily for the sake of conceiving a child and reinvigorating the Blood Moon curse.”

“What?”

“The curse can only last for six generations,” she illuminates. “So every seventh, I pick out the young werewolf I find to be the most attractive, persuade him to willingly trade his soul off to our master before taking him to bed, then I use the child produced from that union to renew the werewolf curse upon the coming generations.” I stare at her in horror. “What? All men are dogs, and they belong right under my heel. When you are as angry with the world as I was, then eternal vengeance is really the only way to go, and our master agrees with me completely.”

“You serve him willingly?” I murmur, dazed from the crushing revelations, but also from the blood loss. That cut in my arm has not healed, and I may very well bleed out from it.

“Of course. I would never betray the sea demon. I belong to him completely, and he can stay in here as long as he pleases. Though I did make you the perfect vessel,” She gestures to baby Jack, laying unconscious on a stone altar right beside this tree. “so if you could just move on into him already, that would spare me this constant headache.”

Her eyes snap back to black, and Proteus shakes his head. “Humans grow too slowly. That vessel is of no use to me, not for another decade at least.”

“Well how about moving into Michael then?” Ravenna demands. “That is the body I most like, and I would very much like to see you in it, love.”

“Very well. But only because you have been such a loyal servant.” The black mist peels away from Ravenna’s back, but I can still feel it right up against me. I can still hear him whispering in my ear, “She’s given me more souls these past few years than you managed to deliver in a millennia, Cassandra. Lovely young women to join my kingdom and dwell with us in eternal darkness. Even Michael’s soul was a delicious little snack, but I bet your Jason’s soul will be a far more filling meal.”

“Stay away from him,” I plead. “I’ll give you whatever you want--”

“I take what I want from you.” Those words come from Mike, as the demon settles down inside of him and he leaves his rigid pose stood guard at the edge of the clearing.

He walks right up to me, and Ravenna most happily hands him her knife, as he leans in to hover it right over my chest. “And tonight I’ll be taking your screams, and then your feelings, your humanity. You will thank me for it afterward, I promise. You will serve me just as loyally as Ravenna.”

I thrash against my ropes, but I can’t change my shape anymore and flee into mist the way I did last time. My powers are gone, and I’m bound here, trapped, with no chance of escape from the blade stabbing down towards my heart.