Orphée looked out the window at the overcast sky that was pouring down rain. One time in his life he would have been sure that he'd only ever see black rain, but this one was almost crystal clear, like it usually was in the human world. After spending so many years here, as a recluse of the highest order naturally, he could see what drew his kind here so often and ended up committing such sins.
Even for demons, there were sins and not just the ones that landed them as demons in the first place.
"Your name?" He
chuckled at the business-like tone of the woman in front of him. She
was young, but very powerful and he, very old and having made his
existence in the human world long before. Her burgundy eyes held a
determination he hadn't seen in her predecessor even when he'd shown
up, which told him how young and inexperienced she was. She was also
barely out of her teens. He couldn't help his gaze taking her figure in
to his memory in an assessing way, noting that she was small and
probably still growing, into her bust at the very least. "In your Japanese way, it would be said Caecilious Orphée." She blinked, obviously surprised. "Blind Darkness?" Suspicious now, she took a closer look at him. Orphée
laughed again, right in her face, which affronted her for some reason.
"As you have probably guessed with that, I'm not your typical…person.
In fact," he added, smiling wide enough to show long teeth that each
one of them had a dangerous point to them, "I'm not even human."
Ichihara Yuuko had sworn it would be a cold day in hell that she'd ever come to him for a favor as he had made it a habit to tease and lord over her the fact that he was twice her age. When he'd come to the human world, it had been barely out of its infancy. Back then they had been far more honest in their carnal and dark dealings, driven by nothing but their own naked needs. He'd watched their culture, themselves as a being; crawl out from even before what they called the 'caveman' era into something resembling a primitive society. He'd continued to watch as they separated themselves into different cultures, fought their wars, died in their beds…he'd seen it all.
He had never made it a secret he was a demon, but he'd also hadn't had a lot of contact with humans. There were some things even demons didn't know, he'd learned, when he'd come across, finally, Yuuko's predecessor. He'd lived for a few hundred years in the human world then and hadn't even had a clue.
Then the man had approached him and offered to solve his problem. His problem that caused him to wince, writhing in pain on the floor or bed during the worst hours of sunlight before it ebbed enough and he could gather strength during the night. It was not that he was a vampire, though he was aware that there were a few living in hell rather…happily.
No, it had been a curse. He'd been just doing what he had needed to do to survive. Just taking one soul from someone dying every two weeks. He put off eating as long as possible and only taking from the dying to make sure he wasn't found out by either the humans or angels, who had prowled the human world far more frequently then than they did now. Now, you'd be hard pressed to find human saints much less an angel.
This one had, unfortunately, come across him with righteous anger and also happened to be an archangel. Not a very high one, but high enough. Young too, full of anger at what he was doing, and refused to listen to him. Most seasoned archangels after the war came away more resigned and calm. Had one of them found him, they would have listened to him and probably left him alone, since he was doing nothing that nature wouldn't have done. And he even went to all the trouble to pick the less savory kinds that wouldn't make it into heaven.
Orphée had forgotten the archangel's name after so, so long. All he could remember was his impression that the archangel hadn't even fought in the war, probably only recently promoted to fill in one of the two spaces in the ranks. After Lucifer had left there had been one open, but he'd heard whispered rumors among the other demons that they had lost another member, one they'd cast out themselves. Details varied, but the rumor at the core had been confirmed later.
The curse had involved upping his sensitivity to light, which was generally known as the angels' time. Night had always fallen to demons, day to the angels. As if the sensitivity hadn't been bad enough, he'd been left with a terrible wound right above his heart that pounded consistently no matter what time of day. It reduced the potency of the souls he ate so he was almost always starving, but also made sure he didn't take more than one every two weeks otherwise it would pump his whole body full of poison and kill him.
He had just gotten used to always feeling hungry when he had come and offered to get rid of it. He said that all the demon had had to do was wish and it could go away. It was very much like how a devil would offer a human a deal and Orphée had smirked. It was demons that had invented these games and he could play along. So he'd asked for what price would this miracle cost.
"Demons
behold to no one except Lucifer and only barely then. They have
self-interest above all else." The man, clad in flowing silk robes that
just screamed upper class, was calm beyond all reasoning when dealing
with a demon. He wore a wide-brimmed hat on his head that he seemed
extremely fond of. "I can take away this curse, but your price would be
to be beholden to us all for the rest of eternity." "Us all?" "Ever
since this society began, there has been one single wish granter. A
sorcerer that has become powerful enough to the point that we
understand that there is far more than good and evil out there. Our
power stretches beyond the heavens, beyond god and Satan, beyond good
and evil. Only one at one time or the balance is thrown off. "Demons
live for all eternity, unless they are killed…or unless they starve
because they can't feed. Make no mistake, demon, the curse is killing
you. You are never full and yet you can't get more. It is slowly
slitting your throat. I can take it off, but your price is that you are
beholden to any wish granter. When they ask something of you, you must
do it. When they require your presence, you must come." Seeing his
face, the old man smiled, his hair a startling white with age and yet
youth in his eyes. "Oh come on, it's not that bad. You'll probably only
be asked one thing by one wish granter in their entire lifetime."
So he had agreed. What else was there anyway? For demons, the priority was survival and this man was offering him that. There was no way he couldn't accept that, not at the stage he was in. The removal of the curse had been painful, but he'd had worse and had bore it with silence.
Orphée had been living in the human world since then. He'd taught that wish granter a lot of things since then, such as a powerless name, an alias. Orphée Caecilious was not his real name, but one he had chosen specifically. Humans couldn't pronounce a demon's real name anyway. He'd seen more than one demon come back to hell with winces as a human mangled their name yet again.
He also rather liked the Japanese style of names, since Blind Darkness sounded a lot better than Darkness Blind.
One of the reasons Yuuko didn't like him was probably because he knew about the technicalities of the job more than she did. Her predecessor loved to talk and had been more than willing to answer any questions he had, things he hadn't ever told his successor.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the bottle on one of his protected shelves. Inside sat a small sphere, giving off a pretty white light, but it had nothing to do with holy power. No, it was a human soul, one that Yuuko had brought to him for that favor. There was no limits to what any wish granter could ask him to do, but he'd found that the man's words had been true: he was rarely asked more than once and only in dire circumstances. They were a proud and lone-wolf lot.
His demon sight, which showed him any given object different than humans, allowed him to see specs of black in that white orb. He doubted a human, even Watanuki Kimihiro, would be able to see it, but he could. His soul was thrumming in the same sort of pattern as the feeling of those black specs, which meant it was of the darkness. Yuuko had only given him the barest of information on it, but he didn't need her explanation to know that the human soul and that evil, as she had named it, were in constant contest. They both wanted control, but were at an impasse.
Orphée stood up from his comfortable chair and put his book down. He'd never met Watanuki Kimihiro before, but he'd seen him once when he'd been required to meet Yuuko at her shop. It had changed since she had taken over, but the location had been the same.
He radiated a mix of auras. One of pure human, one of an angelic grace, and on top of that, also had something that Orphée could only describe as a pheromone. He could smell it, feel it permeate his black and indifferent heart. He had more than enough willpower to resist the siren's call, that told him to get the boy, but it didn't change the fact that it was there. It was no wonder the boy was living a life of terror. If it tempted someone like Orphée, no spirit would be able to resist.
And more than just feeling, what he saw was incredible. Orphée's every day sight would be enough to give any normal person a headache. He saw the bindings that everyone had from their soul to body; their body to earth; their mind to the soul. All three layered upon layered that he was far too used to seeing to even give it any mind.
But what he saw before him was three times that. The bindings were that of heavy-linked chains that circled so securely around that thin frame it was a wonder he wasn't crushed. Red and black ribbons seemed to tie down and cover his right eye, even though the body he saw could see just fine out if it. There were no wounds visible to the naked eye, but with Orphée's vision, he saw thousands of scars and cuts oozing from his soul. There was one right below his heart, the biggest one, like a rent in the very fabric of his being and it festered with pain. Instinctively, he knew this one to have a connection with that glowing soul he'd been given.
And yet none of that compared to the three-tiered wings he saw from the soul. They were wrapped tightly by those heavy chains binding soul to body and awkward looking, how cramped they appeared, but it didn't change the fact that for the first time in forever since he'd come to the human world, he'd gasped and was caught off guard. The power and depth of those wings that he saw…the only time he'd ever since such extravagance had been on Gabriel. And even then, they held none of what this human boy's had. The Seraphim, he knew, was the highest of the angel order and in comparison to that, archangels were only the second on the ladder. But this boy could almost make it to Cherubim in power.
Perhaps, he thought later when he wasn't so shocked, that on their own, those wings would only be as high as Gabriel, but it was the combination of all of the things. The mix of auras, the heavy binding chains to his existence, and then the angelic presence and wings. For the supernatural world, his existence was that of a Cherubim or Seraphim.
This boy had no place in either heaven or hell, in either of the societies thereof. No, he occupied that place in between heaven and hell. That place on earth that was as powerful as both above and below and not even the realm of existence with humans.
The only place this boy fit in was as a wish granter.
If he hadn't been so old, Orphée would have jumped as the phone ringing shattered the contemplative atmosphere of his home. He set down the bottle containing that little soul and knew why Yuuko had brought it to him. It would take several hundred years, they both knew, for that evil to fade and knew the only one that would have that time was him. He was so reclusive, he didn't think even the archangels knew he where to find him. Not that they came to earth anymore, mind you.
"Good evening, little Yuuko. Have you finally found a date for the prom?"
The silence on the other end was distinctly displeased and Orphée's smile grew. As far as he knew, he was the only one that ever teased Yuuko like this. He couldn't help thinking of her still as a child. She may be old by human standards, but she was nowhere near his age. He was time immemorial.
"I hate it when you do that and know it's me."
"Who else would call me?"
"…Whatever."
She also had the habit, which they both knew she did, to fall back like she was just starting out as a wish granter. She was quite ungracious about it too. "What is that you've called me for?"
"I want you to meet Watanuki."
His amusement vanished and he became deadly serious. "No."
"Why? Afraid that mighty will of yours might fail?"
Her smugness over the phone line didn't even hit him, much less make him irritated, angry, or inclined to respond in kind. "He's a prominent figure in the supernatural world and given what I saw the one time I went over to your shop, I have no interest in going anywhere near him. I'm a recluse, Yuuko. I don't want any sort of attention. If he has any part of an angel in his soul, which he obviously does, then he's going to eventually attract Their attention and I don't want any of that on me, thank you very much."
When silence greeted him, he became suspicious. Being a demon, it didn't take any time at all to guess what she was about to do and before he could do so much as get outraged at it, she had sealed his fate.
"You do remember your price, don't you? It's not just a one-favor-for-one-wish-granter-a-piece thing."
His eyes narrowed in anger. Yuuko and him had never seen eye to eye on anything before and had a relatively clear love-hate relationship. She had understood his reasoning being becoming a recluse and he had thought she agreed. "I have no choice then," he spat out with quite a bit of venom in his voice.
"Tomorrow," was all she said and hung up, choosing wisely not to rub it in.
He slammed the phone down in frustration, more worried now than angry. Being a demon gave him a multitude of perks for his power and a vague sense of premonition was one of his. Orphée just knew this was going to end up complicated. He knew that something close to a war might be brewing and at the very center of it, would be that boy. He would no doubt be a catalyst for both heaven and hell, rock both societies that had fallen into a routine of apathy.
Had he been a little more suicidal, he would have been looking forward to it.
End