Chapter 3

Sitka lay in bed and watched the boy sleep. They had spent the whole of the previous day alternating sleeping, arguing, shouting, fighting and talking. Sitka had resisted giving the boy doses of compulsion whenever things had gotten tough, as would have been normal. That or quick and bloody death. He'd given Jahke compulsion whenever the boy had asked for it directly, but had kept the doses short, light, tried to keep him lucid and focused.

Now he lay and watched the boy dreaming. His eyes flickered under thin blue veined lids, and his breath came soft and damp from between plump pink lips. The wounds on his neck and shoulders had scabbed over but were angrily red. Healing was not one of Sitka's gifts and he wondered if the boy was ready to face the wider demon world. Sitka adjusted the blankets and wondered at the features of the gorgeous boy. Shindae had said to him that there were prettier boys but Sitka couldn't imagine where. Or where there were boys with sweeter blood than this one. He had soft rounded muscles and washboard abs. Smooth, soft, every inch of him perfect and unmarked except for where Sitka and Shindae had left their marks. The soft curve of his pink cock nestled between his rounded thighs, the small high scrotum. The boy was perfect and Sitka was happy to watch him dream.

Jahke woke from a waking dream that he was back at home, in his own single bed, staring at a white plastered ceiling studded with origami cranes. Reality was not matching up to this. It was a shock to wake up to realise you hadn't previously been awake in your house. Jahke stared at the ceiling, breathing slowly. He'd been gone three days as far as he could tell, with no idea what was happening back home. Was he missed? Did people look for him? Or did the South Bank Library simply wonder why a book had been left on the floor? The clicking of keratin made his gaze shift. Sitka lay on his side, watching him, holding his own head at an awkward angle to avoid his horns. The big demon smiled at him.

"Hey," Jahke was aware of how rough his voice sounded, his throat raw from screaming, "Morning." He paused, "Is it morning. Do we even have mornings and evenings here?"

"We do," Sitka smiled, "But its lunch time now. We were up late."

"Oh. Sorry." Jahke sat up and looked at his bed fellow, "Are you, um, hungry?"

Sitka put a hand out and touched his knee.

"Do you feel ready to go face the rest of the house? I think the whole world might be a bit much right now."

"Um ... will Shindae be there?"

"Yes, if you want him, and a few others."

"Can I have clothes?" Jahke's request was met with a wide grin. Sitka threw back the furs and got up. From under the bed he grabbed a kit bag and dumped it on the bed, "Shindae brought them by yesterday when you were asleep."

Jahke found a pair of grey sweats, a non-descript t-shirt and a violently orange hoodie and got dressed. Sitka stood by the little table and got dressed, but didn't bother with the thousand belts to hold up his loincloth, just the one with the big square buckle.

"You ready?"

Jahke nodded but the second the door opened the boy was plastered to the back wall, sweating and shaking, torn between the desire to hide and desire to run. Sitka shut the door and let the boy walk into his arms. He wrapped an arm around him, cradled his neck and skull in his hand and hit Jahke with a swift dose of his gift. Every demon had one, and his made him particularly popular on hunting trips of both kinds.

The boy was pliant and walked with him along the hallway, past the bathroom and to the top of the main staircase. Shindae was standing at the bottom of the wide stone stair, smiling up at them.

"Hey, hey, the hermits appear! I was starting to get a little worried about you there buddy." Sitka could feel Jahke fighting the urge to run. He rubbed the boy's neck but didn't give him any more compulsion.

"It's OK Jahke. You'll be OK." Sitka turned to Shindae, "So who else is in?"

Luckily, the answer turned out to be very few of the house's normal inhabitants. It was a little known fact in popular mythology that demons were not only social creatures but lead pretty normal lives. Most demons lived in big social houses not unlike Sitka's, and of the ten usual member of their little weird family the only other ones who were in was everybody's favourite couple. Zai and Tobias were in the kitchen and Tobias was as always moving around the kitchen like he owned the place, chopping things and cooking something that smelt delicious if totally foreign to Jahke.

It helped that Tobias and Zai both looked fairly normal, for demons. Tobias was nearly down and out human, for all that he shift forms as often as blinking, leaping from fridge to stove as a cat and back to a near human shape to stir something. Zai and Sitka could have been brothers, though the more slender demon was covered in ash grey fur and his horns were long and less spiral. Jahke managed to smile, to nod and answer with his name when Zai asked him directly and allowed himself to be steered to a stool by the breakfast bar. Sitka went to the ice block and that served as a fridge but the moment he let go of Jahke the boy began to sweat and shake almost uncontrollably. Sitka abandoned his quest immediately and went to calm his new charge.

"Nice to see you out of your room," Tobias said, keeping his tone level, eyeing Jahke's reaction, "What do you two want to eat?"

"Something ... normal," Jahke looked up at Sitka, "Is that OK?"

"Anything you want."

"Beef and beans?" Tobias suggested, already pulling pans and spoons from their hiding places.

Zai and Sitka began and conversation that Jahke didn't catch the beginning of and so failed to follow and Shindae joined them, serving out a bowlful of whatever exotic smelling thing Tobias had been cooking.

Jahke refused to let go of Sitka as they ate, one handed, at the breakfast bar. Jahke rubbed his shoulder where his wounds ached and was surprised to find Zai's steel grey eyes regarding him.

"I can fix that you know."

"Huh?"

Shindae grinned from across the kitchen.

"Zai's special skill is healing people. Which he does so he can kill them more than once, you sick bastard." The comment was made lovingly but one look and everyone could tell that Shindae's words and pushed at something in Jahke, the boy was threatening to snap under the pressure. Sitka pushed compliance through him and the boy went slack against him, all tension gone.

It was no effort after that to peel Jahke out of his shirt or have him sit quite while Zai worked his particular magic. The slender demon lapped at the scabbed wounds and where his tongue passed clean new flesh formed, very slightly pink like new skin often was, but healed and painless and perfect.

For the demons it was a fairly normal day, conversation about where the others were fluttered around, talks of the house, work and the general state of recent hunts and scavenging trips. It all passed Jahke by without a worry.

Compulsion was a strange thing. It did not make you black out, did not leave big blank holes in your memory. Compulsion dulled the fear and the pain and made life easy. Jahke leant against the demon captor he was coming to think of in his head as his friend and let the daily lives of the other demons wash over him. It didn't concern him. What concerned him was the interesting way Sitka's muscles moved when he breathed, the smoothness of his taut abdomen sinking into the loin cloth.