"Monsters are real, ghosts are real too.
They live inside us, and sometimes, they win."
- Stephen King
Ophelia found the interior of the house just as unsettling as it was during the night of the Halloween party, she got a closer look at the macabre décor now that the house was eerily empty. Ajax took to the basement leaving Damien and Ophelia alone in the kitchen of the large house.
"He doesn't care for humans, most demons don't," Damien explained his anti-social tendencies.
"I see, that's probably why I didn't see him at the party, " Ophelia attempted to normalize this situation in her brain. She pressed her fingers to the scrape on her forearm to subdue the pain.
"Let me take care of that," Damien gently ran his fingers over the cuts and scrapes on Ophelia's arms, the sensations she felt as the wounds healed before her eyes were orgasmic.
"Wow," she smiled.
"Thank you," Ophelia inspected every angle of her freshly healed arm amazed.
"I can't believe everything is real, you're real," She reached out to touch his fingertips confirming his existence.
"I've been real for almost four thousand years, just waiting," Damien brought her fragile hand to his face. Ophelia had no idea what he meant, waiting for what?
Before she could ask, Ajax interrupted whipping the fridge door open, grabbing a bottle of vodka slamming it loudly down on the counter.
"Hades is pissed, we should really think about going back soon, you're just going to have to deal with it," Ajax chugged from the bottle burping loudly.
"You know I have unfinished business here, I can't leave yet," Damien spoke to Ajax but his eyes remained on Ophelia as if he was speaking about a secret right in front of her.
"Why are YOU here, Damien?" Ophelia inquired almost with a sense of suspicion that it was for bad reasons. Didn't Gods belong on Mount Olympus, not strolling around Earth fooling around with mortals so Ophelia had thought, at least that's what she had read in her books, books she realized were now more nonfiction than fantasy.
"Oh, does the little princess not know what your domain is?" Ajax laughed sinisterly which led Ophelia to believe Damien was leaving something out. Damien shooed away Ajax with his hand, as he wasn't ready to share everything with her yet, but the persistent Ophelia did not give up.
The silence built up between Ophelia and Damien as she waited for his reply but it never came, so she nudged him.
"Hades is the God of the Underworld, Aphrodite is the Goddess of Beauty, what are you?" Ophelia inquired filling the silence.
"Mortal sin and temptation, and lust," Damien revealed to her, pride in his tone.
"I like to tempt you humans into doing things that aren't characteristically like you," Damien explained how he was the devil's advocate.
Ophelia processed this information, she processed everything from the time she met Damien till the moment now, where he stood before her studying deeply into her eyes waiting for her next move, her next thought. Ophelia saw through him for what he was, not what he wanted people to think he was.
"Are you evil?" Ophelia's voice was shaky, she no longer knew if she was safe with him. She never trusted him to begin with, just meeting him a few days ago.
"Put it in this perspective, I'm only as evil as your desires are," Damien flicked the ends of Ophelia's blonde hair teasing her.
Ajax lurked around the corner, listening in on the conversation between Damien, his best friend, and the God he served, and the woman that he understood to stand between them. Ajax concocted a plan to scare away Ophelia.
"Your father would be so proud to hear you talk about your obligations in such light," Ajax prodded at Damien knowing how he felt about his legacy, knowing how trapped he felt. Damien's blood boiled, his heart pounded, he balled up his fists, his golden eyes now full of flames and fury. This was something he tried to hide, something he tried to keep nestled within himself for nobody to see. For when Damien became angry, he evolved into a creature, massive in size, created of flames and volcanic rock.
Damien let his rage overtake him turning into the beast that lived inside, Ajax laughed as his taunting worked, Ophelia cowered down in fear attempting to shield herself from what was coming. Damien chased Ajax throughout the house barely fitting through the doorways himself tearing apart anything in his way.
Ophelia no longer was more fearful of the chimeras that may have still lurked in the surrounding forest, now she was terrified of the potential of Damien, the mystery of Damien, and the answers she found were to be earth shattering. Ophelia ran out of the house without looking back, she did not want to look back, for once in her life, Ophelia craved normality, the known, in every sense of the term.
Once Damien realized it was all just a game, he went after Ophelia returning to the form that pleased mortals the most, he found that she was long gone.
"She would have hair so golden the sun would be afraid to shine in her presence, her eyes would be so crystal clear you'd see a reflection of you who are, her skin would be so flawless that porcelain would not even compare, and above all, Damien, her heart will be pure, she won't fall for your foolish games," Damien muttered the words he had heard his whole life. From the time he came into existence, just around four thousand years ago, he was promised a gift, not a something, but a someone. A mortal with the heart of Zeus, the beauty influenced by Aphrodite herself, eyes of Poseidon's most cerulean sea, and the purity of Astraea. It was said that she would have the purest soul in existence, she would be crafted for Damien, himself, the God of Mortal Sin and Temptation and Lust, and that he would fall in love upon first sight. Damien thought little to nothing of this, finding it be outlandish he, an immortal and all powerful being, would desire such a thing more than for a short period of fun.
Damien never believed what his mother said to be true, he never believed when his father told him either, but when he met Ophelia he had no choice but believe the story because when he had seen her champagne hair cascade over her small frame for the first time, her curious pale aquamarine orbs study him, he saw her soul as were one of his gifts, he had never seen anything like it in his time, he became insatiable for this mortal, craving her attention and presence.
"The goal isn't to scare her, I've changed my mind Ajax," Damien returned to his home after he was through pitying himself that Ophelia had run off. He began attempting to fix and replace anything he had damaged in his tantrum.
"What do you mean? You don't actually have feelings for her, do you? You've said for the past thousands of years-," Ajax began ranting before Damien cut him off.
"I'm taking her back to the Underworld with us, and that's final," Damien couldn't get the image of Ophelia out of his head but this time it was the terror spread across her face that he couldn't shake.
"You love her? It was all true? Hades is going to be mad, real mad, when he hears about this one," Ajax smirked playfully at the thought of confrontation especially between Gods.
"Hades promises me a woman of my own, one perfectly crafted for me, and then decides he wants to go into retirement, how does he suppose I bring her back with me? She's clearly terrified of me," Damien threw his body into the couch manipulating the flames that spit off the fireplace from the across the room with his fingers as a way to relax and unwind.
Ajax staggered drunkenly over to the living room with two shot glasses skillfully held between his fingers.
"The same way he brought Persephone to the Underworld," This answer was obvious, though Damien couldn't bring himself to simply rip her out of her own world and force her into his world of death and torment. For centuries, he would come to earth to perform his duties, entice mortals into playing into their darkest desires, tempting people to walk the line between good and bad, what did that make him? In his eyes, he was nothing more than a common Devil. But he wasn't so bad that he would steal anything more than her heart, which he realized was far out of reach thanks to the help of his demon best friend.
"I'm not Hades," The reflection of the fire burned inside Damien's eyes.
"Why did you have to force me to show her that? As if it wasn't enough that she saw your demon skin," Damien being a natural hothead was much more similar to his father than his mother even if he didn't want to admit or believe it himself.
While Damien thought about how to get Ophelia to fall for his wicked ways, Ophelia was back at her dorm feeling more alone in this world than she ever had, with no one to confide in, she tossed and turned all night.