Corrine looked all around herself, knowing as she breathed it in that there was something foreign in the air around her. Not exotic, just different. But that was easily seen just by looking at the vast green landscape that surrounded her. She was encompassed by a great ocean of manicured green, rolling hills of it sprawling away from her in all directions. In the distance before her was a great stone building, what she could only call a castle. It was wider in body than it was tall, reaching high and then tumbling low, clearly made of a grand central mass that had been added to over time. There had been an attempt at balance, and the engineering of it was remarkable compared to castles that she had seen in pictures. But it was a fortress of stone no matter how you looked at it. Flags flew from its highest points, but there was nothing in the design of those flags that she found familiar. Nothing that hinted at state or country or an affiliation she recognized. There was writing in the crests, but she couldn’t see what it was from this distance and she had a suspicion she wouldn’t be able to read it even if she were closer. There were hedgerows and fountains, great sweeping drives of white stone that reminded her of a great manor from an Austen novel. The oaks that lined the drives waved at her with pale-colored leaves barely hanging on.
“Is this where we are?” she asked him. “Inside of that place?” She recalled the stone room she’d woken up in and how it had reminded her of an old castle room.
“This is the home of the Demon King, Noah. And yes, this is where we are. Somewhere on the third floor, beyond those colored windows. I wanted to show you some of my world from another perspective. Some of who and what we are.”
That was when a cloud of smoke suddenly swirled into her view, several feet before her. It rushed around like a tornado, but it was no bigger than a man. Black and grey and silver streams curled around one another, and then suddenly resolved into the shape of a man made of smoke, and then a man made solid. Corrine’s eyes had seen many special effects on movie screens, but nothing like the reality of what she’d just experienced. Even so, she wanted to reach out and touch him, to prove to herself that he was as real as he looked. How was any of this possible? A man appearing out of thin air? Another man who could read thoughts? It was all fantasy, pure and simple. And yet not. Here it was reality.
“Corrine, I’d like you to meet our King, Noah.”
Corrine drew in a breath as the sunset sped up around her, drawing down dark violet skies and then a cloak of night around the handsome Demon King. He was larger than Kane by far, in height and in musculature, and everything in his bearing screamed of his great position in life. He was powerful, he was responsible for the well-being of an entire people, and he knew it.
But as darkness descended around them, Corrine quickly learned there was far more to him. Noah showed her his palms briefly, and then with a whoosh of sound they were engulfed in flame. Brilliant balls of fire swallowed up his hands to the wrists, and slowly he began to move them, creating bright arcs of light in the darkness as he sketched circles and swirls and arches. Then with a sharp snap of his wrists, fire raced up his arms and quickly engulfed all of his body. Everything inside Corrine that had been trained to respond in the human dimension screamed to see a man on fire. She was breathing so hard, the air cold and warmed all at once in her lungs as she stood there forcing her mind to accept the impossible.
And then, in a rush, the flames burst apart, flying around her in a great circle and touching a ring of torches amidst them that she had not noticed before. After he had lit their way, the Demon King disappeared.
She turned to look at Kane, but only had a moment to open her mouth before he put his finger then to his lips and then pointed forward. Her heart seized in her chest as she eagerly looked in the indicated direction. Another cloud was coalescing in front of her, only this time it seemed to have more weight to it than smoke. After a moment she realized it was dust she was seeing.
Kane grabbed her by her shoulders from behind, pulling Corrine into his warm body as he pressed his lips to the sweet spot just behind her ear.
“Corrine Russ, I’d like you to meet my brother. His name is Jacob, and he is the most powerful Earth Demon ever to walk the world.”
And as he spoke, the man himself appeared. There was so much of Kane’s features in him that she might have known they shared the same blood even if he had not told her so. Jacob’s hair and eyes were as dark as Kane’s, but it was those proud Romanesque features that linked them, from the long nose and strong chin to the sculpture of the full, knowing lips. Yet there was something in Jacob’s eyes that Kane’s lacked. The man behind her, for all the pain and hardship he’d experienced as he laid bound beside her, had an almost carefree quality to his aura.
Jacob did not. Here was a man who carried a great weight on his soul. Corrine had seen it before, in the eyes of young boys who were faced with the lures of gangsters every day, and the painful or deadly alternatives if they resisted. In their world there was no such thing as saying “no.” Not without dreadful consequences. In Jacob’s weighted aura, there was a tremendous responsibility.
Jacob spread his hands wide, his palms turned toward the ground, and suddenly everything around them began to rock and tremble. The earth beneath her feet quaked; then a wall of soil and stone lurched up between her and Jacob. It was so massive and raw that she could smell the loam, see the burrowing creatures that suddenly dangled from roots and such as their protective homes were unearthed. Dirt rained down like a soft summer shower, even as the wave rising before her shifted first to the right and then to the left. And in the next moment the entire monstrosity fell in on itself, rumbling and shaking until it had repacked itself into place. By the time Jacob took a deep, cleansing breath and looked up at her, there wasn’t so much as a speck of dust out of place to bear witness to what had just happened.
“All right,” she breathed. “You’re Demons. Not human. I totally get it.”
“But it is not all about parlor tricks,” Jacob responded. “It is about long-held traditions, a long history of mistakes, and a painful responsibility to ourselves and those we coexist with. We cannot make mistakes. Mistakes cost us too dearly.”
“Wow.” Under her breath she whispered into Kane’s ear. “Is he always so tightly wound?”
“Always,” Kane assured her. “But he’s getting better.” A woman resolved out of thin air at Jacob’s side and Kane’s brother immediately reached to wrap an arm around her curvy hips and draw her flush to his body. It only took an instant for Corrine to recognize who she was.
“That’s my sister! Isabella!” She lurched forward, suddenly needing to feel the steady and familiar irreverence of her sibling, but Kane held her tight.
“Remember, this is all a production of my powers. I don’t know anything about your sister other than what she looks like. She would feel, smell, and act very flat to you, with no dimension. I’ve only met her once in person. I could draw from your memories of her, but the result would not catch all those special nuances that make her the person you love and are familiar with. Not unless I put all of my energy and focus into it and I am not old enough or strong enough to maintain our surroundings and do that as well.”
“So there are limits to what you can do,” Corrine murmured.
“Yes, of course. We are not all powerful. And besides, there’s a bit of an ethical limit too, Corrine. I won’t do things that will end up making you feel like you’ve been manipulated. Having your sister tell you how wonderful everything is for her, how wonderful we are, would be an outright manipulation of your trust and a misuse of your relationship with her. I am doing all of this to orient you to my world, to show you who and what we are, not to run some kind of propaganda gambit.”