Demon x Witch!reader— praise, body worship, nipple play, fingering, penetrative sex, scratching, biting, squirting, creampie, multiple orgasms
When your coven members started getting sick, dark horrifying jagged marks blooming on their skin, they all looked to you for answers. You weren’t coven leader, not by far, you were only their humble head healer. This was the kind of stuff you specialized in yet even you had no idea what was going on.
But witch after witch was appearing on your doorstep, their faces scared, desperately begging you for help. Of course you did what you could but the illness was such a peculiar thing, you could barely make sense of it.
With each new blot that formed the witch’s magic grew more powerful but also more unstable. The marks consumed them until they could no longer control their magic and it became a liability to allow them to continue their practice. Which was another issue as the illness also raised their aggression levels tenfold. Even the slightest uptick in their heartbeat could unleash a raging current of magic.
Most cases, no matter how much you tried to stop it, ended in the death of a witch and fewer answers than you started with.
For some it came on quicker and for others it was like a slow crawl. Yet it always reached its end and you could never catch up with it. That is until it finally caught up with you.
Haunting tendrils that began to form on your hands as if the illness was mocking you. You had failed to heal your coven members and now you’d fail to save yourself before it was too late and it’d claim another witch.
You only allow yourself a few minutes to panic. There isn’t time to linger on it any longer. Not when you’re unsure how much you have left. But even as you move, scouring through countless old texts and forbidden spells, that frenzied fear is what drives you forward.
Days go by running through the same cycle. Reading the books, testing incantations and potions, refusing to collapse as another fails, and forcing yourself to start all over again. Each failed attempt threatens to destroy what little hope you have left. There has to be something— anything— you haven’t thought of.
That’s when it hits you. As much as the rationale side of you immediately rejects the idea, the other tells you it’s your last chance. For your coven, summoning a demon is quite possibly the greatest offense a witch can commit. You remind yourself of this over and over as you draw the circle in the dead of night.
Bright purple flames shoot straight to the ceiling as the Demon appears before you, in clothes from a time long ago and a piercing gaze that acts like he already knows what you’re about to ask. Yet when you show him the marks making their way up your arms a flicker of surprises passes over his expression.
He breaks through your summoning circle with ease, clawed hands grasp at your arms with a surprising tenderness. It still manages to send a fierce shiver down your spine. Under his inspection you try and remain normal, ignoring the way your body warms and hums under his touch. A growing throb echoing straight to your core.
“A witch forming marks? What is the meaning of this?” He asks in awe, and his own demonic marks shimmer under the candlelight.
A soft gasp leaves you at the familiar patterns you’ve seen so many times before on your fellow witches. How had you never realized this? The connection between a demons blots and the illness taking control of these witches. Suddenly it was all making sense, the deathly power surges that they couldn’t contain on their own.
“I was hoping you could help me figure that out,” you whisper and his gaze snaps up to meet yours, the hum in your body buzzing harder by the second.
Then it’s weeks that pass in the blink of an eye. You rarely leave your home and refuse to let anyone inside. It’s clear your coven members worry for you but that’s the last thing on your mind. With your days now full of this alluring demon who you can’t get enough of leaves space for little else.
He moves around your home like he owns it, having grown more comfortable there than you ever would’ve expected. The two of you have come to work in tandem, your hand reaching and his is already there waiting as you trade old books, passing each other ingredients without a thought while making potions you’ve never even heard of, and your bodies moving as one as you work.
Every interaction between you is charged with something deeper, something you don’t dare to speak of. Yet it speaks through every brush of your hand against his, how neither of you move away whenever you bump into the other, the smiles and glances you send each other that linger a few beats too long, and that both your marks shimmer in each others vicinity.
And just like the others, as your marks move up your arms and down your body, your power grows stronger. But something about this demon helps calm the magic swelling inside you. His presence soothes the storm, his touch calms the spikes of your emotions. Ones that are starting to happen far too often for comfort.
Leaning against the table you clench your fists as another wave of anger urges you to lash out, to unleash the emotion swirling inside you. Your body shakes with the force of trying to resist but you hold on as long as you can.
Just as fear it’ll overcome you, the demon’s chest molds against your back, his arms curl around you and tug you close. That soothing sensation courses through you and you sigh in relief, melting into his arms like you’ve been doing it your entire life.
“I hate these marks,” you murmur, voice filled with pain.
The demon freezes against you and for a long moment he doesn’t respond. Neither do you. Then a moment later he leans down, nuzzling into the streaks that have bloomed on your neck. His own shimmer and yours respond immediately.
“I don’t. I adore them. You just need to learn how to control them,” he rasps.
His breath on your skin makes that constant buzz return to your body as if calling out for him. Warm arousal bubbles up in your belly and looks in your panties. You know he can sense it all yet he doesn’t rush a thing.
“Your coven’s tapped into a power it wasn’t prepared to handle but you have me now. Let me help you.”
All you can feel anymore is him as his fingers skim across your skin, tilting your chin up just in time to claim your lips in a kiss that’s been a long time coming. A soft moan leaves you, your body turning to face him before he picks up your plush frame with ease and plops you down on top of the table.
Low demonic growls vibrate from his throat as he pushes at your clothes like they’re a nuisance, his lips curl in a sneer as his mouth dances with yours like he’s trying not to just tear them to shreds.
Only when the lack of oxygen pinches at your lungs does he break from the kiss and immediately make his way down your skin. Pressing feverish kisses along every inch of bare skin he exposes.
“Your marks… they’re gorgeous. Just like the rest of you. If only you’d embrace them, embrace me,” he pants against your chest and you gasp as he takes one of your perky buds into his mouth, sucking till they’re swollen, then moving onto the next.
You writhe against the table, small whimpers leaving you as you get hotter and hotter, the mess between your thighs dripping down your legs and onto the table.
As if he can sense just how needy you are he leans back and forces your thick thighs apart, groaning at the slick that gushes out of your weeping pussy.
“You even have them here. How beautiful,” he purrs.
His long clawed fingers slide through your folds, tracing the streaks till you’re crying out and rocking your hips into the movement. You get so lost in the rhythm and the constant stimulation that you don’t notice him replacing his fingers with his cock until he’s sliding in and stretching your sensitive walls to their very limits.
You start to scream only to have them silenced by his mouth as he kisses you again. Your magic pulses in time with your throbbing cunt as he starts thrusting his cock deep inside you, slipping deeper and deeper with each rock of his hips.
Meanwhile he fucks your mouth as hard as he fucks your pussy, swirling his tongue against yours in time with every brutal thrust. You feel his tip smash against your cervix just as his tongue pushes into your throat and suddenly he’s everywhere.
Consuming you from the inside out. For a second you panic, your nails scratching down his back and he hisses, picking up pace and rutting into you even harder. You feel unsteady, body moving in time with his only to realize it’s not your body moving but the magic inside you. As you let him in the overpowering magic settles into your bones like it’s always meant to be there and it increases your pleasure to a point you’ve never known.
The demon grunts as he slams his cock along your walls, molding you to the shape of him. He’s breathless but he’s never felt more alive than he does now and he can’t stop staring at the streaks that resemble his one. Like you’re his, all his now. It makes his cock swell within you.
“Tell me you love your marks as much as I do. I want to hear you,” he growls, ducking his head to worship every inch of marked skin he can reach.
You cry out, the pressure in your belly building, so close to bursting.
“I love my marks,” you whine, trying to sound convincing.
“Louder,” he snarls and nips at your throat.
Every thrust he makes you scream those words till you shatter around his cock, your vision flashing white and your release spraying out of you in a brilliant stream of arousal. Your demon roars as he buries himself to the hilt and sends spurt after spurt of his thick cum to splash against your cervix till you’re coming again for him.
He helps work you through the intense pleasure, rocking into you steadily and holding you close. When the fog starts to clear from your mind a burst of clarity booms and you realize you’ve been going about this all wrong. Trying to be rid of the streaks is impossible. It’s only through accepting them can you manage the power that comes with.
And all along it was your demon helping you to see that. To accept it. Now you think you finally are and if you can convince your coven members to do the same you think everything may just be ok.
Your marks glow in a silent heartfelt thank you. Warmth flows through you as his own shine in return. Both your body and souls now connected as one.
Summoner with orb and little friend (Danny Willis, from ad for Quest, a computer moderated PBM roleplaying game by Peter Read's Dynamic Games of Kanahooka, in Australian Realms magazine 8, Nov/Dec 1992)
✨ Here! Have a sketch gone color study! I think my failures at sketching are starting to go in really fun directions 😆. I almost never play with extreme lighting, and I’m proud of how this turned out!
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✨ Someone seems to have interrupted Crowley’s drink…wonder how that’ll go for them? 🤔 Let me know what you think!
On Earth, the Louisiana swamp possessed a peculiar sort of silence after a kill.
Not true silence, of course. The cicadas never stopped their relentless chorus, and the frogs along the bayou croaked on with blissful indifference, uncaring of whatever horrors stalked beneath the cypress boughs. Nature had long ago made peace with monsters.
No, this was something subtler.
A hush that settled over the marsh like morning fog. A world holding its breath. The only sound left was the slow, satisfied exhale of a predator with nothing left to hunt.
Alastor adored that silence.
He hummed as he worked, an old jazz tune with a lively swing to it. He'd first heard it drifting from an open window on Bourbon Street, back when the city was still finding its feet and New Orleans smelled of magnolias, cigar smoke, and impossible ambition.
His black gloves were hopelessly ruined, so he didn't fuss over the bloodstained handkerchief. He wiped the blade clean with practiced care, folded the cloth into a neat square, and slipped it into his breast pocket.
One never abandoned good manners simply because one had committed murder. The details mattered. They were what separated artistry from butchery.
The man — former man, Alastor corrected himself with a pleased smile — lay sprawled at the edge of the mire, one arm already disappearing beneath the sluggish black water.
A traveling salesman from Houston. Painfully ordinary in life, even more so in death. Really, that was the greatest insult Alastor could imagine. The universe had handed this man a perfectly serviceable existence and he'd spent it being aggressively mediocre.
He'd been wealthy, entitled, and thoroughly convinced the world existed solely for his amusement. Worse still, he'd mistaken Alastor's smile for an invitation.
“That's all your kind is good for,” he'd sneered, reaching far too boldly.
Alastor had indeed shown him a delightful evening. It had simply ended with a hunting knife buried neatly beneath his ribs.
Honestly, it had been almost disappointingly easy. Undo a few buttons, flash a shy smile, laugh at a handful of dreadful jokes, stroke an ego already swollen beyond reason and the man had practically led himself into the swamp.
Alastor had scarcely needed to try.
He clicked his tongue, loosened his tie, rolled his sleeves back down, and straightened his suspenders with meticulous precision.
“You really ought to have struggled more,” he remarked to the corpse. “Where's the sport in it otherwise?”
The body, predictably, had no rebuttal.
“Mm. That's what I thought.”
With efficient, almost domestic motions, he finished filling the grave. The wet earth swallowed the body without complaint while the surrounding reeds whispered softly in the evening breeze. Nearby, the last scraps of evidence crackled inside a small fire: a bloodied cloth, torn fabric, a wallet stripped of anything useful.
The flames consumed them all with greedy little pops until nothing remained but glowing embers and drifting ash.
When the fire died, Alastor let out a quiet sigh of satisfaction.
He retrieved his shovel and hunting knife from where they rested against a gnarled oak, wiped each one spotless, and packed them into a worn canvas sack. Another pleasant evening, concluded.
He dusted the dirt from his trousers, adjusted his hat, and turned to leave.
Then stopped.
Something shimmered through the trees. A single gleam, bright and impossibly out of place, flickering from a nearby clearing.
Alastor's smile widened.
Curiosity had always been one of his favorite vices.
--------
It was faint.
Half-buried beneath dead autumn leaves and the thick carpet of moss that, given enough time, claimed everything in this forgotten stretch of Louisiana bayou.
Alastor stopped and tilted his head.
His hearing had always been unnaturally keen—a gift he'd never found a satisfying explanation for and, eventually, stopped bothering to question. Beneath the endless chorus of insects and croaking frogs, he caught something else.
A whisper. Not a voice, but a vibration.
A low, lingering hum that seemed to exist somewhere between sound and silence, like a distant radio station bleeding through the wrong frequency.
Curious.
Alastor had not survived this long by walking away from curious things.
He stepped off the narrow trail, polished shoes climbing over slick roots twisted through the marsh. The closer he came, the stronger that peculiar sensation grew. Not louder, but clearer, as though whatever lingered beneath the earth had suddenly realized someone was listening.
He crouched and swept aside the damp leaves with one gloved hand.
A pentagram.
Nearly as wide as a wagon wheel, carved deeply into the soil. Its lines had been drawn in chalk, cold ash, and something rust-colored that Alastor recognized immediately as blood. Melted candles ringed the symbol, their wax hardened into pale rivulets clinging stubbornly to the dirt. Torn pages fluttered lazily across the clearing, stained by rain and mud until whatever scripture they had once carried had long since become unreadable.
The air smelled of burnt sage and cheap moonshine.
Alastor pursed his lips.
“A summoning circle,” he announced to absolutely no one, in the precise tone of a professor grading an exceptionally poor examination. “My, my.”
He leaned closer, inspecting the outer runes without allowing so much as a fingertip to brush them.
“Crooked sigils.” His gaze drifted to the next. “Uneven spacing. The circles aren't even concentric.”
He sighed with genuine feeling. “There is really no excuse for such dreadful penmanship.”
Then he stopped.
“...Are those cartoon apples?”
Tiny doodles had been scribbled cheerfully among the ritual markings. Little apples. A circus tent. Smiling ducks. One of them appeared to be wearing a top hat.
Alastor stared for a long, unblinking moment.
“It's a wonder they summoned anything at all.”
A beat.
“...Or perhaps they didn't.”
--------
The memory surfaced almost immediately.
A few months prior, New Orleans had been swept through by a wandering religious sect.
It was magnificent material for his radio program, truly a gift that kept giving.
According to their increasingly incoherent sermons, the barriers between realms were weakening. Heaven and Hell would soon collide in some grand cosmic reckoning against an unnamed evil, and the Devil himself would play a pivotal role.
There was, however, one rather unusual detail.
The Devil was, they insisted, a duck man.
Not metaphorically. Not symbolically. Literally. A duck man.
Alastor had no particular opinion on the theology. The entertainment value, however, had been extraordinary.
Their followers wandered the streets shrieking, “The time has come! The time has come!” at bewildered pedestrians while waving handmade signs covered in apples, pentagrams, circus tents, and suspiciously cheerful ducks.
One particularly ambitious disciple had even stationed himself outside a church on St. Charles Avenue, eagerly distributing pamphlets to anyone unfortunate enough to make eye contact.
The pamphlets, naturally, also featured ducks, apples and even a circus.
--------
There was a consistency to their madness, if nothing else.
Whatever credibility the sect might once have possessed evaporated entirely when their self-proclaimed prophet concluded that earthly garments were merely an oppressive social construct and began delivering his sermons in the nude.
New Orleans had tolerated an impressive assortment of eccentrics throughout its long and colorful history. Public nudity on a Tuesday, however, proved to be where the city finally drew the line.
The congregation had been chased out soon afterward. Apparently, not before attempting a few summoning rituals in the surrounding wilderness.
Alastor surveyed the remains of their efforts.
He found he had very little sympathy.
--------
He spotted a broken bottle lying beside one of the cypress roots. Brown glass with the neck had shattered cleanly against the wood.
He picked it up, holding it to the thin shafts of moonlight filtering through the canopy.
Sticky residue clung to the inside. He sniffed it.
“Corn mash.” Another sniff. “Far too much sugar.”
He smiled. “Moonshine and desperation. A proud Louisiana tradition.”
He set the bottle down, dusted his hands, and rose to his feet.
Interesting though this little discovery had been, he really ought to be on his way. There was a body to relocate before sunrise, an alibi to maintain, and a radio program that wasn’t going to write itself.
Frankly, he had no interest in cleaning up after whichever half-baked occult enthusiasts had attempted to bully the cosmos into granting them an audience.
He turned to leave.
The jagged edge of the broken bottle snagged against his glove.
A sharp sting. “Ow.”
He drew his hand back.
A neat little slit had opened across the leather covering his index finger. How irritating.
A crimson bead welled through the tear, then fell.
Past his hand. Past the drifting leaves.
Straight into the exact center of the pentagram, with the sort of impeccable precision that could only be described as fate showing off.
”...Oh, honestly.”
The swamp answered immediately.
No slow awakening. No ominous rumble. No theatrical crescendo, which was frankly, a little rude, given the circumstances.
One moment the clearing was cold, damp, and entirely ordinary. The next, every rune ignited with scarlet light erupting through the carved lines with explosive violence, racing across the earth faster than lightning, consuming the pentagram whole.
Then gold. Blazing gold which became impossibly bright.
The earth hummed beneath his feet. The cypress groaned and bent away from the circle. High above, a murder of crows burst screaming from the canopy, scattering into the night in a storm of frantic black wings.
The frogs fell silent. The cicadas stopped mid-song. Even the wind left.
Alastor threw an arm across his face.
“Now just a—” He never finished.
Nor did he see the thread.
A single strand of golden light slipped silently from the tear in his glove. It coiled gently around his wrist, then stretched toward the blazing heart of the summoning circle. Shimmering once, as though recognizing something, before pulling taut.
The light exploded.
There was no sound. Only brilliance. White consumed everything.
Power crashed through the clearing like a tidal wave, ancient beyond comprehension, surging through the swamp with enough force to send Alastor stumbling backward several steps. Every hair on his body stood on end.
For one dizzying instant, he could not locate the ground.
Then it stopped. Abrupt as a snuffed candle.
The wind returned, tentative. The frogs resumed. The cicadas followed. The swamp, with the magnificent indifference that was Louisiana’s greatest natural resource, simply continued.
Alastor blinked spots from his vision.
No creature. No horror. No spontaneous combustion. He flexed his fingers cautiously.
Still attached.
“...Well.” His brow furrowed. “That was certainly dramatic.”
He glanced around the clearing. Nothing. No scorched earth, no lingering glow, no polite explanatory note from whatever had just decided to make his evening significantly more complicated.
“I dislike mysteries that refuse to leave behind proper evidence.”
--------
Something was there.
Something small.
It glowed with a soft golden radiance, no brighter than a lantern hidden beneath a blanket, yet utterly impossible to ignore.
Alastor retrieved his shovel and approached with measured steps. The runes had gone cold, their light spent entirely on whatever they'd been building toward.
He reached the edge of the pentagram.
Raised the shovel.
Prepared himself for whatever was reasonable to prepare himself for.
He peered inside.
--------
A baby looked back at him.
Alastor's expression didn't change.
Internally, however, and he would take this to whatever grave eventually claimed him, there was a brief but significant pause while his mind attempted to rearrange reality that made even marginal sense.
The infant couldn't have been more than a few months old.
She lay nestled in a soft pink blanket, impossibly clean amid the muddy clearing, as though someone had placed her gently inside an oversized cradle rather than the smoking wreckage of an occult ritual gone sideways. Tiny wisps of bright blond hair framed a cherubic face. Her skin was pale as fresh snow, with round pink blush marks decorating both cheeks as naturally as freckles.
She looked remarkably like one of those absurdly expensive porcelain dolls wealthy little girls insisted on dragging everywhere.
As he leaned slightly closer, because surely not…
Two tiny horn nubs curled delicately from her forehead.
Then she blinked. Her eyes met his. It shimmered like molten gold dust caught beneath sunlight.
She was, in every observable sense, the most aggressively charming thing Alastor had ever encountered.
He found this deeply suspicious.
The infant blinked once more. Then smiled. A bright, toothless smile, entirely free of caution or fear.
Then reached one pudgy little fist toward him with the unshakeable confidence of someone who had never once considered the possibility of being refused anything.
“Baa…” she giggled, a trail of drool escaped the corner of her mouth
Alastor stared. The shovel remained raised.
The baby grabbed at empty air with tremendous determination.
Several long seconds passed.
“No.” Instantaneous.
She waved both arms.
“No,” he repeated, with considerably more conviction than he felt. “Absolutely not.”
She kicked happily beneath the blanket.
“I was in the middle of something.”
Another tiny giggle.
“I have responsibilities.” He pointed at himself with the shovel handle.
“A program to run. An audience to entertain. I am, in point of fact—” he said this with great clarity ”—a murderer.”
The declaration hung in the humid air.
He gestured toward the tiny bundle.
“Which is not a profession generally conducive to...” He searched for the word. ”...this.”
The baby considered his argument with great seriousness.
Then—
“Achoo!”
The sneeze was impossibly dainty.
A tiny puff of pink-and-gold smoke drifted from her nose, floated lazily into the humid Louisiana air, and vanished without a trace.
Alastor watched the smoke disappear.
Then looked at the little horn nubs, then back to where the smoke had been, then back to the horns.
Several fundamental assumptions he’d held about the nature of reality made quiet, dignified exits from his working model of the world.
“.....That’s new.” he said, because, what else could he say.
--------
Alastor lowered himself slowly onto his heels.
His hands, which had not trembled through rather a lot of things that reasonably warranted trembling, were doing something embarrassingly close to shaking.
“She is not human.”
He said it aloud because the situation seemed to warrant stating the obvious.
He looked up. His gaze swept the dark wall of cypress, the still black water, the moon hanging overhead with the blameless indifference of something that had seen far stranger things and intended to keep its own counsel.
Then he waited.
Quite reasonably, he thought.
For someone to arrive and explain themselves. A frantic parent. A guardian. An infernal courier with paperwork. Anyone capable of explaining precisely how an infant had materialized in the middle of a summoning circle.
The swamp offered frogs.
“...Of course.”
His attention drifted back to the child.
The infant had become thoroughly absorbed in the noble pursuit of fitting her entire fist into her mouth. The endeavor appeared to require her full concentration.
“...Of course,” he repeated.
A long sigh escaped him.
“....Good Lord,”
His gaze dropped to the blanket.
Soft. Pink. Far finer quality than anything one would expect to find abandoned in a Louisiana swamp. In one corner, delicate burgundy thread embroidered a single name in elegant cursive.
He read it aloud before realizing he'd only meant to think it.
“Charlie.”
The name settled warmly in the humid air. Strangely unassuming for something that had arrived the way she had.
He looked at the horns. The golden eyes were now blinking slowly, sleepily, at him. The pink smoke was still faintly in the air.
None of it fit any category he possessed. Which meant he was operating blind. Which meant, his jaw tightened, that whoever had sent her, or lost her, or whatever the appropriate verb was for this situation, would be coming to collect her eventually.
And they would find her in the custody of a man standing beside a freshly filled grave, holding a shovel, with blood on his cuffs.
“...Well.” His voice came out softer than intended. “Miss Charlie.”
He inclined his head with the courtesy the situation seemed to demand.
"It would appear someone has made a truly spectacular error in judgment this evening."
A thoughtful pause.
“And I regret to inform you..." He sighed. "...it was almost certainly me.”
Charlie regarded him with solemn golden eyes. Then blew a tiny spit bubble. It floated for precisely one second before popping.
"...Yes," Alastor said gravely. "Quite."
He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“You are, unless appearances are wildly deceiving me, which, given this evening, I can no longer entirely rule out that you are not from here.”
He glanced toward the extinguished summoning circle.
“Which means that wherever you are from, someone is going to notice your absence.”
He glanced around the clearing.
“And when they come looking, and they will come looking, make no mistake, they will find you in the company of a man standing next to a grave.”
He gestured at the shovel. “With this.”
At his cuffs. “And that.”
He let out a slow breath through his nose.
“I rather expect introductions are going to prove tremendously unpleasant.”
--------
So he waited.
One hour. Then another.
No infernal gateway split the air. No smell of sulfur drifted through the trees. No frantic, otherworldly guardian came crashing through the cypress demanding to know who had stolen their child.
Only the moon. The swamp. And Charlie.
She shifted beneath her blanket. A small whimper escaped her, then another. Building with gradual, inevitable momentum into something louder and more committed. Like a storm that had made a decision and intended to see it through.
“Oh.” He straightened immediately. “Oh, don’t.”
Another whine.
“Please don’t.”
The pleading note in his own voice startled him considerably.
Charlie drew in a deep breath.
For one hopeful, glorious second, he wondered if perhaps she’d decided against it.
Then she wailed.
The cry tore through the swamp with astonishing force for a creature scarcely larger than a loaf of bread, echoing across the black water until even the birds nesting high in the cypress stirred uneasily.
Alastor flinched. “Oh dear.”
The crying intensified.
He looked at his own hands, the hands that had done a frankly impressive catalogue of things without flinching, and found them completely, uselessly unhelpful.
“I...” His voice came out almost apologetic. ”...don’t do this.”
Charlie remained entirely unconvinced. If anything, she cried louder.
Despite everything, despite the grave behind him, the shovel in his hand, and the rapidly mounting certainty that this evening had permanently escaped his control. The corner of Alastor’s mouth twitched.
“My, my.” He shook his head slowly. “Bold.”
Another indignant shriek.
“Demanding.” Something shifted in his expression, not quite a smile and not quite anything else. ”...I can respect that.”
--------
With the crying showing absolutely no inclination toward a diplomatic resolution, Alastor did the only thing left to him.
He picked her up.
Poorly. Very poorly.
His elbows locked at his sides as though she were an unstable explosive, which for all he actually knew, she might be. He held her at arm's length, her tiny legs dangling uselessly beneath the blanket.
Charlie found this arrangement deeply insulting. Her cries doubled.
“Oh, for Heaven's—”
He stopped himself.
Unclear if that was the right address. Best not to chance it.
“...Mercy.”
With all the confidence of a man performing surgery after reading half a pamphlet in a language he didn't speak, he adjusted his grip. Closer. Still wrong.
He hesitated. Then, with the careful, almost reluctant movements of someone navigating entirely unmapped territory, he drew her against his chest.
One hand supporting her back. One hand cradling the impossible little bundle. And almost without thinking, he began to rock her.
A slow sway.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
It was awkward and utterly undignified.
Had another living soul witnessed it, Alastor would have felt morally obligated to create a second freshly dug grave before dawn.
Charlie's cries faltered. Softened. Then finally, stopped.
Alastor froze.
A tiny sigh escaped her instead, warm, sleepy and, perfectly devastatingly content.
Safe.
The sound settled somewhere deep inside the quiet between them. Her fingers fumbled upward until they found his lapel. The grip that followed was astonishingly strong for someone whose entire hand could scarcely wrap around one of his fingers.
She did not let go.
“...Huh.”
He stood motionless beneath the moonlit canopy, surrounded by black water and ancient cypress trees, holding a horned, golden-eyed, pink-smoke-sneezing infant who had materialized in a summoning circle in the middle of a Louisiana swamp.
An infant whose parents were almost certainly the kind of people one did not want to be on the wrong side of.
An infant who, in the span of less than an hour, had dismantled an evening that had been proceeding perfectly well right up until the blood touched the circle.
He searched himself methodically for what he was feeling.
Not fear. Not pity. Not obligation.
Something stranger. Something that didn't fit neatly into any compartment of his carefully ordered mind. It settled behind his ribs with surprising weight, pressing quietly against the inside of his chest.
Responsibility.
The realization arrived reluctantly. Not as a revelation but more like an unwelcome guest politely letting itself in. And woven through it, so faint he almost convinced himself it wasn't there at all, was another feeling.
Something entirely unfamiliar.
He refused to examine it.
He had the distinct suspicion that, if given a name, it might become real.
--------
He didn't examine it further. Some instincts, he had learned, were best left unnamed.
His gaze drifted back to the sleeping infant in his arms.
The tiny horn nubs. The golden light still clinging to her like the last warmth of a sunset. The little crease between her brows slowly smoothing away as sleep claimed her completely.
And the name stitched in burgundy thread into the corner of the blanket.
Charlie.
“No one's coming for you tonight.”
The words came out before he'd decided to say them.
Charlie offered no reply.
She simply slept against his chest, one impossibly small hand still wrapped stubbornly around the lapel of his shirt.
“No,” Alastor murmured. His eyes lifted toward the empty dark between the trees. “Didn't think so.”
Carefully, almost without realizing he was doing it, he pulled the pink blanket higher around her shoulders.
The gesture felt entirely too natural. He found this profoundly inconvenient.
With his free hand, he slung the canvas sack over one shoulder, the familiar weight of the shovel and hunting knife settling comfortably against his back.
Then he turned toward the narrow trail leading home.
The old jazz tune returned almost of its own accord, a quiet hum beneath his breath that drifted through the chorus of frogs and insects until it became difficult to tell where the melody ended and the swamp itself began.
He told himself it was only for one night.
Only until morning.
Only until whoever had misplaced a horned infant with golden eyes and an alarming tendency to sneeze magic came looking for her.
And that conversation, whenever it arrived, was going to be extraordinary, and he was absolutely not going to think about it until it became strictly necessary.
He repeated these assurances several times during the long walk back through the cypress.
They became noticeably less convincing with every repetition.
--------
Behind him, the ruined pentagram faded slowly. One by one, the ancient runes faded into darkness until nothing remained but scorched earth, melted wax, and the lingering scent of something that had never belonged in the mortal world.
Ahead, the cypress gradually gave way.
Beyond them waited the lonely road. A small house that had never been meant for two.
A story that would require an extraordinary amount of fabrication.
And a future Alastor could not yet begin to imagine.
He never did discover who had carved that summoning circle into the earth, nor what desperate soul had meant to call upon the darkness that night. In the end, it hardly mattered. They had aimed at something and missed entirely.
Something else had answered.
Far beyond the reach of mortal eyes, where the unseen threads of fate were woven together in silence, two lives had already become entangled.
A sinner who had yet to answered for his sins. A child who did not yet know she was a princess.
One born of Earth. One born of Hell.
Bound together by a single drop of blood, a circle drawn by fools, and the particular cruelty of fate when it decides it finds something funny.
History did not always change with wars.
Or revolutions. Or kingdoms rising and falling.
Sometimes, it changed because one murderer chose to pick up one abandoned child.
The world shifted by only the smallest measure.
One impossible little girl asleep against a killer's chest, her fingers still stubbornly curled around the lapel of his shirt.
Neither of them noticed.
The future had already begun rewriting itself around them.
The swamp kept its secrets. It always had.
And beneath the endless chorus of frogs and cicadas, it quietly buried one more.
disclaimer- THIS IS A FICTIONAL STORY!!! it will be explicit (bp uzair uk-) so be aware. and i have unintentionally made uzair a hindu balochi (due to some comedic dialogues). and its my first time writing ANY KIND OF FICTION so please bear with me. NOW GO AND ENJOY HEHE
Morning crept up in the flat like it had personal vendettas against a very hungover uzair Baloch.
He woke up to the sound of his Personal favorite alarm, his Bhabhi maa’s ringtone
“Maa ka phone aaya, maa ka phone aaya~~~”. He sluggishly picked the device up and answered the call while still trying to catch some semblance of sleep by keeping his eyes closed.
“Yes Bhabhi, I am fully awake now, I will be ready in the next 20 minutes, I’ll shower with soap rather than bodywash, I will only let Yalina go after making her eat breakfast, I will not leave the house unlocked and I will close all the windows before going out. Good morning to Rehman bhai too, I’ll call you in the afternoon, love you too, bye-” Uzair ended the 1 minute morning call after completing his daily dose of assuring his always concerned sister-in-law.
*THUD* the world blurred in front of Uzair’s eyes as he opened them abruptly because of the bang he just heard.
Light green eyes clashed with dark brown ones as a boy wearing a striped red and white t-shirt with black pants, sitting beside his bed as if had fallen down suddenly, came into Uzair’s view.
Until Uzair’s cognitive functions finally came into work and reminded him to yell at the intruder, the boy had already sat up straight with an amused smile on his face. Uzair, who was now also sitting up, screamed at the boy
“WHO IN THE MOTHERFUCKING HELL ARE YOU? AND WHAT THE FUCKITY FOCKITY FOOK ARE YOU DOING IN MY HOUSE?”.
The boy answered in a perfectly polite tone contradicting Uzair’s panicked one- “well they call me Jaskirat or Jassi here in the human world and… you…are the one who brought me to your house?”
Uzair’s already aching head could not understand what shit this guy was spewing in front of him in that moment, so his ‘raised in a gangster household’ honed instinct made him pick up his emergency gun from beneath his mattress to scare off the crazy thief boy.
“Is that a toy thingy u humans play with? It looks cool.” Jassi asked the question like a child who had just found his favorite candy and was now looking up at an adult to buy it for him, leaving Uzair dumbfounded with the gun still in his hand.
the guy suddenly contorted his face like a child while making puppy eyes even better than Faizal and asked Uzair- “can I touch the toy thingy once? It looks interesting........so, please? only for a minute?”
Uzair was now more concerned for the boy’s sanity rather than being angry with him.
Still, he did not let the puppy eyes crack his tough guy façade and told the man in a boring voice “I don’t care if u are Jassi or Jaskirat or if you haven’t seen a gun in your life or not. What I need you to do right now is leave me alone to battle with my deadass headache and get out of my house this instant before I put bullets in you damaged brain software-”
“-but you are the one who tethered me to you, if I leave right now you will be the one in danger sir.” The kid cut Uzair’s sentence in the middle to say this.
This situation was not helping Uzair’s headache at all, so he spewed whatever his last brain cell could conjure in front of the boy- “do whatever the hell you want but let me die in peace on my bed for at least 10 minutes more.”
“But-” Jassi tried to refuse.
“Shut up or I’ll shoot you and YES” Uzair pulled up his palm to stop the guy from interrupting him “I don’t care if I die in turn.” Uzair’s voice muffled into his bed as he laid back down his pillow face-first. That sentence shut Jassi up, and he slowly laid down beside Uzair’s bed, on his rugged carpet and waited for his human to come to his senses.
It took Uzair approximately 5 minutes and a distressed female voice outside his room to wake himself up from his self-made hangover therapy i.e., sleeping.
He moved to sit on the side of the bed which resulted in his feet touching something soft rather than the old ruff carpet-
“OUCH” Jassi exclaimed.
“YOU ARE STILL HERE?” Uzair’s eyes widened realizing that the man he saw five minutes ago was not actually a figment of imagination from his sleep addled brain. “SO, YOU WERE NOT A NIGHTMARE OR SOMETHING?”
“ok wow NIGHTMARE? Seriously…. not even a dream? I feel hurt sir-” the boy spoke in such a tiny hurt voice that it even melted exasperated Uzair’s heart a little.
A distant voice cut their conversation as Yalina started her hungover yap session “Uzair bhai I am having the worst headache of my life and I need you to cure this shit before I commit mass murder-” the voice was moving absurdly fast towards his room.
Jassi was still looking at Uzair with a wounded look when Uzair’s brain finally started acting up and he moved clumsily, banging into his side drawer while trying to move the human or whatever creature the boy was to hide him.
“Ok now you need to go hide in my wardrobe if you don’t want to be panickily punched by the woman who is about to enter this room.” Uzair explained to the confused boy while simultaneously pushing him towards his wardrobe-
“But-” Jassi tried to retaliate
“No buts if you want to make out of this situation uninjured, NOW MOVE IN AND CLOSE THE DOOR YOU IDIOT.” Uzair scolded the man.
He didn’t even know why he was hiding someone who looked like a golden retriever trapped in a large body and had seemingly broken in his house-
His thoughts were broken by the bang of his door as Yalina strode in the room clutching her head speaking in her *i-made-a-mistake-by-touching-3-bottles-of-vodka* language forcing uzair to move from near his wardrobe to comfort the girl.
“it’s ok Leena, today is a Sunday anyway so you don’t even need to go to work-” Uzair tried to console his unofficial child In a soft tone. “IT’S A SUNDAY?! Then you can cook some soup and I can just crash here-” Yalina tried to muse.
“NO NO NO I- I am going to host some of my subordinates in the evening to talk about A VERY IMPORTANT upcoming meeting, so you REALLY CAN’T STAY HERE Yalina.” Uzair picked the best excuse out of his very uncreative thinking process and tried to dress it up as plausible for the young girl to believe it.
“I’ll just be in the guest room you know-” Yalina tried to negotiate but Uzair was faster.
“some of them might stay overnight so you really can’t stay the night and Jamali uncle called me yesterday night too asking if you could be back today, he is your father Yalina we shouldn’t disagree with him-”
“-You never cared about disagreeing with him BHAI.
What are you trying to hide?!” Yalina was now speaking in her prosecutor tone which made uzair sweat like a labor in hard sun whenever he was hiding something BUT today, he really couldn’t concede, so he continued lying-
“I am not hiding ANYTHING I just need to prepare for work, you know how busy trying to make a company function is Ms. Jamali. ”
Uzair should be given a fucking Oscar for this shit-
“…I don’t believe you but okay….AND I WILL ONLY LEAVE AFTER SOME HANGOVER SOUP or else I am telling Ulfat Bhabhi.” Yalina threatened Uzair with a demanding look.
Uzair played along, “accha okay baba I will whip up some soup. You go get in a human state first, I will be down after freshening up myself.”
He pushed the pink frazzled kid out of the room and reminded her to brush her hair properly while pointing out how much it looked like bird’s nest- which earned him a well-deserved smack.
As soon as Uzair clicked the door shut, the wardrobe door burst open-
What’s with these young dudes banging doors, Uzair complained in his mind.
He turned around only to find out that the boy he was hiding a few minutes ago was now standing merely inches away from him, and Jassi was not looking amused or even hurt this time, it was rather a type of cold fury on his face.
He grabbed Uzair’s waist only hidden by a thoroughly used tee with his bare hands and trapped him between his own body and the door.
“Who was she?”
The tone that the kid used this time was not soft or smooth like the one he used beside Uzair’s bed in the morning.
Although looked down on by other Wizards, and forbidden from attaining "Arch Mage" status, there is no debating that Warlocks can amass and exert immense power rapidly.
Perhaps it is the rapidity and lack of full understanding of that power that so often leads to such short, terminal, careers.
