The Devil's Assistant (Watty Awards Finalist 2011)

Devil's Assistant [12]

Chapter 12

The touch of warm soft lips on my forehead roused me from the most incredible dream. In the bliss filled hours of unconsciousness, I had never felt so loved, so cherished, and so madly in love that even I could barely even begin to understand how I felt.  At the same time there was this whole underlying notion that it was secretive, but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn't understand why. And what was worse, was that as consciousness flittered to me, the face of the person that inspired all of these feelings slipped away with the last vestiges of the dream like a name whispered on a breeze.

My eyes opened and blinked rapidly before I was forced to shut them once more in a futile attempt to relieve the intense stabbing caused by the bright light. I groaned and attempted to lift my arm and rub my closed lids but as my fingers twitched my whole arm erupted in an intense throbbing pain and it was then that I started to feel other aches and pains erupting all over my body. Groaning once more, I squeezed my eyes together tightly and grit my teeth as a wave of pain rolled through my limbs and every fibre of me was urging me to tense up but the tightness of my skin wouldn't let me. Letting out a gasp, my chest rose and fell rapidly as I tried to regain my breath and sometime during this I sat up but immediately regretted it when my side stabbed with pain. I didn't know where one ache ended and another began other than the fact that my whole body felt that it had been beaten black and blue.

A hand on my shoulder caused my eyes to snap open and a startled breath to escape my lips. I stared into a pair of icy blues that momentarily confused me as I was so unused to the emotion displayed within them. Lucius frowned, before gently pushing me back into the soft pillows, his brow wrinkled into a mask of concern.

"You need to lie down, you shouldn't be moving yet." He said softly as his hand moved from my shoulder and with more tenderness than I ever thought him capable of; he brushed a strand of hair out of my face before stroking his fingers down my cheek. "You've been asleep a while but you need to rest up so I can get my assistant back."

I tried to smile at him only to wince when I felt the dull ache in my cheek. My mind was trying to process his words but I felt sluggish and it took me a few minutes to fully comprehend them. I didn't even notice that I had leaned into his hand and had let my eyes flutter closed in exhaustion until someone cleared their throat. Opening my eyes once more I followed the sound of the throat clearing to see Mr Watson sat in one of the chairs holding a sleeping Danny whilst Ezekiel stood against the back wall with his hands folded across his chest, his face completely blank. I frowned at Ezekiel, not sure why I disliked his expressionless face so much, before Lucius' words truly hit.

"How long was I out?" I tried to ask but my throat was dry and felt like I had spent hours screaming at the top of my lungs. Lucius seemed to understand though as he perched down on the edge of the bed and after a quick glance over his shoulder at Mr Watson he turned his face back to me smiling grimly.

"You've been unconscious for a week. The fire alarms went off and the sprinklers managed to douse the flames before they did much damage but it took us a while to find you because of how much you were buried under." I frowned, buried under what? Flames?

"What? What flames? What's going on? Why am I even in here?" the questioned came out in a choked whisper as I tried to sit up again but Lucius kept a firm hand on my shoulder to keep me down. His face held even more concern as his eyes bored intensely into mine; probing for something though I wasn't too sure what, as I stared straight back.

"What is the last thing you remember?" he asked after what seemed like an eternity. His tongue darted out to lick his full bottom lip in a nervous gesture, his hand digging slightly into my shoulder as he waited for my reply.