An Eternity of Eclipse (13 page)

Aside from being my mentor and buddy at school, Ara was also the reason why I got the job as a student assistant at the graduate library of my university. Having worked at the library throughout her undergraduate years, Ara was promoted to student supervisor and was in charge of managing the student assistants. Since she knew that I was looking for a job to kill time and to make some extra money, Ara encouraged me to apply for the job. She said that the patrons here (being students as well) were easy to deal with. The majority spent their time studying and very rarely bothered anyone. She also said that during the slow times, we were also allowed to study and do homework. That tidbit was all that it took to convince me to apply and sure enough, with Ara’s highest recommendation to the hiring manager, I was offered the student assistant job right after my interview. 

Judging from her waning excited demeanor, I imagined she wanted to gossip with me about her day. After seeing my unkempt appearance, gossiping seemed to be the last thing on her mind.

“Bad day,” I replied sullenly, aware of how hideous I must have looked to receive that type of reaction from Ara. She normally gushed over my sense of style. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

After being submerged in filthy crap all day, I embarrassingly went to class and endured countless stares from bewildered classmates. I honestly never wanted to crawl under a hole and die more in my life. Once class was finally over, I ran to the bathroom and did my best to clean up. It was futile because the mud stains seemed to have been mixed with industrial strength super-glue. No matter how hard I scrubbed, the vast majority of the mud still clung to me, hanging on me like leeches hell-bent on making sure I experienced nothing but embarrassment for the duration of the day.

I had no time to go home to change because I was too responsible to ditch my obligations to school and work. After seeing Ara’s reaction, I was beginning to hate myself for being so responsible and dependable. If there was a day to be selfish and ditch my responsibilities, today was it.

Nodding her head while students passed us by, staring at me like I was a hobo off the street, Ara was considerate enough to adhere to my wish to not talk about it.

She angled her head towards the stacks of books on the rolling cart behind her. “I was going to stack the books back in their place when you came in, but I could watch the front desk. Do you want to go to the back and categorize them instead? You can just stay there and make sure all the books are in order until your shift is over.”

I smiled appreciatively at her, grateful that I didn’t have to sit up front like I usually did during my shifts. With a whispered thanks and an air hug to her, I quickly ran to the cart. I wheeled the cart away in haste so that no one else would see me in this awful state. Anger returned to me when the stupid cheap cart wouldn’t stop squealing as I moved towards the row of bookshelves in the back. Students who were studying stared at me with gaping eyes. Fortunately, I was able to escape quickly and get lost in the back before anyone else could look up from their books and judge me for my unfortunate appearance.

Finally. I’m finally alone.

While standing on a ladder and categorizing books into the correct order, I felt peace settle upon me. I was grateful that I’d be able to hide my unkempt appearance from the rest of the library patrons until my shift was over. I only had to hold out for a little while longer before I could go home, shower, and end my horrible day on a somewhat relaxing note.

“
Gracie
. . .”

The sound of his voice ruined my momentary serenity.

Fury blazed in my eyes when I looked down and saw him beside me. Standing on the steps of the ladder, my petite 5’2” height was elevated to the point where I was actually slightly taller than his 6-foot frame. Because of this slight height advantage, it made me feel like a big, bad monster compared to him.

“You,” I snarled, baring my teeth at him.

After a long day of cursing his name and rehearsing in my mind all the things I wanted to scream at him, I couldn’t believe that when the actual opportunity arose for me to give him a piece of my mind, all that I could come up with was, “You.” 

It was anticlimactic, but I was too angry. I couldn’t even string together the words to scream at him!

“Oh, come on, Gracie,” he replied, already knowing what I was so upset about. Smoke escaped from his lips when he said this. He was still dressed in the same outfit I saw him in earlier and he looked as spiffy and polished as ever. Such perfection made me angrier because it only reminded me of my disheveled appearance. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“An F!” I shrieked, nearly falling off the ladder. He spent the whole day screwing up my luck and he had the audacity to make it seem like I was overreacting? I picked up the cursed project and waved it in his face. “You gave me an F! Do you know how hard I worked on this project? I pulled three all-nighters for it!”

I angrily threw the project on the floor and plowed on with my rant, scowling at him with fire in my eyes.

“Not only that, you also tortured me by making me trip the entire day!” My lips quivered when I gestured at my overall outer appearance. “And you had a car drive by and splash mud all over me. Look at me! I look like a pig who rolled around in mud all day!” 

Although a hint of guilt splashed across his face when I mentioned the mud incident, it wasn’t enough to throw him over the edge with remorse. 

“Trust me, Gracie. It could be worse,” he placated soothingly, helping me categorize the books by picking up some hardcovers from the rolling cart and putting them in the correct order on the lower shelves.

“Nothing seems worse than my bleak future,” I replied resentfully, grabbing the books from him. I didn’t need him to pretend to be nice to me when he was the one making me miserable in the first place.

“You’re being horribly overdramatic,” he went on calmly. He stared up at me, inhaling the last of his diminishing cigarette before flicking it into a nearby trashcan. He then vested his full attention on me. “You have no idea the things other Demons would do to persuade humans into giving up their souls. The vast majority are heartless, uncaring of the welfare of the humans they are after. All they care about is making you so miserable that you want nothing more than to end it and beg for them to take your soul. As far as I’m concerned, what I’m doing isn’t even remotely close to the type of misery I could bring upon you.”

“It doesn’t matter if it could be worse,” I snapped, not having any of it. I would not let him feel better about himself by making it seem like he was the lesser of two evils. “The point is that none of this would be happening if it wasn’t for your interference in my life.”

“Give me your soul and I’ll stop everything at once,” he countered, his voice stern. “I won’t worsen anything.”

“Go to Hell!”

“I know it may not seem like it, but I’m suffering just as much as you are,” he whispered, noting the unforgiving daggers in my eyes. “All you have to do is agree and both our miseries can end.”

I gaped at him dryly. “How are
you
suffering as much as me?”

A disbelieving expression spread over his face. He looked at me as though it should be obvious why he would be miserable.

“I know that this may come as a surprise to you, Gracie, but I do have responsibilities. I’m actually a very busy Royal Demon. Since I’m trying not to kill you, I have to dim myself, thereby making me less powerful than I actually am. I can handle stepping out of my Kingdom for you because I look forward to being around you. Nevertheless, as I’m sure you’ve figured out from my cocky personality, I happen to like my powers. I do not appreciate still being a Dimmed Demon just because you’re stubborn. So yes, I’m suffering as much as you, and I would very much appreciate you ending this misery for us by just saying ‘yes’ to me.”

“I’m not giving you my soul, you evil Demon!” I shouted, wishing that I could jump off the ladder and kick him. “I hope you’re suffering a lot because I’ve never been this miserable in my life. I’m going to keep my soul and I will enjoy watching you suffer without your powers just to spite you. I don’t care what you do or how you try to convince me, I’m not giving you anything!”

He laughed self-mockingly, shaking his head at my stubbornness.

“God help me. It would make sense that I’m cursed with you, Gracie,” he muttered sourly to himself. “How can a human girl be this stubborn?”

“How can an all-powerful Demon be this thickheaded and stupid as to pick on a poor, innocent girl?”

He looked at me blankly when I described myself as “innocent.”

“You murdered your own family when you were six,” he deadpanned.

I glared at him, furious that he'd low-blow me with a crime I committed when I was barely old enough to remember it.

“I really hate you right now. I hope you know it.”

He smiled in disappointment at my retort. Knowing that any further interaction with me at the current time would be futile, he yielded with his efforts.

“I think it’s best if I leave you alone now, Gracie.”

I appraised him suspiciously. Something in the way he said that made me uncomfortable in the most chilling of ways. He was up to something.

“Why?” I inquired. My alert eyes locked with his. “What are you planning to do to me now?”

He gave me one of the most innocent expressions I had ever seen in my life. It could have melted the heart of the most evil witch. Other girls would see this and fall head over heels for him, but I knew better. An innocent expression from Eclipse did not mean reassurance—it meant trouble.

True to my assumption, without warning, Eclipse casually lifted his right hand. He rested the palm of his hand flat against the shelf, and to my horror, gave the towering bookshelf the single most powerful push I had ever seen.

Oh no.

As the gigantic bookshelf began to tilt, adhering to his very will for it to no longer stand its ground, Eclipse gave me an apologetic smile and disappeared into thin air, leaving me to deal with the chaos to come.

Shit.

Horror clutched me as I watched everything in slow motion.

Oh shit.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

Shelf after shelf fell upon one another like dominos, thundering to the ground as a tsunami of books splashed across the carpet with the fervor of wet paint. The sound was destructive and utterly attention grabbing. An ominous silence followed, along with a cloud of dust mirroring that of an atomic bomb. The destruction may have been done, but the aftermath was just beginning.

“Oh my God!”

“What the hell?”

“Holy crap!”

Students who were seated at the study tables ran to the area of the crime. In synchronization, their widened eyes laid on the carnage. A myriad of books laid on one another, shrouding the carpet in disarray. Their eyes skimmed over the gigantic shelves piled on top of the other, the dust that clouded the air, and finally, in perfect harmony, all eyes in the library landed on me.

Standing on the ladder, trembling with a book that I was about to categorize onto the shelf, my own eyes were wide with shock and disbelief.

“Grace!” Ara shouted, running in from the circulation desk in her black dress. Her eyes expanded at the catastrophe before her. She looked up at me, floored by the mayhem. “Grace! What the hell happened?”

I could feel the silence and accusatory stares rest upon me and my answer.

In desperation, I muttered the only thing that came to my congested mind at that humiliating and fucked up moment.

“I-I sneezed.”

“You were never created to survive against him.”
0
8: To Vanquish a Demon
 

“Someone help! There’s a Demon after me!”

After roughly five hours of all the library employees working together to clean up the mess I created (or more like the mess Eclipse created), I had never wanted to scream out a string of words more in my entire life. Every time my coworkers gave me death glares, I wanted to scream out, “You don’t understand! It’s not me. It’s Eclipse. It’s the Demon of Lust. He caused this mess. He’s after me!”

Eclipse’s hasty departure made complete sense to me now. He didn’t want to deal with the aftermath of a woman’s scorn, and let me tell you, I was pissed off. I wanted to get rid of him. This was what was running through my mind when work was over. I bid a swift goodbye to Ara, dashed off campus in hysteria, and ran into a cathedral shrieking what I wanted to say in the library.

“Someone help! There’s a Demon after me!”

A small bout of relief soothed me as soon as I stepped in the cathedral. I felt better screaming my message out in the cathedral because it was the only safe place for me to be. My momentary relief abruptly ended when I realized that I had barged into the cathedral with a soon-to-be bride and groom in the middle of their wedding rehearsal.

With my hair drenched from rain, my clothes cloaked with remnants of mud, and my eyes as wide as saucers, I stared back at the bride and groom standing at the altar. Their eyes were large with shock while their friends and family gaped at me in the same horror. Though I hadn’t interrupted an actual wedding, I still felt crappy. Surely the memory of some psycho running into your wedding rehearsal, looking like she could shoot everyone at any given moment, wasn’t something you wanted to relive when you recounted your wedding memories.

Good going, Grace,
I thought scathingly.

I contemplated suicide by bashing my head against the pews. I was mortified. I thought about the embarrassment I went through today, and I wanted nothing more than to run outside, sit down in a puddle, and throw a tantrum like a spoiled child. I simply wanted my horrible luck to end. Fortunately, before one of those ridiculous options became a feasible choice, I caught sight of a lurking Father.

He popped out of the corner and approached me with a fearful expression on his face. His apprehensive and shaky demeanor told me that he must have been a rookie—a newbie Priest. He was not fully equipped to be dealing with a crazy person while in the presence of so many witnesses.

“What’s wrong? What was that you screamed out?” he asked gently, herding me away from the main cathedral. He took me to the back and spoke to me in the hallway.

I thought about telling him, “Father, please help me! An insanely gorgeous Demon is after my soul and making me accident-prone while giving me bad grades in the process!”
I vetoed that idea because of the idiocy in that sentence alone.

In lieu of that, I said, “Father! I am a religiously curious agnostic who is looking to find salvation in a house of worship. I was wondering if you could give me a Bible and holy water to start off my spiritual exploration.”

Eager to kick me out because I frightened the bride and groom (and I imagined him as well), the Priest quickly gave me what I needed. I gave him a bow of gratitude and was off in a flash, sloshing through the ravenous rain with a Bible and a bottle of holy water in hand.

After a refreshing shower, I immediately got dressed and went online to research all the possible ways to ward off a Demon. I took notes on all the commonly used methods to get rid of a Demon and rushed to a local store. I purchased the supplies I needed: two big packs of salt and a six-inch wooden cross. Some of the online tipsters stated that throwing holy water and reading scriptures from the Bible should do the trick. If that didn’t work, they also suggested that I hammer a big cross on my door to prevent Demons from coming in. To be safe, in case I was dealing with an incredibly powerful Demon—which I was—they also suggested that I stand inside a big salt circle to further protect myself. It all sounded ridiculous, but I was extremely desperate. I would have stood on one leg with a finger up my nose and hopped for hours on end if it meant that would get rid of the Demon.

After hammering the cross over my “999” apartment number, I ran back into my living room. With my black heels clacking about, I moved the sofas to one corner in order to form a big circle of salt around myself. I held the Bible and bottle of holy water in my hands and waited inside my protective salt circle. My eyes shifted all around my bright but eerily quiet apartment. Anxiety plagued me as my heart raced without signs of slowing down. I was deathly nervous. I really hoped Eclipse would appear soon so I could vanquish him and get on with my life. I still had homework and studying to do!

After roughly fifteen minutes of waiting, I started to become restless. My scraped up knees were beginning to ache and I was becoming more and more anxious about completing my schoolwork. I decided to step out of the circle with the intention of grabbing my books and doing some homework while I waited for Eclipse’s arrival. I barely made it out of the salt formation when the Demon materialized right before my eyes.

“Oh my flyin—!”

I gasped at his sudden appearance and hopped back over the salt circle. Once inside, I gave him my most ferocious scowl.

One of his hands was tucked in his pocket while the other was holding his cigarette. Curiosity marked his features as he evaluated me and my salt circle. His cool brown eyes trailed from my Bible, to the bottle of holy water in my grasp, and then back to me again.

“If I didn’t know better,” he voiced lazily, walking around the salt circle with ease. He never once touched the salt and he never once attempted to cross over it. “I’d think you’ve just declared war against me, Gracie.”

There was amusement in his velvety smooth voice. I would go as far as saying that he thought it was cute that I was trying to vanquish him.

Bastard.

I’ll show him cute.

“Stay back, Demon!” I shouted dramatically, trying to steady my quivering lips every time he stepped closer to the salt. He never once touched it, but he was still too dangerously close for comfort. “I don’t want to hurt you, but you’ve forced my hand with all those things you did to me today.” I held the Bible and holy water tight in my grasp. “Now I will give you one more chance to leave me alone or else I’ll have no choice but to hurt you.”

“You do realize,” he stated randomly, his attention focused on the salt and not on me, “that you’re going to have a hard time getting all that salt out of the carpet, don’t you?”

“That . . . that’s what vacuums are for,” I answered distractedly, not expecting him to bring up the cleanliness issue of attempting to vanquish him. I was thrown for a moment before I got back on topic. “N-now just stay back! Just stay away from me.”

“You don’t have a vacuum, Gracie.”

My God, could this Demon make this vanquishing attempt anymore awkward?

“That’s a problem that can easily be resolved,” I replied awkwardly. “I will promptly purchase one after this is all over.”

He tilted his head at me. A sliver of hurt penetrated his once cool eyes. “You really have the heart to vanquish me?”

He was looking at me like I was the one who wronged him, like he couldn’t believe how hurtful I was being to him.

“You’re torturing me!” I retorted, outraged that he was acting so innocent.

“I gave you an F, made you a bit clumsy, and allowed some mud to splash all over you,” he amended, speaking to me as if I was an overdramatic drama queen, “and for that, you want to
vanquish
me?”

“You . . . you will not guilt me into feeling bad,” I responded clumsily. Hastily, I added, “Your existence itself is a sin. I’ll be doing everyone a favor if I got rid of you.”

His entertained chuckle filtered in the air. “The irony of this conversation is too funny to not laugh at.”

“Seriously, please stay away from me, Eclipse,” I implored, trying to steady my voice. The truth was that I really didn’t want to vanquish him. I only wanted to be left alone; I only wanted my life to be normal again. “Please? Can you please go bother someone else? I promise I’ll let you live if you leave me alone.”

He shook his head. This time, his eyes pulsed with conviction.

“That’s not possible, Gracie.” His tone was firm and unyielding. “I don’t want anyone else but you. Since we’ve reached this bridge, either you vanquish me or you deal with me because I’m not giving up on you.”

Then without notice, he stepped
over
the salt formation.

Oh shit!

I went into panic mode because he wasn’t supposed to be able to come near me when I was attempting to vanquish him!

Shit! Shit! Shit!

“Get away from me!”

Freaking out, my mind went into overdrive. I did the first instinctive thing I could think of to stop him in his tracks: I splashed the holy water at him. 

To my horror, when the water hit his face, it did not start burning his skin like acid. The droplets of water dripped normally down his face, doing absolutely no harm to him. This sight in itself didn’t cause the paranoia to give way inside of me. On the contrary, it was the sight of Eclipse’s heavily irritated face that scared the hell out of me.

With rivulets of holy water dripping from his face, Eclipse spat out the holy water that had gotten into his mouth. He groaned to himself about how his favorite shirt had gotten wet and how bad the water tasted. It was clear that he did not appreciate me drenching him, and it was very clear that I had not only managed to annoy a Demon, but I also managed to piss one off in the process.

“That,” he snarled, his eyes turning ferocious as he shook the holy water off his hands, “was a big mistake, Gracie.”

A low, angry growl emitted from the depths of his chest. He furiously wiped the water from his face, splashing it onto my apartment floor. Without another word, he advanced towards me in the manner a lion would when it was ready to kill its prey.

My terrified eyes expanded.

Holy crap, holy crap! He was going to kill me!

I had no idea what to do. The cross didn’t keep him out, the circle of salt failed to keep him away from me, and the holy water did little to dissuade him from coming after me. If anything, it only managed to piss him off more.

Appalled by the dilemma I found myself in, my mind started to curse at all the stupid internet instructions that did not even remotely assist in helping me vanquish the damn Demon.

Freaking delusional internet liars!

My mind was spinning. I was scared shitless when I turned to my Bible for help. The sucky thing about my last course of action was that I didn’t know what to do with the Bible!

I realized in my state of frenzy that I had no idea what verses to read in order to vanquish a Demon. My eyes couldn’t focus on the small print because I was freaking out that the murderous Demon was getting closer and closer to me! Panicking because the overwhelming fear had somehow made me illiterate, I decided to take advantage of the Bible’s thickness and hurled the holy book at the Demon.

I followed up that idiotic move by throwing what was left of the holy water at him and screaming out the only thing I could think of: “The power of Christ compels you!”

“Bloody hel—!”

The Bible knocked against Eclipse’s forehead with a loud thud, earning a round of curses from the Demon before the remainder of the holy water grazed his face again.

“Ah, damn it!” Eclipse groaned. “I’ve always hated how needlessly fat those Bibles are!”

Eclipse rubbed his forehead as the Bible fell to the salt-covered ground. After muttering another growl, he locked his irate eyes on me. “You’re going to pay for this, Gracie.”

I cowered away and whimpered my surrender. I was about to cover my eyes to prepare for death when something odd happened. Eclipse was a breath away from grabbing me when his once fierce face contorted in unexpected pain.

Huh?

All of a sudden, the once harmless rivulets of water that adorned his face started sizzling relentlessly. Unable to withstand the pain, Eclipse abruptly collapsed to the floor. Groans of agony saturated the room as he crouched over the salt formation, clutching his head.

“Augggh!”

I covered my mouth and stared in shock.

What . . . was happening?

The scent of sulfur and burning flesh filled my nose. Seconds later, countless strings of smoke began to rise from Eclipse’s shaking body. Every part of him that was drenched with holy water began to sizzle like acid on his flesh.

“Ahhhh!”

The tortured scream that emitted from Eclipse was the single most horrible thing I had ever heard. It was so agonizing that I felt my own body tremble in pain; it was so powerful by nature that his roar alone caused the entire apartment to quake violently.

Boom!

The impact of the quake nearly knocked me over before I grounded my feet to the floor. With my heart beating out of my chest, I continued to stare at Eclipse, who was still groaning in excruciating pain. The louder he screamed, the more powerful the tremors overtaking the apartment became. It felt as though the entire world beneath us could feel his pain and was outraged by this abomination.