Pushing aside a medic, I set the plate down and cut off a piece of meat, holding it in front of him for him to eat and shaking off an arm that tries to stop me.

Wait, how the hell is he supposed to eat? He’s asleep…

…

I just keep holding the meat in front of him, eventually my eyes fall on him and a thought goes through me. Order him.

…

“…Nathaniel Smith, open your mouth.” I tell him. He does as he is ordered, despite being asleep.

I falter and shake a bit, something in the connection between us pulsed… The feeling of ordering him felt so natural… I could…

I shake my head and force myself to focus, putting the meat into his mouth, I give him another order, “Eat the food that gets put in your mouth. Open your mouth when you are ready for the next piece. Continue eating until your body doesn’t need any more.”

He does as I tell him, slowly chewing and swallowing as I feed him piece after piece.

As I feed him, I focus on the connection between us, the feeling that he is dying is slowly fading away, while the feeling that he is healing is growing stronger and stronger.

Soon, the steak is getting close to running out, he had already downed a couple of pounds of meat, but the connection is telling me that he needs more. His metabolism is working in overdrive to fuel his healing. For the first time since getting back, I finally direct my attention to the others in the room, picking a soldier at random, I tell him, “You, go to the kitchen and cut some more meat off of that leg I brought back! Cook it to medium rare and bring it here, make it big, quick!”

He looks a bit shocked at getting pointed out and tries to decide between staying or doing as he is told. Nervously, he asks, “Isn’t that monster meat…? Is that stuff safe to eat? Shouldn’t we wait for…”

I interrupt him and yell, “Did I fucking ask you for your opinion soldier!? Go! Do you want him to die? Meat, now!” I can feel as a cluster of shadows writhe over me like hissing snakes responding to my anger. As the shadows in the corners of the room become deeper and darker. As the lights hung from the wall start to flicker.

He falters between trying to snap a salute and turning to run before finally turning to leave with a, “Ye, Yes Ma’am!”, running out of the room.

The other soldiers look startled, but I ignore them.

Shortly after he leaves, Lieutenant Colonel Roberts enters the room. He looks over everything going on and pulls one of the medics and a soldier off to the side and starts talking with them, probably asking what the hell is going on with the crazy Imp.

I just ignore them and turn back to my first… to the boy, I turn back to the boy and keep slowly feeding him. Just like he was ordered, he continues to chew and swallow his food despite being deeply asleep. As he eats, I remain focused on our connection and lightly pull on it, demanding updates on his state. Setting my hand on his chest, I close my eyes and focus, I can feel it… His lungs are healing, the blood that was slowly filling them is getting cleaned out and flushed by his system. Moving my hand over him, the information I get back from his body comes in more and more clearly, muscle is regrowing, veins are mending, nerves reconnecting and firing off fresh signals, flesh is scabbing over and scarring, his melted away ear and eye on the left side of his face are both slowly regrowing. They will be… new. Part of his change. The first parts to change, just like myself and my left arm…

I push deeper, demanding that it tell me about his changes, wanting to know how he will differ from me… What will he become? Fiend.

A fiend, yes, I ordered him to become a Fiend. A warrior. He will become the first of my warriors. A powerful individual, the embodiment of strength. The perfect warrior to serve his…!

I get pulled out of my thoughts as a hand touches my shoulder, I want to shake it off, but when I hear his voice, I force myself to stop. “Lain, what are doing? I need you tell me what it is your doing.”

I put another piece of meat into Smith’s mouth and watch as he chews and swallows. Without looking away from him, I answer. “I’m saving his life… I’m making him heal… I…”

I can’t finish my words, I don’t want to tell him that I made him mine, that I am making him mutate. But I know that I am going to have to tell them. This isn’t something that I can hide. His changes will be too obvious, impossible to hide. They’ll know that I am the one responsible for this… I shake a bit and I can feel as his grip on my shoulder tightens in response.

Behind me I can hear as he barks out an order, “Everyone, out.”

“But sir…” Someone tries to argue.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“That’s an order, everyone out, now.”

I remain seated as everyone else shuffles out of the room, just slowly feeding my… feeding Smith, the meat piece by piece. Eventually, the room goes quiet, and his hand leaves my shoulder. Moving away from me, he goes to the other side of the bed and sits down, folding his hands on his lap as he looks down at the sleeping boy.

He doesn’t say anything for a long while as I continue to feed him, waiting patiently until the plate is clean. After I set it aside and order Smith to close his mouth, he finally speaks again, a curious look on his face after watching the sleeping boy follow my order.

“Hmmm, you mind explaining what is going on? Why it is that I am getting woken up in the middle of the night with reports about a certain Imp running around like a crazy person? Going out hunting in the middle of the night and coming back with a monster leg covered in blood? Feeding monster meat to a dying man?” He asks. He doesn’t look mad. Just tired and curious.

My eyes go back down to the boy, his breathing already sounding much cleaner and easier. Healing. Changing. Growing. Mine.

I wet my lips and look back up to my boss, “I saved him. He’s healing now…”

He looks back down at the boy and examines him, slowly he nods, “Yes. It certainly seems that way. He seems to be sleeping quite peacefully now. Thank you for saving his life… But this doesn’t tell me why you are doing this, why monster meat, why was his face covered in your blood, why do you look so guilty when you just saved his life?”

Something in his tone tells me that he already has an idea of what it is that I did. What is already happening before him. He just wants to hear it from me.

I swallow back some saliva and look into his eyes, “I… I made him mine… He woke up during his last moments and asked if he was dying… Something came over me. When he said that he didn’t want to die… I made him drink my blood. I made a deal with him, in exchange for saving his life, in exchange for my…” I tilt my head a bit as the words come to me, “Blessing… A gift of power and life…” I shake my head and force myself to focus, to try and pull myself away from the weird instinct driving me forward. I finish, “I made him mine. Him, his descendants. Every generation that will follow from him and share his blood, they are mine…”

By the time I finish, I am shaking. He just sits there and looks down at the boy on the bed, mulling over his thoughts. For a long while we sit there and watch him sleep. Eventually, the soldier that I had sent away for more meat arrives and asks for permission to enter. After being permitted to enter, he drops off the steak and then leaves when he is dismissed. I continue to feed the boy as my boss watches silently.

Eventually, he asks me a question. “The meat, how is it important?”

“Fuel, resources for his body… My blood wasn’t enough on its own. It stopped him from dying, but he needed more. He’s going to need even more as he changes…”

“Can the process be stopped? The changes, just leave him at being healed?” He asks.

This question makes something inside me want to snap out at him in anger, Mine! You can’t take him! He is my first…! But I forcibly push it back down and calm myself. Taking a moment to consider, I tug on the connection and try to find an answer to his question. It takes a few moments, but one eventually comes to me.

“Yes… But it would kill him. Inside, he has already started changing. It can’t be reversed and if the process is stopped, his organs would quickly start to fail…”

“Is he in danger of dying now?”

“… No. The worst of his injuries are done healing now. He’s healing well now, but all of his new material is not human… His new eye will take a day or two to finish growing, even with the meat as fuel.”

“How do you know these things? I know that you have some medical training from your mother, but these shouldn’t be things that you know.”

“There is a connection between us now… I can feel him through it, if I focus on it, it can even tell me important information about him, more if I touch him…”

“Was this always something you could do? Make a person mutate?” His voice staying even and level through all his questions… but searching. Probably trying to see if I have been hiding something from them all this time.

I shake my head. “No… At least I don’t think so. I’ve never had this, urge, before. I felt compelled to do it. Something inside of me pushing me forward. Instincts…” I tell him, shaking a bit.

He looks up at me seriously, and asks, “You said that you made him yours. You clearly have some abilities to compel him to do as you tell him… Are you able to remove him from this control Lain?”

I shake a bit under his stare, a flash of anger tearing through me, I grit my teeth and fight it down. I look down at the boy and ask myself, Can I release him?

The very idea of the question seems to wound something inside of me. I flinch a bit from the sudden pain in my chest.

No. Mine. A deal was made, the contract paid. His blood is my blood now.

I rip my eyes away from the boy and to the wall, finding it difficult to control my breathing, my heart pounding in my chest, and anger stubbornly continuing to grow at the idea of breaking my contract.

I try to get myself back under control, to get my breathing to calm. I can hear someone calling my name through the ringing in my ears. Curling up on myself, the shaking increases until I am crying. A hand finds my shoulder and forces me to look up. I find my boss looking down at me, “Lain, Lain, I need you to tell me. Can you release your control over him?”

Through my tears, I shake my head and tell him, “No!”

“No, you can’t or, no, you don’t want to?” He asks seriously, his tone not warranting any nonsense.

I sniff, “I want to, but I can’t!”

“Why can’t you?” He asks softly, keeping himself calm despite everything going on. Despite me yelling.

I look up at him, staring into his eyes, something pushing inside of me to speak, to declare a fundamental truth of the world. I try to fight it back down, but it is too strong. The boiling over anger pushing me aside.

My mouth moves and my voice speaks through quivering lips, “The deal was made; the price was paid…My blood flows through his veins… Until the day he dies, he is mine. His children and his children’s children, from generation to generation shall belong to me. They shall be my warriors, my Fiends! He is the first of my people, my Demons, and he shall not be the last! My people shall be born from the ashes and rise to serve their new Queen! I shall build a Kingdom upon the broken shell of this world and…!!!” I punch myself in the face, throwing myself to the floor in a heap as tears stream down my face.

I curl up in a ball and cry, pulling at my hair as I scream at myself to stop. Why am I saying these things!? Why am I thinking these things!? Why does the idea, just feel so, right? What the hell is wrong me!?