“Witch! Witch! Burn the witch!”

Townsfolk gathered outside the cottage, torches blazing in the dim evening night, burning as bright as the hatred in their eyes. Their voices were raised high and loud, raucous cries for blood like hounds on the hunt. Baying for the death of their prey.

That prey sat inside of her house, curled into her armchair, a small book open in her hands; inscribed on the pale, almost leathery cover was an intricate pentagram that glowed softly in the firelight. “They’ve come for me, haven’t they?” she asked softly, shutting the book around her finger to keep from losing her place in the clamor sure to follow.

“Yes, mistress.”

The young woman, who looked fifteen at most, heaved a soft sigh. “I only wish I had more time,” she lamented. She uncoiled in one smooth movement, graceful for someone as awkwardly tall as she was. Still not quite grown into her body, she was just beginning to soften into full curves, but she moved with confidence. “I thought I’d hid myself well this time. What did I do wrong, Anafiel?”

Her companion, a slim man who was even taller than she, shrugged his shoulders. Elegantly dressed with a shock of dark hair, he looked out of place in her cozy cottage. Even more shocking were his eyes; slightly hazed, as if he were a corpse. “I don’t know,” he replied, standing by the door with his arms behind his back, “You can’t explain these fickle humans.”

“Yes, it is rather hard to guess what they’ll do,” the young woman said with a soft laugh.

Anafiel didn’t crack even the slightest hint of a smile as his mistress crossed the room to twitch back the curtains. An odd smile crossed her face as she looked out at the vengeful townspeople. “I suppose I shouldn’t have let you have one of their children,” she said thoughtfully, turning to place a hand on Anafiel’s face.

He softened slightly, his face crinkling into some approximation of a smile- he was still new to the body, and found it difficult to conform it to his wishes. “They were bound to realize eventually, Yuki”

“I suppose.” Yuki heaved another sigh before she left her hand drop. It fell to smooth out the wrinkles in her unflattering brown dress; she made an unhappy face at it.

“Allow me, mistress?” Anafiel offered. When Yuki nodded, a shine in her eyes that hadn’t been there, he closed his eyes. A small stream of words in no human language hushed out between his lips, filling the air with a soft, electric excitement. It swirled around Yuki, making the hair on her arms and the back of her neck stand up, before settling into her.

When Anafiel opened his eyes once more, his mistress looked beautiful. Those growing curves were accentuated by a dress of the highest French fashion, tight at the waist and bodice but sweeping in waves to the floor. The rich blue of her eyes was mirrored in the dress, as was the soft gold of her hair. Her happy smile had color in her cheeks, and she threw her arms around him with a happy noise.

“Thank you, Anafiel!” she chirped in his ear. Her body pressed against his, and she felt the reaction of the body he inhabited, making her mouth turn up in a naughty smile.

Anafiel shifted uncomfortably. “Yuki,” he began, his voice dying in his throat before he tried again, “Please, my love.”

Yuki’s heart did a funny wiggle at the words: please, my love. Any woman, human or not, who was unmoved by those words had no blood to race hot in their veins. “Anything for you, my beloved demon.” Yuki got up on her toes to make up for the few inches of height and pressed her lips to his.

The kiss was more than physical- power sparked between them, flowing from mistress to servant, a gift that not many had ever received. Anafiel reeled from the heady power, his arms tightening around her waist to crush her close. As an incubus, a demon who fed from the lust of other beings, having power forced upon him in such a way was akin to a human drinking a keg of the strongest beer.

Yuki pulled away, laughing when he made a disappointed, needy sound. “No, beloved,” she said, placing her fingers over his lips to hold him back- and remove some of the temptation that filled her when she looked in his eyes. “I believe it’s time for you to make your exit.”

“I don’t like this plan,” Anafiel said sullenly, but he dropped his arms from around her waist.

Yuki stepped away from him, toward the door. “I know you don’t like it,” she said with a shameless grin, “That’s why I do!”

Anafiel glared at her. “Selfish brat,” he muttered under his breath. Yuki responded with a cheerful laugh that he didn’t hear; the man’s eyes had gone blank, and he crumpled to the floor. Left in his place was a boy who looked near the same age as Yuki. His snowy hair was dishevelled, and his fine features were crinkled with disgust as he stepped away from the corpse he had inhabited for over a month.

“Could they be any more disgusting?” he sneered, poking at the corpse with his bare toes.

“Now, now,” Yuki said, clucking her tongue at him, “You were one of them, once.”

“Don’t remind me,” Anafiel scoffed.

Yuki laughed again; he never failed to delight her. He looked up at her, and his eyes were passion red, the mark of a demon. Were she in her true form, rather than trapped in the living body of a human she’d been tricked into, her own eyes would be a deep red like half dried blood.

“Now, Anafiel, leave me to finish this.” Yuki turned away from him, suddenly distant as she turned to put her hand on the doorknob.

Anafiel watched her open the door with a pained expression. “Be safe,” he whispered, before blinking out of existence entirely.

Be safe. Yuki laughed bitterly, for ‘safe’ was the last thing she intended to be as she stepped out onto her porch to greet the angry humans.

“There she is!” one of them shouted upon seeing her in her beautiful dress.

The others followed where his accusing finger pointed. Soon the air was filled with their shouts.

“Burn her!”

“Witch!”

“Burn the demon spawn!”

Demon spawn? The idea was ludicrous, and Yuki’s delighted laughter made the humans be quiet for a moment. They stared at her, stunned into silence. Then, her inhuman cheer in the face of her potential murderers became nothing more than further proof that she was a witch and needed to be burned.

“Take me if you dare!” Yuki spread her arms wide, her head back so her golden curls tumbled over her shoulders. She cut an impressive figure, lit by the torches the humans thought would protect them from the things in the darkness that would devour them all, a manic joy in her eyes as they swarmed forward.

Two of them grabbed her, large men that she recognized. One was the butcher, a swarthy man who cheated on his wife with the miller’s daughter, and the other was the butcher’s son, who took his father’s place in the bedroom. To think they both thought they were better than her set her insides afire with anger.

“Burn her! Burn the witch! Burn her!”

Yuki wrenched out of the men’s arms as the crowd began to move. She strode out ahead of them, chin high, arrogance in the way she moved. Soon they reached the town center, and if the townsfolks’ intention hadn’t been clear before, it would have become clear as the pyre rose in Yuki’s vision. A large wooden cross was at its center, surrounded by a huge pile of kindling that must have eaten up most of the winter stores. The fools would probably starve to death, all to get rid of the ‘witch’.

Yuki wasted no time in clambering up the pile of kindling, standing with her back to the cross. The butcher’s son came up behind her to tie her to it, his hands brushing places they shouldn’t, that they wouldn’t even come near to as he tied her wrists and waist to keep her from escaping. As if a few measly knotted ropes could stop her if she truly wanted out.

The butcher’s son scrambled back down the pile, sending kindling scattering across the cobbled road. The mayor of the town, a portly man with a lust for young boys, stepped forward out of the crowd with a torch in his hand. The town’s priest was next to him, bible in hand and guilty conscience in tow- only Yuki knew how he forced the young women in town to go to bed with him, saying it was god’s wishes.

The priest began to read from the bible, some hogwash about how her soul would be purged through fire and she would return to God an innocent, unsullied by Satan’s hand. Yuki’s smile only grew as the mayor stepped up to her pyre. Already sweating, glancing up at her nervously as if he expected her to start shouting all their secrets, he grunted and threw his torch as close to her as he could get it- which was not, after all, that close.

But the kindling was good, and the flame roared, consuming what it could as it ate its way up to Yuki.

“One, two, three, and four,” Yuki’s voice rose up, once more silencing the angry townsfolk. “The devil’s here, now sleep no more.”

Out of the crowd stepped a smallish, frail form cloaked in black. Pale hands showed, reaching up to push the hood back, revealing snowy hair and eyes that were red as the fire that was catching the skirt of Yuki’s dress.

“You waited too long to call for me, mistress,” Anafiel chided as he stepped forward, into the flames.

“My apologies.” Yuki gasped, half pleasure and half pain, as the fire began to eat at her mortal body.

The humans expected her to scream; they had planned on reveling in the sounds. They could appease their guilt by saying it was the sound of her guilt being purged. When she laughed, high and crystalline, full of joy and pleasure- it ruined their plans. They stared, wide-eyed, as the flames devoured the young woman who had once been planning to join the convent, and she laughed all the while. And Anafiel stood next to her, untouched, his cloak moving in a wind none of the humans could feel.

The laughter died suddenly as the shock and the touch of the flames overwhelmed the human body’s ability to continue. A smile formed on Anafiel’s face, bright and expressive, as he held a hand out. A hand came out of the still flaming body of the young village girl, and Anafiel took it in his own. Tugging forward gently, he helped a pretty asian girl step out of the body; she shook her pale hair, and opened burgundy eyes.

“You have returned to me, my love.” Anafiel’s voice was full of a sort of admiration as Yuki dropped his hand.

“Yes, I am back.” She ran her hands down her naked body with a satisfied smile. Then she lowered those hands to the fire.

The humans watched, terrified, as she scooped up handfuls of the hungry flames. They lapped at her wrists like playful puppies and lit her face, making her look even more terrifying as she raised her eyes to the humans crowded by the pyre.

“You’ve served your purpose,” she said as Anafiel stepped up to her side. They shared the same malicious smile as Yuki tossed and caught the fire like one would a small ball. “Now, die.”

Yuki and Anafiel left the town at dawn, arm in arm. It burned behind them, every building that wasn’t already ash and cinder on its way to that state. “What do we burn next, Yuki?” Anafiel asked.

“The world, my love,” she told him. Their eyes met, and both demons smiled, repeating together: “The world.”