Page 174 of Devil Inside
I’ve got the body, and she’s got the soul.
I give this toyou, I want to tell her.Me, all of me.I open myself up to you. I want you inside me. I give you this space. This place in my heart. I want you to share it with me.
I need you. Come in.
Take me.
Lilith’s eyes slowly open, finding me beside her. “Hello...”
“Good morning...”
She hesitates, taking us in. There’s a question in her eyes. “What is it?”
“What’s what?”
“That look,” she says. “So serious. Something on your mind?”
“I’m ready.”
“...For?”
“You,” I say. “I need to see.”
She lifts her head, just a bit. “See. . .?”
“You. All of you.”
“We talked about this,” she warns. “You won’t like what you see.”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
After a moment, she says, “Nobody has ever seen us before. Not like this.”
“I want to. Just you.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
Lilith hesitates. “I’m afraid.”
“Don’t be.”
“What if it frightens you? What ifIfrighten you?”
“I’m ready. Show me.”
Lilith takes a deep breath, then stills herself. Her body halts. All movement simply ceases. Her skin ripples. The surface of her flesh looks like a pond of water. Someone has tossed a pebble into the very center of herself, the subsequent splash sending an echo across the surface, these thin rivulets of skin resonating outward, one ring after another.
A pattern. The rings continue to ripple through her skin, starting near her chest—her heart—and reverberating out across her neck, her cheeks, her forehead.
I watch the ripples spread down the length of her arms.
It begins as an eclipse. At first, I can’t tell for certain just what exactly I’m looking at. It’s as if the sun is rising directly behind Cara’s body. No, not behind.From.A solar flare fans out from her flesh, rising higher by the breath, lifting up from her skin and into the air above her.
A sun. She’s a black hole sun.
I’ve never seen such radiance before. I wince from the sheer heat of it, bringing my hand up to shield my eyes. I don’t know how long I can look at it without blinding myself.
