Chapter Text
“Last box,” Shane called out, balancing the large cardboard container on his shoulder. It was heavy, and judging by the way it shifted when he walked, he suspected it was stuffed to the brim with something… mysterious. Curiosity prickled along his spine.
“Yeah, thanks, man,” Hayden said, panting as he set his own box down on the polished hardwood floor. Shane mirrored the motion, letting a faint smile slip across his face—pride, he hoped, clear enough for Hayden to see.
“Nice place,” Shane muttered, scanning the room. “Big spaces… big windows.” He wandered slowly, absorbing the sunlight spilling across the floor, while Hayden headed toward the kitchen, chuckling at Shane’s wandering. “So much natural light…” Shane’s voice was almost a murmur, barely audible, but Hayden caught it anyway.
Finally, Hayden had moved out of that high-rise condo he always complained about, into a proper house.
“Are you saying that because you mean it… or is your addiction to real estate getting that bad?” Hayden teased, scrunching his brows as he handed Shane a cold can of light beer.
Shane took it—then froze. “…Ginger ale?” He blinked at Hayden, trying to hold his ground. This year, he’d promised himself he wouldn’t be the pushover.
Hayden gave him a look of mild doubt. Shane laughed nervously. “Uhh… never mind. Beer’s fine too.” Maybe next year, he thought.
Hayden chuckled as he strolled toward the kitchen, the can of beer dangling loosely in his hand. Shane’s gaze drifted back to the final box sitting alone in the middle of the living room. Brown, unassuming… but something about it made him itch with curiosity.
The more he stared, the stronger it grew, as if the box had some magnetic pull. His chest tightened. Breathing grew shallow. His limbs felt lighter, as though the room itself was subtly nudging him closer.
“Hey.”
Something cold brushed his forearm. Shane jumped, whipping his head to the left. Hayden’s brow lifted in a questioning arch.
“You good?” Hayden asked.
Shane blinked a few times, shook his head, and muttered, “Yeah… sorry. I just—uh… what’s in that? Seems heavy.”
“Oh, yeah. Jackie loves her books,” Hayden said, taking a gulp from his beer, leaving Shane’s ginger ale untouched, slowly warming in his hand.
Noticing Shane’s continued stare, Hayden raised his eyebrows. “You wanna… look through it?”
Shane shook his head quickly, flustered. “What? No! I was just wondering—”
“Dude, it’s no big deal,” Hayden cut in with a laugh. He approached the box, lifting the lid. Shane leaned over instinctively, catching glimpses of various books: old, new, pages white and yellowed, spines cracked or pristine.
“That’s… a lot of books,” Shane muttered, brushing a few aside, revealing even more. He chuckled quietly, flipping through some titles, letting his hand trail over the worn pages. Then, one black spine caught his eye.
Hollander…
He froze mid-crouch, heart skipping. He looked around, half-expecting Hayden to be sneaking up behind him for a prank. But no—Hayden was outside, phone pressed to his ear, laughing softly. That voice… it hadn’t come from behind or beside him. It felt like it had come from inside him.
Shane shook his head, kneeling fully this time. Ginger ale set aside, he cleared space on the floor and carefully sifted through the pile. That black book… it practically hummed under his fingers.
Old. Dusty. Fraying at the edges. Black leather, intricate gold designs curling around the cover. And dead center, a single eye, embossed and unblinking.
Shane hesitated. Jackie’s taste in books had always been eclectic, but this—this felt… different. He flipped a page, and another. Brown stains, what looked like coffee or dirt, dotted the edges. Burned marks lingered along some pages. The temperature seemed to fluctuate—sometimes hot, sometimes chillingly cold.
He shivered, gripping the book tighter, arms trembling. Then he reached the last page. A portrait: a man so impossibly beautiful it hurt to look at him. Dark, piercing eyes that seemed weighted with secrets. A strong jawline, curly hair, broad chest…
“Lucifer…” Shane muttered under his breath, unaware of the small cloud of condensation leaving his lips in the suddenly cold room.
Above the portrait, scribbled in elegant cursive:
Ilya
Dominus Inferorum
Qui Respondet, Non Invocatus
Notes in the margins, older than Shane could read, scrawled in faded ink. He traced the letters with a finger.
“Non est daemon qui vocandus est…” he whispered. “Est daemon qui audit…”
The words made his pulse spike. Questions surged—more than answers. His eyes fell on three sentences written just below the portrait:
Qui nomen eius dicit, attentionem eius capit…
Qui desiderium celat, mentitur…
Qui mentitur, punitur…
Shane groaned. He should really… really use Google Translate.
“Jesus Christ!” Hayden’s voice shattered the silence, making Shane jump. “That’s twice today,” Shane muttered, more to himself than Hayden.
“Are you cold? What the—what happened here?” Shane asked, glancing around. Sunlight streamed through the big windows, yet frost had begun forming along the edges. The room was… freezing.
Hayden approached the nearest vent, hand raised. “It isn’t the air conditioning,” he muttered, scanning the space like he expected someone—or something—to appear.
Shane’s stomach churned as he lowered his gaze back to the book. Ilya’s portrait seemed to glare at him, accusatory, as though judging the chaos of the frost and the sudden drop in temperature.
He snapped the book shut, shaking his head, trying to clear the prickling tension in his spine.
“It’s going away…” Hayden observed. Sure enough, the frost retreated from the windows, leaving droplets trickling down the glass. "What the fuck..."
Hayden glanced at the book in Shane’s hands. “Want it?”
Shane hesitated, torn. He wanted to lie—he didn’t want to trouble Hayden, didn’t want to upset Jackie. But the book felt heavier than a normal weight, magnetic in his grip, impossible to ignore.
“Would that be… fine? What would Jackie say?” Shane asked.
Hayden shook his head, a faint scowl on his face. He pointed toward boxes stacked across the room. “See that? And that? And that?” He tapped another box in front of Shane. “All full of books. I had to make sure the house had an extra room for her library. Trust me,” he said, lightly tapping the cover of the book. “Jackie won’t notice if one goes missing.”
Shane’s resolve wavered. Something about the book… about the pull it seemed to have… felt wrong to separate from it.
“Just tell her. Tonight, or as soon as possible. I can give it back if she doesn’t like it.” Hayden slung an arm over Shane’s shoulders, guiding him toward the sliding doors leading to the backyard. “Don’t even worry about it,” he said, reassuring yet oblivious to the strange pull in Shane’s chest.
The apartment was quiet, save for the hum of the TV and the faint ticking of a wall clock Shane barely noticed. The flickering images of his past games played across the screen, each one a reminder of mistakes, misjudgments, and every time he’d failed to live up to his own expectations. He leaned forward on the couch, elbows resting on his knees, fingers tapping lightly against the remote. Every pass, every dodge, every failed opportunity was burned into his memory, dissected by the commentary of his own frustration.
And yet, no matter how closely he watched, nothing changed. Every replay ended the same: a stalemate. Shane’s jaw clenched. He rubbed at the back of his neck, trying to massage out the tension, but the pang in his chest wouldn’t leave.
His eyes drifted to the black book resting on the kitchen counter. He’d placed it there deliberately, a test of his own willpower. A challenge to prove that he could exist in the same room as it without feeling the tug at his senses, without letting it get under his skin. But the longer he stared, the more prickles danced across his arms, the hairs along his spine standing at attention as if the book had its own pulse.
“Hollander…” The whisper was so faint that for a moment he thought he’d imagined it. But it lingered, curling into his ears, tugging at his thoughts.
“Hollander!” The call came again, sharper this time. Shane’s head snapped toward the counter, brows furrowing, confusion and panic flaring in equal measure.
And then the TV reminded him of reality. His coach’s voice screamed through the speakers, tearing him down for mistakes he’d made in that long-ago game. The past and the present collided, each insult echoing louder in Shane’s mind.
“Hollander…” The voice returned, deeper, resonant, crawling under his skin. It wasn’t coming from behind, not from beside him. It felt like it came from inside—inside his own chest, inside his skull.
He swallowed hard. Deep breath in. Exhale. Another in. He combed a hand through his hair, trying to ground himself. I am present. I am here. I am—
“Here.”
The word hit him like ice. Shane’s head snapped toward the counter. Sweat ran down the sides of his face, sticky against his temples. His pulse drummed in his ears. The air around him felt charged, thick, almost viscous, pressing against his skin in a way that made it hard to move.
Fuck this, he thought. Gulping hard, Shane forced himself to his feet, one tentative step at a time. The kitchen counter might as well have been miles away, each movement weighted with the inexplicable pull of the book. He reached it and opened it immediately to the page where Ilya’s portrait glared at him with impossible clarity.
For a heartbeat, Shane hesitated. A surge of self-preservation warned him to close it, to step back, to forget the book ever existed. But it was useless. The pull was stronger than reason, like a current dragging him deeper and deeper.
He clicked his tongue, gripping the book tightly, and carried it back to the couch. Sitting down, he set it beside his laptop, hands trembling slightly as he typed into the search bar:
“What do grimoires look like?”
The search results came instantly. Shane scrolled through hundreds of websites, each more sterile than the last, none matching the gravitas of the book in his hands. And then, buried in the listings, he found it: a relic of the internet itself. A site that looked like it had been made by someone with a dream, a library of knowledge, and almost no concern for aesthetics. The layout screamed early 2000s—a blog clinging to life—but the information was rich, dense, and unsettling.
Grimoires are libraries for gods, devils, and entities. Not cookbooks. Not spell kits. Real grimoires are handwritten, centuries old, and most of the time… cursed.
The word cursed made Shane flinch. He glanced at the black book beside him. It seemed heavier now, as though it had absorbed some of the chill creeping across his apartment.
He scrolled down, eyes scanning dense paragraphs, bullet points bolded and underlined:
Age matters. Blood is optional. Intent matters. Names are power.
His gaze drifted to the page above, to the name etched in flowing, perfect cursive: Ilya. The letters seemed alive, twisting subtly in the corner of his vision.
Bindings are tricky. Shadows, fire, air, and cold are all signals…
Shane’s mind flicked back to Hayden’s house, to the frost crawling along the big windows, the sudden bite in the air.
Read the marginalia.
Marginalia. Notes. Scribbles. Doodles. Warnings, perhaps curses, left by those who had come before. Shane’s hand traced the rough, inked ridges of the writing, fingertips brushing the paper with a mix of reverence and unease.
He tried to pull back, to return to the safety of his laptop, but the page lifted slightly under his fingers, almost as if the book itself guided him. Heart hammering, he turned it. Beneath Ilya’s portrait, instructions glimmered into clarity: a ritual. A way to summon… or call… the entity.
Ad Vocandum Ilya.
Shane whispered the words. They were heavy in his mouth, heavy in his chest. He opened a new browser tab and typed carefully:
“To Call Ilya”
The search results hit instantly. Shane stared at the screen, disbelief flaring across his face. “This has got to be a joke…” He muttered, shaking his head, glancing between the computer and the book. The Latin curling across the page seemed impossibly old, centuries in the making, each character imbued with intent he could feel pulsing under his fingertips.
He typed the first instructions aloud:
Do not attempt unless you intend truth. This is not a summoning. This is a call. Those who attempt without understanding will find themselves bound…
Shane groaned at Google Translate’s attempts to parse the archaic text. Each word twisted and shifted, slipping through modern language like water through fingers.
Materials required: Circle drawn in chalk, salt, or powdered ash… One black candle… One reflective surface… Name of entity written thrice…
Shane’s eyes scanned the list. Each item seemed mundane, but he knew better. Chalk, salt, candle, mirror… each a conduit, each an anchor for something older than time itself. The name, written three times, made his skin prickle again. He swallowed hard, feeling the weight of centuries pressing down through ink and paper, into him, into the quiet room that seemed to hold its breath around him.
Shane moved through his apartment like a ghost, swift and careful, carrying the ritual materials with a nervous reverence that made his arms feel heavier with each step. The living room, usually mundane and cluttered with the residue of everyday life, felt transformed—a sacred space he was fumbling to prepare. Chalk from a long-forgotten college project lay in one hand, the deep red candles from his aunt’s wedding in another. A small desk mirror and a whiteboard marker completed the list, their ordinariness belying the weight of what he was attempting.
He dropped everything onto the floor in a careful scatter, taking a step back to survey the scene. His mind ran over the instructions like a calculator, running through every possible variable: Would red candles work? Did they need to be black? The chalk—was it too brittle? He could almost hear the whispers of caution from the countless blog posts he’d read, the careful margins of the grimoire he still held like a lifeline.
Shane wasn’t going to go all-in blindly. If this went wrong, he wanted to be able to clean it up quickly, to erase every trace of the experiment before anyone noticed. The thought of scrubbing permanent ink from his polished wooden floors made his stomach twist, but it didn’t stop him.
With a shaky exhale, he began tracing the sigil from the grimoire in chalk, slowly at first, then with more confidence. He went “big or go home,” letting the lines sprawl wider than the instructions dictated, the circle taking up nearly half the room. Each line pressed into the floor with purpose, a geometry of ancient intent rendered by shaky hands.
“One candle per cardinal point,” he murmured, voice barely audible over the faint hum of his apartment. Shane stood back to inspect his handiwork, hands resting on his hips. The circle wasn’t perfect—chalk lines were uneven, smudges dotted the edges—but the ritual had to be imperfect for him to matter. The candles went into place, one by one, their deep red flames flickering as though unsure of their task.
He exhaled slowly, squatting to write Ilya’s name three times along the borders of the circle. Each letter seemed to tremble beneath his hand, alive in the flickering light. He sealed the windows and closed the blinds, ensuring the flames wouldn’t be snuffed by the faintest gust of air.
Shane sat cross-legged on the floor outside the circle, staring at the grimoire open before him. He traced the translated instructions with a finger, reading them aloud to anchor himself.
“Select a quiet space… Darkness preferred… Windows sealed… Place the circle on the ground… Mark cardinal points… Light the candles… The flame must not flicker away from the center…”
He studied each flame in turn, holding his breath until they steadied, then continued:
“Arrange the reflective surface in the center of the circle, angled toward the practitioner. Say the written name of the entity thrice into your reflection…”
Shane’s lips parted, but no sound came. His throat was dry, his chest tight. His rational mind screamed at him to stop. This was ridiculous. A joke. A hoax. Yet the pull, subtle but undeniable, urged him forward.
He flipped the page, reading the invocation aloud in hesitant whispers, translating slowly to confirm every word:
Stand at the north point. Face the center. Close your eyes. Breathe deeply. Focus on intent, not words. Words without will are hollow. Speak thrice: “I call not to bind, I call not to summon, I call to be seen, and seen I will be.” Each repetition must be accompanied by a deliberate pulse of energy, either of pleasure or pain, felt in the chest. The energy is the key. If the candles flare or dim at the wrong time, stop immediately. The entity may misinterpret.
Shane’s mouth twitched into a bitter laugh. It’s 2015. None of this is real. His fingers fidgeted against the pages, his eyes flicking nervously between the laptop and the grimoire. Doubt clawed at him, but something deeper—something older, colder, irresistible—pushed him onward.
He read the next instructions:
Place the written name on the reflective surface. Step back. Wait. Silence. Shadows may lengthen or shrink. Air may cool. The entity may appear partially, fully, or not at all. This does not indicate failure. To end the ritual, blow out the candles in reverse order of lighting. Record observations in a separate journal. Include sensations, emotions, and any anomalies.
Shane stared at the candles. Which one did I light first? How? He let out a dry laugh and sank back onto the floor, stretching his arms behind him for support. Legs extended, he exhaled slowly, letting tension leak from his shoulders. Despite the rational part of him wanting to walk away, an itch of curiosity—and something else—drove him to continue.
He picked up the grimoire again, flipping to the portrait.
“Ilya…” Shane whispered. His eyes lingered, tracing the impossible perfection of the face. Too sharp, too precise. Too alive. It belonged in no world he had ever known, no mundane corner of Earth. His chest tightened, breath catching. His pulse drummed in his ears. The portrait seemed to hold him in place, staring, judging, inviting.
His body grew warm, an unshakable heat curling through his veins, making his limbs feel light, fragile. He tried to blink, shake it off, and harshly flipped the page away, but the sensation persisted. A static fire seemed to hum beneath his skin. Sweat beaded at his hairline and trailed down his neck. His shirt clung uncomfortably as he tugged at it, trying to cool himself, but it was useless.
The candles flickered, their flames wavering in ways that made no sense. The windows were closed. The air conditioning centralized. Shane’s gaze flicked toward the small vent near the ceiling, then back at the circle. The flames danced as if moved by invisible fingers, teasing him, daring him.
And then, a whisper, deeper than before, curling inside his chest, tugging at his mind:
“Hollander…”
Shane squeezed his eyes shut, gasping for air. His hands pressed against his knees as his vision narrowed, world spinning.
“Hollander…”
“No. No, no!” he choked out, scrambling backward, yet somehow finding himself inexorably closer to the circle. “This isn’t real. This isn’t fucking real!”
The whisper intensified, thick and heavy, weaving dread and something darker, sharper, hotter through his body. Say my name… it demanded.
Shane collapsed onto his ass, back against the floor, shaking his head violently. His voice trembled as he stammered, “Who… who the hell are you?”
The grimoire seemed to pulse, shadows gathering around its edges. His chest burned, lungs heaving. Fists clenched, he could do nothing but stare at the portrait. Maybe he had made a terrible mistake.
A force pulled him toward the book, vision blurring as the warmth and pressure intensified. Heart pounding, Shane slammed his hand onto the portrait, daring, mocking, questioning.
“Yeah? Is it you?” He laughed nervously, fingers tracing the name again, trembling.
A heat pooled low in his stomach. Something switched inside him, igniting a reaction he didn’t understand. Shane dropped to his knees, chest heaving—a weak attempt at stoping himself from uttering the demon's name again.
Shane’s phone rang like a lifeline in the darkness, piercing the heavy, electric tension of the apartment. He froze mid-breath, staring at the screen as if it could save him from whatever he’d unleashed. Hayden’s name flashed across it. Shane’s pulse thudded in his throat, and he whispered a half-sarcastic, half-prayerful thank you before swiping to answer.
“Yeah, man?” His voice sounded hollow, shakier than he wanted it to be.
“Hey, dude. Glad you’re still awake.” Hayden’s tone was casual, but Shane could hear concern threading through the words. He sagged against the couch, letting the cushions take some of his weight. “You okay? You sound… out of breath.”
Shane swallowed hard, trying to keep his composure. “Uh… yeah, I was, uh, in the middle of a workout,” he said, laughter forced. His eyes flicked back to the grimoire, sitting innocently on the counter as if mocking him. “Why?”
“At… two in the morning?” Hayden’s incredulous voice made Shane glance at the bottom of his laptop screen: 2:34 A.M. Shit.
“Yeah… just… late-night routine,” he murmured, brushing the tiny hairs on his neck as if that could erase the weight in his chest.
“You’re weird. You’re a weird kid,” Hayden said, a note of teasing in his voice. “But maybe it’s a good thing. So I told Jackie about that black leather book you asked for. She says she doesn’t remember owning anything like it.”
Shane’s brows knit as he stared down at the grimoire. The absurdity of it all made him laugh—a nervous, breathy sound. “But she says you can keep it. See? Told ya.” Hayden’s sing-song teasing drew another chuckle from Shane.
“Yeah… I was—worried about nothing, huh?” He shook his head, brushing imaginary dust off his hands.
“By the way… what’s in it? Looked old,” Hayden asked, and Shane slid closer to the book, flipping through pages that seemed to hum under his fingertips.
“Real… witchy stuff,” he muttered, voice dropping. “Like… super old. Super… demonic.” His eyes darted across pages of ink stains, hand-written symbols, and sketches that seemed almost to writhe when he looked at them too long.
Hayden laughed over the line. “Yeah? What’s the demon’s name?”
Shane’s own lips curled with a grin. “Ilya.”
And then the voice came. Not Hayden’s. Not anyone familiar. Deep, rough, tinged with a Slavic accent that made Shane’s blood run hot and fast. It rolled through him like fire through veins, a vibration he could feel in his chest, his stomach, the pit of his spine.
“Hollander?”
Shane froze. Every instinct in his body screamed, this isn’t possible… it’s not real. Yet the heat that bloomed inside him was undeniable. Electric. Erotic. Dangerous. His knees buckled beneath him, and the phone slipped from his grasp, thudding softly onto the carpet as his palms pressed to the floor.
Breath shallow, stomach twisting, Shane’s body trembled with need he didn’t understand. He felt feral, desperate—like a dog starved for days, clawing at life itself. His hands scrabbled over the carpet, legs shaking. What was this sensation? What did he need so badly that it burned through him, ignored reason, ignored safety?
And then he saw it.
The portrait. Ilya.
Something inside him snapped, a pulse that rattled through every nerve. Shane whispered the name, barely audible, a quivering feather of sound carrying more desire than he realized he had in him:
“Ilya…”
The voice returned. Closer. Stronger. Almost corporeal.
“Hollander.”
It was there, right behind him. Not in his head this time—he could feel the presence, heavy and undeniable. Breath warmed the back of his neck. Shane’s body tensed, every hair on his skin standing on end.
He turned slowly, heart hammering, chest heaving, and there he was. Ilya. Taller, impossibly flawless. Curly blond hair falling just so, piercing sea-colored eyes that held the vastness of storm-tossed waters. Shane’s mind scrambled for words. None came.
“I… Ilya?” His whisper trembled.
The demon’s lips curved, and the world seemed to narrow to the space between them. “If you continue saying my name, I may have to… fuck you here and now.” His accent, rough and deliberate, sent a shiver down Shane’s spine.
Shane blinked. Heart stuttered. Mind scrambled. “You… you look—” He tried to take in every detail—the sharp planes of his face, the soft curve of his lips, the impossible symmetry. Every feature felt alive, demanding attention, imprinting itself into Shane’s memory.
Ilya tilted his head, a predator testing, eyes glinting. “How do I look?”
Shane’s breath caught. Words failed him entirely. He could only reach forward, tentative, and brush a hand along the curve of Ilya’s jaw. His touch was feather-light. Shane’s chest fluttered, heat pooling low in a mix of fear and need.
“Like… an angel,” he breathed.
Ilya’s eyes flicked downward briefly, taking in Shane’s touch with a sinister amusement. Then a slow, predatory smile spread across his lips. One hand lifted, cupping Shane’s hardened cock through the thin fabric, a shock of heat and audacity that left Shane gasping.
“You couldn’t have been more wrong,” Ilya murmured, his voice a dangerous lullaby. Shane’s breath hitched, mind screaming for reason even as his body betrayed him completely.