There was something in him beyond all saving, now.  Something even she could not touch, walled away behind fearborn defenses that no mere woman could breach.  -C. S. Freidman

’What a woman,’ he breathed.  ‘Give me ten like that, and I could take an empire.’  -C. S. Freidman

The place had an aura of entrapment about it - as if by staying too long within its borders, one might lose the will to leave.  -C. S. Freidman

He wanted it so desperately.   And feared it, with equal fervor.  Most of all he wanted the decision to be out of his hands; wanted the dreadful balance of need versus betrayal to swing one way or the other without him, so that he might be spared such an awesome responsibility.  -C. S. Freidman

The man’s a monster - even worse than that, a monster who once was human.  That’s far more dangerous than your average demonkind. 

-C. S. Freidman

How did one approach a man like this, without giving him license to claim one’s soul?  -C. S. Freidman

Keys.  They were somewhere.  She fumbled for them, fearing to look at him.  Afraid she would get lost in his eyes forever if she did.  Afraid she might wake up in the morning to find him beside her and never know how he had gotten there, or if he would ever leave.  Or if she ever wanted him to leave.  -C. S. Freidman

’I’ll call on you,’’ he promised.  And then he stepped away from her, and he bowed ever so slightly - an outdated gesture, so ridiculous for others, so graceful for him - and with a parting smile he strode casually down the stairs.  Owning her soul, as perfectly as if he had stayed the night to claim it in passion.  -C. S. Freidman

[He] gripped the bottle in his hand, feeling hot tears squeeze from his eyes.  What color were the pills, what essence their magic?  It didn’t matter.  They all brought forgetfulness, one way or another.  They were all ways of escaping this world, with its inescapable nightmares.  The only escape there was, other than death.  -C. S. Freidman

She prayed.  Not in words but in images, because words could never capture all that she felt.  -C. S. Freidman

If you bind yourself to him, you will make yourself part of his war.  -C. S. Freidman

God, he prayed, I have loved You and served You all my life.  Your law gave meaning to my existence.  Your Dream gave me purpose.  In Your service I grew to manhood., measuring myself against Your eternal ideals, striving to set standards for myself that would please You.  I live and breathe and struggle and Work - and accept the inevitability of my own death all in Your Name, Lord God of Earth.  Only and always in Your name.

 -C. S. Freidman

 Her lover.  How strange that word seemed.  How odd to apply it in this case, where their time together seemed like a brief bout of passion between

one tragedy and the next.  They had not even made love in the traditional sense, although he’d known enough close variations to make the time pass

pleasurably enough.  Now, though, she ached for that shortcoming, and wished she had held him inside her once, just once, in that embrace which

was so intimate that echoes of it lasted forever in one’s flesh.  But he’d been terrified of making her pregnant, and though the intensity of that fear was

incomprehensible to her  - like so much else about him - she had indulged him, stifling all the arguments . . .those were things you said to other men,

not him.  His soul was too tender, too bruised, too vulnerable.  If intercourse would increase his anxiety, then it would have to be avoided.  There’d

be time enough for it later, when his soul had a chance to heal.  If that time ever came.  -C. S. Freidman

I accept the dedication of your life to mine, I acknowledge you as an extension of my will, I swear unto you protection against all harm. 

-C. S. Freidman

. . . it was all he could do not to scream, not to beg them to turn back, turn back!  And take him out of this place that was slowly remaking him, turning him into something he was never meant to be.  -C. S. Freidman

'I can’t,’ he whispered.  ‘I don’t have the strength.’

'Then trust in God, my son.  He does.'

 -C. S. Freidman

Unspeakably tempting to the hedonistic spirit in him, that craved sensation at any cost.  Maddeningly tempting to the wounded shell of a man that he had become, desperately in need of escape.  What narcotic could rival such an experience, or offer such total escape from the bleak reality his life had become? . . . God, he needed a drink.  How else did you drive out such a vision, . . . a woman’s tongue, hinting at sensations beyond human bearing..

-C. S. Freidman

Some things were better left unquestioned.  -C. S. Freidman

It was just a nightmare, she told herself.  Some nightmares happened while you dreamed and some happened while you were awake, but they all ended sometime, right?  -C. S. Freidman

She felt strangely numb, as if she had been afraid for so long that something inside her had finally snapped and she just couldn’t be afraid any more.  Or maybe, instead, she felt safe.  Maybe this was what safety felt like in the Outside.  -C. S. Freidman

You’re trapped by your own intelligence, you know.  A simpler man would have found his way back to God long ago.  -C. S. Freidman

Because only by devoting his strength and passion to God did [he] feel he could justify his own existence.  Any other profession would have been an exercise in futility.  -C. S. Freidman

’I’m okay.’ She whispers.  Not because the words are true, but because they’re the only ones she can bring herself to voice.  How can she make them understand the danger?  -C. S. Freidman

From her movements he guessed that she still hurt badly . . . but she obviously wasn’t going to admit it.  Still afraid, he thought.  Still convinced that if she hurt too much or feared too much they might leave her behind.  -C. S. Freidman

It was an effort just to live.  -C. S. Freidman