The Demon Demigod

by Eliza Raine

  I gaped at him.

  ‘But-’ I started, but he smiled at me and strolled off, towards the teachers table on the dais.

  I groaned, closing my eyes.

  ‘How am I going to do anything between detention every night for two weeks and Dasko’s extra class on Sunday?’

  ‘Well, there’s not much else to do now but study,’ said Zali sympathetically. ‘Only two months until next exams.’

  ‘Yeah, I’m getting some extra classes in with Fantasma,’ Tak said. We talked a while about the exams, and I felt a bit better that I wasn’t the only one having to put in extra time. After dinner I excused myself and went straight into the bookshelves, to the section on Scorpio. I still hadn’t found any information on fire rafes. I was hoping Icarus might be there too, but there was no sign of him. I hadn’t seen his big black wings anywhere in the temple at dinner and I couldn’t help feeling worried about him. If he said he needed time, then that’s what I would give him, I told myself. Trouble was, patience was definitely not one of my virtues.

  13

  I struck lucky on the third book about Scorpio I opened.

  Fire rafes grow in warm water and are very beautiful, very dangerous plants.

  I read on, my tired eyes suddenly perking up as they took in the picture of a plant covered in stunning orange and red flowers, shaded like fierce flames.

  They are rare due to the short amount of time they bloom for. Once planted, they need four weeks to grow and will then only bloom for exactly twelve hours, before bursting into underwater flames and ceasing to exist.

  My hopes sank to the pit of my stomach like a stone. Twelve hours? I had to get underneath the school and look for a rare plant that only existed for twelve hours? I let out a long, unhappy sigh. This was not going to be easy.

  ‘Are you OK, Dora?’ Zali asked me when I trudged into our dorm room.

  ‘Yeah. Tired from all the excitement on Taurus,’ I said.

  ‘And… Icarus?’ she prompted, coming to sit beside me on my bed. I saw the concern on her face and tears pricked at my eyes.

  ‘I let him down,’ I whispered, trying to hold them back.

  ‘Oh Dora, I’m sure you didn’t,’ my friend said, throwing her arms around me.

  ‘I did, Zali. I lied to him.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Stuff I should have been honest about,’ I mumbled into her curly hair.

  She pulled away and looked at me for a moment.

  ‘I’m sure you had a good reason,’ she said eventually, with a small nod.

  ‘You have too much faith in me,’ I told her, a tear escaping.

  ‘Don’t be silly. I know you’re a good person. So if you lied, it was for a reason. He’ll realize that, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, I hope so,’ I told her, praying the words were true.

  ‘He will. You wait, he’ll be back sitting with us for dinner by tomorrow.’

  But he wasn’t. And he wasn’t there for lunch the day after that either. Gida joined us though, and he was chatting about a plan he and some older students were devising to bait the Keres demon by not drinking the safety potion. I had only been half listening, scanning the temple for Icarus’s wings, but when I realized what he was saying,I gave him my full attention.

  ‘Isn’t that really dangerous?’ I said.

  ‘Well, yeah, course it is,’ the satyr said, puffing his chest out. ‘But we’re the most advanced students here. Most only spend two years at the academy. We’ve been here nearly four.’

  ‘How are you going to stop it when it comes though?’ asked Zali, her face a mask of worry.

  ‘We’re making a potion that means we’ll be able to see it, so we can stop it before it gets to us,’ he said.

  I frowned, wondering if it was anything like the potion we were trying to make. Would they really be brave enough to not drink their safety potions? What if more people were hurt, or lost their souls?

  ‘I think it sounds too risky. There must be a better way to bait it than not drinking the safety potion,’ I said.

  The satyr shrugged.

  ‘Yeah, loads, but this is the easiest and most likely to work.’

  I thought about the note from Neos with the list of ingredients for the baiting potion. Should I share it with the others? If they were going to try to catch the demon, shouldn’t they have this information too? I would ask Neos, I decided.

  ‘How are you going to kill it? Will that bring the souls back?’ Tak asked.

  ‘That’s the bit we haven’t worked out yet,’ Gida answered. ‘Bit more research to do.’

  Neos had said that a powerful god could convince Hades to return the souls if they had the demon. Was there any other way to kill it and return the souls? I found myself hoping against hope that Gida and the older students would find something out in their research, that there was an easier, safer way.

  ‘Keep us updated,’ I said.

  The gong rang for the next lesson and Tak, Zali and I all got up together to go to History of Mythology. My stomach fluttered nervously. I would see Icarus now, for sure. We made our way to the blue curtained door, and when I entered the classroom I saw his black wings immediately. He was sitting on the far side of the room, not looking at anybody who came in. Nobody was sat next to him. Emotion skittered through me and I crushed the urge to go over to him. He’d asked for time. Tak glanced at me, paused, then went towards Icarus. I watched as Tak clapped him on the back and sat down beside him, and Icarus gave him a sideways look and a grunt.

  ‘They can have some boy-time,’ said Zali, and gently tugged me towards the back of the classroom. I tried not to be hurt that Icarus wouldn’t even look at me. I tried not to care that he found it so easy to not even glance towards me. But I couldn’t stop the sadness that settled over me.

  ‘Hello, class. We’re going to talk about punishments of the gods today,’ said Dasko, strolling through the curtain and to the front of the room. ‘It is important that we all understand that whether it is right or wrong, the gods are able to mete out any punishment they like, even if the crime doesn’t appear to deserve it.’

  I pulled out my notepad.

  ‘Now, Zeus is Lord of the Olympians, as you know. And he… well he doesn’t always behave as his wife, Hera, wishes he would. He has been known to draw attention to himself by spending too much time with women who are not his wife. And Hera has come up with some interesting ways to punish those women over the years. In an attempt to hide one woman, named Io, from Hera, Zeus turned her into a cow. But Hera knew what he was up to and sent a gadfly to bite the cow all day, every day, until Io was so sleep deprived and uncomfortable she nearly went mad.’

  I scratched at an imaginary itch on my shoulder, scrunching up my nose.

  ‘And many mortals have regretted suggesting they were better at something than the gods were. Actaeon believed he was a better hunter than Artemis. She made his own hunting dogs eat him. Arachne believed she was a better weaver than Athena. After winning a competition set by the muses, Athena turned her into a spider. Marsyas challenged Apollo to a lute playing competition, and upon losing was flayed alive.’

  I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat and wrote ‘Gods are better at everything’ on the notepad page.

  ‘But I think the most deserved of all the famous punishments was Tantalus.’

  The fire dish in the center of the room burst to life, showing a well-dressed man in a toga, beaming.

  ‘Tantalus was a demigod, a son of Zeus in fact, and he was fortunate enough to get himself an invite to dine with the Olympians. But Tantalus was not a nice man. He wanted to test the gods because he didn’t believe that they knew everything. So he killed his own son, and made a stew with his body.’

  I wasn’t the only person in the classroom to gasp at Dasko’s words. Zali looked at me, horror on her pretty face.

  ‘He served the stew to the gods but, of course, they knew what he had done. Zeus condemned Tantalus’s kingdom, then forced him to stand in a
pool of water in the underworld for eternity. Every time he tries to drink from the pool, the water recedes to nothing. He is standing under a tree, ripe with fresh fruit, and every time he tries to pick the fruit it leaps from his reach. He will be hungry and thirsty forever, never quite able to reach the things that would quench his needs.’

  My eyes were fixed on the flame dish, showing an old, stooped man, trying desperately to catch water in his hands from a pool around him, but the water drained to nothing each time he tried.

  ‘How awful,’ Zali whispered.

  ‘He did kinda deserve it though,’ I whispered back.

  ‘Sisyphus and Ixion also serve endless torture in Hades’ realm. I want you to get into pairs and look through your books about Virgo and find out what each of them did to upset Zeus.’

  ‘Did the gods eat the stew?’ a boy in the first row asked loudly.

  ‘No, of course not,’ Dasko said, shaking his head. ‘Well, Demeter accidentally ate a little bit, as she was distracted. But Zeus brought the boy back to life, and apart from a small part of his elbow, he was fine.’

  ‘Well, that’s good,’ whispered Zali, her face still slightly pale.

  Icarus didn’t sit with us for the rest of the week. My heart ached whenever I spotted him sitting alone at another table, his big wings wrapped around him like a shield. I wanted so badly to go and talk to him, but I needed to prove to him that I could respect his request. Plus, I didn’t want to force a confrontation that would end in him never forgiving me. So instead, I tried to concentrate on getting the potion ingredients and controlling my elemental powers. My detentions with Neos were turning out to be more useful than scary when it came to my fire magic.

  If I could ignore the fact that he was a demon, he was actually a really good teacher. He’d not tried to scare me again, instead starting each detention with a tiny flame in the dish in the middle of the fire classroom. He explained how fire didn’t work like water, running in continuous and solid patterns, but that it was erratic and unpredictable. Water existed in designated quantities, whereas fire could grow and shrink. Water had to be summoned from somewhere, which was hard unless you had a lot of power, but fire could be snapped into existence from anywhere, just by drawing on the air always present around us.

  The more he explained the differences between the two, the more the fire magic made sense. Where water’s disadvantages lay, fire’s advantages stood out. We practiced making fireballs no larger than the size of soccer balls, guiding them around the room and shrinking them as they flew about, and my underlying fear of the flames lessened.

  ‘Now that the other students know about the death demon, can we tell them about the bait potion?’ I asked Neos at the end of our detention on Friday.

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,’ he answered quickly.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you would have students all over the school baiting the demon and risking their souls. You wouldn’t want that, would you?’

  ‘If they’ve drunk the safety potion it wouldn’t be a problem would it?’

  ‘The safety potion only protects their souls. Death demons have other ways of doing damage, Pandora,’ he said seriously.

  ‘Like how?’ I asked, alarmed.

  ‘They can attack your mind, or immobilize your body, or sometimes even possess others.’

  ‘What?’ Fear thrummed through me at his words. ‘So we’re not safe at all?’

  ‘The Keres is after souls. She wouldn’t do any of those things if there wasn’t a chance of getting one, unless she had a good reason - like being attacked.’

  ‘How are we going to catch her then?’ I asked. ‘It sounds impossible!’

  ‘Not if you have another demon on your side,’ he answered with a grin, his red eyes flashing.

  14

  ‘There we go,’ said Zali, pinning a tiny braid of my hair to the twist of others she’d done.

  ‘It looks amazing, thank you,’ I told her.

  ‘You’re welcome. Icarus will have to talk to you looking like that,’ she beamed. My stomach flipped. I had been dreading the school dance all day. The last few had been so much fun, dancing with Icarus, his wings curling around us. Now I didn’t know if he would even look at me. I didn’t want to go at all but Zali was insisting.

  ‘I don’t think he’ll care much what I look like,’ I said.

  ‘Try talking to him then,’ she said softly.

  ‘I can’t. He said he needed time to think.’

  ‘Hmmm. Boys shouldn’t be left to think too long. They’ll come to all sorts of silly conclusions without some female input,’ she said.

  When we entered the main temple there was a lively tune playing, a loud drum beat resounding off the marble columns, but not many people were dancing. I saw Arketa and Filis standing together, barely speaking. Their normal aura of beauty and poise was somehow missing and they didn’t look right without Kiko, I thought. She may have been just as nasty as they were, but she hadn’t deserved what had happened to her. And her friends clearly missed her.

  ‘There’s Tak,’ said Zali, and we headed over to where he was chatting to Thom.

  ‘I heard you got into trouble on Taurus,’ he said to me as we reached them.

  ‘Oh, I, um,’ I stammered. Nobody ever spoke to me or Icarus, apart from Zali, Tak and Gida.

  ‘Good job you got out safely, I’ve heard manticores can be pretty dangerous,’ he said playfully. He was a manticore shifter.

  ‘Yeah, he was pretty scary,’ I said carefully.

  ‘I know, I saw him when we visited. He’s called Sting, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, I don’t think there are many evolved manticores in Olympus. He’s about as trained as they come. Tak said you were really interested in manticores?’

  ‘I am, yeah,’ I said, throwing Tak a look. He shrugged, eyes sparkling.

  ‘Well, I’d be happy to talk to you about them. I’ve had to do loads of research, obviously.’

  ‘Really?’ I looked at him in surprise and he smiled.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, pushing his brown hair back from his face. I scanned it, looking for signs he was teasing me or about to follow up with a nasty joke or trick. He’d never been nasty to me before though. ‘Not many people are into manticores,’ he said eventually, with a shrug. ‘Nice to find someone that is.’

  He really did want to talk to me, I realized. I felt a flash of guilt that I wasn’t actually that interested in the creatures, that I just needed a feather, but I smiled back at him. It wasn’t like it was a boring subject to talk about.

  ‘That would be great,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Sure. You got a drink yet?’

  I shook my head, my heart skipping a little. I hadn’t expected to be making new friends tonight.

  ‘I’ll go grab us some.’ He turned, heading off towards the punch fountain.

  ‘Tak!’ I hissed, turning towards him. ‘Why did you tell him I was into manticores?’

  ‘Well you were determined to go in that pen and get a feather,’ he protested, holding both his hands up. ‘I assumed you were!’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘He’s nice,’ said Zali. ‘Talking to him can’t hurt.’

  She was right. Why was I so nervous?

  ‘Pandora?’ I whirled, coming face to face with Icarus.

  ‘Icarus,’ I breathed, stepping towards him. He held a drink out to me awkwardly.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, taking it. ‘How are you?’ I asked, fixing my gaze on those intense emerald green eyes, my tummy turning somersaults.

  ‘Alright,’ he shrugged, his dark hair flopping forward. ‘How are you?’

  I shrugged too.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  ‘Any luck with the potion?’ he asked, looking around hesitantly.

  I shook my head.

  ‘No. But I did find out some stuff about fire rafes,’ I said. My heart was hammering against my chest now. I didn’t want
to talk about the potion. I wanted to ask him if he had forgiven me.

  ‘Oh. That’s good,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I heard you had some trouble on Taurus?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I was trying to get a manticore feather,’ I said.

  ‘Did you get it?’

  ‘No.’

  We lapsed into awkward silence.

  ‘Pandora,’ Thom’s voice came from behind me and he held out a glass of punch as I turned to him. ‘Oh, hi,’ he said to Icarus.

  Icarus’s green eyes darted between me and Thom as I took the second drink.

  ‘Thom’s talking to me about manticores,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Right. Well, see you later,’ he said and turned from me before I could open my mouth.

  ‘Wait!’ I said, taking a step after him, but his wings disappeared into the crowd as he moved quickly away. I clenched my teeth as I gripped both glasses, frustration welling in me.

  ‘Did I interrupt something?’ asked Thom.

  I closed my eyes, took a long breath, then turned back to him with a smile.

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ I said. ‘So, are manticore wings always the same color?’ I asked him.

  ‘No, not at all,’ he said excitedly, and started to tell me all about the various colors the feathers could be. I would build up to asking him where I might find a feather, I thought. If tonight was a total bust with Icarus, then I had to at least make some progress with the potion.

  Listening to Thom talk animatedly about the creatures was actually a lot more fun than I thought it would be. His passion for the subject was infectious, and he knew so much interesting stuff. Before I knew it, I’d drained both glasses and had a burning desire to study manticores myself.

  ‘Course, if you stay here three years you can specialize in mythical beasts. Then you get to work with some really cool stuff, like dragons and chimeras.’

  ‘Dragons?’