Demon Cursed

by Sadie Hobbes

  Over the last two years, I managed to pick up some cleaning jobs and a few catering jobs, even some yard work. I wasn’t picky or proud. I’d take anything. After a while, I’d squirrelled away enough to get the three of us a small apartment. It wasn’t much, but it was an actual apartment left over from the old days, with two bedrooms, a decent-sized living room, one tiny bathroom that worked minus the hot water, and a kitchen that was slightly larger than the tiny bathroom. I gave Noel and Micah the bedrooms, and I just cornered off a portion of the living room with some blankets to make a third bedroom for myself.

  They offered to share a room, but I figured they’d had precious little to call their own throughout their lives. They at least deserved their own rooms.

  “We need to wake her,” Micah whispered.

  I pushed the blankets aside and swung my feet over the side of the bed. “I’m up,” I called out.

  “Breakfast is ready,” Noel called back.

  I smiled at her word choice. Breakfast was a rather strong term for our usual morning meal.

  I ran a hand through my overlong hair. I needed to cut it soon but more critically I needed to wash it. But there was no time for either this morning. I grabbed my brush from the crate I used as a side table and ran it through my hair before quickly and efficiently pulling it into a ponytail.

  I stood up and put my robe on over my tank top and underwear. I pulled back the blanket door and smiled at Noel and Micah. Noel was fourteen, and Micah was twelve. Noel was tall for her age and was often mistaken for a full-fledged adult. Micah, in contrast, was short for his age and often mistaken for someone much younger.

  After that night on the beach, Micah had accepted me immediately. Noel’s trust had been a little harder to earn. But once I’d earned it, I knew there was nothing she wouldn’t do for me, and vice versa. She was tough, smart, and way too jaded for someone her age. But she hadn’t exactly had the easiest of upbringings. Orphaned at the age of nine, she’d ended up in a group home. And from the little she said about it, I knew it was a place of horrors. Micah still had nightmares about it. She’d left with Micah three years ago. They’d been on their own for a year until I came across them.

  I stepped out of the bedroom and smiled at the two of them. “So what amazing creation will we be having for breakfast this morning?”

  Noel smiled, holding up the plate. “Fresh apple slices with peanut butter.”

  “My favorite,” I said as I took a seat at the table. I flicked a quick glance at the fire escape, but it was empty.

  Micah sat across from me. I ran a hand over his head. “Sorry I was late last night, guys. It couldn’t be helped.”

  “What was the party like?” Noel asked as she placed the plate in the middle of the table. From the look of it, she had sliced the apples to make sure she got every last piece of edible fruit. Thinly spread across them was peanut butter.

  My stomach growled at the sight. But I only ate two slices, and small ones at that. I’d managed to eat a little at the party last night, and I knew that Noel and Micah had had little to eat. Food was a luxury these days, and we had very little money for luxuries.

  I sat back, sipping a glass of water. “Oh, you should’ve seen it. Francesca Remiel was there, and I swear she must’ve been wearing her weight in diamonds. She had trouble holding her neck up, they were so heavy.”

  The kids' eyes shone as I told them story after story of how the rich lived. My stories from my time over the bridge were one of the few sources of entertainment we had in this world. I’d gotten pretty good at taking a boring event and making it into something fabulous.

  “What about the food?” Micah asked.

  “They had a chocolate fountain. Chocolate bubbled up and cascaded over the sides. People would dip cups in or little cookies.”

  “Wow.” Micah leaned forward, his mouth hanging ajar.

  I described the feast, which for a party in Sterling Peak, was just a normal night. There’d been roast rack of lamb, ham, and salmon as the main courses. And then at least twenty side dishes, plus appetizers and two ten-foot tables full of desserts. While food might be an issue in this household, and most of the households in Blue Forks, it was definitely not a problem over in Sterling Peak.

  Micah sighed after I mentioned that I’d left before the Sterling Peak Seraph Force had arrived. “One day, one of them is going to look at you, and realize what you can do. Then you’ll become a ranger and we’ll move over the bridge.”

  I smiled back at him. “Let’s not get your hopes up.”

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  Noel and I shared a look over the table. Rangers were the soldiers of the Seraph Force, the security force that protected people from demon attacks. They did occasionally take on a Demon Cursed as a ranger, but it was rare.

  And no one was going to invite a maid to join their ranks.

  But neither Noel nor I said anything to Micah. He lived in a small fantasy world that I wasn’t sure what to do about. I didn’t want to take away the solace of a world that was much kinder and more hopeful than our actual reality provided him. At the same time, I knew that he needed to have his feet firmly planted on the ground. After all, life was not going to get any easier for either of them.

  “How was school yesterday?” I asked, wanting to get that dreamy look off of Micah’s face.

  Mission accomplished. He frowned.

  He and Noel exchanged a glance. “We had to duck out early. A social worker came by,” Noel said.

  My heart rate picked up. I struggled to keep the tremble from my hands. Even though they sat there within arm’s reach, the fear of losing them jolted me. Social workers went to the schools to check and see if there were any children without homes. At least, without official homes.

  We were undeniably an unofficial home. Foster homes had to pay taxes on their kids. If we became official, I would have to choose between paying rent or paying for the kids. It was a stupid system. But the group homes got money from the government for each kid. So if you wanted to take a kid from them, you had to pay them. It was corrupt. It was wrong. And it was how it was.

  But if it came down to it, there would be no choice. I would have to pay. I was just really hoping we could avoid it for the next six years or so. “Did she see you?”

  Micah took a bite of his apple slice, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “No. Noel noticed the car before we even got into school. So we ducked down the alley by the old toy store and came back home.”

  “I think you should stay home today.”

  Noel shook her head. “The social workers never come two days in a row. It’ll be okay.”

  I waged a silent war inside my mind about whether or not to let them go. I knew they needed to go to school. Not necessarily for the education. They were both smart kids and had the basics down. And to be honest, it wasn’t like lawyers and doctors were really a thing anymore, at least not for people like us. But they needed to be around kids their own age. They needed to have a normal life, or at least as normal a life as we could manage.

  “Okay, but if anything feels off—”

  “Trust your instincts,” they said in unison.

  I raised an eyebrow. “Have I said that before?”

  Noel rolled her eyes, popping another apple slice into her mouth. “Only every day.”

  “Well, then, my job here is done. Speaking of which …” I glanced at the clock. “I need to get moving, or I’ll to lose my other job.”

  I hustled into the bathroom and took a super-fast ice-cold shower. Then I dashed back into my room, pulling the blanket closed. My uniform hung on a hanger on an exposed pipe, but I ignored it. Normally I left it at work, but I’d been so late yesterday that I’d worn it home. I’d had to wash it in the sink last night. It was still a little damp.

  I slipped on my jeans and tank top, sitting on the edge of the bed to pull on my socks and boots. I shoved my work shoes into my backpack and then my clean uniform over my arm. I’d get changed when I
got to work. If I wore it there, I would just get it sweaty and wrinkled. And Mrs. Uriel hated when we showed up sweaty and wrinkled.

  I stepped out of the room and yelled down the hall, “Okay, I’m going.”

  I waited for a beat. Both doors opened. Noel and Micah hurried out. “Hugs.”

  I opened up my arms, and the two of them rushed me. This was our morning ritual. Everyone got hugs before they left, no matter what. The world was decidedly unstable. And I never wanted to leave the house without saying goodbye, just in case. I kissed Micah on the forehead and did the same to Noel. “I love you. And I love you.”

  They held me tight. They mumbled their I-love-yous into my side.

  And for just a moment, everything in the world was right. The small apartment, the lousy job, the unbearable weight of just existing these days, none of it mattered right at that moment. I had them, and they had me. And that was all that mattered.

  Too soon, Noel and Micah stepped away. I glanced back at the clock. I was really going to have to hustle to get there in time.

  “Love you,” I called out one last time as I flung open the door and raced down the stairs.

  Chapter 4

  I hustled out onto the street, ducking around Immanuel Sanchez as he pushed his shopping cart filled with metal scraps from the alley that ran along our apartment building. “Morning, Manny.”

  The Sanchezes lived on the first floor of our apartment building. It was Manny and his wife, Lisa, and their four kids, three of whom were younger than ten. Lisa worked up in Sterling Peak at one of the other houses. Sometimes she and I walked to work together. After the birth of their baby boy, Miles, though, she’d taken on an extra cleaning job and now left hours before I did.

  “Morning, Addie,” he called as I ran by. Addie was short for Addison. I still didn’t know what my actual name was. But the day after I met Noel and Micah, we all agreed that they needed to call me something. We passed by a store that had an old sign on the window for Addison Shoes. Next to it was a former bakery. So Addison Baker was born, a non-angelic surname. Only the Angel Blessed had angelic names.

  With money, a person could buy a lower level angel name, But there was no point in getting one. There was no benefit. So most waited until they had enough for one of the higher angel names.

  Noel and Micah had angel last names simply because all orphans were given the same one: Rikiel. It was a label they then had to wear until they could afford a new one. Of course, the label also helped insure they never did. It was like being stamped with the term Demon Cursed.

  I recognized a few more people heading along the street in the same direction, but I didn’t stop to say hello. They were more the people you saw all the time but never got to know, which was the case for most of the people in Blue Forks. They were kind, hardworking people. But we were all trying to make ends meet—during daylight hours. Because when the darkness hit, no one stepped outside unless they had to. The nights belonged to the demons now.

  The Celestial Bridge, which connected Blue Forks to Sterling Peak, came into view. I smiled at the sight of it. I loved this old bridge. It was a hundred and fifty years old, made of rock and steel. I don’t know why, but I thought it was absolutely beautiful.

  My eyes immediately went to the highest point of the bridge. Stone-carved versions of the archangels Michael and Gabriel clad in armor with spears clutched in their right hands stood with their backs perfectly straight. Their narrowed gazes focused on a point in the distance, their backs to Sterling Peak. Each time I saw them a tingle of warmth spread through me. Times were tough yes, but the angels looked out for us. And if the demon attacks got really got bad, I and everyone else knew they would return to protect us, just like they had before.

  Which was good, because we couldn’t count on the people of Sterling Peak coming to our rescue. Twenty years ago, renovations on the bridge had been completed that allowed the first twenty feet of the bridge to retract in case of a demon attack, thus protecting all of Sterling Peak while leaving the people of Blue Forks on their own.

  I tried not to focus on that whenever I saw the bridge.

  “Morning, Addie,” a familiar voice said.

  I scanned around quickly to make sure no one was too close, and then said, “Morning, Torr.”

  Torr was only five feet tall. He had green mottled skin, pointy ears, and two small nubs for horns. Today he wore red shorts and a dark gray Mickey Mouse T-shirt, along with his standard black Converse sneakers.

  I met him three months after I met Noel and Micah. One of the other demons was attacking him late one night. I intervened before I got a good look at him. And afterwards, well, it didn’t seem right to kill him. He had a large gash in his ribs, and tears had welled up in his bright blue eyes. I’d never met a demon like him. He wasn’t vicious. He wasn’t cruel. In fact, he was seemed younger than the others.

  And he could be invisible.

  The first time I realized that Torr could cloak himself, I’d been terrified. It opened up a whole new avenue of fear when it came to the demons. Slowly, I realized that the ability was unique to Torr. He made himself invisible, but as far as he or I knew, no other demon could.

  “I smelled demon blood on your blade last night. How many did you take down?”

  I kept my head forward, talking out of the side of my mouth. “Only two. One caught up with me on the way back from the Hills last night, and the other was stalking Lisa Sanchez.”

  Torr shook his head. “She shouldn’t stay out after dark like that.”

  We were getting closer to the line for the bridge, so I took out my water bottle and pretended to drink. “No choice, just like me. The Uriels had a party. It was stay or lose my job. Lisa had the same choice at her job.”

  Torr swore softly. “So they just sent you guys home with no protection?”

  I shrugged. “You know how it is.”

  He didn’t say anything because he knew the deal.

  Sterling Peak used to be a ritzy part of Los Angeles. They didn’t worry about demon attacks at night there. They had enough security to make sure that if any demon attempted to attack its citizens, it paid for that violation.

  The first Seraph Force Academy had been started in Sterling Peak nearly a hundred years ago. It stood on the far side of the mountain, away from the wealthy estates, and trained the country’s top defenders against the demons. There were a hundred students at any given time, give or take, plus the thirty-six full-time soldiers of the Seraph Force stationed in Sterling Peak. It was fair to say that Sterling Peak was one of the safest locations on the planet.

  Downhill, though, there was nothing for the rest of us regular folks. The demons had realized pretty quickly which side of the bridge to focus their attentions on.

  Not that demon attacks were new. The first demon attacks occurred over two hundred years ago. They had ramped up before the Angel War began and then all but disappeared after the war.

  But they didn’t go away completely. For the last hundred years, the attacks happened occasionally, once every three weeks or so. Now, it was more like once a night. Something had changed in the last few years, ramping up the attacks. Back then, when it had gotten really bad, a legion of angels descended from on high and fought back the demon hordes.

  Half of the world had been destroyed as the battle raged on for fifty years. But eventually the angels were victorious. When it ended, life for humans was very different. Resources were much scarcer. Electricity had become an extreme luxury. And society had been quickly split into the haves and the have-nots.

  But the haves decided they deserved a better name: the Angel Blessed. They claimed to be descendants of the archangels who had appeared to fight back the demons and then disappeared. There had been offspring of the archangels who had some of their abilities. But from all reports, the abilities were only seen in the first generation of children, not any subsequent generations. That didn’t stop the wealthy from claiming to be Angel Blessed, even decades later.

>   It probably helped them justify in their own minds their hoarding while other people starved and died. The name they gave the rest of us made it easier too: Demon Cursed. There was no proof that humans and demons had procreated, but that didn’t stop the name from catching on. Now the Angel Blessed gathered all of their resources to themselves and gave them out only when they needed something from the Demon Cursed.

  I worked for the Uriels, another one of the higher Angel Blessed families. The Angel Blessed, when they had enough resources and money, took on the names of the archangels. The richest families had the names of the archangels, while the less well-to-do had names of lower angels.

  The Uriels had an enormous mansion: ten thousand square feet with ten bedrooms for a four-person family. Noel, Micah, and I could have hidden away in one wing of the house, and they probably wouldn’t even realize we were there for a week. But of course, the Uriels weren’t the sharing kind.

  And the truth was, I was just happy to have a job, a roof over my head, and at least a little food. Plus, the cook at the Uriels often snuck me and the kids some extra food.

  In my gut, I knew it was unfair. We shouldn’t have to struggle so hard when those with so much didn’t struggle at all. But when you were just trying to get food on the table, there wasn’t a lot of extra time to fight the system.

  Besides, as far as the power balance went, it was all on the side of Sterling Peak. It would be like throwing pebbles at a demon. It might feel good for a moment that you were fighting back, but it wouldn’t change the outcome of the fight.

  “How were the kids last night?”

  Torr smiled. “Good. They came in, did their homework, and tidied up a little bit. Then they played Parcheesi until it got too dark to see. Noel read by candlelight for a short time before going to sleep.”