by Derek Landy
“Do you know what I’ve just done?” she growled as she stalked after him. “I’ve just broken some poor woman’s bones in the gas station. I threw her around like she was nothing and then I went for a goddamn swim. You think I’d hesitate for even one moment before I ripped your throat out for robbing me?”
Glen scrambled back on all fours. “Please, I didn’t mean anything!”
“You meant to steal from me.”
“I’m starving!”
She leaped, landing on top of him in a crouch, her right hand closing round his neck and pinning him to the ground. “Not my problem.”
He looked up at her, tears in his eyes, and those tears just made her angrier. She wanted nothing more than to grow talons, to feel them slice into the soft meat, to sink her teeth in, to feel that warm blood flow down her …
She blinked. Wait, what?
She loosened her grip. The impulse to tear his throat open was rapidly receding.
“Are you going to kill me?” he whispered.
“No,” she said dully, and stood. “No, I’m … I’m not going to kill you. I wanted to. I was going to. But …”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “Something’s going to kill me sooner or later. Most likely sooner, to be honest. If I had a choice, I’d prefer it to be you.”
Amber took a few steps back, then turned, walked to her clothes. She let her scales retract fully as she pulled them on, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling of dry fabric on wet skin. Still frowning to herself, she sat on a log to wipe the soles of her feet before putting on her socks and sneakers.
“Your clothes don’t fit you, y’know,” Glen said.
He was tall and skinny, scruffy but not bad-looking. He bent to pick up her roll of money and she bared her teeth. He walked over slowly and held out his hand.
Amber finished tying her laces and stood, taking her money without a word and stuffing it back into her pocket.
“You should probably invest in a wallet,” he said.
“Shut up, Glen,” said Amber.
He nodded. “Yeah. That’s fair.”
She turned away from him, hiked her shorts up to her waist, and started walking back towards the gas station.
He caught up to her. “Can I ask a question, though? What are you?”
“What do I look like?”
“Honestly? A demon.”
“Then there you have it.”
He nodded. “You’d think that’d shock me, right? Meeting a demon? A few weeks ago, it would have, but my life has taken a pretty weird turn lately, so I’ve adopted a policy of complete and utter credulity in all things. It saves everyone a lot of time. These days I don’t ask for proof or reasons or anything. I just accept. That doesn’t mean I’m not curious, of course. I’m very curious. I mean, look at you. A real live demon, just walking around. Do you live down here?”
“Down where?”
“Here. In the woods.”
She frowned. “Are you stupid? Why would I live in the woods?”
“Well, I just thought, y’know …”
“Stop following me.”
“Okay. Right. But can I ask another question? Why do you have money? How do you buy stuff?”
She stopped walking and turned to him. “How do you think I buy stuff? I walk into a store and say I want something and I pay for it.”
He frowned. “You walk into a shop like that?”
She remembered her appearance. “Oh,” she said. “No. This is new. I’m still getting used to it. I keep forgetting I have horns.”
“They are magnificent,” he breathed, staring at them.
“Eyes down here, Glen.”
“Yes, sorry.” He blushed. “You’re … Sorry. You’re just the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. Like, prettier than most actresses and models, even.”
Amber grunted, and started walking again. “This isn’t the real me.”
“No, it is,” Glen said, matching her pace. “Like, you’re beautiful in a way that I’ve never seen before. Everything about you, your face, your horns, your amazing teeth, your skin that’s my favourite shade of red, your legs, your body, your—”
“You can stop anytime now.”
“I’m not scared,” he said. “You might think I’m scared of you because you’re a demon and most people would be scared of demons, and that’s why you put up this wall, to reject others before they reject you, but I’m really not scared. You’re not scary. You’re beautiful, not ugly. And I’ve seen some ugly things. I mean, I really have. Back in Ireland, I was attacked by this, by this creature, you know? It passed something on to me, the Deathmark. Wanna see it?”
“Not really.”
He held out his right hand, proudly showing her his palm. Just below the surface of his skin, a tendril of darkness circled like a fish in a bowl. “Isn’t it freaky? Ever since it happened, I’ve been meeting the oddest people. I met this guy in Dublin, this real weird guy, knows all about monsters and stuff. He said this thing will kill me in forty days if I don’t pass it on to its intended target. That was, like, thirty-two days ago.”
“You’re going to die in eight days?” said Amber, frowning.
He nodded, and seemed oddly unbothered about it. “Unless I pass this mark on to a woman called Abigail. Apparently, she’s a bad person. Like, really bad. Killed a lot of people, that kind of bad. I’ll be doing the world a favour by passing this on to her. That’s what I was told. She’s supposed to be in a bar here in America that I haven’t been able to find – The Dark Stair. You know it?”
“Sorry.”
“Yeah, me neither. I looked it up online and nothing. I don’t even know what state it’s in. Maybe I’ll find it, maybe I won’t, but I’m here now, y’know? If I die, I want to die here. I want to see bigger things before I go, better things than the creature that attacked me. I want to see proper monsters. American monsters. I didn’t think I’d see anything as beautiful as you, though.”
“Right,” said Amber. “Well, I better get going.”
“Where are you off to?”
“Oh, uh, Springton. It’s in Wisconsin. We have to find someone.”
“We? Who’s we? You and your boyfriend?”
“No, no. He’s a … he’s a guide, I guess.”
“A guide to what?”
“Um …”
Glen’s eyes widened. “Are you on the Demon Road?”
She hesitated. “No.”
“You are!”
“We’re not.”
Glen was practically dancing in excitement. “I’m on the Demon Road, too! The guy, the weird guy, he said I should get on the Demon Road while I still had the chance, to see all the horrors the world had to offer. We’re on the same road! What are the chances? Do you have a car?”
“No,” Amber said automatically. Then, “I mean, I don’t, personally. My friend does.”
“Yeah? Do you think he’d let me tag along, like?”
“I … I don’t mean to offend you or anything, but probably not. He doesn’t know you and you did try to steal my money.”
“I gave it back, though.”
“Only after I caught you.”
“That’s true. But don’t you think this is meant to be? I mean, what are the chances, really, of us meeting like this? Two people like us, cursed by darkness, meeting on the Demon Road?”
“According to my guide, they’re actually pretty good.”
“Oh. Really? Oh. Well, could you still ask him if there’s room for one more?”
“Glen, you tried to rob me.”
“Which turned out to be a mistake.”
“And we’re on a very dangerous journey, to be honest. We’ve got people coming after us and we’re probably headed straight into even more danger, so I think it’d work out better for you if we just say goodbye here and now.”
“But I don’t have any other friends.”
“You and me aren’t friends, Glen.”
He looked dismayed. “So I have
no friends?”
“I have to get going.”
She started walking again.
“I could help,” he called after her. “And I wouldn’t be a burden. I’d carry things, and I’d sit in the back and I wouldn’t say anything, unless you needed me to say something, in which case I obviously would. Does your radio work? I could sing if it doesn’t. I know a lot of songs. I don’t have the best voice in the world and I might not remember every single one of the lyrics, or sing them in the right order, but I can carry a tune and I’ll just make up the bits I forget. My dad used to do that all the time. It was like a gift he had, you know? Only he wasn’t very good at it. I’m much better.”
His voice eventually started to fade, and Amber left him behind. As she neared the edge of the woods, she focused on shifting back. What had Imelda called it? Reverting, that was it. She concentrated on her breathing, on calming down, on becoming her again, and, just when she thought it wasn’t going to happen, an explosion of pain rocked her, made her stumble.
She put her shoulder to a tree and stayed there, blinking, her brown hair falling across her brow. She looked at her hand and noted the normal skin. She looked down and noted that her clothes fitted her once again. So that was normal, too, then.
Great.
A TANGLE OF BRIARS scraped across Amber’s bare shin and she grimaced, bent down to rub it, then continued on. Moving through this little patch of forest had been easier as a demon – her red skin, even without the scales, was a lot hardier than the pale flesh she usually wore.
She felt the damp unpleasantness of her clothes more acutely now, too, as she did the embarrassment over a stranger seeing her naked. Both these sensations were washed away when she remembered what she’d done to that woman in the restroom. She could have killed her. She had wanted to kill Glen.
Amber forced herself to move on.
Emerging from the treeline further up from where she went in, she walked along the road back towards the truck stop. She kept her head down, really wishing she’d thought to grab the baseball cap as she ran from the restroom.
The throaty growl of the Charger’s engine caught her by surprise, and she turned to watch it pull in sharply behind her.
Milo got out. He looked mad. She walked to the passenger side and he threw her the baseball cap. “Found this in the restroom,” he said. “It was lying next to a woman who swore blind she’d been attacked by the Devil.”
Amber put it on. “Um. Thanks.”
They looked at each other over the roof of the car.
“I got you a sandwich,” he said. “You can eat while we drive.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Amber said as Milo ducked to get in. “I shifted and she walked in. She pulled a knife, for God’s sake!”
Milo straightened up. “She’s fine, by the way.”
Amber winced.
“A few nasty bruises. A dislocated shoulder. Maybe a fractured cheek. Definitely a concussion. But your concern over her wellbeing is touching.”
“I get it, okay? You can stop now. I feel guilty enough as it is.”
“I’m sure you do,” said Milo. “But it isn’t all bad. She’s going to have a great story to tell, about the time she was attacked by a genuine, bona fide devil. A red-skinned devil with horns, no less. She’s going to get some mileage out of that one. The cops have already been called, don’t you worry.”
Amber glared. “I just wanted to see what I looked like in a mirror. Is that so bad?”
“Not at all,” said Milo. “Doing that in your bedroom mirror behind a locked door, no problem at all. Doing it in a truck-stop restroom, however …”
“Can we just go? Can we? Before the cops get here?”
“Sure.” He hesitated, then looked at her again. “But I need you to understand something, Amber. This will catch the attention of your parents.”
She blinked. “I’d … I’d …”
“You hadn’t even considered that, had you?”
She frowned. “No. But I should have. What the hell?”
The expression on Milo’s face softened. “What did Imelda tell you? Your demon side is more confident. You can take that to mean arrogant. And you can take that to mean self-centred. You’re not going to be thinking too much of the consequences of your actions when you’ve got your horns on. That’s what makes it so dangerous.”
“Do you think they’ll come here themselves?”
“I would, if I were them.” A van passed on the road beside them. “We’ve lost our advantage. Up till now, they didn’t know you were running; they just thought you were hiding. Now that they know, they’ll be coming after you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “Come on, the sooner we get away, the better. At least no one here knows where we’re headed.”
Amber winced, and Milo froze.
“What?” he asked.
Dammit. Dammit, dammit, dammit. “Someone might know where we’re going,” she said.
Milo blinked at her. “I don’t understand. Who did you find to talk to around here?”
“A guy. His name’s Glen. I met him in the woods,” she said. Then she added, “He’s Irish.”
“Oh well, he’s Irish,” said Milo. “That’s okay, then. The Irish are renowned for how tight-lipped they are. What the hell, Amber?”
“I’m sorry, all right? I wasn’t thinking.”
“Some random guy in the woods?”
“He’s not random,” she responded, a little hotly. “He’s like us. He’s, you know … cursed by darkness.”
Milo actually laughed. “He’s what?”
“They’re the words he used,” she said, scowling. “And they’re not too far away from what you said about the blackroads connecting points of darkness, whatever the hell that means. And, y’know, he’s dying, actually. Glen. He’s got the Deathmark.”
“What’s a Deathmark?”
“I … I thought you’d know.”
“Edgar’s the occult expert, not me.”
“Well, the Deathmark is this thing that he has that’s killing him, and he’s on the Demon Road, too. He wants to see some real American monsters before he dies.”
Milo rubbed a hand over his face. “He’s going to get his chance.”
“What do you mean?”
Milo folded his arms on the car roof and leaned on it. “People travelling the blackroads tend to meet, Amber. I told you that. Whether they’re drawn to each other by some unconscious radar or it’s all down to recurring coincidence or part of some grand scheme straight from hell, the fact is travellers tend to meet. That’s why I’m confident of finding Dacre Shanks. But think who else is going to be on the blackroads. If your parents come here, and they will, and your new friend is still in the neighbourhood, the chances are they’ll find him. And if he knows where we’re going …”
“So … what do we do?”
Milo sagged. “We have two options.”
Her eyes widened. “The first is killing him, isn’t it? We’re not doing that. We’re not killing someone just because I made a mistake and said something I wasn’t supposed to. What’s the second option?”
“Convince him to come with us,” Milo said. “Go get him. We’ll take him as far as Springton and let him out there. If we have to tie him up and throw him in the back seat, we’ll do that, too.”
“I don’t think convincing him will be a problem,” said Amber. She turned, and started walking for the woods again.
“You have five minutes,” said Milo. Amber didn’t respond.
She retraced her steps until she found him. He was sitting on the same log she’d been sitting on, his elbows on his knees and his head down.
“Glen?”
He looked up quickly, but his hopeful smile vanished. “How do you know my name?”
She walked forward a few steps, and took off her cap. He regarded her suspiciously. Moments passed. His frown deepened, and then his eyebrows rose.
�
��You?”
“My name’s Amber.”
He jumped up. “But … but where’s … what happened to you?”
“I told you, the skin and the horns are new. This is what I look like without them.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her, but for entirely different reasons than before. “But what happened?” he asked. The look on his face was pure dismay.
Amber flushed with embarrassment and hurt. “I changed back,” she said, putting the cap on again. “It doesn’t matter. If you want to come with us, you can.”
If she had asked him that while she was tall and red and beautiful, she knew he would have leaped for joy at the offer. As it was …
“Where are you going?” he asked doubtfully.
“Springton, Wisconsin,” she said. “I told you.”
He shrugged. “I’m terrible at place names. I forgot it the moment you said it. Couldn’t have remembered it at gunpoint.”
Amber stared at him. “Seriously?”
“I won’t forget it again, though. Springton, Wisconsin. Springton, Wisconsin. Okay, it’s embedded. Why are you going there?”
Anger coiled. “Because we are, okay? We’re on the Demon Road, you’re on the Demon Road, the Demon Road is taking us to Wisconsin, and we thought we’d be nice and offer you a lift that far. But hey, if you’re inundated with other offers …”
She turned, started walking away, and after a moment she heard his running footsteps behind her, hurrying to catch up.
“THIS IS REALLY COOL OF YOU,” said Glen from the back seat for the fourth time.
Milo nodded, and Amber felt him glance sideways at her. She didn’t respond. She kept her eyes on the road as they drove past endless fields of white cotton pods, bursting like tiny puffs of cloud from all that green.
“So Amber tells me you’re her guide,” Glen continued. “You’ve travelled the Demon Road before, then?”
“We try not to talk about it,” said Milo.
“Talk about what?”
Milo sighed. “When you’re on the Demon Road, you don’t really talk about the Demon Road. It’s considered … crass. You can mention it, explain it, all that’s fine … but just don’t talk about it. And don’t call it that, either.”