by Krista Walsh
“I don’t know much about the different soul-sucker breeds,” she said, ignoring Allegra’s look of distaste at her classification, “so maybe you could help me narrow down what we’re dealing with.”
“Perhaps.”
Daphne shared everything she’d learned about the demon — the method, the timing, the green-hued magic. Allegra listened intently, perking up when Daphne mentioned the victim’s mouths were glued shut.
“That is a point of interest,” she said. She took a slow sip of her drink as she mused over it. Daphne waited for her to explain, reining in her impatience.
Allegra shifted in her seat to face her and crossed one leg over the other with slow sensuality, accentuating the length of her caramel-hued limb. “When I devour a man’s soul, I consume the energy, burning it off as you would calories. I have no fear of his ghost returning to haunt me because his energy no longer exists. I absorb his essence and it sustains me. Does this make sense?”
Daphne nodded slowly, not wanting to think about it in too much detail. With her new focus on compassion and helping others, Allegra didn’t exactly fall into her circle of acceptable acquaintances.
“But these creatures leave evidence behind. They leave ghosts. They know this or else they would not glue the mouths, keeping their secrets from anyone capable of listening. These demons are not consuming their souls, but their emotions. That sounds like Morgrin demons.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of those,” Daphne replied, wondering if the species was documented somewhere in her dossiers. A species she should have studied years ago so she might have recognized the signs right away.
Cut yourself some slack, she scolded herself. It’s not like you could have known.
Guilt had become a familiar state of mind to her over the last year, but she had to be careful it didn’t consume her.
“Ugly as sin,” Allegra said with a grimace, dragging Daphne back into the conversation.
“Let me guess — they look like walking charcoal?” she asked.
“That would be correct. Like me, these demons are not evil, they just require strong emotions in order to survive.”
Again, Daphne kept her thoughts to herself, not wanting to pass judgment on a guest. But while her new-found conscience wanted to argue the case, her primal side agreed with Allegra. Human beings hunted animals, after all, and these demons were simply higher on the food chain. They couldn’t be faulted for having the same drive to survive as any other creature. But she would fault them for being greedy.
“If the demons devour their emotions, why are these ghost so…emotional? Their anger and fear are so intense it’s corrosive.”
Allegra shrugged. “A memory of their emotions, perhaps? Just as their appearance is a memory of how they looked in life, so might their behaviors be. Or perhaps the Morgrins don’t consume everything. Emotions are such an integral element of the human psyche that it is likely impossible to remove them completely.”
Daphne rubbed her arms to clear the rising goosebumps.
“An interesting point about Morgrin demons is that they can survive on any kind of strong emotion,” Allegra went on, staring into the amber waves in her glass. “Happy memories serve just as well. The trouble is that negative emotions are easier to evoke with greater potency, so the Morgrins veer toward those if they feel they don’t have time to dig deeper. Unfortunately, all that negative energy can damage the demons’ minds. Drive them mad. And their victims as well, if they do not complete the feed.”
Daphne jerked her head up at the echo of her earlier thoughts and felt her back twinge. “What would keep them from finishing? I don’t see a human being able to fight them off.”
Allegra bobbed her head. “True, but it could be that these demons are not very skilled in what they do. Like everything else, it takes practice to hunt well. If you are lucky to have a mentor or a natural skill, that learning curve is shortened. Without one,” she shrugged, “I can only liken it to a wild beast in a rage. The attack is more likely to be messy than effective.”
Daphne sank back into the couch and sipped her drink, an idea spinning in her mind. “Do these types of demons have souls? When you die, for example, will you leave a ghost hanging around?”
Allegra grinned, her even white teeth sharpened into pointed tips that promised violence. “I would not suggest you try to discover the answer to that. If you did, I would make sure you found your own answer first.”
Daphne held up her hand. “I wasn’t suggesting we test it, Allegra. I’m only curious. I know there’s one demon alive and kicking, but the ghosts at the hospital have been getting louder as they wake up. The last time I spoke with them, they seemed scared. Based on what you’ve just told me, could it be possible that if the demons have souls, they’re also waking up? Maybe because of the murder or this rising darkness you mentioned?”
Allegra eyed her closely, and when she appeared to accept that Daphne wasn’t threatening her, she tapped her perfectly manicured index finger against her cheek. “I do not see how. One of the reasons we consume other people’s souls is a lack of our own distinct spirit. That being said, if the process of feeding went awry and was not completed properly, perhaps it’s possible that remnants of the victims’ energies would cling to the demon. The victims’ emotions might transform into something more unique and lasting.”
Daphne pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to wrap her head around what Allegra was saying. “I just want to make sure I understand. The demons don’t have souls of their own, so they can’t become ghosts, but it’s possible that the energies they absorbed mutated into a kind of pseudo-soul?”
Allegra’s smooth lips quirked into a smile. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard it put quite so, but yes, in the most basic of terms, that is how it could work.”
Daphne leaned forward, her mind swimming with thoughts. “So the ghosts of Peony House could still be connected to the ghost demons that killed them.”
Allegra nodded. “That could well be. If that is so and the ghosts of the demons are waking up, no wonder the spirits are frightened. The connection would likely stir up the same negative energies the demons conjured when they first attacked. To a lesser extent, the feeding could still be going on, forcing these spirits to relive the worst days of their lives for eternity.”
***
Allegra stayed to chat until the small hours of the morning. On her way out, she paused at the top of the stairs.
“While I have no intention of calling on you again, if my dreams are in fact a warning of what is to come, I suspect our paths will cross soon.”
As though to offset the ominous sentiment, she stroked Daphne’s hair and offered a wink, then swayed her hips down the stairs and out into the night. Daphne gave herself a shake and closed the apartment door, sealing herself in the safe silence of her home.
Her eyelids sagged, and her back twinged as she yawned. She pulled her sweater over her head and threw it into the corner on top of her other discarded clothes. On her way to the bathroom, she stumbled out of her jeans and turned in front of the bathroom mirror, peeling back the bandages to see how the healing on her back had fared over the course of the day.
The four lines were smooth and red. They were clean strikes, and all that remained were nasty scabs. Daphne sent another wave of magic toward them, discarded the bandages, and climbed into her pajamas.
Every joint in her body ached with fatigue, but she recognized the pain as more mental than physical. These ghosts needed her, but if a guardian had been trailing the Morgrin demons for a hundred and fifty years and hadn’t been able to overpower them, what chance did she have?
At least Allegra had given her a name. She also knew how the creature worked and a possible reason why the spirits of the hospital were so anxious. Not only a living demon, but an unknown number of ghost demons as well. And only two more days to put it all together for Gerry. As if she didn’t have enough on her plate.
If she didn’t find Crispy so
on, she could stalk the hospital with Harold and keep watch for any unwary street kids trying to use the place as a temporary shelter.
Faces wavered behind her eyelids as she tried to fall asleep. Haunted voices begged her for help, to do more, to try harder. She tossed and turned, but they wouldn’t go away, and no matter how many times she tried to convince them she was doing the best she could, they only begged louder.
Finally, she rolled out of bed and crashed on her couch, which had seen more action than her mattress over the last couple of months. She flicked on an old movie to keep some light in the room and drifted off listening to a British detective saying, “Either we stop this now or the whole town will be dead by tea time.”
***
Daphne rolled off the couch the next morning with her phone singing its cheerful alarm, her thoughts picking up immediately where they’d left off the night before. A few overnight inspirations had become mixed in with the facts she’d learned from Allegra, but seeing as how they included Crispy riding around the hospital corridors on Emmett’s back and Hunter standing shirtless in the lobby, the peaks and valleys of his defined muscles revealed in all their glory, she suspected her subconscious had failed to answer her questions while she slept.
She dragged herself into the bathroom and stood under the spray of water until her fingers went pruney, and when that didn’t shake any new epiphanies loose, she got dressed and followed the scent of bacon to the downstairs apartment.
Evelyn responded to her knock and ushered her into the kitchen.
“Your plan worked, Cheryl,” she said.
Daphne’s mother rose from her crouch in front of the oven with a smug smile and a plate of blueberry pancakes she’d set to warm. “About time one of them did. Good morning, dear. How did you sleep? Did I hear you have company last night?”
She set the pancakes on the table next to the bottle of syrup and returned her attention to the bacon and eggs frying on the stove.
Daphne poured herself a cup of coffee and dropped down at the kitchen table with a yawn. Meowing, Benji jumped onto her lap, curled up, and drowned out the other noises of the breakfast routine with his sonorous purrs.
She scanned the small kitchen with its white-and-blue laminate tiles and dated walnut cupboards. The room would need a lot of work to meet modern-day fashions, but she’d spent most of her youth and younger adult years, before they’d converted the upstairs into a separate apartment for her, sitting at this table watching the women of her family cook. The energy was warm and soothing. So at odds with everything she felt inside Peony House.
“I did,” she said, replying to her mother’s question. “A succubus came to visit.”
Cheryl bumped her head on the cupboard in her rush to straighten up and turn around. “What are you getting yourself into now, Daphne? How in all the heavens are you involved with a succubus?”
Daphne had never told her family about her locked-room experience — she hadn’t wanted to worry them — but now she wished she’d told them enough that her association with Allegra didn’t come as so much of a shock.
“She’s…well, not a friend, exactly, but an acquaintance. And I wouldn’t say involved. We met through a story I worked on almost a year ago. I haven’t seen her since, but it seems she’s been having strange dreams about me. She stopped by to talk them out and we ended up chatting about Peony House. It turns out she knew a lot that will help me.”
Her explanation drew Evelyn and Cheryl closer, their expressions comically similar with their wide green eyes and open mouths. Daphne wished she was at a place where she could laugh at their surprise, but too much was weighing on her for her to feel any kind of levity.
“Surprisingly, she knew more than Harold, who turns out to be one of the last surviving guardians,” she added.
Cheryl sank down into the chair on the outside edge of the table, too stunned to speak, and Evelyn took over the breakfast. Nothing was said as she moved the bacon onto a plate and shoveled the scrambled eggs beside them.
She carried the food to the table, lay it out in the middle, and sat down across from Daphne.
“Perhaps now that the food is ready, you’d care to explain to us what you mean so your mother can breathe again?” she said, peering at Daphne over the rims of her glasses.
“You actually met a guardian?” Cheryl asked in a breathless voice.
Daphne nodded, although she didn’t understand her mother’s excitement. “I confess I don’t really know much about them. Are they good people?”
“They used to be one of the strongest species in our world,” Cheryl said, and sat back in her chair, some of her shock wearing off. “The closest comparison I can come up with is that they were like the supernatural Special Forces. If you knew the guardians were after someone, it was best to stay out of their way, because they played by no one else’s rules. They didn’t have to. But a hundred years ago, the demons fought back and wiped them out. If your caretaker survived the battle, he must have been as determined to keep his head down as he was to find his quarry.”
Daphne worked through her mother’s explanation and thought about how Harold had preferred to stay hidden. It was only when she came around asking questions and poking her nose into his affairs that he’d felt ready to take a stand. The man was afraid.
She’d promised him she would include him in her plan to end the curse of Peony House, and now that promise burned in her heart. If the guardians had protected their world for so long, she would give him the chance to regain the status he deserved and complete his final mission.
As Daphne filled her plate, she shared what she’d learned about the Morgrin demons and the possible reason the ghosts were so afraid.
“The poor dears,” Cheryl said, her hand pressed to her chest.
“So what do you intend to do?” Evelyn asked.
Daphne chewed on a mouthful of pancake as she mulled over the question.
“Whatever plan I come up with, I’ll need to follow through soon,” she said. “I’ll bet Charles’s petition to tear down Peony House will be listened to more closely than Laura’s recommendation to preserve it as a heritage site. The hospital is sitting on prime real estate. The city’s been wanting to build those fields up for years.”
Evelyn grunted. “The city always talks about tearing down its beautiful old buildings.”
“If Harold is right,” Daphne continued, “and the Ancowitz family magic is what lures these demons to the hospital —”
“We still don’t know anything about the red magic, I’m afraid,” Cheryl interrupted her to say. “It might just be a lingering power the family inherited over the years.”
Daphne groaned. “That’s disappointing. But hardly my biggest concern right now. I’m worried that the demon will be free to terrorize the entire city if its cage is broken.” Daphne frowned and speared some eggs, thinking of the concerns Allegra had voiced. “Even if it ends up trapped in what remains of the foundation, what will happen to the families living in the houses they build on top of it?”
“Morgrin demon,” Cheryl said, and then repeated the name under her breath a few times as she rose from the table and disappeared from the kitchen.
Daphne looked to her grandmother, and Evelyn raised a shoulder in a half shrug. Benji took the opportunity to jump up on Cheryl’s chair, his long whiskers twitching as he loomed over her plate.
“Don’t you dare,” Evelyn said when he eyed the bacon. He meowed in complaint, then jumped off the chair and bolted out of the room when Cheryl returned with an open book, her mouth screwed up in a grimace of distaste.
“Ugly things,” she said, and set the book on the table next to the plate of bacon.
Daphne reached out and grabbed another strip of meat before turning her attention to the book. The picture showed a familiar blackened and shriveled monster. “Yep, that’s what attacked us.”
Evelyn adjusted her glasses and peered through the bottom half of them to read the description. “Morgrin demon
s fall in the category of spirit-eaters, feeding on energies created from strong emotions. Morgrin demons are territorial and will maintain the same feeding ground even if food sources are low. Primary defenses include claws that can grow to three to four inches in an adult, as well as a paralyzing agent secreted from the tongue. The agent also serves as an adhesive substance to keep the demon attached to its victims during feeding, preventing the victim from escaping. This substance is often left behind on the victims’ mouths, though is rarely seen by those of human blood. As of the early 1800s, Morgrin demons are believed to be extinct, with no record of any sightings within the last hundred years.”
Evelyn shuddered and pushed the book away, while Daphne snorted. “Clearly the author missed a few items in their research, because that’s definitely what’s stalking Peony House.”
Once again, Jack’s face rose up in her mind, and she pictured the white threads sealing his lips closed. She’d believed it was glue, but the memory of how the substance glistened under her flashlight beam made more sense now that she knew it was saliva.
Her stomach churned and she pushed her plate away.
“Does it mention anything in there about how to kill them?” she asked.
Evelyn scanned the page again and shook her head. “I’m afraid not, my dove. I suppose the authors didn’t feel it necessary considering they believed them to be extinct.”
Daphne groaned. “Of course it wouldn’t be so easy.”
“How many do you think you’re dealing with here?” asked Cheryl.
Daphne pushed her hands through her hair. “That’s part of the problem — I have no idea. I know there’s one Morgrin demon in the flesh. Crispy had to have killed Jack. He could be the only one, but there’s also my theory that some of these demons might still exist in the afterlife and be haunting the ghosts at the hospital. In that case, who knows how many there might be. If that is the case, I need to find a way to break the connection between the ghosts and the demons. Allegra says it’s possible that the feeding process wasn’t as smooth as it should have been, and therefore whatever is keeping the victims trapped is also keeping the ghosts trapped.”