Daemons in the Mist (The Marked Ones Trilogy: Book One)

by Vancil, Alicia Kat

  “Because you’re really cool?” Patrick answered, shrugging.

  17

  Unnatural Selection

  Friday, January 20th

  NUALLA

  After Skye had finished embarrassing the crap out of me, she walked over to us looking rather pleased with herself. My family had spent the last few years teasing me for being dumb enough to date Michael; I wondered just how long they were planning on poking fun at me for Patrick. With the way my luck was going, it was probably going to be for the rest of my life.

  Skye smiled down at Patrick. “Hello, I’m Skye Varris. You must be Patrick Connolly.”

  “Yes, I am,” Patrick answered nervously.

  “Sorry we had to meet like this. Sometimes Nualla doesn’t think about how her actions will affect others,” Skye said, her eyes drifting to me. Which was a polite way of saying I fucked up.

  “I’m not too good at that myself, either,” Patrick admitted as he nervously ran his hand through his hair.

  “So what did your parents say about this?” Skye asked Patrick as she leaned over the table and pulled the ring from under his shirt.

  A bright blush shot across Patrick’s face. “Um, they don’t exactly know,” he admitted, shooting me a panicked look.

  “Probably a good thing, not everyone’s as understanding as I am,” Skye said with a crooked smile. I coughed, and she shot me a sidewise glance.

  “Your club’s really awesome; I mean, not that I’ve really seen a lot of them but…” Patrick said in a rushed, unsteady voice.

  “Why, thank you dear,” Skye said with a huge grin.

  One of the drink girls appeared behind Skye. “Skye, the bartenders want to know what type of drinks they can give out for free.”

  “I’ll be right there Kristin,” Skye said to the girl before turning back to us. “Duty calls,” she said with a smile as she handed Patrick’s Blue Card back to me. She took a few steps away before turning around to point at us. “You four stay out of trouble for the rest of tonight, okay?”

  Shawn looked up from his drink startled. “Does that mean no more drinking?”

  “No Shawn, it means no causing trouble, disrupting my patrons, or other shenanigans that would warrant me calling your parents to haul your asses home.”

  “We’ll be good, Mom,” Nikki promised with a not too reassuring smile.

  “Sure you will,” Skye said as she rolled her eyes at us and turned to walk away.

  “Did she just seriously say shenanigans?” Shawn asked with a snort.

  I turned to Patrick. “Here, put this on before someone decides to kill you or something,” I said, handing Patrick the Blue Card.

  “Um, okay,” Patrick said as he slipped the cord over his neck. He looked at it suspiciously for a while before looking up and asking, “Hey Nualla, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” I answered, taking a sip of my drink.

  “What on earth is a Blue Card, and since when did people specify that they were human to others?”

  I all but choked. Geez he didn’t miss a thing, did he?

  “That would be our cue to go,” Shawn said, grabbing his drink and jumping up.

  “Oh look, I think I see Natalie—” Nikki announced abruptly, following his lead, and the two of them all but bolted from the booth.

  Patrick looked at me questioningly. I held up a finger and took a big gulp of my drink. I knew I was going to have to tell him everything, but I just couldn’t find a good starting point.

  I looked at him, putting my drink down. “If I promise to answer all of your questions will you agree to start off with something a little easier to answer?”

  “Sure…um, okay your hair then.”

  “My hair?”

  “The dye job always looks so fresh. I dyed mine for an anime convention once, and it didn’t look that nice for long. So do you have to dye it like every week or something?”

  This question was and wasn’t easy to answer at the same time. “It’s natural.”

  “Wait, what? How could it possibly be—?”

  “I’ll get to that, so could you pick something else, please?”

  “Okay.” Patrick looked around the club, sipping his drink. Finally, he looked back at me. “Your aunt seems to be taking our news rather well. My parents would probably kill me if I told them—well anything about this, really.”

  “You didn’t see her in the office,” I said, stirring my drink, “she was plenty scary.”

  “Speaking of your family,” Patrick said as he ran his hands down the side of his glass. “When will I get to meet the rest of them?”

  “Soon,” I answered, still idly stirring my drink.

  “Soon?” he asked, looking at me.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Patrick asked, looking a little confused.

  “Because the dance you asked me to is tomorrow,” I replied before taking a sip of my drink.

  “Oh yeah…” Patrick said, a little dazed.

  “You did remember the dance was tomorrow, right?”

  “Of course, what do you take me for? I’ve wanted to go with you for nearly four years!” And then he realized what he had said, and a deep blush spread across his cheeks. He ran his fingers nervously through his hair and looked up at me. “Sorry, I say a lot of stupid things around you. I’m just kinda nervous, I guess.”

  “It’s okay—so am I,” I said with a shy smile.

  We both sat there sipping on our drinks as the music rushed in to fill the would-be silence. After a while, Patrick finally asked, “Nualla, why are we here?”

  “It’s a safe place. Public, but the wrong ears won’t hear.”

  “Safe? We’re in a freakin’ club,” Patrick snorted, gesturing with his hand out at the dancers. Then his expression changed abruptly. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “That explains a lot…” he said, still staring out at the crowd.

  “What does?” I asked a little exasperated. I had absolutely no idea what he was referring to.

  “What your aunt said earlier,” Patrick replied, looking back at me.

  “You’re not making any sense,” I said, furrowing my brow.

  “I think I know what you are now,” Patrick said, looking at the table.

  I swallowed hard. “You do?”

  He looked up at me. “I think I know, but I’m not sure, so I’d rather you just tell me.”

  I couldn’t keep putting this off, couldn’t keep making him ask different questions because I was afraid to tell him the truth. I took a deep breath and prepared myself for his reaction. “I’m—everyone here aside from you—is a daemon.”

  “I thought so,” Patrick said with a small smirk.

  I stared at him dumbly. “What?” This was not the response I had been expecting; not even slightly. Running and screaming, sure—but not this.

  “I suspected you were, but I didn’t know for sure. That’s why I needed to hear it from you,” he admitted, looking up at me cautiously.

  I stared at him in shock. “How did you…how did you know?” Patrick didn’t answer; just pointed at me. “Me?” I asked confused.

  “Your necklace.”

  “My necklace?” I replied, looking down at it.

  “That’s the goddess Daenara, sometimes mistaken as the Egyptian goddess Hathor. The symbolism looks Egyptian, but the inscription around the outside is in Daemotic. It reads, ‘May the stars protect us.’ You rub it when you’re worried or nervous because it’s supposed to protect against evil and bring you good luck.”

  I sat there gaping at him; letting what he had just said sink in before I asked, “How could you possibly know that?”

  “You give yourself away in a thousand diffe
rent ways each day; it was just a matter of putting the pieces together. Once I knew what that necklace meant, I just let the internet lead me around until I found the truth.”

  “Are we—am I that obvious?” I asked, more than a little startled.

  “No, probably not to someone who doesn’t have a nearly eidetic memory.”

  “Which you have?”

  “Which I have,” he confirmed like he had just admitted some grievous sin.

  I let the air out of my lungs I hadn’t noticed that I had been holding.

  “So what are you exactly?” Patrick asked carefully.

  “Huh?”

  “The internet can only take you so far. Most of it is speculative or referencing thousand-year-old texts. And there are different interpretations of daemons. The Greeks, the Egyptians, the Christians, they all had different versions.”

  I had to shake my head to clear it before answering. The conversation had taken a completely different direction than I had expected. “Oh. Um…the Greeks hit the mark closest. There are two types.”

  “The Kalodaemons and the Kakodaemons; the good and the bad,” Patrick said simply as if it was just common knowledge.

  “Yeah…” I looked at him questioningly.

  “Wikipedia,” he said with a small smile.

  “You know you can’t trust everything you read on the internet, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s why I’m checking the source,” Patrick answered as he flashed me a huge grin.

  “So yeah good and bad; we Kalodaemons are kind of like angels, and the Kakodaemons are what you would normally think of as demons. We’re like minor deities, much more powerful than humans, but not gods either. We can influence the humans around us, what they feel, what they see.”

  Patrick sat back with his arms folded. “If you daemons are so much more powerful than humans, why hide? Why aren’t you ruling us all?”

  I knew this question would come up. Funny, I had asked the same thing as a child. And so I decided to use the explanation my dad had used. “Think about it like a hunting party.”

  “Excuse me?” Patrick asked, raising his eyebrows.

  “Just go with me on this one, okay.” Patrick nodded, and I continued. “Though the bear, stag, and lion may be more powerful than a human in one-on-one combat, the creature stands no real chance when vastly outnumbered. Basically, you humans vastly outnumber us even though our race most likely predates yours.”

  “Oh, well I guess that makes sense.”

  I looked at him curiously. “You know, you’re taking this rather calmly.”

  “Well I mostly got over my hysteria at home,” Patrick admitted as he ran his hand through his hair.

  “Ah ha,” I said, raising an eyebrow.

  “But apparently not all my stupidity,” Patrick groaned, covering his face with his hand. There was another long pause before he spoke again. “So are you immortal?”

  Gee how to answer this one. “Kinda—well not exactly. We do die; we just live longer since we age much slower than you. Also most human means can’t kill us.”

  “What can?”

  “Drowning, dismemberment, starvation. Fire, but not so much the flames as the smoke; our bodies are considerably tougher than yours, but we need to breathe same as you. And then there’s our kryptonite.”

  “Which is?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Titanium.” I shuddered just saying the word.

  “Really? I thought it would be something weird like garlic or silver bullets.”

  “It’s not funny, Patrick. We’re allergic to it. If the skin is broken with a titanium blade or bullet, the skin will never stop bleeding, never close up, or heal. If ingested, it’s instant death. If we even touch it, we get a chemical burn.” And then a horrible thought crossed my mind. “Why are you so interested in what can harm us?”

  “Because I want to know what I have to protect you from,” Patrick answered, leaning forward.

  “You’re worried about protecting me?” I had to smile at this.

  Patrick looked down at his hands. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.” He looked up into my eyes. “You’re…very important to me,” he stated in an odd voice.

  I played nervously with the ring hanging from my necklace. What had I been to this boy? I had just met him, but he already seemed deeply attached to me. If he had been a daemon, I would have thought I was his One. But since he wasn’t, it must have just been a him thing.

  Patrick looked at me as I continued to play with the ring. “That holds a special power over you doesn’t it?”

  “Kalodaemons don’t love like humans; we choose our mates for life.”

  “Don’t you have divorce? What if you…what if you fall in love with someone else?”

  I looked down. “Even if we did—we can’t choose another unless our mate dies.”

  “Oh, so kinda like penguins.”

  I looked up at Patrick, raising an eyebrow. “Did you just compare me to a flightless arctic bird?”

  “Yeah..sorry,” Patrick answered, looking down at his drink.

  “No it’s okay, I like penguins; they’re cute,” I said, with a crooked smile.

  Patrick was silent again; nervously stirring his drink. I was secretly hoping he wouldn’t ask if I loved him. It wasn’t that I didn’t think I ever could; it was just I wasn’t sure what I felt yet. But thankfully he asked something completely different. Either he was thinking it and was afraid to ask, or it hadn’t crossed his mind. “Most of you choose other daemons, don’t you?” he asked, looking back at me.

  “Yes most do, but some choose humans,” I answered quietly. “Skye did.”

  “She did?” Patrick sat up straighter and looked around. “Do I get to meet him too?”

  “No. He—died.”

  “Oh—how?” Patrick asked cautiously.

  I cringed; I hadn’t wanted to tell Patrick this until much later in the night. Preferably after he had had a few more drinks. “His body rejected the retrovirus. He died instead of becoming a daemon. It’s not common, but it does happen.”

  Patrick sat bolt upright. “Wait, what virus?”

  I looked down at the table. “Remember how I said not sleeping with me was a good thing?”

  “Yeah?” Patrick said slowly.

  “Well um—if I sleep with you, you will become one of us,” I confessed, still not meeting his eyes. I could feel the blush creeping across my cheeks.

  “How exactly?”

  I swallowed hard. “We carry a retrovirus in our blood. It re-encrypts your DNA, so you become a daemon.”

  “Wait, so daemons are a disease?”

  “In the very broadest of terms—yes.”

  “Are there any side effects other than death?”

  “No, and death isn’t very common. Some people’s bodies just contain a self-destruct button. Instead of letting your DNA be rewritten, it just kills you.”

  “Sounds—fun,” Patrick said with a grimace. “Is it a quick death?”

  “Unfortunately no, it isn’t,” I answered reluctantly. “Once passed to your body, it will take three to five days for it to rewrite your DNA. I’ve heard it’s a very painful process; like being on fire from the inside out.”

  “Now those descriptions for demons and fiery hell make a lot more sense,” Patrick said with a wry smile.

  “Yeah, funny that,” I said nervously.

  Patrick fell silent again and took a few large gulps of his drink, finishing it off. I finished mine as I flagged down one of the passing drink girls to get us another round.

  When the next set of drinks arrived Patrick finally asked, “So why are you telling me all your secrets? How do you know I’ll decide to become one of you?”

  “One, I pr
omised I would if you married me. You did, so I’m keeping my promise,” I answered holding up one finger. “Two, I made the assumption that you would like to keep on living,” I said, holding up a second finger.

  “Wouldn’t everyone?” Patrick asked with an ironic smile.

  “Since I cannot prove without a doubt to the Grand Council that I didn’t tell you our secrets last Friday, that leaves you with only two choices. Either you refuse to become a daemon and they execute you, or you become one of us and either die in the daemonification process, or we live happily ever after.” I took a long pause studying his face. “You have no idea how sorry I am about all this.”

  “I’m not. Living happily ever after with you sounds a lot better than anything I could have hoped for in life.”

  “So you’ve decided?” I asked slowly.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No, not really. But you still have to make it—formally.”

  “What?” Patrick asked, wide-eyed.

  “We have to go before the Grand Council on Sunday, and you have to speak your intent to become a daemon.”

  “Seriously?” Patrick asked in a choked voice.

  I nervously fiddled with my necklace. “Yeah, I just found out about that myself on Wednesday. I thought I could just file the license and get you a Blue Card, but no such luck.”

  “Blue Card, isn’t that that thing your aunt was talking about?”

  “Yeah, that pass you’re wearing tells daemons not to kill you,” I answered, pointing at the Blue Card hanging from his neck.

  “Oh.” He picked it up and squinted at it. “Is that what it says?”

  “You won’t be able to read it, so don’t even bother. It’s inscribed in a spectrum only daemons can see.”

  “Oh—cool,” Patrick said, staring at it with far more interest. “So do people always have to get these?”

  “No, they were originally intended for the children of Kalodaemons that were born human.”

  Patrick looked back up at me quickly. “That can happen?”