The Human Herders

by Michaela Haze

  Henry ran his hand through his hair and tugged it in frustration. His body was rigid with tension. His deep blue eyes darkened, and he licked his bottom lip.

  “I keep making decisions without you?” Henry asked dangerously, he stepped forward until our chests were touching. “Decisions like drinking a phial of Pureblood?”

  I flushed red and my vision clouded in anger. “Well, you fucking left me! You let me drink your blood and then you left.” I struggled to keep the tremor out of my voice.

  “I had to leave!” He replied desperately.

  “Maybe you did.” I shrugged. “But you could have told me why.”

  “I thought we moved past all of that. I thought you had forgiven me?” My daemon whispered, his eyes had flared to a pale ice blue. His pupil was a stark black dot, tracking my every movement as I rubbed my arms uncomfortably. I did not like confrontation. My heart raced a mile a minute, but I couldn’t live like that anymore. The blind little human girl that hung onto the coat tails of an incubus.

  I took a trembling breath. “How can I forgive you, if I don’t know why you left?” A tear spilt from my right eye, and I was determined not to draw attention to it by wiping it away. Instead, I took a hearty swig from the white wine bottle in my hand. I felt a sting of pride that I hadn’t thrown it at Henry’s head. Yet.

  Without a word, I brushed past him and stalked to the living room. Sinking into the black leather sofa, I took another gulp of wine. It was cold, corked and tasted vaguely like vinegar but I didn’t care. I hadn’t drunk in so long, and I welcomed the feeling of warmth that had begun to radiate from my toes and up my body.

  Henry followed me. I schooled my expression to be emotionless, channelling Trix. I didn’t know if it worked or not, so I avoided meeting his eyes.

  “I don’t want to talk about why I left,” Henry said in a carefully measured tone.

  “Can you tell me about how you ‘used’ to be a Pureblood?” I took a deep breath, seeking a middle ground. I tried not to get distracted when I noticed the swirling burgundy smoke of my anger form on the air. Visible energy, with streaks of light, it looked ready to ignite if I stoked the fire.

  I bit the inside of my cheek and turned my gaze to my daemon, refusing to back down.

  “I… I….” He stammered.

  “How is that even possible? You told me that the Purebloods had never been human.” I snarled, taking another deep slug of wine. A stab of anger hit my chest when I noticed the bottle was empty. Without a word, and without any control over my actions I aimed the bottle at Henry’s head. He ducked and caught it without a word, his grip on the glass cylinder was so hard that it exploded into white dust. I flinched and then looked at the carpet. With my luck, I’d step in the glass sparkle dust later and end up walking on crutches for weeks.

  “I have never been human,” Henry admitted. His voice held no inflexion or emotion. “Although, the body I have now is the closest thing to a human that I could possibly be.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “The body you have now?”

  “Sophia,” He pleaded, dusting his hands against his black trousers. I stared down at him. I wasn’t letting him get away without at least giving me some answers.

  “I was a Pureblood, and now I am not.” He said sadly.

  I blinked slowly, my lip curled in frustration. “Getting answers from you is like trying to draw blood from a stone!”

  “I am trying, to be honest with you, Sophia. But it is tough. Can you imagine living millennia where you have no one to answer to? No restrictions at all. To be suddenly forced into a body that cannot connect to any real power…” He breathed, exacerbated. “It’s so stifling.”

  “What happened?” I asked, quietly.

  “There was a Witching.” He admitted. “I did tell you one thing, Lillian.”

  “So she’s real? The woman that changed you?”

  “Actually it was the other way around.” Henry ran his hands over his face and walked over to the patchwork armchair on the other side of the room. He took one look at it and decided to stay standing, he paced to the other end of the room. His movements were slow and measured as if every step was painful. As if all he wanted to do was destroy everything he could get his hands on. I wasn’t frightened. Henry was a concealed maelstrom. I was more likely to act on my violent temper than he was.

  “Lillian was a Witching, in the 1930’s.” He said, refusing to look in my direction as he paced. “She wanted immortality and summoned a Pureblood to help her acquire it.”

  I nodded, silently.

  “That Pureblood, of course, was me.” Henry laughed without humour. “Lillian did not realise that she would lose her connection to her Witching powers when she became a daemon. A human that becomes a daemon, even an Elite, is diluted. When she woke to her new life, having manipulated me, she was furious.”

  “She manipulated you?” I laughed to hide the stab of jealousy in my chest. How could I be jealous over something that had happened decades before I was even born?

  “Lillian cursed me.”

  “She was able to do that?” I asked.

  “She had help.” His eyes darted to the massage table folded in the corner and the table with the tattoo machine. His wordless glance told me all I need to know. Witchings had cursed him.

  “I feed on the emotions of humans, as all daemons do. However, my current existence has a catch—I am burdened by the emotions I consume, forced to feel them. Unlike other daemons. I am cursed with empathy. All of my power is gone, and I am trapped in a body that is forced to feel the fear when I take a life.”

  “Why would you become a hitman then?” I wondered.

  “I do not deserve to feel happiness,” Henry admitted. “Or I didn’t believe that until I met you. You make me selfish.”

  I swallowed the lump in my throat and tried to distract myself from looking at him. I picked at the skin of my thumb and closed my eyes. The sound of the clock on the mantel ticked as the seconds passed.

  “You make me want to be better,” Henry admitted, his voice strained. “You make me feel more than defective and broken.”

  I stood up, unable to contain the tears that rolled down my face. “I’m broken too, Henry.” I sobbed. “You broke me.”

  Henry’s expression was pleading. “And I will do everything in my power to make you whole again.”

  I avoided his eyes. Unable to verbalise the truth in my bones—What if I could never be whole again? What if I was broken for good?

  “Could Trix help you find a cure to this curse of yours?” I asked hesitantly.

  “Perhaps.” He admitted, rubbing his jaw line. “However, I wouldn’t want it.”

  “Why not?” My voice inched up an octave.

  “I don’t need my power. I have you.”

  We laid on my futon, on top of the bed sheets and fully clothed. My head rested on Henry’s chest, I focused on my own heartbeat as no sound came from his hard and cold ribcage. His lungs filled, but the motion seemed more about scenting the air than breathing. His nose buried in my mess of hair. I closed my eyes, content.

  A vibrating text alert broke me from my peaceful reverie. I felt the pulses of Henry’s phone against my stomach, where I was pressed against him. Groaning, I rolled off to allow him to pick it up. I still hadn’t bothered to get a phone and mentally added it to my list of things to do.

  Henry fumbled through his pocket for his phone as I moved off the bed and padded into the kitchen to find something to eat. I chanced a look back at him and his brow furrowed in concentration.

  I picked up an apple from the kitchen and walked into the living room. Trix sat on the floor with her legs crossed, like the good old days, with a mug of steaming coffee in her clasped hands.

  A book lay open at her feet, she glanced at me and nodded but didn’t say a word.

  My teeth popped the skin of the apple and juice dripped down my chin. I wiped it off with the back of my hand.

  “What ya reading?” I a
sked around a bite of the apple.

  “Just about daemons and shit. Not much in here about any Purebloods, though.” She shrugged and closed the book, kicking it away.

  “Find anything interesting?”

  “Did you know that incubi and succubae can give someone an orgasm just by staring at them?” Trix tilted her head and put her finger to her bottom lip in thought.

  “I heard about that from somewhere,” I admitted. “But, truth be told, the only thing I’ve ever really experienced with daemons is their overwhelming desire to murder me.”

  “Not that daemon.” Trix waggled her eyebrows and tilted her head in the direction of my bedroom.

  As if he had been summoned, Henry appeared in the doorway in a cloud of grey smoke. I jumped out of my skin and swore. Trix didn’t move an inch, but raised her eyebrow as if to say What the fuck are you doing now?

  I scratched the skin on the top of my shoulders, my arms were wrapped tightly around my chest. Henry’s face was a mask of stoicism, but I could feel the pulsation of annoyance. That was new. I hadn’t been able to gauge his emotions before.

  “I want to go out,” I told him. “I’ve been Shrouded, so I don’t think I have to hide anymore.”

  Trix nodded thoughtfully and took a sip of her coffee. My throat ran dry, and I was insanely jealous of her hot drink for a second. I held myself back from standing up and stealing it from her.

  “William Kain is coming here,” Henry said, his eyes scoured mine for a clue as to my emotions. I didn’t know what to feel but I shrugged and sunk deeper into the armchair. I distracted myself by watching the floating dust motes coming from Trix. She never gave off much emotion, but at the mention of William Kain, the energy around her flared blue. She hadn’t even looked up from her coffee.

  “You know William Kain?” I guessed.

  “Fucking twat.” She muttered.

  Henry looked at both of us and shook his head to himself as if to say, children. I caught his look and narrowed my eyes. He had the decency to look sheepish.

  Another text alert vibrated in Henry’s pocket just as the pebbled glass on the front door rattled as someone knocked on it, hard. My heart leapt to my chest, and my fingernails dug into my palms. I focused on Trix instead to overcome the urge to jump out of the window.

  “How’d you know him?” I asked.

  “I’m his tattooist.” She drawled. Standing up without a word, she went to the console and began to rummage around in the draws. Someone cleared their throat in the doorway. William hadn’t changed since I had seen him last. His raven black hair was cropped close to his head; his arms were covered in Japanese flowers and dragons in a mixture of blacks and reds. The only difference was that his band t-shirt had been replaced by a t-shirt that had the words ‘Normal people scare me,’ across the front. I blinked and couldn’t decide how to greet him.

  I stood up without a word and walked towards him as if to give him a hug. His full pink lips pulled into a pearly white smug smile as he opened his arms to return the hug. His motives were a power play. As I had intended from the second that I stood up, I slapped him. The sound of my palm hitting his cheek rang out into the air. Trix’s energy turned a blush pink, which could only indicate that she was delighted at my actions.

  William’s head had turned brutally to the side, he licked his top teeth and spat a drop of blood onto the carpet. Well, he obviously had no respect for our vintage seventies shag floor.

  “What was that for?” William asked, genuinely confused.

  “For coming to my house in the middle of the night and screaming at me.” I shrugged with one shoulder to look untroubled. “And for making Henry leave.”

  “That was years ago.” William’s eyes rolled from mine to Henry’s. “I didn’t make anyone do anything.” He said stiffly.

  Trix continued to rummage through the drawers in the corner, seemingly uncaring to our discussion. She pulled something out and slammed the cupboard shut. The Witching walked towards William, her hips swayed as she did so. Trix was short, but she had curves in all the right places. Wordlessly, she handed what she had been searching for over to the Elite daemon. He looked down and his face contorted from confusion to amusement.

  Trix had a Mona Lisa smile as she picked up her coffee and took another deep sip.

  Curiously got the better of me. “What’s that?” I wondered.

  William unfolded the golden cardboard, but it was Beatrix that spoke. “A Burger King crown for his royal pain in my arse.”

  Laughter bubbled in my chest, and I couldn’t contain it. I hunched over, bent over at the waist as I struggled to breathe. I looked at Henry, tears of mirth in my eyes and saw he was struggling just as hard as I was. After I had finished with my hysterics, William jammed the crown onto his head with a serious expression.

  The raven-haired daemon crossed his arms over his chest and turned to me once I had stopped laughing.

  “You said I made Henry leave, why do you think that?” William murmured.

  “Apart from the fact you turned up in the middle of the night and threatened me, saying I was going to get Henry killed?” I questioned.

  “I had nothing to do with Lillian’s summons,” William said stiffly, he opened his mouth to speak, but when he looked to Henry, my daemon’s face was thunder and wrath. William zipped his lips.

  I sighed, I wasn’t going to get any information on why Henry had left me anytime soon. It was getting harder and harder to trust him. My head filled with buzzing insects and my blood boiled.

  I felt the walls close in. The familiar creeping sensation of an episode caused black to crowd the edges of my vision.

  I turned away from the daemons without a word and continued to my bedroom. Silently, I prayed that Henry hadn’t noticed the flicker of fear in my expression.

  Melanie was back.

  My sister had followed me, silently, since the day I had left the asylum. I ignored her because she wasn’t real, or so the doctors said. She also lied. I couldn’t trust a word out of her mouth.

  I tried not to talk about her. I could at least pretend to be normal on the outside.

  I closed my bedroom door, conscious that the daemons could probably still hear me and that walking away in the middle of the conversation was a remarkably insane thing to do. But I didn’t care.

  I sat on the bed as she hovered over me like a spectre. Melanie’s face looked so like my own, if not for the wider jaw and softer features. Her eyes were violet like mine, and her hair was the same dull chestnut but cut to shoulder length, just like it was the night she had died.

  I stared at her. Willing her to disappear.

  Melanie smirked and brushed her hands against her arms. She always wore the same outfit, because it was the one she had died in. The only difference was that her skin was no longer marred with black veins from a heroin overdose. I grit my teeth, unable to stand it anymore.

  “What the fuck do you want?” I hissed, barely more than a breath.

  Mel laughed like bells. “I have a gift for you.” She winked out of existence as quickly as she had appeared. Thinking about her, seeing her, always left me drained. I walked to the door, unable to stomach the four walls when a metallic glint caught my eye. Sat on top of my chest of drawers, which I could have sworn wasn’t there this morning, was a switchblade knife with a shiny apple red handle.

  I stood up, pulling my coat from the back of my bedroom door. The energy in the room had turned dark and stagnant. I palmed the concealed blade and slid it into the pocket closest to my heart.

  “That’s it!” I shouted to everyone in the flat. “We’re going to get drunk!”

  6.

  Our foursome paraded the streets to the nearest tube station like a motley crew of young adult trouble. Trix and William headed up the front, side by side. Although they were both covered in tattoos, their personalities were on opposite ends of the scale. Trix was deadpan, a short woman with peach coloured hair, compared to William, a black-haired daemon who st
ood at over six foot tall. His emotions passed across his face with ease, each tainted with a sense of amusement. All of William’s words and actions came with a sense of detachment as if he was watching a particularly interesting video game instead of living.

  Henry and I walked together in silence. We didn’t touch, but every so often his fingers would brush mine as we walked, as if seeking permission to take my hand. I markedly ignored him and clenched my fist. I was troubled, and a roiling feeling had settled in my stomach, doubting him. I couldn’t consolidate the actions of a man who loved me enough to mark me as his soulmate with a man that would have sex with me and just leave.

  I shook my head to myself and bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood. I was an adult. I had been through enough in the last years, never mind the last few months, to know that I should have taken the good with the bad. I silently mad a pact with myself to enjoy the time I had because I didn’t know if Henry was going to leave again or if the Purebloods were going to kill me.

  I didn’t need to ask why William had called into the Camden flat to join us for our impromptu drinking session, it was as plain as day. He was here as muscle. Another daemon to protect me from the wrath of Damian.

  Was that what my life had become? Always running from monsters?

  My internal struggles roared inside my head, and I grabbed Henry’s hand and held it tightly. Silent feud be damned, I needed to feel the cold skin of my daemon while I still had the ability to.

  “I know you called William to help protect me against Damian.” I leant over and whispered. I needn’t have bothered trying to be quiet because as soon as I said his name, the black-haired daemon twitched but continued ahead without turning around.

  Henry blinked slowly. “I have no idea what you mean.”

  “Henry, I am Shrouded. At least for now, I am safe.” I said. “Aren’t you curious as to why they haven’t just swooped in and grabbed me. They are monsters, it would be pretty easy.”

  Henry rubbed his chin with his free hand as we continued walking. When we came to a group of tourists outside of Camden Town station, he stepped aside to let me walk through first.