The Demon Inside Me

by Christopher Nelson

  "Or maybe they're on the way," I suggested.

  For once, she didn't argue with me, just walked over to the opposite side of the circle and pricked her finger again. She pressed her blood into another two runes, then stepped back. "I should be done in a minute."

  "You don't have a minute!" Kibs phased through the ceiling. "Zay, get the fuck out. Now. They're on the way."

  "Who?" I asked.

  "I can't tell you that!" Kibs' wings fluttered and he dove toward me. I was a tough guy, but forty pounds of imp slamming into your chest hurts, no matter how tough you are. "I figured out who it was right around the time they started moving, and they're moving fast, and they're pissed."

  "Rank, Kibs!"

  He grabbed my collar and hauled my face closer to his, his feet braced on my belt. "A Duke," he snarled. "It's a fucking Duke. You are so far over your head, your family is going to be lucky to find any pieces of you."

  "Another thirty seconds," Tink said.

  "As for you, sweetcheeks, you better be worth it. I'm getting the hell out of here. My head is not going on the line with yours." Kibs let go of my shirt and phased before he hit the floor. I took a deep breath and started converting blood back to ichor. While there was no way I'd be able to take any demon on in a fair fight, let alone a Duke, I could at least be prepared.

  All my preparation was for naught. I felt him crash through the first floor door, sensed his presence, his heavy tread on the floor. The building trembled. "Tink, we've got to leave."

  "Ten seconds!"

  Sweat beaded on my forehead. "He's in the building."

  "Five!"

  There was a crash from below. I could feel him getting closer, inevitable doom, destruction implicit in every step he took. The taint in the room intensified. No wonder it had affected me so much. "Tink!"

  "Got it. Let's go!"

  She took a step toward the doorway. I grabbed her arm. "He's on the second floor already, starting up the stairs."

  "I don't suppose you can hold him off while I escape, can you?"

  I squeezed her arm, hard enough to make her hiss. "How many stairwells did you see on the way up here?"

  "Two."

  "And how many of them were unlocked?"

  "Shit."

  The presence grew. My heart hammered, pumping a volatile mix of ichor and blood through me. His trap was encouraging me to lose control, which would kill us just as quickly as facing him head on. I looked at Tink. She had her knife in one hand, her other hand clenched in a fist. Not much help there.

  I looked at the back of the room. One window, covered with a sheet of plywood from the inside. One chance. "Give me the knife."

  "Why? Going to kill yourself before he gets here?"

  I didn't argue with the stubborn bitch, just grabbed the blade and squeezed. The edge cut into my palm, blood and ichor immediately welling up. The presence paused, sensing my nature. I was screwed. As far as I knew, I was the only halfblood within fifty miles. This was as good as shouting my name. The ichor started to smoke and I turned that palm toward the window. "Don't look this way," I told her, and summoned hellfire.

  Anything hellfire strikes will be consumed, without mercy. It was energetic, destructive, and lots of fun to play with. I called up a little too much.

  The window and most of the wall blew out, the explosion loud and clear in the quiet night. Tink instinctively crouched. I forced ichor to circulate through various parts of my body, changing myself. My skin rippled and formed demonic leather, my bones stiffened and grew jagged. It was as close to a full transformation as I was willing to go, considering the circumstances. The presence started moving toward us again. I grabbed her and cradled her in my arms. "Hold on," I said, and charged out through the smoking hole.

  She shrieked as we plummeted from the third floor. I continued to harden my skin and bones. A fall from the third story was survivable, even for a normal human, but it would still hurt like hell. I spun slightly to make sure that she'd land on top of me if I failed to keep my balance. Even as we fell, I saw the presence enter the room. Red eyes, glowing in the smoky darkness, tracked us as we fell. If he came after us, we'd be in all sorts of trouble. I summoned up another burst of hellfire, even larger than the last, and sent it into the second floor, aiming for the room right below him.

  My plan was to collapse the room, maybe part of the building. I took out one of the load-bearing walls, and my hellfire ate into the floor and ceiling around it. It took only seconds for that part to burn, and then my hellfire ate into another load-bearing column. The entire building moaned as if in agony. "Oops."

  "Oops what?" she screamed in my ear just before we hit the ground. My legs groaned just like the building, but I flexed and tried to dig in. Tink was small, but still enough to throw my balance off. I toppled backwards and her weight knocked the wind out of me, maybe cracked a rib or two. It took me a moment to catch my breath, by which time she was slapping my face and screaming something at me. None of her words made any sense to me, most likely because my attention was focused on the collapsing building.

  I scrambled to my feet and we sprinted for the fence. Behind us, concrete cracked like gunshots. Lights started coming on all around us. Climbing the fence would take too long and expose us too much. I sprinted ahead of her and tossed another tiny spark of hellfire ahead of us. The fence burst and melted, opening a gap. I ducked through, ignoring the snags and cuts, then bent it open as best I could for her. She raced through behind me, I let go, and we ran for the darkest area we could find.

  In the shadow of a rundown house, hidden by a poorly maintained fence, we stopped to catch our breath. I slowly undid my partial transformation, wincing as what were tiny cuts on my demonic skin started to bleed. I had at least two cracked ribs, plus something wrong with my left leg. I hoped it was just a sprain.

  "What the hell were you thinking, demon?" she snapped at me.

  "I was thinking how nice it would be to live through tonight," I snapped right back. "With your delightful company, of course. If you're upset, maybe you should go back there and explain the situation to that demon. I'm sure he'll be willing to listen to you."

  "You brought the entire building down!"

  "I was trying to save your ass, girl!"

  "You monster. What if there had been people there?"

  I wanted nothing more than to punch her out, right there. I would have, if I had enough strength left to move. My ichor was almost completely burned, and I was having a hard time staying awake due to all the blood loss. "I'm a halfblood. Not a demon. Not a monster."

  "There's no difference." Her breathing was already stable. Damn her. I was the one on the verge of passing out here, she was unscathed, and she was bitching at me?

  "Like hell, no difference."

  "Demon, don't give me that bullshit. You all use your power for your own gain, or your own sick amusement. Like what you just did, like what that bastard did to Vostok. Like what I saw thirteen years ago."

  What she saw? My vision started to swim and fade. I couldn't convert blood fast enough. "Monsters use their power for themselves," I managed. "Not for others." Her surprised expression was the last thing I saw before I passed out.

  Chapter Four

  I woke in my own bed with no idea how I had gotten there. It wasn't the first time. During many of the previous occurrences, I had found a delicious young lady in bed with me. Wonderful surprises. This time, my bed was empty, except for myself. No clothes littered the floor, chair, and dresser except for mine. I sighed, disappointed.

  Then I remembered.

  I bounced out of bed, still fully dressed from the night before, my clothes still ripped and stained. I threw the bathroom door open. Tink had one towel wrapped around her and was in the process of drying her hair with another. Her gaze locked on me and turned to ice. "Can I help you?"

  "When did I give you permission to use my towels? I'll have to confiscate-"

  "Get out." She still had her knife, even when s
he was taking a shower. I got out.

  I made coffee and wondered what the hell was going on. It was morning, but I was stiff and tired, more than I'd expect to be, even with my injuries. The scratches and bruises seemed healed, also more than expected. Shit. I walked back to my bedroom while the coffee brewed, changed my clothes, and checked my phone for messages.

  When I walked back to the kitchen, she was in there, watching the coffee. Her hair was still damp, sticking to the back of her shirt. "I see you're feeling better," she said.

  "You let me sleep for a day and a half?"

  "It wasn't a question of letting you," she said. "I tried to wake you up. I even set your alarm clock and put it next to your head. You didn't even flinch."

  That demon knew who we were. He had to. Why hadn't he chased us down and killed us? Maybe I had hurt him more than expected with the building collapse. Maybe he had something else planned. The former was unlikely. "I'm surprised to find myself still alive. What happened?"

  She shrugged. "You passed out. I dragged you back to your car, found your keys, and drove you home. Carried you upstairs, threw you in bed, slept on your couch. Next day, I went home for a bit, changed my clothes, came back and made some phone calls, browsed the internet, talked to Kibs, and waited for you to wake up."

  I rubbed my forehead. She passed me my coffee mug and we returned to my living room. Her notes covered the coffee table, pages of drawings and text. I shuffled some aside to put my mug down. "So that demon didn't come after us. Assume for the moment that I didn't hurt him enough to scare him off. Why are we still alive?"

  "He didn't know where to find us?"

  "No, he sensed me. It'd be trivial for him to track me down."

  "He either had better things to do, or he didn't think we were worth his time," she said. Both of those were possible. The former scared me more than the latter. "Did you recognize him at all? Kibs said he was a Duke. That's high up, isn't it?"

  "Very high up," I said. "There aren't many demons holding that rank. I don't know most of them. Hell, I don't even know most of the Dukes of my own House."

  "Your House?"

  "House Asmodeus." I watched her shuffle papers and pull out a fresh sheet. "You're going to take notes on my lineage? Don't you learn this stuff in Demon Hunting 101?"

  "Not exactly," she said. "Tell me more."

  I leaned back on the couch. "There are seven Houses, each named after an important historical figure, later associated with one of the classical deadly sins. They are Lucifer, Mammon, Asmodeus, Leviathan, Belphagor, Beelzebub, and Amon. The lines have intermixed over the years, so they aren't strictly characterized by those associations anymore."

  "And you're part of House Asmodeus? What's the associated sin?"

  "Lust."

  "Color me surprised."

  I stuck my tongue out at her. "Halfbloods aren't usually involved with their Houses. We're too weak to play the typical power games, so they usually leave us alone, unless there's a need for a disposable pawn. It's usually easier for them to just delegate tasks to a lower ranked full blooded demon, but sometimes they ask us, especially if it involves human society, since most of us integrate better than full blooded demons."

  "So what about the ranks?"

  I shrugged. "Demonic society is a meritocracy. If you have the ability, you seize the power and the rank to go with it. Each House had their own ranks, but a few hundred years ago, the Houses all agreed to use the same rank system, based loosely on European nobility. Made them sound more legitimate when dealing with humans."

  "Do you do things like fight to the death to see who's stronger?"

  "What? No! Killing someone means you're losing potential future allies. Generally, by the time there's a power vacuum, everyone knows who's going to move into it. Sometimes it's as easy as a lower ranked demon proclaiming that he is more capable than one above him, then making his case. Sometimes there's a campaign to discredit and weaken a rival for decades."

  She looked up from her note scribbling. "So there's a lot of intra-House conflict?"

  "Of course there is. Everyone looks for more power, maybe to overcome a rival, maybe to settle a grudge, maybe to direct the House in a direction where their interests lie. But remember, demons live for a long time, Tink. They don't have the same sort of time pressure as humans. There's always time enough."

  "What about conflict between the Houses? Are there leadership issues?"

  "The Houses all operate independently. There's no central authority, just a council."

  "Bullshit."

  "No shit," I said. The central authority over demons had died around five hundred years ago. Humans weren't supposed to know about those events.

  "So what does Duke mean in terms of power?"

  "It means that he's way up there. Most Houses won't even consider you for the rank unless you've been a noble for a century or more, and there's only a dozen or so per House. There are only two ranks higher than Duke. Prince or Princess is the next step up, and then the leader of the House, the High Prince."

  Her scribbling grew frantic. "What about you?"

  "What about me?"

  "What would your rank be?"

  "I'm a halfblood. I don't have a rank."

  "I'm not asking you what your rank is, I'm asking what it would be. If you faced off with demons and used all your power, how would it turn out?"

  I sighed. "Unranked. I might be able to beat the weakest demons if I was lucky, smart, and got the jump on them."

  She noted that, circled it, and put her pen down. "Good to know."

  "So what did you talk with Kibs about?" She froze in the process of lifting her mug of coffee. Her hand twitched and I made my best guess. "You stripped for him, didn't you? You did it in my apartment, while I was asleep?" She didn't meet my eyes. Her cheeks burned. "I'm outraged. I was totally planning on peeking."

  "Didn't you get a good enough look a few minutes ago?"

  "No," I said. "I was planning on peeking. Just peeking. I know how disgusting Kibs can be. I don't think I'd have been able to watch the whole show."

  She growled, deep in the back of her throat. It was almost cute. "I will never offer that little shit anything of the sort, ever again. Never. I'd rather die."

  "You know he's going to tell all his co-workers, right?" Her eyes widened. I grinned. "He's going to tell them everything about you, in detail. You're going to be very popular if you ever need legal work done through the Consortium. You're lucky he doesn't know how to work a camera."

  Her mouth moved soundlessly for a few moments. If her face had turned any redder, she would have popped a few blood vessels. She put her mug down, jumped to her feet, and stalked off to the kitchen. I held back a laugh. The girl was all too human from time to time.

  I flicked through her notes while waiting for her to recover her composure. She had noted everything she had learned that night, both about the mage and the demon. There was a runic drawing on one sheet, labeled as the mage's signature. Another sheet noted the pentagram drawn on the floor, while another one noted all of the aspects of the demon that she had seen. That one was blessedly short.

  Another paper noted everything she had observed about me. She had noted my skin changing, my increased physical strength, speed, and durability. She had also noted my hellfire. That had drawn the most curiosity. She hadn't seen me blast the back wall open, but she had seen me wreck the building and the fence. "Swirling yellow-green balls of flame," she had written. "He can control the size and direction. Does he need to have ichor open to the air to use that? If so, why can he do other things without bleeding?"

  I looked toward the kitchen. "It's because to physically affect the outside world, I need to expose ichor to the outside world."

  "What?" She looked around the corner and saw me looking at her notes. "So why can't you heal yourself from the inside out? What about possession?"

  "I could, but it would heal from the inside out, instead of the outside in. Affecting someone's mi
nd needs internal power." I shrugged. "You change something physical, you need to expose ichor and burn it. You change something mental, like projecting possession, you burn it inside and push it outwards. You transform your body, you force ichor to that body part. Don't ask me why it works the way it does."

  She started to ask me something else, but her phone rang. The ringtone was something soft, melodic, almost soothing. I snickered. She scowled and turned her back on me. "This is Anna. Ok. When? All right, I'll be there as soon as I can, with a guest. Thanks." She put the phone back in her pocket and looked at me. "Conclave emergency meeting," she said.

  She had said that she had made some phone calls. This was probably the result. "I assume I'm your guest."

  "Yes. I'll need to bind your powers."

  "Why?" As if I'd let her in the first place. As if she could.

  "You're dangerous. In theory."

  "So are you. In theory."

  Her scowl darkened. "You're a demon. You're the enemy. If you're not bound, they'll kill you, and probably me too."

  "Tough shit. I'm not walking around with my power bound, especially not with a Duke in the area. Your conclave is significantly less scary."

  She pressed her fingertips to her temples. "I wish you were wrong about that. Fine. When we get there, I'll put you in a rune that will bind your power while you're within it. You can freely walk in, and walk out. It's just that they'll kill you if you walk out."

  "That's fair enough." I didn't know if human magic could actually bind me. It'd be an interesting experiment. "When and where?"

  "In thirty minutes. About an hour from here."

  "So we're going to be late."

  She grinned. "Nothing ever starts on time."

  We spent most of the drive in silence, except when Tink was issuing directions, commanding me to pass some slow-ass old driver, or bitching about how cautious a driver she thought I was. The rest of the time, she sharpened her knife. I gritted my teeth and entertained thoughts of getting the car t-boned on the passenger side. It would be an accident, of course. Accidents happen. Lucky accidents that release unlucky people from contracts.