Monster

by Yolanda Olson

  Cody looked at me questioningly. If I answered him truthfully he wouldn't believe me. If I lied, he'd be furious and never trust me again. I stood there silently and watched his demon surface. He wasn't going to be much with words now, so only the only clues I'd have would be his movements.

  “Of course, if you can give her those lost memories back, then neither of you will need me. So go ahead. Kill me,” she said with a maniacal giggle.

  I watched him carefully. His eyes were still showing signs of demonic possession but his face was showing signs of doubt in what he should do.

  “Know what I think?” Paige asked. When neither of us answered, she continued. “I think he's scared. I think he's not sure of what to do right now and it bothers him. If he kills me, he'll fix one problem for you, but cause another one. This is fun. I wonder what's going to happen next!”

  Letting out a long, defeated sigh, he let her go. She giggled louder and turned to face him. His eyes were still devilish so I could tell that he didn’t trust her.

  “Come here, Cody,” I said holding out a hand to him.

  He whipped his head in my direction and slowly walked toward me, keeping his eyes on Paige. When he touched my hand, it was so cold that I almost pulled away. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close to me. I wasn’t sure if the demon was capable of affection but I was going to try it.

  I closed my eyes and sighed happily when put his head on my shoulder and rubbed my back with his hands. I guess it was capable after all.

  “How sweet,” she said mockingly. “The dead and the damned have fallen in love with each other.”

  Cody’s body went rigid. He pushed me away and turned to face Paige. I’ve seen the demon angry before but I’d never seen his eyes blazing with the hatred of a thousand hells.

  I blinked and Cody had Paige by the throat. Obviously her remark had either stung or angered him.

  “Do not speak of her in that manner,” he said in a low growl.

  My body shivered. So that’s why he didn’t talk when he was possessed. He sounded like a scholar that was riddled with the world’s monstrous, deep voice. It was actually scary.

  “Or what? You’ll kill me? Like I said, Finnegan needs ...”

  Her hands flew to her throat. He applied pressure, cutting off her air supply and suffocating her.

  “She doesn’t need you,” he said in a gravelly whisper.

  I watched in frozen horror as he continued to squeeze his hand tighter and tighter. Her eyes were bulging and her face was turning a scary shade of purple.

  If she’s possessed, why doesn’t she fight back? I wondered to myself. I have to help her.

  Taking a deep breath, I mustered all the courage I had inside of me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Charlie, Kae, and Remy coming around the corner of the house. I knew they would think me crazy for what I was about to do.

  “Cody?” I said.

  He turned to look at me. That was all that I needed. I removed my jacket slowly and gave him a seductive grin. I ran a hand down my stomach and lifted my tank top a little to show some of my skin. I signaled him over with my finger.

  At first he looked uncertain. Then he looked at Paige and back to me. He’s going to hate me for this, I thought unhappily. I turned around slowly, running a hand up and down my thigh. I gave him an over the shoulder look and winked at him.

  It worked. He let go of Paige and made his way over to me. Cody was taken over by lust. When he got to me he wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me tightly to him. His breathing was labored and he kissed my neck. I was too busy looking over his shoulder at Paige to care about what was happening. It only took her a few seconds to restore the air in her lungs. I felt jealous because I knew that had to be the devil in her that helped her. She got to her feet and looked at us.

  “Paige, run!” I shouted.

  Cody stopped and pulled back to look at me. Now he knew what I had been up too. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or if he was hurt at being used the way I just used him. I didn’t care right now to be honest. I needed Paige to survive so I could give her my own special brand of interrogation later.

  “You tricked me?” he asked in his normal voice.

  “Yes. I’m sorry. I need her alive,” I replied looking down.

  “Dolly, why would you do that? You know how badly I’ve wanted to ... You know that I ... You could’ve just told me to let her go,” he said angrily.

  I took a step back. His eyes were normal but I was still weary. Cody had a really nasty side when he was angry. I’d seen it and I didn’t want to be on the receiving end of it, even though I know he’d never hurt me.

  “Would you have listened?” I looked over his shoulder again.

  Good, she was gone.

  “Yes!” he shouted throwing his hands up in exasperation.

  “Look I’m not trying to get in this, but with as hard headed as you are, and those horse blinders that seem to be permanently attached to the sides of your head when it comes to Finn, you know you wouldn’t have listened,” Charlie said.

  “I wasn’t talking to you!” he said in a shout that seemed to split the air.

  Everyone took a step back. Charlie actually looked a little nervous. Remy’s hand rested on her whip and Kaeden was looking at me uncertainly. I shook my head slightly.

  “Cody calm down,” I said.

  “No! That was a real evil thing to do to me! I would’ve listened to you. I would’ve let her go,” he shouted.

  “Then why didn’t you let her go when she told you I needed her help?” I screamed back.

  “Because demons lie,” he said emphasizing the last word.

  “Exactly,” I said crossing my arms over my chest and staring at him.

  He scoffed. He looked at the three that had been watching us then back at me again. I reached down and grabbed my jacket from the ground. I shook off the dirt and debris from it and slid it back on.

  I looked at Cody again and saw that he was looking over my shoulder with a smirk. I didn’t turn my head. I wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking at but I forced myself not to look. After all it could be a trick.

  “Lover’s quarrel?”

  I turned around and saw Paige hanging upside down by her legs from the tree that I had climbed down to get to her.

  “Well, since you need her help so bad, I’m going to have a seat and watch this unfold,” Cody said heading to the side of the house. Sitting on one of the solid cellar doors, he crossed his arms behind his head and watched us.

  “Are you a complete idiot?” I asked turning my attention back to her. “I helped you for a reason.”

  “And what’s to say I want to help you? It’s because of you that I’m like this.

  Skiles wanted to make sure that he could still make more of him, so he used me instead of Kendall. Hm. Kendall. I wonder if she’s stopped screaming yet,” she said with a malicious laugh.

  I lost it.

  With one jump I had latched myself onto the tree and scaled it in a matter of seconds. She hadn’t made any attempt to move. It was obvious she thought I wouldn’t hurt her. To be able to stop Kennie’s screams and save her I would torture a saint if need be.

  I crouched and steadied myself on the branch she had used to attach herself to the house. I half crawled, half stepped my way over to her. When I found myself within a foot from her, I stood up and stomped down once on the branch. Hard.

  Realizing what I was doing, she quickly flipped her upper body up toward her legs, to bring herself back up onto the branch.

  I stomped again, harder this time.

  “What are you doing?” she asked in a panic.

  I smiled a grim smile, then with all my might and strength, jumped up into the air and came down so hard on the branch that she fell off and landed with a sickening crack, head first into the hard ground below.

  Carefully, I lowered myself onto the branch and hung there by my arms for a moment, judging the distance to the ground and from where I
was.

  I should be fine.

  I let go and hoped that I would land right. About two feet before I landed on the ground, Kaeden stepped over and caught me. Setting me down gently on the floor he smiled.

  “You can never be too careful.”

  “Thanks,” I said with a relieved laugh.

  I looked over at Cody and dramatically flipped my hair over my head and he laughed. Looks like we were back on good terms, which made me happy again.

  Charlie and Remy were over by Paige. Charlie was crouched down over her and Remy was looking down curiously.

  “Finn, I think she’s dead,” Charlie said not taking her eyes of off Paige.

  “I know she is. Head trauma. Her brain has been damaged. That’s really the only way to kill us,” I said nonchalantly.

  “Really?” I looked at Kaeden who looked shocked by the knowledge. “That’s not something you should share with too many people.”

  I shrugged. The moral of my story was that at the end I would die. Maybe one of them would fly into a blind rage and help me out since now they knew how to kill me.

  “She can stand on top of a mountain and scream it at the top of her lungs if she wants too,” Cody said walking over to us. “No one’s going to kill her. Not while I’m around.”

  Kaeden smiled at him and went over to join Charlie and Remy. He looked back at me curiously, “How do we get rid of the body then?”

  “Burn it. Bury the ashes. Of course I’m guessing but it seems like a good way, don’t you think?”

  “I like it. It’s kind of poetic. Die one death and get two burials,” Cody said.

  He put an arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him. Sometimes I felt like he was my own personal bodyguard. I reached up and held onto his hand, while Remy gathered wood for the pyre they were building.

  “I always wondered what color we burn,” I murmured.

  “What’s that?” Code asked leaning down toward me.

  “Just talking to myself.”

  He chuckled and we watched as Charlie started to rub a couple of sticks together. Her hands moved so swiftly that a fire was burning in no time. She instructed Remy to toss some dry leaves and place them around the kindling.

  Kaeden hoisted Paige’s body up and laid it on the pyre. Charlie looked over at me and waved me over.

  “I figure you should do the honors since it was your kill,” she said holding the small torch out to me.

  I shook my head and handed it to Cody. He pushed it back at me and I shoved it at him again.

  “Can’t do it, kid. Not if I want to stay part angel anyway,” he explained.

  “But you killed the vampires at the fairgrounds,” I replied shoving it at him again.

  “Yeah. Abominations. If I defile a corpse by setting in on fire, I might as well shoot the good half of my soul out of a cannon.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yeah, really,” he said with a laugh.

  “I’ll do it then,” Charlie said coming over and taking the torch. “Who knows where I’m going being what I am,” she said with a grin.

  Pulling her arm back she flung the torch at Paige with all her might and the pile of dried leaves and wood caught quickly, becoming engulfed in an angry consuming flame.

  The smoke was a melancholy shade of purple. There was my answer. Monsters like me burned into purple smoke. As we watched her body turning to ash I watched the smoke go up into the skies. The clouds came together and blotted out the sun. It was almost night now and a mass of clouds formed almost as if to protect the sky from the smoke.

  “Heaven doesn’t want it,” Cody said quietly into my ear. “The clouds are to keep it at bay.”

  “So when I die I know where I’ll be going. One of the few people here that can say that,” I said with a chuckle.

  “No. They don’t want it either. Look at the ashes, they’re being collected on the branches, they should’ve sifted through by now but letting them fall to the Earth would give them the possibility of being transported to Hell.”

  I glanced at the pile and saw that he was right. It looked like the branches had fused together and turned almost into a giant shell to keep her ashes from being scattered on the ground.

  What is going on here??

  “So where would I go?” I asked myself.

  “With me,” he said softly in my ear. He trailed a finger down the side of my face and under my chin. Gently he nudged me chin up to look at him and he kissed me softly on my lips. I lost myself in the kiss. We hadn’t shared a meaningful kiss in so long that I didn’t want it to end. When we finally pulled apart we were both breathing hard and smiling.

  “That is if you want to go with me,” he said with his mischievous grin.

  I laughed and gave him a bear hug. “There’s nowhere else I’d want to be Code.”

  “That’s my girl,” he said with a laugh. “So listen guys. Since we can’t bury the ashes after all, what do you want to do with them?”

  “Why can’t we bury them?” Kaeden asked him.

  “Because if you put those in the ground and any of it trickles down there they’ll be an onslaught of demons coming up to find out who did it. Unlike angels, demons kill indiscriminately and will kill everyone in their way to find out who did it.”

  “Weird,” Charlie said.

  “Not really,” Cody said, “It's just their way to keep balance. See when something is supposed to be dead and it's not, it loses its soul like if it died already, so the battle for the soul is over. Why take the leftovers? No offense, kid.”

  I rolled my eyes. Apparently somewhere out there in the cosmos I was thought of as leftovers. That's a great pick me up.

  “Leftovers are usually the best part of anything I would think,” Kae said pushing his glasses up his nose.

  “Well now that depends. Would you rather have what’s left of a human’s blood or be the first to drain one?” Cody asked.

  “Let’s go with neither. I don’t drink from humans.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No.”

  “Then how do you survive,” Cody asked scratching his head. Clearly he was confused, but then again none of us had explained Kae’s eating habits to him.

  “Unless the answer has some way of helping Finnegan, then I think we should save that discussion for another day, don’t you?”

  Cody inhaled to speak again so I clamped my hand over his mouth. Laughing, he removed my hand from his mouth and gave it a quick kiss. I turned my attention back to the remains of Paige wondering what do to. There was no way I was going to leave a funeral pyre by Kaeden’s house.

  I shrugged off my jacket again and tossed it to the side. I walked over to the charred wood and began to yank the fused pieces apart. Behind me there was complete silence. Either everyone had left or they were all watching me. As if in answer to my silent question, I heard a lone pair footsteps approaching me. I turned slightly to the left and smiled when I saw Charlie crouch next to me and nod.

  Leaning forward, I grabbed onto one of the bigger pieces and pulled with all my might. I fell backward as the thick chunk cracked, slightly giving way then fusing back together. I sat up and looked at it frustrated.

  “That one has a lot of ash,” Charlie said pointing to it.

  I sat there for a moment, wiping the sweat from my brow. Or pretending too anyway. I wasn’t much of a sweater since my glands had shut down.

  “Wait. I’ve got an idea,” I said suddenly sitting up.

  I signaled Charlie over and had her watch what I was going to do. I reached over to one of the branches that had a good amount of Paige’s remains on it, and cracked it open. Almost immediately the angry charred branch snapped shut but not before encasing the ashes deep within it.

  “Wow, that’s pretty cool,” she said. “Alright, let’s do it!”

  It took us longer than just grabbing the branches and tossing them away, but it was done by the time the sun went down. We stood up and gave each other five as we
looked down at the pile of twisted wood. It looked almost evil but definitely scary.

  “Now that we have that part figured out, I have no clue what to do with the branches and trunks,” I said to her laughing.

  “We can take them to Ryker,” Remy said suddenly.

  Charlie and I turned to look at her. Where did the boys go?

  “Why Ryker?” Charlie asked.

  “Because I’m sure he can find a way to get rid of the contained evil. If we burn it on a night of the waning moon, which is tomorrow, we can destroy it,” she explained.

  “So then why can’t we burn it here?” I asked curiously.

  “You don’t have the know-how,” she said with a smile. “That’s not an insult or anything, but we’re gypsy. We do things differently.”

  The three of us chuckled. I glanced around again and then back at Remy, “Any idea where the boys went?”

  She shook her head.

  I shrugged, but secretly I was dying to know where they went. That wasn’t something I’d have to wait long to find out because I heard the sounds of Cody laughing coming from inside the house.

  This is our chance.

  “Guys, come here,” I whispered.

  “Let’s grab the wood and head off to the gypsy camp. I’m not sure how we’ll look walking through town with chunks of burned wood in our arms, but it’s worth a shot.”

  Remy seemed to be mulling over as was Charlie. Then they both grinned at each other and ran toward the pile gathering as much wood as they could carry in their arms. I was right behind them grabbing the last of the pile.

  We tiptoed to the side of the house and around the front. I craned my neck and saw that the door was closed. I turned slightly and nodded at them. Securing the stack in my hands, I took off like a shot. I was pretty sure that Cody and Kaeden wouldn’t know where we were headed and even if they did, they wouldn’t be allowed on gypsy lands.

  I heard Remy and Charlie racing behind me so I knew that they were able to keep up some kind of pace. To be honest, at that point the only thing I was concerned about was making sure that I didn’t drop any pieces of the wood along the way.

  As we ran through the newly darkened streets it dawned on me that I was down to 7 days now officially. Of course I should’ve been counting them as nights, but for some reason it sounded better as days to me. I guess that was the part of me that still wished I were human. My reasons were obviously different but still they were mine and made perfect sense to me.