Confessions of a Demon

by S. L. Wright

  “So it was Ram—Dread’s people felt him when he dropped his shields. Everyone’s talking about him.”

  “Good for them. Is there anything else I can do for you, Savor?”

  “I came here to thank you, Allay, for not ratting me out. You didn’t tell Dread that I’m the one who spilled the beans that you were supposed to run to Glory. I appreciate—” She broke off as a couple approached.

  “It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.” I watched them pass by. “Is that all?”

  Savor shrugged.

  “Then go report back to Dread. I won’t be seeing you again. Good-bye, Savor.”

  I started to shut the window, but she lifted her hand. “Don’t be so quick to assume that, Allay. I have interests uptown, too.”

  It took me a second to realize what she was saying. I mouthed the word, “Glory?”

  Savor nodded, grinning wickedly. I couldn’t believe it. Savor was a double agent, working for Glory, as well as Dread. Savor was Glory’s spy in the Fellowship.

  And to think her pretty butt had been planted on my barstool all this time and I didn’t know it. I had always seen Savor as the bottom of the barrel in Dread’s organization, but maybe that was enough for her to get valuable information for Glory.

  My astonishment showed. “I had no idea.”

  “Not very flattering,” Savor said, and for a moment I saw a glimpse of her favorite persona, Sebastian with his supercilious manners.

  I laughed. “I guess I will be seeing you around. But you still can’t go out with Lolita. You understand?” As soon as I said it, I remembered that the bar wasn’t going to reopen unless I killed a demon tonight.

  I didn’t see how that was going to happen.

  But Savor was too pleased with herself to notice my discomfort. As I closed the window and relocked the gate, I wondered if I had let Savor in, would she have avoided me like Revel and Shock did?

  Even worse, would I have been tempted to consume her?

  My desperate need was burning, really starting to hurt now. Would it become all-consuming? Would I lose my reason and all control, and attack any demon who happened to be nearby? Or would I struggle with this until I died?

  I had a bad feeling I was waiting until I couldn’t help myself, taking the coward’s way out.

  22

  It was getting late and only a few people were around when I ventured out to clean up the broken bottles on the sidewalk. I couldn’t stand looking down at the mess. I would be able to see anyone coming down the block or driving up in a car, and get inside before they arrived.

  I just finished sweeping up the broken bits when I felt Ram approaching. He was unshielded and letting his signature fly free, approaching from downtown.

  My heart began beating faster. I wasn’t afraid. I couldn’t quite identify what I was feeling.

  Then a few seconds later, I felt another signature weaving through, becoming more dominant: Pique’s abrasive signature. He was chasing Ram.

  Straining up on my toes, I tried to see down the block. A dark-haired man veered across the street, right in front of a car. A shout went up as he turned down Second Street, disappearing out of the light of the streetlamps, heading toward the East River.

  Pique came loping after him in one of his nerdy personas. He kept pushing his glasses up on his nose and his long gait was fast. He was highly charged and clearly determined to run Ram down.

  My first thought was that Ram was pulling something on Pique, maybe even luring him past the bar to trick me into taking him. But then Ram wouldn’t have turned away so soon.

  That was when I realized I was wrong. It wasn’t Ram. The signature wasn’t nearly strong enough. It was Mystify.

  Ram’s offspring must have come over the bridge from Brooklyn and had the misfortune to run straight into Pique.

  I remembered what Glory had said about helping our newbie demons, rather than abandoning them to their fate like so many baby turtles running a gauntlet of hungry seagulls. Pique had probably already killed Petrify this week, and he would consume Mystify without hesitation if he got his hands on the poor kid.

  I couldn’t stand there and watch Mystify get slaughtered.

  I ran to catch up with them, passing by a series of ramshackle tenements and a new, glass- fronted condo building that had recently sprouted in a vacant lot.

  I knew it was dangerous, what I was doing. But did it really matter? I had nothing left to lose.

  At the end of the block, I faced the projects. I couldn’t feel either of their signatures. I ran up Avenue D to Fourth, then back down to Houston Street, but nothing but cars and headlights glared in my eyes.

  “Damn!” I was angry at myself for losing them.

  When the light changed, I hurried across the street into the projects. The sidewalks curved and crisscrossed between the redbrick apartment towers. The buildings were identical, with rows of small windows rising fifteen stories high. These were the Wild Houses, one of dozens of projects for low-income residents in the city, with the Baruch Houses being an even larger complex right below Houston Street.

  The sidewalk was bordered by a three-foot-high wrought-iron fence to protect the narrow grass plots. The trees were mature, and the grass was nice and thick behind the fences. The housing authority kept it clean, and I liked the neighborhood feel, so I often walked around the Wild, watching the kids in the little playgrounds and the basketball courts between the buildings. Most of the Spanish I had picked up, I had learned here, not in Orange County.

  I neared the upper edge on Sixth Street, at the back corner by the narrow FDR highway that ran along the edge of Manhattan. I felt the prickling of Pique at the edge of my extended senses. He was on the other side of the highway, in the narrow strip of the East River Park that bordered the river.

  I ran up the turquoise ramp of the pedestrian overpass. A few boys were lingering at one end, watching the cars on the FDR speed by underneath. Their fingers were laced in the chain-link fence as if they wished they were going somewhere, too.

  I came down on the other side, and turned past the old-fashioned stucco restrooms. Iron lampposts cast pools of light as I ran down the cobblestone lane. On either side were towering trees, and a wide grass border next to the concrete barriers of the highway. Squashed between the highway and the river was a grassy, oval track field surrounded by a tall chain-link fence.

  Pique was still ahead of me, moving south. If I could feel him, then he could feel me. But he was focused on easier prey.

  There were people in the park despite the late hour; joggers and bikers kept up with me while others idled on the benches or walked in the cool night air in sedate couples. I passed by a lane that ran at right angles a short distance to the river. Benches lined both sides, and the trees arched together overhead, making a dark tunnel. The river gleamed at the end, reflecting the lights from Brooklyn on the other side.

  Then I felt Ram’s signature, closer to the river. For a second, I wondered whether it really was Ram. But it lacked the depth of the power he had, unique from every other demon I’d met.

  I veered off the lane and ran between the trees, ignoring the marked pathways through the grass.

  Ahead was another high chain-link fence, this time protecting a soccer field. Like the track circle, the field had been closed for the night and the floodlights were turned off.

  A flare of energy alerted me. Mystify and Pique were nearby. The closer I got, the more staccato the “Ram” signature became, as if Mystify were having trouble maintaining it, as if he were under stress. Maybe they didn’t sense my delicate signature while they were so close to each other.

  Sped by urgency, I grabbed on to the chain- link fence and quickly scaled its eight- foot height. My strength helped me stay quiet, and I counted on the darkness under the trees to prevent any passersby from seeing me.

  I swung my legs over the top and lightly jumped down, remembering how those demons had jumped from the roof of Crave’s house. I had never attempted anythin
g that high before, but it was nice to know it could be done.

  I darted into the shadows of several bushes. There was only an iron-bar fence between me and the edge of the river, with the bank reinforced by short bulkheads disappearing into the water. The river sparkled under the artificial lights, stretching across to the Domino Sugar refinery.

  Circling, I finally saw Mystify and Pique in the shadows of another cluster of bushes at the edge of the soccer field. They were wrestling against each other, their legs braced wide. The energy swirled around them in prismatic colors, flashing scarlet with fury where their hands gripped each other.

  Pique was taking Mystify’s energy by force.

  I didn’t even think; I ran into them, slamming against Pique and throwing him off balance. Pique didn’t let go of Mystify, and we all three went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

  Pique continued drawing energy out of Mystify. His snarl showed that he was not going to be denied. His fingers dug into Mystify’s arm like claws, tearing his flesh.

  “Let go of him!” I screamed, beating at Pique’s face. He didn’t seem to care.

  Mystify was gasping in my ear. “Get off me!” He shoved me until I rolled over onto Pique.

  Then Mystify kicked Pique in the throat, finally breaking his hold.

  The moment he did, his signature changed. It was no longer a racing, driving rhythm. Instead, I felt as if I were suspended in a blank void with nothing to grasp on to. It was baffling.

  I had felt this sudden switch before. But Pique lay there stunned, staring at Mystify openmouthed.

  Then in an instant, Mystify’s signature changed to Pique’s. The grating, rasping, rough sensation couldn’t be mistaken. My lips formed Pique’s name when I looked at Mystify.

  Now Pique was even more confused. If I hadn’t felt it myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.

  “Watch out!” Mystify called as he darted away.

  I realized I should be running, too. As I turned away, I was jerked to a halt when Pique grabbed my ankle. I struggled to pull away, but he swiped my feet from under me.

  As I kicked and tried to roll away, he crawled up my body. He was grimacing, showing his teeth, but it couldn’t be called a grin. There was no merriment in it.

  Pique was pressing me down so I couldn’t buck him off. He got his hands on my throat. But he left himself open, unlike Dread, and I was able to grab a finger and pull sharply downward, breaking his hold enough to breathe. Still holding on to his finger, I lifted one hip and used my leverage to roll him off.

  My shirt ripped as I got away, standing up to face him, prepared for another attack.

  His fingers twitched, as if urging me to go for him, to attack.

  “I’m not falling for that again,” I told him.

  He lunged for me, and I stepped out of his line and spun him away from me.

  Pique was coughing when he got up, and he spit out blood. My elbow had hit him, though that hadn’t been my intention. His focus was hard on me.

  It was always this way when I confronted Pique. Some demons taunted me, trying to psych me out. But with Pique, I felt as if I were being stalked by a lion or a hawk, with each move ruled by cold calculation.

  I’m getting tired of running.

  I suddenly realized I’d been right that night I fought with Pique at the bar—it was time for me to stop getting pushed around. My mistake was that I’d been too cocky, charged up with Petrify’s energy. But standing up to this psychopath was the right idea.

  Pique tried to grab me, and I smoothly evaded him, making him stumble past me with a nudge of his shoulder.

  He kept coming, and I kept deflecting his strikes and using his leverage points against him. I was always reacting; this time I didn’t strike out at him, reflecting the true spirit of Aikido. Most people thought the style had a bal letic beauty, but was worthless in a real fight. However, I was living proof that it worked.

  I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

  He had caught me by surprise in our last fight because I made an aggressive move and it backfired on me. This time I stuck to what I did best, stepping away every time he charged and wearing him down. Again and again I threw Pique, letting go of him at the point of maximum trajectory. He came up, shaking his head and staggering. I wasn’t being easy in my takedowns, and even a demon could take only so much pounding. Even I winced when he wrenched his knee, snapping the ligaments with loud popping sounds.

  His charges began to slow. He was bleeding in several places, while I wasn’t even breathing heavily.

  “I’m not running anymore,” I told him.

  Pique was fairly charged-up, as usual. He could have kept hammering at me in hopes that I would slip up again as I had in front of the Den. But the predator assessed me, seeing how I glowed with energy, more than ever before. I wasn’t backing down.

  This time I didn’t look like easy pickings.

  Pique backed up a step. I went forward one. “You’d better run.”

  He backed up another step, still assessing me. But there was doubt in his stance. Then he made his decision and began walking away, picking up speed.

  Abruptly a shadow separated from the dark mound of bushes. Pique was keeping an eye on me as he retreated, so he didn’t see the man emerge.

  Pique could turn on him in an instant. “Get away!” I called out in warning.

  When he stepped fully forward, I saw it was Ram. He was back in his Theo-guise.

  I hated not being able to sense him. “I need to bell that cat,” I muttered.

  Ram expertly tackled Pique, taking him down. Pique was already so battered from the hard falls that he flailed uselessly. Ram got him into a headlock and held him facedown in the dirt.

  I ran up next to them. “Ram! What are you doing?”

  He exerted a bit more pressure, popping Pique’s shoulder out of joint. His cry of pain made Ram grimace in satisfaction. Now Pique wasn’t resisting as hard. “You can’t let him go, Allay. You need to take him.”

  “I’m not going to kill Pique!”

  “He’s the one, Allay. It’s time for you to face up to this.”

  I backed up a few steps, on the verge of running into the darkness. “Don’t you think I wish it were that easy! Don’t you think I want to live?”

  “Then do it; do it now. I’ll hold his shields open for you—it’ll go much faster that way.”

  I shook my head, tears stinging my eyes, warring in my heart, my soul, my body, my mind.… “I can’t do it! It’s not right to kill someone to survive.”

  Ram let out a growl of frustration, kneeling against Pique as he held him down on the ground. “It is the right thing for demons, Allay. You’re a demon now, whether you believe it or not.”

  “If I die without killing, I’ll still be human.”

  “You’ll die by your own hand. There’s a sin in that, I’m told.”

  “I’m not committing suicide, Ram. It’s completely different. I’m refusing to commit murder.”

  “Allay, nobody’s immortal but the gods. We aren’t gods—I should know that better than anyone. Like every other living creature, we’re supposed to die someday, to pass our energy on to the next generation. You keep thinking of demons in human terms. Humans shouldn’t be killed because they’re so fragile; they die of such insignificant things—a bee sting, a virus, a scratch from a rusty nail. But the only thing that can kill a demon is another demon. Along with fissioning, it’s the only way our essence is passed on. It’s how we live on in spite of our death.”

  I had to admit that he was convincing. I had never considered that demons died only by the hand of other demons. It was the natural order of things, as far as demon life went. But did I really want to be a demon?

  Slowly, I said, “I had no choice when I was turned. If I do this, I’ll be making a choice to be something other than human.”

  “You are something other than human, Allay. It’s time for you to stop hiding from yourself and the world. You even deny the me
mories in your own head. That’s no way to live.”

  The truth stung. “It was the only way I could survive.”

  “You did that. Now it’s time to start living again. I know you’re hurt by what I did to you. Lying to you. I never meant to ruin your life. I’m trying to help you now, so you can move on and find what you want. Live how you want.”

  “But to do that, I have to end someone else’s life. Who’s to say that Pique is going to be this way forever? He’s hardly been alive a month. I was certifiably insane after I was turned. Who am I to judge and condemn him?”

  I looked down at Ram struggling to hold on to Pique, who was now fighting back with everything he had. It felt wrong to stand there and watch, just as I had watched Ram kill Vex. I was culpable in that, an accessory to murder. Could I take the next step?

  Ram got Pique under control again, shoving his face deeper into the grass. “Believe me, Allay, I know what kind of demon Pique is. He lives for suffering, and it will save the world a lot of hurt if he’s gone. You can end it here. Think of it as snuffing out a disease or a deadly virus.”

  “He must have more to him than that. He’s a person, not a sickness. He must have at least one redeeming quality.”

  Ram gave me a hard look, to be sure I really meant it. “There is one thing I’ve seen.…”

  “Yes?” I urged, looking for anything that could stop this from happening.

  “You know how he likes to wear glasses?”

  “Yeah, it’s weird. He doesn’t need them to see.”

  “No, but he steals them from people; he seeks out victims who wear them. I saw why last week. When he’s not being a first-rate prick, he’ll sit on a bench or a curb and stare at the simplest things for hours. Leaves. Pictures from magazines. Even plain water. His pupils change shape, as if he were using the lenses to see down to microscopic levels. You could say it’s his only hobby.”

  I wished I hadn’t asked. It made Pique seem more real than the bogeyman who lurked outside my bar. But it was so peculiar, as well. He wasn’t even a reasonable facsimile of a human being. He didn’t have a home or people he loved. He was a demon, and his only reason for existence was to prey on people.