Demon's Song

by Sonya Bateman

  He pushed through the gates, put his back to the Underground entrance and headed for the human residences. He could already feel her, a presence familiar as his own wings. How he’d missed her vibrant, fractured soul.

  She would become his again.

  Chapter 6

  Logan woke with a scream lodged in her throat. Shivering, she curled tight and coughed past it. Didn’t want to wake her obnoxious roommate—drenched and sweating as she was, Myra would summon the wing monitor and they’d drag her off to the med ward for the rest of the night. Those beds really sucked.

  Gradually, she realized she couldn’t feel the bars beneath the thin mattress. Couldn’t see the grated blue security light above the locked door. Nothing hummed or ticked or droned.

  She was out of rehab. Alone. Her only roommate was a stuffed cat.

  She groaned, sat up and swung her feet to the floor. One in the morning. What a popular time for her to be awake. The chills subsided gradually, but the idea of dropping back to sleep was laughable. Whatever she’d been dreaming hadn’t been good. And the cold sweat soaking her probably came from equal parts nightmare and withdrawal.

  Even now, for just a few seconds, she could see herself plunging a needle in, letting the rush drown that deep-seated itch that never went away. It’d be easy. Just once…

  Damn it, no. She was going to stay clean if it killed her.

  Maybe a hot shower would make her drowsy, or at least relax her enough to attempt sleep. She hadn’t bothered changing for bed. Just stripped her jeans off and crawled in, so she wore only a long-sleeved shirt and underwear. In rehab she would’ve had to dress before she left the bed. Anything suggestive had been ruthlessly suppressed. Of course, that meant the inmates—excuse her, patients—came up with more creative ways to express sex. But now she could strip right here and walk down the hall to the bathroom naked, if she felt like it.

  She didn’t. Wasn’t quite ready for that kind of freedom yet.

  She stood and crossed to the closet. The cool carpet under her feet only woke her up more. By the time she shrugged into her worn cotton robe and made her way to the bathroom, she was completely alert. Damn it. If this middle-of-the-night wakeup was going to be a regular thing, she might have to resort to sleeping pills. She needed rest.

  Especially now that she had a job. Sort of.

  The idea that she was the lead singer of Ruined Soul hadn’t quite taken hold yet. It elated her and terrified her. Already she’d gotten further in a single night than she had in years before. She was in a solid, professional band. They had paying gigs. Tex had informed her that the money wasn’t great, that after they split the payment five ways—the band always put a fifth into their equipment fund—her take would be around two hundred bucks a night.

  She’d laughed at him. In all her brief stints of employment between meth binges, she’d never made more than two hundred in a week, much less a night. Besides, this was getting paid to sing. She would’ve taken twenty bucks. Hell, she’d do it for free.

  But the fears still came close to overshadowing the joy. There was the stage fright. It’d hit her hard with only three people watching. What would happen when there were fifty, or a hundred? She’d earned the band’s acceptance, but that wasn’t enough. She’d have to win crowds too.

  Those were bad, but they weren’t her worst fear—relapse. Using again to escape disappointment, struggle, failure. The crutch would always be there, waiting for her to pick it back up and keep limping toward self-destruction.

  With a sigh, she undressed and turned the water on in the shower. It didn’t take long to heat. She adjusted it to a few degrees below scalding and flipped the switch up to spray.

  Logan...

  The voice knotted her stomach and broke her skin out in gooseflesh. No fucking way. She wasn’t going to hear Fred, not here. Shivering, she practically vaulted into the shower and yanked the curtain closed, as though she could leave whatever had spoken on the other side.

  She held her breath while the hot spray drenched her. Heard nothing but her own heart pounding in her ears. Either Fred had nothing else to say, or she’d imagined that single word in the first place. A brief mental relapse brought on by stress.

  The water felt damned good, and she let it soothe away the tension. Eventually she figured she might get back to sleep after all. She waited until the spray started cooling, then reluctantly turned the water off, stepped out and grabbed a towel. Banks of steam filled the room, condensing on porcelain and tile, fogging the mirror above the sink. She towel-dried her hair until it stopped dripping on her shoulders, and then wrapped the long end of the towel around her chest. Definitely sleepy now.

  What are you doing out here all alone, Logan?

  She jumped like she’d been pinched. This time the voice pissed her off—Fred sounded disappointed. “I don’t hear you,” she snapped, and resolved that would be the last time she answered the imaginary voice aloud. No matter what he had to say.

  You hear me. You’re so close now.

  Fresh goose bumps raced over every inch of her skin. Not once, in all the years he’d haunted her, had Fred responded directly to what she said. And what the hell did he mean, she was close—close to what? To him? The bastard didn’t even exist. His voice was something in her head, some misfiring cluster of brain cells projecting her worst subconscious thoughts in what was probably a blend of known male voices in her life. That’s what the alphabet-soup doctors at the clinic would’ve said, anyway.

  You’re mine.

  Across the bathroom, the water vapor swirled and parted as though something moved through it, toward her. The steam thickened and bunched, whispering around the shape of a leg, an outstretched hand—a face. A man’s face, transparent and sketched in the mist. The apparition’s lips moved, forming the shapes as she heard the sounds.

  Logan…

  A scream locked her throat and stopped her breath. She bolted from the room.

  Panic smothered her conscious thoughts. The next thing she knew, she was huddled on the living room couch, every light turned on, cell phone in her hand and open to the address book with Tex’s name highlighted. She gulped in a succession of ragged breaths and moved her finger away from the call button. What would she say? That the voice in her head, the one she’d never told him or any of the other counselors about, had materialized as an invisible man in her bathroom?

  Friend or not, he’d drop her right back into rehab—or maybe a psych ward.

  When her racing heart calmed a little, she told herself that she couldn’t possibly have seen what she thought. It was just steam and exhaustion. Her utter frustration that Fred had followed her after all.

  No, it wasn’t even that. There was no Fred.

  And she wasn’t crazy.

  Eventually she convinced herself to move. She headed for the bedroom, dressed in a T-shirt and shorts, grabbed a blanket and returned to the living room. So much for getting back to sleep. Cocooned on the couch, she flipped through the scant selection of television channels and settled on a cheesy Lifetime-style movie with bad acting and irritating background music.

  The idea of grabbing a snack crossed her mind. Before she could act on it, she slipped into slumber.

  * * * * *

  She had not only heard him, she’d actually seen him this time.

  Jaeryth sat, more or less, on the chair in Logan’s living room, watching as she drifted to sleep on the couch. She had definitely seen him in the bathroom—or more likely, a suggestion of him. Further proof that he was right.

  He’d planned to return to his district tonight, just to make an appearance and keep Ronwe from getting suspicious. But she’d seen him. She could be fully awakened at any moment. It would be far more satisfying to return and report that she had manifested, and watch Ronwe choke on his pronouncement.

  He would stay, and tomorrow he’d double his efforts. His district would be fine without him for a few days.

  With a satisfied smile, he settled in to wat
ch over Logan.

  Chapter 7

  That could’ve gone better.

  Logan walked away from the Greenleaf Senior Residence, waiting until she got a block or so down to light a cigarette. The interviewer was an administrative supervisor by the name of Velma Swanson, a thin and harried-looking woman who had not been amused by the Scooby Doo joke Logan had tried to make. Things had only gone downhill from there.

  When they’d gotten to the point of discussing her past experiences, it had become apparent that a few crucial items had been left out of whatever memo Velma had received about her—like the whole reformed junkie thing. From the instant she’d mentioned rehab, the woman hadn’t been able to shoo her from the office fast enough.

  She was pretty sure she wouldn’t be getting a callback on this one.

  Well, at least it was over. And for once, Fred had been good for something—he’d freaked her out enough that she’d actually looked forward to leaving the house. Now that she’d managed to relax a little and had nothing pressing to do until band practice tonight, item number one on her list was to get something to replace the god-awful suit. She refused to wear this thing to one more interview.

  Even Velma, with the fashion sense of a woman whose wardrobe evolution had peaked sometime in the 1980s, had given a little nose-crinkle sniff at her attire.

  She didn’t have much money at the moment, but she should be able to get emergency assistance at the welfare office. After all, it was for a good cause. The quest to get her off the dole and stop wasting the state’s money on her worthless ass. So she’d spend a million hours in the waiting room, and then hit the thrift store. And celebrate later by burning the god-awful suit.

  Greenleaf was only a few blocks from the county assistance office. She could walk from here—here being all the way across the city from Crystaltown. Which was definitely a good thing.

  While she walked, she called Miss Turner and got the caseworker’s voicemail. She left a clipped message about successfully reporting to the interview. Miss Turner was paying her a home visit tomorrow, so she could regale her with details then. That’d be a fun time. Especially when she confessed about the band.

  A few times along the way, she could’ve sworn she was being followed. She saw no one familiar, no one paying attention to her, but her skin still crawled.

  She came to the county building, a long two-story structure that for some reason was painted a dull pink. A handful of people occupied the sidewalk along the place, leaning on the wall or standing in small clusters. Someone had set up a tent stall that displayed a few t-shirts, some purses and boxes of knockoff perfume, and a table of DVDs. Probably bootlegs. She’d always wondered how the sidewalk sellers managed to make any money, since no one ever seemed to buy anything. Truth was, they probably didn’t. They were on welfare like everybody else. Or they were dealing once the sun went down.

  She hadn’t quite finished her cigarette yet, so she found a spot on the wall and joined the ranks, taking her time. She knew what waited inside. Endless lines, endless hoops to jump through, delay after stonewalling delay. Just another exciting morning at public assistance.

  “’Scuse me, hey. You got another cigarette?”

  Logan startled and turned toward the voice. Next to her stood a girl in short sleeves with stringy, tangled blond hair, hands shoved in her jeans pockets, directing most of her attention at the sidewalk. There was something familiar about the figure. At first she thought it was just the stance, the same loose-limbed, spaced-out shuffle employed by junkies around the world.

  Then the girl looked up, and Logan recognized her with a shock. “Deenie?”

  It hurt to look at her. She’d crashed with this girl and her thug boyfriend more than once. Six months ago, Deenie had been all right. She’d been a social user, preferring pot and the occasional snort over pipes and needles. Then, she’d still looked like a relatively healthy twenty-year-old. Now there were years etched into her gaunt face, shading dark hollows beneath her eyes and lining chapped, tight-pressed lips. She had track marks on her stick-thin arms.

  And she was pregnant. The slight mound of her belly said four, maybe five months, but if she was using, she was probably further along.

  Deenie blinked a few times and smiled, showing teeth already starting to rot. “Logan! I thought you…”

  “Died?” She leveled a smirk. It was a reasonable assumption. Most people didn’t leave Crystaltown any other way, with the exception of dealers striking out in search of bigger turf. “Not yet,” she said, and handed over a cigarette. She probably shouldn’t, but it wasn’t like Deenie would quit on the spot if she didn’t. The girl would just bum one off somebody else. “Need a light?”

  Deenie nodded. “Thanks.”

  She watched the girl light up with trembling hands, and her heart threatened to break. Deenie had fallen so fast. She’d seen this rapid descent into addiction too many times, and it invariably ended the same way—with a corpse pumped full of drugs that nobody cared enough about to identify, eventually dumped in an unmarked grave.

  Well, she wasn’t going to let that happen. Not this time.

  Deenie drew an appreciative drag and plucked at Logan’s sleeve. “Nice threads. What is it, Halloween or something?”

  “Nope. I’m joining the Navy.” Smiling, she dropped her smoke and ground it out. This had to be handled right. She could get Deenie into rehab right now, bring her inside the welfare office and have her checked in today—but the girl had to sign up voluntarily. The state could only force people into it if they were arrested or hospitalized, like Logan had been after she’d blacked out in the street and nearly gotten run over by a bus. And getting a hard addict to volunteer for rehab was like telling the sun not to rise. “So, when are you due?” she said, gesturing to Deenie’s swelling stomach.

  The girl glanced down and shrugged, her mouth twisting unconsciously. “I’m just getting fat,” she whispered, but a flicker of panic in her dulled eyes insisted that some part of her knew the truth.

  “Right. Must be all that steak you’re eating.”

  “Mm-hm.” Her gaze shut down and she went back to smoking.

  An urgent shiver traversed Logan’s spine. She was losing her.

  As she watched Deenie bring the cigarette to her lips, the world seemed to darken. The shadows lengthened along the sidewalk…and Deenie’s rose up, thickened, became a substantial black silhouette that draped an arm around the girl and leaned in to whisper in her ear.

  Oh, shit. Another hallucination.

  Heart skittering in her chest, Logan reached toward the humanoid shape, which was growing more defined by the second. She’d touch nothing and shock herself back to sanity. But when her fingers brushed the thing that wasn’t there, a horrific vision slammed into her mind—Deenie sprawled in an alley, stomach distended, blood trickling from her nose and foam drying at the corners of her slack mouth. One eye rolled back to white, the other drifting off into frozen eternity. Dead, along with her unborn baby.

  “No!” She clutched the girl’s arm as the shout tore from her.

  And felt something pass through her, into Deenie. A painless electric shock. Light bursting in darkness.

  The shadow-creature hissed and unraveled like smoke. Hyper-brightness surged through everything, as it had when she’d seen the black-eyed freak at the Wawa, and faded back to normal.

  Oh, God. What the hell just happened?

  Deenie stared at her, wide-eyed and stunned. “Um. You okay?”

  “I’m fine.” She shook herself and imposed self-control. She’d have to worry about her own sanity later. Crazy as the hallucinations were, she didn’t doubt the vision would come to pass if she didn’t do something now. “Deenie, hon,” she said gently. “You’re pregnant.”

  The girl’s lips twitched once. Then she burst into tears.

  Logan hugged her and let her sob, rubbing the girl’s heaving back as the cigarette fell unnoticed from her fingers. A few people threw glances at them, some sym
pathetic, others disgusted. She ignored them all.

  At last, Deenie’s personal storm subsided and she drew back with a snuffling breath. “Lenny kicked me out,” she said, referring to the thug boyfriend. “He s-said I was getting too fat and ugly for him.” Her shoulders hitched, and she settled a hand on her belly with something close to reverence. “A baby,” she whispered. “What am I gonna do, Logan? I don’t even have a bed.” Fresh tears slipped down her cheeks.

  “You’re going to come in here with me.” Logan hooked an arm around her waist and gestured at the pink building. “You’re going to sign some papers, and they’ll take you to Grothman.”

  A shudder went through Deenie and she tried to jerk away. “Rehab? I can’t. They’ll put me in jail.”

  “Do I look like I’m in jail?”

  “You mean…that’s where you were? Grothman?”

  She nodded. “Six months. I’m clean now, and I’ll never go back to using.”

  “I can’t.” Deenie hung her head. “I’m not strong enough. I need the hits.”

  “I won’t lie to you. It isn’t going to be easy.” Logan waited until she looked up. “But you can. I know you’re a fighter. And you’ve got a lot to fight for now.”

  After a long moment, Deenie offered a tentative smile that banished some of the misery from her gaze, and her hand strayed back to her stomach. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll sign.”

  Though the sun didn’t exactly shatter the clouds and bathe them in golden light, Logan could’ve sworn she heard angels singing.

  * * * * *

  Jaeryth blamed the damned angel.

  She would not listen to him. Had progressed to ignoring him completely—so completely, he almost believed her claim that she couldn’t hear him. But that wasn’t possible. The Prophets could not turn off their perceptions once they’d begun to manifest. Her stubbornness had prompted him to try a different approach.

  He would appear to her in the guise of a mortal. Seduce her, entice her into sin. Preferably the sins of the flesh. And then she would fall, and he would be vindicated.