Daimonion (The Apocalypse Book 1)

by J. P. Jackson

“Finally.” His voice was gravelly.

  Dammit, I’ve done it again. I had already displeased Master. Nothing I did was ever up to standard.

  All the hate I held inside welled up inside me as I folded my wings back and lifted my head. When that much fierce emotion is felt, the demon within takes over. The skin on my face pulled tight. Heat burned from behind my eyes, which meant that they were glowing red with rage. I snarled, releasing a small growl.

  Master, his black suit draped by a flowing cloak, scowled at me and raised his hand. With a flick of his thick-nailed digit, I was thrust backwards, clambering through the air. For just a brief second, I flailed my limbs, trying to grapple on to anything to gain control. But the wall was too close, and Master was too powerful. With one wing sprawled out and the other tucked behind my back, I smacked the interior wall of the warehouse.

  I heard the crack of a wing bone. Then I felt the heat radiating outwards, which quickly turned into burning pain as a force pinned me to the wall. Damaged wings don’t heal well, and if they do, they never heal right.

  “You forget your place!”

  I attempted to wrench my shoulder up to pry my one wing free, but I was paralyzed, splayed out, vulnerable.

  Master’s image shifted, displaying a visage of anger that transformed his human face into a demented mask of outrage. His soulless eyes simmered violet, filling with anger. He hovered inches above the ground, his mantle fluttering around his feet and gently brushing the concrete slab floor. He sailed through the air towards my restrained position. Terror welled up from within me.

  I closed my eyes and turned my head away in shame. I was going to die. This was it.

  So be it. I’m so tired.

  There was a small part of me that thought how nice that release might be. Death. No more punishment, no more rules. No nothing.

  But my instinct to survive was strong.

  For the love of all that is dark; I can’t die, not now…

  Master glided towards me, slow and steady. As he drew closer, I tried in vain to turn away from him. I didn’t want to peer into his eyes. I struggled and writhed in a desperate attempt to break free. A whine escaped my lips. I was sure Master was going to end me. He would make a bloody example of me in front of the others.

  The attendees watched from the table, some with nonchalant glances and others with morbid curiosity. I could smell the diverse emotions, which left different tastes in the back of my throat.

  Please, no.

  Master leaned in close and whispered, “Why do you constantly fight me? What good do you think it will do? You’re such a stupid creature. If I didn’t have need of you…. Look at what you’ve done to yourself.” Master gently stroked the hair on my head, as if soothing a distraught toddler, like he cared.

  He fingered one of the glass vials at his throat, which dangled from a bejeweled chain. It was my vial, the glass jar that contained my excised soul part. He caressed the vial, taunting me. I could smell the hate wafting off of him, and I was quite sure he could sense my hopelessness.

  He released the vial, and then he held out his hand. I flinched again.

  Maintaining his telekinetic hold on me, Master reached behind me, grabbed my pinned wing and pulled it forward, releasing it from its entrapment. The broken bones rubbed together and chewed up the flesh inside as the shards were jammed into soft tissue.

  Through a sneer, Master raised his voice to ensure all heard him. “Even though you flout me, I still care for all of my creatures. But do not ever disobey me again!” He wrenched his arm upwards, extending my wing to its full expanse, shifting the broken bones once again. The quick action produced an upswell of pain, and I became light-headed. Vomit rushed from my stomach to my mouth. I swallowed the bile, muffling my screams. My cockiness, my inability to keep my emotions in check might have just ended any chances of flying ever again. Master was right. I was a stupid creature.

  Master turned around and floated silently towards the table, returning to his original position while straightening his tie. Everyone cast their eyes downward. Without looking back, he waved a hand and released his telekinetic hold on me. I slid down the wall and fell to a heap.

  “Assume your position, D’Alae. Take your chair,” he said softly, but his words carried great weight.

  With humility, and as fast as I could manage, I pulled myself up, cradling my broken wing.

  I made my way to the long table. The walk of shame seemed to take forever. My face burned with humiliation. I found the empty seat and took my place, my head hung along with the others. I placed my broken wing carefully on my shoulder, hoping to brace it. It throbbed.

  I hated him. Oh, how I hated him, and wanted to be free from him. But all of my kind, the D’Alae, are bound in servitude. It was tradition and it had always been this way. As much as I longed for freedom from Master and his brutality, I’m not sure I would know what to do without him. But I could imagine.

  “Now, let us begin,” Master said, holding out his hands like a priest towards his congregation, as if we were about to start mass.

  Infection

  DATI

  The table was wooden and intricately carved with twining vines that criss-crossed around the edge. Ornate shoots radiated from the edgework in elegant spirals, darting across the surface in rounded curlicues to the center.

  From the other side of the table, Hemming offered a look of sympathy for the broken wing draped over my shoulder. It throbbed and burned, and every other moment, a sharp pain would shoot up the bone and down my spine. My knuckles turned white as I gripped the chair’s arms, bracing myself against the pain. Hemming grimaced, if only slightly, in empathy, and he cast a resentful glance down to where two missing fingers should have been. Hemming was keenly aware of Master’s propensity for punishment.

  Hemming had sharp facial features covered by a thick brown beard that was kept short at the sides and long at the chin. His mouth was slim, and his dark brown gaze darted around the table, scoping the scene before us as much as I was.

  I gritted my teeth as another shooting pain—like a nail had just been driven into the bone—emanated from the break. I dared not draw any more attention from Master. I surveyed the other participants around the table. I had never seen any of them before, except for Hemming, but then business with Master was done on a one-on-one basis. I wanted no knowledge of any other horrifying actions that were being perpetrated on behalf of my kind. I had heard of the tasks others were charged to complete, set out by Master, and they had been as sick and twisted as the deeds demanded of me.

  Sitting directly to my left was a young girl. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, if that. She had pretty bright blue eyes and long blonde hair that curled at the ends. The tips had been dyed black, as if gathered together in clumps and dipped into inkwells. She wore a fuzzy pink sweater and tight slacks that ended in a wide cuff just below the knees. It was odd attire for demon folk as we typically preferred clothes that allow us to melt into the dark. She didn’t smell like one of us either; her aroma was off, stale like swamp water that was turning green. We, on the other hand, have an acrid burnt stench to us, a smell that reminds me of burning plastic. I wasn’t sure what she was or why she was there.

  There were so few of us present, and yet I had seen, or thought I had seen, many others in my dream-state summoning. Master began to speak, his deep voice soothing when paired with a handsome face, so deceiving from what he could be and had been moments earlier.

  “The time has come.” He stopped, studying us, as if expecting acknowledgement and agreement. “The time is now to bring him here to be with us, so we can be in his presence, and he can rule over this luscious human domain.” He beamed at the thought of Satan’s presence. It was disturbing to watch.

  I chanced another stealthy glance at the night’s participants.

  Beside the young girl next to me was a filthy bloodsucker of a Vampyre with alabaster skin. His lips were too red, eyes too vacant. Past experience had
taught me these demons were capable of a bloodlust beyond what any Hollywood horror movie could ever depict. Their thirst was violent and insatiable. I’d only witnessed one massacre. My stomach churned at the memory of a room washed in fresh hot blood and the screams of humans trapped in that room with a monster that taunted them with their lives. Not that any escaped. They all died, slowly, painfully, and bloodily. You would have thought evolution would tailor the Vampyre to be precise and efficient hunters. In truth, their evolutionary path was more directed by the acts of violence they committed. Most often, Vampyres hunted in mating pairs, and the bloodier the stage, the more virile and fertile the mating, producing large litters. They truly were more animalistic than humanoid.

  “And we will be the chosen ones to bring him into this realm.” Master still slogged on about his Hellish paradise in the human world. What in Hell’s name did he think he was going to do? Bring about the apocalypse?

  “For years, I have researched and toiled to find a way to bring our king, the Dawn Bringer, to this realm, and I have finally found the path to do so. Lucifer, the fallen, cast out because he wanted to be a god. Why should we be restrained or contained for ambition, for reaching and striving to be more?”

  An enormous amount of piety rolled off of Master in waves. The whole speech sickened me, and his viewpoint was one I certainly did not share.

  “He can bring us to freedom, to create for us a world where our pleasure, our needs, our desires can be explored without being punished, banished, or destroyed. Imagine a world where humans are freely available to us for our use! Think how we could stretch and grow and come to understand our full potential.

  “I have spent so many years in a desperate attempt to know why we were created, who we are and what our purpose is. Surely our existence is meant to be more than just living in the shadows.”

  It was true, in some measure. None of my kin held any favour with the other god.

  “We are so much more than that! I have fretted upon the reasons behind my existence: if I have achieved everything I can, if I could have done more. And then I came to believe that freeing him from his entombment, destroying the bonds between our two worlds that restrict his passage, and bringing him here is my ultimate purpose because it serves us all.” Master closed his eyes and smiled. His hands rested on the carved tabletop. He gripped it tight. When he opened his eyes again, they were luminescent, reminding me of a black cat whose orbs were reflecting moonlight in the dead of night. You couldn’t see the cat, just the eyes, burning and piercing through the darkness. It was unnerving.

  “Imagine when he sits here in the human realm. It will be a new world in which we become gods to the meager sapiens that we are now made to hide from. The filthy pit that we all once called home will be no more. The humans shall fall before us, and offer up their flesh and spirit. This is our reason to exist, to bring him here, and yet…we don’t quite have the Daimonion needed for the task. There are unique creatures required to create that passageway, the door that will allow him to come through. It is not an easy task. There needs to be sacrifices.” He stopped again. I could feel his stare, probing us all, gauging our expressions, looking for dissention.

  “You six are not enough,” he repeated, “but I have the solution.”

  With those words, Master lifted his right hand and I cringed. Typical demon custom is that the right hand delivers, the left hand receives. But then he lifted his left hand as well, and in it, he held his dagger. With a quick swipe of the matte blade, Master ripped open the palm of his right hand with the serrated teeth. Blood flowed freely, as red as the rubies embedded on the haft of his weapon, dripping onto the carved troughs that decorated the wooden table.

  Where Master’s blood touched the table, it began to move and ripple. Master walked around and placed a bloody handprint in front of each of us. He took up position directly behind me.

  As each blood print brought the carving to life, he leaned in close and whispered, “Regardless of what happens, you will care for her.” I turned as he nodded towards the girl with the pink fluffy sweater who smelled like stale, sour water.

  The wood splintered and crackled as it came to life, writhing and growing, taking my attention away from the teenager and her black-tipped curls. The smooth tabletop became a slithering mass of wooden vines, which quickly grew beyond the surface, reaching towards us, and with snakelike precision, the vines struck out for us.

  The Mindbender, a member of the demon species who were masters of illusions and deception, hissed through its jagged sharp teeth. Its translucent skin revealed the veins beneath the surface. As the vine grabbed its wrist, it tried desperately to wrench the ensnared appendage free—to no avail.

  I was so caught up in the blood magic and the vines trapping the others, I hadn’t realized that Hemming, the girl, and the Vampyre were also imprisoned with their left hand strapped to the table. Master still stood behind me, and the air was rife with his anticipation and impatience.

  Only the Kasadya demon—a rare order—and I had yet to be ensnared. I had never seen a Kasadya, or Watcher demon, before, but I knew them by reputation. They always had an ostentatious style of dress, and this one was no different. Sporting a black-velvet top hat with a wide silver buckle serving as a hatband, made me think he had just arrived from the 1800s. A decorative mantle of raven feathers encircled his neck, and the black of the feathers seemed to melt into the inkiness of his topcoat. These Watchers, with their dark irises, saw into the past and futures, of probabilities and histories. If he had gazed into my eyes, he would have seen all the secrets I had kept from Master over the years. He was a dangerous creature to have so close by.

  I glanced up to discover that Master had moved back to his position at the head of the table. He stared at me with displeasure again. I had already received his wicked retribution once; I wasn’t about to test Master’s limits or tolerance a second time this evening. I held out my wrist like an arrested criminal awaiting his handcuffs and let the vines do their job. Only the Kasadya was left untangled, and he avoided the vine strikes like a well-seasoned martial-arts expert.

  Master watched the Kasadya, his handsome face contorting back to the snarl I had seen earlier. Master took a step, leaned over in front of the Watcher demon, and squeezed his hand. Fresh blood fell directly in front of the Kasadya. The vines thrashed at the taste of it, lashing out ferociously. The vine latched onto the demon’s arm and strapped it to the table with a thud. One vine reared up like a cobra ready to strike, and with deadly accuracy, whipped forward, wrapping itself around the Kasadya’s arm, piercing the forearm, burrowing straight through, and anchoring it to the table underneath. Blood flowed from the wound, thick and dark. The Kasadya screeched loudly.

  Master let his hand drop to the table, blood still flowing from the wound. Like a squirming mass of worms, the vines wrapped around his hand and wrist. Seething and caressing his wounded limb, I could hear them sucking the blood that flowed, like spawn suckling at their mother’s teat. With his unmarred hand, Master reached inside his robe and produced a flask containing a substance that appeared very much like liquid mercury. The substance swirled in its confines. It churned on its own in the bottle.

  “I had to pay dearly for this.” He lifted the flask to his mouth, bit into the stopper, and pulled it out. It made a hollow pop when the cork gave up its grasp on the bottle. “But I have faith that this will grant us exactly what we will require to be with him.”

  He tilted the flask and let the metallic liquid pour out.

  It was viscous, too thick to be mercury. There seemed to be far more of the substance coming out of the bottle than what the bottle should have been able to hold, but it continued to gurgle at a slow and seemingly unending rate.

  As the liquid hit the table, it pooled into a perfect circle. A carved indentation on the tabletop beyond the squirming mass of vines allowed the viscous substance to collect. When the flask was finally empty, the vines froze.

  For just a brief se
cond, all was silent. Everyone held their breath. Nobody moved.

  Our limbs were still lashed firmly in place by the sinuous vines, but the tendrils gripped even harder, squeezing like a python constricts its prey. Veins popped out on my arm.

  The perfect circle of thick goo began to divide into six equal but smaller ones. The reformed smaller pools began travelling across the surface of the table, repositioning themselves, one in front of each of us. The shiny substance glistened and vibrated in front of me. That knot in my stomach formed again; this didn’t feel right, or good. I tested my D’Alae strength against the vines that had me confined. Being feral, we were stronger than most others, but there was no getting loose. The liquid began spinning all on its own, counterclockwise until it swirled apart into another four equal fractions, which then changed from liquid into hard little silver balls. The balls rolled around for a bit and then settled.

  Metallic spines emerged from the smooth surface, grew long and folded, then felt around until they touched the tabletop. Each sphere hoisted itself up on silver spidery legs. The spheres morphed and changed, elongating into metallic beasts, and inched their way towards our trapped supinated hands.

  The closest silver monster scurried over and crawled up onto my palm. The tiny pinpricks of the spine legs punctured the skin and left little wounds, which welled up with blood. I glanced up and chanced a quick view of the fiends around the table. The same thing was happening to the others. I pulled my arm frantically, trying to wrestle it out of the grasp of the table’s vise grip.

  In retaliation, the creature speared me with one of its sharp legs in the fleshy part of the forearm, sending more shooting pain through my body. Using its legs and teeth, it began ripping up the flesh on each side of the wound. I yanked hard, panic taking over for a second time that night as I frantically tried to break away. I moved my free hand to beat the little terrors away from my wounded arm, but the vines on the table lashed out and ensnared my right hand. All I could do was sit and watch.