Daimonion (The Apocalypse Book 1)

by J. P. Jackson

  “Actually, it’s Babylonian,” I said. It meant Bearer of Dreams, but for the children I marked, it meant Bearer of Nightmares.

  “Yes, right, of course it’s Barbarian.” She had a blank look on her face, and I made the assumption she had no idea what Babylon was.

  “What do you remember from the past couple of days?”

  “You mean, like, the very last couple of days? Well, then not much, except I’ve slept a lot, but I’m still tired. I’ve been tired for days, like I just can’t get enough sleep, and this hurts,” she said, raising her bandaged forearm.

  “But I remember the dream,” she piped up again in between bites of scrambled cheese eggs, “where Master appeared and told us to come to that warehouse, and I remember finding it and thinking it was so cool that I could see that glowing purple around the building.”

  Well, that was interesting. Master was able to communicate telepathically with demons, but apparently that extended to witches as well.

  “So what’s with him anyways? He was so nice to me, but now he’s just an asshole. Where does he get off stroking my hair like that and making that table pin us down while those things ripped us open? I don’t like him.” She sighed. “He used to be so nice to me when I was with Mira. He would show up when I was visiting her and promise me all kinds of things, and he would bring me cool stuff and sometimes give me money. But he was just a complete asshat at that meeting with the way he treated you when you burst in through the window, which was totally freaking awesome!”

  I wondered when she would run out of breath.

  “Oh my God, I forgot, you have wings! I’ve never ever seen anyone with wings. What are you? And then I remember all those others at the table and that thing that sat on the other side of the table…” She dropped off. “I don’t remember too much after that,” she snapped, and I could tell that was a lie. She must have known more, but whether or not she wanted to remember was another thing.

  “Keep going. What else?” I wasn’t going to let her squirm out of anything or not talk about something just because it made her uncomfortable.

  She studied me cautiously but then started up again.

  “My wrist. I remember those fucking bugs digging into my arm and the pain. I remember there was a lot of pain…but I don’t really remember anything else. Everything is kind of a blur after that.” She held up her bandaged wrist and forearm. “Did you do this? And how’d I get here? And what were those silver things? And…”

  “One step at a time. I’ll answer what I can, but I still have questions for you.” I shifted in my seat and leaned forward. “Do you know what you are?” This should be good.

  “What do you mean?” she barked back. “I’m a girl. What are you?”

  “No, I mean, yes of course you’re a girl. What I meant was, sitting around that table, you saw lots of things most other humans have never seen or want to see or even want to know exist. So, if you were brought to that meeting, that means that you’re one of us, but I want to know what you are.”

  “Well, Mira said I was special and that she would show me how to do magic and get people to do what I wanted. In fact, she said that anything I wanted, I could make happen. So I don’t know, like a witch, I guess.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. She actually got that right.

  “So where’s this Mira? How’d you meet her?”

  “Oh, Mira, yeah, well um, she’s dead. At least she was dead when I saw her last. I don’t know, it was really weird, and the whole thing freaked me right out.” She stopped short again.

  “Keep going,” I prompted her, needing the information but already regretting the inevitable onslaught of words that would follow.

  “She was always on the same bus with me when I was on the way to school. And then this one day, she sat next to me and was all friendly and started talking to me, but she smelled bad. She was kind like a grandmother, and I never really had one, so I thought she was kind of cute, and then she showed me this little magic spell between us right there on the bus, and she lit the end of her finger on fire—which blew my mind—and then she had this really cool little lizard in her purse.”

  Jenae said the whole speech in one breath.

  “I’ve never seen a lizard like that before. It had like little wings on it—so cute! It ran out of her purse when she opened it and up her arm onto her shoulder and perched behind her ear and stared at me, flicking its tongue out just like a snake. It sort of looked like a little baby dragon, and Mira said I could have one too, if I did everything she asked me to do. Then she asked to see my left hand, and she read the lines on my palm like a psychic and showed me the little star I have on my hand.” Jenae lifted up her bandaged hand and showed me the star that was still outlined as if in ink.

  “Yeah, that won’t come off now,” she said as she rubbed the ink.

  “Then Mira gave me some cookies from her purse, and I thought she was really friendly. So I agreed to go visit her after school. She gave me her address, and then she got off the bus. I went to school that day, which was a total waste because I couldn’t think about anything other than going to visit her, and then I went right to her house after last period. Her house wasn’t very far from my school. I went there, and she was happy to see me and said her grandchildren never visited her, and she was happy that I came. I felt bad for her.”

  In went another scoop of breakfast, thankfully the last.

  “Her house was a bit of a mess—I think she needed help—so I told her I would come see her and help her as long as she showed me how to do all that cool stuff. There were books everywhere and all kinds of jars with stuff in them. Some were cool and some were gross. Anyways, she made me sit with her on the couch, and then we had some cookies as she showed me a book of spells she had and told me how very special it was, and it had all kinds of really neat symbols in it that I’ve never seen anything like. Oh except for the runes, I’d seen them before.

  “She said that she would help me make a book just like hers. So every day after school, I would go to her place but only for like an hour so that my stupid sister and mom wouldn’t know where I was, and then when I was visiting, Mira would teach me things, and that’s when I met Master.” She stopped briefly, inhaled, and glanced at me. I sat there, somewhat wide-eyed.

  She took a deep breath, recovering from her spiel, and then continued.

  “Master said to me that I was extra special and Mira had found a miracle when she discovered me. Master promised that he would come and visit every now and then and that I was to do everything that Mira wanted. He promised me all kinds of things.

  “Mira would always make tea for all of us when Master visited and bring out cookies—she always had cookies. Master had the most interesting purple irises, and then during the last visit, Master was there and, I don’t know, I don’t remember everything. I just remember having tea and cookies and then them saying that they thought I was ready, and then I must’ve fallen asleep or something. I mean, things are kind of fuzzy after having tea and I don’t really remember anything, but when I woke up, I was on the floor and I was naked, which totally freaked me out—”

  That was it, that’s what I had been waiting for. So they had drugged her and then started the transformation. She continued.

  “—I found my clothes folded on one of the chairs, but Mira was just lying in the hallway. So I got dressed and then went over to wake her up, but that’s what totally blew my mind because she wasn’t breathing. She was stone cold, so I guess she was dead. I couldn’t stay there, so I ran out of the house.”

  I was shocked at how young she was and somehow seemed unaffected by her encounter and transformation into the world of the dark. She was completely disjointed in her thought. After everything she had been through, she was still perky and bubbly, despite the fact that such horrible things had happened to her. I would have expected her to be withdrawn and scared.

  She trusted me—a total stranger—with far too much information.

  “It was la
te at night, so clearly I had been asleep for a long time. I went home where I would get total shit for being late. When I did get home, my mom was totally drunk again, so she was an out-of-control bitch, and my sister was standing behind her and was yelling at me too, and then…. well, I kind of blew up and then I don’t remember anything…and then I must have fallen asleep again, but I woke up in the kitchen, and the house was a complete disaster and neither my sister or my mom was around. And so I went to my room and packed up my stuff, and left. Screw them.”

  Sounded to me like she had cast another spell and feasted on her family.

  “Jenae, how old are you?” I asked.

  “Eighteen,” she said immediately, another lie. I didn’t even need to smell the difference. It was that obvious. But still, her pulse had quickened, the heat off her body grew, and her stench hung thick in the air. Spicy metallic oranges, mixed with that burnt acrid smell.

  “Jenae, how old are you really? And don’t lie.”

  She rolled her eyes. “God, you’re as bad as my sister. Okay, fine, I’m sixteen, but my birthday is next month, so I’m close to eighteen.”

  I wasn’t sure how to follow that bit of logic. So she was really sixteen, which explained the immature moments but also the rare brief instances of an adult brain working.

  Master and Mira were obviously in league with each other and, for whatever reason, saw potential or special abilities in Jenae. Perhaps the little old lady had drugged her with the food or drink and then had done whatever witches do to transform humans. I had no idea what that entailed, as I’d never witnessed it, but it sounded like the old lady didn’t survive the process.

  Transmorphing a human had never been down topside. In the pits of Hell, warping human souls was a common occurrence, but demon flesh housed the morphed soul. That morphing process varied for each species, but it always took a lot of energy and time. If it wasn’t done right or the soul wasn’t selected carefully, the transformation would fail. I didn’t really understand the biology of witches, but in the old woman’s case, it sounded like she didn’t have enough life left in her to survive creating a new witch. Again, I found this kind of odd. Mirabelle sounded like she was a well-experienced witch; she should have known what she was doing.

  “Do you remember anything else?”

  “I don’t know. There was shit everywhere—in Mira’s place—things were broken, and the walls had all these weird marks on them. Actually, kind of like the walls here. It looks like black mold or something, but there were also a bunch of symbols written on the walls all around where I woke up. The same kind of wriggly writing I saw in Mira’s big book.”

  I guessed that the script Jenae referred to were invocation sigils that would have aided in her transformation. The black rot, well, that could have come from the girl and one of her uncontrollable spells. I wondered if Jenae had inadvertently killed her maker.

  “Okay, my turn!” She put the empty plate on my coffee table and put her feet up next to the plate. I grimaced a little as her human toes clung to the edge. “What are you? I mean, you look human, sort of, but your eyes are so cool and you have the wings! What’s with the wings? Can I touch them?” The gravity of the situation clearly had not sunk in.

  “Jenae, you really sound like a nice girl. I don’t think…no actually, I know you don’t understand how much trouble you’ve got yourself into,” I said, and she rolled her eyes again. I swear she could flip them into the back of her head.

  “God you sound like everyone else. I’m not stupid, you know.” She appeared hurt.

  What had the old woman been thinking with turning this child? She was a bit bratty, but there was something else about her that didn’t sit right. She was in deep trouble getting involved with anything that included Master, but she was so young she didn’t seem to understand the gravity of it, or didn’t care. It was like she was incapable of thinking any further than her next thought. She went from raging against her family and seemingly depressed and rejected to wide-eyed and excited that she was sitting with something that was obviously not human. I was certain that Master had elicited a new form of revenge. My actual punishment for disobedience and tardiness at the summoning wasn’t the broken wing; it was the perpetual headache in the form of a yappy and clueless witch.

  “No, Jenae, I don’t think you’re stupid. I don’t think you understand what has happened to you.”

  She frowned, casting a sideways glance towards me. “Okay, then if you’re so smart, you explain it.”

  “Well…” Where to start. “That old woman, Mira? She was a witch.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Not a nice one, Jenae, and I think she tricked you. I also think the food she gave you was drugged. Once you were drugged, she changed you. It’s a process called transmorphing. Our kind do it to human souls who have descended and have special abilities or show affinities… a propensity for being evil. I’ve never heard of it being done here.”

  Jenae gazed at me with a vacant gaze. “So what? She turned me into witch. She said she was going to teach me how to do magic.”

  “Yes, Jenae, you are a witch. A bad one. I assure you, the old lady was right in one regard, you definitely have a talent for it. You cast a spell on me last night that could have killed me, but you lost control and the creatures you summoned almost killed you instead.”

  The Shishi snuggled in closer. They understood everything.

  “Those ‘dogs’ are guardians created to protect palaces and shrines that house evil creatures, spirits, weapons, and artifacts. They are not protectors of individuals, so I’m not sure what you did, but they switched loyalties last night from guardians that protected my place, to protecting you. When you lost control last night, they saved you.”

  “They guard evil places?”

  “Yes, Jenae. But now they guard you.”

  “So, I’m evil,” she said, with a touch of incredulity. The girl wasn’t stupid; the wheels were turning.

  “Yes. Anything you do will be for evil, not good, and there is a cost,” I said. I really wasn’t the one that should have been having this conversation with her. I didn’t really know that much about witches, at least not enough to raise one.

  “What’s the cost?” she asked.

  “The cost is your soul, or at least pieces of it. A witch is a human who has the ability to take energy and reshape it to do what she wants. Sometimes that’s summoning creatures, and sometimes that’s changing the weather. I don’t know much more than that, because I’m not a witch. But every time you cast a spell, you use a piece of your soul, and if you use enough of it, you can die. You almost did that last night. Every time you deplete that much of your soul, or life force, you have to replace it.”

  “Okay, how do you do that?” she asked. She was tense. I could tell she was sort of braced for my answer, and I think she already knew the truth.

  “You take it from another human.”

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean? How do you take someone else’s soul?”

  “You kill them and then you absorb their soul,” I said.

  She stared at me with a blank stare and saucer eyes, and then she went a little pale.

  “You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? Do you remember what you did last night?”

  She violently shook her head, but I couldn’t tell if it was an answer to my question or if it was in defiance of her memories.

  “No, no, I wouldn’t ever do that. I couldn’t do that.” Her eyes were wide, and her face was now completely ashen.

  “I watched you do it last night.”

  “You watched me murder someone and ‘absorb’ their soul. Yeah, right, you’re so full of bullshit!” Her fists clenched as she crossed her arms in defiance.

  “Well, I sure as Hell wasn’t going to stop you after what you had done to me moments before. Okay, come with me. I’ll prove it to you.” This wouldn’t be pretty, but there was some reminiscence lurking beneath the surface of her mind. Maybe a good shock
of viewing the corpse down the hall would bring everything to light.

  I grabbed her hand and pulled her up. Jenae fought back by attempting to wrench away from me, but I was too fast and too strong. I dragged her out the apartment, down the hall, and to the dead woman’s abode. I could smell the stink of death from in the hallway.

  “Jeez, let go of me!”

  No chance of that happening. I wanted her to see the dead woman, and I wanted to see if it would trigger anything.

  I turned the knob on the neighbour’s door and pushed it open, then walked into the main area, trailing her behind me. The body was still there, and the blood-soaked area around the body was shiny; it had gone gelatinous. The smell of copper was heavy in the air.

  “Jenae, look. You did this last night. Bring back any memories?”

  “No!” The body in its grotesque display made her start to heave. She was going to throw up.

  I threw one hand over her mouth and pulled her close in to me, then turned her away from the sight of the body. I couldn’t risk her vomiting. The heart that she had consumed was essential to keep her fed and alive. It needed to stay down.

  “Do you remember what happened here last night?” I asked.

  She shook her head and sobbed, before shrugging her shoulders and nodding ever so slightly.

  We walked out of the apartment, shut the door behind us, and went back to my place. As soon as we got inside, I let her go. She fell to the floor, sobbing and crying. I helped her to the couch. As soon as she calmed down enough, we got down to the business of discussing what had actually happened in all of its gory details.

  It was a tough few hours for her. Most of what she did remember was hazy, like she recalled a bad dream. We spent the better part of the day and early evening reconstructing the last few weeks of her life. The end result was that she admitted her mother and sister were dead; she had fed on them. Jenae also thought two, maybe three, of the metal parasites had crawled into her arm.

  We had no idea how she had been transformed or what had happened to Mira, the old woman. Jenae had just finished making herself tea and sat back down on the couch when there was a knock on the door. I glanced quickly at her, wondering who was at my door and if the unannounced arrival posed any danger. She looked back at me and shrugged.