“How old is he?” I asked.
“Four.” And that was all he said. In fact, Hemming’s eyes became distant, and he picked imaginary lint off of the comforter that was wrapped around him.
“You know, Hemming, I’m the only D’Alae in the area. I would be able to pass on him, if I knew who he was. It’s not like I haven’t done that before. I could do it again,” I said, thinking of Alyx. In the end, that hadn’t worked out well.
“You’d do that?” Hemming said with a hint of surprise and hope.
“I could,” I said. “There are enough children to mark that Master isn’t going to know if I’ve missed one.”
“I would be indebted to you, man. Seriously.” I had never seen Hemming so genuine before. I’d known Hemming for fifty-odd years, and that was through Master’s tasks. So, Hemming was only revealing the current ties that bound him to Master. There had to be more, but for now, Hemming had shared this, and for now, that was enough.
“Let’s forget about who owes whom and just agree we’re on the same team?” I said. “But that’s not going to prevent anything happening to him if Master already knows about him. We may have to get creative to spare your child.” I glanced over my shoulder towards my bedroom where Alyx lay entombed.
“Alyx? He’s your son?” Hemming inquired.
“No! Seven Hells, no. But at one point, I had made a promise… All I’m saying, Hemming, is that we can try to keep your son safe. But Master is vicious.”
“Yeah, you don’t really need to remind me of that,” he said, indicating his wrist and midsection.
“So then we’ll do what we can. But right now, there are some more immediate concerns. For instance, where are those pods of yours, and how did you manage to have three guys come at you at once? How did that happen?”
Hemming explained. “I got instructions on that too.” Holding out his phone again, he showed me three pictures that had been sent to him. “Directly after the summons, this was sent to me. And stuffed into my coat pocket was this old T-shirt. So I went out on the hunt.”
“And by hunt, you mean…?”
“Yeah, wolf form—cold wet nose and all. I found the one that belonged to the shirt and then corralled him and his friends into a back alley, and the minute we got close enough to each other, the bugs burst forth and did their job.”
“So, where are they, Hemming?”
Hemming gave me a good description of where the event occurred. Hopefully, no one had found them. Hemming had tried to camouflage the pods as best he could, but same rules applied. Touching a pod while the transformation took place was never a good idea.
“I’ll go soon. It’ll be better if I do this when it’s completely dark. That should be in a couple of hours or less, but I will, Hemming, I’ll get them back here for you. We’ll get us both through this, and your son.” I put a hand on his shoulder. Hemming studied me with an I’m-not-sure-I-can-trust-you expression, and rightfully so; trust was not something you did between creatures of the dark. Instead he nodded ever so slightly.
“Alright, rest. I’ll be back soon.” As I turned to leave, another thought crossed my mind.
“Oh, and don’t let Jenae do anything to you. At least not until I get back?”
Hemming let out a little laugh at that. “Agreed,” he said. “So, you and Alyx?” He cocked an eyebrow.
“That’s complicated,” I said, and left it at that.
“It always is, Dati. It always is.”
I left his temporary recovery room and went down the hall to my room where Alyx lay trapped.
I leaned over the pod as the crystals sounded ominous little chimes. “Alyx, I have to go out for just a little while, but I will be right back. I promise.” I wanted to place my hand on the tomb, an act of reassurance, and actually reached out my hand to do so, but I stopped short. No contact; I couldn’t touch him.
I backed away, feeling hopeless.
Bringing home Hemming’s pods wasn’t going to be easy, and I wouldn’t be able to touch them either, so I needed something to keep the surface away from my skin, and the best I could come up with was several large bed sheets. So I grabbed the few I had and then went out to the kitchen. I needed my backpack, and that meant I had to take it back from Jenae.
I rounded the corner into the kitchen. Jenae had made a complete and total mess of the place. Bowls with white pasty thick gruel were scattered around the kitchen counter. She was busy, slopping the sludge into a towel and ringing it out over the sink.
If nothing else, she was determined. I’ll give her that. But the smell from her ‘cooking’ was horrific.
“Well, you’ve made yourself at home. Just remember you need to clean this all up too,” I said, with a bit of discontent and while examining one of the closer bowls. The mixture really did appear like lumpy gruel. I put my finger out to touch it.
“I wouldn’t maybe do that,” Jenae said.
“Why?” I pulled my hand back to my side quickly.
“I don’t know. That batch turned out weird. Look what happens,” she said, and then put her towel down on the counter. White liquid leaked out from the towel, ran across the counter, and dripped onto the floor. I sighed. Such a mess.
Jenae leaned over the bowl, examining it, and then reached her fingers out to it. And as soon as her hand was over top of the bowl, strings of the liquid started reaching towards her hand.
“That’s not supposed to happen.”
“Do not under any circumstances put any of this on anyone. That means Hemming or yourself. Do you understand me? I do not need to be cleaning up any more messes, or dead bodies,” I said with as much authority as I could muster. Jenae, being the typical teenager, would most likely do the exact opposite of what I told her. “I mean it. Nothing until I get back.”
“Yeah, okay.” She put her hand back over the bowl, watching the strings form again. “I don’t know why this isn’t working. I’m doing everything it says in the book!”
I shook my head and walked over to the cupboard, pulled out a box of garbage bags, taking several out. My backpack sat abandoned on the kitchen counter. “I need this tonight, so if you don’t mind?”
“Um, yeah, sure, just dump it out on the table.”
As I went over to the dining room table the Shishi watched me carefully. I pulled the items out of her bag and placed them on the surface where I was sure they would remain for quite some time. Jenae wouldn’t be putting them away, and that left another mess. Her presence in the house was getting on my nerves.
I shoved the garbage bags and the bed sheets into the backpack, and then walked towards the front door. It would be another hour or so until sundown, but I had one more task I needed to do before I could go retrieve Hemming’s pods. I had to get rid of the body down the hall.
Rot
DATI
It took me far longer than I had anticipated, wrapping up the dead neighbour and hauling her out of the building without any witnesses. I travelled several blocks away from my home with nary a deep breath. The strenuous activity didn’t rip open any of my wounds. That could only mean they were healing.
I ended up in a cavernous alleyway, and at the very end of it stood a dumpster that was already fairly full. So I pitched the savagely battered, pill-and-liquor-soaked addict into the bin. Good riddance.
I stood up straight and flexed my muscles, careful not to stretch out the still-bound wing. My back popped. It felt good. Actually, it felt better than good. There was a certain sense of relief that came with knowing that, even though this woman’s body would eventually be found, it would take the police a long time to trace this to the same high-rise I lived in.
I made sure that identification of the corpse would be difficult. The small bag in my hoodie pouch contained the ends of her fingers—which meant no fingerprints—and the woman’s face and teeth. As gruesome as that was, identifying the body would be almost impossible. All the police would have was a sack of meat.
Hemming’s directions led me
to a seedy area of downtown, and as promised, there was the river in front of me. I reached into my stuffed pocket, grabbing the gruesome contents of my hoodie, and unceremoniously pitched the squishy human bits into the waterway, but not before I had placed a good-sized rock into the bag so the damn thing would sink.
After a scramble up the riverbank and a quick jaunt down a side street, I came across the bar Hemming had described.
It was a shameful joint. The clientele that walked in and out of Mila’s Pub made me think twice about ever going in. Combinations of meth addicts and prostitutes, gang bangers and miscreants ensured a lively group that could best be described as the dregs of urban city life: a group of people who had made a lifetime of bad decisions.
But, as promised, around the corner from Mila’s was the empty parking lot that Hemming had described, flanked by an immense dilapidated building.
I cut across the parking lot to the warehouse. The first-floor windows were all boarded up as if the entire base was wrapped in a big bandage.
Behind the ramshackle monstrosity, I saw stacks of old forgotten wooden pallets. Another large dumpster was also tucked into the back, and in the corner, right beside the bin were three dark shapes.
I had only ever seen pods from my own kind. The whole transmutation process was a relatively secretive matter amongst the various demon ilk. I wasn’t sure what to expect.
The cocoons were considerably different than Alyx’s pod. These were amorphous—jet black and velvety. Round, sort of. They moved too. A blob bubbled up, distorting the surface, and then it disappeared. A bulge appeared on the other side of the sphere, and then the pod was round again. Whatever was in them was pushing and pulling the walls from the inside. Luckily, there were no filaments or strands anchoring them to their spot, which would make the task of moving them a whole lot easier.
“No skin contact,” I reminded myself before slipping on some gloves and pulling out the bed sheets from my backpack, spreading out one of them in front of the first pod.
Hushed whines came from the pods as I knelt down and touched one with my gloved hand. A skeletal hand pressed against the surface from the inside, and a garbled moan erupted from the pod. The noise deteriorated into wet rasps and a click of teeth.
The hair on the back of my neck rose as I listened to the unearthly noises emanating from what was inside.
I placed my covered hands on the pod and attempted to roll it towards the center of the sheet. It barely moved. It was also far heavier than I thought it would be. I pulled on it again, with a little more force, but I was so unsure how much would be too much.
Again there was a push from inside the pod, almost resistance, and the noises were increasing. This was going to take all night.
I pulled a third time, hard.
A rip, like the sound of tearing flesh, halted my actions.
I stopped and inspected the pod carefully. Running my fingers over the top of the cocoon, I couldn’t spot any tears. With my feet dug in, and on my knees, I gave the pod another good, hard tug forward.
The whole front ripped open.
Black coagulated blood flowed out in a torrent, over my arms, and pants, spilling out onto the cement. The half-formed demon Shape-Shifting body floundered and panicked out of the pod, scampering on top of me.
The corpse was covered as if it had been dipped in tar, except it was more bone than anything else. Long strips of flesh hung off of the skeleton. There were some patches of sinew and muscle, but mostly it was bare.
The scalp had bits of hair poking out in decayed tufts; black ooze matted the hair to the thing’s back. Its face was missing. There were no eyes in the socket, and the inky tongue was swollen with rot.
With the skull only inches from my face, it started to shift. Bones rearranged themselves, flattening out and stretching. Its jaw lengthened and teeth fell out as the tongue rolled. In the creature’s half decayed state, it reached out a bony arm towards my face and tried grabbing for me. The noises that had been coming out of the pod before were now hissing from the gaping maw, and halfway through its scream of torment, its jaw fell off.
This was a morph that had not taken. The body still alive inside had rejected the demonic blood, or vice versa, and the human form was still in agony over being ripped apart and half rebuilt.
I grabbed its head and squished the skull, crushing it. Bits of bone fragments and grey matter exploded in all directions. What was left of the body flopped to the ground, dead.
The odour was overwhelming. Mixed remnants of decayed human flesh and shifting demon bits clung to me like lumpy porridge. My stomach churned. I turned my head and vomited repeatedly.
The viscous liquid from the pod was sticky. I opened and closed my fingers as the liquid formed strings between them. The fluid had soaked into my flesh, reeking of death, and now staining the crevasses of my hands and colouring black lines deep under my fingernails. Evil just does that; it wedges its way in.
At least the creature no longer suffered. I couldn’t imagine how much pain and torment it had gone through. I immediately thought of Alyx and swallowed hard.
Hemming would owe me big for this.
Hemming…how would I tell Hemming that one of the pods didn’t take? What was Master going to do with Hemming? What would Master do with all of us?
My mind raced through several scenarios. All of them had Master torturing us in bloody ways. An uneasy feeling gnawed away at my stomach.
I grimaced at the other two pods. I really hoped they remained intact.
Wiping myself off with the bed sheet, I approached the next pod. I attempted a very gentle roll forward. Again, I felt something inside press up against my own hands. I braced myself before rotating it towards me.
Within a few minutes of very careful manoeuvring, the black velvety case sat in the middle of the sheet. I gathered up the ends and created a sack.
Round two began. Same trial, just as difficult, but eventually I had two satchels of velvety, ebony evil. There was no way I was going to lug two of these creatures across the city with a wounded midsection, and I couldn’t very well make the trip twice.
I had to borrow a car, sort of. I moved some pallets around and slid the wrapped-up pods in behind, concealing them with crates.
I hung out across the street from Mila’s, concealing myself in the doorway of a closed-up business and waited for patrons to leave. The little alcove smelled heavily of urine.
I waited and waited. A few people had stumbled out of the bar and staggered down the street, some of them accompanied with entertainment for the night, but none of them wandered over to the line of parked cars.
To my surprise, another dark creature walked out of the building. The eyes are the tell: they reflect light differently than humans. This demon had a human with him. I had no idea what kind of demon it was, or why the human was a tag-along, but regardless of the situation, it wouldn’t end well…for the human.
Eventually, a patron came out, one who’d had one too many, and stumbled over to the parked cars. That’s when I moved in, quickly.
“Hey, buddy, you can’t drive,” I said.
“Fuck off, asshole,” he slurred. Okay. Fine. He wanted to be difficult. I could be much more difficult.
He fumbled with his set of car keys. He stopped, wrinkled up his face, and then said, “Jesus, man, you fuckin’ stink.”
I wound up and landed one swift punch to the drunk’s head, just above the ear. He fell to the pavement. The keys clattered as they tumbled under the car.
I glanced around. No one was within sight. Perfect. I bent over, fished the keys out from their landing spot, picked the drunk up, and stuffed him into the passenger side.
Within minutes, I had loaded the pods in the trunk and was driving home.
I couldn’t stand the smell of myself. I was tired and wounds all over my body were screaming out for rest. Hopefully it would come soon. I turned the corner, and the drunk rolled and smacked his head against the passenger-side windo
w. It made a hollow sound.
Pulling into the back of the high-rise, I parked the car beside the back-door entrance, which I had left propped open just for me.
I turned the car off and then pulled the interior lever to pop the trunk of the car. I threw the keys at the drunk, not really caring too much about him, his recovery, or if he even found his car keys when he finally did wake up.
With great care, I hauled the pods into the condo and gently set them down in the front entrance of my apartment. Hemming walked out from the kitchen, his face whitening as his gaze darted from one pod to the other.
“Please, no. Where’s the third, Dati? What happened? Where is the third pod?” His voice wavered. He had a wild look of panic on his face.
“Hemming, I’m sorry. I really am. I moved it, and it split open.”
“No…” He staggered back, clutching his bandaged wound. He shouldn’t have even been up and walking around. “No,” he said again. “You should have been more careful.” He spoke curtly. The colour in his irises flickered, sparks of amber flared. “You should have been more careful!”
“Hemming, it wasn’t my fault,” I started before Hemming dropped to his knees.
“He’ll go after him. I know it. He’ll go after him, and I’ll lose him to all this.” He slammed a fist into the floor. Tears ran down his face.
Jenae hooked a brow up in confusion. As usual, she was incapable of understanding.
“Hemming, listen to me. The pod didn’t take. It was rotting on the inside. Can’t you smell it on me? It wasn’t my fault, Hemming.”
He glared at me, golden yellow eyes flamed violently. “Does it matter?” he growled. “There’s now one missing. What am I going to do? He’ll go after my son, Dati! My son!”
I needed to diffuse this situation, quickly. I had already started to back up, giving Hemming some space, and I didn’t want to say another word. If Hemming didn’t rein in the emotions, he was going to shift.
Daimonion (The Apocalypse Book 1) Page 13