There it was again, the emotion I had no name for.
“There is this feeling,” I tried to put into words what I was perceiving, “coming from you…”
She eyed me as if I had a head injury.
“Are you alright, Adam?” she asked, lips pulling back over her lips in a nervous grin. A reaction I couldn’t place on my map yet. “You look rather pale.”
It took a while until things fell into place, like a jar of water with sand slowly drifting to the ground. It was a muddy clearness at first. Then it became obvious, as if I’d always known it.
“You have feelings for me,” I concluded aloud, shocked that I was actually saying it.
Maureen pulled back her hand, shame flickering over her features before she turned around and laughed out loud, an unnatural pitch making the sound feel fake.
“Feelings?” She turned back to me, face composed. “Come on, Adam, these past days must really have affected you more than you realize.”
She stared back at me as I waited for the emotion to disappear. It didn’t.
“I’m not quite certain,” I began to question her denial.
“Adam,” she stopped me mid-sentence, “I’m a demon. Demons don’t feel,” she dragged the words out as if it was something she could choke on if she said it too fast. “Demons are immune. We don’t fall victim to all those emotions humans glorify so much. We don’t feel compassion, we don’t love. We don’t. Anything beyond the neutral scale is off limits for demons.” There was sincerity in her eyes as she explained—maybe more to herself than to me. “Anger, hate, lust, greed, all of those are in our realm. But not those filthy feelings that make humans so weak. Those are the ones which trigger the wings of part-angels.”
Her eyes were fierce now, almost glowing with determination.
“Those are the feelings that make them vulnerable. That make them suffer. They give us power over them. Deep within their souls, they have a breeding ground for their own misery. That’s where they seal their own fate.”
I had never seen her like this, never heard her speak so many words at once. I doubted she had said as much since they’d recovered me from the woods, as she had in the past minute.
There were thoughts in my head, trying to push through and manifest on my tongue, but they didn’t become more than a cloud of cognitive dissonance. If all she said was true, what was it she was emitting toward me?
“That’s why I couldn’t care less about who you are, Adam. I am trying to have a little fun, that’s all.” She didn’t wait for me to figure out what she meant, but laid her hand on my neck and pulled me back toward her until her lips crushed on mine.
It was almost painful, the force of her mouth moving on mine, but it was enjoyable--for a moment. Then, as I closed my eyes, a pair of grayish-blue eyes stared at me, taunting me. I shrank back from Maureen’s kiss, startled by the girl’s eyes rather than Maureen’s seductive tongue on my teeth.
“I’m sorry,” I apologized even though I didn’t even know what for. It was like something was speaking inside of me, rather than I myself was speaking.
Maureen laughed darkly, eyes composed, hiding that my rejection had affected her. “Never—and I mean never—apologize, Adam,” she said, voice almost as fierce as before. “You are a child of darkness. We both are. Children of the darkness do as they wish and take what they want.” She winked at me. “You’re lucky I am not determined to take off your clothes right now. I have other, more important things to do.”
There it was again, the shame as she acted as if she didn’t care.
“You can go now. Blackbird will need your assistance with interrogations.” She dismissed me with a wave of her hand, the same way Volpert had before.
Walking through the tunnels rather than teleporting helped me sort my head a little, recover from the piercing eyes in my mind. What was going on with me? Was she someone I’d known in my old life? Another demon? Or was I simply having issues, some sort of brain damage from my time with the dead?
“How nice of you to join us,” Blackbird welcomed me with a grin and patted me on the back. “Did you have a good morning?”
He winked at me, referring to something I couldn’t understand. I stared at him for a moment, trying to figure it out when he seemed to realize he had made a false assumption and his grin faded.
“Wait, you don’t look as relaxed as I was expecting. That means, either she was really weak this time, or…”
I raised my eyebrows, trying to read him.
“Or she didn’t get in your pants.”
It clicked. He thought Maureen and I had slept together. The expression on my face gave me away.
“Man,” Blackbird boomed with laughter. “She’s good. Real good. You have no idea what you’re missing out on.” The look in his eyes told me he was disappointed.
I didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t like I hadn’t desired her body, just something else had been stronger. The need to understand her emotions, the eyes looking at me from the depth of my mind…
“Next time,” I shrugged, hoping he’d leave the topic alone. In no way was I ready to talk about the creepy eyes. They were my secret for now. Maureen had said we children of darkness took what we wanted. And that’s what I was intending to do. I took control of the situation.
“The she-demon said you needed help with some special case?” I steered the conversation in a new direction.
Blackbird nodded and pointed at the smooth wall behind him. “Behind the door.”
“I don’t see a door.”
“That’s because you don’t know it’s there.” He walked over to the gray rock and ran his hand across the surface. “Can you see it, right there?”
As he moved his fingers in a circular motion, I noticed a symbol. It was shaped like the ones in the pool, but it wasn’t glowing.
“There is a very strong one behind the stone. A real angel, no half-breed. It’s a guardian angel.”
As Blackbird reached to his neck and pulled out his necklace, I shuddered. The thought of an angel stronger than the ones we’d encountered before, more dangerous, scared me.
“The walls have demonic energy, so she can’t just break through, but we’ll need to get her into shackles in order to interrogate her. We can’t risk her getting away.”
I nodded in agreement. “What can I do?”
“I’ll need your energy, Adam.” He handed me the shackles. “I’ll open the door and I will draw upon your strength as much as my own in order to keep the angel’s power at bay. Give me your hand.”
I did as he told me and the moment our skin touched, I felt it circulating through me, my energy, the demonic, dark power which would help defeat that creature.
Blackbird nodded. “Ready?” He lifted his necklace and pushed the pendant into the circular space.
A line of fiery orange appeared around it, as he turned it like a key. There was a cracking noise and the stone slowly slid aside. The angry scream of the angel startled me.
“I thought you were going to let me rot in here,” she said once the gap was big enough to reveal her face.
She looked harmless. A pretty woman in her mid-forties, smooth, dark skin, and short-cropped hair. She eyed me with curious black eyes.
“You wish,” Blackbird answered and stepped back as the woman moved an inch closer.
She eyed us from top to bottom before her mouth turned into a wide curve. “Oh, how sweet. You’re so afraid of me, you need to hold hands.”
Anger flared up in me.
“Don’t let her provoke you, Adam,” Blackbird warned me, but it was too late. I had noticed the pure, white light underneath her mocking facade and the draw I thought had been strong with the other angels became ridiculous. This was a force I could have never thought possible.
“Adam,” Blackbird pulled on my hand, “Stay in control of yourself. We need her for information.”
The angel realized our moment of weakness and lifted her hand. A ray of light shot from her
palm, brightening the cave in a flash. Blackbird pulled me out of the way as he ducked down. His grip on my hand tightened.
“Now!” he called and raised his own arm.
As he drew upon my strength, all the warmth from my last meal left my body. A flash of silver light emitted from his fingers as he crushed the enemy with one fatal blow. As the angel’s eyes went blank, her wings burst from her shoulders and she dropped to the ground.
My own legs buckled and I grabbed onto Blackbird’s arm to stay upright.
“Well done, Adam,” he said with a frown.
At first, I thought he was praising me, but then, as my strength was slowly returning, I realized he was looking down on me with heavy disapproval.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” he said, his icy whisper scarier than any yelling could have been. “This,” he let go of my hand, “was a guardian angel. A real angel. A strong source of information and energy.” He stepped toward me and raised his palm, hooking his claws into my strings. “We needed this angel to get information for Volpert. He will be very displeased with both of us.”
A short, searing pain ran through my system as he pulled and I slid to the ground. What was happening? “Ouch!”
The expression of shock on Blackbird’s face was almost as explicit as the shock I felt myself.
“What are you doing?” I hissed at him and he dropped his hand, eyes blank for a brief second.
He shook his head and murmured more to himself than to me, “You’re not supposed to feel this.”
7
Aurora
The next days I spent mostly keeping to myself. The incident with Blackbird had made me think—and it seemed thinking was something I was really good at. It was easy to logically deduce theories from my observations and what I saw was a clear pattern: this new family worked in a definite hierarchy. Volpert was the top of the pyramid, then Blackbird. Nora and Jin seemed to be the next level. Nora appeared to have some sort of connection with Volpert that I couldn’t yet figure out. And then there was Maureen.
Whatever part she was playing in my integration into our little society, she most certainly was at the bottom of the pyramid. However, Volpert needed her for some reason and that gave her power she wouldn’t normally have.
She hadn’t approached me again the way she had in her room. I assumed it had something to do with the feelings she so strongly denied. But then, what did I care? Feelings weren’t on my agenda as a demon. I wanted to climb the pyramid. Nothing but feeding and supporting Volpert in his tireless effort to defeat our enemies was important. And it seemed I was doing alright on my way up.
After the short escapade with Blackbird, Volpert had summoned me and questioned me. How had I felt? What did the pain feel like? Had it triggered memories? I had answered everything as truthfully as I could. He was pleased with the amount of energy I had been able to provide Blackbird with and he offered the prospect of starting to act on my own.
Today was the day he had promised to take me to the surface.
“How much further?” I asked, excited to get to see the city above us.
“Just a couple more seconds.” He led the way uphill, ignoring my impatient mood.
The darkness was getting less dense, and I could make out colors in the stones and bricks. Tiny prisms of quartz were breaking the beams of light which were entering the tunnel through a crack in a door.
Volpert stopped, hands on the stone, and glanced over his shoulder with a warning look. “Follow my lead. No experiments.” The warning was clear in his staccato tone.
“Understood.” My eyes were trying to see past him, through the opening door, as he pushed it aside effortlessly, but he blocked my view one more time as he looked at me with a serious expression.
“And no talking to strangers.”
I nodded, eager to get out of the tunnel, wondering where the whisper of water was coming from. How many days had I spent under the ground? I couldn’t tell. The endless night—despite being broken by dim torches and bright star-like souls—had taken away my sense of time.
When he finally let the door swing open, I found myself staring at an opening a little bit ahead in the tunnel. It was rounded and let in a warm ray of sunlight. After a moment of adjusting, I stepped into the small spot of light that shaped a half-circle under the protective roof of the stone.
The view was breathtaking. A wide river, flowing far under the level of the city, greenish-brown water reflecting blue skies and historic brick buildings far up on the streets. I looked up and found the steel and stone of a bridge running above my head.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” Volpert commented, sounding not at all impressed by the picture.
There was no need for me to speak. He had brought me to the surface. He trusted me with showing me the way out.
He watched me as I took in every detail. The island which was splitting the river, the little ruffles on the waves where the water touched the land and stones, the dirt where the wind had driven plastic and paper into the corner beside the door. The smell of the water, the exhaust of cars above us, and their humming sound as they slowly turned and drove over the bridge above us. The voices of humans, laughing and talking as they rushed along the sidewalks…
“How about a little hunt?” he suggested after giving me a minute or two.
What could I say? The fresh air was like a balm to my mind and the prospect of being within direct reach of thousands of little stars walking through the streets of Aurora was thrilling.
“Let’s go.”
Volpert rushed ahead, fast as only a demon could, invisible to the human eye, and light and graceful as he snuck up the walls. I tuned out everything but his movements, trying to keep up and ready to teleport any second if he gave me the signal. He didn’t stop until we found cover in an alley between the brick buildings at the river. If anyone had noticed us, they wouldn’t have seen more than a shadow speeding by. I looked around, ignoring the smell of the trashcan behind us, and tried to catch a glimpse of the light in the street ahead.
“No experiments,” Volpert repeated and I nodded, reassuring him I had understood. “Stay out of view and act human if someone notices you. For all people know, you’re dead.” With those words, he stepped out onto the sidewalk, slow enough for me to become impatient, but I knew following his orders was the only way I would be safe up here. With a sigh, I mimicked his human demeanor and the annoyingly slow movements that came with it and followed onto the street.
Had I thought before the sunlight was bright, now that the first souls were walking past us, the winter-sun seemed pale compared to the ocean of stars bundled up in winter coats. My system reacted without delay and the hunger set in, driving my imagination over the edge. It would be so easy to just reach out with my hand—quickly, demon speed—and suck them dry, draw out their light and devour it. Just like that. They would drop dead and not even notice what was happening to them. I would be able to leave a trail of extinguished flames—I knew what I was capable of—and no one would be the wiser. At least not the humans. But Volpert. And the angels in this territory… I wasn’t certain which one I should fear more. The creatures of light or Volpert’s wrath. My intuition told me they would be equally uncomfortable if I decided to give in to my lust for the humans’ shiny souls.
“Don’t even think about it,” Volpert shot me a look from the side.
His eyes were sharp. Even with the distraction of hundreds of lights within reach, he didn’t miss how my primal instincts were breaking through.
Again, I tried to focus on the faces rather than the lights. There was a woman walking past us as we disappeared into the niche between a bare tree and a mailbox, features tense from the cold wind and hair ruffled. She wasn’t wearing a hat; her thick black curls were covering her head instead. Behind her, an elderly man shuffled by, woolen hat covering half of his forehead and his ears. There were children on the other side of the street, laughing as they ran from parked car to parked car. Their joy was int
riguing. The innocence and purity of their lights… Again I had to pull myself together to not just cross the street in a demonic sprint and tear their souls from their tiny bodies. Delicious...
Volpert’s hand hit my chest and I snapped out of my beginning frenzy.
“Last warning, Adam,” he hissed. “If you can’t control yourself, we’ll return underground immediately.”
It was clear he was serious.
He waited for a second, making sure I wouldn’t expose us to the humans, before he led the way from shadow to shadow until we were in a wide side street near the river. There weren’t many people there, just a lot of parked cars. Volpert stopped in front of what seemed to be an office building, looking up at the dark windows.
“Sunday,” he said and pointed at one window, high up, which was brightly-lit despite the sunshine. “No one should be up there.”
A smile spread on his lips, cold and cruel, and my face mirrored his expression as I understood what that meant. There was a human up there, probably alone, behind closed walls, out of sight when we would snatch them. Perfect.
“We teleport in,” Volpert shared his plan and grabbed my shoulder, taking me on the quick journey through time and space before our feet hit the ground inside the hallway of the building, conveniently right outside the office with the lit window.
“I’ve been here before,” he explained, seeing my surprised face as I stared at the little glass window in the wooden door. There was a middle-aged woman sitting at a desk, typing away as she listened to music. I could hear the beat from her headphones through the walls, a happy tune I would never have chosen, not in my right mind.
“The happier something makes them, the better for their soul,” he whispered, “and the music, horrid as it may be, makes her very happy. See how she is glowing.”
He didn’t need to point out the radiating light underneath her bronze skin. It was hard to overlook as it became stronger with every second.
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