Fire

by Angelina J. Steffort

  “I was just hunting,” I explained, hoping I wouldn’t get to meet the wrath of Volpert first-hand. “In case you’re interested: I was successful. I fed.”

  A pair of hands clapped behind me and I jerked around. Volpert was leaning on the wall, blond ponytail dangling behind his neck, and applauding my baby-steps.

  “Wonderful,” he said, his tone taunting me. “I’m glad you got your food…and whatever other rush you needed.”

  “No one recognized me,” I defended, hoping they would understand. They had wanted me to go hunting by myself. Or had they wanted to test my loyalties?

  “Dear Adam,” Volpert smiled and pushed himself away from the stone, “you didn’t really think you were alone, did you?”

  I sank my head, embarrassed. They had observed all of my night? All of it?

  “He had something good going,” Blackbird informed Volpert. “A hot girl.” And then he winked at me, praising my choice of prey, “respect.”

  Was he joking? Where had the anger gone?

  “Ah, yes, demons and their desires.” Volpert patted my shoulder. “Lucky our power of seduction works on almost anyone and anything. You did well, son.”

  For a second I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. Was he being sarcastic or did he actually mean what he was saying?

  “Did he do the thing with the eyes?” he asked Blackbird without looking away.

  “What thing?” I asked before Blackbird had a chance to respond.

  “The blinking, the gazing, the almost hypnotic stare of a demon when he wants something.”

  “He did,” Blackbird stated and laughed. “It was very beginner-level, though.”

  With shock, I remembered how easy it had been to lure the girl to show me the way. She had even decided to take me up to her apartment. I hadn’t asked for any of it. Just for a place to have a meal, and she so conveniently had provided both—the place and the meal.

  “I think now he’s truly ready,” Blackbird suggested with a smile. Volpert agreed with a graceful nod of his head.

  “Ready for what?” I was confused. Volpert had said that before. What was I ready for, this time?

  “We’re going to hunt down the enemy together.”

  “Which one?”

  “The girl and her guardian angel,” he said and his lips turned into a thin line of bitterness. “The one whose ancestors killed my father.” I flinched as he shared this new piece of information. “The descendant of James Albert Thompson. It’s time to take revenge.”

  I didn’t ask for her name, for it wasn’t of any concern, just that she would die. And I would so sweetly enjoy it.

  “Nora and Jin have been watching her, and it seems she is hardly by herself anymore. She has a whole protection network of angels now, not just her guardian angel. An angel-army.” He laughed hysterically before he swallowed the sound and put on a dangerous face. “We need to terminate her. Sooner rather than later. And for that, we need to know where she is, what she is doing, with whom, and find a window of opportunity when she’ll be alone.”

  As he spoke about the girl-monster, the dangerous human and her protective wall of angel-creatures, an image worse than what I could have ever imagined built up inside my mind. Not just the temptation of angelic energy, but also the threat of being smothered by it.

  “What can I do?” Once more I offered my service and my powers for our demonic cause.

  “For now, feed regularly, keep your energy levels up, secure the supply of food for the rest of us.”

  It sounded almost too easy. Find humans. Bring them to our caves. Make sure our clan is properly fed. But what about catching the girl? What about the angel-creatures who were protecting her?

  “Allow me to ask what we’ll do with the angels if we catch them.”

  Volpert eyed me with an unreadable expression.

  “You said the girl needs to die, but what about the angels?”

  He shook his head as if I didn’t fully get the gravity of the situation.

  “She will die. And the angels…well, if we catch even one of them, I’ll take them down to the Sacred Halls of the Dark and make sure they are of use to our cause.”

  “The what?” I interrupted and bit my lip, noticing Volpert’s patience was coming to an end.

  He sighed. “There’s a lot you still have to learn, son.” He turned to march out of the room and without looking back, before he crossed the threshold, he said, “you might want to relax today. Blackbird’s going to pick you up for one last interrogation before your new task starts.”

  Was there a chuckle at the end of his words?

  For a while, I kept thinking about the Sacred Halls of the Dark. Volpert hadn’t explained nor had he given an indication he was going to explain any time soon. It was like when he had first mentioned the girl-monster. Subtly on the side, stirring my curiosity.

  Taking Volpert’s suggestion of relaxing, I made my way down to the room with the pool, enjoying the thought of the warm water and the fiery symbols. I didn’t meet anyone down there. The others seemed to have abandoned the part of the caves which was accessible to me. For the moment, I chose to not care about being excluded from the action. I was still hoping to somehow retrieve some memories from my premortem area. Maybe today was my lucky day.

  The flickering light of candle flames greeted me, as always, and I undressed and slid into the pool at demon speed. As I closed my eyes and leaned back into the water, the face returned to my thoughts. The girl who had haunted me before, her bluish eyes, deep ponds full of secrets. Had I been relaxed and calm a moment ago, I was now agitated, craving for that light the girl emitted. I could taste the bright rays of her soul by just looking at her. But there was more. There was a yearning to understand her. Why did she keep showing up in my dreams? I looked straight into those eyes, trying to unearth the mysteries they held, but she blinked, denying me access into the world behind them, and she was gone.

  The moment she disappeared, a hollow ache echoed in my chest and I tore my eyes open. What was going on with me? The flames of the candles were pitch-black compared to the girl’s inner star. With a sigh of frustration, I slid under the water and watched the burning lines on the ground of the pool. Their symmetric pattern eased my mind a little bit. Where had they come from? Who was she? Was she a product of my imagination or a real person? Was she a memory? I didn’t even dare think the last thought. If she was, then maybe there was a chance I might get my memories back one day…

  The bath didn’t bring the relaxation I’d expected, and so I jumped out after just a short while and stood in front of the small mirror behind the stone bench. I stared into my own eyes, trying to see what the girl had been staring at. They were pale-green. My skin was almost unhealthily white, and my hair was hanging wetly in my face.

  “Who are you?” I asked the face in the mirror and listened to the coldness of my voice. It reminded me of Volpert’s a bit, maybe of Blackbird’s.

  There was only one answer I could give myself. I was a demon, designed to fight our enemy, to torture, to kill. The thought gave me a certain satisfaction. I was strong and, in this world, almost invincible. No matter if I had died before, I had returned. Probably more powerful than before.

  As I gave myself a pep-talk, the hollow feeling in my chest disappeared. It seemed there were certain things I had control over and others I didn’t. The girl most certainly belonged to the category of the ones I couldn’t control. And so, for now, I decided to focus on those things I could control.

  I whirled back into the water and stared into the orange symbols. Angelic energy, Maureen had explained, confined in those demonic symbols. Maybe that was the reason I was so drawn to the water. Angelic energy was attractive to all of us demons, and there, in those glowing lines, it was preserving the heat of the pool, utilized to serve as a common heater. I had to ask Blackbird how this worked sometime soon.

  “Time to go,” Blackbird stood in the rounded entrance of my room, arms folded across his chest
, looking impatient and hungry.

  Before he could get upset, I rolled off of my cot and slipped into a hooded shirt, the best disguise in the human world.

  “Where are we going?” I asked as he started walking uphill into the part of the tunnels where the natural stone turned into brick walls.

  “We have someone we need to question.”

  Right. Volpert’s announcement.

  “Who is it? An angel? Human?” Eager to see the shining light of an angel, I sped up and caught up with him.

  “Human,” he answered curtly.

  Somehow he sounded different. Tense. As if there was more at stake than just the usual need for energy or somebody’s mark.

  “We need to get to the library,” he added when he saw the look on my face as we stepped into the gray daylight of a cloudy evening. With those words he led the way, ghosting ahead into the streets.

  I followed, always in the shadows, always ready to disappear. Nobody noticed us as we skipped from behind cars to doorways, from dark alleys to trees, quick and silent as only demons could.

  “There,” Blackbird pointed at a modern building with a glass entrance door. “The public library.”

  Behind the windows, the dim light of exit signs and idle computers cast a low glow on the inside of the building. The outline of an elderly man was visible against the green and orange shine.

  “I’ll teleport us in,” Blackbird announced and grabbed my arm.

  Within a fraction of a second, we stood between walls of books, the children’s books section, to be specific.

  “You’ll incapacitate the human, I’ll question him.” Blackbird stepped out of the aisle and the man noticed us, eyes widening with recognition.

  “So, you finally found me,” he said, probably realizing what we were.

  “Finally.” Blackbird grinned icily and gestured for me to pull on the human’s strings.

  He didn’t need to motivate me. Fear was enhancing the human’s light and it shone deliciously though his skin. From my position hidden in the shadow of the shelves, hood deep over my face, I lifted my hand and let his strings snap into my fingers. He gasped as he felt the leash on his soul and he knew he was right. A rush swooshed through me. The rush of power over another being. I could just snuff out his light, suck it in and let him drop to the stone floor.

  “Keep your hunger under control,” Blackbird urged in a whisper as he saw how my thoughts were drifting off.

  “All in check,” I reassured him in anticipation of what was coming.

  “Very well, then,” he turned back to the old man who was panting from being kept at the edge of what was bearable. “Back to you, librarian.”

  Blackbird’s cruel smile added a layer of terror to the man’s expression.

  “You have been busy chit-chatting, haven’t you?” Blackbird stated the question like a fact he just needed confirmed for protocol.

  I loosened my hold on the librarian’s soul just enough so he could take a breath and speak.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he defended, disappointing Blackbird’s game.

  “What about the nice sit-in you had with the girl the other day?”

  “What girl?” The man was defying Blackbird’s questioning, staring him in the eye as if he had nothing to fear from the demon.

  “The girl who works here, the one who confided in you, and the one you told about our history.” He whispered the last words, a sound so dangerous it even made me shudder.

  “She hardly ever comes here anymore,” the human struggled in my grasp as I tightened the leash again. He would talk. They all did. Eventually.

  “That didn’t keep you from sharing, did it?” Blackbird’s teeth were gritted as he stepped closer to the man, hand reaching toward his throat as if he wanted to snap his neck.

  “I’m not going to tell you anything,” he laughed, spit running down his chin as he tried to writhe out of my merciless hold.

  Blackbird looked at me over his shoulder. “Well, if you’re not talking to me, you’ll talk to my friend here.” He gestured to me to drop the hood and join him. I did as he asked.

  With three soundless footsteps, I revealed myself to the librarian, giving him a wide smile and flashing my teeth while never letting go of the strings on his soul.

  As he saw my face, his jaw dropped and no matter how much fear had been written in his face before, now it was like an encyclopedia of terror. He shook his head in denial.

  “I need to warn her,” he whispered and coughed.

  Blackbird, who had been enjoying the effect my appearance had on the human, now froze.

  “She needs to know. If I’d known you were one of them…”

  His voice trailed away in a breath as Blackbird raised his hand and pulled the strings out of my fingers with a quick motion, directing the man’s soul toward him in an instant.

  “You will not tell her anything,” he twitched his index finger, “or anyone else,” and the human’s soul was gone, an echo gleaming through Blackbird’s eyes.

  He dropped to the floor, skin ashen and heart silent.

  “Why did you kill him?”

  “He was of no use to us, was he?” Blackbird dismissed my question.

  “I’m sure we would have gotten him to talk.”

  “It doesn’t matter now, does it?”

  Something was strange about the way he acted. This wasn’t the Blackbird I’d gotten to know. This was a spooked demon.

  “What’s wrong, Blackbird?” I tried to figure out what was going on.

  He gnawed his teeth and pulled the front of his cloak tighter. “Let’s get back,” he said, voice even again. “The others are probably expecting our arrival.”

  He grabbed my shoulder, teleporting us out, and started walking the second we hit the ground in the upper areas of the cave network.

  “We failed,” I reminded him. If we returned home empty-handed, Volpert wouldn’t be amused.

  “We technically didn’t fail.”

  We turned the corner to the throne room.

  “Just practically,” I corrected. “What are we going to tell Volpert?”

  “Yes, what are you going to tell Volpert?” Volpert asked, surprising us as he appeared in the entrance to the fire-lit cave.

  “Master,” Blackbird stopped in his tracks and I almost bumped into him, so focused on the leader with the ponytail that I hardly noticed the chief-interrogator anymore.

  “Come on in,” Volpert put on his unreadable smile and lifted an arm, indicating we should sit by the fireplace.

  As we walked over, he followed suit and settled down in the largest chair.

  I observed the carvings on the armrest, frightened to meet his gaze. Blackbird showed a similar behavior in the chair next to me, glancing over to me like a schoolboy caught red-handed.

  “So, who of you is going to tell me what happened?” Volpert asked when after a minute or two neither of us had spoken.

  I raised my eyebrows at Blackbird, expecting him to explain. He had initiated the interrogation and he had killed the human. I hadn’t even known what it had been about.

  “Well, Adam,” Volpert pierced me with his gaze. “Why don’t you start?”

  Fine. I swallowed and straightened up a bit. I had nothing to fear. We were all on the same side.

  “The beginning went as expected,” I shared facts, no emotions. “I incapacitated the man, Blackbird questioned him. Teamwork, as always.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “He is dead,” Blackbird took over and I felt the relief of being out of Volpert’s focus. “All we wanted was to confirm what the girl knows, so we know what to expect when we face her and her pet angels, but he didn’t speak, he didn’t say anything.”

  “Nothing at all?” Volpert chuckled darkly. “My dear Blackbird, you must be losing your skills…”

  “I am not losing anything,” he jumped to his feet.

  “Careful, Blackbird,” Volpert lifted a finger and pointed
at his chest. “You don’t want me to make you tell me the rest the way you did with that human, do you? I surely haven’t lost my skills.”

  Blackbird slowly sank back into his chair, frustration knitting his brows together.

  “I thought seeing Adam would get him to speak,” he admitted, “but it had the exact opposite effect. He started talking about warning the girl.”

  Volpert shifted in his chair, finger still up in front of his chest.

  “And I was worried he might…you know…say something…” While I had no idea what he meant, Volpert seemed to be understanding very well. “…So, I killed him.”

  Volpert slowly lowered his finger back into his lap, clutching his other hand. The flash of anger on his features had vanished and he had returned to his unreadable expression. Now even his eyes were different, looking at something he alone seemed able to see. Blackbird and I shared a look, mine was one of concern, Blackbird’s one of suppressed fury.

  “Very well,” he clapped his hand and broke into a laugh. “What’s done is done.”

  It took a moment or two to realize he wasn’t joking. He just smiled at us until we slowly unfroze and relaxed.

  “Out now,” he caught me by surprise yet again as he barked at us, “both of you.” His eyes turned dark and fierce. “I have work to do.”

  The next couple of days were careful planning and preparing for a stakeout. Maureen and I had the task of procuring more humans for a feast before we would head out to confront the enemy. Volpert hadn’t brought up the incident again, whereas Blackbird and I had repeatedly talked it through. He couldn’t—or wouldn’t give me a clear answer as to why it had been necessary to prematurely end the interrogation. I’d had the human under control and we could have taken our time. The library would have been clear of humans all night. Nothing I said made him explain any more than, “it was too dangerous to let him live.” That was all I got. No matter how many times I kept asking why.

  We were both sitting in the throne room, I waiting for Maureen, Blackbird just killing time, playing with a rat on the floor. It kept screeching as he lifted it up by its tail and repeatedly shot tiny flashes of silver light at its heart. I wasn’t sure what fascinated me more, the amount of self-control Blackbird was exercising as he portioned his demonic energy to hurt the rat but not kill it, or the waves of panic radiating from the animal.