The Demon Girl

by Penelope Fletcher

  Tu slammed his beefy hand on the desk. “Enough,” he barked.

  I jumped, snapped my mouth shut.

  Stunned at his own outburst he blustered around with some papers on his desk, and cleared his throat. “That is enough on this subject for today.” His voice was quiet, distracted. “Team up and turn to page sixteen of your textbooks to discuss and summarize the proposed vampire reproduction. Start. I’ll be back shortly to check your progress.” He spun on his heel, avoided looking at me, and left the class.

  Snapped from my single-minded quest for truth, I flushed at the number of people staring at me. I shot a look at Alex who was wide eyed, pouty mouth hanging with a chocolate bar resting on her bottom lip. It was foolish for me to call such attention to myself, and plain stupid to insult the Sect. Pulling my hood up, I breathed out, and tried think of a reasonable explanation for my behavior. Skipping out of class wouldn’t help; it would confirm any suspicions. Tu was one of the Clerics who had hunted me this morning. No doubt he was on his way to inform the others of my weird behavior and the direction of my questions. Great, talk about staying under the radar.

  A sharp pain on my arm made me yelp. Alex’s face popped into view. “Damn, Rae. You zoned hard.”

  “What class is next?” I asked. I wondered if I should consider ditching. If the Clerics thought I was a danger maybe I needed to leave now. If they found out I was a demon… Wait. How would they ever know that? Gods, I was becoming melodramatic.

  “We got Subterfuge,” Alex replied, “but I might ditch.”

  I eyed her like she’d lost it. Why would she do that on a whim? Disciples who were caught ditching had to do bereavement duty. It meant helping the morgue deal with the remains of any poor misfortunate’s that got taken out by demons who’d breached the Wall. You helped cremate dead bodies and notified any next of kin. Most times it was kids who’d stayed out too late, or had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the Clerics duty to protect, and when they failed they made sure they grieved with the families, and showed them respect. I only considered it because my life might be on the line.

  The class divided up into little clicks and Ro came over. He made a silly face at me then grinned. I built myself up mentally, knowing what was about to come next. Hauling me up, he wrapped his arms around mine and kissed my cheek. “I missed you, Rae.” He was several heads taller than me, and my feet lifted from the floor as he squeezed. Roland, Alex’s on off steady, was nice. He’d always talk to me if he saw me around the compound even when he and Alex were on outs. I wouldn’t call him a friend since I only knew him, and maintained a relationship, because he was important to Alex.

  And that’s why I let him hug me, didn’t punch him in the face and said, “You too.” I shifted, a subtle signal for him to let go, but he remained uncomfortably close. I extracted myself. “How was it? The assignment, I mean.”

  I was genuinely curious. I hadn’t lived in the slums before I came to the Academy. I had been tied to the Sect since birth, and held in orphanages in the upper dwells. I was one of the lucky ones. Those without parents generally became panhandlers, beggars prey for any hungry demons that hid behind the Wall. Plus, I loved the creative atmosphere of the place.

  “A goblin kid hid in a shack close to the Sect church, a simple catch and release.” He shrugged, shifted on the spot. “Same old thing. Dirty and cold, but it be my home, y’know?” He paused and made a clicking noise with his tongue, a sound one made unconsciously before bringing up a touchy or dangerous subject. It was a slum dwell habit I knew he’d been trying to get rid of for a while. “Something happened to you this morning?”

  I pressed my lips together. Ro was perceptive, more than was usual for a boy his age. That or I looked worse than I thought. I worked hard to keep most of the kooky crap I did away from Alex. It would only worry her. The stuff from this morning would probably give her grey hairs. Ro looked like he was ready to buckle down and figure what was wrong with me. Maybe his well timed words and snorts earlier were trying to accomplish more than just derision. Maybe he was trying to cover up the fact I was giggling like a banshee during what was supposed to be a serious discussion. Whatever issues I had about how cooped up we were behind the Wall or how purist the teachings of Sect had become, the Temple was my home. Suggestions bound to get me into serious trouble stayed locked firmly inside my mind, most of the time. Disciples who’d voiced radical ideas like my own ended up failing the final exam or kicked out of the Sect. Then there were the ones who disappeared entirely. That was not going to happen to me. Ro and I had had a few very brief discussions about this. Touched on the subject more than once, how some things the Sect did and said didn’t quite add up. How Disciples going missing, after they had spoken up about the treatment of demons we captured, was just plain wrong. Ro had always been keen to talk more, but I’d always pulled back.

  “I went Outside,” I said and lifted my chin. “I ran in the forest.”

  Alex groaned and plucked at the skin of her throat as if it irritated her. She’d already known this and her reaction was purely knee jerk.

  Ro didn’t look surprised, if anything mildly impressed. “Did something happen?”

  I tilted my head, hearing something unspoken in the words. “Why’d you think that?”

  “You on edge, and earlier you went pale like you seen you a ghost. You got so shook up you forgot yourself and walked right into Devlin. Rae, you always so careful and cautious about touching, and you got so distracted you forgot?” He shook his head. “I don’t think so, something big happened.”

  I swallowed before I answered, “I saw–” Was I really going to tell him?

  “I’ll tell you something else,” Ro began, speaking slowly and looking down at his hands looped in his jean pockets. “Maybe on my way to class, I hear a Lord and Lady Cleric talking about a problem with a demon Outside this morning. Maybe I hear them talking about a Disciple who broke Doctrine and went beyond the Wall. They say a Disciple disobeyed and even struck out, gave the Lady Cleric a black eye.” He looked up at me and lowered his voice an octave. “You need to be careful now, you feel me? Think about the questions you ask in class and the way you react to some words. Like…fairy, eh?”

  “What are you getting at?” I tried to pretend the shrillness of my voice was natural.

  I couldn’t tell them what had happened, if the Clerics were looking for me there was only a matter of time before they found me. I was bound to slip up again. I had a bloody vampire snoozing in my wardrobe for gods sake. I had decided the best was to play this was to not confirm or deny anything else. Ro would try to help me and his heart would be in the right place, but I couldn’t risk it.

  As for Alex… “You do remember the Rupture? What happened to people like you who wouldn’t get in line and act right,” she said angrily.

  She was not happy and I could sense a long, rambling speech coming on. With all the information I’d told her and Ro’s speculations, she would have been able to piece together quite a bit by now.

  Opening my mouth to tell her to shut the hell up, I saw Tu enter the room talking to a thin woman. She was dressed in a crimson blazer with a swollen eye and bandaged arm. A Lady Cleric, the Lady Cleric from that morning.

  Chapter Four

  I straightened and ordered my feet to freeze mid step back. My heart pounded double time as every instinct I had screeched at me to run and hide. They really were looking for me, and knew the one they sought was a Disciple. The Lady Cleric’s gaze slowly passed over every female face in the group as she replied to Cleric Tu. My stomach clenched and sweat beaded my brow. Did her gaze linger on me? Did she hesitate to move on, or was it my imagination?

  I wanted to scream at her that it was an accident. That I had no idea what all the crazy stuff happening around me meant, nor did I want to. I wanted to rewind a day, back to when things were simple. Where my life made sense and where boys spoke and acted normally. Where Clerics were the good guys who protected us from
demons and my teachers were not heartless murderers.

  The Lady Cleric scanned our faces once more than shook her head once. She left with Tu close behind her, whispering something to him.

  What did I do? Surely if they had identified the Disciple in the forest was me, they would have hauled me out the class.

  Alex glanced over her shoulder at the retreating Cleric, but was otherwise uninterested. Ro was more on ball, and his eyes narrowed as he watched me. Too messed in the head to try and be subtle, I glared at him, daring him to comment. Well, there was nothing I could do. I'd had enough of being stressed out. Slouching back into my chair, I kicked up a leg on the empty seat opposite and mud fell off my soles.

  “…Are you even listening to me?” Alex asked.

  “I'm sorry, what? Oh, yes,” I said. “Yes, I do remember.”

  The Rupture was a global slaughter that had nearly wiped the entire human race of the face of the planet. It had changed everything. Vampires had emerged from the shadows one winter dragging all manner of wicked with them, and in one clean sweep had consumed the earth. Shapeshifters had prowled the streets in daylight. Hunting were-bears, were-lions and were-whatever–the-hell-you-can-think-of had feasted on human flesh. Goblins tore people limb from limb and roasted them in dumpster-sized stew pots. Raped the screaming women, and produced more deformed offspring. Powerful witches cast spells that stopped the hearts of entire cities, made all things in a thousand-mile radius just stop.

  Within weeks governments had fallen. Monarchy’s had been eliminated, a warped genocide, madness. No one but the crazies who had believed in such things was prepared. They knew how to protect themselves with stakes and silver, hiding places underground. Otherwise only the strong, quick and the smart had survived. The barbaric culling of the human race left us scattered across the world in tiny pockets of civilization. Communities of people who put aside old hates based on colour and religion, and blended together until the human race was a convergence unlike anything ever predicted. We lived in an overcrowded region of land surrounded by electricity, a patch of city untouched by the horror Outside.

  At least, that’s what the Priests told us in their sermons. Most people alive now-a-days were too young to remember what had happened, and the old ones who had experienced it had died of old age years before. Against all odds endangered humankind had survived and had the Sect to thank. A group of human men and women had erected the Wall, and set the strongest of us as guardians. Determined to keep fighting and to survive at all costs, they selected new protectors from the masses seeking sanctuary and trained them to hunt the monsters that had stolen the planet. Those protectors were the Clerics. They hunted down any demon that dared step on our territory. Of course I remembered the Rupture; it was something I, nor any other being, would ever forget.

  Clicking her fingers in front of my face, Alex flicked my nose and I recoiled. She smirked, happy to have broken into my down time. “You wanna end up like the people who lost their lives for nothing?”

  “Wouldn’t call marching up to the closest demon and trying to kill it, nothing,” I said. Chewing my bottom lip, I cautioned myself to be careful. “I ran that’s all. I just ran.”

  “Thinking on it, I don’t believe you,” Ro said.

  I shrugged. I couldn’t tell them, it was too big.

  Alex placed her palms on the table. My eyes darted from hers to the small runes that decorated the back of her hands. “The Wall keeps us safe. It keeps those demons out and us humans in. That’s the way it be, Rae. If a vampire or goblin were to lay hands on you–” She shuddered, her eyes becoming hollow with visions of death and gore from years past. “Your life here means something. Don’t throw it away.”

  “The Rupture happened lifetime’s ago. Who knows what it’s like out there?” I leaned forward and lowered my voice to match hers. “They may have changed, evolved.” I thought of Breandan and Tomas. “Y'know, I don’t think he Sect have been honest about what they’re like.”

  “Evolved? Demons be animals, dangerous animals driven by need, nothing more.” She took a deep breath. “The Doctrine of the Sect is law. Clerics keep the law, and Doctrine says going beyond the Wall is forbidden. The rules keep us safe.” She visibly relaxed as she said the words.

  Familiar frustration bubbled inside me at her lack of curiosity. “What if that’s not how it’s supposed to– Forget it,” I said and ducked my head. I felt her eyes on my face and I carefully kept it blank, my gaze cast down to the floor.

  I couldn't force her to change her mind in a minute, nor did I want to. She was the one making sense and thinking clearly. I was the one making waves, and allowing dangerous beings to run riot unchecked and unopposed.

  A voice said close to my ear, “Am I to keep the vampire in your wardrobe a secret?”

  I jerked up and Devlin leaned back, grinning impishly. I swear, if I had not spent a lifetime controlling my face and emotions, I probably would have launched myself at him shrieking. Ro had wandered off across the room, and I hadn’t seen Devlin sidle up, too lost in my thoughts. How the hell did he find out? He must have seen Tomas carrying me across the Temple, but Tomas was sure we would be moving to fast to be seen. Panicked, I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I didn’t know what to say. Oh Gods. Devlin gazed at me, green eyes clear and sharp. I decided the best plan was to deny it. To call him deluded or whatever I had to get him off my back. It was his word against mine, and though I was considered freaky, the mere suggestion I had a vampire in a wardrobe was just crazy. But then hadn’t my behavior had been somewhat suspect? I glanced around. Devlin coming over to talk to me captured the attention of the entire class, but no one seemed overly alarmed.

  “What?” I said in a perfection imitation of cluelessness, but I knew my face was white as snow and my voice brittle.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anybody. What fun would that be?”

  He was still leaning close over me, speaking right into my ear so no one else could here. To the casual observer it may have looked like he whispered sweet nothings in my ear. My heart sunk. What did he have in mind? Blackmail?

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked in a low voice. “Just go away.”

  I sank further into my seat and turned my head away slightly, clearly giving the message I didn't want to talk anymore. Childish tactics, but confrontation didn’t seem to work, maybe ignoring him would. He had that amused smirk that made his face look smug and I found myself detesting his presence. There was something decidedly off about him, and the perfection of his face was making me sick.

  He turned to Alex, narrowed his eyes and moved his lips without sound. Maybe if I acted bored of this theatrics he would get the message and leave. I watched him with cool detachment.

  He spoke to me whilst keeping his gaze on her, “This is a female of strength. You choose your friends well.” His fingers, seemingly infused with light, brushed her check.

  I didn’t like that and I smacked his had away. Alex started, as if coming to from a trance and sent me a baffled look.

  “Who’s the boy outside?” Ro said from across the class.

  I shot up. Devlin backed away a pace, as if I was suddenly too close for comfort. I excused myself and walked speedily to Ro's side, all the while telling myself the fairy-boy I’d met that morning would never dare. He would know he could not show up here at Temple, and parade around half naked, and glowing. I reached the window and made a strangled noise. Breandan. At least he’d had the good sense to glamour himself human. His eyes flicked from me to behind me, and then he beckoned to me.

  “Rae, you know him?” Ro asked and eyed me head to toe. A slow smile spread across his face, and the green beads he’d tied into the end of his cornrow plaits clicked together as he laughed. “You be keeping secrets, eh?”

  “Yes,” I said, took a step backwards. “I mean… I don’t know…” In truth I was not surprised Breandan was there. I just wondered how long he intended to follow me and if his ultimate goal was to have me
strung up Outside by the Clerics.

  Breandan waved at me, impatient this time.

  “He seems to know you.” Ro ran his tongue over his top teeth. “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

  Breandan stood on the grass with his hands loose by his sides and somehow, through the rain, I saw the storm in his eyes threatening to drown me. He didn’t beckon to me again, but I knew he wanted me to go to him. Afraid of the hot, fluttery feeling spreading through my limbs, I shook my head hoping he got the message. This was not okay. He could not come here and expect me to run off with him into the forest like a lunatic.

  His head drooped then snapped up, his gaze directed over my shoulder.

  “Rae, you right?” Alex asked from beside me. “What’s going on?” Then she spotted Breandan scowling at me. “That’s him? The boy from this morning?”

  A few other Disciples got up out their desks and came over to look out the window at whatever it was we were looking at. I took a few steps back until I bumped into someone standing behind me. Devlin stood in my way and looked furious. What was his problem? He was the one on my back, not the other way round. Then his shoulders started to shake and I realized he was laughing. He looked straight at me and smiled. No. Not a smile, but a snigger filled with wicked delight. The intensity of his stare boldly probed mine, and the chill that slithered down my spine had me wound to near breaking.

  When I looked back round Breandan’s entire body tensed, and just like that, with one last glance at me he turned and darted away. A sense of relief was replaced by a fiercer surge of regret. The moment he winked out of sight the longing to see and feel him, pressed upon my consciousness. The emotion was like a splinter burrowed beneath the skin, determined to settle in for the long haul.

  I thought then about telling a Cleric, Breandan, a demon from beyond the Wall, could get onto the Temple grounds. Why was I was covering for some boy I barely knew? Yes, he’d told me I was a demon, but what if that had been a lie. I looked pretty damn human to my eyes. Yes, I’d done some demon stuff, but I could be a witch. The thought made me very nervous. All witches were bad, forces of evil. Did I really want to wish to be one? My mind wandered back to Breandan, the boy who made me warm and tingly when I thought about him. And that is why I resolved to keep my mouth firmly shut. That and the fact I was hiding one of the scariest of demonkind in my wardrobe.