Daemons of London Boxset (Books 1-3) The Bleeders, The Human Herders, The Purebloods

by Michaela Haze

  I knew that I was dying.

  The sides of my throat had sucked closed, constricted against each other. My chest heaved. I knew that Satan was coming for me. The floor was going to open up. I could smell the sulphur in the air, hanging over the dirty room like a dark brooding spectre. The devil was waiting for me. I could see his yellow eyes burning into my skull—all I had to do was die.

  It would be easy.

  Effortless.

  “I hate you. I hate you so much!” Melanie screamed in my ears.

  I grabbed my head and slid down the wall. My legs sprawled out unnaturally, and I retracted them to my chest as I tried to claw my way into the smallest space possible. He would come for me. The devil would come and take me to hell—there was no way I could repent because I wasn’t sorry for killing Parr and Maylett.

  I was going to hell.

  My fingers clawed at my arms and I felt the prickle of blood as I dug in too far. That was when I saw it—I saw it and I knew that everything was wrong.

  When I died, my life flashed before my eyes but I didn’t see everything. I saw my regrets and none of the happy moments. I wondered if death was the same as life. I saw the day she died again. I hadn’t seen it in so long. My bones felt like they had turned to mush and my head throbbed.

  I watched the sick play in front of me, my sister’s tableau, as voices chimed in with no occupants.

  “Those are fucking track marks, Mel!” It was my own voice that rang out.

  It flashed in front of my eyes like a floodgate opening.

  “Get away from me Sophia. I swear—don’t tell mum, keep it to yourself, I’ll stop…I’ll stop.”

  “Who are you getting it from Melanie? Maylett? Parr? He fucking beats you, is that why you’re with him? Getting free Heroin?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “I swear Melanie, is that why you’re home? Running away from the abusive boyfriend, my arse! You came for money, didn’t you?!” I screamed.

  “No…I’m home because I need help…I need to stop…for my baby.”

  “But you won’t,” I said.

  “Not unless you help me,” She admitted grimly.

  My head felt like it was going to split open. Images flashed through my mind and I knew, even though it hurt, that I was no longer justified.

  I couldn’t tell if my mind closed off parts of the past, maybe nothing was real. If anything really existed, if the people in front of me, speaking, were figments of my imagination, props in my delusion. I had always trusted myself but now I didn’t know what was real.

  Henry had told me I was pure…justified, that was the word he used…it repeated over and over in my head. That was what he saw in me, a kindred spirit, I no longer had that anymore…I was a murderer. Sure, Parr and Maylett weren’t 100% innocent, but I wasn’t even a little bit innocent anymore.

  The devil was coming for me.

  Pale white, ice cold, pointed teeth and crooked smile—he would eat me and drag me through however many circles of hell until I would be left with nothing but to repeat it again.

  Suddenly like tiny jigsaw pieces, everything began to fit into place.

  My mother’s indifference. Mel was already dead in her eyes, stealing money from her constantly. Her thin frame had withered like a dead plant as she killed herself with drugs. My mother had her own way of dealing with the death—but she had left me and that was a reason why I could never forgive her.

  In her own need for solace, she forgot me, her daughter. My mother was never a mother; her thoughts regarding herself were too alien, she just didn’t think that way. My mother always looked out for number one.

  He was going to eat me, rip my flesh from my bones.

  I wanted blood, it felt like my veins were dry and my throat was rubbing against itself like sandpaper. There was only one thing that would take away this thirst.

  Henry’s touch, his blood, his body, even his voice—I needed the tranquilizer.

  I needed him.

  How did I live without him? It didn’t make sense.

  “Henry…” I sobbed. “Henry…I need you.”

  A gateway opened on the dirty bathroom floor, the gateway—to hell.

  It burned around the edges and blackened—like skin—it beckoned me, so close, flames fanning out and reaching for me like talons, calling my name over and over.

  Then I saw him at the window.

  His face was bone pale and glowing luminance in the moonlight, his expression light, looking at me through thick rimmed lashes, He didn’t blink, he didn’t breathe, and his breath didn’t fog on the glass.

  He watched me. It was Henry.

  I pushed myself away from the flames, breath ragged and teeth chattering. I swayed and held my hand up against the door, looking at him. We stared at each other in silence.

  My head felt heavy like it was filled with concrete as I pushed my buckling knees into steadiness. I fumbled as I reached to unlock the bathroom door. I didn’t want to take my eyes off the window when it occurred to me that it was a second story window.

  I looked down to the lock, single click to the right. Henry was gone when I looked up.

  I started to panic even more.

  The flames still threatened, the people still argued, Melanie clawed at her blackened veins as she sat in the bathtub, screaming for my head on a plate and then in the same breath for help, salvation, for her unborn child.

  There was such a cacophony of noise, rising like a tide. It was difficult to focus on anything other than the constant thrum, the blood-curdling mixture of screams.

  “My baby, my baby, my baby.”

  “You’re fault. You murderer, monster.”

  I pulled open the door with my withering human strength, it slammed against the drywall and ricocheted back as I jumped through it. I clawed my way through the hallway, everything looked the same but different, tainted with darkness.

  He stood in the corridor. Floating. Watching me with haughty eyes. I wanted to reach for my angel but he was too far from me, too good for me. Every step I took towards this prodigious superior being was matched with the figure behind me.

  It was Henry too. Henry whispered in my ear but none of the words made sense.

  I could have settled for the Henry that stood by my side. But I knew he didn’t exist. It was the beauty that I clawed for, the unobtainable which truly represented the man I fell in love with.

  Henry Blaire.

  He seemed to travel without ever moving, flicking like stop motion as I blinked to water my dry eyes and licked my chapped lips. Every time…new location.

  I ran to the reception.

  “Miss?” I pleaded, out of breath. “Have you seen a man, he just walked through here…” I turned around and gasped. My hand flew to my mouth and I gritted my teeth to keep myself from screaming.

  “No, sorry, I haven’t…” Maggots…maggots in her eyes, where her eyes should be, she doesn’t have eyes, she had black maggots…rotting flesh…festering in her eye sockets, writhing. “Are you alright?”

  I shook my head viciously and turned away from the woman whose flesh melted into something with the consistency of wax as larvae wriggled and nestled in her skin.

  I pushed into the night air, the silence deafened me.

  I couldn’t see him but I knew he was in the trees in the forest. I knew because I could sense him. Following Henry felt safe, if I could just get him to stop walking away.

  My feet pushed against the ground and I dragged myself closer to the trees when I stumbled I clawed at the earth and began to scream.

  “Henry?!” I shouted. “HENRY….?!”

  My hands cupped over my mouth as my voice went hoarse and echoed against the surfaces of the forest. There was nothingness here, the darkness had swallowed everything.

  It mocked me and beckoned me closer through the beginnings of the trees.

  Henry was part of the forest. I could feel him everywhere. I could feel him in the rotting leaves that covered in
forest—everything rots, everything dies—I could feel him in the tiny creatures I could not see nor ever find. I could feel him, like every particle of the man I loved belonged in the woods of the forest and all I had to do was call out to him.

  But it wasn’t my voice that needed to call to him.

  I was part of the forest too; I knew this because I could sense him in these woods.

  I walked further and further looking for my Henry, looking for my daemon. I would follow him forever…and ever…until I died…until I left this world and my body decayed.

  Further and further in, the darker it became. When I reached a small clearing, I breathed the sight of the trees in and studied the fallen oak, balanced precociously in between two of the larger and older trees. I felt an unknown weight buckle my knees and push me to the ground.

  The forest floor was covered in rotted leaves. My breath fogged in front of me but I didn’t feel the cold—I felt hot, covered goosebumps but empowered. Ready.

  The devil wasn’t coming for me in the forest.

  Henry was here…my angel…he would keep me safe. I just had to find him. He was in the forest; he was part of the forest but so was I.

  I dug my hands into the ground. I pried through the tight and cold earth for my Henry. Hoping his white alabaster hands would grab me and pull me under the thick blanket of the earth with him—not to hell but to the forest, we could be part of the forest together.

  I closed my eyes and focused. I imagined his face—so perfect—I imagined the power I felt, shattering through my thin ragged body, struggling to get out and building in my chest. I could feel my eyes darting wildly beneath my closed lids.

  Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry. Henry, Henry. Henry. Henry.

  The power built in my chest and a scream erupted and I felt it let loose, the wind ripped through me as my power exploded into a shrill sound with a life of its own. I could see it, the curling red spikes that hung in the air and dropped to the forest floor and into the bracken like little dead spindly weights. The sound shook my bones. I could feel a rip in the world, a void, I could sense with certainty the other worlds, where this one joined with other realities, where this world, my world, joined with everything that I didn’t know and had never experienced.

  I felt a mixture of unbridled passion and joy. But it was superficial. Beneath that, I felt the dark and swirling moisture, seeping and destroying those feelings, eating away at everything…like leeches…like poison…like a virus that couldn’t be cured.

  I yanked my hands out of the dirt. It was too powerful—looking at that secret place was going to destroy me. Why did I want to control the forest? Henry was a part of the forest; did I want to control him? My arms were smeared with mud and leaves, my hair matted as if I had been rolling on the forest floor—the wind blew and pierced my skin as I staggered through the trees.

  “Henry?” I gasped. “Help me. I need help…I need…you…get…better…” I gushed as I tried to pull air into my lungs. There was silence in the forest.

  Not even Henry was there…I certainly wasn’t in any sense. I looked around like a madwoman, not trying to find a way out, nor trying to bury myself deeper into the forest. I looked for something, anything to hold onto. But there was nothing—I felt like I was clawing at the edges of a well—the cliff face—were too slippery for me to hold onto. I had no nails, they clawed at the pristine rock and slipped, my nail-beds bled as I tried to claw myself back to sanity, to equilibrium.

  That was when I heard them. They were not part of the forest.

  They were my worst fears and my worst nightmares. It was Parr and Maylett, it was the people I murdered—I saw Maylett’s grimy black ponytail and gold earring, that fucking flannel shirt over his greasy dirty body. He stood next to Parr, with his short-cropped hair and dark eyes. I knew they were dead…Although the apparitions didn’t have their faces, they had their essence, their intents. They wanted to kill me.

  Soon, I was surrounded by people, there were four of Parr and Maylett as they ran at me and grabbed at my flesh. They swarmed over me, and tried to tackle me to the ground. I closed my thighs together and tried to scream as I writhed, but my mouth filled with dirt and bracken. I didn’t want them inside me, on me or near me.

  I thrashed but their grip was like iron fetters, steel cold and hard enough to leave bruises.

  I felt and saw the glint of a needle…they wanted to poison me.

  “Don’t…No…don’t…I…poison…skin…don’t…” I slurred as the sharp pain in my thigh pricked. I thrashed one more time before slipping under.

  The poison was not kind. I knew I was not dying because Satan wasn’t there. Henry was with me and he smiled as he held out his hand. I ran right up to him and flung my arms and legs around him. He lifted me easily and brushed the hair out of my face. His breath was cool in my ear, like a lover’s caress.

  “I’ve missed you terribly,” He said.

  Everything brightened to pristine white, painful, blind and numb.

  Part 3

  “A slumber did my spirit seal:

  I had no human fears;

  She seemed a thing that could not feel

  The touch of earthly years.”

  -William Wordsworth

  19.

  A bright light overhead took me back to when I had my ears pinned back when I was seven, lying in the recovery room after surgery. The pain was similar, my head throbbed, and my legs felt like heavy lead under the scratchy sheets. I blinked and tried to roll over but my body would not cooperate, the only thing I succeeded in was looking at the metal railing on the side of my bed.

  Oh, shit. I was on a gurney.

  “I…Henry…where…?” I croaked, my voice scratchy and inaudible. I heard voices fading in and out, like the volume on a television being turned both up and down.

  “I’m here…I’m here…shh, calm down,” His perfect melodic voice cooed in my ear.

  I relaxed, and fell back onto the pillow and sighed.

  “Ms. Taylor…?”

  I turned, expecting them to be calling my mother over. Given the situation, it was normally what followed, but there was a brief silence as they waiting for me to talk.

  “Y…es?”

  She was talking to me—I was the only Miss Taylor left.

  I looked out from heavy-lidded eyes to see a nurse in pink scrubs holding a clipboard, standing over me. She looked down at me kindly.

  “Sophia Taylor—we found your driver’s license in your possession.” She informed me lightly.

  I nodded. “Is this—the hospital?”

  “Do you remember what happened?”

  “Don’t say anything—lie, they will keep you here…lie…Fia, I love you, please…just lie, for me.”

  But I couldn’t. I couldn’t lie anymore. I couldn’t say I was fine when I wasn’t. Life was meant to be something easier than this hell, surely. I’d learned to walk, to talk, and all the other essentials, but I was stuck. I couldn’t live like this.

  I needed help to live.

  I was pathetic.

  “Lots of things happened…which one specifically?” I asked, trying to keep the bite out of my voice, the nurse didn’t deserve it.

  “I’ll get your doctor to talk to you about the bigger events recently—but I was referring to the fact you had to have five doctors and a policeman to sedate you in the middle of a wooded area,” She said.

  I chuckled hoarsely, it wasn’t funny, not one bit, and the nurse certainly didn’t think so. My laugh became desperate, manic as if I had lost everything in the world. It bubbled out and grew louder and louder.

  “I thought they were trying to kill me—poison me,” I gasped, between hysterical bursts of laughter. The nurse nodded and looked to the IV drip.

  “I’m going to give you another sedative,” She murmured, turning to look at my hand before injecting something into the clear bag that hung on a metal pole by the bed.

  She looked at me like I was crazy…was I
crazy?

  I was moved to a mental health assessment unit at The Priory Hospital, North London. Funded by my mother’s latest husband. The crisis team was called due to the condition in which I was admitted. The one thing I was happy about was the fact that Henry continued to stand by my side. He never spoke and no one gave any indication that they could see him but he was always next to me. He kept me from breaking.

  Seated in front of a team of five doctors, each moved in synchronisation as they wrote on their clipboards. It was a well-choreographed dance, one asked questions as every other person wrote. Was I depressed? Did I have a history of depression…mental illness in the family?

  “What happened in the forest, just outside of Tickhill?” One of the doctors asked me.

  “Tickhill?” I asked gently.

  Another doctor with caramel hair and a kind face leaned over and smiled at me. “The place you were staying dear,” She said.

  The room was bare apart from a nondescript plant in the corner and the swarm of white coats in a ring around me. I felt that if I moved I would disturb the room.

  Dr. Patel smiled, “You said you had no history of mental illness in your family; that you knew of.” He was repeating himself, that seemed to be all everyone was doing.

  “That is correct,” I said simply. I flinched internally at my voice. I sounded almost bored.

  A woman in the corner scowled and began writing furiously on her loose-leaf paper.

  “Ms. Taylor. You were brought in after a rather distressed call from the receptionist at the hotel in which you were staying, had anything traumatic happened to you?” The caramel haired woman asked.

  “Can you define traumatic?” I requested.

  “A recent death—perhaps something that would have shocked your system, bad news perhaps?”

  What, like the fact my sister was a junkie and had killed herself?

  What about withdrawal symptoms from being addicted to daemon’s blood?

  “Why are you asking me this?” My voice shot up a few octaves, my face scrunched in distaste as I leant visibly away from the conversation.