The Human Herders

by Michaela Haze

  I was unable to move, paralysed.

  “She wasn’t a daemon.” A sweet voice came from the darkness. Feminine. “But I am.” It belonged to Dany, the pink haired girl with an eating disorder. The girl who had spoken to me earlier that day. Her laugh was a harsh snort as if she was mildly amused at best. Her voice distorted, deepened. Her shadow extended and filled the light cast from the windows. I saw his straight porcelain teeth, his hazel eyes. The damn All-American looks that belonged to a sociopathic creature from Hell.

  “Damian.” A low snarl escaped Henry’s throat.

  “Brother.” Damian cooed. His eyes flickered to mine. “Sophia.” He doffed an invisible hat. My teeth clenched so tightly that I had to consciously release my jaw to be able to speak. I opened my mouth and couldn’t help the hysterical giggle that escaped my lips. I felt like Melanie had taken over my body, it was finally ending.

  I succumbed to my insanity.

  “I’m so fucking dead.” I cackled.

  3.

  When Trix and I dosed, back in the throes of my Bleeder days, she would start fights. Taking advantage of the enhanced healing abilities and strength that came from drinking daemon blood, she would pick a fight with the biggest man at whatever hole we frequented that week and beat him to a pulp.

  When Henry stepped forward, I knew a fight was going to break out. There was a crackle in the air as if one movement would release a dam.

  I couldn’t help but think of Beatrix Klein and the memory of my best friend, kicking a skinhead over and over in her Dior heels. How she towered over a man as he hunched over to protect his nuts. I laughed to myself as the memory played out in front of my eyes. Henry looked concerned, but Damian was benignly amused.

  The Pureblood found me funny.

  The two men were polar opposites. Henry was winter, with his Celestine blue eyes and mahogany hair. He was ice. But Damian was summer, he was fire and heat. The smell of burning flesh and the fear of flames.

  Whereas Henry was slight and leonine, Damian looked typically muscular. But I knew it was all for show, as the Pureblood could look like anyone. I had seen him shapeshift into a child version of my own body when we had first met.

  Damian stretched out his arms, and casually noted the blood that stained his skin up his elbow. He held Dr Mavis's heart; he stared down at it with a look of concentration. Blue flames licked Damian’s skin in a burst, and the organ disappeared in a cloud of ash. He smacked his hands together to dispel the dust.

  Blood rushed through my ear drums, and my knees buckled. I had waited so long for Damian to come and finish the job, I almost didn’t believe he was in front of me.

  Henry’s teeth bared in a snarl and his bare feet slapped against the linoleum floor as he ran at Damian. Their bodies smacked together, the sound was a harsh crack of flesh hitting flesh. My daemon turned to me, his eyes flared pale ice blue.

  “Run!” Henry hissed, his teeth bared like a feral animal as he reached up to restrain the Pureblood. Out of the corner of my vision, I saw long black tendrils, like thick dark vines, weave from Damian across the shiny floor. They attached to my feet, I felt a horrific sting as the veins entered the space between each of my toes. When I could move, which was difficult, my neck was too stiff. My body was completely restrained by Damian's magic.

  Henry's eyes pleaded silently, they begged me to stay frozen as Damian picked him up like a ragdoll and discarded his body against the wall with an almighty crash. The drywall rained down, and Henry’s body rolled across the floor, his palms smacked against the floor as he struggled to steady his body against the momentum. Blood dribbled over his chin as he pushed himself onto his elbows.

  “Weak as a kitten,” Damian smirked. “How times have changed, Haage.”

  The Pureblood took a step forward, but I was paralysed and unable to run. The vines of his dark magic held me tightly in place. A thick obsidian fog covered my eyes and clouded my mind, I was trapped with my senses hindered.

  “Come to me, my dear,” Damian sang.

  Unable to resist, I went to him. My body wanted nothing more than to obey his every command, it was as natural as breathing. A small part of my brain screamed and bashed my fists against my mental prison. Begging to be released, my steps jarred as my mind fought back.

  My eyes flicked over Damian's shoulder and I avoided making eye contact with the Pureblood. His stride was forceful and confident as he walked to meet me. His arm extended, our fingers brushed, almost touching. Damian almost had me.

  Come closer, child.

  Henry swayed to his feet and clutched his chest. His white t-shirt stuck to the planes of his torso, slick with his blood. His knees buckled as if he was unable to support his weight. I was unable to think as Henry charged the Pureblood from behind. I couldn’t move out of the way, I couldn’t move at all.

  Damian gave me one last look, his eyes held something I didn’t understand, longing. He stepped to my left as Henry darted forward with his hands curled into fists. Damian disappeared into a doorway that no one could see, the blonde man vanished into thin air.

  Henry watched in horror as a disembodied arm curled around my waist and pulled my body into a space between worlds.I watched as Henry turned towards us and his hand reached for my own, my stomach heaved and my ears popped. No human was meant to experience the way that Damian travelled. It was a place between Hell and ‘Here’, with no oxygen and no life.

  We landed on the other side of the corridor; As if to mock Henry. Damian's laugh was loud and unrestrained. A cat playing with his meal.

  I hunched over and spilt the contents of my stomach onto the floor when a sharp ringing noise echoed through the hall. Damian didn’t even bother to look as he stepped towards Henry. I recognised the fire alarm, shrill and all encompassing

  “If you do not allow her to come to me willingly, brother. I will burn this building to the ground.” The Pureblood's gleamed with lust for pain and death.

  Henry didn’t hesitate. “Why can’t you leave us be?”

  Damian flicked his wrists as if shaking off water from a raincoat, and the doors in the corridor exploded outwards with flames that burst out seeking air. The atmosphere was too hot, stifling. I clutched my chest unable to breathe. Henry grabbed my shoulders and pulled us backwards, away from the Pureblood.

  “No!” Damian snarled, his hands grabbed the space where I had stood a few seconds before.

  Henry and I moved too quickly for my fallible human eyes. I felt the familiar pull, like being in a car during an emergency stop. People were dying in the building. Boiling alive. Blackened, melted skin flashed through my mind. I could feel their energy, their silent screams and death pressed against my skin like a wet flannel. Their deaths were causing a Fold in the fabric between Hell and ‘Here’. I had no idea what a new Fold would look like, where we would go if we slipped through the cracks.

  I dropped to the floor but kept sinking as if it was made of sand. The ground never met me, I fell down the rabbit hole.

  My body slammed into the hard concrete, palms first. I felt the pressure of the fall but no pain. I was a spectator watching my own body. I sat up as my teeth rattled from the fall. Henry was nowhere to be seen. I brushed the gravel from my hands and rubbed them against my wet pyjama bottoms. I groaned when I saw where I was. I recognised the bulbous dome of the building in front of me. St Paul’s Cathedral. Southwark, London, by the Thames.

  I had landed in the centre of the road but there was no traffic to be seen. Long white letters stretched out in front of me, look left, look right. The sky was a dance of grey. The atmosphere was muggy. I instantly assumed I was dead, but when I placed my hands on my chest I could feel the echoing thump of my human heart. It must have been a dream because the world was washed out. The same but different.

  Flakes of black ash drifted into the air. A large onyx growth took over half of the dome of the cathedral, it writhed and shed like tree bark. I blinked and looked closer, the mass was not solid but instead made up
of thousands of butterflies. I squinted and looked to the sky, thousands of winged creatures inhabited the world that I stood in. Swallows, Wrens, dragonflies and butterflies. Like the butterfly scar that Henry had gifted me.

  I looked at my hands as if they did not belong to me. They trembled, my right hand was swathed in a thin haze of red energy. I waved my arm and wiggled my fingers but the crimson haze hung around my littlest appendage like a fabric ring, dispersing and reappearing with every movement as if it was alive.

  St Paul’s Cathedral was dirtier than I remembered, having only been once before for a school trip. It was in an area surrounded by grey, sleek business offices and shimmering glass walls. I started to walk, conscious of my bare feet but unable to feel the cold concrete beneath my toes. The red energy hugged my fingers and stretched in front of me like a curling pathway, beckoning for me to follow. I walked towards the Millennium Bridge and the familiar banks of the Thames. My bare steps echoed through the empty street.

  I neared the opening of the Millennium Bridge, before the edge of the river. I could see the lines of the industrial buildings on the other side, with their maroon colour and blocky shapes. The Tate Modern was on the other side, but no one was around. I was all alone in Central London. A clawing uneasy feeling reached up and gripped my heart. It was hard to breathe. Every instinct in my body told me to run, but I had no idea where I could go. The only comfort was the red string around my little finger. I could still see the haze of magic on the air.

  I trailed my hands against the cool metal of the bridge railing. When I looked over the edge, I expected to see the familiar murky water of the Thames. Maybe a boat or the water buses. But instead, there was a dark, charred fissure. Cracks of red hot magma peaked through the edges of the canyon. There was no water, just a large opening in the fabric of London.

  “That's a gateway to Hell.” A voice behind me said cheerily.

  I turned on my heel, unsure of what to expect. It certainly wasn’t a Hipster. Flannel shirt and ginger beard, right down to the Wayfarer nerd glasses. I would have expected him to be frequenting the Cereal Bar in Shoreditch, not following around a girl in pyjamas.

  “Where are we, exactly?” I asked, my voice cracked.

  “Limbo. Purgatory.” He shrugged and leant against the railing, pensively looking out at the burnt scar on the landscape.

  “Who are you?” I wondered. I wanted to ask if I was dead, but voicing the words would have made it too real. The Hipster took a business card from the front pocket of his flannel plaid shirt. He held it between his extended fingers but made no movement towards me. A flurry of motion caught my eye as a red-breasted robin landed on his shoulder. Its little body jumped erratically, not staying still for more than a millisecond. It cocked its head to the side, in that way that birds do. Even from a distance, I could see the soulless black eyes. It lowered its head and took the card in its beak and took off to the air, unable to fly in a straight line. It swooped over my head and dropped the card at my feet.

  The Hipster laughed. “I’ve been trying to teach him to put the card in people’s hands.”

  I turned over the thick cream parchment, it felt expensive. “Sharon?” I questioned, turning the card over in my hands. “Your name is Sharon?”

  “Charon.” He explained, enunciating it for my benefit. Kay-ron.

  “Right, well, Sharon of Limbo.” I laughed nervously. “Have you seen a daemon? Dark hair, looks a bit tormented all the time?”

  “His name?”

  “Henry.”

  “I know Henry.” Charon laughed. “Been a while.”

  “How do you know Henry?” I crossed my arms over my chest.

  “I’m the ferryman. I know everyone.”

  “Wait…” My brow furrowed. “The ferryman. So, that’s Hell down there? And this place is purgatory?”

  “I thought we established that. Daemons sake, you humans do like to repeat things, don’t you?” Charon adjusted his skinny jeans and put his hands in his pockets. He stared at the grey sky, looking for his little Robin friend, but no other birds landed on his shoulder.

  “How do I get out of here?” I asked.

  “Get to a Fold before nightfall.” He shrugged. “You know what a Fold is, don’t you?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “Follow the red string. You’ll find your Henry. Just don’t get caught here after dark, you’ll be stuck here.”

  “What happens if I am stuck here?” I swallowed the lump in my throat.

  “You die, Sophia.”

  I didn’t ask how he knew my name, I looked at my hands, surrounded by swirling red mist like gossamer. I took off without a word and followed the trail on a mission. I heard Charon mutter something as I passed him. I thought I heard the word, Rude, but I didn’t care.

  It took over forty-five minutes to walk to the Denmark Place Fold, the old hangout nearest my Camden flat. I started to walk the banks of the Thames, but blood roared in my ears and screams filled my mind. I did not know if it was real or not, but my head throbbed, and my nose began to bleed sporadically. Instead, I walked into the urban expanse, preferring to be away from the mass chasm of Hell. I walked deeper into the city until the screams ebbed to silence. I couldn’t bring myself to think about it. The Gateway to Hell.

  Was that where I was going to go when I died?

  No Shit Fia. You’re a murderer, of course, you’re going to Hell.

  I walked through the familiar apple red vehicle doors, comforted by the novelty of being near my old home. I hadn’t walked these streets in a year. Something about London felt like home to me in a way that no other place could. The crackle of excitement underlined my every thought, the city was always awake. A city of Daemons. Blood. Magic. Witchings.

  It was where I had grown up, and where I had loved and lost.

  My sister, Melanie had walked the streets, the same as I had. Even the double yellow lines reminded me of her.

  The tall burgundy building was colourless in Purgatory. The image from my memory layered over what I saw, tainting my vision. I saw the lights inside the building. It was full of people. The swirling red string slipped right through the door, beckoning me inside but into a different place altogether. It wasn’t the entrance that I had used almost every day when I had been a Bleeder, it was inverted. A different world.

  I pushed against the titanium double doors, but they did not budge. I knocked, unnerved by the lack of feeling in my knuckles when they met the metal.

  “Hello?” I shouted. The door was never locked. To a human on the human plane, the building was a photography studio. To a daemon or anyone Marked, it was a Fold. It was a Latin-themed bar between worlds. The lingering death from a massive fire years ago had caused a rip in the fabric between the human dimension and what I had discovered to be Limbo.

  I heard screeching chairs against the floor inside. Panic. Hushed voices and confusion. I wondered how many times someone had tried to come into a Fold through the front door rather than the Human world. I knocked again.

  “Henry?!” I shouted desperately. “I’m out here. Let me in.”

  The red string attached to my little finger warped and grew fat, all my worries eased when my daemon opened the doors. I flung myself through and wrapped my arms around his neck. I buried my head into the crook of his shoulder. I had missed his smell, fresh and clean soap coupled with sandalwood. Suddenly conscious of my soaked pyjamas, I broke the embrace and hugged my torso.

  Physical sensation crashed into my body like a roaring crescendo, coming back to the human world felt like being reborn.

  “You’re safe.” Henry breathed.

  “I met Charon”

  “You did?” Worry coated his tone.

  “I did,” I said, my teeth chattered from the cold. Henry draped his blazer over my shoulders.

  “Did he say anything about me?” He asked, his tone was pensive.

  “No.” I blinked, confused.

  “You aren’t hurt.” Henry sighed in reli
ef and ran his cold hands over my shoulders, taking in every inch of my skin.

  “How did you get here?” I asked.

  “I landed in Leicester Square and walked. You said you lived with the Blood Scratcher in our time apart.” Henry rubbed the back of his wild mahogany hair, nonplussed. “This is the Fold closest to her residence, I believe.”

  I shivered and the rush of voices pushed against my inner ears. It suddenly dawned on me that we were stood inside of a bar full of daemons. As if sensing my awakening to their presence, the wall of people turned away and busied themselves with whatever they were doing before I burst in through the doors. Wordlessly, I took Henry’s hand and watched the crimson energy meld my skin to his, sinking under the service of our fingers. He pulled me forward and the room melted into the street outside. We left the Fold, daemon magic left a sharp tingling feeling in my stomach. The roar of humanity built up until my ears thrummed with a familiar pain. We were back in the human world.

  A woman in a business suit walked past, she took one look at me and her face crinkled in disgust. I was still in my dog-themed pyjamas and soaked to the skin. Henry's broad shouldered blazer hung on my body. My nipples were hard enough to cut cloth. Henry wore a white dress shirt and black trousers, very different from the white scrubs that I had seen him in at Tranquil Hill.

  “Did the … facility burn down?” I asked shakily, as we hurried down the London street. Darkness lowered over the city as night began to fall.

  “Yes. Damian killed everyone. It was enough to create a Fold.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything else. I concentrated on the feeling of Henry’s hand gripping mine and took a deep breath to steady my lungs as I tried to calm down. We had been so close to dying and so close to being caught by Damian.

  “What did he want with me?” My voice broke.