by Lila Huff
The beast’s eyebrows furrowed and his head tilted as he looked at me, his lips slowly slid back over his fangs and his entire stance became less hostile.
“Ellie?” the question came from his muzzle in a growl.
Every muscle in my body simultaneously clenched. How did this monster know what Paul called me? His face slowly rearranged itself and I found myself staring at my old friend. This was why I had been brought to this dank corner of London, it was where Paul would be. His face was a bit scragglier than I recalled, but it was still Paul.
No. It was not.
The Paul that I had known was gone now, only the vile portion of him was allowed to survive when he became an Asakku. Why else would he be stalking that defenseless girl in the middle of the night? Paul was gone; the demon was all that was left.
“Ellie!” His face broke into a wide smile and his forehead smoothed out as he took two massive steps toward me. I, in turn allowed myself to drift back the same distance. His smile turned to a frown and I saw his eyebrows knit together again. “Ellie, it’s me. Paul.”
I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. The reality of Paul’s fate was too horrible for me to try to grasp. I realized now that my hand had flown to my mouth to conceal the gasp that I had wanted to release. I mouthed a silent prayer that I knew would do him no good.
“Come on Ellie, you know me!” His face was expectant, as though he honestly thought that I would forget what he was just doing. He thought I would forget what he was.
“I know what you are.” The words came from my mouth in a shaky whisper.
“What I am?” he looked at me as pain spread across his face. “I didn’t choose this.” He held his hands out in an apologetic way as he stepped toward me again and I drifted back.
“No,” I couldn’t argue with that. I hadn’t chosen my fate either. I could not fault him for the means of his transformation. “But you choose to be a monster.” The last word stung as it spewed acridly from my tongue.
“Monster?” His head tilted to the side and he stared at me with wide black eyes. “What are you talking about Ellie?”
Paul was the only one who had ever called me that in my life, and the sound of it from the lips of a demon was too painful to recount. I felt the warm fingers of hateful rage as they crept into my chest and wrapped around my heart. “Don’t call me that.” I said through clenched teeth.
Paul was a good man, even if he had his faults and it enraged me that he had fallen into such a fate. It was all that I could do to keep myself from destroying him now. I felt my hand wanting to raise, to snuff his flame, to put Paul to peace at last.
“Please tell me what you are talking about.” He said the words slowly as he took another step toward me and I slid backwards. “I am only what I have to be.”
“Monsters stalk women in the night. Monsters kill and drink blood. It was a monster that killed me.” I was so mad at this point that I was shaking. I didn’t know how much longer I could be here. I focused on keeping my calm, but I saw the paper on the ground as the wind pushed them about in mad circles and I saw the street lamps beginning to sway.
“It was not one of my brothers who did this to you. It was the others. The wind demons.” I looked into his black eyes and knew that he honestly believed what he was saying. “And I only take the souls I am bid.”
“You don’t need to.” I spit the words at him acidly. “You’re going to become an addict like the rest of them and your eyes will glow red just as theirs do. And yes, it was one of your ‘brothers’ who did this to me. Hephaestus would have sent me to Hell had Adam not intervened.”
“You are in league with the wind demons then?” he asked as though he was charging me with an indefensible crime. “Gallu was right, I guess. Wind demon scum.”
“They are not what you think.” I answered back coldly, “they kept me from having to be like you.” I spat the words and they flowed freely, like venom through the bloodstream.
He took another step toward me and I did not move this time, instead I fixed him with a cold glare and waited. One more step, and as he lifted his foot to take another a great gust of wind rushed down the street from behind me and blew him across the road and into a parked car. The frame was no match for him and it quickly buckled inward on itself, encasing him in the steel frame and splintered fiberglass body.
I heard the screeching of the metal as he pushed the boot and bonnet outwards and stood glowering at me menacingly. “Is this what it’s come to? I will destroy you for your own good.” The growl he let out was deafening.
I stood, unmoving as he ran toward me at full bore, he leapt into me and I felt him pass through the vapor that I had become. He skidded to a stop halfway down the alley behind me and I heard him slowly stalking toward me. He circled around to my left and I waited as he came to stand in front of me.
“Did you know that your ‘brothers’ killed my family?” I asked as he paced back and forth in front of me. “They killed them and then burnt down my house to make it look like an accident.”
“Are you sure that your friends didn’t kill them and then set a fire to try to blame it on us?” He spat at me, “your family could have been spared if the wind demons hadn’t been so greedy as to want to keep you from death.”
I stared at him, not willing to respond to his derisive opinion of the Lilitu.
“Your new family has such a low opinion of the reapers, simply because they do not understand that we are necessary.” His voice was calm again, but it still had the sharp edge it had carried before.
“What the Asakku do is not necessary.” I was not yet clam, and I had no qualms about that fact. “Killing innocents to satiate an addiction is never necessary.”
“I don’t kill innocents.”
I interrupted him, “No. But your brothers do, and you will too eventually.”
“How can you be such a Delilah?” He spat at me.
And I couldn’t control myself anymore. The wind swept up around me and I saw the trash that littered the gutter sliding away from me. I stared at him murderously and the force of the wind shot out from me like the pulse of a shockwave.
Paul flew backwards into a building across the street. Signposts and street lamps were bent away from me and the entire area was cleared of litter. The walls to my left and right held bricks that were now cracked and pieces of them crumbled to the street below.
“Impressive.” I heard Demetrius’ voice from behind me. “I came to see if you possibly needed any help, but I can see that you don’t.”
We both watched as Paul extricated himself from the rubble that had once been a florist shop. He looked to me and then to Demetrius behind me, his face full of anger and hurt. He let out a feral snarl and with a quick burst of flame he vanished, leaving the ruined building behind him full of smoldering bits of plywood and decorative baubles. I sent another gust of wind toward the shop, blowing out the small fires.
“Let’s go home.” Metri whispered in my ear and I allowed myself to drift home, though my thoughts remained in the alley much longer than I did.
I found myself back in the room, though I didn’t know how and it was suddenly raining.
Raining? Inside? No.
I looked up, black sand was falling from the ceiling, and pooling on the floor. I crawled onto the bed allowing the canopy to shield me from the downpour. The room filled with the glittering black sand and I knew what was happening. I was sinking back into my coma. There was no escape from the nightmare of my existence. I could only trade it for the nightmare that resided in this coma.
The walls turned to the black sand and crumbled to the floor. The desk, the piano, they all dissolved into the black sand. The carnival reappeared and the masked man returned with it, however this time his mask vanished and Paul was reaching toward me, beckoning me to join him.
I forced a gust out that threw all of the carnival performers out of the black valley, but Paul remained. I picked up boulders, throwing them at him. I sent out
fire filled barrages. I attempted to drown him. I made the earth swallow him up. But nothing held. There was no way to rid myself of him.
I shut my eyes tightly until all of the dim light in my desolate valley was blocked out and held them that way for a few moments before peeking out onto the black sand again. Paul was gone.
The bed and I were the only things that remained in the black sea of sand. We floated aimlessly in the dark for what seemed like several hours. The image of Paul’s face, however, still haunted me, even in the darkness of my desolate valley.
The skeletons of my father and grandmother returned to me, and though neither said anything to me, they somehow found their own ways to bring Paul’s face to my mind, the carnival clowns returned too, placing jester hats on the skulls, and doing cartwheels across the foot of the bed. I did my best to ignore them all. I could push all of the other voices out of my head, but Paul’s still remained.
His words bombarded me as I lay there in a state of catatonic submission. I listened to every word he had to say, again, listening to them from the human Paul was easier than listening to them from the demon Paul.
He’s as much a victim as we are.
I looked to my left and I saw myself, it was the person I had been when I was living. I looked into my blue eyes and suddenly felt very confused.
“He’s a demon.” I argued back.
Aren’t we just as much of a demon as he is?
“No. I made a choice to not be a demon.”
Why couldn’t he make the same choice?
I had a good point. There was nothing concrete telling me that he could not also make the choice that I had. “He’s chosen his fate.” I looked away from myself, “You saw him chasing after that girl on the street.”
We saw him stop; a true monster wouldn’t have hesitated when he saw us.
I couldn’t argue with my own logic. “But he is an Asakku.”
My conscience seemed to understand that she had no more ground to argue, at least no ground that would hold firm against my resignation that he was unreachable as an Asakku.
I tugged at a small piece of hair that had fallen out of my ponytail. I felt the small sting as the end pulled at my scalp. It was a strange thing to know you’re hallucinating, but not know how much of what you saw and felt was real.
“Jo.” I heard the loud whisper as it echoed over the valley. “Jo.” The ground started to shake as though there was an earthquake in my peaceful black valley.
The valley disappeared and I was staring into the velvet black of a night sky studded with stars. It was beautiful in the darkness of the night, almost as though the stars put forth no light.
“Jo.” Demetrius said, blinking and breaking my line of sight to the silver flecks in his eyes.
“Sorry?” I asked, feeling completely disoriented.
“Are you ok, Jo?” Demetrius’ hands were on my shoulders, holding me back to the bed, and I fought against his grip for a moment. “You can wreak havoc when you go into one of those.” His statement was almost laughing.
“I’m ok,” I assured him, though I wasn’t so sure myself. “What are you talking about, ‘havoc’?” He let me sit up then and I saw the singed carpet that looked to be soaked through to the cracked floorboards that were covered in papers that had been blown from Metri’s desk.
“Oops.” I said quietly. I had no idea that my actions in my coma-like state were tangible in the real world.
“Oops is right,” he said with a laugh. “Carla burst in here demanding that you be turned out! She’s afraid that you’re going to destroy us all in one of these fits.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that it was that bad.” I got up and started to pick up the papers.
“The first time they weren’t.” Metri said as he joined me. “Running into that Asakku didn’t seem to be good for you.”
“I don’t think it would have mattered if I hadn’t known him.” I said, trying to figure out some order to the mess of papers that I held.
Demetrius had frozen. He stared at me with a curious, yet wary glance. “You knew him?”
I just nodded, silently, unable to look at him. The derision in his voice somehow made me ashamed.
“How did you know him?” his words were cautious, as though he was being very careful about what he was saying.
“Do you remember the memory I shared with you and Lilith?” He nodded. “It was Paul.”
“Paul is an Asakku?” something that resembled recognition flashed across his face. “It’s just like Ryan.”
“Your brother?”
“Yes.” He said decidedly more composed than he had been a moment ago. “She killed your family and took your brother, just like she did mine.”
“But Paul’s not my brother,” I argued, though I knew he was right, I was just nit-picking.
“No, but you said yourself that the two of you were like family.” He was staring at the papers in his hands, but his eyes flitted back and forth as though he was seeing something that was not there. As though he was trying to work through some sort of a puzzle. “We need to go talk to the family.”
When he called it the family it reminded me of the old gangster movies I had seen. It was like he was telling me we were going to see the Godfather. But I allowed him to take my hand and lead me from the room. I hadn’t thought about it before, but I idly wondered now, if Lilith and Adam’s children had rooms of their own. They seemed to always be in this hall.
Carla immediately paled when we entered the room, shifting in her seat so that her back was not to me. None of the others reacted strangely toward me. They seemed perfectly at ease, even with my little episode.
“There’s been a new development!” Mitri said when we stopped next to the table they were all seated at.
I had not realized that they were playing a card game. Lizzie dropped her cards on the table, face up, exposing her three kings – the others all laid theirs face down – before she said, “What now?” her question wasn’t sarcastic, she seemed to have a genuine hope that Demetrius’ news was good.
“You all remember what happened to my family after Father saved me from the Asakku, right?” He asked, glancing to each of them, and they all nodded as he continued. “She’s done the same thing with Jo.”
Lizzie’s face fell and she turned to me with sorrow in her eyes. “Your whole family?” I just nodded. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
“She just ran into an Asakku in London, it was her very close friend Paul. He was the last person to see her alive, but he was taken, just as my brother Ryan was taken.” Demetrius was gripping the back of the chair that Billy sat in so tightly that I was sure the wood would splinter in his hands.
“So she’s up to her old tricks again.” Nathaniel said, his jaw set as he looked to the table, seemingly lost in thought.
“But we still don’t know what those tricks are. She has never sent Ryan after you, not in four hundred years.” Lizzie said optimistically.
“But she didn’t want me as badly as she wants Jo.” Metri said shaking his head. “I think that there is something amiss with Paul. I think she’s going to try to use him to get to Jo.”
“Can I remind you that I’m still in the room?” I said, slightly annoyed. “There’s no reason to talk about me as though I’m not here.”
They didn’t seem to even notice my request. They just continued to talk about what this could mean for us. I finally became so annoyed that I went to one of the high-backed chairs that was strewn about the hall and waited for them to notice my absence.
I wondered if they even cared that Paul had been just as amazed to see me as I had been to see him. He knew about my transformation as much as I had known about him. I couldn’t see how Gallu planned to use him against me if he didn’t even know that what I was.
I would go find him. I would find out the truth from him. What had happened and what would happen. I couldn’t stand to hear the preposterous things that they were saying, the radical things they
thought up. Paul was not really a monster, he was my friend.
Though I had not been much of a friend to him in the alley, I would find him and I would figure out what was really going on. We each deserved to know both sides of our stories.
There was a strange popping noise that broke me from my resolutions, and I turned to my left as a sudden burst of flames lit and put itself out in the hall. I blinked trying to remove the white spot that now seemed burnt into my line of vision. It was gone in less than a second, but its green shadow stayed with me.
I looked to where the column of flames had been and found myself staring into the glowing black eyes of an Asakku. I didn’t have time to recognize who it was before Earl and Billy materialized next to him, each grabbing an arm and throwing him to the floor. Paul let out a low grunt, but didn’t struggle against them.
“Stop!” I yelled, throwing myself from the chair, “He’s not fighting back.”
“He’s evil.” Earl said in an oddly stormy voice, “he must be destroyed.”
“He’s stupid. Coming here was suicide.” Carla’s icy tone cut through the silence behind me. “They should all be exterminated. Demons don’t deserve to walk this Earth.”
“That’s a bit hypocritical. You may not kill others in the pursuit of chaos, but you are no more human than he is.” I sneered.
“I am not a demon.” Her eyes narrowed at me murderously.
“That’s just semantics.” I turned from her. “Look, he’s not struggling. I’d wager that he just came to talk.”
“He came to die.” Earl placed his hand to Paul’s back, where his heart would be.
“No!” I said with such a force that Earl and Billy were blown backwards, though they still held their grip on Paul.
I was not going to let this happen.
14. Defection
-Paul-
