Demon Flames

by M. J. Haag

  “When we return, will you take your clothes off again?” he asked, kissing my temple then nuzzling the place below my ear.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said with a small grin, already knowing I would.

  I craved his attention more than I cared to acknowledge.

  Drav carried me down to the communal table where many men had already gathered. I’d thought there’d been a lot of them before. Their numbers had easily doubled. Men crowded into the lantern strewn clearing, the throng of muscular bodies filling the stump area and spilling over into the surrounding undergrowth.

  “Is this everyone?” I asked softly.

  “This is more than half, but not all.”

  Nearby men noticed our arrival and conversation slowly quieted, drawing the attention of Molev, who stood near the communal table. He started our way, his eyes never leaving me.

  “If he mentions what he saw, I’m punching him,” I said under my breath. Drav grunted.

  “Hello, Mya,” Molev said when he reached us. “Thank you for joining us. Come. We will eat while we wait.”

  Relieved, I followed him through the crowd to the three empty stumps near the center. He motioned for me to sit. He and Drav took seats on either side of me. A bald man approached with a leaf stacked with cabbage rolls. He held out the leaf to me first.

  “Oh, I’m not falling for this again. Last time I helped myself, people got hurt.”

  “That won’t happen again,” Molev assured me. “Eat.”

  I glanced at Drav, who nodded, before helping myself to two rolls.

  “Thanks,” I said to the man.

  “You’re welcome.” He turned and offered the rolls to Molev then Drav.

  “Thank you, Limar,” Molev said.

  I did a double take at the man as he walked away.

  “Is he being punished? Is that why he’s serving dinner?”

  “The lowest serve and train until they prove themselves worthy of more,” Molev said. “It is not punishment, but protection for them and us.”

  As I munched, other men brought food to the communal table. Once offerings heaped the surface, Molev stood and turned to me.

  “There is more to eat. Come choose,” he said.

  Drav nudged me until I stood and picked a few things from the table. Molev grabbed some food, then Drav. One by one, the men approached, and I began to notice a slow change in their general appearance. By the time the last bald man helped himself from the picked over remains, I understood the length of their hair related to their social standing. Drav’s reaction when I’d put my hair up back home took on a whole different meaning.

  A commotion near the far side of the clearing drew my attention. The men stood aside, making it possible to see the new arrivals, who stood out starkly from the rest. Dust coated their grey skin and dark hair, and several of the men had rips or scorch marks on their clothes.

  With a weary droop to their shoulders, the travel worn group progressed to the center of the circle where they hungrily helped themselves to what remained of the food. I felt a surge of pity for them and what they’d likely endured on the surface. It conflicted with my impatience to hear the news they brought so we could be on our own way.

  A few of the new arrivals noticed me and stared, catching the attention of the rest.

  “Tell us what you learned,” Molev said, without addressing their curiosity.

  Since only Drav and Molev spoke English, I sat between the two of them and listened to the gibberish pouring out of each speaker’s mouth. Sometimes, Drav would translate or Molev would ask a question in English so I would get an idea of what was being said.

  The men had come from the old orchard and told stories of unintelligent beings who craved flesh and of birds whose shit destroyed anything in a flood of flames. That description of planes, by far, won as my favorite. The men produced different items, explaining their purposes. One man showed a broken cell phone that he said used to glow. Another showed a lighter, which he’d actually figured out how to operate. My amusement ended, though, with the guy who dumped a bag full of canned food on the feast table.

  He picked one up and squeezed it, popping the top right off and causing a mass of brown to come squishing out. He brought a finger full to his mouth and, after eating it, explained that he had seen some intelligent beings above who didn’t crave flesh. They had eaten what the cans provided.

  Drav stood and took one of the cans, which he brought to me.

  “Eat,” he said.

  I looked down at the can of dog food I held, a feeling of devastation overwhelming me. While I safely hid underground, people were up there struggling to survive.

  “What happened to the people? The ones eating this?” I asked in a tight voice.

  Drav translated the man’s answer.

  “He killed them and took the cans.”

  My silent tears fell onto the label.

  “I’m sorry, Mya,” Drav said softly.

  “Tell them what happens when our heads are ripped off. Tell them we don’t resurrect from the dead. Tell them they are taking away our lives forever.”

  Getting angry, I looked up and glared at everyone.

  “Those unintelligent people were once like me. But when the hounds came to the surface and started attacking, people got sick. Those uninfected, healthy people you killed were scared and just trying to survive, and you killed them so you can bring fucking dog food down here for show and tell.” I threw the can, almost hitting one of the bystanders. It didn’t appease my anger.

  “I thought this was about sharing real news. All of this is a waste of time. You want real news that won’t be at the expense of some innocent person’s life? We’re just as fucking important as you are. You had no right.”

  Tears tried to clog my throat.

  “No right to kill them, and no right to keep me down here where I’m no help to anyone.”

  The tears won.

  Fifteen

  Drav turned me into his comforting arms. His hold soothed my tears, but not my anger or the increasingly painful thump in my head.

  The rational part of me understood Drav, too, had killed humans. That none of these men had known better because they’d lived thousands of years in a place where death did not exist. And, although I understood all of that, I couldn’t forget or just“get over” what had been done.

  When the tears slowed, I pulled back from Drav and looked at Molev.

  “Your people were trapped down here. You had no choice in that. Now, you do have a choice. You know the earthquakes set the hellhounds free on us. Your men have seen what they do to humans…how unprepared we are. Stop hiding underground. Go to the surface and fix the mess you made. And, it is your mess. You ate the cursed deer, which created the hellhounds. Whether accidental or not, the hellhounds exist because of you. Help my people, like yours should have been helped so long ago.”

  I turned to Drav who’d held me through my speech. The soft lantern light played on his concerned gaze and made my head ache worse. Crying hadn’t helped, either.

  “Please, can we leave now?” I asked. I desperately wanted to get back to the surface and start the search for my family. Drav bent, as if to pick me up.

  “No, you will stay,” Molev said. His gaze swept over my tear-stained face.

  I opened my mouth to tell him to stick it—Drav and I were going back no matter what—when he cut me off.

  “Please. I need you here to help clarify what these men are sharing. Your world is vastly different than ours,” he said.

  So he wasn’t trying to keep me in his world, just at this meeting. I sighed, about to agree, when a jolt of stabbing pain shot right into my head. I hissed a sharp breath and pressed my fingers to my temples, trying to sooth the ache. It didn’t help. Instead, a wave of nausea twisted in my stomach. I closed my eyes, hoping it would all fade away, but it didn’t. The cramping grew worse.

  Perhaps leaving would need to wait for a few hours so I could lay down and rest first.<
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  Drav touched my arm.

  “Mya?”

  At the anxious concern in his voice, I forced myself to open my eyes and drop my hand to my side. Drav didn’t look reassured.

  “I’ll be fine. Let’s hurry up and get this done.”

  As much as I hated hearing about my people dying unnecessarily, I needed to learn everything I could about the state of the world above before we left.

  “We will continue,” Molev said after I sat.

  The men seemed a little more cautious when they approached us. Some watched me warily as if making sure I didn’t have anything nearby to throw at them. Their garbled language became background noise that I began to ignore.

  “Mya…” Drav said.

  “Hmm?”

  “Sain said there was a weapon the intelligent ones were using that made a lot of noise, and something went into his chest and stomach. It took him until he arrived here to heal.”

  The man in question pointed to the two bloody holes in what remained of his shirt.

  “You were shot,” I said, amazed that he was still standing. “The humans were using guns to protect themselves.”

  I felt a stirring of pride toward the other human survivors out there. They weren’t helpless, even if these guys could heal quicker or weren’t the real threat. As I thought it, another man stepped forward.

  The dark fey wasn’t dirtied like the rest, and his hair looked a little wet still. He spoke a stream of words which didn’t quite sound like their language. It had a familiar ring, but I couldn’t place it.

  “Fyllo says there were no birds with explosive shit on the surface where he explored,” Drav said. “The skies remained clear and the cities whole and quiet.”

  I frowned, not understanding where he was going with this.

  “No bombs?” I asked. That sounded promising. “What did he mean when he said where he explored?”

  “The other hole that opened,” Drav clarified.

  Fyllo took a step forward and hesitantly produced a can of food. He didn’t pop it open but handed it to me whole.

  He spoke as I looked at the can, and Drav translated.

  “He said he found it on the shelf of a building full of food.”

  I took the can from him realizing he was implying he did not kill anyone for it. I turned the can over, half expecting it to be dog food. Instead, I saw an unfamiliar label with a bright blue background and a plate of sausages on a table. It read,“4 Munchner WeiBwurste.” The words he spoke, and the words on the label, clicked into place. German. Of course. They’d suffered quakes, too. My stomach sank a little at the realization it wasn’t just our continent that had been affected.

  “That other hole leads to Germany? What’s happening over there?” For a moment, my headache took a backseat to my curiosity. “Are there any safe places? Did you see any normal humans? Not the infected kind?”

  “Yes. Humans,” Fyllo said.

  “You saw humans?”

  Fyllo looked worried, and his gaze darted to Molev then Drav before he spoke again. Drav set his hand on my leg and squeezed it reassuringly. I doubted I would like hearing the translation.

  “He said there were many people, most of them infected. He did find a group of humans travelling together, though. He followed them for some time until they arrived at a human stronghold.”

  Had the Europeans fared better than us? If they weren’t dropping bombs there, then perhaps they thought it better to preserve our Earth. Considering we only had one planet, it made more sense to find a solution that didn’t involve bombing the hell out of everything.

  “What else can you tell me about what’s happening over there?”

  Fyllo spoke again, but this time, Molev translated.

  “He said he followed the humans until they arrived to a safe point, but that is where he got his injury and the news to return.”

  “Did you notice anything else?” I asked, swallowing hard against my roiling stomach. “Were any of the humans gathering to go look for others? Any military movement to suppress the infected without the use of bombs? Any hope at all that they have a chance of killing the hellhounds on their own?”

  “No,” Fyllo said clearly.

  Drav moved his hand so he was rubbing my back, and it helped ease some of my tension. It didn’t matter. I didn’t listen to more after that. My mind dwelled on the wasted time since Drav drug me down here. Drav and I could have been up there searching and helping anyone we found. But what could two people do against the mess on the surface? The struggle wasn’t just mine or Drav’s. It concerned Drav’s people, too. They needed to see that. Living down here wasn’t living. It was existing.

  When the last man finished showing what he’d brought, the rest drifted to speak in smaller groups. Loud chatter came from most of them, along with a few bursts of boisterous laughter here and there. Most likely due to some retelling of tales of their time above ground. Were they laughing at the weak humans? At their struggle to survive when the shadow men could so easily outrun hellhounds and rip off the heads of infected?

  Drav rubbed my neck gently, and I realized my hands were clenched into fists.

  “Molev, you need to return to the surface. Now. Today. It’s where you belong.”

  “No, down here is safer. We do not have a final death like your people on the surface.”

  “Safer, but is it better? Do you really want to spend your lives down here like you have been? Now that you’ve seen the surface and females like me? This isn’t where you belong.”

  “This is where we have lived for thousands of years. This is our home. For now, we will stay. We will revisit this conversation when the birds that shit bombs are gone, and the hounds are far from the crater.”

  I opened my mouth to argue more when my head blossomed with a pain that would have knocked me off my feet if I had been standing. Black dots clouded my vision. I closed my eyes and gripped my head between my hands.

  “Mya?”

  Drav’s quiet voice sounded like thunder. Bile pooled under my tongue, and I slowly shook my head.

  “Home.” It was the only word I could manage.

  “Yes,” Drav said before Molev could get a word in.

  A strong set of arms scooped me up. Cradled against a familiar chest, I turned my face into the wind, seeking any sensation to distract from the pain threatening to explode my skull. Within seconds, some of the pain eased. I exhaled slowly and tried to relax as Drav ran, hoping the rest would go away too. The majority of the pain stubbornly remained.

  The sensation of Drav racing up the tree stopped along with the wind. His growl had me opening my eyes. Men crowded the branch which held our burl. Some moved to and from other burls further out, others lounged outside the burls, talking to one another.

  At our appearance, someone called out Drav’s name and everyone’s attention turned to us.

  Drav didn’t put me down but moved right for the entrance of our temporary home. No material covered the opening like before. The pile of“blankets” no longer waited inside on the wooden bed either.

  Drav growled again.

  “Where did everything go?” I asked. I wanted to block out the weak crystal light, burrow under the blankets, and fall asleep until my head stopped hurting and I didn’t feel like hurling my rolls.

  A voice come from behind Drav, who grunted then translated.

  “They needed to replace damaged clothing.” He turned. “Can you hand Mya the bag?”

  The man standing nearby picked up the bag and handed it over.

  “Thank you, Nero. You may use this place. If Molev looks for me, tell him I went to my village.”

  “Village?” I just really wanted to sleep.

  “My home outside of the city.”

  Outside of the city meant closer to the wall and the way home, so I didn’t argue.

  We left the burl, and I closed my eyes, ready for the trip down. The wind continued after we stopped descending. I opened my eyes, anyway.

&nb
sp; “How long will it take to get there?”

  “Not long. Close your eyes. Rest.”

  I wouldn’t have thought rest possible but managed some, until the steady motion of Drav’s running stopped abruptly.

  Pulled from my light doze, I opened my eyes and found my head felt a little better. It probably had something to do with the lack of light. We’d stopped close to the wall. No lanterns hung nearby, and the dim light from the larger cluster of crystals suspended above the now distant grove didn’t reach far over the fields that stretched out behind us.

  Turning my head, I focused on the four stone huts we faced. The structures seemed to emerge from the city wall. Nothing about them looked inviting, except their completely vacated state.

  Drav walked to the one on the far left. Once again, no door or covering protected the entrance. Drav’s village home didn’t look much different than the city dwelling. The builders had used stone to create seating along the walls. Other than the entrance, there were no other openings to see beyond the immediate area just inside the door.

  “Stay here, and I’ll get a lantern so you can see.”

  He gently placed me on the bench and left me sitting in the dark. I didn’t really mind. It gave me a minute to think.

  Resting my head against the stone, I considered everything I’d learned after the arrival of the remainder of Drav’s people. The bombings decimating the surface weren’t happening worldwide. It gave me hope there might be something left to call home when we returned to the surface.

  The news about the infected still roaming didn’t surprise me.

  I thought of my family and wondered how they were surviving. Were they eating canned dog food? I hoped not. I hoped jackasses like those at the bridge weren’t taking all the supplies from the cities and starving out the survivors.

  I also hoped the rest of my headache would go away after a nap so we could leave.

  Soft light preceded Drav’s return and cast enough of a subdued glow to see the rest of the room. I groaned just as he entered.

  “Are you in pain?” he asked in concern, moving to my side.

  “I’m going to be. Do we really have to sleep on that?” I asked, pointing at the stone bed protruding from the back wall. A furred hide covered the center of the platform with a thickly woven matt at one end.