by Sara DeHaven
“I’m okay, we’re talking,” Bree replied shortly. Her heart was fluttering in her chest like a nervous bird. I’ve never heard of a person becoming a demon. I don’t know what you mean.
He would not be a demon as I am. But his essence, what you call his ‘energy’ would be mated with demonic energy. With the energy we have when we hunger. He would want what we want. With the Seldenai, we called this ‘Chey-ra.’ I think it might translate to English as‘The Anger.’ There is no softness, no remorse. The being has grown dark.
It was hard to work through Gelsenim’s odd syntax, but Bree thought she was starting to get it. I think you’re saying he’d become what we call ‘demon burned,’ a Demon Master who has gone crazy, lost their mind.
No, it is not the same, the demon insisted. It may look similar on the outside, but the cause is not the same. Nor the cure.
So what's the cure?
As I said, his voice came back impatiently. He must become one, no longer be divided.
Yes, but how does that work?
Do you not know? Gelsenim sounded truly surprised.
There was a moment of mutually uncomprehending silence in her mind. No, I honestly don’t know, I have no idea!
And you think my kind is stupid. He must become one, inside himself.
Do you mean he has to get rid of that thing, the darkness, so he can become one?
No, no! You are not listening! He must become one! He must take the darkness inside himself and become one!
How the hell does that fix him? Won't that just cause this human demon thing to happen, or maybe make him crack like all Demon Masters eventually do?
You are wrong. He will crack if he doesn’t become one. How do you not see it? The bowl with a crack will break, that which is whole does not easily break.
But you’re talking about a human taking in and ‘becoming one’ with demonic energy! That can’t be right! She was getting more and more confused.
Is that not what you are doing now? How does it harm you?
Just as Bree thought she might scream in anxious frustration, Kevin’s voice interrupted. “Bree, I think you need to hurry this up.”
“Can you just hold out another two minutes? I’m into something really important here,” she replied, eyes still closed and focused on Gelsenim.
“It’s not me, it’s Daniel. I think you need to drop the contact.”
She opened her eyes, and saw that Daniel was panting and sweaty. His eyes were closed, and he looked like he was in pain. Quickly, she re-focused on the read, and she did so, she realized her energy was still entwined with his. And so was Gelsenim’s. As a result, that darkness was building. Holy shit! She’d forgotten that demon contact made it worse, and here she was, exposing him to extended demon contact while she argued with Gelsenim. She started trying to untangle the energies as Daniel grated out, “Stop. Bree, I need you to stop it.”
Perhaps he will break now, Gelsenim said with bright interest.
Just when I think you’re not a total bastard, you have to go and remind me, Bree sent as she frantically worked to unravel the energies. She was rattled and losing focus and it was taking longer than it should have.
“Get out! Get out!” Daniel shouted suddenly, his voice shockingly loud. Bree fiercely concentrated, but before she could finish, she felt Daniel’s hands grip her upper arms, hard. Her eyes shot open reflexively, and she lost her concentration. He was looming over her and he looked desperate and furious at the same time. Her Reader sense was still wide open, and she felt the sudden rush of energy coming out of Daniel, through his hands and into her body.
“Get out now,” he whispered raggedly.
Daniel’s command slammed into her with palpable force, and Bree lost control of her mind. She tore away from him energetically before the attunement was broken, something you were never supposed to do, something she never would have chosen to do. It felt like something was being ripped inside of her. She heard Gelsenim howling wordlessly in protest. Daniel pushed her away from him, hard enough that she stumbled and fell. He raised his hands in fists before him, and commanded, “Gelsenim, depart!”
The warmth of the demon’s presence drained out of her as his voice in her mind said, My host, beware of him, he is divided! The cloud of orange and red that was the demon’s essence moved out of her and vanished. As she sat on the floor, leaning back half stunned on her hands, Bree could still feel the grip Daniel had on her mind. He had put a binding on her, something he’d promised never to do. She looked up at him as he slowly lowered his hands. He was still breathing hard, and there was an empty look to his eyes. There was a moment of silence, then a ripple of energy moved through the air as Kevin dropped the wards.
“What on earth just happened?” Sophie asked, anxiety making her voice squeak as she hurried towards Bree and knelt on the floor next to her. Kevin went to Daniel and put a concerned hand on his shoulder, saying, “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Don’t touch me,” Daniel said hollowly, shrugging him off and stepping back. He was looking at Bree now, still with that terrifying lack of expression. What if he had ‘broken,’ as Gelsenim said he might? What might he do to her, now that he had her bound to his will? She felt light headed with fear.
“Daniel, let me go,” she pleaded, voice coming out hoarsely through her dry throat. His eyes met hers, and she felt power building inside her, his power, a great wave of pressure so intense she thought she might burst from it. She instinctively reached up and covered her head with her hands, trying to hold it together.
Then, quite suddenly, it was simply gone. Daniel whirled around and paced to the end of the room. His whole body was stiff, his expression shuttered. Kevin followed him and was talking in a low voice, but Bree couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Bree, honey, are you all right? Bruce, read her, will you? Something clearly went wrong there at the end.”
Bruce crouched down next to Bree and said gently, “Is that okay with you Bree?”
Bree nodded wordlessly, and pulled down on the top of her shirt so he could put his hand directly on her chest. It took a conscious act of trust to do it. She’d been invaded enough for one day. After a couple of moments of silence, during which Daniel continued to stand silently, Kevin to talk softly, and Sophie to look ill with worry, Bruce removed his hand. “Well, your energy isn’t down that much, which is pretty amazing, but it’s all ragged and stirred up. It’s kind of like…” He paused, clearly reluctant to go on.
“What? It’s kind of like what?” Sophie prompted.
“It’s kind of like after Seth died. Like you’d been torn in half.”
“Oh, I should never have let you talk us into this!” Sophie exclaimed in distress. “What has that demon done to you?”
“It wasn’t Gelsenim,” Bree whispered. She could hardly make herself say the words. It felt like a betrayal, but if Daniel was truly dangerous, if he had broken down in some way, she had to tell the truth. “It was Daniel.”
“What did Daniel do?” Bruce asked in a hard voice. Bree hadn’t had a chance to shut down her Reader sense yet, and she could identify the disappointment underlying the anger in Bruce. He and Daniel had quickly become friends in the last months.
“He bound me and forced me to break the attunement before it was unraveled. Then he banished Gelsenim.”
“Are you still bound?” Sophie asked fearfully.
“No, he let me go.” Then it hit her. That was true, he had consciously released the binding. And if Daniel had let her go, maybe he hadn’t somehow ‘broken’ and become the half human, half demon monster Gelsenim had hinted at. She looked over at where he stood facing Kevin, and heard him say, voice rising, “You think I wanted to do it? You think I would do it if I didn’t have any other choice?”
Bree focused her Reader sense deliberately on him. It hurt, and she was careful not to try for any kind of attunement. She just opened herself up to reading tells as much as she was able. The abrupt way he moved his hands, the
set of his shoulders, the tension in his neck and jaw, and that particular tone of voice added up to that very close to the edge emotional state she’d seen in him before, months ago. As much as that scared her, as much as she knew he was close to losing control of his temper, she was reassured a little by the evidence that he still read like Daniel. An unstable, unpredictable Daniel, but not some kind of evil, sociopathic Daniel.
As she was focused on her read, Bruce approached Daniel, saying, “Do I understand correctly that you just put a binding on Bree and forced her to break Reader attunement? Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”
Kevin raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Let’s all just slow down here. We’re all spooked and upset.”
“Damn right I’m upset,” Bruce continued. He was not raising his voice, but he moved closer to Daniel in that way men had when they wanted to establish dominance. He was taller than Daniel and nearly twice as broad.
“Oh great, a male testosterone match,” Sophie murmured in Bree’s ear. “We’d better put some water on the fire or we’re going to be in a real mess. Can you stand?” She got up and put out a hand to Bree.
Bree took it and allowed herself to be hauled to her feet. She felt a little dizzy, like her body wasn’t put together properly.
“I tried not to hurt her,” Daniel was saying as the two women got up and joined the group around Daniel. “The attunement was almost finished unraveling…”
“Oh, you tried not to hurt her? You grabbed her and threw her across the room!” Bruce was a closer to shouting as Bree had ever heard him.
Sophie put a hand on her husband’s arm. “Honey, Kevin’s right. We all need to take a minute and calm down.”
Daniel ignored her, focusing on Bruce, talking fast. “Look, something went very wrong with the read. Having the demon in on it did something to me. I held it together as long as I could, but then I…” He turned suddenly and stalked away, hand clutching at his hair, in the grip of some emotion.
Kevin said to Bruce, voice very low, “You need to back off. He feels crappy enough about what happened, and trust me, you do not want him to lose his temper right now.”
That seemed to give Bruce pause. He looked at Sophie, who looked at Bree. “He’s right,” she whispered. Bree saw the growing look of unease on all their faces. It was easy for them all to forget how high power Daniel was, how potentially dangerous he was as a Demon Master who just might be starting into demon burn. He’d gained all their trust in a short time, had the kind of natural charisma and leadership skills that made them all want to fall in line behind him. But it appeared he was, in reality, a slender branch on which to place all their weight.
She watched Daniel’s back as he stood facing away from all of them, hand still at his head. His back rose and fell with breathing that was still rapid with anger, frustration or some other upset. Bree felt a sharp stab of discomfort as she automatically went to read his tells. She took a moment to consciously shut off her Reader sense. She could feel that it was damaged in some way, and she knew she should stop using it to give it a chance to heal. She refused to believe that it wouldn’t heal, even though a part of her mind gibbered her fear that this time might be different.
They all stood in careful stillness, waiting for Daniel to get a grip on himself. Slowly, his hand lowered to his sides, and his breathing slowed. He finally turned around and walked back to the group. This time, he looked directly at Bree, and Bree found her gaze flinching away.
In spite of that, Daniel spoke to her. “Bree, I’m sorry for what I did. It was mostly on instinct, a kind of self-defense response. That doesn’t excuse it, I know.” His voice was fairly even, but she could tell he was still very upset. She made herself look up at him, but by then, he was addressing the whole group. “When Bree started the attunement part of the deep read, I could really feel Gelsenim’s presence. At first, it was just the usual disturbing feeling of being touched by someone possessed. But then it changed. When Bree touched that dark thing, that energy complex we’re trying to figure out, something happened.”
He rubbed at his neck and closed his eyes for a minute, concentrating, then opened them, and continued. “First, it was like a shock. I don’t know, maybe like an electric shock. Then some kind of resonance started to build up, but in a bad way. Like if you struck a bell, then you struck another bell that was out of harmony with the first one. And I was in between, being shaken apart. I think, I feel like, like…I almost broke. I mean seriously, like something in my mind was going to be broken apart, and then all my control, everything that holds the pieces in place, would be blown to bits. I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew if I didn’t stop it, I might go off like a bomb. I just had this vision of a power wave that would take you all out. Hell, I don’t even know if I was right, if I was just imagining it, but I didn’t have time to think about it.”
Bree thought about all that Gelsenim had told her about Daniel being ‘divided’ and the risk of him being ‘broken,’ and she knew it fit with what Daniel was describing. Though she had wondered on some level if Gelsenim had been telling her the truth, that doubt started fading.
“I think maybe you were right,” she told Daniel. “Gelsenim said he recognized that dark thing. He said there was a risk it could ‘break’ you, and then you’d become something like a Demon Master who’s lost it, though he insisted it wasn’t exactly like that. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you’re both using the same words to describe what you were feeling, that you might break.”
“It would make me like a demon burned Demon Master, but worse.” Daniel was regarding her with a stiffly controlled expression, but his whole body was practically vibrating with tension.
“He didn’t say worse, exactly,” Bree hedged. She was still angry with him for binding her, still afraid he might lose it if what she said upset him enough. And she knew she was stepping into very deep waters with him, the deepest. They were talking about his darkest fears here, that he was doomed to go off the rails, and at that point, he’d probably be one of the most dangerous people on the planet. She was terrified enough that she would eventually lose it herself, given what appeared to be some unusual kind of Demon Master talent that was showing up in her. But if she lost it, she wouldn't be that much of a threat to anyone. A Demon Master and Binder at Daniel's level of power would need to be put down ASAP if he became unstable. But who would be able to do it?
The collision of feelings inside her, fear, anger, pity and yes, she had to admit it, love, on top of the stresses of the last hour made it very difficult for her to find the right path here, to know what to say and how to say it. Seeing Daniel standing rigid across from her, looking like he was waiting to hear his death sentence, put pity and love on top, and somehow, that calmed her a little.
“He said the dark energy can be triggered by demon contact. It sounds like it is, in a way, an unusual sort of taint, something that attaches to something already inside you. He said it makes you “divided,” whatever that means. He said if you don’t ‘become one,’ with that energy, you will eventually break. That’s when you become something like a burned Demon Master. He made it sound like that would change you in a very bad way, but he didn’t exactly say it would be worse than being a burned Demon Master.”
“So if I don’t figure out how to ‘become one,’ I’m basically fucked? Did Gelsenim give any clues at all how I’m supposed to accomplish this?”
“I tried to ask him, but I didn’t have time to get a very clear answer. He was actually doing his best to explain it to me. He tried to show me some pictures, said he used to see this same thing with the Seldenai.”
“I thought that dark energy thing was what made you drop your shields and allow demon possession,” Sophie put in tentatively. “If you ‘become one’ with that, how does it keep you safe from being demon burned? Wouldn’t that just make you more likely to seek out contact with demons? And isn’t that what you’re supposed to avoid to keep from being demon burned
?”
“Maybe it’s some kind of paradox, like a riddle,” Kevin said. “There’s got to be a way to fix it. Bree, you said Gelsenim told you it could be fixed by ‘becoming one.’ Is there anything else, anything at all you got out of him on that?”
She crossed her arms and tried to stiffen her knees, which were shaking in after reaction. “He seemed surprised I didn’t know what ‘becoming one’ meant, like it was obvious. He did say that it doesn’t mean getting rid of the dark energy. He said Daniel should not be divided from it. It was pretty clear that being divided is the problem.”
“Any clues to how long he has before this becomes a problem?” Bruce asked. He was sounding less angry now.
Bree winced inwardly. Man, did she not want to say what she had to say next. But she was sure that keeping it secret would only make things more dangerous. “He seemed to think it could happen at any time. In fact, he thought it might be starting there at the end. So probably you were right to force a break in the connection,” she admitted reluctantly.
There was a very awkward, very loaded silence.
“I think you should all leave,” Daniel finally said.
“Look, maybe if we all calm down, get something to eat, replenish our energy, we can figure this out together,” Kevin suggested.
“Not now, Kevin. Maybe later today, maybe tomorrow. Right now I need to meditate, try to get my energy calmed down.”
“Kevin is right about eating, though,” Sophie put in practically. “Eat a little something first, then meditate, then eat a lot, that’s my advice. We’ll get out of your hair.” She made shooing motions to the others, then led the way downstairs.
“We’ll get this figured out,” Kevin murmured as he went past Daniel, patting him briefly on the shoulder. Bruce nodded at him, a conciliating gesture. That left Bree last. She paused in front of him, unsure what to do or say.
“Please, just leave,” he said with a barely suppressed mixture of shame and despair. He wouldn’t look at her. Abruptly, she gave up and headed down after the others. She really had nothing more to offer right now, no way to break through to him, break past his obvious misery, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to anyway, wasn’t sure it would be safe, wasn’t sure it would ever be safe again.
