The Demon's Deal

by H. D. Gordon

  I picked a pregnant woman with a gentle aura. She had curly black hair and dark eyes, and could not have been more than nineteen years old. She was far enough along that people in the outside world would’ve been saying things like, “Any day now,” or “When you gonna pop?” But in here, there was no celebration of the condition. In here, there was only fear, sadness, and obedience.

  At lunch time, I took a seat beside her and offered a tentative smile. “Hi,” I said. “I’m Alice.”

  It was the first name that wasn’t my own that came to mind.

  “Hi,” said the woman. “Grace.”

  Grace looked down at her tray of food, which was exactly what one would expect in a place like this—green beans, gravy-less mash, dry roasted chicken and a carton of milk. Grace’s plate had been piled with double the amount mine had, and a host of pills I could only assume were prenatal vitamins sat in a tiny paper cup. No point in going to all this trouble if the women weren’t producing healthy babies.

  I searched for a way to ask questions that wouldn’t sound too abrupt, and kept coming up short.

  After several long moments of what felt like awkward silence, Grace looked up at me beneath dark lashes. “I know you have questions, so go ahead and ask them,” she said quietly.

  My brows rose. “What?”

  Grace pursed her lips and blew out a heavy breath, keeping her voice low. “You’ve just been kidnapped and washed, and now you’re in a room full of other prisoners who all happen to be female.”

  I blinked at her.

  “When I came here thirteen months ago,” Grace continued, “no one would answer my questions. I learned everything the hard way.” She gestured at her large belly. “If this is my life now, living in this hell, being used to….” She cleared her throat and shook her head. “I promised myself I’d answer the questions of the newcomers.” Her voice lowered further still, so much so that I couldn’t be sure if she was talking to me or to herself. “It’s the only power I have left.”

  My throat tightened. I had to swallow twice before I could speak.

  “What’s going on here?” I asked in a whisper, trying to appear casual as I picked at the food on my tray. “What is this place?”

  Grace’s hand rubbed idly at her swollen belly as she answered. “They’re using us to create children, of course. Who they are, why they’re doing it, I don’t know. Your guess is as good as mine. But as for what this place is, that one is easy. This place is hell.”

  I chewed my lip. Not sure what to say to that.

  Grace continued, turning in her seat a little now so that she could look me in the face. “You’re not going to believe what I tell you next,” she said, “but that doesn’t matter. You’ll find out for yourself soon enough.”

  I could hardly draw air as I waited for her to finish.

  “The men they’re making us breed with…They’re not men at all. They’re not even human. They’re…They’re monsters straight out of nightmares.” She shivered, her hand still stroking her belly. “And that means that the babies inside of us….” A little moisture gathered in the corners of her eyes, but she blinked it quickly away, glancing warily up at the people in white coats milling around behind those windows with their clipboards, watching.

  If not for my strong hearing, I might not have picked up the next thing she said.

  “That means the babies inside of us are monsters, too,” she whispered.

  Monsters.

  The word brought back a memory that seemed so long ago, and yet wasn’t. Six months after I’d moved to Grant City, with the help of Raven, a male name Shiva had lured me to a warehouse to ask me to join his band of weirdo rogue supernaturals and Halflings. He’d told me that eventually, I’d have to choose between humans and my own kind.

  You can pretend you are one of them, Miss Fae. You can make friends and try to build a home, but you are not one of them, and you never will be, and one day, when you need them most, they will turn from you. They will make it clear that you are not the same, and that there’s no room for you on their side of the line. Not for you. Not ever.

  A single clock hung on the wall of the common room, and I watched the seconds tick down, knowing that every one took me closer to my last. As evening fell, we were fed dinner and sent to our rooms, which was the word they used for what I thought more accurately resembled cells.

  One doesn’t typically get locked inside a room, after all.

  The door to the cell clanged shut, the interior no more than a five-by-six space with bunk beds and a toilet. No windows, save for the small one on the door so the guards could peer in at us as they pleased.

  My roommate was one of the women I’d been brought in with, and she spent the entire night sobbing into her thin pillow. Normally, I would make an attempt at comforting her, but at the moment, I didn’t even have it in me to comfort myself.

  At some indeterminable, ungodly hour, just as I was beginning to slip off to sleep, she asked, “What’s wrong with you? This is all so crazy, and you’re calm. Aren’t you sad that we probably won’t see our families again? Aren’t you afraid of what these monsters are going to do to us?”

  There was that word again. I blew out a slow breath, blinking up at the ceiling of the cell. I didn’t think that telling her that I was a monster myself would offer much comfort, nor the fact that I’d been processing losing my family and everything I loved for the past eight and a half months, since I made that dreadful deal with Saleos.

  So instead, I said, “I’m just in shock.”

  That was the end of that conversation. Sleep refused to find me after. With no clock and no window, there was no way to measure the passing of time.

  That felt like as much a curse as it was a blessing.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I could hear the electricity running through the walls, the metallic clicks of the cell doors when they opened early the next morning. That meant that all the doors in the cellblock were likely controlled from a single location.

  A guard shouted for us to get up to be counted, and I confirmed my assessment regarding the doors when I saw the guard booth on the second floor above. I would bet that the controls were in that little room, which was currently staffed with two guards.

  I also noted that while the doors and walls of this place were built sturdily, they had been built to keep in humans, not people of supernatural strength. Snapping the locks or breaking through either with brute force would not be easy on my part, but not impossible, either. I clung to the small bit of comfort this offered, because there was still all the men with guns, and while I may be supernaturally strong and fast, I was not bulletproof.

  As we stood at our cell doors to be counted, a guard who was tall and jowly and old enough to be my father ran his eyes from the tip of my feet to the top of my head. It was an effort not to twist my lips in disgust when I watched his aura light up with arousal, clearly liking what he was seeing. As he made his rounds, I watched the auras of the other prisoners, and knew that this bastard had been taking advantage of them when no one was looking. Oddly, this helped to clear up some of the self-pity I’d been drowning in last night, as my resolve to help these women strengthened. I’d need to hold onto the reasons I’d come here in the first place, needed to let them steel me for whatever lie ahead.

  After attendance had been taken, we were led back to the common room for breakfast. I ate the bland food that was given, knowing that I would need to keep my strength up.

  My roommate sat beside me as we ate, eyeing me over her spoon of porridge.

  I blinked at her. “What?” I asked.

  Her eyes narrowed a fraction. “I don’t think you’re in shock,” she answered.

  I struggled not to roll my eyes. “Okay. Cool.”

  She leaned a little closer, panic welling in her aura but not on her face. For the first time, my own curiosity was piqued. I wondered who this young woman was in the outside world. “I think you know more than you’re letting on,” she a
dded.

  I furrowed my brows as if I had no idea what she was talking about.

  Sensing that this method was not getting anywhere with me, she switched tactics. “Please?” she said, and her aura said she was not faking the tears that welled in her eyes.

  “I know as little as you,” I replied.

  She sat back, shaking her head, her aura flashing with anger. Again, this emotion didn’t show on her face. “I’m Clare,” she said. “What’s your name?”

  “Alice.”

  “Where are you from?”

  I hesitated. “Benton.”

  She nodded. “Me too…. Where were you when they grabbed you?”

  I tried to find a reason not to tell her, and couldn’t think of one. “Coming out of a bar.”

  “We’re you drunk?”

  “Tipsy,” I lied.

  “What about your family? They’ll be worried. They’ll look for you, right?”

  As she spoke, I was slowly gaining insight into my new roomie. She was a pragmatic person, and probably older than me by six or seven years. Her hair and nails were done in a way that suggested she had money, and the way she spoke implied that she held a position of power in whatever work she did. Her aura, however, was even more revealing. Clare was uncommonly good at hiding her emotions (save for her crying the previous night) and I wondered if maybe she didn’t work in politics or sales.

  “I suspect they will,” I said, realizing she was still waiting for me to answer her question.

  She nodded. “So will mine. My brothers will look for me, and they won’t stop looking.” She glanced around at the guards. “Whatever the hell this place is, they can’t keep something like this quiet forever…. Surely.”

  I nodded, thinking that powerful people were masters at keeping things quiet. In fact, now that I thought about it, the Blue Beast who had been terrorizing Grant City before I stopped him had been probably about ten years old, which meant at the very shortest, facilities like these had been running for at least a decade.

  Now it was my turn to hide my anger. Every paradigm the Peace Brokers sold me had turned out to be a lie.

  We finished our breakfast, and the woman with the clipboard who’d checked us in yesterday entered the common room and began to call out numbers. She ordered those whom she called to line up against the wall. I stood and followed the others as my number was called.

  Clare’s number was called as well, along with the other women we’d been brought in with. My heart kicked up in pace, but I told it to chill out, reminding myself again that these walls could not hold me.

  I was at the front of the line, and I leaned over to clipboard-woman, pushing all my persuasive magic on her when I asked, “Where are we going?”

  She eyed me behind thin-rimmed glasses. “It’s time for your examination,” she said, and looked surprised that she had even answered.

  “Examination?”

  Again, she didn’t want to answer, but couldn’t help it under the sway of my magic. “We’re checking your female reproductive system to ensure that it’s fit and fertile.” She snapped her mouth shut and strode a little further ahead.

  When I looked to my left and saw the large, creepy guard who’d taken a head count this morning leering at me, a shiver went straight down my spine.

  I was not about to let these freaking weirdos “examine” me.

  I’d seen enough. It was time to be done with this mess, time to go home and call in reinforcements.

  We were led down a hallway that looked like all the others—off white walls and yellowing linoleum illuminated by fluorescents overhead. We were lined up against one of the walls and arranged by our numbers. This put me in third place, and Clare in fourth. The first woman they called into the room resisted, and I cringed when Creeper Guard grabbed her by the hair and forced her inside the room, a nasty grin on his face as he did so. Her screams echoed down the hall as the door slammed shut behind them.

  My blood boiled. I’d known plenty of men like that one in the past, and beating the crap out of them always offered a very particular kind of satisfaction.

  Clare gripped my hand as we stood against the wall, the fear in her aura seeping into me. “Be strong,” she whispered, but I couldn’t tell if she was talking to me or herself.

  The first woman had not been brought back out when they called in the second. The second took one look at Creeper and did not resist. Her shoulders slumped so low it looked like she was trying to curl in on herself. I swallowed past the desert that had become my throat.

  When it was my turn to be called in, panic tried to overcome me, but I managed to keep my cool. The Peace Brokers may be some lying bastards, but they’d gone to great lengths to train me how to keep calm in the worst of situations. I met the gaze of the Creeper Guard as I walked through the doorway, my eyes narrowed. This only seemed to excite the pervert.

  The door clanged shut, and I was brought through another door and into what looked like a doctor’s office, complete with an examination table covered in white paper and various instruments hanging on the wall.

  The woman with the clipboard was present, as was another woman in a white coat, scrubbing her hands over the sink in the corner.

  “Thank you, Biagi,” said the doctor, talking to Creeper Guard. “You may wait outside.”

  Biagi hesitated, beady eyes watching me distrustfully. Perhaps he was not as stupid as he looked. “This one seems feisty,” he said. “Maybe I should stay.”

  Feisty. Ew. I hated that word. It was only ever used by men to describe women who didn’t automatically submit to their masculine posturing.

  The doctor dried her hands on a paper towel and tossed it in the wastebasket. She studied me a moment, and I knew exactly what she saw. My disarming appearance had always been a useful weapon. I was only five foot three, with long wavy hair and big eyes. For all intents and purposes, I looked about as threatening as a baby doe.

  “I think I can handle it, thank you,” the doctor said.

  It was an effort not to flash a smile at Biagi. He grunted and exited through the door we’d come through.

  Once he was gone, the doctor patted the examination table. “All right,” she said, “hop on up.”

  The woman with the clipboard sat in a chair in the corner, pen poised over paper, observing.

  “What are you going to do?” I asked.

  The doctor smiled thinly. “Just a routine examination, for your own good, really. To make sure everything is in working order.”

  “You make a habit of telling other women what’s for their own good?” I asked. “You’d think you’d get enough of that from the men in congress.”

  Clipboard woman scribbled something down. The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Should I call Biagi back in?” she asked.

  This threat made it difficult not to throat-punch her, but somehow, I managed. I hopped up onto the examination table and earned a pleased nod from the doctor.

  “Good girl,” she said. “Now just slide out of your pants and—”

  I grabbed a pen from the counter and spun her around so that my forearm was wrapped around her throat, her back pressed to my front. I’d done this so swiftly that the two women hardly had time to blink. I held the pointy end of the pen to the soft spot on her neck, watching the doctor’s aura spike with fear as she let out a little squeal.

  The clipboard woman shot to her feet, her mouth falling open.

  I spoke quickly. “If you scream for help, I’ll jab this into her throat deep enough that she’ll bleed out before anyone can save her.”

  Clipboard woman looked conflicted, but the doctor, shivering a bit under my hold, held a hand up to her. “Do what she asks, Becky,” the doctor said.

  “Yes, Becky. Do as I ask. In fact, have a seat, please.”

  Becky still seemed reluctant, I suppressed a sigh and forced a bit of persuasion toward her. She slowly lowered back into her chair.

  The doctor moved a little in my arms, and I tightened my hold enough t
o hurt, pushing the pen a little deeper into her throat, not enough to break skin, but enough, nonetheless.

  “What are you?” the doctor whispered, and then answered her own question. “You’re one of them.”

  My jaw clenched. “You mean one of the Halflings you’re forcing women to give birth to? I’m not one of your cruel projects, but yes, I am a Halfling.”

  I took some satisfaction in the fear that spiked in her aura.

  “What do you want?” Becky asked. She sat as still as a snake in her seat, and I realized then that out of these two women, Becky was the one I needed to watch.

  I snorted. “You can’t be serious. I want you shitheads and your messed up science experiment shut down, and for you to be held accountable for what you’ve done.”

  Becky snorted in return. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. There’s no stopping this. You’re only making things harder for yourself.”

  I could tell that Becky was stalling, waiting for one of the guards to come in and check on what was taking so long. That’s why I’d timed the intervals at which the other two women had been called in before me. By my estimations, I had about seven minutes before we’d likely be interrupted.

  “I don’t get women like you two,” I said. “Honestly, I expect men to oppress us. I expect them to take advantage of us. It’s what our culture has taught them to do…. But women like you? You’re disgusting.”

  Anger burned through Becky’s aura now, and I knew instinctually that I didn’t care to hear another word from her mouth. So when it fell open, I turned, still holding the doc against me, and planted a kick right in the middle of Becky’s face. Blood spurted as her nose broke, and she slumped to the side, unconscious.

  The doctor let out another little squeal. I checked the clock on the wall. Three minutes and counting.

  “Come on, doc,” I said. “It’s time to go.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two