by Jenny McKane
You’re hired. Can you start next week?
Sunny could start this very minute if Kitty would have her, but she didn’t want to appear too anxious for the money she desperately needed, so she tried her best to play it cool.
Of course. What day would work best for you?
It sounded casual enough, right? Sunny was trembling with excitement--it was like the nervous butterflies from some stupid crush, not a damn low-paying retail job. She laughed at herself and got back to her books. A short while later, the response came.
Monday at 3 p.m. See you then.
She smiled and got back to her studying. She hadn’t seen Gideon since yesterday afternoon when she’d come back from the yarn shop. He’d been salty and withdrawn since getting the box back from the demoness Lisette and spent the night somewhere else. Probably with Lisette. Or Anya’s girls.
Whatever. Sunny didn’t care. Seriously, she didn’t.
Noodle walked across her book and reminded her that he was still around and king of the castle. With a sigh, she pushed herself to her feet and wandered into the makeshift kitchen where his food was stored underneath the sink.
She pulled the doors open and screamed like her life depended on it, because for all intents and purposes--it suddenly did. Perched in the spacious cabinet under the sink with its snout fully immersed in the cat food bag was a dream demon. Sunny had fallen back on her rear end in the panic, and she scurried away as the thing turned to look at her with slate grey eyes.
The best she could describe a dream demon was some unholy cross between a cat and a gargoyle. They moved on two feet with portly, round bodies and had triangular ears perched on the top of their heads. They also had catlike tails with the major difference being that dream demons had spikes on the end of their tails. The spikes produced sleep-inducing venom that knocked their victim unconscious with little effort.
Sunny was on her feet just as Noodle ran into the kitchen and launched his furry body at the interloper currently trying to free itself from the cat food bag. Noodle attached itself to the demon’s thick hide and was on its back chewing on its skull, screaming bloody murder.
“Pull your henchmen off, Hunter,” it wheezed, trying to bat at Noodle. “Please, Plaxo does not wish to hurt the Lady Hunter.”
Odd. It was strangely well-spoken for a dream demon. Sunny reasoned that it could have put both her and Noodle to sleep by now if it had wanted to.
Against her better judgement, she inched forward and pulled a hissing and spitting Noodle from the demon’s flesh and did her best to keep him from re-launching at the thing. When Noodle refused to calm down, she moved quickly and set him inside the stairwell that led to the garage, which was currently closed and locked up. She pulled the door shut before Noodle could get back inside and turned to face the creature.
“You have about two seconds to explain what you’re doing here and why you’re eating my cat’s food,” she said with more authority than she felt. She studied the thing as it inspected its war wounds. It had a triangular nose like a cat and similar slitted eyes. It was the size of a medium-sized dog--like a cocker spaniel or something like that. And it was gray. All of it. No hair, no variations. It was why Sunny had originally mistaken it for a gargoyle when she’d first opened the cabinet. The thing looked like it could have been made out of concrete.
“Plaxo,” the thing said with a flourished sweep of his hands and a bow. Well, it certainly had a flair for the dramatic. “At your service.”
She frowned.
“Excuse me,” she said. “Why would you be at my service? Aren’t we enemies?”
The thing emphatically shook its head.
“Plaxo does his best not to make enemies on either side of the line,” he said. “But even still, Plaxo is your humble servant forevermore. Lady Hunter spared Plaxo’s life, and it now belongs to her.”
No. Nope. No way. She was not going to get away with some dopey dream demon following her around.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes at the thing. She tried to recall everything she knew about dream demons. This particular breed, she later learned, had quite the history among humanity, and it was the Germans who’d taken the time to write down everything they could about them. They’d been called Alps, and along with the venomous tail barbs, dream demons loved to lay atop people while they slept and steal their life force.
“Plaxo is telling the truth, Lady Hunter,” he insisted, pushing forward toward her, its tail switching back and forth nervously. She didn’t need to be unconscious. She held her hand out to stop his progress. “You don’t remember Plaxo?”
His weird cat eyes stared up at her, pleading and begging for recognition. Of course. She closed her eyes and sighed.
It was the very same dream demon she’d tussled with late last year. He’d escaped, and she’d nearly broken her leg falling from a fire escape. She hadn’t exactly spared the damn thing, she’d freakin’ misjudged her athletic abilities and plummeted an entire story to the concrete below.
And that was after the damn thing had rolled over her feet in some weird self-defense mechanism that had crushed her toes and scraped her shins. She tilted her head and looked at him.
“Why are you here? I was sent to hunt you and you got away,” she half-whispered. “I didn’t save you, idiot. You escaped.”
The thing shook its head violently.
“No, Lady Hunter,” it argued. “The Seeker was after Plaxo, and the Lady Hunter helped Plaxo. The Seeker ran from the area because of Lady Hunter. She saved Plaxo. She did.”
Sunny thought about everything that happened that night. It was one of the last hunts she’d been on because she’d botched it so badly. She’d been sent after a specific demon that she’d assumed was Plaxo and started chasing him. Not only did the tiny dream demon escape, she’d come to find out that she wasn’t even after a dream demon in the first place. She’d been so excited to find her first mark that she hadn’t double checked the identity.
To say that it’d been a bad week that week was an understatement. A big one. But still. Why was he here now? Where had he been this whole time?
And most importantly--how did she get rid of him?
Downstairs in the garage, she heard the rumbling of the garage door opening. She shot a glance behind her at Plaxo.
“Crap,” she said, panicking. “You can’t be here. I’m pretty sure he’d kill you.”
Plaxo didn’t move as quickly as Sunny expected he might. He actually didn’t seem all that concerned with Gideon’s arrival.
“Plaxo isn’t scared of the half-breed,” he said nonchalantly. “Plaxo only cares about Lady Hunter. Is Lady Hunter safe with Half Breed?”
The speaking in the third person and the weird names was making it hard for Sunny to follow.
“Am I safe with Gideon?” she asked, listening for his steps on the stairwell. “I think so. Why? Do you know something that I don’t?”
Plaxo simply shrugged after tossing the cat food bag back under the sink.
“Plaxo knows nothing about the Half Breed. His trace is impossible to read,” Plaxo walked closer to Sunny, and she involuntarily stepped back. “Plaxo will protect Lady Hunter. Yes?”
Gideon’s heavy footsteps were now on the stairs and she could hear Noodle meowing like a maniac to be let back in and have a second shot at the demon standing in front of her with giant, pleading anime eyes.
“Can you hide?” she whispered furiously. Gideon was moments from opening the door.
“Like this?” When she looked away from the door back to where Plaxo was standing half a breath earlier, she found the spot empty.
“Where’d you go?”
“Plaxo is still here. Just hiding in the air.” He sounded very proud of himself.
“When I get a free moment, we’re going to talk about this and you’re going back where you came from. I don’t have room in my life for this kind of crap.” She almost caved when she thought she he
ard a whimper from the spot Plaxo had last been. “Seriously. And find something to do with yourself while he’s here. Don’t just be creepy in a corner somewhere and leer at us.”
“Plaxo will patrol the perimeter,” he said, the pep back in his voice with something to do. “Plaxo will keep Lady Hunter safe.”
She heard the heavy, uncoordinated pitter patter steps of the dream demon running away toward a far corner. Seconds later, the door opened and Noodles flew inside like his tail was on fire. He scoured the room and did a sweep for the offending creature before concluding that the thing was gone.
He was going to be pissed when he realized the food had all been eaten though. Sunny made a note to grab some more when she went out in the morning.
Gideon shut the door behind him as he walked in. He cast a glance around the empty loft, over to her stack of books lying open on the floor, and back to Sunny before striding away.
“I’m expecting a delivery tomorrow,” he said. “Let them in if you’re here.”
With that, he stomped away and slammed the door to the back room shut.
Sunny blinked.
What the hell?
Chapter 11
Gideon was gone early the next morning. It wasn’t that Sunny was necessarily looking for him; it was just that the slamming of the door just after sunrise had woken her up. She had been awake into the wee hours of the morning studying and trying to outline a paper that was due next week for her English class. She had fallen asleep wondering if Liam stressed about grades as much as she did.
She wondered if Liam, or anybody in the entire school, for that matter, stressed about grades and money half as much as she did. It seemed like that was all she thought about lately, and it was getting in the way of her concentrating on the task at hand when it came to the archangels. Gideon had said very little about what he was up to during his long absences and, combined with the fact that Michael had not sent her any sort of communication after the emails with the dossier, it made Sunny just a little bit nervous.
But she also knew that the archangels weren’t the type to hold back when they wanted to communicate. So…all it meant was that they had no use for her right now. The archangels or Gideon. She tried not to let the former sting more than it should. He had been incredibly withdrawn after they had left Lisette’s condo, and he had reacted to her so strangely. Sunny knew there was so much about Gideon that she would probably never learn, and that she should probably stop trying to learn more. But Sunny liked a good puzzle, and it was something that ticked around in her brain, that she played with during her quiet moments, thinking about what exactly Gideon was up to, who he was, and what he was after in this whole game.
It got Sunny thinking about what she was after in her own game. Was it merely survival? Or was Sunny looking for a bigger stake in the game with the archangels? She was pretty sure that wasn't it, but it didn’t stop her from asking the questions. In reality, all Sunny really wanted was to finish out the semester, and possibly the next one, without going into massive student loan debt. She wanted decent grades. She wanted a decent portfolio to show for all her efforts. And she wanted to get into a good art school. All in all, it didn’t seem like too much to ask for.
She brewed the coffee in Gideon’s crappy coffee pot and let out a curse when she saw there was no more cream left. She was not one to drink plain black coffee, even if it had a little bit of sugar in it. Just as she was getting herself dressed to go out in search of a better cup of coffee, Plaxo appeared directly in front of her, causing her to fall out of her boot that she was lacing up.
“Do you have a death wish?” she hissed, as she rubbed her sore ankle. The jerky movements she gave from the surprise had nearly rolled her ankle out of her boot.
“Apologies, Lady Hunter,” the dream demon said. He even gave an obnoxious little bow with his chubby little gray body. “Greetings on this fine morning. Do you have big plans for the day? Does Lady Hunter need an escort?”
Sunny let out a sigh.
“I'm going out for a cup of coffee,” she said. “Probably not the most exciting thing for you to tag along for.”
Sunny should have remembered that she was dealing with a different species. They weren’t much for subtle hints, and the fact that she did not want him to follow her was completely lost on him.
“Plaxo is not a demon who expects excitement,” he said solemnly. “Plaxo, in fact, avoids excitement as often as possible.”
“Well, I am certainly not the hunter for you,” Sunny replied. “Whether I like it or not, my days are full of misadventure and hair-raising missteps. Are you sure you don’t want another person to glom onto?”
He vigorously shook his head.
“Plaxo is with the Lady Hunter he wants to be with,” he said solemnly. “Plaxo takes his duty very seriously.”
Sunny continued to get her boots laced-up.
“Say, Plaxo,” she asked suddenly. “Do you have any sort of beneficial powers? Do you have any abilities that could come in handy some day?”
In reality, Sunny was hoping that the dream demon would be able to summon a cup of coffee on the spot. She knew it was highly unlikely, but there was no harm in asking. She wasn’t exactly sure where the nearest available coffee was in Gideon's neighborhood, and from the looks of it, it wasn’t exactly a neighborhood she wanted to be wandering aimlessly through at any hour of the day.
“Plaxo is able to walk in dreams,” he said, as Sunny began to walk towards the door. He fell in step beside her. “Plaxo can also read minds in dreams.”
“What use would that have?” Sunny asked. “Dreams are so random and basic brain barf from all of the stressors of the day. Why would you want to read minds in a dream?”
“Human dreams are often riddled with nonsense,” Plaxo said. “But there is often valuable information in them, Plaxo has found. And demons, on the other hand, do not dream nonsense. Sleep is so valuable to demons that they do not have extra time to let their subconscious create fantasy.”
“Demons dream?” That was new to Sunny.
“The more advanced ones do,” Plaxo said, as the door shut behind them. “And those are the ones that you have to be careful of. Those are the ones whose dreams should be monitored.”
She convinced Plaxo to go invisible as they walked through the neighborhood. It took about a half a mile of walking through industrial parking lots and loading docks before they finally started to see a little bit of commerce and retail civilization.
When she was certain that there was nobody within earshot that could hear her talking to thin air, Sunny attempted to get any additional information out of Plaxo that she could.
“Why was a Seeker after you that day?” It was the first thing she wanted to ask. Sunny was relatively new to the demon world and had very little demon knowledge. She basically did whatever an archangel told her to do, and they were never forthcoming with any background information, lore, or even a few helpful hints. It was mostly a target on a piece of paper and instructions not to screw it up.
“It is a dangerous conversation to have,” Plaxo said wearily. “Lady Hunter should be certain that she wants the answers before asking those questions.”
Well, that was nice and cryptic of him.
“Have you ever read a demon hunter’s job description?” Sunny asked. It was a rhetorical question, so she could not help the smile that threatened to creep from her lips when Plaxo shook his head no. “The very nature of what I do depends on the mood of an archangel. At least that’s what I figured out so far. Dangerous conversations do not seem to worry me so much these days.”
In fact, Sunny was having so few dangerous, informative conversations these days, that she was almost giddy at the thought of learning something juicy from this tiny little concrete-looking dream demon.
“Plaxo is an ancient race of demon,” he said. He wasn't missing a beat in explaining things to her. He had given her a warning, it appeared, and when she had ignored it, Plaxo decided to answer
her question. Maybe having him around for a little while might end up being a little useful. “Dream demons are not as revered as they once were. Often, they are the butt of a joke. And they are often assigned menial tasks, such as gathering gossip amongst the races of demons, who are always jockeying for position.”
“Like a spy?” Sunny asked.
“Very much so,” Plaxo said. “But it is dishonest work amongst the demons, and our kind is looked down upon, no matter how helpful and valuable they are.”
“So how did you end up on the run from a Seeker?”
“Plaxo did not want to join a fight that was not his,” he said. Suddenly his little gargoyle-like voice was serious and sad.
“Who was trying to make you join a fight?”
“Plaxo does not want to say his name, as names are powerful, and he might be able to trace Plaxo to Lady Hunter someday,” he said. “But it is the Grand Duke himself. He wanted an army of dream demons to venture into places they did not belong.”
Sunny’s spine tightened at the mention of Azriel, who’d suddenly taken on very Harry Potter-esque Voldemort proportions. She always knew he was dangerous and was a demon the angels were after, but this was some next-level stuff.
“Where did he want them to go?”
Plaxo was not paying attention to her anymore. Instead, he’d zeroed in on a chipmunk darting across a patch of grass nearby.
“It’s breakfast time,” was all he said before he dashed off after the critter. He’d gone invisible when he did, and Sunny didn’t stick around to see whether or not he caught his prey. She shuddered at the thought of him succeeding.
She found a gas station eventually. It wasn’t much, and she was sure that if she kept pressing forward, she’d probably find a more reputable source of caffeine, but she was tired of walking, and by that point figured any cup of black water with cream and sugar would work miracles.
Inside, she assembled her cup and paid the bored-looking cashier, who didn’t bother looking up from her phone. Sunny didn’t mind. She hated small talk more than anything.
