I gaped, looking from the demon, back to Shock.
“Allay . . . ,” Shock mouthed. She tried to sit up but fell back, depleted.
The demon turned to Shock and took a step back to her. Every moment, it was looking less like Shock, its features blurring and reshaping, the hair darkening, growing, then curling. It was expending energy with every shift, but it seemed much stronger than Shock, who struggled to sit up.
The demon was close to Shock—too close. Shock was having trouble shielding herself, trying to tighten her remaining energy to protect her inner core. My skin prickled as if chilled as my own shields instinctively snapped into place. Usually I was more lax, but not when another demon was anywhere nearby.
To distract the demon from Shock, I peeled away from the wall. “Get away from her.”
The demon whirled on me like a cornered animal, dropping into a defensive crouch. I froze, locking eyes with it.
Shit! That thing’s about to jump on my face!
This was a demon in its most primeval form—shapeless, a parasite driven by hunger, ready to do whatever it took to survive. But an arc of recognition shot between me and the tensed creature before me. Because of my background, I was as different as I could be from this demon, yet I was formed from the same material. We were the same at the core.
At least now it was focused on me instead of on Shock.
I took a slow sidestep, careful not to advance or retreat but taking control of the situation by making the first move. That was when fear hit me in the gut. The demon’s signature finally penetrated the persistent buzzing of Shock’s signature. It was a shiver down my spine, making me yearn to look over my shoulder to catch the eyes that were watching me, following me, waiting to do the worst things imaginable to me. . . .
“Petrify,” I said. That was the demon’s name, his true nature. My palms were sweating as I radiated exactly what he wanted—fear. I had been feeding Shock a steady stream of panic ever since the poor girl had arrived, so that was what this demon craved.
Some help I am! Why didn’t I pour love into her? Or calm?
Petrify, his hands opening and shutting, took a step toward me, compelled as he was to touch me, to soak up my fright. But I couldn’t let him—he would steal the little energy I had left.
I stumbled toward the kitchen, drawing him away from Shock. His facade was still wavering, but he was quickly gaining more control, conserving his energy for an attack.
Shock managed to push herself to her feet. “What are you waiting for, Allay? Take him. You need his essence.”
It took me a second before I realized what she was saying. “You want me to consume him?”
“Go on, Allay. It’ll be easy to slip past his shields. He doesn’t have much control.”
I stared at Petrify, who stopped his advance. It was true that his aura was fluctuating, his energy flow chaotic. Maybe it would be easy to absorb his power and expose the core that kept him alive. Then I could steal his essence for myself, just as I had inadvertently stolen Plea’s essence ten years ago.
Yes.
The longing swelled inside of me until it made my heart pound. I had felt this need growing for a long time, but I had tried to deny it. I couldn’t hide from it any longer.
That hot fire of life will make me immortal.
Well, at least it would keep me alive for a couple of centuries. That was how long it took to burn down the candle again, to reach the final waxy puddle where our demon flame began to gutter and go out. I could feel it happening inside me and knew if I didn’t take the core of another demon soon, I would wither and fade away. That is, if a stronger demon didn’t kill me first. Then the spark of my essence would renew his life for another two centuries.
Plea had last consumed a demon 188 years before I had taken her essence. From the first time I’d heard about this catch to demon immortality, I had hoped the clock had been reset when I was created. I had enough problems to deal with. But the odd, growing urgency inside of me, forming a tight knot in my stomach over the past few months, was unlike any other. I knew instinctively that I needed to take another demon’s essence soon, or I would begin a rapid decline and eventually disappear into a puff of nothingness.
The craving suddenly overwhelmed me. I reached for Petrify, unable to resist that animating spark buried deep inside of him. Our hands met, fingers interlacing like lovers.
Power fluctuated between us. He tried to pull the fibers of my being into him, but I wrenched back. This was different from the everyday desire to fuel myself. This was life or death.
The influx of his energy hit me like a lightning bolt. I felt as if I could crush the slight man in my arms, as if I could leap into the sky and fly. Demon energy was nothing like human emotions, which suddenly seemed pale and insignificant next to
this
—this glorious power. . . .
I breathed out, relaxing into myself for a rare, compelling moment. This was what it meant to be a demon, to consume one of our own. No wonder some demons were addicted to demon energy. Some made sport of specifically hunting
me
.
This time I was doing it—stealing his essence, his soul. As I stared into his eyes, the impossible suddenly seemed perfectly reasonable. I could kill him, just as I had killed Plea, though that had been a terrible accident.
Perhaps I’d been afraid that I couldn’t beat another demon, that if I tried, I would lose. Then I would finally and truly die. That fear had kept me running from demons ever since I had been possessed.
Now I realized who would triumph was a matter of will. My will had been as bendable as a reed. But now I felt like a different person, like Allay the Demon. It was as if the secret powers I had collected were nothing but match-sticks, and this was lighter fluid. It was pure, unadulterated energy—
all mine.
Actually, it was Petrify’s. Before that, it had been part of Shock. Petrify hadn’t existed a moment ago. What did it matter if he disappeared now? If I crushed him like a cockroach because he meant nothing to me or to anyone. If I devoured him like—like a killer. Like a cannibal.
“No.” I shoved Petrify away from me.
He scuttled off, but Shock managed to trap him between us. “Don’t let him go,” Shock said. “You have to finish him off, Allay. You’re almost done.”
I shook my head, clutching the countertop behind me. “No, I won’t. I’m not going to lose the last bit of humanity I have.”
Shock was wobbly, but she blocked Petrify from getting around her. Now that he was weakened, it was easy. “Go on, Allay. You’ll be exactly the same. Without him you’ll die.”
I stared at Petrify, who was slightly hunched over and shaking, leaning against the wall. He was trying to gather together what was left of his energy.
“I would be different. I’d be a murderer.”
“It’s not murder!” Shock protested. “It’s . . . how it has to be. How it’s always been.”
I shook my head. “I’m not going to kill your offspring, Shock. Now move aside. He can go out the bedroom window.”
“You’re letting him go?”
I gave her a hard look. “You don’t eat your own.”
“I’m not going to take a demon until I have to. Like you, right now.”
“It’s not that urgent.”
Shock shook her head. “You think so? Because it seems to me it’s getting that way. Besides, if you let him go, someone else will snap him up. The new ones go quickest.”
“Maybe. But it won’t be me.”
Petrify had been listening, and he wasn’t as frightened anymore. In the bedroom, he snatched up a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt and hurriedly pulled them on, as if he expected me to deny him. I dragged the chaise lounge away from the window in the bedroom, and pushed the old wooden frame as high as it could go.
A titanium lock secured the gate at the wide lock plate. I had installed the heavy-duty gates made from three-quarter-inch iron, the strongest I could find. Soon after I had moved in, a demon had broken the window and tried to force its way inside, but a can of mace had burned its eyes and given it a seizing cough, just as it did with humans. After that, I turned my place into a fortress of steel to make sure no demon could sneak up on me again.
The lock was stiff, but I wrenched it open and swung the gate out. The backyard was very narrow, made of concrete with a drain in the center. “Jump down and go that way.” I pointed. “Then into the yard behind that one. You’ll find an open lot with a fence on the next street.”
Shock sighed behind me. “Word will spread fast. It always does after a birth.”
“Get out of the city,” I told him. “Stay away and don’t come back until you have to.”
Petrify swung his legs through the window and glanced back inside at me. “Why are you helping me?”
My flip retort—
I’m Super Demon, champion of poor and oppressed fiends everywhere!
—died at the sight of his big, soulful eyes. Now he looked much darker than Shock, an elfin man with shaggy hair. Despite his appalling signature, he wasn’t that bad.
“I’m trying to be humane,” I said honestly.
“But you’re a demon.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
Self-preservation reasserted itself and Petrify ducked out the window, then poised on the sill, judging the drop. His feet made a soft thud as he hit the ground. I locked the gate again and pulled the window back down so it was partially open to let in the night air. The flowers on the acacia next door smelled so good.
Then I turned to Shock. “Is that why you came here? To give me your offspring?”
“Yes. Plus I knew that birthing another demon so quickly would weaken me. I was afraid he would turn on me while I couldn’t defend myself.”
“He almost did.”
Shock shook her head. “I still don’t understand why you didn’t take him, Allay.”
I watched the shadowy form climb over the fence. “I just couldn’t . . . kill him.” I turned away from the window. “Did you really think I was going to eat your child, Shock?”
“He’s not my child, Allay. He’s my offspring. There’s a big difference, and besides, I don’t see what that has to do with anything. You need to take a demon. Soon.”
I shook my head, suddenly unable to speak. I could still taste it, that overwhelming desire to steal Petrify’s essence. The hunger burning inside of me was much stronger now that I had gotten a taste of what I needed. I had almost given in to my worst demon urges.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.” Shock shoved both hands into the front pockets of her baggy jeans. She always dressed down when she wasn’t in her EMT uniform. “I want to help you, Allay. I don’t want to lose you.”
“You demons just want me because I used to be human,” I said as a joke, trying to lighten the mood.
But Shock was serious. “To be honest, maybe I was fascinated with you because of that in the beginning. You know you’re different. I could really feel it when you were feeding me. You taste like that last burst of energy a human releases. . . .” She glanced away, aware that she was admitting to having drained someone. “So sweet, but passing. They say people get the same high from drugs. But you have it all the time. You radiate it. It’s really compelling.”
It was nothing I hadn’t already figured out. But I hated to think that my human-tainted energy was why Shock kept coming back to see me. “Lucky for me, my godfather sends his finest to watch over my nonexistent soul.”
Shock was standing awkwardly in the archway. “I think it’s love. I don’t know anything about love; what demon does? But I can see it in you, how you treat people, how you care about making things right. You hug me and I want to hug you back; I want that feeling. But I don’t know how.”
My throat closed up. She was warped, vulnerable, and inhibited. But she was reaching out—trying. I appreciated that.
“You hug great.” I smiled sadly. “The more you do it, the better you get.”
Shock didn’t move. She was always hesitant to touch me because of her instinctive fear that other demons would try to steal her energy, so hugging definitely didn’t come naturally to her. I had to go to her and put my arms around her. She hugged me, surprisingly hard and long. It was the first time I tried to let go before her. I squeezed her tighter for a few moments more, sinking into that safe, familiar feeling. It had been so long since I had felt like that . . . the last time I’d felt so human.
2
I used to be an ordinary girl living an ordinary life in Orange County. But a month before my eighteenth birthday, I’d accidentally been possessed by a demon. It happened over spring break during my senior year. I’d lied to my parents and gone to a rented beach house with my friends in San Diego. It wasn’t the first time I had lied to them—I’d been sneaking out of my room since I bought my first junker at sixteen. I saw no harm in soothing my parents’ fears so I wouldn’t have to deal with their worry. I took care of myself.
But on the last night of my vacation, there was a pimply-faced dude at the bonfire who wouldn’t leave me alone, so I told my friends I was going back to the hotel. They were right behind me, packing up the towels and saying good-bye to everyone. But it turned out to be an important few minutes, because on the boardwalk in a vast shadowed space between the lamps, I stumbled on a man attacking a woman.
I didn’t know what was happening at first, and thought maybe they were making out. The guy had his arms wrapped tightly around her, and there wasn’t any noise—the woman didn’t call out for help or protest. That was why I didn’t see them until I was almost on top of them. I felt the impact of their feet hitting the boardwalk as they struggled, and the woman beat feebly on his back with her fist. Then her arm dropped as if she were too weak to fight back anymore.
