A Shadow's Tale (11 page)

‘Not only that, but for demonesses, the pregnancy is swift, lasting five months at most. Judging by the smell of you, you have perhaps three, three and a half months to go,' Vrael added.

I ran a hand through my hair. ‘There wouldn't happen to be some big book on ‘everything you need to know about being a demon', would there?'

‘Nope, sorry,' Amarath said cheerily. ‘Just us.'

We managed to finish the house completely by the end of two more months. After a couple of disastrous attempts, we decided to rely on magic and not on electricity in the house. The smell of
fried vampire is particularly insulting to keen noses. Unfortunately, I now resembled a beached whale. Vrael had started to get together various medical supplies, pinching what he needed from a nearby city as we had done to help us build the house. What we couldn't make ourselves, we had to steal, doing so at night, teleporting into the shops so as not to set off any alarms. Most of my teleportation training was done on such outings. It also came to general consensus that once the twins were born, I would go into the city and try to find a job. After all, I was the only one with any kind of qualification that might be recognised in this dimension.

I spent more and more time with Merlas, talking to her and occasionally flying. Vrael's constant checks on me were starting to get on my nerves. Although he had studied medicine, (turns out even demons get ill, which is a little odd), he had never really had to apply it. He had learnt a lot of his healing knowledge from an old vampire in the Dimension of the Dead, and he had said himself that injuries and illness were, in a somewhat expected manner since they were all dead, rare. Somehow, I think he was more nervous about the whole thing than I was. At least until I went into labour. I was leaning against Merlas's side when the contractions started. I hissed in pain, doubling over. Merlas nickered in concern before letting loose with an ear shattering neigh. Amarath popped her head out of a window to tell the doe to shut up when she noticed that I was curled up in the grass, sheltered under Merlas's protective wing. All three of my siblings rushed out to help me back into the house.

I don't remember much of the birth. Vrael had me on a series of painkillers to help me get through. Merlas still grumbles that when she stuck her head through the window of the ground-floor room we had designated as a medical centre, I had grabbed onto her mane and refused to let go. I suppose it would explain why I had a handful of coarse black hair in my hand. Either way, thankfully,
the birth went without a hitch. I had given birth to two healthy part demon girls. I held one of them carefully, feeding her with a formula Vrael had put together. For the moment, they were identical, black haired and blue eyed. I lay back, exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep. Amarath poked her head around the door before walking into the room and perching on the edge of the bed.

‘Have you thought up names for them?' she asked, sitting next to me.

‘Yeah, Archangel Holly and Onyx Natalie,' I said softly.

‘You miss them, don't you?'

Miss them? An understatement. I had lost my two best friends to Karthragan in the same way I had lost my mother. Every day without them was like living without a part of me. I couldn't tell Amarath that. She didn't understand friendship. She had never been taught what friends were. I needed to grieve for my friends, but I couldn't allow myself to mourn them in the same way I had mourned Arellan. The clan was relying on me for some reason, believing that I was going to be able to defeat our father. To allow myself such grief would be to destroy what faith they had in me. But I couldn't expect her to understand that. She understood duty, but not emotion. So to answer her question, I simply said, ‘Yeah, I miss them.'

To her credit, she didn't say anything else. We sat in silence for a moment before Amarath got to her feet, leaving in silence with the strangely fluid pace she used to compensate for her leg. I had once asked her what had happened to cause the constant pain she seemed to suffer, but her only response had been ‘something that happened a long time ago and far away'. I looked down at the two tiny bodies sleeping curled up next to me, smiling slightly before joining them in slumber.

As agreed, a week after the birth of Archangel and Onyx, I was in the city, looking for a job. I managed to find something pretty
quickly, thank the goddess. A small, struggling florist shop. They dismissed my lack of qualification in the face of being able to communicate with people and arrange flowers into something pretty. I could do that. I even had the nose to be able to put together smells that complimented each other. I worked alongside a teenager, a girl who looked to be the same age as I appeared to be. She smelled a little strange though. Not quite human. She hid her strangeness well though, with a passion for flora so strong that the owner of the shop often deferred to her when it came to ordering the flowers. After a few days, I managed to feel enough at ease in the shop to ask her name. She smiled at me, and said her name was Alba Manticora.

Archangel and Onyx were growing quickly and had thirst for knowledge that superseded my own and taking very much after their namesakes. Onyx had a passion for reading the dictionary and any other informative book she could find. Amarath often grumbled, as she dismantled prank after prank, what had possessed me to name a certain child ‘Archangel'. Thankfully, I escaped each day to go work, leaving them in Vrael's care. This bewildered the part vampire. He had no idea how to handle children and often found that he had to call in backup from Amarath in order to control them. Each night, I came home to find Vrael in his animal form of a panther, submitting to having his ears and tail pulled by the over-inquisitive twins. His tail now has a permanent kink in it from being pulled out of shape, but he considers it to be minor compared to having no tail what so ever. Strangely enough, they behaved around Merlas. They never put a toe out of line. Soon, she became their primary babysitter, much to her dismay, to the point where she disappeared for the best part of three months. I wasn't worried about her though. Merlas could fend for herself. Three years later, when the girls' magic manifested a dark green, I started to see myself mirrored in them, in Archangel's appearance, which mimicked mine almost
perfectly, and Onyx's joking despair on her sister's part, not unlike the attitude I used to have with Holly. The only way to train them was to play, and I found myself playing games of tag in the forest to train them to teleport, always ending up breathless from laughter. It was as if I had found my best friends again.

I often escaped from my family in the forest, to reminisce. I thought about Holly and Natalie, the shenanigans we had managed to get up to at the Academy and in its grounds. Somewhere in the forest of the Academy, there was a tree with the letters HB, NP, SR. Holly Bristol, Natalie Patterson and Shadow Roth, the trio that had sparked fear in the hearts of the most experienced of teachers. It was difficult letting them go. I wandered further into the forest than I usually did, lost in thought. Something rustled on the edge of the path. I stopped, looking around, trying to see what had moved. A twig snapped. I put a hand on the hilt of the sword Amarath had taught me to use. Crouching, half hidden by a tree, I watched as a creature of fantasy crept along the path. A manticore, if I remembered my mythological creatures class properly. I sniffed the air. The scent of the manticore was familiar. I nearly whacked my head off the tree. I must be stupid. Alba
Manticora
.

‘Alba?' I asked softly, stepping towards the creature. It jumped, morphing back into a rather bewildered looking teenage girl. I smiled slightly. ‘I thought you smelled a little odd.'

‘Shadow? What're you doin' out here?' she asked warily. I could sense her kicking herself mentally. I made a guess that it was because I'd spotted her. A lot of being a non-human rested on not being found out. It was the only way to stay alive, in one piece and preferably not in a cage.

‘I live around here,' I said vaguely, holding out a hand to help her get to her feet. She coughed nervously, brushing herself off.

‘I guess you, uh, saw my transformation there, huh…'

‘Yeah, no worries though. I'm not going to rat on you.' I felt relief coming off her in waves before she tensed, looking back the way she had come. Grabbing my hand, she started to sprint through the undergrowth, pulling me along behind her with surprising ease and strength. She didn't answer when I asked her what the matter was until we had gone another mile into the forest where she stopped, breathing hard.

‘There are…people after me,' she started to explain. I raised an eyebrow, prompting her to go on. ‘I sensed someone following me out of the city, but they didn't reveal themselves until after I changed. I don't know who they are.'

Frowning, I scanned the forest around us, looking for any traces of these people. I couldn't see anything, but that didn't mean they weren't there. I turned back to Alba, pointing east.

‘Look, if you go far enough that way, you'll come across a house. Tell Amarath I sent you. Get out of the forest. I'll follow behind masking our tracks.'

Alba nodded, looking nervous, but followed my orders. I glanced over my shoulder one last time, looking for any movement. Nothing. I started to walk after Alba, taking care to hide any signs of our passing. I stopped as I heard something. Something thudded against my skull. I don't remember even hitting the ground.

When I came around again, my entire body throbbed as if I had been through a power surge. Fleeting memories were quickly banished from my mind, giving me no recollections whatsoever of what had happened since I had been knocked out. Looking around, I realised I was in the hospital room of our house. Amarath, Vrael and Alba were watching me with worried expressions. However, their expressions weren't the things concerning me. I was more concerned at the fact that Vrael had his arms around Alba protectively and was holding her close. Vrael and Alba? Okay, weird pairing there. I wondered how that had
happened.

‘Shad?' Amarath asked. ‘You back with us?'

‘Yeah,' I grumbled, trying to sit up despite having the mother of all headaches. ‘Anyone care to enlighten me as to what the hell happened to make me feel like someone ran over me with a bus and then reversed again to make sure they did it right?'

The trio glanced at each other. Amarath sighed irritably. ‘You're such a coward, Vrael. How come I always get stuck with the task of explaining things?' She turned back to me with her best ‘you're really not going to like this' face on. I cringed. Whatever had happened, it wasn't likely to be good.

‘Long story short, you had a run in with the Milita.'

‘The Milita?' I asked.

‘A group of soldiers-come-scientists who study mythological creatures. We're prime targets for them, since they don't wait for people to volunteer…' Alba answered quietly, her head resting on Vrael's chest. I tried not to let the images of them getting together into my head. I'd never get rid of them if I did.

‘The Milita tried to split your demonic side from your human,' Amarath said bluntly.

‘I'm guessing it didn't work…'

‘No, duh,' Amarath snorted, ‘if they had managed, you'd be dead. We're parts, more specifically, halves. Every single part demon ever born has been a half, regardless of parentage. The non demonic and demonic sides can then exist in a vaguely harmonious state. If we weren't halves, our bodies would tear themselves apart in the battle between our sides. Being without your demonic side would be like living with only half of your vital organs.'

‘Bloody hell, you demons are complicated,' Alba muttered. A slight smile grew on Vrael's face as he ruffled her hair affectionately. I averted my eyes. Yeesh, lovebirds.

‘Anyway,' Amarath's voice broke into my thoughts. ‘Since you're obviously so uneducated in the ways of demons, Vrael,
Shaeman and I have recorded everything we know for your listening pleasure.' She held up a portable CD player, a slightly evil grin on her face. ‘Enjoy.'

Left alone to recuperate, I put the headphones over my ears and pressed play. There were so many things about part demons that I hadn't read in the Scriptures. Then again, there had been no way of telling if the Scriptures had been intact. I closed my eyes, settling back to listen to my siblings' voices:

Amarath:
Right, Shadow, since your ignorance is going to get you killed one day, Shaeman, Vrael and I have recorded most of what we know about half demons in order to give you a crash course in how to be a demon. Goddess knows, Arias stunted your knowledge in that area
.
First on your list, physical form. Vrael, you're the medic, I do believe that's one of your areas of expertise. Take it away!

Vrael:
The physical form of a half-demon in his or her natural state is remarkably similar to that of a human, although there are several key changes. Because of these elements, it is imperative that you do not approach a human doctor who is ignorant of us
.

The first difference lies mainly in out internal arrangements
,
notably in our cardio-vascular system—

Amarath:
In English, that would be?

Vrael:
Patience Amarath. As I was saying, one of the most notable differences is that we have two hearts. The primary heart, located in the same place as a human's, takes the major effort of running the body. The secondary heart, which is half the size of the primary, is located in the lower right hand-side of the chest, only intervenes to aid in funnelling the energy required for the use of magic and in the case of injury to the primary heart, can sustain the body. However, you must still be very careful of injury to the primary heart. The secondary can only run the body for a certain amount of time, normally two to three weeks
.
However, any stress placed on the heart, more than usual, can dramatically reduce the time it is capable of running the body. Other differences include a reinforced digestive tract—