DARK SOULS (Dark Souls Series) (12 page)

He laughed. “That’s usually what the humans call most demons who can’t properly control their hosts. Or in some cases, it actually is the human. But you, my dear, are neither.”

“Then it has to be some other sort of mental disorder. My mother—”

“If that’s the case, how would you explain your powers of persuasion? Your physical changes? I’ve never seen the physical manifestations that you’re displaying. And believe me, I’ve been around for a very long time. You must tell me just what else you can do.” His eyes brightened for a moment, eager as he looked at me. “It irritates me that I’m stumped by you.”

“I don’t know what else I can do. I don’t even know what I’m
doing
.”  

“Well, let’s reach a deal then. Since you clearly have no memory of what you are, allow me to inform you of our ways, to become your Mentor. In return, you’ll allow me to study you.”

“I’m not some experiment,” I said, appalled. “I’m a human being.”

“No you’re not.”

“I am
.
Possibly I’m a human with superpowers.”

He laughed again, and I had to admit that he had a nice, rumbling laugh. “No. You’re not. But I suppose you can call them superpowers. So, do we have a deal?”

I sighed, contemplating his words. So far, he was the only person who could offer me any explanation as to what was happening to me. I could possibly see a psychiatrist, but I’d probably end up locked up in a mental institution in a hot minute once I told him or her about my perceived “superpowers.” Oh, and killing people in a bloody mess before evaporating them and leaving no evidence.

“Okay, let’s say I entertain you
temporarily, and allow you to regale me with all your demon stories.” I didn’t want to tell him that I had no other option, that I felt adrift and alone. “But only temporarily. If this becomes too tiring, or too insane, I’m out okay?”

Derek nodded, but his eyes stayed steady on mine. “Fine.”

“Okay then.” I slapped the palms of my hands on my knees to punctuate the deal.

“So, what’s your first question?”

I started a little. “Oh. Okay.”

I didn’t think we’d begin our little tête-à-tête immediately, but Derek’s face took on a determined look. I didn’t think he wanted to let me go just yet. Not until he knew more.

To be honest, I felt the same way.

I stood up, my energy firing in all directions. It was becoming more and more difficult to stay still. “Can we sit at a table for the rest of this?”

Derek shrugged, standing up noiselessly. I couldn’t help but be in awe of his quiet, lithe movements. Human movements had no choice but to make cracking or popping sounds, legs and arms moving around for balance as one stood up. His movements were unnervingly
in
human. No wonder he moved so fast that day in the park, smacking me in the face with his book before I could even blink.

“The...girl,” I continued as I headed over to same table I’d originally occupied, lightly stepping over the broken chair as I tried to focus my thoughts away from Derek.  “The monster that attacked me. Why did she attack me?”

“Describe her to me,” Derek said as he sat down across from me.

I did, right down to the empty, black eyes, the large, fanged mouth, her emaciated state, and of course, her lack of a tongue.

“Well,” he said, taking time to think. “What you’re describing, she’s certainly very low in our ranks. She’s a Scraw. No physical or mental powers—they’re what humans call ‘bottom-feeders.’ They come to this world, and they eat. They isolate themselves. Rarely do they make contact with other demons. And even more rarely do they ever
fight
another demon.” He looked at me, his mouth forming a tight line. “Are you sure this is what you saw?”

I nodded. “Yes. Absolutely. She’s hard to erase from my memory.”

“Yes well, your memory isn’t exactly up to par now is it, my little demon?”

I frowned. “No, that’s what she looked like. I’m sure. And I’m not your little demon.”

He ignored me, deep in thought as he stared at the mahogany table, absently tracing circles with his finger. “It’s just so unlike a Scraw.”

“Well, there was actually another time...”

His head jerked up at that. “
Another
demon attacked you?”

“Yes. Last Friday at a party. But, here’s the thing. He’s my friend—was my friend. Rob Morrow. One minute he was himself, and the next...he slammed me up against a wall and tried to bite my head off. Literally.”

“No, no that’s just not possible.” He stood up from the table and began to pace. “We don’t
attack each other like this. We all know. The Trine is here. We can’t wrestle around with each other when there is a much greater danger to our kind in our midst. Damos’s orders.”

 “Well, it is possible because it did happen.” I tilted my head as my eyes followed him, back and forth, back and forth.  “Who’s Damos? Is he like, a super-demon?”

“When you address the most powerful demon of our kind, you address him accordingly. Don’t be so glib.” He stopped moving enough to glare at me. “Tell me about this demon.”

I once again described a monster for him. This time I pictured long yellow teeth, a gaping maw, and definitely a large black tongue. Derek seemed most interested in his eyes, how they were bright yellow, almost glowing, with a black slit in the center.

“That’s another low-sect demon. A Melix. Pretty much acts like a snake, makes a nest somewhere in the woods, swallows its prey whole, that sort of thing,” he said, as if he were talking about a nature show and not a supernatural monster that eats people.

“And its prey is—”

“Humans, of course. All of our prey is human. Even yours. How else have you survived this long if you haven’t been feasting on humans?” He tipped his head sideways at me again, regarding me.

I jerked back in disgust. “I have never, ever ‘feasted’ on another human. Ever.”

 “I’m just going to have to blame that on your faulty memory. Of course you have. You can’t survive without it.”

I pictured a long dining table filled with grotesque demons, each sitting primly on their chair as they eyed the rows of humans in front of them, apples stuffed in mouths and empty stares gazing skyward.
No, I insist, you take the heart. I had it last time.

“We only take a little. Usually we don’t kill them,” he said, as if reading my thoughts. Or maybe he could
read my thoughts. I eyed him suspiciously as he continued. “We just take enough to sustain ourselves. It’s rather easy to compel the humans to forget.” He waved his hands out in front of him again. “If you’re a high-sect demon.”

“You mean like a vampire or something? Demons just suck on human blood, then dilate their pupils all scary-like and compel the person to forget?”

Derek laughed again. “With one difference. We don’t drink blood. Gross,” he made a face before continuing on. “We take pieces of their life-force. Or the whole thing, if a demon is feeling greedy.”

“Life-force?”

“I believe humans term it as their ‘soul.’ We survive off eating human souls. Sucking the life-force out of them, if you want to get all vampirical about it.”

That made me pause. It was such an intangible thing, barely thought of as we lived our lives, smiling with our hearts, thinking with our brains…but we were driven by our soul. And this person, or creature, was telling me that he took it. Not only took it, but
ate
it.

You remember…

I did remember. Those spiraling tendrils of blue smoke, delectable as it drifted into my mouth and coated my throat like melting chocolate. I had to take a loud swallow of saliva before I asked, “Rob. What happened him? No one seems to remember that he exists. It’s as if Rob just disappeared out of existence.”

Derek went very still after that, and if I thought he regarded me carefully before, he was even more watchful of me now when he stated, “That can only mean one thing. You are very, very high in the ranks if you can do something like that.”

“Something like what?”

“Alter reality.”

I stiffened. “I did what now?”

“When you fought this demon and destroyed its human host, this ‘Rob’—which I really don’t recommend, by the way, it only draws unwanted attention to you—you were able to make it so he no longer existed.”

At my blank look, he continued, exasperated, “When you attack a demon without first expelling that demon out of the human’s body, you kill the human, but not the demon.”

It still wasn’t clicking. This time, he dropped his chin down and looked at me, his face perfectly mirroring a sarcastic “
Really?”
before he tried again. “The demon can easily sift out of its dying host and move onto another. Our essence inhabits humans, not our form.” He leaned his face closer to me, speaking slowly so his next words could sink in. “We can’t be destroyed when we’re inhabiting a human.”

His words began to become clear. A demon inhabited Rob. Another one inhabited the girl. I nodded in understanding, as if he were just talking to me about ingredients to put in chocolate cake. I think my mind had gone numb, an after-shock of sorts. Was I really accepting this?

I remembered the girl’s unearthly screams. Rob’s dripping fangs. Okay yes, I was accepting it.

Derek ploughed on. “Usually, demons must deal with the human life they destroy. I can’t think of any demon in a long time that was able to zap that human life out of existence.”

He lost me again. Or maybe it was the denial that began to bubble up in my throat like bile as I began to understand his meaning. “What do you mean zapping a life out of existence? I couldn’t have done that.”

 “Most of us have to deal with the human body after we feast on them. You know, attempt to make the human body look like another human murdered it, the usual tactics. Which is why we usually don’t kill and just take a little.” He gave me a sideways glance. “Too much effort to clean up otherwise. But you.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “You made it so the human you killed never existed in the first place.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I didn’t do that. I didn’t do that to Rob.”

He placed his hands on the table as he leaned towards me, his face mere inches from mine when he said,  “Yes, you did. You took your friend’s soul, then deleted him.”

It took a full minute for his words to sink in. Foul smelling demons, intangible life-forces—I could deal with all that. It was separate enough, crazy
enough, that my mind could absorb it, much like I would absorb a bedtime story. But this…
this.
Telling me someone was dead—that he was dead because of me…I had no words, only horror.

His voice became eager when he continued, “What you did—it’s incredible. I haven’t seen anything like this in—in a century. You took control of reality, rippled it so that you only affected one human life and left everything else the same as it was. No butterfly effect. No mistakes. Do you know how much control that takes? How much talent?”

I barely even registered his words.

“No.
No
,” I said, my voice tight and strained. “I didn’t kill him.”

Derek finally stopped pacing, turning to me and taking in my shaking, trembling form. His eyes softened. “Oh, little demon, I think you did. Just like you did with that girl over there. You must come to terms with it.”

“It’s not—it wasn’t him, though Derek! It was the demon. Rob was gone. It wasn’t Rob anymore…”

It had gotten too quiet. I looked up, searching, and jerked a little in my seat when I saw he had once again taken a seat across from me. Silently. He leaned into the table, his chin resting in his hand.

“The Melix didn’t empty its host entirely before inhabiting it,” he finally said.

“What? You’re saying Rob was in there…with the demon—Melix? Trapped by it? But you just said demons take souls!” Was I becoming hysterical? Maybe. I was confused, hurt, panicked. Yes, I was definitely bordering on hysterical.

“You need to listen to my words,” he said, dropping his hand from his chin. “I said we only take a
little
. We can easily take over a human body with pieces of the soul still in place. They’re so, so weak…” he trailed off, caught himself. “We can eat away at it, savoring each bite as we continue on in this world, using these bodies.” He lifted his arms, looking at them and smiling. “Because they fit us so well.”

I remained silent as he spoke, my eyes boring into the table in front of me, my jaw clenched. I didn’t kill Rob.

“Besides,” he said, lowering his head so he was within my line of vision. “How do you explain that delightful tasting misty smoke? Don’t deny it. I know you nibbled.” I raised my eyes up, finally met his.

“That’s how I know the Melix didn’t inhabit an empty host. Because that, my dear, sweet demon, was a soul. Rob’s soul.”

It finally sunk in. I fought for my life, preventing those long, sharp snake-fangs from piercing through my eyes and into my brain, because I had to. The demon was going to kill me, so I had to kill it. But, I didn’t. I just killed its host. I just killed my friend.

I set the demon free.

“No,” I moaned, covering my face with my hands, but there was no comforting darkness when I closed them. I could feel the walls of the restaurant caving in on me. I pictured blood cascading out from the cracks in the ceiling and running like a river toward me. Rob’s blood. “No, no no…”

Derek sighed as he straightened in his seat, the sound bursting through my thoughts enough for me to open my eyes. The golden candlelight of the restaurant washed over me, the mahogany wood cool on my fingertips. Dry wood. Empty walls. No blood.

“I believe that’s enough for today, you fragile little thing. We’ll meet tomorrow. I want to test you out a little anyway. Then we can get back to lectures.” He dragged the last word out like the very effort of uttering the syllables bored him to tears.

I shook my head, moaning and shaking as tears began to pool in my eyes and run down my face. I didn’t kill him. I couldn’t have killed him. I didn’t mean to kill him…

 Derek studied me a little longer, offering no words of support. To him, my reaction was probably akin to crying over a chicken breast once I realized it came from a living thing. His face seemed to say, chicken is just chicken, souls are just souls. It’s all just food in the end.