Demon of Mine

Demon of Mine

Ranae Rose

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This book is a work of fiction. All
characters, names and events are products of the author’s
imagination and are in no way real. Any resemblance to real events
or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Demon of Mine

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Copyright © 2011 Ranae Rose

Cover Design by Ranae Rose

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book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written
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London

1801

Elsie awoke to the sight of a demon
crouching on her chest. It was dark and heavy, with flickering
orange eyes, leering as it choked the life out of her. She couldn’t
breathe. Desperate, she swung a slender hand at its face. To her
surprise, her fingers streaked straight through the creature’s
wicked visage, meeting no resistance. The demon parted in a hundred
grey wisps and whirled away, but the heaviness in her lungs
remained.

The monster had only been smoke, but
it was still suffocating her, every bit as deadly as the demon
she’d imagined. And the flickering orange eyes – those had been
fire, seen through a couple holes in the foul grey cloud. She
rolled, kicking off her thin blanket, one corner of which had burst
into flame. Coughing felt like spitting up hot ashes. She was going
to die.

She rolled over, pressing her cheek
against the dirt floor she slept on, seeking a cool reprieve from
the searing heat that rolled through the air in waves, each one
hotter than the last. She found none. The earth was hot, baked by
the inferno that was devouring her home. “Mama!” she cried, digging
her nails into the earth, as if she could claw her way
out.

No one answered her call, but the
flames crackled more loudly than ever, as if they were laughing at
her. “Papa!”

Nothing. There was a heavy stench in
the air, foul enough to make her retch. No food came up from her
empty belly, only a little water. Her stomach heaved, the motions
of vomiting depriving her of what little oxygen she’d been able to
draw in.

Strong hands gripped her beneath her
arms. “Papa?” Hope flared in her hammering heart. She turned her
head from the floor in an attempt to look up at whoever was holding
her, but the smoke was too thick. Her eyes stung and watered,
forcing her to close them again as she was hefted upright. Moisture
crept from beneath her lashes and rolled down her cheeks as she
shuddered in her savior’s arms.

After a few steps – all that were
needed to cross the single room Elsie called home – they stopped
moving. A crash sounded above the roar of the flames, accompanied
by the screech of rusty hinges, and cool night air touched her
cheek. She tried to breathe a sigh of relief, but ended up retching
again instead.

Uneven cobblestones grazed her bare
feet and she collapsed onto them as her rescuer relinquished his
hold on her. She braced herself against the street, coughing.
Something cold hit her in the face. She sputtered as it streaked
down her neck and wet her threadbare gown. It was the only one she
had, and she always wore it to bed so that she wouldn’t have to
take time to dress in the morning before hurrying to her shift at
the textile manufactory. Now it was ruined, stained by smoke and
surely singed.

“
Hurry!” a voice cried.
“It’ll destroy the whole bloody neighborhood it we don’t stop it
now!” Feet slapped against the street, running. Elsie opened her
eyes just enough to watch her neighbors sprinting toward her,
wielding buckets of water. The contents of one arced over her head
as it was thrown and met the flames with a spectacular
sizzle.

“
Faster!” someone
cried.

She could see now, though her eyes
still stung fiercely. She turned toward the door, the frame of
which had burst into flame not three yards away. Where was papa?
Something shifted in the doorway, the dark shape of a man. Before
she could cry out he slipped back into the flames.

He must have gone back in to save
mama. Elsie tried to suppress her coughing as she anxiously watched
the doorway, waiting for him to emerge through it with her mother
in his arms. But even as her neighbors tossed bucketful after
bucketful of water, slowly taming the flames, no one came back out.
Eventually the house was reduced to a smoldering shell, black and
empty, save for ashes. She sat retching on the street, a twelve
year old girl who’d just lost the only thing of worth she’d ever
had – family.

****

“
Here dear, wash your
face.” Mrs. Peterson deftly scooped up Elsie’s damp hair with one
weathered hand and held it at the nape of her neck. Missing more
teeth than not, many of Mrs. Peterson’s words came out half-whistle
as they escaped through the few she had left. “You’re covered in
filthy ash.” She was one of Elsie’s many neighbors, the first who’d
been kind enough to pluck her from the cobblestones in front of her
charred house and usher her to the neighborhood spigot.

It was barely dawn, and Elsie’s house
was still smoking. She stared down into the half-full bucket of
water Mrs. Peterson had plunked down onto the ground. Less than an
hour ago it’d been used to douse the inferno that had consumed her
home and her parents. Her reflection stared back at her, black,
save for where a few tears she didn’t remember shedding had
trickled through the layer of grime. Her chestnut hair, which Mrs.
Peterson had just helped her to wash, was the only clean thing
about her. It hung limp and dripping over her shoulders instead of
in the waves it would assume when dry. Her olive-green eyes blinked
back at her, their whites looking stark and out of place against
the mask of filth that had darkened her normally fair
complexion.

“
You’ll feel better once
you’ve washed your face,” Mrs. Peterson said in what seemed to be
an attempt at a soothing tone. The fact that she even tried was a
mark of how badly she must feel for Elsie – she never addressed any
of her own half a dozen children in anything softer than a
shout.

Feeling better seemed unlikely in any
case. Her parents’ deaths had settled into the core of Elsie’s
being, a hollowness more real than even the dull hunger that
constantly gnawed at her. Still, she reached into the bucket,
cupped her hands and splashed water over her face. It streamed down
her arms and dripped off her elbows, so grey it was almost black.
When she looked down at her reflection again, she could see the
faint freckles that dotted the bridge of her nose.

“
Has anyone seen my
father?” Elsie asked, staring dispiritedly at the grimy puddle that
was forming around her knees. The wash water was soaking her
skirts, but it hardly mattered – they simply couldn’t get any
dirtier.

“
No,” Mrs. Peterson
replied, brushing an errant wisp of hair out of Elsie’s eyes. Her
voice had climbed an octave, but it was still far short of her
usual squall. “Your parents were both burnt in their bed, dear.
T’was a kinder way to go than you might imagine – they never knew
what was happening, and they woke in Heaven, to be
sure.”

If only that were true. It would be
better than thinking they’d come to like she had, to feel the life
being choked and singed out of them. Elsie knew better. “My father
woke up. He saved me.”

Mrs. Peterson tsked. “He couldn’t
have, dear, though I’m sure he would have if he’d had the
chance.”

Elsie shook her head, sending dirty
droplets of water flying. “He picked me up from my bed on the floor
and carried me out into the street. I’m sure of it.”

“
Maybe t’was an angel,”
Mrs. Peterson replied, pulling the bucket away as Elsie scrubbed at
her freshly washed face with a sleeve. Too late, she realized she’d
just smeared her face with fresh ash. She washed it away under Mrs.
Peterson’s watchful eye. “Your father’s angel, perhaps,” she
continued. “Isn’t that a nice thought?”

It wasn’t nearly as nice as
thinking that her father might still be alive, or even that he’d
saved her and died in the attempt to rescue her mother as well. But
if his body had truly been found lying in his bed, who’d rescued
her? Elsie pushed the question from her mind and shuddered. What
really mattered was one sure fact – her parents were dead. It
wasn’t right that they’d been reduced to bones and ash when they’d
been so
alive
just
hours before. It wasn’t fair that their lives had evaporated like
water dashed against a hot skillet. She hadn’t cried in earnest
yet, but now seemed like a good time.

“
Keep your chin up, dear,”
Mrs. Peterson admonished, “we’ve got a rare visitor.”

Elsie blinked back the tears that were
threatening to escape and turned toward the sound of horses’
hooves. It wasn’t something heard often in her neighborhood, where
London’s factory workers crowded filthy, narrow streets that rarely
saw anything other than foot traffic.

“
An agent of Mr.
Remington’s, no doubt,” Mrs. Peterson remarked. “I expect he’s come
to see the damage.”

A fine black carriage rolled down the
street, pulled by a pair of large dappled horses. The opulence
stood in stark contrast against the rickety factory workers’
dwellings, which were crammed side-by-side like too many crooked
teeth in a small mouth. Surely Mrs. Peterson was right – nobody so
wealthy would come into this neighborhood unless they had to.
Normally Elsie would have been in awe of the gleaming carriage with
its plum-colored velvet curtains and great, shining wheels. Today,
the sight seemed like salt in her wounds.

Her parents had worked themselves half
to death in one of Mr. Remington’s factories, only to perish in the
shabby housing they’d rented from him. And now he’d sent someone to
assess the damage…to the building, surely, not to its inhabitants.
Life was unfair. She’d known that for a long time, but never had it
seemed more true.

The carriage door swung open, and out
stepped a man in a long black coat and a fashionably tall hat. He
was tall and lean, exceedingly fair of skin but dark of hair and
eye, and surprisingly handsome. Attractive or not, he looked
absurd, standing on the dirty streets against the charred remains
of Elsie’s home. As he shook a bit of filth from his shoe, a second
person descended out of the carriage. He was young – a few years
older than Elsie, perhaps. His creamy skin, high cheekbones and
ebony hair identified him as the first man’s son.

Mrs. Peterson clapped a hand down on
Elsie’s shoulder, squeezing. “That’s him! That’s Mr. Remington!”
she whisper-shouted in Elsie’s ear.

“
You’ve seen him before,
Mrs. Peterson?”

“
Yes, he came through the
factory once for an inspection while I was working.”

A spike of curiosity pierced Elsie’s
veil of grief as she studied the man. So, this was the famous Mr.
Remington, industry mogul and owner of nearly half the city’s most
profitable factories. She’d been working in one of his textile
manufactories since the age of six, but had never laid eyes on him
until now. Though he wasn’t the ugly old codger she’d always
imagined him to be, his face was a mask of indifference that caused
her stomach to churn. How could he stare at her parents’ frail,
smoldering tomb as if it were merely an expense, a bit of annoying
paperwork?

Elsie clenched her hands into fists at
her sides. Mrs. Peterson was still crouching beside her, gaping at
the handsome pair who’d stepped out of the carriage. “Bloody hell,”
someone nearby said softly. “It’s bloody Mr. Remington himself,
innit?”

“
Shut up before he hears
you,” a woman hissed. “The man is as cold and cruel as a January
night. Everyone knows that!”

“
He’s a bloody demon, is
wot he is,” another man grumbled.

The neighborhood’s residents had all
crept out of their shoddy homes and were crowding the street, eager
for a second round of excitement after the fire fiasco. Some of
them would surely be late for their shifts in the factories because
of it. A shiver ran down Elsie’s spine as she imagined the
punishments they might endure for daring to be tardy. She’d
suffered her fair share of strappings at the hands of a supervisor
and had even been dunked in the water cistern once as punishment
for falling asleep. Doubtless her neighbors would say they had been
busy putting out a fire, but that was unlikely to earn them any
mercy.