Demon Girl (6 page)

“My wardrobe is dark.” The words popped out
of my mouth before they registered. “Wait,” I said, and held up my
palm. The standard cracks in my judgment were now gaping canyons,
and there were all kinds of crazy ideas flying around. “You’re
friendly, right? If I help you, you aren’t going to turn on me. Or
turn me.”

“As you rightly pointed out, the sun is
rising and I weaken by the moment. I need to talk to you. Hear what
I have to say then I’ll go.”

“Okay,” I said slowly. There did not seem to
be too big a downside to this arrangement. “I can do that, hear you
out. But tell me, the fairy-boy I met is hunting you.” I watched
his face carefully. “Why? Did you do something bad to him or his
kind?”

He looked me over so intently I squirmed in
my skin. He made a quick movement with his hand that said ‘so
what’.

“If they find my resting place they will kill
me, and they won’t listen to what I have to say, which is why you
must.”

I mouthed my next words silently before I
spoke them aloud. “I’m a fairy too.” It was easy to say and I
smiled. “It’s important I know if talking to you will get me in
trouble.” I paused then grunted. “In more trouble than I already
am, I mean.”

His eyebrows rose and he focused on me more
intently. I backed up a pace and couldn’t help cupping my neck with
my hand. He tilted his head and narrowed those bottomless eyes of
his.

“I smell magic, but you seem human to me in
every way.”

“You seem to know a lot about me and what
I’ve been doing. But then if you knew a lot about me you would know
I have only just found out I’m a fairy.” That sentence was
convoluted, and I had confused myself. It made some kind of crazy
sense, so I stood my ground and waited for his answer.

The vampire did not seem confused. “I can
explain. But at night.” His eyes darted to the east and his mouth
pulled down.

The sky was much lighter now, but the clouds
gave extra cover. Time was running out, I was beyond terrified, the
curls of fear in my stomach were tornadoes, and I felt a
responsibility to protect this vampire from bursting into a
firework display.

“My cupboard it is.” He placed a hand on my
lower back and I jerked away. “Watch the hands,” I said and eyed
him.

“I’m going to carry you,” he explained. “It
will be faster and we will not be seen.”

He was not much taller than me or bigger in
size. No doubt he could carry me, but still, the thought of being
so close to death itself was worrisome. His presence still rubbed
me up the wrong way. I was strong willed, not infallible, and me
losing control would be fatal.

“No funny business. I’ll scream and dead or
not, it will hurt your ears.”

He shook his head, face serious. “No funny
business,” he promised.

“Could you put the fangs away?”

“I like the way you smell.”

“That is creepy,” I said and plucked at my
bottom lip. “You’re creepy.”

His body kind of vibrated, and a strange
grizzly sound came out of his mouth. I guess since vampires didn’t
use air to talk or breathe they sounded, moved and even laughed
differently to normal beings. I jumped, but thankfully he was too
preoccupied with laughing to notice, or to comment on noticing.

“No biting. I swear.”

I was having a hard time. Vampires were more
often than not attractive in a scary, dead, don’t look them
straight in the eye, ripping throats out and wallowing in ‘top
yourself’ amounts of despair, way. This vampire-boy was positively
spritely. It was such a stark contrast to my preconceptions
cultivated by years of Sect reports, I kept having mini flashes of
the different ways he would grab me, and sink his fangs into my
flesh.

“Can’t get much crazier than I already am,” I
said finally, and shuddered. Another flash of watching him drink me
to death had me wishing I’d stayed my ass in bed.

The vampire picked me up and broke out into a
ground-eating run. I noticed then that he was not breathing and
wondered if that was by choice? It was strange to be so close to
another person and not sense the normal rise and fall of the chest.
There was no heartbeat either. No body heat. Just this animated
body walking and talking and carrying me. People said vampires were
soulless, and I did not agree. They had souls, dark ones. Here I
must say I also believed there were different kinds of dark. There
was a dark that was evil and cruel, and there was a dark that was
solitary and simply absent of light. Maybe this boy was the clear
dark.

I kept thinking nice fluffy thoughts of
flames that didn’t blister the skin because they looked pretty, and
bolts of lightning that wouldn’t kill you dead because they were a
gift from the sky. Making bad things good helped me to not freak
out, and start bawling in this demons embrace. No matter how hard I
tried, I couldn’t stop the thought that really mattered. This
vampire needed
something
from me. That was the reason I was
still alive. And, I concluded he must be cunning. Breandan seemed a
good tracker and he’d been fooled. I was sure he would not have
left me if he’d thought there was a chance I’d be in danger.

Thinking of the fairy-boy had me thinking on
a new problem I had created for myself. What did I do and say the
next time I saw him? Did I tell him about the vampire-boy in the
wardrobe? Breandan had said he’d come back, but not when so I
figured he’d probably give me a few days to adjust. He’d seemed
very conscious I accept what he’d told me, and he’d made an effort
to ask how I was feeling and if I’d wanted to talk about it. The
vampire could die for the day in my wardrobe, ask me his questions
after sunset then go on his merry way. Problem solved, because then
I would wake up.

I had decided right around the time I saw the
green fairy-girl that I was dreaming.

We ended back on the Temple grounds in a few
blinks of the eye. At first it looked like he was going to run
through the brick wall that surrounded the Temple, and I squeezed
my eyes shut. I felt a jolt. Air whistled past my head and other
sounds drowned in a loud whoosh. The vampire-boy did a fast
movement, another bigger jolt then the wind was blowing the hair
back from my face again. It was hard to figure out the speed he ran
at in the dark, but the wind on my face gave me a little thrill. If
ever I needed to run away from him I’d be faster. Something struck
me as a little odd. He seemed to know exactly where he was
going.

I said, “You’ve been here before.”

This was more evidence I was still sleeping
safely in my bed.

“No. Your scent is distinctive.”

“Huh. The key is in my left butt pocket,” I
said candidly.

“I see,” he said. We reached my room and he
threw me over his shoulder. It was neat, and swift, and not a
little bit uncomfortable. “May I?”

“Uh, may you what? May you take the key, or
may you drain me for dinner?”

“You have to invite me in.” He sounded
strained. “The hallways are public but your room is private. Invite
me in.”

“Sorry, I forgot. I’m a little nervous with
this whole thing. I’m still waiting for you to try and take a chunk
out of me. Sure, go ahead. I invite– Wait. It will only let you in
right? The invitation won’t throw my room wide open to all
vampires, I mean.”

“Only me. And I cannot extend the invitation
to others. Are you satisfied? The night is over.”

“I invite you to enter my room,” I said and
giggled. It sounded so formal.

There was a light brush against my butt then
we were in my room, and he was placing me down on the bed.

“Ta,” I said and fell back, rubbed my face on
my blanket. It smelled like trees, rain and sunlight. I blinked. It
smelled like me, but it also reminded me of Breandan.

“This is your wardrobe?” My vampire-boy did
not sound happy.

“It’s small, but it will do the job.” He shot
me a look that on a human face would have been long suffering. He
was too strange looking to look anything other than intimidating.
“Give me a break, it’s not like this was ever a scenario I’d ever
have to prepare for.” I started pulling clothes out onto the floor
until the space was empty. “There,” I said with satisfaction. The
space was big enough for two people. He was being prissy. I
deliberated for a moment if you could catch anything from sharing
with a vampire, but then gave myself a mental slap. I chucked my
pillow and blanket in there and nodded. “Best I can do.”

The vampire picked up my hand and bent over.
My heart stuttered and I flinched. He paused and his shoulders
shook with laughter again. “No biting,” he repeated.

Keeping eye contact, he flipped my hand over
and kissed my palm. The press of his skin to mine was almost beyond
words. His lips were firm and the tip of his tongue wet. It was
odd, cold and overly smooth, but not unpleasant. My mouth opened
and I made a gasping, choking sound. I blushed from the soles of my
feet right up to the tip of my ears. I tugged my hand away, hid it
behind my back.

“Once you’re in I’ll close the doors, and no
one will be the wiser.” I glanced out the window. “You’d better
tuck yourself in now. There’s a storm, but I can see breaks in the
cloud cover.”

He lacked the smooth and predatory movement
of vampire as he staggered forward and collapsed into the space.
We’d pushed our luck too far. He was visibly exhausted, which was
fascinating to see on one of the most powerful demons in existence.
Face shadowed he sighed, shifted a bit, and sat with his legs bent
in font. He wasn’t very tall. It must have just been his scary
vampire presence and the pulsing darkness following him around that
made him seem huge to me. In a very human move he propped the
pillow to the side and leaned his head.

“At sunset we will talk.”

I nodded. Pushing the hair out of my eyes I
smiled at him. “Sure thing.” I went to close the door, but then
stopped and yanked it open again. “Oh wait, my name’s Rae.”

His eyes were already half closed, and as he
died for the day he said, “Tomas.”

The storm broke at dawn. I slipped into the
surge of Disciples heading into Sanctuary block as the first
raindrops hit the ground. Pounding the concrete entrance stairs, I
wheeled through the other bodies to get to the Hall before the bell
rung. I skidded to a stop. Sanctuary Hall had cracked black marble
floors and scuffed ivory walls. Electricity was hard to generate so
the radiators stayed off until winter, and the temperature was on
the cool side, but I liked it.

Draped across the clunky furniture, and each
other, in erratic clusters the Disciples of the Sect wore two
colors, black and green. Boys tended to leave their chests bare
under the green blazers, and the girls rocked them shorn at the
elbow or tied around the waist to show off their tattoos. Nearly
all humans were marked now days; protective sigils coerced from
defeated wiccans. I myself avoided it. The idea of someone so close
made me sweat, no matter how pretty the ink.

I wondered what would happen if I shouted out
“I’m a fairy and there’s a vampire in my wardrobe.” It would be
very dramatic.

Reflexively, my gaze travelled across the
bobbing heads. Alex sat alone at our bench. She noticed me and
wiggled her fingers, animated by my arrival like I was something
special. Rake thin and inked from head to toe, Alex confused people
when they first saw her. She was too pretty to look at straight on
and most slid looks her way to digest her beauty like jolts of
lightening, rather than get a fist in the gut at the sight of her.
Long blonde hair and sultry blue eyes contrasted startlingly with
her deeply tanned skin, a few shades shy of rich chocolate.

She smiled, and the blue runes prettily
decorating her cheekbones crinkled. “Hai,” she said and chucked a
can at me.

I caught it one handed and tipped my chin up
as thanks. Popping the top, I took a few slurping gulps and grinned
at her, breakfast done.

Alex’s general attitude to life was, ‘And
what?’ She didn’t give a damn what people thought of her, or what
she did. If the upper dwells gave her hell or looked down on her
for coming from the slums, she’d punch them in the face then ask
who was next. She took the same approach in her friendships. This
was why she was my only friend. She didn’t care I was a freak since
she figured she was already one too.

Ambling over to our bench, I sat on the table
surface and tucked a leg under my butt, left the other hanging.

Stuffing a bread roll into her mouth, Alex
pretended to roll her eyes in the back of her head. “It’s all bad,
Rae. Real bad,” she said around her mouthful. “I slept terrible,
and there’s a bad storm coming in. My hair be all static.”

She made a big hair gesture with her
hands.

Overly excited or emotional, Alex tended to
slip deeper into her colloquial roots to twang like crazy. I used
to have to concentrate on what she was saying when we first
enrolled, her slum speak was one of the most broken and slow I’d
ever heard, but after a year or so I understood her babble
easy.

Relaying the horror of how a third grade had
tried to ask her out, but puked, she paused to screw her eyes up.
“S’up with you? You look all shiny and more frazzled than
usual.”

I should take up cards because my face didn’t
twitch. Keeping a neutral expression I shrugged. “Not that
much.”

Her eyebrow climbed. Maybe my face was a
little too composed. “You gonna share or keep evading? Don’t make
me beat it out of you. I went to your room this morning to eat
breakfast, but you weren’t there. Where you go? I tore this place
up looking.” She leaned in, her voice hinting at naughtiness as she
said, “You do something prohibited?”

My gaze flicked to then from hers, down to
the floor. “I met a boy,” I said and felt my cheeks warm.