C. E. Murphy - No Dominion - A Garrison Report

The sky was ink black beyond his head, a sliver of moon over on the horizon but not a single star shining through, though the cold said it had ta be clear. “This something I’m gonna get kicked outta the Army for?”

He sat up far enough ta flash me a grin. “Only if you get caught AWOL. No, I can cover for you. Come on. No guns. Too loud.”

I rolled outta my blankets and onto my feet, leavin’ the duty weapon behind and collecting a couple knives instead. My pack was only inches away, so I grabbed it too, figuring we’d get some use out of the rations if we were gonna be up all night. Danny slipped through the other sleeping soldiers like they weren’t even there, an’ I tried not to kick anybody hard enough to wake ‘em up as I followed him.

There wasn’t much distance between camp and cold raw wilderness. I looked up again, tryin’ to orient myself by the stars, but I still couldn’t see ‘em. Once we were well outta camp I stopped to take a better look, then exhaled a steamy breath into cold air. “Danny, where’re the stars?”

“That’s what I need you for.”

“To bring the stars back?”

“To kill the demon that’s hiding them.”

“Dan, there ain’t—there ain’t no such thing as demons.” I stuttered halfway through ‘cause I was thinkin’ of Dandy Andy and all of a sudden wasn’t so sure of myself. “What kinda demon?”

“It’s called—” He looked at me and sighed. “Never mind, you couldn’t say it anyway. A sky demon. It wants to eat the stars, and it starts by trying to make people forget them. It hides them under a blanket of its hair. Once they’re hidden, once people begin to forget, the smallest stars become vulnerable, and—”

“Stars are giant gas balls in the sky, Dan. You can’t eat ‘em.”

“Yeah? Can you not hide them in a clear night sky, either?”

I said a word my Ma didn’t think I should know and rubbed my eyes, hoping I’d see stars again when I was done. But I knew I wouldn’t, and I was right. “Sure, buddy. How do we kill a sky demon that eats stars?”

“Cut off its head so the stars can fly back out.”

“I shoulda guessed.”

Dan looked surprised and I muttered, “I was joking, Danny. That was a joke. All right, how do we find this thing?”

He switched on a flashlight. “Like this.”

Seemed like the whole world lit up, compared to the darkness of a starless night. I reared back, squinting. “Damn, that’s bright.”

“It has to be to make it think it’s a star to eat.”

I s’posed he had a point. We huddled together, back to back, waiting in the cold night air. When I got tired of counting the breaths I could see, I said, “Why me?”

“Because you didn’t go out after the crying demon, and because you listened when I told Dandy Andy to watch himself. And your eyes are grey.”

“What’s that gotta do with it?”

“Silver eyes see ghosts.”

“Oh, yeah, sure, a’course. Forgot about that. What the hell, Danny.”

I felt him shrug. “It’s what my mother used to say. I don’t know if it’s a Korean superstition or if it was just her own because her grandfather had silver eyes. But it can’t hurt to have silver eyes along with me on this.”

“There can’t be a lotta folks in Korea with grey eyes.”

“There aren’t. Now shut up. The demon is attracted to light, not noise.”

I shut up, then swung my pack around to dig out some rations, and pulled them and a flashlight out of the bag. “Hungry? Hell, I got a flashlight in here too. Should I turn it on?”

“Starving,” Danny hissed, “but look. Slowly.”

Just like that, I wasn’t hungry anymore. My skin got cold, not from nerves and not from the air being freezing, but more like a warning of something creepy going on. I peered over Danny’s shoulder.

For a second I thought hell, if that was a demon, I was all right with letting her do what she wanted. She was maybe five feet tall and Korean, ‘cept her skin was white as starlight. Her lips were blood red and her eyes were black as raven wings. Her hair was amazing, black as her eyes and dancing with a life of its own, rising up toward the sky until I couldn’t see what was hair and what was sky. Hiding the stars in a blanket of hair, Danny’d said, an’ I didn’t know how she was doing it but that’s what was going on. She was wearing a midnight blue high-collared robe with sleeves so long they trailed on the ground without leaving any kind of marks. It was wrapped around her torso by black ribbon that sparkled with starlight. In that first moment of looking at her, she was the most perfectly beautiful thing I’d ever seen, like some kinda living sculpture.

‘least she was until she focused on the flashlight, and her mouth opened wide enough to be bigger than her face an’ to show off a bottomless pit of stars an’ gleaming razor teeth. Danny yelled and threw the flashlight to one side. The demon rushed it, swallowed it down, an’ just as fast spat it out again. It hit the ground with another thud, an’ back-lit the demon as she spun toward us with rage pulling her already-stretched features even further outta place.

Way at the back of my mind, that voice I was getting kinda used to said I don’t remember this. That was it, nothing more, and hell if I knew how it was supposed to remember what I was only just now doing, but I had my pick of worrying about that or worrying about the black-eyed beauty who was gonna gobble us up along with the stars. I decided on her, an’ the voice got quiet again.

The demon dropped to all fours and bounded at us like some kinda big cat, clawing up the ground. Danny an’ I scattered, both of us grabbin’ for the knives we shoulda had out and waiting. I switched my flashlight on and she swung toward me, which was kinda what I expected if I’d been thinking it through, but not much what I wanted once I did think it through. I hit the deck and flung the light away. She leaped over me and jumped on it, but she wasn’t fooled enough to try eating it this time. Still, I had time to get the knife out and roll to my feet before she turned back on me.

She pounced and Danny tackled her just before she hit me. His knife cut into her ribs, slicing the ribbon apart, an’ when he pulled it away, she bled starlight. Thick shining waves of it, and drops that hung in the air instead of falling like normal blood would. She screamed a staticky sound, not like a woman’s scream at all. It hissed and rushed an’ made the hairs on my arms stand on end, and it did something worse to Danny, who was even closer. He looked like he was coming apart, like the sound was melting him from the outside in. I snatched up my flashlight as I ran at them, and shoved the thing down her gullet when I reached her. She hacked and spat it back up, but at least the screamin’ stopped and Danny stopped looking like he was melting.

The demon skittered back. She looked less human and a lot less gorgeous, her hair tangled up and the starlight still bleedin’ from her side. It was the mouth, though, that really made her a monster, ‘cause it was hanging open to show all of the ugly teeth and the guts that were made up of magic instead of humanity. Danny scrambled up an’ all three of us started circling each other, me and Danny working two against one.

I guessed she chose Danny ‘cause he was the littler guy. I guessed she figured if she could get rid of him she could focus on me. I saw her planning it before she moved, some kinda little give-away in the way she was leaning played up by the flashlights. She went after him, but I was on her heels, not losing any time to surprise. She landed on Dan with all fours, an’ I grabbed a handful of black hair that was cold as ice, hauled her head back, and slashed her throat.