Stacia Kane - Demon Inside

Megan finally left the shop with a designer gown, the shop owner’s business card, and a face bright enough to send satellite signals.

Tera smiled beside her. “Sure,” she said. “You’re not getting too wrapped up in the whole demon thing at all, are you?”

The bag with the gown in it banged against her leg like a toddler demanding attention as she walked into her house. She’d managed to have a good time, all things considered, especially when the conversation turned away from her and toward Tera’s various casual dates.

“Hi, Megan.”

The scream died in her throat when she saw Rocturnus lounging on her couch. “Damn it, I’ve asked you not to—”

“You asked me not to jump out at you and I’m not. I’m just sitting here.”

“You scared me.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t look sorry, but then demons never did.

She set down the bag and switched on the lamp by the couch. “Where have you been?”

“Checking on everyone.” His beady little eyes shifted. Not a good sign.

“And?”

“And they’re all alive. No more explosions.”

A breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding escaped. “Good.”

“But…maybe you should sit down.”

Megan knew people often told other people to sit down when they had good news for them too. It just hadn’t ever happened to her. There was no point in trying to put a brave face on things as she sat. Rocturnus would be able to feel, taste, and smell her every negative emotion anyway. “Okay, what?”

“Well…some of us aren’t very…happy. About the changes. And about what’s been going on. The deaths.”

“I didn’t think having your buddies explode would put you guys in the Christmas spirit,” she said, “but—”

“Actually we quite like the holidays. Lots of depression, feelings of inadequacy, jealousy…we’re very busy this time of year.”

“Mmm, just like Santa’s elves,” she said. “What about the changes?”

The frown on his wizened little face told her what he thought of the “elves” joke. “It’s confidence,” he said. “I know you don’t feel entirely comfortable with us. With what we do. But you have to remember, it is how we stay alive.”

“I’m not trying to kill anyone. I think it’s fair to ask you to exercise a little restraint, don’t you?”

“There’s another family.”

“What?”

“Another family. I mean, some of us have always had loyalties to other families. Not all of us in this city or even this country belonged to the Accuser.”

She nodded. He’d touched on this subject before, but she hadn’t paid much attention. It was enough to know several thousand demons in the city belonged to her. What the others did didn’t matter much, at least that’s what she’d thought.

Apparently she was wrong. “Another family is forming in the city. Some of yours…they’re uncomfortable. They don’t like your new way of doing things.”

“They’d rather be tortured and beaten?”

Rocturnus nodded. “And be able to live the way they always have.”

“But they aren’t giving it a chance!” She stood up—so much for sitting down—and started pacing, then realized she was still wearing her coat and scarf. No wonder she felt so warm.

“They don’t think you can protect them,” Rocturnus said. “They think you didn’t want us to begin with, and now you’re trying to starve us and you don’t care about the explosions.”

“That’s not true, you know it isn’t true. I do care. I went to jail last night for you guys; if I didn’t care I wouldn’t have bothered to go in that house and—”

“I know that.”

“Have you told them?”

He nodded.

“But they don’t believe you.”

“It isn’t all of them,” he said. “It’s not even a lot of them…yet. But enough to make me worry. They just—they don’t think you’re strong enough.”

She brushed aside the little voice in her head warning they they might be right. “I want to help them!”

“They want to be ruled, not helped. It’s the way demons are.” She raised an eyebrow and he amended, “It’s the way Yezer Ha-Ra are. The big ones, they have their own needs. They still want a strong leader though.”

She never thought she’d live to see the day when she was rejected by a bunch of little demons who fed on human anger and misery. By rights they should be drawn to her like flies to…well, like flies to just about anything. She’d never heard of a discerning fly.

They should be drawn to her like she was drawn to the bottle of vodka in her liquor cabinet. It sloshed into her glass, cracking the ice sticking to the bottom, turning a lovely jewel pink when she poured cranberry juice over it and added a splash of Rose’s lime. A tropical drink for a very cold and frosty night. Hey, something should be warm and tropical. Her insides certainly weren’t.

Half the drink was gone before she felt ready to talk again. “So who started this other family?”

“What do you mean?”

“Who started it? Who’s in charge? Is it one of you guys or is everyone joining a different Meegra or what?”

From the way his mouth twisted she almost expected him to say the others were joining Greyson’s Meegra. But that wasn’t possible, she knew it. Greyson wouldn’t betray her like that.

At least she thought he wouldn’t.

Shoving that disturbing little doubt out of her mind, she repeated the question. “Who’s in charge, Roc? Come on, if I’m going to be in direct competition with someone I’d like to know who it is.”

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “They wouldn’t tell me.”

“Can’t you—wait, what do you mean they wouldn’t tell you? Who wouldn’t tell you, the ones who left or the ones who’re still with me?”

He looked at his hands.

“Okay, so my demons—the ones staying with me—are now refusing to tell you where the demons who are no longer with me are going?”

“That’s the gist of it, yes.”

“Fuck.” She stood up and held out her hand. “Okay, then. Let’s go see them.”

“Now? They won’t be there.”

“Then I’ll call them there.” Why this was suddenly so important she didn’t know. Hadn’t she spent half the day wanting to be rid of the little demons, to be herself again? To come down to it, hadn’t she spent most of the last three months wishing this whole leader-of-the-personal-demon-pack thing hadn’t happened? As much as she liked Roc, being pulled in two directions like this wasn’t exactly comfortable.

But now she was hopping mad, fighting mad. It wasn’t that they were leaving, it was that they weren’t even telling her where they were going. That anger burned in her chest, burned through her entire body. If they wanted to leave, that was fine. But to not tell her where they were going, to treat her so disrespectfully…

It wasn’t until she’d closed her eyes and reached with her mind for the high-ceilinged room in the sky where they lived that she realized she was thinking exactly the way Greyson kept telling her she should think.

She had no idea what to say.

Faced with a sea of little bald heads in a confusing Impressionistic variety of colors and squinty lash-less eyes, she started to regret her impulse. It would have been better to let it go. It would have been better to let the ones who didn’t want to stay with her just leave. If they weren’t even interested in trying things her way, in giving being a little less vicious a chance, they should go.

But the people…

And that was why. She couldn’t let them all just leave her and move on. Not when she’d spent so much time formulating a plan. Not when she was able to sleep easier at night knowing the humans her demons affected slept a little easier as well, because her first rule had been no more suicides, no more abuse. They could make their people miserable, but they were not to harm others.