Stacia Kane: Demon Possessed

And only fifteen feet from her house. This was silliness. Summoning as much courage as she could, girded by the glow of her own windows, she took another step, trying to look unconcerned.

Another shiver up her spine. Stronger this time. Her casual act was only giving her tormentor—or whatever it was—confidence; it was getting closer to her.

Her front door was unlocked. She couldn’t just get into the car and go. Even if she sent Malleus, Maleficarum, or Spud—Greyson’s guards—back to lock it up, it would still be open for close to an hour. An hour in which her unknown lurker would have full access to her home. Her belongings. Everything.

A scrape, the faint tinge of metal against pavement. Again she spun around. Again she saw nothing. Her head pounded almost as hard as her heart. Whoever—whatever—it was out there had to know she knew it was there. And it hadn’t spoken. Hadn’t stepped forward, even though she knew her fear was strong enough to taste, to feel. Her watcher knew she was afraid and wanted her that way.

Which pissed her off, and that was a good thing. Someone wanted to lurk in the shadows as the sun went down and intimidate her? Fuck that. She straightened her spine, forced her head high. The simple act of looking unafraid grounded her.

One step toward the house, and another. The air around her thickened, pressing like a hot iron against her skin. Danger. Danger. The word echoed in her head, vibrated through her body.

Her flip-flops slapped impossibly loudly on the sidewalk, announcing every step she took. She tried to ignore it, just as she ignored the sweat trickling down her spine and temple. It didn’t work. Hidden in that hollow flapping sound, in the too-loud beat of her heart, were whispers and giggles, the sound of her watcher’s footsteps or breath.

She stopped, spun around again. A flicker of movement this time. A shape? Or her panicked imagination? She had no idea which. All she knew was at any moment a hand would close over her arm or her mouth; any moment someone would grab her and drag her down.

Pain erupted in the back of her calf, a stinging horrible pain. She stumbled. Shit, what was that? No time to look. She kept going, but her next step felt as if it was taken through seaweed, and her hands and feet tingled in a way she didn’t like.

The door in front of her wavered, tilted at an odd angle. Why wasn’t it upright?

Another sharp pain in her leg. She opened her mouth to try to scream, but she couldn’t seem to make any sound come out except for a queer, muted gurgle.

Panic started taking over. She could feel her blood racing through her veins, faster and faster. Could feel her palms hit the hot sidewalk. She’d fallen. She’d fallen and her sweaty hair clung to her neck and her mouth wouldn’t close and something icy touched her leg where it hurt. The last thing she saw was a flash of impossibly bright light bleaching the front of her house.

Why did she always have to throw up?

It seemed as though in every time of stress, every time of worry or fear, Megan’s overly sensitive stomach was the first thing to rebel, spilling its contents into or onto whatever happened to be handy.

Worse than that, these days it seemed as if she always had a fucking audience. And worst of all, yet again it was Greyson.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked. Sweat still dripped from her hair and into the toilet bowl, but not from the heat. At least not from the heat outside; they were safely insulated from that by the walls of her house and the low whirring of the air conditioning. No, this was from her internal temperature: boiling hot yet freezing, while her muscles quaked and her head threatened to split open. Why not? Her stomach already had. She would have been thankful it was empty if it had mattered even the tiniest bit.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Greyson wiped at her forehead with the cool washcloth again; it felt so good she sighed. “ Litobora venom is horribly poisonous. Anyone would be sick. If they survived.”

“If this is surviving . . .” she started, then stopped when the corner of his mouth turned down. Right. This was something to be taken very seriously. And she intended to, as soon as she was able. At that particular moment she was too busy and semidelirious to focus on anything.

The cloth moved around to the back of her neck. “Want to try getting in bed?”

It took her a few seconds to answer. “I’d nod, but I’m afraid to move my head too much.”

His soft laugh comforted her. So did the heat of his body as he gently helped her up off the floor—her stomach gave a warning twist but held—and back into her room. Her legs felt rubbery beneath her.

“How about if I carry you?”

“No. No, I can make it.”

She did, barely, and collapsed onto the bed with piteous gratitude. But the sheets were icy. The whole room was suddenly frigid, worse than standing outside in a swimsuit in the middle of winter.

“I’m cold.”

A few seconds of silence, just enough time for her to wonder what he was doing, and then his bare skin pressed against hers, bringing with it the faint scent of smoke and his aftershave. Oh, that was good, both the heat and the smell. As a vregonis demon—a fire demon—he had a body temperature that was perpetually elevated. It had made the summer interesting and accounted at least in part for the meat-locker-esque temperatures at which she usually kept her house. She’d gotten into the habit of cranking the air up half an hour or so before she expected him to arrive, and at that moment, sick or not, she half expected to see ice crystals forming in the untouched glass of Sprite that Greyson’s guard Malleus had set by her bed.

But as much as Greyson’s overly warm body had to be worked around and compensated for in summer, at that moment she was eternally and ridiculously grateful for it. She almost thought she heard her own skin sizzle when it came into contact with his; some of the cramping in her muscles relaxed.

Only to tense up again when she saw, through her half-closed eyes, Greyson’s second guard and Malleus’s brother, Maleficarum, advancing on her with a hypodermic needle. Something clear squirted ominously from its sharp silver tip.

“Oh, no,” she managed. “You are not giving me a shot.”

“’Sonly under the skin, m’lady. You’ll barely even feel it, honest.” Maleficarum’s features did not do “innocent” well; he looked like a serial killer trying to hide a severed head behind his back. Not his fault. It was simply the way he was made. Bald head, horns, large frame, beady eyes. It was a good thing he was a guard demon, because his appearance would have been an issue in most professions. Megan couldn’t imagine, for example, Maleficarum as a pediatrician. Or either of his brothers. Spud, the third brother, was probably prowling around outside.

“I don’t want—”

“Let him.” Greyson rubbed her arm. “It’s basically just an antivenom. And something for the pain.”

“And that’s why I don’t want it. I need to tell you what happened today.”

“It won’t put you to sleep. Just let him give you the shot. Please?”

She hesitated. On the one hand, she wasn’t at all sure she believed him when he said it wouldn’t put her to sleep. On the other, something to kill the tremendous crashing ache in her head and the stabbing pains in the rest of her body sounded good.

Finally she nodded. “Go ahead, then. But if I fall asleep, I’m blaming you.”

“And your vengeance will be terrible indeed, I imagine.”

“Yes, it will.” She squeezed her eyes shut as Maleficarum wiped at her arm with an alcohol pad and slid the needle in. It didn’t really hurt—she wasn’t bothered by needles much anyway—but the necessity of it . . . that, she didn’t want to face.