Stacia Kane - Personal Demons

A cupboard ... she had seen this room before. She'd been here in Kevin's dream, in the vision that sent her to the hospital. The Accuser had sent Kevin to her, had sent that room to her.

She was in the home of the personal demons and, as the realization hit and her heart started pounding, more doors in the walls opened.

Megan's throat worked convulsively as she attempted to scream, even though she knew screaming wouldn't do her any good.

The demons poured from their cupboards, crawling along the walls, swarming across the ceiling and down. The walls were alive and moving, a sight made all the more impossible by the almost near-silence of their movements. Their dry little hands and feet rustled along the wood, whispering things she could not understand, but none of them spoke. They didn't chant her name, they didn't laugh or sing. They were like roaches under a log when the log was turned to the sun, scattering and moving, their horrible bodies scabrous in the bright light.

Megan started to run, but even as she turned she knew it was too late. Had been too late the minute she arrived here, the minute she went to dinner. The minute she sat down in that radio station. What would everyone think happened to her? Or would ... would the Accuser use her body, pose as her, to do her show? Of course he would. He'd take over her practice, her show, her life. She could easily picture him on television analyzing Hollywood marriages and the inner pain of government leaders.

Sparks of anger flashed through her. Her reputation, the life she'd worked so hard to build after she left home for college and her parents actively encouraged her not to come back. She hadn't spoken to them in years. She wondered if she regretted that and decided she didn't.

But she didn't slow down as she ran for the door. It was impossible to tell how far away it was and the floor rumbled under her feet as the first demons reached the slick wood and came after her. She might have gone down the way Art Bellingham wanted, to save the Fearbusters people, but there was no way she was bending over for these fucking little demons, these miserable beasts who did nothing but make people unhappy and laugh as they did it.

She skidded to a halt, almost falling as those damned boots skidded on the polished floor. Why was she running? She couldn't escape them. They were coming for her, and they would get her, and she would face them head on.

Now she understood what Greyson said earlier about being calm because he'd done everything he could do. As she turned to face the demons, her breathing slowed, her eyes focused. She'd take out as many of those little bastards as she could before they killed her.

The demons stopped, too. One minute they were running, the next they were still and silent in front of her. A Mexican stand-off without the guns. Megan felt vaguely like Dorothy in Munchkin land, an odd feeling for a woman only a couple of inches over five feet tall.

Up close they were no less terrifying than they'd been before, an army of bald creatures with large, loose-lipped mouths and pinkish eyes, but Megan's calm didn't leave her. "What do you want?"

They didn't reply, but a shuffling movement among them made Megan think they weren't expecting the question.

"If you don't even know what you want from me, why don't you leave me the hell alone?" Her voice echoed against the high ceiling, the words continuing long after she'd closed her mouth again.

She expected a reply, but not the kind she got. They didn't speak, they didn't attack. Not physically. Instead they sent a wave of choking power, anger and despair, frustration. Above it all was the feeling of being trapped. Unable to move or breathe. She wanted to get up but couldn't, she was so heavily weighted with the force of their frustration.

She screamed and fell back, pain shooting up her wrist as she used her hands to break her fall. Her shout turned into a choking gasp. She couldn't breathe, couldn't move. They'd captured her, enslaved her, using only their energy.

"No," she managed. "No!" Somewhere deep inside her was a door, the door Tera had tried to teach her to open. Now she found it, her desperation making her mental fingers shake, and pulled.

Every muscle in her body tensed and vibrated, an orgasm without the pleasure. Instead pain ripped through her, rendering her insensible for a moment that could have been forever. Flames roared through her head, obscuring her vision. Agony ripped her body apart. Her hands scrabbled claw-like at the floor, her feet kicked at nothing.

Somewhere in the middle of it, Megan's mind still fought. She gathered all the force together, everything terrible that had crouched behind that door, and turned it into a sword in her head. Her body disappeared. She couldn't feel it anymore and, in that second of blessed relief, she turned the sword outward and flung it through the air, severing the connection between the demons and herself, pushing them away with all the force she could muster.

The demons screamed, their voices rising as one, drowning out Megan's own cries. She opened her eyes and found them all on their knees, their horrible little faces contorted with pain, but also with something that looked like ... triumph. As if she'd pleased them. Had she done the wrong thing, had she given them all of her energy and left none for herself?

A voice. "She can do it."

"What?"

The demons hadn't moved, didn't move even as Megan pulled herself to her feet. She swayed on her heels and wanted to take them off, but didn't dare. She couldn't show any weakness now, not when they looked at her with wide, respectful eyes. She'd scared them.

One demon, slightly bigger than the others, stepped towards her. He bowed slightly.

"Will you help us?"

"Okay, let me get this straight." Megan sank back in the soft leather chair and rubbed her eyes. "I bound you to the Accuser?"

The little demon—Rocturnus, his name was—nodded. "Have some more water. And try one of those cookies. We got them just for you." He nodded towards the little table next to her, on which sat a silver tray covered with chocolate cookies. Across from her a small fire burned merrily in a brick fireplace. The room behind Rocturnus's little cupboard door was larger than she'd imagined and very comfortable. Like a gentleman's study, instead of a demon's lair. She liked the room, and in spite of herself she liked Rocturnus. She even managed not to shiver when she saw the rest of the Yezer Ha-Ra watching through the open doorway.

For a week now she'd imagined the horrors the personal demons would visit upon her when they finally caught her. Not once had she supposed they would give her tea and cookies, and settle her in an easy chair for a nice chat.

"Thank you. How did I manage that?"

"We don't know for sure. But for the last fifteen years of your time, he's been using us. All of our power, he took. Everything we feed on, he took. So we branched out. We took more and more, just to survive. You understand."

Megan nodded. The personal demons had been faced with a choice—get meaner, or die. They'd chosen meaner. She couldn't say for sure she blamed them.

"Normally we don't like to gang up in such numbers," Rocturnus continued. Like the room, he was strangely elegant for a naked three-foot-tall demon with lurid green skin. Megan kept expecting him to smoke a pipe or play concert piano. "It dilutes our power. When we have to share, when we're forced to gang up on people who don't have the strength to give, it deadens everyone. Our victims aren't as strong to begin with, their friends and family aren't as shocked and upset when—well. I'm sure you know to what conclusion we normally take our humans."

Megan nodded.

"But he took that choice away from us. You took that choice away from us, Megan, and we'd like our freedom back—at least as much as we can have it back. We want you to undo it."