Darren Shan - The Demonata 6-10

And then Bill-E moves.

At first I think it’s just Dervish jolting the body, but then I see Bill-E’s fingers shake and curl inwards. His lips part. He shudders. His eyes flicker open.

“What is this?” Lord Loss growls. “Regeneration? It cannot be. I felt his soul depart.”

“Billy?” Dervish cries, unable to believe it, falling backwards as Bill-E sits up and looks around.

“Bill-E!” I yell with excitement, grasping his arms, squeezing hard, delight taking the place of dread. Somehow I’ve brought him back. I’ve used magic to restore his life. Everything’s OK. We’ve beaten the demons and saved Bill-E. How’s that for a night’s work! “I’m so sorry for what I did, but there was no other way. But it doesn’t matter now. You’re alive. We whupped their ugly hides and…”

I stop. Bill-E’s looking at me curiously, as if he doesn’t know me. And his face is strange. His skin is bubbling, rippling, shimmering, a bit like Juni’s did when her face changed. Then he opens his mouth and speaks, and I can’t understand a word he’s saying, because he’s speaking the language of the girl in the rocks. They’re Bec’s words, not Bill-E’s.

Lord Loss gasps. “You! No! I will not let you–”

Bill-E’s right hand points at the demon master. He shouts something in Bec’s language and Lord Loss screeches, “Artery! Attack!” The hell-child leaps and Bill-E’s hand snaps round. A ball of energy surges from his fingers and Artery explodes into a thousand shredded pieces. He’ll never recover from that. The hell-child has been finally, savagely, beautifully killed.

Bill-E stands. His flesh is still changing. The bones seem to be altering too. His eyes and ears. His whole face. Softening. Narrowing. Becoming more… feminine.

Lord Loss stares at the remains of his dead familiar. Trembles with a mixture of rage and fear. “You should not have come back, girl,” he snarls. “This is wrong. You are asking for trouble, and be assured — it will find you.”

Bill-E laughs in a way he never laughed before. Catches sight of Spine and waves a hand at the demon — it melts, screaming shrilly, a pool of gristle-speckled liquid within seconds, leaving Kernel to grapple around uncertainly and wonder what happened to his foe.

Bill-E faces Lord Loss again. His face is unrecognisable. His body too — he’s smaller and his clothes are hanging loosely on his frame. I’d think I was going mad, but Dervish and Beranabus see it too. Their faces are contorted with bewilderment.

He speaks again and this time I hear the girl’s accent as clearly as I heard it when she spoke to me from within the heart of the rock. Lord Loss trembles, then scowls. “So be it. Perhaps you are right — this is not our time. But it will come, be sure of that. And you won’t have to wait another millennium and a half for it!”

The demon master draws himself up straight, then glares at me. “Enjoy your victory, Grubitsch. But remember — the end of the world is coming and there is nothing you or that apprentice priestess can do to stop it. Remember this also — you killed your brother. He died by your hand. How do you think you will sleep tonight? And all the–”

Bill-E barks a short spell. The strips of flesh at the end of the demon master’s legs are suddenly alive with rats. Lord Loss squeals, slaps several of them away, then darts to the stalagmite where the body of Juni Swan is impaled. Ripping her corpse free, he cradles her to his chest, snarls hatefully at all of us in the cave, then launches himself at the crack in the rock — now just a thin line a few centimetres wide. He hits it hard and uses magic to squeeze through. Even so, the walls of the crack scrape much of his and Juni’s flesh away, and the rats on Lord Loss’s legs are knocked loose. They fall on the floor, turn in puzzled circles for a second or two, then tear away, heading for the surface, back to wherever Bill-E summoned them from.

Except it wasn’t Bill-E who made the rats materialise. It was Bec. And I realise, as I watch him looking down at himself, curiously touching his chest and face, that Bill-E’s as dead as ever. The girl from the far distant past has taken control of his body and is transforming it into her own.

→ A couple of hours later. Home. Sitting in the TV room with Dervish and Kernel. Kernel is asleep, moaning as he dreams, pain coming at last. Beranabus and Bill-E… no, Beranabus and Bec are in another room, having a lengthy heart-to-heart. The magician was ecstatic when he understood what was happening. He practically burst with excitement. Hugged her hard, weeping happily, kissing her face. And she stood there, hugging him back, crying too, repeating one word over and over — “Bran!”

Dervish and I haven’t said anything to each other. He’s staring off into space, his face a mess of dried tears. Every so often he shakes his head or makes a soft grunting noise. That’s as close as we’ve come to communication.

I don’t know what to feel. I’ve saved the world from the Demonata, but at what cost? To kill your own brother… Nobody should ever have to suffer such a cruel fate. I’m already wishing I could go back and change it. Maybe Bill-E would be better off alive and suffering than dead and gone. Did I have the right to make that choice for him? I don’t know.

And maybe I can go back. I haven’t discussed it with Beranabus yet, but I will, as soon as he’s through talking with Bec. Find a way to travel back in time like we did before. Stop any of it from happening. Snatch Bill-E from Juni’s clutches. Never open the entrance to the cave. I don’t see why we can’t. We did it once. I don’t care what Beranabus said about waves and trains reaching the end of the line — there must be a way to do it again.

→ Eventually, as the sun rises on a normal day, lighting up a world unaware of how close it came to toppling into an abyss of demonic damnation, Beranabus and Bec return. There’s almost nothing of Bill-E left. The girl has taken over completely, remoulding his body in her own image. Even his hair has turned a dark red colour. One or two small traces of my brother remain – she walks like he did, and her left eyelid hangs a fraction lower than her right – but I’m sure those traits will vanish too.

“Sorry we were such an age,” Beranabus says, sitting opposite Dervish. “Loads to talk about. We’ve cut it short as it is, only covered the more important issues.”

Bec stares at the couch, then sits on the floor close to the magician’s legs. She looks at me with worried eyes. “I hope you do not mind that I took this body.”

I blink. “You can speak our language now?”

“A spell,” she replies. “Beranabus taught me. I’m speaking in my own tongue, but it allows me to be understood by others.” She sighs. “If I could have worked such a spell when we first made contact, things would have been much simpler.”

“I’d normally say there was no point worrying about the past…” I begin, but Dervish cuts me off.

“Who are you?” he shouts. “What the hell have you done with Billy?”

“Billy’s dead,” Beranabus says. “This is Bec, an old friend of mine.”

“No!” Dervish yells, lurching to his feet. “That’s Billy’s body. She stole it. I saw her. I want it back.” His hands bunch into fists.

“I apologise, but I cannot give it back,” Bec says quietly.

“Even if she could, what would be the point?” Beranabus chips in, roughly but typically. “The boy’s dead. Bec took his lifeless flesh and filled it with her spirit. If she vacated it again, you’d only have a dead child on your hands.”

“I want him back,” Dervish snarls, eyes wild.

“I understand,” Bec says solemnly. “You wish to bury him.”