Demon Inside

Chapter 12

Excuse me?”

“Don’t ‘excuse me’ me, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“What makes you think—”

“They were Templeton Black’s nighttime guards, Grey. Now they’re dead, and it looks like a demon killing. Their…” Tera swallowed. “Their bodies were mutilated.”

Greyson shrugged. “What a great loss to the world.”

“Wait a minute. Templeton Black’s guards? But they—”

She didn’t need Greyson’s hand to tighten painfully on hers to stop talking. The church and the funeral about to begin inside had disappeared. Instead she was back on the cold city street while Ktana Leyak reached into one man’s chest and ripped out his heart; she and Brian exchanged worried glances.

“M’lady, we oughter get inside,” Maleficarum said, shifting on his feet and nodding toward the church. The parking lot was almost empty of people now.

Tera glanced at the church, then back at all of them. “We’re not done talking about this.”

“Of course not. That would imply sensitivity to Megan’s loss,” Greyson said.

Tera ignored him. “But we should go in.”

Together they made their way up the sidewalk and through the wide, polished double doors of the church, closed to the winter air. Megan gasped.

About half the pews were full of mourners, their backs in dark clothing looking like fat crows perched on planks, but she barely saw them. Her gaze was drawn upward instead, to the railings of the choir loft, to the ornate pillars in lengthwise rows up the sides of the building.

Every one of them was covered with demons. Her demons, crouching on rails, clinging to ornate stone, with multicolored light from the stained-glass windows playing across their slick skin. They’d come to support her at her father’s funeral.

Tears stung her eyes. Feeling a little childish, she ducked her head, pressed it against Greyson’s sleeve so she wouldn’t start sobbing. Yezer didn’t feel love, as far as she knew; their anger at the recent losses of life had more to do with fear it might happen to them than any sense of sadness. So they weren’t here out of caring, but out of respect. Somehow it meant just as much. Somehow it meant more.

Unless they were just here because funerals offered excellent feeding. Which was entirely possible. She preferred to think of it as respect.

“We need to sit down,” Brian murmured beside her, and she realized people were starting to turn and look at them—exactly what she’d been warned not to allow to happen.

Safely sandwiched on the bench between the two men, she was able to look up at the little demons again, and nod slightly, hoping they could see her gratitude. She thought they could. They nodded back, almost as one, a choreographed routine nobody else could see.

“Don’t you want to sit up front?” Brian whispered. Funny, of all of her escorts he looked the most uncomfortable. The demons and the witch all sat calmly, staring obediently ahead as if they were in a very grandiose schoolroom, but Brian fidgeted and glanced around. Of course. Not a religion thing; he felt her demons.

“My mother told me to be unobtrusive,” she said, not bothering to hide her bitterness. “Oh, and my demons are here.”

He visibly relaxed. “Thanks for telling me. I wondered why I felt kind of weird.”

“You didn’t think it was the blasphemy of being in a Protestant church?”

“I figured if I made it through the door without being smited, I had a chance.”

If the officiating pastor hadn’t stepped up to the podium at that moment, Megan probably would have laughed. As it was she just smiled softly and settled back in her seat, her right hand firmly in Greyson’s. Brian reached over to take her left, a gesture that touched her.

“…David was an accountant, known to most everybody. A family man, survived by his beloved wife Diane and his son David Junior, who will be taking over his firm and his place on the town council. You all know the good works that his company has done for the town—donating new benches for the park, sponsoring school fund-raisers, helping to keep our streets clean.

“David also had a daughter named Megan. I knew David as a good man, one who always wanted to help others…”

Megan knew she shouldn’t have expected anything else, but she still felt like someone had hit her in the chest. Her eyes stung. Brian’s hand convulsed on hers, but Greyson didn’t move. She glanced over at him. His face was impassive. Was he even listening?

She turned around, checking to see how clear the path to the door was. Not so clear. The church wasn’t crowded, but just inside the doors stood Orion Maldon, staring right at her. Their eyes met and he grinned.

She turned away quickly, to where the pastor was now giving the lectern to her brother. Great. If there was anything she didn’t need right now, it was to listen to anything Dave had to say.

“Those witches were Templeton’s guards?” she whispered to Greyson.

“Hmm? Yes. I assume they came after you on Monday while you were messing around with their car?”

“We weren’t messing around, but yes. And K—she killed them.” Megan glanced past Brian to Tera, whose eyes were focused straight ahead.

“…the best father anyone could ever ask for. Dad was always there for me…”

Greyson nodded and put his arm around her, pulling her closer so they could continue their barely audible discussion. “Don’t worry about it.”

“How can I not worry about it? Tera thinks you did it.”

“Tera can think whatever she likes, but without proof it won’t do her much good. I wasn’t even in town that night, remember? Besides, I have more sense than to go after witches and she knows it.”

“Should I tell her what happened? Brian can back—”

“Good God no, are you insane? It’s none of her business. Eventually she’ll get tired of poking around and go back to whatever else it is she does all day.”

“What if she doesn’t?”

“Don’t you have other things to think about just now?”

“…when I was eleven, and he helped me build a soapbox derby racer for Boy Scouts…”

She tried to tune out Dave’s speech. “Like what, how everyone is embarrassed to even say my name?”

“Did you expect anything else?” Ouch. “No, I mean Maldon over there in the corner.”

She shifted in her seat, refusing to look at Maldon again but feeling his gaze on her, while her brother continued droning in the front of the church. “He came just to get at me—at us?”

“I don’t think so, no.”

“Then why?”

Greyson paused. “I don’t think he was lying about your father. I think they did know each other.”

“Apparently most people did, right? The town council, the accountancy firm…” Another surge of bitterness, cold and sharp in her chest.

“…when I finally got it together to go to college, and he and Mom supported me every step of the way…”

“Doesn’t that strike you as odd? They’ll barely look at you, but your father went on to become a pillar of the community, such as it is. You went to a bar last night and got threatened, but he bought benches and led parades.”

“He’s not the one who—”

“Stop playing the martyr and think, darling. What could have happened, who could have been powerful enough to make sure your father stayed in business, stayed everybody’s friend, while you twisted in the wind? Whose influence could have been brought in to play here?”

Duh. “My dad made a deal with Maldon?”

“Looks like it to me.”

“…the position in the firm was just waiting for me. He had my name put on the door before I even got there—a gift to me…”

“I suppose we need to go over there later and find out.”

“That’s my girl.” He kissed the back of her hand and looked toward the front of the church. “Does your brother ever shut up?”

She laughed before she could help herself, a quick nervous bark. Heads turned, and she quickly looked down. “Shit.”

“What?”

“What do you think? Here I am, Megan the murderous ghoul, giggling at my father’s funeral?”

Now he laughed, thankfully much more softly than she had. “What do you care what they think?”

“My mother—”

“Is a bitch. You don’t need these people, bryaela, not for anything. They can think whatever they want.”

The words sank into her, through her, a spark of truth she didn’t yet know that she could fully accept. He was right, absolutely. The thoughts and opinions of the residents of Grant Falls should be no more important to her than the results of American Idol.

Shouldn’t be, but still were. Was she that much of a wimp? Anger rose in her chest, insinuating itself through her brain, but she couldn’t tell if she was mad at them or herself. Or mad, again, at her father, who certainly had not been “the best father any girl could ever ask for.”

Dave finally ceded the floor to someone else, a face vaguely familiar to Megan and a voice more so. Bill Ryan, a golfing buddy of her father’s. She had a few dim memories of the two men drinking and talking about sports in the backyard, before she reached her teens and they did their drinking elsewhere. Bill was followed by a few other speakers, then the pastor again. Megan wanted to listen. She felt like she was at the funeral of a stranger, someone she’d never really known, and wondered if perhaps somewhere in their words she would find him.

But a small voice in her head refused to let her, a voice that sounded suspiciously like Greyson’s. What did it matter? The man was dead. He’d never really been much of a father and now he was gone. Why should she try to know him when he’d never tried to know her?

The man they buried today had died to her thirteen years ago when she’d gone to college. Before that, even. This was just the final period on a sentence that ended long before, so what did it matter?

That wasn’t right. She should care. She should be sad.

Instead she was bored. And that thought, more than any other, brought tears to her eyes.

Beside her Greyson turned and murmured something to Malleus, who got up and crossed behind them. Going to set things up with Orion, she guessed.

Rustlings and gentle scrapings indicated that everyone else in the church was getting up too. Was the service over?

No. The mourners were lining up in the center aisle, getting ready to go say their good-byes.

Megan tensed in her seat. Should she go up? If she did everyone would watch, but if she didn’t they would all wonder why she wasn’t going, and would stare even more.

“Are you actually supposed to get up and just stare at his dead body?” Tera whispered, leaning across Brian. “I mean, isn’t that a little weird?”

“It’s…you’re supposed to say a prayer, or something,” Megan said.

“But you don’t put anything in the casket with him, or touch him or anything?”

“Well, not as a rule, I guess.”

Tera rolled her eyes. “Regulars are so confusing.”

Several people glanced at her as she said it; Megan bit her lip to keep from laughing while a rush of affection for her friend flowed through her. The combination of Tera’s comment and Greyson’s earlier about not needing these people seemed to coalesce in her head in that moment and a weight she hadn’t really known was there lifted. She was no less hurt, no less angry or scared, but she had people who cared about her.

It wasn’t only that either. The service was over, she’d made it through the worst of it, her last public appearance in Grant Falls. Relief made her giddy. Her chest swelled with warmth, her vision seemed sharper.

The church emptied around them while Megan sat and enjoyed, for the first time in days, the feeling of being absolutely in control, absolutely safe. Her demons still crowded the ceiling, there for her. Six people flanked her sides, there for her. It felt good. She smiled to herself and squeezed Greyson’s hand.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Fine.” She didn’t look at him, though. She was too busy looking around, thinking about how she’d never have to see this place again, about all those people with their petty worries and miseries, the blackness in their tiny hearts, how insignificant they were compared to her.

“I’m ready.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt.

“Meg, maybe—”

“I’m fine,” she said again. “Just need to pay my respects, right?”

Greyson’s hand tightened on hers, but she shook it off and squeezed her way past Brian and Tera into the aisle. Her mother and Dave stood there; Dave’s arm was around Diane’s shoulders and her head was bent, her handkerchief pressed to her face.

“Megan,” Dave said. “I, uh…”

“Sure, Dave. Excuse me.” She brushed past them, lowering her shields a tad as she did so she could feel their shock and pain. Ha, served them right. Silly little things, so worried about their stupid miserable lives, about the opinions of others and their social standing in this piss-ant town…just like her father had been. Just like they all were.

It seemed to take no time at all to reach the front of the church, as if she had glided up the aisle rather than walked. Behind her she heard her friends talking to each other in low urgent whispers, but she ignored them.

Smooth, cold wood pressed against her palms as she curled her fingers around the edge of the coffin. There he was. Her father.

Older than she remembered him, of course. Despite the yearly Christmas photo she still tended to think of him as he’d been when she’d last seen him. Now the years sat plainly on his still, cold face. Even plainer was the truth; this wasn’t her father. He was really gone, and in death he was no less remote to her than he’d been in life.

So sad. She started to whisper it, thinking it might be funny to hear it out loud, to let him know she was too strong for him to hurt now, when the truth of what was happening hit her.

She squeezed the wood, suddenly terrified. This wasn’t her, having these thoughts, standing over the dead body of her father and wanting to laugh. This was someone else, someone cold who lurked inside her, someone who’d taken advantage of her relaxed and wandering mind to lower her shields and open herself to the energy of her demons.

She’d sat in that pew and fed on the mourners. It was their sadness, their pain, making her high.

Footsteps beat a muffled, quick tempo on the floor of the aisle behind her. Her knees gave out, and she fell into Maleficarum’s arms just a second before the world disappeared.

“It was tribute, Megan. They didn’t know it would upset you,” Rocturnus said again. Megan turned around to look at him, perched on the backseat of Greyson’s car. “They were trying to make you feel better, to pay you for letting them be there.”

“Yeah, I feel great now.”

“They thought you might punish them for staying through the whole service if they didn’t.”

“They know I’m not going to punish them,” she snapped. “Why can’t they just get—”

“They don’t know that, and even if they did they would still wish it wasn’t so, and you know it. They need their lives to be run in a certain way.”

“Then maybe we should just let them. Let them go be with someone who’ll beat them regularly, and leave me alone.”

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Greyson said, speaking for the first time since he’d put her in the car. She cringed, thinking of it. Everyone gathered outside, waiting for the casket to be loaded into the hearse for its trip to the cemetery…Just as well she hadn’t planned on going.

“Why not? I don’t want to do this anymore. I’m tired of it, the misery being pushed on me and I’m supposed to be pleased, and the crazy urges—”

“Urges?”

Shit, she hadn’t told him about any of the other stuff, had she? One more thing she was hiding from him. “Their crazy urges to have me punish them. What did you think I meant?”

He shrugged, but she didn’t like the quick sidelong glance he gave her. “Just asking.”

“So why isn’t it a good idea?”

“Well, aside from the very real possibility that you could die, there’s a distinct chance you’ll die.”

“Why?”

“Because, and I thought we all understood this, they’re connected to you. Physically connected. They’re part of your body. Remove them, remove that piece of demon inside you, and you remove your heart. Aside from the metaphysical issues—you could conceivably lose your soul—the physical effects would be devastating.”

Fuck. “But some of them have been leaving, right? And a few have died themselves. So I don’t get it.”

“They’re connected to you as a whole, not individually. Think of it as—as a flower, for lack of a more manly example. A few petals can fall off and it still looks like a flower, but if too many petals go, it’s nothing.”

“So without them, I’ll be nothing.”

“Yes.”

Roc shifted in his seat, breaking the gloomy silence. “Megan, they’ll be waiting. Can I give them your thanks?”

“What? Shit. You might as well. Tell them it was great to see them there, and, um, I’m pleased they came.” She was, even though she felt like someone had just slapped her. They really were trying to help.

Roc nodded and disappeared again.

“Greyson…what happens to a flower when a few of the petals fall off?”

“The other petals have to work harder to get sunlight, I think. Why?”

“Just wondering.” Maybe that was why her unusual desires had been stronger lately. Four of her demons had died. Several more—she wasn’t sure exactly how many—had gone to Ktana Leyak. So if she’d somehow been getting strength, or whatever it was, from them since September, and she needed that now to live…

That might explain why the experience in the church had been so different from the other ones too. Not a sudden, violent craving or aversion, but more like the few occasions in college when she’d smoked a joint. That light, floaty feeling, stealing through her body…it had been excessively pleasant.

Which made it even scarier.