"And here I was actually trying to be your friend. Silly me. I should have figured it out sooner."
The Demon that was Barb danced a bit, actually spinning in place a little, to music that only she could hear it seemed.
"Really. You think so? Why? The Technician didn't get it and neither did the old man. You're barely out of the crib. Maybe a month old? I really don't think it's fair to expect you to have gotten what the grown-ups totally missed, do you? You are a clever one though, so maybe you should have. It wouldn't have helped you much though. Now, before I finish growing a dick here, why don't you ask me all those questions you must be dying to have answers to. You know the ones..." The girl started to slowly undo her pants, making room for the bulge that was, as mentioned, actually growing there.
"Like how I guessed that you aren't older? You certainly seem it. Not a crack in the armor, not a single hint that I could find. Walking the lines like you do... Amazing Keels. Truly. I didn't manage that for nearly three hundred years myself. Then, I didn't have anyone to teach me."
Keeley shrugged.
"I learned on my own too. It wasn't that hard." She was about done healing, but honestly didn't think she could do it again. It was tempting to call her slaves in to fight, but this being in front of her would just kill them all. It served no purpose and other than Balthias wouldn't help at all. Even he probably couldn't do more than buy a few seconds.
Fighting herself was out too, clearly.
It came down to just the one thing then. The one thing she was pretty good at so far.
A deal.
Which Barb walked into nearly perfectly.
"That whole "Mistress of Souls" thing too, taking
Vampires
against their will. Do you think you could take a Demon? One of us I mean, not the soiled leavings of the Christian mind. More to the point, do you think you could take
me
? Maybe we could have a little wager? I hear you like those don't you "Mistress of Souls" make your victims struggle under you while you have your way?" She thrust her hips a few times to illustrate what she meant.
"Here's mine then. You try to take me and if you fail you have to serve me for one hundred years. If I don't just kill you I mean. I won't try to force you, you just have to give your word to me you'll do it. If you win, well, then I guess we fight then, because I won't just let you have me that easily. I could lie and say I'd be good, but why bother? One way or the other I'll eventually have you, Deal?"
It wasn't, because that wasn't the way it would go at all. Keeley didn't know if she could take a Demon either, but she wasn't just going to give in. Even if it meant death.
"How's this instead... If you move, or breathe, or think too long, you will be mine. All rules are mine and you will obey me without end. Tell me we have a deal." The rule was that you couldn't take a Greater Demon, that it was like with Vampires, but it had happened a few times. One of them to Darla.
There was only a grunt in reply, but it was enough.
They locked into a struggle that was so much harder than anything she'd ever done before that Keeley knew she couldn't win. It
had
to be done though, because she really didn't want to spend the rest of the night being raped to death, which seemed to be Barb's go to plan as far as bonding went. She rallied and fought, struggling to lock the energy into place, the Demon being more slippery than not, like a half melted ice cube in July.
Things burned inside her as she pulled on the last of her reserves, energy running out totally just as she felt the soft sigh of the universe.
"No!" Barb screamed, panicked.
"Quiet." The noise cut off instantly then.
"You will not think, or speak, unless I command you to." Keeley sat on the dirt, small rocks digging into her, not able to get enough air for a while. She wasn't having to fight to hold the link yet, not like she'd thought she would be. It was a good thing or she would have lost it and probably just died. There wasn't anything left energy wise inside her. Nothing.
"You may never lie to me, or plot your freedom in anyway. There are no loopholes allowed, or struggle. Do you understand? You may speak to answer me."
"Yes... Master." The words were grudging, but Keeley could stop that.
"You
like
being my slave and feel incredibly happy about it. You will from now on."
She still couldn't rise, just stuck in place like an invalid. That being the case, there was no way she could do this. Not for long. After a while any Greater Demon would find a hole, a weak spot in what she said. When that happened Barb would kill her. If she didn't simply die from the stress of it all anyway.
"Tell me, what is your name. What do the others call you? Your real name, not Barb."
The form in front of her didn't move, clearly fighting the words that came out anyway.
"Xenses."
That made sense. Who else would have bothered?
"Why did you try to kill me? To get at Darla?"
"I didn't." The words fought again, a small struggle coming even as it was forbidden.
"Stop that! No fighting, not on any level. What do you mean, you clearly intended to kill me, didn't you?"
"No, I was just playing. I
love
you Keeley. I just want to kill the Technician. More now after what she did."
Keeley knew it wouldn't be much longer until she failed, she felt herself slipping away, fading from reality all together, too weak to hold much longer. If she let go though, this thing in front of her would kill her, despite what it said. There was almost no other choice.
"What did she do?"
"She... hid my daughter from me. To punish me. Or to protect you. I don't know which. I won't just let that go though. She will pay for it."
Even dying like she was Keeley got the meaning. She just couldn't argue the point at the moment. Or let her friend be killed. There was nothing left for her to do... Except to take one desperate stab at trying to save the others around her.
"Fine. Xenses, kill yourself, go far away from me and destroy your being utterly. You have five minutes to do this. Go." It probably wouldn't work, but the form vanished almost instantly, taking to the inroads a lot faster than she ever would have managed.
She tried to hold on. If she could last long enough, maybe Xenses would actually do it. Manage to destroy himself. A few minutes later the thread was gone, the link between them. The sense was like a breath of air after being held under water for too long. It could have been his death, but what were the odds of that really? Greater Demons weren't that simple to kill, or everyone would be doing it. Still, it wasn't a huge energy backlash or anything either, just the line snapping, which meant it didn't kill her immediately either. That was a good sign.
She tried to crawl back to the meeting hall, just in case he came back, but passed out before she got there. Not even half way, her clown make-up picking up gritty dirt on the right side as she lay there. A few minutes later she came to enough to try again, dirt and gravel digging painfully into her knees and palms. It was a struggle to keep going, made harder by the aching in her gut from hunger. She made it to the side of the building, but couldn't even yell. There was just nothing there anymore, inside of her. Keeley just laid there instead, working to breath enough not to black out again.
After a while, a time that was probably minutes but could have been almost any length of time, one of the Vets found her and helped her walk inside, asking if she'd been hurt or taken any drugs. She mumbled that she needed food, which caused the man to assume she was diabetic. He did take her right in though, which got everyone to gather round her fast enough.
"Keeley, what happened... You're skin and bones." Sherry ran to her, but it was Clara that figured out what she needed opening the nozzle end on a soda syrup pack and holding it up while she struggled to drink it all. It wasn't carbonated, just thick and sweet. It was large, meant to make about twenty gallons of soda. She got it all down, along with two others and the remains of the snacks off the table before she even tried to talk. It wasn't enough yet, but it would keep her alive. Looking down she saw how much of herself she'd used and winced. She really looked like a walking skeleton. Without all the entertaining moving of course.
"We should get home. I need more food. Clara, when you and your people are done here, could you come to my house and make sure I have enough to eat?"
Everyone insisted on going, but only Hally and Eve were really needed, along with Sherry. Rebekah had to do something else. It wasn't a fair thing to ask, but it had to be done and Keeley wasn't in any shape to see to it.
"Dad, Charles... He's dead mom. Xenses... I'll tell you later. I know the head is out back. Maybe the body too. We can't leave it. No investigation. He ran from the country. It stays that way. I just wish so many people hadn't seen him tonight." It started tears down Sherry's face and she insisted on going to look herself. It was a bad plan, but her call.
Eve got them a car, driven by a guy in his late teens that Keeley didn't know. Eve, apparently, didn't either. She'd just said they needed help and he
offered
it. She mumbled that Eve should get the guy's name and number. He had to be a better choice for the girl than Balthias at least.
She drifted in and out for a bit, but found herself on the living room sofa when she came to, food being offered to her bite after bite. It took a lot of it, but it wasn't like she had to re-grow a limb. No, just replace a fat layer that had been almost missing and about fifteen pounds of muscle. It took a lot of concentration to get done, but by mid-afternoon the next day, Clara giving her something like a milkshake, she figured it was good enough for the time being. She looked about the same at any rate. Maybe a little leaner at the waist, but her breasts had a little more fat to fill them out, so it was probably about right in overall body mass. She'd look a little funny for a while though if anyone paid too much attention. A couple of days at least. A bit too much like a comic book super-hero and too little like a real girl.
"I need to find another job." Keeley mused out loud, having spent the better part of a day trying to gain weight. Who did that after all? This was America. Hardly fair that she'd have to be the one that just couldn't keep anything on. That was just being moody though, because she was worried about pretty much everything in existence at the moment.
Xenses could be back any second and she knew she wasn't really ready to take him in a fight. It might be possible that he died, sure, but Demons that old and powerful probably didn't just fall like that to babies like her. The force of the single blow that had hit her played over in her mind, not letting her think of anything else for a long time. Not the fact that it had nearly killed her "thrice" as some liked to call it, meaning well and truly dead, but that as far as she could tell, from every memory in the archive she had access to, one thing was crystal clear.
Barb really had pulled that punch. It was barely a tap for Xenses.
There was no way her head would have stayed on her body otherwise. Not even healing as fast as she was at the time. It was probably what had happened to her dad. A single blow out of nowhere, faster than he could even have made out. She hoped that was the case. She felt a misery that ate at her over it all.
She
killed him, just as certainly as if she'd taken a gun and shot him in the head. If it wasn't for her being who and what she was, Charles would have been safe in Mexico, or possibly going off to prison by then. Instead he was in a deep hole out in the boonies somewhere in an unmarked grave.
Rebekah had done the work and Balthias had carried the body for her, but there was no service, no hint that her father, the man that raised her for good or ill, was doing more than sipping frosty drinks with little umbrellas on a beach somewhere.
The other worry was twofold and even more powerful than the fear of a crazy Greater Demon coming for her. Was what he'd said true at all? Could he be her father? He was bound to her at the time and that meant he couldn't lie, but it just felt so unlikely. For one thing, why would Finias and Darla try to claim her if it wasn't true. Or why not just say something along the lines of "hey, Keels, by the way, your real dad is a crazy person. Just thought that needed to be said."
Was it some kind of trick then? If so what else had they told her that was wrong? Could she trust anything at all? Barb had fooled her pretty solidly and Xenses wasn't exactly noted for being clever or overly good about things like that. What could the others do if they wanted then? Would she even be able to tell it was being done at all?
The whole thing almost had her spinning in circles. For all she knew the information that Tarsus, The Librarian, had given her was just a trick to lead her down the wrong path. It wasn't like they weren't all Demons. Of course by that same token Xenses could have just been stringing her along the whole time, making her think he was caught when the fact was that it was all a game and she was still being played. She just didn't have the knowledge she needed and worse, given the head start everyone else had on her, there was no possible way for her to catch up.
If the people on her side weren't really with her...
She was dead.
There was a small chance she could just take off and run for it, but even then she'd need to stay mobile all the time. Otherwise it was too likely that someone could trace her. There was only one thing for her to do at the moment though and that was to stop worrying about things she didn't have control over. It took a while to chase them all down inside her head, but once it was done she felt much better. Back in charge of her own life.
Then she decided to try and figure out what she needed to do in order to survive. Somehow she had to grow stronger, in a way that didn't take magic to maintain. Whatever else had been said, that was just true, she was weak compared to everyone else she might have to fight. Then she needed some allies that weren't being handed to her by Darla or Dan. How to find those she didn't know, but there had to be a way.