The Demon Side (5 page)

Demons normally give off an immense feeling of coldness, but if you’d feel where a Demon’s feet have touched, you’d find that the heat can cause third degree burns. I made it to the end of the wicker table next to the bed when the door suddenly opened. I waited for the humming, but heard nothing. It wasn’t him. Getting up off my hands and knees, I was surprised to find René looking around the room with a glare in her hooded eyes.

You didn’t need to be a Demon or even smart, for that matter, to see that René truly despised Etta. She walked around the room examining every knick-knack, flipping open books, opening drawers, and even looking inside a few shoes in the closet. She hadn’t gone downstairs for her bottle yet, so her visit hadn’t been a drunken mistake. She seemed to be looking for something in particular. Was she such an alcoholic that she hid booze among her daughter’s belongings? As she turned from the closet to exit the room, she stopped. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the drunk saw me.

Was there something more to this woman? Could it be the ability to see my kind the reason she took so kindly to the booze? I wondered what she searched for until she spat on Etta’s bed. It wasn’t the drink that fueled her hate for Etta. No, something entirely different was going on between mother and daughter. I hadn’t done a walkthrough on her because I didn’t see the need to waste my energy on it. Alcoholics were usually so easy to read from the outside. I could see now that had been yet another mistake on my part.

“We’re home!” John’s crackling voice rang through house. René shuffled out of the room. Whatever she was doing, she didn’t want anyone to know. This woman was hiding more than just vodka bottles around the house.

Something inside me wanted to go downstairs to see how Etta was doing, but it was that something that got me far too wrapped up in her to begin with. I’d continued my search for hotspots on the cold hardwood floor when Etta startled me, dropping down onto her bed, stomach first.

“What are you doing down there?” Etta seemed close to bursting into tears even though her voice sounded happy.

“Looking for hot spots,” I replied before turning back to the floor.

“What for?” Etta asked.

I really didn’t want to get caught up in another conversation with the girl. I tried to ignore the impatient tapping of her finger on the mattress as I felt around the floor at the foot of her bed.

“I understand. I have another entity so you don’t want to talk to me now, huh? Typical guy gets all quiet when there’s competition around.” Etta giggled at her own failed attempt at comedy. The funny thing about jokes is that there is some honesty to them all.

Typical guy? What did she think I was, some jealous boyfriend? She may have known a few things about Demons, but she hit off target with that one. Demons aren’t the jealous type; we’re more the territorial type. I could care less what happened to her or her demonic stalker as long as it didn’t involve my house. Yet I didn’t bother to correct her.

“I’m trying to concentrate, and your constant squawking is a bit of a distraction,” I said instead.

“He was standing right next to you. That’s where you’d find the warm spot. It’s probably gone by now.” Etta rolled on her back and let out a loud frustrated sigh. Normally, I wouldn’t be too happy about a barely eighteen-year-old girl knowing more than I did, but she did have a leg up on me in this situation. I couldn’t see or hear who or whatever attacked her. I got up and went over to where I had watched Etta get lit up a few days ago. That’s what it’s called when we send someone into sheer, paralyzing terror. It’s a difficult trick to pull off. You basically muster up every available ounce of energy you can safely spare and send it through a person’s body. Just the act scares the person so bad they don’t realize they are actually being cooked from the inside out. If done properly it can cause brain damage or death. The human eye can’t see it, but the victim’s eyes, mouth, and every other orifice lights up like New York at night. And I do mean
every
orifice. It’s a beautiful sight to me.

“You learn all this stuff from your books?” I asked. I grudgingly sensed a little excitement in my voice. Maybe it could be because someone finally paid enough attention to know what happened around us all or maybe it was the fact that now I had a worthy opponent who wouldn’t fall for amateur tricks.

“No. Most I learn from my friend Mosh’s dad. He runs the Parapsychology Department at Duke. When you guys started coming out, he was the only one who believed I wasn’t another schizophrenic running around screaming, ‘The demons are coming!’ So, while my dad shoved pills down my throat and René dragged me from one shrink to another, he actually took the time to find out what was really happening to me.” Etta’s eyes never turned from the ceiling.

“Duke?” I asked, shrugging off her “woe is me” monologue. I didn’t want to dive into the depths of Etta’s emotional pool of who loved her and who didn’t.

“It’s a university in North Carolina.”

I rubbed my hand lightly over the spot Etta said the houseguest had been in. She was right. On the floor where she said he’d stood lingered a faint warmth and slight odor, but no trail leading to where he might have set up camp. I would have to wait for him to come for Etta again and trust me, he would. No Demon would risk going out of a home into the nothingness after using as much energy as it takes lighting someone up unless he’d found another plaything. And that’s what Etta apparently became, his plaything—his favorite squeak toy.

“You didn’t see him, did you?” Etta rolled onto her side, resting her head on her hand as she gazed at me, waiting for my answer.

I wasn’t interested in getting buddy-buddy with Etta, but I needed her to fish out the other Demon in my house. I was in no mood to get into an ongoing pissing match over who did what, what belonged to whom, or who scared whom with one of my kind. It was time to remove the other player out of my game, and fast. But if I told Etta that I couldn’t see him, she might perceive it as my weakness. I needed her to believe that I held the ultimate power. But if I told her I’d seen him, she might not trust me since I didn’t help her during the Demon’s attack.

“No, I didn’t,” I reluctantly replied.

“Why’s that?” Etta’s eyebrows rose.

“Anything a Demon can do to you, it can do to another Demon. If I don’t want another Demon to see me, he won’t be able to. It’s called cloaking, and that’s probably what he did.”

Etta looked eager to hear more. Although my honesty came as a bit of surprise to me, I couldn’t see the harm in it. It wasn’t as if I was telling her where a Demon’s Achilles heel was located.

“But I see you all the time. Well, except when I take my meds. They tend to blur you guys out.”

Ah-ha! Her medications had blocked me from her sight all those months. And I suspected René did the same with her constant trips to the liquor cabinet. I needed to learn everything about her yellowish pills. How long did they last? Where did John keep them? Maybe I could switch them with a placebo, leaving Etta with nowhere to hide. I’d need this information for when it came time to get rid of her.

“Do you take them every day?” I asked Etta.

“Off and on. I’m supposed take them twice a day, but most of the time I flush them down the toilet or spit them out. I don’t like the way they make feel. Besides, I don’t even need them, really. I’m not crazy like everyone thinks.” Etta’s body tensed up. Talking about her medication made her edgy.

“How do they make you feel?”

“Numb.” Etta shrugged her shoulders.

“Why do you even have them then if you never take them?”

“Because I can see people like you. Because of your kind, I had to spend the last few nights in a psych ward. Because of Demons, my family is falling apart.”

Etta jumped off the bed and walked to the window, clenching her fists. Though this new information could prove incredibly helpful to me, it wasn’t my intent to upset her.

She’d dropped the tough girl act and showed me her vulnerable side. I didn’t know what to say. The weird tingle in my stomach returned as I stared at this disheveled girl. Something about seeing her that way appealed to me, but not in my typical sadistic way. Her brown eyes sparkled as her tears began to dry. For the first time in my existence, I wished I could hold something for more than just a few minutes. I began to walk toward her when I caught my reflection in her white wicker vanity mirror.

Dull black and dingy grey scales covered my entire eight-foot tall muscle-packed form. Eight six-inch long, thick black claws tipped each hand. Two rows of sharp, pointed teeth and large blood-red eyes filled my sucked-in face. Four curled, blood-stained horns framed my hideous features. The image snapped me out of my delusion. What was I thinking? Holding her? Demons don’t think those things. We feed off screams of fear, chaos, and terror. We think only of ways to torture and inflict pain, both mental and physical.

“You’re not like the other one, you know.” Etta turned and faced me with her arms across her chest. How she could stomach not only to talk to me, but to look at me was truly puzzling. But what became even more puzzling was what she said.

“What do you mean I’m not like him?”

“You’re different. As in, not the same.” Etta’s sarcastic response irked me, but I had to remain calm to get a straightforward answer.

“What does he look like?” I hissed through my teeth, trying hard to keep my temper under control.

“I don’t know. There’s just something really different about you.” The topic made Etta fidget and me extremely impatient. It was time to change the direction of the conversation. I struggled to think of what to say when Etta turned the subject to me.

“So, what’s your story?”

“What do you mean?” I knew what she wanted to know and I had to be very careful. Tell her too much and she could use it against me. Don’t tell her enough and she might shut down communication altogether.

“For starters, why this house? Of all the places you guys can go, why did you choose this place to settle down?” Etta asked a question I’ve been asking myself for centuries.

“I didn’t choose this place. This is where I woke up,” I growled. Why and how I ended up in this forsaken dump was beyond me.

“I thought Demons didn’t sleep.” Etta sat back down on her bed.

“We don’t.” I felt my eyes grow redder.

“So then how do you just wake up somewhere if you don’t sleep?” The girl wasn’t going to give up no matter how tense my outward appearance became.

“C’mon,” I said as I walked inside the closet, motioning for her to follow.

“Wait. Where are you going?” Etta asked, hesitation in her voice.

“You want to know more about me and my kind, I’ll show you.” I opened the plywood access and pulled myself up. When I looked down through the opening, Etta stared up at me expectantly.

“Can you help me up, please?” Etta reached her hand toward me as she stood on her tiptoes.

I’ve never had a human reach for me, except to try to fend me off. Watching her fingers wiggle, as if that would somehow magically extend them upward to me, my stomach tingled again. What I was doing was not only wrong, but against every rule I’ve ever made. And now I found myself about to give her an intimate sneak peek into my life.

I hadn’t gotten much rest since Etta and her family came into my home, and today I was running on empty. Based on Etta’s height and weight, I knew pulling her up into the attic would require a large drain on my reserve.

“Are you going to help me or not?” Etta tried to extend her hand farther.

I couldn’t resist her sheepish smile, but if this could become a bad habit of mine, I needed to get her a stepstool. Moving all of my energy to my five-foot long arm, I wrapped my claws around her wrist and yanked her up into the attic. She was slightly heavier than I pegged her for, by maybe fifteen pounds. It turned me on in my own sadistic way. What can I say? I am a big Demon and I prefer a woman with meat on her bones.

Etta was a nice change from the last girl I decided to pick up and throw across the room. She weighed a hundred pounds and was almost six feet tall. I used to watch her make herself puke after every meal. She had dreams of being a supermodel. Posters of Tyra Banks and Cindy Crawford covered every inch of the bare walls. Boys would literally fight over that bag of bones. Quite honestly, being able to see a girl’s ribs grossed me out; it’s so unnatural. She and her parents were extremely easy to get rid of. It only took me three months, a little tampering with the mirrors in the house, and once she threw up her last meal, mom and dad moved.

“Why did we come up here?” Etta smacked her hands back and forth on her hips, dusting herself off. I found it a little silly to be honest. I controlled her landing in the attic perfectly to make sure she didn’t disturb my sanctuary, so there should have been nothing on her. She probably did it out of nervousness more than she did it to clean off her baggy blue jeans.

“Over here. Can you see it?” I walked to the far back corner where I kept my belongings, mostly little things that stuck out to me or annoyed me that I had taken from previous occupants. I’ve collected everything from quilts to pictures and even a few CD’s. But behind them all was where I kept my prized possessions: my armor, shield, and sword. I have only used them in severe cases when tenants simply would not get the hint. I used it on the last Marine that lived and died here. Poor guy hung himself with his belt. Wonder what made him do that?