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Milo didn’t look up. “No.”
“It’s a really good series. It’s been adapted into a TV show. They’re on Season Three right now. You should read them. They’re all about these star-crossed lovers, Balthazar and Tempest. She’s a Dark Faerie and he’s an Eternal. That’s, uh, that’s what they’re called. He’s got an evil brother and her parents are nuts and she’s just been possessed by the ghost of her ex-boyfriend. It’s set in Montana. They sometimes have horses on the show.”
“Horses are nice,” Milo said, in a voice that indicated he wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention.
Amber glowered and stopped trying to make conversation.
They sat in silence for another ten minutes, and then Milo’s phone buzzed. He checked it, and stood.
“She’s back,” he said, tucking the western into his back pocket and picking up the shotgun. He left the apartment, and Amber immediately leaped up, scanning her surroundings for an escape route.
After a few moments, she sat back down.
She heard the faint ping of the elevator arriving, and then low voices as Imelda and Milo exchanged whatever they had that passed for pleasantries. Thirty seconds later, Imelda came in.
Amber sat back into the couch, her arms folded.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Imelda said.
“You hit me.”
“You were screaming.”
“Not when you hit me.”
“If it makes a difference, I’m pretty sure you were going to faint, anyway.”
“So why didn’t you let me faint?”
Imelda hesitated. “I should have let you faint. I’m sorry.” Her apology apparently over with, Imelda walked into the kitchen. “Have you had anything to eat?”
Amber didn’t answer. She was starving, and thirsty, but to respond was to forgive, and she wasn’t prepared to do that yet.
Imelda made herself a cappuccino without trying to engage her again in chit-chat. When she was done, she came over, sat where Milo had been sitting. She took a sip, placed the delicate cup on the delicate saucer on the delicate coffee table, and sat back. “You need to eat something,” she said. “I can hear your stomach rumbling from here.”
“That’s not hunger. That’s anger.”
“Your belly rumbles when you’re angry? I didn’t know that about you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Well,” said Imelda, “that’s not strictly true.”
“You’ve barely ever spoken to me.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know you. Your parents kept us all very well informed – and they know you a lot better than you think.”
Amber looked at her in silence for a moment. “What did you do to me earlier? My skin and … What was that?”
“You know what that was.”
Amber shook her head. “No. I’m not like you. I’m not a monster like you. What did you do to me?”
“I didn’t do anything. You were born that way.”
“I wasn’t born with red skin, Imelda. I wasn’t born with frikkin’ horns.”
“No, but it was inside you.”
Amber glared. “Show me, then. Go on. Change. Transform. Go demony. I want to see it again.”
“Amber, I don’t think—”
“Go on,” said Amber. “I wasn’t really expecting it the first time. Now I’m ready. Let’s see you in all your glory.”
Imelda sighed. “Fine,” she said, and stood, and her skin reddened and her features sharpened and her horns grew, and Amber shrank back instinctively.
There was something about the very shape of Imelda now, the way the horns curved, the way her face – once a pretty face, now a beautiful face – caught the sunlight, there was something about all of it that sent a shiver down Amber’s back. This was the shape that nightmares took, deep in the darkest parts of her subconscious.
“You can do this, too,” Imelda said. Her teeth were pointed. She was taller. Her shoulders were broader. Her clothes were tighter. Her top had come untucked. “You just decide you want to shift, and you shift.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Shift, change, transform. You can come up with your own name for it, if you want.”
“I don’t want. I don’t want to shift. I don’t want to be a monster.” Amber realised she was shaking.
“It’s really not that bad,” said Imelda. “You get powerful. You get stronger and faster and you feel something inside you just … alter. It’s like you’re becoming the person you were always meant to be.”
“Not person. Monster.”
The smile on Imelda’s face faded. “Monster,” she said. “Yes.” She reverted to her normal state, and tucked in her top. She looked almost embarrassed as she sat back down. “Well, there you go, anyway. That’s how it’s done. If you’re ready to listen, I’ll tell you how it started.”
“You’re not going to let me leave, are you? So go ahead.”
Imelda took another sip from her cup. “I’ve known your parents since I was your age.”
“I know,” said Amber.
“No, you don’t. I met your parents when I was sixteen years old. They were already courting.”
“Courting?”
“That’s the old word for dating. Which is probably an old word for whatever it is you call it now. We met Grant a year later. Bill befriended Alastair at Harvard, and Kirsty was added to the group after Bill and Betty got married.”
“Bill didn’t go to Harvard.”
“I think it’s safe to say that you don’t really know your parents, Amber. Is it safe to say that?”
A strange feeling overtook Amber, a feeling of being adrift, cut off from everything she had thought she knew. “Yes,” she admitted softly.
“I’m telling you this so that you’ll know that we were all friends by the time the world welcomed in the New Year … of eighteen hundred and ninety.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m one hundred forty-six years old, Amber, and your parents are three years older than me.”
Amber didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Bill and Alastair met some interesting people at Harvard,” Imelda continued. “There were all kinds of clubs and societies back then: curious people looking to expand their horizons. They started out by merely dabbling in the occult, Bill and Alastair. And they drew the rest of us in.”
“What do you mean by occult?” Amber asked. “You mean like black magic?”
“I mean all magic. Or as much magic as we could do, anyway. There were limits to the levels to which we could rise. I … I have no excuses for the things I’ve done. I let myself be swept along, but Bill and Betty … This was all they thought about. Early on, Bill came to us with a story he’d heard, of a deal with a being called the Shining Demon. In exchange for a tribute, this Demon would grant power, strength, magic and, if you obeyed the rules, eternal life.”
“By turning you into demons yourselves?”
“You’re skipping ahead,” said Imelda, “but yes.”
“Why would you want to be turned into demons?”
“Did you not hear what I said? About the power and the strength and the eternal life?”
“But you’d be monsters.”
Imelda gave her a soft smile. “Look at me. Do I look like a monster? We can hide. We’re very good at it. But you interrupted me. Bill came to us with this story he’d heard. We got interested. We wanted to know if it was true, and if so how we could get a deal like that for ourselves. It took us years, piecing together the different clues, following every lead …”
“And then you met the Shining Demon.”
“We were told about a book. The Blood-dimmed King, it was called. We tracked it down to this magician in Boston, and we stole it. The Blood-dimmed King is a devil, or the Devil, or the King of Demons or … something. He goes by many names, and he has these Demons who interact with people here on Earth – Demons with a capital D. The Shining Demon is one of them. The book detailed how we could make contact.”
“How did you?”
“It was a ritual. It took months to prepare. So many requirements to meet, things to arrange. We couldn’t eat for four days beforehand. Couldn’t drink for two. It was hard, arranging everything. Almost impossible. But we did it. We managed it. And we made contact.”
“Did it look like you?” Amber asked. “You know, monster–you?”
Imelda shook her head. “He was … he was something else. But the book said that one of the most important rules was not to look at him. You avert your eyes. I only caught glimpses. The first thing I noticed was the smell. We were in a basement. Dark. Cold. And then there was this smell of sulphur. It got stronger and stronger until … One moment we were down there, just the six of us, the next this light started to burn, right in front of us, and he kind of grew out of that light. We all looked away immediately.”
“And you didn’t sneak a peek?”
“All I can tell you was that he glowed. He shone.” There was a strange look in Imelda’s eye. Almost wistful.
“And he offered you a deal,” Amber said, a little louder than necessary.
Imelda snapped out of it. “Yes. He offered us power. Power enough for seven people.”
“But there were only six of you.”
Imelda went quiet for a moment. “That’s right. He told us what we’d have to do. The terms and conditions were … unexpected. Half of us – Kirsty and Grant and myself – wanted to walk out right there and then. But in doing so we’d break the circle and … well. He would tear us apart. So we stayed. And we listened. And, in the end, we agreed.”
“To what?”
She cleared her throat. “The Shining Demon would give us power enough for seven people. So two of us would have to have a child. That child would grow up, and their power would manifest at some stage in their sixteenth year. They’d become as strong as we were. Just like you.”
“Okay,” said Amber. “And then there’d be seven of you. What was wrong with that?”
“It was what was expected in return, Amber. Some Demons want souls. The more they have, the stronger they get. The stronger they get, the stronger the Blood-dimmed King becomes. But the Shining Demon didn’t want souls from us. He wanted a jar of blood from each of us. Our blood, which had magic in it already, spiced with … more magic.”
“And how did you spice your blood?”
Imelda’s eyes locked on Amber’s.
Seconds passed.
“You’re looking at me like you’re expecting me to figure something out,” Amber said, “but I have no idea what it is you’re hoping for.”
Imelda held her gaze. “Your parents had a son.”
Amber’s eyebrows rose. “I have a brother?” She’d dreamed of having a brother or a sister, someone to talk to, to share with, to alleviate that awful feeling of loneliness that would creep up on her whenever the house got too quiet.
“Your parents had a son,” Imelda repeated. With emphasis on the had. “He reached his sixteenth birthday. A few months later, he started having headaches, started feeling sick, and then his power manifested.”
“Yes? And?”
“And we killed him.”
Amber paled. “What?”
“The Shining Demon explained it all to us, down in that cellar. He told us how we’d have to absorb the seventh’s power, how that would make our blood more potent, how that would be a suitable tribute.”
“You killed my brother?”
“We killed him,” Imelda said. “And then we ate him.”
(#ufbc59ab5-a287-5422-a79b-6b57fe88f674)
THE WORLD DULLED.
“No,” said Amber in a soft, soft voice.
“Our demon forms made it easy. Made it far too easy.”
Amber shook her head. “You can’t have done that. Please, Imelda, tell me you didn’t do that.”
“We could never let the children reach the stage where they’d realise what they were. It was too dangerous. Too unpredictable. We got stronger with each child we consumed, but each one was born with a strength to rival our own. You’re the only one I’ve seen actually get a chance to shift.”
“Was … was I going to be eaten, too?” Amber was suddenly standing. “They were going to eat me? They were going to kill me and eat me? My own frikkin’ parents?”
