The Demon Inside Me Read online

  The Demon Inside Me

  Kindle Edition

  ©2011 Christopher Nelson

  Cover Art by Christopher Howell

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  Acknowledgements

  To the beta readers who kept me crawling along, in no particular order, Amy, Ethan, Anders, Shaun, Steve, Jennifer, and Andreas. You gave me the will to finish.

  To my teachers long ago who encouraged me (or maybe more accurately, didn't discourage me) - Mrs. Crisci, Mrs. Aucompaugh, and Mr. Foster - thanks for instilling all those basic writing tools and habits in my head.

  This book has been mostly written under the influence of one of my Pandora channels - so, thank you to the music of Rise Against, 30 Seconds to Mars, Paramore, and more - and to Pandora themselves for such an excellent service.

  Chapter One

  Tuesday was a mixed sort of day. On the upside, I met a girl who pulled me close and whispered in my ear. On the downside, she put a knife to my throat and said she was going to kill me.

  A mixed sort of day. I've had worse.

  I raised my hands without being asked. "Wallet's in the front right pocket." Tomorrow was payday, and I only had a few bucks on me, so what the hell. If she needed the money that badly, she could have it. No one would see her unless someone bothered to look out the window, down into the alley between Lark Street and my gym. I had always thought less of myself for being motivated enough to get up and exercise early in the morning, but then taking a shortcut instead of walking an extra minute. Now my laziness was paying off, so to speak.

  Instead of taking the wallet like a halfway competent mugger, she continued to whisper in my ear. Her words weren't English, but a language with harsh consonants and glottal stops. Many humans bit their tongue halfway through a sentence. Unfortunately for me, she was fluent enough to spray all over my ear.

  I swallowed and felt the knife press a little harder into my throat. "I'm sorry, but I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say."

  She repeated herself. I wanted to tell her that repeating what you just said, only louder, doesn't work on anyone over the age of six. Instead, I corrected her pronunciation. The knife abruptly pulled away. "You're not Azriphel," she said.

  I rubbed my throat. My fingers came away red and I clicked my tongue in annoyance. John was going to have my head if I showed up bloody today with management making their monthly appearance in the call center. No way could I talk it off as a shaving accident. "I'm not Azriphel, no, nor would he submit to you, even if you asked politely. What you said wasn't coherent, much less polite. Is that what you were trying to get across, or do you need some help with pronunciation?"

  The point of her knife poked into my back. I moved my hand away from my throat and stretched that arm out again. "You know Azriphel," she stated. Her voice was soft. She sounded cute. She'd have been cuter without the knife. "If you know Azriphel, I'm going to have to kill you after all. I can't let word get back to him."

  "Hold on. Hear me out first. You have me at a severe disadvantage here. Let me say my piece and see if I can convince you to let me live instead."

  "Ten words or less."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Ten words or less," she repeated. "I won't count those."

  I sighed. "I don't need ten words, only three. I'm a halfblood."

  "That's four words," she said. "Twelve words total. I need to decide if I should kill you. Give me a moment to think it over."

  "You're going to kill me for using contractions? You can't do that. That's the most ridiculous reason to die I've ever heard." I shook my head. "Look, if you've got something against Azriphel, that's fine by me. I've heard about him. I'm insulted you'd mistake me for him. That hurts. That hurts deep. I understand why you'd want to hunt him. Now how about you let me go, I'll forget all about this and go to work, and you can get back to hunting him. Sound like a deal?"

  "You talk a lot for a demon." The point of the knife pressed against the small of my back. I still hadn't gotten as much as a glimpse of her. Her tone was so soft, I suspected I wouldn't be able to recognize it if I ever heard it again.

  "Halfblood," I said. "I'm a halfblood."

  "You haven't proven that," she said.

  "How do you expect me to prove it?"

  "Don't die." The blade slid in next to my spine, gliding through skin and muscle. I held very still. She had aimed low enough to miss my heart, for which I was grateful. She wiggled the knife a little, widening the slice by another fraction of an inch, and I felt blood start to gush. The girl was ruining one of my favorite shirts. Worse yet, I'd need to take a sick day.

  It also hurt like a son of a bitch. Maybe she wasn’t such an amateur after all.

  "Are you still alive?" she asked.

  "I'm still alive."

  "Are you sure?"

  I patted my sides, then my chest. "Still here. Happy now?"

  "I have an ignition spell imbued on my knife," she said. "I'd recommend not upsetting me. I'm a jumpy girl. Easily startled. Loud noises might make me do something regrettable. You know how it goes."

  Maybe I had underestimated her. Maybe she had the capability to do me serious harm. Maybe. "All right. You got me. Now what?"

  "What do you mean, now what?"

  "I mean, congratulations, you stuck it in, now what are you going to do with it? Do you want to stay here and exchange witty banter until someone wakes up and calls the cops? Girl, this situation isn't going to get any better for either of us. Like I said, we can both just walk away from this, forget it ever happened, and get on with our lives." My arms were starting to get heavy. "Sound like a deal?"

  "I don't see why I should just let you go," she said. "Even if you're not Azriphel, you're still a demon. I have a nice prize here. I think I should take advantage of that."

  "Under different circumstances, I wouldn't mind being taken advantage of by a young lady such as you. It's been a while, you know."

  She laughed. "You've got an imbued knife stuck in your back and ichor running down the crack of your ass. Even though I could set you on fire with a word, you're still cracking wise. If you weren't a demon, I think I could get to like you."

  "Hey, I like you, even if you did stick a knife in my back. I like gutsy chicks like you. I think we'll be good friends, once we get past this little disagreement."

  "Disagreement?"

  "Yeah." I flexed my shoulders and took a deep breath. It hurt, but I was already deadening the pain. "First of all, I'm not a demon. I'm a halfblood. I insist on that distinction. Second, that's not ichor, that's blood, just like what's running in your veins. I’m type O positive, if you're curious. Third, if that knife does have some sort of magic on it, it's so weak I can't even feel it. It wouldn't set me on fire, much less a full-blooded demon. Azriphel would be more likely to die from laughter than injury."

  She took a short, quick breath. I continued. "Like I said, I'm willing to let bygones be bygones. This is my third time asking. I'm free to act after this, you know that, right?" She didn't reply. "So, let's walk. No harm, though I should make you pay for the clothes you ruined. Everyone's happy. Sound like a deal?"

  I felt a tug as she pulled the knife out. I bet her hand was drenched. Served her right. I patted the wound and swore silently. One of my favorite shirts, slashed and soaked with blood, absolutely ru
ined. It had cost me thirty bucks, on sale. What a wonderful day.

  I looked over my shoulder, but she had already turned her back on me. Golden blonde hair streamed halfway down her back, pulled back by a hairband. The band itself caught my eye. A pattern was etched into the metal, a circle with an equilateral triangle stretched across it, each corner extending just past the curve of the circle.

  I stopped staring at the hairband and checked her out. She was short, tiny in comparison to me. The top of her head didn't even come up to my shoulders. The mental image made me laugh, and I saw her shoulders stiffen. "Hey, I wasn't laughing at you," I said. "Well, ok, I was. You're shorter than I thought. Did you need a stepladder to reach my throat?"

  She spun around so quickly, her hair whipped out in a halo around her. The knife was back in her hand and her teeth flashed white. Without saying a word, she spun the knife between her fingers and slashed it across her left palm. I blinked. Blood oozed from the wound and she quickly slapped the flat of her knife against the wound, flipped it over, and did it again on the other side.

  It was the blood loss. It certainly wasn't due to watching her ass in her short shorts, or watching her chest heave under that tight white tank top. It certainly wasn't because I was wondering how she'd look without those shorts or top.

  Naturally, she stabbed me in the stomach, deliberately aiming for a place that wouldn't be fatal. The knife, covered in her blood, sank in. It took seconds for her blood to mingle with mine, and this time I did feel the tingle of magic, like an itch somewhere that just can't be scratched. "Hey, this is a really big mistake," I said.

  "By my blood, I bind you," she said. "By my blood, I invoke a contract."

  "I don't know anything about Azriphel," I said. "Really, I don't. You're not going to get much out of a contract with me."

  "By my blood, I bind you. By my blood, I invoke your service."

  "I'm not a good servant. I mean, I work in sales, but that's not really service, right?"

  "By my blood, I bind you. By my blood, I invoke your obedience," she said, and her determined expression faded into a grim smile. Unfamiliar magic burned through my veins. "And I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't die before we're done here."

  "I'd appreciate it if you'd pull the knife out," I said. "Are you sure you want to do this? It's not very polite to stab and bind a stranger. Didn't your parents teach you any manners?"

  She yanked the knife out and wiped it on my shirt. I nearly protested, but gave it up. The shirt was a write-off, the pants were a write-off, the whole damn day was a write-off, and now I had contract negotiations to deal with. I glared at her and her smile became a grin. "Don't glare at your new master like that, demon," she said. "I'll get upset. You already know I get easily upset."

  "Halfblood," I corrected her.

  "Demon," she said.

  "Halfblood!"

  "Demon. Let's get down to business here. I need help, and you're going to help me. You owe me a contract by sunrise, right?" She looked at her left wrist. There was no watch. "I'll be, about an hour to sunrise. What a surprise. Where shall we begin?"

  I held my hands up in front of me. "Settle down, my bonnie lass. First of all, give me the knife, if you please."

  She cocked her head to the side. "Give you the knife so you can stab me?"

  "Are you kidding? You're too pretty to stab." I pointed at my stomach, which was still leaking. "I'd just like to do something about this before we start contract negotiations."

  She laughed and flipped the knife toward me. I caught it and concentrated on my blood. Halfblood wasn't just a metaphor for my parentage. I forced ichor to my left hand and jabbed my finger. A drop of green ichor oozed from the puncture, hissing and smoking. The stench of sulfur from a single drop was sickening. "Impressive," was all she said.

  "If you say so," I said. "I stopped finding it impressive when I was a kid." I pulled my shirt up to reveal the gaping, oozing wound in my gut.

  "You're going to use your own ichor to heal yourself? Why didn’t you just push it from where I already cut you?"

  "Waste not, want not," I said. "I could start gushing ichor all over the ground if you'd like. The fumes might not kill you, but I hear that prolonged exposure isn't too healthy."

  She shrugged. "You're the expert, I guess."

  I touched the ichor to the wound and let the demonic part of my being do its work. The cut began to seal itself. I could have regenerated it normally, but that would have worked from the inside out, and I wanted the visible wound to go away first. Getting back to the apartment in a blood-soaked shirt was going to be hard enough without leaving a trail. "Like I said, my bonnie wee lass, I'm a halfblood. That's why I was bleeding sweet red blood first, rancid green ichor second."

  "Did you just call me a bonnie wee lass again?"

  "No. I called you a bonnie lass the first time, and a bonnie wee lass just now."

  She stuck her hand out. "I want my knife back."

  "I'll give it back once we get back to my place."

  "What?" Her composure was fracturing. "Look, demon, do you think you're in charge here? You have less than an hour to make a contract with me. You're going to be on the serving end, remember?"

  "Is that what you think a contract is?" I asked. "Contracts are binding as partners, not master and servant. Something for something, and believe me, I'm not interested in your soul, and 'allowing you to live' hasn't passed arbitration in hundreds of years. We've got case law on our side."

  Her lip curled. "We'll see about that, demon."

  I slapped my forehead. "Would you...no, never mind. Look. Let's go back to my place and cool off. We'll have some coffee, relax, and discuss terms." Her expression didn't change and I sighed. "Look, wench, I need to change my clothes, thanks to you, and I need to call in sick, also thanks to you, and I need to lie down for a while. That last part's also thanks to you, if you didn't already figure it out. You owe me that much."

  "Wench?"

  "I don't know what to call you, woman!" I threw my hands up in the air. "I despair of you. Where's your sense of humor?"

  "I'll show you my sense of humor as soon as you give me my knife back."

  "Funny. I'll give you the knife back at the door to my apartment," I said. "You can consider it a test to see how I'll keep my end of the contract up."

  "You have some big brass ones for a demon who's been busy bleeding all over the alleyway for the past few minutes. I'll play along. I'm not the one who's going to have the blood start boiling out of my body come sunrise. If you want to keep it to the last minute, that's fine with me. I can always hunt another demon."

  "No offense, but I hope you fail at hunting down any other demons," I said.

  "None taken," she said. "So lead on, Mr. Demon. Let's go back to your den of evil."

  I shut my mouth before I could get into any more trouble and led her back to my apartment a couple of blocks away. The blood on my clothes raised a few eyebrows, but we made it without public outcry, which wasn't terribly surprising, considering the area. The girl seemed calm enough, but when she brushed against me walking into my building, I could sense her heart hammering. By the way she glanced at me, I wondered if she had gotten a read on me too.

  I was feeling a bit lightheaded. Even with my ichor taking up the slack, I couldn't just blow off that sort of blood loss. A couple minutes of rest was all I needed to get myself back in order.

  The elevator took us up to the third floor. Normally, I'd have taken the stairs. I didn't want to get any blood in the stairwell, or fall down the stairs, so I leaned on her shoulder. There were three reasons for that. First, it meant she couldn't get a good grab at the knife without dropping me. Second, I got a good look down her top. Third, it made her assume I was weaker than I really was.

  We took a step out of the elevator as soon as the doors slid open and I got a face full of tits. As such joys weren't a daily occurrence, I didn't complain. When the owner of said tits backed off, I reluctantly looked up. I was hopi
ng I had a new neighbor, or maybe it was one of the grad students from the other end of the hall. Instead, Rebekah Silvatini crossed her arms and frowned down at me. "You look like hell, Bright," she said.

  "Thanks, Becky," I said. "I feel pretty hellish right about now."

  "You want me to have a chat with whoever did it?" She smiled. One of her teeth looked newly capped. In case it wasn't clear, she slapped her left side. I heard something hard thump against something soft. I wanted no details.

  The girl wasn't saying anything. I didn't blame her. Becky wasn't easy on the eyes. Monica Bellucci, she wasn't. "Not a big deal, Becky. I got jumped on the way to work. This little ray of sunshine gave me a hand getting home. Isn't she precious?"

  Becky leaned down to investigate my mystery girl. "She's cute. Your new girl?"

  "Not yet," I said, earning a baleful glare.

  Becky leaned in closer and licked her lips. I groaned inwardly. "She’s too cute for you. Maybe I should take her and teach her a thing or two."

  "I regret to inform you that I'm one hundred and ten percent straight," the girl said. "And if I had to choose between him and you, I’d choose to cut my own throat."

  I wanted to slap a hand over her mouth, but the damage had already been done. Becky straightened up and laughed. "I like this one, Bright," she said. "Spicy."

  I chuckled weakly as a door slammed shut down the hallway. I peered around Becky's bulk. Her "roommate", Lionel, was a good match for her in size, character, and attitude. "Miss Rebekah," he said. "We need to get moving. Your father is impatient."

  "Business." Becky brushed us aside as she got onto the elevator. Lionel followed, testing just how much weight the cable could bear. "See you later, Bright," she called as the doors slid closed.

  "Don't get arrested," I called back.

  "Arrested?" the girl asked.

  "Becky's got a tendency to go places that nice, law-abiding citizens like you and I wouldn't dare go near. Well, I wouldn't go there, at least."