The Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher (namjoon book recommendations txt) 📖

Feet clawed and scaled pounded the ground in a tribal rhythm. The beating of chest, feathered and armored blended into a melodic clamor. Fingers sunk into the earth to scoop bracken from the floor, and heave it into the air with flourish, letting it sprinkle over them like polluted rain. Clothes thin, transparent as the smoke that snaked around them, billowed and streamed in the wind as they gyrated and preened around my bound body. Every beady eye, fluttery lash and arced eyebrow was directed at me, yet the mouths and bodies whined a tune I was too dizzy to recognize. They shrieked and hissed. Leaping and dancing they groped and kissed, smiled and bit. Blood was drawn with screeches of rancor and their lusty whimpers whipped up a hungered frenzy.

I blinked, and focused hard on the centre of the commotion. They danced around something wide, flat and gray, raised from the floor. An alter. The human lying on the stone slab moaned and writhed.

“Alex,” I whispered.

She moaned again, and twitched. She was coming too. I wished she would stay under so that she could be spared the horror.

“I call you fairies here to partake in this delight. The night is our master.” Devlin’s voice, raspy and thick cried out. His words were carried away on the wind into the darkness. He stood at the foot of the dais, handsome and magnetic. His hair flowed like golden corn. Eyes wide and clear as the sky in summer. Face luminous, pale and stunningly angelic. He held a simple curved blade in hands, too perfect to be human. Beneath his ebony robe he was naked, and the moonlight reflected off his pearlescent skin. A terrifyingly evil aura pulsed from within him.

“Our master,” murmured the beautiful voices.

“She is pure. We offer her to the night with glee in our hearts, and blood in our mouths.”

Devlin took a deep drink from a silver chalice then spilled the rest of the contents over Alex’s body. The metallic scent from before reached my nose. A few splashes dripped into Alex’s mouth and terror gripped her so hard she screamed, arcing her back. The skin under her bindings tore.

“We offer this human child. We give thanks to the night that blesses us with sex, blood and death.”

“This is not happening,” I said loudly.

“Rae?” Alex choked and squinted, trying to make me out in the low light. Her eyes went wide and she started to thrash around. “Help me, oh gods, what’s happening?”

Devlin slapped her across the face. Alex kept shouting for me and pulled harder on the rope that bound her. I had nothing to help her. I didn’t even have any words to soothe her. I tried to reach to the Source; I could feel it all around me, calling to me. All I had to do was touch it. I panted, and grunted, and tried to extend my influence past my own body, but the iron was overwhelming.

A cloaked figure stood in the m�l�e, utterly silent and composed. A deep cowl was drawn over his head, and I could see nothing but the gleam of calm and cold eyes peering at me. I got the greatest sense of danger from him, so I looked away and struggled harder. My wrists burned and chafed, but I kept writhing.

“My brothers, sisters. The Tribe protects you and pleases you with fresh meat.” Panting, I continued to struggle. I just needed one arm free, just one leg. “A body to drink revel and break.” Devlin’s voice clotted with lust.

A new fear shot through me hot and hard.

He wouldn’t dare.

His mouth trawled over Alex, and she convulsed in disgust as his clawed fingers dragged leisurely across her skin. Wasp was beside him and laughed throatily. My eyes stung, and the salt in my tears tasted bitter as it slipped into my mouth.

“The night is our master, our lover our warrior. The night is our master.” Over and over and over they chanted, rising and falling in tempo.

Hair red as blood, a female threw back her head and shrieked at the moon. A bare-chested male with yellow jewels for eyes rocked on his heels and bared his teeth. Snarly razors filled my vision. He was smiling at me, and those eyes, those glowing eyes snuck into my mind and stoked the fires of my hysteria. I stared back in mute horror as he jumped onto the altar by Alex’s head, and let out an undulating cry.

I looked up into the sky, through the dark shadow of trees and succumbed to fear. I stopped struggling.

“She can’t die like this.”

Wasp’s hand slid down Alex’s chest and cupped her breast, squeezed.

“Please,” I begged, clamping my eyes shut as Alex’s screams increased as her dress was pushed up her torso, and the wailing from the fairies got louder.

“Look at me Rae.” Tomas’ voice was urgent. I tore my eyes away from Alex to him. “Don’t watch,” he whispered.

“Do something,” I sobbed.

He looked stricken and tried to free himself. Like me was held by chains that drained his strength and mental abilities, and there was nothing he could do. The clear dark that followed him around was a frazzled gray.

“Rae,” Alex said quietly, so calm and collected it reached me through the chaos.

“Don’t look away, I want to see your face.”

My tears streamed as I turned to her. “You’re going to die.”

“I love you.” She smiled and the blue runes on her check crinkled. “You my best friend. I don’t know what you are or who you are, but that don’t change the way I feel, y’know?”

I nodded frantically and braced myself. “I love you too.” It was the first time and last I would ever say those words. They were hers and hers alone.

Another hand, smaller with razors for nails trailed down her stomach, across her hip. Alex cried out in pain as the cries of anticipation shattered the night. The noise and clamor reached peak as Wasp fisted her hand in Alex’s hair, drawing her head back, almost in tenderness. Devlin lifted the blade high above his head, and the wicked sharp edge flickered with light. Then he

Another scream erupted from me so loud a blood vessel burst in my eye. My scream cut off, no more air in my lungs to carry the sound.

The figure cloaked in black threw back his hood.

Conall.

My heart crashed in my chest as screams, sounds of death and violence surround me. I was too terrified to open my eyes. All I could see was Devlin’s dagger sinking into Alex’s throat and the gush of blood. The bonds at my hands went slack. My feet were free and I kicked for all I was worth. Screaming. Too far gone to fight properly, I lashed out like a wild animal. Firm, but gentle hands lifted me up and held me close. I kept my eyes pressed shut in defense against whatever torture I was to be subjected to.

“Be still Rae, I will not harm you,” a calm voice commanded.

The voice was singsong, not raspy and seductive. It hinted of magic and light. Still, I pushed, and shoved, and bit with my teeth. I yelled and screamed.

“She can take no more, Lochlann,” Maeve’s high chine sounded sad. “Leave her.”

“No,” I said hoarsely. “I won’t be fooled. You’re all evil. Demon monsters!” I thrashed about, hoping to drag an eye out and to my grave with me.

“Watch. Your brother avenges your friend as you bawl like a baby.”

My yelling stopped and my eyes popped open.

Conall had become a phantom figure, massacring the bewildered fairies prancing in the inner circle. A blur, he ripped and tore the beasts to pieces like crepe paper. There was nothing but a whisper of sound as death claimed those who’d held us captive. He disposed of any lingering survivors with a snap of the spine, or blade through flesh. Headless bodies tottered and fell as hot guts spilled onto the cold ground. Then it was done and he was still.

Clad in snugly fitted pants, and soft boots he was tall and sinewy. His dark hair was ponytailed, resting loosely across board shoulders. His skin glowed like a beacon and his ears had the distinctive point of fairy. With competent ease, he wielded his sword in one hand, and saluted to Lochlann with the other. Leather hilted the shiny steel of his sword was drenched in what looked like red paint. Chest splattered in blood and gore, clutched in his other hand was the dismembered head of a fairy. Savagely lifting it high, he laughed boomingly and blood dribbled from the ragged hole where the neck used to join to the body. He tossed it indifferently and it landed with a squelch to roll and gather the pine leaves on the forest floor.

Orchard, the fairy wyld was littered with mutilated fairy bodies and I felt nothing but bone deep satisfaction.

I scrambled over to the dais, and sank to my knees over Alex’s body. Her eyes were wide and starring, mouth slightly parted. Rocking back and forth, I wound my fingers into my hair and wailed. She was dead. Gone. I could never laugh or joke with my friend again. She had lost her life for my mistakes, my foolishness. I couldn’t bear it, and nor would I have to.

I placed both my hands on her eyes and called magic to me. It came reluctantly, already forming into something dark and unnatural. As I stood in the way of natural order, my nature rumbled with discontent. I was meant to bring balance, not perversion. I didn’t care, so I ignored my instincts.

I did not have time to think of the ramifications of what I was doing. I couldn’t let her go, and I hoped in time she would forgive me, and understand why I did what I did. I muttered the name of one who might take pity on her.

Her body twitched beneath my hands as if I had zapped her, and I said it again, louder this time.

“What is she doing?” someone asked sharply behind me.

“Loa!”

Her eyelids fluttered.

If this could work, if I could call on the voodoo deity and call back someone from the grave, it would be Alex. She was the daughter of powerful mambo, a voodoo Sorceress who ran wild in demon territory, and battled against witchcraft before the Clerics hunted her down. But Alex had been spared. The Clerics had taken her to the Priests for judgment as a child and they had declared her human, believing the spark had missed her. I could sense something within her. A glimmer of the magic her mother could touch and manipulate. I had never taken her roots seriously the few times she had spoken of it, and all that time I’d known her, in her own way she had been asking me to believe in her.

There. I had it under control. Her life force was trying to depart, but I tethered it to her body.

“Forgive me,” I whispered in her ear. All I had to do was lock her soul within her body and she would wake.

A heavy pressure at the base of my neck shocked me still.

Mercifully, it went black.

*

Before I opened my eyes, I smelt him. His mineral and damp earth smell. I opened my eyes and concluded it had all gone to hell. Tomas was burning. Whorls of smoke rose from his skin, and his head drooped forward. The silver hung him from a tree and bit into his skin cruelly.

It felt like a sack of bricks weighted down each of my eyelids, and my bones slid around inside me.

“Let him down,” I