Daimon by DANIELLE BOLGER (e reader .txt) 📖

for a scotch.”

I shifted apprehensively. “It is scotch.”

He scoffed. “Top shelf scotch, ruined because you decided to mix it with soft drink.”

I lowered my eyes. “You've...had so much drink already tonight. I thought, maybe, it might be best to slow down a bit.”

“Stupid kid. Always fucking everything up.”

With tears welling in my eyes, I was about to walk away, but he gripped my hand, restraining me.

“I'm sorry, Jane. I didn't mean that. It's just that...I'm so tired.”

I managed a half-smile. “Yeah, you and Mom have been at work so much lately. I feel like I hardly ever get to see you two.”

He nodded. “Your mother's at the hospital now, doing an extra shift; more gunshot victims. One of them is pregnant, third trimester. It looks like she will probably lose the baby.”

His hand was still gripping me.

“When I discovered that there was no cardiac damage to these latest ones, I was glad. Can you believe—damage to the kidneys, spinal cord, and brain, but not the heart— and I'm actually happy? It meant that I could finally go home, and when I do, I just get pissed.”

“It's okay, Dad. You're just tired, you need a break sometime.”

“It's these fucking gangsters. All they do is kill each other and any other person that's unlucky enough to be around.” He released me as he sculled the remainder of his glass. “I wish I could do something to stop them; stop this bloodshed, stop innocent people getting hurt by this evil; but these hands.” He brought them before his face, staring at them. He clenched his fists. “They can perform heart surgery, but they can't do what needs to be done. They can't remove the gangs from our city.”

I rubbed my sore wrist. “Dad, you save lives. That's the most important thing. That's what you do to fight.”

When he turned to me, it was with such malice that I retreated a step back. “Fighting would be to end this violence. Fighting would be to end the gangs; kill them if need be.”

“Dad!” I insisted. “Fighting violence with violence will just cause more pain.”

“Pain is what finishes it!” He threw the glass at the wall, where the fragments exploded away from one another as if shrapnel from a landmine. One of these pieces spun and reflected the light brilliantly. It grew as it soared from the wall until it finally neared and shot into me.

It only grazed me, but it was enough to slice into my skin. When I pulled my hand back down from my cheek, I observed the fresh crimson streak upon it.

My mind returned to the present, where I was no longer a child but I could still feel that moisture on my face. I felt a drop land on my outstretched hand, another on my bare foot, and then the rain fell steadily, in sparse light drops. Though I was looking up into the sky, I had not noticed the subtle veil blanketing it. It transitioned so gradually that it was only then that I realized no more stars could be seen. There was only the moon’s glow showing through, though fuzzy and sadly dimmed. No more than a ghost of its original beauty.

I stuck out a hand and tried to catch a droplet, but it shattered at my touch. I thought of that scotch glass, and then of other fragile objects breaking, like the bones of ribcages. In my mind's eye, I saw rain falling, the color a blissful crimson.

The thought was terrifying, yet comforting. I wondered if I should scold myself for my waning aversion; I knew that was what would have been appropriate. Dark desires must be reprimanded. Things that eat human hearts are monsters, but that was not what Alex had said. She called me a daimon, something that derived its power from another world; a place that I would never be able to see or touch, but would somehow always breathe a hint of. I wanted to push back those domineering clouds then, scatter the rain before it made its mark on me and leap deep into the sky, up into the stars and discover this other world. Perhaps there I would find a place where I belonged, for this one had discarded me long ago.

I wondered, if I did escape into another dimension, another world, whether anyone would miss me here. Sandra had already rejected me for stealing her focus. Ryan had put up clear boundaries as the little sister, and Jack, my real brother, abandoned me before I even came of age. The only person I thought would miss me was Zach; always smiling, so positive and so ready to jump into danger for me, but so considerate to back off when I asked him to. I realized then that I could lose everyone, but if I lost his friendship, then I would not be sure if I could maintain my sanity any longer. He was the only person I had that I could talk to, even if I couldn't really say what I was thinking.

Then something flashed in my mind— it was that stupid Wolverine dog tag he always wore around his neck. The bloody nerd. Still, it made me smile.

“I got it in a cereal box when I was a kid,” Zach had explained after I asked about it over a year ago. “It's worthless really, but I just haven't been able to part with it since I got it. I don't know, I guess it just reminds me of my childhood. It wasn't anything spectacular, but yeah, there were good times there and I'm just not ready to let them go. Not yet.”

“Not when the reality of adulthood is so crappy,” I agreed.

That Christmas he gifted me with my own dog-tag necklace. This one had an image of Catwoman inscribed on it. I had told him previously that I liked the character for her independence, intelligence, and ability to slip into the shadows and disappear at will. I omitted the part how she does not conform to society's stringent morals. She does as she pleases and fights for herself, no one else.

“I thought, now that you have one, you could return back to your childhood, remember the joy. Your own beacon of optimism,” Zach explained.

I hadn't worn it once.

The clouds thickened overhead, the rain pelting down harder. The drops were getting thicker, increasing in number and speed. They struck down with malice, pushing me down into the softening earth, as if to bury me where I lay. Whatever I was, I was dead; murdered nights ago and due to return to the soil. I would not make it to the stars. Instead, I would be transported into the depths of hell.

****

My eyes sprung open to an incessant noise in my jeans pocket. I fumbled around with muddied hands and retrieved the device emitting the disdainful, pop-hit ringtone. I cursed the old-fashioned design that gave the device enough bulk to protect it from water damage.

“What?” I snapped.

“Jane?” A tentative voice projected from the phone.

“Sandra?” I grumbled as I sat up, and began to tease the dirt from my hair with my free hand.

“Yeah,” she responded stiltedly. “You're not at work. You are okay, right?”

I peered through the trees and up into the blue sky above me. “Right, Monday, a workday.”

“Um...” she trailed hesitantly. “Are you coming in? You know it's after eleven a.m.?”

I sat upright and started brushing away more hardened soil from me. “I guess, but I'm going to be a few hours out.”

“Jane, what the hell? Why aren't you here? You sick?”

I was surprised by the concern in her voice. “Yeah I'm fine. I just spent the night out of the city.”

“Huh? Out of the city? Where are you?”

I looked around me. “Mount Air.”

“Mount Air. Christ! Why are you there?”

“Um...”

“Tell me later.” She sighed, frustrated. “Just hurry your ass and get here. Frank hasn't noticed that you're missing yet, but I can't cover for you all day.”

“Sandra...does that mean you've forgiven me now?”

I heard her scoff through the phone. “I'm still pissed. I'm just making sure you haven't wound up in some ditch or something.”

“I see. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

She hung up.

I looked down at my phone that flashed with both one bar of battery life and signal strength. It seemed I hadn't run far enough away. Then I noticed the messages icon, which had a number 1 next to it. I clicked it open and again wished the phone had received water damage from the night's rain.

Target acquired.

127 Michelson Street, St Lucia

Caucasian male, 52 years old, height 174cm, gray hair, average weight.

Deadline: 3:30pm

Do not be seen.

I went straight to my messages, composed a new one, and selected Sandra as the recipient.

Won't be able to make it in after all. If you could tell Frank that I'm not feeling well that would be appreciated, and Sandy, thanks.

Chapter Fourteen

So Mr. Gray Haired, you're my next kill then?

I stalked the target as he tended to his garden at 127 Michelson Street, from the rooftop of 125 Michelson Street. It was early afternoon and I was fortunate that his neighbors were presently vacant, allowing my booming footsteps on the tiled roof to go unheard. I was careful to listen for signs of life before bounding into my chosen place of cover, as it occurred to me that I could be detected very simply by my footfalls. My mother had been the one who ingrained that notion in me, and at that moment, her words returned to me clearly, as if she had just made the lofty comment. “Must be a possum,” she had said after heavy clangs were heard overhead in our home. “It may sound like a burglar, but that's what must make it something smaller. If it sounded like an elephant on the other hand, then we should be a little more worried.”

I did consider it a strange place of cover, a bare roof, albeit a sloping one. The sun blared down on me, though I deemed a still form would go unnoticed in an elevated position, for whoever thinks to look up? Gray-haired definitely had his attention downturned, to his posies and mosses, as opposed to any sniper points.

He was humming to himself, a tune I recognized though neither of us could recall any of the words. He chopped weeds in his already immaculate flowerbed. He eradicated the unseen pests with gentility.

Who are you? I wondered. Why do the Foxes have you marked? I had been watching him for some time—a couple of hours—wondering what made him so special, what made him fit for dinner. It was this curiosity that stayed my hand as I watched his obscured image through the glass of his home. When he was out of sight, I focused my hearing on him and detected heaving between sips of some sort of beverage. I imagined him sitting at his coffee table, drinking tea, dunking chocolate biscuits as he read the day's paper. Perhaps it would be my own, the Coastal Horizon. Those scratching noises could be his pencil on a crossword. Then he came outside after the lunchtime heat began to abate and returned to tending posies with the exaggerated slowness of one who never had another day of paid work ahead of them.

Why? I wondered again. Why was this retired old man such a threat that he had to be eliminated, and by me of all people? I knew that answer would not be revealed before I made my strike; it was already 3:00pm, a shy thirty minutes from the deadline. I wondered, what would happen if I killed him after the allotted time, or if I lingered around the scene too long. Would I be able to tear myself from the encapsulating gratification that ensued with consuming a heart? I remembered, once more, Alex's threat with my first act of disobedience, where I would relive the excruciating punishment. The second would be taken out on someone else, someone I cared about: Sandra, perhaps my brother. Jack was hours away by plane, but I did not doubt that the Foxes could extend their reach that far if needed. I knew that, strong as I was, I was no match for Smoke, and how many Smokes were out there for me to face? How many of us daimons existed? Even if the answer meant I had just the two powerful enemies, Smoke and Rose, I was still far outmatched. Then there were the other mysterious characters, such