Daimon by DANIELLE BOLGER (e reader .txt) 📖

red package. I looked into Sage’s eyes, watching the life fade from them. The deep black of his irises softened into a pale blue, faded further to gray, and the rest of him followed in kind.

The organ in my hand was paling, too. Its red luster dulled into a soft pink with gray touching the edges. I was running out of time. I swallowed Sage’s heart whole.

Nothing happened at first, and I thought that I was safe, thought I was strong enough to fight off the disease, without the need for an internal battle. Maybe it destroyed me before I even had a chance of defending.

Gasping, I released Sage. As he fell to the concrete floor his body shattered into countless grains. Instantly they were taken up by the air and the dust dispersed into the breezeless space.

I desperately clutched at my chest—it had come.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I wished it had been like last time. Oh how I wished it were that easy. As soon as I fell into that strange place, I was instantly engulfed in flames. They licked my skin, tenderly, vehemently. I heard the searing of my flesh resound like giggles. Minions, devilish minions, lashed whips of fire onto my fresh skin, crooning at the sight. I heard kookaburras, friendly, bold birds that once ate from the palm of my hand as I stood excitedly on the family balcony. They were now laughing at my agony. Their laughter morphed into the bellyaching laughter of the cruel kid in the playground that wanted everyone to know that they were enjoying themselves, and at whose expense. It was chilling how painful a human could still be.

The dismal realization washed over me: I had failed after all. That was what the hell-fire meant.

Lash; whip; cut; sear; they all violated my body. Is it my body? My subconscious? My soul? Am I dead? Is it really all over? I remembered Sage's strange smile. He knew: should I attempt to claim his power, I would be killed instantly. He did it; he killed me.

“No!” I screamed, passionately, somehow breaking my shackles and falling stiffly to the hard red dirt. Around my wrists were silver cuffs that glowed with a similar resemblance to the blade Freddie had plunged into my internal heart.

Maybe...this is another subconscious place? I proposed the idea to myself tentatively, but as I turned to gaze on my surroundings, that notion was a breath from shattering.

It was a desert, as red as the Australian outback, but the sky was as black as ink. No stars and no moon, no light was emitted at all, and yet the earth roared red. It was even red to the touch. When I pulled my palms away, I saw the dirt cling there, a coating I could not escape.

There was more laughter. It surrounded me, tormented me as it pointed and jeered at my plight. The sound echoed across the desert, filling every space, pressing down from an empty space.

I raised my hands to my ears, desperate to block it out, but in this place the sound was only amplified as it howled into my skull.

“No. No...stop it! Stop it! What do you want from me? What’s so funny?” I screamed, but my voice could not be heard. In its place, my throat emitted a foreign cackle.

“Stop. Stop!” I tried to say, but again it was a maniac's laughter.

I slammed my fists to the ground; drawing on my daimon power to punch holes deep into it, but with my diminished strength, barely more than a dust cloud was created. My hands fell so slowly as if my muscles were wasting away. My body reduced to the shell of a corpse, trying to fight against the massive force of the planet.

What is this? Where am I? How do I get out? Still, I hoped that it was another subconscious realm. I prayed for it, in fact, before my thoughts were rendered mute by the irony of it.

Then that dark voice inside me spoke out. God won't listen to you; you're in hell. Not that He ever would have, not after you killed your first victim. Not after you killed your—

“Shut up!” I screamed at my thoughts, but the laughter wouldn't stop.

Stop. Don't laugh anymore. Can't you see it's doing something? I shouted at myself, but every word came out as a cackle; getting darker and more synonymous with my nightmares, but this was me. It was coming from me. I was the monster, the witch, and the villain. I was the thing to fear.

I placed both hands over my mouth, and I managed to quell it. However I was not able to block out the howls that surrounded me. The cold dark laughter permeated through me.

I looked around again, desperate to find something, anything to save me from this place. Wherever—whatever— it was, it was still a desert, devoid of any kind of hope.

I turned behind me, looking for the podium that I was raised on, that my current shackles had once been bound to, but there was nothing there. With that supernatural phenomenon, at least I knew that I was not in Blue Coast anymore.

I thumped against the dirt again, and I noticed that my wrists were thinner; the chains had become even longer. When I raised them off the earth, I noticed their weight increase, and their gravitational attraction to the red soil strengthen. This place was trying to chain me to the earth, imprisoning me in this hell for eternity.

This did not fill me with panic, but hope. The chains are not connected yet, there's still time.

Where is the hope? the dark voice husked.

I gulped, and blinked with exaggerated slowness. It was true: in a desert, where was there to escape to? Where was the oasis? Where was the possibility of survival in a barren land? There had to be something. I had to fight. As long as I had will, as long as I possessed some strength, I could fight. I would fight to the last breath.

Are you even breathing here? the voice uttered.

It had a point—I stopped breathing and waited.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

I did not suffocate, nor faint; I simply crouched, motionless, in the red darkness. In this place, breathing was an illusion. That incited the next hopeful thought: what else is an illusion?

Epiphany struck, and the answer became obvious: the endless desert, the hopelessness…

The laughter continued to press in around me from all sides, echoing as if the desert had walls.

I lifted my heavy arms; the tissues beneath my skin so slight that the outlines of my two forearm bones could be distinctly made out. I barely managed to raise the growing chains from the soil for longer than a couple of seconds.

Time was running out. I had to go now. My only chance was to run to the walls of kookaburras and demonic minions, and break free. This was my hope, the only hope of survival.

I lifted myself to my feet and almost collapsed with the effort. The desert spun around me and the ground pulled, tugging at my too heavy arms. I gritted my teeth; I would not fall back down, could not. I had to survive, I still had to make so many suffer.

I raised my hands, barely able to pull them above my forehead so that the chains did not contact the ground. That I managed for a few scant seconds before red hands, crumbling and exposing black reticular lines, rose from the earth and claimed my silver binds.

“No!” My untranslatable laughter spewed from me, unrestrained. It could not be subdued as I fought against my captors.

“NO!” I felt my arms drop down. Fervently, I saw the red hands retreating back into the earth. They're pulling you six feet under, my cruel voice whispered. If they make it below the surface you'll be chained forever.

I could not help my panicked stare at the dust being stirred up from the descending limbs.

“Yeah Catwoman's one of my favorites,” a voice called out from behind one of the unseen walls. “It's not just the sexy body and black leather get-up, but for the fact that no matter what trouble she gets herself into she always finds a way to slip away. No bars or chains can hold that thief.”

I looked around desperately, trying to find its source. There was nothing but red sand.

“Zach!” I screamed and this time it was my voice cutting through the insane laughter.

“You're a lot like her,” Zach's voice continued. “The way you prance behind police tape in some of the biggest crime scenes. I swear they're gonna throw you in lockup by the look on their faces. Then you just flutter your lashes and walk away unscathed, hot data in tow. I swear, Jane, you could get away with murder.”

“Zach, where are you? Help me, please! I don't know what to do. I can't fight them anymore…” At the end, my voice was transformed back into laughter and my chains tightened firmer than ever.

So much for Catwoman slipping away unscathed.

My chains descended into the earth steadily, as if cranked by a wheel, and I laughed; uncontrollable laughter that nothing would ever break. I laughed at my supposed death, my rebirth, my promise to return to Ryan, Zach's corpse nailed into his apartment wall, all the people I had killed as a daimon, and at the man that I killed as a human. I laughed because it was not funny at all; it was cruel, hideous, and despicable. I laughed because madness was taking over. I laughed because it was all over.

The chains retracted further as my wrists were pulled, without contest, to my knees. The ground shook, and I could feel it preparing to open its mouth.

Down the rabbit hole we go. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes...

My inner voice was right—it was all over now. As soon as those hands found my chains, it was all over. No…it was all over from the moment I thought I could beat fate again. How could I ever have thought that I stood a chance of beating a daimon a second time?

Zach's voice echoed off the desert walls. “She always finds a way to slip away.”

How, Zach? How can I slip away when chains are pulling me into the earth?

I slouched in defeat, inches from the world’s red belly. The silver cuffs, perfect circular bars, grazed my wrists intimately by my sides. My throat continued to roar its insane shrieking.

Slip away. The words repeated in my mind as if it was an important message that I needed to take heed of. I wondered if they were telling me to let my life slip away to escape my self-inflicted torment.

My fingers now touched the ground, the unforgiving cuffs pulling. A small effort of resistance caused those bindings to cut into my wrists, threatening to snap the small bones there with any further rebellion. Suddenly, I knew how to escape.

Laughing manically, I pulled and twisted my hands so that all the pressure would be applied to the bones of my thumbs. My body was so frail that, even with my paling strength, I was successful in severing this bone at the joint.

I yanked, still not enough room to allow my hands passage. Panting, I viewed my wrists where the silver binds just began to enter the ground.

I twisted the other way, to the metacarpal leading to my little finger, and forced an additional snap. My laughter became deafening.

Again I pulled, utilizing strength that should not have remained, and I suddenly felt deathly ill. The dirt grazed by the bottom of my wrists.

I'm not going to die this way!

I ripped with all the strength my wasted muscles contained, and with a sickening crunch of dozens of fractures, I raised my hands with a triumphal roar.

This time, I actually enjoyed the uncontrollable laughter.

Suddenly, I felt a cold sliver at my ankle. A furtive glance showed a vine emerging from this barren floor, silver and encircling, ready to create a pretty little anklet. A friend for the other foot was fast emerging.

I don't fucking think so.

I narrowly escaped it as I dashed forward, and fled as fast as I could. It was not the pace I had recently become accustomed to, nor even one that I possessed as a human. It was the pace of an invalid, who barely managed to crawl out of their deathbed. My limbs ran listless, threatening to collapse with each new foot fall, but I would not give up—never. Father had to die.

I ran