Daimon by DANIELLE BOLGER (e reader .txt) 📖

from the vine, but it followed, like a cold-blooded serpent that was specially adapted to the barren land. I felt it slither briefly against my skin, preening for another grasp. The touch only spurred me on and accelerated me faster to my goal. I was getting nearer to the invisible walls; I could hear it from the echoes. I could feel that they were close by, like the kind hug of a friend.

“Run, Jane. Run!” Zach screamed from just ahead. I leapt and plunged forward, diving through the black sheet of a wall, which rippled silver before collapsing onto gray concrete.

I lay there motionless; unseeing, unhearing; not even breathing. I could do nothing. I was all used up. There was no pain, but I knew that all my bones, even the tiniest ones that structured my ears, shattered upon impact of this hard floor. I was rendered completely powerless and utterly vulnerable, unable to enact another motion.

Nothing…there was nothing. I ran to nothing.

My sight, composed of void, shifted around in circles. My heartbeat, illogically hammering all this time, finally stopped and sighed into death.

I crossed a threshold.

Is it already too late? Is this even the right place to go? Was Zach's voice all part of the illusion, enticing me to a deeper pit of despair? Ushering me further into an inescapable hell? If it was, I did not blame him.

Chapter Twenty-Four

“Get up, you stupid girl.”

Something was out there, from beyond the winding darkness, drawing me out. It ushered me to a nasty place: bright, painful, and heart wrenching. I truly did not want to go there.

“Damn it, Jane. Wake up or we're both dead!”

That voice again. I recognized it, and I did not like it. Go away, I can't bear any more.

There was a sharp sound—a clap, or a slap. “Don't you dare die on me.” Her voice was panicky. “You're my only hope. Please—you must kill Rose!”

Rose...Yes, of course. I must kill Rose. It is for vengeance, my vengeance. No, not just mine, but also a friend's. I must kill Rose for Zach. I must make him suffer for the death of my friend.

The sharp sound made a repeat. It sung loud in my ears; it sung loud on my ear, too. “Jane!” Her voice was desperate, its holder’s with no other place to turn.

I reached out my hand and caught the woman's that was flying back at my face.

“I'm done with feeling like a fucking punching bag,” I snarled, as the stinging sensation from her slaps began to take hold.

I could see again. Alex's face beamed like a child told that Santa would be giving them presents and not coal for Christmas after all.

“Jane!” she pleaded. “Fucking Christ, don't bloody well die—I'm dead if you are.”

I pushed her off as I sat upright, rotating my stiff shoulders. “You think you're alive, if I am?”

She recoiled and retracted her hand. It hit me then just how shadowed she was under the eyes. “All that matters is that I'm dead if you are.”

I watched her stern expression and curled body. She was almost as frail as I had been in my red hell. She was so skinny. It made her beautiful in the right light, but in the wrong ambiance and the wrong posture, she looked ill, beaten and helpless.

My hand was outstretched from grasping Alex's, there I surveyed my limb's appearance: slender but not bony. Not fatty nor stout, nor emaciated like the features of the grim reaper. It was just me, but clenching my fist I could feel the power that resonated within. I was back to normal. No, I was better than normal.

“Why are you suddenly marked for death?”

She adjusted her dress as she sat on the concrete floor. A quick glance reminded me that it was the casino car park where I had my face-off with Sage.

She shook her head and smiled weakly. “Your heart does not need to stop beating for it to die.”

I nodded. I felt the same way after my parents' deaths. She maintained her will to live so long as vengeance was still on the agenda.

“For the time being, it looks like we're both still alive.” She sighed her relief. “Something tells me that was a close call, and yet you don't have a single wound on you. There's a lot of blood, but I think you've healed already. Now, I wonder, whose heart did you take to recover so well?”

I held my gaze firm, not that she waited very long for a response.

“Idiot.” She shook her head in exasperation. “Well, you're alive and surrounded by crushed bullets. I guess that says something.”

I looked around me and was slightly alarmed to discover the dozens—hundreds perhaps—of distorted bullets. My body must have expelled them as I was healing.

She smirked. “I'm glad you're alive. That way, maybe you can live up to your promise of killing Rose for me, but...don't take a daimon heart again. There are not many that can handle its power.”

“It's not such a foreign concept then?”

Her eyes twinkled. “Well, I've heard it work for one daimon.”

It didn't take a heartbeat to work it out. “Smoke.”

****

“I thought you didn't have the balls to take on Rose yourself,” I snarled over my hatchback's rumbling engine.

Alex sighed from the passenger seat. “I don't know. After what you said, I started believing that maybe you could...” She shrugged. “Crazy. You're so damned crazy that it's rubbed off on me.” There was a warmth there. She smiled. “I really am sorry about your reporter friend. I had friends once, too, before...” Her voice trailed off and I could see it fade into some sort of sad thought in her mind.

I hardened my expression. “He was a photographer, and I haven't forgotten your role in his death.”

Her eyes shone as we passed an intermittent streetlamp. “If you kill Rose, no matter what else happens, that will be enough.”

“As long as I kill Rose,” I continued. “No matter what else happens, that will be enough for me too.”

There was a silence, one where both of us were lost internally, battling our demons, preparing ourselves for what was to come. Not making peace, not in my case, just readying myself for the very imminent prospect of death. I thought it was high time that I got used to the idea. Even as Zach's Catwoman, I doubted I had even a single spare life to rely on. Some quivering part of me whispered that any other close calls and it really would be over. Not game over, restart or quit, but a very real and complete silence. Yes, I thought that would be my cue for death: not a white light, or terrible, insane violence or noise, just silence.

Alex navigated us up a narrow private drive obscured by tall hedges on either side. It was a steep incline. A glance showed her to be more rigid than ever. So, we are here.

The car leveled off and the bushy walls parted to allow a full view of the grand estate. Great gardens lined right from the front lawn and extended back into endless hills. In the darkness, the full beauty was heavily veiled, though the bountiful variety of flowers and plants could still be seen splendidly in my acute sight.

Alex instructed me to stop the engine, with a trembling voice. As she gazed into the small house in front of us, she shrank into her seat.

A quaint single-storied building was situated in front of us; one that appeared ridiculously small for the land it boasted; small, but not lacking in elegance. It too possessed a delicate beauty, just as the flowers surrounding us. I wondered, again, just what kind of man Rose was.

“Time to say hello?” I prodded Alex, but she only shivered with greater exuberance. Her closed-mouth breathing became hurried, and her heart drummed with greater purpose. As she stared fixedly through the windscreen, I analyzed her mind and detected its juxtaposing signs of fight and flight. She had courage in her, but also a great amount of fear—which will win out?

“Yes.” She gulped. “Do or die...or die a slower way.”

“Hey, Alex...” I reached across the center console and placed one hand over her mouth, pushing up to snugly block her nostrils. My other hand braced her head.

She stared at me, shocked and bewildered—betrayed—and failed pitifully to fight against my hold.

It took a few minutes but eventually her eyes began to roll back, indicating that she was falling unconscious. I murmured, “Thanks.” When she finally lost all fight, I released her, laid her seat as far back as it would go, and tilted her head to the window corner. She wouldn't sleep comfortably, but she would sleep.

I exited the car and wondered at my companion's change of mind, or rather her change of heart. She desperately wanted to win a game that she was so heavily disadvantaged at from the start, but she was never defeated despite the years of torment from unfulfilled promises. This was her shot, but I knew she gravely doubted its success. Was her faith a testament to me, that I would succeed with her help, or was she so desperate after all this time that she would cling to the faintest hope, no matter how easily it would be carried off by the wind. Like dust, her hope in me could fade in a matter of minutes.

Though the air outside was still, I shivered, just as Alex did, with the prospect of failure. I imagined my defeat and the resultant disintegration of my flesh dispersing into the air. It would be a harsh realization, that my corpse would not even be accepted by mother earth. Perhaps she relinquished that title over me when I took on Rose as my father.

The estate ahead had light emitting from the interior, indicating its occupancy. A silhouette walked across its terrace. Slender, yet tall, with voluminous hair: the clear outline of an immaculate woman.

Ruby floated a wistful limb. “Won't you join us, Jane?”

I approached her on the threshold and halted. “May I ask who my hosts will be?”

She smirked. “Cheeky...for someone who comes without an invite.” She fluttered her lashes as if to bestow her superior beauty to me. “Of course, our dear master wants to greet you. I think,” her eyes blazed, “he wants to kill you himself. Normally, the others won't let him, for the risk it poses, but God I know how you can just...itch to kill.”

I leered, “Yeah, I heard he's up for a challenge.”

Her smile broadened. “I'm glad you got rid of that old man. From the day he was reborn, he was such a drag. Always with the protecting, but you see, Rose is a god. In every realm of the term.” Her eyes twinkled. “Nothing will ever threaten him, but he has been dissatisfied.” She choked on her words. “Not in a sexual sense—I saw to that—but on a blood-lust scale.” She sighed sadly. “He's like a shark that's been fed tuna. Disgraceful! He needs some real meat.”

She grunted as I pushed past her and entered the building. “Yeah? Not interested. I just wanna kill him.”

There was a black-eyed glare as I passed. “Say whatever big talk you like, but he will kill you. All this time, he has been preparing you; allowing you to gain strength and fester hatred so that the battle will be all the greater. He is so much more powerful than your immature mind can ever grasp. He will fight you, he will win, and he will take great pleasure in consuming your heart. Then, when the rest of you is no more than gray soil, Rose and I will be reconnected once more.”

As I walked into the foyer, her words were readily forgotten. The room was far larger, and more exquisitely adorned, than was anticipated: multiple large crystal and pearl decorated chandeliers, a wide room with white granite floors and gold hinged at the edges, and tall windows on the perimeter, heavily tinted so that the dark outside was totally obscured. It had occurred to me that the cottage-like building was one room in its entirety. That was not completely true. This place was too grand, as it displayed a spiral staircase at its center, but this descended downward, not up, carrying its hidden splendor into the depths of the earth.

“Well, won't you meet him? I've heard that you've just been...dying to.”

I turned back to the redhead who stood at the doorway. “Are you his girlfriend?”

Ruby smirked indulgently. “I'm so much