Daimon (4 page)

Artemis crouched beside a doe, a quiver of silver arrows in one hand and a bow in the other. The eyes were unnerving, painted completely white—no irises or pupils. “No. It was. He thinks I’m a freak.”

She scooted closer, placing a gentle hand on my knee. “I know it’s hard for you to be away from… the Covenant, but you’ll be okay. You’ll see. You have your whole life ahead of you, full of choice and freedom.”

Ignoring that comment and wherever it came from, I took back my ice cream and shook the empty carton. “Boo, Mom, you ate it all.”

“Lexie.” Cupping my cheek, she turned my head so I faced her. “I know it bothers you being away from there. I know you want to go back and I pray to the gods that you can find happiness in this new life. But we can never go back there. You know that, right?”

“I know,” I whispered, even though I really didn’t know why.

“Good.” She pressed her lips to my cheek. “With or without a purpose, you’re a very special girl. Don’t ever forget that.”

Something burned in the back of my throat. “You’re like totally obligated to say that. You’re my mom.”

She laughed. “That is true.”

“Mom!” I exclaimed. “Wow. Now I’m going to have self-esteem problems.”

“That is one area you are not lacking in.” She sent me a saucy grin as I smacked at her hand. “Now get off my bed and go to sleep. I expect you up bright and early. Your little butt better be out on that balcony, cleaning up that mess. I’m serious.”

I hopped from the bed and shook my butt. “It’s not that little.”

Her eyes rolled. “Good night, Lexie.”

I skipped to the door, glancing over my shoulder at her. She was patting the bed, frowning.

“Your windstorm knocked it on the floor.” I went over and picked the book up, handing it to her. “G’night!”

“Lexie?”

“Yeah?” I turned back around.

My mom smiled and it was such a beautiful smile, warm and loving.

It lit up her entire face, turning her eyes into jewels. “I love you.”

I smiled. “Love you, too, Mom.”

AFTER DUMPING THE EMPTY CARTON AND WASHING

off the spoon, I scrubbed my face and changed into a pair of old jammies. Restless, I tinkered around with the idea of cleaning my room, an impulse that lasted long enough for me to pick up a few socks.

I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the shuttered balcony doors.

The white paint was cracked, showing a deeper layer in a pale shade of gray—like a cross between blue and silver, an unusual shade that struck an old yearning inside me.

Really, after all this time, to still even think about a guy I’ll never see again was freaking ridiculous. Worse yet, he hadn’t even known I’d existed. Not because I’d been some kind of wallflower, wilting away in the shadows at the Covenant, but because he hadn’t been
allowed
to notice me. Here I was, three years later, and chipping paint reminded me of
his eyes
.

That was so lame it was embarrassing.

Annoyed with my own thoughts, I pushed off the bed and went to the little desk in the corner of my room. Papers and notebooks I rarely used in class covered the top. If there was anything I loved about the mortal world, it was their school system. Classes out here were a piece of cake compared to what went on at the Covenant. Knocking the clutter to the side, I found my out of date MP3 player and earbuds.

Most people had cool music on their players: Indie bands or the current hits. I decided I must’ve been high on something—Apollo’s bay laurel fumes?—when I’d downloaded these songs. I clicked through—

that’s how out of date this thing was—until I found Van Morrison’s
Brown Eyed Girl
.

There was something about the song that turned me into a walking cheese ball from the very first guitar riff. Humming along, I danced around my room, picking up discarded clothing and stopping every few seconds to flail about. I threw the pile in the basket, bobbing my head like a deranged Muppet Baby.

Starting to feel a little better about things, I grinned as I shimmied around my bed, clutching a pile of socks to my chest. “Sha la la, la la, la la, la la, la-la tee da. La-la tee da!”

I winced at the sound of my own voice. Singing was not a personal strength, but that didn’t stop me from mutilating every song on my MP3

player. By the time my room was fairly decent, it was past three in the morning. Exhausted but happy, I tugged out the earbuds and dropped them on the desk. Crawling into bed, I flipped off the lamp and dropped down. Usually it took me a while to drift off, but sleep came easily that night.

And because my brain liked to torture me even while I slept, I dreamt of Matt. But the dream-Matt had dark, wavy hair and eyes the color of storm clouds. And in the dream, when his hands roamed under my dress, I didn’t stop him.

***

Thin sheets of light broke through the creases under the shudders and slid over the old bamboo throw rug. Specks of dust floated and danced in the rays.

My smile froze when I spotted the clock. “Crap!”

Throwing the bedspread to the side, I swung my legs off the bed and stood. “Bright and early” did not translate to waking up at
noon
. My mom had gone easy on me last night, but I doubted she’d feel the same if I added not doing my chores for the second day in the row. A quick glimpse at my reflection in the tiny bathroom mirror while I stripped confirmed I looked like Chewbacca. I took a quick shower, but the hot water still went cold before I could finish.

Shivering from the wrath of the evil water heater, I changed into a pair of worn jeans and a loose shirt. Towel drying my hair, I started toward my door. I stopped, smothering a yawn. Mom was probably already outside in the tiny garden in the front. It was right below the balcony, facing the apartment buildings and row homes across the street. I tossed the towel on the bed and threw open the balcony doors like some kind of southern belle greeting the day, all ladylike and delicate.

Except it all went wrong.

Wincing from the glare of the bright Florida sun, I shielded my eyes and stepped forward. My foot snagged in an empty flowerpot. Trying to shake it off, I lost my balance and careened across the balcony, catching myself on the railing before I could topple over it headfirst.

Death by flowerpot would be a hell of a way to go.

Underneath my arms, the rickety-ass wooden plant stand swayed to the left and then the far, far right. Several pots of green and yellow tulips shifted all at once.

“Crap!” I hissed. Pushing off the railing and dropping to my knees, I hugged the plant stand to my chest. Kneeling there, for once I was grateful that none of my old friends had been around to see that.

Half-bloods were known for their agility and grace, not for tripping over things.

Once I got everything back to where it was supposed to be without killing myself in the process, I stood and leaned
carefully
over the railing. I scanned the flowerbeds, expecting to find Mom laughing her butt off, but the yard was empty. I even checked by the fence, where she had planted a row of flowers a few weekends ago. I started to turn back when I saw the gate was open, hanging to the side.

“Huh.” I was almost positive I’d closed it last night. Maybe Mom had gone to the Krispy Kreme to get doughnuts?
Mmm.
My stomach grumbled. I grabbed the garden spade out of the mess of tools piled atop the small folding chair, bemoaning another morning eating shredded wheat if there weren’t doughnuts. Who did I have to kill to get some Count Chocula up in this house?

I flipped the spade over in the air, catching it by the handle while I gazed past the yard. The row houses across the street all had bars on the windows and paint peeling off the sides. The old women who inhabited them didn’t speak much English. Once I’d tried helping one of them pull her garbage bags out to the curb, but she’d yelled at me in another language and shooed me away like I’d been trying to steal it.

They were all out on their stoops right now, cutting coupons or doing whatever it was that old ladies did. Traffic packed the street. It was always like this on a Saturday afternoon, especially when it was turning out to be a nice day for a beach trip.

My gaze crawled over the townies and the tourists as I continued to toss the spade in the air. It was always easy to pick out the out-of-towners. They wore fanny packs or abnormally large sun hats and their skin was either fish pale or sunburned.

A strange shiver coursed over me, spreading tiny bumps over my flesh. I sucked in a sharp breath, my eyes scanning the passing crowds with a will of their own.

Then I saw it.

Everything stopped around me in an instant. The air went right out of my lungs.

No. No. No.

He stood at the mouth of the alley, directly across from the bungalow and right beside the front porch where the old ladies sat. They glanced over at him as he stepped out onto the sidewalk, but they dismissed the stranger and returned to their conversation.

They couldn’t see what I saw.

No mortal could. Not even a pure-blood could. Only half-bloods could see through the elemental magic and witness the true horror—

skin so pale and so thin that every vein popped through the flesh like a baby black snake. His eyes were dark, empty sockets and his mouth, his teeth…

This was one of the
things
I’d been trained to fight at the Covenant.

This was a
thing
that thrived and fed on aether—the essence of the gods, the very life force running through us—a pure-blood who had turned his back on the gods. This was one of the
things
I was obligated to kill on sight.

A daimon—there was a
daimon
here.

I WHEELED AWAY FROM THE RAILING. WHATEVER

training I’d managed to retain vanished in an instant. Part of me had known—had always known—deep down that this day would come.

We’d been outside the protection of the Covenant and their communities for far too long. The need for aether would eventually draw a daimon to our doorstep. Daimons couldn’t resist the pure-blood mojo. I just hadn’t wanted to give voice to the fear, to believe that it could happen on a day like this, when the sun was so bright and the sky such a beautiful azure blue.

Panic clawed at the inside of my throat, trapping my voice. I tried to yell, “Mom!” but it came out a hoarse whisper.

I rushed through the bedroom, terror seizing me as I pushed and then pulled open the door. A crash sounded from somewhere in the house.

The space between my bedroom and my mom’s seemed longer than I remembered and I was still trying to call out her name as I reached her room.

The door opened smoothly, but at the same time, everything slowed down.

Her name was still just a whimper on my lips. My gaze landed on her bed first, and then on a section of floor beside the bed. I blinked. The pot of hibiscus had toppled over and broken into large pieces. Purple petals and soil were strewn across the floor. Red—something red—mingled among the blossoms, turning them a deep violet. My gasp drew in a metallic smell that reminded me of the nose bleeds I used to get when a sparring partner would get in a lucky shot.

I shuddered.

Time stilled. A buzzing filled my ears until I couldn’t hear anything else. I saw her hand first. Abnormally pale and open, her fingers clawed at the air, reaching for something. Her arm twisted at an awkward angle.

My head shook back and forth; my brain refused to accept the images in front of my eyes, to name the dark stain spreading down her shirt.

No, no—absolutely no
.
This was wrong.

Something—someone—braced half her body up. A pale hand clenched her upper arm and her head lolled to the side. Her eyes were wide open, the green somewhat faded and unfocused.

Oh, gods… oh, gods.

Seconds, it had only been seconds since I’d opened the door, but it felt like forever.

A daimon was latched onto my mother, draining her to get at the aether in the blood. I must’ve made a sound, because the daimon’s head lifted. Her neck—
oh gods
—her neck had been torn into. So much blood had been spilled.

My eyes met those of the daimon—or at least, they met the dark holes where its eyes should have been. His mouth snapped away from her neck, gaping open to reveal a row of razor-like teeth covered in blood. Then the elemental magic took over, piecing together the face he’d had as a pure, before he’d tasted that first drop of aether. With that glamour in place, he was beautiful by any standard—so much so that, for a moment, I thought I was seeing things. Nothing that angelic-looking could be responsible for the red stain on my mother’s neck, her clothes…

His head tipped to the side as he sniffed the air. He let out a high-pitched keening sound. I stumbled backward. The sound—nothing real could sound like that.

He let go of my mom, letting her body slip to the floor. She fell in a messy heap and didn’t move. I knew she had to be scared and hurt, because there couldn’t be any other reason why she hadn’t moved.

Rising up, the daimon’s bloody hands fell to his sides, fingers twisting inward.

His lips curved into a smile. “Half-blood,” he whispered.

Then he jumped.

I didn’t even realize I still held the garden spade. I raised my arm just as the daimon grabbed me. My scream came out as nothing more than a hoarse squeak as I fell back against the wall. The painting of Artemis crashed to the floor beside me.

The daimon’s eyes widened with surprise. His irises were a vibrant, deep blue for a moment, and then, like a switch being thrown, the elemental magic that hid his true nature vanished. Black sockets replaced those eyes; veins popped through his whitish skin.

And then he exploded in a burst of shimmery blue powder.