Demon Girl (9 page)

My hand shot up.

Dark eyebrows climbing at the forceful thrust
of my hand, Tu jerked his chin at me. “Rae, you have something else
to add?” There was faint surprise in his tone.

I could admit I was a more sit in silence
then ace all my exams type, but just looking at him had all sorts
of questions swirling around my mind.

“Lord Cleric,” I said thickly then had to
grunt a few times to clear my windpipe. Bile had risen at having to
address this man with the honorific. “I know despite the reports of
sightings that fairies are rare, but have… Have you ever seen one?
Up close, I mean? ”

He stopped pacing, and his mouth opened then
closed. He stared at me hard before rubbing a large hand over his
face. “No. I have never seen a fairy. They are incredibly rare
demons.”

I cocked my head and my mouth won out over
logic. “Have the Clerics ever caught a fairy? They hunt vampires
and shifters all the time, but I’ve never heard of them actually
catching that particular type of demon.”

From the corner of my eye I saw Devlin shift
in his chair. I was not surprised. People didn’t question Clerics
like this. The only reason I was managing it is because I’d seen Tu
in his most base form. He had lost all my respect so it was nothing
to talk to him as an equal.

His eyes went wild, glassy with repressed
panic. Could no one else see it? “Like I said they are so
rare–”

The direction of my thought changed abruptly,
“If they haven’t,” I interrupted and tapped Alex’s textbook with a
finger, “how does the Sect know to put such detail in our
books?”

Now I’d looked, they’d even described
different variations of fairy coloring. Once you’d seen it, it was
so striking it was not something you could ever forget. How could
the Sect know that, and why had I not noticed before?

His eyes darted to and from mine. He placed
his palms up, pushed them out. “Such beings are commonly–”

My mind flashed to the fairy in the clearing,
all that blood and sizzling skin. The ruthless way he had behaved
made my gut churn and my expression darken. “The Sect is lying.”
Someone to my left made a choking sound of disbelief. “They must
have studied these demons, and for some reason you don’t want us
to–”

Tu slammed his beefy hand on the desk.
“Enough,” he barked.

I jumped, snapped my mouth shut.

Stunned at his own outburst he blustered
around with some papers on his desk, and cleared his throat. “That
is enough on this subject for today.” His voice was quiet,
distracted. “Team up and turn to page sixteen of your textbooks to
discuss and summarize the proposed vampire reproduction. Start.
I’ll be back shortly to check your progress.” He spun on his heel,
avoided looking at me, and left the class.

Snapped from my single-minded quest for
truth, I flushed at the number of people staring at me. I shot a
look at Alex who was wide eyed, pouty mouth hanging with a
chocolate bar resting on her bottom lip. It was foolish for me to
call such attention to myself, and plain stupid to insult the Sect.
Pulling my hood up, I breathed out, and tried think of a reasonable
explanation for my behavior. Skipping out of class wouldn’t help;
it would confirm any suspicions. Tu was one of the Clerics who had
hunted me this morning. No doubt he was on his way to inform the
others of my weird behavior and the direction of my questions.
Great, talk about staying under the radar.

A sharp pain on my arm made me yelp. Alex’s
face popped into view. “Damn, Rae. You zoned hard.”

“What class is next?” I asked. I wondered if
I should consider ditching. If the Clerics thought I was a danger
maybe I needed to leave now. If they found out I was a demon… Wait.
How would they ever know that? Gods, I was becoming
melodramatic.

“We got Subterfuge,” Alex replied, “but I
might ditch.”

I eyed her like she’d lost it. Why would she
do that on a whim? Disciples who were caught ditching had to do
bereavement duty. It meant helping the morgue deal with the remains
of any poor misfortunate’s that got taken out by demons who’d
breached the Wall. You helped cremate dead bodies and notified any
next of kin. Most times it was kids who’d stayed out too late, or
had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the
Clerics duty to protect, and when they failed they made sure they
grieved with the families, and showed them respect. I only
considered it because my life might be on the line.

The class divided up into little clicks and
Ro came over. He made a silly face at me then grinned. I built
myself up mentally, knowing what was about to come next. Hauling me
up, he wrapped his arms around mine and kissed my cheek. “I missed
you, Rae.” He was several heads taller than me, and my feet lifted
from the floor as he squeezed. Roland, Alex’s on off steady, was
nice. He’d always talk to me if he saw me around the compound even
when he and Alex were on outs. I wouldn’t call him a friend since I
only knew him, and maintained a relationship, because he was
important to Alex.

And that’s why I let him hug me, didn’t punch
him in the face and said, “You too.” I shifted, a subtle signal for
him to let go, but he remained uncomfortably close. I extracted
myself. “How was it? The assignment, I mean.”

I was genuinely curious. I hadn’t lived in
the slums before I came to the Academy. I had been tied to the Sect
since birth, and held in orphanages in the upper dwells. I was one
of the lucky ones. Those without parents generally became
panhandlers, beggars prey for any hungry demons that hid behind the
Wall. Plus, I loved the creative atmosphere of the place.

“A goblin kid hid in a shack close to the
Sect church, a simple catch and release.” He shrugged, shifted on
the spot. “Same old thing. Dirty and cold, but it be my home,
y’know?” He paused and made a clicking noise with his tongue, a
sound one made unconsciously before bringing up a touchy or
dangerous subject. It was a slum dwell habit I knew he’d been
trying to get rid of for a while. “Something happened to you this
morning?”

I pressed my lips together. Ro was
perceptive, more than was usual for a boy his age. That or I looked
worse than I thought. I worked hard to keep most of the kooky crap
I did away from Alex. It would only worry her. The stuff from this
morning would probably give her grey hairs. Ro looked like he was
ready to buckle down and figure what was wrong with me. Maybe his
well timed words and snorts earlier were trying to accomplish more
than just derision. Maybe he was trying to cover up the fact I was
giggling like a banshee during what was supposed to be a serious
discussion. Whatever issues I had about how cooped up we were
behind the Wall or how purist the teachings of Sect had become, the
Temple was my home. Suggestions bound to get me into serious
trouble stayed locked firmly inside my mind, most of the time.
Disciples who’d voiced radical ideas like my own ended up failing
the final exam or kicked out of the Sect. Then there were the ones
who disappeared entirely. That was not going to happen to me. Ro
and I had had a few very brief discussions about this. Touched on
the subject more than once, how some things the Sect did and said
didn’t quite add up. How Disciples going missing, after they had
spoken up about the treatment of demons we captured, was just plain
wrong. Ro had always been keen to talk more, but I’d always pulled
back.

“I went Outside,” I said and lifted my chin.
“I ran in the forest.”

Alex groaned and plucked at the skin of her
throat as if it irritated her. She’d already known this and her
reaction was purely knee jerk.

Ro didn’t look surprised, if anything mildly
impressed. “Did something happen?”

I tilted my head, hearing something unspoken
in the words. “Why’d you think that?”

“You on edge, and earlier you went pale like
you seen you a ghost. You got so shook up you forgot yourself and
walked right into Devlin. Rae, you always so careful and cautious
about touching, and you got so distracted you forgot?” He shook his
head. “I don’t think so, something big happened.”

I swallowed before I answered, “I saw–” Was I
really going to tell him?

“I’ll tell you something else,” Ro began,
speaking slowly and looking down at his hands looped in his jean
pockets. “Maybe on my way to class, I hear a Lord and Lady Cleric
talking about a problem with a demon Outside this morning. Maybe I
hear them talking about a Disciple who broke Doctrine and went
beyond the Wall. They say a Disciple
disobeyed
and even
struck out, gave the Lady Cleric a black eye.” He looked up at me
and lowered his voice an octave. “You need to be careful now, you
feel me? Think about the questions you ask in class and the way you
react to some words. Like…fairy, eh?”

“What are you getting at?” I tried to pretend
the shrillness of my voice was natural.

I couldn’t tell them what had happened, if
the Clerics were looking for me there was only a matter of time
before they found me. I was bound to slip up again. I had a bloody
vampire snoozing in my wardrobe for gods sake. I had decided the
best was to play this was to not confirm or deny anything else. Ro
would try to help me and his heart would be in the right place, but
I couldn’t risk it.

As for Alex… “You do remember the Rupture?
What happened to people like you who wouldn’t get in line and act
right,” she said angrily.

She was not happy and I could sense a long,
rambling speech coming on. With all the information I’d told her
and Ro’s speculations, she would have been able to piece together
quite a bit by now.

Opening my mouth to tell her to shut the hell
up, I saw Tu enter the room talking to a thin woman. She was
dressed in a crimson blazer with a swollen eye and bandaged arm. A
Lady Cleric,
the
Lady Cleric from that morning.

I straightened and ordered my feet to freeze
mid step back. My heart pounded double time as every instinct I had
screeched at me to run and hide. They really were looking for me,
and knew the one they sought was a Disciple. The Lady Cleric’s gaze
slowly passed over every female face in the group as she replied to
Cleric Tu. My stomach clenched and sweat beaded my brow. Did her
gaze linger on me? Did she hesitate to move on, or was it my
imagination?

I wanted to scream at her that it was an
accident. That I had no idea what all the crazy stuff happening
around me meant, nor did I want to. I wanted to rewind a day, back
to when things were simple. Where my life made sense and where boys
spoke and acted normally. Where Clerics were the good guys who
protected us from demons and my teachers were not heartless
murderers.

The Lady Cleric scanned our faces once more
than shook her head once. She left with Tu close behind her,
whispering something to him.

What did I do? Surely if they had identified
the Disciple in the forest was me, they would have hauled me out
the class.

Alex glanced over her shoulder at the
retreating Cleric, but was otherwise uninterested. Ro was more on
ball, and his eyes narrowed as he watched me. Too messed in the
head to try and be subtle, I glared at him, daring him to comment.
Well, there was nothing I could do. I’d had enough of being
stressed out. Slouching back into my chair, I kicked up a leg on
the empty seat opposite and mud fell off my soles.

“…Are you even listening to me?” Alex
asked.

“I’m sorry, what? Oh, yes,” I said. “Yes, I
do remember.”

The Rupture was a global slaughter that had
nearly wiped the entire human race of the face of the planet. It
had changed everything. Vampires had emerged from the shadows one
winter dragging all manner of wicked with them, and in one clean
sweep had consumed the earth. Shapeshifters had prowled the streets
in daylight. Hunting were-bears, were-lions and
were-whatever–the-hell-you-can-think-of had feasted on human flesh.
Goblins tore people limb from limb and roasted them in
dumpster-sized stew pots. Raped the screaming women, and produced
more deformed offspring. Powerful witches cast spells that stopped
the hearts of entire cities, made all things in a thousand-mile
radius just stop.

Within weeks governments had fallen.
Monarchy’s had been eliminated, a warped genocide, madness. No one
but the crazies who had believed in such things was prepared. They
knew how to protect themselves with stakes and silver, hiding
places underground. Otherwise only the strong, quick and the smart
had survived. The barbaric culling of the human race left us
scattered across the world in tiny pockets of civilization.
Communities of people who put aside old hates based on colour and
religion, and blended together until the human race was a
convergence unlike anything ever predicted. We lived in an
overcrowded region of land surrounded by electricity, a patch of
city untouched by the horror Outside.

At least, that’s what the Priests told us in
their sermons. Most people alive now-a-days were too young to
remember what had happened, and the old ones who had experienced it
had died of old age years before. Against all odds endangered
humankind had survived and had the Sect to thank. A group of human
men and women had erected the Wall, and set the strongest of us as
guardians. Determined to keep fighting and to survive at all costs,
they selected new protectors from the masses seeking sanctuary and
trained them to hunt the monsters that had stolen the planet. Those
protectors were the Clerics. They hunted down any demon that dared
step on our territory. Of course I remembered the Rupture; it was
something I, nor any other being, would ever forget.

Clicking her fingers in front of my face,
Alex flicked my nose and I recoiled. She smirked, happy to have
broken into my down time. “You wanna end up like the people who
lost their lives for nothing?”