Stones Unturned (29 page)

"Nothing," the demon replied. "It's just that you're so much more human than others of my seed."

"This is human?" Danny mumbled, looking at the skin of his hands, and the razor-sharp claws that adorned his fingers. "I'd hate to see my brothers and sisters."

Baalphegor looked away. "Yes, you would, for they are all dead."

Danny was startled by the statement, for the first time seriously considering the existence of others like him — actual siblings.

"All of them?"

But the demon was already on the move again, crawling bug-like across the ceiling, making his way toward the exit. Danny followed.

Blending with the darkness of the night, the two emerged from the subway station, concealing themselves in shadows thrown by the buildings around them. They were in South Boston now, and his curiosity continued to pique.

Where the hell could we be going in Southie?
he wondered, trying to keep up with his father as the demon darted from one patch of shadow to the next.

Baalphegor came to a sudden stop and pointed a long, crooked finger at the burned-out remains of a building surrounded by a hastily erected chain-link fence. The smell of fire still hung in the air.

Studying the wreckage of the old building, Danny came to realize that it was the shell of a Catholic church. He reached down into the ash and rubble, retrieving a piece of stained glass. There was part of a face on the fragment, some saint or another. Not really knowing why, he put it inside the pocket of his jeans.

The demon motioned him through the jagged frame of a tall window, and Danny went through the archway. His father followed.

"A church," Danny said aloud, looking about. "Why here?"

Baalphegor loped toward the shattered, scorched altar and stopped just in front of it.

"Once this was a place of goodness and light," he whispered, his head darting around, taking in the destruction. "Now that light has fled, leaving behind an empty, beaten corpse. This is a good place for us to be."

The demon continued up onto the altar. Part of the ceiling had come down atop it, covering it with rubble and blackened, charred wooden beams. Baalphegor perched atop the rubble.

"Come closer," he hissed, motioning with both his hands. "There is much for you to know of your true heritage."

Danny felt the urge to bolt from the burned out shell of the church, run out into the night and never stop until he got back to Louisburg Square. A part of him wanted to see his mother right then, and he had to wonder if that was the humanity she'd instilled in him, afraid to face the truth of what he was becoming.

No. Not becoming. It's what you've always been.

"Come," Baalphegor urged.

Danny climbed up onto the damp and blackened beams, the stench of fire permeating the very air. He stopped before the demon, admiring the shape of the creature and everything it seemed to represent. His father had been created to kill. With his sleek body, his speed, the severity of his claws, and that mouth filled with rows of razor-sharp teeth, he could serve no other purpose.

Will I look like this someday?
he wondered briefly, that little human part of him crying out in fear.

"They say I'm a changeling," he said, overwhelmed with the desire to know the whole truth at last. "That I was switched with a . . . with a human child."

He was surprised how difficult it was for him to say it — to admit that he wasn't human. That he never had been.

The demon stretched languidly upon his perch. He appeared strangely comfortable in the burned out surroundings.

"
Changeling
is their word, not mine," Baalphegor said. "The fairies have done such things since time began, and the humans coined the word for them. But our kind have always done the same, though for different reasons. It is not that we covet human children. We place our offspring among the humans to ensure our own survival, changed to appear human, at least for a time."

Danny didn't understand. "Why?" he asked. "What do I have to do with you surviving?"

Eyes flashing with anger, his father lashed out at him, talons renting the air in a blur. Danny stumbled back across the rain-soaked plaster and charred wood, nearly tumbling to the floor, but he caught his balance. He looked down to see that his shirt had been torn open, his bare chest revealed.

"What the hell was that for?" Danny snarled.

Baalphegor pointed, and Danny glanced down, following his gaze to the strange, sack-like growth on his chest. It had become even larger and more engorged. Danny could feel it throb, an internal pressure intensifying within the dangling cyst.

"That is how we survive," Baalphegor said, reaching out to gently cup the object.

Danny attempted to swat his hand away but missed. "Don't touch me," he ordered with a snarl.

The demon grumbled, and Danny wasn't sure if it was a sound of anger, or one of amusement.

"The contents of that sack of flesh," Baalphegor said, "are the entire reason you were changed. Dark magic transforms the flesh of one of our offspring. The child is then exchanged for a human babe, its unwitting parents completely fooled. The humans raise the demon child as one of their own. Only when the child begins to approach adulthood does the flesh begin to reverse its transformation, and its true nature begin to reveal itself."

The sack of flesh throbbed painfully, rousing Danny's anger all the more. "See, now again I'm asking you why. What do you get out of demon babies being raised in a human family?"

Baalphegor shifted upon his throne of rubble and leaned closer. "Though despised throughout the myriad realities, the human species retains something of immeasurable power and potency, absent from almost all other species."

The demon craned his neck, looking about the remains of the church. "Some would say it originated from Him, the one whose house we now despoil with our presence, that there is in humans some divine spark given willingly to those creations He most admired."

Danny's thoughts raced as he attempted to understand.

"Are . . . are you talking about the soul?" he asked.

The demon flinched as he turned to glare at his son. "The soul, the self, one's humanity, it's all the same to me and mine. It is a source of unimaginable power, and humans possess and squander it."

Danny narrowed his eyes, brows knitted, and stared at his father.

"I have a soul?"

"In a manner of speaking," Baalphegor nodded. "When transformed as infants, our children
grow
a soul, absorbing humanity from their fragile human parents and others around them. Conscience and experience come over time.

"But do not fool yourself, child. You are far from human. You were bred to be a collector. From the moment that I snatched the mewling human babe from its cradle and put you in its place, you have been collecting memories and experiences, sentiment and emotion. You've been absorbing humanity."

Danny looked down at the swollen sack of flesh hanging heavily from his chest. Suddenly it felt much heavier. "This?" he asked, his hand reaching up to touch it, but falling away. "This is my soul?"

The demon grinned, the horrific nature of the expression exemplified by the rows upon rows of long, shark teeth.

"You could call it that," Baalphegor replied. "That sac — your soul — is the reason that you and so many others were left here."

Danny couldn't take his eyes from the dangling polyp. "This is all that . . . that separates me from being like you?"

Baalphegor extended his neck toward the sack. Danny swore that he could feel the demon's eyes on it.

"Yessssssss," he hissed like a snake. "Without it, your metamorphosis will be complete, and your human nature will be sloughed off like an old skin."

Taking a deep breath, Danny mustered the courage to reach up and touch it, to hold the sack of life — of his humanity — in his hand. It felt warm, a sort of vibration passing through it different from that of his heartbeat.

"What will you do with it?" he asked, imagining what it would mean to be like the creature squatting before him.

"I will use it for magic," Baalphegor explained. "Powerful magic to tear aside the curtains of reality, to take us far away from this dimension before its untimely end."

His father's words concerned him.
What does he mean by untimely end? Is he talking about the Demogorgon?
But he was distracted from the fate of the world by something far more personal and immediate.

His own existence.

Danny glanced cautiously at Baalphegor. "What if I don't want to give it to you?" he asked the demon as he gripped the hanging sack of flesh, protecting it from harm.

Baalphegor drew back, folding his long spidery hands across his chest. "That is your decision, as it was the decision of my other offspring to make. I will not take it — it must be given up willingly."

Danny stepped backward, sliding down the pile of rubble to the edge of the altar below. "I'm not sure if I can do that," he said. His brain felt as though it was on fire, and he would have given anything to erase what he had learned this night. "It's all I've ever known — being human."

The demon stood, stretching its long, sinuous body, powerfully defined muscles evident beneath the dark, leathery flesh.

"Instinct will show what you truly are," Baalphegor said. Then the demon went rigid, tilting back its head and sniffing the air.

Danny couldn't smell anything except the smoky stench of fire, but it appeared that his father did.

"I'm hungry," Baalphegor stated, springing from the altar wreckage with a powerful leap that cleared nearly half the church. He landed in a silent crouch by the door. "And I imagine you are as well."

Danny didn't want to admit it, but there was an aching pain in the pit of his belly. It had been a while since he'd last eaten.

Baalphegor beckoned him to follow, and he did, moving as silently across the rubble as his father did. And soon he smelled it as well, an odd, pungent aroma that he was sure he had experienced before, but never like this. It was almost as if his olfactory senses had changed again, growing stronger, processing the scents floating in the air differently than before.

The demon reached out, taking him by the shoulder and drawing him closer.

"There," the demon whispered, his breath vile, but strangely comforting.

He pointed toward the fence surrounding the church. An old woman stood there dressed in a heavy winter coat, her hat pulled down practically over her eyes. On the ground to either side of her were dirty shopping bags filled with empty soda and beer cans. She worked her fingers over a string of beads, muttering beneath her breath. Danny could see a silver crucifix dangling from the end of the black beads.

"What's she doing?" he asked.

"She's speaking to a power that doesn't live here anymore."

There were tears on the old lady's face, and Danny felt a sudden pang of sympathy for the stranger. In return, he felt the flesh dangling from the center of his chest swell just a tiny bit more.

Baalphegor tensed, a kind of crackling energy leaking from his body as he prepared to pounce. Danny knew what he was about to do and stopped it.

"No," Danny said, reaching out to grab hold of his father's arm. "Let her go. Find something else to eat. Rats or something."

The demon turned to him.

"Still held by the shackles of humanity," Baalphegor growled.

"Yeah," Danny responded, attempting to pull his father back into the church. "Come on, let's go back inside."

The demon smiled horribly. "But I'm hungry."

"We'll find you something else."

Baalphegor was gone in a flash, his movement an even darker blur on the night. Within seconds, he was back, the frightened old woman clutched in his arms, breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps in whimpers.

She was still alive, teary eyes wide with sheer terror, too frightened even to scream.

"Why look for something else when the food is right here for the taking?" the demon asked.

The old woman's eyes met Danny's, her plaintive gaze searching his, pleading for him to save her.

"Help me," she squeaked, and for the briefest of moments he found her terror and helplessness delicious. The ache inside his belly grew almost painful as it begged to be satisfied.

The woman started to struggle, and that was all that Baalphegor required. He dipped his mouth to her throat, sunk his teeth into the flimsy flesh there, and ripped it away like cotton candy.

Danny was stunned at how silent it all was. Baalphegor lifted his face, blood and strings of flesh dripping from his bear-trap mouth.

"Will you join me?"

Repulsed, Danny stepped away from him. Baalphegor reached down, digging his claws through the heavy winter coat and into the soft body beneath. With a display of utmost savagery, the demon tore the innards from the body, spattering Danny with warm gore as organs ripped loose. Baalphegor tossed this pile of viscera to the floor before him.

Danny gazed down at the blood that now splashed his clothes. He could feel it on his face, smell it in his nostrils. Before he even knew what he was doing, he felt his tongue sneak from his mouth to lick away the flecks that dappled his face.

"What are you doing, Danny?" asked a familiar voice from somewhere in the church.

He whipped around, lifting the sleeve of his shirt to wipe away the blood that stained his face, and saw Eve jump from a hole in what remained of the east wall of the church to land among the tumbled pews. Her eyes glinted menacingly in the darkness as she slowly stalked toward him.

"It's not what you think," he said.

But he saw the look of revulsion in her eyes. Who knew better than she did precisely what he had been doing?

A horrible roar filled the ruined church, and a massive, dark, shadow thing leaped through the same hole, landing in a predatory crouch. The thing might have been a really big dog, but Danny sensed it was something else entirely. The shadow beast bounded down the aisle, dragging a cursing, snarling something behind it.

The something was Squire.