Chapter Three
CHAPTER THREE
Daemon
Consciousness came slowly.
It started with small awarenesses that teased at the edges of my mind, pulling me out of the deepest sleep of my life.
It was the cold at first.
Sure, the sensation of being cold was a constant battle since leaving Hell and entering the human plane. It was just a natural adjustment to a new climate. It didn’t seem to nag me the way it constantly bothered Ace, who could always be found in one of his grandpa sweaters curled up near the fire.
But this was different. It was the kind of chill that crept across your skin and burrowed under, kept rooting down until it seemed to settle in your very bones.
My body was racked with it, violent shivers that had me pushing closer and closer to the edges of sleep.
It was the screaming next.
To be fair, it was a sound I was accustomed to. You didn’t work your whole life punishing the deserving in hell and not get used to the bloodcurdling screams of people in pain—both mental and physical.
But this wasn’t right.
I wasn’t in hell any longer.
And the only screams I heard on this human plane were those of women in the throes of ecstasy.
But my mind was a thick mud, trying to pull me back down into its comforting depths each time I tried to claw toward the surface, to figure out what was going on.
I guess it was the pain that finally did it.
The more I struggled toward consciousness, the stronger the sensations got.
There was a hammering in the back of my skull that demanded notice, that had my eyelids flickering open.
The first thing I saw was the dirt floor beneath my feet and my own filthy shoes.
When I tried to peel my chin off my chest, there was a screaming sensation up the back of my neck that said I’d been in that position for a long time.
What was going on?
Ignoring the pain, I forced my head to loll back on my weak neck as I became aware of a searing ache in my shoulders.
One look toward the side showed me the source.
Chains.
Thick as fuck chains around my wrists—wrists that I was dangling from.
“What the fu—“
But then it came back to me.
The club.
The downer mood inside of it.
Leaving.
Pain.
Panic.
People.
People who couldn’t just be people because at some point, the Change had moved through me, focusing my powers, strengthening them.
But they’d kept control over me.
Then, clearly, dragged me down here, chained me up, knocked me out cold.
How long had it been?
As if answering that question, though, I saw the small barred windows toward the top of the wall. Through them, little streaks of amber and gold stretched across the sky.
It looked more like sunset than sunrise to me, though.
Had I been knocked out for nearly a full day? How was that possible?
Another scream had me looking away from the window and over toward the far side of the room.
There, cast mostly in shadow, another figure rattled their chains, their cries like that of a dying animal as three dark figures half-blocked him from view.
Clearly, they were doing something to him. Something terrible to be eliciting those sounds.
A shadow seemed to move out of nowhere, creeping closer.
And I could have sworn I heard one soft, whispered word amongst all of the screams.
“Sleep.”
Then, I shit you not, the man went from pulling against his chains and howling in pain… to dead asleep in seconds.
What the fuck was that?
Had he just hit his limit?
People could only endure so much pain. There was a real trick to torture—to inflict as much as you could while also just toying with the threshold, so they didn’t slip into the blissful peace of sleep.
But something didn’t sit right, didn’t feel right.
I hadn’t imagined that voice, damnit.
“It’s no fun now,” one of the figures declared.
“We will come back later,” another agreed.
Then as a group, they moved, their feet sliding against stone stairs before the door above groaned.
Then… nothing.
Silence, save for the chattering of my teeth from the cold and the deep breathing of the sleeping man.
That same shadow I’d seen before seemed to shift again. It crept across the wall, making its way directly across from me.
Then pausing.
Before approaching.
Not a shadow.
Shadows couldn’t move across the center of the room, couldn’t stalk toward you like a predator approaching prey.
Then it hit me.
“Sleep.”
This shadow was the source of that voice, had been the mercy that made the man pass out. Had it also been the reason I’d been so deeply unconscious?
I forced life into my feet, made them take my weight. Ignoring the way blood rushed to my arms as the strain of my body weight lifted, the pins and needles screaming through my muscles, I glared at the shadow as it moved right in front of me, stopping just a few feet away.
Then, right before my eyes, like a cloak shrugging off someone’s frame, the shadow fell away. In its place, a woman.
Not just any woman.
A fucking smokeshow of a woman.
Really, almost all human women I came across were hot as shit in their own unique ways. This one, though? She was the kind of beautiful you only saw on screen, in ads, on canvases.
She was slight and fair, her porcelain skin impossibly flawless, save for a small crescent moon-shaped birthmark to the side of one of her eyebrows.
Her inky black hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back, framing a soft, delicate face dominated by stormy blue eyes.
Eyes that were lasered in on me.
“You’re awake,” she said, her voice like a secret just for the two of us, smoky and elusive, something like the shadow she clearly was able to cloak herself in, even if I had no idea how that was possible.
“You put me to sleep,” I countered, finding my voice scratchy from, I recalled, screaming in agony for what felt like lifetimes.
“I put you into a deeper sleep,” she clarified.
“Like you did with him?” I asked, jerking my chin toward the slumped figure across the room.
“If I hadn’t, they would have kept torturing him until he died.”
“What happens when he wakes up?”
Above us, there was a chorus of laughter that was quickly drowned by the thump of music.
“I get him out of here,” she said simply, shrugging.
“How?”
To that, she reached into her pocket, producing an ancient-looking key.
I wanted to tell her to release me. But her body language was tense, distrustful. At some point, it was entirely possible she’d seen the Change in me, was questioning who I was, what I was.
I needed to gain her trust first.
“Don’t they know it’s missing?”
“No,” she said simply.
“What if they want to release one of us?”
To that, her face darkened.
“They pull,” she told me. “If the wrists and hands are small enough, just until the skin is gone.”
“And if they’re big?”
“Until the arms rip off of their bodies,” she admitted, her stormy eyes nearly going black as my own stomach sloshed around.
“Fuck.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “Hence the key.”
“How many men have you rescued?”
“Dozens. More. Men, women, some teens, even. They’re… not picky,” she said, face scrunching up as if the words tasted sour in her own mouth.
“If they like playing with humans, why am I here?” I asked, hedging my bets, figuring she must know I wasn’t one of them.
“My best guess is they’re tiring of how quickly the humans die.”
“I guess that makes a sick sort of sense,” I agreed. I was, after all, immortal. They would torture me day and night for eternity, and all I would do was heal and be prepared for more.
“What are you?” she asked, point-blank.
I exhaled hard through my nose, knowing I was taking a huge risk here, but not knowing what other choice I had but to trust this woman.
“A demon.”
“A… demon?” she asked, brows scrunching. “Like… hell demon? Lucifer, fire, brimstone demon?”
“What other kind could there be?” I asked.
“Oh, I believe you have a lot of catching up to do,” she admitted.
“So catch me up. Who are they?” I asked, jerking my head up toward the ceiling where it sounded like a whole party was taking shape.
“What,” she said.
“Huh?”
“You mean what are they.”
“Alright,” I agreed. “What are they?”
“They’re gods.”
She said it so simply. No hesitation.
I mean, sure, that was the going theory with my club, with even the Academy of demonslayers. But I think some part of me was still a little dubious.
I mean, I thought the “old gods” were the stuff of myths. That our story with Sky Daddy, Hell Daddy, and all the angels and demons in between was the only real creation story.
“Gods,” I repeated. “What gods?”
“Well, you have personally met Oizys,” she said.
“Oizys.”
“Goddess of grief, anxiety, and depression,” she explained.
“Well, that explains some things.”
“There’s also Moros, the god of doom; Ares, the god of violence and war; Eris, the goddess of strife. And, perhaps worst of all, the Keres.”
“Who is Keres?”
“Keres is not a who; it’s a collective.”
“Why are they the worst?”
“They’re death spirits. They personify violent death. They like to be around ugly deaths, drinking blood, soaking up the misery and pain…”
“Sounds like they’d be the life of the party.”
“This isn’t a joke,” she told me, worrying her plump lower lip with her teeth, clearly second-guessing whatever she thought of me.
“Okay,” I agreed, nodding. “Why are you here then? Who are you?”
“I’m Nox,” she told me.
“Nox. Like night?”
“Exactly.”
“Explains that nifty shadow cloak, I guess. So, you’re the, what, goddess of night?”
To that, an unexpected little snort escaped her as she rolled her eyes at something I wasn’t privy to.
“No. No, Nyx is the goddess of the night,” she told me.
“Didn’t have a myth lesson on my schedule for the day, but okay. And then what are you?”
“Her daughter,” Nox said with a shrug of those dainty shoulders. “Just like Oizys, Ares, Eris, Moros, and the Keres. Amongst others.”
“So you are a goddess?”
“No. No, a god or goddess is the child of two gods. Nyx is my mother, but my father was a mortal. I’m not a goddess. I’m just a demigod. A somewhat useless one at that.”
“Oh, come on now. That shadow thing is pretty cool. And you can put people to sleep. Which… okay, probably isn’t that useful. Unless you can put the gods to sleep.”
“No. No, I can barely put most humans to sleep.”
“You put me to sleep.”
“At great personal cost,” she said, gesturing toward her face. And, yeah, on closer inspection—looking beneath all that damn pretty—she looked completely spent.
“I am not very strong. I can hide in shadows. And I can put people to sleep, even give them good dreams, but I am drained afterward. Sometimes, if I’m not careful, I can’t even move after. So, yeah, I do what I can. Which isn’t much.”
“I think the people you get out of this basement would say it’s a lot,” I told her.
“Anyone with a soul would do the same.”
“I don’t have a soul,” I told her. “But I would do it as well.”
“You’re a demon. You torture humans too.”
“First of all, that’s past tense. I found me a nifty hellmouth, got myself sucked up onto the human plane, and have no interest in ever going back. I mean, have you tasted pizza? Listened to music? Watched movies? Humans got a lot of shit right. Besides, I only ever tortured those who deserved it.”
“No one deserves torture.”
“No?” I asked. “I once had a human who brutally raped, tortured, and murdered fourteen women he met through various churches. I think he had it coming.”
“Fine,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t want to argue with you.”
“What do you want with me?” I asked. And maybe my tone had slipped a bit seductive. I couldn’t help it. She was standing there, looking all pretty, smelling all sweet.
Did something warm flash across her eyes at hearing it, or was that just my own wishful thinking?
Despite the circumstances, I wouldn’t mind her coming closer, stripping me down, and having her way with me. If she could use my legs to step on, she might even be able to climb up on my shoulders, so I could…
“I need your help.”
“Help with what, sweetness?” I asked, trying to tamp down the desire that was threatening to get my cock to full mast in a matter of seconds if I didn’t get control of myself.
“I need help finding someone.”
“Finding someone,” I repeated, brows pinching. “Finding who?”
“My sister.”
“Your sister?”
“Nemesis.”
“Your sister and your nemesis?”
“No,” she said, a little smile toying with her lips. “Nemesis is the name of one of my sisters. Half-sisters. She’s a goddess.”
“Oh, alright. Well, she doesn’t sound much better than the others. Why do you want to find her?”
“Her name is deceptive. She’s actually the goddess of balance. She balances human grief and joy. Pain and pleasure. She’s the only thing that keeps all our other siblings in balance. Without her…” she said, waving out a hand.
“People get their arms torn off.”
“Yes.”
“Well, can’t you just, you know, call her? Don’t gods have some sort of Bat Signal or something?”
“It’s not that she’s just not here,” Nox said. “It’s that they took her.”
“They?”
“Our other siblings. They took her. Hid her somewhere. They want to be unchecked. They don’t want her interference.”
“Hm. Can’t you just call Mommy? Tattle on the bad siblings?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s… the old gods aren’t black-and-white like your religion is. There’s a lot of gray. They don’t believe that the Keres, for example, are inherently bad. They just… have a job to do.”
“Making sippy cups out of dying people?”
“Yes. Besides, Nyx is a primordial goddess.”
“Sweetness, I have no fucking idea what that means.”
“It means she was born of Chaos itself. She’s one of the oldest gods. One so powerful that Zeus himself fears her.”
“That’s quite the origin story.”
“She’s the goddess of night, of secrets, and can speak to us through our dreams.”
“Cool résumé. So why can’t you reach out to her?”
“Because I wouldn’t even know where to begin. She’s not one of the gods who hung around on Olympus or in the human realm. She exists outside of us and this world.”
“Would she help if she could? Or is she as evil as all her kids?”
“They’re not all evil. Some are more… neutral. Hypnos, the god of sleep. Thanatos, the god of nonviolent death. The Moirai, the fates who control the destinies of all humans. And there’s maybe more of me, I guess. But that’s not clear.”
“And what about you, sweetness? Are you good or evil? I ask, as an evil creature myself. So no judging.”
“I guess I’m more… human,” she said. “I’ve always been on the human plane. I’ve always been… this.” She waved down at herself as if to indicate her shortcomings. But my gaze didn’t see anything lacking.
“Are demigods immortal?”
“Not… entirely?” Nox said, eyes scrunching up. “It seems to kind of be different on a case-by-case basis. Like Achilles was immortal, save for his Achilles tendon area. And Heracles was poisoned. But it seems like, as a whole, we are semi-immortal. We live unnaturally long lives, but we do die.”
“How long have you been alive?”
“Only about fifty years.”
“Well, you’re very well preserved for fifty,” I said, loving the little flush that crept across her cheeks. “So, Mom woke up first then?”
“What?”
“The old gods, they’ve been waking up. Or, at least, that’s how my club has been putting it.”
“Club?”
“Motorcycle club. I dunno. It’s a business the older demons started when they came to the human realm.”
“Oh, I see,” she said, and I could see her gears turning behind her eyes. “Well, I think the primordial gods have been… awake a lot longer than the other gods,” Nox explained. “But the Protogenoi are the very basic components of the universe. They emerged fully formed and represent earth, air, sea, sky, water, Underworld, darkness, night, light, day, procreation, and time. They are, by nature—since they are the very world itself—neutral.
“It’s the newer gods who cause all the problems, who lean either good or wicked, who don’t know true balance unless it is forced upon them.”
“Hence finding your sister.”
“ Yes .” There was desperation in her voice. I could only imagine the things she’d seen and heard around this place. Feeling helpless thanks to their strength and her temperamental powers. But doing what she could regardless.
“And you want my help.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t do it alone. Because I’ve been trying, day and night, for weeks. Because I—“
Her voice was getting high, borderline hysterical.
“Hey, hey, alright,” I cut her off. “No one would exactly call me a do-gooder. But one thing I am is a sucker for a pretty girl with a sad story. Unlock me. We’ll go looking.”
“There’s a catch.”
“What kind of catch?”
“You can’t be free.”
“I need to be free to help you.”
“Yes, but… but I need you to come back here in between.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, dozens of innocents will suffer,” she said, her eyes going wide and sad. “I know what I’m asking,” she added. “I know what they do. Believe me, I know. And that would be done to you. But—“
“But I can take it. But I won’t die. And your conscience will be clearer.”
“Yes.”
“Well, shit,” I said, sighing. “Let’s hope we find your sister fast then, huh?”