Chapter 2
I was having a good dream.
I was racing someone I couldn’t quite see on loud as fuck motorbikes we’d acquired somewhere, heading west on the quiet winding roads that led to Devil’s Den. The adrenaline rush was better than any high, making my limbs shake with pent-up energy.
The black cloud that followed me around every day of my life was gone. The numbness had cleared. I felt each swoop of my stomach as I went over a particularly steep drop, the burn against my palms as I gripped the handlebars harder, pushing for more speed.
Whoever I was racing was gaining on me, but I couldn’t turn my head to see them. They laughed, and it was a familiar sound. I knew this person.
Just a little further, and we would get to our destination. To our prize. It was something good, I could feel it.
“Get up, you lazy sack of shit.”
I groaned as the remote Dad threw hit me in the head, rolling towards the back of the couch and giving him my back. Damn it, why had he woken me up? It had been such a good dream. I had been so close to winning.
I didn’t need to see him to know exactly what he looked like right now—arms crossed, brows drawn down, jaw clenched.
He was an older, rounder version of me, with hair that was more salt than pepper, and a beer gut that I had sworn to the goddess I would never develop.
Every night he left the house in dark jeans, a t-shirt that was stretched a little too tight, and a leather jacket he’d acquired in the 90s and would wear until his dying day.
Mostly because it had plenty of internal pockets to store his merchandise.
“You need to move some product tonight, Riot. I’m not joking,” Dad warned, sounding as irritable as usual. “Or don’t bother coming home. You’re a curse on my reputation.”
I grunted in acknowledgment, but didn’t bother arguing.
What was the point? My time was up. I’d been living here for ten years—which was about nine years longer than I’d intended—and my general uselessness to him was always going to be a deal breaker.
We were a line of salesmen, and I wasn’t fucking selling, nor did I intend to.
I didn’t give a shit either way how my old man felt about that. I wasn’t intending to die of guilt before my 30th birthday because I’d left a line of dead and dying humans in my wake.
“Get it together. I’m not running a fucking charity here, Riot,” Dad groused as he let himself out the front door of the apartment, slamming it shut behind him hard enough to rattle the liquor bottles on the shelf.
I massaged the spot on my skull where he’d got me with the remote before rolling onto my back, staring up at the cracked plaster ceiling, yellowed from years of smoking indoors.
The street outside was coming alive as the sun set, growing noisier as the neighboring daimons and a few of the particularly deadbeat humans who lived around here woke up.
I knew if I looked on the kitchen counter, I’d find a selection he expected me to push tonight.
Weed, pills and coke were the usual suspects, though sometimes he threw in little bonuses to surprise me.
Fuck, this would all be so much easier if I could just mindlessly follow orders, sell the shit I was supposed to sell, and ruin lives like a good little daimon.
For years, I’d faked it pretty well. Everyone who lived around here—human and daimon alike—knew who my old man was, what the family business was. If someone had approached me and asked for something, I’d give it to them and justified it to myself by saying that they’d asked. They had come to me.
When I watched humans get fucked up over the shit I’d given them, I told myself that they’d asked for it.
Even when the Goddess’ gift whispered in my ear what their weakness would be, their particular brand of poison, I ignored it.
I only ever gave them what they asked for, and told myself they knew what they were getting into.
Until six months ago when I’d stopped selling anything at all. The excuses hadn’t been flying even in my own head for a long time, and I’d finally made the call to do something about it. Apparently, the timer on Dad’s patience had run out.
It was probably a good thing. I needed a push to get me out of my comfort zone. Homelessness was a push.
I reached blindly on the floor next to the couch until my fingers brushed over my cracked phone and grabbed it, squinting at the bright screen.
Five pm, probably time to get up. There was a missed call from what probably passed as my only friend, Dare, and I hit ‘call’ not really expecting him to answer.
“Hey, man,” he said distractedly. The phone crackled as he set it up somewhere, the sound of his equipment clinking against the bench in the background. “You’re on speaker, but there’s no one here.”
“No one there? Are you losing your touch?” I joked. Dare was booked solid with clients almost every hour he was awake. He was the best tattoo artist for miles.
“Fuck off,” Dare scoffed. “Just cleaning up in between bookings. Where are you planning on sulking tonight?”
“Onslaught,” I replied, lips twitching as I felt the comforting rush of my self-destructive tendencies making an appearance. “Thought I’d mix things up.”
There was a pause where it sounded like Dare stopped what he was doing before he let out a long, low whistle. “You’re getting brave, my man. Or you have a death wish, which wouldn’t entirely surprise me. I thought Wild banned you from all Underworld clubs?”
“That was ages ago,” I replied dismissively.
Two years maybe? Wild, club owner, big bastard, and king of a string of nightclubs known as the Underworld hadn’t liked me since I’d sold coke at one of his clubs one time .
He frowned upon that sort of thing. It wasn’t like I’d wanted to sell it.
“Besides, Onslaught is a shit hole. It’s the chip in his crown, I doubt he’s been there in years. ”
Dare snorted. “Wild’s got eyes everywhere and he still owns the place, but whatever. It’s your funeral.”
“It might be my funeral soon anyway,” I replied flippantly, feeling around in my jeans pocket for the bumpy carved exterior of my copper lighter. I fished it out and popped the lid reflexively, the familiar sound of igniting calming me down.
“You still not selling?” Dare asked. The concern in his voice was impossible to miss.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked, smirking at the ceiling as I extinguished the flame then immediately lit it again. I felt fucking crazy. “It goes against everything I’m supposed to do. What we’re supposed to be. What I’m supposed to be.”
The darkness. The sinners. The Pied Pipers for sad and desperate humans. Those were the daimons. The Moros line in particular.
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” Dare replied quietly.
If anyone understood what it was to find a loophole in our programming, it was him.
“But I think you need to get the fuck out of your dad’s place before he kills you.
Don’t pull that bullshit about having no money, you can crash at mine until you figure something out.
You sleep on a couch anyway. Sleep on mine. ”
“I might have to take you up on that,” I replied, my chest tight. Not many daimon offered something without requesting a deal in return. “He said move some shit tonight or don’t come home.”
“Then I’ll see you later,” Dare replied firmly. “This could be good for you, if you don’t destroy your life first. Gotta run, my client is here. Stay out of Wild’s way. Don’t get arrested. Or killed.”
“Aye aye, sir,” I chuckled, hanging up. Ye of little faith . No one was arresting anyone in Milton, this place was a fucking wasteland.
Besides, I sort of had a plan. My old man wasn’t welcome in any Underworld-owned clubs either. So long as I kept my head down and didn’t cause any trouble, I was better off in the viper’s den than anywhere else in Milton, and I could burn off a little steam. Win win.
With a groan, I rolled off the sagging couch and headed for the bathroom to make myself look at least somewhat presentable and pack my toiletries, since apparently I wasn’t coming back tonight. Or ever.
Fuck it, there was something quite freeing about that knowledge. No more waiting for my dad to reach the end of his tether and wondering what would happen when he did. I’d skim some of the good stuff Dad had left on the bench and spend the next few days living hard and hoping I didn’t die young.
I splashed my face in cold water and roughly dried it before glancing up at my reflection in the mirror, gripping either side of the small porcelain sink.
The devil stared back at me. Dark red irises that bled to purple around the edges.
The mark of a daimon. No human ever saw these eyes or even knew we existed, but the goddess didn’t let us hide our true nature from each other or ourselves. Even if we wanted to.
I ran my fingers through my messy black hair and left my stubble as it was, not particularly caring about what I looked like at that moment.
On the one hand, there was a sense of freedom I hadn’t experienced in years, so close I could touch it.
On the other, if I wasn’t doing what I’d been born to do, designed to do, then what was the point of me ?
It’s not like I could just pretend to be a human.
Well, I could , they wouldn’t know, but I didn’t know how to be a regular human with a 9-to-5 job and a minivan.
I had no idea how I was going to make money, and no legitimate work experience.
Maybe I could spin a decade of slinging drugs for my dad as ten years sales experience for the family business?
Or figure out how to hawk protein powder and sunglasses on social media.
I was pretty good looking, I could probably pull it off.