Chapter 5 Des
Des
Des had been standing outside the Wisteria University gates for over an hour when the tall man in the black coat finally emerged.
Des had followed him here all the way from the other side of the city. Or rather, he had followed a demon here, who’d been
trailing the man all evening like a shadow.
Gareth had stood shivering beside him, clearly worried the demon—which had disappeared as soon as the man entered the iron
gates—might return. Des had been more focused on the person the man had apparently come to meet: a young woman who had invited
the man inside. But as far as Des knew, there weren’t any classes over the weekend, and he couldn’t understand why she was
there in the first place.
When they disappeared into the dean’s cottage, her presence began to make sense. He knew of Dr. Blake by reputation; occasionally,
the man made visits to the Iron Fortress to extoll the virtues of higher education to the guards, who could choose to leave
their service when they turned eighteen. Few did, of course; higher education, for all its supposed glories, didn’t pay. Demon
hunting did.
Des thought he remembered hearing something about the dean having a niece.
He assumed they must be dining together with her uncle.
But then the man emerged far too quickly to have eaten, and Des knew then that he was right to have lingered.
The guard let the man out through the pedestrian gate, and only moments later, the demon they’d been hunting previously materialized.
It was a true demon, a verita, the worst kind because it was intentional. People couldn’t control what their subconscious mind did while asleep, and even
King Aciano hadn’t attempted to outlaw procreation. Verita, on the other hand, came from willful disobedience of the law. A person chose to compose a new piece of music, or paint a picture, or devise a new solution to a commonplace problem, and a demon was inevitably
born.
Des would never be able to understand the selfishness of such people. It was why he was determined to put an end to verita entirely. He couldn’t eradicate all demons, not so long as they were linked to creation. But he could prevent as many children
from being orphaned by demons as possible. He’d tracked down three men in the past year for illegal inventing, though tying
them to their verita was not easy. One had gotten off on a technicality, but the other two were in prison where they belonged.
Those verita had escaped their creators in search of prey, but this demon didn’t appear to be hunting. When the man stopped and the demon
caught up, Des’s muscles tensed in preparation for the attack he knew was coming—but instead, the man leaned down and spoke.
A moment later, the demon trotted off in another direction.
Every hair on Des’s body stood at attention. This demon hadn’t been tracking the tall man at all. It was his thrall. Des had
never seen one before—hadn’t even been sure they existed—but there was no other explanation for what he’d just witnessed.
Demons didn’t leave prey. And they certainly didn’t take orders. Gareth’s mouth hung open in disbelief.
Des turned his gaze back to the dean’s cottage, wondering what on earth Dean Blake’s niece was doing with a man who consorted with demons.
Des stood ramrod straight before Commander Yew, who was the epitome of what the Iron Guard stood for. His thick salt-and-pepper
hair was always kept impossibly short, and his armor fit like a second skin. Even the jagged scar through his left eyebrow
looked as though it belonged there, a reminder to everyone he encountered exactly how dangerous it was to be a demon hunter,
one who always came out on top.
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Whitlow. I’ll go to the university tomorrow to speak with Miss Blake.”
Des cleared his throat. “Perhaps we should wait, sir. We don’t know yet if she was deliberately socializing with a consorter.
If so, tipping her off might give this man an opportunity to escape.”
Commander Yew’s hallmark scowl deepened. “Dean Blake is an upstanding member of Wisterian society. I sincerely doubt that
sweet, sheltered girl would do such a thing.”
“I understand, sir,” Des replied, not wanting to malign a family Commander Yew clearly respected.
After a moment, Yew continued. “But keep an eye on her, just in case. If anything were to happen to her in Dean Blake’s absence,
I’d never forgive myself.”
Des didn’t love the idea of babysitting when he should be hunting, but perhaps this was an opportunity. “And the consorter,
sir? Would you like me to track him, as well?”
“You’ll be plenty busy with your own patrols, not to mention Miss Blake. I’ll put another guard on it.”
Des did his best to hide his disappointment, but Yew knew him too well.
“You don’t have to take on everything, Whitlow. Your performance has already far surpassed that of your peers.”
Des nodded. Commander Yew thought Des wanted what all young guards wanted: glory, recognition, respect. But this went far
beyond that for Des.
All hunters had heard old tales of people consorting with the demons they conjured, using dark magic to wield control over
them. It was magic, after all, that had created the curse on the kingdom in the first place, and why it had been outlawed
along with inventing. But hearing those tales had been nothing compared to seeing, and feeling, the very wrongness of a demon under thrall firsthand. It took the fire in Des’s chest, the rage that burned at every casual
act of negligence that created a demon, and fanned it into an inferno.
Demons were responsible for the fact that every member of the Iron Guard was an orphan. But a controlled demon could be responsible
for so much worse. A weapon instead of a rabid animal.
Wisteria kept records of every human-demon encounter, whether it resulted in a human’s death or not. There were men at the
fort who studied the records for patterns, improving the Iron Guard’s capabilities over the years and reducing fatal encounters
significantly for humans. When he was fifteen, Des had snuck into the archives and looked for the record of his parents’ deaths.
He regretted it, sometimes, because what he read had left him with night terrors for months afterward. But it had helped him
decide that ending verita was his calling.
Des had been four months old at the time of the attack.
His father was a farmer, and, per the account pieced together by the Iron Guard, he’d most likely gone out that night to the chicken coop after hearing a commotion.
The noise had woken Des, and his mother had gone to rock him back to sleep.
But when she went into Des’s room, she saw a monster looming over his cradle, its red eyes flashing at her when she opened the door.
According to the records, she had screamed at the demon on purpose to draw it away from Des, and it had worked. It pursued
her downstairs and into the parlor, where it caught up with her, tearing her to shreds with its long talons. Hearing her screams,
Des’s father had returned to the house just in time to watch the life drain out of her. He started to reach for his axe, but
the demon would already have been growing after feasting on his mother’s flesh. Des’s father ran for the alarm bell to alert
the town guard, only managing to ring it twice before he was attacked. He lived long enough to tell his neighbor what happened,
then bled out on the floor of his house. The demon was eventually caught and killed by a mob of villagers, being too far out
of the city to warrant their own platoon of Iron Guards.
There was no time to study the demon once it was pierced with an iron-tipped spear. It had gone up in green flames, like they
all did. But the records stated that the demon’s talons resembled scythes, and the theory was that a nearby farmer had attempted
to create some sort of new blade for more efficient farm work. No one had ever been caught. His parents never received justice.
“You did well tonight, Whitlow,” Commander Yew said. “Go get some rest. You look like you need it.”
Des saluted and returned to the barracks, where Gareth was telling the rest of the guards what they’d seen. He didn’t blame the kid for his excitement; everyone shared stories of their hunting when something unusual occurred. But he didn’t like discussing things he didn’t yet understand.
“You’re telling us you saw an honest-to-gods thrall,” a guard around Gareth’s age said. She was sitting close to him, her
chin propped on her elbow, and Gareth was blushing under the attention.
“If it wasn’t a thrall, that man was extremely lucky not to have his face ripped off,” Gareth said, glancing across the room
to Des for confirmation.
“What about the dean’s niece?” the girl asked. “Do you think she knows about the demon?”
“No idea,” Gareth replied.
“It’s interesting that she waited until her uncle was gone to meet with this man, though,” the girl said, and Des nodded in
silent agreement. No matter what Commander Yew thought, something stank about the entire thing.
He closed his eyes to rest and grunted as a weight settled on the end of his bunk just a moment later.
“What do you want, Daisy?” he asked without opening his eyes.
“I heard you were spying on the dean’s niece tonight,” she said in a deliberately teasing voice.
“Hmm.”
“I’ve heard she’s very pretty,” Daisy pressed.
“It was dark.”
“Oh come on, Des. Tell me something! This week has been exceedingly dull.”
He forced himself to sit up on his elbows. “I didn’t kill anything either, if it makes you feel better.”
“I meant in terms of gossip, not demons. Anyway, you saw a thrall. That must have been thrilling!” Daisy was cross-legged on the foot of his bed, her chin-length red hair tucked behind her
ears. She was scrawny and cheerful and couldn’t have been more different from Des if she tried. He’d never understood why
she befriended him, but she was his oldest friend in the Guard. He trusted her more than anyone else there.
But he still didn’t want her sitting on his bunk.
“Like I said, it was dark. I couldn’t make out any details, other than it was about the size and shape of a sheep.”
Daisy rubbed at her freckled nose. “Huh. That’s not very exciting, is it?”
“I told you.”
“But the girl?”
“What about her?”
“She met with this man? With no one else present? What do you make of it?” Daisy’s wide blue eyes were staring down at him,
and he wished he had the energy to spin a tale like Gareth, to somehow make demon hunting sound like an adventure, rather
than duty.
“You already know what I think, Daisy.”
“Aw, come on,” she said. “I don’t think you’ve used your quota of insults for today.”
He sighed in relief when the gas lamps were extinguished, a signal that it was time for everyone to turn in, and for Daisy
to return to her own bunk. “I think she’s a silly, spoiled fool.”