Chapter 3 #2
She was committed to the bit, that was for sure.
“All right. Let’s pretend for a second that I even believe demons exist.” Which she did not. “They sure don’t look like you .”
She looked like she’d stepped out of a 1950s Sears catalogue, not the depths of Hell.
Daphne’s lips pressed into a sour-looking slash. “Why do they always say that?” she grumbled under her breath. “I suppose you probably expect me to look something like this.”
Thunder cracked and a cloud of pastel-pink sugary-sweet-smelling smoke filled the elevator.
A scream ripped its way up her throat as Sam searched blindly for something, anything she could hold on to, certain that the elevator was about to plummet, sending them to what she could only hope would be a quick, painless death.
“Would you stop ? You’re going to give me a migraine with all that caterwauling.”
As much as Sam wanted to ask Daphne how she could be so glib when they were very clearly about to die, she couldn’t. Fear had rendered speaking all but impossible, only the tiniest whimper escaping.
She squinted, trying to see through the bubblegum-pink haze that tickled her nose and made her head feel funny, like a helium balloon. Through the strange, slowly dissipating smoke, she could just barely make out the shape of Daphne, now standing. At least, she thought it was—
A gasp left her lips and she scurried back, shoulders slamming painfully into the wall.
Oh, was she wrong, because that was not Daphne.
What could only be described as the creature standing across from her bore no resemblance to Daphne.
Its skin was the color of freshly spilled blood, the color so unnatural, so wrong , it sent a shiver down her spine.
Too afraid to look at its face, she let her gaze travel down the length of its lithe body.
To call what it wore clothing would be generous.
A length of ragged, sootcovered bandage covered its breasts, a scrap of the same fabric acting as a skirt fashioned around its hips.
Its arms hung loosely at its sides, relaxed, skin a gradient of steadily darkening shades of red bleeding into sooty-black fingers tipped with lethal-looking claws.
Left with little choice but to bite the bullet, Sam dragged her eyes from those sharp, sharp claws and—pressed her fingertips against her lips in horror. “ God. ”
It— she smiled, teeth razor-sharp and stark white against the deep crimson of her mouth. “No, silly. It’s Daphne .”
She was breathtakingly horrible . The blue of her eyes was gone, the white, too, replaced with two inky-black voids, her stare sucking Sam in.
The only thing unchanged was her hair, inexplicably still blond and still spilling over her shoulders, only now there were two curved crimson horns jutting out from her gently teased roots.
“I’m guessing this is closer to what you had in mind?
” She cocked a hip, striking a pose, drawing Sam’s eye to the— Oh, okay.
That was a—a thing she had. Long, sleek, and the same color red as the rest of her, growing darker at the spadeshaped end, a tail, her tail, twitched idly behind her.
“It’s fine, I guess, but it’s what everyone expects, you know?
” She rolled her eyes. Or at least Sam thought she did.
Hard to tell, considering her eyes were infinite pools of black.
Sam needed to sit down. She pressed her palms flat against the floor. Oh, right. She was sitting down.
“I—you—there are—you’ve got … horns ,” she stammered, and Daphne’s lips twitched. She stole in a deep breath and started over. “You are a demon.”
“I mean, don’t sound so surprised. I did tell you.” Behind Daphne, her tail swished from side to side, a lot like how those of Sam’s kitties, Nacho and Pumpkin, did when they were feeling playful.
Air shuddered between Sam’s lips as she slumped against the wall, reeling. No, spiraling . “Demons are real, and you are one.”
“As we’ve established,” Daphne said, sounding amused.
Dreaming. Sam had to be dreaming, trapped in a nightmare, or—or maybe she’d knocked her head on a subway pole and was passed out on the floor of the 1 train and this was all just a figment of her brain’s overactive imagination and—and concussive trauma.
Or something. In a few hours or days she was going to wake up in a hospital bed with a bump on her head and a bill that would bleed what was left of her savings account dry, but in a world without demons.
Just in case, Sam slipped her fingers inside the sleeve of her coat and pinched the thin skin of her wrist hard.
“Did you just pinch yourself?”
“No,” she lied, scowling as heat gathered in her cheeks.
Daphne grinned, mouth full of too-sharp teeth. “Humans are so cute sometimes.”
Humans. Jesus Christ on a cracker. Only Sam, with the worst luck in the universe, would find herself stuck in an elevator with a demon. An actual living, breathing—Wait.
“Are you even alive?”
“Am I alive? That’s what you care about?
Seriously? I can’t die if that’s what you’re asking, so don’t go getting any funny ideas,” Daphne warned before, in the span of time between one blink and the next, returning to looking human.
She shimmied her shoulders, settling into her skin like most people settled into a well-worn shirt, and sighed, relief plain in her features.
“Since we’re finally on the same page, let’s get down to brass tacks, shall we? ”