6
The black fog rapidly and violently throws me down. My feet sink into the marshy, muddy ground, and I fall into Darya’s arms.
I weakly turn my head, pushing myself away from the man.
Without his help, I can’t stand on my own.
Clinging to his arm, I look around. The light is chillingly red, and I have to blink to see anything.
The air is damp, and I cringe at the earthy scent.
Brown swamp walls surround me, with both sides leading into long, dark tunnels.
I am in a cave. Red and white crystals are embedded in the rock, providing a source of light just like lanterns.
Breathing is difficult. The narrow space and dizziness remind me of another place, one from which I could barely escape.
I startle at Darya’s scratchy voice. Once again, he speaks in a language I don’t understand. His silver hair now glows red, and his black pupils scrutinize.
He contemplates my silence, as if angry I can’t see clearly in the red light. Where am I, though? My muscles slowly come to life, tiny stabs spreading through my limbs. I blink to dispel the effects of the sleepless night caused by the withdrawal symptoms. I am terribly tired.
I feel the sting of the drugs I hastily took rushing through my stomach.
“When do you think,” the man says in French, “you will speak our language again?”
Their language? He means that scratchy voice.
I once saw a video where members of an African tribe clicked their tongues at the end of each word, deeply, as if they had a muscle in their throats that we don’t.
Darya’s language reminds me of that. An indefinable scratching, as if a caveman is trying to kindle fire with two flint stones.
“I never understood your language,” I mumble, my head heavy.
“We spoke it all afternoon,” he says.
I shake my head. Can’t they leave me alone to process all this new information, just for a moment? This damn cave is spinning enough already.
Darya has brought me to a place that… Actually, I have no idea what kind of place this is, but the cave walls are closing in as though I’m never to escape from here.
Panic takes over me, and my palms start to sweat.
“Let go!” I hiss at Darya, who had been supporting my arm to help me stay on my feet.
He does so, and, I immediately have to cling to the wall. My whole body is trembling. There’s no denying that the post-overdose – as I call them – honeymoon days are over. Of course, it never lasts days, just a few hours. Plus I took too much.
I look at the silver-haired man. Four pills. Four pills weren’t enough for him to disappear. So, either my mother was right, and I really went crazy, and I’m currently imagining things within the walls of a psych ward, or Darya truly is the Demon King, and he brought me to his realm.
“Where are we?” I ask. Darya tilts his head to the side.
“Your friend said that you’re taking a strong antidepressant… and other things. You changed after you returned to the table. Since you took the pills, you haven’t spoken the Filizi language. What kind of poison did you take, and how long until it disappears from your system?”
I can’t help but laugh. Poison. No one has ever called my medication that, except Bengt.
“You understand our language,” Darya continues, perhaps mistaking my mocking laughter for surprise. “You speak every language in the world. But the poison suppresses your abilities. That’s why I asked.” He looks at me questioningly. “When will its effect wear off?”
A shiver runs down my spine at the thought. I start to fiddle with the bandage on my arm. So, it appears I didn’t understand his language once I’d taken the medication.
The man remains patiently silent. I realize I’m waiting to see that usual look I get from others. The disdain. The disbelief.
I don’t get either from him. Just curiosity, and something else too intense to name.
“Well,” I begin, trying to retrieve from my mental lexicon what it is I’m currently taking. “The effect lasts a few hours, then it’s one or two days until it’s cleared from my system.”
I clear my throat from embarrassment and lower my gaze. If all this is true, then I should understand their language. And their language…
Wait a minute.
Their language… Demons. What do demons look like, I wonder…?
My muscles tense up at the sound of a growl emerging from the dark corner of the cave. My eyes widen as I slowly turn to the side.
Shock immobilizes me as I gaze at several yellow pairs of eyes shining at the end of the dark tunnel.
They’re here. They’re here.
“Darya…” I whisper, gripping the black fabric of his sleeve, trembling. I dare not move. The creatures emerging from the ground are so familiar that fear melts me. I forget to breathe.
Those pitch-black skulls and sharp teeth surrounding me are the same ones that once loomed over me in my bedroom. The ones in my nightmares. At least I thought back then that they were creatures of my imagination.
They approach, and some emerge from the red wall as if they were ghosts, although they are very much real.
Their claws dig into the rocky ground, and they sniff the air.
Each creature is unmistakably looking at me.
I can almost feel their mouths biting into me.
And then they scream and I hear them exactly as I did in my dream.
The snarling and the sound of sharp teeth clashing.
I press into Darya’s arm.
“We need to get out of here,” I say, shaking him. “What are you waiting for? Let’s go…”
I look at him, and I’m astonished. The white-haired demon in front of me is no longer Darya.
His cloud-gray eyes have turned midnight black.
Pale lips are streaked with dark purple veins, as if he were already dead.
He blinks, and from the inner corner of his eye, two thin streams of black tears flow down.
The two streaks solidify on his face like tattoos, appearing as if they have always been there.
“It was you,” I stare at him, wide-eyed. I know I should push myself away, but I grip his arm even tighter.
They were his monsters. I’ve seen his demons all my life. Because of him, I had to take medication. Because of him… Everything is because of him.
“They won’t harm you unless I give the signal,” he says, tilting his head to the side again. He’s like a scientist who has made an interesting discovery. Except he’s a demon, and I surprise myself at how quickly I’ve accepted this fact.
“With the angels… you sent the monsters after me!” I stammer, and the realization hits me. How could I be so stupid? How could I choose him?
“To save you from the herebias.”
“The monsters wanted to kill me too!”
He shrugs.
“One of them indeed didn’t understand his task. But fortunately,” he says, leaning closer to me, “I intervened in time.”
He played the savior. I suppress a whimper.
“We had to get you out quickly, there was no time for explanations,” he adds. “And if you want to,” he continues casually, “we can move on.”
I just blink and look at the demons surrounding me.
“But where will we go?”
“The center of Filizi is not far.”
“What is that?”
“Where we demons live.”
“You’re taking me to a country filled with monsters?”
He smiles.
“You no longer belong in the Third World, among humans.”
“What do you mean? What Third World ?”
Darya steps quite close, and I feel the heat between us again.
He tilts his head to the side. I can’t make out much in the red lights.
Thoughtfully, he gazes at me, taking hold of a strand of hair.
His slow movements sharply contrast with how quickly he snatched me away from the hungry monster in the barn. He brushes a purple lock behind my ear.
“I like it,” he says, as though talking directly to my hair. “I very much like it.”
His last comment dries my mouth. I want to deny how satisfying it is that he likes the part of me that, in the past twenty-four hours, has become almost as important as the necklace from Bengt. But I don’t want to let him closer. That man, or demon, is the reason for what is happening to me.
Without any warning, I slap him across the face.
He doesn’t react to the slap as he should. He doesn’t get angry. Instead, surprise spreads across his beautifully smooth face. He looks down at me and smiles.
“You’re stronger than I thought.”
“Only when I’m angry!” I hiss, clenching my fists.
“Tell me, Lotte. Are you scared?”
I grimace as the blood pumps more strongly in my veins, but in the end, no sound comes out of my throat. My heart beats wildly, like the pounding of a dozen horses, and yes, I am scared, but… my anger is greater.
How would I have reacted if I didn’t already know these creatures? Surely, I would have died from fear. Should I be grateful that I have been seeing these monsters since I was five, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to handle meeting them now?
Darya smiles faintly. I shiver from his gaze, as if beaten. I want to take a pill…
The monsters follow as I take a step. They turn their black skulls to the side, sizing me up. My lungs whistle as I command myself to breathe. There are too many of them. Too close.
“Let’s go,” Darya declares. Every instruction he gives feels like he’s just informing me of my next move. He places his hand on my waist and gently pushes me forward. “Go in front of me.”
He doesn’t need to say it – there’s no way I’d willingly place myself between him and the creatures behind us.
I glance at Darya as we walk, trying to sift through every piece of information I know about him.
“You said you would never lie to me,” I state, carefully assessing his face.
“That’s right, Lotte,” he states, nodding while keeping his gaze on the cave.
“You said at the café that I could choose the monsters, too. You lied to me. Those creatures,” I point my thumb backward, “are yours. They wouldn’t have harmed me.”
Darya’s face stiffens, and he replies in a deep, cool voice, “To me, it’s not them who are the monsters, Lotte.”