Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
Daemon
LORE OF THE DEMONS
Dawn crept over the horizon, breaking against the darkness of the forest. Sitting back against a tree with my arms crossed, my eyes flicked down to my mask.
Five slashes.
I was honestly a little surprised. I never thought of myself as powerful.
But as each morning brought a new slash—one more circle of Hell I descended to—I was beginning to wonder what I was truly capable of.
I could already feel the difference as I let out my demon more and more.
My possession had become second nature, slipping into creatures with less resistance each time, until it was no longer a struggle but a reflex.
The last creature I had seized unsettled me—it had been different, sharper. Intelligent.
Embracing more of my demon certainly wasn’t winning over Vhaena’s favor—not that she was winning mine either.
It still hurt me to this day that she had never told me what happened.
Over and over for months, I had tried to get her to tell me, but she never gave me the chance to ask. Eventually, I stopped trying.
I waited a few more minutes for the sun to rise a bit farther, thinking Vhaena would wake up. She didn’t. In fact, she slept like the dead. She snored ever so slightly in an adorable way, and her hair was plastered over her face.
I knew she was tired—clearly—but we needed to get to the other side of the river today.
I wasn’t letting her be near the demons any longer than necessary, so I was only allowing her to sleep for a little while longer before I woke her up.
Which I wasn’t looking forward to. I’d never personally experienced Vhaena when she woke up—aside from yesterday, which I didn’t count because it was a much more hostile encounter—but Vosten had told me grueling stories about her coarse demeanor.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to wake her up. I looked up at the raven, preferring he take the brunt of whatever hostilities awaited. He began squawking until she finally roused from sleep.
“We should have cooked him last night,” she grumbled, peeling one eye open to glare at me. “Why are you watching me sleep?”
Because I can’t keep my eyes off you.
“Not much else to do while I was waiting for you to stop wasting the daylight.” I shrugged.
“Well, maybe try something less creepy next time.” She sat up, rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms.
At least she couldn’t see the grin beneath my mask.
I stood and walked over, offering a hand to help her up. She must have been really out of it to accept, but I wasn’t going to complain about touching her again; even if it was barely a brush of her fingers against my skin for only a moment.
Hells, I hated how much I missed her, even after all this time.
“Thanks. And I appreciate you not killing me in my sleep,” she muttered. “Now, go away.”
“Rude way to follow gratitude, but also, no. We need to get to the Leuch River.” Vosten wasn’t wrong; she was something else when she woke up.
“That’s great and all, but I have to pee, and I’m not doing it in front of you. So, please go away?” she snapped.
I held my hands up in surrender, biting back a chuckle and not hesitating to spin on my heel and walk away, keeping my back to her.
After a couple of minutes, I heard her walking up behind me and coming to my side.
She looked more refreshed already. The dark spots under her eyes had lightened, and I noticed she had taken out her braid and redone it, capturing the flyaways and taming them back as best she could.
She had smoothed out her top and skirt, with her spoon safely tucked into the waistband.
She groaned as she rubbed her shoulder, likely from resting it against the rough bark all night.
My eyes were drawn to the movement, and that was when I noticed she had removed the wrapping around her neck and stuffed it into her pocket, exposing the bitemark.
“That bastard marked her before we could…” my demon seethed.
I felt the same way, but I didn’t voice it. My hands fisted at my sides, trembling with the urge to track down my brother and rip his jaw from his skull. But I forced myself to breathe and let the murderous urge simmer in the back of my mind until I had the opportunity to act on it.
No, wait. Fuck. That’s my brother…
“Alright. I’m ready,” Vhaena sighed.
The rest must have really helped her because she was able to keep up this time.
“So, you’re a demon,” she stated plainly.
“I am.”
She eyed me for a moment, and I could see the mass of questions swirling in her eyes as she fought to decide which to ask first or whether to ask them at all.
“You can ask whatever you want,” I offered, pleased that she wanted to talk with me, even if it was just to pass the time while we walked.
She contemplated for another moment before her curiosities spilled from her lips.
“Where are you from? Are you from the Hells? How many Hells are there? How many demons are there? What is the demon’s obsession with hunting down a bunch of women every year—”
“Whoa, slow down.”
She inhaled deeply, breathless from her rambling. “Sorry. I just… There’s so much I want to know. Humans are kind of left in the dark about all this, you know.”
“I know. It’s intentional.”
“But why? Why can’t humans know about demons? Why remain a secret?” she asked, exasperated.
“Control. People fear what they don’t know, and those who are afraid are easy to control.”
“I mean, couldn’t you all just tell us who you are and intimidate us with all your freakish shit?” she asked.
“Freakish shit?” I stifled a laugh.
“Uh, like the roots guy, and the loud-whispering guy, and who knows what else you all can do.” She tilted her head to look at me with curiosity. “What’s your freakish thing?”
I definitely wasn’t telling her that.
“Demons didn’t always hide who they were. A long time ago, humans knew about us and the freakish things we were capable of—but then humans started killing us. So, demons decided to hide in plain sight in order to live in peace with humans, and we’ve been doing it ever since.”
“Humans killing demons? That seems unlikely,” she scoffed as if the notion was absurd.
“Hundreds of humans against one demon? I’m sure you’ve heard there’s power in numbers, and it’s true.
Demons may be strong and capable of much more than humans, but not against the whole.
There are far fewer of us than you think.
” I gave her a pointed look, and she pursed her lips.
“All we did was take that power away. They can’t attack something they can’t see. ”
“And no one knows who you are? Besides your demon family, of course.”
I chuckled under my breath. “Not everyone in my family is a demon. Only the men.”
“Really? How come?”
“Demons are only born male.” I shrugged. “And don’t ask me why, because I don’t know.” I intentionally didn’t mention that demons could only bear male offspring. It felt too close to putting suspicion on families with only male children—which could have outed myself.
“Ah. That’s why there are only men out here hunting and why you only choose women. So you can rape them.” It was more of a question than a statement.
“That’s not why,” I said, and I knew she didn’t believe me with the look she gave. “I’m not saying rape doesn’t happen on the island, but the reason for women-only hunts began when my kind decided to hide from the humans. Demons couldn’t risk the towns voting for a demon as a sacrifice.”
She remained quiet, taking in the information, but I could see more and more questions swirling in her eyes.
“So…why the island then? Why not just go kill one woman in every town instead of coming all the way here? What’s so special about this place?” she asked after a few moments, gesturing around us with a wave of her hand.
I took a deep breath, remembering what I had been taught.
“The first demons appeared here hundreds of years ago—maybe thousands. It’s said that this very island rose from the depths of the Hells—there are seven, by the way, but I’ll get to that later.
Anyway, the emergence of our kind and the unnatural chaos we created in this world brought such sadness to the gods that the two of them each shed a single tear upon this island.
Those tears created the Wal, locking the demons here—and any other creatures that had crawled out with them—preventing any more demons from plaguing this world. ”
“The Wal of Two Tears…” she whispered under her breath.
“As I said, for many years, demons tried to live amongst humans, which didn’t work out.
Plus, it’s in a demon’s nature to hunt—to kill and wreak havoc—and they couldn’t contain their primal instincts forever.
They terrorized the humans, slaughtering their way from town to town, because once they started—once they unleashed the demon within,” I tapped the side of my temple with my finger, “it was too difficult to tame it until their prey was gone.”
Vhaena’s eyes were wide as she listened intently.
“In order to feed that temptation and keep them under control, they came up with an alternative that stopped the massacre of an entire species that couldn’t tell the difference between us and them. This part, I think you know.”
“The Hunt,” she said with certainty.
“Yes.” I nodded. “They decided to create the Hunt. Once a year, some of the demons are allowed to come here to fulfill those urges, to let out their demon. The original Ministry—the societal leadership of the demons—chose to come back to this island because we can be contained, and it gives us a sense of connection to the hells from which we came. It gives us the space and time to rein in our demons, away from the rest of the humans, to protect them, because we understand how much of a danger we are. They believe it’s for the betterment of the human species—kill a few a year, or risk slaughtering them all. ”