“Horses are nice,” Milo said, in a voice that indicated he wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention.
Amber glowered and stopped trying to make conversation.
They sat in silence for another ten minutes, and then Milo’s phone buzzed. He checked it, and stood.
“She’s back,” he said, tucking the western into his back pocket and picking up the shotgun. He left the apartment, and Amber immediately leaped up, scanning her surroundings for an escape route.
After a few moments, she sat back down.
She heard the faint ping of the elevator arriving, and then low voices as Imelda and Milo exchanged whatever they had that passed for pleasantries. Thirty seconds later, Imelda came in.
Amber sat back into the couch, her arms folded.
“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Imelda said.
“You hit me.”
“You were screaming.”
“Not when you hit me.”
“If it makes a difference, I’m pretty sure you were going to faint, anyway.”
“So why didn’t you let me faint?”
Imelda hesitated. “I should have let you faint. I’m sorry.” Her apology apparently over with, Imelda walked into the kitchen. “Have you had anything to eat?”
Amber didn’t answer. She was starving, and thirsty, but to respond was to forgive, and she wasn’t prepared to do that yet.
Imelda made herself a cappuccino without trying to engage her again in chit-chat. When she was done, she came over, sat where Milo had been sitting. She took a sip, placed the delicate cup on the delicate saucer on the delicate coffee table, and sat back. “You need to eat something,” she said. “I can hear your stomach rumbling from here.”
“That’s not hunger. That’s anger.”
“Your belly rumbles when you’re angry? I didn’t know that about you.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Well,” said Imelda, “that’s not strictly true.”
“You’ve barely ever spoken to me.”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t know you. Your parents kept us all very well informed – and they know you a lot better than you think.”
Amber looked at her in silence for a moment. “What did you do to me earlier? My skin and … What was that?”
“You know what that was.”
Amber shook her head. “No. I’m not like you. I’m not a monster like you. What did you do to me?”
“I didn’t do anything. You were born that way.”
“I wasn’t born with red skin, Imelda. I wasn’t born with frikkin’ horns.”
“No, but it was inside you.”
Amber glared. “Show me, then. Go on. Change. Transform. Go demony. I want to see it again.”
“Amber, I don’t think—”
“Go on,” said Amber. “I wasn’t really expecting it the first time. Now I’m ready. Let’s see you in all your glory.”
Imelda sighed. “Fine,” she said, and stood, and her skin reddened and her features sharpened and her horns grew, and Amber shrank back instinctively.
There was something about the very shape of Imelda now, the way the horns curved, the way her face – once a pretty face, now a beautiful face – caught the sunlight, there was something about all of it that sent a shiver down Amber’s back. This was the shape that nightmares took, deep in the darkest parts of her subconscious.
“You can do this, too,” Imelda said. Her teeth were pointed. She was taller. Her shoulders were broader. Her clothes were tighter. Her top had come untucked. “You just decide you want to shift, and you shift.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Shift, change, transform. You can come up with your own name for it, if you want.”
“I don’t want. I don’t want to shift. I don’t want to be a monster.” Amber realised she was shaking.
“It’s really not that bad,” said Imelda. “You get powerful. You get stronger and faster and you feel something inside you just … alter. It’s like you’re becoming the person you were always meant to be.”
“Not person. Monster.”
The smile on Imelda’s face faded. “Monster,” she said. “Yes.” She reverted to her normal state, and tucked in her top. She looked almost embarrassed as she sat back down. “Well, there you go, anyway. That’s how it’s done. If you’re ready to listen, I’ll tell you how it started.”
“You’re not going to let me leave, are you? So go ahead.”
Imelda took another sip from her cup. “I’ve known your parents since I was your age.”
“I know,” said Amber.
“No, you don’t. I met your parents when I was sixteen years old. They were already courting.”
“Courting?”
“That’s the old word for dating. Which is probably an old word for whatever it is you call it now. We met Grant a year later. Bill befriended Alastair at Harvard, and Kirsty was added to the group after Bill and Betty got married.”
“Bill didn’t go to Harvard.”
“I think it’s safe to say that you don’t really know your parents, Amber. Is it safe to say that?”
A strange feeling overtook Amber, a feeling of being adrift, cut off from everything she had thought she knew. “Yes,” she admitted softly.
“I’m telling you this so that you’ll know that we were all friends by the time the world welcomed in the New Year … of eighteen hundred and ninety.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m one hundred forty-six years old, Amber, and your parents are three years older than me.”
Amber didn’t have anything to say to that.
“Bill and Alastair met some interesting people at Harvard,” Imelda continued. “There were all kinds of clubs and societies back then: curious people looking to expand their horizons. They started out by merely dabbling in the occult, Bill and Alastair. And they drew the rest of us in.”
“What do you mean by occult?” Amber asked. “You mean like black magic?”
“I mean all magic. Or as much magic as we could do, anyway. There were limits to the levels to which we could rise. I … I have no excuses for the things I’ve done. I let myself be swept along, but Bill and Betty … This was all they thought about. Early on, Bill came to us with a story he’d heard, of a deal with a being called the Shining Demon. In exchange for a tribute, this Demon would grant power, strength, magic and, if you obeyed the rules, eternal life.”
“By turning you into demons yourselves?”
“You’re skipping ahead,” said Imelda, “but yes.”
“Why would you want to be turned into demons?”
“Did you not hear what I said? About the power and the strength and the eternal life?”
“But you’d be monsters.”
Imelda gave her a soft smile. “Look at me. Do I look like a monster? We can hide. We’re very good at it. But you interrupted me. Bill came to us with this story he’d heard. We got interested. We wanted to know if it was true, and if so how we could get a deal like that for ourselves. It took us years, piecing together the different clues, following every lead …”
“And then you met the Shining Demon.”
“We were told about a book. The Blood-dimmed King, it was called. We tracked it down to this magician in Boston, and we stole it. The Blood-dimmed King is a devil, or the Devil, or the King of Demons or … something. He goes by many names, and he has these Demons who interact with people here on Earth – Demons with a capital D. The Shining Demon is one of them. The book detailed how we could make contact.”
“How did you?”
“It was a ritual. It took months to prepare. So many requirements to meet, things to arrange. We couldn’t eat for four days beforehand. Couldn’t drink for two. It was hard, arranging everything. Almost impossible. But we did it. We managed it. And we made contact.”
“Did it look like you?” Amber asked. “You know, monster–you?”
Imelda shook her head. ?
??He was … he was something else. But the book said that one of the most important rules was not to look at him. You avert your eyes. I only caught glimpses. The first thing I noticed was the smell. We were in a basement. Dark. Cold. And then there was this smell of sulphur. It got stronger and stronger until … One moment we were down there, just the six of us, the next this light started to burn, right in front of us, and he kind of grew out of that light. We all looked away immediately.”
“And you didn’t sneak a peek?”
“All I can tell you was that he glowed. He shone.” There was a strange look in Imelda’s eye. Almost wistful.
“And he offered you a deal,” Amber said, a little louder than necessary.
Imelda snapped out of it. “Yes. He offered us power. Power enough for seven people.”
“But there were only six of you.”
Imelda went quiet for a moment. “That’s right. He told us what we’d have to do. The terms and conditions were … unexpected. Half of us – Kirsty and Grant and myself – wanted to walk out right there and then. But in doing so we’d break the circle and … well. He would tear us apart. So we stayed. And we listened. And, in the end, we agreed.”
“To what?”
She cleared her throat. “The Shining Demon would give us power enough for seven people. So two of us would have to have a child. That child would grow up, and their power would manifest at some stage in their sixteenth year. They’d become as strong as we were. Just like you.”
“Okay,” said Amber. “And then there’d be seven of you. What was wrong with that?”
“It was what was expected in return, Amber. Some Demons want souls. The more they have, the stronger they get. The stronger they get, the stronger the Blood-dimmed King becomes. But the Shining Demon didn’t want souls from us. He wanted a jar of blood from each of us. Our blood, which had magic in it already, spiced with … more magic.”
“And how did you spice your blood?”
Imelda’s eyes locked on Amber’s.
Seconds passed.
“You’re looking at me like you’re expecting me to figure something out,” Amber said, “but I have no idea what it is you’re hoping for.”
Imelda held her gaze. “Your parents had a son.”
Amber’s eyebrows rose. “I have a brother?” She’d dreamed of having a brother or a sister, someone to talk to, to share with, to alleviate that awful feeling of loneliness that would creep up on her whenever the house got too quiet.
“Your parents had a son,” Imelda repeated. With emphasis on the had. “He reached his sixteenth birthday. A few months later, he started having headaches, started feeling sick, and then his power manifested.”
“Yes? And?”
“And we killed him.”
Amber paled. “What?”
“The Shining Demon explained it all to us, down in that cellar. He told us how we’d have to absorb the seventh’s power, how that would make our blood more potent, how that would be a suitable tribute.”
“You killed my brother?”
“We killed him,” Imelda said. “And then we ate him.”
THE WORLD DULLED.
“No,” said Amber in a soft, soft voice.
“Our demon forms made it easy. Made it far too easy.”
Amber shook her head. “You can’t have done that. Please, Imelda, tell me you didn’t do that.”
“We could never let the children reach the stage where they’d realise what they were. It was too dangerous. Too unpredictable. We got stronger with each child we consumed, but each one was born with a strength to rival our own. You’re the only one I’ve seen actually get a chance to shift.”
“Was … was I going to be eaten, too?” Amber was suddenly standing. “They were going to eat me? They were going to kill me and eat me? My own frikkin’ parents?”
“Please sit down.”
“I don’t think so!”
“Fine,” Imelda said, sounding tired.
“So go on! Tell me what you did to my brother.”
“We killed him and we ate him, and he made us stronger,” Imelda said. “We each gave a pint of our blood, which was practically sizzling with power by that stage, and by then Kirsty and Grant were expecting.”
“No,” Amber said. “No, you can’t. None of that happened. That’s sick.”
Imelda didn’t meet her eyes. “Once their son reached his sixteenth year, once we’d eaten him, it was my turn, with Alastair, and we ate my child when she turned sixteen, and then it was back to Bill and Betty.”
“You took turns? What was it this time? Another brother? Maybe a sister?”
“It was a girl.”
Tears rolled down Amber’s cheeks. “I had a sister. I had a sister and you killed her.”
“Yes, we did,” Imelda said, pulling at a tiny loose thread on her sleeve. “Every sixteen years, the seventh’s power was recycled through us, making us stronger, and then the surplus was available again for the next child.”
“So that’s what you’ve been doing?” Amber asked. “For, what, the last hundred years?”
“We make it a point not to grow too attached to our children. It’s the only way to stay sane.”
Amber laughed. “Sane? You think this is sane? This is the most insane thing I have ever heard! This is nuts! It’s sick and it’s wrong! It’s evil! You’re saying my parents are—”
“Psychopaths,” said Imelda, looking up at her. “Yes. Pure psychopaths. The others, they became psychopaths. They let the power corrupt them, eat away at their consciences. But Bill and Betty, they were born that way. They just hid it until they didn’t need to any longer.”
“So everyone’s a psycho except you,” said Amber. Her fingernails – still ordinary fingernails, thank God – were digging into her palms. “That’s what you want me to believe now?”
“If I’m a psychopath,” said Imelda. “why haven’t I killed you? The others aren’t around. If I killed you now … ate you … I’d absorb all of your power. I wouldn’t have to share it with anyone. So, if you really do think I’m the same as your parents, why are you still alive?”
“I don’t know,” Amber said. “Maybe you’re trying to talk me to death. Or maybe, because the Shining Demon demands a jar of blood from each of you, having me all to yourself would break the terms of your deal.”
Imelda smiled. “I’m breaking the terms already by keeping you alive. But I admire your logic. You’re always thinking, aren’t you? That’s what I’ve always loved about you, Amber.”
“You’ve never loved anything about me,” Amber said. “Before this, you barely spoke to me.”
“I couldn’t do it anymore,” said Imelda. “I couldn’t pretend anymore. Not like the others.”
“So how come you’re different?”
Imelda hesitated. “The last time I had a child, something went wrong. I’d tried to remain detached from her, but I couldn’t. The moment I held my newborn baby in my arms I knew … I knew I wasn’t supposed to feel this way.”
“You loved her.”
“Yes.”
“But you still killed her.”
“Alastair killed her. I tried to run. I tried to take my daughter and escape, but Alastair knew what I was planning. He promised me that if I returned he wouldn’t tell the others. I was scared. Confused. Weak.”
“So you brought your daughter back to be killed.”
“Yes.”
“And let me guess – you felt bad about it.”
Imelda looked up. “This stops here. With you. I’ve spent the last ten years building up my courage. I’m sorry I was never kind to you, but it was too risky. I was afraid the others would see what I was planning. Alastair, especially. He knows me the best. But now I’m going to break the cycle. You’re going to leave with Milo. Tonight. I’ll be joining you as soon as I can, but you have one chance to get out of this alive, and Milo knows where to start.”
“You’re sending me away? But you can’t. This is my home.” br />
“Is it? What exactly do you have here, Amber? Friends? Really? Are you going to stay because of school? Because of your job at the diner? These things are enough to make you stay?”
Amber swallowed. “Then where am I going?”
“Milo knows. I don’t.”
“Why wouldn’t you know where I’m going?”
“Because if your parents figure out that I’m helping you,” said Imelda, “they will torture me until I tell them everything. If I don’t know where you are, I can’t betray you.”
Amber stared. “But … but then what’ll happen to you?”
Imelda hesitated. “Your parents are very ruthless people, sweetie, and they’re not going to pass up the opportunity to absorb more power.”
“They’d eat you?”
“And if I’m very, very lucky? They’d kill me first.”
MILO CAME IN AND Imelda talked to him at the far side of the apartment in a low voice Amber couldn’t make out. He nodded occasionally and replied, and barely even glanced Amber’s way.
She busied herself with looking through the bag Imelda had given her. A few items of clothing and underwear, everything in her size. She dug a little deeper, found a bag of toiletries. Dug deeper. Found a bag of money.
Tens, twenties and fifties in tightly packed rolls. Her eyes widened. There must have been thousands in there. Tens of thousands. A hundred thousand?
All the essentials that anyone would need to go on the run.
Milo and Imelda came over, and Amber stood to face them.
“It’s time to go,” Imelda said.
“I don’t want to,” Amber announced.
“I understand that,” said Imelda, “but it really is for the best. Milo will keep you as safe as he can and keep you out of sight as much as possible. We’re paying him for this – ten thousand a week. Take it from the money I gave you.”
“You’re not listening to me. I don’t want to go.”
“I am listening to you, but you’ve got to listen to me, too. I know what your parents are capable of.”
“You can hide me here.”
“They’ll check here,” Imelda said. “Alastair is already looking at me strangely. He’s got his suspicions. It’s only a matter of time before he stops by for an unannounced visit.”