I could be polite. Right?
Maybe.
I searched my brain for moments when I’d been polite to her and only came up with the time I walked her home and didn’t suck her soul from her body. So far? I was losing.
Kyra gulped and looked to me. I nodded slowly and by some miracle it worked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “You can touch me.” She held out her shaking hand. Cassius took it, and an immediate wall of ice hit all of us at the same time. All except Kyra; her hand seemed to glow—no, it seemed to heat up against his.
Cassius jerked away and then laughed to himself. “I think I might enjoy this.”
“Come again?” I hissed.
He just looked back at me and shrugged. “Remember you have choices to make, demon, don’t make the wrong one or you may miss out on a grand adventure.”
“D-demon?!” Kyra shrieked.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Thanks, Cassius, really, thank you for just shoving my corpse under the bus and camping an elephant right on top of it for good measure.”
“Huh, I was thinking more dinosaur, but sure, yeah what he said.” Alex shrugged. “Let’s go, Hope. Things to do… in the bedroom.”
One by one, they shuffled out leaving me alone with Kyra and Tarek, both of whom looked at me like I was the problem when all I wanted was to be the solution.
“Tarek!” I barked. “Get her some dinner.”
“Yes master, right away master,” Tarek said in an amused voice. “Should I cook it or just make it raw the way demons feed.”
I was going to kill him later.
Kyra yelled again.
“He’s joking,” I said lamely, earning a petrified stare from her. “And…” My throat all but closed up. “You’re safe from me, from all of them, you’re… safe.” It needed repeating.
“You’re a demon. An actual evil demon?” She spat the word.
I hated how much it made me defensive, but hadn’t it always? I was more than that, I was more… what the hell was I?
Frustration hit me on all sides as I paced again in front of her.
My memories were not my own. Or were they?
I fought with the very real vision of darkness crawling its way across the hardwood floor like smoke swirling toward us.
If I wasn’t actively conjuring up the darkness, it begged the question, who or what the hell was?
I stared down as Kyra’s eyes widened. She pulled her legs to her chest and trembled. “Please tell me I’m hallucinating.”
How was I supposed to tell her I was on the good side of things when shadows were at that very moment revealing themselves to her?
“Not hallucinating,” I said in a gravelly voice, and then because I was pissed that she was looking at me in fear, I did, in fact, go full demon and shriek in a booming voice. “Be GONE!”
A flicker of gold snapped from my fingertips like lightning, so brief and swift that I thought I’d imagined it. Only when I looked at my fingertips, they were touched with black like I’d burned from the inside out.
There wasn’t pain, but I knew in that moment, using whatever power was inside this body, inside the soul fighting to get free, came at a cost.
Because I felt the tattoo slither across my chest and winced when I looked at my left arm and saw another branch wrap around my wrist like I was going to be buried in a tattooed prison.
Kyra whimpered. “I’m scared.”