Demonica (19 page)

29

The Remnants

Zoey and I both whipped around to find an exact replica of me standing between us and the door. My usual friendly expression was gone, replaced by an eerie smile. My doppelganger’s eyes were fixed solely on me.

“Don’t be scared, Monica,” she said. “You should never be afraid of yourself. I just want to have a little heart-to-heart.”

“Who are you?” said Zoey. The fear was tangible in her tone.

“Why I’m Monica,” she said, gesturing to herself. And then she paused, placing a thoughtful finger to her lip. “Well…sometimes.”

His skin began to like liquid. Clothes and skin seemed to meld together in a blur, her frame growing. In seconds, her soft, slender features hardened into a chiseled male form. “Sometimes I’m Eli.”

Another step forward. It was Kelly.

Another step. It was an exact replica of Zoey. My best friend gasped beside me.

“I’m really whoever I want to be,” said the Zoey imposter. “Whoever I
need
to be.”

She grew even taller than Eli, now uniformed as a police officer, complete with a friendly mustache. I remembered him. It was Sheriff Patterson, the man who had questioned me after taking Casey to the hospital.

“Believe me, it’s so much easier to cover the murders of seven hungry Demons when you have the law on your side.” His eyes glanced from me to the encompassing walls. “But judging from the photo fetish, you can probably guess who I am most of the time.”

The figure took another step forward, growing thinner and lankier. Curly brown hair fell across a pair of glasses. It was Levi, minus the peppy cheerfulness. Behind his glasses, there was a seriousness that was genuinely disturbing.

“
What
are you?” I asked, mustering every ounce of courage in my tone.

“Ah,” Levi sighed, raising a finger. “That’s the question now, isn’t it? But I can imagine you probably already have a hunch on that too.”

“A Demon,” I said. Almost on pure instinct, the Demon Dagger materialized in my grasp.

“My true name is Leviathan,” said Levi. He hardly seemed fazed at the sight of the Demon Dagger. “I’m the variety of Demon your kind would refer to as a shape shifter. But like my brother, Belphegor, my views are not quite in line with the rest of our little Demonic family. You can kill me if you want. But you might want to hear what I have to say first.”

Although my grip remained every bit as tight on the Demon Dagger, I lowered it nodded. “I’m listening.”

Leviathan smiled and gestured us towards him with two fingers. “Come with me.” He started down the photo-laden hallway. Zoey and I exchanged skeptical glances before following.

“There’s something you should know about me and my fellow Demons here in Villeneuve,” said Leviathan. “We’re not actually Demons.”

“You’re not Demons?” I repeated incredulously.

“At least not in the traditional sense.”

“Then what are you?”

“We’re more like fragments,” he said. “Fragments of an extremely powerful Demon but fragments nonetheless. We refer to ourselves as the Remnants.”

There was something very peculiar in that wording. I knew it because I had heard it just last night.

“Like your story last night,” I said, more as a realization to myself. “About Hexham Manor. You said that an exorcism and the witch’s spell collided, splitting the thing possessing her child into several coexistent fragments. Seven remnants. ”

“Good memory,” said Leviathan. “Yes, minus a few slightly important details, that was a true story. That’s how my family and I came to be.”

It was only then that a certain detail of Levi’s story merged to the forefront of my mind. Just the thought gave me chills.

“You’re a fragment of the son of the Devil?”

Leviathan smiled. “My fellow Demons and I have alternate identities that I think you will find very interesting.”

I was so absorbed in the conversation that I hardly realized it when we came to a halt in the living room. The living room was even bigger and just as plastered in photographs and mirrors. All except for one wall. This wall was even weirder.

Seven Demon names had been burned into the wall. Together they formed a circle. Some I had already killed. Others I simply knew of. But now, not a single name was unfamiliar to me. The strangest detail, however, was a word that was scorched beneath each name. Starting at the top of the circle, the Demon names proceeded counter-clockwise:

Amon / Wrath

Asmodeus / Lust

Beezlebub / Gluttony

Belphegor / Sloth

Leviathan / Envy

Lucifer / Pride

Mammon / Greed

I obviously didn’t believe in God or the Bible or anything, but I wasn’t an idiot.

“The Seven Deadly Sins,” I said.

“What do those have to do with anything?” said Zoey.

“Everything,” said Leviathan. “When we were born through the destruction of another Demon, it wasn’t randomly. We were divided into separate entities by our unique sinful natures. And with those natures came special abilities. For example, I, Leviathan, am also known as Envy. I am dissatisfied with being myself, so my unnatural Demon ability allows me to shape-shift. In essence, I
become
someone else. You might be intrigued to know that, at some point or another, I have impersonated almost every wretched human being in this town.

“It is the same for Amon—Wrath—whose werewolf ability is triggered through his anger. Or Asmodeus, whose lust is satisfied through her existence as a succubus—a sex Demon. Beezlebub gluttons himself upon blood, and when he can’t, he feeds on anything else. Belphegor is slothful, so he raises the dead to do his bidding or creates new undead out of the living—which, ironically, are just as slothful as he is. Mammon is the Witch King and satisfies his greed through witchcraft as well as the craft of his witch followers. And lastly, Lucifer—our classmate, Lucy Hartley, if you care to know—is our self-appointed leader. She is the most powerful of us all.”

“What’s her power?” I asked hesitantly.

“Lucifer takes the form of a Fallen Angel,” said Leviathan. “Believe me. She’s scarier than anything you’ve seen so far. But nowhere will you ever find a breed of Demons like us because we are unnatural in every sense of the word. Even by Hell’s standards, we’re considered abominations.”

“So you aren’t real Demons,” I said. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

“If
we
aren’t real Demons, it’s interesting to see how compatible
you
are with our abilities. I spied on your fight with Asmodeus and Beezlebub, and I have to say, the way that you’ve seamlessly transitioned Amon’s power into your own is…fascinating.”

“Yeah, but…that’s what Demon Slayers do,” I said. As Leviathan’s smile grew wider, I asked, “Isn’t it?”

Leviathan pressed his fingers together. “What if I told you that there’s no such thing as a Demon Slayer?”

“What are you saying?”

“I just think it’s incredibly ironic that everything you’ve done thus far has been according to what you’ve been told by a Demon. How have you
felt
ever since you began your Demon hunt? Has anything felt…off?”

Zoey glanced back and forth between us. For once in her life, she was utterly speechless.

“Let me throw you a bone here,” said Leviathan. “Have you felt
wrathful
since you defeated Amon? Or perhaps
slothful
since Belphegor submitted himself to your dagger? Maybe you felt recent bursts of
lust
or
gluttony
since you took on Asmodeus and Beezlebub?”

I felt cold from the inside out. All the anger that I’d felt. The overwhelming desire to sleep. Everything.

It was all because I was killing and absorbing these…
things
. These Remnants.

“You trust Dante a lot, don’t you?” said Leviathan.

“If it wasn’t for him, my brother and I would be dead,” I said. I wanted to sound defensive, but every word came out hollow.

“And there’s another irony for you. He saved your lives, yes. But only because your brother made a Deal with him to begin with. He would show your brother how to find and kill Amon, and in return, your brother would…hmm.” Leviathan scratched his curly brown head. “Oh, now what was it? The other half of this bargain seems to be escaping me. Do you remember what it was? He did tell you, right?”

Now he was just toying with me. My grip tightened around the Demon Dagger which had never left my grasp. A flicker of rage burned inside of me—a rage that I could now identify as Amon’s wrath.

How much of me was actually
me
?

“No worries,” said Leviathan. His gaze shifted to my best friend. “Hey, Zoey, could you do me a favor and remove your ankle bracelet?”

“My what?” said Zoey. She could not have looked more confused. For starters, an ankle bracelet wasn’t even visible with the jeans she was wearing.

“The bracelet on your right ankle that your coven gave you. The one with a particular Demon warding symbol on it.”

When Zoey didn’t respond right away—too busy looking stupefied—Leviathan’s fingers melded together. The texture of his arm became moist and scaly, extending into a long tentacle. This new appendage whipped at Zoey’s right leg. Naturally, she screamed. It slithered around her calf and snapped a leather anklet off. There was some sort of dangling stone attached. I caught only a brief glance of the emblem on it—some sort pentagram/crucifix doohickey.

“It’s okay, I’ve got it,” said Leviathan.

His tentacle wrapped around the stone in a contorted ball, squeezing furiously. This appendage retracted in length, returning to normal flesh. In mere seconds, Leviathan was extending a human fist again. He opened it sideways. Dust crumbled from his palm along with the leather band.

“I’m sorry,” said Leviathan, “but somebody has been eavesdropping on our conversation, and that particular piece of jewelry isn’t so friendly to his kind. Dante, stop being so antisocial. Come join us.”

30

Dante and the Secret

Leviathan’s gaze shifted to the shadows of a separate hallway. Black mist swirled around an invisible shape. The figure materialized as he stepped forward—Dante, wearing his classy black suit and loose collar. His blue eyes were fixed on me.

“Monica,” he said. “I haven’t been entirely honest with you.”

His face was lathered in guilt. After he said this, his eyes shifted down. He couldn’t even look at me.

I noticed Zoey glancing between the two of us suspiciously. When I told her everything, I hadn’t necessarily told her
everything
. I left out the feelings I had for Dante. Zoey, however, had an eye for spotting chemistry and lingering emotions. I wondered just how visible it was on my face.

“Is Levi telling the truth?” I said.

I had meant to point my finger, but instead pointed the Demon Dagger almost accusingly at Leviathan. He beamed in a twisted sort of way, clearly enjoying the attention.

Dante’s green eyes shifted down. “Yeah. It’s all true.”

My hand fell limp at my side. The rage vanished, replaced by suffocating emptiness. I had no words. No desire. Nothing.

“Why are you here?” said Zoey. “Just to tell Monica you’re a liar?”

“No, I’m here to give answers,” said Dante. “Or at least to fill in the holes of Leviathan’s story.”

Leviathan gestured enthusiastically for Dante to proceed. “By all means. Fill away.”

Dante’s eyes returned to me, but I very consciously glanced down at my shoes like they were suddenly the most interesting thing in the universe.

“It all started with the Hexham Manor legend,” said Dante. “Leviathan already told you an accurate version, but he left out three important names. That night, Dr. Hexham really was visited by a witch. A very young and beautiful witch at the time. Her name was Martha Binsfeld.”

I choked. On what? Hell, I dunno. Oxygen? But I choked, and like, how do you breathe again?

“Your mother was a witch long before Mammon ever came into the picture,” said Dante. “She only joined Barbara Marion’s coven because she was suspicious of her intentions. She knew the ramifications of black magic. She knew because her tampering had inadvertently resulted in the possession of her child. That child’s name was Monica.”

No…

“And the Demon possessing her really was the only son of the Devil,” he said. “It was me.”

I was past thinking or feeling. I was in this state of numb, shell-shocked, skull-fucked mental paralysis. I was detached from the world around me, floating in an empty sea of nothing.

“To this day, I still don’t fully know or understand what happened to me that night,” said Dante. “But somehow, your mother’s witchcraft and Dr. Hexham’s exorcism collided. They integrated together. The end result didn’t just rip my spirit out of you. It literally ripped everything that made me a Demon
out
of me. The exorcism couldn’t even send me back to Hell because there wasn’t enough Demon left in me. All of my power went into the seven Remnants of my being that went on to possess and kill Dr. Hexham and his family.

“So my miserable excuse of a spirit was left as a lingering afterthought on earth. But I never left Villeneuve. I watched as my seven Remnants found new vessels. For the most part, they remained dormant, hibernating and allowing their severed spirits time to heal and to fuse with their new hosts. But as they did so, I never wandered far from the witch’s daughter I possessed. For some reason, my energy was stronger when I was near her—as if my brief possession left something in her that made me feel somewhat whole. My spirit grew stronger. Strong enough to wander on my own. After my near-demise, I steered away from possession. Instead, I learned to strengthen myself through the ancient Demon art of Dealmaking. But with my Demonic evil stripped out of me, Deals took on a whole new meaning. I couldn’t manipulate people for my own gain. I just…I couldn’t. So…I helped people. In a sense. A parent trying to pay the rent. A child trying to protect him or herself against an abusive father. A single mom trying to feed her baby. But Demon Dealmaking always asks for something in return, and I needed something to survive. Demons are parasitic by nature. So in exchange for each Deal, I asked for a year of human life, and I never made a Deal with the same person twice. It would be a year that most of them would never miss.

“Human years translated into more Demonic energy for me. But I was something very different than a Demon. I didn’t know what I was. But that’s when I observed the remarkable imprint I had left on a young girl’s soul. Meanwhile, the Demon killings that had been happening in Villeneuve for a decade and a half were scarcely invisible to me. It was then that I realized what I had to do.”

His blue eyes narrowed once again on me. This time I did not evade his gaze.

“I had to trap all of those Demons back inside that girl,” said Dante. “And then I had to kill her and send all of them back to Hell.”

And this was what it was like to drown. I was breathing, but I was suffocating all the same. The world was closing in around me. I stared down at my hands which were now trembling.

That was it? That was Dante’s plan all along? To kill me and send me to Hell with seven Demons inside of me?

I was nothing but a package.

His words had snapped me so much out of reality that I hardly noticed as Zoey swiped the Demon Dagger out of my grasp. In the time that it took me to blink, she threw herself at Dante, smashing him into the wall with the circular Demon diagram. The blade stopped only centimeters from his throat.

I knew Dante’s reflexes too well. Not to mention he had about a fifty pounds on her. He
let
her attack. Hell. Maybe he wanted her to.

“Give me one fucking reason why I shouldn’t kill,” said Zoey. “Just one goddamn reason.”

Dante’s face was indifferent, perhaps even craving it. “I don’t really have any reason you shouldn’t,” he said, “other than for you to hear the rest of what I have to say.”

“I think I’ve heard enough,” she said.

“Zoey. No.”

I said that. Apparently. I was moving before my brain had a chance to register what the hell was going on. My hand wrapped calmly around Zoey’s, clutching the Dagger. Reluctantly, her gaze met mine.

“Let’s at least hear the rest of what he has to say,” I said.

I had the ability to summon the Demon Dagger back into my grasp, but it was better to calm Zoey instead. If she had really, truly intended to kill Dante now, she would have done it. Or at least tried.

She sent one last glare Dante’s way and snorted before finally setting the Dagger in my open palm. As she backed away, she put as much fury as possible into each footstep. Dante and I exchanged close-up glances before I finally stepped back as well.

“Bravo,” said Leviathan. He clapped obnoxiously. “Man, ain’t life a bitch. You guys are so much better than Jersey Shore.”

Dante ignored Leviathan. He pressed his fingers together, semi-contemplative. But mostly just empty. “Leviathan was telling the truth when he said that there’s no such thing as a Demon Slayer. It was all an elaborate lie to get you to use my own creation.”

“The Demon Dagger was your creation?” I said.

“Not just the Dagger.
You
are my creation. You as a whole. Your power, your abilities, everything that makes you a Demon Slayer. Except that you aren’t actually
slaying
anything per se. All the Demon Dagger does is absorb the Demons inside of you, reducing each of them to a dormant state. Their energy is then your energy—the good, the bad, and the ugly. Their powers are channeled to your disposal, but you’re also subject to their vices. And those vices will only get worse as the Demons awaken from their dormancy.”

“But…why me?” I said. Which was kind of a stupid question because I knew
exactly
why me. “What did you do to me?”

Dante’s flinched, as if my words, or maybe just my despair, had a sting. “It couldn’t be just anyone,” he said. “You can’t just shove a bunch of Demons—even dormant ones—inside a human host and expect that person to survive more than a couple hours. And then you just have a bunch of loose Demons all over again. And no exorcist would last a second in this town. It had to be you. Your body adapted to their Demonic presence. It’s like snapping puzzle pieces in place. That’s the only reason the power I gave you allows you to adapt their abilities so easily.

“And as for
how
I did it…I suppose you have your brother to thank for that. It was all part of the Deal. In exchange for what I gave him, he gave me you. That’s an oldest sibling’s right in the Demon handbook. If parents have proven untrustworthy—as your mother had by inadvertently getting you possessed by me in the first place—then the oldest sibling has the right to take action for his younger siblings. Of course, I twisted the rules a little bit, but that’s about the exact same terminology I used when I explained it to your brother. Casey was certainly desperate enough to go for it. I simply told him that I would be using your connection to the Demons against them—which, as you know, is absolutely true. I just may have left out certain details wherein I kill you and send you to Hell with the rest of them.”

Casey
gave
me to him? His discomfort talking to me at the hospital suddenly made perfect sense. He had given me away to get revenge on his dead girlfriend. Zoey, I noticed, was as appalled. She shook her head, as if she could just shake the truth away.

Dante seemed to enjoy telling me the truth as much as I enjoyed hearing it.

“So what now?” I said. At this point, I was devoid of emotion. Dehumanized. That was the point of Dante’s plot all along, wasn’t it? To use me as an object to get rid of Demons? Demons that were ironically pieces of him? “What’s the point of telling me the truth?”

“The
point
is that I don’t want to lie to you anymore. I
want
you to know the truth, as horrible and shitty as it is.”

“Well good job. I know the truth. So now I’m just supposed to go along with this plot willingly? Sacrifice myself for the greater good? Is that what you want?”

I already knew the right answer. I wasn’t about to let Dante guilt-trip me into it.

“Fine,” I said I’ll do it.” The words burned on my tongue. “If it means that no one else has to die…I’ll do it.”

“Monica!” said Zoey

“No,” said Dante. “That’s not what I want. Not anymore.”

“You don’t?” I said. Now I was officially confused. “What
do
you want?”

Dante stepped forward, placing both hands on my shoulders. I could feel his warmth.

“I want to get out of here. I want to get you as far from Villeneuve as possible.”