Deadtown

I wondered what it would feel like to die.

But the flames didn’t reach me. The deep, floor-shaking laugh faltered, then slid up, up, up in pitch into a scream.

I raised my head and looked.

The demon was on its knees, writhing in its own flames. Aunt Mab stood over it like an avenging angel. She carried a sword I’d never seen before; it was as long as Mab was tall, but she wielded it with ease and skill. The sword gleamed like pure sunlight and gave off a dazzling rainbow of flames. These held the cringing demon in a cage of light. Mab’s lips moved, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying over the thing’s screams.

Aunt Mab took a step forward, and the demon shrank into a tighter ball. Slowly, she took another step, still reciting the unknown words. The fiery sphere around the demon grew smaller, then smaller still. I couldn’t believe it. That huge, monstrous demon was shrinking. Still Mab advanced. Now the thing was the size of a doll. One more step and it vanished. Only a scorched spot on the carpet remained.

“Mab! You killed it!”

My aunt glanced at me with a single, decisive shake of her head. She bent over my father, laid a hand on his forehead, like a mother checking on a sick child. “Oh, Evan,” she breathed. She closed her eyes, for a moment looking very old and very tired. Then she crossed herself and straightened.

“No!” I shouted. I tried to stand, but still my legs wouldn’t hold my weight. I crawled over to my father and put my cheek against his. His skin was already cold. “No,” I sobbed. It was the only word in the universe. No, no, no.

IN MY NARROW BEDROOM UNDER THE EAVES, I SAT ON THE bed and stared at the floor with its wide wooden boards. Aunt Mab had sent me there, saying to stay out of the way, that she’d handle everything. From my high window overlooking the courtyard, I’d watched a single police car arrive—no lights, no siren—followed by an ambulance. A few minutes later, a small black car disgorged a priest, who carried a heavy-looking bag. He paused on the doorstep and crossed himself before entering our house.

I tried to convince myself that the ambulance meant there was hope. But I knew it wasn’t true, and I wasn’t surprised when the ambulance men wheeled out the gurney with a sheet draped over Dad’s body.

I sat on the bed, numb. The world was divided into Before and After, as neatly and completely as if someone had split it with a butcher’s cleaver. Before, I’d woken up in this bed, and Dad had been alive. Before, I’d gone down to breakfast, and Dad had been alive. Before, I’d run up here to change out of the sweats I wore for sword practice, and Dad had been alive. The clothes still draped the chair where I’d tossed them.

I told myself I should put them away, but I couldn’t bear to touch them, as if moving them would make it real.

A glass of water sat on my nightstand. Thirsty, I reached for it. Before, I thought, when I’d filled up that glass . . . My hand dropped to my lap.

I was trapped in a world of After. Even if nothing in this room ever changed, even if I sat forever on the thin mattress, the eternal caretaker of Before, I could never get back there. This long night couldn’t last forever. The moon would move across the sky. The sun would come up. And so would begin the first day of After, the first day of a world without my father in it.

I knew that. Even so, I sat absolutely still, some part of me believing that if I didn’t move, didn’t speak, didn’t cry, I could somehow keep time from snapping the thin thread that connected me to this day. To my living father.

Soon, I heard Mab’s tread on the stairs. She rapped once on the closed door. When I didn’t answer, she rapped again and opened it.

I kept my gaze on the floor. I didn’t want to have this conversation, didn’t want it to carry me further into the After.

Mab didn’t speak. She sat next to me on the bed and patted my knee. Minutes went by. Mab sighed. She patted me again. “Your father . . .” she began.

At the sound of her voice, the last remnants of Before shattered like a funhouse mirror and crashed at my feet. Dead. My father was dead. There was no going back.

I howled with the pain of it and sobbed into my aunt’s shoulder. Mab didn’t respond, just carefully put her arms around me. There was nothing comforting in her stiff embrace.

“Victory—”

“Don’t call me that! Don’t call me that ever again. I killed my father, Mab—it was all my fault. I killed him!”

She pushed me back and held me at arm’s length, giving my shoulders a little shake. “You most certainly did not. He was killed by a demon of Hell. By Difethwr, the Destroyer.”

“You don’t understand! I summoned the demon. I got down your book—” I didn’t want to continue, but I forced myself to say the words. “And I spoke the spell.” Mab’s grip tightened on my arms. “I didn’t say all of it. I swear I didn’t. But the demon came anyway.”

“Tell me exactly what happened.”

I did. She interrupted only once, to ask me what I was thinking as I sounded out the words of the spell. When I told her, she shut her eyes and bit her lip, then nodded. I finished my story, and she nodded again, then looked at me. Her eyes were clear, and when she spoke, her voice was calm.

“Evan was fated to die at a demon’s hands. He knew that. He’s known it since he was your age, even younger. When he confronted the Destroyer, he knew exactly what was coming.”

“But I should have helped him! And I didn’t. I was too afraid of that fire. I couldn’t reach into it to get the sword because I couldn’t stand the thought of getting burned again.”

Mab looked at me sharply. “The Destroyer’s flames touched you?”

I nodded.

“Where?”

I held out my right forearm. It looked completely normal. It felt normal, too, except for an itchy tingling. “You can’t see it now. The demon was burning my arm with its eyes when Dad came in.” Mab pursed her lips as she ran her fingers over my arm. She shook her head and muttered something I couldn’t make out. My heart sank. She didn’t believe me. She probably thought I was lying to make up a reason for not helping Dad. Tears welled in my eyes.

My stupid arm didn’t even hurt anymore. Maybe I was making it up. Maybe I was so scared of the demon that I’d only imagined the pain. The tears spilled over.

Mab reached into her pocket, and I thought she’d hand me a tissue. Instead, she gripped my right arm and slashed a blade across the forearm. I saw the blood before I felt the cut. I stared at my aunt, openmouthed. In her right hand she held a jeweled dagger, its blade shiny with my blood.

Then the pain hit. Not the pain of the knife slash, although that stung, but a roaring, hot, fiery pain, like she’d stuffed burning coals under my skin. I screamed and twisted, but she wouldn’t let me pull away. Blood streamed from the wound, and from it rose puffs of yellowish steam that smelled like sulfur and rotting meat. The steam—billows of it—filled the small room, choking off my screams into coughs. The blood ran down my arm and made a sticky pool on the floorboards. Gradually it slowed. Mab’s grip remained iron until it stopped. Then she got up and opened the window, her figure vague through the yellow steam though she was only three steps away.

She muttered something, and the steam swirled into a coil. At a sharp gesture from Mab, it shot out the window. The air was instantly clear. I could breathe again. Mab stood by the window, looking out toward the courtyard.

I gaped at her, unable to speak. Was she punishing me? Making me suffer because I’d caused my father’s death? Even with the pain that seared my arm, it wasn’t enough. Nothing could ever be enough.

“I had to let the fire out,” she said, still looking outside, “or it would have continued to burn.” She spoke matter-of factly, as if telling me we were having lamb chops for dinner. It was that matter-of-fact tone that made me lose it.

“You cut me!” I shouted. “You stupid bitch!” I clutched my arm against my stomach, bloodying my shirt. “You act like you’re some mysterious, powerful force, but you couldn’t stop that thing from killing my father! You didn’t care about him. You have no feelings. You’re not human!”

“No,” she said softly. “I’m not human. And neither are you, Victory.”

“I told you—don’t call me that.”

She sat next to me again, took my chin in her fingers, and turned my face to hers. “Victory—Vicky. Listen to me. There’s something you must understand about what happened tonight. When those flames touched your arm, that demon marked you.”

“I wish it had killed me.”

A slap stung my face. “Your father died to save you. How dare you dishonor his sacrifice.”

She was right, of course. I hung my head.

When she spoke again, her voice had softened. “Evan saved your life. But you bear the mark of the Destroyer.”

Fear gripped my gut. “What does that mean?”

“What it means, young Vicky, is that you’ll have to be strong. You’ve been poisoned by the essence of that demon.”

The essence of the Destroyer—the flames, that fetid yellow steam. I felt sick to my stomach. “But you got it out, right? That’s why you cut my arm.”

She nodded. “If I hadn’t opened the skin, the essence would have spread. Let’s hope the mark remains small.” She wasn’t talking about the scar from the knife wound. “Bearing the Destroyer’s mark will change you. You might find feelings like anger harder to control. You may sometimes feel a powerful urge to smash things. Or this arm could strike out when you wish no harm.”

I was beginning to understand. “You mean that . . . that thing is inside me? For good?” My stomach clenched, then heaved. I managed to run across the hall to the bathroom before I threw up. Kneeling on the cold tile floor, I retched and retched until I was weak and shaking, until it felt like there was nothing left inside me.

Nothing except the essence of a Hellion.