Jonis by Rowan Erlking (manga ereader TXT) 📕

and watching everything as we went. Distantly, he could hear birds singing. Farther off, he saw a handful of workers plucking fruit from the trees. Blinking, Jonis propped the sword on its point, resting his hand as he watched them.

He called out. “Aren’t you afraid of the demon that killed those five men?”

One from the group looked down. That worker whispered over to another worker. That one cupped his hands and shouted back, “We’ve got to eat, don’t we?”

Jonis nodded, knowing that was true. He continued walking down the row, gazing up at the tree where they were gathering peaches. Only seven people were working in the grove. The rest of the orchard seemed ripe and ready for picking with no time to lose. He walked over to one of the ladders.

“Shouldn’t the entire village be out here helping? This is a village orchard, isn’t it?”

The workers peered down at him, regarding ‘the stranger’ carefully, especially his tinted glasses that prevented them from reading his gaze.

The one that replied the last time answered him. “Everyone else is too scared to come out.”

“Why aren’t you scared?” Jonis asked again.

The man plucked another peach and put it in his basket. “We have to eat, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Jonis murmured. “You said that.”

He looked to the right and the left, listening to the air as the fruit pickers continued filling their baskets. If it weren’t for the weeping in the village square, it was like there nothing was wrong in this village at all.

“Have any of you seen or heard anything strange going on out here?” Jonis asked, pulling up once onto the stepladder.

“Get off,” that man snapped. “This here ladder is only built for one. It will bust from too much weight.”

Jonis hopped off.

A woman answered him. “You are the only strange thing we have seen in these parts.”

Jonis nodded to himself. “I thought so.”

Someone dropped his basket. That man cursed, getting off his ladder. Others came down, heaving their loads to the ground and helping the man fill back up his basket. Jonis turned and started to walk down the rows of trees again. They watched him while hefting the fruit-filled baskets onto their hips and carrying the loads back into the village.

 

It was late when Jonis joined the troop. They sat in the offered room for the night discussing what they had observed among themselves. When Jonis slid the door closed to the simple room, they looked up at him. All their faces showed they were still puzzling over the evidence.

“So, did you get anything from the grove? A smell? Droppings? A nest?” Lt. Gillway scooted over to give Jonis some room.

Jonis sat next to him with a tired plop. “Nothing. Nothing, but peculiar activity.”

“Peculiar activity?” one of the other corporals asked. “Like what?”

Reaching out to the small table in the center of them for the steaming pot of water to pour into his cup, dumping out the tealeaves first, he sighed. “Like fruit pickers that seemed more suspicious of me than of any demon.”

“Do you think maybe they could be infected?” Cpl. Emas asked, having now been briefed on the nature of parasitic demons by his comrades on the trip over.

Shaking his head, Jonis sipped the hot water. “No. I checked. No feathers out of their necks, no bilious eyes or bad breath, and no extra spider appendages clinging onto their backs. They were just average humans.”

“Have you seen the bodies yet?” the lieutenant asked him.

“Not yet,” Jonis said. “I spent all day in that grove, just thinking—if I wanted to ambush somebody…that would be the place I’d choose. Whatever kind of demon stalks these people, it is smart.”

“Just like you?” Cpl. Emas said with a glare.

The other men hit the back of his head. “Shut it!” “Idiot!” “Stupid!”

“Knock it off, soldiers!” Lt. Gillway snapped. “Cpl. Emas has the right to be critical, even though it is ignorant.”

Jonis nodded to his friend. “Thanks.” He glanced at Emas, took off his glasses and said, “Cordrils would never just take the heart. If a Cordril wanted to kill someone, he’d take the entire body.”

The sharp, piercing gaze of his blue eyes stabbed into the new soldier. Cpl. Emas knew Jonis was not lying.

Jonis lowered his eyes. “However, this demon I am not familiar with. What did the bodies look like?”

“Grotesque,” the lieutenant said. He dumped another swig of tea down his throat, cringing as it burned down. “Each of their hearts were ripped out, as if torn out by hand. They had claw marks on their shoulders, evenly spaced, and larger than I have ever seen—bigger even than a Gole’s claws. I think it wasn’t just one demon, but many. Perhaps it is a new kind of Night Stalker?”

Thinking, Jonis slowly shook his head. “I think I need to see the bodies.”

“You’d better hurry,” one of the privates said. “Dimwit Emas here suggested they burn the bodies so eggs don’t hatch. They were talking about pyres last time I checked.”

Jonis sprang up immediately. Running straight out the door and stumbling over the threshold to get to the village square, his feet skidded over the gravel. Sure enough, he saw the people hefting the dead onto heaps of wood. The people wore facemasks.

“Hold on a second!” Jonis leapt up to the nearest body, peering over the corpse.

Some of people screamed, pulling away from him.

Looking over the bodies, it was exactly as Lt. Gillway described, grotesque. The claw marks on this victim’s shoulders matched the gashes digging into his wrists and legs. The man had been held down as his heart was taken. If it had been one demon, that demon had many legs. If it had been many demons, one heart did not seem like much of a meal.

“It’s a demon!” one woman shrieked.

“Kill it!” another shouted.

“Hold on!” Lt. Gillway ran out after Jonis. He held out Jonis’s sunglasses. “You forgot these.”

The villagers stared, watching Jonis blush and take the glasses from his superior’s hands.

“Sorry. I suppose our secret is out,” Jonis said through a grimace.

The village patriarch tromped forward, shouting. “What is the meaning of this? You brought a demon among us?”

Lt. Gillway immediately turned around with as much dignity as possibly. “My apologies sir, but we find that Cordrils are very useful in sniffing out demons. Pri—I’m sorry, Corporal Macoy here is an expert in demon hunting. He….”

Jonis had heard this argument before. Tuning it out, he peered at the staring faces of the crowd then turned once more to see if the bodies had any other demonic sign about them. Glancing once at his commanding officer, Jonis loosened the buckle to his right-hand glove. He took it off as secretly as possible. With a glance at Lt. Gillway, Jonis gently stroked the corpse, feeling inside for any last thoughts he might have had.

“Corporal! What are you doing?” Lt. Gillway snapped, his eyes gone wide.

Caught, Jonis blushed, pulling on his glove again. “Sorry sir, I figured it wouldn’t hurt since he was already dead.”

“What were you doing, though?” Lt. Gillway asked, marching over to him to make sure Jonis was latching on his gloves properly.

With a shrug, Jonis knew he was in trouble. “I just wanted to see if any last thoughts lingered in his mind.”

Lt. Gillway blinked. “You can do that?”

“I’ve never tried before,” Jonis frankly replied, “But when my father was dying, he passed on thoughts. Anciently, we all could communicate just by touch. It takes two Cordrils to do it but—”

He watched all the fixed stares on his face. Jonis swallowed, holding back the rest he had wanted to say.

“What was he thinking?” Lt. Gillway asked, looking to the corpse and ignoring everyone else.

The crowd held their breath, listening intently.

Jonis shook his head. “It didn’t work. Thoughts don’t linger in the minds of the dead, I guess.”

Breaths of disappointment mingled with sighs of relief. Jonis noticed.

“Let’s all go to bed,” Lt. Gillway suggested, motioning for Jonis to follow. “We’ll tackle the problem in the morning.”

Nodding, Jonis followed. He looked back on the watching crowd once, feeling the penetrating stares and fear flood the village.

They returned to their room. After drinking the soup that the villagers provided with some simple flat bread, Jonis went about making demon wards and then a large hate ward. The men did not question it, knowing it was routine in some areas. But Lt. Gillway sensed a growing oppression over Jonis’s thoughts and manner as he went about the task.

Jonis did not sleep that night. He sat in his own hate ward, leaning against the wall with his sword on his knees, drawn and ready for a fight. Guarding his fellow officers, he believed it was his duty to keep everyone alive. Never in all his life had he felt so unsafe among human beings.

The clatter of metal striking the ground woke Jonis out of his exhausted sleep. He blinked open his eyes. A deep voice cursed over him. In the darkness, he saw only shadows. One loomed over him with sharp claw-like hands, scratching at the hate ward without any success at breaching it. Jonis stood up, lifting his sword.

“You don’t smell like a demon,” Jonis said in a quiet hiss. “But you will die like one.”

The one that stood before him backed away. The rest of the demons scrambled out of the room, four clawed shadows.

Jonis raised his sword. “You want a piece of me? You have to fight for it!”

He leapt out of the circle. The demon yowled, scurrying out of the room. It broke through the door and tripped out into the square. Jonis chased after it, heaving his sword high as not one, but many of these things escaped into the grove. They ducked into the high grass. Jonis did not follow.

“I’m not stupid,” Jonis said, halting on the dirt edge. “I can’t see you all, and there is only one of me. Many against one. Very unfair. If you want a piece of me, you have to come out here.”

None came. They waited in the grass, moving about secretly under the shadows.

Jonis sighed, put his sword point on the ground, contemplating making another hate ward to sleep in. However, he just turned and walked back to his room. If they wanted him, they would have come in to get him.

 

No one attacked for the rest of the night. Lt. Gillway, handed Jonis something as he nudged him awake. “Do you know what this is doing in here?”

Rubbing his eyes, Jonis blinked. In Lt. Gillway’s hands was a metal gardening claw. Jonis took it, peering at it.

“Sure beats me,” he murmured, getting onto his feet. Jonis walked straight to the doors. He noticed that the door edges did not have claw marks, as would be with a Gole. He slid the broken door aside and stepped out, setting his sunglasses over his eyes.

“You should leave,” he heard a girl to his right say.

Turning, Jonis saw the same girl that had left when they were being greeted the day before. He handed her the gardening claw. “Why?”

He watched her eyes grow wide. She glanced from side to side and then up at Jonis. Whispering, she leaned in. “They could kill you. I know you mean well, but they would kill you and not feel at all sorry. The others with you might escape, but—”

She stopped when she saw the village patriarch approach. Immediately she scurried away over the wooden walkways to the village delicatessen with the gardening claw in her hands.  Some heads turned to watch her, but most ignored it like it was usual for her to be so skittish.

Jonis frowned.

“Have you—?” the patriarch gazed at the broken door. “What happened here?”

“We were attacked last night by your demons,” Jonis said with a casual shrug. “Tell me about that girl.”

“Who cares about that girl! You were attacked? Did you kill any of them?” the patriarch shouted, his chest heaving.

Jonis shook his head mildly. “No. They ran off into the grove. I want to know about that girl.”

“That girl is