The Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher (each kindness read aloud TXT) 📕

you mean. We have two wylds, the Orchard and the Grove.” He paused, slanted a look my way. “You’re asking a lot of questions. You believe me now? That I am fairy, that you are fairy.”

“No,” I blurted. “I’m not I’m not.”

“You never thought it odd you are able to push your body beyond the normal boundaries of a girl your age?”

I ignored the fact he’d called me a girl, and batted his words away with my hand.

“I’m stronger, yes. And I’m fast, but I always have been.” I was stretching the truth. I hadn’t always been fast, but crazy fast.

“And that’s all?”

My pace slowed to a dazed meander, an aimless weave through the mossy trunks. Swallowing hard, I bit my lip and tasted blood. My hand strayed to where the wound from a bullet graze should mark me and felt nothing. I had always been a quick healer. Not that quick, but quicker than most. I was not like other people because I didn’t think or feel the same. I didn’t eat right, or feel right when people touched me. I got urges, strange urges to I blinked away the sting in my eyes. My mind took a frightening and obvious leap of intuition. I stopped. Everything in my world vibrated and slid to a canted angle then jerked straight, becoming new and balancing to the truth. I gave myself time for the largest wave of emotion to subside.

“I am a demon,” I said slowly, testing the words. “I am fairy.”

The world didn’t end. No one gasped or cried out, and there was nothing to suggest anything was wrong anywhere else in the world in that moment. My entire perception and understanding of everything was shifting into a new alignment, but that did not affect anything or anyone but me. My eyes were drawn to Breandan’s face. We stared at each other. Over the worst of my freak out, I had decided to make everything his fault, and I wondered what part of him to hit first.

His expression turned from wary to amused. “See, you’re not surprised. You knew you were different.”

I ducked my head to let my hair fall forward and cover my face. “I wish I’d reacted with hysteria now, like stabbed you with a stick and run screaming.”

Lips curving he shook his head once. “You’re taking this well,” he explained.

“Better than we’d hoped for.” I opened my mouth to ask who this “we” was he kept referring to, but he kept on talking. “The world has changed with demons out in the open and the fact you are training to be-” His expression hardened briefly. “Your reaction is not what I expected, good, but unexpected.”

“What did you think I would do?”

He shrugged. “Violence.”

The word described how I would have expected to react, but I didn’t feel aggressive. I was exhausted, confused and a little giddy. Maybe I was having a vivid dream, or an outer body experience. “Give me longer, I’m working up to it.”

“Do you want to talk about it? That helps females.”

His eyes fell from mine as the violence he was waiting for seeped through my calm and poisoned my voice. “No.” I threw the word at him with the force of an accusation.

“I’m sorry.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You need to work on the whole speaking plainly thing.”

“The awakening was painful for you.” His mouth twisted around the word. “Your nature should not have been released so crudely without you knowing what you truly are. It may seem like I’m being cruel with my words, but we don’t have a lot of time and now you have broken the spell you will find it harder to conceal what you are.”

It was like he was speaking dead languages to me. One minute, I understood and followed his train of thought, the next I was being dunked head first into the sea when I’d thought I was standing in a field.

“You’re not making any sense. You talk like I already know what you’re referring to. And I don’t.”

“Your true form was concealed, a powerful casting. It suppressed and hid your fairy nature to keep you safe.”

I bit my lip. “I really am a fairy too?”

“What else would you be?”

I stopped, and my fingers curled under into fists. “You called me a demon girl. I could be a shifter, or have goblin blood or be a witch.” I sniffled. Unattractive, but needed since my nose was running. I was still trying not to cry, and the stinging pressure had to be released somehow.

My voice was muffled and my nose felt thick. “They all look human too.”

“Oh, Rae. You look like a human because of your glamour.”

My frustration was replaced with confusion and curiosity. “My glamour?” I waited for him to elaborate. He said nothing. I did the only thing I could do and applied logic to try and understand. I felt sick.

“Vampires can do what you describe. Glamour a human when they need to trick and feed.”

Was that it? I was I some freaky vampire-fairy hybrid that was going to go mad and massacre a load of people?

“No.” His hand cut the air in a strong motion. “What you refer to is purely mind control. The dead ones dress up compulsion to make it seem harmless. Fairy glamour is a small enchantment allowing us to look completely human.” He placed a hand to his heart, to his lips and reached as if to touch me. “Magic to our being is air to breathe and water to drink.”

The barrier over him rippled again.

“The glamour is that shield over you.” My hand swiped feebly but the curiosity in my tone was evident. “The barrier I can’t see through or feel.” His mouth tugged into a secret smile. Then he looked back over his shoulder, tapped his foot impatiently. I frowned. “You still need to go after the vampire you sensed back there?”

His face smoothed into relief. “Yes, yes I do.”

“Then show me. Prove what you are.” I stopped and crossed my arms over my chest. “The quicker you do the quicker you can go.”

Breandan took a long look at me then glowed with an inner light. His face was fiercely beautiful, the perfect features sharpened. His ears had elongated, pointed at the tips and curved into a slender elliptical shape. He looked different. Other.

The desire to hold him had increased in pressure, and was a force attacking all angles.

“Why do I feel like this?” I asked quietly. “I don’t think I even like you. How can I feel like this? Like I’ve known you my whole life. When you touch me I feel complete. When you speak, I accept everything because you said it.”

“The feeling of dislike is mutual, but I’m beginning to think I was born for you.” He sighed. “This will not be easy. Of course I would be the one to see you first.”

He pointed to somewhere behind me and turned his head slowly from left to right, like he was considering something. I looked over my shoulder. We had reached the Wall and the sudden crackling energy in the air allowed me to sense he was doing something big. The red wires stopped humming and cooled to pewter metal instead blazing red with electricity. The wires pinged and unraveled leaving a hole big enough for me to pass through at a stoop.

He jerked his head toward it. “Go now. Be safe and we will come for you.”

Then he was gone. Apparently fairies didn’t do long goodbyes. He was there then he wasn’t.

I was alone again in the forest but at least I wasn’t lost anymore. The sun was nearly done creeping up too. I slipped through the hole in the Wall, and the moment I did it knitted back together, but not before a dark streak dived through.

Every hair on my body stood on end. This was no fairy or Cleric. The movement was too liquid and quick to belong to anything, but a dead one. All I could think was run. I turned, tripped over a tree root and fell flat on my face. A mouth full of dirt, I crawled forward then decided I wanted to see it coming rather than be jumped from behind, and flipped round to scuttle back.

The vampire loomed over me, silent and deadly. He was dressed all in black and the space around him pulsed with darkness. Gesturing to me, his fingers were palm up and they curled around the air.

“Quiet, now,” he said. “It is not what you think. I would have revealed myself in a less dramatic manner, but the tear the fairy made was closing, and I did not have another way.” His somber expression lightened and his eyes twinkled. “I have already eaten, a skinny girl, bitter.”

I shrieked and scrambled back some more. My hands were scraped and gouged by stones and bracken, but the flares of heat a second after told me I was healing. The vampire followed me, human slow so my eyes could track his movement. I’d heard they liked to torment their meals. Make them beg and scream for death before putting them out of their misery.

“You are being rude,” he said shortly. “Will you not talk to me?”

I blinked, astonished, and stopped moving. “Huh,” I grunted, incredulous. “I’m about to die and you think I’m being rude by not talking to you?”

If I was in my right mind I would never back-chat the living dead, but I was shaking with fear and pretty sure I was about to pee myself.

Back-chat didn’t seem bad anymore.

His face remained passive. “I am death to those who cross my path.” My heartbeat picked up as if to emphasize the point. His mouth pulled into a grim line. “I do not deny what I am. I embrace it, but I have not come here to hurt you. I told you. I have already eaten.”

I started backing up again. It was stupid me crawling back and he walking after me, but now I was over the initial shock, I couldn’t get my body to stop. “Forgive me for not wanting to trust you, but your kind and my kind haven’t exactly seen eye to eye.” As I spoke I wasn’t sure if I meant humankind or fairykind, but I was sure the relationship with the vampires was about on par.

His lips quirked then fell straight. “No. I suppose not. Would it help if I gave you my word?”

He stopped and held out a hand to help me up.

I thought about it and managed to stop crawling. My arms were tired, my ass was damp from being dragged across the forest floor, and I was pretty sure I had a spider crawling up my back. I sighed and tossed my head to get the hair out of my eyes.

“No, it would not help, but I’m tired of being on the ground, and if you’re going to eat me I’d rather be upright with my head held high.”

I clasped his hand and curled my fingers around his. They were rock solid, cold. He pulled me up and my legs wobbled, so his other hand snagged my waist to steady me. For a moment I stood, but was weightless. The sensation was unusual. I scowled and stared into the face of my vampire. He was older than me, not by much and he was ugly. Swept back from his forehead and longer than fashionable, his hair was coal black, and cut close at the neck. His eyes were red ringed, like he was sickly, and had a peculiar stillness about them. He hadn’t blinked, not once since he’d first