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An odd mix of confusion and disappointment surged through me as I came upon the center of the wicked aura. “Huh?” The confusion became more pronounced as I looked around.
Starry Knight wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Elysian hadn’t arrived yet, either. There was no sign of some demonic spirit or shadow monster wailing around.
I was starting to wonder if something had gone wrong when a cry thundered out from behind me.
“Stop! Please stop,” a man was calling out as he ran in my direction. “I already gave you my wallet, and I told you I don’t have anything else for you.”
Okay, I thought. “Here we go.” Stress crept up through my body, and my fingers gripped ever more tightly around the hilt of my sword.
Before I could say anything, another man came running out. I was taken aback; the man looked normal, but there was a toxic shadow clinging to his body.
“I still need your Soulfire.” The man’s voice reverberated in a discordant way, like he was talking, but there was someone—or something—talking through him.
Creepy, I thought.
“Come on, man, this isn’t funny. I’m sorry I laughed at you earlier.” The first man tripped and fell, then he scrambled to get further away from the demon-man. Shaking myself free of my initial shock, I hurried over.
A blazing arrow of light shot out from behind me and landed between the demonic man and his prey. I glanced around briefly, and my heart soared in both appreciation and excitement. I could see the familiar outline of my co-defender as she stood on a building top behind me. Her white wings gleamed in the small amount of sunshine left from the rainclouds, and her hair, pulled up in its half-bun, shifted with the wind of her own power. I gave her a small smile while she took out another arrow.
I saw the demonic man was focused on her, so I didn’t miss my chance; I reached down, grabbed the fallen man, and pulled him up. Starry Knight could deal with the demoniac. “Come on,” I told him. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you so much.” The guy was breathing hard and fast, and his hands were shaking. “He just starting attacking me for no real reason.”
“How do you know him?” I asked, as he hobbled over me. He was a full-grown man, in his mid-forties or early fifties, and it was hard to keep my own balance while he grabbed at me. I knew he was afraid, so I couldn’t fault him. But I still wish he’d been just a bit more aware of how he wasn’t helping me help him, either.
“He works with me. I know he’s been acting weird lately—but still, I never thought he’d attack me; I mean, management, maybe, but we’ve been colleagues for a year now.”
Dealing with people, I thought, is difficult. Especially when it comes to difficult people.
I supposed I’d have to get used to it, if I wanted to work in politics. As he rambled on, I thought about how Mayor Mills might deal with such a person. He’d empathize, then he’d get practical. I decided that was a good way to do it.
“That’s definitely a tough situation, sir,” I said. “Starry Knight and I are going to see if we can stop him. You need to stay out of the way.” I let go of him, even though he didn’t let go of me. I sighed quietly. “I’ll need you to step back so I can help your friend.”
“Oh. Oh, okay. Sorry. Never been in this kind of situation before ... do you think it would be okay if I smoked?” he asked.
“Ugh ... ” Never thought I’d be asked that question. He seemed to answer it himself as he pulled out a cigarette and began to try to light it with shaking hands. I couldn’t resist watching him as he burned himself a few times before managing to get it lit. “Okay, then. Just be safe. Stay out of sight. If you move, go somewhere safe.”
He mumbled and bumbled around a bit, and I finally decided, at the sound of a loud crashing noise and seeing Elysian’s shadow hurling toward the scene, it was time to go.
“Elysian!” I shouted, as I moved out toward the street.
“Kid!” he called back, swooping down to meet me. Starry Knight was holding her own against the possessed man. “We’d better get this taken care of soon,” he told me in a soft tone; no easy feat for his deep big-dragon voice. “There is a crowd watching from a lot of the buildings. Police are on their way.”
“Can you give us some cloud cover?” I asked. “That guy told me that the demon monster is a friend of his.” At Elysian’s frown, I added, “Not like a real demon, but maybe there’s one inside of him? Like there was with Mikey a couple of months ago?”
“That would explain it. Go find out. I’ll give you the cover you need,” Elysian replied. “Watch yourself.”
I was already heading out as Elysian rose into the sky. I didn’t see much, but there was a lot of smoke starting to cloud the outside of my vision field. “Starry Knight!” I called out.
She looked back at the sound of my voice. I was about to tell her to try to get the man subdued when he grabbed at her from behind. “Watch out!”
The demonic man gripped her throat and choked her in a headlock. I came running into him, just as Starry Knight managed to swivel out of his grasp.
I hit the man at an impressive speed. The guy and I both flew into the ground, and I swear I felt the road crack under the pressure. Still, I looked up at my partner with a sheepish grin. “Didn’t mean to let him get an opening. You okay?”
“I’ll live,” she assured me. I didn’t even mind the bite in her tone, or how her strikingly violet eyes narrowed at my arrival. If she was well enough to give me a hard time, I knew she was fine. And I was glad for that.
She checked the man on the road beside me. “He’s out cold.”
“Good,” I said. “I didn’t want to have to use my sword.”
Starry Knight indicated the clouds starting to form around us. “What’s Elysian doing?”
“He’s giving us a cloud cover,” I said. “The other guy—”
“Is he safe?” Starry Knight interrupted.
I’d known Starry Knight long enough to know she was concerned about the people, despite what Elysian might have thought about her. I nodded my head in response and said, “He told me that this guy works with him. Can you hold him down? I’m going to try to see if I can ... ”
My words trailed off as I realized I didn’t even really know what it was I did to help people like this. Cure him? Set him free from the demonic hold he had on his heart? I didn’t really know to describe it the first time I did it, and I still didn’t really know. A lot of the ways I found myself explaining it sounded insane, even inside my own head.
Fortunately, Starry Knight seemed to know me pretty well, too. She held down the man’s shoulders and nodded. “That’s fine. If you need me, I’ll be here.”
I was surprised by the remark; there wasn’t much Starry Knight could do, if you asked me. Not when the guy was like this. Unless she meant actually ending his life. Hopefully she didn’t mean that. But as I looked at her and met her gaze, I realized she was trying to support me. I celebrated a small victory as I turned my gaze from her. While she had stipulated, very clearly, that we were only going to be allies, I had a feeling we were slowly slipping into friends.
I almost laughed at the thought; I’d never been so happy to be friend-zoned.
Putting that aside for later, I grabbed the wrist of the man and pressed in with my power, just as I learned to do with my own mark.
Instantly, the swirling emotions of his body flushed up, and after applying more pressure, I was able to transport myself into the Realm of the Heart, which was my name for the place between the inner and outer reality.
The heart is an interesting place, I thought as my eyes settled onto a new landscape. It had a reality all its own inside a person.
In this case, the reality in question was something out of a horror film mixed in with my own cubicle at City Hall.
It was a small heart, I guess, because I found the man’s inner self pretty quickly. The man was working at a desk, and there was a demon swirling around and around him, sinking himself into his heart and trapping him, speaking for him. Making a puppet out of him.
It was much like this when I’d been in Mikey’s heart, I recalled. A demon pulling the strings while the man was caught in a web of lies.
“Sir?” I asked, just a bit hesitantly. The man didn’t seem to be old enough for “Sir.” He did not seem to be much older than I was, actually. His blackish hair was short and neat, allowing me to see the youthful qualities of his face.
The man didn’t look up from his work. The demon shadow turned his attention to me.
After several months on the job of demon hunting and Sinister-slaying, I’d sharpened my assessment skills. It wasn’t a demon type I was familiar with; an eela had more of a personality, and they tended to create their own bodies with their powers. A tenwaleisk kept to a lot of technology, but it did have a human-like side, too; was it possible this was one of them? I knew it wasn’t a bakreel, a type of monster who usually used animals or plant life for a vessel. Maybe it was a more powerful form of a bakreel.
And I knew for certain it wasn’t one of the Seven Deadly Sinisters. None of them would deign to use a man’s body—and a lowly pencil-pusher at that—to try to gain power. Confusion set in. How was I going to defeat this monster when I didn’t recognize its species?
“What are you doing in here?” the demon shadow asked.
“I’ve come to set this man free,” I said, deciding to treat this like some kind of video game experience so it didn’t feel quite so surreal. I pulled out my sword, ready to do battle if the man himself wouldn’t help me.
“You don’t need this soul,” the demon told me. “He’s been depressed for so long. He feels his job is nothing special, but it’s the only thing he has in life. He works long hours. His brother is getting married, and he has no one else. Nothing but an empty job and a hollow life.”
“That doesn’t matter,” I said. “He still has the right to choose a better one. I won’t let you take that away from him.”
“I see.” The demon frowned. “I suppose you belong to him then.”
“Him?”
“The Prince of Stars,” he responded.
“Oh, him.” I straightened. “I mean, yes. I am one of his Starlight Warriors.”
“I am surprised you are not bitter,” the demon spoke. “It is not unusual for a fallen Star to hate the Prince.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Why would I be bitter?”
The demon’s eye gleamed with renewed interest. “Oh, I see; you don’t know, do you? Oh, this is priceless!” He began to laugh, and not only was it a terrible laugh, but I hated how much superiority I could hear in it.
My sword faltered. “What don’t I know?”
“All the fallen Stars living on Earth were sent here as a result of the Prince’s ruling on the matter. It is a punishment.”
The word “punishment” stopped me as nothing else could have. “What do you mean?” I asked slowly. “I have a purpose for being here. It wasn’t to be punished ... ”
Was it?
I mean, sure, some days it felt like it. But it wasn’t really a direct punishment. It couldn’t be.
This is a demon monster. He is your enemy. He wouldn’t tell you the truth. Unless the truth is worse than lying to you. I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts and find some source of truth to break me away from the demon’s words.
There was a small push behind my own heart, and I grappled onto its warmth. The Prince would not betray me, I thought. He was supposed to be the good one in all of this. After all, Adonaias had specifically told me that I’d been forgiven.
But forgiven doesn’t necessarily mean “unpunished,” my lawyer side reminded me.
One thing at a time, I decided. First, cut down the demon. Then ask the uncomfortable questions.
Before I could make my move, the demon suddenly lashed out and curled around me, cutting me off from movement. I struggled against him, but his power held me back. “What are you doing?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“Why, trying to take your power, of course.” The demon offered me a creepy, distorted grin. “As a fallen Star, your heart and soul are much more powerful than that of a human. All I need to do is find a weakness ... ” He laughed again, and in that instant I began to worry. There wasn’t anything I knew of that would let Starry Knight or Elysian follow me into this realm. I was completely by myself.
A shadow of a hand formed from the demon’s aura and, before I could say anything else, it cut through my armor and my tunic and strangled itself around the core of my being.
“Ack!” I choked out with a hiss, as a burning pain began to surge throughout my body. I felt a sense of unconsciousness slipping around me as my soul began to separate itself from my form.
Seconds later, the demon slid back and began to cry out in pain. “Augh!”
Through half-open eyes, I watched as my energy burst free from my skin, showing a glimpse of the mold from which my heart had rested, cradled in its light like a flame in a larger fire. As I watched, power reached out and grabbed the demon’s shadow, and burned through it with a blood-red flame.
I felt my body begin to move again as the demon burned up, the blood flame dissolving it into nothing but fire residue.
“Ah,” I muttered, my hand flying to my chest. The red flame of my soul slipped back inside of me. I felt it brush against my fingers as it oozed past, returning to its home. “How did I do that?”
The demon holding the man hostage was gone. I looked up to see a college-age student before me, with dark eyes and darker hair—normal, once more.
“Thank you,” he said.
I watched as the tiny, cramped cubicle blew over, and a bright morning sky filled with twinkling lights settled around him.
“You’re welcome,” I said back. “Um, are you okay now?”
“I’m having a hard time,” he admitted. There was an air of loneliness and uncertainty around him still, I noticed. I was about ask what was bothering him when he continued, “But I’m not ready to give up, like that thing wanted me to. I have people counting on me.”
Oh, well that was good then. I guess I shouldn’t really be asking people I’ve never met personal questions. “Are you ready to go home?” I asked.
“Yes.”
And with that, we faded back into the real world, where I found my body kneeling over his, and his still unconscious.
I looked up and blinked, finding the real world a lot brighter than the realm of the guy’s heart. I felt his wrist fall out of my hand, and I slouched back onto my legs.
“Did you get to him?” Starry Knight’s voice came to me like a voice from the other side of the water.
I heard myself answer, “Yes. He’s free.”
“Are you okay?”
I looked up at Starry Knight, and her beauty was especially striking to me. I found myself falling forward, my hands wrapping themselves around her. As I broke through the surface, I found myself saying, “Yes. I am.”
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