Demon

Chapter 1

Demon of disappointment

I looked on as the petite mousy brown haired woman shuffled to her refrigerator and opened it. She was bleary eyed. Her expression was one of detached tolerance. Something I was very familiar with on a completely different level, for completely different reasons. She winced when the cold hit her face. I watched as she swallowed the urge to cough. I only knew what she was doing by watching the muscles in her throat work like she was actually drinking something. I already knew what was wrong. She fought the urge to cough or even clear her throat. I smelled it when I entered the flat, while I still had a human nose. I encountered a sickly sweet organic smell, like wild mushrooms and lilac. The fragrance was chased by a little rot, or decomposition. The overall effect was fairly unpalatable.

She has cancer in her throat and lungs.

You may be wondering why she doesn’t mind me watching her. So let me tell you. She can not see me. The moment I stepped past her as she opened the door to gather a package, my corporeal form collapsed. She had done a double take around her but appeared to mentally shrug when she did not see anyone present.

I can only surmise that her lack of recognition is to blame. Perhaps the drugs in her system helped a bit, they certainly allowed her to accept the hallucination of a 6′ male walking past her and simply disappearing.

It was not a pleasant feeling, collapsing.

It had been a very long time since I had last seen her, but I hadn’t anticipated her lack of acknowledgement, obviously. It has taken me the last 30 years, give or take, to realize I had been going about the whole thing all wrong. I am now, staring at a disillusioned half dead woman with a broken soul. I need to stop wishing I had fixed this earlier, and explain. For you to understand I must start further back. Not the beginning mind, I can’t even properly remember it after all this time.

My name is Gideon, Gid Ye On or maybe even Gids. My actual assignment is #23425 s480. Which is how many times my penitent soul has been recycled since the beginning of time. Or maybe just the number of times I have died in the wars I have fought as a barely self aware entity. There are many names for what I am, the most common among the people of Eos or Earth, is Demon. I came to exist on another plane. The Plane of Echo, otherwise known as Hell.

That human history got the way it works wrong isn’t a surprise, but the label will suffice for now.

The world she lives in, this dying woman who accidentally inherited me, does not, or rather did not, understand the separation of the planes. But I digress, It has just gotten very interesting here on Eos and I wish I had handled this incarnation for my contractor a bit differently than I have this time.

As I muse over the events that led us to this moment, I am watching her pick at a piece of toast and not really eat it. It makes my hand itch to put a bit of butter or jam on it to try to entice her. I don’t, of course. I brood instead about how normally, she is born and I am able to manifest all manner of things to aid and develop her character as she learns to know me again. This time, and I mean literal time, the generation she was born into was feral. Unsupervised, Unassisted, Unloved. Just keeping up with her location with all the custody battles and household moves was beyond challenging. Times had changed greatly from the last incarnation.

Instead of trying to help her, I chose to descend into decadence and debauchery. I mean come on, let’s remember I am a demon.

Having the faux-body she gave me via dreams as a child worked well for me. I was an attractive human, I believe the phrase “tall, dark and handsome.” was fitting. I was probably patterned after an actor she saw in a movie. I suspect I had a bit of that silver screen daddy vibe.

I could maintain my pseudo-form as long as she dreamt of me now and then. That meant a deeper connection wasn’t all that important that I needed to track her down from foster home to foster home.

Without her birthright, without her training, she had been unable to give me an actual flesh body. I was unable to make her understand I am real. The result was she was set adrift in a world that didn’t need, want or care about her.

I am guilty of abandoning her; nearly breaching my contract.

I watched this incarnation come into this world. She was born November 11, 1969 at 2pm. It was a Tuesday. Her mother was nonplussed, as she was the woman’s third child. Her father however, was over the moon.

I always liked the man, a bit odd, but he named her well. He was properly tickled with her for at least a year and a half. He doted on her. In her second April her little sister was born. Her sister was a much more verbal and needy type. In contrast, my girl was a quiet and independent child. So she was set aside.

Probably not intentionally. Probably.

I watched her on and off through her childhood. I conversed with her, and gave her small gifts. She was a melancholy little thing. Her dreams were fantastic though, vivid, colorful and terrifying in a very visceral way.

She often dreamt of horses, she loved them so much, but was forever denied the sensation of actually being able to ride. I should have known what that would eventually mean for us, but I just figured it was an interesting side note. Especially since she was frightened of heights and yet dreamt regularly of flying.

I am confident some stupid contemporary self awareness guru could make a blog about being good enough to do the hard things even if denied one’s desires.

Rubbish really. Everyone should get to at least do what they want in dreams.

Her development aside, She shut me out sometime after she got married in 1991. I had tried halfheartedly to approach her while she was self-destructing after her wedding. She shut down hard and to coin a phrase, “put away childish things.” For her, that meant turning off ‘imaginary friends’. For me it meant my ability to become completely corporeal this time would now be withheld. It made me angry. So I left.

Fast forward to now. I am watching her gag and spit out her pills and throw them away in the trash. Probably not a good thing. I have so much to tell her and she is too drugged and sick to listen.

It is 2022, post pandemic earth. She is now 52, and possibly the saddest person I have ever met. The twinge of guilt I feel is pretty real. Okay fine, it’s not a twinge it’s like swallowing acid. It burns and yet I have to keep swallowing.

She stands suddenly, coughing and hacking, rushing to the bathroom. If I owned a heart it would have skipped a beat as she walked straight through me to the next room.

I wondered for a moment if when she passed through, she felt me around her, or anything at all. The thought came unbidden. But since I recently acquired information on a number of other things that are important right now, I forgot the random thought as quickly as it presents itself.

A couple of big things have happened. I had come here to let her know. They were probably pretty important for us as a summoner and familiar. Probably.

Three human subsets, which have lived invisibly among society for a very long time have decided to live, well, less invisibly. There have been no announcements but the cover-ups for their activities stopped around the time Joe was elected in the US.

The groups are as follows; the Haema, the Cogitari, and the Naizu Senate.

Memories that were sealed for me have surfaced since the rescinding of the effective ‘gag order’ on the aforementioned Cogitari. They are the race that liberated, or maybe enslaved my kind here on Eos, respectively of course.

I move to watch as she is brushing her teeth, pained at the way her hand is shaking on the way to her lips. I imagine the smell of cinnamon when I see her brand of toothpaste. It is the same she used as a child and it makes me smile. She is the only human I personally know that buys cinnamon toothpaste. I try not to focus on the blood in the sink. Instead, I contemplate how to communicate with her since my form dispersed. She is in no condition to accept my information.

She, my tether to this plane, is dying. Most likely without ever uttering the words to bring me to the physical plane.

I could just try speaking but chances are she would just ignore it. That is how I ended up leaving in a huff last time. We are entwined by a curse or contract if you rather, set so long ago that even for me it’s hazy.

She had no choice, but she used to interact with me as a child. We were both ignorant then, since my knowledge of the clandestine races was lost each time she was reincarnated. The knowledge was only gained back as she learned about herself. The problem, or maybe solution is, after the races ‘came out’ I know far more about her than she does.

The unsealing of some of my memories has torn a hole through the ignorant bliss my timeless ass had been living in.

I need her. I am in very real danger of getting a one way ticket back to hell and that was the best case scenario. Worst, I would simply fail to exist at some point.

She is everything, with her little green toothbrush and bed head.

I have allowed her, this time, to be exactly nothing. Unwanted, unheard, unloved…the ‘uns’ could go on forever.

She is the embodiment of her generation. X marks the spot.

I, the demon on her shoulder, the one who jumped for joy when she discovered punk rock, let her fade into the background like a random blade of grass on the prairie.

Chapter 2

Demon dreams of Karaoke with silent sirens and cold children

I watched as she choked on air for the zillionth time. Her pasty skin covered with a sheen of oily perspiration. The way she holds her breath between coughs, and the expanding of her laboring chest while her eyes water is disgusting and pitiful.

The worst part is how she won’t let herself cough. Like she might come apart at the seams if she lets it start. I suspect that is exactly what she is afraid of. It is not a pleasant thought.

I had no right to look away from her pain, I had abandoned her after all. Kind of a hard stop to come back from, especially for a person like her. Not that I knew her well this time around. She was a reflection of several other lives she has already lived and in this one it was a blurry indistinguishable mess. In my defense, if there is any, I did not know what she was, or what it meant that we were bound in a way that allowed me to be independent of her. I had lost the information normally relayed to us through her lineage and training just like she had. The absence of information or Cogitari training had made both of us unaware of many facets of our contract. It completely obscured our codependency for lack of a better way to put it.

The only thing I have known this whole time was that I needed her to stay here on EOS.

At any rate, we would both be lost if I didn’t figure out how to open her back up to me. I had assumed we had another couple decades before this would need to happen. She wasn’t living a dangerous life after all. Aside from really bad luck, she had been safe and secure her entire adult life. It is a colossal joke that bad luck is exactly what is now killing her. She doesn’t smoke, but she has lung cancer. The pandemic had affected her, her contracting the virus had catapulted her declining health into the red.

Her dreams are now, well, sad. She does not dream about horses anymore. She doesn’t dream of anything solid, it is all fever and random images as if her mind has come apart in the wash and the contents of her thoughts and memories are spilled like coins from her pockets, in the machine.

I am going to have to string them together. Doing so is not my forte, I am not creative by nature. I was a soldier and then a jailor of sorts, and then a captive. So here I am figuratively knee deep in gray matter trying to catch random images like bubbles being blown in a hurricane. She has taken a long time to wind down today, her heart rate higher than normal and her breathing more shallow. Images flit past me as I dip my imaginary toe into the pool of her dream.

I note a pretty fish and a random CD case before I pick up on the sound. First it’s her heartbeat, stuttering a bit now and then. The smell of maple syrup in my mind is strangely flat but since I don’t actually have a nose it makes sense. I hear her humming. The humming gets louder over time and then in a flurry of feathers and gray cloudy skies I hear her start to sing.

“Listen to his body moan…” a rusty contralo cuts through my thoughts.

Ah, lyrics, memories half remembered, a snippet. I grab it, search my memories for where it came from, and find it. I whisper softly; “Mask a wish..”

It is something like three beats of her heart before she decides to hear me. I feel like it is an eternity.

“...and send us home.” She answers.

There she is. I feel a bit misty, if that’s a thing a demon can feel. I am not sure. The music keeps moving and the song changes, lyrics flooding in with a few prompts remind her where she has been. The images take shape after the rhythm and words take on a life of their own. I hear synth-heavy beats and simplistic refrains. I feel them as she relaxes into known pleasures, substance.

The pale creature that crawls out of her mind then, is the one I remember. She is the Siren that disappeared the same time I did. She is an integral part of this poor woman’s inner self. The only part of her that expresses everything and says nothing. Words are not this creature’s medium.

The complete containment of her inner self was the only favor she had ever allowed herself.

Everything else was reactive. Words would pour from her in any situation, they were her shield, her armor against the outside world. She didn’t even trust herself enough not to self harm that this part of her, the primal one, was very rarely let loose.

Dancing with her as a shadow, letting my form take a smoky dark shape is as good as I can do this time. I will feel the beat of the music long after she wakes.

It is a few weeks before she allows the little girl out in her dreams. The child is the spokesperson. She asks me questions. They never end, when one is answered another is posed. She never smiles, this child. She is never scared, hungry, or tired. She stands and asks question after question. She never judges the answer, simply uses it to frame a new question. This child is the being that originally brought me forth from the other plane. Her questions, posed to the void, seemed to require an answer. So I did.

She holds my hand, it is not an affectionate gesture, neither of us are capable of that.

This child is older than this body it’s trapped in, it’s part of divinity that was tossed back to earth without so much as a kiss goodbye. This child knows what it is, but does not have the capacity to do anything with that knowledge as she was born away from her people. Her parents were unaware of their respective blood lines. Her father was a Haema, her mother a Cogitari. I had just realized this fact myself, after having my memories returned. Each incarnation, there is a delay with the information available to me because of the state of the world. Most of the time the clandestine races remained so in my memories, the deep effort and magic expended to hide would cause my mental slate to be cleared of certain items when re-establishing my pact each time. If my contractor did not realize she was a Cogi, I had no way of understanding it either. That being said, this time the wards and spells had been released globally. This meant I knew even if she did not.

The two branches, the Haema (bloodborne) and Cogitari(thoughtborne) were not typically interactive. Throughout history such unions did happen, but it was rare for any such offspring to maintain any sense of reality. They were often damned to go insane by the pull of their respective instincts. The animal part would either eat their intellect, or the intellect would kill the animalistic qualities. It was unlikely that the dichotomy would survive. This child, having been a ‘sleeper’ meant the roles had never actually interacted.

This new information gave me an option to save her. If I could find one of the Haema to activate her, we could live. I was not sure what effect our curse, or her mixed lineage, would have on the whole process. We were going to die this time, if I didn’t do something, since she was not accepting me back anyway.

She sees me in dreams and shadows, but refuses to actually name me this time. In order for me to materialize she has to give me a name and call me forth. It is not going to happen before she dies, she does not see me as anything other than a faceless shadow, through my very own fault. My summoner has forgotten our pact. Out of sight, out of mind, or something like that. The red string of fate had faded to pink and frayed to hair fine. I was unsure what would happen if it actually snapped.

Chapter 3

Stray cats

It took entirely too long to find one of the ‘blood’, and when I did, she was a lousy drunk. The woman looking at me was the angriest wet cat I had ever met. I had bought her too many drinks, listened to too much of her blather, breathed too much of her air. Not that I actually breathe, not without a meat suit.

This body is an illusion. It appears to have substance and can be touched but it is not flesh. It is like a forcefield, air resistance in place of actual contact. It even has warmth but it is insubstantial. It is easy to maintain when I have power. It is taxing in my current condition. Needless to say it has been a long night ‘pretending’.

I was nearly exhausted from maintaining a pseudo-corporeal form for hours. I could feel my grip on her slipping as I helped her to sit. Literally, my hand was losing substance. She was teetering like a see-saw on the armrest of a 1980′s looking overstuffed, way too pink, sofa.

She tumbled on to her dirty couch. I watched her fall. I wanted to cry a little as she passed out. This had gotten me exactly nothing but tired. Apparently trying to soften up the blow of asking her to bite my master had been a bad plan. To be perfectly fair, my plans were usually spot on so this loss is probably just to appease the god of averages.

“She won’t wake up again now, you can leave.” the voice of a young boy startled me out of my misery.

I turned to look at him, steeling my form for a few more minutes out of curiosity. It would have been very easy to simply disappear at this point but the fact he startled me made me want to at least be face to face before I did so. You get what you give right?

Standing in the shadow of the doorway to a room with a flickering monitor, probably a video game on pause, was a teenage boy. He was lanky but not overly tall, in the half light his eyes seemed black, not unlike my own. He had a beautiful face. I glanced back at the woman who was out cold, they looked nothing alike. I could not help but be disappointed. I was hoping for a blood relative.

However, the way he moved was familiar. The languid grace present as he pushed his dark hair back from his forehead to see me better was feline. So maybe he was still ‘blood’.

“What are you?” His eyes seemed to be gaining light from somewhere and there was a green glow like animals get from the flash of a camera.

I realized that it was the light from behind me, from the cheerily lit kitchen. It was seeping through my dissolving form and hitting him. I gasped in surprise, my concentration lost as well as my pseudo-body.

The boy was surprisingly casual about the situation. He had his eyes trained right where I was even without a body to focus on.

“I know you’re still here.”

“I apologize, I am having a hard time keeping shape.”

I was flummoxed that this was the direction our interaction was going. Still at least he wasn’t shocked or screaming. Obviously he was not surprised by my appearance or better yet, by my presence at all. Nonchalance was all I could sense. Thoughts of the Cat of Cheshire popped into my head and an eerie sense of reversal had me wondering if my mouth was still visible. I mentally flashed a smile to check. Nope I felt nothing.

“Well…?” His query was half muted by the fact he stuck a sucker into his mouth half way through the word.

He crossed his arms and moved his weight to his back foot staring right at where I had been. Tapping his foot would have completed the vibe, but he held still. Still, the idea of a tail swishing was hard to dispel.

“I am looking for a Haema to help my master out.”

[Fuckit, I’m just gonna shoot from the hip instead of the whole get to know you shit. I don’t have the patience or the time to dance around this. If this means I go get powered back up and try again tomorrow, so be it.]

“She wouldn’t have been of much help. Her blood is thin.”

The sound of the candy hitting his teeth while he spoke around it was distracting.

“I need a bite. I have a sleeper who needs help.” I reiterate my situation, having a hard time thinking over the candy clacking.

“You’re not one of us…”

It was posed like a statement, however there was an element of question to the way he said it. It made me want to answer.

“My master is, ..she’s sick.”

He toyed with sucker after my words, I tried not to be irritated by the clacking and sucking sounds or by the leisurely way he moved the stick around with a thoughtful expression on his face. He was so very disinterested, and yet obviously curious. By his presence alone, I realized this was no teenage boy but an elder.

“A bite an kill a sleeper as much as it can save one.”

“She’s half breed. I am aware of the danger. She will die anyway if I do nothing.” Truer words and yet it had a hard time spitting them out.

“Okay, I’ll take a look, but only if you tell me what you are..”

“I am a Familiar.” I said hoping to leave it at that.

“From?” His tone spoke volumes. He knew what I was about to say and he was going to force it.

“Echo”

He crunched down on the sucker before I finished the word. I saw him lick his lip, to hide a smirk. I began to wonder what he could possibly want to know about hell. I also wondered why it would cause him to smile, if you could call that smirk, or grin he pulled a smile.

“Well, let’s go see this master of yours.” His voice had changed tone.

He seemed a bit… excited? He checked himself though and adopted the cheshire expression again.

“Why…” I started to ask him why he was going to help, since he obviously had something going on in his head about my origin, and possibly my master.

Some Haema families were selective about ‘turning’ but Felis were known to not mind, which is why I had looked specifically for this family.

He looked at me as he pulled another sucker out if his skinny jeans. He unwrapped it and stuck it in his mouth before answering.

“Curiosity, Killed the cat.” He said and I could hear him snort in amusement.

Chapter 4

Elevators and Edema

The cat, whose name was apparently Xan, was proving to be hard to keep up with. I was corporeal to lead the way but he was like lightning, shooting from one point to the next in a straight line as if everything else was standing still. After the third such dart through a crowded intersection I couldn’t take it anymore.

“I am going to disperse again. I can not maintain this form.”

I realized as I spoke that my voice was becoming faint as well. I quickly attached a spectral tether to him.

Demons and denizens of other planes use these things as return points. Throughout human history this is the device that made people believe in hauntings. The belief that people were haunted and not places was due to a tether being put on a person, which was more likely than a place since something had to power the spell and life force works for that.

It’s a small bleed. It does no more damage than the ticking of a clock.

Xan looked at me, seemingly annoyed. I knew it didn’t hurt, I had placed many in my lifetimes. It was temporary after all. It would have been just a tiny flutter on his skin. He didn’t protest so I prepared to drop my form again.

“Just give me the address now.” He tossed the sucker stick into a nearby trash receptacle.

There was really no reason to hesitate. Once he got there he wouldn’t be able to get in without the code. I would be close enough to my master to get some of my power pool back at that point. This power burn was about to make me deconstruct completely. So I gave it to him. I tasted a whiff of ozone.

Everything went black for me for a bit. I couldn’t say how long.

When things started to fade back in he was stepping into the elevator in my master’s building. The tether pulled tight and dragged me with him over the threshold like a balloon on a string.

Before I can tell him I am back, I notice his hair is in disarray. It is as if it is standing on end. I hear it then, a soft static-y sound with a deep growl under it. The twofold noise stops me from announcing my presence.

“Oh quit ya stupid cat.” The delicate sneer is palpable. Also, a ...scottish? Accent.

I notice for the first time that Xan is not alone in the elevator. There is a pretty little human in front of the button panel. This complicates things. Especially since the human obviously knows what he really is.

“For the last time, stop following me…” The fact that the words come out over the growl and hiss is fascinating.

There are three layers to the sound.

The human seems to not be as impressed as I am by the multi-layered vocals going on.

She points at the buttons, none of which are illuminated yet.

“Ya gonna to tell meh which floor?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Why not? Afraid I’ll be able to get trackers on more of your kin? Ya know, if you’d just pay me back, I’d stop following ya.”

“I don’t have anything to replace what was lost.” His voice drops in volume at the last words as if faltering due to what I would assume is his version of guilt.

“Ya mean what you lost.” The sneer is gone and a grimace of disdain appears on the young woman’s face. “Ya are responsible, and ya’ve had plenty of time to come up with a replacement. Why you took it in the first place is beyond me, but my employer is gonna cut me off if I don’t get something to replace it.”

Her pretty long nails click across the metal wall next to the buttons. She seems to realize she isn’t going to get anything though, and with a heavy sigh steps back out of the elevator. She watches as Xan moves to the panel. After he selects the button and the doors start closing, he emits one last hiss/growl at her.

She pops the bird.

I started to laugh but was immediately shushed with a look. I was surprised yet again that he could look right at where I would be, if I was solid.

“She’s an ‘Amp’. Don’t talk or she can hear you.” He mouthed it at me, soundless. It took twice for me to get it. Luckily I knew what he was talking about and was only mildly surprised that I hadn’t realized she was Cogitari.

I noticed then that he had selected the penthouse. He proceeded to the top floor but then selected two under the penthouse and then the bottom floor before getting out.

He located the stairs and carefully entered and shut the door behind him as soundlessly as possible. He then proceeded to jump several flights of stairs at a time. He repeated this, silently until he reached the floor my master was on. His breathing was completely stable with no panting. I was impressed but I guess he really was an elder. He came to a stop after he carefully shut the door to the stairwell behind him on my master’s floor.

“Are we good then?” My voice seemed to split the silence like a lumbering axe and I winced. I had thought I was speaking softly. I had not realized just how quiet Xan was capable of being.

The long suffering look on his face said it all.

The shimmer and paper ripping sound next to us told me we were in fact not at all good.

It started as a small sparkle in the air and expanded until it was basically a doorway. A small long nailed hand pulled the ‘door’ open and the young lady slipped through the portal. In a matter of moments, a tiny gum smacking, pissed off yet smug looking, sound mage stepped into our way.

“Ya really never learn do ya?”

“Shit, you can portal?” He was obviously surprised by this.

I was also, I would think I would have recognized an echo mage. Her portal looked different than what my master used. There was another kind of mage that could port. I did not think sound mages, or amps could do it so this mage was a dual classification.

My thoughts on the matter were aborted as I was suddenly assaulted by the sensation of tingling in my chest and a wheeze escaped me.

My summoner was waking up, she was never comfortable, but seemed really anxious right now and I could feel it. I continued toward the door as they conversed behind me.

“Dual class, bitch! I can portal.” She smugly retorted. “Sometimes mess up the spatial reasoning though. Thank gods yer invisible friend is a dumbass. He totally didn’t listen to yer warning.” The fact that she could hear mouthed words would have been something to explore if my chest hadn’t suddenly caught fire. Luckily I did not need to breathe at the moment, I am not sure I could have.

“So you figured it out” His disappointment culminated with an eye roll. “All that elevator shit for nothing then.”

I could not wait. I moved to the door and hit the key code, which took a surprising amount of effort, since I had to fully materialize. I heard a gasp behind me as the two behind me saw me come into view.

I should explain.

I am close enough to my master to take magical power from her. As an aside, since she was never trained during this life time she just sits on the power pool, not using it for anything. It’s literally an untapped well. Normally, materializing doesn’t require much but the half bond we have established has caused a power drain for me. I can do the half assed human version normally, like I did to hang out with Xan’s roommate. But I can also use my masters magical power and pull my real body from Echo. I did the latter because using my power reserves is more dangerous for her.

Basically, she has power but I am refining it and sending it back as life force.

She is so sick she is living off of my reserves. So when I materialize, unless I jack her power, I have to concentrate to look human. However pulling my actual body requires basically no power since she is close and accessing her power is just easier, if problematic, for aesthetic reasons.

I am not human. I am an ancient demon from another plane. When I don’t make myself look like the rest of these people… well it can be a bit jarring. I have onyx black, skin. It is covered in glyphs for power and because I was a soldier there are a number of things carved into my skin. A kill count for one, and instructions on how to get to a certain place I was required to report back long ago to name a couple.

The glyphs vary in color but most glow red. My horns match my skin but are tipped with tungsten guards and they have seen use so there is probably some crusted blood from a different century up there. None of my wounds taken on Echo heal. It’s part of the conditions of leaving the plane. The contract grants me a physical body but my master must will it into being and she has forgotten who I am.

Since she only partly acknowledges me so I am an illegal immigrant of sorts right now.

Probably the biggest problem here is that on Echo I do not wear clothing.

Anyway, It didn’t go over well.

The little amp started casting almost immediately. Normally, not a problem for me but I have a sick master living off my power. I have no shields, no defenses and as I said, no clothes.

As luck would have it, my master wailed hysterically from inside her apartment. The amp mage snapped her head towards the noise and Xan smacked her face to interrupt her vocalizing her spell. He hit her resoundingly, it was probably necessary to stop her words. Probably.

“That’s who led me here, let’s not kill him. At least until we meet his master.”

I would have thanked him, sarcastically of course, but I was too busy smashing through the door to get to my master. Her wail hit me hard. It was like someone was pulling my veins out through a point in my chest there was a tearing sensation throughout my body.

“I hope you’re ready Kitty. She’s not okay…” I projected my voice but didn’t stop my progress towards my master. I was gripping my own chest and staggered my way into the room where she lay in time to see her eyes snap open and fix on me.

“Gideon?”

The single word was enough. My body changed mid step, my vision got fuzzier and more human, my overly sensitive hearing muffled, my weight suddenly shifted to a much more lithe and graceful version. My olfactory sense blew up. Human’s have a much more sensitive nose than we do, probably environmental, many regions on Echo actually have fire and brimstone. I have no idea what my face looks like now but I can feel my hair flutter as I move, the weight of my horns gone as well as the crusted blood.

Any joy I might have felt at that moment was stolen by the tearing sensation in my chest. I crumpled to the floor and ended up crawling to her.

Xan vaulted over me and as my master started to seize he glanced at me. I nodded as I grabbed for my master’s hand her sweaty cold digits rigid and shaking as she convulsed. I high pitched whine was coming from her throat but it wasn’t coming out of her mouth. The tearing turned to lava, the burning before had been a lie in comparison. It was traveling up my throat.

Behind us the amp was standing stock still, frozen and silent. If I wasn’t internally combusting I might have taken a better look at her.

This, Haema activation bite idea was not a guarantee, this process may just finish the job of killing her. But I know for a fact that this tearing and burning is exactly what I think it is. She is dying. If she does that in our current state, I will likely end up back in Echo with parts missing. The thought caused an involuntary wince. I wouldn’t die, even if only part of my skull made it back. That was the joy of Echo.

“Hey, what’s her name?” The cat paused for a moment. I could smell that his last sucker was strawberry flavored. The thought only distracted me for a tic.

“Onya.” I wheezed softly. I hadn’t said it in so long that something akin to affection came out with the word.

The cat looked back at me eyebrows raised, seemingly surprised by my tone.

“And you’re Gideon?”

“For now…” I didn’t have to explain that response, he was quick on the uptake.

“Well, here goes. This might be goodbye, ya know?” His tone told me he might actually feel bad about that for a minute.

“Do it.” I felt like my heart was going to explode.

I could only kind of see him lean over her. I was laboring in a very real way to get breath that I now actually needed. It was not the most gentle of births.

It never occurred to me where he would bite her. I figured it would probably be pretty impersonal, maybe a wrist? But he ripped open her night gown and despite her convulsions he sunk his teeth into her chest. I was horrified for a split second before arriving at the assumption it would work better closer to her heart. She thrashed and he held on like a rodeo star.

I watched the whole thing while tasting my own blood and feeling like I was drowning. I realized suddenly that was exactly what I was feeling. What she was feeling, she was choking on her own blood and … drowning.

Chapter 5

Habits are hard to break; only good vibes please

A low groan escaped me. It felt like I was breathing wet cement. I became conscious of a comforting sound, like a fire crackling. After a little while listening I realized it was on a loop. It was soothing to me. The undercurrent of the crackle was; ’be well, please be well, we need ya.” I knew it was a spell then, the little amp mage was surely the source.

“You don’t have to try to move, it would better if you didn’t”

The voice was unfamiliar. Male, stiff and strong, it was definitely a command. I took him up on the not moving bit, but I did open my eyes.

“Who are you?’ My voice felt rusty and the air needed to push out the words was lacking. I truly was completely corporeal, I was still having trouble breathing.

“Have you restrained me?”

“For safety, yes.”

“Yours or mine?”

“Both actually.” I doubted that.

His tone bespoke mistrust and so did me not being able to lift my arms or legs. It had to be some sort of shackle spell or maybe a device. I glanced around looking for something to identify the mechanism.

“You won’t find anything, your restraint is an Echo suppression device and it is in the other room.”

“Well, that’ll do the trick won’t it?”

I responded, to my own ears I sounded completely unimpressed. Truth be told if they had a device they were used to my kind. That potentially complicated things. I could sense Onya close, and I had already established that the little amp was spell soothing me. Her message had me a bit nervous.

“Where are the others?”

“You mean the renegade FreaQ and the sick woman who owns this place?”

The distaste dripping off his tone was enough to make me crack my knuckles impulsively. Sucking in the air to retort caused a searing, scorching sensation throughout my throat and chest. I could almost picture my human lungs bursting. I regretted letting it get me bothered.

He ignored my intake of breath and my obvious struggle with the ramifications from doing it.

“The little parasite claims to be taking care of the owner of this flat, she wasn’t feeling well and had to lay down. What I am wondering is why you are still here? Cambion.” He followed the query with a strange greeting. It felt like baiting actually, a hostile afterthought.

That would have made me laugh if I could have.

His label didn’t fit. Cambions, like Cherubim, did not really exist. The physical being on Echo is constantly reanimated, augmented, torn down, repurposed. They do not have a set designation aside from their number.

Though the idea of a Cambion as well as Cherubim is fair, it is like a model of car, but the car is constantly being re-imagined. My rank is high, sure. I have been torn apart more than many, that means I have been put back together many many times. That gives me more clout. The same thing happens to the Cherubim, their parts are just more.. Fluffy?

I happened to have been given adaptability somewhere along the line. I look more human even in my natural form than most. That happened over time, which I have had a great deal of. I have been many legged, winged, at one point I had a trunk like an elephant. However these things all happen without labels if I had not spent so much time here on EOS I wouldn’t even know what he was saying.

I only grunted in response. This man was stupid. I focused my gaze on him. He had gray hair, oh shocking! He wore glasses that looked like they were straight out of a 1960 something yearbook. He was wearing …

“Fuck.”

“Fuck, Indeed.” he mimicked, not without a bit of sardonic chuckling.

He was wearing vestments. Normally this wouldn’t bother me, however there was a Naizu Senate badge on his cuff.

“You will not move them.” I growled out, not sure how long I had been unconscious that would have allowed one of Naizu to show up here.

They were Cogitari’s natural enemy and they had no love for Haema either. His presence in my master’s flat, in her environment, was like a piece of glass in my shoe. Painful and guaranteed to be destructive.

“Where are the females?”

He treated me like a cretin, I figured I would let him believe it, though calling my master and the tiny mage ‘females’ made me cringe and nearly roll my eyes in discomfort. Still to be underestimated is better than being anticipated. If he considered me muscle with no actual intelligence, all the better.

I realized just as much as he did that any forcefulness I showed was not sustainable. Not in this state. I was, however, hoping he would see me as toothless and simply answer in his state of being in charge.

“You are surprisingly friendly with beings other than your master aren’t you?” He referenced a familiars typical behavior, good.

He had posed the question like an observation, but there was something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

I chose to hold my tongue this time and growled instead. The sound rattling and clicking from me made the amp mages spell drop. The crackling stopped and I knew she was listening.

“Which ‘she’ is your master?”

There it was. He didn’t know. That also meant my little friend the amp didn’t say she wasn’t my master. This told me all I needed to know. This man was not to be trusted. I decided to play the invalid card and closed my eyes after allowing a rattling exhale to burst out.

Now you may be wondering how they even know I am a familiar and a demon. The NS can read auras, and mine is infernal. They have tools for such things. Lacking that, if one is suspected, glyph lore knowledge, would result in a quick body check for an ownership mark. I obviously have one… somewhere.

Being that I am naked I should do a quick check but I will save that for alone time. This body, is as they always are, male about 6 ft tall, and lean muscled. My master has a specific type. I know without even checking that my hair will likely be dark and thick and my skin will have a slight gold cast. My eyes only change in shape a little, usually having slight epicanthic folds. The irises are either some degree of amber to yellow or red to purple. I have never had green or blue eyes nor blonde hair. I did have shock white one time, but that was a fluke.

I listened to the Naizu dude, not familiar enough with that organization’s ranks to be able to know how high up he was, and regulated my breathing, which was hard. Eventually he gave up on me speaking again and left the room. I wished, oh god I wished, I had my demon ears at this point but I wasn’t sure switching bodies right now was safe.

It would definitely serve me for escape, I could jump out of the window in that body. I could make it down the 7 floors that way. But the minute they think I am not bound to a master they will hunt me. I am not that scared, I am easily one of the most independent and capable familiars that exist. There is a reason for that. However, ditching would definitely put my master in danger. The Naizu would never guess that I had been on my own recognisance from 1992 until now.

“Are you okay little amp?” I whispered.

The answer came, sounding like wind through a crack in the window.

“We both are. Xan got away. They were tailing me. I’m sorry.” The elegance of the spell made the apology seem very heartfelt.

“She’s still unconscious but Xan was acting strange when he bolted.”

“Strange how?”

“He was mumbling to himself, something about a chimera, an elders and other furry shit I didn’t understand.” Her spell conveyed that she was close to tears.

Her information made me relax a little. I didn’t know Xan from Adam, however Felis are well known for not backing down in the face of Naizu Sente involvement and the glimmer in his eyes had implied that his help was going to have a price. I was sure he was still planning on collecting.

“Don’t worry little one, I am sure the kitty will be back. Would you do me a favor?”

“O’ course, I’m the reason the fucking Naizu showed up right when you were getting stabilized.”

“If you are close to her, will you keep an eye on her for me? I am very worried.” I threw in the last bit for human flavor but I suspect it is not as untrue as I would like.

My breathing was dysregulated and I could feel spikes of pain all over. They were intense and completely consuming.

The answer was an affirmative mmhmm, very anime. It would have made me laugh. If I could breathe that is.

“How many of those NS are there out there?”

“Just two, the guy that were grillin you and his bodyguard.”

Here’s betting on a greedy cat boy, we had time. Worst case, I’d have to hulk out, grab my ‘females’ and jump out the window. I doubt it will come to that, I’m pretty sure the vibe with Xan is no cap. Probably.

I went ahead and relaxed back, feeling myself starting to succumb to Onya’s exhaustion. If I had known what would happen if I allowed her to drag me into her coma, I would have fought it. As it was, I found myself in a strangely familiar landscape.

I am watching women, Women in black and white. (nuns)

They are scrambling around in a panic, basins of water sloshing yelling in human. There are cries from a singular voice and a chorus of voices comforting and shushing her. The singular voice is alternating between grunting and scream-crying.

Curious, I follow the sound (why am I here?)

I have been to EOS before, but only on missions. Only to retrieve. Escapees. But right now, I just felt compelled to move toward the voice. Even I realized this was unnatural.

“Cher Dieu, aide-moi s’il te plaît, aide-moi, pardonne-moi. Je suis pénitent, s’il te plaît, ne me laisse pas mourir….”

It went on and on over the backdrop of hail marys and our fathers. Prayer, I was familiar but not particularly interested. It meant little to me from the mouths of these.

They had no power to compel. But something here did.

“What is this pain? Why am I here? Will someone help me get out of here? It hurts.” The voice was tiny. It didn’t sound distressed, but it’s words were intoxicating. I followed toward the cacophony of women in black.

The scene is grotesque enough to make me take stock. That is saying something, I have spent centuries on battlefields cleaving enemies and eating entrails. But this. Femininity.

The female making the most noise has her legs being held up and apart by a number of women.

The sight of her chasm gaping with something that looked like a moon protruding made me stop and consider for a moment. I suppose it is strangely naive of a Demon to balk at the site of birth. I instinctively knew what it was. I had seen many things birthed, just never a human.

The tiny voice started requesting help again. It was louder now and it only took a moment to realize it was the “moon”. In this scenario.

I know none of the women can see me so I approach. I answer it.

“If I help you, will you let me stay here on EOS?”

“Will you stay with me forever?” the tiny voice asked.

“If it means I do not have to go back to Echo, yes.”

It was an easy answer, centuries of fighting, dying, being reanimated, being eaten and shat out and reanimated, being victorious and yet still being reassembled and then reanimated. It was really not a question I could answer any other way.

“Get me out of here and we have a deal.” The tiny voice said.

I split the screaming nun from asshole to belly button, avoiding the moon. It sounds brutal but the exclamations from the other women were pretty hilarious.

They thought it was a miracle, that the Lord God had bestowed mercy upon the errant sister who had somehow gotten pregnant. Truth be told, it was kind of miraculous, the heat from my hellborn claw that they could not see, partially cauterized the wound so the woman did not bleed out.

The woman’s pelvic bone was snapped on either side (it was why the tiny voice could not get out) but should would heal as long as she took care sitting after being stitched up.

The moon was a tiny woman child. She was quiet after finally getting out of her prison. However, I knew because I had a new glyph, that I could stay. I knew somehow this had worked out for me. The tiny creature couldn’t even hold its head up. But she dreamt … she dreamt of so many things.

Chapter 6

Faces on milk cartons; finding the lost.

Before my eyes is a hallway. There are two doors on either side, and at the end of it, a mirror. My image in it is blurred. I am too far away to see it clearly. I hear “Heartbreaker” by Pat Benatar playing somewhere, probably from my sister’s room—the second door on the left side. I feel a strange familiarity, a warmth. It is physical, pressed against my back. It feels like protection. I know I am crazy, though. Nothing and no one in this place protects me.

I am an afterthought, a nuisance, and I have to bust my ass daily to earn the right to draw breath.

The ‘family’ I live with tolerates me. There are moments of connection but always a feeling of ‘other’-ness. It doesn’t make me sad. It doesn’t make me cry. I stopped crying on the inside a long time ago. Sometimes the tears come when I am overwhelmed, but they aren’t something I feel. I am not really afraid. I am not really sad.

I am simply very alone.

My existence itself is probably unforgivable. I remember thinking someone, somewhere, would eventually see me and want to know me. There were times it felt almost true here in this house. But then the obligation, the chore part of the relationship, would come up. I am a torturous device put here to make my caretakers miserable. They mostly, especially her, returned the favor with interest.

Never let it be said she was a failure. She was insanely good at a number of things. It just so happened one of those things was destroying me. She took anything I might possibly love or care for and distorted it, perverted it, or just plain removed it. That included memories of my parents, my connection with my own sister, my connection with anything or anyone that wasn’t her. Then, after separating me, she even kept herself separate. I would never be good enough, smart enough, or special enough for her to love me.

I tried for a while. I really did.

But none of that matters. I know, I KNOW, she’s dead. It breaks my heart more than finding out about my own mother dying. More than, well, a lot of things. I can’t even talk to anyone about it because she…fucked me up so badly that no one would believe I regret not getting to say goodbye.

At this moment, though, it’s a dream. I am here, in the place that I had nightmares about for most of my young adult life. They faded eventually. But right now I feel it, I smell it, I hear it. The fear.

The warmth at my back is an illusion, but it is welcome. Being in this place, hearing the gasp of a beer can crack open, the flicker of a lighter, and an exaggerated inhale as the cigarette comes to life, is enough to have my fingernails shoving into the palms of my clenched fists. I feel my back, ramrod straight, and my step, as light as I can make it. I step forward, making sure to avoid the section of the floor right before my bedroom door frame. About one foot to the right of the first door on the right, you have to step closer to the bathroom door, or it will make enough noise to wake the dead (drunk).

My goal is to find a place to hide. I hear the tread in the kitchen, the creak and slide of someone not as focused on being quiet as I am. I hold my breath. I start shaking.

Now, you would think that the individual or thing I am afraid of is violence. Anyone who sees my current expression and concentration would think the person in the kitchen has a machete. She does, but it’s in her mouth.

The warmth at my back is an illusion, but it is welcome. Being in this place, hearing the gasp of a beer can crack open, the flicker of a lighter, and an exaggerated inhale as the cigarette comes to life, is enough to have my fingernails shoving into the palms of my clenched fists. I feel my back, ramrod straight, and my step, as light as I can make it. I step forward, making sure to avoid the section of the floor right before my bedroom door frame. About one foot to the right of the first door on the right, you have to step closer to the bathroom door, or it will make enough noise to wake the dead (drunk). My goal is to find a place to hide. I hear the tread in the kitchen, the creak and slide of someone not as focused on being quiet as I am. I hold my breath. I start shaking.

Now, you would think that the thing I am afraid of is violence. Anyone who sees my current expression and concentration would think the person in the kitchen has a machete. She does, but it’s in her mouth.

I would rather be beaten with a baseball bat daily than have her voice hit me. Her words, and the shame they evoke, the complete and utter disappointment in life and mostly in myself. She knows exactly what to say to me, she knows how to say it so it can never be forgotten. She makes me hate her with every syllable. But she makes me hate me more.

I owe her my life, I owe her my life, I owe her my lifeiowehermylife.

I have forgotten to breathe. I feel dizzy. The warmth at my back whispers soothingly in my ear.

“Come on, Onya, two more steps and you’ll be safe.” He sounds so sure.

I shake my head minutely. The sound in the kitchen is closer than it was before. I can smell the smoke, and the alcohol. I need to be patient, be safe.

The sound suddenly gets louder, and she is looking right at me.

I can see her in the mirror, I can see her clearly enough to know this won’t be quick. Her cigarette is hanging limply from the left side of her mouth, and that seems wrong until I realize it’s a reflection. She meets my eyes in the mirror. A curl of smoke insinuates itself around her loosely curled auburn hair. Her blue eyes look black in the shadows. She locks her gaze with mine.

I twist violently to face her for real. That should not have happened. That never happened before.

This is a dream. She never looked into my eyes for real. She never acknowledged me as a human. To actually look into my eyes… Every part of me, save my voice, is screaming.

This is hell, isn’t it? It would make sense if this was what my hell is.

She is standing there, kind of weaving back and forth. She snatches her Kent III 100 from her lips, perching it between the first and second fingers of her right hand. It’s like a tiny magic wand. She licks her lip once as she grips the cigarette firm enough not to drop it while she points her two fingers at my face. She is not looking into my eyes now (thank god). Cold sweat slides down my back as she takes in a breath to start. No, this is familiar. This is more like it. The comfort I feel is so disgustingly cowardly.

My brain, bless it, changes the song to “Hell Is for Children.”

I smell aquanet and oldstyle.

She is talking, and now I know it’s a dream because I cannot understand a word of it (oh sweet bliss). But each of her statements, each of her demands, is punctuated with her poking her two fingers and cigarette in my face. Her nails had been red, but all that’s left of the lacquer is the tips. Somehow, her nails peel backward. It makes it seem like her fingertips are dipped in blood. I dare not duck her stabbing cigarette. Instead, I just hope she misses consistently.

She only ever hit me once. To my absolute and utter humiliation, I hit her back. I knocked her on her ass. The woman, after poking her finger at me repeatedly, actually swung her fist at my face. She took my half-pulled-back punch, ended up on her drunk ass with one of her half-on, half-off socks left stuck under my foot as she sprawled out. My sister had started laughing… at the sad little deflated sock.

Neither of us were okay. No one else in this world would understand as much as I do how not funny having to punch that woman was. No one, not even her, knew how much it destroyed me. She doubled down on the shame for a while after that, and it worked to the point that honestly, I am not sure how I am still here (if I am and this isn’t hell).

At any rate, I know this isn’t real, but I feel my stomach clenching. It’s hard to breathe.

The warmth at my back feels me stop breathing. I really am going to die. I am opening my mouth as wide as I can, and no oxygen is coming in. I am starting to panic. She’s still poking and yelling.

I can’t breathe… I can’t breathe…

The half scream coming from me wakes me up.

I open my eyes, drenched in sweat and with my pulse roaring in my ears, the lack of oxygen making my head spin. I blink to clear my vision and see an 8-foot-tall creature with black skin, tattooed with red symbols, and shining black horns that glint in the light from the lamp next to the bed. His eyes are infernal pits, sickly yellow irises with red rings. He should be terrifying.

“Gideon?”

Chapter 7

So I need you

If you could step into my head Tell me, would you still know me?If you woke up in my bed Tell me would you hold me? Or would you simply let it lie Leaving me to wonder why? I can’t get you out of this head I call mine, and I will say; I can’t to let you go My little girl

Because you’re holding up my world

~3 Doors Down

I can feel her, and it’s excruciating. She is alive, just barely. She woke up sometime yesterday, and since then, her hallucinations and pain have torn me apart.

The battles I fought in Echo, having limbs removed and reattached, being basically shoved into spaces too small for my presence, nothing compared to what was happening now. The physical pain is tolerable, but the part that truly stops me in the midst of synapses and nerves firing and exploding is a singular thought:

She has never been torn apart before. She has never been rebuilt.

She is feeling this for the first time, and strewn through it are hallucinations of her childhood. Some of her hallucinations are prenatal. Her mother was a drug user, so the images are so erratic when she hits one of the pockets of prenatal memory that it is physically jarring. I almost feel her brain shake. Her body is actually restructuring as well.

I understand now why this process is just as likely to kill as it is to save. I hadn’t considered the frailty of the human body, especially one that was sick to begin with and old, in no way resilient. I had never considered what her trauma would bring to the process either. Also, our bond... Cogitari did not typically have enough Haema blood even in cross breeds to actually change. I searched my memory, and before she woke, I had been searching for information about documented cases of bitten half breeds. Only one lived, at least that made it to the point of being documented.

Our bond means that she triggers me. I am pulling as much of her pain off of her as I can, but when I do, she gets my memories of pain instead. I hope they are sterile. I hope they are just images. I know I see her dreams and feel her feelings, but I have never been particularly affected. I didn’t feel them technically. It was kind of like watching a movie. You have an emotional reaction, but you can’t actually feel what you are seeing. Probably.

At any rate, her screams have been muffled by the little amp who, bless her precious soul, is trying her best to keep the Naizu from figuring out what is going on. In a moment of quiet, the little mage told me her name is Nala. She could have left long ago; they did not put a restraint on her body, just the door to the room she is in. She could have portal-ed out already.

Our friend, the priest — I’ll call him that since I do not know his designation nor his name — has been to see me once aside from the first interaction from when all this started. I told him that I was not used to being corporeal for so long, and since he had me restrained, I was experiencing pain. It’s all lies. But it seemed to explain my distressed state. It didn’t occur to him to touch me. My body is real. It is actual flesh as per my contract. It is not a projection. If he had taken a moment to check, I am afraid things would have gone particularly sideways.

My biggest fear was that he would take pity on me and remove the restraints. Thank God, for all our sakes, he lived up to his human stupidity. He gave me the side-eye and seemed to feel I deserved to be in pain simply for existing. Thank you, Douche.

He left me after that, not trying to converse anymore and apparently completely buying my “you’re torturing me, I can’t talk” act.

She passes out now and then; she usually wakes fairly quickly. Luck was on our side in that she had been out cold when the Priest had dropped in.

My research had all pointed to one piece of information that I wasn’t sure how to deal with. I had little time to contemplate it, but it had to do with my master’s physical body. It was breaking apart and reforming. I realized that already, but there was a more concerning item in the documentation. I was taking as much of her pain as I could, at this distance. Hoping her mind wouldn’t break. The episodes were getting farther and farther apart due to the fact that she was exhausted and kept passing out.

But the info grab had told me this: For each bloodline that is dominant, there would be a transformation when she shifted the first time. Many full-blooded Haema died in the process if they were dual-natured. More natures caused consecutive transformations. The body could only hold out so long. My master, by rights, should already be dead. Her human body had been nearly beyond life when the change began. She had so many drugs in her system from chemo that at this point she was likely burning them off like an egg in a skillet.

Her Cogitari half was untrained, but since she inherited me, I wondered if my ability to siphon her pain was helping her. Since she did not have a spell she had to maintain to keep me, it might be a key to success here. However, if she went through any more changes, the law of averages would win. She had beaten far too many odds already.

In the midst of it all, I was hearing a commotion outside the guest room where I was restrained to the bed.

Something smashed against the wall next to the door. I had an adrenaline spike in response, and I felt it wake Onya. Her gasp tingled like the scattering pieces hitting the floor on the other side of the wall.

“Gideon! It’s okay, it’s...” Nala was shouting.

I didn’t hear the last part because my restraint suddenly loosened. I was up and out of the room so fast that the fact that I was still not dressed had not yet sunk in. Luckily, no one really seemed to care. I did not have time to worry about them either, but I did notice Xan as well as a tall, elegant woman in a gold sheath dress standing in front of the priest and his bodyguard. The latter was seated and looking taken aback. The woman’s voice was something I could not hear, but the expression on the Naizu agent’s face was strangely slack and focused so acutely on her that he didn’t even seem to notice me as I went past them.

I reached the door to Onya’s room at the same time it was opening from the inside. The tracks of the little mage’s tears were a stark contrast to her milk-white skin. I patted her softly on the head as I pushed past her to get into the room.

Onya cried out and looked up while clenching her teeth.

Yes, I feel it. Our left femur is fracturing on its own and extending. Maintaining eye contact, I move to her and lower myself to embrace her. My body lined up next to her. I wrap my arms around her and begin taking her pain — all of it. It won’t kill me, but it could kill her.

The outside world can fuck off. I will do this. I will help her. The options for me might be easier than this, but something in this pain is personal for me too. Having her understand what I have been through during my cycle on Echo is something I never believed could happen. I will not stand idly by. She will be the first in her bloodline that I will address by name.

She relaxes minutely into my arms and grits her teeth. The feel of her flesh is hot. Her hammering heart, on the verge of bursting, is dialing back a fraction at a time. The veins in her hands are smoothing slightly.