Page 12 of Prayer of the Damned

“We don’t need contact lenses, Bellcolor,” my father says. “We can change the color of our eyes at will. But all demons have white eyes.” His eyes flash, and a white color replaces the black. I jump back, hitting the mirror behind me, and it shatters.

“Goddammit!” I shout. Damn, that hurt.

“I’m sorry.” His gaze expresses sincere concern, and he immediately shifts his eyes back to black. The change makes meleap back again. I wasn’t expecting it the second time either. Shit, shit, shit.

“What are we, exactly? What am I?” I ask with trembling lips, completely ignoring the shards of the broken mirror at my feet.

God, what a mess.

“Demons,” he answers as if it’s obvious.

“I get that, but what does that mean?”

“Well, some symptoms may have started appearing already. First, we’re not alive, so we don’t age. Second, we don’t need sleep, breath or anything related to that—”

“Wait!” I lift my hand to stop him. I breathe in and out. “I’m breathing.”

“It’s a habit most of us can’t ditch. And while we walk on earth among humans, it’s not something we should give up either...”

“Or people will suspect us,” I complete his sentence, and he nods. “What else?” I ask.

“Well, third, we don’t feed like humans, we subsist on blood.”

“Blood?!” I cover my mouth with my hands.

“Yes, we feed off human blood. Our company provides, among other things, blood for all the other demons walking among us. We’re a medical company after all, and we’ve managed to create artificially-engineered blood. It’s actually a replication of the blood we get from real donations.”

“No, no, no…” I shake my head and start to wander around the room. “We’re vampires?” The symptoms are too similar to the vampires you see in horror movies.

“If you want to call it that, but it’s a private joke among demons. I’m not sure who started those rumors, but they made their way to humans and somehow a mountain grew out of a molehill. Some of the superstitions are rather ridiculous, I must say.”

“Like what?” I demand to know. I’m really curious to know what’s more ridiculous than everything he’s told me so far.

“You won’t die from anything humans can do to you. You know, all that nonsense about garlic, silver, the light of the sun, et cetera. In fact, you can’t die at all. The only thing that can remove us from this world is our creator: the Devil. Even God can’t make us disappear, so that ‘light overcoming darkness’ tale doesn’t work either.”

“God is real?” My eyes almost bug out of my head.

“Of course,” he answers, and I feel my head spinning.

“God saved me from Trent and his friends?” I ask.

“No, that was me.”

“You’re God?” I furrow my brow.

He laughs. “Oh, no, no, I’m a demon just like the rest of them, albeit older and stronger. When I got the alarm that you’d left I followed you via the satellite tracker in your car. I’m glad I made it to you in time, before those bastards could hurt you.”

“What happened to them?”

“The bottom line is that their memories have been wiped. As far as everyone at the party is concerned, you were never there.”

Great, I’m back to being as invisible as I was all through high school. I don’t even spare them a thought; they’re not fucking worth it.

“And that’s what happened to Mom? The Devil took her back?”

“Yes…” he whispers, and avoids my stare. Seems like the loss of a loved one stays forever fresh for an immortal. His reaction makes me regret my question, so I decide to stop prying into past wounds. “Now, thanks to you, the whole Council is abuzz over what it means. But ultimately they’re as much in the dark as we are.”

“So what happens now? What exactly is going to happen to me?”

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