Page 4 of Claimed By Night

“You hear me?” the guard demands, and I remember he’s just asked me something. “What you doin’ out there alone?”

“I don’t know,” I admit as I try my best to remember, try to understand the events of the last hour. But there’s nothing but a black void inside my head.

“What? You got memory loss or somethin’?”

“Something,” I answer, then take a deep breath and try to force the vertigo away. I feel sick to my stomach. Weak.

“You’re lucky we let you in,” he continues, seemingly determined to make conversation. I’m grateful he opened the gates, but I’m not in the mood for small talk. I’m not in the mood for any sort of talk, actually.

There’s a pounding right between my eyes that wasn’t there before. Or maybe it was but I was so panicked I didn’t notice it.

“Whydidyou let me in?” I ask, craning my neck upward to look at him. It’s the first time I notice how massive he is. Maybe nearing seven feet, and his girth is almost as wide. He’s probably a demon.

How I know any of this, I can’t say.

“You’re an angel,” he answers with a shrug, like the reason should be obvious. Well, nothing is obvious to me.

An angel.The word holds no meaning to me. It’s as foreign as my name, this stranger, Precinct Five, the voice inside my head…

“Did you check her for the markings?” A woman’s voice sounds from in front of us, and I glance up and into the face of an Opalite Demon.

How do I know what she is?I ask myself as I study the pearlescent quality of her skin. I don’t have any answers.

The woman is wearing form-fitting pants, combat boots, a sleeveless camouflage t-shirt, and a machine gun strapped across her chest. The only hint at her lack of humanity, aside from the fact that humans are extinct, is her eyes. Her orange pupils aren’t pupils at all—they take up the entirety of her eyes.

The guard mumbles something unintelligible and the woman responds with a frown, grabbing my arm and forcing me to stand in front of her. She’s tall, though not as tall as the demon guard. But she’s still a head or so taller than I am. And she’s uncommonly thin, with a long, narrow face, a generous nose, and wide lips.

“What’s your name, gorgeous?” she asks, her triangular tongue coming out to swipe at her lower lip.

“Eilish,” I answer calmly. The pounding in my head is making me sick again.

“I’m Anona,” the woman responds. “And welcome to Precinct Five.” She takes a breath and studies me with a curious smile. Then, she rotates me around so quickly, I feel dizzy. “I just need to check you’re legal, otherwise we can’t have you here. But you already know that.”

I don’t know that, but I also don’t respond. Instead, I just stand there as she pulls my loose shirt up from my waist, all the way up until my stomach is in view. I pull it down to my belly button so I won’t risk flashing my breasts to no one in particular. The guard is still behind me. Anona runs her fingertips acrossthe skin of my upper back, then drops my shirt back down and she wheels me around so I’m facing her again. She nods.

“You’re legal, which means everything’s okay,” she says with a clipped smile. Thunder breaks out overhead as another onslaught of rain comes down even harder. She looks upward, appearing to notice the inclement weather for the first time.

“Let’s get you out of this rain,” she adds with a polished smile.

I can’t even feel it. “Okay,” I answer, allowing her to pull me up the now muddied road and into one of the handful of buildings that hasn’t been blasted into oblivion. The demon guard follows us.

I want to ask her what she meant by my being legal, but I can’t seem to open my mouth. It’s like my brain isn’t communicating with my body. Instead, the headache increases and pulses inside my head, feeling like larvae ready to pop out of my eyes.

“How did you end up here?” Anona asks. She holds the door open, and I walk into the dark room. A second or so later, a lightbulb flickers overhead and bathes us in artificial halogen light. I take stock of my surroundings and find a wooden table in the center of the room with four chairs. Anona motions to one of them and I sit down, feeling exhausted all the way to my toes. In the corner of the room is an unattended cot and a dirty-looking pillow. There are no windows.

“She don’t know anythin’. Her memory’s gone. Probably wiped so she can’t tell us nothin’,” the guard says from where he stands beside Anona. She looks at him with a discouraged expression before she sits down across from me and tries to smile. It looks more like a grimace.

“You don’t remember anything at all?” she asks, and I shake my head. She continues, “You don’t know why you were on the road or how you got there?”

I shake my head and wince as the pain behind my eyes becomes intolerable. “I… do you have anything for a headache?” I shield my eyes from the suddenly blaring light overhead.

“Hmm,” she mumbles, reaching forward and gripping my arm. She pushes my long, tattered and soaking wet sleeve all the way up to my elbow and nods once she spots the veins in my wrist, which travel up my arm in glowing neon-green branches.

“She’s going through withdrawals,” she announces to the guard, who doesn’t say anything. I don’t know when he did it, but he’s taken off his helmet so I can clearly see him. Not that I want to. With his scaly red skin, underslung jaw, beady black eyes, and the ten or so horns protruding from his head, he’s an ugly son of a bitch.

“Get theAtacomite,” she orders. He nods and turns around, hulking out of the doorway and disappearing into the pounding rain. “We’re going to get you fixed up real soon, gorgeous,” she says as she turns her attention back to me.

But I can barely register that she’s even there. Even though she’s sitting right across from me, it’s like I can’t concentrate on her—can’t see her. But I can see everything around her. Until the room starts spinning, and the headache along with it. I drop my head into my hands and squeeze my temples, trying to will the pain away. Or maybe I’m trying to shove my fingers through my skull so I can shred my brain.

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