Demons. CH 18 (Patreon)

I walk. I walk for a while, along the same street. I walk through the people there, and a few give me second glances. One takes out her phone and takes a picture of me. Wearing the trench-coat, I do look like the hunter I am, although with my shoulders hunched I doubt most seriously think I am one.

Jason told me that some people like dressing like me. It’s their way to pay— 

I shut down the thought. I don’t want to think about Jason. I don’t want to think about the lies he told me. About how he tried to make me into…something.

I don’t know where I’m going. I could ask one of them, the humans walking around me. I’m sure they could tell me where headquarters is. I don’t. I try hard not to think they are in on the lies. I don’t want to believe that every human is like that, but humans lie. Humans have lied to me. The idea that they will lie is there, with the fear that I am alone.

The wind shifts and I catch a scent. I stop and turn.

He stands there, as humans walk him by, looking human enough they don’t even glance at him. The red of his eyes is barely visible deep in his hoodie. Even his feet are no longer large and clawed. They look like black shoes, looking a little too large for him. His skin imitates the cloth of the hoodie and jeans so well that for a moment I forget he isn’t wearing clothing. I look at my hand. Can I do the same with my skin?

I walk to him. “Why are you following me?”

“I am trying to understand why you lied to me. You said you were going to that building. Yet, you are going away from it.”

“I didn’t lie,” I growl, keeping my voice low. He looks at me expectantly, and I sigh. “I don’t know where it is.” I am certain I can see him smile in the darkness of the hood.

He nods. “Follow me.” He turns around and starts walking. I hesitate a moment. The city can’t be that large. I could find it on my own. I walk after him, quickly catching up.

We walk past the building I woke up in and continue for eleven blocks. He stops at the intersection and points along the road, where the sun slowly drops in the sky.

“Walk along that road. It will take more than it takes for the sun to set, but you will reach it.” He turns and walks away.

“Claws,” I call. He stops, and after a moment turns. “I’m… Look…” I sigh. I don’t even know what I was trying to say. “Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.”

His shoulders drop slightly, then he nods. “That’s the promise I made you.” He turns and resumes walking.

What did he mean by that? I watch his form recede in the distance. Only once he vanishes do I move in my own direction.

* * * * *

The building looms large before me, the smaller of the two moons perfectly aligned with it right now. It isn’t the largest of those in this area, but it’s the one I look at now. I’ve always known it was ten stories high, but I never noticed what that meant. Even when coming back from the grocery store, I never paid attention to it. It’s always just been the building there. The one that has my apartment, on the eighth floor.

I knew it was glass and steel, but I never noticed the ground floor’s wall is concrete and has no windows in it. The other buildings around are similar in that the ground level is concrete. Some have a few more above it, also concrete, and some have windows.

What happens in those, I wonder? Do they also have scientists, running experiments on an unsuspecting hunter? No, that can’t be. There couldn’t be other hunters in the city. I would have known, wouldn’t I?

Once I’m done here, I can go in there and find out.

I walk to the front of headquarters, but I stay on the other side of the road. I look into the lobby. People are walking from one side to the other, to the elevators, or through doors leading to offices. Some are in lab coats, some in shirts and pants. All of them hold papers. The scientists are always carrying papers everywhere.

One of the elevators open and a woman wearing a jacket and a skirt steps out of it. She waves to the guard and steps outside, looking at her phone. She looks up as she puts it to her ear and our eyes lock.

I don’t know her, but she recognizes me. She stops moving. Her eyes grow wide with surprise, and she runs back inside, yelling something to the guard.

I cross the street as he takes out his radio. Cars screech to a halt and honk at me. I ignore them. I step on the sidewalk and stop. The guard’s radio is away again, and he steps out, hand on his gun. For a moment, I wonder if he’s going to shoot me, but he looks around. There aren’t many people walking by, but enough to make him decide not to draw his weapon.

“Tell Amanda I want to talk to her,” I tell him.

“My orders are to take you to her.”

I snort. “Do you feel like trying? Tell her to meet me here.” Our tones are normal enough none of the pedestrians pay attention to us.

“I have more men coming. Don’t force us to subdue you.” His voice trembles. He is afraid of me. That makes me smile.

I show teeth in my smile. “How much collateral damage are you willing to receive in your attempt?”

He looks around, then over his shoulder. None of the guards he is expecting are here yet. He takes out his radio. “He wants the director to come down here.”

There’s silence, and then, “She’s on her way,” comes over the radio.

“I heard,” I say before he repeats the message.

Four more guards join us. None of them have drawn their weapons, but we are attracting stares. Do those watching us realize I’m a hunter and that things are going badly for my former colleagues? Do they even know who lives, lived, in this building? Were Amanda and Jason telling them lies too?

The pedestrians walk around us, and after a moment, they all cross the street instead of walking between us.

Amanda walks out of the elevator and hurries to us.

“Derick!” She is slightly out of breath. “Thank God you came back. I was so worried about you.”

I stare at her. She was worried? I find I can’t say anything. If she was worried, does that mean there’s a chance this can be fixed?

“I am so sorry for what I did. I overreacted.”

“Yes, you did.” For a moment I feel the sword entering my gut.

“I’m really glad you’re okay. Just come inside so we can talk.”

I take a step forward, then stop. Is she telling the truth? Or is this just another lie? How am I supposed to know?

“No, I don’t think so. Right now I don’t trust you.”

“I understand, Derick. Trust me, I do. I don’t deserve your trust right now, but all I want is to make things right by you.”

Does she mean it? I’ve never heard her sound so contrite. Normally she is always calm and controlled. In this situation, Jason is the one I’d expect to sound like this.

Jason.

I focus on her, blocking all other sounds. The cars, the other people’s voices fade. All I hear his her, her breathing, and…

“Okay,” a faint voice says. “He isn’t going to respond immediately. He’s going to think things over. You broke the trust you had with him. Don’t lose your cool, or you’re going to lose him again, and there won’t be any regaining his trust.”

“Jason is wrong,” I tell her. “You’ve already lost me.”

The surprise registers on her face for a moment, then it’s gone, replaced by her usual serious look, her determined expression.

“You don’t care about me, do you?”

“How do you know about Jason?”

“I can hear him talking to you. An internal ear piece, by the way, his voice sounds.”

“How can you hear him? None of our tests showed you could hear this well.”

I shrug. “You never asked me if your tests pushed my hearing to its limit.”

“Your hearing is better than the previous models,” she muses. “I’ll have to remember that.”

“If you don’t know how good my hearing is,” I say, thinking of my hand, “what else don’t you know about me?”

She smiles. “Oh, I know what you can do. We might have missed your hearing, but all the other tests have been pushing you as far as you’ll go. What I want to know is how it happened. What changed to make that possible. That’s where your dissection would come in handy.

I keep my gaze on her. “I am not going to let you do that.”

“I know.”

“What happens, then? You’re going to hunt me down? Have your next creation do it? You’re going to tell it I’m a monster and need to be killed?”

“Why should I bother with that? I don’t have the time to have my people chase you down, and you’d kill too many of them in the long run. No, you’re a write-off. You’re a failure. At least the two and a half years I’ve devoted to you aren’t a total loss; the research is invaluable, and you’ve proven I can get a result that’s human enough to be useful. A few tweaks here and there, and I’m not going to listen to Jason so much. I’m still going to let him name the next one. ‘E’ something, I’m sure.”

I look at her, trying to decide if she’s lying, but I can’t tell. She sounds sincere, but she always sounds that way.

“No, I don’t have to do anything. You’ve killed a lot of demons. There are a lot more of the smart demons than you think. And I’m sure a lot of them are pretty angry with you. How long do you think you’re going to last without any support?”

“You’re letting me go? You’re not going to try to convince me to stay? You tried to kill me, and now you just don’t care?”

“Speaking of which, how did you manage to disappear? One minute I had you on the camera, the next you were nowhere to be seen until the sensors recorded the door opening, and by the time the guards showed up, there was no sign of you.”

I just smile at her. Let her think I know what happened to the cameras.

She shrugs. “But to answer your question, I’m not going to throw good money after bad. Go ahead, walk away. Have fun fighting off the demons alone, and if you manage to survive, send me a postcard from wherever you end up settling down.” She turns and goes back inside, calling her men after her.

I stare at her back and I’m…disappointed. I didn’t expect her to walk away. I thought she was going to force me to stay, to fight. I wanted that fight.

I consider rushing them, but what will that gain me? A quick death? Do I want to hurt her so badly that I want to die for it?

No, I don’t.

I turn away and walk up the road.