Demons

Part two

By Robin

Kitsune

Orang Minyak, my father, is talking to another succumbus hooker. He’s such a dick. All he does is make hotcakes and fried harpy eggs in his diner and… you know… do it with succumbus.

He’s never really been a large part of my life. Besides the fact that he’s my dad, we really have no connection at all.

And yet, because of him, I’m an outcast. I’m a Cambion.

Cambions are crossbreeds of a daimonion and a human. My father, Minyak, is an Incubus, a sex daimonion who prowled around a long time ago, in the 1960s. He terrified young Malaysian women for a while. My mom was the last girl he impregnated.

            Being a Cambion is much, much worse than it seems. To daimonians, I am marked by my pale, almost white skin. And when humans see me, they see only daimonian. To be honest, I am more like them than any daimon.

After his years in Malaysia, he decided to settle down and make his diner in the Astaroth District. He ditched my mom and took me with him.

I don’t hang around the diner much. I run the rooftops and try to help people in need. Not that I’m a crime fighter or anything.

I’m tired of my dad. If I had a gun in hand now, I would probably shoot him. Oh, yeah. Another thing about Cambions. We don’t have much when it comes to sympathy. In fact, the daimonian in you makes it almost completely obsolete.

I’m tired of his flirtations. I need some time alone. I bust out the door and out into the orderly street.

I hate this district. It is cold and cleanly, something that daimonians aren’t really happy with.

Unfortunately, when the daimonians took over, the Snakes assumed control. They’re different from most of the others. They like cold and damp and slimy. They lack horns. They have a cruelty that doesn’t seem to exist in anything else I’ve seen. Daimonians are ruthless, but not heartless.

Snakes have no emotion. Some people think that makes them good leaders. I disagree, but I’m a Cambion. So my opinion is irrelevant.

I’m on the verge of Aeshma Street and Kasadya Avenue when I hear the scream. It’s coming from the alley a couple streets down.

Shannon Iggans

Shit. I’m staking out in the Astaroth District when I hear the scream. It sounds distant, but I’m a fast runner.

Now to get around this backup of cars. Or… maybe I can go over.

I have no qualms about getting mud on these cars. The cars happen to be the nicest ones in the world. When the demons took over, they left us the shitty cars. That’s why I drive a station wagon.

I jump on the first car. A Death specialist demon gives me a scary look, which I should probably take more seriously than I do.

“Suck it!” I yell. Man, that was a bad idea. He jumps out of his car and starts chasing me.

I pull out my tomahawk and send it spiraling into his chest. He disappears in a burst of light. The tomahawk locates my wristband and zooms back to my hand.

An Octos police officer screams at me to stop.

“Fuck you!”

He just looks blankly across the row of cars at me. Octos are a lot like the Snakes. They have a minimal amount of emotion and they have octopus tentacles for tongues. But unlike Snakes, Octos have a hard time reacting to human obscenities.

There’s the alley. Just gotta run in.

When I squeeze into the alley, I take a couple seconds to adjust to the low light. Did I just imagine it? I hear another scream, and now I can tell who it might belong to. It sounds like a little girl.

At the far end of the alley, a Fear demon has his hand placed on a small girl’s forehead. She’s crying. To my surprise, he’s crying with her, but he’s laughing too. Black tears drip down his face. Tendrils energy form between the two.

This is sick. It’s like fear pedophilia. What the hell is going on?

“Hey!”

Someone’s yelling at me from above on the roofs.

I look around. There’s a female Cambion hanging on to a fire escape.

“Don’t just stand there!” she yells as she leaps to the ground. “We have to help her! He’s trying to change form!”

“Alright fine,” I say. I raise my gun to the Fear demon’s head.

The girl knocks the gun from my hand.

“No! If you send him back, he’ll take her with him!”

Dammit. Why won’t she just tell me what to do? This is incredibly unhelpful.

The Cambion pulls a little bag from her belt. She scatters shimmering dust on the ground around the two glowing figures. She draws a star inside the circle. She holds up a pale finger and a small flame ignites. She touches it to the dust and the circle glows.

I’ve heard of this. It’s Cambion magic. Very dangerous, if you’re on the wrong side of it.

The demon’s laughing stops. He shrieks and let’s go of the little girl. The glowing goes away. The demon slumps. His eyes are wide open and the black tears trickle slowly off of his face. He’s dead.

I look at the Cambion.

“You killed it?

“I killed him,” she corrects.

“Without a Deadgun?”

This is a lot for me to take in. We’ve never found a way to completely kill a demon without a Deadgun. Not like this, anyway. 

“No. He stays here,” she says. “This fucker is dead.”

Kitsune

“I’m Kitsune,” I say. I extend my hand.

“Shannon Iggans,” the Native American woman says.  She gives me a firm handshake.

“Shenanigans? What? Isn’t that like a human word for… mischief or something?”

That’s weird. Who name’s their kid that?

“No,” she says with a smile. “It’s not real. The DEC told me not to let anyone know my real one.”

“What’s the real one?” I ask, as I lean down to pick up the little human girl.

Shannon frowns.

“I don’t want to say,” she says.

I nod. Better just to let it go.

            “We should get this girl to a human hospital as soon as possible. Do you happen to have a Fear Recovery Unit?” I ask.

            “Yeah,” Iggans says. “It’s a long walk. Hope you don’t mind.”

            I can’t go with her. Humans hate me. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting Iggans to be this accepting.

            “I should really stay here. Most humans don’t… like me.”

            Iggans frowns. Then she walks over and takes the girl from me.

            “Alright. I know how you feel. The rest of humanity is not very accepting of Navajo like me,” she says. Then she turns to leave.

            Hmm. There’s something I’ve been thinking about. I want to join the DEC. Maybe if I joined, they wouldn’t hate me. Maybe I could even live with them, instead of in this super clean, isolated sector.

            And then one day… maybe they could send me home.

            “Wait!” I yell after her. “You don’t happen to be looking for any jobs, are you? Or at least, is the DEC?”

            I almost immediately feel like an ass. Why would they hire someone they thought was demon?

            But Iggans cocks her head to one side.

            “As you can imagine, that doesn’t sound like the greatest idea. I happen to work alongside some of the more racist humans,” she says thoughtfully. “But… you seem to be good at… killing your own kind.”

            I shake my head.

            “They aren’t my kind. I’m as much human as I am daimonian.”

            Iggans smiles.

            “Then,” she says, “You have yourself a job. I’ll call if I need you.”

            And then she takes off at a breakneck pace.

           

Jack

            Rumor has it that a little girl was stolen from one of the human districts a couple hours ago. Thanks to some lady with a ridiculous name, the girl is in an FRU.

            Weird shit like this happen all the time. The demons have really over taken the world. Now, they pretty much run rampant. And the Snakes who persecute us every day stand by and watch.

            Now that that lady mentioned it, I sort of do want to join the DEC. I want take our world back.

            Mom would be pissed if I did that, though. She works hard to help keep me out of harms way. I feel like enrolling for the most dangerous job on the planet might be a bad way to honor that.

            But still…