Dancing With Monsters by M.M. Gavillet Page B

blood mixed with demon…there
was a fight.” He pointed to the table that had been knocked over
and the wallpaper that looked like claws had ripped through
it.
    Ezra ran her fingers over the claw
marks and looked up at me. “Demon, strong too, I can feel its
lingering energy.”
    “ Lingering, meaning as in
gone I hope,” Malachi said shifting his eyes to me.
    “ In here,” Ayil announced
as a light flicked on through an open doorway.
    We went inside the kitchen, or what
was left of it. Nessa and Ayil stood over a body of a man lying
face down. He was dressed in a long, black wool coat and splintered
bits of wood along with other kitchen rubble surrounded
him.
    “ What was he doing?
Cooking up a batch a serum when it exploded?” Malachi examined what
was left of the oven.
    “ The demon has been gone
for some time—I can sense it,” Ezra said stepping beside Ayil and
gently touching her on the arm.
    Ezra looked at her with her dark,
brown eyes. “Are you sure?” Ezra nodded. “I guess your Shadowland
senses are to be trusted. Come on; let’s see who this gent
was.”
    Malachi and I flipped the man over.
His skin was bruised with a large gash across his cheek and a deep
one across his chest. Black blood pooled on the floor.
    “ He’s a monster, but I can
smell demon blood too.” Malachi stepped away wrinkling his nose
from the smell only he could sense.
    “ Wait,” Ayil shoved the
light she held in her hand closer to the man revealing another
person underneath.
    “ Is it the demon?” Nessa
asked standing beside her.
    “ No,” Ayil replied
removing some of the debris.
    Malachi and I stepped closer to see it
was a young girl dressed in a silver dress.
    “ It’s a girl,” Ayil’s eyes
shifted to the man. “They look like they were on a date or
something of the sort by the way they are dressed, not making
serum,” she said flipping the man’s coat open and examining the
pockets. “Nothing on him,” she announced as she stood
up.
    “ Do you think he’s the one
we are looking for?” Nessa asked.
    “ It’s hard to say, could
be, but we never had any description of him. And with no evidence
here other than a demon attack, I can only guess. I think there was
some connection, because why would a demon come to a bed and
breakfast and demolish it for no reason?” She asked rhetorically.
    “ Disliked the service,”
Malachi said, with a shrug of his shoulders.
    “ They don’t risk their
wellbeing to just crash a party.” Ayil glanced at all of us
dismissing Malachi’s reply.
    “ Yeah, but this one did,”
I said, gazing down at the girl. “They must’ve had some connection
to the serum.”
    “ That’s what I think too.
They could have been striking a deal, or drumming up potential
customers, and obviously whatever happened here, didn’t go well.”
Ayil glanced down at the dead couple.
    Suddenly, the girl lifted her bloodied
hand smeared with red-black blood. Her eyes opened trying to focus
on her surroundings. “Ben,” she said in a whispered, raspy
voice.
    “ She’s still alive,” Ezra
said, stepping towards her.
    Ayil knelt beside her and pushed away
more debris. The girl gazed at Ayil. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Ayil’s voice was soft. “Malachi, Seth, help me with
her.”
    Malachi and I lifted the girl up by
the shoulders, gently cradling her arms around our necks. Her head
flopped to my shoulder.
    “ She has a
hexmark—possibly a royal one.” Malachi held her arm with his free
hand and turned the girl’s arm to reveal a mark. She was one of us,
a monster, and a rare one to have such a mark.
    Ayil looked at it and turned off her
light. She glanced at us with her dark eyes and silver-grey hair
that seemed to catch what remaining light there was. “Let’s get out
of here just in case there might be a round two.”
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    5
     
    April
     
    Flashes of unfamiliar faces surrounded
me. I tried to call for Ben, but couldn’t sense him anymore.