Thin Air Page 0,107

kindness or compassion. She made Eamon, messy and awful as he was, seem like Father Christmas in comparison. She wanted only one thing, and it was the iron-hard central core of who she was: She wanted to go home.

And she would do anything, use anyone, destroy the world to get there.

Starting with Cherise, because she'd been close and vulnerable, but really starting with Kevin, because he was what she needed. Power. Strength. Energy.

She used him like a straw, an empty vessel good for nothing but as a conduit between her and what she craved...raw aetheric energy, the stuff that powered all Wardens. She would have preferred to consume a Djinn for the sheer force of the experience, but since the Djinn had slipped their bonds to humans, it was far riskier to her. No, a Warden would do to satisfy her hunger.

She had tried the girl first, but the pathetic meat hadn't been able to deliver much of a meal; humans barely brushed the aetheric, and so were of little use. But she kept Cherise, aware of the emotions it roused in the boy; the angrier and more afraid he was, the more energy the Demon was able to draw.

It was horrible, and it was cruel, and it interested her for a long time. Too long.

She used Cherise and Kevin to stalk other Wardens. Those she did not bother to control, only to drain and slaughter, but Cherise and Kevin provided her with a self-sustaining well of anguish that she would not easily give up.

And then something happened. Something startling.

There was a shift of energy on the aetheric, titanic in its intensity. It was like some soundless explosion, and everything rippled. The Demon felt it and chased after, not even sure what she was chasing, but there was something floating there in the emptiness, something free and powerful...

She battened on to it and consumed it, mindless in her raging hunger. Back in the forest, Cherise and Kevin fell like abandoned puppets, and the Demon...changed.

She took on form and weight as what she'd eaten took hold of her.

She'd taken my memories, along with a substantial jolt of my power. She'd found the pieces Ashan had ripped away from me in the chapel in Sedona. The Demon didn't know what had happened to her, didn't have a sense of self in the same way that a human did. The change was painful for her, startling and-a new emotion-frightening. She no longer wanted only one thing. Memories confused her, made her want more things, made her ache for what she did not understand, had never had, and she couldn't put it out of her mind because the problem was in her mind.

Never to be corrected, because it had been made part of her, imprinted deep.

My memories had damaged her.

I'd woken up afraid, alone, cold and naked, without any memory of who or what I was; she knew, and she was still afraid, still cold, still naked in her own mind.

Demons could not become human, but now she craved the rest of what I'd once had, and she understood something that, as a Demon, she never could: The Wardens were a force, not individually, but as a group. They could be used. Directed.

Made to do her bidding.

She woke up Cherise and Kevin and sent them in pursuit of the remnants of Joanne Baldwin-the sole threat to her existence. She could sense me, not in an aetheric sense but in some other, primitive way that I didn't fully understand; now that I felt it, though, I knew I'd never mistake it.

I stood silently by as the Demon piloted Cherise and Kevin through the forest, hunting Lewis, hunting me, finding us, pursuing. She used them ruthlessly, but all the while she was learning.

Learning a terrifying amount about how to bend people, how to find their buttons, how to get what she wanted.

Because she knew what she wanted now, and it wasn't just being me.

She wanted to open a door between worlds and bring other Demons here to nest, feed, and grow into what she had become.

She wasn't going home.

She was bringing home here.

It was a memory, and I'd seen some shocking things, but a chill still zipped up my back as I saw the Demon step out from behind a tree to face Cherise and Kevin. She was me, or partly me, anyway. Her eyes were black and empty, and she was a cheap plastic doll made in my image.

She had no further use for her