Halfling (Black Petals Book 1) (29 page)

But isn’t kidnapping me going to add another charge to Forrest’s plate? Won’t it get him in even more trouble? “You can’t do that!” I shout, not meaning to raise my voice. “And it wasn’t just Forrest. It was his brother Maxwell,” I tattle, feeling like an asshole and throwing the guy under the bus.

“I know about Maxwell.” His back straightens. “Actually I
can
do this, and I will. Why would you defend someone who’s done
this
to you?” he wonders, clearly confused.

“He’s a good guy. He just wanted freedom. You can’t blame him for that. Wouldn’t you have done the same?” I try to justify the mens’ actions.

Aiden thinks about it and then scratches the back of his neck slowly. “I know that you are partly in the wrong for this, Megan, but I will not let anyone lay and finger on you. It might be selfish and wrong, but I will throw Forrest
and
Maxwell into the fire if it saves your life. They’re both probably going to be sentenced to death anyways without the charge of kidnapping you added to the mess. They’re demidemons, free demidemons, but still demidemons, ones who can’t be controlled by compulsion. The council won’t give them mercy,” Aiden continues. He sighs a deep sigh. He looks exhausted.

“Megan, he did to you what you never wanted for yourself. He took your soul without your permission and damned you to eternal life as a soulless creature without chance of reincarnation. You can’t possibly have forgiven him for that already.”

My heart falls into my stomach, and my mouth drops open again. Does Aiden think that Forrest and Maxwell turned me into a demon?

“You didn’t know,” Aiden observes. He looks to me as if he feels sorry for me, and that angers me deep down. “Megan, you’re a demon. He took your soul.”

I swear that my heart stops in that moment. Aiden turns and picks up a piece of shiny tin from the corner and holds it up in front of my face. Dark, black, endless irises envelope my pupils making one big round black hole. I nearly puke. No,
no
, this isn’t happening. I realize that I’m not breathing and suck in a quick breath. I step back from the mirror-like tin and a disgruntled sob escapes me. I have to be seeing things. This can’t be happening.

“You’re not in transition yet. You have to consume a soul first. If you don’t, then you’ll go crazy until you do consume one. You’ll eventually lose control,” Aiden summarizes, reaching through the cell bars to grasp my hand. “After you take your first soul, you’ll start becoming a pure blood demon. You’ll start losing certain emotions and gaining new strengths.”

He stops for a moment, letting me come to terms with this as if it’ll only take a few seconds for me to digest this all. “You’re locked up down here because Terry didn’t know what to do and didn’t want you running off before I could get here. He was helping you by throwing you in here, Megan. If you’d have run and killed a bunch of people without meaning to, then you could be in all kinds of trouble with the council. You have to be in control before your set out into the world.” A touch of warmth enters Aiden’s eyes and sticks his other hand through the bars to grasp my free hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll be with you through this whole thing. I promise.”

I can’t believe it. None of this can be true. I don’t feel any different. I don’t feel like I’m a demon. I feel normal. I mean besides the fact that my eyes sting a little, and I’m starving.

Aiden sticks a key into the lock of the cell and twists. I feel my cheeks dampen with tears. I didn’t want this. I really didn’t want this. I was ready to choose death over this.

“Follow me,” Aiden instructs, beckoning me to follow him with his finger. I follow him to the only room in the house that I’ve never stepped foot in.
His
kitchen. The room that he feeds in while living in the human realm. He swings open the metal door, and I tell myself not to look. I don’t know what I expect to see. Blood, body parts, severed heads, I don’t know.

I finally open my eyes. Two men sit in the corner of the room. One a young, brown-haired man and one a tall, old guy with blonde dreads.

Aiden locks the door behind us and shoves the key into his pocket. “Breathe, Megan.”

I do what he says more out of instinct than obedience. I smell nothing but dirt and body odor. I hope it’s one of these men that stinks and not me. I don’t smell anything of importance, yet I suddenly find myself in front of the young man, my hand on his cheek. I don’t know why. I don’t understand it at all. His eyes suddenly seem mesmerizing to me, and I get the weirdest urge to kiss the guy even though I know he’s a criminal. I don’t know him, and he’s really not all that attractive. I push myself away from him.

“Megan, you need to do this,” Aiden urges. “If you don’t, you could kill an innocent human or turn a halfling.” He says this in a near pleading tone. “You’ll only get hungrier if you don’t do this. I can promise you that.”

Before he finishes speaking, something in me takes over and I black out.

“Megan, come on, it’s me, Aiden,” a rough voice pleads. “Come back now,” it begs gruffly.

My vision is pure red but the redness begins to fade as I recognize the voice speaking to me. The hunger begins to not disappear, but fade into the back of my mind. Mind over matter.

“Megan?” Aiden asks for the hundredth time.

I blink and realize that Aiden is holding me against the wall, so I can’t move. I realize that I’m struggling against him. I don’t know why. I stop.

“What happened? What’re you doing?” I beg, scared, my breathing erratic like I’ve just ran a marathon.

He lets go of me and sighs a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank god,” he mutters exasperatedly. “You’re a feisty one. Your father’s that way too, so I shouldn’t be surprised. In fact, it’s why I locked the door to this room behind us.” Aiden steps back from me, giving me space. “Are you feeling better?” I notice he’s huffing and puffing, but I don’t understand why.

I think about it and nod. I do feel loads better than I did, before I blacked out, yet I’m still hungry, extremely hungry. I look back at the two men who were sitting in the corner. Both of them are now in a heap on the floor.

“They’re dead aren’t they?” I ask Aiden slowly, tilting my head to get a better look.

“You sucked out their souls. Now they are dead, yes, unless someone turns them into demons, but we don’t need to do that. If we did that to every human we took souls from, demons would have outnumbered the humans millennia ago. We have to keep the demon population in check.”

I don’t hear much of what he says, because I’m too taken aback by the two men I’ve just
murdered
. Only, I don’t feel regret, nor do I feel sorry for them or guilty. I feel nothing. I feel empty. I’m just
surprised
that I did
that.
I’m all too used to this feeling.

“You compelled me,” I state. “Don’t mess with my head!” I shout angrily at Aiden, and I find myself jumping at him. I mean, I leap right onto him, catching him by surprise. He peals me off of him and pins me to the wall again.

“I didn’t compel you. By nature as a demon, you cannot feel anything towards those you kill. Like I said, you’ll start losing human emotions now. This is the beginning.”

“Then why do you?” I demand. I’ve seen the look in his eyes before. Especially when he was speaking with his siblings about himself when they were locked in this very basement. “Aiden feels things towards the people he kills. I
know
he does.”

“I don’t. It’s not that I feel these things. It’s that I know I should. I know how I should feel after killing someone.”

I suck in a breath. What do I do? What now? I don’t want to be this soulless
monster
, but how can I bring myself to commit suicide, when I know that there’s nothing for me in the afterlife? I won’t ever be reincarnated without my soul. It’s my ticket to anything after life. This can’t be happening. I curse. Aiden lets go of me again.

I get this gut feeling full of anger, frustration, annoyance, and pain. It makes my vision begin to go red again. It makes every nerve ending in my body ignite. It makes me want nothing more than to kill Forrest
and
Maxwell. I
will
kill them. The red tinge begins creeping into my vision again and I lunge at Aiden, surprising him and actually knocking him down for the first time ever. He looks as surprised as I feel. He springs up, once he catches himself and throws me into a wall, a wicked grin on his face.

“You might be faster now, you might me stronger now, but you still have nothing on me, Megan.
Nothing
.” He says this in a playful tone, like he found my knocking him down amusing. A wave of lust washes over me, and I push it off. It’s no time for me to be jumping all over Aiden. What is going on with me? My emotion is all over the place. I focus on my breathing again.

I relax and Aiden let’s go of me wearily this time. I sit down on a plastic chair in the corner. “Now what?” I say out loud through a rushed breath.

“Whatever you want. You know the rules. You know the laws. You’re choice wasn’t much of a choice and it came sooner than expected, but...you still get a choice, it’s just even shittier than the last one you were given. You can still pick death, but if you pick remaining a demon, then you’ll be monitored by me until you can control yourself well enough. Then the council will assign you a job, and you’ll have to do it.”

I feel empty. I feel wrong. I feel scared. Aiden’s right. These options are even shittier than the last options I was given.

Aiden takes in my expression, and a small smile plays on his lips. “You could come stay with me again in hell. I’d like that. I enjoy your company. Even after you’re in control, I could find something for you to do. You could continue living with me,” he offers. I know that since I’m done with being mentored, I’m done with being a halfling, Aiden doesn’t
have
to do a thing for me. He can tell me to piss off and let some other pure blood keep me until I’m in control, but I know he would never do that.

I don’t want to go back to hell, especially now that I know it can affect me in the way that it does all demons, yet I don’t think I’m ready to die. I’m still not ready to give up my life. I’m such a coward.

I need someone to help me through this. I need Aiden. My decision is made up. I have no choice. I have to go back to hell with Aiden. At least for the time being, until I can decide what I’m going to do in the long term. In the back of my mind, I think of Crispen. When he finds out that I’m not longer a halfling, he’s going to be outraged, even more so than he already is. What a disaster. I can’t believe this has happened.

“Yes, I’ll come with you,” I answer Aiden with a weak, forced smile. I brush my hands through my hair, hitting far too many tangles. I’m in desperate need of a brush. I probably look like some sort of barbarian.

Aiden lights up and more warmth slowly enters his eyes. He looks surprised by my decision, like he thought for sure that I would choose death over remaining a demon and going back with him to hell. He looks relieved.

“You seem to be holding up well,” I state carefully, changing the subject from me. I
have
to think about something else before the rage comes back.

He looks at me, squints, and tilts his head to the side. “Me holding up well? Shouldn’t you be worrying about you right now?”

Probably, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t worry about him too. Worrying about him takes my mind off of myself and my own problems.

Aiden chuckles and pulls me into an unexpected, tight hug. “When I couldn’t find you in hell, I thought I’d lost you. You scared me to death. If Terry hadn’t come and found me as soon as he did, I would have torn the whole place up looking for you. I nearly ripped the heads off of a few guards in a rage fit.”

“I couldn’t have been gone that long.”

“I came to find you to tell you that Forrest had found the weapon shortly after supper. You weren’t in your room, and I couldn’t find you anywhere.”

Aiden squeezes me tightly for a moment longer before releasing me. “Forrest killed Lucian, Megan. He had the weapon the entire time. He killed him, because he knew that I would connect the dots and link the weapon to the murder. He knew I would ask him to find the weapon, and when I did, he would make the deal for his brother’s freedom. When he brought me the weapon, I already had my suspicions. Forrest is good but not
that
good. He brought it to me so quickly. I asked him questions about where he got it, and his answers seemed…just wrong. I know Forrest well, and I knew he was lying. It all seemed too coincidental. By the time I put the pieces together, I couldn’t find him anywhere, and I couldn’t find you. The thing Forrest wants most is his brother’s freedom, he’d do anything for it. A deal is a deal. Forrest brought me the weapon. They’re both free, but they’re also broken many laws. They are in over their heads. They will be trialed as demidemons and that makes things look bleak for them.”

Aiden mutters something under his breath that I don’t hear. He runs his fingers through my disgusting hair. I need a shower so badly. I don’t know what to say in response to what he’s just said. Forrest killing Lucian? I guess Aiden and I were both set up.

“Where is Terry?” I ask, feeling like I owe him an apology.

“Upstairs. I am going to take you back to hell right now where you’ll be safe, okay?”

When I’m back in hell, I wait for the well-known influence of the place to bombard me, but it doesn’t. I feel no different. Well, I feel no different besides the fact that I’m starving constantly. I’m not allowed to be around any of the humans or even leave my bedroom, because Aiden fears that I’ll hurt someone. Humans and halflings have been banned from the entire section of the building I am in. I feel like I have a disease or something, and I’m being quarantined.

I think the biggest issue for me is my new eye colour. Every time I look in a mirror I scare myself to death. I’m surprised by how much I still feel like me, and yet how much I feel different. I know that I’m still going through the transition of becoming a demon. It doesn’t all happen at once. It takes usually just under a week for someone to fully become a demon. I feel myself getting faster and stronger. I feel myself getting more and more bipolar. Once second I’m ecstatic, the next I could
literally
rip someone’s head off without a second thought. This side of me terrifies me.

Aiden doesn’t leave my side the next twenty four hours. It’s like he think I’m going to just up and disappear or something if he goes to deal with something more important. I’m sure he has something more important he could be doing. After all, he is the boss of hell.

Aiden lies in bed next to me drawing pictures on my arm with his finger. I wonder if he’s getting sick of having to pull me out the murderous trances I go into now and then, where I suddenly go nuts and get the strength of an elephant. It comes and goes like a heat flash and I never remember the actual time while I have these fits. I just remember how the room looks afterwards, how Aiden looks afterwards. He looks sad, worried, scared even.

“Megan, how are you?” he asks, pure warmth in his expression. If there was any coldness in him yesterday, it’s all gone now. I’m getting a little tired of his asking how I am doing every five minutes like he thinks I’m suddenly going to have a mental breakdown.

“As good as I can be, I guess,” I answer, unsure.

Aiden nods and rests his head on my stomach “Isn’t there a million other things going on in that brain of yours?”

I stare at him and grimace. “Of course.”

Aiden stares back at me, unmoving.

“What are you so
worried
about? I don’t get it,” I admit almost annoyed.

He bites his lip in thought. “I’m waiting for the moment you finally lose yourself, lose you humanity.”

I look at him questioningly.

“I lied to you before. I
do
feel things that I shouldn’t, Megan. I don’t know why, but I do. I always have. I’m unlike any of the pure bloods. I’ve never met
one
like myself. Something is wrong with me. I asked Terry about it once, and he said he’s never heard of a pure blood being able to feel before either. It’s just me. To answer your question, I’m worried, because I know that at any moment the Megan I know is going to disappear, poof, gone forever. I’m scared, because I know that I’m going to lose you at any moment.”

I don’t want to believe what Aiden says, because if I do, that means that pure bloods can’t feel, and they truly are the terrible creatures from horror movies, legends, and religion. I don’t want to believe that. I don’t want to believe that I will end up like Adison or my father or any other pure blood I’ve met. Aiden’s the only one that I’ve met that isn’t so terrible, but I’ve always thought that if Aiden isn’t so evil, then there must be others like him. The last twenty four hours, I’ve been holding onto the hope that maybe I could turn out like Aiden after my transformation. This hope, it’s just been shattered.

Aiden stares at me like he’s inspecting me. Feeling awkward, I switch the subject before I break into tears or go off again in one of my fits. “How is Terry?”

“Terry found Forrest and Maxwell. He’s brought him here,” Aiden answers, surprising me.

As if Aiden reads my mind, he says, “I didn’t demand it of him. He just went out and found them. He brought them back to me. He had no choice. He knew it was what I wanted. Serving me is engrained in him to the core. It’s kind of sad really that a changeling can’t even break the bond with their master to save their child’s life.”

Aiden is right. It is sad. Very sad. I can’t imagine what Terry is going through. He must be so torn. Does he feel guilty for turning his own children in if he’s always completely loyal to Aiden? For some reason, I think the answer is yes.

“Do you
really
think the council will sentence them to death?” I wonder, still not able to come to terms with this.

“I don’t know. Turning a halfling before they’re trained is against our ways, but it’s not illegal. A demigod tricking a halfling to get out of hell is illegal. A demidemon leaving hell, also illegal. If they’re not killed, then they will likely be put back into servitude. I haven’t mentioned to anyone that Forrest also killed my father. Terry knows, I told him. I can’t bring myself to take this information to council if not needed. For Terry. Killing Lucian would be enough alone for Forrest to be sentenced to a long death. Not just the usual torture and kill, it’d be centuries of torture, before he got to rest.”