No response. It had been several days, and Thea had been dead silent. It was late in the evening. I was winding down for the night, laying on my bed, hoping that today, maybe, would be the day for her to finally tell me something. Anything. Was she okay? Had something happened to her?

“Is she deliberately leaving you hanging, so that you will obsess over her instead of focusing on your duties?”

“Quiet.” That night, Thea had shown me a glimpse of something different. What could be. I wanted to cling to her vision, where she was right. Where I could just trust in her, and she’d lead me into a better world. And not just because she was my hope of seeing things go back to normal. Or was that it after all? “I just want to see my parents again. Is that too much to ask?”

“They made it difficult for you to perform your duties.”

“Vespa, they were my parents! Are my parents,” I corrected. Now I was going about acting as if they were dead. That... that wouldn’t do.

“You there, Quinn?” Angelina peeked into my room, interrupting my thoughts. “I’m going out. You can tag along, if you’d like, tonight. Shouldn’t be anything too serious.”

“Hunting Demons?”

“Of course.”The opportunity seemed almost providential. Thea’s words echoed in my head again. Why not see Angelina hunting? Thea had made her seem to be a monster. But looking now, I only saw her standing in the doorway, kind of bored-looking, her head tilted as she waited for my answer.

“What’s with the change of heart?”

“It’s Nep’s idea. Not mine,” she quipped. “But... welll, you’ve been doing very well recently. I’m confident that you can hold your own now. At least against what I’ll be taking on tonight. They aren’t too dangerous, after all... Nep’s been watching them for quite some time. But she said it might do you good to see... well, to see a hunt in action.”

“Sure. I’ll come.”

She gave a slight smile. “Meet me outside in five minutes.

***

I shivered in the cold autumn night, pulling Sarah’s jacket tight around me. I was still a little bit wary about putting it on, though as the season had gotten colder I’d found it more and more handy. Still, it wasn’t fun to wear a jacket that was... alive? Was it? As if in response, one of the jacket arms twitched. Unsettling. “Why are we not transformed yet, anyways?” I asked.

“We want the element of surprise,” said Angelina. She was also wearing what was much more obviously a living jacket, though she was far more comfortable in it. It had the appearance of black leather, though the surface was really made of thin interlaced dragonfly shells. The fabric breathed and hummed at the touch, muscles inside vibrating softly to generate heat. I figured Sarah’s worked similarly, though I’d never worn it long enough to tell.

“What are we waiting for?”

“We are waiting for the final Demon to arrive.”

“Final? How many are there?”

“Four.”

“Four? Isn’t that, like, a lot? Three of us couldn’t... against Ecto...”

Angelina scoffed. “These are not Ecto. They are lowly Demons of forgotten ages, barely able to muster up the weakest or most pitiful Echoes. The worst they can do is meddle with the timeline in little places, displacing humans so they can take their places in our world. Easy marks.”

Perhaps Thea had had a point after all. If most of the Demons were like this, then what harm could they reasonably do? Why not just let them live their lives? Well, I supposed they still displaced some people, but... “I—”

“There he is.”

A black car pulled into the driveway, and a Demon stepped out. He wore a well-fitting suit, just as Ecto and Thea had. Besides his attire, nothing really seemed off about him, though he seemed to be scanning the area. Sensing us, perhaps? But we weren’t transformed, and so it seemed that we were fine. After looking around one final time, he opened the door and went inside.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

A few minutes later, we stepped up to the door and knocked.

***

A Demon answered the door. She was tall, sharply-dressed in a dress shirt and pants, though she was not wearing a suit jacket. Her long, straight, black hair was streaked with pink highlights. She looked to be maybe in her late thirties.

Behind her, the interior of the house seemed altogether normal. The wallpaper was pale and clear, and the furniture was neatly painted in white. I couldn’t really sense any large echoes or other discontinuities here. Though there definitely was something.... something was subtly unsettling. I couldn’t shake the thought...

“Hello? Can I help you?” Her voice was completely normal. Nowhere near as unnatural-sounding as Thea’s. And yet Sarah’s jacket squeezed me tightly, clearly unsettled by her presence. And at the back of my mind, I was certainly feeling the desire to... to...

“We’re good, thanks,” said Angelina. Her hand darted and grabbed... something. An Echo? She opened her hand to reveal the crushed body of a cockroach, made of rough basalt and glowing with volcanic heat. She dropped the remains, showing the red marks where the ichor had burned into her palm. “But I don’t appreciate being watched. Especially by Demons.”

The Demon’s eyes widened in surprise, but it was already too late. Angelina was blisteringly fast, her human form replaced in an instant by her Imago, four arms bearing their two-pronged daggers and tearing into the woman. The Demon. Behind her, four huge wings sprung out, knocking me to the ground.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, turning sideways to let me in. The Demon lay on the ground, dismembered limbs scattered in the foyer in a pool of blood. If there was any sign that the Demon had been anything but human, I couldn’t see it. But I could feel it.

“So fast. And it looks...”

“It was a Demon. You know that. You cannot hesitate with them. Even now, the others have probably noticed.”

As if in response, a stream of those same cockroaches swarmed out from between the walls and crevices, each one glowing molten red, with a dark circle bearing two glowing eyespots on their backs. They stared at us and glowed, and then they took flight and swarmed us.

“What are you waiting for? Transform!”

I hadn’t learned too much from Nep’s lessons, but I did know that, beneath their little hoods, roaches could be voracious predators. And my fragile little human body would not do well against them. The transformation came cleanly, and my weapon slid into my hands. We slashed through the tide of insects toward the stairs.

At the top, there were the other three demons. They seemed... apprehensive. Afraid. But then they rushed down the stairs. Three men in suits, each flanked by crude, rocky facsimiles of the cockroaches. I prepared to swing, and they—

They turned into children.

Little children. And I hesitated. But they lunged again, and I— had I really been so easy to fool?

Angelina’s daggers intercepted them. She was completely unfazed by their appearance, taking them... apart with ease. She held them up, dangling, dismembering them one by one with brutal precision. They wailed and cried for help, and I nearly intervened, but... they were not human. Though they looked the part in death, I’d seen them change. It was...

“It is all an illusion, yes. Or, not even that. They can change their very appearance as they will,” Vespa confirmed.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be,” said Angelina. “It’s a challenge, for sure. They will do anything they can to trick you. And... frankly, I don’t think Nep expected anything different. I certainly didn’t. But now you know. And now it’s over.”

We walked out into the backyard. Angelina was digging through the dirt in the garden, looking for something. It had all been so quick, so violent. Unlike the Echoes, what remained was messy and bloody and... it looked human. I felt a little bit sick. And yet also these were usurpers. Real people had lived here before them. Before the Demons had replaced them. But did that make this justified?

“Here,” she exclaimed. “This is what it’s all about.” She held out the glassy tetrahedra, brushing off the bits of soil from their clear facets. One for each Demon. Within, just like the one that Thea had shown me, various scenes and faces swirled inside. Paradoxes that they had created. And now...

She pocketed them.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you supposed, I dunno, break them, or something?”

“We could shatter them, now that the Demons are dead. That would undo what they did. But we’re not supposed to.”

“Sorry, what? We aren’t supposed to undo what they did?”

Angelina tapped the pocket of her jacket again. “It’s... it’s hard to explain. But there’s a protocol for this. Nep... Nep could explain better. But we’re supposed to send these in to Mali. She said it was very important. I don’t really care to know why. That’s not my job.

“But—”

“No buts. It’s time to go.” And with that, she took off towards Sanctuary 73. What else could I do but follow?