Book of nightmares

She sat up slowly, as though the air around her were thick as syrup. The light shined through the cracks between the rune-marked boards barring the window, spilling onto her pallet on the floor. Every night she drank a tonic that lowered her life sign and reduced the risk of her being attacked.

The area she was in was relatively low in risk at night, as the Hollows had not yet moved that far from the gate - according to one of her companions. She did not want to risk it, though. The moment you got complacent and felt safe, was the moment you signed your own death certificate. Of course there were no longer any death or birth certificates, and infant mortality was incredibly high. The tonics were rough on newborn systems, and going all night without feeding left them emaciated. On top of that, if the tonic wore off, they were usually gone in the morning. Infants were the best delicacy for Hollows, it seemed.

She looked around their rented space, and found the outline of one of her guardians on the other side of the thin sheet separating their flat into three rooms, not counting the non-functional bathroom. His form stood still; the sentry for the last part of the night. As though sensing her waking, the shadow turned to move to part the sheet and peer in.

“Mornin’” he whispered almost thankfully in an unused voice. His golden hair was tousled and his eyes were tight with fatigue. She wondered how the night had gone, but knew better than to ask.

She really wouldn’t want to know.

“Morning.” She repeated, reverently. Mornings were no guarantee, especially traveling with her. She was thankful for her two guardians. Most were not so lucky.

Vantar and Tsuar were twins, though definitely not identical. Where Vantar was blond, thin, and pale, his brother was a deep chocolate, built like an old-age bodybuilder with jet black braids falling to his shoulders. They both had the same swirling black and gray smokey eyes that had been unsettling for the first few months of knowing them. After they appeared on her doorstep so long ago, near the beginning. Now she adored those eyes, and could gage their moods based on the swirling and how light or dark the gray to their irises were.

That morning, Vantar’s eyes were dark. It was not going to be a good day.

“Mornin’,” Tsuar parted his sheet and looked between them.

“Morning” She and Vantar greeted in unison.

Today, their only task was to stock up on food. They were taking a couple more days in this town to recoup from their long travels. It was rare to have a roof over their heads for extended periods of time, and they wanted to be refreshed before they faced the open nights again.

They got ready in silence. She made a mental note to find some laundry soap soon and a clean stream. This far south was hard to find anything not muddy and murky, but there had to be somewhere to clean the stench from her clothes nearby.

Out of habit, Vantar packed all their belongings into the rucksack and slung it on his back. Looking around the empty space, bare of the sheets and meager personal effects. It was both impressive and depressing that everything the three of them owned fit in the single rucksack, barring the small emergency pack they each carried. They approached the door, She hid behind Vantar while Tsuar cracked it open, sniffed the air, and checked the corners.

After a quick hand signal for ‘all clear’ she and Vantar jogged out to meet Tsuar. The walk to the pitiful market was a short two blocks. The buildings on either side were crumbling and overgrown with the alien Reaper vines; very poisonous vines that grew extremely rapidly. Their iridescent purple leaves concealed the flowers below. Bees and other pollinators would fall into the flowers and be consumed. Larger prey could be captured closer to the heart, by long rope ‘lassoes’ that shot out and attached to the target much like jellyfish tentacles - shooting little needle-like filaments into the muscles and around the bones, and injecting a substance that actually produced euphoria and extreme pleasure. The pray didn’t fight that way. The same secretions liquified the poor creature and was sucked dry, similar to how a spider feeds, but through the filaments burried deep in the tissues. After witnessing the attack once, she made it a priority to avoid the reaper vines’ hearts at all cost.

The market was packed. Between vendors and customers, roughly a hundred people crowded around very poor looking produce and poultry. The chickens would be worth little, other than to flavor water to resemble broth. There wasn’t much to be had these days, and beef or pork was almost impossible to come by. The corn husks were small and pale, browning around the edges. The squash was squishy, and were likely rotten inside. Watermelons and Cantaloupe grew in very few places, and here was not one. No citrus, either, though the temperature was definitely high enough. The drought, though, was taking its toll.

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After the Gates opened, the weather had changed drastically. They had opened on a march night with an earthquake that shook the pictures from the walls. The two feet of snow she’d had in michigan was gone in hours. Her family had heard one news broadcast before absolute radio silence. Their cars, television, water lines, and power had never worked again after that night. The next morning brought scorching 102 degree and higher temperatures across the country. Rain fell rarely. Water resources were guarded. The night following the Opening brought many, many deaths. It took a few weeks to discover the use of the tonic. Just in her town, over half the population had been decimated in those initial weeks.

A flash of vibrant red caught her eye, and she was drawn to the booth.

Tomatoes.

They looked amazing. Very few signs of bruising! She immediately held out the token, cradling a BigBoy tomato with such reverence that Vantar, who was about to protest the exorbitant fee, laughed and shook his head, walking away to report with Tsuar.

The elder vendor held a smaller token out to her for her change. When she reached for it, however, he grabbed her arm and pulled her in, whispering in her ear as the skin he touched sizzled and burned, experiencing instant and excruciating frostbite. She bit down her tongue, drawing the metallic taste of blood, and refused to scream as the tangy taste of iron filled her mouth.

“This body,” He ran his tongue over her cheek, leaving a trail of burning cold. “It’s so juicy and healthyyyyyyy,” his voice held the painfully familiar warble of the possessed, “Needs to be savored. Let me have a biiiiiite!” he hissed, his jaw unhinged just inches from her neck. She jerked against his hold, but the possessed were imbued with super-human strength. Now that she was close, she could smell the sickly-sweet stench of one who has been possessed for an extended time; an Asmodan.

Just before the sharpened teeth sunk into her jugular, the white-gold blur of Vantar in battle mode tackled the asmodan to the ground, ripping him away from her. The beast gave as good as he got, though, and slugged her guardian, decked in holy armor and armed with a godsword, with a wicked left hook that shot Vantar four feet across the packed earth. He swiped at the creamy gold smear of his split lip.

Well, crap.

Pandemonium erupted in the marketplace. Humans were screaming. Asmodans were engaging. Hidden Guardians were exposing themselves, though they were far outnumbered. Red blood mixed with gold and black. Tsuar’s voice boomed over the clang of ancient weapons and armor, for her to run to the sun spot.

She ran.

Straight into a dead end. The eight foot tall chainlink fence was no problem. She'd gotten pretty good at scaling the inconveniences. However, the razor wire atop it was a big problem. She began climbing, anyway. Tsuar could heal her, later, if she survived.

The inhuman screech behind her set her already racing heart into overtime. The thunderous beat of her heart stopped as she looked back. One of the raunchiest asmodans she had ever seen came at her, in a lurching, uneven gallop. This demon was old; powerful. The human body could not handle the power of the demon within, and was falling apart. She could feel it ripple the aether around her, as though the neutral energy of the world couldn’t stand it, either.

The woman housing the demon would have been beautiful, had her long blonde hair not been matted and falling out, or her eyes completely black and leaking black blood. Or her skin a gray, dead cast, with blackened veins and large black bruises criss-crossing her very thin and minimalistic nightgown-clad body. But the most unnerving thing was the unhinged jaw with yellow and black sharpened teeth.

She was frozen.

As the thing reached the razorwire, it latched onto her ankle. The pain was immediate. The extreme biting cold burned clear to her bone. Doing her best to ignore it and not scream, she jerked against the creature. The creature jerked back, digging its long, jagged nails into the frostbit flesh, pulling skin and meat from her. She didn’t feel the damaged flesh peel until the nails dug into the already-pained neighboring flesh; with working nerve ends.

Then she screamed.

And two other asmodan ran out from the surrounding shrubbery, summoned by her screech of pain.

She looked through the chain link to the sun spot. It was the one place the demonkin would not step, and there were many throughout the world. She and her guardians traveled from sun spot to sun spot, trying to help the people surrounding. Who the fuck had put a fence around the one safe spot???

The admodans gave her a break by fighting each other over her. She gained another foot up the fence, facing the razor wire, and knowing she would have to shed her blood again, and deeply.

The fence shook and she knew her pursuers were going to be on her again. She put one arm across the wire, then the next, and she hiked her legs higher on the fence, just out of reach of the clumsy asmodans.

She felt them grasping at her, the spots they touched erupting in pain, then numbness, with a deep ache in the surrounding tissues. Neither of her feet would work when she hit the ground on the other side. She would have to crawl.

Why had she not packed her sword with her? Why did she insist that Vantar carry it?

When she was high enough for her feet to swing up and catch the lip of the fence, she used the thick material of her vest-jacket as the only protection, rolling painfully across the stabbing metal. She felt every slice race along her nerve endings, and knew the asmodans were right behind her as she plummeted to the earth on the other side, bloody and terrified.