Burning You Down

I entered my room to find Vic lying on the bed and reading a book. I narrowed my eyes at it – it was Fifty Shades of Grey. Seriously?! I rolled my eyes, slightly amused, and closed the door behind me.

“You know, I find this rather intriguing.”, Vic spoke up without looking up from the book.

“Where did you find that book?”, I asked, taking my jacket off and throwing it on the chair. “It’s not mine… of course.”

“I stole it.”, he shrugged, finally closing it. “From our Physics teacher. Who’d know that the old Mrs. Carlyle could read such naughty things…” He giggled, threw the book away and rolled over so he was now lying to the side, his head rested on his hand. “I don’t blame her, though. It’s an interesting read, pretty… educating. It could be more… how should I say it… ingenious, though. However, it gave me some ideas.”, the demon winked playfully. “I can show you tonight if you want.”

Oh, God, not gonna lie, he was looking incredibly attractive with his messy brown hair, pushed to the side, and his handsome face, with a small smirk stretched on it. In the position he was lying, his shirt was lifted a bit, revealing a part of the tanned skin on his waist. I fixed my eyes on this small spot of perfection before he pulled his shirt down and covered it absent-mindedly. I blinked. Get your shit together, Kellin.

“Um, okay, maybe.”, I grinned slightly and sat on the edge of the bed. “Vic, there’s something we need to talk about. I need to ask you for a small favor…”

“Oh? Go ahead, I’m all ears.”, he rolled over once more, moving closer to me. His hand slipped across my hip. I ignored his attempts to seduce me (was he even trying?), even though I would gladly have him right there, right now, on that bed… Dammit, Kellin, don’t think about this! I almost slapped myself. I had some more serious stuff to do first.

“Remember my friend Jesse?”, I settled on the bed more comfortably.

“Sure… if it’s the same Jesse I’m thinking about, ‘cause the last time we talked about him he wasn’t much of a friend of yours, as far as I remember.”, Vic chuckled. “Anyways, what about him?”

“Remember when someone beat the crap outta him?”, I continued.

“Nope… Oh, wait, I think I do remember! Was it that time when he got beaten up and you blamed it on me?”, he grinned ironically. “’Cause if so, yeah, I remember that. Demons are famous for their good memory.”

“Right.” I bit my lip, feeling guilty again for blaming Victor for what happened to Jesse. He turned out to be far not as bad as I thought back then. “So, now I know who did it.”

“Well done, Sherlock, good for you. I still don’t see what that has to do with me, so keep it short before you start to bore me.”, he suppressed a fake yawn. “C’mon, enough introductions. Get to the point.”

“Okay.”, I sighed, slightly amused by his bored attitude. He was weirdly cute, in an extremely annoying way when he did that. “I want you to find them and talk to them about it. If they’re not… very talkative, you can hurt them some.”

A wide grin stretched on Vic’s face.

“…Well why didn’t you say that in first place.”

I gave him a warning look. “You shouldn’t kill them, whatever they do, you gotta promise me that.”

“But of coooourse, dear, who said anything about killing? I’m sure I didn’t. Did you?”, the demon winked at me. I sighed.

“Vic, I’m serious. Don’t kill anyone.”, I insisted, hoping I can make him understand that killing people is bad, even if these people are evil and have hurt someone.

He let out an irritated groan. “Ugh, Kells, you always know how to ruin my fun, don’t you.”

“Yup, that’s what I do.”, I agreed calmly. “You have to promise me, Victor.”

“Okay, okay, alright, I promise.”, he rolled his eyes theatrically. “What do you want me to ask them about?”

“Um, about the accident, and you should ask them what- Actually, forget it. I’m coming with you.”, I suddenly changed my mind.

Well, yeah, I knew the story better than Vic (who actually didn’t know it at all) and I was sure I would do much better at the interrogation than him. I wanted them to get what they deserve, and besides, I was curious to know if that Alex guy had really said the things Jesse thought he did, and if so, what they meant. I had some… doubts about this. All that stuff about deals and taking things really stunk of demons, but I don’t think it was possible… Maybe it was about drugs or some shit.

Suddenly Vic surprised me with an unexpectedly reasonable question: “Isn’t that a bit dangerous for you? I mean, it’s going to get dark outside soon. I don’t think it’s a good idea to go after some suspicious guys at this time of the day.”

I raised eyebrows at him.

“Seriously? The rebellious, reckless demon suddenly had an idea which doesn’t involve breaking the rules, drinking, having sex and possibly getting killed, and is actually about us being safe. I can’t believe it.” I chuckled. “Yeah, you have a point. We better wait until tomorrow, there’s no need to hurry. Besides, I’ll have time to tell you more about this shit Jesse went through.”

“Wonderful.”, Victor approved. “Until then, you can cook me dinner.”

“Mom’s cooking tonight. You can’t keep showing up at our place for dinner, Vic, you have to go home from time to time too. Otherwise you’d look weird and your- I mean, Walt’s parents will start doubting in you.”

“But Mrs. Fuentes cooks horribly!”, the demon pouted. “I don’t like the stuff that family eats, everything’s so spicy, after all it’s not my fault they’re Mexican, goddammit.”

“Yeah, but you’re supposed to be their son.”, I reminded him. “And Walter likes spicy food, so he wouldn’t normally object.”

“You know,” he started with an a-matter-of-fact tone, “That “pretending to be Walter” thing is starting to kinda annoy me, just a little. It was fun at first, but then it started to become a bit boring. One of the few cool things about it was that having this glorious body I could get into bed all the girls and boys I want, and I can’t even have that anymore, because I have you.”

“Hey, is that a bad thing?!”, I frowned. “Are you complaining?”

“Not at all.”, he shook his head calmly with a small smirk and then quickly changed the subject: “So, you wanna have a small research on these guys now? To find out more about them?”

I sighed and gave up. “…Okay, we could do that. I’ll go get my laptop.”

“Your laptop? What for?”, Vic tilted head. “I thought we were going to sneak into the school and look for their files or something.”

I headed to my desk where my opened laptop lay, and then looked back to throw him a glance.

“Hellooo? It’s the XXI century. All the information we could possibly need…”, I took the computer and lay on the bed next to Victor, and then typed something in the browser, “…is here.”

I turned the laptop towards him so he could look at the screen. He furrowed eyebrows as he read the title of the website I had opened.

“Facebook? Is this some kind of… online library?”, he asked cautiously.

I laughed. “No, stupid.”, then I remembered who I was talking to and before he gets angry, or worse – mocking, I added: “This is a social network. Here people make accounts, find friends and post pictures and some shit like that. I personally don’t like it, but I keep my account just in case.” I made a pause to remember the attackers’ names, and then typed the first one: ‘Jack Barakat’. “Let’s see what we have here, bitches…”, I murmured, pressing ‘enter’ with a theatrical gesture.

It took a few seconds for the page to load. The whole time the demon was watching closely in silence, intrigued. I never managed to get him much into the secrets of the internet and it was all new for him.

And here it was, Jack Barakat, 18 years old. A picture of a seemingly happy boy appeared on the screen. He looked exactly like Jesse had described him – spiky brown hair, a few blond strands scattered in it, the big warm eyes, the long nose, the silly grin. It was totally the same person. Only that… he didn’t look like much of a rapist or anything like that. I went through his friends – all good students, nice guys, a lot of chicks, nothing too unusual. No suspicious buddies. I checked out his photos too, and as far as I saw, he didn’t have a girlfriend, though he seemed to spend a lot of time with his friend Alex, the other guy who hurt Jesse. Eventually I ran into his profile and went on it.

Surprisingly, he seemed like a good boy too. There was nothing on his account that could indicate that he was such a horrible person. He looked cheerful and happy; no hateful comments, no offensive pictures. Another thing I noticed was that his Facebook hadn’t been used for months, and before that he used to update regularly. I gave up on trying to find something there and opened another tab – Google. I typed Alexander’s full name, almost sure I wouldn’t find anything useful, but hm, he seemed to be quite popular lately. The first few results that appeared were mostly websites of local newspapers which obviously wrote more than just one or two articles about him.

“Check this out, there was some noise around our guy about nine months ago.”, I spoke up to the mesmerized Victor and clicked the first link.

The title of the article was written in big black bold font and stuck into my brain like a needle: “ALEXANDER GASKARTH: A STORY OF PAIN AND SURVIVAL. The eighteen-year-old boy’s cancer miraculously disappears, doctors have no reasonable explanation”

“Well, well, well…”, the demon murmured. “Read.”, he ordered after a second.

I obeyed without bothering to argue.

“We all heard about the tragic story of Alex Gaskarth, a teenage boy whose life was almost taken by the horrible disease. After his name was spread through all the local newspapers the last few weeks, now we witnessed a true miracle – his cancer seems to have vanished without a trace. ‘I feel perfectly fine’, the boy says, ‘It’s like it was never there, you know. Like I was never ill… It’s so weird.’ The teenager went through careful examination but nothing was found. ‘We’ve never seen anything like this’, doctor Stephen Clark, an expert in this area confirmed. ‘This is a real miracle’. (more in the next issue with an exclusive interview with Alex!)…”

I stopped. Here the article ended, so I opened another one, but this time I didn’t bother to read it out load – Vic could read, after all, it wasn’t my fault he was lazy. It said pretty much the same thing, so I checked out some older ones too. While looking, I quickly told Vic what had happened to Jesse, saving him most of the details, except that part when Alex said the thing about his “father” and the “deals”. Victor seemed thoughtful, but he didn’t comment, so I gave up and continued reading.

Long story short, about a year and a half ago they found out that Alex has cancer and after awhile they figured it’s incurable. It was too late – he wasn’t going to get better, he wasn’t going to survive. At first they tried chemo and stuff, but it didn’t help at all, it just made the boy more miserable and depressed, so they decided they’ll just leave him to die happily. It was a real tragedy, the world was going to lose such a smart, talented young man like him – not only that he was an “A” student at school, but he also sang and played in a band and was interested in psychology and poetry… he had potential, he was definitely going to become something. Six months later they ran some more tests on him, to be sure how much he had left, and surprisingly, they saw that his cancer was gone. As if Alex had never been ill. At first they thought it was a mistake, but it wasn’t – he was magically cured, and no one knew what the reason was. The case became an often discussed topic back then. Interesting why I hadn’t heard about it… Probably because I was one of these kids that don’t talk to the others much and mostly stay at home, duh. Hooray for the antisocial freaks, woo.

Even more interesting was the fact that he changed a lot, like, his personality, too, around the same time. I found that in the comments, mostly – kids were saying that he was different since then, he had become rude and unfriendly, aggressive, even. Others still claimed that he was a nice boy. In general, there were a lot of ‘for or against Alex Gaskarth’ discussions. Damn, what did he do to become this popular? He got better and survived brain cancer, no fucking big deal. They discussed him like he was a celebrity or something.

Anyway, I still didn’t get what his problem was. None of this explained his strange behavior that night at Jesse’s house. I told that to Vic.

He gave me a critical look.

“Um, dugs, darling. As far as I can see, this seems to be something quite popular these days. He was probably higher than the goddamn Eiffel Tower.”, the demon shrugged.

“Yeah, but still… Doesn’t this whole thing seem weird to you? Brain cancer disappears, the guy goes all rebel and shit, and a few months after that he tries to rape a girl with his best friend, and beats Jesse almost to death.” I put the computer away. “I don’t know, man, just… This isn’t normal.”

Victor sighed and lay back down on the bed. “Sure it isn’t, Mr. Obvious. It’s… strange, I know. Still, you fragile humans could be easily influenced by drugs and alcohol, and about the disappearance of the brain tumor, I have a few other suggestions, but you wouldn’t want to hear them, trust me. Let’s just hope there was a mistake in his tests, and forget about it.”

I furrowed eyebrows.

“Forget about it?”, I repeated. “Really now?”

All I got was another shrug.

“Vic, that guy almost killed my friend.”, I continued. “And not only that, but he threatened him, too. I don’t like this. Why doesn’t it seem important to you?”

“Well.”, he shrugged again. “I’m not a good person, I’m a goddamn demon, okay? Why should I care? Things like that happen all the time, it isn’t anything shocking or… or… yeah.”

For some reason his words seemed incredibly unconvincing, though, and that was indeed weird – being such a great liar, I could never be able to tell if he was telling the truth or not… but could I, really? I narrowed my eyes at him. He wasn’t looking at me, purposely, in my opinion. It was almost like he was…

“…You’re scared.”, I concluded slowly, staring at him, slightly amused, slightly alarmed. You rarely see a demon frightened (well, you rarely see a demon anyway, but being afraid of something isn’t exactly their thing, isn’t it)

“I’m not!”, he objected and finally looked at me. “I’m not scared of anything!”

“Yes, you are, I can tell!”, I objected. Yes, I could see it now! Something was really bothering him. I wondered what it was… and I was going to get an answer. He just threw me an annoyed look.

“This is stupid, of course I’m not.”, he declared.

“You are! I know you well enough to be able to notice the small changes in your behavior.”, I continued, then, eager, grabbed his arm roughly, accidentally hurting him a bit, and made him sit up. “Come on, tell me, what is it, what are you scared of?”

He jumped a bit, kind of startled and now suddenly angry.

“Don’t touch me!” His eyes flashed in orange for a moment, like fire, and before I could realize my mistake, he pulled back and waved his hand, instinctively tossing me across the room.

My back hit the closed door of the wardrobe and I heavily fell on the ground with a quiet “Ugh!” I was too surprised to feel how much it actually hurt. I was basically shocked that Vic had just hurt me, and I didn’t even know why he did it. Maybe he just reacted instinctively – being a demon, he’s used to people obeying him and probably the fact that I tried to order him angered him; or perhaps he just got startled by the way I pulled him up and he responded with a natural instinct (at least, natural for demons). Whatever the reason was, the act itself left me speechless.

Victor’s expression changed quickly from angry to surprised by himself, and then to upset and regretful.

For a second we were both silent, both sort of shocked by how quickly this escalated. Vic spoke up first:

“Shit, Kellin…”, he jumped on his feet and ran to me. I noticed he looked confused and he didn’t even try to teleport (being the lazy-ass demon he was, he usually didn’t bother to walk, even in such a small distance). He fell to his knees and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“Get away from me!”, I snapped, getting out of the shock as well, my surprise turning to anger. “You don’t simply hit people for such small reasons, you can’t do that! What the hell man…” I shook head and pushed him away, clumsily standing on my feet.

Yeah, I understood that demons are not like humans and they have different… I don’t know… different ways to respond to certain situations, but this was just too much. He can’t just hit me like this.

“No, wait, wait, wait…” Victor grabbed me by the wrist. “Look, I didn’t mean to hurt you, okay? I just did it accidentally, I didn’t realize it would happen, it just… I can’t always control this shit, okay? You must understand that I am a kind of creature that gets angry easily and reacts impulsively, sometimes doing bad things, hurting people, even. I didn’t want to hit you, I swear. It was more like a defensive reflex… I promise, it won’t happen again.” He seemed to hesitate and then, after a few seconds, he added: “…I’m sorry.”

This was the first time I ever heard him apologize and my eyes automatically widened. Did I really hear what I thought I heard? I’ve always thought I’d never hear him say he’s sorry, ever. He was too proud to do it, or at least I had thought so.

Huh. He would never quit surprising me, it seems. I was sure that even for a whole lifetime I would never learn to understand him.

“…It’s fine.”, I said slowly, unsurely.

The demon just nodded quickly, now looking ashamed of himself.

“Um, okay, now, sit and I might decide to tell you what worried me.”, Victor murmured, changing the subject.

I hesitated, still a bit confused by the whole situation. The time I spent with him was all one big riddle I was forever trying to solve.

“Come on,” he rushed me, “don’t waste your time, sit and listen before I change my mind.”

Oh, finally, his usual cheekiness was back. I felt much more comfortable around him when he was like this, because now at least I knew his usual tricks and he couldn’t leave me too surprised.

“Alright.”, I sat down, but took my time anyway, to annoy him a bit, just like that… after all, my back still hurt a bit from when it hit the wardrobe. I kind of wanted Vic to heal me but I wouldn’t ask him to do it. I wanted to see if he’d think of doing it, himself. “Go ahead, spit it out. I’m interested.”

The usually arrogant demon seemed a bit embarrassed, as if he felt that there was still something wrong with my tone, but he couldn’t tell what it was.

“Um, okay. See, this whole thing…”, he paused to look me in the eyes, “…this whole thing just stinks of demons. I could be right, I could be wrong, the latter, most likely, but I don’t know. People make deals all the time, deals with different demons. It happens much more often than you can imagine, all over the world. So it’s completely possible that when he realized he was dying, the boy summoned one of us and negotiated until, if he was lucky enough, he got a few years of life more… But this is just a suggestion. I can’t know for sure, and I prefer not to find out. I’ll just, like, stay outta danger, be a good demon and mind my own business. That’s who I am. I might sound like a coward, I know.”, he added quickly, throwing me an accusing look, as if I blamed him for that. “That’s not true, though. I only have a really strong sense of self-preservation. Besides… I shouldn’t mess in other demons’ deals. It wouldn’t be fair.”

I almost translated this as ‘Yeah, so you really are afraid’ out loud, but I stopped myself on time, remembering what his last reaction was. I didn’t want to piss him off once more.

“…So if it’s a demon thing you’re saying there’s nothing we can do about it.”, I concluded thoughtfully.

“Kinda, yeah. You might say that.”, he nodded.

“And what if it’s not a demon thing? What if it really was just a kid who got high and started threatening people around?”, I questioned. “I think we need to do something then. Before something else bad happens.”

“Okay, fine, we can dig around, see what we can do. If it really turns out to be about demons, though, we’d have to stay aside. It’s not my business to ruin other demons’ deals. I really don’t wanna run into those guys anyway. They’re taking their job too seriously, most of them, and if they see I’m having such a great fun, they’d be jealous and who knows, they might drag me back down there.” Vic shrugged casually. “Should I consider this conversation over?”

“Um, sure. It’s getting late anyway, this can wait. It’s not like we’re detectives or something, this is not a job we should do urgently.”, I sighed and rested my still kinda hurt back on the bed. “Now, what do you wanna do?”

…It’s amazing how such a simple sentence can have such a huge effect on Victor. His serious, reasonable self was gone in a few seconds, replaced by the usual mischievous, devilishly grinning creature I knew so well.

“I’m sure we can think of something…” His look slipped across my body, observing it carefully, but then he obviously dropped the idea, replaced by another, better one. “…Let’s have a walk outside. Christmas is coming, there’s plenty of interesting stuff to do at this time of year, hmm?”

END OF CHAPTER 15.