I should kill him. On some impulse I saved him again but he's finally taken things too far. He's a lot more trouble than he's worth.
The thought follows me as I dart across the rooftops in the night, persistent and logical and increasingly difficult to ignore. Three guards dead, my hunting grounds compromised, and all because a twelve-year-old boy thought I needed a pretty dress.
The stupidity of it makes my head ache, reverberating through my skull to my horns.
I find a perch on the cathedral's bell tower, high enough to see the entire slums spread out below me. Somewhere down there, Reagan is probably still sitting where I left him, curled in a ball, weeping and trying to understand how his good intentions turned into disaster.
Good intentions. The road to hell might as well be paved with them.
The smart thing would be to hunt him down and end this before it gets worse. Before more guards come looking, before word spreads, before his continued existence becomes an even greater liability than it already is. A quick death, clean and merciful, and then I could disappear until things cool down.
But as I sit there, wings folded around me against the evening chill, I find myself remembering the look on his face when he pulled out that dress. The shy pride, the desperate hope. The way he'd offered it, so cautious, just wanting to please me. He really did something just for me, to make me happy. Even if he wanted my protection in return, it was a first. I really don't know why I saved him again, but if I killed him now all that effort would be wasted.
The dress was beautiful. I could admit that much. I had seen young rich girls visiting the circus wearing those types of clothes. The kind of dress I might have worn in another life, in another world where I was born human and all my problems didn't exist.
The first drops begin to fall as I'm making my way back across the rooftops, fat and heavy with the promise of a proper downpour. Within minutes, the drizzle becomes a steady shower, then a proper soaking rain that turns the slum streets into rivers of mud and refuse. I need to find shelter. Somewhere dry to hole up in and wait for the storm to pass.
***
My body feels heavier than it should. Sluggish in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature which has been steadily dropping or the hunger from not having drunk blood.
By the fourth day, I know something is very wrong.
Fever. I can feel it building in my blood, the same sickness that occasionally swept through the circus when we traveled to cities with bad water and worse air. Demons aren't immune to disease. We can get sick from the same illnesses humans do and we can infect them too. We just process them differently. Sometimes slower and more painfully, other times we have different symptoms from the same illness but most of the time we easily burn through them.
But burning through infection requires energy. Requires resources my half-starved body doesn't have to spare.
I should hunt. Should find prey and feed and give my body what it needs to fight. But the thought of moving from this corner, of forcing wings that feel like lead to carry me anywhere, seems impossible.
Just a little rest. Just until the fever passes.
They didn't stop the shows when I was sick. Couldn't afford to–people had paid to see the demon child, and Master Celerhea, the ringmaster, never refunded tickets.
"Get up, Beast," the assistant hissed, striking me with the rod. Pain like lightning shot through my already-aching body, but I couldn't make my limbs cooperate. Couldn't force myself to stand and perform.
"It's faking," Master Celerhea said from outside the cage. "Demons are manipulative creatures. It wants sympathy, for us to cancel the show."
The assistant, cruel as he was, hesitated.
"Sir, she's burning up–"
"I said it's faking." His voice went cold. "Use the prod again. Harder this time."
The pain was extraordinary. White-hot and all-consuming, turning thought into animal howling. My body convulsed, and somehow that was enough to get me moving. To stumble through the performance while fever made the world swim and tilt.
Afterward, when I collapsed in the cage, Master Celerhea stood watching.
"See? The sneaky little bitch could perform all along. They always can, when properly motivated."
He walked away, and I lay in my own filth, too sick to move, too weak to care.
The memory surfaces through fever-fog, and I curl tighter into myself. No one will prod me into performing now. No one will force me to move when my body is screaming for rest. I am completely alone.
I can just... stop. For a while.
The fever builds over the next day and night. I drift in and out of consciousness, sometimes aware of where I am, sometimes lost in memories that feel more real than the present.
The veterinarian came when animals were too valuable to let die. He never came for me.
"Is the demon sick?" I heard someone ask once, during a particularly bad bout of illness.
"Probably," Master Celerhea replied. "But demons are resilient. It'll recover or it won't. Either way, it's not worth the cost of a vet visit. There live many of her kind in the countryside and the animals come from other, exotic continents."
I recovered. Just barely, but I always recovered.
Somewhere in the fever-dreams, I become aware of voices. Real ones, not memories. Two men discussing the burned warehouse, on which roof I hide, whether it's worth salvaging, whether the owner will ever rebuild. I don't know where they are.
I should retreat further into the shadows, make myself invisible. But I can't move. Can barely breathe through the fire in my lungs. I should feel panic, anger, fear, and maybe I do, somewhere in the back of my foggy mind, but I cannot manage to feel emotion.
The voices fade. More time passes. Maybe it's minutes or hours, I can't tell anymore.
Then different voices. A voice. Singular. Younger. More familiar.
"Xaveon? Oh gods, Xaveon, can you hear me?"
Reagan's voice cuts through the fever like a blade. I try to respond, but can't even form a coherent thought. My mouth won't form words so all that comes out is a groan of pain.
"I've got you. I've got you, just stay with me."
I feel arms lifting me. The world tilting, spinning. Then the fever drags me back under.