Daimon, DANIELLE BOLGER [read my book .txt] 📗

If he couldn't be revived after six months of the shooting, then I would personally grant him his death wish.

I placed the painkillers and antidepressants by the glass that had fallen to the carpet as my father took his final doze. I pressed my fingertips to his neck where my science teacher had taught me, just two weeks earlier, to find the carotid artery. I could feel no movement. My father, Edward Kirra, was free to find my mother, Sarah Kirra, if any such other world existed. I didn't believe there was, but he did. That was why he could not do it himself. Committing suicide meant a direct ticket to hell, and my mother would surely have been in heaven. I liked the idea though, that they could find happiness with one another again.

I pulled out my cell and called for an ambulance, deciding it had been long enough. I told them that my father didn't seem to be breathing and, “Oh my God, there's all these pills on the ground.” I then started to elaborate, saying that I came to check on my father after his movie finished. He had fallen asleep like he always did when watching films, but when I tried to stir him awake, he wouldn't respond. I told them that he had to be okay and that they could pump his stomach, and that would make him better. The lady on the line was very calm and reassuring. She asked me for my address and instructed me to feel for my father's chest. She also instructed me to perform CPR if I knew how, or to ask for help from family or friends if they were around. I told her that some people came to school to teach us and that I had my first aid certificate. I then put down the phone and started compressions on the man in front of me.

I did not tell the emergency department that I knew that my attempts would be futile, that I had mixed the lethal dose of drugs in my father's scotch glass just before playing the movie. I did not tell them that I watched as he sipped on the drink and let it slip from his grasp after only ten minutes. I did not tell them that I watched as his eyes fell closed and witnessed the last rise of his chest. I did not tell them that I had already checked his pulse before heading up to my room to do my homework. I did not tell them that my father was dead, but of course, he had already been dead for six months.

****

Rose was staring joyously as he watched my face contort. It was true; I never really wanted to admit it to myself. That was why I made that man out to be a stranger, but he wasn't, he was my father. He had fallen deep into the abyss of depression where nothing could retrieve him. I told myself it was not really him; my father would never fall prey to such weakness; and that something must have died inside him the day my mother passed. Psychologically, he was broken, and already dead. What was left was a hollow shell. My claim was that I killed him out of pity, but that was not entirely true.

It was not pride, as Rose suggested, though it was a gross embarrassment to refuse friends over to my place because of the living corpse on the couch. He may have been empty, but he was still my father. This moment was what made me accept the truth—that I killed my Dad, and that I did it out of anger.

I had to; he led me to it. All my life he had coached me to be strong, never to shed a tear, never to cringe at the sight of blood. I had to be tough, impermeable to incapacitating emotions; I had to be like him. If I followed by my father's lead then maybe I would have the fortitude to save this crumbling city, but then my idol transformed. First to a puppet, then gnarled into a blathering mess. In the end, I could no longer recognize the great man I once admired. All I saw was another weak, useless life. One that had failed me and that made me angry. He was meant to stand up for justice, protect the city and guide his children in that path, but instead, he gave in to weak emotions. Sentiment—that was what made him fail. That was what drove me to kill him. From that moment on, I never regretted murdering my father.

“Get off me!” I roared as that same hatred filled me again, an old fury that always laid at the inner most part, hard and dense like the inner core of the Earth. It was so tightly compacted that I had not felt it since those few months as a teen, but it broiled to the surface now and exploded out of me with pestilential heat. The water started bubbling violently all around me. Rose himself even pulled his hands away.

A violent eruption threw him several meters away, and as I pulled myself upright from the boiling kettle, the displaced water plummeted down upon my steaming form.

Rose pulled himself from the water with a disarmed expression that morphed into a wide grin. “I see you've found your fire. Now we can have some fun.”

He rushed toward me. I sidestepped, evading his fist. His other hand was thrown out, but I shifted from this, too. He came back with the first limb as a knife-hand to my neck. I leaned my body backward and dipped my head behind. The hand sliced through the air above my face, with an inch to spare.

Taking advantage of my adverted gaze, he came with an uppercut to my belly, but my internal sight was switched on and those twinkling fairies allowed me to twist through the air and dodge the attack. When I landed, Rose's eyes sparkled.

He came back with a: jab, jab, back-kick combo, which I dodged, dodged, and blocked. Then countered with a roundhouse kick of my own. I thought I had him, but within a blink, he was on my flank with another uppercut. It landed and bruised my battered ribs.

I hooked back at him, but he blocked. I went for a front kick to the jewels, which he deflected with his hands. He pushed my leg back to the ground and elbowed me in the temple, dizzyingly. Before I had a moment to think, there was a smooth hand right at my face—I sidestepped from just in time. Not wasting a moment, I threw an uppercut at his abdomen, then a hook back to his face—they both connected.

He stumbled back a few steps and stole a moment to brush the back of his hand across his cheek. He pulled it forward, saw the small streak of blood and gave a soft excited laugh. “Yes, this is it!”

I went back in with a jab, then knife-hand to his neck. He evaded both. He dropped, cutting through the water, and in a whirlwind he swept under my feet. I collapsed onto my back and rolled to the side, just in time to miss him landing his dripping shoes to my face.

Lunging off my hands, I launched my legs into the air. With a turn of fate, I landed on top of his body. My boot pressed just under his chin so that his alarmed eyes wavered beneath the agitated water. His hands reached out to my leg to throw me off, but I concentrated my energy into that limb and drove it down with greater force. In an instant, his hand glowed with opaque intensity as it ripped into the flesh in my calf. With a pained yelp, I released my hold of him and stumbled backward.

Rose needed no time in recovery; he came right at me with a sharp jab to my cheekbone. He dropped, and swept under my other foot. I fell back again but this time, I was ready as I flipped onto my hands, leapt up and spun backward to reclaim my footing.

He rushed in during my moment of vertigo and struck to slice into my throat. I missed his hand by millimeters. He went for a stab to my gut, I sidestepped that one as well, but my healing leg was slow and dragged me back. As his blade-hand breezed past me, it made an incision a couple of centimeters deep.

For some uncanny reason, I thought of the sharp cuts Valentine always made into his victims. I had always thought they were due to a blade, as did the coroners, but with the speed of his swipes I could understand how a blunt end could slice so cleanly. There was that dagger, though. He did indeed use that for his targets; he boasted it so proudly only minutes earlier. I wondered what an attack from such a mysterious knife would do to a daimon.

I skirted past another thrust towards my shoulder. It was not entirely missed, as this fresh strike also produced crimson fluid.

I leapt into the air, swirling my legs out to him in a flurry. He dodged, backing away a little, allowing me to keep swinging a little distance on.

He shot a jab-jab-jab-hook, which I kept sidestepping, edging back; making my way closer to Sandra. He jabbed, and side-kicked, following up with a masked back-kick, which I managed to dodge, all the while flying furtive glances to the floor of the lagoon.

Another uppercut, jab, and then front kick, which was a balk, as he slipped deftly into another back kick. The heel of his wet shoe drove right into my sternum, forcing the bone to crack, and I soared through the air backward, this time not of my volition. Before I even landed, he was back at me again, with his forefoot fluidly connecting against my forehead. I plummeted to the lagoon's floor with a hard crash. Water was sprayed in a great radius. Sandra was involved in the shower, as the drops drizzled her faint skin.

I put out my hands to rise myself up, but halted. Rose took this moment of hesitation and threw another foot below my chin. I was thrown backward again. Just before the somersault was to end, I broke in with my limbs and crouched there, waiting for the next attack. It didn't come. He still lingered at the center of the pool, his back to me, hovering over Sandra. He had a hand raised, with fingers locked together into a blade, and began to plunge down.

“I don't fucking think so!” I roared, sailing through the air. As I fell, I outstretched my hand and drove a real blade into the center of my foe. He became deathly still until finally a cough reverberated through him. There was blood at the entry of my slice, which had splattered onto Sleeping Beauty.

“You found my dagger,” Rose stated.

“That's right. I picked it up just before you clipped my chin here and now,” I twisted the silver harshly, “it's time for my counter attack.”

He slumped.

Yes, that's it! The blade, whatever it is, has some connection to daimons and using it here weakens him. With this strike, I will destroy him! I sung internally, triumphant.

Then his hand whipped back behind him, retracted the short sword from his body and out of my brief hold, flipped around and injected the blade into me. This all happened in a flash.

I coughed, spraying blood into his face. I would have fallen limp to the ground if it were not for his tender hand cradling me. I watched, dazed, as the through-and-through slice on him started closing in seconds.

“You seem quite paralyzed as if this dagger has some effect on you.” He pulled it out and shoved me to the water. “Idiot. What did you think; it has some kind of mystical power? It's a piece of metal.” He spat, so unlike the altar-boy I envisioned him as.

“This dagger,” he continued, “is no more than a trinket. Some family heirloom I took from a noble that was brave enough to challenge the Cardiac Animus.” He guffawed. “I do like it, though. At the time, silver was very expensive, you see, and that was what gave the people of the town the notion that my kind could be harmed by it. Of course, they were wrong.”

I took a quick glance at my belly, and indeed, it was healing; no special properties there. Damn.

Rose admired the intricacies of the weapon. “Thanks for returning it to me. I would be devastated if such a nostalgic item was lost.”

He came at me again with the dagger poised right in front of him. He took a swipe, and I sidestepped again, but the blade did not twinkle in my mind's eye like his body did, so I misjudged its range. It cut me deep and pulled across, slicing through my ribs with ease, and right through to my lungs underneath. As I coughed, blood flowed freely. I knew that if he had entered my