Down with the Demoness
an excerpt

“Koda, your eyes. What the hell’s up with them?” Ace asked, as he brought a hand towards her face.

Her eyes widened in a sudden fear and for some unknown reason, she swatted his hand away and turned her back towards him. She looked down and away before she walked off, leaving the city and Ace standing in it.

“Hey! Koda! What the hell?” He yelled as he chased after her. He dashed in front of her to try to stop her, but she simply walked around him as if nothing was going on. This only pissed him off more, as he was concerned by the strange red hue in her eyes, and her sudden odd behavior. It irritated him more that here they were, and she was refusing to talk about things. He followed her down the path, and a fair distance walk to the mountain path. “Will you just stop it!” Ace yelled at her.

She stopped in her path, and put a hand on her hip, staring ahead of her at the path leading up the side of the mountain, though around its peak. “You wouldn’t understand,” she replied in a low tone, almost more like a growl.

“Try me,” Ace replied. “After everything I’ve gone through to get this far, you think I won’t understand? Try me.”

Vashkoda folded her arms and continued to stare in front of her. She bit her lip, finding that she was holding back tears while wanting to scream and kill something all at the same time. Was this the feeling of the ‘demon down in the demoness’ that Argan had referred to? Was it consuming her slowly? Would it take hold of her? This was something that Sir Mugsin Randalia never explained to her, and now she was beginning to wish that she had asked these kinds of questions. And what about the whole traveling with an Angel thing? Was she wrong to accept help from Ace since he was now an Angel, even though he did it just for her and they grew up together?

“I’m waiting. Why are your eyes red? What’s with your attitude?”

“I shouldn’t be traveling with you,” Vashkoda blurted out.

“What? Why? Because I’m naturally a human?”

“No, because you’re an Angel,” she replied, half looking over her shoulder towards him, staring at the trees on the side of the path.

“Okay, and the Angel that I saw told me the same thing and tried to recruit me into the society. Koda, it doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters!” Vashkoda barked back at him. “This is my destiny. This is what I was born into! I have an active part in all this that I must play. I have to find my place in this society, and I reek of Angel.”

Ace took a few more steps towards her, finding his anger more and more difficult to control. “How many more times do I have to say it? It doesn’t matter!”

“And I’m saying it does!” Vashkoda finally turned around completely towards him and stared him down. “I am some crazy creature that defies most of the laws, and I’m a half Demoness raised as a Christian. I have to figure out what I’m doing and where I’m going. I have a role to play, and all of a sudden I have to be part of this society.”

“Listen, you started this out to rescue Lance, right?”

“But-“

“Right?”

“Y… Yeah…” Vashkoda trailed.

“Okay. So I did all this stupid crazy shit in my normal stupid crazy way so that I could travel along and help you bring Lance home. That’s it. Kapeesh. You don’t have to belong to this society. I don’t plan on taking any part in this Angelic society. I don’t care about it. Come on, how is it any different then our government? Just because you’re born into it doesn’t mean you have to care about it or anything, right? I mean, who’s really been listening to Ms. Cidesco’s ramblings on the Presidential debates? It’s been like four of five people in class talking about it. Nikki just texts all the time, and I, well I mean I was concentrating on you and Lance, but even if you guys were there, I wouldn’t have been paying attention. And I sure as hell know Lance wouldn’t have either. Would you?”

“Well… maybe a little,” Vashkoda replied. Ace smiled as he found she was slipping back into the shy sweet Vashkoda that he knew so well.

“Oh come on, all it would’ve taken was for Nikki to turn around and gossip about something on the team, and you would have been distracted right away. Or right, how about Lance turning around and talking to you. Come on, at the beginning of the year, you would have been blushing like a little girl!”

“But I’m not any more Ace,” Vashkoda replied. “You haven’t seen all of the things I’ve done before you met with me. I’ve killed people. I’ve destroyed innocent lives, and shattered innocent dreams.”

Ace walked next to her, staring at the mountain path in front of him. “Come on now, how many of us are actually innocent anymore?”

“I… I don’t know…” Vashkoda stared at the ground, finding a small plant growing next to the little pebble by her boot.

“So what happened with your eyes?”

“The redness comes out when the ‘demon down within the demoness’ pushes itself forward.”

“So you’re like a split personality?”

“I don’t think so… I’m not really sure. I think it’s something like lower demons are unable to control themselves at time, while Demonesses are able to. I don’t know… it really scared me. He antagonized me, and I just sort of flipped out, drew my dagger on him, and got my answers.”

“Well, that’s a friendly conversation to some people,” Ace joked.

“It’s not funny. It scared me.”

“No time to be scared,” Ace replied. “No time to feel it. If I had done that, I would’ve never saved your ass back when you got captured.”

“Please, I was just about to jump when you showed up. I was just curious,” Vashkoda replied. “But I see no reason not to be worried.”

“If it still bothers you when you get home, you can talk to Mr. Ian Woon and get some information about it. I’m sure he can explain it to you,” Ace answered. “Now let’s go. Once we start climbing the mountain, we’ll get a few more hours of sunlight. I’m sure we’ll find some cave along the way for the night.” Ace reached out with his ungloved hand to touch her gloved hand. He began walking, pulling her along. She followed, her heart still burdened with her own confusion about herself.

As they walked, Ace struck up a conversation with her, similar to the one they just had about her. “Sides, you don’t think I’m a little freaked? I mean, if there is some great destiny or goal, then I just screwed myself. I just pissed God off something fierce by going ‘Yeah hey, great plan, but I uh, decided to do something totally different.’ I mean, I think people do it all the time, where they decide to do something that God probably doesn’t want them to do… But man, I really screwed up. He’s probably sitting there like ‘Shit, this kid is an idiot. What am I going to do with him now?’ And I’m just kind of sitting here laughing and traveling along. I mean, man, what the hell did I do? I was going so fast I really didn’t have time to think about it until now. I was so in the moment, so passionate. You disappeared, and it was like ‘Okay, have to find Koda’ then it turned into ‘How can I get to Koda?’ And I mean, the rest is history. We’ve gone this whole time, I spent the time trying just to get to you and everything. It seemed like we’d never get to this point, this dimension where Lance is…”

“Do you regret it?” Vashkoda asked as they hiked along the path, using the few hours of sun that was left for them.

Ace thought for a moment. “No…” He was silent for another moment as she thought about it. “Absolutely not. No. Not a chance…”

“How come?” Vashkoda asked, looking up at him as the wind breezed by them.

“I feel like for one of the first times in my life, I’m doing what I want to do. I’m being who I always said I wanted to be. I guess in all this midst and chaos and crazy confusion, I feel more alive then I ever have. It’s almost like I’m perpetually in a football game, in on the action, hearing my own heart pound, hearing the crowd roar. Every move I make could make or break the game. I could make us lose the game, or even worse, get someone hurt. It’s the same out here in this crazy universe. Every action matters. I don’t have to sit there and study because someone told me to do so. I don’t have to go to school and get a generic job because someone told me I needed to. I’m out here, making sure you’re safe, to rescue one of my best friends. I’m closer to you now then I’ve ever been with anyone before. So I guess that’s why I think this whole Angel and Demon thing is all bullshit. What the hell does it matter? We’re working together just fine. I don’t think it’s in our blood to fight each other. I’ve never felt anything but the need to protect you and be your friend, even more so after becoming a half Angel… And then I just hope that God will forgive me for screwing up his plan.” Ace laughed slightly at the end of his explaination.

Vashkoda smiled for a moment, but then frowned as she shuffled across the path. “I’m not one of His creatures…” she trailed off. “How could He feel any love towards me? Not just any demon, but the highest of the demons in the Demonic Society. What need does He have for someone like me? What could I possibly have to provide? I’m just some Demon… I mean, after all this, I haven’t seen any proof that He exists…”

“What, you thought that by dimension jumping it would get you closer to finding proof that God exists? That’s a little silly of you, don’t you think Koda?” Ace asked. “Besides, you’re still human, even if you’re a demon. I think He’s still watching out for you. I think He’s still there protecting you. I mean, He didn’t keep your mother out of the churches or anything… He didn’t keep her from praying and talking to Him. Your mother must have found something, or else I’m sure she would have abandoned it and gone back to her normal life. And if God loved her, then I have no doubt that that same love is there for you.” There was a long pause between them as Vashkoda contemplated his words. “And hey, worst comes to worst, you could always get the demon exorcised out of you, right? I mean, people do it on TV all the time!”

Ace quickly closed his mouth once he saw the glare from Vashkoda, and was at first unable to figure out whether it was a serious glare or a playful glare. His question was soon answered as she jumped at him, trying to tackle him, while yelling that he was such a jerk. And it was enough for him. He knew that he had provided comfort for her. He knew that she was at least not in some sort of serious deep thought.

Though suddenly in the mess, she burst out into tears. He did the only thing that he knew he could do, and that was to stop and hold her. It killed him that she was in pain, but at least she was not keeping it all bottled up to herself as she was doing before he had made her argue with her. He smiled as he remembered is father’s advice that sometimes the only way to get the truth out was to get into an argument. And if that failed, lots of booze never hurt in making truth worm its way out of someone.