Neil didn't last a whole year on his own before he opened his mother's book.
She'd always warned him that he shouldn't even touch it. Many times over, he'd thought about getting rid of it—selling it to the highest bidder using his mother's contacts, or just destroying it. But every time he got the urge, he thought that she must have had a reason for keeping it all this time, and he chose to do so as well. Just in case.
Then his father had closed in on him again. The business of esoteric, magical items was a cutthroat one—so much power, literal power, passed down with every transaction—and Neil's mother hadn't just stolen from her husband; she'd become a so-called witch hunter, dedicating her life to killing every magical being, breaking every artefact she could find. All with her teenage son in tow.
She had trained Neil, but only so he could handle himself if he was in danger—her main lesson had always been to run. Being a hunter like her would take something more than just work—a price his mother had insisted he should never pay.
Her warning lost all meaning when they cornered Neil. He'd been caught unawares in his school's locker room—alone, of course, all because of his insistence to shower after everyone else. He'd thought he was clever, hiding his scars from anyone who might see, but all he'd earned was a lack of witnesses.
Neil didn't even know what the creatures his father had sent were called—some kind of humanoid with animalistic traits and a smell of blood surrounding them like a thick cloud—but he knew they'd come from him. And he doubted he could fight them with his notions of self-defense. His only advantage was that they hadn't seen him before he'd slipped into the shower room. But the room had no other exit, and they'd check in here eventually.
All he had with him was his duffel bag, the one he never parted from, and the book that lay at the heart of the pile of Neil's clothes and other belongings. He was still naked, his towel abandoned when he'd heard the creatures—better to sacrifice his modesty than his mobility.
He threw the book open on the floor, letting its internal magic find the page Neil needed, and knelt by it. The Hunter's Oath, the page read. Neil gulped nervously, but he read the incantation anyway, reached in his bag for his razor, and pricked his finger on it, smearing a drop of blood on the page.
The thick paper absorbed it without leaving a trace, the page turned black, and time stilled around Neil. The door, that had just begin to creak open beneath a monstrous paw, slowed and stopped. The vapor in the air from hot showers and bad ventilation paused mid-swirl. The razor Neil had dropped rested a couple inches above the floor.
For a moment, Neil felt frozen too, and it was only when he realized he was still breathing that he realized he wasn't—not by magic, anyway. Fear did grip at his chest, but he shoved it down and stood up. Had he misread the page? Was this a spell that would let him escape safely? His mother had always said human blood alone couldn't produce magic—but then again, maybe he wasn't completely human, considering his parents' activities.
He was almost at the door when a voice stopped him. "Careful. You're almost out of my reach."
Neil started at the sound, and turned around to find…a boy his age. He wasn't sure what he'd expected to find—the voice had sounded human, after all—but he couldn't help but feel underwhelmed. The boy was shorter than he was—which was saying a lot—and clad all in black, his clothes clashing against his fair skin and hair. If it weren't for the magic surrounding them—magic which the boy had called his—and the electricity in his blue gaze as he smiled at Neil, he could have fooled Neil into believing he was human.
Which could only mean one thing. "You're a demon."
The boy blinked, smile unwavering. "You're naked," he said, sounding bored more than anything.
Neil flinched. It was harder to ignore that fact when he wasn't thinking about running away from something, and even more so now that the boy—the demon—had pointed it out.
The demon huffed in what could have been laughter, or a sigh. "I can fix that."
"At what price?"
"You're about to pay the price anyway, for something else. Let's say this one is free of charge."
He didn't let Neil say anything more. He didn't move, either, but Neil sensed what he did anyway. It felt like a shiver, Neil's hair standing on end—the brush of magic. Then Neil was fully clothed—not in his own clothes, but something stylish and eye-catching, something people his age might wear to go out at night. Far too showy to Neil's liking, but at least it didn't seem to restrict his movements.
"What am I about to pay a price for, then?"
"You want to be a witch hunter."
Did he? He wasn't so sure about that. "I want to be rid of the creatures my father sent after me." Everything could be negotiated with demons—maybe he didn't have to go to such an extreme.
"These ones?" the demon said, nodding towards the door. "All right. I could take them out. Or take you out, let you run away."
"All right. What's your price?"
"But"—Neil hated that word and the way the demon said it—"you won't be rid of the creatures your father sent after you."
Neil understood the implication well enough, but he shook his head. "I can hide. My mother and I have been avoiding him for years."
"And that's worked wonders for the two of you. You, trapped here. Mary, dead."
His mother's name cut off Neil's breath. He narrowed his eyes at the demon, suspicious. "You know my mother?"
"Knew," he corrected. "Obviously. How do you think she became a witch hunter? There's only one way this is done. Namely, selling your soul to me or my brother."
Now Neil was certain that wasn't an option. "So you can…what, turn me into your slave later? Consume my entire being after I die to become stronger?" Then realization hit him, and he took a deep breath to keep his voice from breaking, but felt it break anyway when he asked, "Did you—to her?"
"I could also just let you die here and now," the demons aid, turning away as if to leave.
Neil couldn't afford that. "Wait! There has to be something else." He paused, racking his brain for ideas. "There wouldn't be any point to making me a witch hunter. I wouldn't know what to do with my abilities so quickly—I couldn't fight. Did you think I wouldn't figure out your trap?"
The demon slowly turned back to him, his bored look suddenly gone from his eyes. He said nothing, but Neil guessed that was encouraging enough.
"Get me away from here—or kill these creatures, I don't mind. Name your price. And when I'm safe, I'll think about becoming a witch hunter again."
"He wants me to take his word," the demon retorted, deadpan.
"Take my word on this: I know I die without your help, but I know I die if you make me a witch hunter and nothing else. I won't take your deal anyway, so you have nothing to lose by taking mine."
Silence hung between them for a moment, and Neil saw some of the vapor around them swirl, as if the demon was considering the option of just releasing his hold on time and letting Neil be devoured. Neil was getting ready to face death with dignity when the demon finally said, "We have a deal."
He held out his hand, but Neil shook his head. "The price?"
"The price is that I'll stay with you until you make your final decision."
Neil frowned. "What do you have to gain from that?"
"It's my price. Take it or leave it."
If there was a catch, Neil couldn't see it. "We have a deal," he said, clasping the demon's hand.
"Stay behind me," the demon said without missing a beat. He walked towards the door, and suddenly, time flowed again, and the door crashed open.
Two creatures poured in, a man whose traits were mixed with a bear's, and a woman with feathers, a dog's tail, and something along her left arm that didn't belong to any natural creature at all. Both were gorged on magic, grown too tall from it to make it through the doorway—so instead, they crashed through it, breaking chunks of wall as if it wasn't there.
The demon stood his ground before them—Neil could see the smile on his lips, still unchanged. Not even confident so much as uncaring, as far as Neil could see. Only when the creatures were on him did he move, ramming into the male and gripping one of his paws. The momentum sent the creature flying, but the limb remained in the demon's hand, along with parts of his shoulder and torso. Blood poured from the wound, and after just two seconds, bear hair followed it to the ground as the man was returning to human form. He was dead, and magic deserted him along with life.
All of it had happened too fast for the female to make a move, but when the demon dropped the now-human arm he was holding, she recoiled. Not running away—but taking her distance, gauging her new opponent while glancing at Neil behind him, pressed against the bathroom wall.
It took Neil too long to understand what she was assessing. In her blind devotion, she leapt across the room in a single bound—trying to get to Neil, to kill him as commanded, even if it cost her her life. He had no room to back away, no time to react—he'd barely taken one first step when he felt talons sinking into the flesh of his forearm, and he yelped in pain, sinking to his knees.
The pressure vanished almost immediately, but the pain was too much to take. He collapsed to the floor, his vision going black.
Suddenly Neil was conscious again, he was being rolled onto his back, and the demon knelt above him. "You're losing blood."
Neil managed a chuckle, then winced at the pain that followed. "No shit. I think she's venomous, too."
"Was."
"You sure like to correct me about who's dead." Maybe you can add me to the list, he thought—or maybe he said it out loud, judging by the way the demon's eyes widened ever so slightly.
Then the demon's hand closed on his arm. His body was on fire, but the demon's touch made his arm feel like it was melting. Then the rest of his body cooled, the pain receded, and finally, there was nothing there. Nothing but a wave of exhaustion.
Neil blinked rapidly. "What did you do?"
The demon got up. "We are not done, you and I."
He did not offer Neil help standing up, so Neil painfully pushed himself to his feet. He considered the scene around them: the two human-looking corpses, the blood splattered all over the floor and walls and even ceiling, Neil's duffel bag and his mother's book at the center of it all, a perfect circle of clean floor surrounding them.
People would ask questions. Someone would know Neil had been here. It was time to leave—quickly. Neil went to pick them up, put the book back in his bag, and secured it on his back, before turning to the demon.
"You healed me." The demon stared back silently, bored look back. Neil smirked in response. "Fine, you don't like me stating the obvious. How about this: you could have forced my hand. If you'd made me a witch hunter, I could have healed without your help, and you would have upheld our deal."
The demon considered him silently. Then, when Neil was thinking he wouldn't say anything, he opened his mouth. "I think I hear someone calling the police."
His words reminded Neil of the urgency of his situation. But he couldn't help but feel like the demon had chosen to stick around a little longer. And that left him on edge—demons rarely did anything without a purpose, and Neil couldn't figure this one out.
In the end, he just shrugged. "Fine. I'm Neil, by the way."
"For now," the demon said, and Neil couldn't even feel surprise that he would know Neil wasn't his real name.
Neil waited for the demon to add something, but instead, he walked into the locker room through the broken remnants of the doorway. It was all Neil could do to rush after him. "It's usually polite to offer your name in return."
"Even when you gave a fake one?"
Neil shrugged. "I am Neil. For now, as you said. A demon of all people can understand that identity is fluid. It's as true a name as you'll ever get from me."
They'd reached the end of the locker room, and walked in silence down the hallway that led outside the building. Then, as they stepped into daylight—the sun's warmth and light feeling almost shocking after what had just happened in the bathroom—the demon spoke again. "Andrew."
Neil was still blinking in the sunlight, and he turned to stare at him. "What?"
"You can call me Andrew."