DEMONS CRY TOO

Do you know, Percy, that each Demon, just as each Angel, is entrusted to a human? I'm Nico. Nico di Angelo. It's ironic, my surname, since I'm your Demon. Maybe you can't get, every night, when you turn the light off, that I'm there, leaned to the jamb of the door that you are too scared to close. My job would be to upset your dreams, to persecute you with the shadow of my black wings. But see you sleeping, with your ajar mouth from which strains the usual trickle of slim, can't not to rip me a smile every single time. I would never hurt you, Percy. Rather I would make they kill me instead of you. Because it's eighteen Years that I watch you sleep, eighteen years that I love watching you sleep, eighteen years that I love you.

At this point you could ask yourself why you never saw me before. The answer is easy. My wings are big and black, but they are silent and fast too, as the darkness is. As I am. I've always managed how to get away from you, when you turned your light on because you were scared, but this time is different. Do you maybe feel my presence? You abruptly turn to me and your mouth is twisted in a grimace of pure terror. What? Are you scared of my talons? Your eyes... I've never seen them before... have they always been so green and deep? I move a step to you, and you move one back, looking for an escape from me. Do I really scare you so much? You ask me who I am, and I smile, showing you my sharpened teeth. I explain you that I'm the one who upset your dreams when you were a little boy and the one who protected you while you grew up. As hypnotized, you come closer to me and you touch my wing. I shrink back, burned by the contact. The pain blinds me and I feel hard shivers running through my body to the spine. Crazy, isn't it? I can't be touched by the person I love. We are not like Angels. We are the darkness. And darkness isn't something that has to be loved; it's something to fear, to evade, to fight. But darkness is underrated. How many important things happen in the darkness? We are underrated too, maybe because we are an integral part of darkness... who knows... Just as the pain starts to fade, you ask me if it's only a dream. And I feel another pain. At the chest this time, where the only thing I've ever felt before was the sensation of couldn't stop the whipping of my wings, the first time I saw you. I answer that yes, it's only a dream, and you come back to you bed, as stunned, keeping staring at me. I come back to the jamb, hoping I can exit from a life in the same way that I exit from a room.

Well, Percy, maybe you don't believe in me, but I'm going to tell you a secret. Demons cry too. And now I'm crying, and all these tears that reach my lips have a ferrous and sweet taste. It's my blood's taste. My blood that's seething with anger and pain.

Suddenly, a dazzling light flood your room. I knew she would come. Annabeth, your Angel. She passes a white hand on your eyes and you close them, coming back to dream really. The blond Angel kisses you on the forehead and your mouth twists in that perfect, fabulous smile that I love so much.

Annabeth gives me a triumphant look, and then she unfolds her feathery wings and flies through the window that you keep always open.

She's right.

Nobody loves a Demon.

Angels are loved.

Demons are feared.

And that's what I am: just a Demon with wrinkled wings and sharpened horns. And you will never love me.

You'll love her. And I will be forever alone with my blood tears.