AN: I rewrote Chapter 5. If you read the previous version please read the updated version as future events may not make sense without the updated context.
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The weekend kicked off with a bothersome start, waking up from what could only be described as embarrassingly X-rated dreams, but it was still better than being hungover and miserable. Fortunately, I hadn't overdone it with the beer last night and didn't have to suffer through those consequences two days in a row.
And one glance out the window had me optimistic that today would be fantastic, because the clouds were dark and thick and a wall of them was starting to solidify on the horizon. Today was the day Rei and I were going storm-chasing, and I couldn't wait. Once again though, my intuition could not have been more inaccurate.
I drove to Rei's place in record time, and then texted her of my arrival. She was renting an apartment near downtown in a not-so-great area, but it was within walking distance to both restaurants and shopping, which even I had to admit was advantageous. Remembering her melted phone, and not sure if she'd replaced it yet, I laid on the horn until she came out.
"Bitch, would you knock that off, my neighbors are going to bury me! Besides, I already got a new phone, I texted you about this storm, remember?" She threw herself into the passenger seat in a huff, tossing her purse into the backseat.
I grinned and pushed on the horn a couple more times for good measure. She smacked the back of my head, and laughing all the way we were off to go tornado hunting.
It had been chilly for a couple weeks, with a late-frost just last Monday, but a warm front was moving in today I was hoping we'd see at least one funnel cloud when the warm air hit the stagnant cold air. Rei and I had been going storm-chasing together since we were in high school, it was one of many shared interests that brought us together. But unlike me, Rei got nerves when she was behind the wheel chasing a storm, so I was always appointed as the driver for these excursions by virtue of being the only one brave enough to keep up with the weather.
It's an hours drive out of Denver to reach the eastern part of Colorado where most of the interesting weather events happen, and as we drove Rei was getting all the dirt from me about Mina and her new beau, and I was successfully avoiding the subject of the demon's visit to the party. I was quite proud of myself until I slipped up and mentioned how I left without Mina.
"You ditched her? Oh, she must have loved that."
"I'm sure she was fine, I mean she was with whats-his-face and the demo-" I bit my tongue I stopped talking so fast. Rei had lulled me into a false sense of comfort discussing Mina and the party, but I didn't want her to have to worry about the demon too. "And the...demo-nstration they were putting on was pretty convincing that she'd go home with him."
I must have hesitated too long because Rei threw me some doubtful side-eye, but she didn't question my flub.
Why didn't I want her to know about the demon at the party anyway, why did it feel like some clandestine secret I should keep? It was probably just because of those wildly inappropriate dreams. Rei should know about the demon at the party, I persuaded myself. What if he showed up in her classes or at a party she was at and attacked her? I'd just need to choose my words carefully so I didn't cause her a heart attack.
"Listen...you remember that demon from the other night?"
"Hard to forget," she was still staring at me like only a best friend can. Its that look where they know you aren't telling them something, and they're still deciding whether or not to force it out of you, because they know they can.
"Well," I cleared my throat, second guessing my decision to tell her. "He kind of showed up at the party last night and-"
"WHAT!?" Rei was giving a physical testimony of why I was the better choice as driver, as she had practically stood up in her seat. If she'd been behind the wheel today, we'd be in a ditch right now. I couldn't really blame her though, my reaction at seeing the demon at the party last night had been similarly alarmed.
"Yeah, he was just kinda there out of nowhere. And I told him we didn't mean to summon him and that we didn't want a pact or anything, and I asked him to just forget about it, but he said he wouldn't forget that we did that spell." Taking my eyes off the road I saw that Rei had a vein in her forehead that was visibly throbbing, and there was more white to her eyes than color at the moment. She was breathing heavily so I put an arm on her shoulder to calm her down. "Look I'm sure its fine. He left after that and he probably won't bother either of us again." I didn't believe that last bit for a minute, but sometimes you have to lie to yourself when you're trying to convince someone else. And my memory from last night was about as clear as the weather, even without getting completely wasted I'd definitely had enough to not remember things with crystal clarity. Like had he really vanished into thin air? Surely that was just dulled visual reflexes. We drove in silence for a bit until the car hit a pothole, which seemed to snap Rei out of it.
"How did he find us?"
I shrugged, honestly not knowing the answer. My best guess was my wild-magic flare up and I still didn't want Rei to know about that particularly eventful aspect of my life.
"Did he attack you? Mark you in any way?" She'd grabbed one of my arms and began turning it over, to which I made a noise of annoyance as I was still driving.
"Sometimes just one touch is enough for them to get a hold on you."
"A hold on me?" A shiver ran down my spine. Had he touched me last night? I didn't think so, I vaguely recalled moving away from him.
"Yeah, demons are tricky. Some of them can manipulate or even control humans, or work magic on us. What's this?" she'd rolled up my sleeve and was poking the bruise on my arm from where I'd donated blood.
"Oh, its nothing. I went to the clinic to give some plasma, that's all."
She audibly sighed in relief. "Thank god. He didn't touch you or do anything to you then, right?"
"I don't think so." Rei leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes and blowing out another breath. "But, you know, in case I'm wrong, maybe you could tell me a little bit more about demons? Just so that I'm prepared if he shows up again." And so that he can't get a hold on me, I added mentally. Because that didn't sound ominous at all.
"There are different kinds of demons, and I'm not a demonology expert." I shot her a smirk, she was probably closer to an occult expert than anyone I'd ever met, but I didn't tease her for choice in hobbies. I couldn't throw stones when my own situation wasn't exactly normal. "They have different abilities, and I know a little about a few different types and about them in general."
"So tell me what you do know. The bits you haven't already told me," I encouraged.
"Well, he didn't have any visible signs of being a demon, which means-"
"Wait, visible signs?"
"Like horns, or a tail, or wings."
"Oh," I said, feeling sheepish. To me his whole appearance had practically screamed demon both times I'd seen him, from the calculating eyes to the immaculate clothing and fuzzy impression of danger that radiated off him like cologne. But Rei was right, horns and wings would have been a much more clear dead giveaway. Distressingly, I wasn't convinced that horns and a tail would have diminished his allure at all. What was wrong with me?
"Which means," she continued, undaunted, "that he's probably either a contracting demon, a shapeshifting demon, an energy-feeder, or an arch demon."
"I think you're going to have to go real slow for me through those again, and explain as much as you know about each like I was born yesterday."
Rei rolled her eyes. "You joke but to a demon, you practically were born yesterday. A lot of them are as old as dirt, and immortal." I swallowed a sudden lump in my throat.
"Like un-killable immortal, or just really really old immortal?"
"I don't know, Serena! I told you I'm not an expert. Assume yes to both until I can get home to do more reading about it." Rei sounded like she was getting upset again so I pressed my lips shut and waited for her to continue when she was ready. "Contract demons are the most common, they look basically like us. Really all of these types of demon do, they all look humanoid. Contract demons make pacts with humans, and when the pact is completed they eat the human's soul. They coerce humans through physical contact and lies, which is why I asked if he'd touched you. If they get their hands on you, they can make you believe basically anything."
My eyes must have been as wide as saucers, because my brain was suddenly in overdrive. Souls were edible? And that demon could have tried to eat mine? Or he could have tricked me into making a pact if he'd grabbed me? I was in deep shit if he was a contract demon. We were getting pretty close to the darkest spot in the cloud line where tendrils were forming on the edges, so I tried to split my attention between memorizing everything Rei was saying and making sure I didn't drive us straight into a twister.
"Shapeshifting demons are just like their name. They can look like whatever they want to, or at least some of them can. I think the most well-known are werewolves, which are the whole half-man half wolf hybrids. They don't care about your soul, but they will still eat you alive. Most of their abilities are enhancements like strength and speed."
My mind went immediately back to the vanishing act the demon had pulled at the party and my mouth was dry again. Was the demon a werewolf? It would have explained how he disappeared so quickly. The thought of being eaten alive turned my stomach and I had to tilt my head back slightly to keep the nausea down. "These can't all be real," I mumbled, trying to wrap my brain around everything she was telling me.
"As far as I've read, they are. Energy feeders eat people like werewolves but in different ways. Some of them eat souls, some of them eat other things. Like vampires drink blood, incubus feed on sexual energy, reapers eat souls. They've all got their specialties in skills too, like a vampire can get a hold of you with their eyes, but an incubus can get a hold on you through touch." So far these descriptions really weren't helping me narrow it down at all, I could have thrown a dart at a list of humanoid demons and had about the same luck guessing which type he was.
"Arch demons are the most dangerous, they're the oldest and they've got the most powers too. Usually they don't need or want much of anything, they're the ones in a lot of myths that are just killing or tricking people for their own amusement. Sometimes they'll pretend to be other types of demons too. If he's an arch demon we are royally fucked."
"How do we stay clear of all the different kinds of powers that all these demons have?" I wasn't sure I wanted to hear the answer but I felt like this was critical knowledge for self-preservation.
Rei looked sideways at me, eyebrows knit together. "We're pretty much effed on that front. You can't listen, touch, look at, or in general be around a demon without risking their abilities being used on you, especially if you don't know what kind of demon it is. Which we don't."
"That's a wrinkle," I groaned. "So just stay away, do not pass go, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?"
"Let's just pray he doesn't show up again, because its really not in our control. We can keep our distance but it won't matter if he's a shapeshifter, vampire or arch demon, because of the increased speed. And we can't really avoid physical contact if he's faster than us."
I banged my head against the steering wheel. He was definitely faster than me, he was faster than any human. Even though I'd been a little tipsy at the party, in the harsh light of day there was still no way to explain how he'd just vanished without accepting that he definitely had enhanced speed or teleportation abilities. Both did not bode well for Rei and I.
Just as I was about to bemoan our bad luck in summoning a demon, I heard a distinctive howling like the roaring of a train in the distance. A distraction is just what I needed, and it seemed like the storm fronts were going to give me one. "3 o'clock, tornado," I announced, flooring it towards the spiralling dirt ahead of us. My jelopy wasn't the best for speed or precision, but it was sturdy and held together as we flew over the gravel roads. As we got closer the form of the tornado became less and less recognizable until a majority of the horizon was taken up by a massive vortex of brown and lightning. It was a behemoth of ferocity, sowing pure chaos and ruin. It was magnetizing to behold.
"Wow, that's going to be at least an F-4!" Rei shouted over the horrendous din, whistling through her teeth. Grabbing her phone off the dashboard, she started trying to record a video of it as we drove. "Careful you don't get in too close, this one looks like a super-cell!" I watched as what looked like a farm house in the distance was consumed and ripped apart by the tornado, flying up in chunks of wood and concrete.
The noise was deafening, even with both windows shut and both of us screaming it was difficult to hear. "Its a real monster!" I shouted back, swerving to avoid a hunk of debris as it came spinning towards us. It was hard to tell with how fast it had flown at us, but it looked like it might have been a telephone pole. With my full focus on the road, we both screamed when a vibrating bang hit the roof as something collided with the top of the car.
"We're too close!" Rei screamed, "Go back west!" The wind was pushing against the vehicle with such force now that I had to keep the wheel turned slightly to the right just to keep from the car being pushed into the adjacent lane.
My heart was pumping fast now though, and I could feel adrenaline kicking in. "Just a little closer!" I screamed back, only letting up on the pedal a little. We were so close now I could make out bits of the farm house from within the updrafts. I wanted to reach out and touch the storm, feel it rattle my bones. If I could just get a little closer...
A chunk of something hit the passenger mirror so hard it ripped clean off, leaving a hunk of severed wires and bent metal behind, and the impact rippled through the interior of the car.
"I SAID STOP!" Rei yelled, yanking the wheel hard towards herself and forcing me to make an unplanned U-turn. I screamed as we spun, pulling us out of it just in time to avoid the car flipping over. The tornado was still rampaging behind us, its destructive path leaving the landscape trampled in its wake. It was moving more into the distance now that we were driving in the opposite direction though, and I felt a pang of disappointment. The reverberating explosion of noise was now a dull bellowing.
"What the hell were you doing? You could have killed us!" I yelled at Rei as she took her hand off the wheel.
"YOU ALMOST DID KILL US!" she screamed, wiping the back of her hands across her eyes. It was only then that I pulled my gaze off the tornado and noticed that she was crying. "Take me back," she demanded, shuddering as she sobbed. Disappointment transformed into guilt.
"Rei, I had-" We were far enough away from the funnel cloud now I didn't need to shout, so I lowered my voice. "I had everything under control. You know I'm a good driver. We were perfectly safe. I just wanted to get a little closer."
Rei had buried her face in her hands, her dark violet hair hiding her features as she continued to cry. After several long minutes, her crying softened and she pulled her hands away with a sniffle. Her face was a wet angry red with thick mascara lines leaking down her cheeks, and I knew that if she wasn't so frightened she would have been pissed.
"Perfectly safe," she spat, and it was the most venom in her voice I'd ever heard. "I told you," she sucked in a deep breath, still breathing unevenly. "I told you we were too close. You didn't listen."
"But we weren't!" I insisted, suddenly defensive. "We could have gotten at least another mile closer and-"
"Are you blind, suicidal, or just that stupid?" I was right, she was livid underneath the fear.
Rei pointed an accusatory finger at the dent in the ceiling of the car and the severed remains of the passenger mirror. "You drove us so close that you couldn't even dodge the flying rubble. Did you even think about what would happen if something hit, or went through, the windshield? Or if something big enough hit us from the side and knocked the car sideways? That tornado would have lifted us off the ground in seconds and we'd both be dead! We've chased dozens of storms and you've NEVER been this reckless. You should have turned around the second I told you we were too close, what the hell is wrong with you?"
"Excuse me?" I could feel my own anger welling up. How dare she blame me and complain when she wasn't even a good enough driver to chase storms without my help. "I drove MY car out to chase this storm with you, because you wanted to go chase it but were too chicken to chase it yourself! And I always drive my car out for these storms with you, and you never pay a cent when it gets damaged like it did today. You probably won't even chip in for the gas!" I was yelling again, even though the background ruckus the tornado was making was barely audible.
"Fuck the money! You and I both know this isn't about that!" she swiped her hands across her eyes again, smudging her mascara worse. She was screaming too, now. "This is more than that and you know it, you've been different ever since he died and you won't even talk about it! Not with me or anyone! What the hell kind of friend are you?"
"What kind of a friend am I?" My knuckles were white on the wheel. I could feel tension strain my muscles all the way up to my shoulder blades. I was so mad I couldn't see straight, but luckily the road was wide and straightforward, no curves for miles. A dreadful calm descended over me, like a hand pressing down on my anger. I felt like I might implode and explode at the same time. "I'm the only friend you've got. You're too self-absorbed and callous to keep anyone else around you, and I guess I'm the only one dumb enough to stay." I spat. I could hear the bitterness in my own voice, but I couldn't stop myself now, I was on a roll. "And you know what the best part is? You think MY side of this friendship is the issue. And you know what, you're probably right. I go right along with it, every time you ask me to do something insanely stupid. Because I know I'm all you've got." I could feel tears starting to burn the corners of my eyes too as we entered the city proper.
"That's not tru-" Rei started but I cut her off.
"No, you shut up and listen. You texted ME to come with you to Yaten's rager, two weeks before finals. You invited ME to come storm chasing with you. You asked ME about doing that stupid fucking spell that you thought would-" I stopped, flexing and unclenching my fingers from the wheel as I navigated the familiar streets. My hands were beginning to cramp up from the tension. "You know what, it doesn't matter. Because even after all this you'll still be the one calls ME up asking for something else next time." I let out a harsh bark of laughter, and it tasted like acid in my mouth. "And you know what, I'm such a fool I'll probably still say yes. So don't you DARE try to make this about me and him."
"Pull over," Rei ordered. I swerved into the shoulder, slamming on the brakes. "I'll get a taxi. I'm not spending one more second trapped listening to this." She grabbed her bag out of the back seat, slamming the door and I smashed on the accelerator as soon as she was clear of the car, not looking back.