[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 6 - Damon, Landon

Feeling came back first, numb needles stabbing throughout his body until it reached a crescendo and began to fade. And then breath, sharp and fast.

The fire was gone.

Dr. Mackie hovered over him. "Damon?" His face was gray, the furrows too deep.

Damon coughed and cleared his throat. "I'm...fine," he croaked. His voice sounded odd. Sharper. And wrongly familiar.

Dr. Mackie handed Damon back the halo knife, wrapped in a towel. "It heated up, I think it needs returned to your arm."

Damon took the knife. His muscles ached like after a day of hard work. And for once, his broken left arm didn't hurt. He carefully flexed it, extending it to length. No pain.

The halo retracted in his hand, and he pressed the bead back into his arm.

He fully noticed his hands and arms, then. Darker, swarthy. Like Alexi had been. He turned his hands over and stared at his palms. The shapes of his hands were different, but they didn't feel unfamiliar. Shouldn't they?

"I need to check you over," Dr. Mackie said. There was a nervous edge to his voice. The doctor wouldn't meet his eyes.

* * *

"No," Oji said, taking a step back from Alexi. "Oh gods, no. Oh gods of the stars that burn, protect us from the demons of the Void."

"Stop it," Campa said, shoving off from her desk. She brushed Oji aside, and levered down with her crutch to bend over Alexi's faintly glowing body.

It wasn't a steady glow, Luc noted with cool detachment. There was a wave pattern, and the glow was stronger at Alexi's head than at his feet.

The prayer that Oji had spoken registered. "Void demon?" he said. "You said Void demon?"

Oji was still backing toward the hatch, the whites of her eyes rimming the brown. "Cold to the touch. Blood made of silver. Eyes like molten gold--oh, gods!" She crushed her fists to her face. "His eyes--he said they were implants!"

Campa shot Luc a hard look and jerked her head at Oji.

What did she want him to do? He was...numb. No, he wasn't numb. His brain had just not caught up with processing what he was seeing.

"There are no such things as Void demons," he said.

"The hell there aren't!" Oji stabbed a finger at her husband. "I've been trying to understand why my skin crawls when I've stayed with him these last few days. When he--when I should be--" She wrapped her arms around herself.

"Gods, Oji, none of this makes him a Void demon," Campa said. "There's another explanation--"

Luc struggled not to shake. His sister had read him the old fairy tales when he was very young, before she'd abdicated and left the court. His father had found out and screamed at her that the children of an emperor must be raised on the truth, not empty fiction. Luc could still remember the redness of his father's face, the spittle flying in the sunlit palace hall.

When he was older, he had watched the holo dramas. The Void demons were a popular enemy, and the depictions varied--when the Caelian Empire still stood, the dramas favored tales of bold Kynastons fighting off a demonic menace. Luc had seen parts of more recent dramas, too, which favored the people rising up against the evil empire of Void demons.

In all iterations, though, the demons had been ghostly pale, their eyes gold and sometimes glowing. They had fangs and claws and hideous growths too, of course. Few of them had ever looked human, and what they could do varied from drama to drama as well. But there had been some dramas where the demons could take over a human's mind, and their soul.