Wingless

Chapter 3 [Lues' POV]

Here I am. On Earth.
What am I supposed to do? This is ridiculous. To let out some of my feelings I set fire to a bush. I hear a yell.
"D-d-demon!" yells a man. A group of woodcutters, equipped with axes: not that they are a match for me. I turn to them with a snarl, beginning to become a devil. I can feel my cheekbones, nose and chin forming together to create a cruel mush of dark-red, wizened skin: my muscles are tautening and already scaly wings are forcing their way out of my shoulders. I let out an angry roar.

The man splutters and fumbles for something round his neck, then thrusts it at me. A Crucifix. I recoil and splutter, trying to get away, but all of them have some sort of relic. Already it's dampening my health. I'm visibly fading, flickering through my demon and humane form. When I'm about to die, one of the woodcutters raises his axe. I dodge, though it takes all my strength, but it catches my leg and it explodes in pain. I stumble to the ground. The world is blurry.

"Keep your Crucifixes, in case there's more of them," one of the men shouts.

"What about this one?"

"We don't want to kill it in cold blood. Who knows if mortal weapons can even kill a demon?" one man asks darkly. "No - we can't do that."

I hear fumbling. "I've got a Bible here. We cut right through his leg; put my Bible next to him and it'll finish him off," another man suggests.

I try and sit up, but I'm sick. I can hear the men laughing. "Not so powerful now, huh?" one snorts. I want to kill them, but right now all I'm grateful is that nobody that matters is watching this. 

I flicker into my humane form. Then the world goes black.

**

My eyes snap open. I'm lying in a glade, propped up against a tree. My leg is freshly bandaged. There's a fire burning next to me. I can feel my heart slightly thawing to whoever did this for a moment - then I realize that I'm a demon and no matter how much they help me they don't deserve anything in return. 

"Are you alright?" The voice is melodious and irritably good. I look up. I keep my gasp embedded in my throat, though it's a hard effort: when my dad said men got distracted by mortal women, I didn't think it happened like that. When I thought of mortal women, I thought of poor wretches in shabby slips, cooking and cleaning, ugly and dirty and unhygienic, undistinguishable from their husbands. I didn't ever imagine someone like this: blue eyes too bright to be blue, blonde hair too golden to be blonde, white teeth too shining to be white. She isn't beautiful, it's like someone's turned something on inside her, so that goodness gleams out of every pore. It's completely irritating how spotlessly clean her white clothes are, how perfectly beautiful she is. It's a beauty that doesn't just come from Nature. You can tell how pure and good and innocent she is just by looking at her.

That's when I realize I've been staring at her for a long time. "Y ... yeah," I say. I look at her. "You know, you didn't have to help me."

"I wanted to." she says, almost indignantly. "I couldn't leave a boy half butchered by some sort of axe lying in a forest, could I?"

"Couldn't? Or wouldn't?" I ask.

"Both," she replies.

"Why couldn't?"

"Because otherwise I'll end up Wingless." she says. Then, as if she's horrified at the thought of offending someone, puts in hastily, "not that I wouldn't have helped you, of course."

"But you're not a Devil," I blurt out. 

She gives me a look. "Right Einstein, aren't you? I'm an angel."

Something in my heart deadens. It stops right there, I swear. I breathe out slowly. I swallow. Ugh. No wonder she irritated me. An angel. I try to get up, but nausea rolls through me and my leg screams in protest. The Bible is still next to me. It will take me a long time to heal: I'll get rid of the Bible when Princess Candy-Angel isn't looking, let her heal me, and then kill her.

I was born to be a demon.