Shepherd Demon
Posted by Meg
Jenny sent us a new story and a new demon. Check it out.
Here is my competition entry, beautifully left till the deadline to send in!
Hope you enjoy reading it! 🙂
Jenny
A shepherd. The moment she realised their fatal mistake, it was too late for any sort of warning. Instead, she could only scream along with him as he collapsed, twitching to the ground. The torch he’d been carrying fell out of his grasp, but instead of extinguishing itself the fire caught on the layer of leaf litter which carpeted the floor. The flames lit the demon properly for the first time. Its head, which had snapped round to face her upon hearing her scream, was now being illuminated from the flames below, removing any traces of the humanity it had seemed to portray. Almost utterly devoid of features, the pale skin was stretched so tightly it gave the impression that an eerily human-like skull was grinning back at you. Only when the demon bared its teeth in a feral smile, revealing a jaw full of gleaming white fangs, was even that last illusion shattered. It was hard to believe that the soft whimpering sounds which had drawn them out – noises that had been so reminiscent of a child’s cries – had come out of that mouth. The eyes though. She couldn’t tear her gaze away. At least twice as large as a human’s, their glossy black in stark contrast to the creamy flesh, they protruded out of its head like bulbous orbs. Right now, as they reflected the fire, it appeared as if they were alight with flames of their own. She knew she was safe from any form of attack inside her wards, but the malice in that gaze hit her like a physical blow, causing her to stagger backwards.
A scream rent the air, and in it she could just discern one word. Her name. Hearing that made her blood run cold. The demons attention reverted to its prey on the ground, but she knew it wasn’t going to attack any further. That wasn’t how it worked. Sure enough, it took a few steps away from him, then froze in the position it would hold for the next few hours. Waiting.
She knew what she should do. Run back inside the house, leap into the bed and spend the next few hours blocking out the screams. But she couldn’t bring herself to leave him. It was her fault he was out there. If she hadn’t spotted the demon in the woods, heard those cries, and then brought them to his attention, he would never have stepped outside the safety of the wards. Never have gone to the aid of what they both thought was a lost wandering child.
That was what shepherds did. They lured you out to them, keeping their back to you, staying in the mottled light under the trees which could distort any form and trick the eyes. Only when you got close enough to touch them – when you started to realise that something wasn’t quite right from the unnatural paleness of their skin, the way that skin clung to the skeleton far more than it ever should, and the lack of any sort of body hair – would they turn to face you. You had a second of knowing the mistake you’d made before hallucinogenic toxic spittle was projected into your eye, and then there was no hope for you. For the next few hours you would be subject to torturous visions, the nature of which could only be guessed at – and she never wanted to know, never wanted to find out what he was seeing as he shouted her name with such despair and desperation – until the poison eventually reached your heart and you succumbed.
The flames from the torch were spreading quickly, but she had no fear of them becoming an inferno. Most of the wood and humus in this forest would be too damp to burn. New figures were being cast into harsh relief by the firelight though, crawling down from the trees, stalking around the now moaning figure on the ground, pressing themselves up against the pale demon like affectionate cats. The shepherd’s flock.
It was this affectionate behaviour which made it more than just a symbiotic relationship between the two coreling species. The flock demons were fiercely protective of their shepherd and wouldn’t hesitate to attack anything that threatened them, be that other demons or turning on rebellious members of the pack. If one shepherd tried to enter the territory of another, it would result in a full on battle between the two flock packs. The defeated shepherd, more often than not having lost every member of its flock, wouldn’t last long on its own. The poison saliva wasn’t designed as an overly offensive weapon, and their teeth would be no use in physical combat. A demons claw – or a human weapon – would rip through their leather-hide skin before they even got the chance to use them.
The flock demons, however, were lethal. Despite being carrion feeders – relying on their shepherd to catch and kill their prey – they were built for being heavily armoured guards. A reptilian canine was what they most resembled, and they were about the size of a large dog. Scaled with plates as black as onyx and as tough as sheet metal, it took skill with a bow or spear to find the chinks in their defences. Their feet were more like larger versions of a lizards claws than paws, and infinitely more prehensile, the talons at the end viciously curved and deathly sharp. The eyes were small – being one of their weak points – and didn’t require the firelight to glow amber through the darkness.
As they spotted her, a few detached from the main group – circling, vulture like, around the dying man on the ground – and prowled over to pace along the line of the wards, snapping at her, long tails twitching impatiently. Some growled softly and the sound was pure bass, sending tremors through the ground. It also revealed their needle-like teeth, glowing white through the darkness and glistening as they salivated in anticipation of the meal to come. Despite the lack of an external part to the ear their hearing was as acute as any of their other senses. Imagining them working together as a pack didn’t take a stretch of the imagination. They would be graceful, efficient and utterly deadly.
It seemed it was hours later when the screams stopped, when the sound of her name being repeated over and over again finally subsided and the only other noise was the soft footfalls of the flock demons in the fallen leaves. The demons recognised what the silence meant the moment she did, and less than a heartbeat later, they had converged on him.
Thank you to Jenny for sending us that haunting story. Beautifully narrated and intricately described.