“Vicky, I don’t think—”
“Hang on a minute, Mr. Kane.” Costello squinted at me with intense interest, his blue eyes glinting. “Why do you think a Hellion would be after you?”
The roaring started in my ears again, but I swallowed hard and pushed it down. “Why, Detective Costello . . . ?” God, it hurt even to think it. I didn’t know if I could force the words out. Another hard swallow. “Ten years ago, a Hellion murdered my father. Because of me.”
6
MY FATHER NAMED ME. ONE YEAR BEFORE I WAS BORN—TO the day—he was visited in a dream by Saint Michael, sworn enemy of demons, and Saint David, patron saint of Wales. Saint Michael brandished his flaming sword and declared, “A girl child shall be born unto you, and her name shall be Victory.” Saint David nodded and made a gesture of blessing, then the two ascended—into heaven, I guess, or wherever saints go after they’ve delivered a prophecy. Dad thought they were growing taller, until he realized they were rising into the air. He could see the toenails of their sandaled feet at eye level for a moment, and then they were gone.
Funny, Dad said, he’d never thought about archangels, or even saints, having toenails. But that was my favorite part of the story when I was a girl. Clean, pinkish toenails peeking out of golden sandals.
Mom wanted to call me Rhiannon. But she was loopy on painkillers when my father filled out the birth certificate, so Victory I became.
My childhood was normal enough, I suppose, for a demi-human whose birth had been foretold by a prophecy. We lived on the top floor of a Somerville triple-decker. Dad juggled three or four part-time teaching jobs at local colleges, and Mom stayed home with us two girls. When money got tight, she’d sell magazine subscriptions by phone from the kitchen. My parents were both Cerddorion—a race more common in their native Wales than in their adopted home of Boston—and I grew up trying to master the trick of being proud of my heritage while keeping it an absolute secret from the norms around me.
I got by in school, played softball in Foss Park, and alternately fought with and confided in my older sister, Gwen. And then puberty hit—as if that weren’t tough enough—bringing with it the sudden, hard-to-control “gift” of shapeshifting. As I tried to learn how notto become a rampaging gorilla when I was angry or dissolve into a hyena when laughing, I also began my long education in demon slaying.
No more softball. During the summer I was shipped off to my aunt’s manor house in North Wales to fulfill my destiny as a demon slayer. It was like school, only harder. I struggled to memorize entire books of information—the taxonomy of demons, their habits and habitats, the history of my family’s conflict with them—and Aunt Mab drilled me endlessly, peering disapprovingly over her glasses, her lips scrunched up like she’d tasted something awful. Outside, the green hills of Snowdonia, the woods and brooks and neighboring farms, called to me to explore. On the days when I got everything right, I could go run around outside. When I made a mistake, I had to stay in and study. I spent a lot of time indoors.
But I loved Mab. Dad said she could fight with a flaming sword. Although I found that hard to picture, with her frizzy steel-wool hair and her high-necked, long-skirted, old-fashioned dresses, I didn’t doubt it for a minute. There was something formidable about my aunt, something that said don’t mess with me. I could believe she was the scourge of demonkind. Fashion sense aside, I wanted to be just like her. On the days when I pleased her, her brisk “well done, child,” accompanied by a fleeting smile, was a real reward for my hard work.
And year by year, drill by drill, I was learning. When I was fifteen, Aunt Mab declared that the book-learning portion of my education was finished. “I believe you’ve been through every book in my library,” she declared, as we sat by the fire on a cool June evening.
“I think you’re right,” I said. “All but that one.”
“Which?”
“The one Dad says is bound in human skin.” I laughed, too old now for Dad’s scary stories, expecting her to laugh with me.
But she didn’t laugh. Her face shut, quickly and completely, like someone yanking down a window shade. “That is not something to speak of,” she said. “Never mention it again.”
I gulped. “Okay.” Involuntarily, I glanced at the shelf that held the book. There it was, its spine a pale ivory shade, unlike the calf-bound books around it.
Mab grasped my arm. Her hand was gnarled and spotted with age, but her grip was iron-strong and her eyes burned like coals. “Do not touch it, do not speak of it. Do not even think of it. Never, Victory. Do you understand?”
Mute, I nodded. And for that summer and the years that followed, I tried my best to comply with her warning. It wasn’t hard. Mab was teaching me weaponry: fencing, archery, marksmanship, knife fighting. Now that was more like it. I loved the jeweled, bronze-bladed dagger she gave me for my sixteenth birthday. Who cared about books, even that book, when I was learning the best ways to fillet a demon?
The only part that bothered me was that I’d never yet seen an actual demon. And I was getting impatient to try out my new fighting skills on real, live nasties instead of paper targets and straw-stuffed bags. What I really wanted was to use a broadsword like Mab’s, the one she called the sword of Saint Michael, the kind that bursts into flame in the presence of a demon. But instead of a heavy sword with a gleaming bronze blade, Mab started me off with two pieces of wood nailed into a cross shape. Feeling like a kid playing pirates, I protested.
Mab tsked at me in her no-nonsense way, and I knew it was hopeless. It was always the same with Mab: first, technique, then practice—she was big on practice. Next summer, maybe, we’d hunt some demons together. “Small ones,” she said, her voice stern but her accent lilting. “ ’Tis always wise to start small, child.” And so I practiced with a Peter Pan sword.
The next summer, I was eighteen years old, a high school graduate, and feeling more than ready to graduate from Mab’s training program, as well. I was all grown up now, and this would be the summer I finally got to kick some demon ass. When my father decided to spend a couple of weeks in Wales with me, I was eager to show him how impressive my skills had become, to make him and Aunt Mab both proud.
But the day after we arrived, right after breakfast, Mab tossed me the goofy wooden sword. I caught it, surprised, wincing as a splinter slid into my palm. “Broadsword practice in ten minutes,” she announced. “Undoubtedly you’ve forgotten everything I taught you.”
Mab always began the summer with a comment like that, but in front of Dad, it stung. And it was almost like a curse. At practice that day, and the next several days, I was slow, I was clumsy, and I felt like I should be using a stupid wooden sword. Dad standing there watching, saying relax, don’t try so hard, just made it worse. From the look in Mab’s eyes, I just knew that she wouldn’t be taking me demon hunting this summer. Not even for the small ones.
Well, why should I wait for her? I’d trained for six years. I was tired of endless drills and exercises. I wanted to kill a demon. And I thought I knew where to find one.
On the night of July 8—a date burned into my memory—I snuck into Mab’s library and got down the book, the one bound in human skin. My fingers tingled when I touched the spine, and I had a clear vision of a corpse lying on a table and a vat of something bubbling nearby, as a hooded, black-robed figure approached with a curved knife. As the knife made its first cut, the corpse moaned and bright red blood welled from the wound. It wasn’t a corpse at all; someone had been skinned alive to make this book.