I Got a Daughter
Mosquitoes have a particular talent. Even from a long way off they can catch the carbon dioxide and the body-scent a human gives off, and come homing in with a ghost's precision.
Demons have a similar knack. Negative emotion, leaking out of a person — a demon smells it.
Right down to being garbage that does the world not the slightest bit of good, mosquitoes and demons are rather alike.
Anyway. That was why I was walking through this rain.
"God, I'm hungry."
When was the last time I'd eaten despair? I reached back through a memory gone thin. Two years... no. Three? The last of it had been savoring despair while I watched a family undone by a cult come apart.
The problem was that I'd eaten next to nothing since. A drop of water in a desert, at best.
The world has plenty of despair. It's just that a young demon like me is hopelessly short on the strength it would take to shove the others aside and claim any of it.
Hah. How had I ended up like this?
For a moment I hated Belian, the one who had made me what I was. Not that there was a day I didn't hate her. Maybe today was simply worse because I was so damn hungry.
I drew the damp night air deep into my lungs. Through the smell of rain and wet earth, through the stink rising off the sewers, something sweet came threading in.
Prey. Found.
"Ha... A real meal, for once."
The tip of my tongue tingled. Even to a demon that feeds on every sour feeling a human can produce, despair is special. If rage is a harsh liquor, fear is a sharp spice, and envy is a bitter root that grows more acrid the longer you chew it. Despair, set beside those, is a finished dessert — sweet, soft, and above all, long in the mouth. A rare delicacy, made only in the instant a human gives up on every last possibility.
That fragrance was filling the alleys of the rain-soaked city.
The trouble was that I wasn't the only one who had caught it. A presence reached me from far off: a demon throwing off weight even at a distance, a werewolf trailing that uniquely revolting cur-stink, and, on top of them, a clotted mass of virus reeking of foul blood.
"Quick ones. I'll give them that."
I lengthened my stride. Every time my worn sneakers struck a puddle, black rainwater jumped. The long hem of my coat was already soaked through, but I didn't care. A demon doesn't catch colds. Losing the prey was the larger problem.
I followed the scent deep into the alley, and there it stood — the Abandoned Chapel, where human feet had long since stopped coming. The cross had snapped ages ago, and black mold flowered over the walls. Beneath the leaking eaves a thin thread of water ran without pause. Maybe because I was a demon now, even a ruin like this gave off a disagreeable air.
And under those eaves sat a single worn basket.
"...What."
Inside it was a newborn, wrapped in a swaddle. A few months old, if that. Rain had splashed the face wet, and the lips had gone blue with cold. Even so, the baby wasn't crying. As if there wasn't even the strength left for it.
"For crying out loud."
I crouched and looked down into the basket.
"Grown-ups. Human or demon, nothing but trash, the lot of them."
I didn't care what the circumstances had been. They might have been poor. It might have been an unwanted child. Maybe the whole family would have starved if they hadn't left it. Everyone has a story. But sacrifice, an unavoidable choice, a decision that couldn't be helped — dress it up however you like, and it still doesn't change the fact that an abandoned child is dying in the rain.
Not that I was in any position to lecture anyone on human morals. I'd been human once; now I was a demon who went hunting other people's despair. And I had a wish that needed granting. For that wish I needed a great deal of despair — deep, thick, and long-aged, if I could get it.
"...You're carrying despair of an absurdly fine grade."
I set a finger against the baby's forehead. A life so small and frail that the slightest pressure would snuff it out. A candle in the wind wouldn't be this feeble. Swallowing it wouldn't be hard. One indrawn breath would do — pull the despair off the soul, leave the empty shell here, and go. No one would blame me. I was a demon, and even if I never touched this child, it wouldn't last the night.
"Hmm."
I licked my lips. If I had one complaint, it was that the portion was far too small to eat right now. Well, how much could a baby who hadn't even tasted the mortal world be holding? And yet the scent was strangely thick. No bigger than a fingernail, and the density packed inside it was anything but ordinary — deeper than a prisoner stripped of hope for decades on a false charge, deeper than a person betrayed by the family they'd given a whole life to, deeper even than the cult family's despair, the last thing I'd eaten. A depth I'd never smelled off anyone.
Despair no newborn ought to be able to hold. As if a host of tragedies that hadn't happened yet had fused into one and been driven into this small body.
"What the hell are you?"
Despair of this caliber. What on earth had happened...
I leaned in closer and looked into the child's soul with a demon's eyes. A pure white light. A black spot driven into the center of it. And from inside a pit so deep and dark I couldn't see the bottom, something was looking back at me.
Dangerous. Instinct warned me. I didn't know what it was, but I understood that the despair in this child was nothing simple. At the same time, another instinct started to drool.
Eat. Swallow it now. That thing might be the key that grants your wish.
I spread my hand over the baby's face. Black energy rose beneath my palm. All I had to do was close my fist.
"I do feel sorry for you. But I've got my own problems."
That was the moment.
A voice seeped into my head. Not so much a word as a pure wish. A warm embrace. A face that looks at you. Someone who will not abandon you. A presence that feeds you when you're hungry, holds you when you're cold, and stays when you're afraid. The child was calling all of that by a single word. Mom.
I froze with my hand still open.
"...What?"
"...That's your wish?"
Of course there was no answer. A newborn can't even speak.
"Figures. In a spot like yours, a guardian would matter more than anything."
The baby's hand groped at the empty air and found the tip of my index finger. A hand with no real strength in it caught hold of that one finger.
"..."
Maybe I really ought to just eat the thing. I gave it serious thought. I wasn't kind enough to take in a child I'd never laid eyes on and raise it. The memories from my human days were still there; the heart from those days was not. More than that, I had no reason, and I had work to do. To grant my wish I had to gather despair, and along the way I had to break a great many humans. Ha. A debtor's life for you. And that version of me, raising a baby? Absurd.
"...Wait."
A bulb flicked on over my head, and the thought ran on. The baby's despair, right now, was small. The density was unbelievably high. If merely being abandoned had produced this much, what would time do to it?
One thought caught the tail of the next. I take the child in. I feed it warm meals, dress it in good clothes, and hold it to sleep every night. I make it believe I am the only being in the world who loves it. I give it a family. I teach it happiness. And when the child has come to love me so completely that it cannot live without me — what if I vanish? The despair of a human who loses what is most precious at the happiest moment. And if that despair were spun by this bizarre soul...
"Crazy..."
The mere imagining sent a thrill through me. Eating it now would be like picking an unripe fruit up off the street. I am not a monkey, blinded by the fruit in front of my face and unable to picture what comes after. An intellectual, thank you. Formerly. Wait just a little, and it becomes a banquet the world will never see twice. Give affection over a long stretch of years, plant hope, pile happiness up — and only so that, at the very last moment, I can bring the whole of it down. I am a demon. Waiting until the prey is properly ripe is well within my abilities.
"Right."
I looked down at the small hand locked around my finger.
"Turn it over, and it's simple."
All I had to do was become its mother. Until this despair was buried under happiness so deep that not a trace remained. Until the child forgot every bit of this cold and this hunger. All I had to do was become the most precious thing it had. And on the day the ending arrived, take all of it.
A dry laugh slipped from the corner of my mouth.
"You really are something to covet."
Somewhere in all of that, the presences outside the alley had drawn close.
Thock.
Something settled on the roof. It was like a human footfall, except it had no weight. From the alley opposite, a shadow stretched long, reaching the wrong way from the light, and inside it dozens of eyes floated up. The other demons had arrived. Nothing a young demon like me was remotely equipped to face.
"Crap."
I dug through my coat.
"Not much time."
What my hand closed on was a crimson ring — the thing Belian had given me when she made me a demon. The token of a Demonic Contract, the thing a demon uses when granting a wish. The contractor speaks the wish, the demon declares the price, and the contract is sealed; until it ends, the ring guards the contractor's soul. It was the ring of Belian, a high demon. The others wouldn't dare covet it.
I snapped the old cord from around my neck, threaded the ring onto it, and hung it around the baby's neck. The moment the ring touched that small chest, a faint crimson light seeped out.
"All right. I understand."
I lifted the child carefully out of the basket. Far lighter than I'd expected. Inside the wet swaddle, the little body shivered.
"I'll grant your wish."
The baby's hand caught my finger again. I smiled, and I recited the terms.
The rain, coming down hard, stopped dead in the air. So did a bird crossing the sky. So did a splinter of lightning, far off.
The shadows packing the alley writhed as one. Realizing they were late, they came charging.
I pressed my lips to the baby's forehead.
Crimson light burst. Brilliance spilling from the ring wrapped the baby's body and climbed my arm, and heat like flame ran under my skin. The brand of the contract was seared into my heart.
A Demonic Contract is fairer than you might think. If anything happens to this child before it turns twenty, the contract is broken, and this heart bursts where it sits. A safeguard for the child. A collar for me.
The demons that had been charging screamed and fell back. The moment a crimson brand was carved over the child's soul, those greedy presences scattered one after another. None of them wanted to fall from Belian's sight, either.
I looked down at the child in my arms.
"I'm looking forward to it."
The baby slowly opened its eyes. Clouded pupils, like an animal seeing light for the first time, turned toward me.
"The day I become the most precious thing in the world to you."
The child didn't cry. As if reassured, it pressed its face into my chest.
"And the day I disappear."
The contract's crimson light flashed one last time. And with it, something twisted inside my body. Bones that had been thick drew thin. Muscle that had been hard loosened and went soft. My shoulders narrowed, and hair grown suddenly long brushed my cheek. When I tried to speak, what came out was a breath higher and finer than before. A weight I had never carried settled in my chest, and my slackened trousers tried to slide down off my hips.
I looked down, stiff-faced, at myself reflected in the rainwater. Crimson eyes. Black hair. A woman's face, beautiful enough to belong to a stranger. And I knew that face.
Belian.
"...Wait."
Becoming a mom. Hadn't that meant becoming a guardian? A contract reads a wish to the letter. Not a parent. Not a guardian. Not family. The child had wanted a mom, in the most literal sense of the word.
"Nobody mentioned this part."
Instead of an answer, the child babbled, small and soft.
"Ma... ma."
I stared blankly at the child in my arms. And for the first time since becoming a demon, I had the distinct sense that I had chosen something seriously wrong.