A Moth and His Flame

By Alexis Steinhauer

It is hardly the first time that Clement Vyner has been chased by bloodthirsty witch hunters; with his black eyes, icy skin, and antisocial personality, he’s used to being targeted. He’s always managed to scrape by on his own. The last thing he expects is to drag somebody else into his perilous way of life . . . that is, until he finds himself being rescued from dire straits by Alasdair Carmichael, a cynical man whose life is nothing but a series of bloody secrets. Before long, the two men find themselves reluctantly entangled and under fire.

Trust has never come easily to either of them. The last time Clement tried to trust somebody, it didn’t end well. Yet as the shadows from both of their pasts come crawling into the light, he begins to realize that if he can’t learn to open up to Alasdair, their chances of survival are slim at best.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alexis Steinhauer
• Release date: Jun 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005397562

Alexis Steinhauer

Alexis Steinhauer is a cat-loving bookworm who likes tea, heavy metal music, dripping candles and dark stories. Her favorite place to be is in her nest of pillows with a book in one hand and either a cat or a laptop on her lap. She will laugh at just about any dad joke or cat meme you throw at her. Alexis is the author of Dragonfate: Dragon's Gold, Dragonfate: Dragon's Flight and Dragonfate: Dragon's Oath. She is also the author of The Felling. The Bone Harp Book 1. Her new series, Fabricated Men, is her current project and passion.

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A Moth and His Flame

Fabricated Men, Book Two

By Alexis Steinhauer

*****

Copyright © 2022 by Alexis Steinhauer

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

*****

For the gentlemen in my family:

Remy, who likes cuddling;

Da, who would like the elements of horror;

Pockalockchock, who would also like the elements of horror;

And Ruby and Abe, who are just babies and couldn’t care less.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

About the Author

Other Titles by Alexis Steinhauer

Chapter 1

Clement

The Church of Old Souls preaches a great number of facts that are patently untrue.

All human beings have souls, no matter how soulless they may seem.

Advanced technology, having not been invented by God but by overachieving men and women, is unfavored in God’s eyes and should be regarded with extreme skepticism . . . which, of course, means that a person may take advantage of said technology as long as they complain loudly about everything it stands for.

Any creature that is a false human, such as a poor soul who has had machinery grafted onto their body or a man who was born inside a glass jar rather than a woman’s womb, is a scar upon God’s beautiful earth. The only effective way to send them to Hell, where they belong, is by robbing them of the powers of sight and speech by cutting out their tongue and eyeballs – thus reducing them to the blind, mute state of a cave fish – and finally burning them alive. Their screams will serve as an apology to God, on behalf of whomever is responsible for their sinful existence in the first place.

You see, a false human cannot be saved; but in dying a horrible death, they may be able to save their creator in God’s eyes.

This is not even the worst drivel that I’ve heard from the lips of the church’s preachers.

If a pair of men or a pair of women fall in love, they must undergo a lengthy correction process to scourge the sinful affections from their minds and souls. They must devote five hours each day to prayer and contemplation upon holy ground, where God can see their sincerity firsthand; they must bathe in blessed water twice each day; and if necessary, they must shed copious amounts of their fouled blood to flush their systems clean. If they shirk any of these sacred measures, they will be forsaken by God and his church and shall be condemned to spend an eternity in Hell after death, burning and wishing they had repented.

. . . These are the church’s proclamations, of course – not mine. Being male, and having been intimate with the occasional man throughout my life, I have yet to see any of my lovers burst into spontaneous flames as the church says we all should. So, for obvious reasons, when I hear the Church of Old Souls waving its arms wildly about and shouting dire warnings, I have made a habit of simply rolling my eyes and ignoring it.

Yet even I will admit that there are perhaps a few subjects in which the church inadvertently stumbled upon something very near the truth.

For instance, the church makes claims that when a woman curses the conception of her baby, it shrivels and kills the child’s soul so that it will be born soulless, a little monster with a hollow stare and icy-cold skin. If it is allowed to live, such a child will grow to be a thorn in humanity’s side, devouring innocent souls and corrupting holy men.

Soul eaters, they call these children. Or demons. They used to be more common than they are now, or at least their brief lives were more often recorded. They have been known as nameless villains throughout religious history, representatives of pure evil who hunger for good men’s souls the way a good man hungers for bread. They are difficult to kill; they burn under the touch of silver, shun the sunlight because it burns their weak eyes, and have an affinity for the darkest form of blood magic: witchcraft.

All of this is true, to some extent. I don’t know why demons come to be or if we can truly conjure flames in the palms of our hands, but I can attest that I do, in fact, exist. My eyes are black as a murderer’s soul, my skin is cold to the touch, and my mother did indeed mourn the fact of my birth.

The Church of Old Souls, being a dominant religion that transcends minor barriers like country borders, race, and social status, naturally is considered to be an authority on the subject of demons. But there are many things that differ from their paranoid teachings, too. For my whole life, I have always been an unenthusiastic exhibit of proof that for the most part, the Church of Old Souls is made up of raving madmen, deluded fools, and cowards who are too afraid to speak the truth.

My mother was happy with my father, I think. I’d heard her weep for him, late into the blackest part of the night when hunger clawed at our bellies and we were too poor to afford even a single candle to lift the shadows encasing us. At such times, I know from bitter experience that the mind wanders to the darkest of places. When I was a small child and I was squished onto the same dirty straw pallet as my mother, I would feel her shoulders shake and hear the little hiccups as she tried to suppress her sorrow. Sometimes she even spoke his name in her sleep.

My mother’s name was Esmeralda. She was young and beautiful when she met my father: fourteen years old, with luminous blue eyes and chestnut-colored hair that fell in thick curtains down to her knees. She was the daughter of a modest but well-respected carpenter. Her life was simple, but her family was hardworking and close-knitted and supportive of one another, and from what she always said when I was around to hear it, I think she grew up happy.

I don’t know much about my father, except that she loved him desperately, perhaps even destructively, until the day she died. I know he was upper class, and I know it was mutual love at first sight for the two of them – or so my mother always said. She would cry over his handsomeness, his sea-green eyes, the rich timbre of his voice.

When my mother told him at sixteen years old that she was pregnant, he dropped her like a dirty rag.

My mother never wasted an opportunity to remind me of how I’d ruined her charmed life. The warm, respectable community she was raised in turned their backs on her in disgust because of me. Shortly after learning of her daughter’s disgraceful condition, my grandmother hanged herself, and my grandfather, who from all reports was a kindly man, withered away and died of a broken heart.

Without a family to support her and no one who wanted to give her work, my mother fled the city where she was born and raised and sought a place that would accept her. She fell into bad company at a dirty, disreputable orphanage, where she scrubbed floors and sewed until her fingers bled. She told me often of how she’d tried to kill me, taking a variety of herbalist’s concoctions to try and cause a miscarriage, but apparently nothing she took could quite finish me. She said I clung to her like the devil.

Despite living in the basement of a building that was filled with people, my mother gave birth alone, in the dark. No one came to aid her no matter how she screamed.

I don’t know why she didn’t murder me then, but she didn’t. She was repulsed by the sight of me when she took me out of the basement and into the light, where someone finally took pity on her miserable, bloody form and called a doctor, who managed to save us both. I’ve been told that even the doctor didn’t want to lay his hands on me.

I was born with a demon’s eyes, the iris and pupil indistinguishable from one another. Around the very outer edge of my eyes there is a thin, lacy ripple of ice-blue that one must look very closely to notice. My right arm is an ugly, withered, dry-looking red husk like a monster’s claw, the deformed fingers barely able to twitch. My hand has ached terribly since the day I was born.

My mother made sure that I always knew what a hideous child I was. On good days, she would hit me for being creepy and silent. On bad days, she would cower away from me in fear, cursing me for being alive. She did not want to waste a perfectly good name on me, but one of the matrons at the orphanage advised her to name me anyway, because it would give her a handle on me, a chain around my throat that she could yank – everyone well knew that knowing the true name of a monster gave you a certain power over it.

As a child, my mother had always expected to marry and have a happy family, and she had intended to name her first son Clement. This became the name she called me by, albeit grudgingly. More often, if she felt obligated to speak to me, I was addressed simply as Demon Child.

Esmeralda left the dubious shelter of the orphanage with me the instant she was well enough to travel, hiding me inside a rough basket because every breath I took shamed her. I don’t know why she didn’t leave me at the orphanage or throw me in the river.

I was a quiet baby. I never cried, I never screamed. I would chew on my deformed arm until it was bloody, forcing my mother to wrap the ugly little appendage in a cloth so I would stop getting blood all over my face. Anyone who touched me complained that their hand grew cold, as if I sucked the warmth right out of their skin. My mother could rarely find anyone willing to watch me for an evening while she searched for work – my noiseless, watchful black gaze was eerie enough to instantaneously drive away most people who caught sight of me.

My mother lived as a beggar, using me as a prop to earn sympathy. She wrapped me strategically in rags, hiding my face and red arm from casual view so that unsuspecting passerby would toss her a few coins or scraps of food. She soon realized that people were much more generous if they couldn’t clearly see how unsettling my appearance was.

When she was eighteen, my mother married a lowborn man named Xavier Vyner. He wasn’t much of a catch: he was a sewage worker and a drunkard who was twice her age. But he had a house, and his infatuation for my mother made her feel appreciated in some way. I think, in the end, that he may have honestly loved her; certainly he lavished attentions on her that he couldn’t afford. He would buy her trinkets and bits of jewelry to adorn herself with, no matter how many times she yelled at him for wasting his scarce coin on baubles while her belly gnawed at her with hunger.

I grew up in Xavier’s dirty little one-room house, seeing and hearing things that no child should ever be subjected to. Neither of them paid much attention to me, once I was old enough to perform basic human functions like walking and eating on my own. I’ve been told that I didn’t speak my first word until I was four years old. I sat in the corner, listening, watching, waiting for something I couldn’t identify. My mother would often bring in other men and let them have her body for a coin or two; I was present sometimes, sitting silent in the corner, and they rarely noticed me.

When I was six years old, Xavier beat me for the first time. He was always either drunk or lamenting the fact that he wasn’t, but he never laid a rough hand on my mother. He took out his drunken rages on other men, on walls and furniture, and eventually on me.

For as long as I can remember, I always hated Xavier. I hated the stink of his filthy body – he reeked of sewage and sweat and cheap liqueur. I hated his raspy voice. I hated the way he fondled my mother in front of me. I hated his huge, callused, cruel hands. When he struck me for the first time, he knocked my little body to the floor, but I made no sound, so he hit me again, and then again, until he had the satisfaction of seeing me cry.

By the time I was seven years old, I flinched at the approach of any adult. I found that I had enough of a voice to cower and beg people not to hit me. I discovered that I preferred it when they shrank from me in revulsion, because that at least didn’t hurt.

I began to spend time away from the awful little house. For days at a time I would lurk in back alleys or prowl through the most derelict crevices of the city, scrounging through trash for scraps of anything semi-edible that I could put in my mouth. When I went home, it was to my mother’s indifference and Xavier’s brutality. I think I would have run away forever at some point, but I was too afraid to – one time when I didn’t go home for over a week, Xavier tracked me down and beat me until he broke my only usable arm, leaving me defenseless in the worst part of the city’s scummy underbelly. He stood over me, purple and splotchy with anger and alcohol, and told me that he would break both of my legs if I tried to run away from him.

And so, until I was thirteen, I obediently reported back to the house every few days to let him beat me.

Predictably, I suppose, I had no friends growing up. No one wanted anything to do with me. Touching my skin turned people cold; meeting my black gaze was like looking into a bottomless pit. When I was asked by braver children – or children who were dared by their peers to approach me – what my name was, I told them I was called Demon Child. I did it because I rarely heard my real name spoken aloud and I didn’t know what else to say, but their raucous laughter and squeals of excitement caused a bitter annoyance to build in my heart, until finally I stopped answering them. I would frown and stare them down until they slunk away.

Of course, there were still the typical bullies who targeted me because I was alone and different. I fought my way out of a few scrapes and got my lip bloodied a few times like any other growing boy. I learned that many boys who were bigger and meaner than I was, enjoyed insulting my mother in an attempt to get a rise out of me. I simply shrugged my shoulders and agreed with them – there was no love lost between my mother and me, and most of what they said about her was true, in any case.

When I tired of confrontations, I learned how to avoid them. The older I became, the more often I could be found tucked in a cranny beside some stranger’s chimney with a stolen book, or perched up on top of the tallest steeple of the local church, where no one else would look for me or bother trying to approach me . . . that is, until I was thirteen years old, and Eldred found me.

On the church steeple there was a pair of iron wings protruding north and south from its walls, three hundred feet in the air. It was a garish decoration, in my opinion, but it made a marvelous space to hide. The wings were both long and broad enough to conceal my body from anyone looking up from below, and the tower itself, with its overhanging roof, provided a little shelter from sun and rain. Ten feet underneath me, the roof of the grand building sloped up against the tower, giving me a place where I could drop down when I felt like descending.

No one expected the Demon Child to have the guts to hide atop a church, nor the skill to climb it with only one good arm. So I nearly jumped out of my skin one day when I heard an unfamiliar voice say, Hey, you!

I looped a leg across the top of the wing where I was seated, bracing my good hand against the wall to regain my balance, and glared down into the face of a sun-tanned boy whose triumphant grin was very white. He appeared to be slightly out of breath.

Go away, I said guardedly, knowing I would need to fight him to get out of here. I hadn’t eaten in three days; my limbs were shaky. I didn’t think I had a hope of winning against this robust-looking boy, and I had no desire to be thrown bodily off the top of the church.

But it took so long to get up here in the first place, whined the boy. What are you reading?

Reflexively I covered the book that was balanced atop my raised knee. Go away, I repeated.

The boy blinked a couple of times before opening his mouth to speak again. I didn’t think you would be so unfriendly. I just came up here to say hello, you know. The least you could do is say hello back to me.

Hello, I said sarcastically.

He broke into a blinding smile. See? That was easy, now wasn’t it?

I’m not coming down, no matter what you say.

Not even if I offer you a piece of cake? He produced a squashed-looking paper package from a pack he wore slung over one shoulder. Look, I’m not here to pick a fight. I just want to talk to you.

Talk, then. My stomach felt like it was trying to claw its way out of me, but I would need to be twice as hungry as I was to feel tempted by that cake. I didn’t think eating rat poison would do my health any favors.

Let me rephrase that. I want to be your friend.

I snorted derisively. Like Hell, you do.

No! I actually, truly want to be your friend. I’m new to this town, and I’ve seen how the others treat you so horribly. I don’t think it’s fair. I’m not one of them. Can we be friends?

I eyed him dubiously. It was true that I’d never seen him before. But that meant nothing – people moved in and out of cities all the time. I don’t make friends, I said flatly. Talk to anyone, they’ll tell you why.

"Won’t you tell me why?"

No. Go away.

The boy sighed. Okay. I’m going to leave the cake here. You can have it when you come down, if you want. He stooped to place the package on the roof at his feet, giving it a friendly pat for good measure before he straightened up. Goodnight, he told me, because the sun was beginning to warm the sky into orange hues.

Goodbye.

Looking unhappy, the boy turned and left. I watched narrowly as he picked his way across the sloping roof of the church and climbed down by using the same decorative carving of the same corner that I always favored. Blast, I thought. I’ll need to find another hiding place.

When my reading light failed and I finally left my perch that night, I kicked the little brown package he’d left off the rooftop. I watched with some contrary satisfaction as it fell into an open barrel of rainwater far below.

And so, I stopped hiding on the church tower. I found a nook amid the gables of the local library instead. And again, a couple of days later, he found me.

Hey, there! he called, scrambling up onto the roof beside me. I hissed and slithered away from him like a snake, stuffing my book awkwardly into the crook of my withered arm. He looked alarmed by my reaction and put up both hands in a placating gesture. I’m sorry I scared you, he said in a quieter voice.

"Leave me alone," I spat, swiping aggressively at the air between us with my good hand as he tried to approach.

I need to prove that I actually want to be your friend. I understand that. But I can’t do that by not talking to you.

"I don’t want friends! I don’t want you. What I want is the peace and quiet to read my book. Alone, I added sharply, when he started to speak. Get the Hell away from me."

I brought you a cinnamon bun, he said lamely. Aren’t you hungry?

I was always hungry. No. Go away.

His shoulders drooped. Okay. I’ll see you later, then.

God forbid. I glared after his retreating back as he slid down off the roof and left me to my solitude.

Over the following couple of weeks, I hid in many creative places, and he eventually found me every time. No matter how harsh I was to him, he stubbornly reappeared at my side every few days. He was unfailingly optimistic about making a friend out of me. If I’m being honest, he scared the Hell out of me. I began to feel hunted. I began to wonder if I was actually safer inside Xavier’s filthy hovel than outside of it.

When I went home one day, my mother told me to run to the pub and bring Xavier home. I obeyed, propping up the stinking drunkard the entire way and finally throwing him down onto his straw pallet at home. He was too limp to even hit me, although he did manage to slur out a couple of choice insults.

I couldn’t bear to linger indoors when it came to it, so I headed out, grateful that for once Xavier hadn’t touched me.

My name is Eldred, said the boy, coming up behind me as I marched as quickly as I could away from my home. What’s yours?

I sneered, exhaustingly unsurprised to see him there. Demon Child.

"That’s what they call you. But what is your name?"

I swung about on my heel, levering my lanky height against him as I stabbed a finger into his chest. I don’t have one. Everything you’ve heard about me is true – all of it, do you hear me? I’m Hellspawn. My mother is a whore who will take even Satan into her bed. I curse every living thing I touch to die a horrible, slow death. God himself deformed me so that my evil shows through my skin. Are you satisfied? Now run away. I shoved him, hard, and he stumbled backward but managed to keep his feet. I turned my back to him and stalked off.

Wait! You really don’t have a name?

I said nothing and didn’t look at him as he fell back into pace with me.

How sad. What shall I call you, then?

Demon Child. Hellspawn. Freak. Monster Boy. Satan’s Progeny. Miscreation. Pick your favorite, they’re all popular choices.

He seemed to think for a moment. May I call you . . . Edwin?

No. I saw a motorized street sweeper, belching steam, its many spiderlike brass limbs whirling through the air, approaching us. Its metal arms flashed white in the sunlight, stinging my light-sensitive eyes. I ducked down a side alley and kept going.

But why? Don’t you want to have a name?

No! I want to be left alone. Why was it such a difficult concept to grasp? This boy raised my ire by following me around. If left to my own devices, I harbored no animosity toward him or anybody else. Unless you want me to curse you, I suggest you go away.

Hey, stop. Hey! The boy reached out and clamped his hand around my withered red wrist, causing a surge of blistering pain that sucked the breath out of my lungs.

Let go! I ripped free of him, reeling back, suddenly afraid deep in my heart and covering the reaction with anger. "Don’t you dare touch me!"

Eldred lifted his hands in a show of nonaggression. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.

"I don’t care what you meant. Goddamn you!"

Watch your language, freak, drawled a new voice from the end of the alley, and I backed further away from Eldred so I could keep both threats in front of me. A group of three teenage boys, all of them brawnier than my own skeletal frame, advanced toward us with leering grins on their faces.

A sick sinking feeling pulled at my gut. I glanced back to the other end of the alley, and sure enough, another boy had come up behind us to close off my escape route. I weighed the odds quickly. Four big boys, five if Eldred fought with them, against only myself, and I was scrawny with a single arm at my disposal. Damn. How had I allowed myself to get so distracted that I didn’t see them coming?

I swore fluently, edging backward toward the single brutish boy behind me. Better one than three.

Get him, Archie! someone shouted suddenly, and I heard the crunch of gravel beneath the boy’s shoe behind me. I whirled my body into his, lunging for the open space below his armpit, but he smacked his arm against my throat and flung me backward.

I attacked him this time, desperately, raining a flurry of one-armed blows down upon his head to distract him, while at the same time ramming my knee up into his genitals. He grunted in pain and fell to the side, and I was over him like a shot from a gun, racing away from the shouting and scraping and thumping of the fight behind me.

Wait. What fight?

For a split second, the terrified part of my brain fought the instinct to stop and look over my shoulder, but I skidded to a halt anyway and glanced back to see Eldred scuffling with the three bullies.

Ugh. I liked to think that I generally had no sense of honor, but the sight of any single person being brought low by a group of three sent a flash of anger through my black heart. Grudgingly, I took a single step away, intending to show Eldred exactly what kind of scum he was trying to befriend . . . but then I clenched my teeth and my fist and launched myself back into the fight.

I peeled a boy off of Eldred’s back by clawing at his eyesockets. Don’t punch me! I snarled at Eldred, who turned a surprised eye in my direction. I snapped my leg out, scooping the bully off his feet, watching unemotionally as the boy’s head cracked against the alley wall and blood sprayed from his skull. The boy cried out pitifully and crumpled in a heap.

The next few moments were a blur of fists and teeth and swearing. Somebody crushed down onto my back, but Eldred yanked him away before he could hurt me. Someone else managed to land a fist in my stomach, sending me dry-retching to my knees for a moment before I shot back up, using the tenuous strength of my legs to power a blow to the boy’s nose. His nose crunched like fresh celery; he reeled back, wailing in pain. He flailed an arm toward me, which I contemptuously sidestepped. I reached out with my fingers extended like claws and clamped my hand down on his face, letting fear shine through his eyes before I shoved him away by his head. Someone else smashed a fist into my ribs; I turned and lashed back.

A short time later, two boys lay broken on the alley floor and the others had fled. I’d cut the inside of my cheek on my teeth. I rolled bloody saliva over my tongue and spat it onto one of the unconscious boys, making a disgusted sound in my throat as I dragged my arm over my mouth.

Dregs, I muttered scathingly.

I suppose you could have beaten them with one arm tied behind your back? gasped Eldred, who sported a split lip and a shiny spot on one cheekbone that would soon be a bruise. He was grinning, though. I eased back, putting a safe distance between us, and eyed him warily.

That depends on which arm, I replied.

Can we be friends now?

I scowled. No. This doesn’t change anything.

But . . . you didn’t run away.

I had no answer for that, so I ignored it. They’ll make a target of you now, since you put yourself in their way. That was very stupid.

Maybe. But I proved a point, didn’t I?

Did you? I asked sharply. And what point was that?

That I’m not your enemy.

I made a frustrated gesture with my arm. What’s the matter with you, that you want to attach yourself to me so badly?

I told you. He straightened up and put his shoulders back, lifting his chin with some pride. I’m new to this area. My father was an earl in a country called Ainesling, far to the east. We lived in a town called Foolshope, it was very much smaller and less interesting than Candoraldt. I know I’ve been pampered and I’m soft – everyone tells me so – but I don’t like bullies. I’ve been standing up to them since before I can remember. He took a step closer, his eyes earnest. It took me less than a week of living in this city to pick out that these boys are bullies, and that you aren’t one. So I’d like to put myself on your side, if I may.

I’m not the only one whom these dregs abuse, I pointed out sourly. I turned my back to him and strode briskly out of the alley. Go shine your benevolent light on somebody else.

I didn’t know if he heard my parting mumble.

A couple of days later, Eldred ambushed me while I was digging through trash for scraps of moldy food. I brought you a slice of pie, he said brightly, proffering a paper parcel. It’s melon. You’ll love it.

Where do you get all of this food from? I demanded, not taking it, glaring at him suspiciously. A twinge of embarrassment prompted me to pull my hand from the bin I’d been rummaging through – scraping trash bins for sustenance was a show of weakness that I didn’t want to emphasize in front of anybody.

My mother loves to bake. We own a bakery now, in fact. I know that you probably can’t be a regular customer, but she’s very self-conscious about her cooking, and I think she’d love to have your opinion. His words reminded me that I hadn’t a penny to my name, but there was no judgement in his voice.

I hesitated, staring at him. He met my black eyes with an open smile and waved the parcel under my nose invitingly. I felt the hostile urge to smack it out of his hand, but instead I took it, opening it to find a simple but lovely chunk of pie. It smelled divine.

I thought your father was an earl? Why are you running a bakery?

His face sobered a bit. My father was burned alive in an accident on our estate last winter. That’s why we moved here. We bargained away everything we had left, and bought a bakery. Fairy Tale Cakery, we call it. He tilted his head thoughtfully. "Actually, we could use some more help around the place. There’s still so much to do, setting up and getting our name spread around town. I’m sure Mother would hire you for some odd jobs. What do you think?"

I blinked, taken aback. No one had ever offered to hire me before. Me? I asked stupidly.

Yes, you! Do you want to work for my mother? It would be hot work, she might put you in the back room with the ovens sometimes, but you could also run deliveries, or-

You would pay me? I interrupted.

Of course!

I frowned down at my piece of pie, and very carefully nibbled a corner of it. It tasted just as wonderful as it smelled. I chewed the minuscule bite for a theatrically long time before swallowing. My belly rumbled with a humiliating excess of volume.

Okay, I said at last.

And that was how I, a cynical thirteen-year-old demon child, began working at Fairy Tale Cakery.

Chapter 2

Twelve years later

I tore through the gloomy streets with a knife between my ribs, stumbling over my own feet as my vision began to blur. My side was soaked with my own blood and my thin, tattered shirt was sticking to my skin. Each ragged breath I sucked through my teeth felt like a new blade sinking into my lungs.

The streets were mostly empty at this time of night, and those who hovered in the pools of lamplight at street corners glanced pointedly away from me, condemning me to my fate. I didn’t even stop to ask them for help because I knew they would not give it. I clutched at my ribs, cutting my hand on the blade of the knife, too afraid to remove it from my body lest I bleed out right then and there.

Footsteps thundered down the alleyway ahead of me, cutting me off. They’re going to catch me, I thought, my heart jumping into my throat and sticking there. I skidded to a halt, staggered and fell to one knee, and with a moan of pain I struggled to regain my feet, lurching down a side road instead. Dear God, they’re going to catch me. Help.

I was wheezing so loudly that I knew they would track me by sound. It didn’t matter where I went or what I did, I was a dead man.

A fresh wave of clattering, hard-soled footsteps echoed off the walls of the buildings ahead of me. I darted down a side alley that was barely wide enough for my shoulders. My lungs hurt like they were on fire. My knees trembled, threatening to give way with every step I forced myself to take. All I could do was run; I didn’t want to die. I desperately, desperately didn’t want to die. Especially not like this, burned as a witch by a zealous mob.

Lamplight gleamed around the corner ahead of me; voices shouted overhead. I think I see him!

We’re almost there!

He’s got to be just around the corner!

Burn the monster!

You can’t hide from us, freak! Show yourself!

I let out a weak, animal little sound in my throat as fear squeezed at my heart. I wove clumsily to a halt; my legs gave way and my knees hit the cobblestone, sending lancing pain up into my thighs. Groping for a chance at survival, I crawled into the trash that was piled behind somebody’s home and buried myself in slimy, stinking piles of refuse. I pulled a piece of scrap wood