My soul? I mused, alarmed, but she only seemed to twine her consciousness around mine, keeping us separate but close, rubbing her energies across me, old and jumbled, like a West Coast ley line.
You don't want the entire collective to see you helpless and vulnerable, she explained, giving me the impression of half-lidded eyes and a sultry whisper. Having Gally see you as such will be punishment enough for almost killing him, I imagine.
Whoa, Al? I thought, worried, and she swam closer, making me nervous as I remembered him pinning me to the bookcase and spilling ley-line energy into me. And then me, slamming his theoretical dick in a drawer. Why him?
Al, she reiterated, seeming bothered she'd forgotten his name again. You want Dali to peel the memory from your thoughts instead? He's likely more skilled at it, and it's often easier for strangers to see us naked than...just what is Gally to you, anyway?
I shook my head, or at least I would have if I had one. I don't know.
Well, when you're done, bring Gally in to separate your construct from your conscious thought. Let him in, Rachel. Ignore the fact that he will see everything. Moment by moment, every little desire and hate you have, your soul sifting through his fingers as he pulls the construct free. What he doesn't see might be left here, so let him entirely in, she thought, and I had a moment of perfect panic. It's rather more intimate than pinning you to the wall for a kiss, she mocked.
I didn't like this, but what choice did I have? It wasn't as if Al hadn't been in my thoughts before. Wait! I don't know what to do! I thought as I felt her start to distance herself.
Newt's consciousness swooped and dipped about mine, making me dizzy. Creating a collective thought real enough to touch is to prove you have the ability to shelter another soul within yours without absorbing it or accidentally changing what should not be changed. I felt a wave of melancholy come from her, dimming the stars. Do you know why demons are born able to twist curses? Their mothers curse them while still in the womb so they can defend themselves from birth. But it takes finesse to lay a curse within another's soul while you're sheltering it within your own. Making a tulpa and allowing another to exist freely in it is the same. It's also why Algaliarept can't remember what he looks like under all that prettiness he shows the world. He can't pick out what is rightfully his and what his mother added. Beautiful, beautiful baby. I never had any, but if I had, I'd have made her look just like you.
It was starting to make sense. Making a construct would show I was fit to be a mother-a mother to demon children I would never have. So...what do I do? I asked, wondering if the demon who had helped Newt make that memory of an upscale bar was still alive, or if she'd killed him. Maybe it had been Minias.
Newt swam in circles around me, sending out ripples to the edge of the empty collective. I do so like it when no one is here. Quiet.
Newt? I prompted, and she returned.
Remember a place. Make it real in your mind. Fill the void here, and Al will separate it from you and make it real. That's their part. All you have to do is let him in.
I had to trust him. Damn it! How did I get here? Just think of a place?
In my mind, it was as if I could see her bobbing in the water before me, silver stars running down her face like water drops. What do you miss the most? Now that you're here forever?
What do I miss? I echoed, thinking immediately of Jenks, Ivy, and my church, but sharing that with the demons wasn't going to happen. My garden in the sun. The sun I would never see again.
Heartache seemed to double me over. The sun. I was going to miss the sun. That was what I could show them. Not the sun in my garden, but somewhere else, where the sun ruled everything, not just now, but for all the past and all the future. I would give the demons a forest so old and dead that only stones remained. I'd give them that, and nothing more.
With a ping that hurt my soul, I felt the memory of the desert rise in me, carrying all the lonely, empty desperation I'd felt when I thought I'd lost Jenks. I hunched, my eyes pinched tightly shut as my heart ached, resonating with the reality that I'd lost everything. Empty. Everything was empty, and the echo of space washed through my skull.
Heat soaked into me like an internal blanket, first frightening, then soothing. The hint of the abandoned ley lines in the desert seemed to glow, dead and gone and useless. From the inside of my eyelids came a reflection of them, etching through the collective like girders bracketing time. And from there, everything built upon itself, the entire desert melting back into existence. The chirp of insects; the soft click of a beetle; the wind pushing against me, oily and slippery, not recognizing me as I stood in the middle of a lost field of power and begged for a miracle.
The memory resonated in me, pulsing from me like a wave. It cascaded over my mental landscape, coloring everything, making it deeper, solid, real. I had been helpless then, and I was helpless now, and I held back a sob, refusing to cry. The scent of rock rose, strong, ancient air that dinosaurs breathed, finally loosed by a rockslide-once frozen by chance but now free to move again. I felt the immensity of my loneliness, and it hurt.
Open your eyes, little demon, Newt whispered in my thoughts.
I opened my eyes, blinking at the glare.
"Oh my God," I said, my lips drying out in the sun that existed in my thoughts. I was in the desert. Almost high noon. I was wearing dusty sneakers, and a short-sleeved shirt clung to me from a sweat that barely existed before the dry air stripped it from me. Grit ground under my feet as I turned, taking it in, hearing the emptiness, feeling the space. I knew it wasn't real, but it felt real.
I stood on a paved road, my shadow small under me. Behind me was my mother's car. Before me spilled the world, so vast that my eyes defined the edges with their very failure to comprehend. The sun was high, savagely baking the pinks, purples, and oranges out of the rock. The ground fell from my feet like a mountain turned inside out. A wind I knew existed only in my thoughts pushed on me with the affronted force of a god being asked to stop.
And I had made this.
Shocked, I turned to Newt, beside me. She was dressed in tight capri jeans and a brightly colored top. Dark sunglasses hid her eyes, and a ribbon of moisture ran beside her nose. A silk scarf covering her hair made her look like a fifties movie star out on location. I think she had dressed me, because I certainly hadn't.
"Is it real?" I asked. "Is it done?" The sky was so blue. I might never see it again, but I had it here-in my memory.
She smiled, her lips too red and an overabundance of blush on her cheeks. "Let Al in. Only Al. This needs to be remembered. They all need to remember this."
I had no idea what she meant, but I thought of Al.
A quiver went through me and the world seemed to hiccup. In a cascading wash, he spilled into my mind as if he had been there waiting, and when I opened the door, he fell in. He stood beside me in his Mesopotamia robes, his mouth open and his pupils so small his eyes were like pools of blood. Shock poured from him as he saw what I had done-and fear, but if it was because of what I had done or because now he had to peel it out of my brain, I didn't know.
"My God," he whispered, taking it in. "She even has the old ley lines."
"Al?" I warbled, scared, and it was as if he caught my soul as he grabbed my shoulder when my knees gave out. He hoisted me into his arms, trying to see my construct and search my eyes at the same time.
"Take it, Al," Newt said softly. "Before she loses consciousness."
Al took a frightened breath, his eyes fixing on mine. It hurt, almost, and I wanted it out of me.
"Let me in," he said, seeing the pain in me, and I closed my eyes, unable to refuse.
I started to cry as he took my soul and lifted me out of the collective, leaving only the memory of the afternoon at the Petrified Forest. Carefully he peeled back bits and pieces of the construct, freeing little parts I hadn't known were attached to it, the shape of a rock that I'd seen before on the beach, the color that was akin to a sunset when I was ten, the caw of a rook that sent shivers down my spine-I'd heard it before at camp. Al carefully drew the associated memories back, taking my soul from the construct to leave something that could be made real.
Slowly the pain lifted as I was made whole, and still he looked, making sure nothing was left. "I think," Al whispered, "I think I got all of her. I've not done this before. Oh God, I hope I got all of her." I felt him turn. "Newt. The word to fix it-" And then his voice cracked. "Memoranda," he croaked out, and I felt a ping through me as the thought severed completely.
Things that must be remembered, I translated silently, waiting for the rising crest of imbalance, but nothing came.
And then, though my eyes were shut, I knew that every single demon who had been in Dalliance was with us. I hadn't brought them in; Al had moved my memory to them. It was fixed. It was real.
As one, the demons cowered, crying out as the cool night of Mesopotamia vanished and was replaced in a blink with the hot reality of the Arizona desert in June. "My God!" I heard one say, but most were silent with awe.
"Dali!" Al shouted, his thick-fingered hand cupping my head as he held me to him. "Did it take? Did I do it right?"
"We're here, aren't we?" the older demon called back, and I blearily looked, seeing the jukebox standing beside the memory of my mother's blue Buick. The trunk was open, and there was a picnic basket inside. I hadn't thought of the basket. Someone else had. I'd made something that the demons could twist to their own reality. I'd done it.
"A picnic," Newt said, snapping a red-and-white-checkered blanket out right there on the side of the road. "What a splendid idea. Dali, you must remember to give Rachel royalties every time someone uses this, seeing that she's still alive. I'll be watching your books. Us demonesses must stick together."
Demoness. I'd done it. I was a demon. Yay me.
My head fell onto Al's chest, and I whimpered, my hands balled up as I tried to keep my eyes open. At the outskirts of my vision, I could see the demons standing on the edge of the drop-off, throwing rocks to see how far the illusion went. Fists on his hips, Dali stood between me and Newt, gazing at clouds that somehow never seemed to cover the sun. Newt had sat upon the blanket with a bucket of fried chicken and a wineglass.
Al jiggled me up into a more comfortable posture. "She's not well. I'm taking her home. Anyone still think she's not a demon?"
"I'm fine," I slurred, clearly not.
"No!" Ku'Sox shouted, and my pulse hiccupped. "It was Newt! Newt made it!"
My eyes opened, then squinted. "Screw you. I'm a demon. Deal with it." Oh God. I'm a demon.
"Don't be tiresome," Newt said coyly. "I don't remember the sun. Or colors...like this."
She had cried. The tears were gone now, but she had cried when we'd been alone. I think she did remember, and it made her crazy. Was I going to go crazy, too?
"Al?" I warbled, feeling it all come down on me. "I don't feel so good."
Immediately he held me closer, his warmth doing nothing to stop my shaking.
"Take her home," Newt said, having left her blanket to shade me with her own body. "Her construct stretches the entire breadth of the collective. It's only hampered now by the size of Dalliance."
"She filled the entire collective..." Dali breathed.
"The whole thing. You could walk for most of a day and not run into the wall. I'd suggest we make this our new wallpaper, even as bright as it is. At least we could all fit in it."
"Al," I whispered, feeling the world start to spin. Shit, I couldn't go back. This was for real. I was going to spend the rest of my life here. Under the ground. Away from the sun. Every day exactly the same, surrounded by beings who had lived too long, trapped in their own hell. If I turned around fast, would there be barren wall behind me?
I was passing out. I felt it happen as if in slow motion, parts of my brain turning off, the horizon growing dark, and noises becoming dull. There were congratulations to Al even as he struggled to put space enough between us and them to jump out. Ku'Sox raged until someone shoved him in the trunk. The last thing I remembered was someone, Dali, I think, kissing the top of my hand as I slumped in Al's arms.
"Welcome home, Rachel Mariana Morgan," he said, his goat-slitted eyes holding a new, dangerous light. "It's a pleasure to finally meet you."