“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
He looks down at his plate. Smiles weakly. Sticks his fork into the eggs, stirs them, then gazes out of the window again. “I remember the nightmare,” he says. “They cut my eyes out. They were circling me, tormenting me, using my empty sockets as —”
“Hey,” I stop him, “I’m a kid. I shouldn’t be hearing this. You’ll scar me for life with stories like that.”
Dervish grins, warmth in it this time. “Take more than a scary story to scar you,” he grunts, then starts to eat. I help myself to thirds, then return to the biography, not needing the sheet of paper to finish, able to recall it perfectly.
To save Bill-E, we faced Lord Loss and his familiars, Artery and Vein, a vicious, bloodthirsty pair. We won. And Dervish won himself a ticket to Demonata hell, to go toe-to-toe with the big double L on his home turf.
Then, without warning, Dervish returned. I woke up one morning and he was his old self, talking, laughing, brain intact. We celebrated for days, us, Bill-E and Meera. And we all lived happily after. The end.
Except, of course, it wasn’t. Life isn’t a fairy tale, and stories don’t end. Before she left, Meera took me aside and warned me to be careful. She said there was no way to predict Dervish’s state of mind. Sometimes it took a person a long time to recover from an encounter with Lord Loss. Sometimes they never properly recovered.
“We don’t know what’s going on in there,” she whispered. “He looks fine, but that could change. Watch him, Grubbs. Be prepared for mood swings. Try and help. Do what you can. But don’t be afraid to c
all me for help.”
I did call when the nightmares started, when Dervish first attacked me in his sleep, mistook me for a demon and tried to cut my heart out. (Luckily, in his delirium, he picked up a spoon in stead of a knife.) But there was nothing Meera could do, short of cast a few calming spells, and recommend he visit a psychiatrist. Dervish rejected that idea, but she threatened to take me away from him if he didn’t. So he went to see one, a guy who knew about demons, whom Dervish could be honest with. I don’t know what happened, but after the second session, the psychiatrist rang Meera and said he never wanted to see Dervish again — he found their sessions too upsetting.
Meera discussed the possibility of having Dervish committed, or hiring a bodyguard to look after him, but I rejected both suggestions. So, against Meera’s wishes, we carried on living by ourselves in this spooky old mansion. It hasn’t been too bad. Dervish rarely gets the nightmares more than two or three nights a week. I’ve grown used to it. Waking up in the middle of the night to screams is no worse than waking up to a baby’s cries. Really, it isn’t.
And he’s not that much of a threat. We keep the knives locked away, and have bolted the other weapons in the mansion in place. (The walls are dotted with axes, maces, spears, swords ... all sorts of cool stuff.) I usually keep my door locked too, to be safe. The only reason it was open last night was that Dervish had thrown a fit both nights before, and it’s rare for him to fall prey to the nightmares three nights in a row. I thought I was safe. That’s why I didn’t bother with the lock. It was my fault, not Dervish’s.
“I will kill him for you, master,” Dervish says softly.
I lower my fork. “What?”
He turns, blank-faced, looking like he did when his soul was fighting Lord Loss. My heart rate quickens. Then he grins.
The Demonata exist in a multi-world universe of their own. Evil, murderous creatures, who revel in torment and slaughter. They try to cross over into our world all the time.