The small
girl leans forward and brushes the hair out of her face. Looking up at Jack she
says, “This is hard. I’m not sure where to start.”
He hands
her a glass of water. “Whatever it is, you might as well begin.”
She looks
up at him, but then rests her gaze on you. “A few years ago, I… was pretty down
and out. Me, my boyfriend, and a few of his buddies were hanging and crashing
in an abandoned house. It had no running water or anything, but it was a roof
over our heads and for junkies, sometimes that’s as good as it gets.”
“My
boyfriend had just broken into some cars and sold CDs so we were able to get
high that night. Things were going about as well as they could for us, when
these six huge men came crashing into our squat. Instead of talking or asking
us to do anything, a fight broke out. I saw some crazy shit I didn’t
understand. Lights crashed across the room and these new guys moved at
impossible speeds. I just hid under a table screaming. Within seconds the
battle was over and all the people I’d been spending the last few months of my
life with were dead.”
She
pauses and then says, “Can I get something stronger than water, please?” Mr.
King hands her a rum and coke. She takes a sip and winces. “See…well, these six
guys were no righteous heroes, but I guess I was young and pretty enough for
them to decide to let me stick around for them to abuse.”
She sighs.
“You can say what you want about me. I’m not good at much, hell, I’m not even a
good person, my one skill might be that I’m a survivor and these six fuckers
called themselves Selectors and they were all into crap like Darwin’s survival
of the fittest and shit.”
She
manages to smile. “Well maybe I’m good at two things.” She gave Jack an honest
smile, “okay, three things, but the second is being able to manipulate people.
With a complement here, a nudge there, and a lie over there, I convinced the
leader, a guy named Timber, to let me live and if I was going to live, I had to
become one of them, a Selector, a Xemmoni. Men made demon that feed off other
human’s like cattle.”
“So yeah,
I became a junky, demon sex slave for these brutes. After a while Timber
stopped passing me around. Life got a little easier and yeah, I feed with them.
They liked to think they were doing a service for the Earth by feeding off
mostly scum, but I knew better.”
“I might
have a fourth talent, but not a positive one.” Her smile this time held the
hint of dark evil. “I can be a real demanding bitch. I tried to set myself up
as some sort of half assed queen for this pack, but they must have grown tried
of it, for one night after a big feast and a whole lot of drinking, I woke up
alone.”
“I
drifted back to my junky ways, but after tasting the juice of souls the normal
stuff didn’t cut it. When I met Jack and found out he was heading to Vegas, I
figured I’d fit right in. Jack never knew any of this, so don’t blame him.”
She
looked up at Jack with tears rolling down her face. “I’m sure you all hate me
now.”
