1. Rune

I love puttingon my mask. It’s my nightly ritual before the carnival opens. I use my fingers, dipping into the black pot of paint to smear it over my face. By the time I’m done, my eye sockets are a solid black, making the normally blue irises look silver. The tip of my nose is also black, along with the outline of my teeth, making my face look like a hollow skull, outlined by my white hair that hangs down into my eyes.

“Opening in five!” I hear the ticket master shout outside my tent.

Something is happening tonight, something big. I can feel it pulse its way through my veins, and Kali slithers around my body with nervous excitement before settling around my neck and collarbones. I trace my fingers over her inky scales, and her tail twitches in anticipation.

“You feel it, too,” I tell her before throwing on my clothes. She moves under my skin so that her head is at the base of my throat. She likes to watch the feeding, and I can’t blame her. It is brutal and bloody as the humans scream and writhe beneath us.

“Rune,” Mara sings as she lets herself into my tent. She’s dressed head to toe in tight black leather. She twirls a blade between her fingers as she walks around. For a demon, she looks incredibly angelic with her blonde hair and blue eyes.

“Looking especially tempting tonight, Mara,” I tell her as I rinse the black paint from my hands. I walk around the tent, lighting more candles and organizing my divination props, essentially setting the stage for the fortune teller’s act.

“Mmm,” she says as she plops herself down in the customer’s chair and tosses her feet up onto the table.“Nemo said you were jittery.”

“Something is coming,” I singsong to her, wagging my eyebrows.

“How fitting that you play the part of a fortune teller when you actually have the gifts of one. Yet here I am, stuck swallowing knives every night. Do you know how painful it was to learn how to do that properly?”

“It’s not like you can use your actual power,” I tell her. “The humans would run screaming if they saw you shapeshift. We’d never get to feed.” I push her feet off the table and mess with her too-perfect hair.

She rolls her eyes and leans her head back on the chair.

“What is it you saw, then?” she asks.

“A man,” I tell her, walking over to the opening of the tent and peeking out. People are beginning to trickle in, and their scent slowly makes its way over to me. All humans smell different, and their smells have evolved over time. When I first walked this Earth some five hundred years ago, they always seemed to smell more of natural things. It was pleasant. These days? They all smell like synthetic perfumes and MSG.

“A man?” she asks, joining me at the door, looking out at the people filing into the carnival.

“A man,” I repeat. “My man.” A giddy feeling takes over, causing Kali to slither excitedly around my skin.

“Oh,” Maradrawls, understanding dawning across her soft features. “You mean your little Fated?”

Her eyes light up at the possibility. Demons don’t mate like humans; we don’t feel the need or the desire to do so. But we do need to feed off them if we don’t want to return to Hell. Their blood masks our scent, keeping us from being hunted by the hounds and dragged back below, kicking and screaming. Just because we were spawned in Hell, doesn’t mean we like it there. It is Hell, after all.

Every so often, our equivalent of a match comes along, and we feel ourselves inexplicably drawn to them, to their blood, and to their soul. So we keep them with us, keep them on tap. In my hundreds of years of staying up top, I’ve not had one, and the possibility makes me almost dizzy with excitement. I’ve been told drawing from your Fated is as close to a spiritual experience as us demons would ever be allowed to experience.

“Possibly,” I tell her, my eyes going back to scanning the crowd. He isn’t here yet, but he will be any minute now. I can feel him inside of me as if he was already a part of me. Another demon, Egan, walks among the humans, breathing fire in their direction as they gasp and laugh, watching him in awe.

“Show-off,” she says. “Good luck with your human.” She smiles, her sharpened fangs poking out from behind her lips before she disappears into the crowd.

I stand at the opening of my tent, not wanting to turn any of my lights on to draw any attention my way. I want to see him when he arrives. I don’t want to miss a moment. Carnival goers begin to wander my way, and as one makes eye contact with me, I smile, showing my sharpened teeth, and chomp in his direction. He quickly averts his gaze and directs his little friend group in the opposite direction.

That’s when I smell him. I breathe deeply and close my eyes, relishing in his scent. He smells like tobacco and chocolate. My mouth waters as I lick my tongue over my teeth. I chew my lip as my eyes scan across everyone walking through the ticket booth, the golden-and-red glow of the carnival light illuminating their features.

“There’s my man,” I whisper to Kali, and I feel her little head peek out from the collar of my shirt, trying to steal a glance as well.

He is beautiful. My human is dressed head to toe in black: black boots, black denim, and a black T-shirt with rolled sleeves. His arms are covered in tattoos all the way down to his fingertips that light a hand-rolled cigarette in his mouth. That full bottom lip has a ring on either side, and as he draws in on that little stick of cancer, I imagine my dick in its place.

My human is the exact opposite to me in almost every way. He seems to be covered in tattoos where I don’t have a single one, except for my snake companion, Kali. He has jet-black hair compared to my stark white. I can’t see his eye color from here, but I wonder if they are dark to my light as well.

One of his friends playfully pushes him, and I straighten up, anger instantly flooding my veins. No one touches what is mine, even if he doesn’t know it yet. I step out of my tent, making sure the curtain closes behind me before following him into the crowd. He and his friends head directly toward the main tent for the opening show. It will be easy enough to keep eyes on him from there.

My body thrums with the adrenaline of him. My heart begins to beat in time with his, syncing our blood and breaths. From what I’ve been told, he’ll feel drawn to me as well…eventually. But if he doesn’t, I have a ritual I can perform to make him stay. The blood tastes so much sweeter when it isn’t soured by fear.

He tries, and fails, to casually look over his shoulder, but when he scans the crowd, he can’t find me. I smile and run my fingers over Kali, trying to calm her excited slithering. She is moving around my entire torso, tickling my sides as I feel her tongue dart out across my skin.

“Settle,” I soothe her.

He turns back around, taking a final drag of his cigarette before stomping into the dirt with his heavy boot. A girl he is standing with takes his arm in hers and leads him into the tent. That gives me pause. I never even thought the universe would give me a straight man. Surely he isn’t.

I walk around to the back of the tent and make my way through everyone working in here tonight before I find a place on the side where I can see everyone. My eyes find him easily in the crowd now, like they know exactly where to look. He scans the crowd as well, feeling my gaze on him like a physical touch. The lights go down, and I settle in, getting a plan together of how to approach him after.