The Devil's Daughter

Epilogue

Chapter one

Birth

It was just a plain white hospital room, no different from the thousands in which countless women had gone through the pain of becoming a mother. She knew that, but it didn't help to settle her uneasy stomach as she stared at the crisp white walls. The atmosphere of the room felt strange, as the doctor went through the procedure. It had been a long and difficult labor, but the end was in sight. As the doctor saw the baby’s head emerging, he gently pulled the child out. The woman let out a huge cry of relief as the pain suddenly began to lessen. The doctor looked down and smiled at the newborn baby, and for an instant, all was well. All the world was caught up in the look of quiet satisfaction on the doctor's face; satisfaction in the completion of a difficult job that was well worth the trial. That satisfied and professional smile quickly disappeared as he felt his hands begin to burn.

Although he couldn't understand what was happening, the doctor cared first and foremost for the wellbeing of those in his care. Taking care not to drop the baby, the doctor pointedly asked the nurses for assistance. The nurses rushed to the doctor's side and hesitated, murmuring to one another. They were veterans of the hospital, but they were out of their depth. Unsure of how to help without getting burnt themselves, one of the nurses called the manager of the hospital. A janitor arrived after a few tense seconds with a pair of oven mittens from the hospital kitchen. He gave the mitts to a nurse. Gently, she took the baby from the agonized doctor. As the nurse hurried out of the room with the infant, the doctor stifled his pain and remembered his creed: The patient comes first. He turned to the woman, saying, Ma'am, your baby is fine. She's a perfectly healthy little girl. But when you're rested, there are a few things we'll need to talk about.

He smiled at the exhausted woman. She was too tired to see it, but his smile was no longer the same quality of pure joy as the smile he had worn earlier. Instead, it had slipped into the mask doctors must too often put in place while speaking words of empty reassurance to families without hope. Before the mask could slip, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room, and finally allowed himself to call for help for his damaged hands. The woman tried to stop the doctor to get more information from him, but was pushed back onto her pillow by the white-faced nurses and was told to rest while she could.

In a few days she deemed herself sufficiently recovered from the traumatizing birth. A few more torturous days of waiting followed that before the doctor returned to see her, bringing a solemn-faced stranger with him. They had moved her into a different room. It was a private room where new mothers got to share with their newborn children. But her child wasn’t there. No one had told her where she was or how she was doing. She grew to hate this hospital and this doctor.

Let me see my child, she weakly demanded.

It had been five days since she had given birth, and the young mother had yet to see her child. There was no mask in place on the doctor's prematurely aged face. In fact, he looked more haggard than she felt. There was no attempt at a false smile as he introduced her to his companion.

Miss Bell, I would like you to meet Mr. Spring.

In the corner of the room stood a young looking man with brown curly hair, hard blue eyes, and a well-tanned, muscular body. He was wearing jeans and a fairly casual button up shirt, but the air of professional detachment that radiated from him indicated that he would look just as relaxed, perhaps even more so, in a starched black suit. He nodded to the doctor, clearly dismissing him from the room. The doctor, taken aback, locked eyes with the stranger for a moment, before dropping his gaze to the floor.

He has a few things to talk to you about. I’ll leave you two alone. The doctor concluded, and left the room, closing the door behind him. The stranger, Mr. Spring, listened to the click of the doctor's heels down the hallway, and even after they faded, he waited in silence for a few moments more – but his piercing blue eyes never left those of the young mother lying in confusion on the hospital bed. At length, he spoke.

Miss Bell, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but we have discovered that your daughter isn’t, well, normal. There is no easy way to put this, so I'll be as blunt as possible. She is one of a group of special individuals we have officially labeled a demon.

His cool demeanor didn't change, despite the incredible nature of his statement. He had the practiced air of one who dealt with the extraordinary on an ordinary basis. The room fell utterly silent. The woman didn’t know what to say. She simply glared at him. He could see the anger take over her. A few moments of torturous silence followed as she grasped for words, and then she found them. A what? How dare you?

The young Ms. Bell was furious. How could he say such things about her child? Her anger plowed aside the icy fear she felt as she wondered, deep in her secret heart of hearts, if there might be some truth to his impossible claim. The man weathered her outburst and remained calm.

I’m sorry, Miss Bell, but after what happened on the day of her birth, she is now classified as a demon.

Really, Mr. Spring? And why is she classified as…that? What proof do you have? I demand to see my daughter, you goddamn moron! She was in shock, and lashing out with the only weapon she had available – her words.

Miss Bell, we have discovered that her body temperature is, hmm, significantly above average---

So, you're telling me that because my child was born with a fever, she's classified as a demon? What are we, back in the Salem witch trials?

Miss Bell, her temperature is so far above average that she cannot be touched without risk of getting burnt or catching on fire. Mr. Spring spoke with all the patience of a father speaking to an unruly child, no emotion in his cold blue eyes.

The woman didn’t speak. She didn’t want to believe it. But… She saw what happened to the doctor that day her daughter was born. She saw it with her own eyes. How was such a thing possible, unless this strange man with icy eyes was telling the truth?

Miss Bell, please listen. Perhaps you thought that the situation was hopeless. That is not the case. I run a, well, a Center – an institute, if you will – specializing in people like your daughter. My associates and I call it the Demon Care Center. Your child can remain there, not part of society as we know it, but part of some resemblance of society. Better for her to be among her own kind, people that can understand and accept her. If she were to stay with you, she would have nothing to look forward to but a lifetime of fear and mistrust. She would be a pariah with no friends, no hope, and no future. Don't worry about the cost, ma'am. Consider this a free government service.

The young Ms. Bell was silent for a moment. Laboriously, she rose to a seated position and said, I don’t want your money I don’t want your sympathy I just want to see my daughter. God gave me this child for a reason, Mr. Spring. You may see her as a curse, but I see her as a blessing.

Mr. Spring rose with her. Miss Bell, he said, and he paused. For the first time that day, he needed to collect his thoughts. For the first time that day, he showed some emotion. Was it a curl in his lip? A tic in his eyebrow? Whatever it was, Ms. Bell felt a sudden, almost overwhelming sense of terror as he said, God didn’t send you that blessing. The devil sent you his daughter.

Not saying another word, Mr. Spring turned and left the room. Four days later, Ms. Bell left the hospital with her baby.

When she arrived at her house, she found that Mr. Spring had provided her with a few extra pot holders for her newborn. They went into the garbage can, along with a small pamphlet detailing life at his Center, and she made do with her ratty old pair of oven mitts. Daily, he would call to see if she had changed her mind about the Center. Susan please try to understand where I am coming from. How long do you think that you can take care of her? She will begin to crawl soon. You will have to keep your eye on her all the time. Then when she starts walking you won’t be able to sleep. She will get up in the middle of the night just for a glass of water and you will have to put the fires out behind her. Mr. Springs tried to get her to understand but Ms. Bell was determined that she would never give her daughter up. She made everything out of pot holders and fireproof material for her daughter. But day by day, her daughter's temperature continued to rise just like he had warned her.

As the baby got older, she started fires in the house. She was curious about life, as are all infants, and she shared the human desire to explore and discover. The difficulty was that every time she crawled somewhere she wasn't supposed to crawl and touched that something she wasn't supposed to touch, something caught on fire. Susan had an overwhelming love of her child driving her on, but she was only human. As much as it pained her, day by day she felt herself growing wearier trying to keep her daughter alive, and knew she couldn’t do this forever. The smoke damage was getting expensive, the temperature was getting unbearable, and the arson squad at the police department was getting suspicious. The day came when Mr. Spring called and she didn't just hang up the phone. Tell me she will be safe. She asked. Yes, she will be in the best care. Mr. Spring reassured her. Will I be able to visit? Susan voice broke. If you want to. She let the tears fall because she knew that she didn’t want to. She couldn’t be reminded that she gave her baby away because she couldn’t handle being a mother.

Two days later, they were discussing terms for the child's life at the Center. The next day, Mr. Spring took the baby away, and the young Susan never saw her beloved daughter again.

I was told that story when I was five years old - the story of my birth, my infancy, and my adoption. It's the story of how I got here, but not why I'm here. My name is Esther, and for all I know, I could be the devils daughter.

Everyone I know calls me Red. Everybody I know, of course, lives here at the Center. I’ve lived at the Center nearly my whole life, and certainly for as long as I can remember. The people here are pretty much family, albeit the weirdest damn family to never grace a photo album. There’s not many of us, though, thank heaven (or hell). We are a rare kind of pseudo-human, known officially as demons. How we got that name, I don't know. Maybe some government hotshot had a flair for the dramatic. The way I see it, only one person here deserves that name – yours truly.

Jared Springs is the proud owner, leader, and all around Big Man on Campus of the Center. He considers himself one of us, a demon, but he's the best of us. He’s the dad of the family. And he's a werewolf. He's also the son of a fanatical werewolf hunter. (Irony. Gotta love it.) Anyway, Jared's father hated the mythical beasts for terrorizing the small village, they lived in, and so he spent his life trying to eradicate them. When Jared came of age, he joined his father in the hunt. One day Jared got overrun by the feral werewolves, and was bitten. He feared that if his father found out, he would kill him. So he did what any teenage boy would do if he were half dead, terribly injured, and terrified that his father might find, out – he ran, not knowing where he would end up.

After miles of running, he stumbled into a house in the middle of the woods. He was tired, hungry, thirsty, and needed help. An older man who was working in his garden saw Jared. He roughly outlined his situation to the old man (leaving out a few details, of course) and asked the man if he could stay for the night. The old man must have been one lonely old kook (but don't tell Jared I said that) because he treated Jared as if he was his own son.

For years, Jared never left that house in the woods. He helped the old man with his garden fixed everything in the house and did anything else that the old man needed from him. But the curse had taken hold of him. When he started transforming, he made sure to always go far away on the night of the full moon. As time rolled on, he grew confident – and then he grew careless. One night, he lost control, and killed the old man. After mourning, Jared swore to make the old man's house into a refuge to