The boy's desperate plea hangs in the air between us like smoke, heavy and clinging. I can smell his intense fear, but underneath it is something else. Something that might be hope, though hope in his situation borders on delusion.
This boy is trying to latch on to me for survival. Well, too bad for him, but I'm not in a position to take care of others' problems. I can't. I don't want to.
"Go home, boy." I tell him, because it's the simplest solution to a problem I don't want to have.
His face crumples slightly, and for a moment he looks even younger, saying quietly. "I don't have a home to go to."
The words hit something deep in my chest, a place I thought I'd learned to ignore. I know what it means to have no home, no place in the world that will accept you. The circus was never home. It was a cage with prettier bars.
"Then find one," I say coldly, turning away from him again.
"Please." His voice cracks on the word. "I can be useful. I know the city, I know the streets. I know where the guards patrol, where they don't. I know which areas are safe and which ones to avoid. I know things about surviving here that you might not."
I pause again, considering his words despite myself. It's true that I've been learning the city through trial and error, mapping safe routes and hunting grounds through careful observation. But I see these streets only from above, only at night or from the shadows. His perspective might offer something different.
"I know these streets well enough." I reply without turning around.
In truth, I have only been here a month and it is especially important that I am not found out now, because the upper class are probably still abuzz with the massacre of the circus and my escape. They knew there was a demon on the run. My stomach twists in anxiety. I didn't think this would be common news to the public, especially the poor parts of the city, but if those kids report it to the police and they hear them out…the police would be aware of what happened in the circus, wouldn't they? And I have disposed of some bodies, but of some I was not able to…if they recognize how they were killed, they would easily connect the dots, and…my blood runs cold. Still, all the more reason to not have humans involved. This all happened, because I helped this little–
"But you don't know them like prey does," the annoying human presses, interrupting my thoughts. "I see them from below, from the gutters. I know things you can't learn from hunting."
There's truth in that, I admit silently. But truth doesn't change the fundamental problem.
"I also know," he continues, "that you saved me. That makes them your kills, doesn't it? Doesn't that make me... your responsibility?"
I turn back to face him, and he flinches at whatever he sees in my expression.
"You think I claimed you?" The idea is so absurd it almost makes me laugh. "You think killing your attackers makes you mine?"
"I... maybe?" He swallows hard, but doesn't back down. "I don't know how demons think about these things. But you intervened when you didn't have to. You could have let them kill me and fed on my corpse afterward. Instead, you killed them and left me alive. That has to mean something."
It doesn't mean anything, I want to tell him. It was impulse, recognition, a moment of weakness that I'm already regretting.
"Humans are trouble," I say bluntly. "They betray, they lie, they disappoint. They're weak when you need them strong, and they ask for things you can't give. I don't need that kind of complication in my life."
"I won't betray you." The words come out fierce and certain, as if he's making a sacred vow. "I know what you are. I know what you can do. I saw you kill two boys without breaking a sweat. Why would I be stupid enough to cross you?"
Because you're human, I think but don't say. Because it's what humans do.
"Besides," he continues, pushing himself to his feet with visible effort, "what do I have left to betray you for? Those bastards you killed? They were my enemies, not my friends. The city authorities who'd rather see me dead than fed? The people who cross the street to avoid looking at me? I have nothing left to lose and everything to gain by staying loyal to the only person who's ever saved my life."
He says it so simply and firmly, not emotionally. That is the honest truth and he has nothing to hide.
"Go find some other protector," I tell him, spreading my wings slightly. "Find some charitable soul who wants to save lost children. I'm not that person."
"There is no one else." His voice breaks slightly on the words. "You think I haven't tried? You think I haven't begged every adult in these slums for scraps, for shelter, for anything? They see what I am. A nomad brat whose people caused them problems. They'd rather I just disappear." He doesn't say it with anger, at me or at the people he is talking about. Just defeat.
I know that feeling. The weight of being unwanted, of being hated. I was only kept because I was useful, and this boy is not. I do not want to be responsible for him.
"That's not my concern," I say.
"Please." He takes a step toward me, and I tense instinctively. But he's not attacking, just reaching out with one desperate hand, as if he could physically grasp my attention. "I'll do whatever you want. Go wherever you tell me to go. I'll be useful, I promise. I'll earn my keep."
The pleading in his voice reminds me of my own desperation in the circus. But even more the reason why I should not involve myself with him. Promises made from desperation rarely hold when the circumstances change.
I could kill him now. End the problem before it becomes worse. But as I look at his determined face, at the way he stands despite his injuries, at the desperate hope flickering in his dark eyes, I find myself hesitating.
"I don't save people," I tell him finally. "I don't rescue lost children or fight for justice or any of the other noble things you might be imagining. I kill and I feed and I survive. That's all."
"I know," he says quietly. "I'm not asking you to save me. I'm asking you to let me save myself by staying with you."
I study his face for a long moment, looking for signs of deception or hidden motives. But all I see is exhaustion, pain, and a kind of grim determination that I recognize all too well.
"Humans are trouble," I repeat, then spread my wings and launch myself upward.
I don't look back to see his reaction. Don't want to see the disappointment or despair that's probably written across his features. He'll learn, eventually, that the world offers no easy answers, no convenient saviors.
But as I settle onto a nearby rooftop, I find myself watching the alley below, making sure he makes it out safely.
Today, a young boy, beaten and bloodied, stood in an alley filled with corpses begging a demon for protection. There's something both pathetic and admirable about his determination, I'll give him that.