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The thing's appearance revolted her. An amorphous mass of writhing tentacles lined with sharp-toothed lamprey mouths and tufts of scraggly fur, all dripping with mud, it reached out a waving tendril to her almost seductively as it whispered enticements to join it.
Still, it hadn't done anything to her, whereas her classmates, who always looked the perfect image of popular, attractive young girls, obsessed with the latest fashions and keeping up a facade as they were, acted as vile as any demon she'd read about.
Yes, she knew the rumours. There'd been a lot more of them about lately. She'd heard of the terrible fates that awaited people who dealt with demons, how they could wheedle and lie and string you along by offering you the thing you wanted most in life, before eating your very soul, or turning you into one of their own.
It didn't really put her off. Maybe she'd make a better demon than a human. There had to be something wrong with her to make everyone act so hostile when she didn't provoke them at all. Maybe it was bad karma from the last life, or maybe something was already tainted deep in her soul. Whatever the case, she couldn't imagine that death would be any worse than her existence at the moment. In fact, she'd been seriously considering suicide before the thing that called itself Lahmu reached out to her. Whatever fate worse than death it wanted to subject her to, she'd at least only be trading one for another.
He, she corrected, Lahmu had claimed to be male. She couldn't be mean to him when he'd done nothing wrong yet other than looking creepy as all hell. She'd be as bad as the other girls.
"You do understand that you will have to do much worse to them than anything they did to you?" the voice whispered inside her head, sibilant and low and bestial.
"That's different," she snapped, replying out loud, "That's revenge. And stopping them from doing anything else to anyone..."
"You don't have to justify it. Its only the natural order. That's all I am, a deep part of the world, rising to the surface from the mud. I sense distrust," he hissed, "I am not dishonest. I will take from you, yes, but only in so far that the world is full of give and take. Think of it more as becoming one with me so that we can both be stronger."
"But we won't have to..." she blushed, remembering things she'd heard about tentacle monsters, tacky horror movies and adult manga.
"Stupid girl, I am ancient, and nothing like a human, I do not even have my own physical body like yours as such. But you're thinking about primal things. That's an improvement. There's mental strength in you, strong emotions that can be stoked into pure willpower. Maybe you'll have what it takes to gain a foothold in this new, chaotic world, once we've dealt with your immediate problem. Have you ever wanted power, child, real power, so that no stupid humans would ever dare to hurt you again? You could control them, make them behave as you see fit."
She mulled over this. The teachers had that kind of power and they were no help at all. They hid behind impartiality but she suspected they were avoiding their duty, maybe were afraid of the other girls' more wealthy families or had even made a deal with them. Unless they just hated her too. As for the Government these days... If she had that much power, she wouldn't let helpless, innocent people suffer, even if she had to do bad things to get them to stop.
"You're thinking in terms of human order again, but its a start. You have ambition, at least, and I don't care what kind of will you impose as long as I gain power and souls. So, do we have a deal?"
She nodded, brow creasing fiercely, "Might as well."