Читаем Berries and Greed полностью

If it meant I had to live with a bunch of people who had willingly dedicated their lives to worshipping the demiurgus, the monstrous beings who lived among humans? Sure, I didn’t mind that. They could do what they wanted. Did I find it a little weird that they all stayed here desperately hoping to one day become a demiurgus’s mate? That they spent all their time reading about the species’ mysterious history, learning their ways and pampering themselves to look beautiful in the hopes of getting dicked down by one of them?

I mean, yeah, I found it a little strange.

The demiurgus weren’t human, but they were just… people. A different kind of people, but people. They weren’t gods. They’d emerged from wherever they’d lived, deep underground, centuries ago to start co-existing with humans on the surface. They’d brought with them medicine, interesting food, beautiful artwork and a new culture, which was how, I guessed, cults like this had sprung up.

Yeah, I was in a cult. But I wasn’t really in it. I just lived in The Order of the Greater Beings’ compound because… well. Because it was great. The building was huge and sprawling, on the top of a big hill that overlooked the city and surrounding countryside. It was clean and luxurious, and I had a huge room to myself. The food was good. The healthcare was top-notch. And my aunt was here.

My mother hadn’t been around when I was little, and my dad was… not great. Just a total dick who’d clearly never wanted a kid. After a decade of neglect, he’d finally foisted me off on his sister, my aunt, who worked at the compound as the general manager for its winemaking business.

She wasn’t a true follower of the cult either. She’d come here years earlier when she’d had no other options after a short stint in prison for theft. During that time, her boyfriend had shacked up with someone new and changed the locks, so when she got out, she’d been homeless—my dickhead dad hadn’t been willing to take her in—and hadn’t been able to get a job. She’d come to the cult one night, desperate, hoping for a bed and a hot meal. And then she’d stayed, because she got both of those things. She played the game just like I did, pretending to worship the demiurgus, and eventually she’d become general manager here, overseeing the day-to-day running of the cult’s winemaking business.

It wasn’t that humans who lived outside of the compound were destitute. Most of them weren’t at all. Many of them had completely normal jobs, normal lives, and treated the demiurgus as what they were—just other folk.

But by the time I turned eighteen and could legitimately go out into the world and make my own way, I’d gotten scared. I may not have been a true member of the cult, my aunt had made sure when I was a kid that I didn’t get sucked into their fervent worship of the demiurgus, but it was basically all I’d known. And I hadn’t gotten a proper education here. I knew I’d struggle to find a job, especially one that paid well enough for me to get my own place.

So I’d stayed. I liked living with my only family—I had no idea where my dad was now—and I liked my simple way of life. I wasn’t lazy. I worked just as hard as all the others on the vineyards we ran. We had two of them here—a standard one for human wine, and a subterranean one within the hill to grow the nightberries that the demiurgus made their own wine from. It was a pretty lucrative business. The demiurgus loved having easy access to their favourite wine without having to make the long journey back underground to the mysterious place they came from, to procure the nightberries. At some point in the cult’s past, a demiurgus had gifted the members with some of the berries, and from there the subterranean vineyard had grown.

Most of the other members suspected I wasn’t as gung-ho about becoming a demiurgus’s fucktoy as they were, but I displayed just enough deference when the “Greater Beings” were brought up, and I made sure to keep my mouth mostly shut when the high priest was around. If he realised I wasn’t all in, that I wasn’t here in the hopes of one day becoming a demiurgus’s mate, I’d be out the door in an instant.

Besides, it wasn’t like there was any danger of that actually happening. In the entire time I’d lived here, not a single demiurgus had stepped through those doors declaring that they were here to choose a human mate. And even if that did happen… well, I would not be their first choice. Or even their last. We had regular health check-ups here, and our medical backgrounds were recorded in painstaking detail so that if a demiurgus did ever come here, they’d be able to make sure they were choosing a healthy mate who suited their needs.

And I would not suit their needs. I made very fucking sure I didn’t.