But as they walked into a more open space, the Devil’s Rock emerged from behind tall juniper bushes, just as cold and majestic as it had always been. Adam’s heart stopped when he saw a body laid out on top.
He hurried across the moss-covered ground, breathless as he took in planes of bare skin, long, muscular legs and arms stretched to the sides. Because he knew who it was, and his brain could not accept that Emil was here, strapped to the boulder with rope and dressed only in his tattoos.
Dark spots appeared at the edges of Adam’s vision as he reached the altar, the same one he’d marked with his blood just that morning. This time, flames danced in a semi-circle around the site, but they didn’t produce enough heat to keep Emil’s vulnerable form from shuddering on the rough surface of the stone.
Reality hit Adam like a blow to the head, breaking through his thick skull so he’d finally realize what he’d already found out moments ago. If Emil were the evil mastermind who orchestrated his possession, he’d be back behind the thuyas, wearing the most terrifying mask of all, not tied down like an offering to the old gods.
But as regret and shame over his earlier accusations thrashed in Adam’s chest, his gaze swept over the muscular flesh dotted with goosebumps, a servant to hunger coming from deep within. A hunger that didn’t originate in his stomach, brain, or loins but belonged to the being living inside of him.
Emil’s face, deathly pale in the warm glow of the torches, was as tense as the rest of his body, to the point where Adam’s own muscles ached in sympathy. He was conscious, but he wouldn’t look at Adam, his gaze pointed at the stars above as he pressed his purplish lips together, sucking in shallow gasps of air through his nose.
Adam froze, his mind pulsing with fear of what might happen next. In any other situation, the solution would have been clear, even if risky, but nothing had been explained to him, so the ice he was treading on might be extremely thin. Despite the pressing need to take off his jacket and at least provide some warmth for Emil, he stood still, overcome by waves of heat pulsing through his bloodstream as Mrs. Janina walked up to the Devil’s Rock and gently pushed some of Emil’s hair off his face. She seemed unfazed by his nakedness, but the ship of prudishness must have sailed once she had decided to perform rituals in a deer skull mask with short antlers.
The shadow she cast on the rock wall behind Emil’s head was tall and stood at an unnatural angle, with splayed fingers reaching for the offering with a greed that had Adam tasting blood on his tongue.
In a land so far beyond the Lord’s reach, Adam might have been restrained by rules he didn’t understand, and a single misstep might leave him unable to save Emil.
“Why is he tied down? Emil?” Adam asked, forcing words through his narrowing. He started unbuttoning his coat, unable to keep still any longer.
Emil didn’t flinch, but his chest worked constantly, like bellows to start a fire in Adam’s heart.
“It’s for his own protection. And he agreed to participate in the ritual. Tell him, Emil,” Mrs. Janina said but didn’t stop Adam when he covered Emil’s ice-cold flesh with his coat.
Even when Adam leaned over him, trying to capture his gaze in a silent question, Emil avoided the confrontation at all cost. But he spoke, in a raspy voice so full of resignation it made Adam’s chest thud with dull pain.
“It’s true. Chort left the valley inside your mother, but my grandma marked me as his new vessel. You just have to give him back to me, and you’ll be free. You will go home and forget all this.” Emil had spoken in monotone until his final words, when his voice cracked. A tear rolled down from his eye and down his temple, even though the tension in his features suggested he was doing everything to hide his despair.
Adam’s heart beat so fast he got lightheaded and had to rest his hands on the icy surface of the stone. Breathless, he glanced at Mrs. Janina, his teeth already clattering, but it had nothing to do with the autumnal cold. “You said nothing about giving Chort to someone else. We can’t do this!”
“This isn’t your concern anymore, Father,” she said.
Adam wanted to protest, no longer able to keep his cool, but an icy finger slid down his spine when he heard more footsteps approaching.
Mrs. Janina, the nagging housekeeper who always had fresh cake for him watched him from behind the mask, her posture not expressing a shade of doubt. “You will leave Chort with us and go back to Warsaw with a cleansed soul.”
This was too surreal to be true. It had to be a hallucination, brought upon by mold in the bread flour, mushrooms, accidentally swallowed pills, or something. This could not be reality.
“No. You need to untie him,” Adam said, retreating to the other side of the altar as Koterski entered the scene, his mask offering a wide, menacing grin.
“We’ve waited far too long already. This was supposed to happen years ago,” Mr. Nowak said, and yanked the jacket off Emil.
The black sky above leaned toward them, like a dome about to collapse. Adam’s head spun when the torches burned brighter, their flames reaching higher by the second without any fuel added. Their trembling light seeped between the densely-packed trees, creating shadows that ran around in jerks and starts, like figures animated with little attention to detail.
Adam gasped when Koterski appeared in front of him and squeezed his shoulders, the canines attached to the skull-mask a threat even though they could no longer bite. “Give him back to us. This is where he belongs.”
Adam’s gaze darted to Emil’s naked flesh. Saliva filled his mouth at an unnatural pace, and some of it dribbled down his chin as if he were Pavlov’s dog hearing the bell over and over.
Emil let out a raspy breath, and he closed his eyes, as if he couldn’t take the tension and cold anymore. The shudders running through his body affected his speech, so he kept his voice quiet, barely audible with the spinning shadows whispering in a language Adam couldn’t understand. “I will never be able to leave this place anyway. Do what you have to.”
But despite Emil’s words, the coercive nature of the whole situation had body hair bristling on Adam’s back. “I d-don’t have to do anything,” he said, pushing Koterski away with a single shove, but when his gaze passed over the uncovered abs swelling under Emil’s skin like an offering, hunger speared his body, consuming him from the inside in cramps so powerful he bent in half, struggling to keep himself upright as the trees around him spun like parts of a broken carousel.
A raspy laugh passed over the clearing, and when Adam looked up past the masked cult members, he saw a face looming high between the evergreen trees making up the walls of the grove. Shadows danced over its unnatural features, all the way along huge spiraling horns that should have entangled in the naked branches. But the elusive image disappeared with a flash of golden eyes.
Adam fell to his knees with nausea pushing at his throat, but he grabbed Emil’s clenched fist, his gaze focused on the rope, which had been fastened too tightly around his wrist, leaving fingers paler than they should be. He was about to come up with a way of loosening the binds when Emil whispered Adam’s name in the softest of voices.
“You have to. Or you’ll die.”
Adam swallowed, stilling when he noticed a quiet stomping. Behind him. Whatever made the noise was huge and so heavy he didn’t dare to check what it was and instead focused on Emil’s damp gaze. Tears lingered on the lashes, but several wet streaks already glistened on the handsome face when Emil took a wheezing breath, finally looking back at Adam. “It’s fine. Unlike yours, my body can take him. My Grandma made it so. Give him to me, and you’ll be free. He won’t make you do things you don’t want anymore,” Emil uttered in the tiniest of voices. He no longer fought against fate, and lay there, ready to become an offering on the altar of a god from a bygone era.
Warm breath teased the back of Adam’s neck as he held Emil’s gaze, its volume too great to have been produced by a human, but Adam refused to face the monster for whom they’d all gathered here. His fingers trembled li
ke branchlets of a young tree during a storm, but he steadied them by entwining his digits with Emil’s.
“I did want those things,” he mouthed, overcome with grief. All his life he’d been so afraid of his nature that he’d swept it under the carpet and go along by living a lie. Emil had been a ray of hope in a world of bleak rules, the trigger that allowed Adam to open his wings for the first time.
Emil was not a satanic mastermind. Not a cheater, but a man who loved him enough to set him free at the cost of his own liberty. They had both been victims of endless schemes from the day of Adam’s conception.
“Eat him,” said a raspy voice behind Adam, and this time, he couldn’t ignore the sense that there was something standing right behind him. With fog filling his head, Adam glanced over his shoulder and caught a glimpse of grey fur. The bulk of the monster was greater than a bear’s, but Adam refused to acknowledge its presence and looked back at the masked cult members. The moment he averted his eyes, a huge hand pushed his head forward, forcing him to bow.
On the other side of the altar, Koterski dropped to his knees. “He’s here!”
Emil blinked, arching off the rock as much as the rope allowed. “What? What does he mean?”
Nowak shook his head and awkwardly lowered his stocky body until all members of this strange pagan congregation were on their knees. Adam swallowed, struck by the eerie silence, but the moment Mrs. Janina put her hands together and started a quiet prayer, the presence behind Adam was on the move again.
Nowak, Mrs. Golonko, and Koterski all joined Mrs. Janina, their voices monotonous as they recited foreign words that sounded familiar to Adam’s ears nevertheless.
“Don’t you see him?” Adam whispered, brushing the backs of his fingers along the tempting curve of Emil’s jaw as thick, hairy legs passed through the edge of his vision, digging their hoofs into the moss.
“No,” Emil said breathlessly, straining up in the binds that wouldn’t allow him more than an inch of movement.
But Adam didn’t want to acknowledge the monster, and kept his focus on Emil even when the handsome face twisted into a scowl.
Mrs. Janina appeared at Adam’s side out of nowhere, and he flinched when she pushed something into his right hand. “It’s time for you to feast!”
Air flooded Adam’s chest then he looked down at a dagger with a wooden handle shaped like the devil’s head and a blade made of sharpened bone. His palm sweated around the grip, but his mind remained blank until she gently pushed him toward Emil.
“Eat his heart.”
“Eat. Eat. Eat,” hummed the others, their chants pushing Adam into a frenzy of hunger he didn’t understand. Saliva overflowed his mouth, and he rested his free hand against the rock, staring at the ripe flesh that had been so lovingly prepared for him. A meal to welcome him home.
Eat.
Eat.
Eat.
Emil let out a sharp gasp, suddenly thrashing against the rope, as if he’d only now understood his situation. “My heart? You said I’ll survive this! You said I could free him this way!”
Mrs. Golonko was next to him within the blink of an eye and dug her fingers into Emil’s cheeks, breathing laboriously as she held his head in place with surprising strength. “Shut up. After failing to bring him here for so long you should be grateful Chort still wants to feed on your rotten meat! Don’t make this any more difficult for us. You’ve got nothing to lose, and after so many years, we deserve what your grandmother promised!”
Adam couldn’t believe his ears, yet stepping back was physically impossible. His feet were lead slabs, his hunger a bottomless pit that would turn him inside out if it wasn’t fed soon.
“Go on, Father,” Mrs. Janina urged in the same soothing voice she used when speaking to her beloved grandson on the phone, as if she sensed the growing pain in Adam’s gut and knew the way to make it better. “Just the heart. You’ll die if we don’t go through with the ritual, and he chose to sacrifice himself for the greater good.”
Emil took a shivery breath, emotions passing through his features in stormy waves, but his whole body sagged as if his bones were removed. “Do it if there’s no other way. Golonko is right. I’ve got nothing to lose. Do it. Leave. And forget me. You’ve got better things ahead of you. You will live the life you were meant to, and you won’t have to be afraid any longer.”
Adam looked at the dagger, at the blade he knew to be human bone. How easy would it have been to just sink it into Emil’s flesh, to see the light leave Emil’s eyes as his fragrant blood seeped onto the altar. The mouthwatering scent of his flesh made Adam’s mind fuzzy with thirst, but as he met Emil’s gaze again, he tossed the knife away. The gesture hurt as if the handle had taken off his skin, but Adam focused, remembering the cross Emil had given back to him earlier. Fighting through the need to follow the aroma of meat and bite straight into one of the delicious pecs, he pulled the broken necklace out of his pocket and placed it on Emil’s chest.
“What if God saw how much suffering you’ve been through and sent me here to set you free from this place?”
Rumbling laughter echoed in the grove followed by low grunts of the beast. It stood behind its four apostles, waiting to confront its host.
“You were always mine, Adam, born from my seed. You might have been coerced to follow a foreign God, but this isn’t His land. It’s mine. And you are mine too,” the monster said in a voice that sounded like creaking wood.
Adam’s breath caught, and he glanced at Emil for support, but the strong, familiar chest no longer moved. Panic clutched at Adam’s throat before he realized the four cultists wouldn’t move a muscle either, stuck in one pose like wax sculptures. The wind was dead, and so were the dancing shadows. Time has stopped.
Chort huffed, circling the altar at a languid pace that came from a certainty that no one and nothing could thwart his plans. Adam’s human nature compelled him to keep ignoring the beast, to still pretend it wasn’t there, but time had come to confront the worst of his fears. His own nature.
Even in the slouched position reminiscent of a sitting dog, Chort was a massive presence in the grove. Humanoid and built of muscle packed under the thick pelt, he had long arms with clawed hands and powerful legs ending in hoofs twice the size of Jinx’s. The chest, as developed as that of a fully-grown gorilla kept moving as he inhaled Emil’s scent, but Adam’s stomach only dropped once he saw the monster’s head and the horns spiraling toward the sky.
Chort hummed as he leaned forward, reaching above the altar to tap his fingers against Adam’s shoulder. His features were an unholy mix between a wolf and a goat, but still appeared noble when the beast spoke, its hairy muzzle forming words without issue.
“I am a part of you and I always was. From the day you drew your first breath, we shared the body your parents have given to you. But we can part, if that’s what you want. You could live on and serve whatever gods you choose or no gods at all. But if you want to be free, you need to accept the offering. Eat his heart, so I can live within his skin.”
Adam’s body shook at the gruesomeness of that vision, but when he met Chort’s eyes, their golden color no longer struck him with fear. Even the touch of the heavy hand was somehow… familiar. “You mean… my mother hadn’t dreamt any of this?”
The monster lowered his head, and the horns that resembled two fat snakes about to fight to the death cast a shadow on the imposing features with flat nostrils at the end of the elongated muzzle. “The night is only so long, my child. Your entire life has led to this moment. You either accept me, or you eat. He is the only other offering I can consume. His witch of a grandmother made sure of that.” Chort growled and showed off his sharp teeth. “Go on, make your choice. I’ve been away from these lands for too long.”
Adam’s breath caught when he looked at Emil’s face—frozen in time yet so sweet he wanted to kiss it over and over. The selfishness of following Chort’s suggestion twisted all the fibres within his body, but while he could have lived wit
h the shame of cowardice, with Emil’s death on his conscience—he could not. “What if I offered you myself instead? You already live within me.”
The creature’s snarl became a grin. “Your skin feels comfortable, but I need more than lying dormant while you play the docile priest. I need a heart. I need to run free in these mountains every night, reign over my home.”
“If I give you mine, you will spare his?”
Adam’s gaze passed over Emil, who lay motionless, a tear mid-way down his temple. Adam itched to kiss it away, to untie Emil and take him into his arms. Emil didn’t deserve to die, just like he hadn’t deserved all the needless suffering he’d been forced to endure. Adam had misunderstood him so terribly in the last few hours, but now he had the chance to make it up to him by offering him a new life. One in which he’d be free to leave and find happiness, even if without him. Perhaps this way, Adam’s miserable existence would have at least served a purpose.
Chort cocked his head, baring his teeth again as he ran one sharp claw under Adam’s jaw, gently enough to scratch without breaking skin. “We both know you can’t handle me. I cannot live in a body that prevents me from expressing my nature. You’re frightful and frigid, even with the offering who had been made for us. I wish to feast on his body each night. If you give me your heart, I won’t have to consume it entirely, because it already belongs to me, but I won’t allow you to rein me in anymore. Do you understand?”
Adam swallowed, for the first time facing his demon. The touch of Emil’s fingers was his lifeline, and as he listened, the truth behind Chort’s words sank in, piercing his skin claw by claw. Tooth by tooth.
If he offered Emil in his stead, the man he loved would be lost forever, but he could spare Emil’s life by giving up his own in return. He’d become one with this ancient monster-god, and while his mind couldn’t come to grips with what that would entail, he no longer cared. He would be brave for Emil’s sake, even if it meant eternal limbo inside a body he had no control over.
Where the Devil Says Goodnight Page 32