The Devourer

by C H Chelser

  Eric’s face flushed red with indignation. “A hundred francs! Are you insane?”

  Mercedes dared a small, sardonic smile. “I will return the excess, of course.”

  “I should think so. And I shall have the receipt, too.”

  “Naturally, mon cher.”

  He huffed. “Be assured, madame, that I will confirm for myself that the object of your purchase does in fact exist.”

  “I would expect no less diligence from you. You shall not be disappointed.”

  Realising that by now all his assistants were lending their ear to the conversation, Eric cut it short. “Go prepare yourself, madame. I will have a cab and the money ready.”

  “Thank you, monsieur.”

  “And be sure to have Amélie with you when you meet me outside,” he grunted with a pointed glare. “I swear to God, you will not get on that cab without her.”

  The fire in his eyes was as vicious as his promise. Mercedes bobbed a curtsey to confirm her submission to his terms. Yet when she climbed the stairs to the flat, she was all too aware of the pain in her face and the sour taste of resentment in her mouth.

  Chapter XIII

  To say daytime made him uncomfortable understated his deep hatred for it. The bright energies of spirits lighter than him cut and stung like needles in flesh, reminding him that he did not belong here. Yet duty demanded he stayed, so he did. He took care to keep to the quiet corners of the threshold, though. Showing his dark presence to the guides, sprites and borderlings milling about between the two worlds at this time would only cause unnecessary upheaval.

  In contrast, his unwilling companion had no qualms with either the light or the crowd, and had made as much known several times already. For an old soul, the boy’s resemblance to a nagging child proved annoyingly accurate.

  ‘Why won’t you tell me what you’re looking for?’ it asked as they flitted through yet another alley of the maze that was the Cité.

  He ignored this question, just as he had ignored the previous ones. He was not in the habit of explaining himself to anyone, nor would he bother to elaborate on his tactics to one who had no hunting instincts. The boy had none, and he would not waste what concentration he could muster in this glaring light on useless courtesies.

  He prowled the endless backstreets, sniffing the atmosphere as he went. When hunting a predator, one should stalk its prey first. Find out what it wanted and where it would go to get that. Understand where it wouldn’t – or couldn’t – go, and what places or prey it would avoid.

  Mark the territory, mark the hunting grounds. Find out where it will attack next. So he examined the various paths as he went, drawing that map in his mind.

  ‘What makes you think it will strike here? The city is much bigger than this,’ the boy said out of the blue.

  He stopped in his tracks, only refraining from looming in anger to avoid his energy signature attracting unwanted attention. It was a close call.

  ‘Either think or be quiet,’ he hissed. ‘Old as you are, you must be able to do one or the other.’

  The boy sulked. ‘In all my time I have never had any desire to be a hunter of any sort. Old as I am, this is new to me.’

  He snorted. ‘Then start with the first. Look around and think. A sea of souls packed together on the island and immediately beyond. Thousands on both sides of the threshold.’ He waited for the conclusion to become apparent to the boy. It did not. He shook his head and continued on his way, focusing on his work without allowing the boy to slip his attention entirely.

  Three street corners later the boy protested again. ‘Look, if I’m not going be of any use, I might as well go.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’ve obviously got better things to do than keep an eye on me.’

  ‘I have, but you will stay right where you are.’

  ‘And I can’t go into the deep darkness anyway.’

  ‘So you keep reminding me,’ he growled.

  ‘Now if you need my help, fine, but I don’t see—’

  ‘Will you for once. Be. Quiet!’

  The boy froze and stared at him with sudden apprehension. Or rather, at his mouth. Realising why, he retracted his protruding fangs to their more usual size.

  ‘Very well, if you insist I should spell out the obvious to you, I will.’ He retreated into the relative shade of the fog, further still from the delicate senses of the guides. The boy followed with an aura of genuine interest, like a child expecting a gift. How fitting.

  ‘A hunter has various tactics that might be deployed,’ he began, not hiding his exasperation. ‘To stop this other devourer, I must find out how it operates, how it chooses its prey and takes it down. I have already come to the conclusion that it does not stalk the threshold. If it did, it would take more victims faster than it does. It shuns the light, but even at night it will not wait for a target. Rather it rises from the depths, snatches a soul and dives again.’

  ‘No patience, huh? Out of hunger?’

  ‘Possibly.’

  He dwelled on that thought. What sort of hunter would resort to a hit-and-run tactic? It wasn’t hard to put himself in the other’s stead, but this was a choice he couldn’t imagine making. Such unprepared hits too often yielded inferior prey, if any at all. Unless, of course, one could strike a teeming mass.

  Of course.

  ‘You asked me why here? The answer is simple: the Cité is not a hunting ground, it is a buffet.’

  ‘Oh? Oh!’ The boy nodded. ‘Like you said, thousands of souls packed close together. It could hit at random and still make a catch.’

  ‘Correct. Which creates a problem for us.’

  ‘How so?’

  His brows creased. ‘Think! It can strike at random, which explains the lack of a clear pattern. Yet without a pattern to its hunting, there is no telling where it will turn up next. Even if it is close by, it may have gone back to the deep darkness before we find its trail.’ He rubbed his chin out of human habit. ‘No, there must be a pattern. There always is a pattern.’

  The boy and the fog faded from his awareness, giving way to images he would have preferred not to entertain. But in this instance, his memories were not entirely useless.

  Chases, so different from yet so similar to this one, surfaced from the past and sketched their patterns in hindsight. Hunters being hunted fluttered by in every possible configuration. Vague notions connected to others and weaved natural patterns. There was always a pattern. No act was ever truly random. Criminals and crimes went together like horse and carriage. If the ‘carriage’ wasn’t the loot or the scene of the crime, then—

  A distant call distracted him. Recognising it as familiar, he let his attention trace it to its origin. Halfway down the trail, he saw the colours and closed his mind to them. The woman had been clear about her resentment before. He couldn’t fathom why she would seek him out after that, nor did he wish to understand. Her intentions were not his concern.

  Although her part in the pattern did complete the puzzle taking shape in his thoughts.

  ‘The victims! The pattern lies with its victims!’

  The boy’s unfocused presence betrayed his difficulty in keeping up. ‘It’s going after certain souls, you mean? If its hits are random, how does it do that?’

  ‘It selects specific targets but within a crowd, so it is assured it will catch something worthwhile even if it misses the one it is after. Yesss...’ Thoughts came together in an exhilarating stream of consciousness that stoked the predator’s fire inside him. ‘Yes, that is what happened when it found the woman. It tried to get at her, but when she resisted, he turned to the other nearby soul. He would have taken either one had I not interrupted at that exact moment!’

  ‘The woman?’ The boy searched his thoughts for an answer. He allowed it and shared what he knew: the pillar of light, the guide’s energy interlaced with hers.

  ‘I can see how that got a devourer’s attention,’ the boy said. ‘Didn’t notice it myself, though. Should have, i
f it’s as strong as you say.’

  ‘She is strong, but this time the guide’s presence amplified her energy. Guides are of no interest to you, so I assume you took no notice. To a rampant devourer, however, the chance of catching a guide coming so close to the threshold is irresistible.’

  ‘I haven’t heard or sensed anything of it going after guides. You’d think that sort of thing would have been all over the grapevine.’

  He smirked, revelling in the burning passion of knowing he was closing in. ‘Oh, it wants to. Guides are experienced souls, full of energy. Perfect prey, but unattainable. They never venture into the darkness.’

  With one notable exception, he added in private. The guide who had on occasion followed him down took greater risks than it realised. Or maybe it did grasp the severity of its actions, which would make its dangerous folly even more absurd.

  Meanwhile the boy puzzled to put all this into perspective. ‘So it won’t go for sprites, because they are too small. Elementals are too unvaried, I suppose, and any spirits still brighter than guides are completely out of reach.’ It shrugged. ‘Which leaves living humans.’

  ‘And borderlings,’ he said with a nasty grin. ‘Like you.’

  ‘Huh.’ The boy drew together, a motion akin to folding its arms. ‘Why not the darker echelons? Plenty of opportunity to catch those.’

  ‘Second choice. They are too similar in nature.’

  ‘I see. So now you need to find some particular human with an old soul. One who’s likely to be next on the menu.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said deliberately. His smirk slowly widened.

  At once the boy backed away. ‘Oh, no. I said I’d help, but I will not be used as bait!’

  ‘You only need to flaunt your experience. Draw the other’s attention.’

  ‘Ha! And when I have it?’

  ‘You tell me what you see. I will be close by. It cannot detect me any more than I can detect it. Run if you must should it attack you, but I believe it will not come to that.’

  ‘Says you.’

  ‘You frighten too easily,” he growled. “It will run first. It did so before. Also, we will not be aiming to engage it. Not yet. For now, all I want is another confrontation. A chance to find a weakness that will help to lock it up where it belongs.’

  The boy’s defensive attitude relaxed. ‘All right,’ he said, still cautious. ‘And if worse comes to worst, you can always devour it before it gets to me.’

  Lightning exploded from his core. His shape ripped apart and ribbons of darkness shot out, attacking the boy’s thought and tearing it to shreds.

  ‘Never!’

  The one word resonated, hollow and black, with the strangled vibrations of the deepest recesses of existence. It poured out of him and burned its way through the fog around them.

  ‘I will not! I will not abandon my self-control, even for this!’

  The boy retreated beyond the veil of darkness he cast, but its true age showed when instead of fleeing, it stood its ground. No more thoughts came forth. The boy only reflected his own intentions back at him:

  “I will not abandon my self-control!”

  The shock of discrepancy hurt in its effectiveness. He writhed, resisting for only a single moment before recovering his preferred shape. Still his rage continued to simmer beneath the surface like a wounded tiger in hiding.

  The boy regarded him from a distance. ‘Got it,’ it said. ‘Wrong suggestion.’

  ***

  Upon wrestling the cumbersome crinoline out of the small fiacre, Mercedes crossed the rue de Constantine without acknowledging anything but the oncoming traffic and headed into the first alley she could find. All alleys on this side of the Cité eventually led to Anne’s house, so it mattered little which way she went. Pacing down the uneven stones between the decrepit houses, she circumvented gamins and other street scum loitering about. No one bothered to get out of her way but neither did they try to hold her up. Behind her, Amélie’s thin loafers scuffed over the mud and intermittent pavement.

  The maid hadn’t made a sound during the cab ride here, but the way she had plucked at the short nails of her crooked fingers spoke volumes. Eric had no doubt given her a strict set of instructions, but apparently more than the girl knew what to do with.

  Even so, Mercedes had made sure to slip more into her reticule than just the money before leaving. Now all she had to do was to remember that she was not supposed to have any idea who Madame Esmeralda was.

  She made a show of looking for signs on doors. There weren’t many, if only because most ‘merchants’ in the slums sold exclusively to clients who couldn’t read their own name. In the shadows of the afternoon, one sign stood out. The worn plank on Anne’s flaking green door read ‘Ouvert’. Mercedes stared at it with trepidation that wasn’t entirely faked.

  “Cellar door with a curtain, according to my friend. It would appear this is the place,” she said for Amélie’s sake. “Now remember to act naturally regardless of what we may encounter. This is not likely to be an ordinary shop.” The lines were well rehearsed, if no doubt insufficient to prepare the girl for Anne’s exotic venue, but the maid was too skittish to take notice. She physically hid behind her mistress when Mercedes knocked.

  On cue, the door sprung open.

  “Hello?” Mercedes called with exaggeration as she stepped inside. “Is this the shop of Madame Esmeralda?”

  On the far side of the candlelit room, Anne, whose face had lit up, quickly settled into Esmeralda’s professional smile.

  “Oui, madame. Howa may I bee of servize to yoo?” As she approached them, her eyes asked a very different question. One Mercedes had anticipated.

  “I have come for something of a delicate nature,” she said as she produced a folded note from her reticule. On it she had written the crucial instruction for Anne to pretend they had never met before, as well as the three things with which she needed her friend’s help.

  Anne examined the paper, glanced at Mercedes and then read the lines again. Her usually so expressive brows stilled in silent disapproval, but she refolded the note and put it in her own brassière.

  “Yoo have come too the raight place, madame,” ‘Esmeralda’ crooned, while Anne’s tone resembled that of a mother who wanted to reprimand her reckless daughter but cannot without causing scandal. “While we discusse yoor needs, I shall make yoo some tea.”

  “Thank you,” Mercedes said contritely.

  “And thee young girl, madame?”

  “Oh, she is my maid.” She glanced at Amélie hunching behind her. “She may have water.”

  “Thank you, madame,” Amélie whispered.

  Mercedes saw Anne’s expression soften as she regarded the girl closer. Amélie tried to fade into the background, as any good servant should, but ‘Madame Esmeralda’ didn’t let her.

  “Hush, child,” she said with the same warm voice that had soothed many desperate men and women over the years. She gently took Amélie’s hands in her own. “Yoor joints, they ache, no? Thay must ache.”

  Amélie trembled, but after a glance at Mercedes, nodded faintly.

  “Hmm. Yoo are brave too bear theze paine, but I have for yoo ointment. Not to cure, but to releeve.” When the maid only hunched further, Anne looked at Mercedes. “Yes, madame?”

  “Yes, she may.” Mercedes stepped aside. “Go on, girl. No need to be ashamed. I’m sure Madame Esmeralda sees far worse.”

  “Come, come,” said Anne, almost dropping her exotic accent. “I give yoo the ointment. Then warm yoor hands by the stove and wait.”

  Amélie hesitated until Mercedes motioned her again to follow Anne to the small room in the back. Through the crack of the curtain, Mercedes caught a glimpse of Anne pouring the maid a beaker of water from the kettle before putting it on the stove for tea. All the while, Anne’s comforting voice gently explained what she was going to do.

  “I will gette the ointment for yoo now,” ‘Esmeralda’ announced as she came back into the shop. Out of
Amélie’s sight, she shot Mercedes a glare. “And your powder,” she mouthed, gesticulating a sign that could only be interpreted as shorthand for ‘imbecile’. She stood on tiptoe to reach one of the higher shelves and from one of the bowls displayed there, she took a folded piece of paper.

  “I feared you might need this after all,” she whispered as she pressed the paper into Mercedes’ hands.

  Mercedes meant to lower her gaze, guilty as charged, but Anne tipped her chin up and studied her face for a long moment. With one foot, Anne rattled a basket of jars. “Onee minuut!” she called to Amélie while her ringed fingers traced Mercedes’ cheek without touching it. “Men are all the same,” she huffed, and went about retrieving a small ceramic jar from another shelf before disappearing to the back room.

  Alone and waiting, Mercedes held the improvised envelope tightly, as if afraid the powder inside would spill if she didn’t pinch the edges. Behind the curtain, Anne instructed Amélie how to apply the ointment and keep her hands warm to help it work. This unexpected relief was welcomed by Mercedes as well. It was no secret that the maid’s hands and shoulders hurt all the time. Amélie never complained or used her bent body as an excuse not to do her work, but still Mercedes would rather she had as little pain as possible. The girl was a loyal servant to her, and if Eric’s misgivings about Gagnon indeed ended with them needing a new housekeeper, having someone she trusted take up the position was her explicit preference. Anne’s ointment was a small but important step in that direction.

  Her own purchase was less straightforward. Writing the word on the note had been easy enough, but explaining the ‘why’ that Anne undoubtedly wanted to know took time and opportunity that Amélie’s presence deprived them of. Mercedes craned her head towards the top shelf, where she knew Anne stored her particular-shaped wares. In the perpetual semi-darkness just below the ceiling, several cyclopean snakeheads in various sizes peered over the ledge. On the other hand this was the simplest part of the list. It wasn’t as if she was going to use whichever one she bought. The real problem would be the third item on her list, because how could Anne give her any advice on summoning dark spirits without Amélie noticing?