The Devourer

by C H Chelser

  Pride. The difference was masculine pride. Back then, he hadn’t thought her unfaithful. Back then, it had been the allegations against her that riled him, not her behaviour. She knew all that, but she wanted to hear it from his mouth.

  Only he didn’t respond.

  Eric crouched down before her, taking her hands in his with more care than she had anticipated.

  “I need you, ma mie,” he whispered. “I need to know you are there, at my side. We promised each other as much when we married. I will stand by you through these difficulties. All I ask is that you don’t make of fool of me and desert me.”

  “I never have.”

  He gave no reply, only a small, weary smile as he kissed her knuckles and got up. “I should be going back. It is almost time to close up. Not that it will take long to count the registers.”

  “I’m sure we can win our customers back soon,” she said. “Now that we know the poor student’s death was a stupid accident, they will come back. We have survived worse calm spells bef—Oow!” She pressed her hands to her belly.

  “Mercedes? What is wrong?”

  The alarm in his voice was quite endearing to her—

  “Shall I call Doctor Hubert?”

  —but his words were not.

  “It is nothing, mon cher. The monthly usual.”

  He flustered. “Oh. In that case, why don’t you rest tonight. And tomorrow. If you need relief…”

  He waved a hand in the direction of the unpacked parcel.

  “Go and see to the shops. I will be fine.”

  Eric slowly retreated to the door. “The laudanum is in the drawer of my bedside table,” he said as he caught her biting her lip to substitute one pain for another.

  “Thank you. Would you please send Amélie in before you go?”

  “Of course.” With that, he disappeared as fast as he could without being outright impolite.

  Mercedes didn’t mind at all. The effects of Anne’s powder were setting in hard. On the upside, at least she was certain it was working. On the downside, she wasn’t going to be in any state to do much of anything in the morning. She didn’t know if she could afford the delay – if Danielle could – but tomorrow was wasted. Doing half a job never did anyone any good, so she might as well take the opportunity to sleep off the stress of the last few days. If the pain let her.

  The door squeaked a little when it opened again. Mercedes glanced up through another jab in her belly.

  “Amélie, get me a spoon and the laudanum, and help me to bed. I have had enough of all this.”

  Chapter XIV

  He barrelled deeper, ever faster, chasing a trail he could barely distinguish. The other’s fragmented marker was so close he could taste it, if still out of reach. Its gorged energy flared with that of its catch. He had locked onto the catch’s residual signature, but it had faded fast. Absolute darkness closed in on him. The boy had long since given up, but he pushed on. Through the pressure he latched on to what was left of the trail. Dislocated echoes and reflected mirages littered his senses. He searched, frantically, but every trace dissipated before he caught up with it. The endless emptiness compounded like a blow to the stomach.

  ‘No! No!’

  Twice he missed it, sensing the other’s presence too late to give chase. The first time had been hopeless, the second a solid opportunity if only he had been faster.

  ‘Putain!’

  It was his fault. He hadn’t expected the devourer to show itself again so soon after having fed, never mind this close by. At the threshold, the victim’s physical body had merely keeled over, but the soul… The soul had screamed; a silent scream that had been cut off by an absence more profound than the emptiness that clutched at him now.

  And he, witness of this crime, had let the perpetrator get away!

  Hatred burned like acid, eating him from the inside. Thoughts failed to capture his pure disgust for himself and the other alike. So close! He had come so close, only to have his prey slip through his grasp like –

  – wet streets; shadows between lamplight as he tracked the scent; his target, escaped. Not again! Find, track, that was his task. Find, track, close in. A wolf cornering a rabbit, a spider trapping a fly in its web. No way out. Capture assured. Success assured. His success, at last! Track, close in, and capture? No! –

  ‘NO! Not again! Not again!’

  He lashed out at the emptiness, that spider’s web void of prey. Fingers elongated, forming long claws that tore at everything, at himself. Where had he gone wrong? He had been swift, had he not? Swift and dedicated! He hadn’t played with his prey, hadn’t risked losing it for a moment of entertainment. He had learned that lesson! Once he had lost his catch that way, but he hadn’t permitted himself such leeway this time! Then why had he failed?

  The answer seeped into him like cold water: confusion. Infernal, destructive confusion.

  The acid of self-hatred exposed the deepest recesses of his being, revealing him for all he was. A monster, a devourer of souls. No better than the one he pursued.

  Terrible hunger, so long denied, ripped a way to his mouth. His jaw was too small for his head and jutted out. Teeth like razors would have cut his own lips had he still been flesh and bone. He growled in anger, in hunger. Inside him, the acid ceased to burn so much.

  No mistake. He had made no mistake, or it could be that he knew too little of his prey. How to capture a miscreant without knowing what drives it? Without knowing to what lengths it will go?

  Despair. Yes. His only mistake had been to underestimate his prey’s desperation.

  A memory surfaced, haphazard images of a red cassock scaling a sun-streaked wall, of a similar wall in a dark alley where the trapped fly should have been but wasn’t. A fly, yet a lion. A dangerous prey capable of immense feats when it was desperate enough.

  Yes, he knew this type. Miscreants to be arrested, vanquished, devoured!

  Without conscious decision, he rose to a plane that had enough light to cast shadows. A plane that teemed with life, with souls. His hunger drove him further up, drawn by an aching need he had never allowed himself to succumb to. “I will not abandon my self-control,” he had sworn, but now his hunger was stronger than ever. It had seen the other make the kill; the other’s presence had been dim to his senses, but its catch had not. He had seen the soul razed from its body, drawn in as if being sucked up and then swallowed. Appalling! An unspeakable offense! And yet. And yet… Close as he had been, he had smelled the other’s satisfaction, sensed its triumph. He had known that –

  – taste of victory after a hunt concluded; his prey limp in his grasp and ready to be consumed by shackles and bars. That was right! That was just! A true reward for his diligence –

  Like a kick in the head, a sudden mental onslaught scattered the unbidden memories like shards of glass. Back bristled and claws extended, he swerved to counter it. His attacker was bright, so much brighter than he; and old. Eons of countless experiences sparkled through a veil, like diamonds trying to hide. Not from him! They would fill him, heal the gaping holes where he was broken. He rose, no longer bound by the human shape and size he had chosen so often.

  Another kick. ‘Oy! “Not even for this,” you said!’

  He stopped. Before him, the diamonds flickered, took shape. No, they had always been this shape; only now he saw it. Recognised it. Recognised its significance.

  The burn of acid filled him once more. The hunger, that hideous hunger, he had allowed it. Damned as he already was, he had faltered, stumbled just short of falling. His shape collapsed, writhing as he fought the desire to draw the boy in and swallow it.

  ‘Leave!’ he barked, a bare intention without thought. The hunger and the acid battled within him. Both burned, both destroyed him. Both uncovered such memories as he had promised himself would never plague him again. Memories of countless ancient hunts. He caved in under their weight – or was it but one?

  He remembered now. Once, there had been a prey he had caught, but which
had survived. Once, he had had that prey cornered, but it had escaped him again. Once, that prey had surrendered to him at last, and he had let it –

  He had let it go.

  The boy stood nearby, strained by the distance from the threshold it called home. Its soul was a desirable catch, one he longed to make. He reached out, but hesitated. Another prey that offered itself, yet which he could not bring himself to take.

  Another prey that he’d let go.

  Inside him, the acid reigned victorious. The foul taste of it spread to his mouth and dissolved his razor-like teeth and the length of his muzzle. The hunger hadn’t been conquered, but it had been quelled. For now.

  The boy flitted in and out of focus. Urgency akin to fear accompanied its thoughts. ‘You really, really need to feed first before going after the other devourer again,’ it said.

  He emitted a wordless chiding that he had surmised as much himself.

  ‘You go do that, then. Alone. No offense, but I’m not sharing a cage with a hungry beast.’

  He stayed as he was, too exhausted to care, while the boy disappeared. Few could bear to be near him. That was perfectly natural. After this horrendous indiscretion, he could barely stand his own company.

  ***

  Merdeces spread her manteau across the top of the small table in her crafts room. Along the bottom of the front panel she searched for the seam between the dark-brown summer wool and the satin lining. The stitches were small, but not so delicate that she couldn’t insert the tip of a penknife between them and cut the thread. Using the blunt side of the blade, she pulled the first few stitches loose and, measure by measure, opened the seam until the hole was large enough to expose the inside of the garment.

  Anne’s powder had worked its wonders. All of yesterday, Mercedes had lain curled up in bed with a liberal dose of laudanum to keep the cramps at bay. Now, on the other side of a second night, her body had calmed and both the pain and the drug-induced numbness had worn off for the most part. Enough to get up and get to work.

  She had woken late, just in time to meet Eric at the noon meal. As she had hoped, he passed off the effects of Anne’s powder as a symptom of her hysteria and, with a somewhat anxious look about him, he assured her she wasn’t needed in the shops until Monday at least. Mercedes had resigned herself to that decision without a fight. She had better things to do today than sell clothes.

  While the servants went about their chores and Eric was busy downstairs, she had most of the flat to herself. A perfect opportunity for things to be spirited away unnoticed. The excuse of retreating to mend her coat covered a multitude of secrets, one of which she now pulled from the tight cuff of her sleeve.

  The wrapped coins were heavy in her hand. She couldn’t sew them all in the same part of the lining or their weight might skew the manteau when she wore it. Maybe she should hide them in her reticule instead? No, a small handbag was easy to forget or lose. The coat was better, provided she distributed the coins evenly along the full length of the seam.

  Deft hands cut three more holes into the stitching and proceeded to select a needle and an appropriate colour thread from her sewing kit. After nesting the first of the coins in a fold of the wool, she carefully sewed it in place, reattaching the lining as she went. When all four coins were secured in this fashion, Mercedes tried on the manteau. It was a little heavier, but the manner in which it draped over her shoulders was not remarkably different. Even the seam showed no visible scars from its operation.

  She carried the manteau back to the coat stand by the door. Hanging from one of its pegs, it looked to the world like any other lady’s coat. To her, however, the four Louis d’or hidden inside promised freedom, albeit a freedom she prayed she would never need. If she could do all she had to from within these walls, she would.

  “One down,” Mercedes said to herself and strode to the kitchen. “Gagnon, bring some coffee to my work room. A pot. I will be there for a while longer.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  On her way back, Mercedes popped into her dressing room to retrieve Anne’s deck of cards from the bottom of her rags basket. Yet by the time she sat down at her sewing table, she realised she had no plan to proceed with. Anne had given her the cards as an answer to a need, but without further instructions, Mercedes had no idea how to use them to summon entities, never mind the right one. That was not something Anne’s divination lessons had covered.

  She tossed the tied-up deck from hand to hand while she worked out how to go about this, but quickly dropped it into her sewing kit when she heard Gagnon’s uneven footsteps outside the room.

  “Your coffee, madame,” Gagnon announced over the jingle of porcelain wobbling on the tray she carried.

  “On the desk will do.”

  The old housekeeper set the tray at the corner of the table and proceeded to move the rattling cup and saucer to the desk proper, followed by the coffee pot. Her movements were slow, but that didn’t negate the tremors in her arms.

  “Yes, thank you Gagnon. You can go. I will pour it myself.”

  Gagnon let out a small cough. “Will that be all, madame?”

  “Yes, yes. Now leave me be and close the door. I do not wish to be disturbed.”

  “As you say, madame.”

  After the door shut, Mercedes waited for the footsteps to move elsewhere in the flat before turning back and salvaging Anne’s cards from their impromptu hiding place. She tugged at the end of twine that kept the deck together and with a gentle sweep, she fanned them out on the table.

  Through lack of instructions, she would have to devise a safe summoning method of her own. The summoning itself was a matter of focusing on the ghost in question, but protecting herself in the process was trickier. Should she make a protective circle of the cards? They would suit the purpose. Anne had used plain sand to form a shield. She had her own shields, of course, but she couldn’t trust them to be sufficient.

  Still, that night when she had felt the dark figure creep up on her, it hadn’t hurt her. Maybe she should take the risk and rely on her own defences? A sensible strategy, but only until it went wrong. If the cards really could help her improve her odds in that case, she failed to see how.

  “Jean? A little help?” she whispered.

  She got no reply, but unbidden, a memory surfaced: she had been wrong. In her dream of the cathedral, Jean had warned her that her interpretation of the reading was not as he had intended it. Perhaps going over that puzzle anew would reveal a clue. Mercedes sifted through the musty fan while trying to recall the spread.

  “The Snake. The first card was the Snake.” She pulled the card from the fan. The Snake represented a traitor, a danger, and had been the initial answer to the question she had posed. Given Jean’s confirmation that the core of the danger was a devourer, Mercedes didn’t think she had been wrong about what it meant, only about to whom it referred.

  “So if the Snake is the cold-wind devourer, where does that leave the rest?” She searched the fan for familiar images and sorted them until she had recreated the reading.

  “The Child and the Motherbear...” According to Jean, the protection the Motherbear promised wasn’t a guide, but she, Mercedes. “In which case, the Child cannot represent anyone but Danielle.” Indeed the card still referred to the innocence of its victims in general, but the link to Danielle she sensed was too strong.

  Her jaw clenched, as did her fist. The absence of her daughter’s warmth was poignant, almost more than she could bear. She would kill to have her little girl back at her side. Which, she realised at once, was exactly what was expected of her.

  “First things first, madame,” she berated herself. “What do the cards tell you? What do they tell you that you may have missed before?”

  The Coffin and the Scythe. Death beyond death. It was hard to imagine how else this combination should be interpreted. Still she let go of those presumptions and tried to find another possible meaning. Could it refer to the demon’s end? No, not in the context of her q
uestion to which this reading had been the answer, because her intention had been to identify danger, not how to stop it.

  Immersed as she was, Mercedes nearly jumped out of her skin when someone knocked on her door. “Good Heavens! What is it?”

  “Sorry to disturb you, madame,” croaked Gagnon’s voice through the door, “but I would beg a word with you.”

  “Not now! I told you, I do not want to be disturbed this afternoon. Tonight. Whatever you wish to discuss will have to wait until tonight.”

  “I would, madame, but by then monsieur will be in. I do not think you would want him to overhear.”

  Mercedes tensed. That was not the tone of a well-mannered servant. Not in the slightest.

  She paced to the door and yanked it open. “Explain yourself!”

  Gagnon’s wrinkled face smiled, but that expression could only pass for friendly in bad light. “Thank you for indulging me, madame. I promise you won’t regret it.”

  “I certainly hope so. This conduct is unbecoming to your station.”

  “It is of my station I want to speak, madame. You see, last night Monsieur Fabron gave me a good talking-to. About how I’m getting sloppy and slow and, indeed, too old. Said he’d have to turn me out if I can’t manage anymore.”

  Mercedes’ righteous anger dissipated. “I’m sorry. He and I had agreed that I would talk with you first to address his complaints, but without setting an ultimatum. I would have done so, too, and sooner, but then I succumbed to these health problems.”

  “Oh, monsieur said as much. He said he’d promised you he would give me one last chance.”

  “Good.”

  “And I trust my work will be good enough.”

  “I do hope so. I’m not keen on a change of staff anytime soon.”

  “No, you misunderstand, madame.” A strange glint shone in the old woman’s eyes. “You will convince monsieur that whatever I do is good enough. You will make him keep me on, no matter what. At full pay, too.”