by C H Chelser
The hunter becoming the hunted.
Well then, that was no more than he had expected, and no less than he deserved. Ultimately, no amount of self-control could change what he was.
Bitterness filled him, sharp and cold like a mouthful of razors. His every sense was primed in expectation of—of what? He detected neither an improvised hunting party nor the imperious control of the sentinels. The only presence was that of the woman cowering at his feet.
So his compounding failures had not yet worn out the universe’s inexplicable leniency regarding his existence. Not yet, but the moment it did could not be far off.
He tilted his gaze down, regarding the bland, muddled colours that whirled about her. Time was running out. For both of them.
A harsh poke of his cane startled her from her agony.
‘Cease your feeble sobbing, woman. There is work to be done.’
Chapter XXI
She crumpled, her blurring form falling like a frock cut loose from a dress form. Fingers, deformed by fear and anguish, groped blindly behind her at the throbbing, aching cord. So careless! A chance touch, a nail brushing the protrusion sent shots of pain through her as if a knife had pierced her spine. She cried without a sound.
The illusion of tears flowed down her cheeks, too abundant to be natural yet real in their essence. She was dying. Jean had warned her thus. Not too far, not too deep, not too long. She hadn’t listened – why had she not listened?
A single sob broke from her fractured mind. She curled up to escape the anguish. Through fog as thick as a shroud, she raked her nails down the demon’s shield. It was darkness made granite, inhospitable and immutable. Yet his fortitude, congealed into his unyielding coat, promised her reprieve. Reprieve and shelter, albeit as black as the void she dreaded, and drenched in icy droplets.
‘M’sieur…’ Fear weakened her voice. She tried again, uttering the mangled title with the reverence of a proper name: ‘M’sieur?’
He remained oblivious to her plea. Intentionally.
The acerbic burn of the water that dripped from his coat and down into her now sank to the pit of her soul, accumulating there to feed a small but searing fire. She had suffered enough covert rejections in her life to know when she was being dismissed, but even Eric had more courtesy than this. To be discarded, abandoned like a broken tool even as she waited, instant by instant, for death to sever her last, ailing link to life. Was that the penance for her sins? No, she would die, if she hadn’t already, not for human sin, but for her faith. For her faith in Jean and in this demon who so thoughtlessly abused her!
The throbbing in her back eased. She rested her head on her arm, grateful that the infernal pain had relented, but furious despite her weariness. Was this it? She couldn’t tell. Like that ghost loading a physical cart, she couldn’t tell.
A warm glow shone through the fog. Desperate, she peered into the pinprick of light that marked its source.
Danielle!
Mercedes reached to cross the immense yet negligible distance to hold her dear daughter. Yet what extended was not a hand. She clutched her fist; the stained claw did the same.
A choked sob. Jean had alluded that death would bring her soul to the light, yet here she was, her distorted body swallowed up by these hollow streets, in this limbo of sadness.
Ma petite…
No sound, barely a thought, but the girl looked back, a frown on her face. All warmth dissipated as shadows rose around her slender shape.
Danielle?
Silence.
Danielle!
Her thoughts scattered like dust while around her daughter, the shadows grew darker. One morphed as it loomed. A jowl.
No! Danielle! Danielle!
Mercedes crawled forward, but a sudden stab impaled her. Her shocked cry died as a sharp thought slashed hers.
‘Cease your feeble sobbing, woman. There is work to be done.’
Pinned, she could only watch as the shadows devoured her little girl. All hope disintegrated to ash. A living body would have held its breath, but Mercedes had no body, only the flames that built up inside her. They shot into her throat, her mouth, where they ripped apart the bond of a lifetime of reticence.
‘You.’ A fiery tongue slithered between her lips like Medusa ambushing Perseus. ‘This is all your fault!’
The demon raised a dark brow, but apprehension glistened in the cesspools of his eyes. In a slow, almost innocuous movement, he changed his hold on his cane.
‘My fault?’ his cold voice drawled. ‘It was not I who sabotaged crucial investigations by bailing out prematurely.’
‘You fed them pieces of me!’
He snorted. ‘You lost nothing that will not replenish in time.’
‘I lost my daughter, you monster!’
Rage exploded with a magnificent roar. She lunged towards him, her skirts a blazing mass of grief and fury. One of her claws sunk its talons into the demon’s shoulder while the other tore at the protective collar around his neck.
‘You used me! You refused to share your plans and strategies, and I indulged you! I let you drag me down too deep, too long!’ Flames travelled down her arms and buried into his shield. ‘I am not your puppet!’
His cane crashed against her arms with a decisive swipe, breaking her grasp.
‘Spare me your petty indignation.’ His stark appearance seemed too distinct, as if his determination had detached himself from their surroundings. ‘You claim I used you? A bold statement indeed.’ His gaze didn’t waver as a resolute gesture blocked her groping claws. ‘You asked me for help; I came to your aid. You insisted you were useful; I accepted your assistance. I broke fundamental laws for you!’ The head of his cane jutted hard against her jaw, but his gaze was sharper still. ‘Your weakness today may well have cost me my soul. Yet when you failed, I brought you back.’
‘Too late!’ she shrieked. ‘I died! I died because you misjudged your hunt for the other a second time!’
‘You are not dead,’ he retorted.
A jet of fire burst from her mouth as she screamed. Kept out of reach by his cane, she sent coral-coloured spikes to impale him.
They disintegrated on impact.
‘You believe yourself the first to try that?’ he snarled with derision. ‘Control yourself.’
She laughed. It was a hollow sound. ‘Why should I? All I care about is lost! Lost, because you squandered it!’
A second volley of spikes erupted, only to evaporate as they hit their target. The demon remained as stoic as ever, but nevertheless a flurry of dark notions erupted from his shield. He restrained them instantly, but not before she felt the sting of shards. Shards of glass blowing about in a gale. A tremendous turmoil that destroyed everything in its path.
He was not invulnerable, then. He could be hurt. Hurt as she was hurting! And he would – she would see to that.
Invisible waves of his willpower pushed her away like the surf dragging sand from its banks. But she was no longer affable and malleable like sand. The boundless rage of grief had made her as strong as steel, and as unyielding.
She flexed her talons and battled the currents, fighting inwards, to the heart of the increasing riptide he had created. It was strong, but not enough to douse the heat of her fire. His extending aura had become a bubble of dark water, just as everything about him was wet through. Black, freezing waves crashed against her – into her – as they encased him.
An idle thought occurred to her, whispering that his thick, black coat was more a tomb than a shield. How becoming.
She raised her claws to rip his waves to shreds. When they tore through what seemed like nothing, she willed her colours, her fire, to spill down her hands and into her long, bony fingers. Sheer force could not rend apart the shield, but the intense carmine she injected managed to infect its perimeter. The hues seeped through the gashes that formed in the wake of her nails, tearing wounds incapable of healing themselves.
The demon struggled to reinforce his defences and d
rive out the invading energies. Crimson light ghosted over his marred features, giving his permanently wet sheen the appearance of blood. He gnashed his teeth in defiance. The stark outline he had crafted before was fading. His shape flickered unsteadily and his face began to lose its human countenance.
‘I can see what you are!’ she yelled as anger drove her talons deeper where his shield was faltering. ‘You devourers lust after my energy, you say? Then have it!’
A fresh coral spike penetrated one of the red-rimmed gaps in the black veil. The demon cringed.
‘Cheese in your mousetrap, am I? Not strong enough to be of use?’ Her flaming skirt burned a hole in his weakening shield. ‘Even my husband knows better than that!’
The demon straightened, her spike no longer skewering him.
‘Your husband violates you,’ he growled, ‘as you are now violating me.’ Water, black with contempt, dripped from his waxen chin. ‘You hate me for condemning you and that girl that is constantly on your mind.’
‘Do not dare to speak of my daughter!’
He caught and broke the spikes she hurled at him. ‘Yet with your ineptitude,’ he continued, visibly fighting to sound as calm as he did, ‘you condemned hundreds. Possibly thousands, if not more.’
And me, added a whiplash from his mind.
Mercedes screamed, spouting flames. ‘Only my daughter counts. And because of you, I lost her!’ Realisation hit her like the fluid rock that was the river. ‘I—I lost her…’
Her fire dimmed, and his waves of liquid ice washed over her, into her, chilling her to the core. She was drowning, as she had wanted to after losing Danielle the first time. The currents dragged her down, into the darkness where—
—the urge to breathe was too strong. Cold, stinking water gulped down, filling eyes, his ears, his lungs. Too heavy to move, yet wide awake. Churning water; upside down. Eyes open, but only darkness. His chest burned. Stars shot though his mind, then extinguished. Only darkness. There could never be anything else for h—
—er? No, not her thought.
Through the shredded veils that surrounded her, she recognised the demon standing over her. Beside her head, his large hands scooped coloured strands from the fog, but they slipped through his grasp. The hues floated about them both, the red which mellowed to strawberry, honey and lilac. He stared. He stared, like a tiger staring at a fawn.
Mercedes wrested away to face him. They floated, weightless inside a sphere of black and grey. He was shaking, his face contorting continuously without assuming one shape or another. He brought one cramped hand to his lips, where a too-large tongue lapped up the pastels lingering in his palm.
‘So, it all comes down to this,’ she spat. ‘To feeding.’
His gaze snapped towards her, but he didn’t interrupt her energy, however dulled, as it flowed through his gaping jaws. She made no attempt to hide her disgust.
‘Why? Why is draining me worth so much to you? And to the other?’ The fire flared up around her. ‘Drain me for all I care. You have taken everything else!’
His motions slowed, what was left of his expression wary. The last of the colour faded from his hand, but he clenched his eager jaws.
‘Satisfied so soon?’ she sneered.
He met her eye. ‘No.’
‘It is my soul you want, then?’
His lips curled, revealing a bestial snarl.
Instinctively she backed down, but forced herself to stand her ground. ‘Why?’ she demanded again. ‘Consume my soul if you must, only tell me why! Why is this worth everything? What will you gain?’
The long nails trailed the base of her neck, but retreated again. ‘Nothing,’ he grated. ‘It would bring me nothing.’
‘You lie!’ More thoughts than she could process crossed their threads, spinning a web between them. At the centre of it appeared an image of the devourer attacking. ‘The other would not go to such lengths for nothing!’
‘I am not that!’
His coat exploded in a cloud of darkness, spreading like ink in the water surrounding them both. It tore through her web of thoughts before engulfing all in a blinding swoop.
‘What benefits are reaped by devouring a soul?’ His thoughts resonated like a thousand funeral bells. ‘I cannot imagine. Upon all that is true and just, I cannot. And that ignorance must be my conviction. I must not doubt the futility of such a vile act, or I will succumb; I will falter. I cannot falter! I cannot permit myself to fall to such depths!’
Shadows streamed by, their different shades a suggestion of light without apparent source.
‘To commit a crime is to be a criminal. To do good is to be irreproachable.’ Vague faces rose and sank back into the shadows. ‘Devouring a soul, eradicating another’s existence, is the ultimate crime. The ultimate trespass against the most fundamental laws by which we must abide. To accept my nature is to admit my own detestability. I am an abomination!’
A strangled groan, like a drawn-out wheeze from diseased lungs.
‘So I must be irreproachable. Only the irreproachable are just. Only the irreproachable are permitted! Yet to be irreproachable, I must assume my rightful place and become detestable.’ A shrill laugh punctuated the paradoxical absurdity. ‘Never! I shall not fall! I shall not! And still…’
Despite the darkness, Mercedes sensed the demon stagger. His granite resolve was cracking at last.
‘…to refuse my nature as I have done, is to deny justice. A crime in itself. Yet to obey justice is to confess myself to be an abomination. A criminal…’
The shadows, the faces; they shot past, faster and faster, as if caught in a maelstrom. Too near, the water of the ghostly Seine gurgled a promise of relief. Mercedes recognised its call, and knew to fear it. The demon’s dark currents had quelled her fire. Now she scrambled to clear the tumultuous thoughts that threatened to pull her down, into the abyss of his corrupted mind. She clawed at every shadow that was less black than the rest, but her fingers had lost their talons and slipped on the rock hard, ice-cold— ‘Oh no. No!’
The demon’s shield had closed again – around them both!
‘Exchange one crime for another? That is not justice!’ howled the currents with his voice. ‘What is the answer? What is the answer?’
Swirling shadows transformed, became razor blades that sliced her as they whipped past and drew blood not her own. She recoiled from his unadulterated agony, but there was no escape. All was solid darkness but for her glow, which painted the demon’s writhing form in cobalt and indigo. She tried not to stare, but his searing pain etched into her colours all the same. He shivered and twisted under the force of an onslaught still deeper within himself. By the blue light she emitted, she watched in horror as his human shape failed. Growing dread added purples, greens, and finally yellows to her aura. Her anger had receded too far now to set her skirts alight, but even so, she shone like a candle in his darkness.
And by that light, what had looked like a man became a monster.
‘All are accountable for their choices,’ howled a voice – warped and raw, but undeniably his. ‘All must be held accountable!’
His presence filled the confines of the shield. What suggestion of up and down Mercedes had clung to ceased to have meaning as she lay trapped between massive extremities. Those on either side of her resembled a canine’s hind legs in stance, although no real wolf would have nails like sickle knives the size of her head. Her energy shimmered with fright, and it all but dimmed completely at the ominous growl coming from the black expanse above her.
‘Every action begets a response,’ the growl rumbled. ‘Rightful actions born from just choices are rewarded; unjust actions born from malice are punished. This! This is justice.’
Thunderous conviction slammed her down with the force of an anvil. She lay helpless as a wall of pitch-black fur bowed over her and extended two long arms from broad, hunched shoulders. Gnarled claws flicked the hues that surrounded her.
‘Every choice has consequences,’ the
demon wheezed. ‘When a mistake is made— Guilt is—’ He whined as if struck. ‘Suffering guilt is insufficient! Insufficient recompense for the damage my faults have caused!’ One claw wrapped around its opposite wrist and combed slowly through the tangled fur. Or rather…
Mercedes winced when the trail of the talons ran wet with dark drops that soaked the coarse hairs. The demon shuddered but seemed strangely content to have drawn her attention.
‘Suffering is private; accountability must be public,’ he grunted as he brought his enormous, disfigured muzzle to her face. Moist lips pulled back to bare an infinite number of dagger-like teeth. ‘There must be confession, and atonement. In full!’ From under the heavy brow, eyes black as coals gleamed in her light. ‘Absolution cannot be obtained in silence. It must be earned.’
Thick globs of putrid saliva spilled from the opened jaws. His hunger was overwhelming, nearly tangible in this intangible world. Mercedes willed herself to gather the courage as he licked her cheek with his rotting tongue. It was covered in blisters and sores, as were his lips.
‘The scale of the damage is immaterial. A lie is still fraud, taking a life still murder. Petty theft is still… theft.’
The muzzle snapped. Mercedes cried out, but his teeth had barely grazed her. Shaken but determined, she glared back. A guttural growl replied. Urgent and strained, it struck her core, dissolving the remaining barriers between them.
‘Choices… Choices are not immaculate. They arise from reasons. Intent. But intention does not… mitigate the damage. Intentions are…. intentions are to be disregarded. They must—they must—they—aah!’
The demon reared, screaming as a thin beam of light pierced his narrow forehead. His unbearable howl filled her with pain; not her own, but too close for comfort. This ache and anxiety of a world coming to an end, she had endured it. Some days she still did.
The waves of his torment hit her hard. The offending light was born from kindness, that much Mercedes sensed, yet its presence tortured the demon to the brink of insanity.