The Devourer

by C H Chelser

  Caught at last.

  The sting of distant memory warned him not to rejoice. The catch was one thing; the incarceration another. At will, he permitted the woman’s colours to seep through his shield and grant him sight. From the angles of the other’s shadow, he made out its defensive pose, like a predator guarding its catch from a rival hunter. Such traits often reflected in an entity’s form, but what the shadows revealed no longer resembled anything of its previous shape.

  Scarlet glints of razors and scrapers surrounded the black hole of its jawless mouth. A parasite, yet so much worse. It hissed at him, but he ignored the monster in favour of the shapeless sack of luminescent slime that it gripped with multiple tentacles. Small, leech-like mouths covered the slithering extremities like suction cups. Their minute teeth rasped across the glowing sack, scraping off tiny purple embers that disappeared into the many pitch-black orifices.

  The sight left him paralysed. The sack – a living soul, by nature a malleable orb of dazzling light – shrunk in size and strength with every bite. What had once defined this soul, made it unique, had vanished, leaving only its anonymous energy to be consumed as nourishment for the devourer. Sickening to behold, and yet…

  And yet his mouth watered, his teeth growing at the roar of his hunger.

  ‘Mine,’ the other spat. ‘Mine!’

  Infinite mouths sucked globs of fluorescent slime from every conceivable angle. As if he were witnessing murder by dismemberment.

  Yet what were they but murderers? He distinguished fractured details of the other’s eyeless face. Sharp scrapers reflected the diminishing light of the dying soul. Energy, experience; he felt the soul’s bounty fill his opponent with unnatural ecstasy, a satisfaction he craved as much as the other. Hunger beat against his coat, tearing at the seams to wrest the invaluable prize from the tentacles’ grasp and prove that they were alike.

  Hands became claws. No, not alike. His self-control made a crucial difference. It had to.

  He could not permit this to continue.

  He leapt and drove his talons deeply into the ravenous shadows. The creature howled and squirmed, but never released what was left of its meal, its scraper mouths feasting ceaselessly on the remainder of the soul’s energy.

  ‘Me too!’

  Shock pulverised his concentration when he recognised the thought as his own, but the realisation alone didn’t defeat his demonic instincts. He growled, poised to strike again.

  ‘Mine,’ the other hissed, drowning out their overlapping thoughts. ‘Salvation. All mine!’ Its largest mouth gobbled up the last of the energy – a prey rich in experience to have lasted this long. Then it turned its attention upwards, to the source of the scarlet light that still surrounded them.

  ‘Devouring her brings no salvation,’ he snarled, admonishing himself more than the other. He sensed his appearance becoming inconsistent, his focus tenuous. Too much distraction, too much that appealed too strongly to the damned creature he was.

  Damned. Like the other. In the end, he was not nearly as different as he made himself believe. Ultimately, he, too, would suck living souls dry for their energy. It was inevitable.

  It was also already a fact.

  His core constricted as memories of untold hunts washed over him. His talons in his victims’ necks, drinking their vital energy just shy of depletion. Was he truly any less depraved for stopping short of the kill? Acid burned his gullet and dripped down his lips. Such hypocrisy!

  The other lunged, swollen and fat with experience not its own. In reflex he enforced his shield and wrapped his iron will around the creature’s saturated energy. Unnatural, unthinkable. And yet. And yet! He need only sink his teeth into the other and consume it to claim this succulent prize, to quench his infernal hunger. All he need do—

  His hatred flared, forging shackles and chains of the deepest darkness to tether the other to himself.

  ‘We are abominations, you and I. Unfit for existence.’

  In his grip, the other unexpectedly sagged and ceased its struggle. The fullness its gorging had granted now ebbed away, like water on the river’s dirty sand banks. The creature whined; a broken keening, half obscured by the shadows. Despite the barriers he maintained, he sensed the other’s pain.

  The terrible bite of acid.

  ‘Guilt?’ A smudge of green drifted down from the woman. Her innocent surprise cooled the hot sting of pain that lanced through him with the other’s every wince.

  ‘It knows it is culpable,’ he said. ‘No punishment without culpability. Acknowledging one’s crimes is no prerequisite, but it eases one’s acceptance of what is just.’

  A sudden myriad of colours cascaded down, but faded to dark greys before they reached him. He ignored them, instead tightening the chains in order to drag the other back to him.

  ‘The fate to which we have condemned ourselves is ignoble,’ he told it. ‘Only by accepting just punishment, only by seeking our own destruction in voluntary sacrifice may felons such as we find absolution.’

  As with all intentions, his decision carried from the moment he had made it. It strengthened his shields and the chains that bound the other. The creature barely resisted, seemingly unaware of what its capture heralded. The woman, however, was more astute. Despite their depth and the distance between them, her panic dyed the world outside his shield a ghastly yellow.

  ‘M’sieur, stop!’

  Her shrill voice vibrated with thoughts so urgent that words failed. She protested his intentions, of that she left no doubt, but her reasoning eluded him.

  ‘You do not deserve that! You do not deserve that,’ she screamed over and over. He sensed how she willed him to understand through the muddled repetitions that drowned his mind—

  —An alley; a gun to his face; a knife to his throat. Rolls reversed. ‘Kill me’, he said. He had lost; failed. His one prey held the gun, held the knife; to die here, at these hands, was acceptable. Just. Except… The knife cut his bonds but not his skin; the bullet fired but missed. Intentionally. He, who had always recognised intent, now failed to understand—

  ‘—not deserve that! You do not—’

  The woman’s cries hammered inside his core. The other cowered in the shackles that bound it, snapping its innumerable teeth at him at every chance.

  ‘It must be done,’ he said, broadcasting his resolution to both. ‘This creature will not respond to reason.’ Even to himself, he was uncertain whether he meant only the other devourer.

  ‘Because it cannot,’ the woman shrieked. ‘Bring it up! Bring it to me!’

  He, who always recognised intent, now recognised hers.

  A scythe of glowing reds and purples plunged down. Not to kill, but to sever. To sever the chains.

  His cane shot out and deflected her swing. ‘Mine!’ he barked, pulling the chains still tighter. The other twisted its shape to lose them, but his grip was inexorable.

  ‘Please, M’sieur, stop this. You are destroying yourself.’

  ‘That is just.’

  ‘Just? What trespass justifies such a cruel fate?’

  ‘You witnessed its crime.’ He groped for the shadows that outlined the writhing animal head. ‘And to what end? Your killings brought you nothing, you miserable wretch.’

  His black claw sank into the shadows of the creature. In that void only the faintest trace of his shield resonated to mark where he ended and the other began, and even that divider grew more and more volatile as their contact lasted.

  ‘We are the same. What punishment you deserve for crimes committed, I must submit to as well, lest I debase myself.’ With a furious gesture, he yanked the other so close that his arm merged with its back, stronger than chains and closer than bonds.

  What better shackle than himself?

  They didn’t separate even as their shapes flared with the brightest yellow. To his astonishment, the light lifted both him and the creature to a higher plane, closer to the woman.

  Closer to her treacherous intentions.


  ‘Leave us!’

  ‘You seek to punish a murderer when there is nothing but a wild animal following its instincts!’

  ‘Ignorance is a feeble excuse. Excuses do not change the crime or extenuate the punishment.’

  ‘At the cost of your own soul? Are you mad?’

  He bared his teeth. ‘You served your purpose, woman. Be gone.’

  Her energy touched him. ‘My purpose has only just begun.’

  Yellow faded into green and on into an intense blue that ran over his shield. Both he and the other froze in place, mesmerised by the tantalising colours playing so close. So close…

  Too late he realised that the pleasant hues sought to drive a wedge between their merged energies; to set the other free again. And she had the audacity to latch onto his shield to do it.

  ‘You treacherous wench.’

  ‘Call me what you will, M’sieur, but I will not allow you to do this to yourself. Not again.’

  Again?

  —dark; cold; heavy, so heavy. Liquid filled his chest, burning. Like acid—

  Through the haze of unwanted memories, a blueish shine crept along his arm, untangling his energy from the other’s and effecting a dichotomy that he could not distinguish.

  ‘Leave us be!’ No other thought but that was clear. ‘It is the only way to put an end to the souls dying.’

  ‘You are wrong. There is another option, if you will but—’

  ‘Devour it?’ he barked. ‘Is it not enough for you that I submit to oblivion by choice? Must I cast aside my last conviction and fall to earn my just destruction?’

  ‘That is not what I—No!’

  His cane whipped through her lavender strands; she screamed. Were the strands she, or but a part of her? He couldn’t tell, nor could he care. Not when the other devourer pulled frantically at the last remaining connection between them.

  How unnatural that it should resist! They were devourers, condemned by their self-loathing. They were meant to give up, to abandon hope and perish silently. But few sentenced to that fate could tolerate the intense hatred long enough to fight damnation. He had thought himself alone in the half-existence he had crafted on the precipice of tolerance, yet a similar determination drove the other devourer to persist, too. Another likeness that tore at his core.

  He willed new chains to ensnare the other, but meddling blue light raked his mind for memories that sapped his convictions. Pitted against the creature’s desperate thrashing, he lost. It tore loose with a screeching howl and disappeared into the obscurity of their mutual resonance.

  Treachery! Cane raised in defence, he prepared for another attack. A fresh shield expanded instantly at a flick of his mind, but the woman’s colours found him. Her lightning danced across the fortification and ate the barrier faster than he could enforce it. From an unfathomable distance, he heard her voice, but was only aware of her snakes of light slithering together into one ball – one bullet.

  —The same alley; the same gun. His prey fired. The shot missed, yet the bullet pierced his forehead and tore the world asunder.

  The blinding flare dimmed fast in the fog, reduced to the hazy pinprick of a lantern that failed to light the gloom of the overcast night. His hands soaked up the damp cold of the stone parapet. In the abyss below, penitence beckoned and gurgled.

  In a last attempt to restore order to the turmoil within, a lifetime’s habit of meticulous scrutiny insisted on methodical reasoning. A pointless endeavour. The facts were clear, the evidence irrefutable: he had erred. Irreparably so.

  Of the two paths open to him, both destroyed the steadfast pillars of his world. Yet to maintain these supports under the present circumstances would constitute the most base form of self-deceit. Thus his only way forward lay directly ahead.

  Chapter XXV

  Darkest energy milled about them like a growing thunderstorm. Gales of hate and resentment flogged her raw, but Mercedes willed her colours to latch onto his shield. Blue light snaked across its weaknesses, seeking to unravel the black walls before they closed. He fought back, hard, and she buckled when his cane sliced through her aura like a butcher’s knife. Yet she persisted. Through the pain, she knew in her core that if he secluded himself now, his shield would not protect but rather entomb him. Buried in the furthest reaches of the outer edge, from which not even he could return.

  She called to him in words and notions, begging him to cease his mad plan, but he cut her off. In severing their connection so rigorously, he also weakened the hold he had on l’Autre, who leapt at the opportunity it presented. They clung together, a shapeless mass of dark molasses, until the monster broke away and the last restraint shattered.

  L’Autre fled at once. M’sieur braced for an attack, but Mercedes sensed the creature’s fear of wasting this chance. It dived, well beyond her reach. The loss meant another failure on her part, but to what purpose should she hold it captive when defeating it required the destruction of yet two more souls? What justice would demand that?

  Adamant about his course, M’sieur prepared one last attempt to follow his quarry, but Mercedes tore down his defences as fast as he could rebuild them.

  ‘I will not allow you to do this. I promised I would not let you do this.’

  She gathered all her energy into a single, blinding beam. Like stone striking glass, his shield splintered. Its shards dissolved into a black mist that immediately solidified once again – but not before she had slipped inside its folds.

  The first time she had breached his primary shield, the intense cold and oppressive darkness had taken her by surprise. Now the surprise lay in their absence. His torment thickened the atmosphere about him, but without choking her. As if his shield contained more space than it should.

  An uneven pavement extended beneath her feet. Its cobblestones had a dull glimmer to them, like a sheen of moisture reflecting a light other than her own.

  Street lanterns, she realised. They shed a misty glow on her. And on the tall figure beside her.

  Beyond the two of them, the quay was deserted. A moonless and starless sky melted into the outlines of the Cité, with the bridge pump to her left, the turrets of the Palais de Justice to her right, and the bell towers of Notre Dame in the distance. A familiar view, but not quite right.

  She didn’t have to see the arches of the Pont Notre Dame to know there was one too many.

  ‘Is this your Paris?’ she asked.

  The man at her side leaned with his elbows on the stone parapet. Her senses told her who he was, though his appearance differed greatly. His overcoat was not black but a dark grey, and of a recognisable make. An old-fashioned design with three capes and a high collar, which he had buttoned up all the way despite the mild air. A formidable stature.

  He also wore a top hat, resting low across his brow. She had never seen him with one before, but now its brim hid his eyes. What she did see of his face was as stark as she had come to know it, if less chiselled. He seemed older and more weary. Quite a bit drier, too.

  ‘M’sieur?’

  He ignored her. His fingers, buried in his long sideburns, had gone white at the knuckles while he stared out across the Seine with a pained thoughtfulness. To determine whether she even existed to him, she brushed his sleeve.

  —Blazing sunlight reflected off crème walls; a stifling heat pounded down on the haggard men that shuffled along in double file. Chains and shackles rattled throughout the courtyard; dirt and wear failed to hide the red of their vests or the sun-faded colours of their caps. Green for a life sentence, red for the rest.

  Not he. Never would he allow himself to stoop to covering his head with anything other than his blue hat, as befitted a prison guard. Perhaps one day he might aspire to wearing a proper top hat, black and tall. But never a cap.

  Silence broke. Shouts burst forth followed by wild cheering, for on the far wall, a red fly clambered up. He surveyed the crowd, intent to quell further disturbances rather than gawk at the futility of yet another prisoner attempting
to escape justice.

  Gunshots replaced barked orders; the fly fell. Once more society had been protected. Justice was the will of God. No man could hope to break the law and remain righteous even so.

  Silence returned. Justice was done.

  Justice.

  Just—

  Mercedes snatched her hand back, whimpering as she cradled it against her breast. A memory. Not hers, but no less real.

  The parapet hadn’t changed during the regression. Nor had the man at her side, apart from a subtle severity to his posture. Strong shadows marred his features, but Mercedes sensed his galling turmoil.

  ‘M’sieur,’ she tried again, hesitant to connect through more than words. ‘M’sieur, where are we?’

  She started when he straightened without preamble and took off his hat. As paintings gaze without seeing and echoes speak without hearing, she was but air to him. How could she be here, inside his shield, and he be persistently unaware of her presence?

  Unless this was not the demon himself, but a mere reflection of the man he had been. And like paintings and echoes, reflections could never become aware of anything but themselves.

  ‘Memories within memories.’

  The man placed his hat on the parapet with meticulous care. In his movements she recognised herself. How on that bridge she had carefully fixed her bodice and hair. As if the river cared that she looked her best while it drowned her.

  ‘I know where we are,’ she said to him. ‘I also know what you came here to accomplish. But monsieur, why?’

  —He strode, paced, but never ran along the quays, across bridges and into streets. An endless maze of pathways winding, twisting, branching into each other. This quartier, every seedy back alley mapped in his mind, was his hunting ground. Thieves, brigands, prostitutes; all fair game. They did fall beneath his cane like the criminals they were and the convicts they would be.