Speaking of the Devil

by Meg Collett

  Together, Clark and Liam scuttled back up the ridge’s point on their bellies. From his pocket, Liam pulled out a pair of binoculars. He searched the clearing and the woods around it for a long moment. Finally, with a shake of his head, he tucked the binoculars away and looked at Clark.

  Clark met his glance.

  And saw it over Liam’s shoulder.

  The demon was higher born than the one in Clark’s bedroom. Its body was disturbingly thin, with bones pressing against its scaly skin that glinted iridescent in the silver moon’s light. Clark surged to his feet, his eyes never leaving the creature. But it didn’t advance; instead, it remained in the shadows of a tree, crouched as if it was waiting. Its eyes, blacker than the darkness around it, remained fixed on Clark, never blinking. It didn’t even glance at Liam when the Keeper rose up beside Clark. It was so still that it could’ve been a shadow except for its odd, jutting angles from its elongated limbs that were folded up tightly in a crouch.

  Its waiting unsettled Clark more than if it had outwardly attacked them. Something felt wrong about it. Something wasn’t right. Clark hissed in understanding and spun around.

  “Good to see you again, Clark,” Lucifer said, advancing through the trees.

  He moved with a silent grace, his lean body gliding over the ground. He was exactly as he’d been in Clark’s dream: harsher, crazed, and missing something vital inside him that had once made the fallen angel somewhat likable, as crazy as that sounded. Lucifer smiled, the motion stretching his pale, waxy skin. He didn’t look well, Clark realized.

  “Can’t say the same,” Clark answered. He glanced back at the demon in time to see it move forward a few paces. He touched Liam’s arm, jerking his chin toward the creature. Understanding, Liam fixed his eyes on the demon and didn’t move.

  “I see you’ve met my little pet,” Lucifer said. “It’s proved quite useful for getting into tight spaces, like chimneys, for example. I have more of them. Of course, they aren’t here right now, since your little bitch found us earlier. Is she around?” Lucifer asked, turning his gaze to the ridge bottom.

  “No.” Clark felt a tiny flicker of relief that Lucifer hadn’t found the girls yet. He hoped they’d heard the conversation atop the ridge and flown away.

  “Too bad,” Lucifer said with a regretful cluck of his tongue. “She’s a beautiful creature. Powerful. Lethal. I’d quite like to add her to my collection.”

  He didn’t talk like the old Lucifer, Clark noted. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked, unable to keep the question at bay.

  Lucifer’s horizontal smile deepened into the creases of his cheeks, making it look infinitely eviler. He leaned against a nearby tree and tucked his hands into the pockets of his pressed black slacks. The angel had always dressed sharply, Clark would give him that. The cut of his white shirt was perfectly tailored, tucking around his trim form. Clark couldn’t see his new wings, but he knew they were back there, folded out of view.

  “That’s a good question because I don’t rightly know. Nothing good, I can tell you that. I remember wandering in a vast desert, lost and aimless. It was sweltering. Every step felt like death, but I couldn’t stop walking. I was starving, losing myself to a madness that only can be born from an endless nothing.” Lucifer pulled himself out of his reverie, where he’d lost himself to the memory, it seemed. He turned his sharp gaze to Clark. “I thought about you lot. All the time, actually. About your power.” His eyes drifted to Clark’s arms. “And about the fact that you’d killed me. Sentenced me to this.”

  “I didn’t mean to kill you,” Clark said.

  The demon moved another step closer, flanking them from behind. There was nowhere to run. Clark doubted they could corner and kill Lucifer easily without backup, which left luck or mercy to save them. Lucifer seemed scant on the mercy end, so Clark started searching his brain, focusing his thoughts on the markings across his arms, calling forth the power. Sometimes it came to him, easy to read as anything, like when Ezekiel had challenged him earlier. Sometimes, like now, it was just a jumble of symbols, incomprehensible when Clark needed it the most.

  So. Freaking. Typical.

  Lucifer made a snorting sound in the back of his throat, his eyes glinting with anger. His smile fell away as he leaned forward, his manner turning dangerously serious. “You set that fire on me, commanded it to devour me. You rendered me helpless against it with your power, but I fought with everything I had. I tried to pull away from it. And when it sucked me in and tore me apart cell by cell, I thought about you again. And how you had taken everything from me. Everything I loved and cherished.”

  “That’s a lie,” Clark said, defensively. “You didn’t fight. You stepped into the flames.”

  “I fought!” Lucifer suddenly shouted, the sound echoing off the trees. There was no way Camille and Zarachiel hadn’t heard it. Clark hoped they ran from it, but he knew they would never leave him behind.

  “You didn’t fight because you hated yourself and you hated Hell even more,” Clark said, hoping to distract Lucifer. “You weren’t a bad guy then. That’s why you didn’t fight. You were good enough that you wanted to die and un-become something you hated.”

  “You don’t believe that,” Lucifer said, glaring at Clark. The conversation felt too personal, too intimate. As if they were lovers discussing their passions in front of a crowd.

  “I did,” Clark said, quieter this time. “I liked you, Lucifer. Fate made you what you are, put you in that position. You told me once that it was everyone else who made you the devil, that you were just dealt a shitty hand. You played your part to an extent, but you heart wasn’t in it. You did just what you had to in order to keep up the pretenses of Hell and the fallen. You weren’t all bad back then.”

  “And now?” Lucifer asked, smiling once again. “And now am I all bad?”

  “Yes,” Clark answered simply.

  “Good.”

  The word was final, ending the conversation. Clark knew what it meant. He jerked forward, slashing at Lucifer with his knives, but the angel was already gone, faded into the night above their heads with a powerful gust of wind that rustled even the thickest of tree limbs around them.

  Clark spun just in time to see the demon launching itself at Liam, latching onto the Keeper’s throat and sinking its jagged, crooked teeth into Liam’s flesh. Both of them screamed, the demon’s sound shrill in the night but filled with ecstasy. It sent goose bumps pricking along Clark’s arms as he raced over, his breath caught somewhere in the back of his throat. He launched himself into the fight, his knives chinking off the demon’s hard scales, while Liam tried to wrench himself free of its grasp.

  Liam fell to the ground, dragging the demon and Clark down with him. They rolled a distance away, down the ridge, crashing through the brush with an almighty clamor. Clark held on tight, his hands slick with Liam’s warm blood. A small sapling snagged around his boot and tore his grip from the demon. Stumbling to his feet, he dove back down the ridge after them, letting his momentum carry him. Roots snagged on his boots, making him scramble the rest of the way on his knees. At the bottom, he pushed himself to his feet and tightened his grip on the blades. He spotted Liam easily enough through the thin trees; his body was laid out at odd, deformed angles from his hard tumble down the ridge. Clark hurried over, limping slightly, his eyes roving around Liam’s still form until they caught on the impossible bend in his neck. Liam’s eyes stared up into the sky, unblinking and unseeing.

  The demon was gone.

  Clark spun around, his eyes searching the darkness for signs of the creature.

  Leaves rustled behind him. Thinking it was the demon, Clark spun back around, his knives hissing through the air. Instead, he met flesh and bone, slicing a thin gash across Liam’s chest, where he stood much too close to Clark.

  Clark stumbled back. Horror crept up his toes, turning his legs to immobile weights binding him to the earth. His spine turned to a single column of ice.

  “Dude…” h
e started, but the word dried out in his mouth when Liam looked up from the gash. His eyes were black like the demon’s. Long, curving fingers that looked nothing like Liam’s human hands reached up and touched the blood dripping from the cut. He brought his saturated fingers to his mouth, tasting them all too intimately.

  “Holy shit,” Clark said, stepping back again. The demon had clearly possessed Liam somehow. What used to be the Keeper advanced, pushing Clark back up the ridge in retreat.

  “H-holy shit,” Liam mimicked cocking his head as if he were testing out the words. His voice was different, higher pitched and scratchy, like an old record skipping. “H-holy shit. Hol-ly shit. Holy s-shit.”

  Liam flashed forward, moving so fast that his edges here blurred. Clark didn’t stand a chance. Pain seared across his chest. Thinking he was done for, Clark fell to his knees, gasping as he went down and clutching at his chest. But upon looking down, Clark realized it was merely a scratch, placed in the exact same spot and length as where Clark had cut Liam. He looked up at the demon, who smiled down at him. The scratch burned like acid had been dripped into the cut. A silent scream filled Clark’s mouth as the pain mounted inside him, his blood boiling and his innards frying.

  “What did you do?” Clark wheezed.

  The demon craned Liam’s neck, cocking his head so far to the left that his neck bent and cracked. “What…did…you…do?”

  Clark doubled forward, feigning weakness. He felt it sure enough, but he hoped adding a little extra drama would give him an advantage. The demon crouched down, folding Liam’s body into a tight ball. Clark took his chance, lurching forward and colliding with the demon at a full charged head ram. They catapulted end over end farther down the ridge. Clark hit trees as they crashed down, his body bending and breaking around them, but he held tight to Liam, his fingers digging into the skin that had once belonged to his friend.

  When they stopped moving, Clark had the good luck of ending up sprawled across Liam’s massive chest. Scrambling, he set up, clutching both knives in his hands. He raised them above Liam, who remained unmoving beneath Clark. The demon’s excited black eyes stared up at Clark, a slow smirk spreading across its face.

  “Holy shi-it,” it hissed, its voice skipping again.

  “Clark!” Camille screamed from somewhere above him.

  Clark didn’t dare look toward her voice. He wasn’t that stupid. He stared down at the demon and adjusted his grip on the knife. It would have to be a solid blow to get the blades past Liam’s sternum and ribs. He had no clue how to kill a demon, but stabbing Liam’s heart would be a start.

  No, Clark thought, this isn’t Liam anymore. Liam is dead.

  “Clark!” It was Zarachiel shouting this time. Clark heard their crashing approach, heard Camille in the air above him. “Don’t do it!”

  “Don’t d-do it!” the demon mimicked, drawing its tongue across Liam’s lips. “D-don’t do it, Clark!” It sounded just like Liam, but Clark didn’t let himself falter.

  “Stop!”

  Clark didn’t. The scratch across his chest flared with heat and pain. He would pass out soon, and only he knew that Liam was possessed. So he drove the curving knives deep into Liam’s chest, and as the Keeper’s bright red blood spread across his chest, Clark fell forward, blackness closing in around his mind. But not before he saw Liam’s eyes return to their normal chocolate brown before becoming wide and unstaring.

  Dead. Hopefully, for real this time.

  “I had to,” Clark gurgled before passing out completely on top of Liam, feeling the pulsing heat inside his chest. A knock-knock came from inside him, like someone else was home. “I ha-had to.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Clark!”

  Clark woke, opening his eyes to a slinking darkness. But it wasn’t the room that was dark, he was. The inky, breathing blackness splintered and slunk back from his vision, clearing it so that he saw he was in a brightly lit cell inside the compound’s dungeon. He groaned through the soreness and pain.

  “Clark! Look at me!”

  Like his spine was a rusted rod of crumbling metal, Clark achingly turned his head on the slab of rock he laid on. Maya was crouched outside the door to his cell, her face split by large metal bars. “Maya?” he asked. A fog resided in his mind now, slowing his thoughts and causing Maya’s face to flicker from flesh to bone, revealing her skull underneath, and back again. He blinked to clear his vision, but it didn’t help to clear away the flickering images. She looked like a nightmare before him. “What’s happened to me?”

  “You’re in jail for killing Liam.”

  “But he was a demon…” Clark mumbled, trying to focus on the flesh version of Maya’s face.

  “There weren’t any demons there, Clark. Zarachiel and Camille are searching all over as we speak, but they can’t find any sign that anything was out there.”

  “Lucifer and a demon…the demon possessed Liam…I had to kill hi-him.”

  “What are you saying? Are you sure it was Lucifer?” Maya sounded terrified, her voice rushed and whispered, as if she was worried someone would hear them. “You need to tell me what happened. Clark…” Maya leaned forward and gripped the bars. “Clark, they’re already talking about execution.”

  “But the demon scratched me…on my chest.”

  “You’re not hurt. There isn’t a scratch on you.”

  Clark looked down, his fingers slowly moving to his chest. His clothes were coated in dried mud and leaves. The memories of tonight were already fuzzy and confusing. Had he killed Liam or the demon? It was all slipping away from him. Or was being pulled away.

  He pushed aside the material of his shirt, looking down at his pale, unscratched chest. There was nothing there, yet he burned. His chest felt like a bomb had gone off inside it, his skin too sore even to breathe deeply. Something clicked in his brain.

  “Ho-holy shit.” He looked over at Maya, fear mingling with the fog in his mind. He only saw her skull and the pulsing blood vessels over it. “I think it’s in me now.”

  “What?” the skull asked, the holes where its eyes should have been went wide. “What do you mean, Clark?”

  “The de-demon. It’s in me now. Get…” Clark struggled with each word, his thoughts vaporizing into a dark void with snarling, gnashing teeth. The dark—the dark inside him—was alive and taking him over. Before he sank away, he forced the words up his throat and over a tongue that he could barely control.

  “Get he-help. Hu-hurry.”

  Dear Reader,

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  About the Author

  Meg Collett lives deep in the hills of Tennessee where the cell phone service is a blessing and the Internet is a myth of epic proportions. She is the mother of one giant horse named Elle and three dogs named Wylla, Mandy, and Drax the Destroyer. Her husband is a saint for putting up with her ragtag life.

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  Other Books by Meg Collett

  End of Days series

  The Hunted One *currently FREE!*

  The Lost One

  The Only One

  End of Days: The Complete Trilogy

  Days of New serials

  Speaking of the Devil

  Full of the Devil

  Better the Devil You Know

  Devil in the Details

  Give the Devil His Due

  Standalone Contemporary Romance

  Fakers

  Novellas

  Little Girls and Their Ponies

 
  Meg Collett, Speaking of the Devil