Surface Detail

He could use his slight lopsidedness to his advantage, he realised, as he took his next swinging, galloping step. The demon facing him, ready to tackle him, was allowing for how he was moving off-kilter, unconsciously preparing to intercept Prin a couple of metres ahead according to the already set rhythm evident in the way he was moving.

Prin threw Chay from one forelimb to the other and pressed her hard into the other side of his chest. The gesture cost him a small amount of momentum, but gave him the greater advantage of throwing off the reckoning of the demon preparing to bring him down.

Prin opened his jaws as the third barb made itself felt in his neck. One pulse left. The fourth barb would signal his instant return to the small, broken body he’d been trapped within for the last few months.

The demon didn’t even have time to look surprised. Prin crunched his jaws closed on the smaller demon. He felt his fangs penetrate furred skin, flesh, sinew and tendon and then bite into the giving hardness of bone. He was already turning his head, an instinctive reaction giving his jaws time to fully close. The demon was starting to turn too now, pulled round by his attacker’s greater weight. Prin went with the motion, keeping his jaws tight, feeling bone snap and crumple inside his mouth. He pivoted with the demon, using their combined mass to swivel even as he kept on charging forward, bringing the body of the bitten demon swinging round, legs flailing, to connect with the body of the second pouncing demon, knocking it aside in a snarling ball. Prin let his jaws open; the first demon was flung from them and went slithering along the floor, already bleeding, narrowly missing the legs of one of the other two demons still holding the Pavuleans.

He was almost at the start of the slope to the blue glowing door. He made one last bound, launching himself through the air.

As he did so, he knew he had made it, that they would get through the doorway. It floated up towards him as he rose in the air, still propelled by the last great thrust of his hind legs.

One, he thought.

The way the mill demon had said “One,” after the last two Pavuleans had gone through.

And, just as he’d burst into the mill, a voice – the same voice, he realised now – had said “Three.”

Three: then the two little Pavuleans had gone skittering through the blue glowing gate. One.

He’d been counting down.

Of course; the gate could count. The gate, or people operating it at this side – or more likely the other side, in the Real – knew how many to expect, how many they were allowed to let through.

Just one more person would be allowed to make the transition from the Hell to the Real.

He reached the top of his last, pouncing leap. The doorway spread before him, a glowing bank of blue mist filled with shadows. He wondered if the fact that he and Chay were so close together would allow them both to make it through, if the gateway would be somehow fooled by this. Or perhaps the fact she was catatonic, semi-conscious at best, would mean that she could make it through as well as him.

He was starting to fall through the air, the gateway only a bodylength away now. He brought Chay out from the side of his chest, moving her to a more central position, grasping her with both forelimbs as he pushed her in front of him. If there was really only one more person, one more coded consciousness allowed through, let it be her. He would have to take his chances here, accept whatever extra punishment these fiends could devise.

She might be in no state to tell what had befallen them, of course; she might forget or deny all they had experienced. She might not believe it had happened at all. She had denied the existence of the Real while she was here, surrendering all too easily to the grinding actuality of the horror around her; why would she not likewise deny the unbelievable gruesomeness of Hell once she was safely back in the Real, if she was even able to remember it properly?

What if she remained catatonic on the other side? What if she really had gone mad and no return to reality would change that?

Was he to be gallant to the point of stupidity, or hard-headed to the point of selfishness, just wanting to save his own skin?

He tucked himself in, balling up and tumbling, somersaulting through the air as the blue-glowing doorway rushed towards him. He would go through first, holding Chay out behind him.

He would never abandon her. She might abandon him.

At that point the contraband code’s run-time reached its end. He changed back immediately, an instant before the two little Pavulean bodies flew into the blue glowing mist.

Seven