The Devil You Know

A feeling of claustrophobia crashed down on me and made my heart race. Even my breath was making no sound in my chest or in my mouth. A voiceless pall hung over and around me. I turned the other corners of the mattress over, not expecting to find anything. But at the far end, closest to the wall, there was a broad, dark brown stain on the underside. The color was pretty much unmistakable. So was the bitter almond smell of stale blood, which had been masked until I got this close by the sharper ammonial reek of the piss bucket.

I was conscious that anyone finding the upstairs door open could cross the room above me, see the light on down here, and lock me in with a single turn of the key—assuming that this was an anyone who had the key in his pocket. It wasn’t an idea I liked all that much. I retreated to the stairs, cast one more look around the grim place, and headed back up to street level.

The upper door had swung to. I opened it and stepped out into the first-floor room. Just the one step, then I stopped dead. The room was dark; the light from the basement cell barely made it up the stairwell, creating only a strip of fuzzy gray in front of me, sandwiched between broader areas of indelible black. While I was in the basement, someone had turned the upstairs light off.

All I had by way of a weapon was my dagger. It was intended for exorcisms, not for self-defense, and I didn’t bother to keep it sharp, but it might make someone think twice if I waved it around. Standing stock-still in the dark, and grateful now for the absolute silence of my breath, I slid it out of my pocket and held it down at waist height, ready.

Then I smelled her perfume—that terrible, polecat’s-arse musk that bullied its way into your brain and reprogrammed you so that you loved it.

And I heard her laugh—soft, mocking, utterly without mercy.

“It won’t help you,” Ajulutsikael murmured almost caressingly, and I knew she was right. She was faster than me, and stronger. She could see in the dark. She could take the knife out of my hand and pick her teeth with it before slamming it back into my guts, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.

Hoping to throw her off balance and maybe postpone the inevitable, I tossed the knife casually away into the dark and took out my whistle. It wouldn’t work; the aphthegtos ward would stop any sound at all from coming from my mouth. But such as it was, the pathetic bluff was all I had.

She wasn’t fooled. Either she could sense the magic of McClennan’s sigils hanging on me or she could just tell from my face that it was a bluff. I heard her heels click on the floor as she strolled unhurriedly toward me. She knew there was nothing to fear from the whistle this time.

“There was a woman chained here,” Ajulutsikael said. Her voice was the same throaty murmur, but it was from a lot closer this time. She was a couple of steps away from me and just right of center. If I ducked her first charge, I could fake left and make a run for the door. But there was no way I’d ever reach it. There was a moment of terrifying silence during which I tensed and got ready to move. Then she spoke again, from even closer. “Did you chain her?”

I shook my head.

“Did you keep her as your pet until you tired of her? Alone? In the dark? Was the stink of her fear sweet to you?”

All I could do was shake my head again, more urgently. Who rips my head off gets trash, more or less, or at least takes their own chances with the resale value—but dead or alive, I didn’t want to be associated with this hell-hole.

“A pity. It would have been more enjoyable then. But I’m going to eat you anyway.” A kind of anger came growling and graveling up from under the feline playfulness. “I’m going to make you pay, man, for the indignity of this summoning. For being made to dance on a chain at the whim of these stinking bags of meat. I’m going to take you slowly. You will love me as you die, and you will despair.”

I could actually see her now; my eyes had adjusted to the point where she showed as a darker splodge of shape against the background darkness. A fluid blur of black, as deep as midnight.

I threw out my arms in a sort of shrug—the closest I could get to pleading for my life. Her hand fell on my shoulder, turned me round to face her. I hit out, and my fist was caught. I pulled away, and she drew me close—then threw me effortlessly across the room so that I slammed into the sofa, toppling it, and rolled over and over across the floor until I hit the base of the wall beyond.

“Let’s make ourselves comfortable,” she whispered.

I was winded and stunned, but I braced myself to make some kind of a fight of it. I got up on one knee, which was as much as I could manage.