A Knight Of The Word

Nest felt the skin on the back of her neck crawl with the idea of two demons fighting over possession of John Ross. She should have taken the time to find him and bring him with her. He should be listening to this. If he were, he would be hard-pressed to argue that he wasn’t in any real danger.

Boot nodded, as if reading her mind. “It was a bad moment. The first demon gets back to his feet and says, “All right, he’s yours. Take him. I don’t care anymore,” The second demon grunts and sneers at the first, then turns and moves off down the path. The first demon waits until the second is out of sight, then starts to undress. It takes off its coat and the clothes underneath. Then it begins to transform into something else. It happens quickly. I have heard of creatures like this, but I have never seen one — a changeling, a special kind of demon, able to shift from one form to another in moments where it takes the others days or even weeks to assume a new disguise.”

The sylvan took a deep breath. “It becomes a four-legged creature, a monster, a predator like nothing I’ve ever seen. It has these huge jaws and this massive neck and shoulders. A hellhound. A rover. It lopes off into the brush after the second demon. Audrey and I take to the air and follow, watching. The changeling catches up to the second demon in seconds. It doesn’t hesitate. It attacks instantly, charging out of the brush. It knocks the second demon to the ground despite its size and holds it there with its body weight. It tears the bigger demon’s head from its shoulders, then rips its body down the middle and fastens on the dark thing inside that is its soul. There is a horrible shriek, and the second demon thrashes and goes limp. It begins to dissolve. It turns to ash and blows away in the summer’s night breeze.

“The first demon says — growls, actually, and I can hear it even from atop the trees where Audrey and I watch it begin to change again — “He belongs to me, he is mine.”

Rain gusted suddenly through the trees, blown on a fresh wind, and Nest started as the cold droplets blew into her face. The weather was worsening, the mist turning to a steady downpour. Nest tried to make sense of what the sylvan was telling her, why it was that the first demon would be so desperate to protect its interest in John Ross, to keep him alive so that he could be subverted. Something in the back of her mind nudged at her, a memory of something that had happened before, but she could not quite manage to identify it.

Ariel floated past her in the dark, her childlike form looking frail and exposed against the rush of wind and rain. “Is that all?” she asked Boot. “Is that the end of the story?”

“Not quite,” replied the sylvan, dark eyes bright. “Like I said, the demon begins to change again, but — it’s the strangest thing — this time it changes into…”

Something huge tore through the woods. Thick masses of brush shivered suddenly, shedding water and scattering shadows. Boot wheeled toward the movement in frightened recognition, his voice faltering and his dark eyes blinking in shock. Ariel gasped sharply and screamed at Nest.

Then the brush exploded in a shower of branches and leaves, and a massive black shape hurtled out of the night.



On the advice of Simon Lawrence, Andrew Wren enjoyed a leisurely dinner at Roy’s, tapping it off with the chocolate snuffle because everyone around him seemed to be doing the same. He was not disappointed. Then he went back out into the lobby for a nightcap. He drank a glass of port and engaged in conversation with a computes-software salesman from California who was in town to do a little business with Microsoft, picking up a few new tit bits of information on Bill Gates in the process (he never knew what was going to prove useful in his business). So it was nearing nine o’clock when he went up to his room to turn in.

He saw the manila envelope as soon as he opened the door, a pale square packet lying an the dark carpet. Wary of strange deliveries and having known more than one investigative journalist who had been the recipient of a letter bomb, he switched on the light and knelt to examine it. After a careful check, and noting how thin it was, he decided it was safe and picked it up. No writing on it anywhere. He carried it over to the small table by the window and set it down. Then he walked to the closet and hung his coat, turned on a few more lights, called the message service to retrieve a call that had came in over the dinner hour from his editor, and finally went back to the table, sat down in the straight-backed chair tucked under it, and picked up the envelope once more.