A Thief in the Night

chapter Fifty-one

The demon flowed across the floor, the edges of its shapeless form rippling as it glided over the refuse. A face pressed outward against its skin, the eyes protruding and staring in Croy’s direction. A second face loomed toward Mörget. Both were stretched and distorted to a point of horror.

Croy set his candle on the floor, squeezing its lower end between two flagstones so it would stand upright. He couldn’t fight this thing if he couldn’t see it. Then he brought Ghostcutter down, the point near the floor. He put his left foot back to improve his stance.

He had no idea how to attack it. It did not have limbs to cleave or a proper head to target. He was not so foolish to think that the faces would be vulnerable. It had too many of them, for one thing. Mörget had spoken of a central organ that seemed important to the beast, but Croy couldn’t see it through the skin. What could you do with such a shapeless abomination, save carve it up and then burn the pieces?

He doubted it would stand still while he did that.

It came on fast, faster than a man could run. Just before it would have lapped across Mörget’s boots, it reared up in the air and struck at him with the edges of its envelope. Croy jumped in and brought Ghostcutter around in a wide arc intended to slice open the thing’s back. The cold iron edge of his sword found little purchase—its skin gave too easily, so it was like trying to slice honey. He managed only to trace a shallow wound that oozed a clear fluid.

The monster did not roar in pain—if it had a voice at all, it had not used it yet. Croy knew he’d hurt it, though, because it stopped attacking Mörget and came at him instead. He expected it to turn around to face him, but instead it merely leaned over backward and splattered all over Croy’s chest and face like a thing of pure liquid. Its back became its front, and Croy was overwhelmed instantly.

Sticky fluid splashed across his mouth and nose, sealing in his breath. He clamped his eyes shut and tried to bring Ghostcutter up, but the thing’s infernal substance wrapped around his sword hand and squeezed, constricting the muscles in his wrist until he dropped the weapon. He fought and clawed against the stuff as it wrapped around his waist and pulled him off his feet, drawing him into its body.

The demon swallowed him whole.

He passed through its skin like diving into hot water and suddenly was inside the thing. Its blood burned his face and hands—anywhere it touched exposed skin—and slithered down the collar of his tunic and up his sleeves.

There was no air inside the thing. Its jellylike substance pushed at his lips, trying to get inside of him, to suffocate him. Wherever it touched his bare skin searing pain made his muscles twitch, while fear threatened to overwhelm him like a black wave. He was seconds from death—seconds at the very most—and his natural urge to panic, to scream, was almost uncontrollable.

Giving in to that urge would undo him, he knew. He would die the moment he gave up fighting. There had been a time when even reason would not have been enough to save him from his own fear. Only years of training allowed him to overcome that perfectly natural reaction. He forced himself into a kind of fragile calm. If he was to die like this, devoured by a demon, then that was acceptable. But only if he went down fighting.

He forced himself to open his eyes and saw a jeering face inches from his own. Its mouth opened in a mocking laugh and he saw right through its maw—there was nothing behind those cruel lips but dim light. Croy fought to bring one arm up and he punched wildly at the face. Every movement was constrained, slowed by the viscous medium of the thing’s body. He barely had the strength to push his fist forward, to connect with that terrible face. Yet when his knuckles met its cheek, the face did not resist him but only folded around his hand like a wet leaf.

He felt the face’s soft lips work at his fingers, and he yanked his hand back in disgust.

Croy’s lungs heaved with the desperate need for breath. He fought down the spasm that threatened to force open his mouth and make him inhale the caustic substance of the demon, knowing that would be his death. Wildly he looked around him, even as his eyes burned with fierce pain, looking for something to grab, some organ he could rend and pull apart.

Then Dawnbringer plunged downward through the mass of the demon, missing Croy’s chest by inches. The Ancient Blade burst with light as its point found its target—an enormous round mass that pulsed with wriggling dark worms. Dawnbringer pierced the organ through and it spilled open, the worms curling and shriveling as they were exposed to the demon’s acidic blood.

Croy saw three more faces scream, and then a thick wet membrane came crashing down all around him, the thing’s skin contracting as it died. He fought and pushed against the skin that wrapped around him like a blanket. His fingers dug through that gruesome envelope and tore it apart in long ribbons of clear flesh. Icy cold air struck his face, and he spat the creature’s blood out of his mouth, then sucked in a sweet gust of breath that made him tremble with ecstasy.

Mörget pulled and scraped the skin away from Croy’s body as he struggled to get up, to stagger out of the thing’s clinging remains. He stumbled over to one marble wall and leaned hard against it, gasping and weak. Looking down at his hands, he saw they were as red as if he’d been scalded with boiling water.

The demon lay in a puddle of its own ichor, as flat and lifeless as a cast-aside tarpaulin. The faces buried in its skin stared upward at nothing, and its organs oozed dark fluids as they twitched and died, one by one.

Finally it lay still. Its corpse began to steam, and it shrank as it turned to fumes and vapor. Like any demon, like any unnatural creature, it could not exist in this world once its vital spirit had been dissipated. Only sorcerous energy could maintain its physical form, and now that was gone. In a few seconds it was nothing more than a stain on the marble flagstones.

“It is dead,” Mörget said, and laughed wildly. “My demon is undone! Now I am a man—and even my father cannot gainsay it. Mother death, I thank you for this chance to kill, to send this thing into your arms. Croy! Brother! We have won!”

Croy nodded feebly and tried to slow the frantic beating of his heart.

“Yes,” he finally wheezed. “Yes. Won. Now—we find Cythera.”

“Of course!” Mörget chuckled. “Anything you like.”

“Right now,” Croy said, the words like knives in his throat, “I just need . . . to sit down.”