Tamlin sighed, seeming relieved, his pain-wracked grimace disappearing. “I’m sorry it took so long for us to become honest with one another, Inquisitor.” The boy looked down at the nail still embedded in his inflamed hand and chuckled.
Pax took a few more steps back, loading his other pistol with the same kind of special round, but this time, it was first in the chamber. This wasn’t his first rodeo. “Oh, I’m sure you're just beside y’self, deceiver.” Pax knew the demon would be wearing an umbra—its shadow armor—beneath the false skin of the boy. He’d need to buy himself some time if his plan was going to pan out.
Which almost never happened when hoof hit stone.
“Well, let’s be on with it then, shall we?” Tamlin’s eyes bulged, belly swelling as protrusions from within clawed at his skin. His back arched, bones dislocating then realigning themselves into macabre geometries that Pax never got used to seeing. Elongated teeth gnashed into stretched lips over and over. On each inhalation, the demon seemed to suck the very air from Pax’s lungs, each exhalation suffusing the air with an unmistakable thickness.
Its transformation complete, the demon sighed, tongue licking the blood off of too-long canines. It was as if two giants had played tug-of-war with Tamlin’s body. He’d become a stretched, torn up mess of flesh and bone. The umbra slithered across the demon like chthonic clouds over a bloated corpse.
The demon spoke in a baritone, rippling the very air with each syllable. “So much better.”
Pax stared down those unblinking eyes. “Never was any cult around here, was there?”
“The cult? Ah yes, our pitiable servants.” It leaned against the tombstone, unperturbed by the Inquisitor. The demon sighed. “Never were, I’m sorry to say. I trust your zealous cousins to act as fodder and nothing more. No, my work requires a far more delicate touch.” It scratched at its left hand, the golden nail still embedded in its flesh. The demon tore it out and flicked it at Pax’s boots. “Bah! That itched quite a bit, Inquisitor.”
Just keep him talking. Pax picked up the nail with his free hand, never breaking eye contact with his prey, and pocketed the nail. “Little trick our scholars came up with. Chemicals and sunlight. Don’t much care how it works so long as it does. Still,” he nodded at the hole in the demon’s hand, “seems to have made its mark.”
The demon followed his gaze to the hole in its hand, a small patch of flesh where the demon’s umbra refused to coalesce. It clapped its clawed-hands together. “Ha! Clever, yes, but it doesn’t seem to have done much else, I’m afraid.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’m a patient man.” He leaned over and spat before looking back at the luxuriating demon. “You made the bargain with them pagans.” It wasn’t a question.
The demon spread its elongated claws to either side. “I merely gave them a choice: bank on the beneficence of the Inquisition by staying silent, maybe even be saved by you and your esteemed colleagues, or I’d consume them one at a time.” Its eyes flashed. “They chose poorly, it seems. But at least the Inquisition found one demon.” It winked at Pax. “Two, really.”
Rancid winds whipped at Pax’s duster. He adjusted his hat.
The demon continued. “It's amusing, really; your precious Inquisition. So proud of how they pull the strings, and yet,” the demon grinned, revealing rows of incisors punctuated by canines, “when one anonymous person reports seeing odd things at night, of a child skulking into the forest no less, a righteous posse is dispatched to quell those rumors. Mmmm.” The demon smiled.
“You’ve been rilin’ them folks up since the day you arrived in that outfit of yours. Stoking their fears ‘til the Inquisition came. You knew what’d happen when we got here.”
“Oh, I was counting on it. It’s what I love most about you humans: you’re just so dreadfully reliable.”
The demon’s umbra had peeled back to the elbow. He seemed not to have noticed. Pax kept it talking. “Why? Why kill good folk like those in Cairn?”
It looked Pax up and down. “You desire answers. Some way to rationalize the violence you’ve enabled, then hidden from in this, your long dark.”
Pax didn’t reply.
“It’s because I enjoy breaking humanity; a species that believes itself somehow removed from laws codified during the cosmos’ birth pangs, but that you commit all the same. Chaos, violence is the one true constant in this world we share. Birth, no matter the creature, equates to violence, but it is the conscious mind that sees violence for the grand inheritance it is, something that supersedes moral hegemony. Violence is too pure a thing to be saddled with codes of conduct, as any attempt to do so simply misses the point.
“Your species may think itself somehow superior to my own because you maintain a ‘rule of law,’ but it was the fires of violence that forged the precious chain binding Cre’, and it is the Inquisition’s violence that has constricted it about your necks; as much a noose as a necklace. The Inquisition may couch their actions within the ‘greater good,’ but make no mistake, Inquisitor, your masters are just as brutal, just as violent as the enemy they have waged war against for millennia. Look no further than Cairn for proof if my claim rings hollow. Why, even you are untouched by violence, dear Inquisitor. I see how it has stained your skin black with gunpowder, sculpted the scowl you wear without effort; as if a universal truth were something one could banish through sheer repugnance.
“But to answer your question as to why I did what I did to those . . . people you speak of? It’s because you’ve forgotten your place in this violent world of ours. I break humanity the same way a ranch hand breaks a horse; not because the creature is of use, but because all that is not under his purview is ignorant of its defiance.” The demon reared up, rolling ridged shoulders until its bones cracked into warped alignment. “And that is something which cannot be tolerated. I break your kind, Inquisitor, because you defy the truth buried within the very marrow of your bones: that you are inferior in all ways to my kind, save your epistemological illiteracy; for all things that have come, have long since passed, and all which has passed shall become sovereign once more. So saith I, so speaketh Nil.”
Pax was out of time. “Pretty speech, pretender. What do I call you? Need a name to report back to my ‘esteemed colleagues’ once I’ve banished you.”
“Oh, the delicious irony.” The demon touched its chest in a gesture of mock salute. “For my name is Bellum. The war to your peace, Inquisitor Pax.”
Pax rolled his shoulders, the gesture seeming far less imposing than the demon’s. “Well, Bel, you already got the nail.” Pax leveled his pistol. “About time I dropped the fuckin’ hammer.”
He opened fire.
The first round sank into Bellum’s umbra, staggering but not harming the demon, as expected. That was fine. Pax needed more time. Bellum lunged to the side on all fours, its shoulder blades punching through stretched flesh. The demon roared and charged at him.
Pax did the last thing his prey expected; he charged right back. The two closed the gap in seconds and, just as they’d have collided, Pax rolled to the side and under claws scything the air above him, taking Pax’s hat clean off his head. He came up on one knee and leveled three more shots at the demon’s side, causing Bellum to stumble. He fired another round which the demon pinched from the air with its wounded hand, and hurled right back at the Inquisitor.
The round punched through Pax’s right arm, causing him to drop his pistol next to a tombstone that stated Becky had been put to rest there, and that she’d been surrounded by loved ones before the consumption took her.
Lucky lady.
Pax gripped his arm, warm blood coating his fingers. But he’d seen the demon’s hand when it plucked his bullet from the air. Everything beneath Bellum’s shoulder was exposed—its musculature resembling sun-dried jerky. A special round from his pistol there would hurt like hell, but it wouldn’t finish the job. The Inquisitor just had to survive another minute.
Gritting his teeth, Pax whipped his hatchet from
its leather hoop and hurled it at the demon. Bellum stood, arms wide, laughing as it accepted the weapon’s edge into the filmy armor coating its chest.
Bellum lowered its arms, sighing. “Are we nearly finished, my dear Inquisitor?” Bolting forward, the demon backhanded Pax hard enough to send him tumbling to the ground. His world spun, white-hot pain shooting through his wounded arm. He lay there a moment, spitting out blood and a tooth, before pushing himself up, one arm dangling at his side. The pain made Pax want to vomit, but he forced it back down. “Yeah, just about done, Bel.” He brought his one good arm up, balling his hand into a fist. “But feel free to give up. Promise I’ll make it quick.” Pax gave the demon a gap-toothed smile.
This was gonna hurt like hell.
Bellum chuckled as it approached Pax on legs that dislocated, cracked, and realigned with each step, causing it to grow in height. By the time the demon stood before Pax, it was two heads taller than him. “An Inquisitor with a sense of humor? Shame I’ll have to break a rarity such as yourself.” The demon’s umbra had receded, exposing part of its chest.
Left hand shooting out, the demon lifted Pax high enough off the ground that the two were eye-to-eye. Bellum’s breath was scalding, reeked of decay. “And just so you know, Inquisitor, he was real,” it said. “Tamlin was real.”
Pax swallowed blood.
“The boy was your cousin as a matter of fact. Not sure how much the Inquisition has told you—little I’m sure—but you’ve quite the family tree. Shame you’ll not live to meet the rest of them. What few we haven’t slaughtered, that is.” The demon looked away, considering something for a moment, then looked back at Pax. “You know what, Inquisitor? You’ve made for such excellent entertainment tonight, allow me to make a deal with you.” Its sour breath made Pax’s gorge rise.
He nodded for the demon to continue. More time.
Bellum leaned in, teeth grinding together so close to Pax’s ear that it started bleeding. “I see you still have your other pistol, Inquisitor, and they say variety’s the spice of life. I’ve torn your kind apart for longer than I care to recall. I think I’d very much like to see you put a bullet in your brain.” Its tongue tapped Pax’s temple. “It’s that, or I skin you alive like I did the boy and wear you back to Augre. I doubt the Inquisition would even notice a demon masquerading as one of their loyal servants.” The demon pulled back. “These are the only two gifts I offer you; violence against thyself, or by your better. Either way, you’ll acknowledge my superiority before She takes you into Her suffocating embrace.”
The Inquisitor made to speak. Tapped at the bloodied hand holding him a few feet off the ground.
“Oh, you can’t speak! My apologies.” Bellum’s grip loosened enough so that Pax could talk.
“Yer—” Pax coughed up more blood which dribbled down his chin.
The demon leaned in. “What’s that, Inquisitor? Speak up.”
Pax chuckled, the gesture causing him to bob in the demon’s grip. “Yer birthday suit’s showin’, Bel.”
Bellum looked at his chest just in time to see Pax wrench the hatchet from its umbra and bury the weapon in the demon’s unprotected arm. It roared, dropping the Inquisitor. He landed on his rear and wrenched his remaining pistol from its holster with his good arm. Pax aimed for the now-exposed skin over the demon’s heart and pulled the trigger.
The specialized bullet flew true, puncturing stretched flesh right where he’d been aiming. Pax had just enough time to see the surprise register across Bellum’s face before the phosphorus round cooked off.
In an instant, white flames jetted through any section of the demon not coated in its umbra. What was contained beneath its shadowy armor roiled and swept across the demon’s flesh in bone-melting waves of light. Bellum howled, reeled, and collapsed against the tombstone it had languished against mere minutes ago. It shrieked in the tone of the beast and boy, vacillating between the damned and the innocent.
Pax didn’t pay it much mind. He holstered his pistol and went looking for his hat. It’d been stepped on. He punched the inside out, slapped it against his leg a few times, then settled it snug atop his head.
The Inquisitor spat out some more blood, and what felt like a piece of a tooth, and stalked toward the demon. Bellum twitched as its insides continued to be devoured by another concoction scholars back in Augre had devised. Pax wasn’t the most learned Inquisitor, but he was a man of science when it suited his needs.
Though it was difficult with a wounded arm, he managed to roll a smoke and let it hang between his blood-crusted lips while patting his pockets for matches. No luck. Must’ve lost them in the fight. Pax plucked the smoke from his lips and held it over flames cooking one of Bellum’s eyes like an egg on a hot skillet. “Hold still there, Bel.”
The demon made to speak but just ended up choking on what passed for blood amongst its kind.
“Much obliged.” Pax put the now-lit smoke between his lips once more. “Now, I’m sure you recall sending a missive to the Inquisition.” He took a drag of his smoke, savoring the taste of tobacco and blood. “Claimed a demon to be in Cairn.” The phosphorus had run its course. All that remained of Bellum was exposed bone, charred flesh, and the occasional twitch from muscles not quite ready to die. What remained of its umbra was evaporating into nothing. “S’pose it's high time I took care of said demon.”
Bellum tried to rise, so Pax kicked it in the face. Felt good. Demon bone broke with a kind of crack Pax had always found gratifying. He kicked again, and again, each blow not even beginning to reimburse the hell visited upon the people of Cairn. But it was something. Something to avenge the children who’d grow up without parents because of a demon’s whispers and the Inquisition’s rigid mandate.
He gave the demon one more good kick, then stopped to examine Bellum’s broken face. “As for your lies about Tamlin, my kin?” Pax spat on Bellum’s charred visage. “That’s all they are: lies. Ain’t got no family, and that’s fine by me.” He pointed back toward Cairn. “But to the folk in that town, you killed him. That scared little boy they took in, you killed everything they loved about him tonight. Even though he’s a lie, they still believed.”
Pax’s words echoed off Bellum and right back at himself. The demon’s killing of Tamlin was no better than the Inquisition’s slaughter of the people in Cairn. He’d believed in the Inquisition’s mission, that he was helping folk, making a difference. But they’d twisted that lie around his neck like a length of chain and dragged a desperate boy across a rough, unforgiving land into an amoral adulthood. The Inquisition was all he’d had, and now even that seemed a hollow thing. He pushed the realization aside. One demon at a time. “The lies end tonight. I’m going to make this hurt, Bel. Gonna make you see the light them poor folk been praying for all these years.”
Pax stood tall, interlaced his gloved fingers and popped his knuckles. “But first thing’s first, I need a memento of our joyous evening together. Ye done made for such excellent entertainment afterall.” Pax withdrew and flipped his pistol around before unceremoniously whipping the butt at one of Bellum’s remaining canines. “Take my word, this goes a lot quicker if you don’t squirm so much,” Pax grumbled.
After a few good cracks, the tooth came loose. The Inquisitor admired it by torchlight, whistling between his teeth. “Daresay, I’m gettin’ better at this with each go. Outta try my hand at becoming a barber. What you say to that, eh?” He kicked the shuddering body. “Thought so.”
Pax plopped the tooth into a pocket filled with three others just like it, though this one was considerably longer. “Gotta bet going with a couple of my constituents.” He patted the pocket. “Do believe I just won.” He clapped his hands together. “Now then, time to show you the light, Bel.”
From his belt, Pax produced a small vial, its contents black and viscous. He applied a liberal dose of liquid to the demon’s body. Bellum gurgled in protest, but Pax gave it another kick to the face and poured the oil over its remaining eye for good meas
ure.
Taking a few steps back, Pax took a deep drag of his smoke, then held it upright, looking to the night sky. “Listen up, Nil! ‘Bout to send one of your boys back to that vacuous whorehouse you call home.” Pax cleared his throat. “In the name of the Inquisition, I, Inquisitor Pax . . . .” He tapered off, realizing how ashen those once sacred words now tasted. Another casualty of tonight’s slaughter.
He looked down at Bellum. “Know what? You just tell Nil I’m comin’ for Her. I’m comin’, and I’ll go it alone if I have to.” Pax flicked the cigarette at the demon’s oil-coated body, shielding his eyes from the sudden conflagration.
Bellum managed a couple of good screams, but Pax had already wandered over to a nearby tombstone. Pike, who was survived by his drinking buddies, had been so kind as to leave a bottle of brown for any who cared to partake.
Pax popped the cork, inhaling the peaty smoke of well-aged whiskey, and took a gut-burning pull. He rolled another cigarette—lit it by torchlight this time, and leaned against Pike’s tombstone.
Watching Bellum burn, Pax inhaled cooking flesh, exhaled smoke; swallowing fire as a pagan choir sang in the darkness.
Kurt moaned. Awoke feeling the cold floor beneath him and that ancient cold within.
Oh, how he’d missed hard surfaces!
He trailed his hands down a scarred face, reveling in how solid he felt. He twitched atrophied toes, savoring how effortless his movements felt outside of the Conventus before cracking open his eyes. The torches caused him to squint. Light: another thing he’d sorely missed.
He grunted and stood. Looking about himself, Kurt realized he was in a familiar monastery: rows of pews behind him while an immense loop of chain hung behind an altar festooned with his tools. An empty throne stood before it. Rusted chains, as was ever the case, swayed lackadaisical from the ceiling.
The First Stain Page 6
