The Highwayman

by Michele Hauf

  He nodded, inwardly chiding himself for not realizing this earlier.

  Soft, moaning chirps clued Max she was going to climax again. Rainier gave it his all. Cheers to the fellow for his efforts. At least it allowed Max a short rest.

  The woman, her voice hoarse, gave it up.

  Rainier rolled to his stomach and dropped an arm over the bed’s edge. Exhausted. There was possibly something to having too much of a good time. Hell, this might put Max off sex for a week.

  Maybe.

  Probably not.

  “Yes,” the woman moaned. “Ready!”

  Now that was a different plead.

  Max lifted his head as the door swung open and the old man swept inside. A black wool cape covered his head, shoulders and torso. He wielded a book and lifted a hand high as he mounted the end of the bed and leaned over the woman.

  Rainier was half-asleep and lolled there, unmindful of the strange turn in events.

  “I invocate and conjure you,” the old man began, but then his language changed. Must be Latin, for Max had heard the intonations in church before, although he didn’t understand the language.

  Damn, he was too tired. He swung a look at the heap of clothing on the floor. The effort of dressing seemed monumental.

  With an exhausted slur, he asked, “What are you doing?”

  The old man continued, oblivious of him and Rainier.

  On the bed, the woman’s back arched, her shoulders pressing deep into the rumpled sheets. Her fingers clenched the feather mattress and then—

  Well, then it got strange.

  Some kind of yellow dust exploded out from every pore on the woman’s body. It stank worse than the aqueducts. It formed above her, seeming to cloud and then take a shape.

  Max’s jaw dropped. This was not normal. Not that making love to a woman all night long in tandem was any closer to normal, but still, this was…wrong.

  He eyed his clothing. Rainier remained oblivious.

  The old man jumped from the bed and shouted grandly, “I commandeth thee!”

  The woman collapsed.

  The yellow cloud coalesced to something like a human shape, yet not like at all. Arms jutted out and legs formed—legs ending in hooves not feet. Horns coiled at the side of the black head.

  Rainier sat up, saw the figment and scrambled over to Max. “What the hell?”

  Both men stared with gaping mouths as the thing lunged toward them.

  Steeling himself for impact, he watched as it instead dispersed into a yellow cloud. The foul-smelling dust permeated Max’s body. It moved through him, squeezing through his rib bones and crushing his heart as if solid and possessed of fingers. It put him stiffly upon the chair, his arms and legs slashing out.

  It was as if whatever had gotten inside struggled to become mired in his organs and ribs. As it pummeled him from the inside out, he shouted in agony and clawed the chair arm.

  And then, it exited behind him, sucking at his insides till he thought surely his organs would be lying on the floor around him.

  He was aware the same thing happened to Rainier for the man’s arms outstretched and his grimace tightened as he fought the inner torment.

  Max gulped air and dropped to the floor on hands and knees, unsure if he’d been wounded or if part of him had been ripped out through his back.

  Rainier stumbled and collided with the fieldstone wall.

  The yellow cloud swept from the room with the old man in pursuit.

  “What happened?” Bile rose in Max’s throat. His legs shook, as did his hands.

  Foremost, he needed to get out of here.

  He gripped his breeches and pulled them on. Not bothering with his shirt, he tucked it in the front at his waistband and flung his greatcoat over his shoulders. Stuffing his feet into his floppy leather boots, he wobbled, catching himself against the door.

  Rainier followed suit. “That was not part of the bargain. What was that thing?”

  “I don’t know.” Max glanced toward the bed, but the woman wasn’t there. Instead, a white cat sat coiled on the wrinkled bedclothes.

  “Where’d she go?” Rainier searched the room, his head dodging frantically. “I don’t remember that cat being in here. Damn, my chest. Did it feel like that thing moved through you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was that thing?”

  “I don’t think we want to know. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Rainier followed Max from the inn, and into the bright morning light. It had snowed while they’d been slaking their lusts. The ground was thick with white flakes.

  “Split up,” Max muttered, still not sure what he’d just witnessed and unwilling to think on it right now. He switched to survival mode, which meant securing a safe hiding place. “Regroup in a week at Notre Dame.”

  “Sure. If whatever the hell went through us doesn’t kill us first.”

  Max shoved a hand in his coat pocket. It was bare of coin. Had the old man robbed him? No, likely the gold had spilled out onto the floor. He had no desire to reclaim it. Yet at the bottom of the pocket, he found the damaged silver demi-écu the musket ball had gone through.

  “A week, then. Take care, Deloche.”

  But Rainier was already hoofing it down the cobbled street.

  Chapter 7

  “Y ou had no idea what happened to you?” Aby asked.

  Max took out the damaged silver coin he’d carried for centuries and tossed it in the air, catching it smartly. Unfortunately, the coin had never put off his desire to acquire more valuables.

  He tucked it away without showing Aby.

  She snuggled closer to him, curling her hands over the back of the couch and propping her chin on it. She smelled like cherry lemonade and she looked better than any sparkly gemstone Max had ever tucked into his pocket.

  Sitting so close to her—a familiar—brought up all sorts of strange feelings. Memories that mirrored his tale.

  He hadn’t known what the woman had been that night he and Rainier had made love with her. But since learning her truth, he’d stalked familiars as if they carried the plague and he was the cleansing fire.

  “I’d never encountered the paranormal before then,” he said. “You can imagine what a trip it was to see a demon emerge from the woman’s chest like that.”

  “It doesn’t hurt,” she commented, her stare fixed on his mouth.

  Max looked aside, uncomfortable with her attention. Was this wrong? Perhaps he shouldn’t be making friends with the familiar he required to wrangle the demon.

  And when that task was complete? He intended to kill her so she could not bring another demon into this realm.

  Their relationship should remain business, as she’d already said it should.

  Yet, everything about Aby attracted him. Her green eyes, her eager openness. The slither of satin across her skin. The admittance she didn’t know how to take care of a plant. Hell, she was like him, walking this world, focused on one goal. The rest of the surrounding world? Forget trying to fit in.

  He leaned forward to wrest his eyes from her, but her scent infused him. She smelled great. Her kiss would taste like cherry lemonade. He liked to know the taste of things. It was small reward for a life without sustenance.

  The sustenance Aby offered with her sensual body would serve as an anchor. Women always did. They pulled him away from the shadow, the madness, and secured him in the real, if only for the few hours he shared with them.

  “What kind of demon was it? Or is it? The one inside you.”

  “I didn’t know it was a demon then. I didn’t find out until a week later why I hadn’t been able to eat or sleep for days…”

  Paris—1758

  Notre Dame loomed before Maximilien. He’d been inside the cathedral only once, when he was a boy and had raced inside to escape pursuit from a nasty duke. He knew what the rich did when they caught young orphan boys. The boys were never seen again.

  That night he’d hidden in the cathedral unti
l darkness had frightened him out into the nave where a few candles burned. He’d wandered across the dais, counting stone tiles with each step. How could a mortal man create something so wondrous? He wanted to create buildings such as this when he grew up. It would be a fine occupation for a man.

  A priest had interrupted his study of the night-darkened windows. Max scrambled from his grip as the old man had tried to wrangle him, and escaped again.

  As he looked back now, the priest would not have harmed him. But he had never taken chances. Only lately had he and Rainier been pushing their luck. They’d become sloppy, careless. And, yes, greedy.

  “Should have taken up building after all,” he muttered.

  He trundled across the bridge toward the ancient stone cathedral, drawn to the holy. Perhaps connection with sacred grounds would lift him from the misery that had consumed him since that night with the insatiable woman.

  Since then, he hadn’t been able to keep food down. Wine and beer was all he could temper, yet in small amounts. Oddly, he didn’t feel hungry, only he kept attempting to eat because he thought he should. Man could not survive without food, and yet, he did.

  And his nights had been restless. Certainly he’d gotten less than six hours of sleep in the se’nnight since he’d last seen Rainier. How was that possible? He sat awake at night in the small room he’d rented over an inn, listening to lovers couple and rats skitter overhead in the rafters.

  How surreal it was to have the world intrude on his brain like that. There was nothing to do but listen when the sleep would not come.

  Twilight hugged the cathedral in an eerie gray clasp. Congregants milled on the tiled parvis before the cathedral’s massive doors. Vespers must have ended.

  Max ducked his head and tugged the coat collar to his ears. He wore a mask when riding the high roads, and his need for caution had returned.

  He brushed past a pair of chattering females and spied a petite woman with hair white as the moon.

  Dashing to the familiar female, he gripped her by the shoulder. “Are you well?”

  She tugged roughly from him, but did not run away. Perhaps her husband was close by. Shouldn’t matter if she talked to Max now after all they’d been through. He knew her intimately.

  “What happened that night?” he asked. “I need to understand.”

  She looked like a moondrop, blue eyes lost in her pale complexion. Small and thin, she didn’t wear fine clothing; in fact, her skirts were shabby and she wore but wooden sabots.

  With a sigh, she led him away from the crowd near a mound of snow pushed from the parvis.

  “I did not think to ever see you again.” She scanned the crowd, then whispered, “Have you been well since then?”

  “Well?” With a smirk, Max scanned the river’s opposite bank. It was hard to look her in the eye. He knew this woman’s body in ways perhaps her husband did not. But he did want answers.

  “Depends on how you define well. Food makes me sick. And while I haven’t slept more than a few hours, I’m not tired. Mayhap I’ve gone beyond exhaustion. I don’t know if you’d call that well.”

  “The summoning did not go as planned.”

  “Summoning? There was a—a thing in that room. And it touched me. I cannot know for sure, but I believe it—it entered me somehow.”

  “It moved through you.” Head bowed, she toed a wet stone. “We hadn’t anticipated that would happen.”

  “But you expected something to appear out of you?”

  She took him by the arm and led him toward the cool shadows near the church.

  “I’ll say this once, and then I’m walking away from you and you will not pursue me. Ever. Do you understand?”

  “Sure.”

  If it would get him answers, he’d agree. This woman obviously didn’t know it wasn’t wise to ask a thief to promise anything.

  “What moved through you was a demon.”

  “A demon? You jest.”

  “I am not taken to jesting.”

  “I am not taken to believing lies.”

  “But you would lie with a complete stranger to master a challenge to your manhood.”

  He huffed out a breath.

  “Now listen,” she admonished, “and do not interrupt. It was a demon. I am a familiar. I am a bridge for demons to this realm. I need to be sexually sated to do so. We hadn’t anticipated Gandras would move through you and your partner. I’m sorry for that. The demon dissipated soon after—we were unable to control it. It’s gone from this realm.”

  “You wanted to control a demon? What kind of black magic—?”

  To speak of it put up the bile in Max’s throat. This could not be. And he was an unknowing participant in the occult ritual?

  “We thought the demon a loss, but had no idea it had actually entered the two of you. I’m going to guess the demon’s shadow must have been left behind, inside you. Which has its benefits and disadvantages.”

  “Not eating being a disadvantage?”

  “Perhaps, but a benefit is immortality. Are you not pleased?”

  “Immortality? A demon shadow?”

  She was touched. Max had actually had sex with an insane woman, and his partner had joined in. Why hadn’t he listened to his instincts that night when the old man had talked of immortality?

  “It is your new truth,” she said. With a lift onto her tiptoes, she then kissed him on the cheek. “Accept it.”

  When she turned to walk away, Max caught her by the sleeve. She tugged but he held firm, though he could feel the stitches at her shoulders give way. He didn’t know what to say. A demon had moved through him and now he was immortal?

  “Where’s Rainier?” he asked.

  “I don’t know where your friend is. But if you see him, you’ll want to give him the same information I gave you. Release me.”

  And he did, because nothing made sense right now. And to hold on to insanity felt wrong, like insects crawling up his arm and he could not shake them away.

  Max wandered to the bridge and looked down into the Seine. Chunks of frozen snow floated by like miniature icebergs. He waited for an hour. Rainier didn’t show. Nor did he show the next day or the next.

  “Immortal,” Max said on the fourth day as he waited one last time for his partner in decadence and debauchery. “Impossible.”

  Aby gazed out the patio door. She’d listened intently as Max related his tale. Initially he’d come off as a sex-crazed jerk. Two guys and one woman?

  What was it with men and their need to prove their manhood? Many times she’d witnessed Severo puffing out his chest and shoulders as he moved before her to fend off another man’s approach. The display was silly.

  “It’s a deprivation demon,” Max said from the couch. “Gandras is the name I was given, but I’ve never found it in lore or mythology. I’m sure once loosed it would create havoc. Trapped inside me, and only half the demon it should be, it can but dream walk.”

  “Dream walk?”

  “I—it—likes to peer into people’s dreams. When I shadow.”

  “That’s interesting. And since you can’t dream you allow it?”

  “Yes.” He hung his head. “Sometimes I like it. I need it, Aby. I’ve been denied the basic pleasures of life. Man can’t remain sane without them.”

  “You said you could taste things in your dreams. It must be wondrous to see the dreams of others.”

  “At times. I like it when children dream of flying. They soar so high,” he said on a whisper of wonder.

  Aby hugged her arms across her chest. The reverence in his tone touched her. He wasn’t the murderous slayer Severo had warned her about. This man suffered, and he was trying to make his way in the world.

  “I won’t tell you about the nightmares.”

  “It must be difficult,” she said. “But can you stop looking at the dreams if they are bad?”

  “The shadow doesn’t discern between good and evil. It likes to observe them all.”

  “And what of the sex
y dreams?”

  His teasing wink struck her deeply. “Those are the ones I like to experience the most.”

  “A voyeur, eh?”

  “Aby.” He sighed and still could not meet her eye.

  “What?”

  “Never mind. It’s just the sleep and food I’m deprived. I figure it’s some kind of mortal sin thing. I was once gluttonous, and ate without care and wasted much. I lived for adventure and danger, not bothering for rest, hence the sleep.”

  The man’s eyes tracked to the cat climber. Why did that disturb him so much? He’d seen her in cat shape once already.

  “So now you know the whole bloody tale. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But now I’m in the right place. And I’ve done what you’ve asked. You’re getting to know all my dark secrets. So I need an answer.”

  Max got up and crossed to the kitchen counter. “Either tell me you’ll do the job and I’ll book an appointment, or whatever it is you do, or tell me you’re not interested, and I’ll be on my way.”

  “If I refused to do the job, would you kill me?”

  He bowed his head. The passing seconds were far too long for Aby’s comfort. “You would!”

  “Aby.”

  “I need to know, Max. Why should I trust you?”

  “You shouldn’t, all right? You know what the wolf told you. That’s the way it has to be. Except—”

  He ended his heated confession by stalking into the kitchen and turning on the faucet. Cupping his hands under the water, he then splashed his face.

  Clasping a hand to her chest, Aby swallowed a scream. The wolf had told her the Highwayman killed familiars—and Max hadn’t denied that. Rather, he’d implied it was so.

  Where was the phone? Could she call for help before he reached her?

  “Except.” He slammed a fist on the faucet, shutting off the water. “I’m not going to kill you because you’re too precious. You’re like a jewel I want to steal from that damned wolf and keep for myself.”

  “What kind of lie is that? I’m not stupid, Max.”

  “It’s not a lie.” He shook his head, dispersing water. “At least I don’t think it is.”