The Devil Inside

by Lana Pecherczyk

Eve’s brown eyes shot up to meet mine, and I halted my words.

  “Yes I know all about her,” Eve said. “And she’s not what you think.”

  “How the bloody hell would you know that.”

  “Because I’ve met her. Besides, you would know that too but it seems as though your memory is slipping.”

  Bugger. Exactly how much did this woman know?

  Just then, the temperature dropped in the room, icy cold, fog misted in front of Eve’s mouth and then her eyes traveled to an area over my shoulder.

  My skin crawled.

  It was here. The presence.

  “You’ve been followed,” Eve stated without taking her fingers off the chess piece she held.

  “You can feel that?” I stood.

  She stayed seated, silent, listening.

  My senses twitched. I wanted to leave, but I’d only just begun. Conflicted, my fingers tapped my thigh, thrumming in agitation.

  “Do you want me to get rid of it?” Eve asked.

  That was unexpected. Offering to help?

  Suspecting a trap, I was about to decline and leave, but something she said earlier changed my mind. She’d met Little Red. I was curious.

  I assessed the witch’s aura for signs of betrayal and found only soft steady electricity. So unlike the other witches I’d met. Still baffled. But appeased. For now.

  Admitting that I knew about the presence and did nothing to erase it would seem a weakness to her. And, bloody hell if I accepted help from the first of those abominations, but… it would be good to get rid of that sinister cloud stalking me and she’d be thinking she did me a favor. I could use that.

  “Very well. But first, can you find out who it is?”

  Eve’s eyebrow raised on one side as she stood and smoothed her palms down her regal blue shift dress.

  Then she closed her eyes, breathed deep and went still. When she opened them, her eyes were black. A dark stream of smoke billowed from her mouth and dissipated into the room’s atmosphere. She was everywhere and nowhere.

  The energy in the room amped up. The hairs raised on the back of my neck.

  For a moment, a slither of jealousy peaked in me. It wasn’t fair that these creatures had such mighty untethered control over their energy. I’d had thousands of years to evolve, and yet I was a novice in this area compared to her. I couldn’t leave my body permanently. My flesh was anchored to my soul. This simple fact made me ineligible to play the Game the way others did, but at the same time, it gave me a unique ability to drift my atoms apart without losing my identity. A curse and a blessing.

  I waited and watched.

  The darkness turned up again, and this time Eve’s body pounced, catching on tendrils. I gasped. How on earth did she get her body to move when she wasn’t in it? She used her body like a puppet while her energy in the room herded the offending presence to her body where she trapped the darkness like a cockroach in bait. It flailed in her hands, unwilling to yield. Effortlessly, Eve’s body held on, pulled it close and whispered sweet nothings into the darkness, unafraid.

  As though she’d done it before.

  The interloper swam around her arm in a swarm of blackness, pulling in closer, as though unable to resist her call, until eventually it undulated around her limb as though a snake, charmed. The remaining putrid black smoke that was Eve’s essence flowed back into her body through her eyes, ears and mouth, like a waterfall in reverse.

  As though taking her fill of a fine drink, she sighed when she returned fully to the body. She gazed at the smoke snake around her arm with curious eyes.

  “Who are you?” Eve asked the darkness, licking her lips. “Who sent you?”

  I couldn’t hear the whispered response.

  Eve’s eyes flicked to catch mine. “He was sent by the Dark-Lord.”

  “Fuck,” I spat. The Prince. “That little prick.”

  “Wait—he was sent by him or…” Eve paused, straining. “Or he was sent for him. It’s hard to tell. Would you like me to get rid of it?”

  “What do you want?”

  Eve laughed. “Always a price, isn’t there, Marc.”

  “I’m no fool.”

  “Like I said to your little friend the Soul-Eater. I don’t want anything in return. I want to help.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. During her little show of power, she’d neglected to guard her aura. I could see her intentions in full Technicolor glory. “Nothing in return. Wow. You are a number.”

  This sent anger rippling over her face. “I don’t want it to be this way. I never did.”

  “I don’t care what you want. The simple fact is that your creations are destroying our game, and the humans inside it.”

  “My creations.” She laughed. “How is it different from what you’ve done?”

  “Uh, for starters, love, I don’t know exactly how you formed, but I’m not blind. I can see you have links to the darkness that was set loose in the beginning, meaning you’re original sin incarnate and your creations are the spawn of evil.”

  “Ha! And yours aren’t? What about your wars? What about your evil humans, the murderers, rapists, molesters? I didn’t make those.”

  “No, but…” I had nothing to respond. It was the Prince who defiled the Queen’s perfect children, and I supposed it was the Queen who created something for him to defile in the first place.

  Without waiting for my next words, Eve continued her conversation with the black shadow draped around her arm. I frowned. That’s enough of that, thanks.

  Within seconds, I was in front of her. My aura surrounded the writhing darkness.

  “If I were you, I’d slowly disengage your arm from that mess,” I warned.

  Eve’s eyes flared, and a vein popped in her forehead. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting rid of it, of course. Do you have a problem with that?”

  She swallowed. “No.”

  “Well then.” I watched her slowly slide her arm back to herself and out of my range. The black smoke stayed in my trap.

  I caught Eve’s gaze and lifted an eyebrow, a silent challenge, making sure she understood what I was about to do. Then I stepped through the in-between to land a few feet to the right. The darkness that had been contained was now nothing, destroyed by the fabric of the universe. At least I think it was. Either way, it no longer existed in this room.

  “I owe you nothing,” I said.

  “No, you don’t, but you’d like something, wouldn’t you?”

  Eve’s question hit the nail on the head. I did want something. Answers. It was like she saw right through me. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew my true name. She held an air of vulgar confidence, so sure in her knowledge, like she knew the hour of my death.

  “What do you want?” she asked and went back to her game of chess.

  “Tell me about the hunter.”

  “Do you mean the one you know in this age, or the one who stopped us all from returning to Paradise.”

  “You cannot return if you were never there.”

  “Semantics.”

  “No, you act as though you’re one of us, but you aren’t.”

  She pressed her lips tight.

  “You keep saying. So, which hunter—the new or the old?” She used a pawn to capture my knight.

  Now, that knight needed to be avenged. I couldn’t help but sit opposite her and capture the offending pawn with my bishop. “You tell me.”

  “Marc, Marc, Marc.
There is no need to be so cryptic with me. I know more than you think.”

  “You started it.”

  Eve clicked her tongue as though I were a recalcitrant pisser. “All right. A truce then. I’ll tell you something, and then I expect you to do the same.”

  “Ooh, yes, I’ve played this game before. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Right-o, tell me, specifically, was it you who split his soul and why? What did he do to you to deserve such a punishment?”

  A muscle near Eve’s eyes twitched. “By him, I’m assuming you mean the hunter?”

  “Of course.” Boring, witch, this was getting rather tedious.

  “Yes, this is true. It was me.”

  “How. Why?”

  Eve left her seat at the chess table and strolled to the window with her hands clasped gently behind her back. As she got to the curtains and peered behind a drape, she sighed dramatically. I snorted. What an actress.

  “You see, this is where I would usually twist the truth to some version of it, but alas, in this instance, I have no benefit in lying. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. To understand the why and the how, I must first take you back to the beginning.”

  I stifled a yawn. I hated long winded stories. Much more of an action man myself. “Give me the Cliff’s Notes version, yeah?”

  Her eyebrow arched as she tilted her head my way. She had a way she wanted this to play out, and I wasn’t having a bar of it.

  “I haven’t got all day, witch,” I added, unable to hide the disdain dripping from my words.

  That got her cylinders firing. She rounded on me and used her power to take me in an invisible choke hold and squeezed. Her arm extended mimicking the action, hand outstretched, opening and closing in my direction.

  Pressure tightened around my neck. To anyone else, it may have suffocated them, broken their larynx, severed their spine. For me, it tickled. I shivered playfully and shimmied, pretending I’d just gotten the best feather massage a bloke had ever seen.

  “That all you got?”

  Her middle-aged face animated and contorted with fury. Her cheeks reddened, her eyes darkened. All in all, I thought things were going rather splendidly. Precisely according to plan.

  “There she is.” I laughed in a throaty voice, pretending to be affected by her strike. “C’mon, love, show me what you really think.”

  Her face trembled and her splayed fingers vibrated. Good. Give it up.

  “I’m thinking I won’t tell you anything anymore,” she spat. “I’m thinking you are a waste of space, Gamekeeper, and I’ll be doing the world a favor by getting rid of you.”

  Her wide fingers contracted as though she squeezed a rock, and the pressure on my neck tightened.

  I rolled my eyes, and then said with lackluster, “No. Please. No. Oh my, whatever will I do?”

  Her eyebrows darted upwards, betraying a flicker of surprise. Then they snapped downwards. She threw her second arm out in a slashing motion towards my body. Probably intending to slice me apart or something equally unimaginative.

  I had been monitoring her aura and expected this. I expected everything. My sixth sense was as good as reading minds. Now, the only question was whether to keep playing her game to get answers, or to try things my way.

  I decided on my way. Naturally.

  Instantly, I warped to a position behind her, slipped my fingers around her neck and gently squeezed. The action was more like a love-tap, a symbol of her entrapment than anything else because, while my fingers squeezed, my power engulfed her. All I had to do was take her through the in-between and she’d be lost, dispersed into chaos, nothing but a memory. Just like her black smoked friend.

  “I must admit, love, that was easier than I thought,” I said into her ear. “I mean, really.”

  She swallowed beneath the touch of my fingers.

  “Now,” I said, letting go of her neck, but not of her being. I made a show of wiping imaginary dust from my new clothing construct. “Tell me why you split the hunter’s soul and hid him from us.”

  She straightened her back and faced me.

  “Come now, love. You know I’m one of the most powerful beings in existence. No need to simper like that.”

  “If you are so powerful, why are you leashed to this planet as her lapdog?”

  Anger boiled beneath my skin. “I’m nobody’s lapdog.”

  But the truth of it was, I may as well be. I did everything Sephie wanted, and what did I get in return? The permission to bed and befriend only those destined to live and die in the blink of an eye, or the discarded miscreants left banished on this planet. No lasting friendships have been made, no enduring love, only memories of some that faded.

  “I did it to save his life,” she said.

  “And why would you go and do a thing like that?”

  “Because he saved mine.”

  “Are you telling me, that the bleeding hunter of witches actually spawned the whores of evolution himself?”

  “That’s a gross overgeneralization but, yes, that’s fairly close.”

  A huff of air shot out of my mouth as I paced the room. Lies. As if the hunter created any of that. He was the one and only person who gave his life to destroy the bleeding darkness. Bloody brilliant. Just what I ordered. A bleeding pack of lies.

  As soon as I thought the word, I cast a sideways glance at the woman to inspect her aura more thoroughly. I made her repeat her sentence. The tiniest flicker of doubt rippled over her energy.

  Lie.

  “And where is his true body?” I continued, pretending to play along.

  “Gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I mean it was destroyed.” Her aura stayed steady. Truth.

  “All right. How do you know that?”

  “I was there, of course.” Truth.

  “And how did you do it, then? How did you split his soul?”

  This was where Eve’s aura faltered. She hesitated, took a deep breath and sat down heavily at the chair opposite the chess table.

  “Care to elaborate?” I prompted.

  “Not really, for if I do, my last and final secret will be out.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Do I look like I care?”

  “Fine. Being one of the Queen’s first successful creations, I was in a position of confidence. She allowed me within the confines of her laboratories. She showed me her precious book and the spells within it.”

  Truth. Interesting. “Boring. Get to the good bit.”

  Even spluttered and huffed. “You’re a pompous, egotistical, misogynistic—”

  I held up my other hand. “Spare me the theatrics, love. I’m out of patience.”

  “Fine. To cut the long story short, I wasn’t happy being confined to this planet. She thought I was ignorant, but I wasn’t. The Dark-Lord enlightened me. We were prisoners to be abused for the enjoyment of the elite. He convinced me to steal the book. I copied it. I used her opinion of me against her. She didn’t believe me capable of understanding, but I did. I thought I could use the book on myself, make myself immortal, but I got it wrong. Most of her soul-science only worked on Seraphim, those who were already immortal. It was useless to me. This was about that time I discovered the Dark-Lord planned to annihilate my people, to turn them dark to serve his own purpose. He wanted nothing more than to destroy the Queen’s pet project, and to use them against her to take the Empire for himself. By that stage, I was caught between a rock and a hard place. When the hunter found himself in a similar predicament, we bargained. He would set my complet
e soul lose and I would help him hide his soul using what I’d learned from the book.”

  “And by Dark-Lord, I’m assuming you mean the Prince.”

  “Don’t be daft. The Prince died. I meant Urser.”

  “Dead? I thought he was hiding. And Urser?”

  “Dead as a doorknob.”

  Well, that was unexpected. Still… I couldn’t tell if it was a lie or truth.

  “Love, now out with the truth.”

  She cast a wary eye at me. “That was the truth.”

  I inhaled deeply. I really was getting tired of this. Why did people even bother to argue with me? “Do I have to torture you, really?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You lied. About being the one who split his soul.”

  She was silent.

  I put pressure on her energy with mine.

  “Fine. He did it himself. You happy now? He set himself on fire and split his own soul, all by himself.”

  I was right, of course I was happy. Sort of. A queasy feeling rolled in my stomach. I didn’t want to ask the next question. “How do we tie his soul back to his original body if it’s gone?”

  A slow, evil smile curved up Eve’s face, but she stayed silent.

  “You know don’t you?” I accused. “With all the experiments you’ve done to our kind, you know.”

  Her smile grew.

  Air rushed out of my lungs. “Fine. What do you want?”

  “You know what I want.”

  “Deal.” We shook hands. “But I take no responsibility for what happens to your soul after you arrive in the Empire.”

  “You need his blood,” Eve conceded. “Or her blood. I heard they were soulmates. That meant they had similar genetic markers.”

  “Are you fucking having a laugh?”

  At that moment she did, but she continued, “If you have the blood from his original body, and with the help of an Alchemist, fuse it with his current one, then you create a new Seraphim body.”

  “And that’s it? Nothing you need to say, no chanty chant, or hocus-pocus?”