Chapter XVIII #2
He lunged. Now he pinned her down, keeping his weight on her waist no matter how she kicked and bucked, wrestling her writhing arms and pinning them beneath his knees.
“ We are what there is now,” she said. “I serve me. Me me me me .”
Red tongue, white teeth. Black eyes boring into him.
But it was Alba’s hair that splayed across his blankets, shining like mercury. Alba’s body beneath him, positioned as if they were locked in an amorous embrace, nothing but thin nightclothes separating flesh.
It was a fatal lapse of concentration. His distraction turned the tables: Her arms escaped from under his knees; her hands flew to his throat. Nails dug into skin; thumbs pressed hard against his windpipe.
He gasped. He could not breathe. He clawed at her hands. The pain was crushing, crushing, crushing—
Darkness curled around his vision. Strength would not save him. The only advantage he had was weight.
He threw himself to the side. Wrenched them over the side of the bed.
They tumbled and struck the ground.
Her hands fell away from his neck; he gasped. Air flew down his throat, so cold it felt wet. He choked on it and coughed and sucked in air as he pushed himself up on his feet—
Metal at his throat.
He lurched backward. The back of his skull found the wall; he gasped in pain.
She pressed against him. Every curve of Alba’s body was flush with his, legs and hips and breasts, but—
One hard hand gripped his neck. The other held the knife inches from his throat.
“You see too much,” she hissed. Her tongue flicked serpentlike through her teeth. “You are in the way. Die, you rat, die.”
He needed El Libro de San Cipriano . It was too far—it had fallen from his bedside and lay open, face down, on the ground. Out of reach. What tools did it have? How could he defend himself? He needed to fight back. She was going to slit his throat.
“Leave Alba,” he said, gagging as the hold on his throat tightened. “Leave her be .”
Bared teeth. This hiss was angrier. Predatory. He wondered if she was going to devour him whole.
“You only care because you’re guilty about Fátima,” she said.
Elías’s heart stuttered. He had not heard her name aloud in years. He could not even choke through shame and speak it himself.
The demon grinned wide, so wide that lips could split at the seams. “She bled bled bled and hacked and hurt, and then the doctor hurt her more, didn’t he?
She screamed, oh she screamed , but you weren’t there, you were rotting, all because you wanted to be an animal.
” A rumble of laughter, this time deep, dissonant; he could feel it more than hear it as it emanated through Alba’s chest and vibrated against his.
“Being an animal thrown in a cage is easy, isn’t it?
Poor, powerless Elías in the mine. He couldn’t possibly look after the people who needed him. ”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.
” The words stuttered and caught but he forced them out, even though speaking moved his Adam’s apple against the blade of the knife.
A pit had opened beneath his feet, and he was falling, falling, falling, strangled by Fátima’s weeping and slicks of blood so wet they were like rain.
Wider went the smile. A wash of wet, metallic breath. “Don’t I, ya Elías?”
This she hissed in derija, and it was then that he realized she had been speaking derija since she had pushed him against the wall, and that he hadn’t noticed how habit tripped his tongue into the same dialect.
“This isn’t possible.” He forced himself to speak castellano. Derija was the past, dead and gone; castellano tasted like now, and he needed it to be now . “Alba!” he said. “Alba, this isn’t you. Alba, can you hear me?”
“Alba, Alba, Alba. But what about Fátima?” crooned the demon, tongue caressing clipped derija syllables.
“Fátima needed you and you left her to die. She died alone, choking on her own blood, with no one to help her, no one to hear her weep. Shall I send you to her to say sorry? To explain how all you did was leave ?”
Derija cracked open memories from long slumber, and they roared to life, bearing a blazing verse to his lips: “Bismillah al-Rahman al-Raheem.”
In the name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful.
He continued with what he remembered from the Fatiha, hoarse and accented and unsteady. “Al hamdu-lillah Rabb al-‘alameen…”
The knife lifted from his throat; weight off his chest. Spittle flecked his face. She was sputtering and hissing, black pits burning at him, and that red tongue lolling out of her mouth. The knife swung high—
There were gods here, once. Maybe we ate them.
Then why was this working? Why, when he reached the frayed end of his memory of the Arabic verses, did he reach for more prayers?
“Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name…”
And why did it keep working?
The knife swayed. She stumbled back, chest heaving, gasping. A hand flew to her neck and began clawing there, as if she could not draw breath.
It bought him time. He lunged for El Libro de San Cipriano , still reciting the prayer as he flipped pages, searching for what he had read earlier that evening.
Reading and reciting different things sent his mind skittering sideways.
His tongue tripped, and when he faltered, she was laughing again.
Bright and rich, like the ringing of bells.
But still she clutched her throat.
“Weak little magician,” the demon spat. But it was gasping. It , Elías distinctly thought, for there was a difference between it and Alba. It staggered, seeking balance, and leaned against the bed. “You are weak.”
There it was: a long list, titled Incantations for Dismissing Demons of Various Orders .
Elías dove down the page, searching for the strongest antidote. He began to read aloud.
A guttural growl built in the woman before him. The demon was curled over where it stood, as if nursing a wound; as the growl built, as it began to rumble through the floor and travel into his bones, it rose, unfurling, teeth bared in a snarl.
Elías’s breath caught; his words grew faint. But even whispering, he would not stop, he could not stop. When he reached the end of the incantation he began again, more confident this time, faster, even as the hairs rose up his arms and fear scuttled down his spine with a thousand insectile legs.
The growl transformed into words, but barely—they were thickened and distorted by vibrations, by rage.
“You draw on nothing but yourself.” The demon inhaled sharply through its nose and flung the knife to the ground. “You will need stronger allies if you want her.”
Its chin shot up, pointed to the ceiling; convulsions seized shoulders and arms, twitching wrists and yanking elbows in uncanny directions.
At once, the air left the room.
Elías gasped, felt there was nothing to breathe, gasped again, and it was like he was drowning, then—release.
The air was still. His pulse throbbed in his ears. He was still desperate to flee, limbs still a twitch away from seizing the knife and fighting.
She gasped. She was Alba : tear-streaked cheeks, closed eyes, soft lashes. Shaking as if she were standing in the freezing mountain air outside.
“Alba?” Elías whispered.
From her lips—for they were her lips now, soft and natural and parting as they should—came a soft cry, a single faint keening.
His heart splintered at the sound. He dropped the book on the bed.
She collapsed.
And when she did, he dove to catch her.