Chapter 7 #2
I’d nearly reached her when I tripped on a clump of reeds.
The sight of the water rushing up toward my face almost did me in, and it was only the fawn’s cry of distress that kept me present in my body.
I yanked my hands free of the sucking mud and got my arms around her, but the pond wanted us both.
The slimy bottom shifted beneath my knees as if there were a riptide, dragging me back by inches toward the depths.
Almost blind with fear, I heaved the fawn over my shoulder.
Her sharp little hooves kicked against me and tore my shirt to ribbons.
With my free hand, I reached out and seized a ream of cattails, squeezing until their razor edges sliced into my palm.
Just as I got one foot on solid ground, the roots betrayed me, ripping free in a shower of mud and water.
The instant of falling was interminable. The pond opened like a maw at my back, ready to swallow me into its icy recesses. My heart seized in my chest.
Not again, I thought. Not like this.
A hand grasped mine, hard enough to bruise the bones. I was yanked forward, free of the clutching mud and the hungry depths, and he caught me—caught us both—against his chest.
“Trying to reenact our meet-cute, Tess?” the devil asked.
The molten fear in me turned instantly to fury, and I shoved him back with my free arm. “It’s not funny.”
It was a deeply stupid thing to do, letting my temper get the better of me, but he allowed me to push him away, which meant he was still in good humor.
I dropped to my knees and set the fawn down to check her for injuries.
Her legs and belly were black with mud, her sides heaving.
Her little mouth gaped open, all those uncanny teeth on display.
I ran my hand through the slime coating her legs, but I didn’t feel any breaks, and no blood rose to the surface.
I couldn’t count out a muscle pull or strain, but that wouldn’t reveal itself until later.
She was obviously stressed, and that made two of us, especially with the pond still looming behind us.
I glanced up at the devil and saw I’d left a full, bloody handprint on his shirt. The hand I used to grab the cattails was still bleeding freely, and now that my adrenaline was fading, I felt the sting in my palm.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Just came to collect my pet.”
My hand froze over the fawn’s ribs. The panicked drum of her heart matched my own, but my mind was moving twice as fast. I had never once considered she was the devil’s creature; it smacked of exactly the religious dogma I despised, the kind of mania that had led people to string up cats alongside their owners.
It was the sort of thing Broder would suggest, the superstition of cretins.
And yet.
The devil must’ve seen the cold shock in my face, because he threw back his head and laughed. “I’m only joking, of course. I didn’t have anything to do with this little one’s appearance. But I can see she’s your favorite, and I confess, I’m jealous.”
I stood slowly, covered in muck up to my elbows.
The fawn leaned against my legs, still trembling.
The devil’s laughter did not reassure me; perhaps the only thing he loved more than a lie was a painful truth.
He could be lying that she was his, or lying that she was not his.
I would never get a straight answer out of him, and to ask for one would only make it worse.
He wanted me to doubt, to second-guess everything she did and everything I did in response, and now that the seed was planted, there was nothing I could do to keep its roots from growing.
“So,” I said, ignoring both possibilities, “why are you here?”
“Why not here?”
“Because you could be walking the Grand Canyon or the beaches of Iceland, or, I don’t know, fucking Rome—”
“Rome has been fucked enough times, I think.”
“—anywhere in the world. You must have thousands of other little concubines to call on. You could go anywhere, eat anything, do anything, and instead you come here and walk this little spit of land and drink my shitty coffee. I drive through town and I see you sitting on a park bench with some old fart or smoking a joint with the dropouts behind the strip mall. Why?”
The devil was silent for a long moment, looking out over the pond.
Finally, he said, “You traded me your soul to live, Tess, and you choose to live here. You traded your soul to drink your coffee and walk this land, and you’re so in love with it that you never even seem to think of the Grand Canyon or Iceland or Rome.
You thought it was worth that much, and you don’t know why I spend my time here? ”
I glared at him, hiding my discomfort behind anger; I had never told the devil I was bound to the land, that the pond had extracted its own price for denying it a body.
I didn’t want him to pity me, or worse, offer yet another deal to free me.
“So that’s it, then? Because I wanted it?
Because it’s mine? Because it has value to me, you want it for yourself? ”
“I’m not a toddler.”
“Are you sure?”
“I know how to share.”
“But not how to take no for an answer.”
I knew instantly I had pushed too far. I glanced up, only to find him there in my space, eyes cold as a flash of lightning.
“Do you want me to be cruel?” he asked. “Sometimes I think you do.”
Had the pond not been almost lapping at my heels, I would’ve reeled back in new terror.
I felt his power hovering like the blade of a knife, and I knew that one fell swoop would cut through every strand of the weave I’d built over decades.
At his heart, he was like any apex predator; I could build a familiarity with him, accustom him to my presence, learn his habits and his tells, but I could never let my guard down.
He pressed closer, angling his head as if it would help him see through the gap in my defenses.
“Why?” he asked. “Is it simply that you’d have the satisfaction of being right? Or if I turned out to be the monster you think I am, would you finally feel as if you’re not alone?”
Even as he said it, I couldn’t stop my gaze from wavering down to his mouth. He was so close I could feel the heat rolling off him, smell his clean salt scent, and he moved even closer now, the subtlest shifting of weight that brought us inches apart.
“I don’t know why you keep fighting me,” he murmured, his eyes mirroring mine—that telltale flicker down and back up again.
“I’m trying to help you. You act like I want to steal the sanctuary from you, but we could make it a kingdom.
Our borders could stretch for miles and miles, far beyond this valley.
We could take what we wanted, and you wouldn’t have to carry the weight anymore; I would carry it for you. ”
I was breathing his air, our foreheads nearly touching, my hands closed into fists at my sides to keep from reaching for his body.
I wasn’t thinking about the promises he made, the world he would lay at my feet, the fact that it would no longer be my sanctuary but a toy at the mercy of his whim.
I just wanted to steal the taste of his mouth, to take some piece of him he could never get back, keep it under my tongue like a secret.
The muscles of his neck twitched with the strain, and my teeth ached in response.
“Tess, please,” he whispered, and oh, the thrill of that. To have the devil beg me was breathless, heady intoxication, and it was almost enough. When he raised a hand to tip my chin up, I allowed it, convinced that it was his guard that was down rather than mine.
The devil only serves himself, came my mother’s voice, clear as a bell in my head. No matter what he may say to the contrary.
I jerked my head away, and yes, I saw it there, the hint of triumph in the curve of his mouth. It had all been a ploy, and I shouldn’t even be angry with him, the same way I couldn’t be angry at foxes for eating the rabbits I released; it was simply his nature.
I was angry nonetheless, but I didn’t show it. I swallowed back my furious words like hot coals and slid from his grasp, putting the fawn between us.
“I should get her back and clean her up,” I told him.
“Don’t treat me like you treat them—like you can distract me, like I don’t know what you are. I want a real answer.”
“I’ve already told you no.”
My magic may not have been much to him, but the instant I said the words, my web of wards and charms and spells went taut as razor wire.
Thunder rumbled out of a clear sky as the air pressure plummeted, and the light went sickly green.
Every plant and pebble in the vicinity was suddenly bristling with hostile energy—thorns sliding out from beneath leaves, round stones revealing bladelike edges in the shifting light, vines dropping from the trees like nooses.
The scent of rotting water weeds and fetid mud became so strong I could taste it, settling on the back of my tongue and threatening to clog my throat.
“Why do you—”
“No.”
Even the traitorous pond reacted that time, ripples skittering across the dark surface of the water until they broke as waves behind me. The devil smiled, the cruel gleam of his teeth like the untouchable moon.
“You’re going to need me sometime, Tess,” he said. “Sooner rather than later, I think.”
With that, he turned and melded into the shadow of the trees, and I knew he was truly gone when the sanctuary calmed around me. It was then I felt a tickling sensation on my hand, and I glanced down.
The fawn was eagerly licking up the blood dripping from my fingers, her teeth smeared red.