Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
MAYBE IT'S BEST IF YOU DON'T KILL HIM, I MAY WANT THAT PLEASURE MYSELF SOMEDAY
Shiver groaned and spat blood on the floor, making the other demons jump back with a scratchy chorus of upset sounds.
“Oh, lighten up, you ghouls, you've seen worse," said Shiver, trying to focus on any of them. He was so weak and dizzy, and his former colleagues were just a wash of red and charcoal.
"On a human," said one of them in a tremulous croak. "Not… us."
"It's unseemly."
"Impolite!"
"Gross."
Shiver might have laughed if his whole body didn't feel like one big bruise.
He hung by his wrists as dozens of eager demons took their turns batting him about like some infernal cricket game.
The torture crew was dismally uninventive after all these eons, but he had to admit—you just can't beat the classics.
"He shouldn't be bleeding, you half wits, he should be dust."
Everyone went silent at a voice from behind them that barely spoke above a mutter. The air left the room, and Shiver felt as if he were breathing sand.
"Hello, my lord," he said, trying to lift his head. "I'd bow, but I’ve got a headache like you wouldn't believe."
The head demon approached slowly, minions parting the path for him and averting their eyes. Shiver had never seen Eligos in the bright firelight of the main pit, but he brought darkness with him like a fine cloak of furs.
"Look at you, boy," Eligos sighed, taking in Shiver's lighter color, defined face with a big nose and messy hair, actual blood running down his neck where an actual pulse thumped out its staccato beat.
"Guess your winning streak finally caught up with you.
Had to lose one sometime, you outlasted all your old classmates. "
Shiver stayed quiet, knowing the denizens of Below were too thick and self-absorbed to grasp what was happening to him.
Yes, he had been around longer than any other demon.
Yes, this was his first loss in a long career of claiming fever patients.
That wasn't why he was still kicking when every other demon had crumbled to dust in starvation when their human survived.
The reality was so good, so pure, so beyond their ability to comprehend, that Shiver wanted to laugh at them all.
If they could only understand what he felt, even for a half-second, they all would throw down their spears and beg for the grace to become human, the very cattle they had farmed since life began.
Shiver was in love—painfully, horribly, helplessly—and the feeling was both older than even himself and fresher than spring apple blossoms; it was so big that he felt he was keeping something in his ribcage the size of a planet.
He knew the moment he saw that girl, she would be the death of him.
At least now he had the memory of her soft cries, of her taste on his tongue and the slick heat inside her—her laugh, her scowl, the way she scolded, the things she daydreamed about—all of that belonged to him now, and he would go to dust with the only precious thing in this world.
These sad little rock dwellers would never understand.
The pain outside of his heart—the pain of hunger, of torture, of having a functioning body for the first time since his demise—was intense, and he shook and sweated and coughed just like a person.
Even that pain was special to him. How many thousands of years had he gone feeling nothing?
Now he felt everything. What a way to go.
"What can I say, boss?" Shiver smiled with split lips. "It's been a slice, but everything has to end."
Eligos' eyes narrowed.
"I know who did this to you."
"If they don't lock me up in the loon house for doing this, it'll be a damn miracle," Clara muttered as she squeezed out the wet cloth she had used to clean Shiver's blood from her kitchen wall. "Of course, they might still lock me up for consorting with a demon. And talking to myself."
Roger, the rooster, gave a little huff. After all, she was talking to him; did he count for nothing?
"Sorry," said Clara, collecting as much of the blood-tinged water as she possibly could before tossing away the cloth.
She had already tramped through the marsh to harvest some Angelica, then raided the herb garden for rosemary, basil, and a bay leaf, on which she had scratched Shiver's name with a sewing needle.
A long piece of red twine she had, per the book's instruction, tied to one of her wrists, leaving a loop secured with a loose square knot in the other end.
Roger was the last piece of the puzzle, but he was, as usual, being no help at all.
The sun was beginning to set; she could see it dipping below the tree line from the back porch where she and Roger sat with her concoction.
She needed him to crow—a sound she was not looking forward to, so loud it could shatter an eardrum up close— but Roger was an old man of old habits, and he didn't care to sound the alarm after supper.
"Come on, old boy, just give me a good loud one," she said, waving the bowl of blood and herbs under his nose. "I promise not to chase you with the broom this time, just… have at it."
Roger blinked at her, stubbornly silent. He ruffled his feathers and looked toward the screen door, wondering when Clara would open it and perhaps give him some corn.
"Roger, please," she said, her eyes beginning to prickle as she looked from him to the rapidly darkening sky.
She had been moving so fast in her quest for a solution that she had hardly taken a moment to think about what it would mean to lose Shiver now, to admit to herself that this was love, and he might be gone, and she would be alone again.
“Please, I'm out of time. It might be too late already, just… please. One good crow."
Roger wanted to help her; he really did. As a man, he felt it his duty to protect all the hens in his care, and Clara was, in spite of not being a chicken, one of his own. He might be able to understand her better if she opened up that bag of corn.
Clara just stared at the rooster, her eyes filling with tears.
She had found love in the most impossible place, had come out of a fever that was meant to take her life, had tracked down a book, and within that book, a spell, had squeezed demon blood into her mother’s mixing bowl—and here she was, stopped by a force she could not control.
An old rooster.
Throwing her head back, Clara let loose a roar to the sky that rattled the little table and made Roger jump.
Well, thought Roger. Now that I understand.
He answered her roar the only way he knew how, with his loudest crow.
Shiver felt a moment's panic—if his people learned what he really felt for Clara, that his love for her had slowly given him a form again, a personhood, they would come for her and scatter her bones across the world.
The panic felt suddenly too sharp—like a yank upon his chest—and Shiver smiled at the head demon's clouded expression.
"Sir, I'd like to resign," said Shiver. "Formally."
He had just a second to take in the expressions of shock and betrayal that spread across each demon like a plague before he was ripped away and landed with a rolling tumble back on earth.
He groaned when he hit a solid floor, and then again when something hit him in the chest—a girl.
His girl, fallen right on top of him. The tugging at his wrist showed him bound to her by a soft red twine, and when he pulled his arm back, he yanked her closer with a grin, bound to him by the same thread.
"Clara," he said, cupping her face and smashing his lips to hers.
Seven hells, he could touch her again, could hold her, could smell the sweet scent of sun and herbs and grass that clung to her. He could even feel her slapping his face over and over—oh. He released her.
"You palooka! Get your mitts off me!" She fought his grip even though they were tied together. "I thought you'd been killed!"
Shiver couldn't stop smiling, even under the barrage of her slaps and insults. He held her face gently, swiping his thumbs under her eyes to wipe away tears.
"Would you have missed me, sweet girl?"
"I'd've danced all over your c-coffin, you stupid—you big—" Clara was fully sobbing now and looped her arms around Shiver's neck as he crushed her to his chest.
"Say it, honey, tell me," he begged in a rumbling whisper.
Clara hiccupped little sobs into his shoulder, cursing herself. She had screamed it into the floor when he disappeared; why was it so hard to say now?
"I won't tell anybody, baby, come on, we're so close," he said. He wanted to be patient, wanted to tell her he could wait for her as long as she needed—but he had just survived Hell, and he hadn't the faintest idea what would happen now, or how long he might have. "Just a few little words."
"I love you!" She wailed into his shoulder.
Shiver had just been beaten to chewing gum by a horde of demons, but nothing had ever punched him in the gut quite like hearing her say those words.
"Are you happy now you… you stupid d-demon?" She said, looking up at him with her big eyes swimming with tears that refilled the moment he swiped them away. "I would have broken to pieces without you."
His tongue was stuck, but his hands were not—he clapped a hand on the back of her neck and yanked her into a kiss that sizzled between his ears like butter burning in the pan.
He had too much to say to her, but not right now, not when she was in his grip, hot and alive, crying, shaking, and as beautiful as the sunrise he had only just realized he missed for the last few hundred years.
At last, they both needed to breathe, but he only released her a half inch, pressing his forehead to hers, his long nose smushing hers.
“And you," he panted. "Are what held me together…. So no one could break me."
Clara struggled to understand such a cryptic phrase, but before she could ask, Shiver held up his wrist to examine the twine that connected him to her.
"Clara, did you… did you bind us?"
"Well…" she winced, completely unsure if he should admit to witchcraft and using blood and roosters—to a demon, no less. "Maybe a little."
Shiver grinned. "You clever little —"
Something hit the ground out in the field beside them, and Shiver looked up, his eyes flashing bright green.
"Get inside," he said, voice suddenly much lower, much darker, thunder on the horizon.
"What do you see out th—"
"Now, girl!" He hauled them both to their feet,threw her over his shoulder, and ran inside, slamming the door behind them, as if it would do any good.
"What are you doing? Unhand me, you… you caveman!" Clara couldn't help shouting at him, even if she was hoping he might carry her all the way up to her room.
Unfortunately, he set her on her feet in the center of the sitting room—the largest room in Clara's house, which she hadn't used since her parents' funeral.
Shiver began to yank them around by the string on their wrists from one corner of the room to another, digging through drawers and tossing out their contents until he shouted "ha! " and held a pencil in the air.
"This is hardly the time to practice your alphabet," Clara said, torn between amusement and fear. She heard another odd thump from outside, but with the thunder rolling in, it could easily have been the wind.
"I'll have you know I was an excellent student, and could write all fifteen of my letters," Shiver said as he swept his hands to the sides, pushing couches and tables to the edges of the room.
"Fifteen?"
"It goes up to fifteen, right?"
"At the risk of changing the subject, what ever are you doing?" Clara was forced to follow by their connected wrists as Shiver drew a large circle directly on the hardwood floor.
"Things are about to get interesting, honey," said Shiver, scrawling lines and symbols within the circle. "So you'll have to just trust me and do what I say."
"Oh good, things have been a bit of a yawn since I met you," Clara said, looking to the window when she heard another sound from outside, and then another. Thumps, louder and more frequent. Drumming? Hail?
Shiver straightened up, and, as Clara had seen him do the last time he drew a mark like this, he reached up to the sharp tip of a horn and pricked his finger. Then he knelt on the floor, looking up at Clara with eyes that glowed in the dim light.
"Into the circle," he said.
Clara might have argued on a different day, but the hail on the windows was picking up speed, and she was getting frightened. It was hail, wasn't it?
She stepped into the circle. Shiver touched his bloody finger to the very center, and, with a faint crackling sound, it lit up, bathing the room in an aquamarine glow.
Shiver stayed on his knees, wrapping his arms around Clara's waist to pull her to him, their faces reflecting the glow of the runes beneath them.
"Baby, listen," he said. "There are demons outside—"
"WHAT?" Clara jerked in his grip, starting to push him away. "My chickens!"
"They're not after your chickens, Clara, they're after you."
She froze, eyes fixed on nothing, afraid to look down at him and more afraid to look toward her window. The hail—or not hail—was hammering at the glass like it was after revenge.
"I was supposed to die when you recovered.
I was ready to do it," Shiver swallowed, still shaken.
He'd not even had a moment to deal with how it felt to face his demise after hundreds of years, only to be saved by forces far more mysterious than himself.
"But I lived. And I'm more human than I've been in a very long time.
And… it is not terribly hard to apprehend why that might have happened. "
Clara finally looked down at him, this huge demon who held her in a strange sigil, who had slipped into her room and touched her while she was in a fever—and she saw a man. It was almost as if she had been focusing on a shadow thrown across the sidewalk, and only just realized who was casting it.
He had tan skin, black curly hair, thick eyebrows, two long curled horns, and, of course, not a shred of clothing on.
He was no stranger to her. She had long known this man, this face—he'd been there all the time, slowly emerging from the mist and darkness, piece by piece.
She had never seen a creature so handsome in all her life, and she ached to look at him.
"Do not try to tell me that you were saved by love, because that is purely fiction, it… it doesn't happen."
“Yes, it does, every day," said Shiver, keeping his grip on her. Now that he had her, she wasn't slipping away. "And the evidence is right in front of you."
A particularly sharp thwack against the window brought him back around to the point.
"Which is why every demon in Hell is trying to break into your house," he said.
The splintering of wood, the shattering of glass, and a roar like the center of a twister, and Clara knew—they were in.