Mathieu (31 page)

“Your type aren’t exactly known for their honesty.” Carol’s voice was fatigued as she freed her hand from the group and staggered forward to glare at the creature through the barrier between them.

“You do have a point there.” Gaap smiled slowly and spoke again, “You were responsible for the little twist at the end. I tasted your flavor on it. I look forward to raping your mind while I take your body. I suspect the knowledge gained will be most profitable for me.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Carol sighed as her face hardened. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

Gaap bowed slightly. “But I do. I’m not the wasteful type.”

“I was afraid of that,” she said as Dwayne reached over and touched her shoulder. She leaned back into his hand and sighed.

The circle grew one last time, now pinning them single-file between the two shimmering curtains of light. Gaap stood in front of them and preened as it strutted from one to the other, peering deeply into each person’s eyes in turn and smiling wider as it did so.

“Master,” a strangled voice came from behind. Gaap’s smile melted and then reformed, this time hard and sharp.

“
Ah, yes. My faithful servant.” The Demon turned and walked across the circle to where Amanda was pinned. With a flippant gesture of its hand, it reached over and through the inner barrier and pulled her through to stand next to him.

Amanda yanked her hand away, wiping it on the front of her dress with a curled lip. “Our agreement.”

“Of course.” Gaap bowed its head to her and continued. “I believe our terms were that you were to give them over and in return I would take away every thought and memory of me.”

“Yes.” Amanda sighed the word as she leaned forward. “Yes, take it all away.”

Gaap’s smile turned even harder. “All of it?”

“Everything,” Amanda answered.

“Everything,” Gaap agreed as it placed a hand almost gently on her forehead, scales fluttering as if in a gentle breeze. She closed her eyes and shuddered at its touch. “Everything it is.”

They stood like that for several seconds while Gaap’s smile grew wider. Light traced the outline of fingers on her face, illuminating all the gaunt hollows of her face.

It was then that her eyes flew open and she spoke one, long tortured word. “Noooooooo.”

“You said ‘everything’.” Gaap’s fingers dug into her temples, twisting cruelly.

Amanda’s eyes grew wide and a whining noise came from back of her throat. She began to convulse but not enough to wrest her away from the hand on her forehead. Tears flowed down her cheeks and the keening sound grew higher and sharper before suddenly stopping.

Gaap drew its hand away, pausing to wipe the tears from her cheeks and lick them off its fingers before pushing her.

She collapsed bonelessly to the floor, eyes blank and hollow. Tears still traced down her face and pooled on the floor under her gaunt cheek.

“You said ‘everything’,” Gaap repeated to her, squatting down and twining a lock of her hair around one finger as it spoke. “You are made
anew.
As man was born into this world--
Tabla Rasa--
so are you once again.” It shifted and looked up to its captives and smiled coldly. “Am I not merciful? All her pain, all her fear, all her failings—gone.”

“That’s not the word I’d choose, “Carol answered.

“Probably not,” Gaap agreed. “Not yet, at least. Give it time.”

“Shit.” Dwayne muttered the word under his breath as Gaap smoothly rose and approached them once more, leaving Amanda’s shell limp and empty-eyed on the floor.

The Demon gave a tight-lipped smile as it surveyed them, scales pulsing gently in contentment. “Done properly, it could take you all days to die.” It cocked its head over to one side. “I am nothing if not a perfectionist.”

C
hapter Forty - Four

Deliberately Gaap reached through the circle, grabbed Marcus by the neck and dragged him through the shimmering veil of light. “We have business to conclude, do we not?” The circle contracted further against the rest of them, pinning them immobile.

Marcus’ nerves burned as if he’d been plunged into a vat of boiling acid. There was a reason that circles weren’t to be crossed and they had a tendency of letting one know why with a deep and piercing pain.

As quickly as the pain came, it was gone, as was the floor beneath his feet. And the air in his lungs.

He instinctively grabbed at the hand around his neck, scrabbled at it as he was held a few inches off the floor. The hand at his neck didn’t loosen in the least at his struggles. If anything it grew incrementally tighter.

He could hear his wife’s screams at the very edge of perception, but his attention was focused on the Demon’s face, the scales ever so slightly lifting and flattening in the visual equivalent of a cat’s purr of contentment.

Something small and sharp sliced open his scrabbling hand and he hissed breathlessly in pain.

Gaap cocked its head and with a flip of its wrist, tossed Marcus to the floor.

What
had looked to be just a small toss actually carried him several feet into the center of the circle. He slid on his back and landed near Mathieu.

Shaking his head as he coughed and gagged, Marcus struggled to his knees and tried to brace himself to rise to his feet. “Mathieu. Wake up. Little help here?”

Mathieu’s face remained slack and dead-eyed. There was no sign of recognition, no sign of life.

Marcus took a deep breath and braced for pain before reaching over and shoving Mathieu. The body rocked back on its knees before returning back to rest in its normal position.

“He can’t hear you, you know.” Gaap’s voice came from behind Marcus’ left ear. The blow came from behind his right.

The force of the strike spun Marcus around and he hit the floor hard. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision. Gaap straddled Marcus’ chest, reaching forward and putting its hand on his throat again. “He can’t hear anything. Can’t feel anything either,” Gaap continued in a conversational tone. “I drove him so deep that his own mother couldn’t find him in there.”

Marcus writhed, trying to dislodge the creature perched on his chest but Gaap stayed put. “I’ll be happy to show you how I did it, too. I think that would be splendid, don’t you?” Gaap’s smile faded a little. “I don’t think you’ll last nearly as long as he did, though. Or endure the pain nearly as well. You’re softer.”

“Fuck. You.” Marcus gasped the words out with the last bit of air in his lungs. His ears began to ring, the sound growing louder and louder as Gaap’s voice grew more distant. He could hear Jenn screaming his name but it was indistinct.

The grasp around his neck loosened enough for him to take a breath. “Of course you will. But just not at this moment. We have other things to do first. Grand things. After all, I have to get as much out of you all as I can, don’t I?”

Marcus
shuddered as Gaap leaned forward, the scales fluttering faster now, as if with excitement. A fetid odor came from beneath them, fanned into his face in waves. “Are you afraid yet?”

“Terrified,” Marcus gasped back.

“I know.” It jerked its head in Mathieu’s direction. The Familiar was bathed in a red aura, pulsing with power. “Your fear, their despair, soon all of your pain—it’s delicious and it makes me stronger by the moment.” It leaned in even closer and whispered, “I wonder, would you be as afraid if you couldn’t see? The pain of ripping out your eyes would be sublime, but I wonder if your terror would be lessened.”

Marcus shuddered before answering, “Not a question I’ve ever asked myself.”

“Only one way to find out, isn’t there?” The scales on Gaap’s face lifted, revealing the white, hungry mouths filled with razor sharp teeth. “Now where did I put that pony?”

The mouths strained forward, teeth clicking furiously as they tried to bridge the few inches to Marcus’ face.

Marcus screamed. He screamed longer and louder than he had ever screamed in his life. He struggled and writhed and bucked and fought but there was no give in the creature that held him.

“So very tiring,” Gaap muttered somewhere behind the face of mouths and teeth and flying ropes of saliva. The grip around Marcus’ neck tightened again and his screams faded into a choking noise that grew higher in pitch when the first small mouth made contact with his skin.

It didn’t bite right away. At first it traced around the line of his cheekbone, up to the fold of his eyelid and then back down to nibble playfully at the edge of his nose.

It was joined by a second mouth on the other side of his face. This too seemed more interested in teasing instead of inflicting real damage. Marcus cringed away from the orifices, shaking his head back and forth and tightly closing his eyes.

In
desperation he reached up, not to Gaap’s hands at his throat but to one of the hungry mouths at his face. He grabbed it tightly behind the teeth, squeezed and yanked with everything he had.

The muscular stem was slimy but Marcus pulled it out and away from his face—and from Gaap’s.

The mouth-stalk thrashed in his hand, the maw snarled and snapped, and its neighbors slashed and bit at his hand but Marcus kept his grip and kept pulling. The hands around his neck tightened and his lungs began to burn.

A high pitched keening came from the mouth in his hand, the vibrations making the bones in his arm ache. Still Marcus kept pulling.

The appendage in his hand suddenly went limp. Gaap just as suddenly released his neck and then hit him across the face once, then twice. Hard.

“Look what you’ve done, you ignorant piece of filth.” Gaap stood and raged. A dead mouth dangled from its left cheek, swaying and jerking limply with every movement. The other scales and mouths writhed and thrashed in agitation. Some of them turned and bit at each other in a frenzy.

Marcus, ears still ringing from the blows to his head, held up his arm and winced at the damage done. Blood flowed freely from multiple bites down his arm to soak into his shirt sleeve. “I won’t say I’m sorry.”

Gaap froze and stared at him, eyes glittering dangerously. “Oh, I think you will. I think you’ll grovel and beg for my forgiveness before this night is out.”

It made a gesture in Marcus’ direction and the young man stiffened against the cold floor, pinned by the force of the Demon’s will. With a flourish, it turned back to the pinned humans, walked over and dragged Jenn into the circle.

She shrieked in pain as she passed through the energy barrier. It threw her to the ground with a flick of its wrist and then walked over to where she’d landed, sinuous as a cat. The mouths had retreated and the
scales
had slowed into a deliberate but concerted motion, their unison broken by the limp appendage hanging from the Demon’s cheek.

Jenn tucked her legs under and rolled, crouching and backing away from the approaching creature as she scrambled to her feet.

Gaap smiled as it prowled after her, the limp mouth stalk dangling from its cheek marring the symmetry of what had once been handsome features. “Now, what should I do to you? What would hurt your mate most? Should I rend and rape you on top of him so that your blood flows down into his nose and mouth and chokes him? Should I turn you inside out and devour you still alive in small, screaming pieces while he watches? Feed you to him? What ever should I do?”

“It would really piss him off if you just let all of us go. True agony. Really.” Jenn glanced over her shoulder to her pinned husband before looking back.

Gaap suddenly loomed within inches of her face. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

She shrieked and brought her knee up as hard as she could into the creature’s groin by reflex.

Gaap’s body shuddered with the force of impact, but it merely cocked its head at her. “Did you expect some kind of reaction to that?”

“It would have been nice,” Jenn answered before the Demon backhanded her across the circle. Marcus made a small, muffled noise when Jenn screamed in pain upon hitting the barrier. She could see him tensing, fighting against whatever held him there.

She rolled over to her hands and knees and looked up. Dwayne was pinned between the two
Orbis
walls. It had become so tight that the flannel was scorching. Silent tears ran down his cheeks, but then he froze.

“His own mother couldn’t find him in there, but his own mother didn’t hold his heart in her hands.” Dwayne’s voice was strange and hollow-sounding as he spoke softly.

Jenn met his eyes. But the eyes weren’t Dwayne’s. They were deep and distant and filled with compassion. Whoever was behind his eyes
spoke
again, “You’ll have to go as deeply in yourself, though.” Then they both looked over to where Mathieu still knelt on the floor.

“Look out!” Dwayne’s voice suddenly rang out in its normal accent and tones.

Jenn automatically ducked and Gaap’s hand missed her by mere inches.

She scooted to the side, regained her feet and ran over to the kneeling form. She dropped to her knees in front of him and looked into Mathieu’s eyes. Blank and empty, they looked through her, through anything and everything in the room.

“Mathieu, wake up. I need you.” She hesitated, reached out and then touched his cheek. It was warm and soft under her hand, the slightest burn of stubble on her palm the only pain she felt.

She glanced over her shoulder at the Demon. Gaap cocked its head back at her, the scales still undulating calmly. It slowly walked across the circle to Marcus and with another cock of its head, kicked Marcus in the ribs. Hard.

Marcus’ body rocked with the impact and he made a pained gurgle in the back of his throat. Gaap drew its leg back and kicked again, this time harder.

Jenn’s eyes filled with tears at Marcus’ muffled sounds of pain. She turned back to Mathieu. Nothing had changed. He was still slack and blank, dead to her.

“Damn it, wake up. I… we need you. Help us.” She grabbed his face with both hands and shook him, hard. The body swayed limply and then stilled.

The sound of another kick and a soft chuckle from Gaap behind her caught her attention. She did not turn, instead concentrating on the face in front of hers. “Damn it, WAKE UP!” Now she lashed out and slapped him—once, twice, as hard as she could. The limp body reeled but there was no other reaction.