The Devil You Know (32 page)

Telling
herself she had to be sure, Marie said, “Do you like my hair?” in a loud
whisper.

“I
love it,” he said. She felt the fingers of one hand moving inside the skirt.
“I’ve always loved it.”

With
a gasp of renewed grief and fear, Marie kicked him savagely in the shin and
tore herself away as his leg folded under him and he uttered a surprised shout.
It took him only seconds to recover. Standing and spinning around, he launched
himself at her. Marie tried to dodge him, but did not move quickly enough, and
he caught her around the waist, the momentum of his charge knocking her
backwards onto her bed, with Ryan on top of her. She twisted and struggled
underneath him, but he managed to grab both of her arms, squeezing her biceps
and raising himself above her so he could use his own weight to help strengthen
his hold.

Marie
knew he had her, and for a moment she stopped struggling. Looking up into his
face, now lined with rage, she could not see how she had ever allowed herself
to think this creature was her husband. Even at his angriest, the real Ryan had
never looked like this: his teeth bared, nostrils flared, forehead deeply
creased, and flecks of foam on his lips as he practically panted above her.

Breathing
hard herself, she spat out, “You fooled me. But now I know.”

“Bitch!”
the demon said, its voice no longer thin and raspy. “You don’t know a thing.”

She
had had her hands on his chest, trying to push him off her, and now she dropped
her right to quickly make the sign of the cross.

“Pray
if you want,” the demon hissed at her. “It won’t do you any good.” He took one
hand off her and quickly dropped his other elbow down so that it dug into her
shoulder while the forearm stretched across her collarbones. If he chose to, he
could start exerting pressure on her throat with just a quick movement of his
arm. With his other hand free now, he began reaching down to tug his pants
loose. Marie followed his hand down with her own, pushing and pulling to try
and get into his pants before he could. When he saw what she was trying to do,
he shifted his other arm and began pushing down on her throat. She immediately
felt her air being cut off and gasped in a panic, but she could not draw a
breath.

With
a surge of strength fueled by fear, she pushed her hand into his open pants and
grabbed the monster’s scrotum, twisting her hand and sinking her nails into the
flesh. The thing screamed and tried to pull away from her, but she held on.

When
it straightened up, it took most of its weight off her, and Marie sat up with
it, using her other hand to shove the thing in the chest and knock it off the
bed and onto the floor. As it fell, she lost her grip on it, but she plunged
after him, landing on the demon’s chest and shoving her knees into its ribs.

“Back
to hell, you bastard!” she shouted, closing both hands around its throat and squeezing
as hard as she could. In its rage, the creature began to look less and less
like Ryan; it turned bright red, and its eyes bulged as it struggled under her.
Instantly, she realized it could slip away from her any second; the monster
would only need to give up the fight and change its shape to be free of her and
safely on its way back to Julian’s. Taking a chance, she took one hand off its
throat, digging her knee more forcefully into its ribs as she shoved her hand
into the pocket of her skirt to draw out the little cross. She bared her lips
as she pushed the reliquary into the demon’s forehead.

Smoke
began to rise from its skin, and she knew she had it. The thing screamed as she
began reciting the exorcism prayer. It bucked beneath her, trying to throw her
off, but with each phrase that left her lips she pushed harder on the cross
with one hand and dug the fingers of her other hand deeper into the monster’s
throat. At the same time, she felt his fingernails ripping the skin on her
arms, but she fought back the urge to scream and pull away. Where she had said
the prayer forcefully with the other incubi, with this one she recited it with
venom, bending close to its face and baring her teeth as she concluded. “Do may
you be
snatched
away and
driven
from the Church of God,” she
ordered, “and from the souls made to the image and likeness of God and redeemed
by the Precious Blood of the Divine Lamb.”

With
the last word, she bore down on its throat again, her rage at the demon that
had used her dead husband’s image driving her to want to kill the creature in
body and spirit. One second the flesh of its throat was pressed against her
fingers, and the next her hands hit the floor. Her whole body dropped as the
incubus discorporated and turned to dust, and she hit the floor with a loud
gasp, her knees, ankles and seat no longer having anything to hold them up. The
dust from the thing’s body wafted into the air as she landed on it and then
settled back to the floor and the empty shirt and pants that were all that
remained of it.

She
began to cry, and pulled herself up onto the bed, lying there for several
minutes and sobbing out of fear and anger and the return of her grief over
Ryan. He had been here in her arms for just a few minutes, more than a ghost,
and though it had not been real, for those minutes it may as well have been.
And now he was not just gone, but ripped away again, taken from her once more
without her ever being able to say goodbye. Worse, his memory had now been
corrupted by the thing that had taken his form, and she wished that she could
have made the incubus’ death more miserable to make it suffer for what it had
done.

After
several minutes, the sobbing stopped, and she rolled over on the bed. The
incubus had torn several buttons off her blouse and ripped the strap of her
bra. Both garments still hung off of her, and she pulled at the blouse to cover
herself before sitting up. Blood ran down both arms from the wounds the
creature’s nails had left, and her throat ached from where it had pushed down
on her. Thoughts raced through her mind: of Colin Krebs and how he must have
betrayed her to Julian, prompting the incubus to be sent to her house; of Tom,
whom she wanted at her side now more than ever; and of Piedmont himself and his
one remaining demon, and what she must do to destroy it and the book that had
brought it forth.

She
heard a car’s loud engine on the street, and when it sounded like it stopped in
front of her house, she got off the bed, her adrenaline rushing again at the
thought of Julian Piedmont having sent real human reinforcements. A kitchen
knife would be her only weapon against human intruders, but before she could
leave the bedroom she heard a second car start its engine and drive quickly
away, its tires screeching on the asphalt of her quiet street.

Seconds
later, there was a loud knocking on her front door, and she heard Tom calling,
“Marie! Marie! Are you okay?”

“Tom!”
she cried and ran out of the bedroom to see him opening the front door and
letting himself in. The lights were still on in the front room, and when she
saw his face, she knew he could see that something dreadful had happened. He
looked angry, frightened and filled with pity all at the same time. They
covered the distance between the two doors in seconds and threw their arms
around each other.

“My
God, Marie,” he said, bending to kiss the top of her head and turning to rub his
cheek against her hair.

“Oh,
Tom,” was all she could manage at first, her own cheek pressed against his
chest where she could feel his heart pounding.

“You’re
hurt! What did they do?”

She
shook her head. “They sent an incubus.” She paused, unsure of whether she could
describe the rest without crying again. With a deep breath, she said, “They
made him look like Ryan.”

“Did
you—?”

“It’s
dead. I had to kill him.” She felt his arms tighten around her.

“How
bad are you hurt?”

“Not
bad. Just scratches. I’m okay.” Still filled with adrenaline, she had not yet
slowed down enough to know for certain that she was, indeed, all right. “Oh,
Tom, it was so real. They made me think it was him.”

For
a second, a cold wave of fear passed over her, and she pulled her head away to
look up at his face. She studied it carefully for a moment before he seemed to
realize what she was thinking. He smiled reassuringly. “It’s okay now,” he
whispered. “It’s me. Tom Glass. Shell-shocked grease monkey and demon killer.” He
touched her hair and then her cheek, continuing tenderly. “And I know more
about you than any one of those bastards ever could. You’re Marie Doyle. Your maiden
name was Matthews. Your dad died when you were sixteen from a heart attack.
Your husband Ryan was killed when a torpedo sank his boat. They never found his
body. And you’ve never unfolded the flag that the Navy sent you.”

As
he spoke, tears fell from Marie’s eyes, but she did not start sobbing again.
She just listened. With each word he spoke, the fight with the demon seemed
more and more like a nightmare that never could have happened.

“You
know the score now, right?” Tom said, lifting some of the tears off her face
with the backs of his fingers.

She
nodded. “How did you know to come?”

“They
came to my place, too. Just like before, when Gramps…There were three of them—all
human. I think they just wanted to scare me, but I waved the Luger around and
used the butt on one of their faces, and they ran. I tried calling you right
away but your line was dead. They must have cut your line just in case you
weren’t fooled right away and tried to call for help.”

She
clenched her jaw in renewed anger towards Julian and Colin. “They’d have had
me,” she said.

“Thank
God they didn’t.” He shook his head. “I didn’t even think to call the police
first. I had the Dodge running, so I just came.”

“Do
you think the police would have come?”

“I
don’t know. I could have made something up. I wasn’t thinking.” He swallowed,
and then he whispered, “I’m sorry. If you hadn’t been able to stop him
yourself…”

She
squeezed his hand. “It’s okay,” she said. “I
was
able to. That’s all that matters right now.”

He
turned to the door and looked outside, and Marie could see Jasper’s old Dodge
parked crookedly at the curb. “There was another car full of Piedmont’s boys
parked outside when I got here. Waiting to bring their pet back home when it
was done with you probably. They tore out of here as soon as I took two steps
toward them.”

“Funny,
I didn’t see them when I came home.”

Tom
nodded and closed the door. “They were probably parked down the street waiting
to see you come in.” He glanced around the room and then nodded down at her
bookcase. “Your picture’s gone. That’s probably what they used. You know, to
make the look-alike?”

For
the first time, she noticed that Ryan’s picture was missing from its usual
place. Now it was probably in the car that Tom had chased away.

“Is
it awful of me to want Piedmont to get hurt in all of this?” she asked.

“Awful?”
Tom said. “No. Normal, I’d say. He deserves to get hurt. At the very least.”

She
nodded and then looked at the floor. “Tom,” she said, choking back tears now.
“When the Errol Flynn incubus kissed me, you said it wasn’t my fault that I
gave in to him.”

“That’s
right.”

“But
with this one…I think I gave in to him before he kissed me. I wanted it to be
him. I wanted it to be…real. I’m so sorry.”

“You’ve
got nothing to apologize for.” He reached out and touched her chin to lift her
face up. When she looked him in the eyes, he smiled at her. “It’s okay, Marie.
He was your husband. If he really did come back…” He shrugged. “You’d want your
old life back. With him.”

“It
wouldn’t be that simple,” she said, returning his smile. She felt tears welling
up in her eyes again. “I loved him. I still do. But I’m not the same person I
was when I married him. Or when I lost him.” She shook her head. “And if he
really came back today, I can’t say what I’d do. He’s not…he’s not the only
one.”

“The
only one?” he asked.

Her
heart pounding from a mixture of excitement and fear, she said, “The only one I
love,” and stood on her toes to kiss him.

“Marie,”
he whispered and kissed her back.

She
wrapped her arms around him and hugged him for a moment before tilting her head
up to meet his lips again.

“I
want you. Please,” she whispered in his ear.

He
drew his face back from hers for just a moment, his eyes looking questioningly
into hers. Neither spoke, and when Marie withdrew further and slipped her hand
into his, he let himself be led to the couch where they lay down side by side,
kissing each other sweetly and peeling away their clothes as though it were the
most natural thing in the world. They did not rush or pant or tear at each
other in a frenzy; they were not overcome like victims of the incubi. Instead,
they touched tenderly, fingers tracing lines on each other’s skin as more and
more of it became exposed. It was not until later, with sweat on her brow and
the strength going out of her legs, that Marie held tightly to his back,
digging her nails into his skin without meaning to as their bodies shuddered
together and then were still.