The Devil You Know (36 page)

No
longer so entranced by the demon, she could hear Father Joe say, “What’s this?”
with annoyance. “You’re hoping to distract me, Marie. Kindly be still. You’ll
only make this worse on yourself.”

She
ignored him. “
Namon dagoreth ashtakar sa
,”
she said with conviction. Nothing was happening. The priest continued to read
from the book, and the terrible weight pressed down on her with renewed force,
but she fought back against rising terror, refusing to let herself think that
the spell would not work.

“
Namon dagoreth ashtakar sa
,” she
repeated, imagining some other, dark god hearing her and being bent to her
will. With the weight still pressing on her, she pictured herself leaving her
body, or rather her body becoming insubstantial and offering no resistance
against the demon, giving it nothing to press against. It was as though she had
slipped into a trance; she could hear herself repeating the words, chanting
them now in a way reminiscent of chants in Latin she had heard Father Joe make
over his flock a hundred times or more. And though she heard herself chanting,
she could not physically feel her mouth making the words, nor was she conscious
of having decided to start chanting at all.

Fully
hallucinating now, she saw the succubus—a fiercely beautiful, ghostly
figure with wild hair floating all around her head and a predatory, hungry look
in her eyes. It looked at her with the same lust as the incubi had had, but
Marie recognized something more in that look. It was also the same expression
she must have worn when she was casting out the other demons—a look of
desire and satisfaction at knowing she was about to best her enemy.

“
Namon dagoreth ashtakar sa
,” she
chanted, now louder and louder. Distantly, she could hear Tom shouting, but she
could not tell what he was saying.

In
her vision, the demon passed right through her body, and right through the
table underneath, and she knew she had beaten it. Then she watched with
satisfaction as the succubus flew up in a rage, creating a fierce wind as it
rushed about the room, circling and circling like a bird of prey. Then she
stopped in midair and began to descend, seemingly against her will, pulled down
by the power of Marie’s words, but not toward Marie. Instead, the demon seemed
to be dragged as though by a powerful magnet toward Father Joe. With one more
chant from Marie, the succubus ceased resisting, and the sudden end to her
struggle caused her to fly at the priest, hitting him square in the chest,
penetrating him and becoming one with him against her will.

With
a gasp, Marie opened her eyes, not aware that she had even had them screwed
shut. She felt as though she had just come up for air, set free from the
riptide. She was disoriented after the vividness of her vision, but before she
could get her bearings, she heard Father Joe scream, a loud, female-sounding
cry that rose from his diaphragm and made Marie’s eardrums rattle. She arched
her neck as far as it would go to be able to see behind herself, and saw the
priest with his fists screwed into his eyes as though he were trying to rub
them out of the sockets. He kept screaming and stumbled backwards, now hitting
himself in the forehead with his fists and scratching at his face. “No! No!” he
yelled, the last word degenerating into desperate sobbing. Frantic, he stumbled
out of Marie’s line of vision; in seconds, she heard his cries diminish as he
ran away, his heavy footsteps making the tabletop shake beneath her. And then
one more scream split the room, and Marie heard shattering glass. She turned
her head just in time to see Father Joe disappear out the immense window at the
end of the room, and she cringed in spite of herself at the thought of him
plunging down to the concrete slab that surrounded Julian Piedmont’s pool.

“Marie!”
Tom called to her. “Did he?”

“Yes,”
she answered, tears streaming down her face. For a moment, she feared that she
would vomit, but the feeling subsided. Breathing hard, she said, “Are you all
right?”

“Yeah,
I’m fine,” he answered. “You?”

“I
think.” Adrenaline surged through her body, and she felt near to panicking, but
she knew she was physically unhurt and was absolutely sure that the demon had
left her unscathed. “Oh God, Tom. We did it.”

“Yeah,”
he said with good humor. “Now we just need to figure out how to untie
ourselves.”

“The
ropes have to give eventually. Start wiggling against them.”

Pushing
and straining with her legs and arms and trying to rock her body to the left
and right, she soon found herself hoping Tom’s ropes were not as tight. And
then she stopped moving altogether and inhaled deeply, a new sense of panic
rising in her.

“Tom?”
she called.

He
grunted his response as he worked at the ropes that bound him.

“Do
you smell smoke?”

She
felt the vibrations in the table stop as Tom lay suddenly still.

Then
came his reply. “Jesus.”

“Father
Joe must have knocked over candles when he ran,” she said. Arching her neck
again and straining her eyes to look above and behind her, she could see now
that flames had begun working their way up one of the enormous black curtains
that lined the walls of the room.

“Shit!” Tom shouted. “We have to go, Marie. This place’ll go up fast.
Maybe if we rock we can knock the table over and loosen the ropes that way.”

But
even as he said it, Marie knew it would not work. The ropes were tight, and
even if they could get the table to tip through some miracle of coordination,
the ropes would hold fast. In that instant, Marie stopped struggling and
prepared herself to die. There was no way they would be freed from their bonds.

“Wait,”
came a voice from off to her right, and Marie turned her head to see the James
Cagney look-alike approaching the table. For the first time since she and Tom
had entered the room, the incubus appeared lucid and able to control the body
that had been made for it.

“Wait,”
it said again, but this time its voice sounded distinctly different, more
high-pitched. Marie told herself she must still be hallucinating. The voice
coming out of the man’s body sounded amazingly like Elise’s.

She
watched it get closer as smoke began to fill the room, and she could now hear
the crackle of flames as more of the curtains and the walls behind them began
to catch fire. She could feel the heat from the fire on her skin, and she knew
they didn’t have much time. Still, she could not take her eyes off the
approaching incubus, and seconds later the Cagney face began to melt. Not from
the heat, Marie realized. Rather, the thing was transforming itself, its
features becoming softer, the cheekbones higher, the hair longer and turning red.
The body was now a woman’s. In seconds, Marie was looking at Elise.

“My
God,” she whispered. “Is it you?”

“Quiet,”
the thing said. It clearly had Elise’s voice now and appeared to be her exact
double. “Save your strength. Let me get you out of here.”

“Is
it you?” she repeated.

“I
think so,” said the being beside her as it began working at the ropes.

“How?”

“I
don’t know. I’ve been…trapped. Like in a dream I can’t wake up from. Till now.”
As she spoke, she pulled at the knots, and soon three had been loosened. Marie
felt her left arm released, and for the first time since the fire had started
she thought she and Tom had a chance of getting out.

“Elise,”
she sobbed. “I tried to help you.”

“I
know. But right now, help yourself.”

Marie
was able to half roll herself over now, and she started using her left hand to
work the knots holding her right while Elise began pulling the rope from around
her body before starting to untie the knots that held Marie’s legs. The heat in
the room was getting unbearable now, as though the whole room was an oven they
were trapped in.

After
several more seconds, Marie had her right arm free, and she was soon able to
pull her legs out of the rest of the ropes with Elise’s help. Coughing now, she
hopped off the table and ran to Tom, starting to untie one side while Elise
worked on the other. He looked frightened and confused by the roaring flames
and the sight of Elise beside him. “It’s okay,” Marie shouted now over the
sound of the flames, and before much longer, Tom was free.

All
three were coughing now, and as Tom rolled off of the table, he pulled Marie to
the ground. “Crawl!” he shouted as he pushed her toward the front of the house.
The smoke was thinner toward the floor, and Marie was able to breathe the
slightest bit easier. On the floor behind her, she saw the book of spells. It
would take her only a few seconds of crawling in the other direction to get to
the book, and for a moment she thought of Jasper and how he would have loved to
have it. But then Tom pushed at her again, and she began to crawl away from the
book.
Let it burn
, she thought.
Priceless as it was, it still wasn’t worth all the misery it had caused, nor
was getting it worth staying in the burning building for even the smallest
length of time. She looked around as she began to crawl and was relieved to see
Elise crawling behind her. Passing Colin’s prone form on the ground, she
stopped to try and feel for a pulse, but Tom grabbed her wrist and pulled her
along. “No time!” he yelled. And though she was not completely sure that Colin
was dead, there was so much blood on the floor around him that she felt certain
there was no hope.

When
all of Julian’s hooded followers had fled the scene, they had left the front
door of the house open. Now, Marie, Tom and the incubus with Elise’s body
crawled toward it. The closer she got, Marie was able to feel cool air from
outside, and it pulled her along as though the night sky were a rope she had
been tethered to.

With
the door only a few feet away, all three stopped short when a robed figure
blocked the way, coming to the doorway from outside the house. Marie was still
leading the way and thought for a second that it was Father Joe, somehow saved
from his fall by the demon he had carried with him and come to force them all
back into the fire. But then the figure let out a shriek and ran past them,
into the fire. It was a woman’s voice, and Marie knew it was Laura. Driven
completely out of her mind, she may have been racing in to try one last time to
connect with the demon lover she had lost that night in her apartment, pulled
into the fire by the same desire that had led her to Piedmont’s in the first
place. Or it may have been the last vestige of her sanity that drove her to end
it all in the blaze rather than suffer another minute of the horror the incubus
had plagued her with. Marie could not know, but she half turned to grasp at
Laura’s robe, wanting to save her in spite of everything the woman had done.
Laura was too fast, though, and she disappeared in the smoke that billowed
through the house.

“Go!”
Tom shouted behind her, and she went. Once they were out of the house, Tom
grabbed her upper arm and helped her to her feet. “Run,” he yelled, and they
were soon all the way to the wall around the estate.

Marie
was out of breath and still coughing. Tears streamed down her face, and she
threw her arms around Tom. He held her close, his arms wrapped about her back
and his face buried in the hair around her shoulders. The entire house was on
fire behind them now, and Marie could still feel its heat on her back. At the
same time, she felt the cool night air on her forearms and legs; the contrast
gave her goose bumps. When she felt Tom begin to relax his hold on her, she
turned her face toward the fire and the strange sight of Elise standing next to
her, the light from the flames playing across her face. She could see that the
incubus now looked not quite like Elise, its features shifting in a strange,
fluid way.

“Set
me free,” came Elise’s voice from the thing’s mouth.

Marie
understood and nodded. She took Elise’s hands and held them, then looked in her
eyes and said, “I love you, sweetie.” Tears spilled down her cheeks again.

“I
love you, too,” said Elise.

Marie’s
mind was a blank for a moment. Then she took a deep breath and began,
“Namon dagoreth--
”

“No,”
Elise said. “The other way. The way you tried before.”

Marie
shook her head. “I don’t think—”

“It’ll
work,” Elise interrupted again. “It will.”

Her
voice was so calm in the midst of all the chaos, and Marie felt suddenly at
ease upon hearing it.

“Elise,
I don’t know if I can…”

“Trust
me,” she said. “Now let me go.”

Taking
a deep breath, Marie looked into the eyes of a being that looked like Elise and
thought about all she had seen in the last few weeks. It had all been real.
Only faith could explain it—faith in something, anything. She nodded,
telling herself that there had to be more to faith than what Father Joe had
ruined for her. Still holding Elise’s hands and looking into her eyes, Marie
began: “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost.” She
continued, but where she had said the prayer forcefully with the other incubi,
intoning the words with a mixture of conviction, rage, vengeance and fear, now
she recited it gently, hoping that it would set free whatever part of Elise was
trapped inside this strange, unnatural body. And as she spoke, Elise’s face
began to fade away, and the incubus’ face began to shift and distort, looking
like an unfinished sculpture being molded by unseen hands. Marie knew that she
was not just freeing Elise, but all the other women that the incubus had
seduced, and for a moment she even saw the Cagney face looking back at her.
While the other incubi had been both terrified and angry at hearing the
exorcism prayer, this one looked relieved.