Mister B. Gone

their own encampment. I still had a chance to strike out to my right, and move still deeper into the forest, but curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to see what wickedness they had done.

So I ran towards the firelight, realizing even as I did so that it was probably a foolish, perhaps even suicidal move. But I was unable to resist knowing the worst. That's what defines the Demonation, I think. Perhaps it's a corrupted form of the angelic urge to be all-wise, I don't know. All I can say with any certainty is that I had to know what Cawley's cruelties had wrought, and I was willing to risk my sole possession — my life — in order to witness the sight.

I saw the flames first, between the trees. It had not been left untended. There was one more member of Cawley's pack feeding it fresh tinder even as I stepped into the grove that the flames illuminated.

It was Hell on Earth.

Hanging from the branches around the fire were the stretched skins of several demons like me, except, of course, their skins were not burned as mine was. Their faces had been very carefully eased off the flesh and stretched, so they would dry looking like masks. The resemblance to their living selves was remote, but it seemed perhaps I had known one of them a little; perhaps, two. As for their meat, it was presently being hacked into pieces by Cawley's last thug. She was a sweet-faced girl of maybe sixteen or seventeen, the expression she wore as she went about her chores of hacking the meat off the dead and chopping it up before tossing it into the larger of two enormous black pots as innocent as that of a child. Now and then she would check on the progress of the tails she was boiling in the other pot. Several tails belonging to other victims were hung from the branches; they were already cleaned and ready to be sold. There were nine, I think, including one which, to judge by its length and the elaborate design which rose from each tail-bone, had belonged to a demon of great rank and antiquity.

When the girl looked up and saw me I expected her to scream for help. But no. She simply smiled.

How can I express to you the effect that smile had upon me, appearing as it did upon a face completely lacking in flaws? Lord, but she was beautiful; the first true thing of beauty I had ever seen. All I wanted to do at that moment was take her away from this charnel-grove, with the stew of demon-meat simmering in one pot and the tails boiling away in the other.

Cawley had forced her to do this grim, ghastly work; I had no doubt of that. What further proof did I need than that smile of hers as she looked up from her grisly labor? She saw her savior in me, her liberator.

'Quickly!' I said. With a nimbleness I was surprised to find I owned, I leapt the pile of bones that lay between us and caught hold of her hand. 'Come with me, before they catch up.'

Her smile remained undimmed. 'You speak good English,' she said.

'Yes… I suppose I do,' I said, amazed that the power of love had overcome the imperative that had turned my words to growls. What bliss to be able to speak my mind again!

'What's your name?' the girl said.

'Jakabok Botch. What's yours?'

'Caroline,' she said. 'You've got two tails. You must be proud of them. May I touch them?'

'Later, when we have a little more time.'

'I can't go, Jakabok. I'm sorry.'

'I want to save you.'

'I'm sure you do,' she said.

She put down her knife and took hold of my other hand, so that we stood, the two of us, face to face, hand to hand, with only the table of scraped bones between us.

'But my father wouldn't allow it, I'm afraid.'

'Your father's Cawley?'

'No. He's my… he's not my father. My father is the man with the wounds on his face.'

'The one with the pox, you mean?'

Her smile died instantly. She attempted to pull her hands from mine, but I would not let her go.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'That was careless of me, to say such a thing. I didn't think.'

'Why would you?' Caroline replied coldly. 'You're a demon. You're not renowned for your intellects.'

'What then, if not our brain-power?'

'You know very well.'

'Truly, I don't.'

'Your cruelty. Your Godlessness. Your fear.'

'Our fear? No, Caroline. It's the other way round. We of the Demonation inspire fear in Humankind.'

'So what am I seeing in your eyes right now?'

She had me pinned. There was no squirming out of this. I could only tell the truth.

'You see fear,' I said.

'Of what?'

'Of losing you.'

Yes, I know how it sounds, believe me. Laughable would be kind, nauseating closer to the truth. But that's what I said. And if you ever doubted the truth of what I'm telling you, then give up your doubts now, because if I were really deceiving you, I would not admit it, would I? How pathetic I must have sounded, playing the lover. But I had no choice. I was completely her creature at that moment: her slave. I leapt over the table between us, and before she could think to refuse me I kissed her. I know how to kiss, despite my lack of lips. I had practiced for years with the whores that used to loiter down the street from our house. I got them to teach me all their kissing tricks.

At first, my sleight of tongue seemed to be working like a charm. Caroline's hands began to investigate my body, giving me license to do the same to her.

You're wondering, of course, what happened to Cawley, the Pox, Nycross, O'Brien, Shamit, and Hacker, aren't you? Of course, you are. And if I'd been less obsessed with Caroline I would have been doing the same. But I was too busy passing on all my kissing tricks.

Her hand moved around my back now, and slowly, tenderly, she ran her fingers up my spine until they reached the back of my neck. A shiver of pleasure ran through me. I kissed her more passionately than ever, though opening my mouth so very wide made my eyes water. Her hand tightened, pinching my neck. I pressed hard against her, and she responded by digging her fingers and thumb into my nape.

I tried to kiss her even more deeply in response to her touch, but she was done with kissing. Her fingers gripped my neck even more forcefully, and pulled my head backwards, obliging me to ease my tongue out of her mouth.

Her face, when it came into focus before me, did not have the dreamy looks others I've kissed had. The smile that had made me fall in love with such noteworthy speed had gone from her face. There was still beauty there, but it was a cold beauty.

'You are quite the little lover, aren't you?' she said.

'You like that? I was just beginning. I can — '

'No, I've had enough.'

'But there's so much — '

She turned me towards the vat where the tails were being boiled clean.

'Wait!' I said. 'I'm here to set you free.'

'Don't be such a cretin, darling,' she said. 'I am free.'

'Do it, Caroline.' I heard somebody say, and looking towards the voice saw my beloved's father, the Pox, stepping out of the shadows between the trees. 'Boil off that ugly face of his.'

'Doesn't Cawley want him for the freak show?'

'Well, he'll be even freakier with the meat gone from his face. Just do it!'

If she had obeyed her father, my face would have been pushed down into that boiling vat. But she hesitated. I don't know why. I like to think it was the memory of one of my kisses. But the point is that whatever the reason she didn't immediately do as the Pox had ordered. And in that moment of indecision her grip on my neck became just a little looser. That was all I needed. I moved suddenly and swiftly, pulling myself free of her and running in one and a half strides until I was behind her. Then I pushed her, hard, leaving it to fate as to where she fell.

Fate was as unkind to her as it had always been to me, which was some small comfort. I saw her legs give out beneath her, and heard her call my name.