The Devil You Know

It was almost impossible to aim, to focus. My hand was a balloon sculpture, nerveless and fragile; it wouldn’t do what it was told. It wavered and wobbled, the lower jaw of the cutters finally catching on something at least, but I didn’t know what, and now she was pulling me upright again. If I struggled against her this time, my whole face would come off. In my head I uttered a prayer that didn’t even have words, and I squeezed the cutters closed. There was a slight but audible clack as the blades met.

Then I was lifted, Juliet raising me without effort to her own shoulder height, her hands cupping my head like a goalie about to punt the ball past the centerline. My feet flailed but found no purchase as she drew me close, her mouth open, her hypnotic pupils so wide she had no irises.

But her lips didn’t close over mine. She just held me there, dangling uselessly, an inch from my death and damnation and so much in her thrall now that I even felt slightly aggrieved that it had been postponed.

She was looking down, staring fixedly at the ground. No, at her own left foot. She was holding my head completely immobile, and my eyes couldn’t traverse that far, but I could see Damjohn and Gabe. They were also looking down, and a kind of sick horror spread in slow motion across their faces. Gabe’s first, because he had the summoning spell down word-perfect, and he knew exactly what he was looking at.

Juliet let me go, and by some supreme effort of will, I got my balance as I fell so that I only staggered back and slammed against the wall instead of taking yet another pratfall.

For a moment, the cabin was a frozen tableau. Damjohn, Gabe, Weasel-Face, the two anonymous heavies, even Rosa with her one good eye all were looking at Juliet, hushed, expectant, as if she was about to propose a toast. Her shoulders slightly bowed, Juliet flexed her ankle experimentally. The broken chain slid off and tinkled to the floor.

“H-hagios ischirus Paraclitus,” Gabe quavered without much conviction. “Alpha et omega, initium et finis . . .” Juliet swiveled from the hip, without undue haste but still moving almost too quickly to see, and kicked him in the stomach. He folded in on himself with a sound like water going down a partially blocked drain. From the floor, in a defensive crouch, I could hear him trying again to frame a word, without any breath left to force it out. Juliet stamped down on his neck, and it snapped audibly. It had all happened inside three seconds.

Both feet back on the ground, Juliet drew in a deep, lingering breath. For a moment, she closed those exquisite eyes; her face wore the sensual calm of someone who was about to enjoy themselves on a very deep, very visceral level. Then her eyes opened wide again; she flexed her long, elegant fingers once, twice, and turned to face Damjohn.

“Do as you’re told,” Damjohn snapped, pointing across at me. “Finish him off.” He knew damn well that this was a kite that wouldn’t fly, of course, but his whole life had consisted of outraging the natural order in various indefensible ways. You lose nothing by spinning the wheel. Except that this time he did. There was a sound like silk tearing, and he lost his look of contemptuous superiority, a surprising amount of blood, and what looked like a loop of his entrails. Again, Juliet didn’t even seem to have moved. She licked a trickle of blood from the heel of her hand and laughed a throaty, appreciative laugh as Damjohn fell heavily back onto the couch with a grunt of unhappy surprise.

There was a clattering of booted feet on planking as Weasel-Face Arnold tried to run. The other two guys drew a knife and a gun respectively, but Juliet walked through them with her arms flicking to left and right, and blood blossomed as they fell. Arnold was lucky enough to be looking the other way when she got to him. He was trying so hard to get the door open that he didn’t see her come, and his death as she smashed his face forward— into and through the bulkhead wall—must have been mercifully quick.

Then she turned back to stare at Damjohn. The expression on her face told me everything I needed to know. She hadn’t left him alive by carelessness or accident or whimsy, she was going to take her time with him. She even smiled in unholy anticipation.

With what little volition was left to me, I staggered over to Rosa, stumbled across her, and shielded her with my own body. I kept my own eyes firmly shut. It was one thing to be caught up in Juliet’s feeding and mating ritual, quite another to have to watch it. Damjohn’s whimpers and sobs went on for a very long time, until eventually they faded, Juliet’s sighs of satisfaction drowning them out.

When everything was silent again, I straightened up. Rosa’s one eye was staring up into mine, imploring, terrified. Slowly, without turning to look at Juliet, I started to untie Rosa’s gag. It wasn’t easy. Someone had gone to town on the knots, and I couldn’t get my fingertips between them. It didn’t help that I was so rigid with tension that I could barely make my hands move at all—or that the wound in my shoulder was sending irregular pulses of agony down my left arm, making my fingers spasm every few seconds.

The skin on my back was crawling, anticipating Juliet’s touch. I was expecting every second for her to take hold of me and turn me around, and since her tastes were catholic with a small “c” and polymorphously perverse, I was hoping to leave Rosa in a position to run while I was being devoured.

No such luck.

“Face me,” Juliet murmured.

With huge reluctance, I turned. She was standing exactly where Damjohn had been sprawled. The bodies of Gabe, Arnold, and the other two bully boys still lay where they’d fallen, but of Damjohn himself there was no sign.

“You set me free,” she said, her tone glacially cold.

I gestured toward the sigil on my chest, shrugged in mimed apology. My heart was tripping and stammering like a telegraph machine. She stared at the daubed pentagram as if she’d forgotten it until that moment. Then she drew her hand across in front of me—a single horizontal slash in the air—and McClennan’s chains of compulsion fell from me as if they’d never existed. I knew that at once, because suddenly I could hear my own harsh breathing.

“To bind and to loose,” Juliet said, and her face twisted now in almost physical disgust, “these are games that men play. And you dare to play them with me.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that. All I could do was shrug again. Her power over me was undiminished, and it was still hard to think around the searing fact of her nakedness. She turned her attention to Rosa, who was staring at her in hypnotized terror. The gag was still in her mouth; I was only about halfway through untying it. She made an urgent sound around it, pleading with me or with Juliet or with God.

“What’s your purpose with this woman?” Juliet asked after a heavy silence.

I forced myself to speak. My voice came out as an unlovely croak. “I was going to untie her and then take her to visit her sister.”

Juliet considered this, her face a hard mask.

“The other bound one? Under the ground?”

“Yeah, her,” I agreed. “I wanted them to see each other again. Maybe say good-bye to each other. I was thinking that that would probably—”

Juliet’s snarl cut across my words. “I said that binding and loosing are men’s games. I didn’t say I was ignorant as to the rules of them. Do you think I’m a child, mortal man? Flesh puppet, would you patronize me?”

She was walking toward me as she spoke, one slow step at a time. Now she was right in front of me, and I was a rabbit in the headlight stare of her eyes. I bowed my head; just like before, I had to force myself. On one level, all I wanted to do was to look at her until I died of thirst or exhaustion or an overlabored heart.

Juliet leaned forward, brought her face up close to mine. “My mark is on you,” she growled in her throat. “I can whistle for your body or for your soul, and you’ll bring them to me and beg me to take them. You wear my chain, which can’t be broken.”

Without looking up, without meeting her gaze, I nodded. I stayed like that for a long time: three or four minutes, at least. The silence was unbroken, and her perfume was dissipating. When I couldn’t smell it anymore, when the last hint of it had faded from my lungs, I allowed myself a quick glance from under lowered lids. She was gone.

I exhaled shakily, only then realizing how long it had been since I’d drawn a proper breath. Finding that I could move again despite the extensive damage reports coming in from my neck, my back, my shoulder, my face, I turned to Rosa and made a second attempt at removing her gag.

It took another five minutes. When it was off at last and she was able to spit out the saliva-drenched wad of cloth that had been in her mouth, she let loose with what I’d guess was every swear word she knew. Fortunately