Page 35 of Inferno
But Yorin’s calm curiosity began to splinter when Nerik started taking his clothes off. What on earth did he think he was doing? Was he going to…? How was he…?
And then, his friend and business acquaintance and soon-to-be lover turned into…
Yorin regretted his sharp intake of breath the instant he made the sound, as Nerik’s head snapped around to find the source of the noise. No, not Nerik. This was a demon. Its eyes glowed red, like the hellhound’s. Its entire body was black, smoky and insubstantial. Yorin felt the whole world tilt sideways.
“Yorin,” the demon said, taking a step towards him, arm outstretched.
“No,” Yorin said, the word both a plea and a declaration. He held up a hand in front of him to ward off the demon. The hellhound was standing still, watching them both, and Yorin felt an odd pressure against his skull. Was the hellhound trying to kill him from a distance? If so, this was a terrifying new skill that the warriors should surely be told about.
Yorin backed away, one step, two, keeping his eyes firmly fixed on the demon, watching the hellhound out of the corner of his eye… But his feet snagged on something and he fell, twisting as he did so and landing hard on his satchel, still resting neatly over his shoulder.
He hit the ground hard, and the impact broke through the last of his frozen immobility. His heart rate tripled in a mere instant and all rational thought fled. Yorin pushed himself to his feet, grabbed his satchel off the ground, and bolted.
He ran as fast as he could, past Nerik’s house, down the laneway, legs aching and lungs burning, without once pausing to look back. Were the demons chasing him? He didn’t want to know. If they were about to tackle him to the ground or set him on fire or drag him back to the gate to condemn him to hell, he simply didn’t want to know. He ran until his lungs were screaming, and then ran some more, until he was forced to stop through sheer lack of air. But even then, he tried to keep going, finally looking back, even as he gasped for breath and continued to stagger his way back towards the city. The roadway was clear. The forest around him was still and empty. He stumbled, tripping on an uneven patch of road as he failed to look where he was going. Somehow, he managed to right himself again, and kept moving.
Gods, he was an idiot. Trying to get close to a hellhound, just to say he’d seen one in person? What the hell had he been thinking? Scolding himself for that little exercise in stupidity kept him occupied for a good part of the journey back into town, and allowed him to block out the other part of his discovery, the part where Nerik was a…
Nope, not thinking about that now. And the next time Yorin got a bout of unnatural curiosity or wanted to go bounding off on an adventure, he would remember this, the time he was very nearly set on fire by a hellhound, and convince himself to take the safer route, and find pleasure in the smaller, simpler things in life, like a slice of a well made cheesecake, or the glide of silk against his skin in a beautiful shirt.
No more gallivanting about in the forest and pretending that he could have an affair with a handsome man without his world falling down around his ears. Because Nerik was a…
He arrived at the doorway to his shop and automatically reached for his keys, fumbling them in the lock three times until he forced himself to slow right down and insert the key very, very slowly. His shaking hands had nothing to do with it, he told himself firmly. He just needed to take a deep breath, and perhaps lean on the doorframe for a little steadiness.
Finally, the door opened, and Yorin stepped inside, being just as slow and methodical about locking it again.
The shop was already closed up for the night, so he checked that the door was locked another two times, then walked slowly and deliberately through into the kitchen. He set his satchel on the table and gripped the back of a chair, squeezing tighter, tighter, until his knuckles were white and the wood bit into his hands.
Gods have mercy, what the fuck had he just seen? The images played over in his mind. Nerik had been a human – had looked like a human, at least – and then right before his eyes, he’d turned black, with glowing red eyes, and stared straight at Yorin like he wanted to devour his soul.
Prising his hands off the chair, Yorin opened his satchel, intending to take out the canteen of water and have a long drink, maybe splash some on his face to try and calm down…
But instead, his hand closed on the bag of pastries. Pastries he’d bought to share with Nerik. He’d imagined sitting down at Nerik’s kitchen table, watching the pleasure on his face as he tasted the cinnamon and sugar and felt the layers of sweetness melt on his tongue. Watching him smile, and then leaning over to kiss him. Maybe wiping a stray crumb from Nerik’s lip with his thumb, and then offering Nerik a bite of his own pastry, so he could compare flavours.
Yorin lifted the bag out of his satchel, his mind whirling as he tried to figure out what to do with the food. He didn’t want to eat it. But he’d spent good money on it, so he didn’t really want to throw it away, either. Could he give them to Nerik another day? Or could he give them to someone else?
But as he looked down, he saw that the bag was completely crushed, a victim of the tumble he’d taken in the forest. With downturned mouth and tears gathering in his eyes, he opened the bag, seeing the squashed pastries inside. They were crushed beyond recognition, the filling bursting out and coating everything else in a layer of stickiness.
A fine symbol of his crushed hopes and dreams. He’d taken them to Nerik, to share a happy moment on a quiet afternoon. But that would never happen. Because Nerik was a… Gods above, Nerik was a…
Yorin sank to the floor, ruined pastries in hand, and sobbed.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
To say that Yorin slept badly would have been an understatement. That evening, he went through the mechanical motions of sweeping the kitchen floor and heating water for a bath. He didn’t bother with dinner, not hungry and with no patience for the slow, methodical process of preparing food. But once he’d bathed, put on his nightshirt and tucked himself into bed – a cold, lonely bed, and likely to remain that way for the foreseeable future – his mind had refused to turn itself off. He replayed the scene in the forest a dozen times, his shock at seeing Nerik turn, at seeing the hellhound. His mad flight back to town. Apparently with no one following him, though he had yet to figure out what that detail meant. And when his brain finally tired of replaying that scene, he’d gone over everything that had happened in the last few days. His date with Nerik at the pub. The night he’d spent at Nerik’s house. Every snippet of conversation they’d shared in his shop.
And once that was done, his mind had gone back further, to every incident he could remember of Nerik flirting with him. To every reference he had made to the gate or the demons. To the first day they’d met, and how eager Nerik had been to be useful. There was a wealth of information to process, and a clamour of perspectives that his brain kept throwing out. Yorin would be convinced in one moment that Nerik was evil incarnate, and equally convinced two minutes later that he was a poor, misunderstood innocent who had no ill intentions at all.
Yorin finally fell asleep around two o’clock in the morning, and then slept soundly until the sunlight coming in the window woke him at around seven. And somehow, in the depths of sleep, his mind seemed to have reached a resolution. Feeling far less tired than he had the right to be, Yorin got up and got dressed, then made a breakfast of bread and jam, and an apple, cut into neat slices, along with a cup of peppermint tea.
As it was a Saturday, his shop was only open until noon, and on a typical day, he would spend the afternoon cleaning the shop thoroughly, and then making a solid dent on the week’s orders. Today, though, he decided that if he hadn’t seen Nerik by midday, he would take a walk out into the forest and confront him. The idea made his heart rate quicken, but ignoring the issue was not going to make it go away.
Mind made up, Yorin opened the shop and set about making his latest orders.
The morning passed relatively quickly, with two customers coming in to peruse the pre-made items. One left with three pairs of socks and a shawl, while the other selected two plain shirts, paying for his goods with a handful of coins and a cheery smile.
Then a lady came in to enquire about the colours of winter fabrics Yorin had – the answer to which was unfortunately not a great deal at the moment, seeing as it wasn’t even autumn yet – and then a young man came in looking for a coat. The recent storm was making people aware that summer was coming to an end, and in the weeks to follow, Yorin expected to see an increase in orders for winter clothing.
As Yorin was serving his latest customer, he heard the front door open and close, and he felt a mix of satisfaction and frustration. Another sale was always a good thing, to pay for his never-ending list of expenses. But he also knew it was getting on for half past eleven, and with an important mission planned for the afternoon, he was reluctant to spend extra time accommodating a latecomer, if they decided they wanted something complicated.