Page 40 of The Devils

Loophole

‘What happened here?’ whispered Brother Diaz, peering around the corner and out across the square.

They’d seen bodies as they slunk into the devastated town. Some huddled bloody in the street. Some charred in burned-out buildings. Some dangling in archways, from windows, from shop signs. But the square ahead was littered with them. Corpses so broken Brother Diaz had to turn his head sideways and really think about it to work out they’d once been people.

He dashed chill sweat from his face. It sprang back instantly. ‘It looks almost like …’

‘My work?’ offered Vigga, striding out across the stained paving.

‘But without all the restraint …’ He forced his quivering legs to yet another last effort and crept after her.

She was a killer, of course. God alone knew the extent of her butcher’s bill. And yet, since they’d left the shore and followed Alex inland, she’d been the one thing keeping him alive. Dragging him on, sniffing out the track, finding him food, slapping him awake, dragging him on, his tireless guide, his fearless protector, his relentless tormentor.

She snuffled at the air, heavy with the stink of char and untimely death. ‘They came this way.’

‘Why straight through a town?’ Brother Diaz stared at the remains of several soldiers, so thoroughly mashed together it was difficult to tell how many. ‘Especially one being sacked?’

‘To shake off the bastards hunting ’em.’

Brother Diaz blinked. That did, indeed, neatly answer the riddle.

She was an animal, he knew. Fickle as a magpie, blunt as a bear, forgetful as a sardine. But she was also rather good company, and would sometimes strike some spark of unorthodox insight that proved she was no fool at all. He couldn’t see her adding much to one of his old abbot’s theological seminars. But he doubted his old abbot would’ve been much use in a hunt across a battlefield for a princess and a renegade elf.

Good companions and bad ones – so much depends on the circum- stances.

‘D’you think it worked?’ he whispered.

‘Sunny’s a nimble little scrap so I’m hoping.’ She poked through some spilled innards with her toe. ‘At least till I step in their corpses.’ She gave him that always slightly off-putting toothy grin. ‘Smile while you can, that’s what I say. The world’ll kick you in the twat soon enough.’ Vigga sniffed at a wagon, tipped onto its side with one shattered wheel in the air, snuffled underneath it, then padded towards a rubbish-scattered alleyway. ‘They were here … Headed over here …’ He saw the river, at the end, followed Vigga towards a rickety pier, his heart thudding in his ears. She squatted at the edge of the wharf, peering off downstream. ‘Trail stops here.’

‘So they got away by boat?’

‘Makes sense. Harder to track ’em on the water—’ Vigga looked up sharply, then stood, glaring back down the alleyway. ‘Someone’s coming.’

Did he hear shouting, back in the square? He shrank closer to Vigga. ‘Whoever it is, I doubt they’ll be friendly …’

The tendons started from the tattooed backs of her fists as she clenched them. ‘I can be unfriendly.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

‘I mean I’ll fucking kill ’em,’ she snarled.

‘That’s what I’m afraid of!’ The door of a warehouse across the street stood ajar, and Brother Diaz caught Vigga’s elbow and pulled her towards it.

She didn’t move. Not even a bit.

‘I don’t want to die while you’re doing it,’ he hissed, hauling at her elbow with both hands. ‘I don’t want you to die.’ Could he see torchlight flickering in the square now? ‘ None is the ideal number of deaths!’ He leaned back with all his weight, like a man leading a team at high-stakes tug of war. ‘Don’t make me use the binding—’

‘Odin’s bollocks .’ Vigga turned so suddenly he had to cling to her elbow or go flat on his face in the street. She kicked through the open door, bundling him into the warehouse with her, wrestling it shut behind them, shouldering it into the broken frame with a creaking of tortured wood.

The place was mostly darkness and a smell of damp, split sacks and empty barrels glimpsed in the chinks of light from the boarded-up windows. There was a scrape as Vigga slid something through the handles to bar the door and set her shoulder against it.

A moment later he heard noises outside. Hurried footfalls. Raised voices. A mob.

He shrank back as torches passed, a bar of flickering light crawling across Vigga’s face as she frowned through a gap between the boards of the door. Her heavy cheekbone, the scabbed nick beneath one glinting eye, the writing down her face. Beware. Advice he knew he would do well to keep in mind …

The voices faded to dull echoes, and were gone, and Brother Diaz ever so slowly let out the breath he’d been holding in a shuddery gasp, sinking down the wall on trembling legs until his aching buttocks hit the floor.

With the danger passed, exhaustion rushed in like the sea into a holed rowing boat, dragging him down. He hadn’t felt so utterly spent since he charged through the Celestial Palace, late for his appointment with Her Holiness. It was strange to even think of that man now, with his smug little ambitions. A comfortable post in the Church bureaucracy. Tutor to some appalling noblewoman’s appalling brood. Chuckling at the bishop’s jokes. These days his hopes barely extended beyond surviving the next horrifying interlude. Which, no doubt, would not be long in coming.

‘You were right,’ grunted Vigga.

‘You sure?’ Brother Diaz shut his eyes and tried to slow his breath, the hammering of his pulse gradually fading. ‘Doesn’t sound like me.’

‘Look for fights, you’ll always find more. I never learn!’ There was a thud in the darkness that made him flinch, as she punched some meaty part of herself. ‘I’d like to blame it on the wolf, but the truth is I was a fucking fool before the bite.’

‘You’re no fool,’ muttered Brother Diaz. ‘You just have … your own way of seeing things.’

‘Good you’re here.’ She turned from the door, slid down the wall until she sat. ‘Make sure I don’t shit all over myself.’ His eyes were adjusting to the dark now. He could see her outline. Knees up, arms propped on top of them, hands dangling. ‘I need help keeping the wolf muzzled. Calmer heads.’

Brother Diaz let his head fall back against the wall. ‘Cowards, you mean.’

‘Cowards run. You’re scared. But you’re still here.’ He saw her eyes gleam in the darkness as she considered him. ‘You’ve changed.’

‘Changed back, maybe. Closer to the man I was before …’

‘You fucked the wrong girl?’

Somehow, in the darkness, it was easy to speak. He could say things he’d never have shared in confession. Say what you like about her, Vigga didn’t judge. His sins seemed meagre indeed beside hers, after all. ‘There were things to like about that man,’ he said. ‘Doing whatever he pleased. Sparing no thought for the consequences. Like you.’

Vigga held up her hands and fluttered her fingers. ‘It’s got me everything I don’t have.’

‘But you had fun on the way, didn’t you? I buried myself in a monastery for ten years and followed every rule.’ Brother Diaz shrugged. ‘And I’m in the same place you are.’

She was contemptible, of course. A pagan primitive, born into the darkness of ignorance beyond the light of the Saviour’s grace. There were several of the Twelve Virtues to which she was an utter stranger. But when it came to some others – bravery, honesty, loyalty, generosity – she could have given lessons to most priests of his acquaintance. She was contemptible, and yet, even though he was nothing but dead weight for her to carry, she never showed contempt for him.

‘Reckon they’re gone,’ she muttered. It was silent now, outside, and she stood. ‘We should move—’

‘Don’t think I could even stand.’ Brother Diaz slowly stretched out his aching legs. ‘We’re safe here.’

‘Ish.’

‘We’ve a roof over our heads.’

‘Ish.’

‘We’ll do no good fumbling about in the dark.’

‘Hmmm …’ Vigga sat back down beside him, and he wondered whether she might be sitting closer than before, and he realised of a sudden his unfortunate choice of words. He could hear her breathing, the soft rhythm of it, each breath ending in the slightest growl.

She was a savage, it couldn’t be denied. Tattooed with warnings for the safety of the unwary. He had known it from the first moment he saw her in human form, naked and spattered with gore and puking up undigested bits of people. He wasn’t sure whether it would be safer to move or to stay still. At that moment, safety was not first on the list of his desires.

‘Monks …’ came Vigga’s thoughtful voice, ‘have a rule, don’t they?’

‘It sometimes seems rules are all they have.’

‘About fucking women, though?’

Brother Diaz swallowed. ‘There is … something of a vow .’

‘Though I tell you what, visit a brothel in a day’s ride of any monastery you please and you’ll find more monks than whores.’

‘I’ll have to … bow to your experience there.’

The silence seemed to press in heavy. ‘And I expect …’ Vigga’s voice began low but got higher and higher as she wandered to the end of the question. ‘The same goes double … for fucking animals?’

Brother Diaz swallowed with even more difficulty. ‘Definitely frowned upon.’

‘Though again …’

‘Each churchman must answer to his own conscience.’

‘But … hear me out …’ The air was thick with her smell, almost overwhelming in the confined space, once so foul, now somehow the opposite. ‘What’s the position … on fucking things …’ She was edging closer. ‘That aren’t women or animals …’ He could tell by her voice she was closer. ‘But somewhere …’ The pause felt impossibly long. ‘ In between? ’

She was a monster. He’d seen her become an unholy horror with his own eyes and indulge in an orgy of slaughter. She was an accursed aberration hunted down, condemned, and imprisoned by the Church for the good of humanity. But it was hard to concentrate on that. It was hard to concentrate on anything but the sliver of warm and tingling darkness between them, filled with her heat and her sour-sweet smell.

That and the blood flowing rapidly to his crotch.

‘I’m no legal mind, I know …’ murmured Vigga, and he heard a creak. Her putting one fist on the floor beside him. ‘But d’you think … I might’ve found …’ Another creak as she set the other fist on his other side. ‘A loophole?’

God, she was almost nuzzling at him. ‘Vigga … please,’ he whispered, shutting his eyes tight, for what good that did. ‘Even if there’s no … specific restriction against …’ He could hardly believe he was even saying the words. ‘ Lying with werewolves … it would be … wrong .’ So wrong. So incredibly wrong, in so many ways.

‘No,’ he whispered. He had to be a rock. Like Saint Eustace, tempted with every earthly delight, but turning his face to the Lord. ‘No,’ he said. She was a killer, an animal, a savage, a monster. He slipped his hand into the narrow space between their mouths, touched a finger to her lips, pushing her gently away. ‘The answer must be no.’

He heard Vigga sigh. Felt the heat of her breath on his fingertips. ‘All right.’ Her hair tickled his neck as she rocked back on her haunches. ‘No one’ll twist your arm, Brother Diaz. But … you change your mind … my loophole will be ready whenever—’

‘Fuck it!’ he snarled, catching her behind the head and pulling her back. He missed, in the darkness, so terribly out of practice, started by kissing her nose, but he soon made it to her mouth.

He licked at her pointed teeth and she kissed him back, growling at him, nipping at him.

He felt the vial of Saint Beatrix’s blood knock against his chest, as if making a desperate last plea. He slapped it angrily over his shoulder.

It was utterly wrong, deeply disgusting, entirely forbidden. She was a monster. And he couldn’t help himself.

‘Fuck …’ he growled, pushing his fingers into her hair, pulling her close. ‘ It. ’