Demon Inside

Still holding his hand up, he stalked forward. As he vacated the spot where he’d been originally, the torches behind him flared.

The light hurt Megan’s eyes. She closed them for a long second then opened them again, to see Malleus and Spud through a gap in the crowd. They stood below and on either side of a large platform, its legs gripped in their beefy arms. On top of the platform lay the body of Templeton Black.

Megan couldn’t really see him. He was up too high. All she saw was the top of his head, the salt-and-pepper hair thi

Would they ever find out what killed him? Or had he realized his pet witches, the ones who’d tried to murder her and Greyson, had been killed, and decided the only thing left to do was die?

The procession inched ahead. Behind Spud, Maleficarum held one of the rear legs of the catafalque. Megan only vaguely recognized the fourth bearer.

Each time the catafalque passed a torch, the flames flared into life. The footsteps of the procession made almost no sound on the marble floor, so it seemed to float, created by black mist. Megan had never seen anything like it. It was beautiful.

Nick edged her closer. Considerate of him. Even with heels she was shorter than almost everyone in the room.

The impression of the catafalque floating didn’t change, although she could now see where the legs ended, could see the feet of the bearers blurry…there was smoke. Black smoke, sliding silently over the floor, coiling around the legs of the bearers and the priest.

It seemed to take a long time for Templeton’s body to pass. Up close she could see the heavy black satin covering the frame. Templeton was wrapped in it like a toga, with a long-sleeved black shirt beneath it to cover his arms. His face and feet were bare. So were the hands clasped neatly together over his stomach. The diamond pinkie ring she remembered seeing on his left hand shot orangeish sparks onto the wall.

Megan held her breath as the body passed, only belatedly realizing a slow drum was beating somewhere in the hall. Like a march it played, while the procession stepped forward with every beat. Her heart started beating in time, and without thinking she knew the same was happening to every demon in the hall. The piece of demon in her chest, the thing she’d started thinking of as a second heart, caught the rhythm too.

Next came Greyson, his expression solemn. Beside him with her hand on his arm walked a woman, her head high, her eyes damp at the corners. She too wore a long black gown, velvet, with a string of pearls around her neck like tiny moons against the darkness. Her dark hair was swept up, exposing a face that Megan instinctively felt drawn to. Motherly, it was kind even in sorrow, but fiercely proud. Templeton Black’s widow, so different from the other widow Megan had recently seen that for a moment her mouth flooded with bitterness.

The drum kept beating. Megan wondered if Greyson would turn to look at her, but he didn’t, staring straight ahead as they passed.

Next came the rubendas, in dark suits. Some wore shirts of the same blood red as the collar of Greyson’s cassock, others white. White, black, and red were the colors of House Sorithell.

“The colors are by rank,” Nick whispered. “In case you wondered.”

She nodded her thanks.

Almost all of the torches along the walls of the long hall were lit now as the procession passed, on its way to an enormous set of wooden double doors standing open at the end. Megan had never seen those doors open. Beyond them darkness loomed, like the entrance to a cave.

Beat…beat…beat…The drum continued its mournful order as the last of the family passed. Megan turned her head to the left to watch them go, the black smoke still swirling and roiling over the floor, obscuring their feet. Her skin crawled. The energy in the room, the pure, unbridled sense of power, made her hair stand on end.

More than that was the sense she’d somehow stepped back in time. With the torches lit, only the suits of the rubendas indicated they hadn’t all somehow traveled to the inside of a pyramid, or a Viking longhouse. It was creepy and mournful and exhilarating, all at the same time.

Still creepier were the servants following the rubendas. Their faces were smudged with soot and downcast, their hair was tangled and matted. Bare feet peeked out from beneath their shapeless black togas.

She leaned closer to Nick. “Why—”

“It’s to show mourning,” he murmured. “They absorb the misery of everyone else, and it destroys their physical appearance. Purely symbolic, of course.”

“I’ve heard of that.”

The shadow of his profile bobbed up and down. “A lot of cultures took aspects of our funerals. The Romans copied it almost exactly.”

“So every house does their funerals like this?”

The silhouette bobbed again. “With a few minor changes here and there—the colors, the smoke—but basically, as far as I know.”

Megan gasped, her hand tightening on Nick’s arm. Behind the servants were—demons. Not demons as she’d come to know them, but the demons of legend and nightmare. Red scaly skin peeked out from beneath hooded black capes that dissolved into the smoke. Horns curved into the air over their heads.

Worst of all were the faces, shiny and white, expressionless—masks, she realized. China masks. Some of the features looked familiar.

“Sorry,” Nick whispered. “I should have warned you about the masks.”

She didn’t answer. The blank artificial faces towering over the crowd transfixed her. If they were on stilts—and she imagined they must be—they were obscured by the smoke.

“The masks are ancestors. All the Gretnegs are cast. They attend the funeral, see? To welcome one of their number to death.”

Megan didn’t bother to hide her shiver.

The last one had a “traditional” demon face, with a hooked nose and cruelly twisted lips. His mask seemed to float above his head, gleaming white and pale. Templeton Black’s mask, younger, thi

She glanced at Rocturnus, uncharacteristically silent through this service. His little mouth hung slightly open. “Roc?”

His eyes came back into focus. “Yes?”

“Are you okay?”

“That was beautiful,” he said. “We’ve never done something so elaborate. You don’t even have a mask.”

“Oh God.”

“What? You should have one, I mean, what if—”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

Would she have a funeral like this one day? Would her body, old and wrinkled—hopefully—be displayed like this? Who would walk behind her?

“Why? We should—”

She shuddered. “Not now, Roc.” Nick was leading her anyway, to join the line of demons following the procession.

“Keep hold of my arm,” he said. A few quiet voices rose around them as her feet fell into the rhythm of the drumbeats. Heat flared from the torches to play over her skin as they made their slow way past. “I think the floor’s going to get pretty rough.”

“Where are we going?”

“Into the catacombs,” he said. “Into the dungeon.”

Ahead of them the darkness seen through the doorway loomed.