Chapter 18

Part A

A mysterious black gale blew through Fair Isle Landing that day. From South to North, it cracked the cobblestone along the main street, rattled windows, ripped shutters off their hinges and upturned skirts. It also stole a bucket of apples—although that last fact would remain a mystery for the years to come.

Samael came to a skidding halt in the healing house’s front yard, her claws digging deep trenches in the compacted dirt ground. Slei appeared beside her, biting ferociously into an apple. “Find her,” she ordered, and the donkey turned into a barely visible blur that zipped around the courtyard, nose on the ground, before vanishing behind the corner of the building.

Without pause, the devil marched into Meredith’s apartment. In her haste, she carelessly tore off the door and splintered the doorframe when she shouldered her way through. She fell on all fours inside, to preserve the ceiling, and crept silently across the room. Her long tail swayed behind her.

The smells of Sophia and her grandmother filled the interior. Sophia’s smell had decayed some. She had left a short hour ago. Meredith had followed later but not until very recently. Her scent lingered the strongest at the table, sadly, in front of a half-empty bottle of amber liquid and a small picture of three young human adults laying face-up on the tabletop.

Meredith’s trail suddenly turned anxious and moved away from the table to a corner of the living room. A piece of floorboard had been removed there, opening a small hidden cache. It then left through the same door Sophia had taken. That door promptly suffered the same fate as the front one. Samael was not deliberately being a brute, but controlling her strength to spare these flimsy human constructs was not on her priority list at the moment.

On the other side was a long hallway, and Samael picked up a scent that narrowed her pupils to hair-thin slits. Blood—though not much of it, which did not reassure her, not when she knew of so many creatures that drained their prey of all fluids. Some would do it for sustenance. Others used the dried corpse to incubate their young. She had even encountered a type of fungal parasite that used its victims’ mummified remains to walk around in ravenous hordes, their numbers so great it seemed like the land itself was marching to war.

The thought of Sophia suffering any of those fates had Samael’s bristling with fury. But she forced herself to calm down, especially when the floorboards under her claws started smoking. She could not lose herself to her anger. She had learned that lesson the hard way. “Wrath is powerful, my daughter,” Lucifer had told her then, “It burns hot and destroys all your foes. But you must be its master, not its slave. Or you will burn things that are not meant to be burned.”

These words themselves were forever burned in her mind, along with the image of her father standing amid a field of molten rocks, flames and corpses, all the while carefully holding Slei’s scorched and blistered body in his hands.

She found Meredith in the hallway.

Sophia’s grandmother laid against the wall, unmoving. The bottom half of her face was smeared red; the handle of a dagger protruded from her stomach; the blood the demon smelled was hers. Her hand still clung on a small dark purple wand.

Her chest rose and fell weakly. Miraculously, it was not getting any weaker.

Samael crept to her side hurriedly, all senses in alert and sniffing the air. She smelled Sophia—unconscious—and two other men—stressed and focused at first, then abruptly… terrified? They fled down the hallway, taking Sophia with them.

She wanted to chase them, but Slei was already on it. Although physically far weaker than her, the beast beat Samael in pure speed, and his nose did not lose to hers either. If Sophia’s captors were still on the island, he would have caught up and killed them before Samael was halfway there.

Instead, Samael shook Meredith’s shoulders delicately until her eyelids fluttered open—then shot wide open at the sight of the dark creature leaning above her. Samael quickly tried to reassure her. “Don’t be afraid. Please. I’m here to help!” She held her hands up in the least threatening way a nine-foot soot-black monster with murder knives for fingers could manage.

“Oh, fuck.” Meredith groaned. Her hand jumped to her forehead, then to her side pierced by the dagger. “Those fuckers. Who stabs an old woman?” She clicked her tongue, then smiled tensely at Samael. “I’m not scared, love. Haven’t seen a demon in a while, that’s all. You startled me. Uhgn.” She shut her eyes tightly. “Shit. I’d forgotten how painful that felt.”

“Ma’am, what happened here? Where’s Sophia?” While the woman’s words piqued Samael’s interest, she did not have time for a chat.

Meredith snickered, painfully. She shuffled into a position that put less pressure on her stab wound. “I’m fine, love. Thanks for asking,” Samael at least had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. But the old woman quickly turned sombre. “They took her.”

The devil’s hackled rose. A growl rumbled in her chest. “Who took her?”

“Three men. One came with a broken leg. The other two were taking turn visiting. They told me they were from the Beatrice. Fuck!” Meredith punched the wall, angrily. Her skin ripped, but she barely seemed to notice. “I should have checked with the captain. I knew pirates had attacked Sophie once. I should have known they’d tried again. Those soulless bilge-lickers! Ow…” She winced and held her forehead. “That’ll teach me to cast magic I haven’t practised in thirty years,” she muttered disgruntledly. She rubbed her nose and frowned at her bloodied fingers.

Her other hand, still holding the wand, pointed towards the end of the hallway. “They went out back. We’re at the very edge of town. If they circle around, they could reach the shore without meeting anyone—if they’re careful, which I don’t know how successful they’d be with one of them drooling his last brain cells out his ears. But no alarm has been raised, has it?”

Samael shook her head.

“No. Eh, Figures. Shitty backwater guards. They’re worse than a peasant mob. At least those crazy paupers know which end of a pitchfork to shove in a cultist’s ass. Have you ever been chased by a mob? They’re fucking ruthless.” Pausing, Meredith blinked rapidly and shook her head. She seemed to regret the motion immediately. “Ow… Sorry, love. Looks like I’m still out of it. Old age is a cruel mistress—and not even the kind you can enjoy.”

Her bloodied hand suddenly shot out and grabbed onto Samael’s shredded shirt. She stared up at her with eyes filled with old tempered steel—and a touch of insanity. “You have to get her back!” Meredith demanded. “I’ll give you anything. Anything.”

Understanding passed in Samael’s gaze. She gently peeled Meredith’s fingers from her shirt. “There’s nothing I desire from you, Meredith Hale. Your soul, least of all. I’ll get Sophia back. I already have a deal with her. She’s my responsibility.”

The woman visibly relaxed. “Oh, goddess.” She chuckled in nervous disbelief. “Look at my Sophie, jumping right from goody two shoes to making contracts with greater devils. That girl never moved in half-measures.” She was still obviously groggy. “I guess that’s the one trait she inherited from me,” she mumbled. Her eyes glazed briefly before refocusing sharply on Samael.

Meredith’s many laugh lines set into a hard mask. “Go. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. That tiny pecker barely went through the flab. Bring my little girl back. And make those vermin pay. Forgiveness shouldn’t be wasted on those who don’t seek it.”

“If they hurt her, they will die.”

Samael made this solemn promise.

It was simple, really. All she had to do was locate her priestess and then slaughter any of the future corpses who tried to stop her. These people, whoever they were, would not get to meet sweet, happy Sam, who was all naps and cuddles. In the last brief heartbeat, before their lives were brutally snuffed out, they would get to understand why even the leviathans of Tartarus hid, trembling in the depths of their oceans of boiling acid, at the mere shadow of Samma’El, daughter of Lucifer.

They were already dead. They just did not know it yet.

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