It made him itch to get back to the city, and he sincerely regretted not bringing the cart. The entire walk back was probably going to be keeping the damned drunk Izir from tripping into a ditch. If it wouldn’t have made Csilla sad, Ilan would let him break his neck.
What would make Csilla sad shouldn’t matter.
There was sharp electricity in the air as they left, grey clouds that promised violent rain and couldn’t be outrun.
Ilan watched the landmarks as they passed, using them as a way to take his mind off how he would have to tell Sandor that he had been right, they had found nothing that would help the city, and the body itself was another mystery, a black splotch of a dot he couldn’t make connect. So instead, he stomped and counted. A fallen tree, roots overturned and tangled, a shattered wagon axle tossed aside, the sealed demon...
What should have been a black mark on the road was only dirt.
‘Mihály,’ he said quietly, looking at the trampled mud, long ruts that looked like claws digging in the earth. The dog trotted around the furrow with a low whine in his throat, the fur of his ruff prickled. ‘Tell me I’m misremembering where we are.’
Judging by the Izir’s pale face, he wasn’t.
Darkness danced in the air, coming together like a swarm of flies, coming together, then breaking again.
Demons could take temporary physical forms but they couldn’t hold those shapes for long. And they enjoyed crawling into human shells, stealing closeness to the splintered Brilliance they were denied.
‘Mihály,’ Ilan hissed. ‘Are you going to do something about this?’
A divine touch should dispel the Shadow. But Mihály was frozen.
Ilan stepped forward, prayers racing through his mind. If the demon had gotten free, it meant the holy magic had weakened even more, here and everywhere. The Servants of the Road were useless without the Church’s power behind their prayers.
The Shadow condensed further, undulating before them, beckoning. Within Ilan, something tugged toward it, though the part was small. Humans were part corruption, too, and his very flesh knew it. While in Silgard, while behind cathedral walls, priests could pretend they’d conquered all the baseness of their natures and were close to divine. But this was the darkness he saw in every sinner he’d cleansed, the darkness each person had to settle in themselves to achieve perfection.
And there was something so tempting in the smooth whisper of blackness before him. It was all hunger, all greed, every impulse it would be so easy to give in to. The creature came together, piece by joined piece: thin arms, a birdlike head, ropy tendons and visible ribs. All pieces it had no doubt seen inits long life, cobbled together in an attempt to appeal to the corporeal.
‘Mihály,’ he tried again, not even sure his voice, edged with terror that it was, had reached the other man. Ilan swallowed. He might not even have the strength to contain it, much less banish it. He touched his mark and reached for faith. Asten guided him, but the distance between dirt and the divine had never felt so far. Ilan stretched his shaking hand out, asking for power he didn’t have.
‘Leave,’ Ilan said, and the creature tilted its head and clacked its beak, a sharp sound he felt in his skin like a shallow slice. But it slunk towards him, light catching scales in ripples of hide stretched over too many bones and joints, alluringly grotesque. A memory of fishing flashed in his mind, putting a knife to the soft belly of a trout and gutting it to the jawbone.
He had his sword, but this thing couldn’t be fought with blades.
It won’t work. You’re just going to get possessed yourself.
That was the insidious nature of demons, the most corrupted version of everything the divine had tried to create. Just being near them brought every Shadow impulse out to smother Brilliant purity. Fear and doubt were easy to drag out, but if he gave the creature time, rage and lust and all their kin would surface until he welcomed the Shadow and begged it to take him. A demon couldn’t possess the unwilling, but they had so many ways to make you want to open yourself.
It came closer, stretching out a clawed hand to meet Ilan’s outstretched one.
‘Mihály!’
There was no answer, and he couldn’t risk looking away. He shoved his palm against the creature’s chest, groaning at a sudden paralysing fear that turned his vision grey. The demon pressed its sharp beak against the soft meat of his cheek, thegentle nuzzle of a lover matched with knives. Ilan gritted his teeth as his body tingled, darkness pulling as the demon tried to fight its way in. But it was shaking. Holding this form was taking all its strength even as holding it off was taking all of Ilan’s.
And he prayed harder than he ever had before, begging for power. The muffled sound in his ear became a roar as he spoke in an ancient tongue, a language brought from Asten to command the broken parts of the world and repair the cracks with what caulking faith could do. His fingertips sunk into softening gelatinous flesh, the darkness in the demon’s eye sockets writhing like so many worms. The smell that soaked the air was the cold ashiness of an extinguished hearth. It was a smell of nothingness, of doused potential.
It would be easy to welcome the darkness. All he would have to do was let it claw him enough to offer his own blood and an entryway. Humans had dual souls, and if the demon was horrifying, it was also familiar. Ilan had long starved his Shadow soul, but it was gorging itself by the second, and the cold dredge was as comforting as any moment of Brilliant worship. Souls found home in both.
It was up to the person to choose. And he would, before his faith deserted him.
The creature stilled against the fervour in his touch but didn’t dissipate.
‘Mihály.’
If he died gasping the fucking angel’s name he was going to forgo his blessed eternity to haunt him.
It seemed to shake the other man, and as Ilan’s vision dimmed with Shadow-born images, Mihály touched the demon from behind.
That should have been enough. Ilan stumbled backwards, cursing a litany that tasted of sulphur and poison, as the creature turned and took Mihály’s own face in its hands.
