Ged answered for Ogden. “Yes.” He frowned at the corpse with a new, wary fascination. “If we’re being watched, we need to know more.” “If there was a demon in there, it would be long dead by now,”
Jacen protested.
“Would it?” said Ogden.
Jacen spread his arms. “In every circumstance I’ve ever encountered,yes.You might as well ask me to exorcise a piece of meat.”
“And what of those you haven’t encountered?” Ogden challenged. “Surely, you’re not so arrogant as to believe you’ve seen everything of the Source.”
Five years earlier, Jacen might have been. Now . . . he knew far less than he cared to consider. The demon in the canyon, certainly, was different from anything he’d ever encountered. If the red thing was indeed real, it had existed outside the Source without a host for decades. Centuries.
Perhaps it wasn’t the only one.
But the prospect of prodding around a dead man’s mind, searching for some unknown horror that might be watchinghim this very moment, filled Jacen with dread. Besides—he was nowhere near sober.
He said to Ogden, “If you know something we don’t, kindly skip the theatrics and tell us.”
Ogden shrugged. “As I said. I’m simply theorizing.”
“I can try,” said Ilusha, with so much reluctance the words might have been dragged out of her with pliers. “I haven’t assisted with an exorcism since I was a novitiate, but?—”
“Forgods’sake,” Jacen exclaimed. “I’ll do it.”
“Are you sure?” Seth asked. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m well enough.” Jacen had a faint recollection of being much younger and boasting about his ability to perform an exorcism drunk. Maybe this served him right.
He knelt once more and put his hands on the body. He suppressed a shudder at the cold, dead flesh, stiff beneath his palms. He closed his eyes and opened his mind.
As expected, nothing remained to guide him. Just a husk where a soul should be. The fog in his head did not help matters; proper focus eluded him. Each time he thought he sensed something, it slipped out of his grasp.
A demonic mind was more fluid than a human’s. Brother Marez had explained this to Jacen by pinning an enormous cockroach to a table with a needle and, as it squirmed, slicing off its head.
“It can live without it,” the old priest had said, as the insect continued to wriggle. “It has neither bones nor blood vessels; it requires far less structure than we do. It does not require lungs to breathe, nor a brain to think. A demon is similar. They are thought made physical, capable of blending in to the fabric of consciousness.”
Jacen continued to search, until a greater picture emerged. Somethingwasthere, a cold and slimy mass woven into that dead grey matter. It was ancient, shockingly intelligent, and?—
And it was aware of him.
Jacen pulled back with a cry of alarm.
“What is it?” Ged demanded. “What do you see?” “There’s something in there,” Jacen choked out. “Alive.”
It seemed to be hiding, lying in wait, watching for the opportunity to—what? Escape? He sensed no fear from it.
Jacen got a hold of himself, summoning the authority he used to address a congregation. “Get back upstairs. Now.”
Even Ged obeyed. Jacen waved them onward. “All the way. Go!” Only Seth—theidiot—hesitated, lingering at the bottom of the stairs.
The entity proved slippery, already fading out of focus. Jacen struggled to hold it in his mind’s eye, extradimensional senses probing its outline. A many-limbed creature leered at him, daring him to come closer.
Closer.
The oddest sense of familiarity overcame him. Almost a longing. An emotion that did not belong to him flickered through his mind: surprise, tinged with amusement.
And all of a sudden, he was too close.
The creature writhed inside the decaying brain, unfurling massive tentacles.
