Tightening his fingers until her scalp burned, the man jerked her head back so all might look upon her ruined face.
The men and women gathered around whispered excitedly, but Pearl saw none of it, heard nothing. From the moment her head had been flung back, her eyes were fixed in horror, glued to the thing that waited at the head of the room.
This was not heaven and she was not to be judged by God…
It was dim, the chamber lit only with gas lamps instead of the popular electric bulb, but she saw the visage of the fallen one. Light flickered, drawing the pits and edges of its face into stark relief. More hideous than any imagined devil, it spoke, glowing red eyes engaged upon the man who held her down. “Ten days it took you to find the one responsible, and all you have to show me is one unremarkable, toothless female.”
Towering over her, her captor answered his liege. “Weak as it is, it obviously has not fed in days. My lord, it thought to hide from your authority. Once it emerged, the apostate was captured easily, defanged with minimal effort. Its teeth I offer to you.”
Like the shabby coat, the bloodied pair of elongated incisors were tossed to bounce like dice toward the feet of the monstrosity.
The gift was ignored.
The devil turned his eyes to her instead. The power of that burning red gaze traveled like a living thing to settle on her bloodied face.
It stared through her, unmoving where it rotted in its seat. Rope-like muscle encased prominent bones—as if the creature’s flesh had wilted in the grave. Grotesque as it was, its form remained massive.
It wanted to see the whole of her face, demanded that she lower her hand—Pearl could hear him whispering into her mind, urging absolute obedience. There was no possible question of resisting. Weak, her fingers slipped from where she’d relentlessly tried to hold her jaw together, the damage on display for all to see.
Her captor had called her toothless; Pearl grasped the slander was meant to shame. It did. She was almost as hideous as the demon.
Incapable of forming words, incapable of screaming, she could not move, not a muscle, when an arm stretched impossibly far across the room. Boney fingers slid over the ruined side of her face. He probed, snagging her bloody lip to prod the empty sockets and the bits of exposed bone between torn gums.
Her throbbing, horrible pain faded into nothing.
An unexpected caress of the devil’s thumb wiped away her steady trail of tears, the long yellowed nail at the end careful not to scratch.
Just as the pain had vanished, her fear began to drain away until she was empty of all things.
Red, scorching eyes were all she might fathom, her end and her beginning. Nothing else mattered; nothing existed but that rotting devil and her.
A flicker of satisfaction and his interrogation began. “Child?”
The mummified monstrosity cupped her jaw, holding it in place to facilitate her speech. Tongue thick, Pearl found herself answering without hesitation. “Yes?”
Raspy and horrid, his voice slithered through her ears. “Did you slay the human, Chadwick Parker, and leave his body on the street?”
She blinked once. More tears fell from red-rimmed eyes, her voice vacant. “He was hurting me. It was the only way to make him stop.”
The unblinking monster projected his pleasure, looking upon her as if beholding something truly worth devouring. “Tell me what happened.”
Still as stone, legs awkward under her, Pearl found herself leaning into the corpse-like touch. “It was dark. I didn’t want to talk to him.”
“And?”
“He forced me down, tore up my skirt so fast he was inside me before I could scream.” No one would have come even had they heard her cry for help. People didn’t go down dark alleys in search of damsels in distress.
Humans ignored screams in the night.
The demon answered her unspoken thoughts. “Because they are nothing but animals.”
“It hurt.”
There was no change in the fierce expression of the creature who commanded the room, only more demands. “Why leave the body?”
What had the devil expected her to do with it? “I had to crawl away before anyone saw.”
“And in doing so broke a crucial law.” If such a thing were possible, he seemed even more immense, her immediate world nothing but withered lips and glowing eyes full of fire. “Like any vassal under my rule, you must be punished.”
Her words came jumbled, as if from a drunken mouth. “I’m scared.”
The beast almost seemed to smile. “An apostate should be scared. You’ll be lucky to survive what’s coming.”
“I don’t understand.” Pearl blinked, a twin trail of tears escaping dazed eyes.
“You entered my city without permission, hid from my authority, and thought to hunt here, leaving a mess humans identified correctly. Is that clear enough for you?”