The man began to chant.
Groaning in protest of the unnatural bend of her spine engorged a bubble of blood on her cheek. It popped, her bones cracked in symphony with her captor’s guttural pronunciations, and the world lurched.
Vision distorted, walls leaning toward her as if ready to crumble and crush her to dust, Pearl watched the awful world twist in upon her and turn her inside out.
This must be death.
A moment later, it was over.
The grim reaper had not come. Her heart still banged against her chest, her blood still poured from her ruined mouth, and pain only grew.
They were no longer standing in the snow, hidden between tight row houses. Now, uneven, time-worn masonry was under her feet, her scream echoing off an arched stone roof, with not a speck of sky to be seen.
The cry died, and all around them the sound of softly traded conversation, the noise of footfalls echoing as if they stood in a great cathedral replaced it.
A church?
But there were no crosses or priests, only a congregation of strangers watching as she was dragged deeper into the sanctum.
Maybe she had died and this was how she was to be judged, bleeding and broken before heaven’s shining hosts.
When she was dragged forward, when she caught a glimpse of the quiet crowd watching her advance, she met eyes with curious strangers.
She disgusted them. Some even sniffed her way, sneering.
A sharp kick hit the back of her legs; knees knocked into stone so hard her teeth snapped and the pain in her jaw doubled. Hunched over, Pearl clutched her torn cheek, pathetic, scared, and completely confused.
The angel who’d torn out her teeth and ripped open her face shouted so all might hear, “This apostate is responsible for abandoning the remains of Chadwick Parker where humans would find them. I have brought it before you, my lord, as you ordered.” He threw her stolen coat on the ground before them. “And here is the proof. The dead human’s blood is matted into her coat.”
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 face 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.