“Blake,” Rose said, when we’d left the imp behind.
“No,” I replied.
“No?”
I could still feel the effects of being so close to the Imp. It was hard to piece two and two together, much less string multiple words along. “No… not now.”
Not with the animals still here, watching.
We were almost at the subway station when I started to feel like I was getting back to normal.
My heart was pounding, I realized, my mouth was dry, and the adrenaline was making my hands shake. I felt pumped, but it wasn’t a good kind of pumped.
It was the rush that lingered after the flight or fight instincts had kicked in. I’d experienced it enough times. If I could go my entire life without ever experiencing it again, I’d die content. Fat chance.
Well, maybe not, now that I thought about it. The way things were going, with the estimations people kept making about my life expectancy, dying soon might not be out of the question.
“Okay,” I said. I took a deep breath, as if that could help with the vaguely sick feeling and the way my heart was still beating out of sync with what my body, mind, and emotions were doing.
“Okay?” Rose asked.
“I’m… up to talking, and I don’t think he’s got any animals that close by.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thoughts?”
“Still reeling,” I admitted. “That last bit was unpleasant.”
“I don’t think either Pauz or I expected it,” she said. “Why?”
“Because my mind turned off, and because… I don’t know. I was sort of trying to show we weren’t to be trifled with, and I wanted to break the car window.”
“Huh?”
“When they see the damage, they’ll look,” I said. “It’s… close as I can figure, the only way they’re going to see the dog that’s inside the car. Maybe they’ll shit themselves when they walk over to the second broken window and the dog starts barking and snapping, but at least they won’t find out about the dog while they’re driving on a busy road and it bites their arm or throat.”
“You were thinking about all that?”
“I was going with my instincts,” I said. “Which is apparently the only thing you can do when you’re face to face with him.”
“Until he starts perverting your instincts,” Rose said.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“Him? That? That was not what I was expecting.”
“What were you expecting?”
“Something more feral. Something more like the barber. That was more like a goblin, and… it wasn’t stupid. There were times it seemed eerily human.”
“The books warned against using labels, putting things into tidy category of goblin and demon and whatever else. So maybe Pauz is more on the goblin-ish side of the spectrum.”
“Maybe,” I said. “Except goblins, as far as I know, don’t involve the metaphorical radiation we’re talking about.”
“And it’s a parasite. Remember what it said about the languages?”
“It knows thirty, but somehow it skipped Pig Latin.”
“It’s moving from host to host. And it’s taking something away from each one. Bits of personality, bits of knowledge. Piecing things together. It’s growing, I’m sure, with each one. Remember, it’s a spark. It’s trying to become a fire. Consuming, devouring, growing to a point where it’s out of control.”
“Which is why it’s been stopping and starting again?” I asked.
“No. I don’t think that’s why,” Rose said. “We won’t know for sure, until we meet this Dowght person he’s infected, but I think he’s killing them by accident. Think about what the women described. Dowght is feeding wild animals, drawing them to the area, then abandoning them to remain here, starving and vulnerable to Pauz’s influence. He’s living in filth, hoarding…”
“He’s maybe starving at the expense of feeding the animals?” I asked. “Or he’s getting bitten, or scratched, or diseased… so he dies in a little while, of an infection he’s not taking care of because Pauz has sway over him. Pauz moves on, starting the cycle anew, a little stronger each time, a little more human, as he collects bits of his hosts. Fanning the flames, until the blaze you’re talking about finally takes.”
“I think so,” Rose said. “It’s what I imagine, when I picture the situation and the relationship between the imp and its current host. That thing doesn’t seem like it would take good care of someone it’s using, not if it’s not taking care of the animals. If we extrapolate… I don’t think it considers events beyond the present.”
“Which is why you’re offering the deal you are?”
“In part,” Rose said. “It might be easier to deal with the two of them than it is to deal with Conquest and Pauz separately.”
“Unless they get along,” I said.
“Let’s hope they don’t,” Rose told me. “Because this is the closest thing I can come up with to a backup plan.”
“Next to orchestrating a mutiny?” I asked.
“Next to a mutiny,” Rose said.
I trudged on in silence, resisting the urge to fidget and burn off more of that lingering adrenaline. I pulled my gloves off and wrung my hands, then cracked my knuckles.
“Heads up. I won’t be able to reply in a few seconds,” I said, “Approaching the subway, don’t want to be seen talking to myself.”
“If we got a phone,” Rose said. “You could hold it up to your ear.”
“Kid on the subway saw you,” I said. “I’m not sure people wouldn’t hear you, too.”
“There was one thing that bugged me, by the way,” Rose said.
“Hm?” I grunted. I was uncomfortably close to a bystander, a guy standing just inside the subway entrance to smoke. Which was illegal, but still.
“You ask me to trust you, cool. I’ve made that leap, knowing a hell of a lot less going in than you knew going into this. But I ask you to trust me, and you hesitate?”
I rounded the corner as I descended the stairs. There were people on the platform below, but not in earshot.
“Dealing with demons,” I said, “A little different.”
She didn’t reply. I supposed it was because the mirror pendant gave her a view of the people in front of me.
We need to find a way to pull all this together, I thought.
A growl behind me made me whirl around.
It was an older lady, carrying a small dog that wore a jacket. The dog snarled, as my eyes met his. Or hers.
“Shhh, honey,” the old woman said.
The dog yapped, lunging in an effort to get out of its owners arms. Never mind that it probably would have hung itself, the way the leash was coiled up.
“I’m so-” the woman said, stopping as the dog tried to lunge again. “Sorry!”
The yapping, growling and struggling grew more intense.
“He never does this!”
“It’s-” I started.