Page 13 of The Dame & the Devil

But I can’t be certain he would meet the punishment he deserves.

The scales can be influenced. And I of all people know that the rules of both God and the Devil can be worked around.

“I want him to suffer while living. Like I said, your ways aren’t effective enough for my tastes.”

His breath is a hot chuckle against my neck. “Blood thirsty, are we? Then by all means, give him a punishment you feel worthy of his deeds.”

“Do you want to know what he did?”

“I don’t care.” He draws his hand down my spine in a caress that’s almost gentle. “He’s your sinner, not mine.”

The man’s eyes go wide as I take the knife

His various unpunished crimes flash through my mind. Blessed with charisma and good looks, he’s managed to get away with so much…. The impulse to drive the knife through his eye and be done with it is strong.

But self-control has always been my biggest strength.

I look to the pit without the safety of its obsidian floor.

“The dead can handle you.”

I take a step forward. He takes a step back stumbling as his foot slips off the stair.

With a snap the Devil binds him with some invisible cord and he stands rigid, frozen, teetering on that edge.

I stop on the step above him. “The damned will know you for what you are…. And they will punish you as you deserve.”

Tearing open his shirt, I meet his eyes and am glad to see his horror.

“You’ll wish you were one of them, soon enough.”

I dig the blade into the skin at the top of his sternum and his lips tear against the stitching.

What little pleasure I gain from hurting him as I drag that cut open down his chest is muted by the knowledge it isn’t enough. It won't ever be enough.

The seam in his chest is deep enough to split the skin without spilling his insides.

He watches me with wide eyes, and I know he’s struggling even though he can’t move.

I trace the dagger horizontally over his stomach and then toss it away.

The lines I’ve cut into him are more catharsis than anything else. But like blood in the water, it will mark him out among the damned. The dead will tear at him for as long as he’s lost among them.

Breathing heavily, he glares up at me and I imagine he thinks I’m done….

“You won’t know a moment’s peace, so long as I can help it.”

I kick him, squarely in the centre of that upside down cross I’ve just carved in his torso and the Devil’s spell lets him go.

He flies backward, tumbling down the last of the steps and disappears into the pit. A burst of flame envelopes him as shrieks burst from the depths.

Silence envelopes the room, and then…

I cry out, grabbing hold of my leg as searing pain almost makes me double over.

The sinner’s name is burned into my skin as though I’ve been branded. An ugly red scar where the black has burned away.

Good deeds, evilly done, always have their consequences.

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