Page 33 of Run Like the Devil

The idea of some creature in the fog was by far the least shocking or outrageous thing that had happened thus far. I mean, we’d walked up some weird winding route carved into the mountains of hell, then found a Path that would disappear if a person left it, and, oh yeah, I was doing this all with two demons, an angel and some weird tree-being who existed from an old version of the universe.

The idea that the fog might hide some creature was a far more normal thing than anything else that had happened so far.

“Do you think he’s right?” I asked.

Yazmor turned his gaze out to the darkness, to the fog that shifted like ocean waves. He stared as if he could see into it, and I’d learned to put nothing past him. “I know he’s right.”

“How?”

“I can sense it. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It’s watching us, like it’s trying to figure us out.”

“What is it?”

“No idea. I can tell you it isn’t something I’ve run across before. It’s not from Earth or the Chasm or the Plains. It’s bound to this place.”

“Can we talk to it?”

“I don’t think so. It’s like it isn’t quite real, or maybe it’s better to explain that it isn’t quite sentient. It isn’t stupid, it isn’t an animal, it seems to be able to think and reason, but it isn’t a full being, either. It’s almost like an echo, a program running directions it’s had for a long time, something driven by the will of someone else.”

I blew out a breath, putting my hands up to the fire to warm my palms. “So it’s like a guard dog Hubis put here?”

“That’s probably the best way to explain it, but I don’t think Hubis made it, at least not on purpose. This place…I think it was made to protect the Plains, but I don’t think Hubis made it consciously. I think he tried to sever the Plains from Earth and the Chasm, but nothing in this universe can exist in a void. It will always be connected to the space around it. The Path was shaped by that desire, and the thing here was the same.”

“Great, so we should expect to get stalked by some weird manifestation of God’s paranoia. Just when I didn’t think this could get any worse.”

Yazmor turned to look at me, the violet of his eyes reminding me of the creature I’d seen in the Lost Caves, the glimpse of what Yazmor really was.

“Why did you keep your eyes like that?” I asked, regretting the question the moment it left me. I quickly tried to fix the mistake. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have, or like there’s anything wrong with them. In fact, I really like them. They’re different and unique and they fit you. It’s just, you changed the rest of how you looked to fit in, but no one has eyes like those.” I paused and pulled in a shaky breath when I realized I’d entirely forgotten to breathe during my tirade. After that, I leveled a glare at him. “You could have stopped me from just rambling, you know?”

Yazmor laughed softly and shrugged. “I like when you ramble. I follow along with it pretty easily. Maybe my crazy plays well with yours. And I’m not insulted by your question—it’s a pretty good one. I’ve always kept these eyes. I usually take on the form of the dominant type of life for each cycle, but somehow, changing my eyes felt like losing myself. If I look in a mirror, I want to see me still, and the eyes do that.”

“You said you usually take on the dominant type of life, so that means not always?”

“That’s right. Some cycles are boring, and who wouldn’t want to pass time as an iguana or a dodo?”

“I guess I should count myself lucky you decided to go human this time. Though, I think you’d have done well as a cat.”

“Just a cat? I think I’m more of a tiger.”

I shook my head. “Nope—you’re a house cat. Lazy, impossible to predict, doesn’t give a fuck what others want or expect from you.”

“I guess I can’t argue with that. In fact, if it wasn’t so hard to change my form, I’d think about trying that out now. I’d get to just laze about in your room, getting head rubs whenever I want, knocking things off shelves. Sounds like a pretty good life now that you mention it…”

I elbowed him in the side. “Don’t you get any ideas about that. I like you in this form, thank you very much.”

“Fine, fine. Can I still laze about in your room and get head pats?” Yazmor twisted until his head rested in my lap and he was stretched out by the fire, the book still in his hands.

It made him look so young and innocent. He wasn’t, not by a long shot, but knowing that didn’t stop me from smiling and running my fingers through his slightly messy violet hair. When he did things like this, I could almost forget everything I knew about him and pretend we were both just young, dumb kids falling in love for the first time.

What would that have been like for us? Would I have blushed at his clumsy attempts to seduce me? Would he have been eager as he hid his nerves with unearned arrogance?

As quickly as I wondered, I had to laugh. That wasn’t a far cry from how we were, was it?

“Well, if we can’t sleep, why don’t I keep reading this?” He didn’t wait for me to answer before he held the book up to see the words and started to read it out loud to me.

His voice remained soft, probably so he didn’t bother the others who still slept.

At least, I thought they did. It was likely that they’d woken when I’d stood—I doubted they’d have slept through that—but they’d probably just pretended to be asleep again until I settled in.

---