Jenna Black - The Devil You Know

My parents stood in the far corner of the room, holding each other’s hands. My father looked grim. My mother looked…guilty. I hadn’t known what to make of the expression on her face back then, but as I watched my own memory from a curiously removed distance, I knew exactly what I was seeing.

Dr. Neely told me I was very sick and that if I didn’t get the proper treatment, I would die. He injected something into the IV tube that dripped into my vein, and my vision went fuzzy around the edges. I heard my mom telling me not to be scared, that everything was going to be all right.

The next thing I knew, I wasn’t in my room anymore. The new room was cold and sterile, with hospital-white walls and lots of stainless steel. I think it was an operating room. I was strapped to the table, restraints holding me so tightly I could barely move. I tried to struggle against them, but I was still too drugged up to make a credible effort.

Two men stood by the table. One of them was Dr. Neely. One of them was Bradley Cooper. They were both wearing surgical masks, and I might not have recognized Cooper from just his eyes if he hadn’t spoken.

“Morgan,” he said, hovering over me. “I’d like you to repeat these words after me.” He said something that sounded like nonsense syllables to me at the time. I think it was Latin, though I couldn’t remember the sounds well enough to be sure.

I didn’t know what he was asking me to say, or why. But I was a rebel even then, and I wasn’t about to just do what I was told.

“Why?” I gasped, my mouth dry and bitter-tasting.

“Just repeat them,” Cooper ordered, then said the words again.

“No,” I said, when he was finished. I clamped my jaw shut and looked beseechingly at Dr. Neely. “What’s going on? Why am I tied up?”

“They’re just words,” he said soothingly. “It can’t hurt you to repeat them.”

I was only thirteen years old, but I was no dummy. Even with unknown drugs fogging my brain, I knew this wasn’t anything like a normal treatment for a sick patient. I wasn’t about to do what they demanded, even as those demands grew more strident. By now, I was beginning to suspect I knew what the words were. I’d never witnessed a possession ceremony—only the inner circle of the Spirit Society ever did—but I knew it had something to do with repeating a ritual incantation.

I started to spiral down into the memory, feeling the terror that had filled me when I realized what they were trying to do, but something—Lugh, probably—pulled me back and kept me on the surface, watching without feeling. I remembered that when I’d stubbornly refused to repeat the incantation, they’d tried electric shock therapy. I’d borne it as long as I could, but I was a thirteen-year-old girl. Tough as I was, even back then, I wasn’t tough enough to withstand torture. Sobbing in pain and defeat, I’d repeated the words they’d given me three times in a row, as required for the ritual. And nothing had happened.

They made me try again. And again. And again. Still, it didn’t work.

They’d sent me back to my room, and more time passed in a drugged haze. My mind cleared again when I was once more in that sterile operating room. Cooper and Neely were there, along with an unidentified third man.

Once more, I was thoroughly restrained. When the third man reached out and grabbed my wrist with his bare hand, there was nothing I could do to avoid the grip. He just stood there beside me, holding my wrist and glaring at me.

And then I felt it. A tingling sensation where his hand gripped me. Tingling that turned to burning. Burning that turned to agony. I screamed, but he didn’t let go, and the pain kept getting worse. Even worse than the pain was the awful, creeping, slimy sensation that accompanied it. It wasn’t a physical sensation, but it was just as visceral. It was as if something dirty—no, filthy—was sinking into my skin, penetrating my flesh and oozing into my bloodstream.

I screamed until I had no voice left, as that creeping crud crawled through my system, thick and unclean and smothering. It surrounded me, clinging to my skin like liquid cobwebs, then trying to force its way inside me. It slithered into my mouth, choking me. It oozed into my ears, deafening me to my own screams. It penetrated other places, too, but my mind jerked away when that memory tried to surface.

The demon tried every trick he could imagine to break through my defenses, to find a crack in my armor. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get a firm hold, and he finally had to give up.

I was gasping for breath, my heart banging against my breastbone as if it were trying to escape my chest. I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t turn my head far enough and I was afraid these bastards would let me choke on it. I swallowed convulsively to keep my gorge down.

The demon who’d tried to possess me shook his head and turned to Cooper. “I can’t do it,” he admitted. “But maybe a royal could. We should have Raphael try.”

“I don’t think Raphael wants to be a thirteen-year-old girl,” Cooper responded.

The demon shrugged. “He doesn’t have to stay in her. Just find out if he can get in.”

But Cooper shook his head. “She doesn’t have enough of her father’s advantages to make it worthwhile if only a royal can take her. I’m afraid this strain is a dead end.”

I lay on the table, shivering and sweating, fighting the nausea, barely conscious. Feeling like I would never be clean again in a million years.

The demon turned to me with an unpleasant smile. “What a shame,” he said. Then he reached out and pinched my nose with one hand while covering my mouth with the other.

“Don’t,” Cooper said calmly as panic seized me and I struggled with what little strength I had left.

“Why not?” the demon asked, showing no sign that the idea of suffocating a child to death was in any way bothersome. “We can’t afford to have her spreading stories.”

I was already seeing spots in front of my eyes.

“She won’t,” Dr. Neely said. “With all these drugs, she’s unlikely to remember anything. And even if she remembers, we can say they were nightmares. It’s not like anyone can prove anything.”

“I’d rather not take chances,” the demon said.

Darkness crept in at the edges of my vision.

“Killing her is taking a huge risk,” Cooper argued. “I promised her parents she wouldn’t be hurt. If she dies, they could raise a stink. And they know enough to make a hell of a lot of trouble.”

The demon looked indecisive.

“Why don’t we ask Raphael what he wants us to do with her?” Cooper suggested. “If he wants her dead, we can still take care of it later.”

With a sigh of what sounded like disappointment, the demon released my nose and mouth. I sucked in several glorious gasps of air before I passed out.

I came back to myself still in Lugh’s living room, the afghan tucked comfortably under my chin as the fire did its best to dispel the lingering chill. I shivered and clutched the blanket around me, wondering if I would ever get warm again.

Anger usually warms me up great, so I tried to summon a healthy dose of indignation to throw at Lugh. I didn’t know exactly what he’d done to me to break the walls around those memories, but it had been a dirty trick. I turned to look at him, ready to let loose with some choice words, but none would come to me. My skin still crawled with the remembered sensation of the demon trying to get inside me, and I shuddered. No wonder demonic possession had been my worst nightmare after that little episode! And how ironic to discover I apparently owed my life to Raphael’s mercy. If you’d have asked me before, I’d have sworn he wouldn’t hesitate to kill someone so potentially dangerous, even if I was only a child. And if my parents made trouble, he could have killed them, too.