The Devil in the Black Suit

Deal with the Devil

Chapter Ten

Deal with the Devil

Maleka slams the door open with one shoulder, knife catching her wing as she tears through the house. Black tufts cloud the entrance and obscure my view of the feather on the door. It’s mine, I know it. Bale plucked it from my back the night we tussled. That gold vein is the pointer; it’s a trait unique to my family, passed on from angel to fledgling since my great-great-grandfather Mikhail’s time.

Face wild, eyes bulging, Maleka rips through the house. At first, I think she’s looking for Bale, though I doubt he would linger after going through the trouble of posting my feather up on the door. But then I hear her screeching, so loudly that the words are barely audible, for Naya.

I don’t care much for the hellhound, but even my heart’s racing for her. What if Bale attacked Naya? What if he -- dare I even think it? -- killed the creature? Beating my wings so hard that the roots ache, I barrel off in the opposite direction of Maleka, searching for the beast myself.

Maleka and James’s bedroom, the spare room Ymae slept in the night before, the sprawling bathroom where James drenched my wings. Each of these rooms is a blur. A Naya-less blur. My voice joins Maleka’s in a chorus of frantic shouts. Naya. Naya. Naya!

Some sound like rumbling erupts from somewhere beneath me. I shoot down to the first floor but still can’t place the noise, though it only gets louder. It’s a deep grumbling, like something from the bowels of a monster. Panic’s claws grab at my guts as the grumbles turn to moans, and I’m sure that Bale has planted some sort of nightmare creature in the house to finish the three of us off. I try to summon more energy from my halo to fend off the impending danger, but find myself hopelessly dry of power.

I see Maleka and James, arms around each other’s waists, peering down into basement stairs that I had never noticed before. Another gravelly moan. The basement -- that’s where the noise is coming from!

I’m about ready to fight, but then I notice the smiles on the devils’ faces. In fact, they’re laughing. Slinking behind them, I catch a glimpse of the monster in the basement. It’s Naya, wholly unharmed, rubbing her back on top of a ratty grey mattress, legs kicking upward, pawing the air.

“Is she okay?” I whisper.

Maleka laughs, a relieved sound that comes out like wheezing. “She’s fine, thank the Creator,” she says. “This is how she shows us that she’s happy.”

“But those noises --”

“We call them her monster noises,” James says. “Think of it as Naya’s version of a contented sigh.”

Naya rights herself, sneezes into the mattress springs, and charges up the stairs toward us. Her tail wags so hard that her entire backside swings side to side, making her walk seem more like a funny waddle. Ears pinned back, she nuzzles her cheek into Maleka’s legs. Then she moves to James, stretching her fist-sized paws against his thighs.

Lastly, Naya comes over to me. She rears up and I brace myself to be pounced on. Hellhounds can sense fear, they say, and though I’m not nearly as fearful of her as I was earlier this morning, I’m still not entirely comfortable around the creature. But instead of jumping on top of me, she sits at my feet. Her thick whip of a tail scrubs against the hardwood, back and forth. I don’t know what she wants from me.

“She wants you to pet her,” Maleka says, reading my mind. Her voice is harsh as usual, but the way she looks at her hellhound softens up her rough edges.

Maybe Naya wants me to pet her, but I’m not sure if I feel comfortable touching the beast. Every time I look at that face -- those wide amber eyes, the whiskers that dangle like wire from her jowls -- I think of the warning tales my mother told me as a child. How, in the backtimes, when angels and demons were still deep in warfare, hellhounds were released in the cities of Heaven to devour our kind.