Nightside 07 - Hell to Pay

family’s blood. She was still wearing the tattered remains of her black-and-white novice’s habit, though the wimple had been torn away. Someone had beaten the crap out of her, probably just because they could. Blood had dried on her bruised and swollen face, but there was still a calm, stubborn grace in her eyes when she looked at me.
    I nodded and smiled reassuringly, as much for me as for her. My first thought was how much she looked like Paul as Polly, but there was an inner light and peace in Melissa that Paul had never found. I walked carefully forward and knelt before Melissa, careful not to touch any of the lines of the pentacle.
    “Hello, Melissa. I’m John Taylor. I’ve been looking for you. It’s good to meet you at last. Don’t worry. I’ll get you out of here.”
    “And my family?” said Melissa.
    “I’ll do what I can,” I said. “It might be too late for some of them, but I specialise in lost causes.”
    “Of course you do, Mr. Taylor,” said a calm, hateful, familiar voice. “After all, you’re the greatest lost cause of all.”
    I looked around and there he was, leaning against the far wall with his arms casually folded across his chest, smiling like he had all the answers and several aces tucked up his sleeve. The man behind it all, right from the beginning. The man I’d Seen slaughter all those nuns in the chapel.
    The butler, Hobbes.
    I rose slowly to my feet and turned to look at him. “I knew there was something wrong about you from the start, but I just couldn’t bring myself to believe the butler did it.”
    “Welcome to the real heart and soul of Griffin Hall, Mr. Taylor. So glad you could attend. The floor show will begin soon.”
    “The devil you say.” I started towards him, but stopped as he pushed himself away from the wall. Without actually doing anything, he was suddenly very dangerous and not at all human. I adopted a casual stance and gave him my best sneer. “I should have known it was you the moment I heard your name. Hob is an old name for the Devil. Your name isn’t Hobbes, it’s Hob’s—belonging to the Devil.”
    “Exactly,” said Hobbes. “It’s amazing how many people miss the most obvious things even when you thrust them right under their stupid mortal noses.”
    “Enough,” I said. “We’re well past the time for civilised conversation. Show me your real face. Show me what you really are.”
    He laughed at me. “Your limited human mind couldn’t cope with all the awful things I am. Just one glimpse of my true nature would blow your little mind apart. But there is a shape I like to use, when I am summoned to this dreary mortal plane…”
    He stretched and twisted in a way that had nothing to do with the geometries of the material world, and in a moment Hobbes was gone and something else was standing in his place. Something that had never been, never could be, merely human. It was huge, almost twelve feet tall, bent over to fit into the stone-walled cellar, its horned head scraping against the ceiling. It had blood-red skin covered in seeping plague sores and great membranous batwings that stretched around it like a ribbed crimson cloak. It had cloven hoofs and clawed hands. It was hermaphrodite, with grossly swollen male and female parts. It stank of sulphur and suffering. And its face…I had to look away for a moment. Its face was full of all the evil and pain and horror in the world.
    The Griffin family all cried out at the first sight of the demon in its true form, and I think I did, too.
    “A bit medieval, I know,” said Hobbes, in a soft, purring voice like spoiled meat and babies crying and the growl of a hungry wolf. “But I always was a traditionalist. If a thing works, stick with it, that’s what I say.”
    “Fight him, Taylor!” said Jeremiah Griffin. And even crucified to a wall in his own cellar, some of the Griffin’s strength and arrogance still came through. “Stop him before he destroys us all!”
    Hobbes looked at me interestedly, a long red hairless tail slithering round its hoofs. I stood very still. I was thinking hard. I didn’t dare rush into anything. In this place we were all in danger, not just of our lives, but of our souls as well. This wasn’t one of the minor demons, like those I’d bluffed successfully in the past—this was the real deal. A Duke of Hell, and Hell was very near now, getting closer by the moment. I had to find a way out of this mess and be long gone before the Devil arrived to