~ 6 ~

Night, Yuk discovered, was its own special plane of Hell. The human siblings spent the better part of five hours (eight? Twelve?) doing absolutely nothing but sleeping. Toren, unsurprisingly, had opted to leave Yuk cooped in the cage the entire time.

As if Yuk could sleep in the cramped confines of the chicken basket. As if Yuk would need to sleep at all.

In the pitch black of the culvert hideaway, time defied measurement. In the Abyss, he’d never needed to track the days, years, or centuries. It simply did not matter. There, he was free to harry, immolate, or scamper about as he please.

Time was not the problem. It was the boredom.

Fortunately, necessity is the artificer of invention. Soon after the pair had gone to sleep, Yuk had discovered a loophole in Toren’s command. The boy had commanded the quasit remain in the cage, but he did not specify where the cage should remain. In Yuk’s demonic form, he found he could knock the basket onto its side so that his limbs fit through the ample gaps in the wicker bars. His leg had mostly regenerated, though he was still missing an entire foot, but he could make do. The tail was on its way.

He’d crawled forward a mere three steps, the cage jutting over him like some poorly balanced turtle’s shell, before the wicker had caught on the mat and tipped Yuk off balance.

He fell directly onto Toren’s calf. The boy had woken hissing meaningless, infantile threats before a clever grin flickered over his gaunt face.

That was how Yuk found himself just outside the lair’s curtain disguise with a job lowly demons had been used for since the beginning of time.

Sentry.

It was an improvement over the stifling air of the children’s cramped hideaway. He filled the time by scratching demonic runes into the basket floor with a claw. He’d hoped to make enough noise in the process to wake the siblings, but they slept soundly through the carving. Impotent curses eventually covered the basket’s every available surface.

“Leprosy and pox unto thee.”

“Stink of elf and stench of men, damn them all to realms of phlegm.”

“Despair all ye who read of these marks and suffer endless torment.” This last piece rhymed in the Demonic speech Yuk had written it in, of course, which Yuk had accomplished with some small measure of pride.

Stiff from hunching, Yuk shifted back to a bulltoad and waited yet longer. What few insects crawled past the dried-out culvert he caught with his long tongue, but the deliciously bitter flavors of the insects eventually faded from his mouth and still the children slept.

The Lina problem vexed Yuk. He had hoped they might dispatch of Toren together, if only Yuk could get time alone with her. Few mortals were not tempted by forbidden magic and arcane secrets. Power. He could give her the means with which to escape from her destitute life—-or at least convince her he could.

But she trusted Toren. Trusted him and, worse, considered him an ally and friend.

He shifted to his centipede form and tossed all thoughts of Lina aside. The transformation forced him to twist and spiral around the inside of the cage to fit, but at least now he could glean some information from the world above. His sensitive antennae quivered, listening to the minute disturbances quivering through the earth.

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Something approached the culvert’s mouth, slow and careful.

Yuk froze as the missing segments of his body throbbed in remembered pain. Imp-catcher. The creature had his scent, had followed him here, tracking him slowly but assuredly since he'd absconded with the gems. Hiding would be no use. Even invisible, it would see him.

No good hiding, then. Yuk shifted from centipede to quasit and screeched an alarm. The imp-catcher appeared at the mouth of the culvert. Its eyes flashed in alternating violet and green as light and magic both reflected back at the demon.

Everything happened in a second. The small cat dashed down the length of the dried-out gutter, uninhibited by the sewer’s low ceiling. Lina ripped the curtain open behind Yuk and screamed in panic. Yuk pressed himself against the cage’s siding, hand extending to blast the imp-catcher with a flash of fire.

The cat collided with the coop, knocking it on its side and throwing Yuk to the floor. Its feline claws reached through and sunk into the scaly flesh of Yuk’s thigh while the twin hooked tentacles on its shoulders snaked inside to pull Yuk into its gnashing fangs. Yuk bit one.

Something flashed across Yuk’s vision and hit the imp-catcher in its flank. The furred tentacle in Yuk’s mouth went limp as a worm and the cat yowled. It retracted its claws and rolled off the cage to swipe at Toren, who had rammed a crude knife deep into its ribs.

The cat was on its feet in an instant, hissing and swiping at the boy. One of the claws found the weak flesh of his wrist, and the boy gasped in pain.

Yuk lunged for the tentacles then tugged, hard. Instead of restraining the cat against the cage, however, Yuk was pulled—cage and all—on top of the cat. Yuk had the distinct impression of a rider on horseback, featuring nightmare reins and the worst saddle yet invented.

It was all Yuk could do to get his legs through the wicker bars of the cage and brace himself against the dirt floor as the imp-catcher tried to dislodge him. The cat was strong despite its size, so Yuk was more of a nuisance than a restraint.

A moment later, Toren's knife punched into the cat’s mouth, and Yuk tumbled, cage and all, from the cat’s shoulders as the creature collapsed.

The quasit laid where he fell, chest heaving. Toren, though, had become a flurry of activity, barking clipped orders at Lina and crawling frantically about the hideaway on hands and knees gathering what few items he’d hidden in the dirt.

“Why do we have to go?” Lina whined. She had not moved since she first saw the imp-catcher, sitting instead with the curtain half-draped across her shoulders.

“You think this thing didn’t tell its masters where we are before it attacked? If the elves catch us with a demon, they’ll do worse than send us to the algae farms.”

Yuk’s ears perked up as the pieces clicked into place. The elves needed a way to keep their human underlings from turning to magic in revolt, so they deployed imp-catchers to monitor the population. That was how that lowly human magnate had acquired one! He’d stolen it from the elves, somehow, and raised it as his own.

Unless there was a more likely explanation. One that involved the humans’ kingpin working directly with the elves for hi own small benefit, at the cost of his people’s livelihood.

The hierarchies of power always fell into the same ancient order. The universe despised Yuk and his ilk merely for throwing aside pretense.

Lina still had not moved. “But it’s dead! It can’t tell them where we are if it’s dead.”

The girl yelped, followed by a soft thud. Yuk rolled his head toward the sleeping nook to see Toren pinning Lina against a sloping wall.

“Imp-catchers,” he said slowly through clenched teeth, “are like our little demon friend here. They are intelligent. They are also telepathic. Do you know what that means?”

Lina shook her head.

“It means that they can talk to their masters with their thoughts. The elves are probably on their way to us right now, and we’re losing precious time because I’m the only one doing anything to get us out of here. Now move.”

Yuk might have told Toren the imp-catcher belonged to Dorst, that it had followed his scent here, and that it was unlikely the dolt had any mental bond with the cat. Yuk might have spared them the trouble of abandoning such a valuable shelter. Yuk might even have helped them evacuate.

In the end, Yuk decided he’d rather watch everything fall apart and see what crawled from the ashes.