Fuck. I have demons to expel and only minutes to do it in. Goddamnably wretched 9 to 5 servitude.

Bobby held out Kurlos's hand in his outstretched palm. The blood was cooling around all fingers but the mutilated hand still twitched and jerked. He hoped the blackhearted sonuvabitch was howling.

"Quickly, boy" Azaran commanded. "Give it to me before he uses it to find us!"

He awoke to find himself bound to a metal table. The room was stingingly cold and, like a child, a shiver attacked him in the frigid air. The cuffs at his wrists and forearms and the metal binding at his waist cut into him like a dull razor. His eyes blurred a little as they adjusted and it took him a minute to gain some idea of where he was.

The light from the ceiling was pure, sanitized, white, and seemed to make the air even colder on the skin. The hum of them above him barely broke the steely silence of the room. He squinted and tried to raise his head up but found his throat and forehead strapped to the table as well. Where the fuck was he? He tried to lick his parched lips but found his mouth stretched out in some kind of dental mouth-vise. Oh Christ, he thought. Jesus fucking Christ. Where the fuck had they taken him?

Voices began to murmur just barely out of earshot.





He felt the light of all that he knew dim and fade away, the blade scooping into the back of his eyes, the soft dams of liquid broken loose, one by one. His raucous screams his only companions in the dark.