Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel by Liz Williams

Author:Liz Williams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Police Procedural, Singapore, Mystery & Detective, Contemporary, Fiction, Fantasy, Chen, Occult fiction, Soul, General, Detective Inspector (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9781597801072
Publisher: Night Shade Books
Published: 2008-01-15T10:00:00+00:00

Thirty-Three

Inari sat bolt upright, shaking. She took a deep breath, inhaling the once familiar scent of Hell: old incense, and hatred, and blood, overlaid with the more fragrant odors of tea and the perfume of the night-lilies, which drifted in from the garden. She had been dreaming a dream in which Dao Yi had snatched her back to the underworld, and was mauling her with putrefying hands . . .It was a moment before she realized that this was memory, not dream; another moment still before the knowledge dawned upon her that it was not this recollection that had awakened her. There was something in the room.

Zhu Irzh, she thought. Carefully and quietly, she lay back down on the bed. Her hands, resting gently on the covers, flexed their long talons and she could feel the prickle of her incisors as they lengthened. Here in Hell, her own world, she was becoming more demonic by the minute, and she did not like it. She did not want to be this fierce, fearful thing longing for the taste of blood in her mouth, yet repulsed by her own nature and those around her. She wanted to be back on the houseboat, pottering about with the cooking, and the badger weaving in and out between her feet. Sunlight and salt, and fresh clear air. . .remember who you have become, not who you once were. . . But now she had to remember both. She could hear footsteps moving stealthily about the room. She turned over, sighing as she did so in the pretence of deep sleep, then rolled silently onto her back once more. There was a heavy rustle of silk as the curtains were pulled aside. Inari stirred, murmured, peered through half-closed eyes.

A little pair of hands protruded through the curtain. They were delicate hands, with long golden talons shaped into fashionable spirals, and even in the darkness Inari's night-eyes could see that the hands were as red as blood. Long fingers rippled and flexed in obscene anticipation and then, as if by magic, a length of black silk was conjured from the depths of a sleeve. The owner of the hands gave a small, breathy gasp, almost a giggle, and reached out with the garrote. Inari struck: rearing up from the bed and lashing out with a taloned hand. Silk curtains tore and something fell wetly to the bed: a long strip of decaying flesh attached to something bony, which sizzled into ash as soon as it touched the covers. Freeing herself from the bedclothes, Inari sprang to the floor. The figure wore an ornate ceremonial robe. Long hair cascaded down its back. Its eyes were huge and dark above the ruin of its jaw, and now Inari could see what it was that she had torn away: a strip of the creature's face and rotting jawbone. The creature's tongue lolled loosely from the back of its throat and it reached up a red hand and stuffed the tongue awkwardly back in.

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