The Oubliette by J C Stearns

Author:J C Stearns
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf, mobi
Published: 2019-10-18T08:43:50+00:00

8

Jaezubiel drifted from shadow to shadow. Perched atop a bronze image of a weeping saint, it stared down into the crowd of humans in the Colonnadium Mecenate. A few swayed unartfully to the pained string music. To the human senses it was no doubt sublime, but compositions of harmony and rhythm were anathema to creatures like it.

A blink, a heartbeat, and it was behind a corpulent man draped in pale furs. From his proximity to others, Jaezubiel guessed the other humans smelled nothing but the stocky man’s mild perfume. Crouched in the shadow, Jaezubiel could drink in more, much more. Beneath the rancid floral perfume, it could smell the musty shroud of ages, the reminder that this fur cloak had lain unused for many years. Beneath that, however, Jaezubiel could smell blood. It could taste the fat from the ursine creature’s blubber. It could smell the oily tang of the skinning knife that had harvested the pelt. Most importantly, it could feel the creature’s shock and pain as the spear had been plunged into its body, the prideful outrage that any puny prey animal had dared to sharpen a stick and come after him. Jaezubiel felt a shiver run down its spine as it felt the vengeful fury that had possessed the beast in the moment of its death, and there, just there, at the very edge of its senses, it could detect the tiniest hint of the hunter’s own heart, cold and prideful with the knowledge of what it had done.

Jaezubiel came back to its senses, crouching in the shadow of a credenza, and seethed to itself. The perfumed flesh offered no great arousal – the fur cloak smelled of great pain and pride, but the wearer was soft and simpering.

In the space of a glance, it was gone. Skulking behind a tapestry. Creeping beneath a table. Perched atop a ceiling support. On the field of battle it would stick to the deepest shadows, creeping slowly with its brethren, but here, far from the bright-eyed gaze of the terrified or the dull, alert stare of the jaded veteran, it could move with impunity. It might as well have been moving openly among them, as free as it was.

It didn’t have the psychic puissance of its more refined cousins, but the shadows revealed to Jaezubiel what its mind itself could not take. It could smell their fears, could feel their little discomforts, and could taste their unspoken malevolent urges.

It paused behind the old woman in silver. Here was a familiar scent. The nightfiend leaned in close, savouring the odour of hate, and shivered as the old woman stiffened. Not quite astute enough to sense its presence, but almost.

This was the smell from the ancient manor. The one with the decaying wards. Her children and lesser relations bore the ripe scent of blood and bruise; they were hands that were no strangers to blade and bludgeon. The matriarch was something altogether different: in her it sensed a mind full of barbed points and venomous edges.

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