Good. Prayers. This is excellent. Your faith is unblemished!
He sounded so cheerful at this that I didn’t want to point out that desperate prayers were hardly a measure of godliness.
I pushed him aside to look at the situation reasonably.
I had three problems now.
Night approaches.
Fine, I had four problems now.
First, I had a demon to deal with.
Second, I was bleeding badly from multiple lacerations and they needed to be cleaned and tended.
Third, my former paladin superior was now a paladin excisis and he was haunting me.
Rude.
I must prioritize.
I squatted down on my haunches in front of the dog.
“Perhaps we could make some sort of a deal,” I said coolly. “I have you by the neck, after all.”
“AND I HAVE YOU BY THE BALLS.” The demon laughed — or at least, I took that stone-crunching sound in my brain to be a laugh.
“How unfortunate for you, as you’ll find that means you have nothing at all,” I said acidly. “I could kill you right now, but I’m fond of the dog.”
Kill it! Kill it now!
“SILENCE, REVENANT! LEAVE ME WITH THE MORSEL.”
I paused. Was it possible that the demon could hear Sir Branson and Sir Branson could hear the demon? The only thing worse than two voices in my head was two arguing voices in my head.
“Wuff?” Brindle asked, tilting his head.
I find myself in an embarrassing position, Sir Branson said in a tone I had never heard when he was alive. It seems I can no longer possess my body, as it has expired.
“Indeed,” I agreed. “I bid you farewell as you enter the heavenlies. Go now, with my blessing and gratitude.”
Cough.
“Did you just say cough instead of coughing?”
Dogs, it would seem, don’t cough on command.
I blinked at Brindle. He blinked at me and then yawned one of those bone-cracking full-body doggy yawns. One of his eyes was still glowing red, but the other … the other shone with a heavenly light. And it was the watery blue of an eye I’d looked into every morning over breakfast for the past ten years.
“Blessed Saints.”
That curse was not ladylike at all. So, it was fortunate I was no lady.
You are a supplicant squire of the Paladins Rejected and, as such, it befits you to act in a way both godly and dignified. Sir Branson always sounded more formal when he was miffed. Additionally, you know I don’t like that curse. And I have asked you not to use it in my presence. Repeatedly.
I glanced at my dead paladin superior, who looked anything but dignified. It would be best not to speak of what happened to corpses upon the flight of the soul to glory. That he was a knight remained obvious in that armor. The holiness, however, had evaporated with his soul.
I turned my eyes to Brindle. A dog now possessed of three souls: his own, my dearly departed mentor’s, and a demon of questionable origin.
