[ reassure ] – for the sender’s muse to place their hand over the receiver’s in a moment of stress and squeeze reassuringly / reversed, for Fish @imprvdente
The candle that was lit by the crucifix shrugged and elongated its meager flame at the first breath of movement in the hallway. Hannibal had his cassock unbuttoned at the throat and half-slicked to his body, stepped out of the chamber, and closing the battered door behind him with such care that only the latch’s faint click registered. The breeze that swept through was damp with the strong scent of sweat and the iron details of blood. This particular case was a difficult one, and Hannibal was glad that Fish accompanied him after he had requested it. The village was small, just outside Italy, where farmers of grapevines spent their evenings pruning and talking to their harvest.
He had not worked with Fish before, not in so direct a manner, and he was uncertain whether her reticence in the car ride over had been merely professional or the more penetrating species of unease reserved for those who had heard of, if not yet witnessed, his methods. Few appreciated the necessity of a little cruelty, the way one must sometimes goad a demon into revealing its name by threatening the body, or the mind, it presumed to possess. It was a finer point of theology that most in the Association, certainly most in Rome, preferred not to discuss openly.
A harvest moon had slowly risen into the sky when they entered the house that harbored the unclean. The victim had shouted obscenities at both of them, vulgar and distasteful and entirely rude. The things it said about Fish, about the secret shame it claimed she carried, were especially savage. But Fish held up well. She had not recoiled, not even when the girl’s pupils dilated to the point of blackness and she spat out a language so old that even Hannibal, ever the linguist, found it hard to parse. He was certain he had caught a word resembling “scion,” but the rest was lost in the howls and the retching.
His voice felt hoarse from the constant yelling over the shrieks of the demon. He cleared it as he sat by her, focusing on the flickering flame before turning to her. A trickle of sweat dripped down his temple, his body temperature still heated from the stifling feeling of the room next to them.
He reached over and gripped her hand, squeezing it lightly as his head canted to examine her expression. “Are you alright?” It had been an alarming case; this demon held firm to not speaking its name. In the end, it finally relented, casting out the entity and calming the room with a tranquil sense of peace.
