The Devil You Know

Prologue

She looked, at that moment, more lovely than he remembered, and it occurred to him that if her face should be the last sight his eyes beheld, then he would die a lucky man. Then dark spots swam in front of his eyes, eclipsing her beauty and underscoring the simple fact that, lucky or not, he was about to die.

His gaze swung back to the other face-the shadowed, barely glimpsed visage of his assailant-and he redoubled his efforts to break free. He clawed at the fingers which were clamped vise-like around his neck and which had already dammed the flow of life-sustaining blood to his brain. The fingers were thin, with gnarled knuckles like the branches of a willow tree, and gave no impression of inherent power, yet no amount of prying could loosen the killing grip. He changed tactics, directing his ever-waning strength into punches and kicks, but the dark garments of his assailant seemed to absorb the energy as if he were fighting his own shadow. Panic quickly gained a foothold and his actions, though already ineffectual, became increasingly frantic and all the more futile.

A final rational impulse prompted him to go limp, sagging in his captor’s grip as if unconsciousness or death had at last claimed him. But his bluff was as useless as his struggle; the fingers did not relax their grip, even for the measure of a heartbeat. The black spots grew together, completely occluding his vision, and the capitulation of his flesh was no longer an act. Even the noise of his struggle grew indistinct, lost behind a haze of white static that gradually resolved into a sound like the ringing of a….