Checkmate

The sigh that left her lips was… disappointed. Placing her Queen at a1 beside her King at b1, she saw the rest of the game unfolding in a way she couldn’t have imagined in the beginning. She’d thought being commanded to play white had been pity on his part, and a tactical advantage she couldn’t afford to give up, which was why she had borne the humiliation of his order with grace. Watching him sit there and observe the board with a deep furrow over his brow, she was beginning to think she should have countered his offer by suggesting he take every advantage he could get.

“We have about ten more rounds, and then this game will be over.” She told him, plopping her elbow on the table and resting her head in her hand. A pair of ambered eyes, smoldering with an ever-changing orange light like twin glowing embers, leveled a stare at her that translated displeasure and disgust more adequately than any mortal being ever could. If his thin lips had twisted into a sneer, it would have cheapened the depths of his ire and loathing, and she was glad when he didn’t try it.

Before them, the board was set thus:

White – Queen at a1, King b1, a pair of Pawns at f and g3 respectively, a third pawn unmoved at h2, Bishop h3 and rook b7.

Black – Queen c4, King at c3, Pawns at b5, g6, and a pair at f and h7, and his Rooks at d and h 8.

Tava had lost five pawns, a bishop, a rook, and both her knights to earn both of his bishops, and his knights, along with four of his pawns. The board could arguably still be taken by either side, but she knew him now. He’d played his hand too openly, exposed his tactics and his way of approaching pressure, and now she could predict exactly what he would and wouldn’t do when she pushed him. Early defensive play had proven regrettable on her part. Becoming aggressive, and recklessly so, had proven much more fruitful.

“For a human you are rather careless with human lives, aren’t you?” He asked in a tone colored as much with bitter resentment as amused admiration. “Seventeen souls lost, and eight of those at your own hand. You’ve condemned one more than I, did you realize?”

Soft eyes as pale as snow clouds lifted from the gameboard to look at him with the same dispassion that carried in Tava’s voice. “I had noticed, yes. The clock is ticking.”

“Let it tick,” he growled at her, raising his voice to a shout and leaning forward in his seat to make Tava sit up and lean back into her own. “And stay off the table. I find your lack of dignity distasteful. Treat the game with some respect.”

“Certainly, my Lord,” the words came to her lips so easily that Tava felt a little surprised for it. She had vehemently refused to call him anything other than ‘demon,’ ‘monster,’ or ‘foul beast,’ at the start of it all! And all his roaring and punishments when she failed to address him as he demanded hadn’t managed to move her. To have her will vanish and her lips loosen because she was winning… It was her pride getting the better of her, she told herself. She was taunting him, not giving into him.

He, however, didn’t seem to notice at all. He smiled, the expression derisive and fanged, and a rolling chuckle shook his shoulders. “That’s a bit better. Forgot the precariousness of the situation, did you?”

“Not at all,” came an answer so smooth and relaxed that it melted the devil’s smile right off his lips. “I’m just confident that I know the outcome.”

“Oh,” he moved King to d2 and tapped the timer. “You feel your victory is assured now?”

“Not yet,” Tava shifted Queen to b2 to hurry his King further and tapped the timer right back to him. “Almost, though.”

That frown was back, a deep furrow over his brow that crinkled his eyebrows nearly into one. It made the left corner of her lips twitch, but she wouldn’t dare risking that smirk curling into condemning existence. It stayed locked away behind a carefully constructed, calm dispassion while he began to smile again and, as predicted, moved his King to d1. Judging by his smile, he saw his victory. It was there, within his reach, so long as she continued to rush aggressively forward.

“And what do you need to secure your victory?” He asked her with a new calm settling over him. He looked and sounded so pleased and satisfied that Tava imagined the pleasure she would feel in leaning across the table and smacking that smile from his lips could actually be worthy of the punishment it would invite. Returning her gaze to the game board, she reminded herself that more lives than her own still hung in the balance. She knew what she needed to do, but sat chewing at her bottom lip as she studied each piece carefully.

Each one was a life, a soul that had signed themselves over to their fate long before Tava had found herself sitting across a small table from a devil with a debt he’d decided belonged to her upon the untimely event of her mother’s death. It was a unique way for an orphan to learn that, not only had her mother actually lived through childbirth and abandoned her at the hospital, but that she’d been a pact-true witch with some demon spawn.

From what little he’d divulged, Tava had learned her mother had tried to rob the wrong woman’s baby from its crib. And that unnaturally long life wasn’t protection against five 9mm rounds to the chest. Overkill, perhaps, but the woman had saved her child. Tava couldn’t find it in her heart to fault her. Not even in that it could stand to cost her own soul in the process. Debts, apparently even in hell, did not end with death, but rolled over to sit on the shoulders of whatever living relative could be found.

“The clock is ticking, my dear.” He was practically purring with delight; certain he’d won the bargain and deepened her debt considerably in the process. “Are you ready to admit defeat, or do you want to play this thing out to the bitter end?”

Tava leaned over the board and hovered her fingers over the fragile-looking white Queen, but did not touch it. That rolling chuckle came again and she held her breath. There was still the chance her gamble wouldn’t work, but if she pressed the Queen’s advance early, it was almost certain he'd take the game. Quick and decisive, her hand moved. Bishop to f1. His black Queen had been sitting in a trap. If he’d known it, he hadn’t tried to prevent it, and now she was snared in place with a cold dagger at her neck. She could run, but retreat was defeat to the demon, he couldn’t allow it. Instead, he leaned forward and quickly struck his Queen’s Rook from d8 to d2 to stand in her defense.

The unexpected attack had taken him aback and he’d moved too soon. Tava smiled, pleased, and a very animal sound of fury rumbled on the air around her. “What are you playing at?” came the cold demand.

“At chess,” she replied, shifting her own Queen’s Rook to d7. It was far from the first sacrifice she had made, but she knew he’d devour it to remove that future threat from the board. And in the process, leave his King vulnerable. Looking up again, Tava smiled at the devil. “I need only four more turns, my Lord.”

“Is that so?” He slid his Queen’s Rook from d2 to d7, capturing her own Rook and striking it from the board. There was a shiver on the air as he took the piece, some phantom howl of a soul in torment shimmering around his hand like heat, and a familiar pain slicing into her own palm that made Tava gasp. “That’s ten souls you sacrificed with your own hand, not counting the one’s you’ve taken” he remarked with derision. “I’ve never seen a mortal with such a lack of interest in the lives of others without a soul as black and twisted as hell itself.”

“Is my soul not black?” Tava asked, the curious question off her lips before she could contain it. It was a strange thing to learn, for as heartless and humorless as the world accused her of being. Godless, they called her. Warped, foul, an abomination before God to be born as she’d been born, to live as she lived, to think as she thought, and to love as she loved. And yet, the devil seemed to suggest otherwise. Maybe she wasn’t what people thought, or perhaps God was not so cruel as they’d made her believe. “With eighteen souls lost to hell because of my actions, I’d imagine it has been well tarnished by now. If it was ever true that anything I did could have saved them.”

As she spoke, he watched her condemn yet another lost soul to hell by sliding her Bishop from f1 to c4 and removing his Queen from the board. While the sound her Rook had made had merely seemed a distant echo, when she took the black Queen from the gameboard, she heard that shrieking agony inside her head as if it was her own soul breaking from the incomprehensible agony it suffered. A torment so great that begging to the heavens for help was too complex a thing to consider. There was only suffering and screaming, and nothing else.

The taking of the chess piece added another scorch mark to the palm of her hand, another thin line cut by a red-hot blade she couldn’t see, but felt as she set the piece down next to the others. Tava looked up, and the demon sneered at her, ruining the effect of the malice he projected through his glowing gaze. He didn’t taunt her, or answer the insinuation that he had been lying from the very start. Instead, he watched the sweat that beaded on her brow run down and around her eye, and moved his Pawn at b5 to take her Bishop and remove that future risk to his King.

She imagined, in that moment, that the gloating way he tapped the timer was proof he thought the loss of her Rook and Bishop were worth the loss of his Queen. After all, he still had two Rooks to his name. And he was still underestimating her resolve to win. Tava was curious, more so by the second, and she watched with no small amount of amusement as the devil’s face shifted from vengeful delight to shocked outrage as she left her King vulnerable to snatch his King’s Rook from him. The move: white Queen from b2 to h8. “Two more moves, my Lord.”

He clenched his jaw so hard his cheeks flexed. A clawed hand lashed out. Tava drove back into her chair so hard it nearly tipped over. A claw struck a mark across her cheek and snatched at her hair, tearing a small chunk out of her scalp to leave a handful of raven-black strands in his grip. The devil sat back and cast her stolen hair to the floor with a pained and angry hiss. A similar mark appeared on his cheek and a lock of his own hair shed from his scalp. He’d broken his promise, and he’d paid for it. An eye for an eye.

Tava collected the mortal terror that was shaking her down to the bones and desperately made herself breathe. Just a little further, and the game was hers. She couldn’t afford to let fear make her stupid this close to the end. When she trusted her voice to be comfortably neutral, she risked reminding him, “It is your turn.”

He looked at her, but he didn’t speak. Instead, he examined the board with a new found intensity. Her Queen was safe behind his Pawns and out of reach of his Queen’s Rook. His best play was the protection of his King. Rook from d7 to d3, a guard safe from her Queen, which she leaned forward to slide from h7 to h1 without bothering to so much as look at him. Tava felt the weight of his fiery gaze boring into her and she wondered if he saw it? The end was near. One more move.

He must have guessed her goal to be his King’s Rook and moved his Pawn c4 to c3 to defend it, but Tava slid her Queen from a8 to a4. “Check,” she whispered, barely daring to believe it was real. It was done. He didn’t see it yet, but the game was over.

With a snarl, he shifted his King out of the line of fire, one over, d1 to e1. “Not yet, girl.”

Smiling, Tava moved Pawn, f3 to f4 to redirect his attention. His response was quick and aggressive, Pawn f7 to f5. The pieces were moving quickly. White King b1 to c1. Both of them were bent over the table, their gazes locked on the board and its pieces. King’s Rook d3 to d2. Each was entirely engaged in that final, desperate clash to determine who would truly be the victor. Queen a4 to a7.

There was a long silence filled only with Tava’s heavy breathing. She was panting as if she’d been running. Her heart was pounding and the thrill of adrenaline had turned her blood hot in her veins. Had she really been so arrogant as to have thought she was disappointed when she’d realized she was going to win? How foolish that had been, to think there would be no thrill in besting a demon at his own game! She didn’t look up. Not at first. Not until a rolling chuckle, and then booming, full laughter shook the very air around her.

“Years,” he proclaimed in a shout. “No. Centuries!” He laughed more, and then reached beneath the table to fling it, with the board and all its pieces sent flying, onto its side. The marble and quartz chess set hit the floor with a resounding clatter and sounds of shattering, skittering pieces. But Tava hadn’t the time to worry about anything other than the thick, powerful hand that closed around her throat and yanked her up from her chair and onto her toes. She dangled there with no other option but to cling to the devil’s wrist and stare into the burning eyes that bore into her own. “I have not lost a bet in centuries,” he hissed, a twisted pleasure coloring his ire. For a moment, Tava thought she might die after all… and then he let her go, and she choked air back into her lungs.

He turned on a heel and began to walk away from her, and Tava staggered behind him, gasping.

“Wait! Our agreement?”

He stopped and looked at her again. “Your debts are forgiven. You won; you owe me nothing.”

He began to leave again, and Tava took a deep breath to bolster herself. “And the rest of it?”

“What ‘rest of it’?” He asked, turning to look at her again. “We’re done here.”

“You agreed to forgive my debt, and any debt I accrued during the game.” Tava held up her hand, displaying the twenty-one tally marks that were burned forever into her palm. “Twenty-one out of thirty-two isn’t quite as many as I’d hoped, but it was the best I could manage.”

“Twenty-one was the best you could manage?” He questioned it, pondered over her words, and then those glowing eyes of his went blacker than anything Tava had ever seen before. Utter emptiness, cold beyond reason and endless in a way that made her mind struggle to make sense of what she saw. “Clever girl,” he muttered, his voice holding a new kind of fury, one that was still and patient, and full of the promise of retribution. But what mattered to Tava just then, was that he nodded. “Your debtors are forgiven. I release them to you.”

“All of them?” she pressed.

He grinned. “All of them. Every. Single. One.” That time, he didn’t turn to leave. Instead, he walked back toward her, each word marked by a long stride he took to get back to her. Tava tried to back away, but he caught her wrist and brought her hand up to his face. A long, serpent-like tongue caressed her palm and the pain there faded into nothing. Something soothing, and all-together distressingly good, was left behind when he let her go.

“I’ll see you again, Tava,” he promised as he walked away again. “One way or another, your soul will be mine. And in the end, you’ll come crawling to me on your belly and begging for my help. What’s better, I won’t even have to do anything about it. Those souls you know own will do the work for me.”

The fire in her hearth surged so bright and hot that she had to look away, and then just as fast as it had come, it and the demon were gone. Shivering, Tava sank to the floor, rocking and cradling her hand against her chest. Tears came first, then laughter, and then a distraught sobbing filled with a bleak kind of relief to be still alive. The table, chairs, and chess set had all vanished, too. All but the fragile-looking white Queen. Reaching for it, she realized it had changed. The marble had reshaped itself to a woman clutching at her head and hunched over.

A whisper started behind her eyes. And then another. And another. The voice built one on top of the other until her head hurt and her ears were ringing. She clutched at her head with her free hand and hunched in on herself, willing them to shut up so that she could think. In building horror, She turned the white Queen over to see its face. The marble woman was grinning and screaming in madness, and looked just like Tava.

In the back of her mind, somewhere behind the voices that whispered, shouted, and screamed, she could feel him grin.  

Checkmate.