CHAPTER FIVE: THE DEVIL HIMSELF

- Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone"

All things considered, evolution had done a damn good job taking a quadruped creature, wrenching it up onto its hind legs and making a biped of it. Workable, but not perfect.

The dinosaurs, for example, had a better form of bipedalism in that the spine was still kept horizontal to the ground. Human beings walked with their spines erect, all their weight on a teetering column, like balancing a pumpkin on a stick, and this jury-rigged design led to things like lower back pain, slipped discs, hernias, and so on.

But a pain free existence was not the point, nor was perfect function. Evolution had no interest in perfect, only passable. As that obnoxious little twit had pointed out, you didn't have to be faster than the saber-toothed tiger, only faster than the other primitive hominid it was chasing. As long as a creature could manage to pass on a few more genes than the next generation, evolution was satisfied. Until a better solution was happened upon, this would do.

Try explaining that to someone in agony, though. So to make up for obvious deficits in the human form, the human mind came up with wonders like pain pills, which had their own attendant problems.

House had been walking for hours now. He'd never realized how little ground he traversed in the course of an average day. It always seemed like he was rushing here and there, but the actual distance covered was very small, the floors perfectly level and mostly slip-proof, the temperature controlled, and there were chairs everywhere in case he felt the need to stop for a few moments.

There was the dead muscle in his thigh, of course. Over the years that had become an almost familiar pain, but now were added all the little supernumary pains that were a consequence of shifting his center of gravity to the other side, twisting his spine, forcing his good leg to bear more than its proper load, shunting some of that weight down his arms . . . stinging wrist, aching forearm muscles, sore shoulder, stabbing pain in the lower back and between the shoulders, a blister he'd felt form on his right foot, burst, and leave his sock sopping with serous fluid and possibly blood.

Pendergast, however, was doing far worse. It wasn't for nothing that dengue was known colloquially as breakbone fever. The disease was characterized by torturous joint and muscle pain, and worse, he'd visibly developed symptoms of dengue hemorrhagic fever. Wasted and shaky, his skin blemished by the raised, itchy lesions of maculopapular rash, he looked like a shadow casting a man.

The snow fell thicker now, filling the air with fluffy drifting flakes like feathers at a co-ed pillow fight in a bad 80's sex comedy. The wind changed direction every few minutes, blowing snow into their eyes, ears and noses. Visibility only extended about fifteen feet, but Pendergast still insisted he knew where they were going. The GPS of his cell phone was useless, as the battery had died in the cold, but he had a small compass and would bring it out every once in a while, squint painfully at it, then reorient them. House had never seen anything quite like it. The man was suffering intensely, but although his body was in pain, his brain wasn't. His eyes remained searching and sharp.

House slipped a hand into his pocket, reassuring himself for the tenth time that the little prescription bottle of Vicodin was still safely tucked away. He stopped, and Pendergast sagged against him.

"What is it," he asked.

House took the bottle out and shook a few pills out onto his palm. The pain had gone from the usual dull throb to the sensation a bear trap clamping onto his quadriceps femoris. He counted how many were left, then picked out a single pill and offered it to Pendergast. "Here, take this."

He eyed the meds. "Thank you, no. I prefer not to use artificial means to dull pain. At some point I will inevitably be in a position when I will not have access to them, and I don't want to become dependant."

"I can hide it in a piece of cheese." He rattled the bottle. "C'mon, you've got to be in excruciating pain."

"Excruciating specifically refers to the pain Christ felt on the cross." Pendergast raised his head for a moment. House thought he detected a glint of amusement in the man's reddened eyes. "Despite any melodramatic self pity I may have felt for myself when being aggravated by the likes of you, I cannot say I've ever in reality been nailed to a cross. Therefore, I have no basis of comparison."

"I'm not singling you out, y'know," House said, resignedly recapping the bottle and shoving it deep into his pocket. "Ask anyone who knows me, I'm an equal opportunity bastard. I`d eat my own young if I had any."

"And yet you devote yourself to the healing arts, which would indicate some impulse towards altruism."

"Not even a bit. Look, at the core people are basically selfish, asocial and filled with hostile instincts. Altruism and co-operation are subtle deceptions that ingratiate you with others, boost your status in the group and trick others to your advantage. People just don't like to admit that to themselves. I do. Like Mother Teresa. She was the most selfish bitch you can imagine. Using all those poor people just to give herself a feel-good buzz."

Every inhalation was like an icicle stabbed in his chest, and even his teeth felt like they were beginning to freeze, but House kept talking, trying to keep the agent distracted from what had to be incredible pain. He hadn't really expected more than grunts in reply. As he chattered he mentally evaluated Pendergast's condition. The man was deteriorating rapidly.

"You, for another example. What did your little school buddies call you? Whitey? Frosty the Snowman? Casper? Bunny rabbit? Ah, kids can be so cruel." He shook his head sardonically. "So now you're overcompensating. What better way to show off than to save someone's life? To avenge their death. Someone gets killed, you come charging in and do your detective act, get a hard-on from the praise, and then off to the next case, am I right?"

"My superiors - " Pendergast paused slightly, as if letting him know the word was meant in the hierarchal sense only. "My superiors did not authorize me. I have experience and interest in these types of murders."

The way he said interest gave House a chill that had nothing to do with hypothermia. Perhaps it was only because he was used to people dying of neglect, stupidity, and things they had no control over, but the idea of one human being deliberately setting out to injure another bothered him so much.

"What sort of interest? What short circuit in your brain compels you to seek these things out?"

"I don't have much interest in omphalopyschism." Pendergast coughed, a ragged, retching sound. Blood flecked his blue lips.

"Afraid of what you might find?"

"Simply that what I might find is irrelevant, or useless."

"Or incriminating? Probably for the best. When I'm navel gazing I usually just find lint."

They continued on. Higher up, the thick interlaced branches of the pine trees had blocked most of the falling snow. Here, though, the flakes fell unimpeded through the mostly bare branches of cedars and oaks. The ground sloped down and was laced with roots that churned up stones and clogged with dead tufts of weeds and thorn studded vines all masked by a layer of sifted snow.

House considered the situation. Pendergast was nuts, but he wasn't stupid. He knew where they would be going and if he passed out, they'd lost their one chance. The best way to keep him alert was to keep him angry, and he refused to rise to House's usual bait. Therefore, time for a little conversational schrecklichkeit. What are the three utterly taboo subjects? Art, politics and religion. House didn't know squat about art, didn't care to follow politics.

"So, do you believe in a higher power? All the horrible crap that's happening to us happens for a reason we just aren`t privileged to know?" A snowflake landed on his eye, and he blinked furiously to dislodge it. "I'd love to calculate how much karma I'm building up for this."

To his surprise, Pendergast seemed to be taking the question quite seriously. "If you mean do I believe in an anthropomorphic god with human emotions and goals, a god of edicts and punishments, intimately concerned with the minutiae of human lives - no."

"God is dead. Time to party."

"No," Pendergast rasped. "It is not that god is dead but that we must live each day as if god were dead. For practical purposes, religion and magic are blind alleys. You can't cure disease by praying the spirits, putting on a mask, burning incense and shaking a rattle over a patient."

House made a mental note that if he got out of this damned forest, he would check eBay for a rattle and a mask as soon as he got home. It would be entirely too much fun to do a spirit dance next time one of his little band of Boswells offered some batshit diagnosis.

"Natural things have natural causes, and if one is smart enough to ask the proper questions, nature will not withhold its secrets. And yet, it`s folly to think any one person can comprehend the universe. Doctor, I believe in complexity."

"You're saying the universe is so big it's impossible to understand, so we should just give up?"

"No." Pendergast took a deep, wheezing breath. House felt a brief and entirely unexpected twinge of pity. It hurt him to talk - but staying awake was vital, and the only way to keep him alert was to keep him talking. "I am saying . . . suggesting . . . to concern ourselves with . . . human things."

"Why bother? The human race is made up of individuals who are mean, nasty, vicious, deadly, covetous, greedy, deceitful, distrustful and violent killers."

Pendergast didn't answer. His jaw muscles bunched at the cheek and temple, as if he were testing them, or as if he were afraid to open his mouth for fear of biting the person he was speaking to.

"Me, I think if you put your faith in something you don't understand it lets you override all common sense, compassion, peaceful diplomacy, and the evidence of your senses. It's a get out of jail free card for thinking." He shrugged, hoisting Pendergast up higher. House had long ago decided he was as much of a god as existed in the universe. "Human beings are complicated enough without trying to fathom the motives of the divine."

Pendergast twisted his head around. The two men stood nearly eye to eye, and he fixed House with the same look a snake might give to a bird it meant to hypnotize into its coils. "Ah, but the only way . . . of knowing . . . one's own true beliefs about any matter of complexity . . . " Another bout of violent, hacking coughs bent him double as his body struggled to expel the excess fluid soaking his lungs. The cold, astringent air he sucked in only irritated his throat and made him cough harder. "Process . . . by process . . . arguing with others. Quite clever."

"That's me. A song, a dance, an argument." House gently let Pendergast slide down to the ground and propped him up against a tree.

The man`s head lolled, and he fought to focus. "What? We can not stop!"

"Just rest for a minute. I've got to go write my name in the snow."

* * * * *

Back at Princeton-Plainsboro, the diagnostic team found themselves struggling to handle the influx of potential dengue patients. Blizzards had closed the airports, and the team from the CDC was stranded on the ground. They'd divided them into groups and were trying to dismiss the cases that obviously didn't fit the dengue profile. Lab results would take days, but PPTH's trauma center was overflowing, and there were the expected bad weather casualties on top of the dengue.

Foreman poked his head into an exam room where Chase was trying to examine a young man in his twenties.

It wasn't going well. Despite Chase's protests, the man hopped off the table then staggered, gripping his head. "Wooo, head rush!"

"Orthostatic hypotension, actually," Chase said, shoring him up. "Little help here, Foreman?"

He came in and took the young man's other arm, gently wrestling him back onto the table. "Have you finished the neuro evaluation yet?"

"No, but he's not being cooperative. Disoriented, possibly shocky. Where have you been, anyway," Chase groused. "Cameron's been bogged down for an hour with some insane mother convinced her snotty-nosed brats are dying."

"Looking for House. Have you heard anything from him?"

"What? He's not back yet? Is he still out looking for that albino fellow?"

Foreman frowned worriedly. "I was thinking of calling the cops and putting out a missing person's on him."

"Oh, House would love that." Chase snorted. "Ever consider he knows damn well what this dengue scare would do to the clinic and cooked up the whole thing to weasel out of helping?"

"Well, think about it. He's on the far side of fifty, he's physically handicapped, he's on pain medication, and we're supposed to get a couple feet of snow dumped on the tristate area tonight."

"All right. It's your funeral if they find him and his FBI friend holed up in sports bar somewhere, drinking beer and laughing at us."

"Hey," the patient interrupted. His voice slurred noticeably. "Did you hear the one about the doctors who couldn't agree what was wrong with a patient? The gastroenterologist had a gut feeling about, it but the neurologist said he had a lot of nerve. The obstetrician felt they were laboring under a misconception and the cardiologist didn't have the heart to disagree. The dermatologist said not to make any rash diagnoses. The urologist thought the diagnosis didn't hold water, and the radiologist said he could see right through them all. The surgeon decided to wash his hands of the whole thing. And in the end, the proctologist just didn't give a crap."

Foreman rolled his eyes. "He's fine."

"No, wait." Chase let go of the young man's arm. A perfect white handprint remained on his skin, and tiny bruises broke out as pinkness slowly returned to his skin.

"What's that," the patient asked, his voice sharpening with trepidation.

The doctors exchanged complicit glances.

"Just wait here a moment, Michael," Chase said. He and Foreman left the exam room to grab Cameron. Neither of them paid any attention to the patient slipping off the table, grabbing his coat and shoes and heading for the exit. After all, it was a very busy night.

* * * * *

In the forest you are far from home, from fireside warmth and kindliness and the settled accustomed order of things. In the forest you are lost. In the forest trees put out roots to trip you, and reach for you with crooked, skinny fingers. In the forest lives the big bad wolf.

All considered, such thoughts were making it very difficult to urinate.

House craned his neck backwards, gazing up into the low, scudding clouds and tried to do multiplication tables in his head, but fear pinched his bladder shut. Rather than lose anything of possible future importance to frostbite, he zipped back up and turned around.

Although he would never describe himself as shy, House had walked a fair distance away before he felt comfortable enough to let loose, not that that had helped. As he followed what he'd assumed would be a clear trail of churned up snow back to where he left Pendergast, it dawned on him what an incredibly stupid thing he'd just done.

Maybe he himself was worse off than he realized. He'd been concentrating on Pendergast's illness and ignoring (perhaps deliberately, a small inner voice admitted) that he might be disoriented due to hypothermia of his own. Besides the falling snow, a thick fog had rolled up, making visibility even poorer. His trail blended into the rest of the dips and crests of snow whipped up by the wind.

Godammit. He was lost.

"Pendergast?" he called tentatively. There was no answer but the hiss of falling snow.

He yelled again for Pendergast, but the wind clawed away his words, and even when it died down between gusts, the snow muffled him in a thick eiderdown of silence. Even if Pendergast were still within shouting range, he might very well be unconscious by this point.

It had been a long time since Boy Scouts, but House was almost certain that running around like a chicken with its head cut off was the worst thing one could do when lost in inimical weather. Then again, the manual probably also recommended against leaving the one guy who seemed to know a way home passed out under a tree and wandering off into the woods because you were too prissy to take a leak where he could see you.

House cast about hopelessly. This was worse than trying to find a gray four door sedan in a mall parking lot. Remembering that they'd been going steadily downhill, he picked a direction where the ground appeared to rise. The bear trap was now hooked up to a powerful generator erratically shooting intense crackling reanimating-Frankenstein bursts of electricity into his flesh. He'd hit a piece of nearly vertical slope, and the footing was crumbly and treacherous.

The ground fell away again, and House realized he was not retracing his steps, he'd merely found a small hill. As he turned to go back, his good foot skidded on a outcropping of icy slick stone hidden under the snow. Both legs crumpled beneath him and he slid ten feet, only stopped by a tangle of deadfall propped between two living trees. Muttering and cursing, he hauled himself up to a sitting position and tried futilely to shake some of the snow out of his coat. The sound of approaching footsteps crunching in the snow brought him up short, and he peered out through the deadfall.

Fog drifted low to the ground, giving the scene an unreal quality. The first thing he noticed was a tall, burly man in a thick brown coat almost directly below him, hunkered down and pulling or digging at something in the snow. A moment later he realized the man was tugging at Pendergast, nearly invisible in his damn winter camouflage suit. No wonder House had thought he was lost - he had indeed misplaced an albino in a blizzard. He made another mental note, this time to buy Wilson an act-of-contrition donut.

He was just about to call down to the man when Pendergast jerked awake, shock distorting his face as he looked up at the man in the fur coat. He lashed out, knocking the hood of the man's coat back.

The man staggered backwards, and House saw it was not a coat at all but a sort of bearskin cape that fluttered behind him like wings in the strong wind, the raw underside greasy and ragged. The man was wrapped in a what appeared to be a collection of filthy scraps of cloth tied around a body so malformed no ordinary clothes could ever fit around it.

Only the head was bare, a lump of warty bruise-colored skin, half covered in spongy tumescent growths, half in bristly gray hair. Mucus clotted around the flared nostrils, and sagging lips drew back from teeth like an ivory recreation of Stonehenge as the creature growled. A face made for radio. It clutched House's missing cane in one hand composed of two huge fingers like lobsters claws made of flesh.

Meanwhile, Pendergast had rolled away and scrambled upright. The Devil swung the cane at him and missed by a whisker. The handle cracked into the tree behind him and splintered off a chunk of bark. If it had landed, it would have split Pendergast's skull. The agent bent down and drew a small, efficient looking pistol from a concealed ankle holster, but the Devil struck again with frightening speed, smacking it from his hand with a knuckle crunching whack of the cane.

Moving as if he hadn't been practically dead a few moments before, Pendergast snapped a low branch off a nearby tree and aimed a blow at the Devil's head. It raised the cane, guarding high. He bounded forward, passing his left hand over the Devil's right forearm and his right hand against its thick wrist, seizing his own right hand in his left. With the advantage of leverage, he forced the Devil's hand towards him with his left arm at the same time twisting his right hand down. The Devil howled in agony but did not let go of the cane.

House shook himself. He'd been so fascinated by the Devil's appearance it had taken him a moment to grasp exactly what was happening. He tried to stand up, but he was tangled in the barbed bramble of the deadfall.

Bulling forward, the Devil broke Pendergast's grip and knocked him to the snow. He rolled onto his hands and knees, but not before the Devil stooped down and engulfed him in a bear hug, lifting him clear off the ground. Pendergast struggled like a worm on a hook. His arms were trapped, and he rained inconsequential kicks to the Devil's columnar shins.

The agent gasped for air, bloody froth bubbling at the corners of his mouth. He switched tactics, swinging his sharp elbows backward alternately with the muscles of his shoulders and midsection, jabbing the Devil hard in the short ribs and solar plexus. It grunted loudly, and fumbled with him. His arms slipped free but the Devil still had him by the waist, holding him up as easily as if he were a child.

Pendergast stabbed his elbow towards the Devil's gruesome face, not so much to attack but to make him flinch backward and lose his balance. He kicked out forward, throwing the Devil even further off balance - those mismatched legs were quivering now - and then immediately hooked his leg behind the Devil's knee and jerked it forward.

The Devil pressed its lumpish head between Pendergast's shoulder blades and fell backwards, a sacrifice fall, rolling to one side so the first thing to hit the ground was the back of the agent's head. Pendergast abruptly went limp.

House grabbed the trunk of the dead sapling and yanked. The spongy rotten wood broke loose from the bracing trees. He pinned it under his arm like a battering ram and half-fell down the short slope. With a shock that wrenched his arms and slammed the end of the sapling into his ribs, he smashed the sapling into the small of the Devil's back.

The air went out of it in a gust and it dropped to its knees. So, unfortunately, did House. Only momentum had kept him upright, and now the pain hit him like and oncoming locomotive, skewering him through the heart. Tears of agony blurred his vision, and acrid bile flooded the back of this throat.

The Devil recovered quicker, dragging itself closer to him. This close, he could smell the creature, the foul stench of unwashed flesh, the rotting uncured bearskin it had draped around its shoulders, and the hideous spoiled egg scent of brimstone. It raised itself over him like the crest of a tsunami, those deformed but capable hands eagerly snapping open and closed.

Cursing himself, House remembered the Luger Pendergast had loaned him. He really must be half-lobotomized by hypothermia. He fished it out and, holding it high, fired into the sky.

For a moment he was deaf as a blue eyed cat. He caught a glimpse of the Devil's mouth gaping wide in horror, then it dropped down almost to all fours, knuckle walking gorilla-style, and lurched off in an explosion of snow.

Gradually the ringing in his ears faded. He spat stomach acid into the snow, drooled and spit again to clear his mouth. What he wanted more than anything at the moment was to upend the bottle of Vicodin into his mouth, swallow the whole damn thing and just drift off into a endless black sea of oblivion, but he'd never be able to keep them down long enough for them to work. Pendergast was tugging at his sleeve. He looked over at the man.

"Good work. I appreciate your restraint in not firing sooner and risking hitting me as well," he said.

"Yeah." In fact, he had forgotten the gun until that last moment. "And I'm glad you keep faking you're worse off that you actually are. Fooled Tzerkas and the Devil. Oscar winning performance there, you even fooled me. You`re wasted in the FBI."

"Ah, Doctor, but I am afraid I am now truly at the end of my strength," he said. He melted back down into the snow, weak and white and draggled, his eyes sunk into shadowed sockets, his face a bloodless, pain-etched mask of tallow.

House grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. "Pendergast? Pendergast," he snarled, a good deal of despair mixed in with sarcasm, "If you die, I swear I'm going to stuff you myself and sell you to the Oddity Emporium!"

Panicking. That was another the thing the Boy Scout manual discouraged when finding oneself lost in the wilderness. House had a very distinct vision, almost a hallucination, of a fat, pipe smoking man wearing a too tight Cub Scout uniform. He sat in front of an old fashioned typewriter in a snug, bookshelf lined den with a roaring fireplace, typing out the manual with the contented arrogance of the absolutely safe and comfortable.

How he would love to drag that smirking bastard out here into the middle of the frigid, stinking woods and . . . House lifted his head, inhaling deeply. The awful sulfur scent was even stronger now. He refused to consider that the gates of Hell had opened up to let out the Devil, and there was no way there could be enough rotten eggs anywhere near to create that bad of a smell. So what was the only logical source for sulfur?

Removing his coat, House spread it on the ground and rolled the unresisting Pendergast onto it. He shivered, feeling the wind cut like surgical steel through his thin shirt, but if he was correct he wouldn't need the coat much longer anyway. Snuffling like a bloodhound, he stumbled toward the source of the sulfur scent.

It lay only a short way further on, almost hidden behind a densely woven scrim of brambles. Where all the other underbrush had been dry and brittle, these branches were leafless but springy and full of sap. He pushed his way through eagerly, ignoring the minor pain of scratches, and found himself on a rock overhanging a sunken pond. It was tiny, perhaps half the circumference of a backyard swimming pool, although the turbid water was no doubt far deeper. Dense white steam boiled off the rippling surface, adding an even more fantastical and surreal appearance to the place.

The Devil's Spittoon.

The thermal spring was a pocket sized microenvironment, something out of a fairy tale, like a little jewel of eternal summer dropped down in the middle of the harsh Pine Barrens winter. There was a sharp temperature gradient as he approached it, like walking into a sauna. The snow dissolved to nothing several yards around it, revealing luxurious spring like growths of grass, weeds and moss. A fat, black and yellow salamander wriggled out of his path. Animal prints crisscrossed the oddly colored mud on the banks; deer, fox, birds of various sizes, and the oddly humanlike prints of skunks and raccoons. Tiny insects skimmed low over the dark surface of the water.

House felt a twinge on his neck and slapped at it. His hand came away smeared with the crushed remains of a mosquito. Well, that at least explained where the dengue carrying mosquitoes had been hiding out.

Hanging on tightly to an overhead branch, House edged out onto the muddy banks of the pool. The humid blast of heated, rotten-egg scented air enveloped him. It was like being breathed on by a tyrannosaur with halitosis, but the warmth was a blessing. Gingerly, he dipped his hand into the water. Although he could see bubbles sizzling near the surface in the middle, it felt lukewarm here near the edge.

Carrying Pendergast those last few hundred yards to the thermal spring was more like a desperate uphill wrestling match than breezing toward the finish line. Semi-conscious at best, he couldn't support any of his own weight, and his weakly flailing arms and legs interfered more than helped. House would take two or three steps, a colossal effort, then rest with his bad leg shuddering beneath him. Walking barefoot across burning coals dragging a sack full of bowling balls could hardly be less exhausting. He was crawling on all fours the last few feet, shoving Pendergast ahead of him through the mineral-painted sludge. House, who sometimes watched more Animal Planet than was good for anyone, had a stray thought about dung beetles, but kept it to himself.

The agent groggily pushed away House's hands as he tried to undress him, but this was merely dementia. Pendergast had, after all, been heading toward the Devil`s Spittoon the whole time. He had to have realized that submerging himself in the geothermically heated waters was the only way he could survive frostbite. The real question was how he'd known it was here at all. The legends of the Devil's Spittoon were supposed to be just that, as fictional as the Jersey Devil.

"Don't worry, I'm not gonna do anything that would make Wilson jealous," he mumbled, manhandling the nearly nude, protesting Pendergast into the shallows and slipping an arm under his head.

Even to himself, his voice sounded strange. In the confusion and disorientation of severe hypothermia, victims sometimes experienced an illusory sensation of overwhelming warmth and would remove their clothes. He worried for a moment that hypothermia had prompted him to fantasize the thermal spring and perform a sort of paradoxical undressing by proxy.

His concern was fleeting. If he possessed a fraction of that kind of imagination, he was in the wrong profession entirely. And surely even his own subconscious wouldn't be cruel enough to populate his delusion with the dark, vaguely human figure looming towards them in the fog.

Swearing quietly to himself, House fumbled in the holster for the Luger. It was gone, no doubt having fallen out while he was struggling with Pendergast. His hands clenched into useless fists, his heart stammered into overdrive.

The misshapen creature took a step forward, past House, its gnarled, two-fingered hand stretching out slowly for Pendergast's face.

House gradually became aware of a burning cold sensation on his stomach that had nothing to do with the blizzard. He patted the lump in his shirt, then snuck his hand inside. His fingertips touched smooth metal. The gun had fallen out of the under arm holster into his shirt. He was lucky all that fighting with the insensible Pendergast hadn't accidentally hit the trigger and shot him in the stomach.

The Devil seemed utterly enraptured with the agent, shuffling closer to crouch at the water's edge. Pendergast stared back with a surprisingly calm, lucid expression, and made no move to protect himself.

With agonizing care, House shifted the Luger around in his shirt so the muzzle pointed out, careful not to make a quick move that would draw the Devil's attention.

"Drop it," Pendergast whispered.

"But - "

"Drop it!" An entirely uncharacteristic note of pleading tempered his sharp command. "Trust me."

The Devil was watching him, too. Its bearskin hood had fallen back, giving him his first clear, close look at their legendary stalker. Round pupils, dark hazel irises flecked with green, surrounded by white sclera. Human eyes.

Even in this dire situation, House tried to classify the face of the creature, the person, before him. His brain flipped through diagnoses, selecting, examining, discarding. Paget's Disease of the Skull, Neurofibromatosis, Craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, severe Treacher-Collins Syndrome . . . nothing quite explained every distortion. He even briefly considered the effects of the dominant gene mutation Disorganization, which some biologist had given what was surely the understatement name of all time. He'd only ever seen its result in mice, and it was so rare it was only the subject of three papers in English.

Finally, he just gave up. Either this person suffered from a disease of such unparalleled obscurity that even House had never heard of it, or he was an incredibly improbable walking miscellany of several different genetic malfunctions.

House opened his hand and let the gun fall into the water. It sank instantly, swallowed up by the dark silty mud.

The Devil's hand gently patted Pendergast's head, brushing the straggling bangs back from his face. One finger, tipped with a nail so thick, ridged and yellow it resembled a claw, extended and touched him near the eye, with fastidious delicacy. Still resting one hand gently on his head, the Devil leaned over with a grunt of effort and picked House's cane up from the snow. It turned it back and forth consideringly, brought the handle to its lopsided nostrils and sniffed a few times, then laid it back down next to him.

With a rumbling groan, the Devil stood upright and pulled his bearskin hood tightly around his face. He turned, his gait stiff and asymmetrical. The bare legs were terribly warped, one shorter than the other, bones curved, joints swollen, massive feet split into two lumps of fused toes. Even under the fur cloak the scoliosis of the spine that hunched one shoulder up until it almost touched the back of the head was clearly visible. But the Devil had survived a long, long time. His muscles were bulky and corded, his skin mapped with old, healed scars. Without a backward glance, he limped off into the forest.

"What," House asked, "Was that all about?"

Pendergast took a deep, wheezing breath. "I believe he decided we were not his tormenters."

House could feel the pieces start to click together in his mind. Kittredge must have fired his weapon at the Devil, although how he could have missed such a huge, slow target was difficult to understand. His murder was a case of justified self defense. Tzerkas violated the grave of its companion. Child, sibling, it was impossible to know. Fellow Devil. When it shot at Pendergast back at Devil Cabin, he had been holding Tzerkas's camera, which the Devil no doubt mistook for another gun.

"But you shot at it, and so did I, and it caught us dunking in its . . . in his private pool. How'd he know we weren't a threat?"

"We're, ah, irregular specimens also, Doctor. I think he recognized a certain kinship."

"We're all freaks together, huh? Not flattering, but advantageous." House stared after the Devil`s retreating form. "It's human, you know."

"Yes," Pendergast said, his voice lilting faintly with surprise.

"I noticed petechiae on the skin of his wrist. He's got dengue."