The great beast rose. Zadie whimpered. I pressed her back against the far wall of the shallow cave, and stood before her like a shield. Fist met rock, and rock yielded. The creature howled in pain and celebration.
And as it crouched once more to strike, I snatched up the nearest kinda-sorta weapon — the handled end of Zadie’s broken walking pole — and did the only thing I could think to do. I rushed the creature, put my hand smack in the center of its chest, and drove the jagged pole clean through both with all the strength I had.
10.
“Good morning, Collector. I see you’re getting an early start.”
I looked up from my drink — some strange carnivore’s version of a Bloody Mary garnished not with a celery stalk but a single hot-smoked pork rib of all things — to see two blurry Liliths swimming in my meat-suit’s vision, wearing wisp-thin matching silk slip dresses the color of black coffee. I confess, my choice of drink seemed a tad morbid and insensitive, given that I’d not nine hours ago seen poor Topher reduced to a disemboweled, blood-soaked corpse, but it was scarcely 10am in Colorado Springs, and my beverage choices were limited. Took me a good ten minutes’ walk through the mostly residential, tree-lined streets surrounding the sprawling Penrose-St Francis hospital complex before I found anyplace that served booze, and even then, it was just a quaint little brunch joint whose drink menu consisted entirely of Bellinis, Mimosas, and Bloody Marys. You should have seen the looks I got when I ordered one of each to start, and then a round of three more Bloody Marys when I discovered I was none too fond of champagne cocktails. I’d waved off the wait staff’s repeated — and increasingly desperate — attempts to solicit a food order from me, but now that I realized the room was spinning, and my vision was skipping about like a movie that’s jumped its reel, I wondered if maybe I made the wrong call on that front. I made a mental note to ask for some steak and eggs if I hadn’t yet scared the waitress off for good.
“Yeah, well.” I slurred. “Rough night.”
“So I gathered. Were you… successful in your mission?”
I snort-laughed at the politesse of her euphemism. “Yup. I succeeded the living shit outta them,” I said. “And this time, I only killed one civvie doing it. I think my batting average is improving. Although my poor meat-suit probably won’t be playing piano with that hand anytime soon.”
Lilith looked around to see if anyone had overheard, but the waitstaff had long since started avoiding me, and in fact had taken to seating other patrons as far from me as possible about an hour ago, when they decided I was trouble. I think the only reason they’d yet to ask me to leave is because they were worried I’d make a scene. Even chance they weren’t wrong.
You know the problem with going toe-to-toe with a pair of creepy, supernatural dog-beasts in the middle of the Colorado wilds? Once you’re done getting knocked around six ways from Sunday and you kill the fuckers, you’re still stuck out in the Colorado wilds.
At least the walking pole worked like a charm. Soon as I stabbed that evil bitch through Nicholas-not-Nicky’s hand, she and I both started thrumming. My angle was awkward, though, and stabbing through bone both hand- and breast- meant I didn’t drive the pole clean through like with Magnusson or Jain. So there was an awkward moment or two when Angry Dog Chick (it seems weird to me — sad, even — that I still don’t know her name, but unlike human souls, the Brethren’s do not speak to me when I touch them) was reeling backward trying to shake me, as I remained pinned to her dinner table-sized chest. Eventually, I rode her to the ground, and punched the pole through with all my might. The forest rattled and shook as she expired, the land she called home mourning her if no one else would.
Once the beast was felled, and the fog of battle lifted, the pain in Nicholas-not-Nicky’s hand was excruciating. A tender, hesitant Zadie did her best to wrap it for me with a rag torn from her own shirt, flinching every time I winced. When she finished, I thanked her by name, and she corrected me. “Please, Nick, or Not-Nick, or whoever you are — call me Susan.” I guess she was done pretending to be someone she was not — her hipster mask of cool remove discarded. Wish I could say the same, but my whole existence is pretending. Lying. Burying myself so deep I’m not sure I’ll ever find the guy I was again.
Neither of us were in any shape to hike out in the dark. So instead, we called 911 on Topher’s sat phone, and left the line open until they pinpointed our location. Then we huddled together beside the cooling embers of the cabin and waited for our saviors and the morning light to arrive.
Zadie — Susan, I mean — spent most of the night crying. I held her wordlessly and let her weep. What could I have said? There were no words to make her better. And I wouldn’t have said them if there were, for what is mourning if not love’s darker aspect? Seems to me, it’s best never to quash love or push it away, regardless of its form, or of its cost. Sometimes, I think my last tattered shreds of love are all that keep me from becoming as monstrous as the Brethren themselves.
She loved Topher with all her heart, that much was clear. Enough to follow him on his insane quest for answers, for truth, for understanding. You ask me, we’re not built for any of the three. We’re wired for survival, nothing more. Topher’s ruined form, which Susan insisted we drag nearer to the waning firelight so he would not be picked over by animals, stood as a sad monument to the fact that survival and truth were two ends often at odds with one another.
Christ. Listen to me. Leave it to booze to make even a denizen of hell all maudlin and philosophical.
Anyways, by the time the rescue crew arrived — by ATV, not helicopter as I’d envisioned — the embers of the cabin fire were cold and dead, and the two Brethren corpses had withered to dust. That left only Topher to explain. Poor Susan was too despondent to answer the men’s inquiries, so I filled in the gaps where I could. Some kind of large animal. Hit too fast for us to see. Dragged Topher away from us so quickly, we gave chase without thinking, and wound up lost. By the time we caught up, this was all of him that was left. And this fire? Some kind of abandoned structure, we told them. Collapsed for decades, no doubt, before we ever stumbled across it. Without means to fell a tree, it was the only wood we had available to burn. And why not just pitch our tents? The body, I told them. She couldn’t bear to leave it. And so we sat together in the bitter cold beneath the stars, and watched the fire die as we mourned our friend.
The men made some noises about bears and mountain lions, but it was clear by the looks they shared when they thought I wasn’t looking that they had no idea what could have done this. But they didn’t seem to think Susan or Nicholas did, so that was something, at least. They did ask whether we’d captured any footage of the attack, but I told them the camera wasn’t rolling at the time, and anyway, it was damaged in the chase that ensued — beyond repair, as near as I could tell.
That last part was true enough. I spent twenty minutes bashing the camera with a rock before they found us on the off chance I’d inadvertently recorded anything.
I stuck with Susan until the hospital. Then I hopped a ride inside an orderly just before they put me under for hand-surgery. Felt the bile rise in his throat when I took over, but I sucked wind, and willed him not to puke. He didn’t, his body acquiescing to my commands more easily than I would have expected. It’d been that way of late. Guess I was developing the knack. I wondered if maybe that means I’m a little less human that I used to be. I wondered why I didn’t care much about that fact. Told myself it was because I had a job to do, but I didn’t fully believe it. If you ask me, I didn’t care much about my humanity slowly bleeding away because the part of me that would have was now in the minority.