Sinners and Saints

by Jennifer Roberson

  “One or two were just regular clowns, mostly, playing to the audience.”

  I shrugged. “Okay. Yeah. But—”

  “The other clown is different. He’s the one that runs up on the bull when the cowboy comes off, tries to distract the bull while the cowboy runs like stink to the chute or the wall to get out of range. We call him a bullfighter, just like in Spain and Mexico, but he’s not lookin’ to kill the bull. Just keep it away until the outriders can use their horses to run the bull back into the alley and out of the arena.”

  I stared at him with eyes wide, mouth open. “You want me to be the bullfighter!”

  He nodded.

  “And what will you be doing?”

  “Riding him to a standstill.”

  “Riding the bull? You out of your fucking mind? You can’t ride that thing!”

  Remi was clearly surprised by my vehemence. “Sure I can.”

  I flung out my hand to indicate the bull. “That?”

  His slow grin appeared. “I ain’t sayin’ it’ll be easy, mind—but this is what I do at rodeos, Gabe. I ride broncs and bulls.”

  Okay, maybe he had something of a shot. Like, a two percent chance of survival. “Then what?”

  “You find that Bowie, and that KA-BAR buried in the dirt, and you stab him in the throat. Or the eye. And the eye.” Remi read my expression. “There’s no buzzer here to tell the bull it’s over. No outriders to push him to the alley. No nothin,’ but us. You gotta run, duck, dodge, twist. You gotta dance with that bull, keep him moving, keep him annoyed. Make him expend energy. We have to tire him, Gabe. Have to exhaust him. That’s my job, too, to be the burr beneath the metaphorical saddle. And then you can waltz right up and kill him.”

  I sat there with my mouth open for several long seconds, trying to marshal words to tell him he was batshit crazy. What I managed was, “How long is this going to take?”

  Remi shrugged. “Never done it before to know. The bulls are loose in the arena after the cowboy comes off maybe ten to fifteen more seconds. Twenty at most, unless he decides to take a victory lap. They do that sometimes. So while it’s an eight-second ride if the cowboy makes the buzzer, the bull only works hard around twelve, fifteen seconds at most. That’s it—twelve or fifteen seconds. He’ll throw a few farewell bucks just because he can. This means I gotta stay on him considerably longer than eight seconds. And since he will throw me, I’ll have to get back on him as many times as I can. Your job, when I come off, is to divert him so I have time to get back up on this altar. I can’t mount him from the ground. Gotta be above him.”

  I could not believe he was so calm about all of it. “But don’t you guys hang on to something?”

  “Got a rigging, yup. A handle, loop of rope.” He shrugged. “But here, we got nothin.’ I don’t know why Hades gave him that mane, but he’s got one, and I aim to hang onto it.”

  Okay, something I could address. “I know where the mane comes from. I read a story once about Theseus and the Minotaur, when I was young. Because he was a beast, not truly a man, he wasn’t like other bulls. Or men. The drawing with the story showed a man from the waist down and up to mid-chest, and he had a big curly pelt from the hair on his head to his ass. And, well, a weird head that was half-bull, half-human. And horns.”

  “Okay.” Remi stood up, slapped dust from his pants. “I reckon this’ll take us a good while. We’ll probably be hungry when we get all done. I’d recommend brisket, but bulls don’t make good eating.”

  I rubbed the back of my hand against my eye. The migraine had died to a dull roar. I affected a drawl. “Well, then, let’s git ’er done!”

  Apparently colossally bored by our lengthy planning session, Hades played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on the house organ.

  Then he roared, “The seventh inning stretch is OVER!”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  I stripped out of my leather jacket, out of the shoulder harness and gun. It left me in a long-sleeved Henley pullover shirt, leather motorcycle pants, boots. Fleet of foot undoubtedly did not describe what I’d be doing while wearing leather pants and heavy-soled leather boots.

  So I took the boots off, too.

  I lingered at the altar’s edge, staring down at the big animal. “The goal is to be total idiots and make him mad.”

  “The goal is to make him run hell-for-leather all over the ring. He won’t do that if he’s happy. You gotta piss him off so he’s trying to dump me and stampede you all at the same time. That’ll wear him down.”

  I nodded, distracted again by the bull who was not-mooing and not-lowing but working his way through the bovine vocal scale of low chesty moans clear to a high-pitched scraping sound of extreme emotional discord. He sounded nothing like a cow. He sounded like a monster.

  “Do they all sound like that?” I asked. “Or is this Hades playing around?”

  “Oh, hell—this ain’t nothin.’ You should hear a herd bull warning off the younger boys.” Remi moved close to the altar edge. “Okay, this is going to take some doing. How about you get that jacket of yours and wave it here along the edge, let him see it. He ought to come over to give it what for, and I will at that point endeavor to slide myself down onto his spine right behind the hump.”

  The moment nearly overwhelmed me. “You can’t do that! Remi, we can’t do this. It’ll get you killed! You don’t land right, he’s got you right under his hooves!”

  Remi looked at me steadily. “And then it’s your turn, son. You got to get his attention and lure him away.”

  “Oh, my Christ. Hell with a gun—I want a grenade launcher!”

  The bull bellowed, hoarse and heavy.

  “Wave that jacket,” Remi told me. “Make him see it. Make him come.”

  “My jacket’s black, not red.”

  “Bulls are red/green colorblind. They come to the movement, not the color.”

  “Then why do matadors use a red cape?”

  “Drama, son. Sex appeal. Now wave that jacket. I will stay on him long as I can, but you’ve got to be down in the dirt and ready for when I come off. Then we’ll do it all again.”

  The bull’s screeching, honking, donkey-sounding bellow reverberated in the ring. I leaned down, flapped my jacket. “Here, kittykittykitty. Come to papa.”

  The bull answered at a trot, then broke into a charge. God knows what noises I was making, but as he came up I whopped him in the face with the jacket. In his shock, he paused.

  Remi slid off the altar and onto the bull’s back.

  * * *

  —

  Seconds. That’s what Remi said it lasted, a cowboy’s ride on a bucking bull. For the bull, twelve to fifteen seconds from chute gate opening to heading down the alley. But to me it lasted hours.

  Remi came off. Remi came off so many times I’d lost track. Sometimes he came right off as the bull accelerated into hard bucking as soon as Remi clamped left hand in the mane and feet in the ribs behind the bull’s forelegs. Sometimes he made it longer, bent at the pelvis as he leaned back hard, right arm thrust into the air for balance. He got whipped hard in all directions. The bull bucked so hard and high he was almost vertical, butt so upright I thought he’d flip over for sure and come crashing down on Remi. Sometimes he just spun one way, then spun back the other. The power in the beast was incredible. Not only was he huge, but he clearly knew how to use his body.

  God, I ran. Ran and ran. Looked and looked for the knives. Dodged one way, ducked the other, whacked that bull with my jacket as hard as I could right between the eyes. Then he yanked it away from me, dropped his head, hooked it, swept it right out of my hands. Now I had nothing.

  Knives. Find the knives. But the dirt of the bull-ring was deep, and I saw nothing of my blades.

  Remi was still aboard. The bull shook his head, jacket hanging off a horn. Every time he moved his head, the jacket swung forward t
o cover one eye. Not for long, but it was enough to ramp up his annoyance.

  “Yes!” Remi shouted.

  So I didn’t even try to rescue my jacket. I let it hang there as the bull wildly swung his head, shook it hard, dropped it down low. I didn’t know how long the jacket might remain hung up on the horn, so I took my chance and ran up to him from his blind side, then darted sideways and smashed my fist into his good eye.

  The bull scrambled back, head thrown up in the air. Remi was swearing in between catching breaths.

  Come on, knives. Show yourselves. Fighting Remi, fighting me, fighting the jacket might well exhaust the bull so that I had the opportunity to stab him in the eye, or slice into his throat.

  The bull bellowed, tossed his head, and the jacket flew off.

  Crap.

  Knifeknifeknife.

  I took too long eyeballing the dirt looking for my knives. Remi shouted, sounding panicked, and I glanced up in time as the bull came in, head tipped sideways to hook me with a horn.

  I flung myself away, landed hard, scrambled up, felt a horn rub by me. Blunted, the horn did not puncture. It wasn’t a gore. But it was like being punched by a house.

  I thrust myself up, tried to run. Overbalanced and went down flat on my face. I needed not to be where the bull might expect me. I bounced up, threw myself sideways rather than attempting to run a straight line.

  Remi came off, landed hard. I saw him tuck down and roll himself up like a pillbug, hands and arms guarding his head.

  I pushed up again, kept my feet, ran after the bull while shouting breathless, broken insults and vulgarities at him. I scooped up my jacket, reached the animal just as he prepared to shove his horns either beneath Remi to lift and roll him, or to drive one horn down into chest or abdomen.

  Matadors were sometimes gored, then picked up and literally thrown by the bulls. Thick blunted horns couldn’t do that, as Remi had pointed out, but crush him?

  I caught up to the bull and snapped my metal-zippered jacket up between splayed hind legs, cracked it whip-like into his low-hanging fruit as hard as I could.

  Remi rolled, sprang up, staggered out of the way, fell down and got up again. Sweat plastered his shirt to his torso, hair to his head. His eyes were fixed on the bull. The wobble in his legs, the break in the knees that he caught, then snapped back into place, told me how exhausted he was.

  The bull turned on me, and I couldn’t find the knives.

  The altar represented respite, a chance to catch our breath, to regroup and begin again. Except I wasn’t sure either of us had any gas left in our tanks to leap and scramble our way back up onto the flat surface.

  Exhaust the bull, Remi had said.

  Yeah. And us.

  The animal, head lowered, eyeballed Remi, turned to me. I swear, and I’ll swear to my dying day, that his eyes were brilliant, burning red, and his hooves glowed silver like steel. He was no longer just an escaped rodeo bull.

  From one of his hips, black hair stood up. Hair burned. Flesh burned. I could smell all of it. The red-eyed bull threw back his head and filled the chamber with a bellowed roar of agony and anger.

  The new brand on his hip was raw, bright red. Curvilinear.

  666

  It glared at me. And in his eyes was the intelligence of a man.

  Knives wouldn’t harm him. He was no longer just a bull. Hades had made him much more.

  “Remi . . .” Out of breath, I pantomimed instructions. Sideways sweep of arm directing him to the altar. My bent body, linked fingers, the upward jerk. We met at the altar as the bull began to charge. Remi stuck one booted foot into my linked hands, went upward as I boosted. He made it. I didn’t.

  The one horn hooked around my ribs. It hugged my ribs. I felt the tremendous power in the animal’s body, felt the heat of his breath, the burning saliva. The crimson eyes were bright and sharp and calculating.

  He flung me away just as he had my jacket. I hit hard, rolled, grabbed at dirt and tried to climb to my feet, tried to push myself upward to run again.

  “Here!” Remi shouted in a wrecked voice that broke halfway through. I ran for the altar, reached for his arm, nearly pulled him off the edge as I scrabbled my way back on top.

  I stood bent over, hands on knees, in the center of the block. At some point the elastic holding my ponytail had broken so I had loose hair hanging free. “I don’t think . . . I don’t think we’ve got another climb up this thing in us.”

  “He break anything?” Remi asked, panting hard.

  I felt at my chest, my sides. “—don’t think so.”

  “No knives?”

  I shook my head. “In the dirt, under the dirt.” I sucked in another breath. “I’ve been looking. Too much running. Dirt and ash is all broken up. Buried. No time . . . no time for a real search. And any more . . . I think neither knife nor gun would stop him.”

  The massive bull stood a good fifty feet away from the altar, head lowered as he watched us, weighed us, with red, roiling eyes. The brand on his hip still smoked.

  “Did you see it?” Remi asked.

  “I saw it.”

  “Ain’t a natural bull anymore.”

  I shook my head and looked up at Hades. It was stupid, but I did it anyway. “You’re an asshole!”

  “Yes,” he called.

  I swallowed hard and heavy. Shouted again. “You know we can’t kill this bull. It’s not a bull anymore!”

  His voiced echoed. “Monsters can die. Theseus killed the Minotaur. He walked out of the bull-ring. You and Remiel can do the same. Kill the Minotaur, Gabriel. You just have to figure it out.”

  I looked at the torches.

  Hades sounded cheerful. “Bolted down. You have to be cleverer than that. Nothing so prosaic as a flaming torch to distract the monster, or burn out an eye. You’ll have to do it another way.”

  I had little voice left, and almost no breath. “I’m just a guy. Not Theseus. And that was mythology!”

  “So am I,” Hades called. “Or was. This is not Star Trek’s holodeck. This is real. Or, well, as real as you can make it. If you take my meaning.”

  The bull charged. He crashed into the big stone block and knocked it sideways, scraping one horn across stone. Remi and I went sliding. He managed to hang on. I did not. I went right off the edge onto the devil’s front porch.

  “One more—?” I shouted to Remi. I dodged the bull. Dropped, rolled, came up. Staggered another direction. “You got one more ride in you?”

  Remi grinned. “Hell yeah, I do!”

  I pulled off my shirt and pressed my chest against the altar block, making myself flatter. Smaller. “You ready?”

  “Born that way!”

  “Minotaur’s coming.”

  And he was, a freight train on four hooves. I waved my shirt like a madman. The red eyes fixed on it. One horn scraped the block, screeching like metal. I slipped around the edge, heard Remi’s grunt of effort. The bull spun away, and I saw again the scorched brand on his hip.

  Eight seconds. Eight seconds, maybe twelve.

  As real as I could make it, Hades had said.

  I ran. I ran through the gate, through flames that did not burn, to the carved Minoan axe cut into the wall, the sacred double-headed labrys, Lady of the Labyrinth.

  “Be real,” I rasped. “Be fucking real!”

  And I yanked it out of the wall.

  Stone flaked away. I saw the gleam of ancient metal. I ran back through the flames, back into the ring, and right up to the bull.

  I registered the shock on Remi’s face. I saw red eyes and the whip of heated slime, heard the steam engine of his breath, smelled the stink of hell, the stench of burning hair, the reek of bubbling flesh.

  With two shaking hands and all the power left in my shoulders, I swung the labrys up like a scythe over my right shoulder, then bro
ught it down on the diagonal into the neck between jaw and shoulder. The blade cleaved skin, muscle, spine, sliced through veins and vessels. Blood shot into the air in arterial spray. “Yippie-ky-ayy, motherfucker!”

  Remi fell off the collapsing bull. I just fell over.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  I lay on my back in the dirt and didn’t care. I probably lay on my back in bull shit, too—actual bull shit—and I didn’t care. In fact, when Hades came walking across the dirt, mixed with or without bull shit, I also didn’t care about that. I had nothing left in me to care. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  I just lay there on my back and stared up at him as he stood over me. And I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. I was too worn to help myself. I was utterly spent.

  “What the hell?” I croaked. Dirt and blood was in my mouth.

  “I know,” Hades said. “But it’s dramatic. One of the best entrances ever filmed.”

  I swallowed, tried to reclaim some of my voice. “Darth Vader . . . does not wear a Cretan bull-mask. The least you could do is dress up like Hercules.” I waved a limp hand. “You know, in leather.”

  “I think you have the leather market cornered,” Hades said. “Boots, pants, jacket, gun harness. Though right now you seem to be limited to leather pants.”

  “I ride a motorcycle. Get over it.”

  “You’ve left bits of yourself spread all over the bull-ring.”

  Hades switched his glance from me to Remi, who was apparently eschewing lying in the dirt—with or without bull shit—and was attempting to sit up.

  Primogenitura came roaring in, and this time I could move. This time I could defend, because Remi was at stake.

  I reached for the axe haft, scrambled back onto my feet, stood up holding the labrys.

  Even through the cut out metal eyeholes, Hades gave me an amused stare. “I’m not going to harm either of you, you idiots. I didn’t draft you just to kill you off. I’m going to turn you out onto the field, or the gridiron, or the pitch, or the track, now and then, and just have fun with you.”