“Your mother went mad with my dilemma. She cursed me, told me I could never recreate what I had thrown away when I escaped from the womb. She wouldn’t listen to my reasoning. She didn’t want to understand. I told her to leave me. One night she did, with you two. She left me a message, whispered into a mango that split open and let her words escape when I woke. Her children would not die or be used by my hand, she said. But she could no longer walk the world of mortals and raise her children because of the pain I had shown her. So she would see that the children would be cared for, and left me with a final curse: I would never know the spirit of the sister I left behind.
“I hunted Chiao, but she was clever. She led me to a river, which with her power she caused to swell suddenly, sweeping away and drowning my host. By the time I could secure another, her trail was gone.
“For years, I’ve searched for my daughters. I’ve paid for the meager help of the old land’s dying gods with the souls of my own followers. Bargained and begged for the aid of gods born in this new land from the blood of the old land’s people. I have served demons and ghosts, caused plagues and wars, for the knowledge of a few miles of trail taken by my daughters. And during the time of my hunt for you, I considered what happened with Chiao, and what I would have to do when I found my twins.”
Pale Fox stared at Kueur and Alioune for a few moments. “You are not your mother,” he said at last. “She was only a dragon dream, after all. You know pain, thrive on it, as far as I can see. What are children to you? Burdens. What can you lose by letting my fonio seed blossom inside you? Nine days is all I ask. You will have my gratitude. Come to my land, and I will protect you. Perhaps I can even arrange for Legba to favor you with one or two of his blessings. Whatever I can give, I will. Can’t you sacrifice just a piece of yourselves for your father’s happiness? Can’t you find your own joy in the knowledge that you helped your lost father find his?”
Only the crackling of fire disturbed the quiet that followed. The Beast in Max had fallen under Pale Fox’s spell, lulled by words and stories, and the god’s power behind them, to a grumbling ghost of rage. Max silently approached the nearest fire drum, jean legs wrapped as another layer of insulation around his hands and arms.
Kueur spoke. “You know we’ll have twins, because that’s the seed’s power. But you only want one child. What if we want to keep the one set’s remaining child, and the other pair?”
“You don’t.”
“But if we do?”
“You can’t. When I sacrifice the others, I’ll merge their spirits with the one I’ve chosen. Purge the mortal influences of your flesh, along with the taint of the bodies Chiao and I possessed when we made you. Even Chiao’s magic of dream and water and justice will be cut away. All that will be left is my essence, purified of all foreign poisons, shaped in a woman’s form. In a short time, and under my guidance, she will become Yasigui.”
“You should’ve kept looking for your birth twin,” Kueur said, a touch of sadness in her voice. “You never found her, so she may still exist. Only she can fulfill you.”
“If she was ever born, then the others hid her from me. No price I paid, no bargain I made, ever revealed what happened to her. The bond between us is broken, and she is dead to me. I must make my own twin. Your answer, daughters?”
“We’d rather die,” said Alioune.
Pale Fox’s head transformed once again into an animal’s, this time with white hair growing over the canine skull shape. Pale Fox bared his teeth, crouched, moved to face Max.
The shift in shape had broken Pale Fox’s hypnotic spell and roused the Beast, but Max had already picked up the fire-filled drum and started charging toward the god. With the Beast’s roar rising through him like a searing lava flow, Max lifted the drum over his head and brought it down over Pale Fox.
The crash of metal, fuel, and fire staggered the god. Flames burst out of the drum’s holes and open end as the fire bit into the god’s flesh and singed Max’s clothes and face. Alioune rolled forward, thrust a leg out, and swept Pale Fox off his feet. The god rolled, still in the drum, as soon as he landed. Kueur brought up the steel tool she had used before as a weapon and began to hammer at Pale Fox’s legs. Max freed himself of the jeans, found a length of steel tubing, and, using it as a spear, drove it through a gash in the side of the drum and jabbed the tube’s end repeatedly into the god’s body. Alioune joined them with two short lengths of steel pipe, which she used in rapid succession like a drummer on Pale Fox’s legs in between Kueur’s swings.
The sounds of metal clanging on metal, thumping against concrete and bone, mixed with heavy breathing, curses, and inarticulate cries from the twins. Max was surprised to hear himself joining them, with a voice that was not all Beast. He wondered if his expression was as contorted as theirs. Pale Fox remained silent as he rolled, tried to climb out of the drum, threw out burning wood. The smell of burning flesh wafted across the old factory floor.
Suddenly, Pale Fox withdrew his legs. The fire burned brighter in the drum. Max, sensing a trap, drew Alioune away from the opening, which she had been preparing to probe with pipes, and signed to Kueur to step back. At that instant, the drum rumbled, shook. Max dove, taking Alioune down with him. Kueur followed their example. The drum burst, sending fire and jagged steel in all directions, stunning Max for a moment with the sound and flash and shock wave of the explosion. The force of the explosion traveled up his legs and torso and blasted into the back of his head. Metal shards rained down after bouncing off the ceiling.
Max roused himself when he felt the fire burning through his clothes. He stood, swayed unsteadily, patted out flames coming from his coat and pants, glanced at the twins doing the same. The sting of wounds distracted him, and he felt along his body for any serious cuts from the shrapnel. A scraping sound alerted him. His hands rose instinctively, and he hunched his shoulders to receive a blow.
Pale Fox, his borrowed body hot, smoking, still on fire in places, dove into him. The god drove his head into Max’s stomach while wrapping his arms around Max’s waist. They wrestled, stumbled, and then Max felt his feet give and his balance shift backward as Pale Fox pushed him toward the one of the boarded windows. He cracked Pale Fox’s shoulder with a knee-kick and elbow smash even as they fell backward, but the blow did nothing to curb the god’s power or charge.
They passed out of the circle of lights, smashed once into a heavy piece of equipment. Metal corners dug into Max’s back, and his head whipped back. Pale Fox pulled him away from the machine, and Max reached down, trying to break the hold. But his grip slid from around Pale Fox’s neck, and the god quickly tightened his hold around Max’s hips. Max tried to sink his center of gravity, sinking his body until he was almost kneeling. But Pale Fox charged again, legs churning and driving with inhuman power, and Max fell back, unable to find his balance or stand up to the god’s strength. Kueur and Alioune chased them, but they were too far behind to help. Max felt him-self lifted into the air; his feet left the ground. His fists and elbows sank into Pale Fox’s burnt back, into flame and charred flesh. Bones and discs broke and cracked, but just as quickly mended. He tried to bite, scratch, kick. Pale Fox came on like a wild tempest. The Beast screeched with frustration.
The cold air struck him first. Then the sensation of flying. Wood splintered and broke all around him, and the dull pain from breaking through glass and wooden boards spread like a slow stain from back to spine to the base of his skull until the world blacked out. He woke falling, Pale Fox still holding on to him. Air was forced out of him when he stopped, when wet snow just starting to refreeze crunched under his back and Pale Fox landed headfirst on top of him, in the gut.
Max lay stunned in a mound of snow, his body twitching, frigid snow kissing the back of his neck and his hands. Pale Fox rolled off, threw snow and ice on himself, then got to his feet. Skin had been burned away, along with hair, leaving raw muscle and even bone exposed. The wounds had no apparent effect. Pale Fox pulled slices of metal from his
body. Blood dribbled, stopped. Cuts and tears knitted closed, though skin, like eyes, would not grow back where it had been eaten away in large patches.
“Tonton!” Kueur shouted from the window through which they had fallen.
“Don’t worry,” Pale Fox said, leaping to the side of the building, clambering up the brick face like a spider, “I haven’t killed him. You can have him back, if you live after I’m done with you.” The twins drew away from the window as Pale Fox entered. The sounds of fighting drifted down to the street. Max groaned, concentrated on shutting down the Beast’s rage so he could think. Slowly, he rose, pain shooting from ribs and back. His body had taken worse punishment and survived, even thrived, in the pursuit of work, and of pleasures. And when even his unnatural resilience and stamina had failed and he suffered injuries, the Beast had carried him on. But he was older, and the Beast a ghost. Max forced himself toward the door, staggering slightly, pushing himself for the twins. Driven by his love for them, and by the fear of losing them.
Love, and fear. Chiao’s warning returned to him. Love and fear were driving him to his destruction, and condemning the twins.
He stopped at the door, leaned against the jamb. A slight tremor seized his legs. He had little enough left to fight the god, not enough to save the twins. Unlike his enemy, he could not heal his own bruised and broken ribs, much less shattered bones. The Beast urged him on, eager for blood and pain, but reason made him think. He was not afraid to die. A part of him welcomed the promise of darkness. But he could not follow his love and fear to a useless sacrifice, leaving one or both of the twins for Pale Fox. Max hammered the steel door frame once with his fist. He could find no advantage to help him against the god. Looking down, searching for an answer, he saw Pale Fox’s footprint in the snow. The god’s elevated body heat had melted a layer of snow, and a few specks of blood floated in the water. Blood and water.
Max nodded to himself. He might not know how to stop the twins’ father, but he knew someone who might have an answer. He just needed a flow of blood and water. And a mother who cared enough to come across worlds to offer help.
Max went to his car and drove off, hunting for a source of blood. The Beast danced in the haze of pain behind Max’s eyes.
Corners flashed by, mostly abandoned, locked in cold darkness illuminated by lonely streetlamps. Prostitutes ventured through snow and ice when he slowed to cruise by them, cursed when he sped off. A parked tractor-trailer with a driver slouched against the truck cab window tempted him. A police cruiser turning back toward the highway tugged at his restless rage and reckless instincts. He had counted all of their professions among the victims demanded by his work and his appetite, at one time or another, but hesitated now to pursue any of them for his need. The Beast jumped at the sight of each, just as his reason urged him to get on with what he had to do. They were all meat for the slaughter. They all held the blood he needed to summon a spirit. But something held him back from making the necessary sacrifice, and it was neither pain nor weariness.
Max shook his head, irritated by his paralysis, angered by the apparent birth of a drive to kill for a reason beyond his personal necessity. Even saving the twins was not enough. And though the Beast, in its ghost state, was strong enough to aid him in his work, it lacked the power to drive him into the state of frenzy he needed to be in to kill indiscriminately. It was as if the glimpse of Pale Fox’s torment over the loss of his twin, and the god’s abandonment of any reality except the one in which he could find her again, had driven a wedge between Max and his appetites.
Max’s grip on the steering wheel tightened as a realization struck him. He did not want to kill an innocent. He did not want to follow Pale Fox’s path and drag in a helpless bystander, like the man whose body Pale Fox had possessed, to get what he wanted. He needed to find someone that needed killing.
Without thinking, he drove toward a block well-lit by a yellow corner bodega sign, a bar, and closed pawnshop and used furniture and clothing warehouse. He parked on a corner around the block, within sight of the bar. Waited. A tall, husky blond man singing and waving a short pea coat over his head emerged, accompanied by two shorter, stocky men laughing, kicking at street debris, throwing snowballs at the singer. A bus pulled in to the corner, obscuring them for a few moments. When it pulled away, they had quieted. A woman, bundled up in a long coat and hat, carrying a pharmacy bag, quickly crossed the street in front of Max and headed up a quiet block of six-story apartment buildings. The blond man put on his coat. They spoke among themselves, then split up, the blonde leading while the other two trailed on either side of the street as they went after the woman.
Max turned off the headlights and followed them through the cold, abandoned streets.
They caught her as she fumbled with keys at the door to an apartment building. While two kept watch on the street, the blonde jumped up the steps to the entrance and hooked his arm around her neck. Her cry was choked off and she was dragged off her feet, swept down the stairs, surrounded by the others, and carried struggling down the street. The pharmacy bag and its contents lay strewn across the stairs. She had no chance to cry out. Max was reminded of wasps stinging a worm into paralysis and dragging it off to plant eggs in the body.
They took her into an alley between two buildings, one shuttered and abandoned, the other closed tightly with curtains and blinds against the night. By the time Max reached the alley mouth they had beaten her into stillness and removed her coat. The woman was sprawled across garbage bags, half in the light from the streetlamp facing the alley. Her jeans were pulled down below her hips, sweatshirt rolled up to her shoulders, breasts flattened against her body, brown face bloodied, eyelids fluttering. The men jostled around her, glancing up occasionally at the windows shut and gate-locked against winter, thieves, and the stench of garbage. Max ducked back, anticipating one of the men looking back at the alley entrance. Moments later, Max looked back in. Night sucked the harsh sound of the three men’s breathing out of the air.
Max raced his shadow to come up behind the closest man to the mouth of the alley. He snaked his hand under the chin, pushed his knee into the back of the man’s knee, pulled with one hand clenching the back of the coat, and pushed with the chin hand. As the man flailed and gasped with sudden vertigo over the shift of balance, Max drove the head into the brick wall. The man groaned as he slid, stunned, to the ground. Turning, Max caught the second man charging with a kick to the knee. As the second man staggered forward, grimacing, a quick side step and arm trap gave Max the advantage. He led the assailant into the same brick wall into which he had thrown the first man.
Max sank at the knees slightly and raised his hands as he caught sight of the third man as a blur of motion coming quickly up on him. The attacker’s fist deflected off Max’s raised shoulder. Max redirected the blow past his face with one hand, reached low with the other as the man’s solid body crashed into him. Max sank deeper, letting the man roll up on his shoulder. His high hand grabbed hold of the attacker’s lead arm; his low hand hooked around the crotch. Max pulled, pushed, stood up. The third attacker, carried by his momentum, went up easily in Max’s arms. He cursed, and the smell of alcohol blew out with his condensing breath. Max flipped him over, sent him to the ground headfirst, hard. Bone cracked. Fluid and blood dribbled from torn skin and a broken skull, staining the man’s blond hair and making it clump.
The Beast howled with its victory, though Max had hardly needed to call on its rage and power. Without a god to lend them power and overcome their drunkenness and lack of skill, they were no match for Max. An invigorating rush of energy washed through Max, a consequence of the Beast’s elation. Max took a deep breath and savored the partial and temporary relief from pain and exhaustion.
The fight had been quick and quiet, and no one had been alerted. Max wondered if anyone would have noticed if there had been noise. He went to the woman. She opened her eyes, stared at Max. He tried to give her a reassuring smile, but the Beast lurked behind his eye
s, twisted his lips into a sneer, rumbled in his throat. Her fingers dug through the taut plastic of the bags under her. Her mouth opened, eyes widened. Her feet sank between the garbage bags as she tried to push herself away from him. The scream was coming, rushing out just behind the terror contorting her brown face and blinding her vision. Max raised his fist. The blow was sudden and unexpected, he was certain. She would never be able to separate his face from the other three and describe it accurately.
The Beast rose up, ravenous. Max’s erection pushed unexpectedly against his pants. The woman’s legs were spread apart, and her panties dug into the flesh below her belly. The scratches on her breasts inflamed the Beast; the puffiness around her eyes and the bloody cuts on her face incited wild appetites, promised savage pleasures. The Beast’s call was answered by his own lusts, and Max took a step toward the woman while his hands fumbled with his pants.
He remembered the twins and his love; Chiao and her warning about letting love and fear lead him; Pale Fox and the god’s terrible need; his pledge not to sacrifice innocents. Max hesitated. The Beast rode over his resolve, but Max hung on. He turned, stepped to the alley wall, punched bricks once, twice. Hanging on to the pain, Max wrestled the Beast down into darkness. His own desires he swallowed, until his gorge rose and he had to vomit thin and bitter acid. Stomach fluttering, Max went back to the woman and pulled her clothes together with trembling hands. He replaced her coat, found the little purse she had carried in a pocket, as well as keys, and put them in her hands.
One of the attackers moaned, and Max went to the two shorter men and knocked their heads into the wall again, until only soft breathing escaped their slack mouths. The big blond man was dead. Max dragged him farther back into the alley, where a snowdrift accumulated against the back wall. He set a fire in a small trash pile he built in the drift. Snow melted, water flowed. Max dragged the dead man to the drift, cut a gash in his throat, and let blood join the water’s flow.
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