Gods and Demons in Love

by Claudette Gilbert

  *****

  Nate Lee

  It took me a moment to recognize the rattle of gunfire in the distance. This place was primitive enough that they still used solid projectile weapons, and I'd grown unfamiliar with the sound. The noise came from the clearing where I'd left Silk and the children.

  I snarled in rage. Silk was mine, and I was not yet done with her.

  I reached out and found their thoughts. The children were all dead or dying. Silk stood alone in a circle of enemies. Their leader wanted sex before they killed her. Others wanted only her death. The soldiers argued back and forth, striving for dominance.

  I let go of the semblance of being a man. I let go of Nathan, and I returned to my true self. In an instant, I was on them like the wolf I resembled. I tore apart their flimsy bodies, ripped them limb from limb, opened throats, tore open their bellies so their steaming guts spilled on the snow. Silk screamed, and between one scream and the next it was done.

  Fear dried up her voice as she stared at me and did not know me. Silk saw a monstrous wolf with supernatural speed. But what Silk saw was still only a fraction of what I was. I stalked forward, paws digging deep into the bloody snow. I looked into her eyes and let her see me truly.

  Silk screamed again, full throated, full of shock. A scream of outrage that such a thing as I should exist in her world. When I judged that she hung at the edge of gibbering insanity and had seen all that she could hold, I resumed the form of Nathan. The ruby on my hand felt hot and heavy with the weight of the soldier's fresh caught souls.

  "What are you?" she demanded, backing away from me.

  "You've seen what I am," I replied. I had no more patience for this game. "Long ago, when humans were new, I fell in love with a human woman. She won a promise from me, my beloved. I promised her that I would grant the heart's desire of each of her daughters, so long as her line continued. And you, Silk, are the last, the very last of her daughters' daughters. So, tell me your heart's desire and end my curse of love."

  "You think love's a curse?" she asked, straightening. She'd already regained her composure.

  "I know it," I answered. "I've been bound by it for far more time than all the years in your history books."

  Slowly, she looked around the clearing, at the dead children and the mangled remains of the soldiers. The air stank with blood and other fluids that were not meant to be outside a body. The snow was red, where it was not darker. Only the circle where Silk stood remained white. She'd lost her tan cloak and stood in the spitting sleet in a thin blue sweater and dark trousers. I saw her shiver, but I didn't think it was from the cold.

  "So, you'll give me whatever I want?"

  Her voice was calm and even. She was brave, my Silk. She knew now what I was, and she did not fear me at all.

  "Yes," I said. "Just name your heart's desire."

  "And if I wanted to stop this senseless war? Could you do that?"

  "Yes," I assured her. It would be nothing to kill every enemy—man, woman, and child.

  "And could you split this world, so that each side had their own space in which to be in peace?"

  "If that is your heart's desire," I said. I could split the ground apart and both sides would be at peace in death.

  "Or change the moon to silver?"

  "Yes."

  "Or change the sun to gold."

  "Whatever you ask," I assured her. "You have only to tell me the one thing you wish the most."

  She stared at me without fear, with a look of calculation on her face. It was so like that face I'd once loved that a part of me wanted me to tell her to stop, to wish for nothing from me. But I'd given my word, and I could not break it. This curse could end only when I granted the heart's desire of this very last far daughter of Laheese.

  "And you are not my Nathan at all," she said. "Not really."

  I heard cold anger in her voice and shuddered. Silk had fallen in love with a dream, and I'd just destroyed that dream by showing her the truth.

  "Some small part of me is Nathan," I admitted. Some small part of me loved her dearly and struggled to protect her.

  "But you can give me anything? Anything I ask?"

  "I cannot bring the dead to back to life," I admitted, glancing at the children's corpses. "But I can change mind and matter how I will."

  Then she smiled, her lips curing upward in a savage satisfaction that I had not seen on her face before. The part of me that was Nathan covered her thoughts and would not let me know what was in her mind.

  "Then here is my heart's desire," she said, with measured tones as if she were a judge delivering a weighty sentence. "Do this one thing, and do it well. It is all I ask."

  "And what is your wish?"

  "Nathan," she said. "Be my Nathan, truly him, with no hidden self, no secret powers. Be Nathan the man. Nothing more and nothing less."

  "And you want Nathan's eternal love as well?" I asked wearily, knowing full well how such love became a trap and weight upon the heart.

  "No," she said. "Nathan loves me now. That is enough. If he loves me in the future, it will be his choice."

  I stared at her astounded by her courage and her confidence. And I began to feel afraid.

  "Do you understand what you ask? You would turn a god into a mere man? You would throw away power and riches beyond counting?"

  She shrugged and spoke impatiently. "I can find my own power and riches. Give me my Nathan, whole and complete, exactly as you have made him seem, only make it all real. Make him a man with the past you claimed, with the honor that overflowed from him, with the heart that you pretended to have."

  I knew then that the end had come. The godling who had hidden among mortals for so long would be no more. My promise and my curse bound me to grant her heart's desire. I was trapped by my own love for a woman long dust. I would be the man she loved, and perhaps, when Nathan's end came, I would finally go to that far land from which I had been so long barred.

  "So be it," I said. "You shall have your wish."

  I took off my ring and held it toward her. The ruby gleamed with the power of souls trapped in its depths.

  "Take this."

  She reached for it and shuddered as her hand closed around it.

  "This is my heart," I told her. "Crush it in your hand."

  "Crush a stone?"

  "If you want your Nathan, then do it."

  She looked at me with eyes as proud and determined as those of far off Laheese, and her hand closed around the ruby as if she would smash the world.

  I gasped as the ruby shattered under the power of her wish. Red light flew about the clearing, darting bits of life seeking escape. I heard screams and voices singing. Somewhere, I heard the trumpeting of Mammoth as she finally broke free of the jewel that had penned her. My power ran away from me, flying outward like birds escaping. My sense of self faded, diminished, grew less, until only one small part remained.