As Garret watched the hound on the dirt, he realized there was a pattern to the motion of its shadows. Back and forth, back and forth. In and out. In and out.
It was still breathing. The other hellhounds began to prance and pace.
Without thinking, Garret laid a hand on its side. It was real and solid as Babe’s flank, but cold as death. Yet it was breathing. It was still alive. The moment his fingers touched the hound, he felt its terrible pain. It was in misery, and had been for centuries. It had been mortally injured, but was unable to die. From its chest, the wisps and shadows strung away across the dirt in tatters. Its burning heart had not grown cold, as he first thought. It had been ripped from the hellhound’s chest, and its body left here in the middle of the abandoned road. The dead road. The cold road.
Garret bit his lip. He did not ask who had torn the heart from the hound. He knew the answer. The Presence stood over him, waiting. Garret looked up at it, and it opened a hand to the undead hound. Its baritone rolled quietly. “With this you will have the power you seek. I give it to you freely, if you will receive it.”
Garret looked at the hound, its shadowy body splayed in the road, gutted, suffering, and he knew. At long last he knew what the creature wanted. Its desire was simple. Simpler even than Garret’s desire to save his brother and Molly. The creature had been ripped in two, its consciousness torn in half. Both halves, its heart and its body, were flung to opposite ends of the universe, never to find one another again. Despite the evil the creature had done, it was, in the end, a wounded animal seeking an end to its suffering. The creature wanted peace.
It wanted to die.
As Garret knelt there, his hand on its chest, feeling its yearning for an end to its pain, he had compassion on the beast. In that brief moment of joining, it felt the same for him. A few of the wisps, which had been blowing back and forth, curled gently around his fingers. As they did, he felt an emotion from the hellhound. It was the same emotion Babe gave him when, at the end of a long night’s hunt, he would sit exhausted on the ground, and she would lay beside him, scoot tight against his leg, and lay her head on his thigh.
“Will you do this with me?” Garret whispered. “Can we finish this together?”
The curled wisps let go of him with a gentle sigh and went back to breathing. The hellhound was not evil. He knew evil. It was standing right beside him. It had planned and orchestrated all of the suffering: his, the creature’s, Charity’s, Molly’s, and countless more since before he was born. Nonetheless, Garret knew when he was beaten. He held out his left hand, palm up, fingers spread. It shook.
The fear had set in now, not because he was unaware of what was about to happen, but because he was fully aware. It took him three tries to say the words.
“I’ll do it.”
The Presence was instantly in front of him, grasping his left ring finger between two of its own. A sharp pang of coldness flowed into him, making him shudder and suck in his breath. For a split second, he thought he felt a ring, like an iron wedding band, cold and tight, wrap around his ring finger, and a sharp wire of pain shoot from it up his left arm and hook his heart. Then the feeling was gone.
What seized him next was primal and irresistible. Hunger. Need. Lust to destroy. He snatched the hound off the ground as if it were a pup and then, breathing deeply, swallowed it whole.
Garret hit the ground, choking and curling on himself as the hellhound spread through him, tangling, penetrating, permeating his heart and soul. Two torn beings, he and it, growing together into an unholy abomination. The hellhound’s body became one with him, meshing and melding in ways neither of them was meant to join with anything.
As the hellhound’s heart had bonded with Charity’s body, so the hellhound’s body bonded with Garret’s heart. Sheer force, insatiable and voracious, spread from it to every corner of his frame. It drove him to his feet, drove him from the road and into the trees faster than a wisp of wind. The other hellhounds parted before him like the Red Sea, laying back their ears and pacing in fear.
Garret was consumed by primeval drive. He had to complete, to end, to finish. He could not stop. Nothing in heaven above or earth below would stand in his way until he had accomplished what he and the hellhound had been released to do.
He was on his feet, two of them, then four, then two again, shifting from one form to the other, something between, perhaps something different than either of them, flinging himself away from the road. He threw himself through the poplars, heedless of the dark. Much of the time, he wasn’t touching the ground. He no longer needed light to see. He no longer needed anything, except satisfaction, except to protect those he loved, except to bring an end to everyone’s suffering.
He was flying through the trunks. He was flying off the trunks. The more strength he pulled, the more there was, letting him move faster, letting him be more powerful, letting him see and hear and smell and feel everything.
He began to laugh as he erupted from the poplar stand onto the side of a hemlock covered mountain. Molly and Sarn would be safe now. Oh yes, they would be more than safe. He would protect them forever. His laugh rang far into the hills, and the rocks shivered when they echoed it back to him. It came not as a thunderous cackle, or as the creature’s screaming roar. It came back as Garret’s own voice, but with one small difference.
Beneath Garret’s laugh lay the solidity of the earth’s foundation and the aggressiveness of an avalanche. He was unbreakable. Unstoppable. And all the world would know it.
* * *
He passed through the forest as easily as a falcon dives through the open air. Mountains didn’t slow him, trees did not deter him. Over, around and through things he went, but silent as the hellhounds. Faster and faster he flung himself, as though he was limited only by his will. Leaping from cliffs, falling, flying around the trees, sometimes straight through them, though when he looked back, they stood in his wake, as placid and unharmed as if they had not noticed the man-hound which had passed through them like a bullet. Molly and Sarn would soon be safe. He would make them so. He would protect them forever.
On all four paws, he sprang over the crest of a hill and landed on two legs. As he plunged back into the forest again, he caught sight of the town, some three miles away. He could see it in perfect detail, every board and grain of dirt. He could see everything as if it was all laid out beneath his nose for inspection.
He raced across the ground, passing through the spot where Sarn had found him, and where the sheriff and his men had surrounded him. It seemed so long ago, its childish fear a thing of the past, yet it tugged at him, gave him a pang of sorrow and guilt. It was a reminder of something he shouldn’t forget.
Up a hill and across a ridge he went, arriving in his own back yard. He leaped halfway across it, becoming wisp and shadow as he hit the barn wall, passing through it without a sound. He flew across the barn in an effortless stride, becoming solid and human to duck and pass through the rotten hole in the barn wall where he had sat with Sarn on so many nights.
Into his own house he went, through one wall, through the bedroom where he had slept his whole life, where his mother had used him, where he had kept jealous watch over Sarn to prevent the same. He became a gust of shadow and wind when he went through the kitchen where he had scrounged for his meals. This house was not his home. It had never been. He passed out the far wall, leaving his parents’ house forever.
The moon had come out from behind the clouds, and Garret ran down the road on all fours, effortlessly racing the moonbeams. He cut left, down into the woods for a more direct route to town. How fitting that the most direct route would also take him past the Malvern’s mansion. The dark woods could not hold him, and in mere moments, he was cresting the knoll onto their lawn.
The mansion was a pile of rubble, still smoldering. The remains of a gilded hoax, revealed by fire for the jumbled, lifeless wreckage that it truly was.
Molly and Sarn. Molly and Sarn. Garret drew for more power, more velocity
, and it came surging into him, bringing with it, again, the overpowering urge to end all the suffering. Merely a moment passed before he leaped onto Main Street. The town was a burning wreck. None of the buildings still stood. They were heaps and leaning piles of flaming walls and timbers. A few people still scurried around, crying and doing useless things like trying to rake flaming boards away from other things that were already flaming as well, but most simply stood in the street and watched as their lives crumbled to cinder and blew away in smoke.
Garret went right down the middle of Main Street, passing around those who did not get in his way, and passing through those who did. When he passed through a person, they would stumble and cry out in surprise.
His blacksmith shop was a hollowed-out wreck. Burned fragments of walls stood on both ends, and his forge and brick hood jutted up in the center like a broken tree. He flew over the cinders and snags which remained of the boardwalk, landing between his and his Pa’s anvils. Garret’s anvil still stood, the stump beneath it charred but intact. Pa’s anvil lay on the ground, its stump burned and fallen into pieces.
Garret stood stock still, listened with his ears which heard everything, and looked with his eyes that saw everywhere. He saw Sarn buried in the shadows, hidden within them as only the creature could do.
Sarn came out of the shadows without his feet touching the ground. In his hands was a knife, fold-forged from the blank Garret had begun and the silver dollar he had found. On Sarn’s face was sorrow, and despair.
“I’m sorry, brother. I love you,” he said, and then the claws that held him skewered him from behind.
Or at least, they almost did. In the time it took for the creature’s claws to go from holding him to sinking an inch into his back, Garret covered all the ground between them. He caught the creature’s hand with his own. His was small, human in shape, but wrapped in dark fur that looked more like wisps of shadow. Calling upon everything that lay within, he forced the creature’s hand open, withdrawing the cruel spikes from his brother’s back.
Sarn stumbled away, falling to his knees, staring at Garret in horror. There was a frozen moment, Garret glaring up into the creature’s burning eyes, and it glaring back down at him. Hand against hand, they pressed against each other, the creature’s strength against Garret’s will, the creature grinding its fangs and Garret gritting his teeth.
The wisping of the fire filled the air, and Garret growled quietly, “Don’t… touch… my… brother.”
The creature screamed, a rising blast that shook the town’s cornerstones, and then hell erupted between Garret and the creature. Everything was pounding fists and slashing claws, flying in and out of darkness, biting, tricking, evading, dodging. The creature was larger than life and Garret was faster than death. In and out he went, from this reality to the next, flashing back and forth from one to the other, sinking his black, glistening wolf teeth into the creature’s skin as he flashed all around it. The creature clipped him with a fist. He sank his teeth into its leg and ripped off a chunk. The creature burst in and out of hell’s heart though the town’s flames and shadows, flinging itself at him. Round and round they went, leaping, flying, throwing one another, tearing through walls, scattering the rubble of the town like burning chaff.
Garret flashed to a side street, then another as the creature pursued, shrieking in rage, leaking black blood from the numerous chunks of its body he had torn away. Garret was neither wolf nor man. He was the night.
The earth’s gravity could not hold him anymore than the night could blind him. He raced through one house, then another, the creature slamming through behind him, setting ablaze the few things not already sending smoke to the heavens.
Drawn by his need to find Molly, and the dark power which had consented to serve him, Garret lured the creature to the town’s church. As reached it, he smelled traces of Father Bendetti’s blood on the steeple.
As he passed through the doors, his stomach churned, and the hound inside him cried out in pain at the blinding light. It cowered within him, and he dropped to the vestibule floorboards, a naked young man on hands and knees. At the far end of the sanctuary, on the altar, lay Molly. She was tied down, her dress torn and soiled with dirt, blood, and tears.
He crawled down the aisle towards her. The hound within him cried out for mercy with every step. He pushed it and himself closer to the altar. The hound’s purpose, its home, was within the darkness, and Garret had dragged it away, forced it beyond what it was meant to be—beyond what he himself was meant to be.
With a thunderous crash and roar of flames, the creature broke through the church doors, tearing them from the hinges Garret and his Pa had made, and sending them tumbling into the pews. The creature filled the opening, but it dropped to a knee, laying its long ears back and huffing in anguish.
It came forward on hands and knees, struggling to rise. Garret pulled himself up on the sides of the altar.
Molly was awake and wide-eyed, but she wasn’t staring at the crawling, howling creature coming down the aisle. She was staring at Garret. Her eyes were round with fright.
“It’s okay Molly, it’s me,” he said as he snapped the ropes and untied her ankles and feet. The hound inside him rolled in pain, shuddered, and Garret fell against the altar, his strength leaving him for a moment. As he slumped against the wood, regaining his breath and squinting against the blinding light which filled the sanctuary, he saw another figure enter the church. Though his hearing was being overcome by the silvery ring of the light, which was steadily growing louder, he recognized his brother’s voice. The creature heard it too and turned. Sarn skipped aside and tried to strike with the knife, but even its weakened state, the creature’s blow drove him into a pew. He fell limply to the floor.
The creature crawled quickly, filling Garret’s vision, blocking out Sarn’s fallen form. It grabbed Garret by the throat, its strength beginning to crush him. But he slipped into shadow and wisp, slid through the creature and hit the floor behind hit. The creature spun, but he had already leaped and shifted, opening his black-fanged mouth for the creature’s throat. He was faster, and it was a killing strike.
Between himself, the hellhound, and the wolfstrap, he had finally beaten the creature.
But the creature was not alone. As it had held Sarn in the shadows and tried to skewer him, it had not been alone. As it had chased Garret through the town, fought with him, and been bitten by him, it was not alone. Charity was with it all the while, and beneath all the rage and hate and fire and dark strength of the creature, she was simply human.
In the same way, beneath all the speed, desire, drive, and shadow of the hound, Garret was also merely human, and Charity knew it. She had planned for it. Garret could move faster than the creature, but nothing could move faster than thought. As he leaped, Charity reached into Garret’s mind and took hold of the thing she had found there the night in the ravine. She had used the opportunity to seek out his darkest secret and his worst fear, and then she had left it there, knowing this moment would come.
She reached into his mind, down past all the locks and bars and walls he had built to keep himself sane. She grabbed one of the memories he had so carefully hidden there, and she ripped it loose from the shadow in which Garret had safely confined it.
Suddenly, Garret was eight years old. He didn’t have his clothes on, and he’d never felt so dirty and worthless in his life. He wasn’t screaming or even crying. He was just shivering. The tremors came and went, up and down his body, though he wasn’t cold. He kept his eyes squeezed tight enough to make his head hurt, and he shook. She was ecstatic, hellishly, demonically enthralled. Her fingernails were dug into his wrist, sunk deep as tacks, stretching his arms out above his head. Three of them in his left wrist, four in his right. Something warm was seeping down his wrists.
It hurt so badly. But not his wrists. He couldn’t feel them, really. It was hurting his heart, tearing him apart. Mutilating his childhood beyond repair. It was killing him. Slowly. Like s
tripping his flesh away without leaving a mark. One piece at a time. It wasn’t the first time it happened, nor would it be the last.
His wrists would scar over in time. His heart, though, would not be so easily mended.
Garret sprawled out in midair, his black fangs retreating. The creature completed the turn and threw a punch. Garret hit the floor under the creature’s fist. He was fully human, disoriented. The memory kept playing over and over, others coming back with it in a flood he couldn’t handle, couldn’t sort out, couldn’t stop.
He felt the creature’s hand pin his head to the floor, and somewhere he heard the creature’s voice, melting into Charity’s. She was screaming, but not at Garret, this time.
“All of my paintings! Every single one! They were all I had in the world. They were me. My own soul. The servants didn’t know where they all were, did they, little sister? They couldn’t have found them, even if they wanted to. There was only one person, other than me, only one person I trusted.” Charity broke down to a sob. “Only one person I loved…”
“Charity, I’m so sorry.” Molly was sobbing too. “But this isn’t Garret’s fault. Please stop hurting him.”
“Hurting Garret?!” Charity screamed with the creature’s thunder. “You think this is about him?!”
Despite the fact that Garret’s mind was flooded with unbearable things, and despite the fact that he was again a little boy, begging someone to stop hurting him, a small fragment of his mind grasped what was happening between Charity and Molly.
All the weeks of torment and torture by the creature were only an aside. It had never been about him. This had always been about Molly. Molly loved him more than herself, and so the worst way Charity could hurt Molly was to hurt Garret. Garret had been so focused on his own pain that he had not realized how much damage it was doing to Molly.
Brimstone Page 45
