Chapter 1 Love #6
There in the dark, observed by none, Blacktail smiled.
He slipped round his prey, off to the side and behind it, making no sound, invisible and unscented.
He snapped out, bit down hard on the hand that brought gunshots.
The prey’s bones crackled between his jaws.
He ripped the flesh from its neck and face and body, eating some, casting some aside, his neck whipping back and forth as he hewed flesh from bone and sent the two-legs on to whatever hell came next for such as it.
He rolled in the blood and viscera, triumphant, anointing his shoulders with the scents of conquest. He lifted up his head and screamed, sending his fury beyond the walls of the den, past the sky and out into the heavens beyond.
—
Half a world away, in the grasses of the Serengeti under the noonday sun, the Old Kitty Mother was taking questions from her acolytes.
This coven was mostly lions, and they towered over her.
“Instruct us, Mother,” asked one novice.
“What is the secret of your courage?” His tone was both sarcastic… and ever so slightly menacing.
Her lessons that day had been harsh. The Old Kitty Mother was small—men would have called her a house cat—but the true witches among this coven winced at the lion’s impertinence and braced themselves for blood. The Old Kitty Mother was not known for her patience.
She did not respond. She seemed not to notice. She brushed past him, walked to a nearby boulder, and began to climb. Each time her paw touched rock, the light of the noonday sun receded a bit more. By the time she reached the top, it was black as midnight—blacker, for no stars shone in this sky.
The lions gathered below her rumbled nervously.
The senior apprentices were not worried by the sudden dark or even the strange, chittering sounds now rising up around them.
A long acquaintance of her magic had accustomed them to impossible things, but the Old Kitty Mother was purring and swishing her tail with the greatest joy.
Even the oldest sea turtles could not remember a world before her, but in all that time no one had ever seen her so pleased.
“Did you hear that?” She waited a moment, but no one spoke.
She glanced up at the moon. It was the same—so far—but she swished her tail with something like glee.
“No? None of you? Very well.” She hopped down from the rock.
Daylight returned. She walked out into the grass.
They knew without asking that she was going somewhere none of them could follow.
Just before the grass swallowed her, she turned back to the insolent novice.
“Oh—final lesson. One of you asked of my secret?”
That lion, not so menacing with the memory of darkness upon him, shook his mane in assent.
“The secret,” she said, “is that there is no secret. Everyone suffers. Some choose to surrender, and some do not. The nature of your courage, the degree of it…these are entirely up to you.”
With that she was gone, off to stalk something that only she could hear.
—
Even when they were all dead, Blacktail’s rage was still high.
He defiled their corpses, shredding the flesh but eating nothing.
When that was done he scattered the pieces throughout house, pissing and shitting as he went, ruining things.
He understood that the red moon in his mind would never truly set, but after a time it at least dimmed.
When there was nothing left to ruin, he slipped back out into the night.
Blacktail stood vigil over the body of Renren as he had once done for his mother.
For now there was only grief. Once, when he was younger, he had torn out one of his foreclaws while climbing a rock.
This felt like that. Everything he touched hurt.
When he looked at the wall of the garden, he knew that Renren would not climb it beside him.
The memory of his den on the hill was haunted by the ghost of puppies that would never play there.
He knew he would never again sniff the breeze without hoping for her scent.
It crossed his mind then to lie down and wait for the end.
Before too long, some two-legs will come and kill me.
They kill everything that matters sooner or later.
I doubt I’ll even have to wait very long.
The idea was not entirely without its attractions.
He had seen the look of death many times in the eyes of his prey, and he thought that whatever came next would at least be peaceful.
The red moon still shone high in his mind, if not quite so bright as before.
Blacktail stood. He shook the clotting blood from his fur. He crouched to leap the garden wall one last time, then paused. Then, in the first light of dawn, he walked back to the den of men and laid his scent on it, saying:
God may forgive them for this
but if so
I will kill Him, too.
The rising sun brought a gray sky and fat snowflakes that clung to his fur. Winter had begun.