Chapter 7 The Fire of God #6
When the fire was at its peak, the two-legs who had been meditating on the collection of leaves stood.
As it stood, the others fell silent. It strode toward the fire, getting closer than Chester would have believed possible.
The column of flame towered over it, perhaps twice its height.
When it was close enough that the heat set its outer skins to smoking, it turned and faced the other four.
It began to speak, glancing down at the leaves in its hand from time to time.
Blacktail watched for a moment, his eyes narrow and suspicious. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I don’t like this at—”
Then he trailed off, his mouth wide open in astonishment.
“Blacktail, what is—” Chester began, but when he followed Blacktail’s gaze he fell silent as well.
Something lived inside the fire.
It looked like a two-legs on first glance, but it was enormous, fully twice as large as any two-legs Chester had ever seen or heard of.
That was one thing. It wore long, flowing skins, dry ones that the fire should have eaten quickly.
But they did not burn. That was another thing.
But the worst of it, the sight that hurt Chester’s mind and made him question whether this was a dream, was that the two-legs floated above the fire, its hands dangling in the flame well off the ground.
From its back sprouted two mighty white wings.
As he watched, the wings beat once, lazily, the wind of their passage fanning the flames.
Seeing this, all the two-legs knelt down. They buried their faces in the sand, hiding their eyes.
“Come down, hunter,” the winged creature said. “I have a message for you.”
Blacktail stood up, breaking their cover. “Who are you to summon me?” he asked. “I am no lapdog, to be called at your will.”
“You truly don’t know me? No, I can see that you don’t. I don’t know you, either, and that is stranger still. I am called Uriel, Archangel of the Choir of Virtues, who is the Fire of God. The Lord of Hosts heard you cry out in the night, Blacktail. I am the comfort that is sent to you.”
Something about the way it talked was wrong…off. After a moment, Chester saw why, though he never fully understood. Sometimes it speaks without its mouth moving, he realized. Other times it moves too soon or too late. A thought rose from somewhere deep. Is it really here at all?
“Shit on your lies,” Blacktail said. “You have nothing I could want.”
“Are you so sure?” the angel asked. It did something with its forepaws, something Chester found hard to see. Whining and overwhelmed, he squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. When he opened them again, a tall black dog stood in the shadows just outside the circle of fire.
Blacktail drew in a sharp breath. “Renren?” he asked in a soft and wondering tone. He cocked his head to one side and scented the night air, then started down the hill toward her. “Renren.”
“Blacktail, what—” Chester began, but the great hunter did not hear.
“What magic is this?” Blacktail was not quite screaming. “What have you done?”
“I might ask you the same question,” the Fire of God said.
“My god has given man dominion over the birds of the air and the beasts of the field. Such a decree is not a thing to be broken, as you know. But even now you challenge it. Your face seems familiar to me, Blacktail. I think we may know each other of old. But even I, who have lived forever and forgotten nothing, cannot recall your true name. You are not an angel. You are not even one of the fallen. What manner of creature are you, Blacktail? What gods do you serve?”
Blacktail stopped just short of the other dog. “I serve the god of chewing your heart out of your chest if you do not make that shadow go away.”
“That is no shadow, Blacktail,” Uriel said. “Do you not recognize her scent? The Lord has blessed me with many skills, but even I could not deceive one such as yourself in matters of odor. It is your Renren, come back to you again.”
Blacktail said nothing for a long time. “She lives?” he asked finally, in a small, quiet voice.
“No. Not life. The physical world cannot hold her. Not anymore. But I have called her back from where she was. When I saw that she answered the call, I took us a little of the distance to her as well.” Uriel gestured with one of his paws.
Around them, the desert that once seemed to stretch out forever now ended just beyond the light of the fire.
Try as he might, he could neither see nor hear anything beyond that.
What is this place? Chester thought. The dirt beneath his paws felt thin, insubstantial, like a crust over…what? The air carried no smell he could detect. There was only one plant in sight, a prickly pear, and it seemed transparent, like muddy water in a stream. Is this all still real?
Am I?
Blacktail saw these things as well. “Where are we?” he barked.
“We are nowhere. These lands lie between life and death, and stand mostly unclaimed.” Uriel’s eyes were sharp on Blacktail. “You and your Renren might build a home here, if you like.”
“This is some trick.”
“No. No trick. I present my offer freely to you. If you accept, there will be no debt, no obligation. I will heal the disease in you—you already feel it working, yes? You can live out your natural life here with your wife. The hunting is good, see?” At this, a fat elk bounded into the circle of firelight, and at the sight of so many fangs and claws gathered there, bounded away fearfully.
“There are others like that, as much as a pack could ever eat. No more grubbing for squirrel. The water is clean and pure. When I am gone, no two-legs will ever set foot in this place again.”
“What of my pups?”
“I can call them back to you as well. It will take time and great skill, for they died nameless, but I think I might do it. They were five, three male and two female. Because they do not live, they can never breed, but they can be with you, and grow, and reclaim a measure of the life that was taken from them.”
“How long would I live this way?”
“As long as you might have lived in the physical world,” Uriel said. “Perhaps a bit longer. But in time you will die, as all creatures do, and then you and your clan go on together to what comes next. They needn’t even remember that they are—Well, they needn’t know.”
“And what would you have of me in return?”
“Nothing at all,” Uriel said. Blacktail’s nostrils flared—searching, Chester thought, for a lie. “Your wrath is a terrible thing, Blacktail, perhaps the worst thing. All who hear it must tremble. The god of man would ransom your peace. That is the truth, and all of it, I swear.”
Uriel knelt down, stretched out his hand. The ghost-dog, Renren, walked over to it, sniffed the paw a moment, and licked it. The angel scratched her ears. She grinned up at him. It was a happy, servile smile, a slave’s smile.
“What do you say, little one?” Uriel asked Renren. “Would you be with your love again?”
Renren looked first to Blacktail, then to the angel, then with longing to the snowy hill behind her.
“My…my…my lord,” she said haltingly. It was as if she had forgotten the trick of speech during her long stay in the dark. “My Lord Hunter.”
“Yes,” Blacktail said, “it is me.”
“My lord, you know that I loved you.”
“Yes.”
“Know also that I love you still.”
“Yes. And I you.”
“And know that had we—had I lived, I would—”
“Yes,” Blacktail said, his voice thick with emotion. “I do know.”
“Then kill them,” she barked, spitting the words out with such venomous rage that even Blacktail drew back a step.
“Kill for me, who was faithful and loved them without reservation. Kill for my puppies, who harmed no one, but were murdered in my womb, murdered in my body, dead forever without seeing the light. Heed the pleas of your night-dreams. Reign forever in your fury. Devour them all.”
Blacktail sipped at the air for a moment, tasting the scent of his mate.
Chester thought for a moment that Blacktail might speak, but he didn’t.
Perhaps there was nothing more to say. Renren dipped her head, looked up at him one final time…
then turned and walked back into the dark from which she had come.
Blacktail turned from her to face the fire. His countenance had grown so terrible that even the angel now hid his eyes from the sight. The bare sliver that Chester could see from behind left him frozen with terror.
“Come out,” Blacktail said. “I have a message for your Lord of Hosts that I would send back with you.”
Uriel, who was the Fire of God, hid his face in his hands. He made no answer.
“Come out,” Blacktail said again.
Still the angel held his silence, but now he trembled within the flame. Chester thought he struggled against some mighty force that bound him.
“Come out,” Blacktail said a third time, “or I shall come in after you.”
When again there was no answer, Blacktail fixed his gaze and strode down the hill. When he reached the fire, he paused for a moment.
Chester scrambled to his feet, screaming. “Blacktail! No!”
Blacktail did not hear, or did not care if he did.
He walked into the fire. He did not disappear, but receded, as if walking slowly down a long path.
Chester thought at first it was some illusion of the flame.
The fire they had built was only a few paces across at its widest, but Blacktail looked to be much, much farther away than that, now small, now tiny, now only a speck in the distance.
Chester lifted his gaze and saw that the angel was gone. He whined again, very softly. A moment later he crept out of the circle of light and moved away from the fire, his tail tucked between his legs. The fur on the back of his neck was high and prickly.
Despite his fear, Chester was not willing to abandon Blacktail. He stopped behind a large rock and hunkered down, much farther away than he had been but still close enough to see. Something is coming, he thought. Some terrible thing.