The Beast That Was Max (28 page)

"I need only to plant a spirit seed, through this body's physical seed, in my daughters. My seed is a fragment of the original fonio, the seed of the world, which I took with me at the beginning of all things. The fonio will take root in their wombs, twins will grow, and from both sets of children I'll choose my Yasigui and kill the rest. As the child grows, I'll shape her into what I am not, make her my sister, and she will make me whole. I'll be healed, and the curse of jealous gods, this yurugu, will not hold me any longer. I will be Ogo once again."

"And what's to happen with us?" Alioune asked, voice hard, eyes narrowed. "The same death that took our mother?"

"What do you know about your mother?" Pale Fox asked with contempt.

"No more than what we know about you, Father," said Kueur. "Our Jola mother never saw her when she found us in the bush. She only judged a mother had left us, by the weave of our baskets and blankets, and the gold hidden next to our bodies for our care. She judged the father had driven the mother to do this, and that our mother must surely be dead, for the basket's weave showed the kind of love that could only be broken by death."

"Your Jola mother was as quick to judge as your real mother," Pale Fox said with a dismissive gesture.

"Not quick enough, if she was with you long enough to have us," Alioune spat back.

Pale Fox swept his clawed hand around, as if to lash at their faces. When he opened his mouth to speak, his teeth flashed, longer and sharper than they had been moments before. "Chiao came to me while I was in the body of a man. I had the habit in my own domain to take the body of a follower for a few days, so I could taste the old shape and the old ways of perceiving. She had sought me out, sensing my presence from afar, drawn to my power, knowing I was more than what I seemed. The moment I saw her, I knew she was also more than what she seemed. We talked of innocent things, then of her land, and then of mine. I told her Ogo stories into the night, and when she asked, we loved each other's bodies. That was when we discovered the godhood at the heart of our souls. That was when I, in a moment of passion and hope, planted a fragment of the fonio seed in her, to see if her godhood might bring forth another Yasigui.

"Your mother spoke of love, of leaving her land and the places and things to which she belonged. She felt the emptiness in my heart, and thought she could fill it. She thought she could become my twin, and share what I had shared with Yasigui in the womb of creation at the beginning of our universe.

"I waited, saying nothing—"

"You did not encourage her?" Alioune asked, incredulous.

"You didn't fill her with dreams and fantasies?" Kueur added. "You made no promises? You didn't seduce her with your pathetic Ogo stories?"

"Words!" Pale Fox shouted. "Talk! All empty, meaningless. We were gods enjoying a time of peace from the dreary reality of mortals. To talk of a future, to build palaces of pleasure and wisdom out of smoke was to say nothing."

Alioiune nodded her head. "You lied to her.”

“You've no understanding of the ways of gods."

"We know enough," Kueur said with a contemptuous edge.

"Your mother knew. I can't help what she chose to believe, but she knew what I wanted. The seed grew quickly in her womb. Nine days we stayed together. Then you came. Twins, instead of the one daughter-sister I needed. I wondered what I should do—find some way to combine the two of you? Kill one, raise the other to be my twin? But which? It was all new to me.

"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.