brick and asphalt and corrosion, you gain on them in a matter of minutes, until they are close enough to bring down like deer before a wolf. You hurl the brick while yet on the run, and it arcs past the shoulder of the nearer fugitive, toward the leader, thudding solidly into the back of his head. Was there ever any doubt? Something guided it there, as surely as it was first guided through your windshield.
They go down in the street, one tripping on the other. The one you’ve struck doesn’t get up. The other scrambles for his feet but you’re there, upon him. He rolls over to face you, eyes feral in their terror. He can’t be more than fourteen years old.
He thrashes beneath you with skinny stick limbs and unkempt hair, and you retrieve the brick. In your grip it feels light as a dream, heavy as an anchor. With the first downswing you crunch the boy’s eye socket. The second unhinges his jaw. The third staves in his forehead and stops him from moving after one final, frenzied convulsion. He makes a much easier target, until there’s no more point left to hitting him.
The other one is trying to crawl away by the time you finish, legs dragging weakly behind him, knees too weak to support his weight. The back of his jacket is already slick with the cascade of blood from where the brick first connected. You wonder who his parents are, how they let him end up like this, with no more regard for other people than bugs on which they might drop stones out of boredom. You wonder if they’ll miss him. Or instead shed a few token tears, then go on their way, creating other monsters, other demons who haunt these lands, these canyons, these buttes.
Demons. Yes, that’s it. That’s what he must be. You know what they look like now. You know what makes them. And most of all you know why they’re needed.
He doesn’t give you any trouble at all.
And soon after you stumble away from them, the rain begins, disgorged by swollen black clouds, falling to rinse you clean, and to wash away the worst of the slick you’ve left in the street for rats and other eaters of the dead.
*
There’s no longer any need to scan the windows for a glimpse of she who has been luring you for longer than you even realize. You know just where you’ll find her, where she’s waiting, and if you don’t quite yet understand why, you’ve learned that everything comes to you in time.
What a life you’ve led. What a life you’ve been liberated from. What a life into which you’ve been sent, not like a lamb to the slaughter, but the one who holds the knife.
The universe, after all, creates what it needs.
The immense building stands as solid as a fortress, its stone walls gleaming black in the rain. Her window is vacant, but that’s all right. You have faith, and so must she. Your only welcome comes from the gargoyles, watching as you near this one place in the world where you belong.
Does the rain fall harder just before you enter? Maybe. Maybe it does.
At the last moment you cross a weed-choked lawn to the corner of the building, where three floors up a squatting gargoyle serves as a downspout. From its mouth vomits a continual deluge of water, and for a timeless respite you stand beneath the flow, to let it wash clean the last of whatever clings to you from what you used to be. There you stay, until the final tears are rinsed from your eyes, and you can no longer grieve for a lost love whose only purpose was to teach you those things that truly begin tonight.
And then you turn for the door, to join the fellowship of gargoyles, to confront your reason for being, to assume your place in the scheme of all things in heaven and on earth.
A Loaf Of Bread, A Jug Of Wine
The only great figures among men are the poet,
the priest and the soldier.
The man who sings, the man who sacrifices and
the one who is sacrificed.
All the rest are good for the whip.
— Baudelaire
She thought of him as a secret friend, or in more fanciful moments when she dared risk the sin of impure thoughts, a secret admirer. Theirs was so far a relationship conducted via place, not proximity. Perhaps he’d heard her voice, but Sister Giselle had never heard his; and likely he knew her face, while his was a mystery that she found easy to dream of in idle moments. Which was improper, of course. She was the bride of Christ, and there was room for no other.
Were it not for the stable, doubtless they would have had no relationship at all … whoever he was.
She had been born to the farming life in a countryside still healing from the scars of the Great War, and as a girl she’d known much toil. Now, given her youth and experience with beasts of burden and her farmgirl’s strength, care of the horses fell to her. Certainly, Father Guillaume had more pressing obligations in the village and the surrounding countryside, and Sister Anna-Marie was growing too feeble.
Giselle didn’t mind. Horses belonged to God’s flock too, and the scents of hay and oats took her home again, if only in her imagination. She could talk to the four horses while currying them, while drawing them fresh water, while feeding them, talk to them as she might friends who stood patiently by and absorbed every word. They seemed wise and caring, with gentle souls beneath their muscular flanks, and placid brown eyes that seemed nothing if not protective.
Pity, then, that they could never speak in return.
It began three weeks ago, Giselle leaving the cottage that served as their priory and realizing the horses were already well cared for and lacking for nothing. One day, and the next, then a third. Asking around did nothing to assuage her curiosity, and served only to whet it. Father Guillaume had been distractedly amused, had smiled and chuckled with vague superiority. “Perhaps the Lord has seen fit to send an angel.”
She hadn’t thought it nearly as funny as he had.
The next day, this unseen angel began to leave loads of fresh-cut firewood, as well. Giselle’s first explanation was that it had been one of the villagers of Chateau-sur-Lac, slipping about to perform Christian duty in absolute anonymity. But then, how to account for the fact that someone had been spending nights in the stable? More than
