No Dogs in Philly (23 page)

“
Is this what you want for your
world?” Friar asked, still whispering in her ear. “Light and fire?
Why not love? Why not have all your desires come to
life?”

“
You are trying to kill me,” Saru
slurred back. “How are you thinking this sounds to me right
now?”

“
Kill her,” Friar hissed. “Kill
the bitch before she burns your world. Before love is lost. Before
you are doomed to die the True Death.”

She looked down and saw a dagger in her hand, a
black spike, swirled like the floor, and the stone-flesh walls. It
was heavy and real, not her boot knife in disguise or her prod. Ria
was right behind her, blind to betrayal, caught in the ecstasy of
destruction. A hard thrust in her back would do the trick, that
would wipe the smile off her face. Little bitch, making me chase
you around the city, waiting until the last moment—why couldn’t you
have done this earlier? Before we were trapped in this hellhole?
Before half the blood had been sucked out of her and aliens had
raped her mind? But Saru knew the answer. The Blue God didn’t waste
its time with losers. It had only contempt for the weak. It was
waiting, chillin’ at the bar to see if anybody wanted to dance, any
shapely bones with attitude and a bit of fierce in them. A partner
that could throw a punch and take one too, and wouldn’t squat and
cry at the first little lost limb. It was her kind of God—an action
God, a God of instinct and right-angle decisions, sharp teeth, big
guns, hot fire and pain. She tossed the knife, whether it was real
or a metaphor.

“
Fuck you,” she said to Friar, and
in her mind she burned him, tied him to a post under a pile of dry
logs and sent him in ashes to the sky. The heat was real, rushing
through her brain, and she could feel it licking, lapping at the
walls around her mind, human walls, God walls, barriers thrown up
by the weak and fearful and now burned, burned, burned away to let
the fire of her instinct free. The fire traveled to her eyes and
flared, and the blurry half-dead spectator vision faded. She saw
clearly, more clearly than she ever had, and stood straighter. Her
hand grasped the handle of her prod, transformed, a scepter now,
hard, heavy, bronzed with sharp blue jewels around a vicious head
that crackled with lightning-fire energy. She raised her head to
the heavens and screamed her war cry and embraced the gift of the
Blue God. Ria let fly a wave of fire and paused to smile and say,
“Welcome, sister.”

And then she threw her hands up to the heavens
as well, and the cathedral shook. Saru screamed and charged the
hordes of bodies, each swing of the scepter an arc of lighting
flame that splashed away her enemies in droves. She laughed at the
tickles of their wires bouncing against her skin; their cries to
come now sounding less like menace and more the pleading of a
beggar. A smash to the face, an explosion of color and splatter of
blood. Two quick knocks, two bodies on the floor. A backhand blow,
an uppercut, a carefree spin that would leave her dead in the real
world, every pat and tap of her new toy was death and she reveled
in it. Here was love. Here was power. Here at last was an offer of
real temptation. Fuck your peace, your love, your ten million bucks
and luxury. I am home.

Ria kept her arms upraised and light burned
through the fake light, the lying light of the golden mist. True
light cut away the haze, bright, impossibly bright, and yet with
her new eyes it felt good and right, growing more and more around
them until the beast, the bodies began to sizzle and pop, the stone
grew sweaty and moist and dribbled away, the centipedes screamed
and thrashed as they burned and burst and her clothes caught flame
and dissolved, an agony as her implants boiled in her skull, the
shivs in her thighs and the armor plates and pins throughout her
bones all vaporized, but her skin and blood and hair and tits and
eyes were all intact and crying out in joy at the heat of the light
now so strong and wide and powerful that all was white, the pure,
perfect white of a star. And she felt herself rising then, the
walls and ceiling gone, the floor itself now made of light, rising,
rising, up now free of the ground, a perfect circle in a beam of
light, rising like an elevator to the heavens.

The light dimmed somewhat, the whiteness
fading, the glorious hot subsiding into a cool air on her naked
body. She stood next to Ria on a pure white disk floating high in
the air and caught in a beam of light. Below was a pit of fire, the
cathedral and the soup of bodies burned away, the corruption of the
UausuaU purged from the earth. The fire burned white hot, cresting
in waves like an ocean, an ocean of fire in the city’s heart that
she knew would burn forever, a warning to those who would defy the
Blue God. Were there innocents trapped in the beam? Men and women
in their homes, unknown to the UausuaU, caught in the fire for no
reason other than chance? No. There were no innocents. There were
only the weak and the strong. Faithful servants of the Blue God and
enemies to be destroyed. Above, the source of the beam, a galaxy of
colors, a moon-sized chandelier hanging over the earth. She saw,
knew this was the domain of the Blue God, its kingdom, its vessel,
and that it had been there all along and only now was this world
worthy of its vision.

She felt the fear of the people from below and
reveled in it. The light called, demanded they come, and they came,
all the people of the city, and with her new eyes she saw far, far
to the streets where they gathered in crowds like a New Year’s
celebration, clamoring up stairs to stand on rooftops, to spill
from their caves, out from sewers and from under bridges, from
their lofts, and barracks, their hovels and mansions, all summoned
by the light. The black clouds, the hateful haze that had for so
long denied her servants light began as well to burn and die and
vanish, great snaking vines of golden light wrapping through the
sky and pushing away every speck and particle of interference. The
chandelier hung heavy and bright in a black sky, all other light
from the city dying before it, the trash fires and electric lights
flickering to black, the stars themselves retreating so that all
was black in the sky above, the city below and the chandelier
casting its light down upon Ria and the pit of flames, and the new
God of this realm. And her new eyes showed her with a sense more
than sight alone that the people of the city knelt and prayed and
wailed with fear and some with joy at the gifts of the Blue God.
Ria surveyed her kingdom, the world she was to command, frowning at
the silver forest to the east. She took Saru’s hand and let it
drop. She looked her in the eyes, and Saru saw that she was a God
yes, and still a girl, young, terrified, who’d lived her whole life
day to day on the streets of Philadelphia. She hugged her, gently,
fearfully, not sure how it worked, and then, after a long moment,
she let go and Ria was once more a God, commanding her to kneel.
She knelt, and for the first time in her life, Saru Solan did as
she was told.

###

About Andy

Andy is a time traveler from the future. He
lives in a tent and is frequently lost.

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