The Beast That Was Max (40 page)

"The big empty needs filling," the mambo said, pointing to Max's belly. "The child's a pit, drawing what it needs to itself. Your soul."

"No."

"Or your secret companion."

"No."

"Ah, then you'd best rise above the tide that's taking you out to the wild, wide sea."

"I thought you said the child was not a danger to me."

"You feel the pull, but you are still not fighting it. You want to be dragged under. Maybe things be easier if you did."

"No, I don't want to die."

The mambo put her hand out, traced a circle around Max's eyes. "Then what do you want?"

Max exhaled, shook his head. The sea inside him called. He yearned to answer. "I want," he said at last, "the child."

"That not a problem. No one else is having it."

"No," he said, closing his eyes and pushing the mambo's hand away. "I want this thing, no matter what it does to me. It's part of me now. There are bonds ... I never knew I could feel. Deeper than anything I've ever felt. Deeper than what I feel for the twins. The Beast, it's like a brother to me, sometimes good, sometimes bad. But this child, I made it with my body, my sins. It's the sum of my life so far. The consequence of my acts.

"I don't want to let it go anymore. I don't want it to be born. Do you understand, Legba? I just want to keep the child inside me, where I can protect it from the world. From me. Where I can control it, stop it from coming after me."

"You want the feeling, don't you. Is it like flying through the air for you, or like floating in the sea? Is it a song, or a drumming? Is it like a loa riding you, divine power pouring through you, light exploding in your head, blind joy running you into the ground, to death? Or is it like creation's dawn, soft and gentle, lifting the darkness, tempting you each moment, each day, with more color and radiance, revealing wonders and glories and secrets that make you restless for what's yet to come."

"I'm not . . . is it only that . . ."

"You can't keep children from what they want. The child wants, needs to be born. You got to let it go." The mambo rolled onto her back, closed her eyes. "A choice there is. How much of yourself you give when you let the child go."

The sea broke over Max's thoughts. The mambo sagged, her breath rattled.

"Wait, don't go," Max said, afraid Legba had finally killed his horse, left him forever. Left him to drown in the sea of his desire for his own child.

"Wait, the spirit, you talked of a spirit—what is it? What does it want?"

Silence swallowed him, and he fell asleep to the steady sound of the heart monitors registering the beat of their lives: slow and erratic for the mambo, strong and steady, with a slight echo, for him.

~*~

The baby moved like a wrestler twisting out of one hold after another in his belly. Every jab and kick, every shrug and roll, brought Max gasping out of his dream of the sea. Just as quickly, he dove back, eager for the ocean's rocking embrace, for the sense of closeness and purpose he felt in the pull of its currents.

Sometimes the kick he felt was at his feet and legs, as if something under water had snapped a tail or fin against him as it swam past, and he woke startled, sweating, with the primal roar of an enraged land animal ringing in his ears. The fact that it seemed to call his name, seemed to chase him with the same desperate urgency with which he wished to surrender to the water, frightened him more than passing images of mouths brimming with sharp teeth tearing through his body.

Waking, he watched shadows ripple on the wall.

Waking, he glanced over at the mambo, her mouth open, skin pasty.

Waking, he saw Mr. Tung standing at the doorway.

Standing.

Max fought against the sea, forced himself to stay in the waking world.

Mr. Tung, sweat pouring down his contorted face, shoulders shaking, took a step toward Max.

Something gripped his arm. He pulled away, turned. The baby kicked, and he gasped. The mambo, her body shaking, blood trickling from her mouth, cried out, "The angel! It's here—"

Max said, "Angel?"

Mr. Tung looked back over his shoulder at the pod of surveillance equipment, grabbed at the fabric over his heart. "Help me," he croaked. "It's coming for me—"

Max said, "What angel?"

Mr. Tung staggered to the foot of Max's bed, eyes growing wide. A swipe of his hand knocked the candle on the chest down. His face took on the color of flame and shadows, and his knees buckled.

Max crept backward on his back as he watched the twins' latent command kill Mr. Tung. He did not understand how the man managed to keep moving beyond the first step. He should have died immediately, dropping to the floor as soon as he crossed the boundary drawn for him.

The mambo rolled over, tearing loose wires and IVs, and threw herself partway over Max. Mr. Tung collapsed and tried to save himself by holding on to the bedposts. The frame shook, the night tables tipped, the candle on the mambo's side toppled. Wisps of smoke curled up from the mattress edge. Shadows flickered with frantic abandon on the walls, like a dance of witches. "Enoch," the mambo whispered desperately in Max's face. Her sour breath had the acrid sting of smoke.

Max grabbed her shoulders, pushed her up off of him, shook her. "Who?"

Mr. Tung screamed. Stood up. His face twisted into a mask of horror, as if he had seen the hell to which his soul had been consigned.

Outside, doors opened, smashing against walls. The door to the Box, and to the loft.

Max grunted as the child in his womb delivered a savage kick, as if anticipating a fight for its life.

"Tonton!" Kueur cried out from beyond the doorway. "Mr. Tung!" shouted the guards rushing into the loft. Mr. Tung snarled. His eyes darkened into lightless pools of night untouched by Creation.

"Enoch … "the mambo said, chest heaving, "an angel... of destruction, taking on. . . the Lord's wrath… against your sins ... yours ... a mad angel, broken heart... beware the mad angel—"

A flame crawled up along the sheet, crackling and snapping as it consumed cotton and peeked over the top of the mattress.

Mr. Tung jumped on the bed, crouched. He pulled a thin, black ceramic blade from an ankle strap. Spasms seized the mambo.

Max tried to hold her, protect the fetus, position himself to counter Mr. Tung. He noticed Mr. Tung had stopped breathing.

The twins burst through the bedroom doorway.

The mambo slipped out of Max's hands. One of her convulsive kicks caught Mr. Tung in the chest as he lunged. Max's countering kick was snagged by wires. A medical console flipped over. The mambo cried out as Mr. Tung's knife stabbed her in the back of the neck.

"Farewell," said Legba in the dying light of the mambo's face. "My apologies . . . to her family . . ."

 
Max threw the mambo aside and grabbed Mr. Tung's head, trying for a head snap. Mr. Tung pulled the knife out of the mambo, stabbed again. Max felt bone break, the blade penetrate his arm. Pain shot straight to his head.

Kueur and Alioune jumped on top of Mr. Tung.

Men in suits piled into the bedroom.

Flames surged up the side of the bed, catching on the mattress. Fire-control foam sprayed down from recessed nozzles.

Mr. Tung pulled out the knife, tried to bring it down again. Alioune held him back, wrapping both her arms around his. Kueur growled as she reached down his pants, ripped at his crotch. The men in suits tackled them from behind, pushed the twins and Mr. Tung toward Max. Hands grabbed, pushed, punched. Bodies piled on top of bodies. Fire pinched flesh. Foam soaked fabric, and a chemical smell filled the air.

A fist landed a glancing blow against Max's belly, despite his frantic efforts to protect himself.

The Beast's roar filled Max's mind. The sound chased off fear and doubt and sickness, shook thought and feeling loose from their moorings in his mind, shot rage like liquid lightning through his body.

It was as if he had never experienced the Beast's appetite before, had not lived with its hunger all his life, had not spent every waking moment satiating the Beast's needs when it was still alive in him. The Beast's voice flowed through him like an instant intoxicant, sparking flashes of hot memory: the flesh, the cries of pain, the spasms of pleasure. For the moment of remembering the Beast was alive, and its power was his.

And the Beast was like a shark breaking through net keeping it from the sea; a leviathan breaking for air through a thick blanket of suffocating kelp.

Max pulled his legs back and under himself, rose up onto his knees, and fended off a pair of men trying to restrain him. He slid out of their attempted locks, struck one in the throat, the other in the solar plexus, sending them both gasping for breath as they scrambled off the bed. Sheets and covers snapped, the mattress rocked, foam flew up even as the rain of fire retardant slowed. Only a pair of candles remained lit, their flames the only fire in the room, but even in the dim light Mr. Tung was easy to spot in the press of bodies. He was at the center, his own men now joining in the twins' effort to contain him. Unlike the twins, they were trying not to hurt him, and interfered with Kueur's and Alioune's attempt to finish him. The conflict allowed Mr. Tung to lash out with his knife every few moments, cutting Alioune on the thigh, stabbing one of the suited men in the eye, scraping Kueur's skull, stabbing himself in the shoulder.

Max, riding the power of the Beast's rage, bullied his way through the crowd, ignoring his belly's cumbersome weight, and locked his fingers around Mr. Tung's throat.

He tore Mr. Tung's flesh with his nails. Forced his fingers through the wounds. Dug into muscle, feeling the artery, the trachea. Confirmed Mr. Tung's heart no longer beat, his lungs no longer drew air.

Mr. Tung suddenly took a breath, shocking Max so that he nearly allowed the ceramic blade to penetrate his ear. But the dead man had only taken air to speak, though Max could not understand his babbling. Max probed with his fingers, tore out the voice box, snapped the windpipe. Dug through blood-soaked tissue, tugged at bone.

The twins, sensing he had a purpose, fought off the men in suits who were bearing down on Max. In a few moments, he succeeded in ripping Mr. Tung's head away from his body. The Beast let loose a triumphant scream that scraped Max's throat raw.

The suited men hesitated, shock on their faces, as Max threw away the head and dug into Mr. Tung's body, which still moved and struggled. The knife point pierced the back of Max's shoulder, but Kueur caught the weapon arm and pulled it away before the blade could penetrate through muscle to bone. Max grimaced, and the Beast tasted its death, remembered, and faltered.

He reached into Mr. Tung's torso, closed his fist around the heart, pulled the organ out. More of the suited men fell back when Max threw the heart after the head. Mr. Tung paused. Kueur reached down his pants again, finished the work she had started and pulled out his genitals. Alioune worked her hand through his back, drew out a liver.

The darkness left Mr. Tung's eyes, where the head lay on the floor. Mr. Tung's body slumped to the floor, the ceramic blade clattering on the wood. The smells of blood and shit and chemical foam and smoke and burnt linen combined to spice the bedroom's night.

The Beast hung on to Max as the sea rolled up to take him, as the baby in Max cried out for attention, for sustenance and nurturing.

Strength left Max, and he melted into the twins' arms. He closed his eyes, clutching his belly with his hands, the Beast with his soul.

~*~

A storm shook and tossed the sea. Clouds roiled, dark and wounded, bleeding flashes of lightning. Wind howled with the voice of outrage, keened with the pain of betrayal. Angry waves drove Max back and forth in the rift between the himself and the sea. He no longer felt a part of the ocean. The current that had pulled him to a distant shore still tugged at his legs, but other currents and undertow and waves fought for him,dragging him first in one direction, then another. An invisible boundary, like the idea that he belonged to the living, waking world and the sea was a place of dreams and the not-yet-alive, surrounded him, protected him from the worst of the primal punishment.

Something took hold of Max, dragged him through water. He suddenly found himself clinging to a rocky precipice that might have been the highest peak of a sunken continent peeking above the waves, bracing himself in a crevice as if his life depended on his hanging on to land.

Next to him crouched a shadowy figure, wet and shivering and somehow insubstantial, like a black spirit cut from smoke and shadow. Its talons scraped stone. Its growl echoed thunder.

Man and Beast huddled in the shelter of cold, hard rationality, bonded by death, saved by the life they had just taken in the waking world. Man and Beast, they hung on to the reality of their life together, determined to survive until the storm tides of intimacy with the new life in his body ebbed.

~*~

Staccato gunfire ripped through the safety of dreams. Bullets pinged as they bounced off of medical equipment casing, the surveillance pod and armored walls, ricocheting until they embedded themselves or exhausted velocity. Muzzle flash shattered the darkness, burned off images of stormy seas and rocky crags. The roaring echoes of every shot drowned the thunder reverberating in his skull.