She Walks in Shadows(51)

It stood upright, about two metres tall. While the upper half of its body was a woman’s, below the waist, it had the haunches and legs of an enormous goat. And its head ... yellow, slit-pupiled eyes stared out of a goat’s head the size of a bull’s skull. There was a brutal intelligence in those eyes — savage glee, an hysterical sort of amusement. It made sure it had caught my eye and slowly it tightened its arm around Blimp’s neck.

I turned away, burying my head into Lula sweaty hair. I heard Blimp’s squeal become something else, something impossible to listen to and ever forget. I never heard a worse sound, I swear it, than the shrill scream of that poor horse as Shub-Niggurath’s grip tightened. I heard the snap of bones — Blimp’s neck, breaking as easily as a chicken’s. Then a terrible quiet. Maybe the chanting had stopped, or that hideous scream, severed so abruptly, had swallowed all sound. I whispered into Lula’s hair. “What’s the price, Lula? What does Shub-Niggurath want?”

Lula was crying quietly, her hands knotted in Shade’s mane, the knuckles white.

“The Great Mother only asks for what you love most. Eight seconds, Mum. Those precious eight seconds you live for, the most important thing in your life. That’s what she wants. That’s her price.” Then Lula twisted her head and looked at me, and there was something smoldering in her eyes, something that made my guts churn. Maybe it was hatred, all mixed up with resentment and confusion and despair. Maybe I saw love there, too, or maybe I just needed to.

I slid off Shade like I had a thousand times before, grabbing the coiled whip on the pommel, and forced the reins into Lula’s limp hands.

You can’t let yourself think, This is the last time I will do this, or see this, or touch this. You can’t think like that when you’re a rough rider, climbing on the Devil’s back, when you feel the heat of his fury rising up through your leathers. There’s only one thing you say to yourself: Eight seconds. That’s all it takes. Stay on for eight seconds and you win.

“You go, girl. Shade knows the way.” I spoke calmly, as if everything was going to be just fine, and I stroked Shade’s silky mane. It felt as beautiful as life under my fingers.

“Mum?” Suddenly, her voice was thin, a little girl’s voice, a little girl waking from a bad dream.

“Go, girl. Get out of here. I just — I just want you to know ... I couldn’t change what I was.” I guess it was an explanation of sorts, or maybe an apology, if a person could apologize for being born what they were.

I whacked Shade on the rump before Lula could reply and he shot across that arena like a bullet. I didn’t look at Lula. Lula — my daughter. The word had a strange feel in my mouth, like the taste of a life I would never know. Maybe I was getting soft, easier to break on the inside. I knew I wouldn’t be able to look at her and then have the courage to walk across the arena to the monster waiting for me.

As Shade galloped towards the path out of the cul-de-sac, Shub-Niggurath threw back her head and wailed. Inhuman as the sound was, I recognized in it the anguish of loss. For a terrified moment, I sensed the creature was poised to leap after Lula, so I unfurled the whip and sent it snapping outwards with a crack like the sound of thunder. It was a challenge that couldn’t be ignored.

Shub-Niggurath turned back to face me with promised violence in every line of her hideous form and the chanting of her worshippers became frenzied, thick as blood — a victory chant.

I hope I walked across that arena like I owned it. I know I managed not to look away from the creature’s goat eyes, though it was like staring into a furnace. You don’t crawl whimpering to your death, not when you’re a rough rider.

Ever played a hand of poker with the Devil, knowing that if you could keep the game going for eight seconds, just eight seconds, you’d beat the bastard and then you’d get to be a god for a day?

I have. Not a lot of people can say that. But the day comes, sooner or later, when the Devil has the winning hand. There’s a legend that says a rough rider can tell when his time is up by looking into the eye of the beast. You hit the dust and you know you won’t be getting up again. Today was my day. I saw my end in Shub-Niggurath’s eyes.

But eight seconds is enough time to get out of Hell, for a girl on a good horse. And that’s good enough for me.





THE EYE OF JUNO


Eugenie Mora

SEALED WITH WAX and scribbled in spidery script, the General’s letter commanded us to come swiftly, before I kill her.

In the exaggerated language of the Roman elites, I understood this to mean, My wife will not do as I ask, but my master insisted on heeding the summons.

Thick, icy rains greeted our journey. In the Doctor’s sneeze, I heard the indignation he would keep silent until he could expend it in violence, presumably upon my back.

“You said this was the road,” he accused.

The cadences of his Roman brogue were as familiar to me as the perfume of rain-soaked Caledonia. “It is. Do you not see the fort?”

The Doctor made a shelf of his hand and squinted into the bleak night. “Don’t see anything.”

I pointed. “Where the oaks are. See how the tree line slants?”

A hundred miles south, stone pillars rose out of the dirt like mountains. Lit torches burned nightly beneath wooden roofs, a beacon and a warning both. There was no such gleam here. Emperor Severus had lent his name to the sod wall that girdled Rome’s influence far into the Briton north, but there was little of glory in these ramparts.