Release(40)

She will not answer his questions, though he believes she can now hear him.

“My Queen,” he says, reattaching an arm to a thankfully unconscious guardswoman, erasing the memory and the pain from her thoughts. “We must get you to safety. We must get you to the lake.”

But she carries on, remorseless, relentless. He hasn’t seen her like this since before the world began, when it needed forming, when she had to beat back the very darkness itself that threatened to consume them all.

The world is at stake again. He wonders if she will win this time. And if she doesn’t, will he have time to eat anyone before the worlds disintegrate?





The man she seeks is deep within this prison. She can feel him there.

What does she want with him? She is unsure and she senses this confusion seeping through the identity that binds her. But the drive is not confused. The drive is pure. The drive is a torrent and she can only be swept along.

She destroys another iron door. Beyond is a corridor, barred rooms on either side. The bars are too close-set for the faces to peer at her from all but the most oblique angles, but she senses enormous curiosity here, a willingness to shout, a wish to leer and call–

But there is only silence as she steps in. The men – they are all men – stand as if they have taken a breath and held it. They do not shrink back, they are clearly men long past being afraid of anything, no matter how majestic, no matter how powerful, men who would take a moment to chew first if their own God asked them to rise from their dinner table.

But nor do they offer disrespect. The first two men, right and left, stare at her firmly, unwaveringly, and within them she recognizes the spark that drives some of these creatures. The one that compels them to consume too much, gorge themselves to the point of actual physical harm and beyond, the greed and gluttony that would burst their very skin if they could manage it. There is injustice here, certainly there is, there has never been a creature as unjust as these, but there is badness here, too, true and deep, eyes that lead down wells with no bottom.

“Judge me,” the one to her right says.

“Judge me,” echoes the one to her left.

“My Queen,” she hears behind her, but she raises her hand to silence it.

“I will,” she says. “I will judge you.”





“He did what?” Big Brian Thorn said.

“He didn’t come right out and say it,” Adam said. “But it was all there.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You’re sure?”

“Well, no, I mean, like I said, he didn’t come right out and say it but–”

“This man made a sexual advance on you?”

“That’s what it felt like.”

His dad flexed his fists for a moment, breathing heavily through his nose. “God forgive me if I say that what I’m feeling right now is that I’d like to kill him.”

“The thought had occurred to me, too.”

“And you’re sure?”

“How many times are you going to ask?” The Jacuzzi was full now. Adam turned off the faucet and started flipping the heater switches.

“There’s no way you could be misinterpreting him?”

“That’s what he said.”

“But surely he could have meant–”

“I saw the hard-on in his pants, Dad!”

Big Brian Thorn winced. There was so much in the sentence that would have been difficult for him to hear, his son saying “hard-on” pretty high among them.

Adam kept talking, was annoyed to find his voice shaking a little as he remembered, kept talking anyway. “He was … touching me. He had his hands on my thighs. Pressing just a little too hard.”

His dad looked up. “Pressing any way at all is too much.”

“He was just… Testing the boundaries, I think. Seeing how much he could get away with.”

“Sounds like you let him get away with a lot.”

Adam’s stomach went cold. “He shouldn’t have touched me, Dad.”

“No,” his dad said, quickly. “No, of course not. He’s in the position of power here. There’s an abuse of authority.”

Adam finished with the Jacuzzi. It would be ready for tomorrow morning’s immersions, ready to cleanse the souls of the white-shirted believers who would let themselves be dunked by the massive man sitting a few feet away. The massive man who even his son could see was clearly wrestling with what to say.

Adam felt one of his infrequent-lately waves of affection for him. His dad’s size – an enormous middle-aged belly now augmenting all that defensive lineman bulk – his serious beard, his blue, blue eyes that only Marty had inherited. A man who felt he should get what he wanted but who kept finding himself falling just short. The news from Marty was an obvious blow, and now here was his somehow troubling second son adding the picture of a man wanting sex. Worse, Wade wanting sex.

Maybe it was as simple as that here was a confused man struggling to figure out how best to love him.

“Dad–”

“And you’re sure you didn’t lead him on?”

That man vanished in an instant. “What?”

His dad rubbed his nose distractedly but then got a look like he had cast the die, so why not follow it through? “Adam, we … know. Your mom and I. We know.”