The giant bull head was still immobile, but the blood-spattered chest expanded and the muscles of its abdomen rippled. Then from the open mouth of the statue an impossibly long tongue lolled out, uncoiling like a pale serpent until the tip of it touched Bambi’s shoulder. Her whole body was speckled with blood, and the obscene tongue licked it up, drop by drop, hooking gobbets of meat and curling them back into that golden mouth.
The face — the solid metal mask of its face—moved. Jaws opened and eyes blinked once and again, losing the blank stare of a statue and flashing with hideous life. Its lips curled into a sneer that was part sensual delight in the taste of human blood and part in cruel expectation of a greater feast to come.
The gathered men once more began their chant.
“Moloch…Moloch…Moloch…”
White-hair laughed like a madman as the demon-god drew in a massive lungful of air and then let loose with a roar that was unlike anything I could ever imagine. It was so loud that it knocked me backward. I lost the gun and clapped my hands to my ears. Blood burst from my nose. I landed hard on the floor as the sound smashed me like a fist.
Then it stopped.
I gagged and rolled over onto hands and knees, vomiting onto the hardwood.
“Moloch…Moloch…Moloch…”
My ears were so badly damaged that the chant sounded like it came from the bottom of a deep well.
“Moloch…Moloch…Moloch…”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw White-face bend down to pick up my pistol. Beyond him the men in robes were crowding the table on which the knives were displayed. Bright steel seemed to sprout from every hand. There was a weird sound like bending metal as the demon-god Moloch began to move its massive limbs.
Bambi’s screams were rising to the ultrasonic as the full horror of what was happening pushed through the protective haze of the drugs. Somewhere deep within that scream I could hear the lost sea-gull cry of a little girl. The desperate and utterly hopeless shriek of a child who is being used and used and who knows that no one will ever, could ever come to save her. It was the most horrible sound I’d ever heard. It was the sound of innocence being destroyed.
I think that’s what did it.
Not the threat of the gun.
Not the men with their knives or the pounding of guards’ fists on the door.
Not even the first earth-shaking footfall of the demon-god.
It was the sound of the lost child within the woman’s scream.
It was primal.
Feral.
And in my mind, the wolf heard the scream and he — it — howled back in unbridled fury. The young of the pack were in danger, and the strongest of the pack had to answer. Had to respond.
Had to fight.
I transformed without knowing I was going to do it.
No…that’s wrong. I transformed without resistance. All of me — man and wolf—wanted this. All of me needed this.
On one side of a broken second I was a man, smashed to the ground, broken and lost; and on the other side of that second I was the werewolf.
I rose from the floor just as White-hair raised the gun.
I saw the surprise in his eyes. The shock.
The fear.
The doubt.
Even with all of that he pulled the trigger.
Again and again. Each bullet found its target. In my chest. In my heart.
And it did him no damn good at all.
I leaped into the air, closing the fifteen foot distance between us in the space between his third and fourth shot. I took him with my front paws, claws extended. He exploded around me. Arms and legs and head.
His blood was a cloud of red mist that I flew through as I rushed toward the other men.
They had their knives.
They tried.
They tried.
But they might as well have turned their knives on themselves.
I filled the room with screams. Theirs. Bambi’s. Mine.
They died around me. Beneath me. In me.
The room shook and I wheeled amid red carnage as the demon-god came toward me. Bambi was still tethered to him, tied wrist and ankle with red scarves. As he reached for me with one massive hand he reached for her with the other.
Most of him was flesh.
Some of him was still metal.
Whatever process of transformation was necessary for him to come from whatever hell he lived into the world of flesh and blood, it was not completed. Maybe there hadn’t been enough of the guards’ blood. Or maybe adult male blood was not enough. Maybe Moloch really needed the blood of a child sacrifice to gain his full power. Maybe that’s why he reached for her, to feed his need, to create the bridge between his world and ours.
Maybe.
Maybe.
But who gives a fuck?
Bambi was still alive. And I was never more alive than I was in that moment. Fully the wolf. Without hesitation or resistance on my part. A monster, and reveling in that.
On the walls all around me were framed posters of women who had died. I could feel their eyes watching me. I looked at their faces. Recorded every image with the clarity of mind that is a gift of the wolf. Every face, every line, every curve, every scar and blemish. Sixteen beautiful girls, each of whom had been torn apart and had their blood and flesh fed to a monster.
An actual monster.
My ancestors, the Benandanti, fought evil. They fought monsters and demons. Until now I thought evil was a human thing. Entirely human. I thought the whole ‘fighting monsters’ thing was some kind of metaphor, a grandiose way of describing struggles with human corruption.
Moloch, by his fact, by his presence, by his reality, changed all of that. It made the unreal real.
It also made the stuff of nightmares real.
Demon-gods.
Fallen angels.
Blood sacrifices to conjure something impossible.
Gold made flesh.
Maybe being flesh was the only way Moloch could exist in this world. I don’t know, I’m not a mystic, I don’t do metaphysical questions. All I know is that if Moloch was flesh — or even partly flesh — then it meant that he belonged to this world. And this world has rules.
One of which is that all flesh is vulnerable.
With a howl as loud as the roar of the demon-god, I threw myself at Moloch, slashing at him with my claws.
The golden flesh was tough.
Damn tough.
But flesh is flesh.
I had claws as sharp as razors. I had all of the muscle given to me by whatever power or gene or curse created my family’s bloodline.
I had the rage of a werewolf. A Benandanti.
A hound of God.
And I laid into that evil son of a bitch with everything I had.
Golden flesh opened as I raked him back and forth.
Red-gold blood splashed out, striking Bambi, who screamed and screamed. Hitting me in the face, in the mouth. I snarled and drank the blood down as I slashed.
Moloch roared in sudden pain and his surprise was awesome to see.
Maybe in all of his thousands of years of existence he’d never felt pain. Maybe he thought that pain was beyond him, that he was immune to it.
But he chose to be flesh. That’s what he wanted from his worshippers. They killed so many girls to give him that gift.
And I used it against him.
I tore at him. I bit into his stomach and pulled out organs and meat. I covered the floor and the walls with the blood of a fallen angel.
It burned my mouth and throat.
I drank it anyway.
When the guards knocked down the door they found shattered pieces of a statue standing in a lake of molten gold. Bambi crouched on a table that had once been covered with knives. She hunkered down, arms wrapped around her head, unwilling and unable to witness this.
I stood in the center, in the hollow of what had been the chest of the bull-god, a golden lump of heart-shaped meat in my hands, muzzle buried in it, feasting.