Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

“That’s it, Phillipe!” a man said to his companion on the wall.

More arrows flew, some missing, most piercing him. The last one went in his tongue and through the back of his throat.

“I work better with obstacles.”

He shrieked.

Then he saw the light.

Coming from farther down the street.

The light in this infernal Paris had been dim, as on a rainy day or just after sunset, but now a proper light was coming.

The guards on the wall looked at its source, then began firing their arrows at it. They lost the lie of their human shapes, tails snaking out behind them. More devils came, leveling cruel, barbed weapons. A wheel of sorts made entirely of severed arms and legs rolled up and formed itself into something worse, taking up arrows with which to stab whatever was coming.

But it never got to.

He could not believe what he saw.

But then it made perfect sense.

He remembered that day, before they met the woodcarver.

The cart.

The girl drove it.

He tried to remember her name.

That girl.

Who was she?

Then he remembered her name and just as quickly forced it from his thought. It was not a name to be remembered here. It was a name that would kill with sadness and failure.

The devils spat at her and leapt, but none could touch her, nor the mule, nor the cart; a dome of daylight as golden as if culled from the spring of one’s twenty-first year surrounded the intruder, and no unclean thing could tread where it shone.

She descended now, ignoring the hail of missiles and threats falling around them both, but powerless to harm.

She walked toward him.

It was the she of the girl’s dreamy eyes, the maker of the words she had spoken that were not her own.

The thing that had been Thomas croaked through its open mouth but could not speak. This was the meeting of their souls, then—his withered, hers in glory, hers somehow not just her.

He had never seen a sight that looked so beautiful; he had forgotten what beauty was.

Another betrayal

These are false shapes sent to bring memory

And memory is pain

The only truth here

He shut his eyes against them and waited for the next tortures to begin. He sensed her drawing warmly closer, kneeling before him.

The arrow in his mouth came out, painlessly.

She pulled the others out, too, each one a candle flame of misery, now extinguished.

He wept at the relief, the pure ecstasy of relief.

Her small hand lay across his eyes and it felt good.

Beyond good.

Her hand went to his chin and shut his agonized mouth.

They were so devious, so low to do this.

She whom he had loved as a daughter, and more than that, if that were possible, had come again to give him hope.

He grew angry.

This was the best illusion of her they had sent, but it was not the first. How many times had they sent her to beckon and then abandon him, how many times had his limbs refused his commands to stop as he choked the life from her or violated her or butchered her like a lamb?

He opened his eyes, and still she remained.

I SEE THROUGH YOU YOU CUNT

He spat in her face and she smiled.

I understand.

Go away.

Not without you, Thomas.

What did you call me?

Your name. Would you like to hear it again?

I’m not falling for it.

I’ll wait.

Horrid things raged behind her, bit at her, yet none came within the light that pooled around her and around the cart. He watched her for a day and a night, or what seemed like it in this place where time had been beaten beyond recognition.

At once, everything shook.

The horrors around them stopped raging and turned to see.

A sextet of Hell’s princes, each as tall as a castle’s outer wall, came down through the roof, bearing the smoldering body of an angel beautiful beyond imagination, drooping as dead as a martyr in their arms as they gnashed their teeth and descended with him through the ground and to the deepest, safest, most secret vaults of Hell.

His (her?) pale skin.

His wings smoking like paper about to catch.

Lucifer is fallen.

Mammon is Lord here now.

At last she saw a kernel of trust come into Thomas’s eyes.

Are you ready?

He nodded.

Barely perceptibly, but he nodded.

She blew into his hands to warm them back to life. She kissed his feet. She kissed his forehead.

She smelled of cedar and of the sea.

You’re Him.

There is no him or her.

Why did you not come as I would know you?

I came as you would follow me. I came as you would love me in innocence.

Why me?

That question has never been answered to anyone’s satisfaction. But you were the last one. The last one I could still save.

And yet this is Hell. I’m here.

Not for long.

I’m damned.

Not anymore.

Night lay behind her head, but true night, with stars in their proper places, and no comets to trouble them. He was in the cart. She looked down at him.

I want you to answer a question, Thomas.

Yes.

Do you want to remember?

His eyes welled with tears and he shook his head, his mouth contorting to sob.

Not Hell. I mean me. Us.

You?

Her. Delphine.

I don’t know. What are you?

I was two things together. Then one. Now two again, apart.

I don’t understand.

You don’t have to. You just have to say yes or no. But it will be harder for you if you remember. Love is always harder. Love means weathering blows for another’s sake and not counting them. Love is loss of self, loss of other, and faith in the death of loss.

Those gray eyes.

Those gray eyes through every part of him, loving what was strong and what was weak indifferently.

Yes.

I say yes.

She got in the front of the cart and took up the reins.

The cart rolled down a road near the beach.

Night was harmless here.

Someplace warm.

Provence.

Galilee.

No place at all.

He saw the stars above him, and something passed before them.

A seagull.

Just a seagull.

He slept.

Thomas became aware of his body again, became aware of pain. Breathing was difficult because of the weight jostling on top of him as the cart rolled, some fabric half-covering his nose and mouth. Wet. Everything was wet. The stink of day-old blood and the ejecta of death were everywhere. A dog barked. Two dogs. The cart stopped.

“Ready?” a man said.

A boy answered, “Yeah.”

Provençal, but Thomas understood that much.

The language of ravens rasped out as well, obscure in vocabulary but clear in intent.

Feeding time.

Vertigo as the cart was tipped and Thomas tumbled with the others. A dead thumb in his eye. Bewildering daylight. Pain again as he landed on his shoulder and neck on a pile of wet bodies, one of which farted.

He grunted loudly.

Provençal again, but beyond him this time.

I thought the big one’s arm was off.

It was, I saw it too. He was deader than hell. Another miracle.

What do we do?

Help him, idiot.

Now arms hooked under his and lifted him out of the pit of bodies.