Sacred Fire

by Tanai Walker

  The floats started their procession, representing their organizations and businesses with raucous pop music. There were floats for churches, and there were ones for bars and social clubs. Pearl, Rose, and their friends were on their feet, laughing, waving at people they knew on the floats, and snatching at the various trinkets they threw. The witches seemed determined not to let the gravity of whatever was going to happen ruin their mirth. I began to wonder if perhaps, like the party at the old bank, the revelry was part of the rite.

  What remained of the day quickly faded to night, leaving only the humidity. Two police officers on motorcycles cruised by and cleared the way for a particularly loud, large float that cruised toward us flashing beams of multicolored light.

  It was a bus with the top and seats removed, with a glossy black paint job and the word Bacchanista in a flourished silver, glittery script that matched the website. Men in black cowboy boots and shiny skintight bikini underwear marched in single file on either side with shiny wooden rifles that they tossed and twirled.

  A familiar voiced boomed over the music. “Are you ready for the revolution?”

  Leda prowled at the top of the bus, a slight, pale figure in the flash of strobe lights. Bandolier belts crisscrossed her bare breasts. She wore rhinestone-covered panties over fishnet stockings and impossibly high-heeled boots. She carried a pink glittering rifle that she lifted into the air and fired. People ducked and cried out in surprise, startled, their faces distorted in a mirthful, giddy, mock fear.

  “I said,” Leda yelled into a headset mic, “are you motherfuckers ready? Are you ready for revolución?”

  The crowd cheered.

  It was Leda in all her tattooed glory. She grinned triumphantly as she marched around the bus and posed with her rifle for camera phone pics.

  I felt a tug on the back of my shirt and turned to see Sandra amongst the crowd of people who had gathered behind us. Her eyes gleamed with determination, and I looked to her hands, sure she would have some kind of weapon, the awful crop and flail perhaps.

  Her hands were empty.

  “Tinsley,” she said. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

  By then, the witches had noticed her appearance. They stepped close to me.

  “Back off, bitch,” Pearl growled.

  “You’re all in danger,” Sandra said, gazing pointedly at me. “Just forget about the Sisterhood, forget that I helped them deceive you, and just walk away from here with me.”

  “What do you know?” Rose asked.

  Sandra spoke again, never looking away from me. “I came here for Tinsley. Not the beast.”

  Pearl planted a palm on Sandra’s shoulder and shoved it. “Get lost, babe. We got things taken care of here.”

  I moved between them, furious at the young witch. “Don’t you touch her.”

  Sandra ignored the slight. She reached out and snatched one of my hands. “I know you hate me, Tinsley. You let me in and you feel like it was all a lie, but it wasn’t.”

  I looked into her eyes and felt that tug at my heart I felt the day she saw me as the beast in the office restroom, the tenderness she showed, how she slept so peacefully in my arms, the way she looked at me so lovingly when she woke.

  “Tinsley.”

  The black bus had stopped right behind us, and Leda was climbing off a ladder on the back with the aid of a burly man in a full leather mask. He handed her a large black bag, and she reached in and removed a handful of objects. People cheered and reached out their hands over the metal barricades.

  “In the old days,” Leda said, “people used to drink to relieve themselves of their inhibitions. There was a cult in Rome where people drank themselves mad and fucked whoever they wanted.”

  Leda handed out a few of the objects in her hands. “Have a drink on me. I am the Bacchanista, and I hope this helps get you guys laid.”

  Everyone cheered again. She made her way closer, and I saw that her eyes glowed like molten gold. Around us, parade goers were taking the tops off the little clear containers Leda had passed out. The clear plastic gave the appearance of frosted glass etched with the Bacchanista logo. A colorless liquid sloshed around inside. They tossed back the contents of the flasks, and their faces changed. One of the women closest to me let out a whoop and then snarled maniacally, her eyes glazed over. For a brief second, I wondered what was inside the flasks.

  Sandra hadn’t let go of me. I felt her tug at me, and I turned to look at her. There was an expression of complete sadness on her face.

  Leda stopped a few yards away to pose for a picture with the crowd. In the glare of the camera flash, I saw that she wore garish red lipstick, slightly smeared at the corner of her mouth, I suppose, for effect. She was harsh, brash, beautiful, and dangerously waifish. She frightened and aroused me.

  Our gazes met and locked. A slight grin tugged at her lips, then vanished. Leda began to march toward me. Her voice boomed over the roar of the crowd and the growl of the bus.

  “Tinsley Swan.”

  Sandra grabbed my arm and gasped. “Tinsley. Let’s go.”

  I shook her off.

  “If anyone needs a drink, it’s Tinsley,” Leda said. “You see, we fucked last night and now her girlfriend is giving her the blues about it.”

  The crowd booed.

  “Poor Tinsley,” Leda said and let out an exaggerated sigh. “Even now, she can’t decide.”

  She reached for me, and when I stepped close, she turned to the crowd that had gathered around. She handed out more flasks. She was wrong. I had decided. I would follow her to the underworld if I had to prove it.

  Before I could think about this new revelation that had popped into my head, Leda tossed one of the containers at me. I caught it and looked down at the object in my hand. The seven-sided star was embossed onto the plastic.

  “Don’t drink that shit,” Sandra shouted. “Tinsley. Look at everyone around you. This is not going to end well.”

  “You’re no fun.” Leda pouted at Sandra. “We’ll just have to persuade you differently.”

  Several people from the crowd surged forward, jostling past me, their eyes empty, though they shouted out lurid things. They caught hold of Sandra, grabbing at her clothes, her arms, and dragging her away. She shouted and fought at them, but there were too many. I stood there. Numb. Watching. I knew it was wrong for those people to have their hands on Sandra. A very small part of me felt her outrage. I turned to Leda. She moved close and reached beneath the wide strap of my tank top. She touched the star above my breast.

  “Drink,” she demanded.

  I only stared at her. The rest of the crowd moved in on a collective breath of anticipation. Music thumped loudly out of the bus. The night around the parade suddenly seemed darker. Somewhere behind me, Sandra screamed.

  “Drink,” Leda began to chant slowly. “Drink. Drink. Drink.”

  “Drink. Drink. Drink.” People on the sidewalk around us added to the din, and soon so did the people across the street. They climbed over the barricade, startling the horse of a mounted patrol officer. For a split second, something inside me wanted to implore the woman in the blue uniform for help. Of course, there was nothing the cop could do to help. Leda came from a place far beyond her jurisdiction.

  I looked back up at Leda. She had stopped chanting and simply watched me. Her gaze burned deep into mine. The noise of the crowd died, replaced by the crackle of fire consuming its fuel. I heard Leda’s voice, not in my ear, but in my head, speaking slowly in a language I somehow knew to be long dead. I blinked and saw her face made of fire. She was speaking to me in a guttural voice from the pyre that first night the beast had come upon me.

  The roar of the crowd returned. My fingers trembled as I unscrewed the cap. I tossed back my head to dump the drink down my throat. Tequila. A trickle slipped down my windpipe, and I coughed tequila fumes into my lungs. A pain hit me in the gut like a rock-hard fist. I doubled over and felt the muscles in my thighs cramp.

  The beast was near.<
br />
  I stayed down. Leda’s impossibly high-heeled dominatrix boots stayed rooted expectantly. I rolled over on my side and saw her smiling down at me. I squirmed to move away. My rib cage rippled beneath my skin, then issued a sickening crunch. Leda planted one of her feet on my stomach and pressed.

  “It’s time,” she said. “Don’t fight it, honey.”

  This was wrong. Leda’s parade cult of people who forgot themselves and mobbed one woman. It was all wrong. The change racked my body, and Leda lost her footing. I crawled a few inches and forced myself to stand.

  The people around me didn’t seem to care that I was changing into a monster. They stood there swaying with the music that emanated from the bus.

  “Now don’t be like that,” Leda said and reached out her hand. “Once I have what is mine, these people will return to normal.” When I didn’t move, she frowned. “It doesn’t matter now. It’s all done.”

  The crowd behind me erupted as Sandra burst through their ranks. “Run, Tinsley,” she shouted. “Get out of here.”

  I bolted, fighting with the transformation as I ran, pressed by the fear of being caught, arrested, or just shot dead in the street by police. As I moved farther away from Leda’s bus, I noticed that people were not as zombie-fied as the crowd that dragged Sandra away. Screams punctuated the pulse of music. People, not sure if I was in costume or real, hurried out of my way as I ran down the sidewalk on black-clawed hands and feet. A thunderous groan drowned out the entire melee. The concrete in front of me cracked and bent. I stopped and watched the ground tent in an explosion of broken concrete, dirt, and dust. The fault spread to the street, leveling a float on a trailer being pulled by a pickup. The riders spilled to the ground as the hitch popped loose. The driver of the truck gunned the engine and plowed into another float.

  As the riders of the first float recovered and pulled themselves and one another to safety, a manhole cover just a feet away from the overturned trailer shot into the air followed by a column of fire. There were more screams as parade goers ran from the blaze and from me. The manhole cover crashed onto the hood of a parked HPD patrol car, shattering the front windshield.

  The fire raged skyward and blazed bright orange on the edges, black at the center, a hazy blue film in the middle. It was no ordinary blaze; neither was it the Sacred Fire.

  I backed away from the scene and down a narrow alleyway between a thrift store and a bar. It was about as wide as my shoulders; the brick walls were slick with slime in places where the building’s AC dripped, and tufts of grass grew between cracks in the concrete. I disturbed a stray cat that hissed and scampered away.

  In the darkness, I hunkered down, exhausted and confused. It was too late to get back home to lock myself away. The cycle of my curse had come to its end, and I was beginning to slip away, my body giving way to the beast’s.

  Screaming, shouts, and sirens carried into the alley as the darkness in my mind became one with the darkness around me. A wind gathered in the small space of the alleyway. The smell of scorched earth and sulfur carried to my nostrils. The wind strengthened to gale that shook the brick walls of the buildings on either side of me. I stayed close to the ground battered by the foul, dry air. The wind pressed against me like probing hands, rolling over my torso and neck. Those unseen hands pried past my lips and inflated my lungs to over capacity.

  My body rose several inches. I gripped at the concrete with now-clawless hands. The air rushed from my lungs and swirled before me in the form of a black cloud. I blinked my watering eyes as the cloud took on a familiar shape.

  There, standing nose-to-nose with me, was the beast. Flame-colored eyes stared at me beneath red fur, illuminating the face. Seven horns crowned the head and studded gray scaly patches of skin were between the eyes and on the muzzle. The coal-black nose snorted out a stream of hot breath.

  Without my body to hinder it, the beast stood taller and wider. It could barely negotiate its way out of the alley toward the chaos beyond, a reptilian tail trailing behind. Once free of the confines of the two buildings, the beast shook itself and disappeared into the fiery doom beyond.

  I watched it go and for a moment a mix of elation and relief passed through me. Leda had freed me of the beast. It was gone. I stood there in the darkness, listening to the sound of my own breathing. I had not expected such carnage and destruction. I certainly didn’t expect innocent people to be drawn into Leda’s plans or an explosion in the middle of the Pride parade. Then there was the matter of Sandra being dragged away by a mob. Now the beast was loose on its own.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  “Tinsley!”

  I straightened and sudden tears stung my eyes. Sandra was close by. I limped toward the mouth of the alley and realized that the transformation had shredded my clothes.

  In the time since I had left the scene, things had deteriorated greatly. The great fire still roared from the manhole, the black center dilating like the pupil of some massive eye. A few cops ran among the chaos, determined to get people to safety, but the former parade goers had dissolved into something else. A group of men and women gathered beneath a streetlight sang a ribald pop song as they swigged from bottles of wine with various labels. Other revelers had paired off and were making love in the street and on the sidewalks.

  Among them walked Sandra. I waved to her weakly, and she ran toward me, a look of relief on her face. As she neared, she saw the tears on my face and opened her arms.

  I backed away, into the darkness of the alley.

  “What have I done?” I asked.

  “It’s not over yet,” Sandra said, taking my hand. “We have to get to Salacia.”

  When she tugged my hand, I didn’t budge.

  “Come on, Tinsley,” she said. “It’s a matter of life or apocalypse here.”

  She noticed my near nakedness and darted out of the alley. I watched her gather several articles of clothing from the more amorous of what remained of the parade goers. She returned and pressed them on me.

  “Get dressed,” she said and reached out to touch my face.

  I shook my head.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. “Stay here and watch it all burn?”

  I didn’t say a word, let the borrowed clothes fall at my feet.

  “Oh, hell no,” Sandra said. “You put those fucking clothes on, Tinsley Swan. Then you can go back to your work and your sad, lonely life. I promise.”

  Her words shocked me. “It was fine before you came and tampered with it.”

  Sandra narrowed her eyes. “You don’t get it, do you? Your life was what your precious goddess wanted it to be. Hopefully, when that bitch is burned at the stake, you’ll see that.”

  She reached into the pocket of the black cargo pants she wore and removed her phone.

  “I’ve got her,” Sandra said in greeting. “We’re right at the fire.”

  In the glow of the phone, I saw her eyes widen. “Oh. Shit.”

  She turned to me, the cell to her ear. “Yeah. No. We’re going to hang out here for a second.”

  Sandra placed the phone back in her pocket and grabbed my hand again. She dragged me to the edge of the alley and pointed at the column of fire. After a few seconds, the beast appeared galloping on all fours, with Leda on its back. The Lost Goddess sat as poised as a dressage rider, her lipstick still artfully smeared, her hair a fearsome halo.

  The beast ran toward the blazing column of fire and did not slow as it approached the burning obstacle. The beast bowled over a police officer attempting to rope off the scene with tape, knocking her to the street. The beast lowered its head, leapt over a mating couple, and soared into the black center.

  The fiery eye wavered a bit like a candle flame stirred by breath, but otherwise remained unmoved. Leda and the beast did not reappear on the other side.

  Sandra turned to me. “See? She’s gone, Tinsley, and things are still shitty, and it’s going to get worse unless we haul ass to Salacia.”

  As s
he spoke, the giant flame wavered again. A dark shape lumbered forth. At first, its form seemed simian, but the jutting lower jaw and fangs told of something far more sinister. It tripped forward cautiously, unsure of its new surroundings.

  “Fuck.” Sandra shoved me back into the alley. I scrambled in the dark for the clothing she had given me earlier.

  “What is that thing?” I asked as I shed the torn garments given to me by Leda’s witches earlier. It seemed ages ago.

  “It’s a gallu,” she said, “Demons that roam the outer ring of the underworld. They’ll be the first to know of the breach. According to the wisdom, they are easier to kill.”

  Dressed, I straightened. “No one told me anything about demons.” As we stepped out of the alley, I saw that the thing Sandra had called a gallu was sniffing at a stupefied reveler who stumbled up the street unaware of what exactly stalked her. A car horn honked and a black sedan careened forward, dodging the parade debris of overturned trailers and prone bodies.

  The reveler had enough sense to stumble out of the way as she made some obscene gesture. The gallu only turned and sniffed at the headlights. The car struck the creature head-on. The thing disintegrated into a cloud of ash and burning embers.

  Juliette, along with four other women in black, exited the car. Sandra dragged me to them.

  “We’ve got our work cut out for us tonight,” Juliette said, eyeing me shrewdly. She looked to the others and began to give instructions.

  “Rally everyone at this point,” she said. “Kill anything that comes out of there. When the cops show up, I want you to fall back, but keep an eye on things.”

  To my surprise, their faces were young, their eyes glued to their leader. This was a far cry from Aunt Quinn and those spoiled, squabbling old biddies I remembered from the summer of ’83. Juliette instructed them with brisk care. She then turned to us and touched Sandra’s shoulder.