Objects of Worship (20 page)

No more black eyes for him, though. He’d get the
cheapest eyes he could find next time; and he’d go alone.
It had been Judith who’d insisted on the black eyes. That
woman and all her ideas!

The funny thing, though, was that, a few hours after
the party, Judith’s eyes turned black. As did the eyes of all
their guests.

The next day, Judith complained about bad dreams
in which fleshies hunted her down, burned her body, and
dropped the ashes into a dark pit, while gigantic black eyes
looked down from the sky.

Judith gouged out her eyes, but they grew back.

Already, dusk encroaches on daylight, and Luna, lushly
green, hangs in the sky, its fullness announcing the hunt.
Roman’s mouth waters at the thought of fresh meat. It
rained on the night of the last full moon, and the one before
that; the monthly hunt is taboo on such occasions. Now,
the only clouds are thin and wispy. It will not rain tonight.
It must not. Roman does not want to be denied again.

Exhaling pungent smoke, he passes the joint to the
smiling teenage girl next to him — he forgets her name —
and gets up from the grass at the foot of Mount Royal.
Nearby, bare-chested young men play tam-tams, girls
dancing around them, shedding their clothes.

Roman has had enough of being around people. He
runs, first to the beat of the music, then gradually finds his
own rhythm.

He runs up the mountain. He runs along well-worn
paths, avoiding the tangle of branches, so he can go fast,
faster, faster. He hopes to lose his nervous edge in the
adrenaline rush. But the exertion has the opposite effect.
His body yearns for the hunt.

Roman is worried that he might not be chosen as the
Wolf’s avatar tonight. He has been leading the hunt for
the past five years, and he’s been hunting for more than
ten. That’s longer than most hunters last. Soon, he knows,
the Bishop will choose another to incarnate the Wolf, and
Roman’s hunting days will be over. As former pack leader,
he would not submit to his replacement. Better to retire.
The priests know this, and they wouldn’t call on him to join
another’s pack.

He reaches the familiar lookout; some of the ancient
concrete still peeks through the groundcover. The city
stretches below him, stopping at the Wall, the centuries-old structure that keeps Montreal safe from the wild beasts
and uncivilized peoples who inhabit the rest of the island.
Once, the city was the whole island. Now the Wall defines
the city’s limits.

A loud cracking thunders from the sky. Roman turns
his head toward the noise, cursing this unexpected turn in
the weather. But there’s no sign of rain. In the darkening
but clear sky, something streaks groundward. Before he
can contemplate this occurrence further, the church bells
ring. Finally. Roman follows the path westward, up the
mountain and down again, to the Oratory.

Night has fallen. The sixty hunters have gathered —
unclothed, ready to receive the Wolf, should they be called.
There are two new faces: Lyana and Paul, replacing Phil
and Van. Van, barely old enough to be called a man, was
killed by a chimera in the previous hunt, his first outing;
Phil, an experienced hunter, died not in the hunt but in his
bed, after weeks spent coughing blood.

Lyana and Paul will hunt tonight. New graduates are
always chosen. Kill or be killed, a harsh lesson all hunters
learn quickly. Tonight, for the first time, the youths will be
called by their full names.

Naked save for giant Wolf masks that cover not only
their faces but also their chests, twelve acolytes pound the
hunting drums. Roman’s heart thumps in step. Behind
him, unmasked acolytes in black robes tend the bonfires.
Beyond the flames, behind the gates, on the streets and on
the roofs of nearby buildings, people watch the ritual.

Twelve Wolf-masked priests clad in layers of wolf
furs walk down the steps, their masks narrow but tall,
extending a full metre above their shoulders. The priests
carry goblets decorated with Wolf effigies. Each priest
walks to a drummer, then turns toward the assembled
hunters, holding a goblet as if in offering.

The drumming slows but gets louder. The Bishop emerges
from atop the long, high staircase. She holds a leash; on the
end of the leash is a muzzled wolf. A sacred beast engineered
by priests versed in the arts of transmogrification of the flesh.

The Bishop is naked. She is more than two metres tall,
a monument of both fat and muscle. Her limbs are twice
the girth of an average man’s. Her ample thighs give way
to massive hips. Her floppy breasts are held up by her
belly, which spreads outward in every direction. Her
neck disappears into the bloated globe of her face. She is
completely hairless, from head to toe. Her light-brown skin
is decorated with phosphorescent tattoos of the Wolf. She
walks forward, holding the leash tight, and the wolf must
step forward lest it be crushed by her bulk. The drums match
her steps. She stops halfway down the long staircase. The
drums grow quieter; they become nearly imperceptible, a
subliminal collective heartbeat.

The first priest calls Paul Wayfinder; the second, Lyana
Bloodmouth. Ten others are called. The chosen hunters each
walk to their priest. In a solemn choreography, the hunters
pull viscous knives from the goblets before them. Holding
their left hands over the receptacles, they slice their palms,
letting the blood drip into the goblets, into which they then
dip their wounded hands. The drums sound one almost
deafening boom and then stop. The hunters pull out their
hands and stretch their healed palms toward the crowd.

There are forty-eight remaining hunters, many of them
with young and strong bodies — good choices to welcome
the Wolf. Roman, convinced he will not be called, can
almost taste his disappointment.

In the silence, the Bishop’s deep voice shouts a name:
“Roman Predator.”

Roman almost swoons as the anticipatory tension seeps
out of his body. But the newly resumed beat of the drums
gets his heart beating, his blood flowing.

The unchosen hunters retreat to the edge of the Oratory
grounds.

Holding raw, juicy ground meat in her hands, a naked,
shaven, unadorned acolyte emerges from behind the
Bishop. The acolyte, almost breastless, no more than
thirteen years old, is comically petite next to the massive
Bishop. But Roman does not laugh. He positions himself
facing the Oratory’s staircase, three metres from its foot.

The acolyte kneels in front of the muzzled wolf and
pushes the meat in its face.

The wolf snarls and thrashes, tries to break free, but the
Bishop keeps a tight, powerful hold on the leash.

Still holding the meat, the acolyte steps backward,
turns, and continues down the stairs, each step echoed by
the drums. The girl stops once she reaches Roman. Even
without the Wolf in him, Roman can smell her. Her young,
oiled skin. But Roman keeps his eyes fixed on the wolf.

The young acolyte smears the meat on Roman’s naked
body, lingering on the neck, the chest, the belly, the
crotch.

The wolf stares back at Roman, pulling at the leash.

The acolyte stands up and pushes her meat-covered
fingers into Roman’s mouth. He licks them clean.

Amidst a flurry of chaotic drum beats, she runs back up
the stairs, vanishing behind the Bishop.

The Bishop unleashes the wolf. The drummers intensify
the furious beat. The muzzle falls from the animal’s face,
and it races down the steps toward Roman.

To prove his worth as pack leader, to incarnate the Wolf,
Roman must kill the sacred beast. He has never failed this
test.

Roman waits until the wolf is less than a metre from
him. Then, just as the wolf’s jaws are about to close on his
stomach, the hunter somersaults above the beast, flipping
around in mid-air. Stomach-first, Roman lands on the
wolf’s back, grabs the animal’s head, crushes its eyes with
his thumbs, then begins to twist its neck. But, for the first
time in the five years Roman has been called to be the
avatar, the ritual wolf shakes him off.

The blinded animal lunges toward Roman, its open
mouth reaching for his crotch. He rolls away — barely in
time. As the wolf’s jaws snap shut, its teeth tear a strip of
flesh from Roman’s thigh.

Never before has a ritual wolf drawn Roman’s blood.
Rage fills the hunter. He kicks the wolf in the throat and
jumps up to grab it from the back. This time, he gets a good
grip on the head and succeeds in breaking the animal’s
neck.

Roman snarls in anger, conscious that such a poor
performance, no matter how well the hunt itself goes, will
result in tonight being his last time.

Roman rolls the dead animal onto its back. With his bare
hands, he rips the animal open and feasts on its innards.

He pushes his forearm inside the still-warm corpse and
clenches his fist around the beast’s heart. He rips it out.

Roman raises his bloody face from the corpse and stands
up. Facing the Bishop, he bites into the wolf’s heart. The
twelve other hunters walk over to him. One by one, they
take a bite out of the heart and offer Roman their goblets,
with their blood mixed with the sacred ambrosia. With
these potions, he washes down the wolf’s blood.

The blood of the wolf, the blood of the hunters, and
the ambrosia warm Roman’s insides. He feels the liquids
course within him, connecting him with his pack, changing
him. His body expands, grows, becomes a receptacle for the
Wolf. Fur grows on the hunter’s body. His teeth sharpen.
His nails take on the shape and strength of claws. His
senses become more acute. An urgent need to feed, to kill,
takes hold of his mind.

The others are changed, too, but their transformations
are subtle. A heightening of the senses, perhaps meagre
patches of fur here or there, a slight burst of growth, a
thickening of their nails.

Roman issues a mental command to his pack. They
follow him, daggers in hand, eager to kill. The cheering
crowd parts before them.

Beyond the Wall, savage chimeras roam the island. They
are descended from laboratory-created hybrids of the now
extinct pre-BioWar megafauna. Tonight, Roman and his
pack hunt chimeras.

The pack has felled three dozen beasts so far, including
one giant, their latest kill. The giant — its head stood more
than six metres off the ground, its body twelve metres
long — had thick, orange-furred legs, two metres high;
a large horned and tusked head crowned with an orange
mane; and a grey pachyderm hide covering its back and
sides. But, as Roman discovered, its belly was soft and
vulnerable and conveniently high off the ground. While his
pack distracted the monster, he jumped up onto the beast’s
underside and sank three sets of claws into it, holding on
while it screamed and thrashed. He tore into its guts with
his free hand. Two of his hunters plunged their knives into
its neck, leaving large bloody gashes as they tore them back
out. Roman climbed onto the weakening giant’s back, sank
his teeth into the soft flesh of its neck, and ripped out its
throat.

The other kills, although smaller beasts, no more than
twice the size of a tall man, had been more dangerous prey.
They’d all been fast, most of them feline in body shape and
in movement. One of these had had three heads; another,
an extra pair of limbs, arms that ended in six-clawed
hands; yet another, a razor-sharp tail. Their first kill of the
night had such powerful limbs that it could leap above their
heads.

Now, Roman hunts alone as his pack brings their kills
back to the city. Roman could end the hunt now. It’s already
been a good night, better than many hunts — and with no
casualties to boot.

But the bloodlust won’t let go of Roman. This is his
last hunt; he will soon be forced to retire. Even if he is not
replaced, perhaps the ritual wolf will kill him next time.
He’s not as young, as strong as he needs to be. Besides, once
enough meat has been gathered for the community, it’s the
avatar’s privilege to hunt alone, to feast on meat for the Wolf
and no-one else. He catches a whiff of an unfamiliar smell.
Blood, but not quite blood, or blood mixed with something . . .
different. His curiosity aroused, he runs westward, toward
the exotic scent.

The
egg-shaped
object
must
come
from
Luna
,
Roman
thinks.
But . . . this is nothing like the rogue tech with
which Luna occasionally infests the Earth. Perhaps
, he
thinks with wonder,
this is something from beyond . . .
something truly alien. A ship. A starship. An egg from space.

The object’s smooth surface cannot settle on any colour;
seeing it — looking at it — requires concentration, as if it
were only reluctantly visible.

It landed on a titanesque chimera, a lumbering
behemoth with neither the speed nor the wits to avoid the
fatal collision. The beast’s head is submerged in the water,
its body — what’s left of it — splattered on the shore. It must
have been drinking.