Free Wilde West by Walter Satterthwait Page B

might be amusing.
    Astonishing that they would finally speak; yes, but he had of course not been astonished. When first heard, they had come to, him as naturally, as inevitably, as the sound of his own breath. He had been—all along, but unwittingly—preparing for them; he realized, at the first moment he heard them speak, that all along he had been expecting them.
    He was grateful for their presence. For lately he had been—not confused, no. But lately the cloudy moments—those periods when time itself somehow guttered out and a blackness engulfed his mind—those moments seemed to be growing longer and more frequent. One moment he would be walking calmly along, wrapped securely in the familiar pretense of day-to-day, hiding, hidden; and then suddenly, unaccountably, the blackness would sweep over him. Later, ten minutes, half an hour, he would abruptly find himself, as though hurled there by some silent and invisible tempest, in a different neighborhood, on an unfamiliar street.
    It never happened during the quest itself, of course. While he was stalking, nothing at all could diminish the power of his concentration: this was as focused then, and intense, as the hissing white barb of a welder’s torch.
    No, only during the dismal day-to-day, when discretion demanded that he mask himself, masquerade as merely one more puny, ineffectual nothing, indistinguishable from the others.
    It was the result, no doubt, of the massive, superhuman energy he expended during the quests. No one, not even he, could share the furious energy of the gods, meld his own flame with the Infinite Flame that roared at the core of the cosmos, without somehow suffering.
    He was prepared to suffer—had he not suffered for years? Had he not undergone exquisite torments of flesh and spirit? The flails, the belts, the ropes that dug into his skin until it sweated pus and blood? Chafing in his own foul excrement, blistering in the sting of his own sour urine. And hearing all the while, in the background, the mocking laughter of the Red Bitch.
    The suffering had strengthened him. Yes: purified his will, cleansed him of the dross, the pollution, that held mere mortals captive, earthbound.
    If need be, he would suffer again. He would survive it; he would prevail.
    But the voices helped. They strengthened his resolve, refined his purpose.
    Not that his purpose had ever faltered. Not that he had ever, even for a moment, doubted the necessity, the urgency, of his mission.
    No, but by their presence the voices added strength to a strength that was already incalculable.
    Where? Where is the whore ?

    It was near now, the creature destined for him: he knew this. Already he had seen others of its kind, only a few feet from the sidewalk, leaning out the windows of their squalid shacks, their slack faces feigning desire, their flaccid breasts draped like rotting fruit between the open folds of their gowns.
    Perfect. The night was perfect. Only a few souls stumbled through the streets, and these were debased, furtive beings so blinded by their own sordid lusts that he would be invisible.
    Oh, it was delicious, was it not? Could anything, could even the ritual itself, the joining, the union, could even that be sweeter than this triumph of secrecy? To walk as softly as a shadow among them, unknown, unsuspected—
    The whore!
    Yes, yes. Yes.

    This one!
    This one, yes, was perfect.
    Its face grotesquely powdered and painted, it leaned toward him from its window, its fat red mouth twisted in a leer. A small oil lamp on the sill beside it cast a trembling yellow light that seemed to set the creature’s bright red hair aflame.
    â€œOnly three dollars,” it said, its voice tattered from a lifetime of debauch. “Ten dollars gets you all night.”
    He glanced up and down the street. No one watching.
    Dare he do it?
    Always, before, in the alleyways, in the dim sidewalk alcoves rank with the fumes of rotten garbage, he had found union