Part 14: Harsh Lesson II
With a hole in her heart and salt on her face from the cascade of tears over her loss, she commenced looking for her way back to the rift.
He’s Doug, but not the Doug I knew. Now, more than ever, my Doug is dead, and I feel like I’m grieving all over again. Do all people feel so horrible when they fall out of a relationship? I feel like I would cut out my heart if it would stop this pain. It was such bliss while it lasted…but I know for certain that my place is not here in Limbo with him.
Father, I’m thankful that You stopped it before it went on any longer, but I wish You would give me some direction. Is it my fate to just wander from one sad incident to the next? And didn’t Christ make me the way I am for some reason, or is my power here just to test my faith? It seems like more of a curse than a blessing…I never feel You anymore, and I don’t feel like You are with me at all. Is this how it was for that beastly Nightfeeder?
She didn’t get far before she was on the run again. The moment she saw the three demons that were chasing her, she shifted into wolf form, hoping that they would be scared off like before. But these demons only laughed at her.
“Prettypretty think she be Nightfeeder, hahaha!” they said.
She finally had enough and decided to be more offensive. She leapt forward in her transitional form, rolled on the ground while shifting to wolf form, and jumped right at her attackers. They were taken by surprise and scattered. She did land on one, though, and clawed its face. It yelped and scampered away, leaving only the other two.
“Get her! Bitch make nice prize for Momma!” One of them spat at her and made ugly gestures in an attempt to distract her. Rahne somersaulted away from them all, and stopped to get her bearings. Shifting into transitional form, she ran after one of them. It screamed obscenities at her as she closed in on it. It stopped to throw sand at her, and she grabbed it by both legs. She was about to throw it onto the ground headfirst when the third caught up with her. It slashed at her leg with razor sharp claws, causing her to drop the one she held. She flipped backward and threw a rock at one of them, hitting it in the jaw with considerable force. It went down, but the third one was still coming for her.
“Red hair die now!” it yelled, and stretched its body toward her before she could see that it was techno-organic. It got close enough for her to see the circuitry, and was smashed into pieces.
“Didn’t we tell you, sometimes ya gotta kill ‘em fast?”
Rahne looked around. It was Wolverine who had destroyed it. He looked at her with a slight smile on his face. She was happy to see him, even though he was being sarcastic at her expense.
Wolverine walked calmly over to the demon Rahne had knocked out with the rock and put his claws through the back of its head. The state of his costume told her that he had had his own encounters since last they had seen each other. He had a sack slung over his shoulder, and something inside it was stirring. He slammed it down on the ground repeatedly, rebuking whatever it was for resisting its captivity.
“DAMMIT… I…TOLD…YOU…TO STOP…SQUIRMIN’!”
It did.
“Didn’t I tell you to wait near the rift until I got back?” he joked.
“What happened? You were gone, and I was scared, and…”
“You don’t wanna know,” said Wolverine, and she could tell that he was probably right. “Sorry to leave you like that. Good to see you kid. You been okay?”
“Yes…fine.” She couldn’t believe he was showing compassion. It was a nice change. She knew it wouldn’t last, and tried to be positive and upbeat also.
“Great. Let’s go. We got a long hike ahead of us back to camp.”
A long hike it was. When Rahne was finally close enough to the rift to see the moon, she could hardly take her eyes off of it. It glowed down at her, half full, a looming testament to how close they were to home, and yet so very far away. “Camp” was now an area set on the highest point near the rift. Wolverine had been busy while she was gone. He had made a shelter from the ribcage of a very large, but slow, demon. It topped the hill like an omen of doom for all nearby demons. There was a pile of bones next to it, higher than the shelter. She was a little startled by this, but truly impressed. There was a reservoir of clear water inside the shelter. Various goods that Wolverine had stolen from all kinds of sources were also there. He had captured lots of lesser demons, one at a time, and put them to work arranging the camp and such, killing them at the end of each day.
“I think you’ll sleep a little better tonight,” said Wolverine. “But first we gotta do some training.”
“Training for what?”
“For a while,” replied Wolverine coolly. “You have a plan for what happens when that moon is full?”
“No.”
“Me neither. But in the meantime we need to make ourselves ready. I don’t know if D’Spayre can be killed, or even fought like a normal person, but I want us to be in peak condition when he does return. It may be our only hope.”
She sensed that Wolverine was scared. This made her nervous, because she knew that he feared almost nothing. D’Spayre was certainly someone to be scared of, but suspected that his fear was of something greater. He’s seen something, she surmised, something he’s not telling me.
He opened the sack he’d been carrying and pulled out the filthy, ugly demon that was inside. It was like a frightened cat, almost void of will after Wolverine’s harsh treatment of it. He tied it to a pole and walked away from it.
“Bear with me now, okay? I need to ask you some questions.”
“Alright…”
“Do you know what that thing is, tied to the pole there?”
“A…demon?” That was a stupid question, she thought.
“It’s a Limbo demon, right?”
“Oh, right.”
“This is no spirit, though. It has flesh. You can touch it, and it can touch you. Is it an animal?”
“No.”
“Right again. Is it human?”
“NO!”
“Damn straight. I don’t really know what to call these things, besides evil and dirty. Are they mentioned in that Bible?”
“No.”
“Are they all evil?”
“Yes!”
“None of them do anything good?”
“None of them.”
“Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. These disgusting pukes, that are not human, not even animal, aren’t mentioned in the Bible, and have no purpose other than making trouble for us, even killing us if they can…do they have any redeemable values whatsoever?”
“No!”
“Very well. Rahne, shift into your wolf form and kill that demon.” He said it matter-of-factly, as though he were telling her to sweep the floor.
She looked at Wolverine, unsure of this test. She had never killed something unless it had attacked her first.
“If it’s any consolation,” he said, “It bit my hand when I put it in the bag, and sometimes they attack the camp.”
She walked over to it. It was a scrawny thing, and terrified. She shifted to her transitional form. It cowered and tried to put as much of its body behind the pole as it could. It was shivering and whining. She looked back to Wolverine again.
“Imagine what it would do, if your positions were reversed.”
She looked at it again, and this time she saw a revolting, wicked creature, incapable of kindness. She saw what had been done to Illyana, to Doug, and to her. She saw an eater of babies, a molester of the innocent.
She howled and grabbed it by both of its jaws and pulled its mouth open until she had ripped the lower jaw clean off. She then brought the jaw down onto its head as hard as she could. Its head split open and it fell over, spilling out dark odorous muck.
She felt so satisfied. He was right. It was nothing to kill these worthless, evil things. It felt like she had done the universe a favor. She felt Wolverine’s arm on her shoulder.
“Congratulations, demon killer. You just took the first step.”
They cleaned up and went inside to enjoy what Wolverine called ‘just desserts’: a keg of beer that he had brought back from a stepping disc that took him to 19th century Germany. She pretended to like it while laughing at Wolverine’s singing as he made them some supper.