CARRIE RICHERSON - The harrowing

LANCE COMES OUT OF THE store, leans over my Harley and vomits over the flash of James Dean on the gas tank. That's Lance for you: His strength is as the strength of ten, because his heart is pure, but that does him no good in situations like this. Here the purity just trips him up, leaves him white-faced and gagging, trying to take the monstrous in and make sense of it.

Me, I know I can't make sense of it. I save my metaphysical reflections for later.

"Sorry, Gwen." He makes to straighten up, wiping at his mouth. My leather-clad knuckles take him between the shoulder blades and force him over again. I lean down close to his ear.

"We don't have time for this, Lance, so make sure you get it all out now. You won't get another chance."

He knows I am serious, angry, but not angry at him. He turns my advice over in his mind, I see the effort he makes, remembering what lies behind us, behind the upscale, carved-oak doors, the faux stucco walls, the muted jazz. Suddenly he heaves again, and the rest of Kay's excellent quiche and the fine Chardonnay of dinner come up and crown lames. I grin without humor into the night. Lance will clean it up later; it will be one of the penances he assigns himself for this night.

The stone gargoyles flanking the small fountain beside the door rise with a gravelly sempe of knees and shake their fists at me. Carriage lamps reflect on blood-stained ivory fangs, on claws that drip. A green vapor of malice hisses from between their jaws.

I point at each in turn, fastening its stony glare with my own. Down, slime, I command silently. You will have your chance later, but do not cross me now. My other hand remains on Lance's shoulder, comforting now. They are my demons; he is safe from them, cannot even perceive their malevolence. The stone beasts subside with snarls, crouch again, wrap sinewy arms around knees, harden their hearts with hate.

When Lance is truly finished, able to hold his head up like a knight of the fellowship again, we mount the bike and ride back to where we left the others. We've been gone long enough for a fight or two to break out and be settled. Art is nursing a fresh cut on his forearm and Viv is cleaning her butterfly knife; I know the two lovers' proclivities well enough not to assume this happened in anger. The bad boys Garth and Mort are loudly and profanely accusing Kay of cheating at dice; they've goaded the excitable engineer into a red-faced rage that trembles on the verge of explosion. Only Merle is quiet, alone as usual, his nose in a book, as usual.

Lance goes to Kay and calms him, while I shoo Garth and Mort out of the way. I know Kay has steadied when he spots the mess on the hog and sighs regretfully. His own damn fault, he should know by now not to serve up his customary fine cuisine on the night of a quest. Hell, I suggested Taco Bell, though I'm glad now it's not burritos and chili on poor James.

They all kneel in a circle and I draw a floor plan of the store with chalk on the filthy asphalt. Lance settles down to tactics and objectives. He'll be fine now. Battlelight shines through him; he won't get the shakes till after it's all over.

"Bookstore in front, here -- "Merle's pointy ears twitch at that and he cranes over Garth's shoulder -- "nice books, too. Do as little damage here as possible." Lance's finger taps the drawing. "Only one main door in front, but there's an emergency exit through French doors here. Be alert for people trying to get out that way. There's a door into the back marked 'Employees Only' here, and a freight door in the alley here. Kay, you and Garth go down the alley. Cut the phone wire and make sure no one gets out that way. The rest of us go in in this order: myself, Gwen, Mort and Merle into the back; Art and Viv will make a scene up front, get all the legit patrons out and secure our rear. If we're lucky we'll have at least fifteen minutes before the local constabulary is alerted. Any questions?"

Merle is always ready first. He glances at the map once and it's fixed in his head. He has time to finish the page in his book, mark his place and strap it carefully into his saddlebag. He slings the leather bags that carry the tools of his trade across his shoulders like bandoliers. The only other thing he ever carries on these expeditions is a billy, and no one has ever laid a hand on him.

Everyone else checks weapons one last time, looks nervous, does the little things they all do to settle down and guarantee a good night. I'm not immune to the tension. I've pulled my hair back three times already, and when the band breaks and snaps my fingers, I curse so viciously that even Art lifts an eyebrow. Mort grins at me sympathetically and hands me a replacement from his saddlebag. The elastic has glittery silver balls attached and is way too femme for my taste, but I take it with thanks and a mental note to bring some spares of my own next time.

We line up in front of Merle, and with a few deft swipes he applies the glamour to our faces. I look around at a bunch of strangers, but when they start to move I know them, every one. We've all been in this too long to mistake a comrade in arms in the heat of battle.

Garth and Kay take off first, in the anonymous gray delivery van. We give them thirty seconds, then motor slowly toward the store. I wish I could throw up, like Lance, but I didn't eat dinner. And to throw up, something would have to thaw inside, and it's a deep freeze in there.

Always. Almost always.

We stop at a red light, like respectable citizens out for an evening cruise on our respectable Harleys. That's what the other motorists see. They don't see the leathers and the chains and the knives, the burns and scars and tats. But if they did see, we'd be just as anonymous. They would never look at our faces.

There's a full-size fiberglass horse on the sidewalk at the corner; it's the mascot for Sheplers, the trendy western-wear emporium. As we wait for the light to change, the horse suddenly stamps and rears. His hooves lash toward my head, his shoes are spiked and flames pour from his nostrils. I recognize him now: he is one of the Horses of the Sun, who dine on human flesh.

I've got the kickstand down and I'm off the bike with all deliberate speed. I duck in under the hooves, grab the bridle right under his jaw. He throws his head back and rears again, yanking me off my feet, but I ride with it and my weight pulls him back down again. I put my eyes up close to his rolling, baleful one.

Your timing sucks. I spit the voiceless words out and t hey sizzle at his feet, melting the concrete. The balance of terror has suddenly shifted, and he backs, trying to get away now. You can have a piece of me later, if you dare. I punch him, hard enough to bruise my knuckles inside my gauntlets, but he is fiberglass again. I'm back on my bike before t he light changes to green. The others haven't noticed a thing.

Then we're back at the store that is bookstore and something else, and the drill starts to click. The gargoyles twitch, but I quell them with a glance. We're through the front door and Lance is slamming through the lock on the "Employees Only" door before the clerk even has his head up, and I hear Art and Viv staging a sudden loud and very trashy argument behind us. Respectable patrons will be bailing out of the store like cockroaches out of a kitchen when you turn on the light--and that's what we're going to do: We're going to turn the light on in this hellhole.

It smells like an insect nest -- dank and airless and reeking of corruption. Some beg, the vermin that have a second to see us coming. Others go down without ever knowing why. But the end result is the same: Our mercy is reserved for the victims here, and every adult in the place is responsible. If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. We're a last, desperate solution, and the problems fall like rain before our silenced 9mm semis and the blades that whip through air and windpipes.

We make sure none of the children see, though. They don't need that trauma on top of all the others. Merle goes to work on the injured ones with the medicines and potions in his bags, but there are always a few we can't save. Some were dead before we came through the door. Some have been dead for a while, but that didn't stop the games.

Mort is soothing and sedating the children as Merle passes them out of each filthy cubicle. Viv comes in from the front with the clerk and Art's estimate that sirens will blow in less than five. She opens the back door for Garth and the two of them start ferrying limp children into the van. Lance and I take the clerk into one of the empty cubicles.

I have to have one. I can keep the rage in tenuous check, keep the voices of hate down to a dull roar, if I can just have one. The others sometimes need the release too -- except for Lance. But he knows what I need and he helps me to get there without flinching, and for that I love him.

Information won't save the clerk, but he gives it to us anyway: names, addresses, patrons, owners, procurers, politicos. His blood is a fountain in which I seek to wash away my sins; his heart is a smoking altar on which I seek to melt the ice in my own. I drink from this chalice, and if I am not healed, at least my wound is made no worse.

Then Art sweeps through and gathers us all up in his great dragon-tattooed arms. Merle entrusts his bike and its precious, book-filled bags to Garth, and rides in the back of the van with the kids. The rest of us are out the door and a mile down Barton Springs Road before Art's PB scanner bleeps that the Man has found the Scene.

At Riverside the van peels off, with Garth and Mort as escorts, while the rest of us head north on 1-35's lower deck. Kay and Merle will deliver the children to our safe houses, where they'll get the best medical and psychiatric care our generous donors' money can buy. Even so, some never make it back from the Waste Lands into which their spirits have fled. But some do recover, apparently fully. Children have amazing resilience; sometimes all that is needed is a heaping measure of honorable, respectful love. At least that's the fairy tale we all believe in.

Sometimes, years later, it is given to us to see the fruits of our labors. Mort, the newest member of our circle, was the first child Art ever rescued from a drunken pimp, at the cost of the pimp's neck. Garth escaped from horrors on his own, heard the murmured myths about us, believed and found us. And some come to us whose secret shame is not that they have suffered but that they have not: Lance, and Percy and Elaine, who run our Avalon network of safe houses.

Art and Viv split off at Manor Road, heading east past the airport. It doesn't take much imagination for mc to guess how the rest of the night, and nights ahead, will go for my companions. After the kids are delivered, Mort and Garth will go looking for rough trade. They'll bugger and fist their way across the city; I hope they play safe, but I don't know if they care. Kay will go home to his nice, clean house in West Lake Hills, and scrub himself in his nice, clean bath, and don the dressing gown of yuppie-dom again. He'll resume the life of a software engineer and a gourmet cook, fall in love with a new girl every couple of weeks and never be able to make it last past the third date. If it's a good night Art and Viv will lose themselves in a gentle haze of smoke and pills; if it's bad, they'll scream and slash and bum each other, break a nose or a rib, and swear they can't live without each other. It may be true. And Merle will retreat into his books, and an icy isolation that no one can bridge since Gavin killed himself.

But Lance goes home with me.

Home. Far enough out northeast of town for the lights to die down and the neighbors to spread out. I'm shedding leathers as I walk through the door. My naked skin goosebumps from the chill, but it's not as cold as I am inside, so I don't bother to turn on the heat. By the time Lance comes in from garaging the Harley, I have candles lit, Mozart on the CD player, brandy poured, incense smoldering.

I walk toward him with the whip coiled in my hand. It's a new one, one I braided myself; we wore the old one out. He shakes his head in distress. "Gwen, please -- you don't have to do this."

He's growing older, my dear, sweet love, as we all are. There are gray hairs among the thick, blond curls, and lines upon his gentle face, but his strength is still as the strength of ten, and his heart is still pure. It's why I need him so, and use him so mercilessly.

"Oh, yes. Yes, I do." His eyes fill but he takes the whip from my hand. He will never understand, and I thank the gods for that, but he will trust me, as always.

I move to the wall, put my hands in the manacles, wait until he reluctantly snaps them shut around my wrists. Braced for the first stroke, I look at the walls covered with drawings of dragons, gryphons, and manticores, and think, Now. Now is your time.

They're there. Twisting off the wall, slithering from the ceiling, pouncing from the corners. The Horse of the Sun joins them, with his breath of flame, and the gargoyles, with bitter fang and razored claw. As the whip whistles down, they're all there: all the pain and rage and hate and fear and shame of my life, for which I do penance.

Pain and rage. Hate and fear. And cold, cold shame.

So very cold. The terms of my life for as far back as I can remember. But the pain makes the cold back off for a little while, and if my flesh burns enough I imagine that maybe the icy core will thaw someday. Every swipe of Lance's mighty arm, every rope of my blood that slings through the air and spatters the walls in demonic patterns, may redeem me, and so I hang on and pay the price in my flesh for all of them: the infants split wide by pricks and bottles and broomsticks; the children bearing children at twelve, or the ones so damaged by rape and torture they will never be able to bear children at all; the boys beaten down into sullen rage, who want only to beat someone else down in turn; the ones on ventilators, brains shaken ajar; the ones who show up in emergency rooms broken or burnt or bruised, without explanation; the ones who cut and scar and burn and hate themselves, without knowing why; the ones who die, because they cannot choose life.

But I fear, in my heart of hearts, that I can never hurt enough to make amends for surviving.