Nothing was a terrifying as Chernobog, unshadowed.
“Good,” its master repeated. “Your recent task also. It was well done, beast. The priest burned very nicely. Though I believe you wavered once, before this shadow restored your courage.”
The monster whined. The master was unfair! A holy symbol held by such as that one—encased in steel—was a thing of great power. The master knew that. Such a fearsome one should never have been allowed—!
Silence.
The monster’s thoughts fled. After a moment, the master spoke again. Thankfully, through his shadow voice.
“No matter. As elsewhere, this servant has her uses. And now the way is cleared for the creature Sachs.”
The gray mist swirled and billowed. From experience, the monster knew that Chernobog was retreating into his own counsel. It managed to restrain any overt sign of relief. The master would know its thoughts, of course, since Chernobog had taken its soul. But . . . so long as the monster maintained all visible signs of docility, it would not be punished.
Not much, at least.
* * *
How long it was before the master spoke again, the monster knew not. In that mist-shrouded place where it was kept—caged, for all intents and purposes—time had little meaning.
The servant’s voice rippled with the master’s own amusement. It was an odd sound—as if a torrent in a cavern were being heard through an echoing chamber far distant. Raw and unrestrained male power, channeled through the pleasant modulations of a female throat.
“And now I will reward you, beast. Tonight I will allow you to hunt.”
In an instant, the monster’s fear and submissiveness vanished, replaced by ravening eagerness.
Hungry!
The servant’s voice echoed, faintly, the master’s own humor. Not glee so much as simple satisfaction. There was very little left, in the monster, of what had once been a god’s mind. But it understood, vaguely, that Chernobog’s pleasure was more that of a game master than the monster’s own much cruder urges. At another time, had its lust not been so overwhelming, the monster might have felt some grief. It had played games once itself, it remembered, and played them extremely well. Even giants—even gods!—had trembled with fear at that gamesmanship.
“Indeed,” chuckled the servant’s voice. “And a better soul than the one you just fed upon, I imagine. Younger, at the very least.”
The image of a man came to the monster’s mind, put there by the master. The man, and his raiment, and the fine house where he lived; and all the byways of the city by which he could be reached. Late at night, in the darkness.
The servant gave him a garment. Something once worn by the victim-to-be. It was full of man-scent, full of tiny fragments of skin. The monster snuffled and mouthed it. He had the scent, the taste of the intended victim. “I constrain you. On this occasion you will abjure from feeding on any other. Or you will face the master’s wrath.”
Hungry! Hungry!
“Do not feed too quickly,” commanded the servant’s voice. “The thing must be done in blood and ruin—not quickly.”
The monster would have sneered if it still had lips that could do so. As if it would hurry such a feast!
* * *
The time that came after seemed endless, though the monster had no way of gauging it. But eventually, it came.
“Go now,” commanded the servant’s voice, and the monster sensed the grayness vanishing.
* * *
Soon enough, the gray mist was gone altogether. Replaced by the dark—but sharp—shadows of Venice’s narrow alleys and streets.
The monster scorned the streets, however. The great tail it had acquired, as if to substitute for its lost manhood, drove it through the waters of the city’s canals as quickly and silently as a crocodile. Though no crocodile had such a blunt snout, or had a ridged spine protruding from the water, or a spine that trailed such long and scraggly hair.
It was spotted only once, along the way, by a street urchin searching the canal late at night for useful refuse. But the monster had no difficulty disposing of that nuisance, beyond the fierce struggle to restrain itself from consuming the child’s soul. Once they had sacrificed children to him. Their souls had a distinctive taste.