Chapter 7

"There was a deep fear in him which was the breath of a monster unknown to this world."

Thomas sat in the bed of the truck, eating a sandwich at the side of the house along the road. There were no gas pumps, and calling it a gas station would be pointless, but the place did sell food and other goods for the traveler on the road. It took them a while to figure out where Kal was heading, but after passing a few signs on the road, Thomas understood where she was going, and she ran for New Rockwell. It was a good move. They had a lot of friends in the city, and she could get an airship to go almost anywhere on the planet. The problem, Thomas noted to himself, eating the BLT, was that the scarred man would see the move coming as well.

Kal was reacting, not thinking about what she was doing, and she was merely running with fear. It was the driving force behind all her actions, and she was going to pay the price for it.

Another problem he noted to himself was the fact that New Rockwell was a big place with a lot of police and military personnel. They could spend weeks looking for her in the city, and she could be hiding right under their noses. He was trying to remember as he sat there eating the sandwich and watching Benjamin do some simple magic tricks for some children, Kal's friend in the city. She had talked about them before. She had told Thomas about her friend being killed in a bar fight a few times when they were lying naked under the stars, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember his name.

He took another massive bite, watching Benjamin trying not to think back to what the future teller told him before he joined up with Azrael.

He had tracked down the old mountain woman after the people of his beloved town tried to hang him for his crime. It was a righteous act for the deed that cast so much suffering on his life. It would have been a punishment he would have carried out if he were on the other side of the rope. The town folks weren't wrong for their rage. They almost had done the deed until Azrael showed up, saving Thomas from death, but it came with a price.

It always came with a price.

Thomas wanted to see the old mountain woman before he left, and found her deep in the woods. He sat down at her table after with the price of the truth. The old witch loved sweets, needed clothes, and wanted meat. He brought all those things with him.

The old blind woman was thrilled to have such a man sitting in front of her. Time had been cruel to her, taking her eyes and twisting her bones. The hard life of her people was written on her face; she was half-white but mostly native. Her skin was the hue of the red clay that North Carolina was known for, and time had dug long rivers into her clay-like face, but it had done nothing against her raven hair. It wasas  long as the night and darker than Thomas himself, and it seemed perfectly clean.

She wore the clothes of her people with bones of animals all around her neck.

"What's want to know," the old witch said, "bull-man?"

"Two things," Thomas said, sitting at a table, which made him feel like a child more than anything else from the tiny legs of it. "First, what does going with Azrael hold for me? Second, will I ever forgive myself for what I am?"

The old witch smiled with her perfect teeth. They almost seemed unreal, sitting against her face, and she took his massive hand. A hand that could easily cover her face. She open it up, running a finger along its lines, saying nothing for a long time.

"To walk with Azrael," she said softly, almost fearing the name as if she knew something hidden about the Ring Master, "is to live a life of hardships and adventures, but also to find family and love. There are two paths with him: to die a hero or to die a fool."

He rolled his jaw, not sure what she meant by the last part, but the other things she had said about going with Azrael made him gleeful about the possibility.

"You'll forgive yourself," she said, "only when your heart has found someone to love more than your crime."

He wasn't sure how he would do such a thing, and he spent a long time beating himself up for what he had done while strolling around the grounds of the Circus. Even while Kal was talking to him, making him joke with her, and making him smile. The crime of his past, the one which landed him here among these people, would never escape his thoughts, and he had to be careful with how much he allowed himself to lust for a woman.

He held off touching Kal for a year. He made sure to stay away from her when they would sit around the fire at night while, at the same time, keeping her at arm's length. She was the most beautiful thing he had laid his eyes on in all his life. The only other woman who came close to such beauty was his mother, who was also a singer, and all the men wanted.

One night, Kal walked into his trailer wearing a simple dress, one she might wear on the stage, and she told him she didn't like wearing anything under the dress. She liked feeling the rush of the sinful knowledge that if her dress came off, she would be naked in the spotlight for all the world to see.

He sat up in his bed, watching her dress fall to the floor as she crawled into his bed. His fears took hold of him until she kissed him and whispered, "It's okay."

"You don't understand."

"I know," she said, "the truth. Be rough with me. Let go of your fear."

It was an act he fully didn't understand until he found himself sitting on the tailgate of a truck close to New Rockwell, eating a sandwich. The old witch had been right about everything. His life with the Circus was a difficult one, filled with hardships and heartaches, but also so much good that outweighed the bad, and the monster held no true power over him as he was deeply in love with Kal. She was the one who kept the beast at bay. She was the one who calmed the monster, as in Beauty and the Beast.

He was going to find her.

He was going to save her from her past as she did with him.

"Benjamin," he shouted, "let's go."