Page 5 of Carnal: The Beast Who Loved Me

CHAPTER ONE

Kellareal

If you think I’m as old as the stars, you’d be wrong.

My boss qualifies though. That’s right. I report to one of the Old Ones. It’s my job to try to keep the fabric of Earth together while creatures tied to its myriad dimensions do their best to fuck it up. The dimensions with populations that have acquired technology are starting to make my job even harder than it was.

Some little madman, tyrant of a country that occupies half a small island, is always threatening to blow the entire planet to smithereens if the rest of the dimension doesn’t agree to fart his national anthem. Guess how much I’d like to just take him out? Just grab him by his ridiculous haircut and throw him into space? But that’s neither here nor there, I guess. It’s just the job. And needless to say, I’m barred from acting on my own fantasies.

The latest actual disaster to come along calls itself the Council. Excuse my snort. That little band of brats behaves as if they’ve forgotten that there are beings in the multiverse thatdwarftheir power. Some idiot instructor gave themmydomain as a homework assignment. They weren’t nearly ready to be set loose in a place where they could threaten entire sentient races, but that’s the hand I’ve been dealt.

The “Council” believes that I’m an elemental.Inferiorto them. So I play that role and let them think I’m subservient. Pretending to be their errand boy is the best way to have their trust and keep a close eye on what they’re doing. They call me their Enforcer. What a joke! They’re so far up their own asses that they don’t bother to check whether I carried out their wishes or my own. So I work as an independent agent when I can.

My cover is so good that even other elementals think I’m one of them.

I know what you’re thinking. And I readily admit that things have slipped through, but omnipresence is not one of my gifts. I can’t be everywhere at once.

Admittedly, some of the mistakes have been big. Like when Heralda created vampire. She became temporarily infatuated with the darkest representations of Earth’s literary culture and, like the spoiled child she is, decided to act it out. The original vampire were created as real immortals with hearts and minds and consciences. Then, a few centuries ago she decided to cut corners by setting a virus loose in a few dimensions. Five. Or is it six? Only, unlike the original creations, the virus vampires were deeply flawed, more like zombies really.

No. Don’t get all ruffled. Zombies are fictitious. At least until Heralda decides they’re not.

I’m still paying for not being in the right place at the right time to prevent the vampire virus and, yeah, I know it’s caused its share of havoc. If there weren’t some rules that really can’t be broken, like going back in time to make corrections, I’d just follow the kids around, cleaning up their messes as they go. But since that’s not an option, all I can do, while waiting for their assignment to be over, is try to keep them from destroying everything.

Of course I’d love to simply wipe them out, but just like the fantasy about little despots, that’s against the rules, too. The conventional wisdom is that the “Council” must do their homework and learn from their mistakes, even if other creatures are harmed in the process. I don’t agree with it. In fact, you can put me in the Strongly Disagree column. But even the Ancient Ones abide by rules.

Every now and then I get a helping hand. A mere fifty years or so after Heralda unleashed the vampire virus, a couple of grieving widowers formed a reactionary organization called The Order of the Black Swan. As soon as I figured out what they were doing, I began assisting in any way that wouldn’t either break rules or alert the “Council” to my clandestine activities. And believe me. I know how to be creative when it comes to skirting the edges of rule-breaking.

The general guideline is “just let things play out” and, most of the time, that’s exactly what I do, even when I really don’t like it. I imagine I’d be pulled from this assignment if my boss knew that I’d grown personally attached to this place. But what can I say? If you work at something twenty-four-seven for eons, it’s going to leave a mark on you. Right?

I’m allowed to step in to prevent something like a nuclear catastrophe, but I’m supposed to be hands-off with all things evolution-related. Even plague. Natural selection is king. I have to watch entire species of creatures become extinct and not do anything about it unless it threatens the future ofallcreatures. Believe me. That’s harder than it sounds, which brings me to the Exiled.

Almost all of the human-dominant dimensions that have acquired technology have dabbled in developing human/animal hybrids. If you’re a woman, you would probably ask why. If you’re a man, your first reaction might be to think it’s an idea worth exploring. I have this theory that men are driven by conception jealousy. The inability to bring new life into the world lies at the heart of a whole range of horrors, from cloning to a desire to see artificial intelligence overtake and obliterate humankind. The creation of hybrids is akin to that insanity. But once the creatures are here, they’re mine to protect.

I don’t normally have the time or opportunity to express opinions. So forgive my digression.

Setting the psychology of reasons aside, I want to talk about one particular group of hybrids. The ones I risked everything for. They were developed by humans on Telstar Dimension and, I’ve got to hand it to them, they did a bang up job. Over a century and a half, they experimented with both canine and feline DNA, combining one or the other with the best human stock available in terms of intelligence, strength, and endurance.

The results were impressive, but anyone looking at the scenario objectively could have guessed the outcome. The hybrids became disinterested in being a class of controlled warriors. When the Telstar humans realized they’d created a credible threat to themselves and their way of life, they conspired to gas the hybrids while they slept and call it an experiment gone bad.

It was pure accident that I learned about it in advance. I mean, what are the chances? I had stopped into one of the elemental watering holes. A salamander demon was saying he heard about it as he was passing through Telstar. He said it was a shame because the hybrids were more worthy of being the last species standing than the humans who made them. Salamander demons are known for profound insights. So I listened.

I was on my way to Telstar before I had a working plan. I just knew I wanted to do something. Somehow, on the way there, the idea came to me.

The humans on Farsuitwail had watched their civilization regress to just this side of Stone Age when a band of feral hybrids, called Rautt, had taken over. They escaped and settled on the other side of a desert wasteland, but not before they disabled every means of technological power and killed everyone they suspected of possessing the expertise to reengineer the power grid. All weaponry and parts that functioned at a distance greater than the length of an arm was also destroyed so that humans were left with nothing more to defend themselves than could be used in hand-to-hand combat.

The humans woke to find themselves terrorized, slaves to their creations because humans were no match for Rautt in close combat warfare. From a point of view, you might say it was poetic justice except for the fact that most of the humans had no say in the decision to breed hybrids or in how they were used and abused. Most were innocents paying the price for the ill-conceived actions of a few.

For that reason I intervened.

I could save the Telstar hybrids from genocide and aid the Blanthekin dimension humans at the same time. A sort of “cold war” balance would be established and balance was my goal. Always. Restoration and maintenance of balance was what I was made to do.

It was easy enough to find where the hybrids were kept. I planted a suggestion in the minds of the guards that they’d been ordered to sleep through the night. Later, when they were held accountable, they would all swear to the same story and be able to pass a lie detector test.

I looked over the adult males, who were confined in single cells when they weren’t being used as proxies for conflict or for breeding purposes. They were also controlled by collars that delivered electric shocks.

I walked down several rows of boxes with bars, it would probably be more appropriate to call them cages. Every one of the adult males was magnificent, the result of selective breeding and culling. Each was also at the prime of life.

You might say it was sexist of me to look for a leader among males, but I suspected the hybrids would be operating on limited societal organization principles. In other words, might makes right. As I passed each cell, I looked into the face of the occupants until I found what I was looking for.

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