Dance with the Devil

She was moving faster herself, her face and neck stung by the thin, hard, relentless reed whips; the bright fire whirled by on the lefthand, showering sparks up like bright ephemeral butterflies while the dark, black-brown-green forest passed in a jumble of stark impressions off to her right.
        “Move!” the male herder said.
        “Faster!” the woman said.
        She was not so terrified as she had been at the start, for she was swiftly growing too weary for terror. Her arms felt like lead weights, while her legs seemed too insubstantial too support her at all. She barely had the energy to stay on her feet, after her battle with the wind and the snow when she had fought her way from Owlsden to the head of the ski run to keep her rendezvous with Michael Harrison. Too, she had the strong feeling that none of this could actually be transpiring, that it was all much too silly and childish to be real. A dream. A nightmare. And with that notion hovering at the back of her mind, the terror was cut even further until there was nothing at all to occupy her mind but the plodding steps of the dance. If she danced, if she cooperated and moved forward around the fire, then it would all be over sooner than it otherwise might, and she could go home and rest… and wake up from the dream…
        “Move!”
        “Faster!”
        The chants were manic now, pitched in higher voices, the words coming so fast they tumbled over one another.
        Then she saw something so incredible at the perimeter of the dancing circle that it shattered her mental lethargy in the instant and filled her with the energy of pure, unrelieved horror. Her heart speeded, and her throat constricted in the initial puckering of a scream.
        “Faster!”
        “Move!”
        The flames danced along with the worshipers, rising and falling in their rhythm, surged higher and suddenly changed color: blue.
        The thing that prowled beyond the dancing circle now kept pace with Katherine, with no other dancer but her, its fierce red eyes fixed upon her face. Its stare was obsessive, cold and patently evil. She did not want to think about it, to acknowledge it, but she had no choice in the matter. It was a wolf…
        No, not a wolf, she told herself as it padded along beside her, not a dozen feet away. Just a dog.
        The switches came down harder than ever.
        “Faster!”
        Just a dog.
        She passed Michael. He was not dancing, but he was chanting even louder than the others, holding a book in his open hands as if he were a minister with the Bible. She was sure, whatever the nature of the tone, it was not the Bible.
        “Move!”
        The wolf seemed to be grinning at her. Its jaws gaped, revealing rows of huge, white teeth, the red maw beyond them, the lolling tongue. It was clearly a wolf, not a dog, and one of the largest wolves that she had ever seen, nearly as large as a man, with shoulders broad enough to carry the weight of a rider.
        Now, that was an insane thought. Who would want to ride a wolf?
        The fire changed color once again, crackling loudly as some chemical was tossed into it: green…
        A nightmare, nothing more, had to be.
        The wolf raised up onto its hind paws for a brief moment, quite as if it were attempting to stand like a man, and then it fell back, unable to perform the feat
        Somewhere close at hand, something made a strange, low rumbling noise. When Katherine tried to locate it and understand it, she realized that she was listening to the scream that had been trapped in her throat but which was now issuing from her as an agonizingly hoarse moan.
        Fire: orange.
        “Move!”
        She tripped, did not fall, wished that she had fallen, found herself moving forward again. Her body obeyed the thumping drive of the chants as if she had been entranced and had no control over herself.
        The wolf tried to leap onto its hind feet again, failed again, dropped onto all fours.
        It watched her.
        She could sense an approaching end to the ceremony, and she did not want to face the ultimate moment. It couldn't happen, of course. The wolf was only a wolf, not a manifestation of a demon. Still, she did not want to reach the point of the ceremony.
        The wolf tried to stand a third time. This time, it actually achieved its purpose, whirled about with the music of the worshipers' voices, leaping clumsily