Bestiary

Quote

“Drowning or burning, it’s all the same. Just know I deal in flames.”

Coletta Macomb’s past is a mystery. Not even she remembers it clearly. It doesn’t bother her. Her past ceased to matter when she walked the Spiral Labyrinth. Carrying the affectations of a southerner, including the dialect, Macomb made a stir among the Southern social elite, where she traveled a circuit from Raleigh to Memphis to Atlanta and places between. A fixture at high society parties, she was treated as a curio due to her flamboyance, her evangelical attitude, and her undeniable, fiery charisma. Her message of “spend for the end,” also carried a certain intrigue for the rich, as she gained quite a bit of fame (and some say fortune) advising the elite on where to put their money to avoid or prepare for coming disasters that she predicted with some accuracy.

Many believe her to be clairvoyant. In truth, the flames she sees in the future animate Coletta Macomb. She desires the Apocalypse, and between her prophetic harangues, she takes frail ecstasy in imagining the fullness of her Father as he spreads his burning wings over her world, swallowing and burning, burning and swallowing.

The end of the world never looked so good. Ma­ comb, who many believe is from the South, is actually from Eastern Pennsylvania, where underground coal

fires have burned for fifty years. There, the young Spi­ ral encountered an earth-spirit insane from the pain caused by the uncontrolled fires. Wreathed in perpetual immolation, the spirit horrified and mesmerized the young Macomb. She fought with it and slew it, but it changed her forever. Donning its corpus like a shroud she became the spirit of the coal fire, which she took to be the purest sign of the Wyrm’s presence — and the inevitability of the Apocalypse — that she had ever found.

Thenceforth, she has sought to share the wisdom of ruin, and bring her dual message of despair and jubilant revelry to the world, freeing them to embrace the coming fires as she has. More recently, Coletta Macomb has appeared in New Orleans, where she is helping the local Black Spiral Dancers in their plans to drown the city.

Image: A coffee-colored black woman in her 50s, Coletta looks to be more like 20. She speaks with the frenzy of an inner flame. Her words are inciting and exciting, almost as intoxicating as her presence. Only those who can pierce supernatural deception notice that she smells of brimstone, and that her breath often smokes even though she never touches cigarettes. Partners that are more intimate have even seen the flames lick her lips and burn through her nipples. When she takes Crinos form, her coal-colored fur smokes and ripples, and where her flesh is torn, it reveals patches of burning earth beneath the skin.