The Everborn Page 39

  “Goddammit,” he swore, “even I can’t do anything right anymore!”

  Scratch now faced Ralston, who’d caught up with him. Wary, Ralston moved backwards a few steps to establish a sharp distance.

  From behind Scratch, Uncle Maxy had disappeared.

  “Listen to me!” Ralston insisted, “you can’t be reborn! Not the way you’re expecting to be! Salvatia’s been using you, don’t you see?”

  Scratch reacted in utter sarcasm. “Oh, and you’re just the one ordained to tell me all about it....”

  “No,” Ralston replied, “I’m not telling you anything you truly already don’t know yourself.”

  “If my brother dies,” Scratch declared, I will take his place in the new life. Bari will become banished as a Magdalene in consequence and Salvatia will take her place as my Watchmaid. She’ll get what she wants and I’ll get what I want. It’s never been clearer to me. If you have a problem with that, why don’t you ask Salvatia all about it before you die?”

  Scratch raised his gaze past him, a dead giveaway to the goings-on behind Ralston’s back; Ralston turned to find himself again face to face with the towering Magdalene Queen, her orange eyes ablaze, her talons ready to strike.

  “Your idle chit-chat is over, Everborn,” Salvatia said to him with stark contempt, “and so are you...!"

  “Not again,” Ralston recoiled with a partial whimper, bone-white hands lifting to cover his ebony eyes in expectation of the worst.

  But Salvatia’s arm did not swing down upon him and before Ralston could close his eyes he looked and saw Bari billowing upwards from her rear, her coppery hand locked about Salvatia’s wrist in lifesaving restraint.

  Salvatia fought against it, fought to veer over to one side with her other arm flailing for a striking point to her suppresser. Her jaws gaped unnaturally wide, her tongue protracted and flicked about the air over teeth now enlarged and jagged.

  With her opposite hand, Bari grabbed hold of Salvatia’s thick black tresses of hair and wound them tight into a firm wad.

  “Ralston!” Bari exclaimed. “Behind you!”

  Ralston spun around to meet a slice from Scratch’s razor across the width of his lower right cheek. Scratch had relinquished his thermal jacket which by now encompassed his shoeless feet, and, naked but for jean shorts filthy and ragged, he resembled a malnourished alien madman. And he was.

  Ralston placed his fingers to the wound and inspected his own seeping red blood.

  Scratch stood poised and readied for a likewise offensive move.

  Bari, in one swift stroke of barbaric strength, hoisted the contending Salvatia by the wrist and grappled hair and flung the Magdalene upwards, above and over her shoulder. Ralston caught wind of the cascade of frosty air from Salvatia’s lower aerial half, flinching from subsequent gooseflesh.

  Bari released her grasp, and Salvatia hurtled into a thunderous collision clear through an expanse of wall to the right of the restroom door. A turbid haze of drywall dust emanated from the resulting gaping cavity. Chunks of broken plaster and splinters of inverted two-by-fours fell like rain. Elvis littered the debris.

  Ralston lunged to his right and quickly reverted to the corner opposite Scratch beside the door so he could see the commotion while avoiding turning his back. Bari proceeded towards the destruction. Scratch remained poised and readied for either another attack upon Ralston or an escape to the outside and he appeared to be deciding between the two.

  Ralston moaned. “What I wouldn’t give right now for a good dose of substance abuse.”

  ***

  At the outer side of the diner there was an open terrace reserved for private parties only.

  During daylight hours, if presumably this diner was open for legitimate business in the normal everyday realm, this section would be held for advance reservations so as to ensure that no one unattended would ever eat and hop the fence before given the check, secluded as it was.

  Andrew and Melony had certain reservations, but these had nothing to do with eating and everything to do with running.

  Upon their evasion from Max and their hairbreadth escape from Andrew’s pursuant Dreg twin brother, they’d found themselves alone on the terrace and wondering where to go next.

  The terrace was composed of a foundation of smooth concrete stained terra cotta and was wide enough to corral two rows of round wrought iron tables with glass tops, three in each row and each with four matching chairs and ample walking space which ended evenly with the building’s rear.

  Andrew had led Melony away from the side door in a hurry, oblivious to the goings-on inside but for the reckoning that Max would continue after them. They initially stopped short past the wrought iron tables for a quick pause to assess the exit from where they fled; Max wasn’t there, he could not be seen even at the inside glass of the door. Instead, they could see from where they stood the gaps of the MJB poster and the cardboard sign revealing a confrontation between Scratch and Ralston, and a momentary struggle.

  “This is all a dream....” Melony said in a way almost trance-like, as if she was trying to convince herself.

  Andrew realized that perhaps Melony had been trying to convince herself of this all along, that this was all indeed a dream, for only in dreams can an average human accept what she’s been through since she met Andrew Erlandson.

  She was like a spooked poodle as she stood beside him and he placed a comforting arm around her waist. She looked down upon him; the youthful man who’d once been twice his size. His height was now like a stunted child, and this gave her no comfort, not to mention how she was pregnant with his child and how because of this the dream would not end.

  Only escape.

  About them, around the perimeter of the terrace, a two-foot-tall railing of wrought iron to match the tables corralled the cement terrace floor on all sides. A dispersal of gladiolas blooming or dying to varying degrees accented the outlying border along the railing’s outer side. The sole illumination aside from what emitted inside the diner was drawn from strings of Christmas lights adorning and crisscrossing the ceiling of the overhead terrace awning.

  Just as Andrew resolved to re-enter the diner to come to Ralston’s aid Melony panicked, grabbed hold of his arm in effort to flee over the railing in the direction of the front parking lot. Andrew spun around limply, a rag doll against the forceful tug.

  “Melony, wait!”

  A shadow emerged, elongated across the parking lot gravel from around the building’s corner, and Melony reacted to the sight with a halt, turning again, spinning an objecting Andrew right along with her. Melony pulled her alien companion to another railing past the tables and to another possibility of escape.

  From where they ended their retreat, the overhead Christmas lights revealed tall grass beyond the bordering gladiolas swaying in the mild cool breeze, sloping downwards at an angle into a canyon-like darkness. Beyond this, there were dense trees towering from within a short ways away yet distant enough to allow a vacuous black clearing between themselves and the terrace.

  A rumble issued forth from within the diner, a nasty earthquake-styled rumble; this commotion was enough to indicate to Andrew that Bari and Salvatia were getting physical. The next instant all fell silent.

  Andrew gazed up at Melony, who remained adamant about fleeing.

  “It looks as if we’re not going anywhere,” Andrew told her.

  ***

  “Goddamn right you’re not,” Scratch’s outcry startled Melony and the Everborn at her side, whirling their attentions to the diner’s terrace entrance door. “Erlandson! You and I need to have words....”

  Just as they turned, the door slammed shut and Scratch was outside with them, one hand clenching his razor, the other forcefully tightening its grip on the door handle so as to prevent a frantic Ralston inside from following after him. Scratch propped one bare foot against a bottom portion of door frame for stability as Ralston exerted one tug after another to get out.

  Uncle Maxy’s ghostly
beige presence came trudging up on the gravel from around the corner of the building’s front lot, through the wrought iron railing in a spectral flicker, before Scratch took notice of him.

  “Where have you been?” Scratch scolded him. “You’re supposed to be holding him for me!”

  “Hold your tongue, Dreg,” Max said. “I am the vessel of your Beloved One. Besides, why don’t you try getting the hang of instantly transporting yourself across space? There’ll be times when you find your sense of direction to be all fucked up. And I need a cigarette....”

  Andrew took an upwards glance at Melony, who was seriously considering a retreat down the dark and grassy slope.

  ***

  Ralston fought against the door’s handle and Scratch’s strong hold from the other side. His left palm was slashed wide open like a loaf of butter-top bread, at the fleshy portion of lower thumb. He cursed himself. It seemed like a good idea to keep Scratch from escaping out the door after Andrew. When he’d made the move for Salvatia’s Dreg, it cost him the stinging incision. His cheek still bled from the first one.

  Ralston would later wonder why Scratch never carried a gun, how Simon BoLeve could’ve taken him out without a problem by now if the bastard simply shot him. But Simon was an addict to his weapon in ways where, particularly in the issue of his face, a gun would not at all do.

  In the issue of Ralston’s hand, it made it godawful painful to wrestle a door handle.

  Bari, remaining a material Watchmaid a dozen paces behind, urged him, “Ralston, get the hell out of here!”

  “I’m trying!” he shouted, exasperated.

  “I must deal directly with this Magdalene, for only I alone can....”

  Salvatia emerged from the rubble her body made of the wall Bari had flung her through. She’d remained physical during the impact, for she’d no time to react to Bari’s maneuver.

  And the impact hurt like a sonofabitch.

  Beneath the broken plaster and drywall, shards of wood and dust and fallen portraits of the King of Rock n’ Roll, Salvatia dematerialized.

  Ralston abdicated his door handle battle to cop a look at Bari, who took a poised and readied position before the cavernous new entrance she’d made of the restroom with Salvatia.

  The restroom door flung open suddenly with a resounding tumult of force. Its lower hinge tore loose from its frame as the door itself slammed into what remained of the wall.

  From out of the doorway, Salvatia launched an assault upon Bari, and Bari was primed and readied. But she hadn’t prepared for what Salvatia held concealed behind her, nor for the crushing blow to the chops the next instant from a wallop of rectangular porcelain toilet tank top.

  The force plummeted Bari backwards and onto a booth table, rendering her incoherent as she spilled onto the leather booth seating, rolling into a position below the table uon the floor.

  Salvatia discarded the toilet tank top in a backwards Frisbee throw and smiled a wicked smile. She intently proceeded to the booth under which Bari had fallen, and all that could be seen of Bari was a circular swirling of currents whipping the air like invisible blender blades.

  Then, Bari’s voice called out, “Ralston, you out of here yet?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about little Miss Watchmaid,” Salvatia called out to her. “Simon let him out, finally. It’s just you and me, baby. Whether Camelia’s ‘Born lives or dies is, to me, neither here nor there. He’s merely surviving long enough to witness the death of your beloved Andrew. Alas, I can’t say the same thing about Camelia herself, rest her soul....”

  Bari arose from beneath the booth table, bringing the table up along with her by a single powerful grip upon its center support leg, uprooting it from its floor mount of bolted steel as easily as tearing off an ear of corn. With equal dexterity, Bari then utilized it as a shield. She struck a corner of it upwards into an effective collision with Salvatia’s chin, knocking her opponent back, with the full force of the attempted a forward lunge.

  “You can’t win, Salvatia,” Bari proclaimed, “no matter how you’re persuaded otherwise.”

  The Magdalene fended against the driving weight of the table shield to no avail. She managed confidently, “What makes you so sure of that?”

  “Here’s a question going back at you: why, of all places, did you choose this diner for our inevitable showdown?”

  Salvatia toyed with the question. “I knew you’d eventually show here, all of you, and I felt no need to have left a clue. It was meant to be. More importantly, my fellow Magdalene whom I shall redeem by your Andrew’s death have drawn me to this place. But this diner is a prominent and curious locale within the pages of that exquisite mistake of a book Camelia’s Ralston wrote, which written therein were all of the clues you required. Clues for you and also priceless clues for me."

  Bari replied with a sarcastic objection. “And to think for decades I assumed you to be a devious, formidable foe. You’re only an asshole disillusioned by a centuries-old obsession with power. Your obsession with power is worse than a man’s own obsession with his dick. And it’s made you naive.”

  Salvatia’s physical makeup fragmented into an air-powder puff of cloudy mist which submerged into the table, through, and came together again to material form at its underside. She now faced Bari in an eye-to-eye invasion of Bari’s personal space. Having acquired the upper hand, Salvatia then said to Bari, “How naive....?”

  Bari let go of the table before Salvatia could wrench it free from her grip and it toppled to the floor on its side. Salvatia’s hand immediately went for Bari’s throat, and Bari’s hand went for hers in turn. In a dual heartbeat they held one another’s throats, their opponent held high and clawed and poised to strike.

  “You’re no match for me, Watchmaid!” Salvatia breathed. “Don’t you know from experience that even two of you are no match for me? I am a Magdalene, and I am the messiah of my kind. My victory was prophesied!”

  It was true that one Watchmaid against a Magdalene wasn’t a fair match by far, and Bari knew this from the beginning. The strength and the ability to manipulate between dimensions and material objects didn’t quite cut it for a Watchmaid in situations like this, especially for a Watchmaid so relatively young compared to a Magdalene centuries old. If she was to defeat Salvatia, of all Magdalene, she’d have to rely on intuition and strategy and timing, on all the essential elements of a carefully devised plan.

  And she wasn’t in this alone. She had not only her own Everborn to protect, whose life was at stake and revolved around every situation of the moment; she had Ralston also, whom she’d made a vow to protect and through years of intervention did a damn good job of doing so. She’d done so and then some, Ralston being the prick he’d always been and, thanks to her manipulation, a famous one.

  Yet in some point in the aftermath of all that was meant to be of this, it was Ralston who would helm the writing of a book that would save them all.

  Bari knew this now more than anything, and this gave her a confidence she was certain Salvatia did not have.

  And a carefully devised plan.

  At this point in time, it was all perfectly clear to her....

  Ralston’s effort in transmitting a message back in time in the form of a final Ralston Cooper novel had not been directed towards Andrew or herself, had not been transmitted as a mere warning or insight for the good guys to get ahead of the game.

  It had been directed towards Salvatia, in transmitted fragments picked up by her own Dreg who’d taken the ball like a God-sent omen and run with it.

  It had also been directed towards the Watchers, or specifically towards the band of Watchers who had taken his own copy of the book from him and were the only ones with the advantage of having read through its entirety.

  The book was responsible for Salvatia choosing this Carbon Canyon diner.

  What Salvatia didn’t know, the Watchers knew.

  Thanks to the book.

  And the Watchers had a habit of frequenting this pa
rticular diner and its surroundings like a home away from many homes.

  47.

  The Watchers

  God sneezed all of a sudden and without warning.

  Or at least, it was as if.

  Something in the air shifted.

  Somewhere close by, a rooftop weathervane twirled in all directions and slumbering souls dreamed more deeply in their beds. Coyotes silenced their howls in the distance for reasons no less apparent than why they were howling in the first place.

  A hush dripped upon the atmosphere like the ripples of water droplets falling into a pool the land was already submerged in.

  It was as if the Watchers had descended.

  It was as if God sneezed.

  “Bless you,” Bari managed to mutter, not in polite response to God, but in response to the hush itself and the advent of its welcomed redemption, and she muttered this as soon as she’d felt it.

  Salvatia felt it also, and she released her grip around Bari’s throat. This, for Bari, was redeeming in itself; the Magdalene’s strength had succeeded her own, and Bari found herself unable to dematerialize, unable to fight, unable to breath against both of Salvatia’s constricting hands. A moment longer, and Salvatia would have otherwise extinguished Bari’s breath altogether or snapped her neck, on squeezed her head from her body like squeezing apart a lump of play-dough. With mutually decreasing interest in each other, they lifted their heads and their gazes in curious scrutiny upwards.

  The instrumental parodies of pop music from the ceiling’s shower drain speakers silenced, and the Watchmaid and the Magdalene together listened alertly for something more.

  And then once, twice, the interior diner lights flickered off, flickered on.

  Bari, in anticipation of Salvatia’s reaction to sensing the Watcher’s presence, took advantage of the distraction and broke free from her hold, pushing Salvatia away.