“Make a right onto Washington,” Paul instructed the Nomad woman. She said nothing, waited for traffic and pulled out onto the busy street. The guy Nomad was in the back seat with Paul’s gun in hand and pointed in his general direction.
“I suppose I should thank you,” said Paul. “Martin, isn’t it?”
Martin’s eyes rolled back into his head for a moment. Whatever the Nomad had done back there to bring back the Priestess had really fucked him up. Martin blinked his eyes to stay conscious and swallowed several times, pretended to be more alert. “We don’t have to be friends, just get us there.”
These motherfuckers aren’t going to let me and the Priestess live. Once they have what they want—
It was a great thing
Paul’d
stuffed the marrow seeds down his boxers.
“That might be,” Paul replied, “but you don’t have to point my gun at me. You have those Mantle things that come from the Old Domain.”
Martin rolled his shoulders and blinked again. “Let’s just be clear—”
“Turn left up at the freeway,” Paul told the woman.
“Let’s be clear,” Martin repeated. “We can’t let you go until the babies are back in our hands.”
“That wasn’t the deal. I said I’d take you there.” Paul straightened. His heart thumped in his throat.
“And let you return to your buddies and give away our position?”
“I told you—”
“We know what you said, but that’s not what we’re going to assume will happen.”
Paul glanced again in the rear-view mirror. The Bearer had caught up to them and he could see him and the Priestess. Slumped on the passenger’s seat, she still looked out for the count, but Paul knew she was back—there was a color to her that put a smile on his face. “I don’t want to go back to the Church. It’s her I’m after.”
“That’s sweet,” said Martin wryly, “but the risk we’ve taken here is too large.”
His voice sounded dopey then, as though he were about to pass out. With a jerk of his neck, Martin readjusted his position in the back seat. Still, his eyes were sliding.
“How are you?” Teresa asked him.
“Fine,” Martin said, “I’m fine.”
“Take
Reche
Canyon, up here on the left,” Paul mumbled.
This has to be, by far, the most retarded thing you’ve ever done,
he thought. With a glance back he noticed Martin’s eyes had closed. Paul crept his fingers along his waist line and tried to scissor the bag of marrow seeds. They’d made him wear the Bearer’s driving gloves for some kind of a weak deterrent. Paul knew he could probably send over the gloves to the Old Domain no problem, but that would be too clear of a signal. Through the obnoxious leather gloves he felt the bag of seeds and gave a tug. “Turn left over here, take the dirt road.”
The woman, Teresa, pulled up next to the curb. Paul noticed Martin was attentive again. Paul’s fingers froze. The Bearer wheeled the Civic alongside them and rolled down his window. “Stay down here Enrique,” said Teresa. “If you see something just head back for the motel.”
Enrique parked down a short side street along an orange grove.
“Can you feel them?” Martin asked Teresa.
She started up the dirt road. Blinking fiercely, her eyes searched. Paul considered her for a moment. He didn’t feel anything unusual, but clearly the Nomads were hooked into the Hearts. “Yes,” she said finally, her voice filled with relief. Her face contorted as though to cry, but she stayed it. “Yes, they’re up the hill.”
Paul tugged on the bag of seeds a little more and it began to peek through his pants. Martin had
lulled
off again. Paul had the bag palmed but it would not be long before one of them noticed. “Park up there, under those trees,” he told Teresa. “I think we should probably go on foot the rest of the way.”
Teresa glanced at him, but Paul felt the jeep slowing down under the shadows. Now came the time to convince himself this wasn’t another big mistake. The marrow seeds were the only thing he knew of to keep him safe from these powerful people. He just had to hold on.
As the doors popped open, Paul Quintana opened the baggie and dumped all the seeds into his mouth. Swallowed.
~ * ~
Teresa warily watched the Bishop as they slid through the trees. The man shook a few times, as though he’d acquired an intense case of the chills. Martin watched him too from the right. “What’s with you?” he asked the Bishop.
“Nothing,” the man mumbled. He gestured to a dense clutch of trees. “Look, let’s stop there for a second.”
“Why?” Teresa asked.
We should have just killed him when we got out of the car.
Martin glanced over to her and she could tell he was thinking the same thing. They already had a sense where the Hearts would be located. The Bishop was only a liability at this point. She hated making decisions like these, but there was no way around it.
She trained her gun to the back of the Bishop’s head and Martin followed her lead.
The Bishop didn’t turn to them. Instead he put an arm up against an elm tree and leaned his head against it. He sputtered for a moment, smacked his lips and twisted his head miserably. “Has love ever made you do foolish things?” he asked them.
The question was meant to distract them, and it had. Teresa sensed Martin stiffen at her side. “I’m ill with it, I think. Diseased.” The Bishop laughed. Suddenly his body gyrated with another violent spell.
Teresa exchanged one last glance with Martin before they fired their pieces. The silenced rounds struck the tree trunk as the Bishop rolled away. Beyond swinging blond hair his eyes were dilated and face distorted with frenzy. He clawed past the Nomads. They sidestepped and took aim again. The man collapsed against the ground with a scream. Teresa thought one bullet had struck home, but the Bishop’s fall had been caused by another strange fit—and now the man was up again, charging down the road. Martin made careful aim and fired a round into the back of the man’s head.
But the bullet absorbed into the space around the Bishop’s head as though shot through water. The man tripped over a root but kept running.
“What the—?” Martin whispered.
Teresa brought a mantle and launched it with full force. The mantle immediately recoiled and bounded back to her. She let it dissolve the moment it did. Down the hill the Bishop disappeared in a mad streak of black.
“What?” Martin asked. Teresa sensed him trying to build but it was a thin attempt.
“There’s too much resistance—like with Cloth.”
Martin moved forward but she caught him. “How did he manage that?”
Shaking, Teresa took out the radio and thumbed the button. “Enrique, come in. It’s an emergency, come in.”
They waited a few moments. “Enrique? Come in? Enrique—”
Martin shook his head and stared down the hill.
She gave it another try. “Enrique. Get out of there. He’s coming. Go back to the motel. Enrique?”
Voices came from the other side of the trees and they hurried for cover.
~ * ~
Paul hardly felt the seeds go down when a supernova of dread exploded inside him. The taste still flexed in his mouth: cantaloupe and brown sugar and blood. It hadn’t been this way last time. He’d expected more control after the effects of the Heralding—but this was too much. His abilities would flourish.
Just had to hold on.
Twisting nightmares already paraded across the hillside. Murder was in the air. Black-hearted fiends groped every atom in the cold sky. Something rotted nearby... in his stomach. Branches poked through the thick wall and wound around his ribcage like razor wire. Then he heard something rising up.
Pipe organ music
. Soft (evil); harsh (kind). The notes haunted the passages of his heart with a song that offered an irrevocable promise and a ruthless truth: it would play forever. He would die someday, still listening to the dirge’s hungry melody.
The pipe organs played on as the orange grove came bouncing into his view. He grasped his face for control and a dagger of bloody snot fell from his nostril. He wiped it on his sleeve without much care. The body didn’t matter. Not right now. His new ability had lifted his emotions to the screaming skyscrapers of his soul. The marrows bloomed through his entire body now and power was easy. Control was difficult. Every now and then he encountered a lump of ice in his mind and when he touched it, he touched the Old Domain like a groping blind man.
Am I becoming like the Nomads?
The lump grew frost tumors, hold-cold and freezer-burning. The pipe organs strayed from a rhythm into a high-pitched solo.
He saw the Civic parked along the road. One door was opened. The Priestess was struggling, half in and half out of the car. As Paul approached he saw that she and Bearer were wrestling for a gun. They’d dressed her in jeans and a man’s white t-shirt but her beauty was still agonizing.
My Priestess...
The words were lyrics to the forever-song blasting inside. The pipe organ played as a biological organ, a fixture of his anatomy. Paul continued his search for control across the staffs of flowing notes. And the dissonance would eat him alive.
Paul went to the other side of the car and grabbed the handle. The steel turned malleable in his hand. He pulled and twisted out a metallic chunk, leaving behind a hole. The car door had come open with the force. Paul took up the gun from the seat. Enrique and the Priestess both froze from the sight of him. He wanted to blow a hole though the little man’s head but reality was so disjointed Paul feared he might shoot the Priestess at this range. Instead, layers of growling, snarling voices in his throat rolled forth: “Get out!”
The Priestess let go and Enrique scrambled past him, falling into the grove with a shout of pain. Paul went around. The Priestess climbed over to the passenger seat as he fell into the driver’s seat. He twisted the key and as he pushed the gas pedal to the floor, the car pulled away with a screech. Trees flew by fast. The world flowed around them, dangerous.
“I thought I was lost.” The Priestess leaned over and kissed his neck. “You brought me back!”
Paul couldn’t feel the kisses, although he surely knew they were there. He could only drive. The road slithered. The cracks in the asphalt became shining black and orange scales. After two miles down the country road, he couldn’t take it anymore and pulled off the side.
“Why have we stopped?” the Priestess asked. “Paul? Where are we going?”
Paul looked into the serpent eyes of a human-sized black and orange snake and he screamed.
~ * ~
Teresa considered the Church members. There were only two acolytes and a suit. The men descended in height. If you drew a boundary line from apex to nethermost point of their heads, you would have a long triangle. The height probably represented a scale and counter scale: the tallest man was most dangerous and less significant socially, the middle average in both ways, and the scrawniest garbed as
Inner Circle
. They stood in a row, all studying the grain silo up the hill, exchanging chunks of unintelligible conversation.
“One of those wide mantles,” she whispered to Martin and demonstrated with a subtle karate chop to the back of her own skull. “Should give them a few hours rest.”
“Go for it.”
“I can’t manipulate them like that,” she insisted.
“We’ll go old school,” said Martin.
She cocked her head. He wasn’t serious, was he?
Martin stood.
Guess so
.
She grabbed his wrist and pulled him down. “What in the fuck are you doing?”
“Come on,” he said. “I’m ready.”
“Let’s think through this.”
His hazel eyes baked in the sunlight. In the intensity they were almost the color of the grass swaying between them. “You want to take them out? Then we have to go—”
In a flash they flattened against the cool grass, packs held underarm. The tallest acolyte turned to check the safety on the Browning tucked into the puffy side of his paisley boxer shorts. This was the guy to look out for. Sure, his sweat-yellow wife beater and oversized jeans gave a few handholds, but the craggy knuckles told enough about the man to make hand-to-hand a less desirable idea.
Mr. Middle had no visible weapons. But Teresa suspected he had several in the massive folds of that gray USC sweatshirt.
The Inner Circle man had no notable weapons in sight either.
“Such a nasty place up there,” the Inner Circle man’s pinched voice contrasted the bass rumblings of his two companions. “Probably a bunch of rats and spiders up there. Fuck all that. I’m glad we’re put down here.”
“Yeah.”
“Right.” The others agreed, a little ceremoniously.
Martin was suddenly up again. This time Teresa couldn’t grab him. As though trapped in a dream, she watched as he casually approached them. Her knees felt watery when she stood. A mantle readied on the cusp of her mind...
From the man’s boxer shorts, the Browning came free in Martin’s hand. In a blink the muzzle met his skull. Martin seized the opportunity and latched around the middle guy’s head and put him in a rear collar choke. The suit twisted around in surprise, in terror, in shock, in wide-eyed holy shit, only to get the heel of Martin’s hiking boot in the orbit of his right eye. Dirt blasted up from the grass as the man’s body punched the earth. He rolled sideways, crying, and pressed his injured face into the ground before blacking out and relaxing.