“I don’t want—”
“We’re past what you want! We were actually never there. Understand?” The Archbishop leaned back in his seat, anger fading to irritation.
Paul waited a few seconds and sucked in the last of the cigarette in a burst of red light, which smelled similar to how it felt. He crushed the scorched paper and cotton into the tray. The effect of the seeds had come on strong. The walls twisted and a mummy spoke to him from the ceiling. The words came out of the mummy’s mouth in black and silver ribbons with an aroma of shit braising in onion broth. Embryos with wagging wet tongues fell out of the walls and bounced rhythmically with
Sandeus’s
voice—
“Here are your choices: cut his throat, or retrieve Alexander. The Tomes of Eternal Harvest call for a Bishop to know his time and place even in the face of distortion. Prove yourself.”
“I’ll retrieve Alexander,” Paul mumbled, unsure what the hell that meant. Was it some nonsense his mind had popped into the Archbishop’s mouth? He wasn’t sure.
Sandeus
grinned through the fogginess like a shark through sparkling silt. “You’ve chosen the easier path.”
The fillet knife was taken up so fast it seemed to lift into the air on its own—
Paul shielded his face as something red jettisoned from Ray Traven’s throat. Pinpoints of warmth seethed on Paul’s shaking hands.
The sentinel dropped the fillet knife on the table and backed off, stroking blood off his heavily muscled arm. The marrow seeds had juggled Paul’s senses and there was no fooling himself out of the wild
synesthesia
. The red smelling drops that came from Ray’s throat had a different personality, not the liquid-soft feeling one would expect. Paul was screaming at the life slaloming down Ray’s hairy arms. Ray thrashed for a minute before entering a series of twitches, then passing out; the barbarian’s cut had gone too deep for him to live long.
“Are you ready?”
Sandeus
glided over without giving the dead man a glance. He hopped on the table, sitting in the blood as though a wading pool. Paul noticed now that the Archbishop’s salmon undershirt had white lace frills peeking out at the neckline. Covert lingerie. His perfume curled like the lace and traveled outward to pet Paul’s face—he violently shook away the notion.
The Archbishop of Midnight laughed through his nose. Then, casually he looked at one of the sentinels, who understood the silent question and hurried off, rifle clacking on plate armor. After the guard vanished down the room,
Sandeus
slipped two fingers into Ray’s wound and pulled the flesh apart. “Per compliance with the Tomes, if you survive the initial onset of the seeds, the Archbishop of Morning must bless your new status.”
The Priestess’s church, from the other world… “Church of Morning? But how would we—”
“Contact someone in the Old Domain?” asked the Archbishop.
The sentinel came back with a machine resembling some type of robot scorpion. A wicked nest of insulated wires ran along the perimeter of a phonograph plate, which was affixed with a bronze arm and jeweled needle. The machine was placed carefully on the table near the body.
“Listen to music?” Paul mumbled.
Fine, fine, fine, and fine. Just be done. Get me out of here,
he thought
.
“Oh, but your task is to bring Alexander. I need venom to loosen the blood cells. Hurry up now.”
“Excuse me. Did you say venom?”
Sandeus
Pager sighed and rolled his eyes. It looked terrifying. “Alexander is a snake, Quintana, a Western Diamondback. Didn’t you notice the tank back there?”
Paul’s brain walked in place...
a snake
? He peered into the shadows and started. There was a glass tank against the wall. His eyes had not picked up on it in the gloom.
In the meantime Ray’s blood spilled from its vessels in loud
glug-glugs
—the sentinels behind Paul muttered with helicopter lips—the Diamondback rattled its tail now or the memory of the sound had returned—the lacy fringe beneath
Sandeus
Pager’s suit groped around Paul’s face like ivy and slipped down into a shocking mask and—
—brought Paul to his feet, sweating, head pounding. He said something formed as a question, though the meaning remained elusive. It must have been gibberish because the Archbishop only sat there calmly fingering Ray’s wound.
Paul slipped around the monastery table. It stretched into infinity, yet the tank loomed over him and widened. He could
smell
the tank widening. Two large steps brought him closer, still conscious of finishing this and leaving here, getting the hell away from this place. Quickly. Paul flooded with adrenaline. The tank leered and snickered. Paul turned at a sound and he threw his hands to his throat to search for a knife wound. There was no wound that he felt, but his tears were so real they actually felt terrified for him.
“I’m too high for this!” he shouted back at the Archbishop. “I can’t pick up any damned snake!”
“Just grab Alexander behind the neck.”
Sandeus
tittered, looking to the guards, who chuckled from the dark smears at the back of the room.
Gears turned inside and Paul went into a different mode. It wasn’t fight or flight. No, this was something bent and sharp and altogether usual for him, even high. This was kamikaze. This was suicide-bomber stock. This was
I know what happens next, but I’ll do this and then it will be finished for good
. He treaded over and pulled off the tank’s plastic lid. Silence chimed around him. His invincibility deactivated when he looked inside the tank. He wasn’t hallucinating any longer and that was even more awful than the loop of black and orange scales below.
“Not a Western Diamondback. Alexander was brought from the Old Domain as well,” said a starchy voice behind Paul. “I didn’t want to scare you before.”
The kindling of more laughter burned Paul’s ears.
The snake moved. Its two black jelly eyes opened. Paul lifted a hand. The tail rattled alien chatter. He sucked in a breath and hoped for luck. Quickly, his hand moved into the tank. It grazed the side and his trajectory went off target. He took a slimy handful, mid-body, but he didn’t wait (fuck no) and jerked the snake out like a whip. Alexander lashed out and Paul could see black fangs bare as it rounded. He dropped the snake on the floor and it shot for his ankle—sidestepping, he then lunged, caught the snake again, this time at the rattle. His shoulder turned involuntarily and he flung it onto the table. Its bright orange designs gleamed like blood and honey as it slithered away in a tight S-shape. Archbishop Pager fell forward and pinned the snake behind the neck.
Paul’s
heart felt
punctured. Every beat hurt. “Now you’re going to tell me the snake’s venom isn’t even fatal, aren’t you?”
“No,” replied the Archbishop, “I’m not going to say that at all.”
Paul watched as
Sandeus
wrangled the snake and the sentinels hooked wires from the phonograph to Ray’s exposed vocal cords. Paul hallucinated that it was himself that sat there with his throat opened and wires clamped to the fleshy strands inside him. Paul started to cry and his tears began to scream.
Melissa Patterson had to tread lightly now. If Paul passed the trials and ascended to Bishop, her past would follow her around, ad infinitum. Things could get tricky with all her dishonesty to Cole. Lying wasn’t something that came easy for her, but she’d had good reason to make herself a twenty-five-year-old virgin; it wasn’t a good idea to test the jealousy waters with Cole
Szerszen
. Once she saw him slap the teeth out of some young guy who made the mistake of asking her the time. It wasn’t that he’d merely spoken to Melissa; he’d remarked how lovely her watch was and actually touched the band. Never the mind that the man’s flamboyant demeanor suggested he may have been gay; Cole didn’t balk at any threat. At the time Melissa hadn’t said much about past relationships, although he’d pressed her on the issue to the point of driving her crazy. After this blow up, it made sense to erase any old entanglements and become an innocent, awkward person—like Cole was. She especially had to keep her brief involvement with Paul Quintana close to the vest. Even if Paul fit into his plans, Cole couldn’t even say his name without sneering.
With most of the Inner Circle packing belongings for this year’s hunt, the archive stacks felt like a dusty leather-bound tomb; every sound heightened the chance of discovery. She and Cole silently had focused, unrelenting intercourse. He trembled and she gripped his arm tightly to show him how powerful he was. He liked that, bought into it. The chair thumped the shelves, making too-loud
thwacks
and unsettling dust in gray dervishes. She tried to close her stance, make him retreat, and then—he spilled inside her.
“Sorry,” he
panted
, “didn’t have the chance.”
“That’s fine,” she lied. But she wasn’t going to tell him she liked how it felt. She’d done enough for his ego. Pretending he hurt her the first time, that he’d broken her hymen, that there’d been blood, which she’d known would be a safe lie because his disinterest in afterglow became immediately apparent as soon as he came.
Cole pulled out a hanky from his colorless suit. The warm comfort she felt was replaced with disappointment. Weird scarring and creases flexed through the broad, toady face. Hard years of unloading Church supply trucks and scuffles with other acolytes had made those creases. The scarring, however, was anyone’s guess. He never spoke of it. Not to her at least. The impressions sunk into the flesh like third degree burns made by a red hot pickax. Around his temples, around his throat, around his ears, the scars always looked fresh; she easily imagined smoke rising off them and the spicy odor of gristle.
Cole cleaned off. When he was finished he folded the soiled linen and returned it to his pocket, not offering it to her. Melissa frowned and wiped herself with the already damp bridge of her underwear. A moment later, they were dressed and the chair pushed back against the rock wall.
“Traven should be back by now,” he said.
“You know he’s passed out somewhere.”
“Never again.” Cole shook his head. “Not trusting that lush ever again.”
“How long do you think Quintana will be down there with the Archbishop?”
Cole’s gray eyes glowed. “Interested in
Paul
now?”
“Don’t start that, Bishop.”
He pulled her close to his bank vault of a chest. “The thought of you and him—”
Her regret in that drunken event with Paul was so deep that no acting was required. Her desire for it to be untrue was mightier. Cole gently released her; he’d never be satisfied with her performance, no matter how convincing.
Cautiously, Melissa pressed on, “So, again—how long will the trials last? We’ve got a lot of work to do before Chaplain Cloth returns.”
Cole folded his arms and his suit lifted, too small on him. He needed a new one, badly. “It took me a day before the effect of the seeds wore off. Then my garden grew. Balance of the blossoms could take most men their entire life—like with that poor dead son of a bitch Margrave, it may never happen.” Cole leaned his gigantic shoulder against the wall. His face was tragically tired, and clearly not from sex. “Justin Margrave was a waste—we won’t have to worry about that with Quintana. He can achieve balance in time for the Heralding.”
“Will Chaplain Cloth accept someone so new?”
“If Quintana fails then he’ll make me take his place. I can’t go through another Heralding and still put my plans into motion though. The act pulls too much vigor from my body—it almost killed me last October.”
“I remember.” She hadn’t known Cole that well at the time, but she recalled him being in the infirmary for several weeks. The scars might have been forged on that occasion for all she knew. The Heralding was supposed to be a brutal ritual, and Cole had done it more than many bishops before him. “It makes me wonder if all this is necessary. We’re doing well enough, aren’t we?”
“
Sandeus
Pager isn’t worthy,” Cole snapped and then caught the volume level of his voice. “He hasn’t been out on the Hunt in more than a decade, and I don’t think he’s ever been to a Heralding. He’s imbibing more marrow seeds every year when the Tomes prohibit overindulgence in more than twenty sections.
Twenty
, Melissa.
Sandeus
Pager’s an atrocity. I will be the Archbishop the Church needs.”
She did have a Xerox of that inventory count for the marrow seeds. Now, Melissa wished she hadn’t given it to Cole. Even though it had pushed his plans forward, it also made her vulnerable. Besides which, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the Archbishop hadn’t really taken the seeds but merely misplaced them—the man was more absentminded than anyone she’d ever known.
“But I’m not stupid though,” Cole said, “Chaplain Cloth isn’t a man. He has his own ideas about the world of human beings.”
She froze inside his thunderhead eyes. “What then?”
“I won’t take anything for granted, not with Cloth,” he replied. “I don’t have that luxury this 31
st
with the gateway so close to opening indefinitely. Last year I felt it was closer, and had that Heart been just slightly more potent the Old Domain would have spilled into our world. That could happen this year. When the time is right I will, of course, tell Chaplain Cloth my plan and ask for his blessing.”