The Everborn (43 page)

The figures were treading along the chain-linked fence of the kindergarten area the next minute, much too close for Andrew to make a sound or to make a run for it without his unclad spectacle giving him away. If he remained perfectly still, perhaps they wouldn’t even notice his presence in passing....

As they closed in, strolling up casually, he could hear their conversing. One of the figures paused to bend down, a hand reaching into the grass. He reverted back up and continued onward with the rest, tossing whatever he’d retrieved, probably rocks, this way and that. Another figure was smoking, another halted to light a smoke for the fourth one.

Andrew slumped his body down to camouflage himself in the shadows as the four figures approached. As he tilted his head to keep a trained eye upon them, he held his breath as it looked as if the entourage were changing their course towards the rear perimeter of the school, past the trees and to the back fences of the neighboring homes.

But the next thing he knew they were doing just the opposite and made their way to the section of swing sets between himself and the kindergarten area, directly behind him, only several yards away.

Slowly, meticulously, he positioned his sweat pants atop his legs and waist; at least, in the event they noticed him, this would give the appearance that he was halfway clothed. He wouldn’t dare risk the movement required to put them on fully, sicne they were so close.

He turned the other way, to catch better sight of them. They were at the swings now, flicking the orange cherries of their cigarette butts to the ground. One of them, the shortest, took hold of a swing and spun it around, afterwards flinging it with a
clang
into a pole before it hit one of his companions.

“Cummon, asswipe,” spat the one hit with the swing, the tallest of the lot.

“Man, I am
stoned,”
exclaimed the swinger. He was clearly Hispanic, Andrew could tell by his accent. The others wore dark, thick jackets except for him. This one was covered in a mere t-shirt baring some indistinct logo, and jeans. He must’ve been freezing almost as much as Andrew, but, hey, he was
stoned
.

“Everybody must get....” said the tallest, in jovial sing-song.

“Yeah,” admonished another, abandoning his place at the kindergarten’s chain-linked fence and stepping up to the tallest. This one apparently wore glasses, for as he walked they fell from his face and he stooped to retrieve them. After this, he continued towards the tallest, replacing the glasses on his face to clasp hands with his friend. “Ralston, my man! You are hot hot
hot
!"

“I’m hot for some tush, Bel Geddes,” an enthusiastic Ralston said to him.

“So where to now?” asked the Hispanic mesmerized with the swings, now seated and twirling about upon the one he’d flung. “Hey, Bel Geddes, what about your sister? She home? Let’s go to your pad, man, see if she’s home.”

“Fuck you,” Bel Geddes responded. “My sister hates you. No offense, she hates all my friends. Hey Ralston, what about you? Let’s hang at your place, strike up another fattie, watch some tube.”

“No way,” Ralston said. “You know my mom. Let’s hang out here.”

“It’s fuckin’
freezin
’ here,” said the Hispanic guy, and no wonder, with his mere t-shirt and all.

“Hey Michael,” Ralston said to the fourth, who as of yet had yet to say a word. Andrew was forced to twist his neck to catch sight of him, and when he did, he found the bastard directly behind him, not more than four or five yards away, crouched, his gaze jetting outwards in Andrew’s direction. “Michael. You with us, man? What about
your
pad?”

But Michael had surely caught sight of Andrew and the following few seconds confirmed it. Andrew began to shiver again, this time not from the cold, but from dreadful alarm.

“Guys,” Michael announced, “there’s a dude over there.”

“Over where?” said Ralston. Already, Michael was sauntering up to the jungle gym. The others took notice and followed, until Andrew was surrounded by the four inquisitive stragglers.

Andrew raised his gaze to each of them in mute salutation and with a quirky half-smile, his ungainly defenses overwrought by the desperate inclination to play the part as if absolutely nothing was wrong. On one hand, he was naked, literally, and vulnerable. Even if he was a fighter, which he wasn’t, it would be no easy task defending himself like
this
. On the other hand, Bari was sworn to be around to protect him at all times.

Now that the four were upon him, their appearances matched the mental sketches Andrew had drawn in his mind during their liaison at the swings, intensely personified now, extremely threatening. They were hoodlum rock n’ rollers, at least two years Andrew’s seniors and undoubtedly high schoolers, or high school dropouts. Each was crowned with short dark hair and various shades of dark skin save for one, the tallest, by far the whitest, the one whom the others called Ralston. The moonlight revealed his long, shoulder-length hair, and at this new angle Andrew could view the black baseball cap he clenched within his right hand.

Ralston knelt down in between the bars directly before Andrew and intrusively closer than his counterparts, who were now leaning against the jungle gym bars but otherwise stood erect.

Ralston took the initiative to be the first to speak at this point. “What’ve we got here?”

“Dude,” remarked Bel Geddes, the one with the glasses, to Andrew, “you look
fucked up.”

Andrew took solace in that they were stoned, and that consequently any response should do, After all, for all
they
knew, was a hoodlum rock n’ roller high schooler, too. He said, “I got in a fight with my folks. Got kicked out on my ass.”

“Bummer,” said Bel Geddes.

“That’s fucked up,” said Ralston. “I’ve been kicked out on my ass, but never like this, at, what, what time is it, anyway? You must be freezin’ your ass off, lookin' like that.”

“I am,” Andrew said. The illusion was working, his sweat pants draped across him as they were. “It’s okay. No sweat. I’m used to it.”

“Hey,” exclaimed Michael, the bastard who discovered him in the first place, leaning dramatically closer and through the first set of bars, “
this dude’s got no clothes on
!”

The bastard.

Ralston leaned closer, too, his eyes studying. “What? No shit.”

Andrew was speechless. There was a pause amongst them, and if it was any longer a pause, it would’ve allowed time for him to summon an explanation. But it was too late for that.

Unexpectedly, Ralston commenced what began to seem like a slow, disgusted reversal from Andrew as he withdrew halfway from the mouth of the jungle gym. He lifted his baseball cap and placed it upon his head, adjusted it.

Andrew took advantage of this pause and rather than spend it proclaiming excuses for his nudity he endeavored to hasten his sweat pants over his ankles. He managed to merely bring them up to his kneecaps when Ralston threw himself forward and pounced upon Andrew.

“What are you,” Ralston challenged, “some kinda
pervert?
Huh? Fuckin’ pervert.”

And with that, Ralston went for Andrew’s ankles, took a firm grasp of them, and with spontaneous ease slid Andrew’s body across the wet grass and out of the sanctuary of the jungle gym.

The nameless Hispanic swing-set guy called over to Ralston, “Hey, give him a chance, man...let him put his pants on....”

But the others ignored this and Ralston initiated a swift kick to the side of Andrew’s rib cage, then sent a blow just short of his hip. The other two flanking each side of Ralston followed suit, the nameless one helplessly looking on as his friends shouted and cursed, as Andrew curled into a ball and took it in all its painful humility, longing for Bari, feeling by now she would never come.

As for the ones who proceeded to beat him, they continued to do so, allowing Andrew a merciful pause so he could pull up his sweats, though they wouldn’t let him be just yet.

For now, they’ve settled on a place to hang out at and found something with which to occupy their time.

***

Andrew experienced more humility than pain from the beating. Their blows could have hurt a hell of a lot worse if these weren’t typical high school bullies more apt to cruelly teasing him than to seriously injure him. But with each slam dunk to the head, he felt himself becoming severely dizzy.

Just then, out of the direction of the dark asphalt sea behind them, there cried a loud youthful voice.

“Leave him alone!”

Andrew’s assailants instantly discarded him on the grass and turned to look, all at once, all in the same direction like a group of rogue vultures startled from their writhing quarry. Their rumpus had attracted an on-looking guest. To Andrew, the voice was relievingly similar to Bari’s; when he managed to turn over on his side to catch a glimpse of whatever it was the older youths were seeing, the figure he beheld did not match Bari’s voice.

There, on the edge of the blacktop but shy of the grass, too far into the shadows to be completely recognized, stood a boy of Andrew’s height and age. It was a boy in obscure clothing his hands in his pockets, glaring straight at them.

Ralston bitterly remarked to Andrew, “Who is this, your twin sister?”

The nameless Hispanic guy, the only one who refused participation in the beating, began to speak, the next to capture the attentions of all. Andrew maneuvered himself upon his back again to see.

No sooner than he’d begun to utter the first few syllables of whatever it was he was trying to say, the Hispanic friend without further warning bellowed in impromptu agony. His left hand grappled for a firm hold of a bar of the jungle gym beside him, as if he was fighting to pull away from an unseen something which held him where he stood. His bellows evolved next to screams. If his friends didn’t know any better, this teenager was spontaneously tripping off a drug far more psychedelic than weed.

On cue with a crescendo of screams there came an immense bloating from beneath the teenager’s shirt, like a balloon inflating between his chest and the clothing, stretching outwards from his ribs with knuckle indentations in the fabric as if he’d withdrawn his arms from his jacket and slipped them inside his t-shirt to exhibit a freakish delirium. But his hands were where they
should
be, clenching into fists at the mouths of his sleeves, one gripping a bar of the jungle gym and holding on for dear life. His shirt expanded until it spread-eagled his jacket. Tremendously thick black claws tore through the material to reveal bloodied, attenuated silvery hands outstretched and enlivened by a blinding light which arose from behind him and impaled him.

In the next instant, the teenager was split apart evenly by a vision somewhat resembling a monstrous luminescent earthquake crack, ripping apart clothing and reaching down past his groin, separating the boy in two, giving way to a dark and silver creature stepping from between his macabre halves. Each section of the young man flopped limply to the opposite side of the other, innards swelling into two mounds of twisted, seeping red flesh and bulging severed bone.

The being whose presence now filled the space where the nameless teenager stood moments before was not Bari. It held enough characteristics for Andrew to assume that it was another Watchmaid, or at least was related to the sort of creature Bari was. But Bari would’ve come to his rescue in a way where she wouldn’t kill anyone, for one thing, let alone in such a theatrically vile way. This being that now displayed herself before them hovered upon a stream of legless vaporous smoke, much like a genie, much like Bari, but the skin of this being was silver whereas Bari’s was coppertone brass, and her long hair and fingernails and the nipples of her breasts were a glossy thick black where Bari’s were, well, a flat black. Her radiant orange eyes penetrated all she surveyed quite like a Watchmaid’s, with eyes like Bari’s.

Salvatia’s dramatic advent climaxed with a yawning flex of her otherworldly arms in a languid
ta-dah
, emerging into human reality as one would get out of bed and face the new day. The bright light around her faded. She was there, among the physical, in the flesh. She looked upon them all, and proclaimed, “God knows how long I’ve been wanting to do that. I am Salvatia and I’ll be your death for the evening.”

And with that, she hurled herself forward and into Michael and then Bel Geddes, her tenebrous hands seizing both their throats and snapping their necks with a dual swift flick of her wrists. The bodies slumped lifeless to the grass, each alongside the opposing halves of the first friend to go.

Salvatia’s eyes locked onto Andrew’s as she commenced to lurk toward him in a stalking glide, every inch nearer drawing the maniacal grin on her face into a grimace of mounting satisfaction. She spoke again as she closed in to him, speaking not to Andrew but to the boy-stranger at the edge of the blacktop. “Simon...you suppose I stand a chance at taking the young Everborn’s life
myself?
You have to admit I’ve earned straight A’s in slaying everyone else tonight, yes, in that I’ve excelled with...with flying colors. Impressive, to be capable of doing that with the mere power of a Dreg’s presence. So can I slay an Everborn?
Let’s see...
.”

Andrew, still strewn upon his back, elbowed himself away from the beast in terrified angst. His body slid easily across the grass as he fought for the effort to escape her...until he plowed himself directly into Ralston. Ralston hadn’t fled, but remained a few feet behind him all along. Fear and panic had swept him off his feet and the cap from his head and he was sprawled out upon the grass just as Andrew was. Ralston was numb with shock and could not move...horrified, all he could do was stare.

Suddenly Salvatia’s mad glare faltered as her attentions were drawn to Ralston and her expression lapsed into an intensely quizzical fixation as soon as she laid eyes on him. She abruptly ceased her advance and studied him, dumbfounded.