The Everborn (49 page)

Melony exerted a response with muttered success. “Y...you.. .y...you...you...And...d...drew....”

“Deep breath, poor Melony. Come on....” He relinquished his hold on the bag of treats and went forward, one small black boot meeting the doorway to gain entrance, one hand reaching for the front door’s outside knob. His human/alien expression was a display of concern; it would've been far easier to have remained shrouded in the mask for Mel’s sake, but this approach would certainly promise the risk of Melony yanking it off boldly herself like Christine to a hideous Erik in
Phantom of the Opera
and Andrew didn’t want
that
. He’d argued the point with Bari shortly before.

“Andrew, s..stay back....” Melony uttered in weakened breaths, backing away yet allowing him in.

“I’m so sorry, Mel. Its better it be this way, I mean, the timing and all. How else can I get around this way
,
out in the open, looking the way I do, except on Halloween? Besides, it’s become imperative I see you. Your life is in great danger. You must leave this place immediately and only Bari and I can help you.”

Surrendering to Andrew’s intrusion, Mel felt herself aware that the further she was drawn into his words alone, the further her feelings slipped from atop that mountain of alarm built by the unavoidable sight of him.

The front door closed after them, and the porch light died just in time to discourage the noisy sidewalk shuffle of another half dozen or so oddities demanding something out of Melony tonight.

***

Andrew Erlandson felt a common bond with Melony as he faced her for the first time since Bari and Ralston Cooper both had taken part in completely eradicating his chances of developing a relationship with a decent woman.

He somehow knew of his unlikely chances all along, with
any
decent woman, the same way he knew ultimately that Bari was in control of his destiny moreso than he. Even still, there was a master plan in the works, as if the book had already been written....

The common bond he felt was by no means related to his current deteriorating condition, nor was it the increasingly accumulated insight to the overall situation. It took little effort on Bari to impart to Andrew who he truly was; all his life, any given insight had been up to Bari herself. Not this time. Since his regression into his new life had begun, it was all starting to come back to him on its own.

It wasn’t anything obvious, this common bond. At least not to Melony, Andrew was certain. But as he moved into the living room and depressed the TV cable box’s power button, the room fell silent and they faced each other alone. The silence spoke well on its own. This experience was frightening and awkward to the two of them equally, for opposing reasons, and for mutual reasons it equally damaged their realities.

Andrew made his way to the sofa and stood upon it, so as to inspect his image in the wall mirror-art. He scratched his head, withdrew from between his fingers strands of loosened hair which he habitually discarded into a pants pocket beneath his costume. “We haven’t much time, Mel. The forces responsible for the deaths of many including your husband’s are on the prowl as we speak, searching to destroy us both in order to destroy so much more.”

“My husband’s dead?” Melony was strangled by anguish.

“And I will be, too,” Andrew responded, “and many will die after me, I assure you, if we don’t move together to defeat this thing....”

“What
thing
?”

“We haven’t time now. I must get you out of here. You know enough. Simon BoLeve...you know of him...surely you noticed him at
The Crow Job
when you sought to hook up with me, you know of him from your husband’s research, and I’m sure you watch the news. Tonight, as surely as Bari and I are here, he’s coming too. And he’s coming for
you
."

Melony dropped backwards upon the opposite end of the couch, distressed, her eyes still never leaving him. “Bari is with you?”

A crash came forth from the direction of the kitchen just then, startling them to attention.

***

When Andrew rose and went for the kitchen to investigate, he requested that Melony stay put there upon the sofa.

He did not hear the doorbell ring.

Instead, he entered the kitchen until his shoes met with a toppled plastic bowl and its spillage of empty candy wrappers spewn across the kitchen floor. There, in the midst, was an inches-wide portion of gooey
splotch
heaped quaintly like a goat tird upon the no-wax linoleum: partially digested Watchmaid refuse.

Bari had been into the M&Ms.

She’d made it clear to Andrew that she intended to place herself out of the scene, of the trick-or-treat confrontation between her ‘Born and Melony, for fear her outright presence would be too much for Melony to handle all at once, what with Andrew’s oh-so-alien
Vogue
new look and all.

Hell, Bari was too much for Melony to handle the
last
time.

And
Bari
had to ruin it all by causing this kitchen calamity, for the minute reason of her fondness towards the ability to still taste and enjoy food.

“Son of a bitch,” Andrew cursed to himself as he stood.

But.....where
was
Bari?

A tremendous shadow encompassed the very dim backyard porch light at the sliding glass doors in the rear corner of the kitchen just then, which did little to prepare Andrew for the sudden crescendo of surprise and cascade of thick flying glass shards that followed instantly thereafter.

Andrew side-stepped in a heartbeat past the section of cabinets behind him to his left to avoid the spectacle, stumbling to his knees in the process, the palms of his wizened hands seeking stable support to raise himself up again from the obstacle course of the floor.

Lifting his gaze, he instantly caught sight of none other than the coppery-skinned personage of Bari, flailed and having been flung back-first into the floor tile, sliding to a halt before the rear living room entrance.

“Bari...!”

“Andrew,” came Bari's fervent command, “get Melony. Take her away from here!
Now!"

Andrew managed himself to his feet and darted over her and past her for the living room, the flowing black gown of his costume virtually taking flight as he went and he did not look back.

The disorienting shove through the glass held Bari at a disadvantage, though only momentarily. When Andrew was clear of her, she lifted her hands and parted the thicket of long black hair from her blazing orange eyes, and bounced forward in a manner not unlike a
Weeble
that wobbled after
falling
down.

Her senses rejuvenated with a keen prowess, Bari readied herself for another assault from the outer pitch night of the patio’s rear yard; she couldn’t resist a taste of the M&M candy treats, no doubt about that, but suddenly Salvatia’s presence was detected outside and in the yard and she did not hesitate to defend. In fervent abandon she’d sped from the kitchen and
through
the reaches of the back porch to engage in sixty second Championship Wrestling with the Magdalene Queen.

Bari heard the silence as she regained her posture and surveyed, and the longer this silence went, the further went the possibility of a second assault from beyond the glass shards still stuck in the encompassing threshold of the door’s metal frame like a jagged mouthful of teeth.

Her wit slow to respond, it came to Bari now after the toss through the glass that Salvatia could have made herself a decoy and she spun around swiftly to follow after Andrew.

She whisked herself past the living room, only to meet her Everborn who faced her dismayed and confounded just inside the wide-open front doorway.

Hung from a piece of orange and black Halloween decor Scotch tape was a partially torn scratch pad page, with a black Magic Marker message:

WE HAVE HER NOW

AND SOON SO MUCH MORE

TO THE SWEET HORIZON OF SUCCESS,

ON TO THE NEXT
,

AND HAPPY

The
Halloween
portion was mangled off, perhaps even
bitten
off.

All Andrew could mutter was....

“She’s gone.”

On to the next.

It was time to visit Ralston.

43.

Company for Ralston

Ralston Cooper had always been the chip on the shoulder of his own ego, always immersed in his own fabrications of personal importance and glory, never pausing for even one admitted moment to discern the meaning of his own life, to find himself.

Until, that Fall,
himself
found
him
.

Funny, this time period, this season called
Fall
.

For just about everything
did
fall...and, for Ralston, things even fell from the sky.

***

The inside of the Cooper residence seemed as lifeless and abysmal as the bowels of an empty church sanctuary in the dead of night.

Bari had materialized in the downstairs weight room after making sure the coast was clear from antagonistic elements, to unlock the sliding glass door and allow Andrew to enter from the outside pool court.

There was something about Bari and sliding glass doors lately.

Andrew emerged from the early morning air as cautiously as a catburglar, but feeling himself looking like a gargoyle returning late from a masquerade party disguised as a gargoyle. He hadn’t been fully used to the entire experience of this whole transformation gig since he first began losing his hair and by this point in time he’d practically sworn off him own human mentality. His enigmatic self-identity was pretty damn well crystal clear about now, and though Bari had maintained the
entire
truth well beyond arm’s reach until now, she recently pointed out it should’ve been clear to him all along. In retrospect, everything was to Andrew as much of a Catch-22 as it was existing as a human being anyway, this ignorance to foreknowledge, and that was the excuse he gave.

Of course, Bari understood that. For Andrew, she had meant for it to be that way.
Any
Everborn carrying the privilege of a conscious relationship with his Watchmaid throughout any given lifetime held more than a clue to the answers to his own existence, but one of the many specialties of a Watchmaid’s power was a profound influence over the
mind
. That was the excuse
Bari
gave.

Andrew’s sneakers hit carpet, and he clicked the switch of a dollar store plastic flashlight in one hand to reveal the time on the other hand’s wrist. He assumed the time was around one a.m., give or take. He still wore his costume, sans the mask, and even with his
real
hands he found it difficult to lift his sleeve to check. It took long enough to arrive here in Brea all the way from the Politos’ in Malibu, long enough for Salvatia to have already struck. The outlook to Andrew thus far was that Salvatia already
had
. The only way to know for sure was to investigate.

Bari then moved toward him, pressing him backwards and outside, shushing him before he could utter an offended objection. She gazed into him with a sobering stringency, which never failed to win over Andrew’s undivided attention, each pupil a blazing orange sun mirrored by the dual black holes of Andrew’s own as he reacted to her.

“Don’t be too hasty and listen to me,” Bari decreed. “I’ve been through the house, inside and out. Ralston is alone in the upstairs bedroom and all the lights are off as if he purposely wishes for people to
think
no one’s home. Even the phone’s answering machine’s outgoing message is Ralston’s voice insisting he is away in Bermuda sipping Coronas beneath a bamboo umbrella and living out the
Chris Isaak
video
Wicked Game.”

“Tell me what you sense, and what you think we should do....” Andrew’s impatience was mounting, “Goddammit, Mel’s life is on the line and there’s no time to lose. Has Salvatia been here, Bari?"

“There’s no indication, but that means little,” Bari reported, then turned solemn. “Andrew, you need to confront Ralston, now, one on one. I’ll leave you two alone until you summon me. Ralston isn’t himself anymore, and....”

Andrew beckoned her as Bari paused to think, “And what? We don’t have time for this....”

“The Watchers have been here. Twice they have, since you completed Ralston’s last book and gave him his manuscript copy.”

“The Watchers.
I’m
a Watcher, until all is said and done and I forget what I know all over again between the two legs of a
new
mother.”

“Andrew, my beloved, you must talk to Ralston. We can resolve this turmoil. You asked me what I sense and this is what I think you should do. You’ll understand why, shortly. Hopefully, soon afterwards, we’ll all come to an understanding together. As you know, I’ll be around when you need me.”

Bari’s physical coppery flesh became translucent before disappearing altogether, leaving Andrew by himself. Her words well conveyed, Andrew took in a sigh and exhaled a vaporous stream of frosty air before reentering the house, mindful to secure the sliding glass door behind him as he went.

Alone and with flashlight in hand, Andrew again commenced his venture inside.

***

So Bari insists Ralston and I have a little chat together. Maybe smoke a blunt and confess secrets old and new.
Andrew’s mind wandered as he steered his course through the weight room, past the bar and into the hallway. Curious, he flicked on a light switch on the nearby wall before thinking it best not to, and for a second the fluorescent bar lights flickered then died; his entrance had been unannounced and he knew he must not startle Ralston prematurely. What with Andrew’s dramatically tweaked physical appearance as of late,
darkness
was a
good idea.