The Everborn (53 page)

“Where were you ten seconds ago?” Ralston said to her.

“Go,” Bari instructed, “assist my Andrew while I pursue
other
matters....”

“But...Andrew needs
you
...”

“I know what I’m doing....”

Without another word or further time wasted, Ralston did as Bari said and leapt from her arms and onto his feet. He turned his back to her and fled after Scratch in a determined fury to kick his ass; already, at the diner’s opposite far end, Max was succeeding on his own in overpowering an Andrew half his size, having virtually pinned Andrew bent-over-backwards by both arms atop the table surface of the corner booth. Melony was struggling to maintain her balance as she stood over the two of them upon the seat cushion, flogging the back of her estranged husband’s beige jacket with blows from rampant fists.

“Go ahead, you pregnant bitch, exert yourself,” Uncle Maxy exclaimed to her. “That’s not
my
bread bakin’ in your oven, but any way you bake it, it’s coming out
burnt
!”

And Scratch was nearly upon Andrew, too. Ralston did not know whether Scratch would instantly kill Andrew as soon as he’d come down on him, but the possibility was there; Ralston couldn’t risk that. He only hoped that Bari was swifter than he and that she did indeed have a strategy.

A strategy she would let him in on.

Ralston couldn’t help but notice in the process of the chase how the diner’s elderly patrons did not react to any of this chaos; yet as he chased past the length of the counter, he offhandedly caught ear to the mutterings of the denim Dickies man:

“You ain’t askin’ me fer no more
cigarettes
, now....”

46.

Private Parties Only

As the self-proclaimed
Uncle
Maxy for indefinite reasons, Maxwell J. Polito in current form was in essence two scoops of zombie in a raisin bran of ghost. In other words, he was ghostly enough to be considered an apparition yet was physical enough to restrain Andrew Erlandson pinned backside-down across the corner diner booth table.

It was a bitch of a chore for Andrew to crook his pygmy-sized knees into himself and find footing for his floppy sneaker bottoms against the chest of the beige bastard, to push him the hell away. The effort required Melony’s strength as well to do this and she took the hint and aided him. Uncle Maxy lost his grip upon Andrew and toppled backwards against the wall of Elvis portraits, broadsiding Scratch just as he arrived at the scene.

Andrew bounded up off the table and regained his stance long enough to assess the surmounting plight.

“Melony,” Andrew directed her by a flurry of hand motions towards the side exit door, “go, dammit, get out! I’ll follow you....”

Mel slid off the booth seat cushion and landed on her feet to the floor, was quick to ascertain her bearings in her fervent panic and managed a handful of doorknob. She turned it, found it unlocked, and exited into the outside night.

Andrew shuffled in reverse and into the door gap in turn after her, not an instant too soon before Uncle Maxy could plummet forward to seize him again. The side door shut, and Maxy collided with its frame in pursuit, an extension of arm transparent as it stretched its reach through the uninterrupted glass. The remainder of him, still physical, slumped disconcerted against the exit.

The cardboard PRIVATE PARTIES ONLY sign on the door’s top glass pane hung in Maxy’s vision like the foreboding curiosity of a beware sign, until the red thermal jacket embodying Scratch caught up with him and his attentions.

Scratch was mortified at how Max allowed Andrew to slip away so easily as he halted, “What would I expect from a brainless
henchman
like
you
....?”

“
Scratch
!” called out a challenge from directly behind him, and Scratch flipped back his oppressive jacket in effort to spin around to face it. His jacket sleeve swallowed his retractable razor and the hand that held it completely, which frustrated Scratch all the more.

“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.