Paul glanced in the rearview mirror. The man known as the Heart Bearer was one car behind. The Priestess was in that car… maybe even awake now.
“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.
Martin huffed. The wind left his lungs. His captive pulled back and rammed an elbow, again, deep into his side. The man sneered and had the face of a venomous toad, a backstabber. His red mouth parted wide to make a call for help.
Teresa pitched a mantle. It stuffed into his mouth like a glassine gag. The sides of the man’s mouth folded from the force and made him look deformed.
Martin swung into his face—but struck the mantle instead. His arm halted with an unnerving crack. “Fuck!” he reeled.
The suffocating acolyte tried to bowl him over. Martin struck with his other fist. He hammered the soft disc of skin over the man’s temple. The Off button.
Eyes flickered back and the body dropped. Teresa let go of the mantle.
Martin bounced back, already kneading the pain in his hand. For a moment they surveyed the fallen, both breathing in the dusty air in heavy draughts. It seemed that someone else would show up then. None did.
Teresa dipped into her pack for the rolls of electric tape. Martin bound each of the church members, one ankle back to one wrist, and then a couple circuits around the head to gag them.
Teresa began taking the rifle pieces out of her pack, one at a time. When Martin finished, he sat by her, building his weapon too.
Teresa tucked into the grass in attack position, goddamn ready, just as she had been so many Octobers before. From their location the wood structure resembled the silhouette of a dark head with a sloping, brimmed hat. It leaned to the chalky foothill, clearly off its foundation, if ever there had been one. Tangles of weeds and farm equipment. Under the overhang were three limousines, dreary with new dust. Martin tried to smooth the blurry view through his rifle scope. He wrung out his hand a few times. Teresa watched. He better not insinuate it’s my fault he’d punched that mantle.
He glided the sight across the earth. “They’re all pretty calm inside. We haven’t made a scary enough name for ourselves, I guess.”
Teresa rotated her rifle in the snaps of sunlight. The smell of cinnamon and nutmeg came fist over fist. The Hearts. She pushed her sunglasses up her nose. Martin’s eyes began to flutter shut.
“You haven’t recovered yet from the motel. That took something out of you.”
He winced at the mention of it
“I need your aim.” She leveled her sight and inspected the barn within a cold, bobbing sphere. “Have to flush them out somehow. We’ll have to take the barn down.”
“The Hearts are in there,” he reminded.
“If we go slowly—”
“Wait,” he said, “How will we take the barn down slowly?”
“Cut the support beams.” She pointed.
“Mantles again. We don’t need to whip ourselves yet. The gateway hasn’t opened. What if the whole place collapses? You’re just out of the hospital—”
“Shut up with the whining. I’ll do it.” The locus in her mind, that special zip code, that vagueness never explained, turned. Her eyes told the mantle where to move—another distant mechanism described the width and height. She extended the structure. The fibers of old, mealy wood projected onto the screen in her mind. Every thread of wood could be examined, every contour, every exit, every entrance, every pocket, every cul-de-sac, and she worked the mantle through the compounds and sensed the weakened bonds.
Sawdust bloomed through the openings. The barn lurched. Shouts lifted.
“Wait it out,” Martin breathed. “Let them all come first.” His finger steadied on his rifle’s trigger. His aiming eye narrowed to a cut.
Misty forms emerged as the barn’s walls leaned. Then, through the pouring black suits, two came, babies squeezed under each arm.
Teresa inched her pointer finger around the trigger.
“Now.”
Four suits hit the earth. A woman careened sideways, taken in the chest. It was like watching a mannequin fall off its stand. Inhuman. Until pale fingers touched past her chest and fear flashed in her green eyes. That lustrous hair flopped through the dirt and the gaze clenched tight and immediate. Martin moved his sight to another.
“Find cover for fuck sake!” yelled one man who struggled to hold a baby under each arm. A brawny man kept nearby, handling two Hearts of his own. He stuck the babies out between them for a bullet buffer.
With three separate jerks of the rifle, Teresa took another group hurrying around the barn—twinge!—another limped twice toward a tree and collapsed.
To the east, random fire came from a mound of corrosion that used to be a tractor. Several shots went by and ruffled Teresa’s hair. A bullet ricocheted off a rock somewhere behind.
“Martin, we need cover.”
“I—”
“Hurry!”
No mantle came.
“What’s the matter with you?” she demanded.
The men holding the Hearts ran for the tractor; covering fire accompanied their clumsy strides. Up until now shots had been sloppy and adrenaline-dumb, so it wasn’t shocking to see one holder twist around, a whip of blood lash from his stubbly brown neck. His knees knocked the ground and the papoose slipped into the dirt. His comrade dipped down to hurry him but it was too late. The eyes turned up into the head.
“Cloth!” Shouts from behind the tractor. “Chaplain Cloth!”
A grain silo burned in the hillside. Martin and Teresa ignored the intimidating roar. Cloth could do nothing for his followers.
The Nomads waited for a head shot. The remaining holder reached for the discarded papoose.
“Give it up, buddy,” Martin whispered.
The man glanced to the tractor for assistance, but his answer came in a horrifying groan. The barn shuttered to the side, finally unable to endure the internal damage Teresa caused. Inner Circle scrambled from their hiding spots like plague rats—Martin brought one crashing down and Teresa had another in her sight when the barn finished the job. A mountainous dust cloud eclipsed any evidence of the fleeing group.
The lone man stumbled through the grit and pulled the four babies over his lap like a blanket. He had a strangely triangular face and blue-black hair, both on his head and jaw. Teresa spotted a train of vehicles coming up the dirt road to the north. “Come on, let’s get this over with.”
“Keep an eye out.”
Martin followed her, rifle leveled as they crossed the field to the last standing from this spent platoon. The man yanked out a .38 special and fired through the haze. Teresa instantly met the shots with two flash mantles. Both bullets plinked off the invisible resistance and exploded into whizzing red hot scrap. The man dropped his gun hand to his thigh. His fevered eyes went back and forth for any trace of support. There was none.
The scent of the Hearts warmed the Nomads from the inside out. “Hand over your gun,” ordered Teresa.
With a flavorless laugh the man put the .38 to a baby’s temple. She turned to the barrel for assurance with soaked eyes. “There are legions,” said the man. “They’ll be here any moment with Bishop Szerszen. You will not win.”
“Think you’ll live that long?” Martin fingered his trigger. His hands were slick with sweat.
Another bland laugh and the man pulled back the hammer. The smell of love clung to the dirt and rotting wood. He regarded Martin and Teresa, hardboiled sorrow in the eyes. His wide lips twisted into a smile, just before the gun stuck in his mouth.
The shot buckled Martin’s knees. Teresa called out a late warning. The man keeled over, face first, in a clump of bone white weeds. The shot rang in Teresa’s numb eardrums.
Tension pulled above and below. Teresa could feel Chaplain Cloth trying to escape, enraged for his absence and the failure of his miserable humans. Martin took a knee and began adjusting a papoose. The other Teresa picked up. She wanted to cry. The pink faces peered back in wide-eyed wonder. They looked really tired. It wasn’t the right moment but she’d always daydreamed about a little girl of her own. Fertility was not a power Nomads had been granted. Not for this life. This was more difficult than she could have ever imagined.
The hiss of acceleration on dirt grew louder. A few distant shots rang out. Stupid to try firing at such a distance. Teresa could feel Cloth’s anger as he withdrew back into his hellish pit.
It took little time to reach the Wrangler. The Nomads did their best to adjust the restraints to fit each child. While Martin rechecked the babies, Teresa went back to change out the rifles. She turned the corner into a sharp sounding thwack. Her body lurched. She heard her head strike the bumper with the ringing pitch of a tuning fork.
~ * ~
Martin retched. Putrescence billowed off the man in the suit. He had a vermillion tear from ear to throat. Some of the wound had clotted and gummed and some had split open as he turned his head. The black suit was a mélange of multi-colored stains and rancid fragments. Toilet paper hung from his mangy hair like ornaments. The man let the broken plank fall to the dirt and drew a knife from his pocket. He must have been in the outhouse when the barn collapsed, thought Martin. He wanted to go for his gun but it hadn’t been reloaded.
The man stepped forward and slashed. Martin parried and raised his palm to the bastard’s nose—but the guy caught him one-handed and flung him into the Wrangler. Martin couldn’t take a breath before he was pinned under a thick forearm that smelled of sulfides.
Martin touched the cold spot, still lukewarm from exhaustion—there was nothing to draw. A merlot pebble tumbled down his neck. He breathed faster, hoping his muscles would compensate. The knife sunk deeper. An inch more and a stream pumped from the wound. He became lightheaded. Darkness boiled in his peripheral vision and terror pulled through his guts with freezing claws; the sensation cooled his mind; the tiny drop of power he found drifting on adrenaline drew forth a sandstorm of ghost matter—
In one hot instant, a mantle jumped between Martin’s skin and the blade. White sparks zipped away as the knife tore from the man’s fingers. The mantle flew forward and wrapped around the man like quick-drying cement. The man’s body encountered the trunk of an elm with a suddenness that made Martin wince, then smile. The mantle closed in, a perfectly contoured cocoon and pressed into his body. Gripped like a god fist. Bones crackled like dry twigs. Martin let the mantle recede. The indistinguishable mass slipped straight down to the ground in a bony mush.
Martin went to Teresa. The sweet sound of her breathing filled his ears and he saw her eyes stirring behind the lids. It wasn’t like her to pass out so easily, but she’d had head trauma already this week. She wouldn’t be out another two days, thank goodness. The cut on her head, just below the one from the nightstand, was wreathed in splinters and dirt crumbles. Two concussions in the last two days, her headache was going to be large. But he hadn’t lost her.
Martin checked the babies. They were thrashing around and fussing, but otherwise looked unharmed. He gave them pacifiers and they took them into their wet little mouths almost with gratitude. Their faces blurred. Murkiness tumbled over anything Martin’s eyes took in. He slipped his arms under Teresa and stumbled left and right. Oh shit, you’ve gone and overdone it again.
He buckled Teresa into the passenger’s side, shut the door and bumped into the Wrangler on his way around. Building the mantle had not been a mistake; it had to be done, he reminded himself. Just in case this loopiness really set in, he put in the train yard destination in the GPS before driving down the foothill and losing his bearings completely.
They hit a paved road that curved around the canyon in an S shape. He glanced in the rearview. Nobody was following. His eyelids scissored. He blinked to keep them from closing again. Teresa turned in her seat.
The road narrowed and the canyon’s wall jutted perilously close. He avoided a few clusters of fallen rock. A horn blared. He pulled off into another, denser copse of elms, and killed the engine. This wouldn’t work. He held his breath, waiting for a limo to drive past. Maybe the horn hadn’t even come from this road.
Rest felt nice.
His eyes popped open. They had closed on their own. They fell shut again.