Black & Orange

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  Wonderful.

  Eggert waited outside the Priestess’s room, as he was obliged to do. Paul sidled up and stuck out his hand. Some human contact would be good for a mood change, even if the human was Eggert.

  The bushy beard lifted with a dry smile. “Having a pleasant evening? I thought you looked sad after all that ice I filled you with. What? Did a twenty horse carriage run over your balls?”

  Paul’s hand fell. “But I feel stupendous.”

  A prickly moment passed. The barbarian eyes were all business. Eggert’s usual smell of Aqua Velva had soured from many trips out into the rain, probably at the Priestess’s whims.

  “Are you going to call her, or should I?” asked Paul.

  Eggert stepped closer to insist upon the fundamental size difference between them. “I think she could do better than you by randomly picking a warm body out of a crowd.”

  “Good thing nobody cares what you think.”

  “You’re an imbecile, Quintana. You and the Priestess, you both want two very different things out of this.”

  “What does that matter?”

  Eggert backed away. “Because this won’t end well.”

  Paul was too exhausted to toy with the man, although the prospect of making him squirm did have a lingering appeal. At first he had been revolted by the Priestess’s suggestion of Eggert watching them. Friends in the bed were one thing to Paul, but Eggert was no friend. Now however, he found the idea had potential. It might knock the big oaf down a notch or two.

  Eggert rapped on the door with a brace of gnarled knuckles. “Bishop Quintana to see you, Priestess.”

  After a few seconds, he nodded, as though the Priestess could actually see this. She could. The door popped open and Eggert lethargically gestured inside. Paul slipped by the man’s stench and it brought to mind that Paul, himself, hadn’t showered since the Heralding. Eggert reached to shut the door and he turned. “Maybe I’ll see you later, Egg.” He winked.

  The door slammed.

  Paul explored the massive suite for a moment, happy to be through with the Heralding. He already contemplated extended bathtub debauchery. Hot and cold water. And lips. And ass. And tits. He thickened at the fantasy.

  The Priestess of Morning stood at the balcony window. She wore only panties, something from her world that looked like the briefest of skirts made of black scales. The hanging material hardly covered her ass. Her nipples had stiffened in the cold room and her areolas lightly bubbled. As devastating as she was, the worry cut into her face spoiled Paul’s glee.

  “It’s letting up a bit,” he told her, taking off his coat and tossing it over the end of the divan as he had the night before.

  She bit her lip and came away from the window. When he embraced her, he felt her body tremble. “I saw the Nomads again, only for a second,” she told him. “The woman wasn’t well.”

  He stroked her hair. “That’s good.”

  “The Heralding?” A smile flickered to her apricot lips. “Did it hurt much?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, if it’s all the same.”

  She tapped his nose gently, her mood lightening. “You’re so thin-skinned, Bishop.”

  Paul shrugged. Her hand slid between his legs, found his penis and clenched it through his slacks. “You want me then?”

  “Actually,” he voice squeaked. “I wanted to unwind first. Everything’s still crazy inside my body.”

  “You don’t make the rules.” She gripped him harder and her serpentine eyes threaded into his. “You’ll have me, hard, and you’re not allowed to release. If you release any seed—you’re on the balcony again.”

  He pushed her away. “No fucking chance.”

  Her head cocked to the side and she pointed to the door. “You’ll do as I say, Paul, because if you don’t, I’ll send for Eggert.”

  “The bastard’s not touching me again.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  He grabbed his coat. “I’m too tired for this tonight, dear.”

  Exhaustion and terror cinched in a perfect knot at the base of his throat. He locked onto her breasts and the smooth slopes of her abdomen. This was going to be impossible. She slipped the otherworldly undergarment down to the floor and kicked it aside. Then strode toward him, smile growing.

  “He’s not touching me and I’m not sleeping out there again.” A whimper crawled up Paul’s throat. “Not again. I’ve been through too much tonight—I won’t do it. You can’t make me.”

  “I can.”

  “No—you don’t want me to show you what I’ve learned tonight.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong, Paul,” she said softly. “I want you to give me everything inside you. Give it to me.”

  “I’ll give you what I want to give.”

  Her fingers brought down his zipper. “Stop my agony.”

  Paul had an answer for that.

  ~ * ~

  The Priestess had never found coupling as powerful as this. Now the insanity began. And the cramping muscles. With the clenching, gnashing teeth, and the nails disinterring curls of hot flesh, tears creased her face from all the disappointment. Losing the Nomads. Paul took her away from the failure that towered over every moment. She could sense power from the spiritual chambers deep inside him. It was a vast, new power, chilling in its scope. Billions of tentacles suckered onto her perception and then—then—

  She saw him.

  The night sky must have cleared outside. She saw the man at once. She saw the Nomad named Martin. He was in a brightly lit room, playing with his necklace made of seashells. She tried to have a look around the room, to see something that would give away the location. Just a name...

  But she couldn’t concentrate with Paul drilling into her.

  “Stop!” she yelled. “Stop now!”

  Paul’s hands clamped around her shoulders and pinned her down. His hips swung fiercely and a mania of hateful delight rained down. She loved him for it. Hated him also.

  “Stop!”

  But Paul wouldn’t. Beyond the flags of damp blonde hair his eyes burned with the challenge she’d put there.

  “You don’t understand!” The Priestess kicked through the foggy images. She was losing sight again. “Please!”

  His hips came at her faster, and his hold numbed her and pushed consciousness elsewhere, forcing her to become some kind of ghost flushed from one world into another. Wait! He was sending her somewhere—yet, her body remained beneath him. She could feel the movement of ideas, the slipping sanity. Moving. Again, not her brain; her being. She screamed one horrified name at the top of her lungs before her soul left this world for the Old Domain.

  Eggert!

  ~ * ~

  Paul hovered over the Priestess, swatting at her face, trying to loosen those fixed, lifeless eyes. He felt her neck for a pulse. There was a strong thumping there. Snapping his fingers in front of her eyes got him no response. He began mumbling prayers to a nothing-god of his own determination.

  “Wake up Priestess—wake up! What happened? What happened?” But Paul knew. He had felt the newly awakened creature inside him, working under the influence of the intoxicating blossoms raining more seeds from under their petals, and he knew that the Priestess’s soul had been stripped from this world, this flesh, and transported on the ethereal winds that blew through the valleys of the Old Domain. He should have never fought the power during the Heralding. Paul should have let it draw from his life, not rob it in the way he had. He’d cheated and now the Priestess had paid for it.

  Paul bent forward, hoping he could draw her soul back—but it didn’t work that way. He wasn’t like the Nomads. They were powerful enough to pull things from the Old Domain into this world, but as Cole told him, they could never do the same. That meant that Paul had to find them and force them to bring her back. If that was easy, the idea might be reassuring. If you do find them, they’ll just fuckin’ kill you, he thought.

  Getting up from the floor, Paul staggered deliriousl
y, trying to remember where his slacks had ended up. He nearly ripped them open to retrieve the phone. His fingers dialed Vince’s number and he pressed the send button. Before an answer came, red darkness sliced through his vision. Paul’s head bumped a wall and he fell, naked body crumpling. Hot copper dripped over his lip. Everything went in and out. How had Eggert snuck in? A gallows laugh struck through his core: The man was built like a bear and moved like a tiger? How did I not hear him?

  Eggert tied Paul’s hands behind his back with what felt like a zip tie. Paul tried to flex his fingers and get a hold on the big man, but Eggert kept a safe distance. Paul’s cell phone pulsed with green light. A boot crushed the sound out of it. Its cry faded.

  Paul started blacking out from the throbbing head wound. He heard Eggert begging the Priestess to wake, over and over. Each time the man’s voice became more panicked and more sickened with loathing. Consciousness washed away at that point, but somewhere, maybe somewhere not that far away, a man was being beaten. Pummeled. Paul realized he was that beaten man but could do nothing about this. He knew he’d awaken to suffering or perhaps wouldn’t awaken at all. Reaching out for the Priestess did no good here. There was only dark.

  THIRTY

  For Martin the hours at ArrowheadRegionalMedicalCenter had been a quicksilver streak of plastic waiting room chairs, bad TV, bitter coffee and his unbridled anxiety for the inevitable white-coat meeting. The Messenger had secured a new PPO insurance, which turned out to be just outside of incredible—he or she had already paid the deductible and Teresa had X-rays and lab results ready that same evening. So there’s no dicking with incompetence, laziness or any bureaucratic matters, thought Martin. There was just dicking with emotional ones.

  After all the waiting and knuckle grasping, a dumpy, ashen doctor finally shuffled out to meet Teresa’s alleged husband. The doctor talked and Martin absorbed every word, pause and facial expression as though he’d need them later for all-out war. Many things were iterated and reiterated and Martin dwelled on those more than anything else. Aside from the head trauma from her fall, which Martin was assured Teresa would recover from, he also had these beauties to chew on: Localized squamous cell lung carcinoma. Stage 2b. Maybe video Assisted Thoracic Surgery? Lobectomy. And in the recent hour he had a new line of items to add: A pulmonary embolism. She’s sedated, oxygenated and drugged on a blood thinner called enoxparin.

  Martin double-checked everything in memory from the library of med books he’d read. He drew a blank and cursed himself for not asking more questions. Now questions prevailed but only in his mind. What had the doctor meant by her doing well? Was she doing well with the embolism? With the head wound? Or with the cancer? Or was she doing well with everything? And cancer in stage 2b, was that all that bad? There were more numbers and letters, so was she even halfway there? She still had more stages to go. It might be possible to skip a stage. What if her stage 2b wasn’t like a full-blown stage 2b? Were there such distinctions? Who the hell rated these things? Who determined the level of tragedy associated with an alphanumeric?

  “We need to get her ready for some hard work ahead. Tests, possible surgery. Undoubtedly she’ll need a course of radiation.”

  “She won’t do that. We can’t—it would keep us here too long.”

  “Pardon?”

  “I guess I’ll speak to her when she comes around.”

  The hospital wouldn’t let Martin in yet. They’d said he could visit in half an hour, which really meant an hour and a half in hospital time. That meant he had time to meditate a little more. This could be a good thing. Martin felt that in times of panic, Mother Nature was his only refuge of solace. He wondered sometimes if this affinity for the outdoors had been inherited through blood—through the Old Domain. It didn’t matter right now. All he knew was that he’d seen a lake up the street from the hospital on the way in and that’s where he headed. Teresa’s medical folders were snuggled inside his jacket under his arm to shelter them.

  He found a cold stone bench and sat in the rain. For a time he just moved his eyes across the rippling surface of the lake. In the outlying shadows he saw indistinct humps: a golf course. The nets of a nearby driving range shuttered in the wind. He’d studied everything in Teresa’s file so carefully there was no need to even look at the past results of sputum tests or needle biopsies. The chest X-ray performed today was foremost in his memory, like a map to a buried treasure chest filled with radioactive gold. Leaning back and pinching between his eyes, he could see the white hacky-sack lump floating in her lung’s outline. The lymph nodes hadn’t reported metastasizing yet, and the tumor’s growth was slower than other types of cancerous masses. But did any of that sit well with him?

  Hell no, he thought. I’m losing her.

  Thinking about the Hearts crushed him with guilt, so he tried to push away any thoughts associated with the babies. It didn’t work. The idea of abandoning them to schedule an appointment with a thoracic surgeon left a bitter taste on his lips. Teresa was right: it couldn’t be done. The passion they had for the Hearts would not let them run from duty. Martin would go to the Hearts, as though under a spell, just like he had every year. And yet that doctor had no idea when Teresa would be coherent—it could be a couple days. Maybe if she woke up tomorrow they could see about that surgeon—

  “You’re fooling yourself,” he said to the night.

  Teresa would hate him for bringing her to the hospital in the first place. She’s going to wake up pissed.

  The need to be absolutely alone overtook him. Not just alone from people, but from this world. He glanced up and down the street. Nobody was coming. The cold zone in his mind fluxed and that strange feeling of lost virginity sluiced down his spine. A mantle shaped around his body like a balloon. There wasn’t much ghost matter, only a thin layer with the capability of fifteen minutes or so of residence. Martin rolled forward inside it, the rain running at crazy angles around him from the bending contours. He coughed a bit, having sacrificed some oxygen.

  The mantle bubble rolled into the lake with a subtle splash. Dull gray-brown fluid hugged the mantle and drank him in. The lake dipped to about ten feet deep in the center. He dropped under the surface completely and sat down inside the stuffy bubble. Snaky silver movements in the dark indicated fish, but he couldn’t see them through the darkness and silt. Regulating his breathing in short gasps, Martin reached into his coat and pulled out the medical file folder. The chest X-ray was on top. He couldn’t see the image but he knew the white blob sat there on the cold paper, displaced from its environment, just as he was right now. More than anything, he just wanted to bring Teresa here, or somewhere deep in the ocean, and wall them in with a mantle that would last forever. Doing something like that would be worth the agony of creation—to be away from the world. They’d be like his little fish in its plastic bubble aquarium.

  And you’d both suffocate, dumb ass. The thought came with a sharp gasp. Inside a permanent mantle they would wither and die. Would they decompose? Or would their bodies remain preserved at the bottom of the ocean? That was an interesting thought. He tucked the file into his coat, stood up and began rolling his way back to shore. He felt done with his communion with nature and his mind raced with new ideas.

  His eyes broke the water’s surface. A sedan sped down the road. When its headlights vanished, Martin crept forth. The weak fibers of his mantle crackled. He pressed his fingers one more time into the wall. No matter how they were shaped, weak mantles tended to feel like warm sandpaper. He’d never enjoyed touching them. Once he was firmly on land he let the mantle go, grateful for fresh air.

  The half-formed plan stuck in his mind like an arrowhead. His steps back to the hospital quickened. This time he wouldn’t balk. He would make it work. All he had to do was set up some kind of fallback for Teresa if something happened to him. A safe zone like none they’d ever built. Safe for her and the Hearts, not for the Church. But the safe zone was the easy part. If Teresa didn’t regain consciousness tonight,
he could go out tomorrow morning. Then he had to use what little time they had remaining. That would be where all his energy would go…

  The automatic doors of the hospital lobby parted with a sigh. Martin’s blood felt enriched with hope. It was a new feeling, knowing exactly what to do and why. He almost wanted to sing out for the first time in this unending chase. He understood the near future, despite the underpinnings of his decision. Something harsh and irrational howled inside him, promising that with a slight misstep this plan could destroy them both.

  Well, he guessed it might. But that was love.

  October 29th

  THIRTY-ONE

  Cole tried not to go for his gun right then. He could tell the acolyte had just pulled himself out of bed. For the look the grungy man had probably been awake earlier, grabbed a bong and smoked himself back to sleep. He smelled as though this were the case. Lennon’s Instant Karma played somewhere in the background haze.

  “What’s up dude? I mean, shit, how may I help you, Bishop?” A drowsy terror constricted the man’s gaze. “I’m not ready for the Hunt. Bishop Quintana he said I didn’t have to—”

  “Calm down.” Cole shifted his weight. Sandeus often sent out acolytes to trip the Nomad’s minefields. This guy had probably heard as much, but the Hunt was the least of this one’s problems. “I’m inquiring about Bishop Quintana,” said Cole. “This is where his acolytes are staying, correct?”

  “Yes, Bishop. Well, just me and Vince.” The man scrubbed his hand through his greasy hair and ran it down the side of his zit-riddled jaw. “The others found a motel in Rialto.”

  “And his new acolytes acquired from Melissa Patterson?”

  “Same place I think. So can I ask, Bishop, sir, what’s this about?”

  “I can’t get a hold of Quintana. I wondered how he was holding up. He performed that Heralding last night, as you might know.”