“Fuck,” Martin said.
Other children clamored forward. He swerved but the creatures held strong.
“Can you do something?” he shouted.
Teresa had her eyes closed. He hoped she knew what she was doing. It wasn’t easy for her to place mantles while moving—she had no sense of building in a changing position. Give her time, don’t panic... The stemmed child’s mouth unhinged, revealing curling orange fangs that stretched back through the syrupy environment of its mouth. It was a call to its brother. A signal for the kill.
Martin’s heart fisted. The children leapt into the air, maniacal eyes volcanic with hungry wrath, and then their bodies collided with an invisible hammer and orange rain patterned the windshield.
“Nicely done.” Martin hit the wipers. “Here, take the wheel.”
Teresa shuddered. “Wait—?”
“Do it!”
He turned in his seat and peered out to the dark road behind, still freckled in light from the explosion. The Hearts thrashed about in their car seats, glistening eyes turning this way and that way. “Hold on kids,” he told them.
The air grew hot around him and his mind went numb with ice. He couldn’t see the mantles but he knew where they were as surely as he knew where his heartbeat was located. He knew where to lay the mantles and how to plug instigation points into them. Once set the mantles would be independent from his control. Despite the weariness inside, Martin pushed through it and brought a storm of mantles into this world, one and two and four and eight and sixteen and thirty-two and sixty-four. Ribbons of blood coursed from his nostrils and the corners of his eyes.
“Goddamnit that’s too much!” Teresa caught him in the rearview.
Martin staggered his invisible traps across the road and shaped them.
Teresa screamed, “Martin! Brake!”
Cars blasted through the intersection ahead. Martin crushed the brake. A horrid hurrrrr came from the brake pads. The babies lurched forward and began blubbering. One of them shit, Martin thought absently at the smell. Sorry little one.
The Wrangler stopped, ten feet from the stoplight.
“They’re coming!”
Martin put them in park. “Take the wheel again.”
He crawled over her and switched positions. Teresa switched off the still humming wiper blades.
Slobbering children charged down from the canyon’s inky maw. Martin waited for his traps to spring, breathed to calm himself. The psychotic exodus instantly went prone and dozens launched into the air on their backs, impaled on transparent lances.
The light changed and Teresa tore off. One of the babies cooed, enjoying the sensation.
In the rearview, a dark figure raised his arms.
“Mantle!” Martin winced.
Teresa brought her own. It was too late though. The two mantles blitzed and for a moment became visible, a thin slate shell rent into shards. The jeep spun and clipped the side of a VW bus’s tailgate. A tire blew out and the VW hobbled across the lane into a much larger bus, the front end slamming into the words Correctional Facility painted on the side.
Cloth lashed out again. It was meant for them but the prisoner transport slid into the brunt of it and bowled over. The wide steel body sealed the intersection between a narrowing of foothills.
Teresa sped into the dimly lit city and quickly turned down several random intersections: Franklin Street, then Tamara Drive, then Live Oaks Lane. She had lost the Church more times than Martin could count; she was good at it. With those children so powerful, Martin hoped it would work out like it had in the past. At least get them to the Void in the train yard.
“Martin,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“The clock is stopped at 12:12.”
~ * ~
In one swath of darkness, in an insignificant canyon, the CaliforniaRehabilitationCenter’s inmate transport was involved in a collision with a Volkswagen Bus. The driver of the VW died instantly of a massive brain hemorrhage. Only one man was knocked unconscious in the rear of the state bus. The inmates crawled out the emergency exits. Work detail had been scheduled from noon to six thirty in the evening, but then night fell so suddenly they didn’t have the chance to finish picking up litter on I-215.
The growling, at first heartbeat, was taken for coyotes, and then with the fangs clashing like scissors there were other notions of bobcats or cougars or mountain lions or rabid jackals—who knew? These were quick considerations.
“Get your asses back in the bus,” one of the deputies whispered. But the bus was on its side. It was useless and she saw the creatures too and only took one step back in commitment to the idea.
An inmate’s eyes bugged in the moonlight. “Did they bring the night?”
“Yes,” said a voice. It was too dark to make the man out. Something large followed him, a giant hole that swallowed even the scarcity of light.
The deputy shined her flashlight on the man’s face. Something funny in the eyes. The Maglite reflected a weird spectrum.
The inmates shifted as some livened to the idea of returning to the overturned bus. With the movement, the creatures tightened their circle. A couple bravados bantered with the enclosing predators with the intent of kicking these fucking wild dogs right in the putos.
Seconds later the canyon floor was slick. Slices of jumpsuits lay all around. A few police uniforms seasoned the gruel. Readjustment occurred in moments, and then Cloth and his children resumed through the hills toward their goal.
One of the inmates, George Johnson, regained consciousness a few minutes later and climbed outside. The air twitched with an earthy smell—and squash? The road was wet, even though it hadn’t rained in some time. It appeared everybody had forgotten George, including the deputies. George decided to wait. He wanted to get early release and he wouldn’t go wandering around these hills at night with wild animals lurking. Fuck that. Life was too short and he’d never been one to be blessed with good luck.
~ * ~
Sandeus Pager reclined on his leopard skin spread and quaffed a pinot noir. Soon the worlds would twist together and he could lay back and enjoy the change.
Cloth had taken the Hearts. What else could this sudden buckle in time mean? The anchors on CNN looked like billiard balls smacking together with all the hysteria. Astrophysicists with pointed noses and shallow wells for eyeballs haunted other news channels. Sandeus laughed in his wine. These buggers hadn’t seen nothin’ yet. Wait until the populace of the Old Domain start showing up.
The Archbishop placed a cold pair of fingertips on the pouch of skin between his legs. This was all that mattered right now. Now that the Time of Opening had come, the blossoms spread to drink in both powers again. Could he actually do it this year? Make the change? Yes... he had more than enough power needed.
His fingers poked the pouch like two viper fangs. He had kneaded the flesh raw already and now the current inside him (her) had begun to build. Something transient flashed through his mind; a question. Both powers radiated there. His finger felt the divide, the flesh pouting and the pubic hair rolling back, a tiny but significant orb swelled into a clitoris behind it; his pelvis reshaped with a painful string of snaps; sweat dappled her (his) brow in giant beads. Nipples lengthened and areolas widened, both rising above layers of enlarging fat cells—Sandeus knocked over her wine and stained the leopard skin. How would she make the Church understand? Someone who is now both Archbishop and Priestess of Midnight?
Sandeus’s breasts were growing sensitive. He began damming up the power. Her labia had also engorged and she had to call off the flow there. Stretching out, he ran her hands over his nipples and across her belly to the lovely crevice. The power from the black blossoms ceased, but the orange hadn’t calmed their output. Let’s not celebrate yet. Sandeus, he, she concentrated on the flow. Hundreds shut, thousands opened. The garden had become extremely unbalanced.
Reaching for the hope chest, her breasts swept into her elbows like rubber mallets. She moved f
orward and realized her ass had also plumped. She opened the chest and sorted through some silken apparel. After a moments search and a curse for being so scatterbrained, she pushed up from the floor and snatched up the phone.
“Don’t bother calling. The two Ekkians outside are dead.”
The bedroom door had opened and she snatched up the leopard blanket to cover herself (well, just a little). The man who entered was demolished. Top to bottom. A ghastly wound in his stomach made his black suit glisten. Old injuries had caramelized on his skull and popped opened, eager to fester. It took a few seconds to even realize that this man was Cole Szerszen.
“B-b-bishop?” she said. “You’re supposed to be out, with the Chaplain.”
Cole held himself against the wall. He pushed forward a little, leaving a bloody fan behind on the wallpaper. “I had other issues this year. Looks like you did too.”
“What did you mean the guards are dead?”
“As in,” Cole tried to find air, “not living any longer.”
“I don’t have time for jokes, Szerszen. I was in the middle of something important.”
Cole shook his head. She noticed now he had one of Tomes of Eternal Harvest tucked tightly under his arm. “Not important. Only important to you. You never cared about us, about the Church. You’ve forgotten about leadership and direction.”
“I finished with those books before you were even working with wharf rats on our docks! So who the hell are you to judge? You, you novice.” She went to the closet and began throwing scarves out of the way to get to some other storage chests. “Why’ve you come? To help your chances for promotion, I gather.”
Cole said nothing. Sandeus felt her deformed labia swinging between her thighs. This isn’t happening! I just saw that damned box. It was here! How could she have started without checking first for the seeds? Idiot! This could be undone though, surely it could. Just had to remain calm and find them. When she turned, Cole looked at her with morbid concern. “What have you done?”
Blood poured down between Sandeus’s legs, her menstrual cycle accelerating. Her head spun and back creaked, the weight of her breasts tugging her down. She became entangled in the elephantized flesh and her bones were unable to bear the load.
She collapsed under the weight.
Cole limped up. It seemed he was looking down at her from the top of a mountain. Her breasts rolled to either side of her face and pressed into her skull. She could feel them growing still. Her voice sounded underwater. “Bishop,” she gasped, “find the seeds! Help me.”
Cole wouldn’t though. Sandeus knew before she asked. It was in Cole’s eyes, some strange fascination with the outcome, as though a child receiving the exact toy he’d always dreamed of—but with a hint of disappointment. Sandeus made one last attempt to cull the excess in her marrow garden, but it was fighting against the impossible.
The labia flopped backward, spreading her legs into the splits and pressurizing her chest cavity. Blood fled her womanhood by the gallons. Darkness spilled into the room with it. Cracking, splintering sounds came from the peak of her skull. Sandeus fought for air, but it was only flesh that filled her mouth.
~ * ~
Cole knew it was finally over when the smell of feces and Chanel hovered in the room like a besotted ghost. Sandeus had reduced himself into several different wormy piles of pink, purple and white flesh, all abscessed at the collapsed head. Bright blood billowed out to meet the darker.
It was done. The bitch had done it before I even had the chance to pull my gun. Cole realized though that his anger remained. Sandeus had deprived him of one last release. He was the most deserving, the most worthy. Cole had been robbed of the only thing that would’ve sent him out with a smile, the only thing that would have got his name written into the catalogue of heroes in the Tomes. He should have been proven as the top of the Church’s food chain. Now, him dying and with no Archbishop, the church would go back to the days of disorder. They would look only to Cloth, but he wasn’t a guide. He was an antithesis to nature. Cloth didn’t need any of them, not really. He wouldn’t turn the congregation away, and after the worlds combined, it wouldn’t matter if the Church dissolved. And the leftover, apathetic rabble would let Cloth do just that.
Tears bobbed in Cole’s eyes. The Tomes would be abandoned without the right prophet. Only words. Only dust.
Melissa... why this?
He slid to the floor in a corner across from the monstrously swollen cadaver. Not an ideal resting place, but convenient. He placed his favorite Tome over his belly: The Tides of Loss and Martyrdom. The leather bound felt as though it could heal the disturbance beneath his skin. Of course it couldn’t and maybe Cole didn’t want it to. Dying seemed comfortable, if heartrending. Yes. Comfortable. He stretched, took a deep pull into his lungs and let himself bleed out.
THIRTY-NINE
A trio of paint cans spun out from under the back of the jeep, clacking on the road. It wasn’t the first hidden treasure they’d encountered in the canyon, and it wouldn’t be the last.
“You’re sure about this shortcut?” Teresa asked.
“Now that’s a dumb question.”
They’d traded places again since he felt it too presumptuous he could bring more mantles. Driving was easier and let his senses regroup. Teresa’s .357 was trained outside to the colorless grass. It all looked like spun sugar blades out there. In the rearview they could see nothing else. But if something did poke up its head, there was no question Teresa would soundly remove it.
Shapes stood out in relief to the moonlight. They were unmoving, dense shrubs. “Teresa—you see that?”
She did. He leaned closer to the windshield. One of the Hearts squealed in a random fit of unease. The shapes came closer. Was it a cherry orchard of some kind? Or?
He hit the high beams and hundreds of eyes reflected at once.
Teresa yanked her gun back inside.
Out of nowhere, one came straight at them—Martin went left. The Wrangler maneuvered around the startled beast and headed toward an ugly rush of them cresting the hill.
“Stop!”
“I am, I am!”
Wild burros braided around the jeep. Martin waited for a break in the chaos, shaking his head while he looked at them. Above, a stone signpost pointed west. Runic scrollwork ran from the flat body to a giant reptilian claw at the base. The high beams fed a dark purple glaze brushed into each symbol, which made them glow.
“I see it,” said Teresa before Martin could ask. “Looks like some things are crossing over from the Old Domain...”
Martin nodded. One of the donkeys turned its barrel-shaped head as it passed. The eyes were the same purple as the runes, mauve tears hanging in them. The mouth tucked back to spiraling black fangs. Martin recoiled and saw the animal trot off with the departing pack.
“Did you see that?” he asked. He spotted a building. “Look there.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Pump station?”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Sewer lift station or something. There’s a Void there. We can get our bearings.”
They drove up to the silent station. The fence surrounded a concrete pad where a small block building sat amongst a large pair of pumps. There was a padlock on the front gate but it hung unclasped. Teresa lifted it off the bracket and let it fall on the gravel. After backing up, they rolled into a shadow-bank alongside the lift station building.
Martin tapped the GPS. “Yeah, we’re inside the Void.”
He didn’t really need to clarify that though. The air had become more humid and the telltale sweet taste rolled in their mouths. Voids did not protect them from Cloth though and Teresa’s grimace, whether for a clove or for this inevitable truth, told him to be quick.
The pumps drummed beneath the surface, pushing Colton sewage. Martin brought out the map and clicked on a flashlight. His finger glided to the northwest side of town. He prodded his largest Sharpie circle. “That’s where we’re going. The train yard there.”
Te
resa’s face angled out the window. “But they’re coming from that direction.”
“We have to go to the train yard. It’s our best bet.”
She glanced dully at the map for a moment, as though it had no real significance. “Can we get there without running right into them?”
“Probably not.” He sighed with another glance at the stagnant clock. 12:12 still. “We can go west. It takes longer but with how things are going it looks like we’ll have all the time we need.”
“And so will Cloth.”
Martin’s head hurt so much. A cranial collapse felt imminent. All that time zipping by hadn’t given him a chance to rest.
“We’ll go west,” she said suddenly and then undid her seat belt. “I’m going to kneel on the floor back there with the babies for a while. They didn’t look that secure.”
Martin nodded. Before she opened the door, he grasped her hand. “I don’t know if this matters, but you ought to know before we get going.”
“What now?”
He let go at her sudden coldness. “The sign back there was pointing west. That’s where those donkey-things came from. Do you think there are other things out there that have crossed over?”
Teresa gave him a really slow nod. “Let’s find out.”
~ * ~
For half an hour the drive westward seemed uneventful. Only moments before, the night was plowing along in a steady ebon-blue stream. Suddenly the Wrangler banked a rocky dirt hill—and that was when it happened, when they came down the other side. The jeep crashed into a body of water. Red water. It came first through the doors, soaking the floor mats, smelling of mummified fish. Everything gurgled outside. Raw meat mist was thrown over the windows. Martin shouted, out of his mind, out of sorts. An old dead sky peered through the slashes of red current on the windshield. It was night, but a different moon hung above them, a pale green hole in a dark sheet, which stretched over merciless trees across a slash of toneless sand and rock. Just to the right another runic signpost stood proudly in a mound of stones.
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