by David Risen
“After you’re dead, tell me how this feels. I’ve always been curious.”
A muffled crack to his left sent shards of glass spraying through the front of the restaurant.
Adam straightened up.
Rider turned his head in the direction of the noise to find Amelia climbing through the glass-free frame of the front door – her eyes glowing red as she regarded his adversary with a stark expression.
“You are human now, and you have no power.”
“No,” Adam whined.
He backed away from her as if she were a hairy monster, and then he turned and sprinted clumsily for the back of the building, bursting through the French doors that led into the kitchen.
She waved her hand.
Back in the kitchen, he heard Adam’s squeaky voice say, “No fire exit? What’s wrong with these people?”
Amelia knelt before Rider and considered his face. She looked alien to him. He wondered if he’d ever noticed before exactly how perfect and symmetrical her face was.
“I’m sorry, Rider,” she said.
Rider sighed. “Next time, let’s just hit up a drive through.”
He felt the cool palm of her hand on his forehead, and a warm, peaceful sensation filled him until his legs suddenly snapped into place sending an explosion of pain screaming through his body.
He yelped like a kicked dog, and tears streamed down his cheeks.
The broken incisors in his mouth burned white hot against his lips and then cooled.
The knives in both shoulders and in his abdomen popped out of him and fell to the floor, and the wounds flared as if someone lit gunpowder inside the wounds and then cooled.
Once it was over, Rider reclined his head against the wall of the counter, and released a hard breath.
“Why didn’t you just tell him to leave?” Amelia asked.
Rider looked at her, bunched his lips together, and looked down at his newly repaired legs.
“I don’t have the virtue that you have.”
She pressed her palms against his temples and turned his head toward her.
“Yes, you do. Empathy is a virtue. Loyalty is a virtue. Honesty is a virtue. If you want it to work you only have to believe in it.”
Rider bunched his lips and stared down at the floor.
“They’re going to kill me, aren’t they?”
She shook her head. “I won’t let us be separated again.”
He shook his head tightly. “They’ll find a way to make it happen. You know they will.”
His dark realization hung in the air a moment longer, and then something else occurred to Rider. He looked at Amelia again, this time with black fury boiling in his chest.
“What’re we going to do with that little, sawed-off son-of-a-bitch?”
Amelia gave him a dark smile. “Justice?”
Rider rose and followed Amelia down the aisle and through the swinging French doors into the relatively new kitchen.
Adam backed himself in a corner, and brandished a butcher knife in each hand.
Amelia grinned at him and stopped ten feet short folding her arms over her chest and enjoying the spectacle. Rider stepped around her and glowered at the cornered little rat bastard.
“Don’t come any closer,” Adam barked like a frightened Chihuahua. “Remember what I said about my past as a hunter.”
Amelia laughed humorlessly. “You should pay attention to what you’re holding.”
Adam looked at the knife in his right hand.
Rider’s mouth fell open as both knives transformed into African King Cobras.
Adam flung them away screaming like a girl, and pressed himself ever deeper in the corner of the kitchen.
“Please don’t hurt me,” he begged.
Amelia nodded. “Why is it that everyone who accosts us begs for mercy the moment that we’re in a position of power, but when they have the high ground, they’re not the least bit interested in offering the same?”
“I was protecting my children,” Adam snapped.
Amelia looked at Rider. “Who is this person?”
Rider rolled his eyes. “He says he’s Adam – as in the Adam – Garden of Eden and all.”
“Oh,” she said and then looked back at him. “So, what have we ever done to you?”
Adam sighed as if trying to explain himself again really put him out.
“If you end the world now, Father will return to a world where his children are completely out of control, and he will punish all of us for it. I’m just trying to give them more time to clean up the mess they’ve made.
“For your meddling in things that don’t concern you, Adam,” Amelia began.
Rider held up his hand. “This little rat bastard is mine.”
Rider lazily approached him. With each footfall, Adam cringed a little as if the beating of the soles of his hiking boots on the tile were the sound of his own funerary drum.
Rider paused less than a foot away from him and smiled balefully.
“After you’re dead, tell me how this feels. I’ve always been curious.”
Rider grasped his head by the point of his jaw and the back of his head and snapped his neck.
Adam’s bowels released, and he fell to the floor.
Rider turned and brushed by Amelia without even looking at her and passed all the sleeping patrons of Bennigan’s making his way back out to the parking lot, and the old, Nissan Pathfinder.
A white hallway.
Rider finds himself clothed in a white suit with a white tie, and white dress shoes spit-shined.
The narrow hallway extending before him looks like a fancy funeral home. Perfect Greek pillars carved into the alabaster walls every ten feet. The doors between them made of raised panel wood whitewashed.
And at the end of the long corridor, the lone splash of color – a heavy, red door.
The white speakers in the white ceiling pumping out the mellow tones of an instrumental version of The Beatles last great hit, “Let it Be.”
Rider starts down the long hallway with the footfalls of his hard-soled shoes echoing profusely through the corridor.
When he reaches the end, he places his hand on the smooth, cool brass knob.
He pauses for a moment wondering what lay beyond the door, and then he twists the knob and pushes it open.
Inside, a bright white office, of white couches at one end, a white desk at the other presided over by two white crucifixes hung from the wall behind.
Lauren, his wife, clothed in a white dress and white, thick-framed glasses much like the ones she usually wears, looks up from her computer monitor, and gives him a stern look.
“Welcome,” she says. “Can I offer you something to drink?”
Rider smirks. “Are you fuckin serious?”
“I have your favorite. Monster Loca Moca.”
Rider frowns. “What do you want?”
“Close the door and have a seat,” she says extending her hand toward the white, wooden chair before her desk.
Rider doesn’t move.
Her blond, perfectly trimmed eyebrows spike over the rims of her bleached glasses.
“This isn’t a trick. I just want to talk.”
Rider sighs. He shuts the red door, and he closes the distance to the white chair. Then he sits.
“You’d better make this quick, and the first time you say something that pisses me off, I’m outta here.”
She gives him a sad smile looking up to the white ceiling and reclining her head slightly against the thick padding of her leather-covered white office chair.
“I brought you here, because I want to offer a truce.”
Rider makes a spinning motion with his right hand as if reeling film.
She sighs. “I was very angry with you over what happened to Alyssa, and it kept me from treating you fairly.”
Rider sneers. “No shit?”
“Can you forgive me for that?”
Rider smirks and leans back.
“Forgive you
? I loved you. I still love you –God only knows why, and you used that to walk all over me repeatedly. I was just a job. Do you remember sayin that?”
She sighs. “I was angry,” she repeats.
Rider shakes his head slowly.
“But for the sake of our daughter, you need to stop this, before it goes any further. You’ll destroy mortality and everyone in it including Alyssa. If you do this, I’ll promise that the sisters will not look for you anymore. We’ll let you settle down, and have a normal life. We’ll also stop pursuing your friend, and we’ll leave the rest of the Celestial shards be.”
Rider laughs bitterly. The sound coming from him is alien, cold, and so furious that it makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand.
“I’ve killed four people, because you put them in my way. Four people who had never done anything to me before you caused them to attack. How many people do you think their deaths scarred for life?”
He watches her eyes sparkle with tears, and then she shakes her head.
“I can only change what we do from this point forward.”
Rider snarls. “You and your band of bitches have led me around by the ear my entire life. You saw to it that I got hooked on opiates and booze.... No, I can’t forgive that, and you’re a shit for even askin.”
She looks in his eyes. “I know you’re angry, and I get it. But end the world?”
Rider leans forward slowly again.
“I’m going to break you, everything you stand for, and then, if you’re lucky, I’ll put you out of your misery.”
“That’s the most arrogant thing I’ve ever heard.”
Rider laughs – a booming sound that frightens even him.
“Look who’s talkin! And your skinny ass can’t back your mouth up. And you know it.”
She shakes her head slowly. “You don’t know what you’re about to bring down on yourself.”
Rider shakes his head and grinds his teeth. “You don’t know what you’re about to bring down on you. Get the fuck out of my head!”
She shakes her head.
“We’re not leaving here until we’ve come to an agreement.”
“GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD!”
Lauren Fields-Rider flew backwards off the chalk pentagram she drew on the hardwood floor, and her back slammed into the lath and plaster walls of the house she borrowed from the High Priestess of Memphis, Tennessee.
“That not go good,” Maria Zottolli said.
Lauren’s head followed the voice.
Maria sat at the couch with her right leg folded under her filing her nails.
Blood dripped from Lauren’s nose and her bottom lip.
“You think?”
Maria looked up at her and gasped at the sight of blood. “What happen?”
Lauren picked herself up off the floor, and crossed the room to an end table by the door where she pulled a Kleenex from a brass dispenser.
“Rider’s spiritual pressure has reached unprecedented levels. At this point, he has some of his powers.”
“How we fix?”
Lauren pinched her nose in the Kleenex and rounded the couch, and then she looked at Maria.
“I still have a few bullets in my gun, but I don’t think attacking him with Angels is the way to go. They fight too cleanly.”
Maria sat her nail file down on the circular end table, folded her hands in her lap, and blinked at Lauren.
“So, what you want to do?
Lauren nodded. “Baal.”
Maria’s eyes bulged. “We no hava the time to finda the vessel!”
Lauren eyed the chalk pentacle she drew on the floor.
“We don’t need one.”
“If we senda Baal with no vessel he no working. Abysmal Patron kicka him out.”
“Rider doesn’t believe in his own virtue.”
Maria turned her palms up. “Then how we separate Conciliator Matron?”
Lauren smiled at her. “We wait until they’re both sound asleep, and we make sure the Conciliator Matron isn’t going to wake up easy.”
Maria rolled her eyes and deflated. “Then why we no just go get them?”
Lauren shook her head. “They’re both too powerful. They would awaken and kill us all. And we don’t need to poke Rider with a stick. If his spiritual pressure increases any more, we won’t be able to stop him.”
Rider opened his eyes.
It was twilight on the late September afternoon. He glanced at Amelia long enough to give her a stormy look, and then he turned his head toward the passenger’s window and wiped the tears away from his eyes.
“What is it?” Amelia said.
He looked at her with tears swelling in his leaky eyes.
“How long until we get to Greeneville?” he said very carefully – afraid his voice might crack.
“Did you have a nightmare?” she pressed.
Rider threw his hands up and looked back out the passenger window.
“Just hurry up and get us somewhere. I need a minute.”
Amelia Long felt weird about her encounter with Rider last night. Years of celibacy caused the affair to be a surreal experience that seemed more like something that happened in a dream than something that occurred a few hours before.
And now, she felt like a caged animal.
But the encounter was more than just physical; it was so spiritual that it was almost like an ordinance. To make matters even stranger, she enjoyed being that close to Rider, but the problem was that she kept getting in her own way with it.
Her internal thought police kept writing citations for her physical involvement with a man with whom she saw no future.
So she gave him the cold shoulder all day, and that action, or lack thereof, had nearly gotten him killed.
It was her problem. She had yet to process her emotions. And she was going to put an end to it before she ran out of time.
They walked to their room silently. Rider stared with longing across the road at a Liquor store.
He paused peering through the amber-light across the street as she took out her keycard and opened the door. Then he brushed by her and entered the room.
She stepped inside.
She closed the door of their motel room, and watched as Rider started for the bathroom on the opposite end of the room running his fingers through his short, brown hair.
She pressed her back against the door and considered what she would say.
“Rider?”
He turned around. His eyes were red and full of exhaustion.
She pushed herself away from the door, approached him, and pressed her palms against his chest.
“I apologize for my behavior today. You’re the first man I’ve been with in a lifetime.”
Rider smiled, and this time his eyes agreed.
“I guess that makes me feel a little less impotent.”
She shook her head. “I was just...scared.”
He frowned. “Of what?”
She shrugged. “I was afraid our little digression would ruin our friendship – that you wouldn’t accept me.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist and crossed his hands over the small of her back.
“Out of all the people I know, you’re the only one not related to me who sometimes gives a shit.”
She took a deep breath.
“I want us to forget all of the danger surrounding us. Tonight, I want to do the same thing we did last night only slower.”
He cocked his head. “I’m afraid the sisters might have something to say about that.”
She looked back at the motel room door and waved at it.
“I’ve learned some new tricks.”
He gave her an intrigued look. “Like what?”
She smiled mischievously. “For one thing, my Pathfinder now looks like a 1962 pink Cadillac.”
Rider laughed. “So, I guess we’re the only ones out here with a Model A?”
She nodded. “For another thing,” she said waving at the door. “The door is now m
issing.”
Rider looked to find that the door disappeared, and in its place, a stucco wall consistent with the rest of the room.
She considered his eyes. “Let’s forget about all of it.”
“What did you have in mind?”
She smiled. “Let’s go take a shower.”
Before falling asleep, Rider lay curled up behind Amelia in the bedsheets with which she replaced the motel’s linen.
Amelia looked over her shoulder at him.
“Rider?”
“Mmm?”
“Let’s just forget about Skitts Mountain. We’ll just go somewhere far away and forget about all of it.”
“The Sisters aren’t gonna let that happen.”
“What if they can’t find us?” she said.
Rider shook his head. “If you have a way out of this that doesn’t go through a cursed ghost town and involves us spending the rest of our lives together, I’m all up for it.”
She smiled. “That’s what I want.”
Rider touched her shoulder. “Then let’s do it.”
The tension released between Rider’s shoulders. The motel mattress far beneath him, covered with the polyethylene sheet that Amelia always carried along became the softest mattress upon which he ever laid.
He drifted off into the most peaceful sleep in recent history.
Something is fundamentally wrong with the change in Rider’s sleeping arrangements.
The padding beneath him creaks like old leather, and the upholstery is hot and sticks to his back.
Where is Amelia?
Rider’s eyes pop open and he sits up fast.
He finds himself sitting in a small office.
A black lacquer and brass desk sits to his right in keeping with the style of the late eighties and nineties.
A brass-framed poster of Rider decked out in his Tar Heels jersey presides over the wall behind the desk and between two windows with wooden vertical blinds.
Beyond the window, Rider sees a wet city street lit by amber streetlights and finds a view of an old, five-story brick building.
Rider swings around and plants his bare feet on the slate gray carpet.
The door to the small office swings open and a tall man of at least six feet saunters in, closes the door, and flips on the lights. The harsh florescent lighting screams off the white walls.