The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [108]
This was evil.
He felt the evil when the silvery beast touched him, drew his soul back into his dead and bloodied physical remains and held him at bay there.
His soul imprisoned again in that body, the beast stole his body out into the drizzling rain and a great beyond the likes of which no one that was human or once human had rarely known.
Except, perhaps, someone who was once human like the little boy Nigel, who against his will got Max Polito into this entire mess in the first place.
***
The late night sky was spackled with various shades of grey cloud, which upon the horizon turned a sooty black. Below, in the retail complex’s rear alleyway and concealed within the beige brick walls of a dumpster, the silvery beast concluded the laborious process of resurrecting Max’s body to suit her imperative will.
It was a bitch to steal away Max’s human remains this far from the attic of the holy place, though the alley was only two blocks from the church. If the silvery beast was human herself, the whole thing would’ve been dramatically easier; she could’ve taken it farther in the trunk of a stolen vehicle of her choosing...hell, she could’ve placed it in the shopping cart she’d spotted upon a sidewalk and bound it inside a soiled sleeping bag and newspapers and carted it many more blocks away like one of those wretched church-going Jesus-freak homeless degenerates at The Rock.
But the silvery beast wasn’t the human being that she once was a few centuries ago, wasn’t even the Watchmaid she’d become in that time of distant past.
She was a Magdalene.
And being a Magdalene wasn’t easy.
Being a Watchmaid hadn’t been easy either, with all its instinctive and inhibiting rules, but it was a hell of a lot easier than what she’d been forced to put up with for the last four hundred year or so.
And being human in comparison was a piece of cake.
That was a fleeting memory.
There was certainly something to be said about an existence as a vulnerable mortal; no fantastic marvel that every being the silvery beast had encountered throughout those numerous years wanted to be one, to either be one again or to know what’s like to be one if they’d never been before. What remained of the human the silvery beast stole away was about to feel that way too, though she had made damn sure he would remember as little of his life as possible. The less he remembered, all the better for her.
He had experienced his own death, which was enough in itself to make him forget what he was. It was her mission to keep him lodged in that forgetfulness.
She’d succeeded with Nigel in that way, for a good portion of his undead service to her.
Pity Simon BoLeve had finally managed to lay that one to ultimate rest. For this reason, the silvery beast required a new recruit.
This one would serve her well, even better, far better than a little boy ever could. The silvery beast would make sure of that.
Little Nigel’s death had been a necessary convenience for his resurrection to do her bidding, but the need for him recently expired and Simon’s intervention, was timely in the matter of expiring the boy-thing’s life fully, at least what was left of it. Which was no great loss. The time was ripe for a fresh resurrection, and the required circumstances had made it possible for the silvery beast to bring a new undead man-thing into the world.
Reawakened, Max would be a half-breed essence of herself, combined with a few of her special attributes and a few of what was once his own.
Indeed, the man-thing would serve a far greater purpose than Nigel did.
There was a storm brewing upon the horizon. The Watchmaids of the world were beginning to sense its advent and likewise the world’s banished Magdalene.
The time for the vengeance of all Magdalene was at hand.
And so was the time to kill an Everborn and to deal with its detestable Watchmaid as well.
The resurrected man-thing would prove vital in its assisting role and in turn, so would Simon BoLeve.
Max Polito had