The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [119]
This was indeed a true soulless Dreg twin she was after and this unmistakable physical materialization was the truest indication; the prophecy clockwork was already ticking its maiden voyage of tocks. Everything from this point on was guaranteed free flying, entirely in the Magdalene’s favor.
It had to be, no question about it.
Inside the house, within the twin infants’ bedroom of blueblack wallpapered stars and shooting stars, a woman’s pair of silver-toned hands, extending outward by likewise matched arms of intertwined muscle, protruded from the solid wall not far below the double window facing the outer front yard. The surreal hands searched and pawed until, lowering and lowering still, they settled past the painted white wooden bars of a crib as if the bars were merely holographic images from some unseen projector’s eye. The lustrous black of vulture-like claws discovered the infant twin Dreg with a harmless prick against the soft flesh of its inner thigh.
The child barely gave notice. It was wide awake and in diapers, tumbling its fingers through the air above itself and towards an overhanging mobile of plastic swirling balls of planets and more stars, which glowed in the semi-dark. The bedroom door was open halfway, the living room light streaming in on a webbing of illuminated dust-swirls. A solitary muffled voice could be heard coming from the kitchen, combined with a distant door slam.
She had very little time to act.
The presence of her hands at last caught the child’s attention, and it ceased all movement as though suddenly stunned, as though it hadn’t noticed them there before nor their touch, its widened gaze now fixed upon the silvery intrusion...and then the intrusion fixed itself upon the child, lifting it, lifting it up within its two sizable yet feminine palms and reaching it nearer to the double window. The hands shifted and transferred the baby to one palm and one hand retracted, disappearing through the wall. The hand then reappeared the next instant, grappling with the screen of the open window until the screen tore loose and the infant was hoisted up and out the window as easy as pie.
Triumphant, the Magdalene stole the Dreg child into the night, making certain what could be seen of her wasn’t seen by anyone...an exercise she hadn’t had to worry about for hundreds of years....
***
Salvatia had established a sort of lair several cities away, a cannery long since abandoned, which proved to be the perfect location from which to meditate upon the location of the Dreg twin. She had made herself home in a multitude of sanctuaries leading up to this one, a haven of serene solitude and vacuous quiet, a place of rest and away from the whole wide world.
It wasn’t that she had to hide from anyone. She just couldn’t bare the distraction of seeing anyone.
She needed to concentrate.
And this was why she carried the infant Dreg twin all the way back. She had been close enough to sense him from there, and now she had him just as she had foreseen from there.
Now, the best thing to do was take him back there, at the risk of being seen…now that she could be seen, albeit partially, and if not her, then a flying and literally bouncing half-naked baby boy.
Back, to the Rothchild Cannery.
Where there were plenty of black widows.
***
The abandoned Rothchild Cannery was a viciously hollow deep labyrinth full of perilous traps should anything physical feel free to sojourn into its dark abyss.
It was ideal enough for Salvatia to carry the Dreg child throughout several city suburbs to return there.
Black widows were to be found anywhere; locating a black widow or two didn’t depend upon a greater success rate at finding them at the cannery, but hanging her hat there was ideal also for what was to take place after she’d locate a few. The prophecy the Magdalene had been told of, entailed a sure-fire sign concerning a final test of the Dreg’s hidden fortunes and capabilities,