The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [150]
“I guess you mustn’t blink,” Polito summarized. “But you’d have to put a greater effort into me. With me, it’s not as simple as the discipline of not blinking. You’d have to abolish the fact that you still can be reborn with my help, if we can make a deal. Kill me and kiss your sorry-ass existence good-bye.”
“What kind of a deal?” Scratch insisted.
“Oh, you know the sort, Simon,” tempted the being.
“My name is no longer Simon,” he responded with a degree of spite.
“Yes, yes, you call yourself Scratch these days, but what with Alice’s abortion and all...it doesn’t seem to matter what you call yourself does it? However am truly no longer Maxwell J. Polito. I think I shall take the liberty to call myself something else. So you...why don’t you just call me Uncle....”
“You mock me!” Scratch retreated away, backwards and towards the inner sanctum of the hallway, quite distressed and lightheaded. “My entire life mocks me! Look at me...what am I becoming? And look at who I am! Why did my life lead me this way? And who the hell are you people?!”
“Come on,” the Max-thing cajoled, “let it all out. You can tell Uncle....“
“Fuck you," Scratch spat in defiance. “So where is Salvatia? Why does she send the dead to torment me...and why hasn’t she made herself known all these years? I know she’s been watching me. That’s why Nigel is six feet under. I learned I can kill whatever you are, if I don’t blink.”
“Nigel is not six feet under. In fact, his body is frozen under the lock and key of a very secretive order of the U.S. government. Thanks to you. I do not wish to fill those shoes. Nigel, like I, was a mere puppet for Salvatia to monitor you yet keep a distance herself until the time was right to emerge again. You see, she’s been rather busy. Being the prophesied one and all to her kind. She’s gathering up a rather sizable rally of pissed-off Magdalene and now she’s ready again to cut you a deal...oh, and many thanks to the advent of this magnificent manuscript of yours. The Master Magicians have not seen the last of the Magdalene!”
This confounded Scratch’s jolted comprehension all the more intensely and he broke down in anguish. “Nigel haunted me. You talk. I don’t know which I’d prefer. But if there’s a deal to be made, I’m at your disposal, goddamn you, but depending on what your deal can do for me. Nothing remains of me and I resemble a dog-mauled doll thrown beside a Goodwill depository in the dead of night. So what the hell is the deal this time?”
“Let Salvatia tell you herself, then....”
***
“I want you to kill your brother..,.” spoke a third voice from somewhere, yet out of nowhere, identical to the commanding voice of his youth, all too familiar, all too enticing, a voice of dominance and an almost playful wickedness, and its words asserted the same fundamental plea....
An arm’s stretch into the hallway and to Scratch’s rear towered Salvatia, Simon BoLeve’s self-proclaimed anti-Watchmaid, the genie of darkness who could only be freed of her unjust banishment through this Dreg, her hair a sea-witch black and gliding at the tips along currents of air enveloping her invisible lower half and draping her upper silvery majesty. As Scratch found himself facing her, she advanced upon him, backing him into the television set.
But Scratch retreated with a degree more of astonishment rather than fear. “Where have you been?”
“Did you miss me that much?” Salvatia emitted a disarming scowl.
“I’ve wanted to kill you.”
“Yes, I suppose you must’ve, considering how you blame me for making you the prodigal son that you are. Your deeds are your own. In fact, you would never have lived this anomalous life of yours if you’d only followed through with the first deal....”
“Fuck you. I couldn’t do it! You can’t blame me. He’s my brother and he’s connected to me...fuck if he doesn’t know it. Besides, since all that I’ve tried to better myself.”
“Better yourself?? Until the stars aligned,