The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [151]
Uncle Maxy came up beside them and flaunted the manuscript he possessed in a maddening melodrama. Scratch was intensely dismayed.
“That book is the Watchers’ work,” Salvatia said, her eyes an abysmal gyroscope of spellbound orange. “The work of the Master Magicians it speaks of. They’re manipulating you, my precious. That is why being born-again doesn’t quite make the fat lady sing. Not according to her anyway. And look; ah...your lady had you aborted. How sad."
“I did not know it would turn out like this,” Scratch said. “Alice was supposed to have been my way out.”
“You were supposed to have been my way out!” Salvatia snarled. “Before this mystifying book of yours came to your attention, I had a solution to the way out for both of us. You should have believed in me. You could’ve resolved everything for us long ago and you flaked at what could’ve been our finest hour. Now, don’t you see, after all this time...the answer has always been my way?”
“Damn you, creature!” Scratch unleashed a very daring exhibition of spite and advanced a step; Salvatia backed off. “You must be some warped spitball God blew at me from His celestial pea-shooter! Why does nothing in my life ever happen to normal people? If other people’s lives held any resemblance to my own, at least I’d feel slightly better. Look at you, you’re a creature for godssakes. Who, other than me, is aware of creatures like you on a personal basis? You made me evil!”
“And look at you,” Salvatia countermanded, “you’re becoming a creature yourself.”
“I believe he’s losing it,” observed Uncle Maxy, which irritated Scratch’s dementia all the more.
“Besides,” Salvatia reasoned, “I wouldn’t call it evil. I’d call it an indulgence in primal hobbies. I simply aided you along on your quest to find what you really are, and what you are is a Dreg.”
“I was an innocent child when you stole me away from my family.”
Salvatia abandoned interest in the debate. Immediately, she withdrew into a meditative trance and the room fell silent.
“Come to me all ye who are weak and heavy-laden and I will give you rest,” spoke Salvatia next in heightened plea, as Jacob Bradshaw would in calling his flock to penitence. “Can you hear them? Can’t you hear the insatiable whispers of my sisters? The Magdalene cry for release, as do you, my Dreg child. I can set you free. I can set you all free. Camelia is dead. There is only Bari now between us and our prize and the book the Watchers sent to suppress and confuse us can be exploited to suit our cause. Join us, and this time we will be complete in both our mutual efforts and in revenge!”
And in the silence which followed, Scratch listened, and he could almost hear the undertones of thousands of whispers merging with the distant torrents of outside wind.
He knew he had nothing remaining, nothing left to lose.
So, unless his situation resolved itself somewhere along the way, somehow, he at last elected to give in to Salvatia’s latest proposal.
And Uncle Maxy knew just where to take it from there....
42.
Company for Melony
-October 31st, 1994-
-Happy Halloween-
“Each of us carries a measured burden of misfortune, of loss, and of goodbyes...of a specific breed of goodbyes, not the see-ya-later goodbyes but the goodbyes in which seeing you later is just not the case. These goodbyes are absolute and nonnegotiable, they make us sad, and they render us craving for a therapy impossibly beyond our reach.”
These were Matt McGregor’s words, the first words he’d spoken to Melony Polito since that fateful period of post-August, since Melony and Ralston Cooper each fled separately yet with equal panic from Andrew’s apartment when Ban revealed herself to defend her Everborn, since Matt and then other police officers discovered BoLeve’s lair...blood and grisly mayhem, Jacob Bradshaw’s limp remains, his daughter drugged and dog-tied to a bed frame and all....
These were the same words as were quoted by a fellow law enforcement official at Bradshaw’s funeral while McGregor underwent a forced leave