The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [155]
Melony dropped backwards upon the opposite end of the couch, distressed, her eyes still never leaving him. “Bari is with you?”
A crash came forth from the direction of the kitchen just then, startling them to attention.
***
When Andrew rose and went for the kitchen to investigate, he requested that Melony stay put there upon the sofa.
He did not hear the doorbell ring.
Instead, he entered the kitchen until his shoes met with a toppled plastic bowl and its spillage of empty candy wrappers spewn across the kitchen floor. There, in the midst, was an inches-wide portion of gooey splotch heaped quaintly like a goat tird upon the no-wax linoleum: partially digested Watchmaid refuse.
Bari had been into the M&Ms.
She’d made it clear to Andrew that she intended to place herself out of the scene, of the trick-or-treat confrontation between her ‘Born and Melony, for fear her outright presence would be too much for Melony to handle all at once, what with Andrew’s oh-so-alien Vogue new look and all.
Hell, Bari was too much for Melony to handle the last time.
And Bari had to ruin it all by causing this kitchen calamity, for the minute reason of her fondness towards the ability to still taste and enjoy food.
“Son of a bitch,” Andrew cursed to himself as he stood.
But.....where was Bari?
A tremendous shadow encompassed the very dim backyard porch light at the sliding glass doors in the rear corner of the kitchen just then, which did little to prepare Andrew for the sudden crescendo of surprise and cascade of thick flying glass shards that followed instantly thereafter.
Andrew side-stepped in a heartbeat past the section of cabinets behind him to his left to avoid the spectacle, stumbling to his knees in the process, the palms of his wizened hands seeking stable support to raise himself up again from the obstacle course of the floor.
Lifting his gaze, he instantly caught sight of none other than the coppery-skinned personage of Bari, flailed and having been flung back-first into the floor tile, sliding to a halt before the rear living room entrance.
“Bari...!”
“Andrew,” came Bari's fervent command, “get Melony. Take her away from here! Now!"
Andrew managed himself to his feet and darted over her and past her for the living room, the flowing black gown of his costume virtually taking flight as he went and he did not look back.
The disorienting shove through the glass held Bari at a disadvantage, though only momentarily. When Andrew was clear of her, she lifted her hands and parted the thicket of long black hair from her blazing orange eyes, and bounced forward in a manner not unlike a Weeble that wobbled after falling down.
Her senses rejuvenated with a keen prowess, Bari readied herself for another assault from the outer pitch night of the patio’s rear yard; she couldn’t resist a taste of the M&M candy treats, no doubt about that, but suddenly Salvatia’s presence was detected outside and in the yard and she did not hesitate to defend. In fervent abandon she’d sped from the kitchen and through the reaches of the back porch to engage in sixty second Championship Wrestling with the Magdalene Queen.
Bari heard the silence as she regained her posture and surveyed, and the longer this silence went, the further went the possibility of a second assault from beyond the glass shards still stuck in the encompassing threshold of the door’s metal frame like a jagged mouthful of teeth.
Her wit slow to respond, it came to Bari now after the toss through the glass that Salvatia could have made herself a decoy and she spun around swiftly to follow after Andrew.
She whisked herself past the living room, only to meet her Everborn who faced her dismayed and confounded just inside the wide-open front doorway.
Hung from a piece of orange and black Halloween decor Scotch tape was a partially torn scratch pad page, with a black Magic Marker message: