The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [168]
“Scratch!” called out a challenge from directly behind him, and Scratch flipped back his oppressive jacket in effort to spin around to face it. His jacket sleeve swallowed his retractable razor and the hand that held it completely, which frustrated Scratch all the more.
“Goddammit,” he swore, “even I can’t do anything right anymore!”
Scratch now faced Ralston, who’d caught up with him. Wary, Ralston moved backwards a few steps to establish a sharp distance.
From behind Scratch, Uncle Maxy had disappeared.
“Listen to me!” Ralston insisted, “you can’t be reborn! Not the way you’re expecting to be! Salvatia’s been using you, don’t you see?”
Scratch reacted in utter sarcasm. “Oh, and you’re just the one ordained to tell me all about it....”
“No,” Ralston replied, “I’m not telling you anything you truly already don’t know yourself.”
“If my brother dies,” Scratch declared, I will take his place in the new life. Bari will become banished as a Magdalene in consequence and Salvatia will take her place as my Watchmaid. She’ll get what she wants and I’ll get what I want. It’s never been clearer to me. If you have a problem with that, why don’t you ask Salvatia all about it before you die?”
Scratch raised his gaze past him, a dead giveaway to the goings-on behind Ralston’s back; Ralston turned to find himself again face to face with the towering Magdalene Queen, her orange eyes ablaze, her talons ready to strike.
“Your idle chit-chat is over, Everborn,” Salvatia said to him with stark contempt, “and so are you...!"
“Not again,” Ralston recoiled with a partial whimper, bone-white hands lifting to cover his ebony eyes in expectation of the worst.
But Salvatia’s arm did not swing down upon him and before Ralston could close his eyes he looked and saw Bari billowing upwards from her rear, her coppery hand locked about Salvatia’s wrist in lifesaving restraint.
Salvatia fought against it, fought to veer over to one side with her other arm flailing for a striking point to her suppresser. Her jaws gaped unnaturally wide, her tongue protracted and flicked about the air over teeth now enlarged and jagged.
With her opposite hand, Bari grabbed hold of Salvatia’s thick black tresses of hair and wound them tight into a firm wad.
“Ralston!” Bari exclaimed. “Behind you!”
Ralston spun around to meet a slice from Scratch’s razor across the width of his lower right cheek. Scratch had relinquished his thermal jacket which by now encompassed his shoeless feet, and, naked but for jean shorts filthy and ragged, he resembled a malnourished alien madman. And he was.
Ralston placed his fingers to the wound and inspected his own seeping red blood.
Scratch stood poised and readied for a likewise offensive move.
Bari, in one swift stroke of barbaric strength, hoisted the contending Salvatia by the wrist and grappled hair and flung the Magdalene upwards, above and over her shoulder. Ralston caught wind of the cascade of frosty air from Salvatia’s lower aerial half, flinching from subsequent gooseflesh.
Bari released her grasp, and Salvatia hurtled into a thunderous collision clear through an expanse of wall to the right of the restroom door. A turbid haze of drywall dust emanated from the resulting gaping cavity. Chunks of broken plaster and splinters of inverted two-by-fours fell like rain. Elvis littered the debris.
Ralston lunged to his right and quickly reverted to the corner opposite Scratch beside the door so he could see the commotion while avoiding turning his back. Bari proceeded towards the destruction. Scratch remained poised and readied for either another attack upon Ralston or an escape to the outside and he appeared to be deciding between the two.
Ralston moaned. “What I wouldn’t give right now for a good dose of substance abuse.”
***
At the outer side of the diner there was an open terrace reserved for private parties only.
During daylight hours, if presumably this diner was open for legitimate business in the normal everyday realm, this section would be held for advance reservations so