Black & Orange

by Benjamin Kane Ethridge

  “I need a few things to make this video and its twins go away.”

  Her soul paled underneath her skin. “You made copies?”

  “Hell yes, I made copies. I always do. That’s not the point now. Point is, I know how Bishop Cole would feel about seeing this. The chatter around my people is that you’ve got Cole thinking you were a nun before you met him. Poor fool has to be delusional with how much we all stretched you out that night—”

  “Lowering your fucking voice!”

  Paul did, though hers was too loud for comfort. He needed to ease back on the teasing. “First, I want some piece of mind, some security. I can’t wiggle out of performing the Heralding, but now or later, if there are any plans on my life—”

  “There aren’t!”

  “If Cole plans to send some numbnuts to cut my throat when I’m sleeping, I’d be thrilled to know that piece of information ahead of time.” Paul paused, on the verge of laughing but held it together. “And if I don’t hear from you and I’m sent down the drink, a few of my own numbnuts will act on my behalf.”

  “Meaning?”

  “This morning, when you were patching up Cole, I sent my acolytes instructions, along with a copy of this wonderful short film. In Technicolor! They know now who to email should I disappear. Filthy perverts are making a DVD as well and maybe even upload it to an internet porn community. Are my guys brilliant? No way. Are the tech-savvy though? Yes way.”

  “You think you’re smart now?”

  “Quiet down,” he cautioned. “And don’t be so mean. I haven’t shown anyone else the video yet, on my honor. Just do something for me and everything will be good.”

  “What the hell do you want?”

  “Swipe Sandeus’s box of marrow seeds from his vault. You’re the head of logistics and supply, if anybody—”

  “I’m not risking my life, you fucking idiot.”

  “Oh. That sure sucks. Because what will Cole do when he sees this?” Paul twisted the phone in the air. “I won’t be Cole’s favorite person, but he’s loyal enough to the Church to understand losing another Bishop would be a waste. You though? You’re just some slut who took one for the team and fucked him. He can take his pick for the Church women once he’s Archbishop.”

  “Why do you want the seeds?” Checked violence shimmered in her eyes. “Are you going to use them all? Go right ahead. See what happens.”

  “Of course not,” said Paul hastily. “I don’t think I’ll even touch those things again. But keeping them close means that a new Bishop will never come around and put one over on me. With no others empowered I’ll only have to worry about Cole, and with your assistance, I do believe I’ve covered that angle.”

  “How do you think of this shit?”

  “I had plenty of time last night.”

  “Shit,” she muttered and closed her eyes. They opened slowly, looking brand new, to the road slipping past.

  “One more, minor thing.”

  Her posture showed she knew exactly what he had to say next, even though he hadn’t really planned this part. Maybe it was some wild scent in the air.

  Paul unzipped his pants and whistled the theme to The Greatest American Hero. His erection sprung from the divide in his black-gray plaid boxer shorts. He could see Melissa sway uneasily. He found this was too exciting, having her trapped up here and Cole only feet away, too stupefied to know better. Paul gently shut the privacy window. “I promise just this one time,” he whispered.

  “I’ll get you the seeds. Just stop this. It isn’t fair.”

  “You’re right; it isn’t. But I need something to signify your intent. I want you to keep going until I runneth over. It’s no big deal. If you’re fast, I’ll be fast. I’m tense right now, you see. It’ll free my mind. Cole’s not waking up anytime soon.”

  The look of her folding made Paul’s body quiver with joy and his mind almost lost control—the shutter to the Old Domain cracked open in his mind like a lazy eyelid. He slammed it shut and focused instead on the strangling heat below. A gasp came to the top of his throat at the painful anticipation. They seemed to be the only two people in the universe at that moment.

  With the stony eyes of a fallen soldier, Melissa took her right hand off the steering wheel and reached over.

  ~ * ~

  Even in a deep sleep, Cole hated the idea of Melissa being alone with Paul Quintana. It was a risky choice, and he didn’t make those anymore—it reminded him of his days unloading freight in the Church’s warehouse in Seattle. Every time he tossed a volatile package up the dock he wondered if he was taking his own life. Back then Cole would have never dreamed of becoming Inner Circle and would have laughed at the notion of becoming a Bishop.

  Now, even Archbishop was plausible.

  He’d earned this position and losing ground wasn’t an option any longer. This, Cole had to keep. That meant he needed Paul well-trained and close. The Tomes of Eternal Harvest said: Misery, like a trembling-lipped sow with gouged eyes, had run its course in both worlds. Now there was only pride.

  Cole wanted only a glimpse of Melissa’s face. He dug his elbow in the seat, tried to twist his bulk over and face the window. His biceps clenched and body moved. A muscle hitched in his abdomen and he fell back, sucking pain. The cold, dry wound in his jaw burned. The marrow seeds in his body had long ago unfurled and spread. He no longer distinguished them as alien, except for times like this. They pounded in accordance with the pulse under his bandages. Still, this was nothing compared to a Heralding.

  The black leather smell turned Cole’s stomach in two different directions. He swung his other leg off the seat and grabbed the opposite bench seat for support. Bile soaked his throat. Pulling a breath through his lips, he dragged himself up and looked out the privacy’s window.

  Through the rearview, Melissa stared back. A flimsy smile came to her lips as she tucked her non-driving hand under her thigh. She was always cold, even on hot days. He couldn’t believe someone like her had saved herself for so long to finally give it all away to someone like him. Cole was blessed. He was really blessed. Rumors would not sway his devotion for her. Paul Quintana would be his sword and Melissa would be his Priestess of Midnight. Both of them would mold his paradise. Cole just needed to hold on. He needed to believe he could rise above the petty hatemongering of the Inner Circle.

  Paul looked through the driver’s window. His joy was heaven-high, had no bounds, was glowing.

  “Hungry?” A silly grin came to Paul’s face. “I’m starving after all these brain exercises. Should we stop?”

  “No,” Cole replied hoarsely. “Keep going. We have to get settled in Ontario as soon as we can.”

  “You make the rules, Bishop.” Paul smiled wider and smoothed his slacks as though trying to wipe something away.

  Friends with Paul Quintana thought Cole. They had to be. It was the only chance for the new Church of Midnight to exist with any power after the gateway finally opened for all time. Friends…

  Cole Szerszen wasn’t worthy if he could not sacrifice something so small as pride.

  SIXTEEN

  Ramon Castillo had traveled a long way as two people. The burden of carrying his companion had finally taken its toll and it was he who would be carried now. His companion petted his mind with frozen bone digits, coaxing him onward. In spite of the agony there wasn’t a spot of blood, or a bruise, or a welt. In the window of the Greyhound bus, a changing man fiercely looked back at him. Ramon’s skin had once been dark-dark (some of the acolytes had made jokes about him being black, or a ranchero Mexican-Indian), although now his pigment had drained away. His face had tightened into a white beyond snow and milk and frost. This was brighter, more intense, a starlight white. The color lived while it worked. With its glow it twisted the structure of his cheekbones, jaw, eye sockets.

  And those eyes that reflected back were not Ramon’s eyes anymore. He could already tell they saw differently than his old eyes, which had been pushed back into his mind with the rest
of his fragile soul.

  He wasn’t possessed. Ramon firmly believed this. This was what his dream had told him. In the dream he read a page from the Tomes of Eternal Harvest. He’d never seen the page before, which wasn’t saying much because, like everyone else in his chapel, he’d only really thumbed through the old book once. But when the words were spoken, the dream lifted, he shouted himself awake and something inside him overflowed. Filled with the man with those crazy eyes. Anything left of Ramon’s resolve had been sinking ever since.

  This experience wasn’t about sharing the space of one vessel. This invasion of Ramon’s body was leading to complete absorption of his soul. He could feel the tenuous filaments of his remaining memories snapping with every beat this body’s new heart made. Particles of his life: his brother Roberto in prison for tax evasion, his sister Alicia pregnant again, his pinscher Rascal wiped out on the freeway last month. They lost all value. Now that he understood the universe better, he realized they’d never meant much. Not really. Chaos was larger than love.

  “Beautiful, sunny Colton,” the bus driver hollered back. The bus pulled off on a busy street that chased the rolling foothills of Reche Canyon.

  Ramon stood; Chaplain Cloth stood.

  United by one body, they walked to the front of the empty bus. The driver was a portly man in his late fifties with a closely-shaved head. He smelled like Swisher Sweet cigars, which Ramon loved, and in which Cloth remained uninterested.

  Their standing there, thinking, attracted the driver’s attention.

  “Woh, creepy contact lenses, mister. You’re going to win whatever contest you’re headed for.”

  Chaplain Cloth smiled; Ramon frowned. They stepped off the bus.

  ~ * ~

  A grain silo probed the stormy sky from a cluster of eucalyptus trees. Ramon staggered through the knuckly root systems, using the trees to brace Chaplain Cloth’s body—his body. The silo imprinted on Ramon’s memories and dreams. He had seen this silo his entire life, written stories and drawn pictures of it as a kid. He’d memorized its every red blemish and leaking rivet. In those dreams he walked up the dirt slope, holding a clammy hand, always too afraid to see whose hand it was, but now, drudging toward the silo, it could not have been any clearer. He was still being led, one body and two beings.

  He had a feeling that soon there’d only be one being. Ramon Castillo would be gone.

  Ramon approached the granary and wrapped his hand around a cool ladder rung. This is where the dream details ended. He’d always been approaching the silo and never quite arrived there. He took himself up a few rungs. He wondered what this Cloth person could achieve through climbing this old tower. Ramon scoured the bottom depths of his occupied brain but only found Cloth’s insistence, tunnel vision toward one goal: Two worlds, two churches. Midnight and Morning. Black & Orange. The Heart of the Harvest must be reaped, then praise be given! The path will be overfed on the fruit, the gateway unhinged for all time and the ancient way, the ONLY way, restored.

  “Thanksgiving to the blood feast,” Ramon murmured and took several more rungs.

  Santa Ana winds shoved him to the side. His sweaty T-shirt and baggy jeans clung to Ramon as though fearful of falling. In the Old Domain the silo’s location was sacred, a massive temple built from bone bricks and blood-blessed mortar. Men, women, children and newborns gave to the structure. The concept didn’t disturb Ramon, even though his sister Alicia had a baby girl on the way. The image of him sinking his teeth into a chubby arm and ripping the flesh from the bone only made curiosity spike. The raw meat Ramon could taste in Cloth’s mouth, in his mouth, would be bittersweet to those who recalled their sad moralities, or would be delicious to others who never swam those shallow waters. Ramon could do nothing but continue upward, licking Cloth’s lips, wondering which kind of person he would be. Person?

  Will I be a ghost when you’re through with me, Cloth?

  “To those who would mourn you, yes. To the universe, you are restored, a fundamental correction.” Chaplain Cloth took two more rungs and heaved himself onto the roof. The person inside this human frame became an echo of an echo and then a buzzing insect sound in the underworld of consciousness. Ramon Castillo rippled away into the ether.

  Cloth stared into the scrolling shadows in the silo’s opening below. It was welcoming. A warmth lifted with a smell of rotten soil and grain. Cloth inhaled it blissfully. That he had come into this world so early, days before the Time of Opening, gave him a sense of security that made him almost capricious. He’d never had a head start like this and it was all due to last year’s spoils. Tony Nguyen, so delicious. The fruit yielded had been more powerful than many other Hearts in the past and the gateway to the Old Domain pushed open wide enough to allow two church members through. Cloth could still feel that Heart’s power eating away the path, letting more Old Domain influence drift over to this world. Perhaps this year it would allow for an army? Or perhaps the other church could fit the pillars into place?

  They were wonderful fantasies, but the job had to get done first.

  Staring down, one eye black, one eye orange, Cloth put his legs into the silo’s mouth and shimmied out. Nothing better than swimming on the seam between two worlds. Now it was a matter of storing strength until the Day of Opening. Cloth edged out farther. Something itched in his mind. It sounded like a gnat buzzing in another galaxy, but Cloth could touch the insignificant speck of dust with his thoughts.

  Goodnight, Ramon.

  Cloth dropped into the silo. Never in all of his wandering had he ever been this prepared. He shivered in the abyss and felt his temporal body slam to the bottom of the empty silo, bones cracking and breaking and splintering and fluids shooting from his mouth and ears and nose across the filthy darkness. Then those pieces lovingly stitched together in a new form. His form. His black suit sewn from the dark smoothed over him like another skin. His orange handkerchief plumed from his breast pocket. Once more beautiful. Strong. Hungry. Invincible.

  Thanksgiving to the Eternal Feast.

  SEVENTEEN

  All these years had been about preservation for Archbishop Sandeus Pager. This wasn’t as simple as a bright yellow stripe down his back. There was a reason he didn’t perform the Heralding or go out on the hunt for the Heart. For one, he was too important to be bothered with all that sweating and grunting, and for two, he wanted to live to see the Old Domain. People like Cole Szerszen wouldn’t last long in a unified world. Szerszen had too much invested in the Church of Midnight and his scale would tip, heavily. Call him forgetful, scatterbrained maybe, but Sandeus knew how to prepare.

  While the others chased after the Heart of the Harvest, he tackled a bigger question. On October 31st, just where did Chaplain Cloth draw his power from? It took research, meditation and intense practice every year to even begin to understand the answer to such a question. When the worlds opened to one another, Sandeus would spend his time searching. And he had learned more than he’d ever thought possible. But he still felt he’d fallen behind. When the final union of worlds occurred, and he believed it could be this year or next, he’d possess the ability to harness both worlds, just as Cloth did. There was a special test Sandeus had planned for just the occasion, and waiting until then would be difficult.

  His limousine and sentinels rolled into the gas-station town. Sandeus now trailed the exodus by a significant margin. His driver lowered the window. “Archbishop, she approaches.”

  “Thank you, Lex.” Sandeus opened the door and made sure his lace was tucked into his suit. Four sentries slid out of their ebony Vipers and touched their side arms. He glanced to them and shook his head. They stood at ease then, but kept ready. A year wasn’t enough to build trust between the two churches. A shame.

  The young woman stepped lightly through the rising dust. She wore a wonderful tangerine dress and ambrosia hair spilled down both shoulders. Her servant, an aberration in otherwise pleasant sight, resembled the Brawny Man. The two didn’t exactly look from another world,
but they had been here for a year now. Perhaps Earthliness was an unavoidable sickness.

  They stopped before Sandeus and he grinned. “So what name did you choose?”

  “Mabel—I heard it on the television.” She gestured to her bearded companion. “And this is my faithful father.”

  “Of course he is.” Sandeus hoped he hadn’t overdone it with the perfume this morning. It put some people off. “Please, let’s have a sit. I have refreshments. After you.”

  The servant helped the Priestess of Morning inside the limo.

  She was a striking woman. No question. A striking woman with a wonderful figure. But really, more than anything else, Sandeus wanted a face as flawless as hers. She wasn’t even wearing makeup. In a better life he would have worn this woman’s tender skin. With all her beauty and grace, it was easy for Sandeus to worship her, and he had little doubt now why she’d brought a guard from the other world.

  “Addressing our last correspondence, I sent some Flagstaff acolytes over to the old lady’s house. She was a bust—no Heart of the Harvest.”

  The Priestess’s pretty amber eyes went to slits. “I told you not to bother Celeste’s mother. I have the Nomads in my sight. They left the old woman’s house empty-handed. I thought I was specific about that.”

  “It never hurts to be certain, Priestess.” Sandeus took up a wine glass from the bar. The syrah slopped a bit on his sleeve. He pressed the drops to his lips, prospecting for a little color. “So tell me how it went. I never had the chance to ask you, and I am fascinated. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke: two Nomads walked into the bar—”

  “They were somewhat early. But we were ready.” The Priestess sunk her full lips into the bloody-looking juice in her own glass. “Destiny often takes other routes. The Archbishop Kennen had seen many different versions of the outcome.”