His voice grew quiet. "I was stubborn though. Maybe if I hadn't been, maybe if I..."
The others waited until he could continue.
"Then the men came. Not cops. Looked like, I don't know, CIA guys from an 80s action movie. Black suits and ear-pieces. She screamed and told me to run, and I tried, but they shot me."
Melchizedek's eyes had become horizontal blue lines, and Lily found herself holding her breath.
"I remember the pain of the bullets tearing through my chest, my abdomen, and I blacked out. When I came to I was..."
He trailed off again. Lily thought he was holding back tears.
Gideon cleared his throat. "Like that?"
Melchizedek opened his eyes. "No. Not right away. I didn't feel too different at first.The men who shot me had put me in some kind of metal truck, I don't know. It felt like we were moving. It felt like we were driving for days, and no matter how hard I shouted, nobody responded."
"That's awful," Lily said.
"Yeah. They didn't feed me or anything, but somehow I wasn't starving. Wasn't hungry. Just, you know, upset."
"Right," Gideon said.
"Anyway, at some point we stopped and they opened the door and I made a run for it."
"Did they chase you?" Gideon asked.
"Yeah, but I was fast. Faster than I've ever been, even after being locked in that box. Later I found out I was stronger, too. Physically I was great, you know? Felt like a superhero. But man, losing Marianne, being on the run, it's... it's rough. I mean, you get used to it. You have to adapt, to survive. But it's not really a life."
"So what happened?" Lily asked. "With all the shadows and fire and stuff?"
"I got caught again," he said. "Shot again. I was tough, but bullets are bullets, and I got shot a lot."
"Wow," Gideon said.
"This time, when I woke up, I was like this. I can control these shadows. And I'm stronger and faster."
"So every time you die you get more powerful?" Gideon asked.
"I wasn't killed, just very badly hurt, and my body repaired itself, stronger and stranger. I think if they killed me killed me, like shot me between the eyes, I'd just be dead."
"Man," Gideon shook his head.
"Big downside." Mel pointed at his eyes. "Can't exactly just go into town and hit the McDonalds or get a job or whatever."
"Sunglasses?" Gideon asked.
"I'm still more pale than anyone has a right to be."
"Skin cream?"
"Yeah, if I get all super elaborate I can wear a disguise, if I don't let my attention drift and let my shadows out. I have to concentrate to keep them down like this. I just don't want to freak you out again."
"I think we're past that point," Delilah said.
Melchizedek nodded, and tiny wisps of shadow started to leak from his body. "Let me know if they get too weird."
"Okay, assuming this is all true," Lily said. "Why are you here?"
"Looking for Polvorin. That's, uh, the town we all came from."
"I've never heard of it," Gideon said. "Is it in Texas?"
"I think so," Melchizedek said. "It's not on any maps. Marianne might have gotten the name wrong or I might just be mis-remembering. Or maybe they changed the name. But I have a few candidates that it might be, and Laton was one of them."
"If you're right about us being... like you..." Delilah said. "Three of us here?"
"That might mean I'm on the right track," Melchizedek said. "But I don't think Laton's the place."
"Why not?" Delilah asked.
"Simple. Nobody's trying to kill me." He picked up the soda again, fidgeting with the can. "Your cops did chase after me, though. Took a few shots. I was running from them when... when your friends hit me."
A coldness fell over Lily. She couldn't believe she'd almost forgotten. "I have to go home."
"That's why I stuck around," Melchizedek said. "To see if you were okay."
Lily rose, brushing her hands off on the couch. "I'm fine. See? Thanks for your concern."
"It's more than that," he said, stepping to her. "The accident. You might be going through the change I went through."
She stepped around him. "You don't see any shadows floating off of me."
"It's not so obvious at first," Melchizedek said. "I was just stronger and faster."
"Yeah, trust me, a week in a coma didn't leave me feeling like Wonder Woman."
Gideon stood. "Lily... the way you laid out Barny..."
"I said I'm fine."
She opened the door and stepped out into the cooling dusk air.
She could hear Gideon calling after her, but the further she walked down the darkening town streets, the fainter his voice became.
CHAPTER THREE
Jessie Ross strode the line between proud and humble, and she walked it balanced by the faith of her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. She had come to accept her talents as gifts from the Almighty, given to her by the Lord to guide her along her path through the fallen secular world, and she used them as best she could to glorify Him. She was proud of these gifts -- some of them, anyway -- and though pride was a sin she accepted it as part of who she was -- part of who God had created her to be.
And every Sunday she used the gift of her voice to spread His harmony through the congregation of the International Church of Christ Everlasting as part of its honorable choir.
Jessie loved the Church, both the chapel in Laton with its geometric architecture of plaster and glass, and the community and culture of the ICCE. She loved her foster parents most of all, but the Church was her true family, from the Christmas-and-Easter-Christians all the way up to Reverend Robert "Call-Me-Bob" Carter himself. Singing in the choir was only one small way she served the Church, but she liked to think that God and his angels enjoyed the voice He had given her almost as much as His Earthly congregation did.
Her life was a charmed one, she knew, graced by God, and she had no right to complain about anything. After all, as her father the Deacon often said, people all over the world had it much worse than she did. She did have concerns though, from time to time, that scratched like burrs at the underside of her contentment.
As she and the choir sang their homily to the glory of God, she could feel one of these burrs adding a discordant note into her melody. Her eyes scanned the pews and their rows of upturned reverential faces until they lit on that of Lily Anne Baker.
She was there up in the front row with her mother and father, Deacon Baker (in her mind the 'Other Deacon' though of course he and her own father were equal in the eyes of the Church). Most Sundays Lily looked as peaceful and in tune with the music as anyone else, but this morning she seemed tired. Weary. Troubled. She followed along in the hymnal, but Jessie could tell that Lily just mouthed the words, not contributing her voice to the community's song.
That wasn't surprising on its own, of course. The poor dear had been through such trying times. The Lord was surely testing Lily, putting her through trials and tribulations, sounding the bedrock of her faith. Jessie had no doubt that her friend would come through stronger for it, though inside she felt pangs of sympathy for the losses and trauma Lily had suffered.
There was something more to Lily's current distraction, though.
As Jessie watched her friend, a darkness cast itself across the Church, shadowing its congregation, though there was nary a cloud in the sky.
Jessie braced herself and kept singing. The Lord seldom saw fit to grace her with a vision while she was with the choir, but she owed it to her Church family to keep the tune.
In the congregation below, she could see shadows across every face, save for Lily's, who stood out all the more brightly. Indeed, as she watched, the rest of the Church seemed to sink away until only Lily remained, elevated above and caught in a mote-filled shaft of multicolored light. The rest of the choir fell away as well, leaving only Jessie, caught in her own beam.
She kept singing.
Jessie felt herself pulled along up through her b
eam like one of those tubes at the bank, and saw that Lily was being likewise transported. Their beams connected and parted, weaving and intertwining with others, though she couldn't make out any of the other travelers. Some were pure white, like hers, others were dark hues, and a few -- like Lily's -- were multicolored and shifting.
Above, far above, she could see that they all merged into one glorious explosion of light and color.
And then she was back on the stage, her vision ended. She did not falter, she did not drop a note; she was used to the suddenness of visions by now.
What rocked her more was the sudden understanding that Lily wasn't the only one being tested here. She didn't always understand the messages the Lord sent her -- how could she -- but she resolved to make the best use of His gifts in His service as she could.
***
Lily was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling when her father knocked on her bedroom door.
"Lily, we need to have a talk."
"It's open," she said.
Deacon Baker entered his adopted daughter's room and sat next to her on the bed.
She rolled away from him, facing the dresser set against the far wall.There was a mirror fixed on top of it, but she couldn't see her reflection past the various track and field ribbons that had been attached to the glass.
"Principal Harper called." Her father was using his 'understanding' voice, the one that said he was disappointed but willing to listen. "He said you missed half your classes Friday."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I wasn't feeling well."
He laid a comforting hand on her shoulder. "You've seemed down all weekend. Maybe it was too soon for you to go back."
She sniffled into her pillow. "Maybe. I just... wanted to get back to normal. You know."
"I know, sweetheart. But you always push yourself so hard."
"I just want to be alone right now."
Her father let out a long sigh. "Darling, you know your mother and I worry. We just want you to get better. To be happy."
The guilt hit her like a kidney-punch. "I know."
"If you're feeling sick or dizzy, next time tell someone."
"I should have," Lily said. "I was just... I panicked, I guess."
He rubbed her shoulder, then stopped. "Your mother... she said you didn't come home until later Friday evening."
There it was. A statement. Her father wasn't asking her where she'd been, but he was acknowledging that he knew it wasn't home. The way he always did.
She turned back to him, the man who had raised her, loved her, and lied to his face. "I wasn't sick sick. Just... head sick. Anxious. I needed to walk, to clear my thoughts."
Her father nodded. "I understand, Sweetheart. You do what you need to do to get better. Just... let someone know, okay?"
"Okay, Daddy."
"We worry."
"I know, Daddy."
He leaned over and gave her a peck on the forehead, smiling in such a loving, trusting way that it made her really, really hate herself.
She watched him go, then rolled onto her stomach, burying her face in the pillow. She hated this, lying to him, lying to her mother. They didn't deserve this, but what could she say? Telling the truth wouldn't get her anything but therapy.
Maybe that's what she needed. Therapy. This whole business was crazy bullshit, and she had too many real problems in her life to deal with crazy bullshit.
There was another light knock on the door. She looked up to see her mother in the doorway.
"I didn't want to bother you until after your father had spoken to you," she said. "But there was a young man who stopped by earlier."
Lily froze. "Was it Barny? Carter?"
Her mother looked taken aback. "What? No. It was Sheriff Cermak's boy. Gideon. I told him you were resting."
Lily relaxed, sinking back down to her mattress. "Thanks, Mom."
Lisa Baker pursed her lips. "That Cermak boy... he's troubled. I don't know what he'd think you'd wanted with him."
Real subtle, Mom. "Just some school stuff. Nothing important."
"Oh, of course." Her mother smiled with genuine warmth. "I'm so lucky to have such a well-behaved daughter. I don't know how Bill puts up with that little monster."
Lily didn't say anything, nodding and staring at her fingers, steepled in front of her.
Her mother withdrew from the doorway. "Lunch will be ready in a few. Oh -- the Ross's will be by for supper. Jessie is looking forward to seeing you."
"Mom, I don't think... I mean, I think I'm just going to go to bed."
"Feel better, Darling."
She managed a weak smile for her mother's sake, but as soon as the door closed her face reverted to blank neutrality. She rolled onto her back, staring at the ceiling, trying hard not to think about... anything. Gideon. The accident. Derek. Melchizedek. She just wanted to ignore it, wanted it all to just go away.
***
The desert and scrub flew by, tinted amber by the visor of Delilah's helmet. Her dirt bike rocketed across the Laton town limits and into the arid lands beyond. Sometimes, when a flight of fancy took her while riding, she liked to imagine that she flew through some post-apocalyptic wasteland, a survivor girl on her own. Nowhere to go and nowhere to be, no pressure but the pressure to live and survive another day.
Other days she imagined what it would be like to leave Laton and just keep going West past Odessa, on into New Mexico, or maybe even all the way East to Dallas.
Could she make it that far? She liked to think that it was possible. Load up a pack with a few weeks worth of food and a tent. Her bike wasn't street-legal, but there were a lot of open spaces in Texas.
When she reached the salt flats she veered north, hugging the scrubland border. She lowered her head and rose off of her seat, going faster across the salt-flats. There wasn't anything to hit, so she could indulge in the purity of speed.
She loved her dirt bike, not just for the freedom it offered to leave town, but for the connection it represented. Her foster-brother Sean had left it behind when he went off to Texas A&M, and she had appropriated it. Her parents didn't notice, or if they did, they didn't mind. Not even when she started riding it around town. Not even when the Sheriff escorted her home with the admonishment that the dirt bike wasn't street legal.
He was the one who suggested she take it out into the flats around town. As big a jerk as he was to Gideon, she did owe Sheriff Cermak that.
After another quarter-mile she hit the old river-bed. If it had ever had a name, she hadn't been able to discover it. And she'd been looking.
To most of the folk of Laton, the desert, scrub, and flats surrounding the town were empty and boring. Delilah knew better. She found things out there sometimes, old things, ancient things, like the dry creek-bed. Like the old Volkswagen bus, rusting and half-buried. Like the shack.
It was the shack she was racing towards now. She didn't know why it was there, or who had built it -- searching the town records for information about it had been her introduction to 'real' hacking.
There it was, ahead of her, a black speck on the horizon perpendicular to the dry bed she was following. She'd almost missed it the first time she'd been out here, a year ago. She had barely spotted it out of the corner of her eye, and impulsively decided to ride out and take a look.
Delilah leaned the bike into a wide turn and directed herself towards the shack and, hopefully, some answers.
CHAPTER FOUR
The shack wasn't much to look at, just four scrap wooden walls under a corrugated tin roof. The only impressive thing about it was that had somehow survived the sun, wind, and rare rainstorm out in the middle of the west Texas desert. An errant strand of cable ran up one of the walls to a corner of the roof where it looked like a fixture had been bolted long ago. Delilah's theory was that it had been a radio array at one point. She liked the thought of it, some diode nerd out here, in the middle of nowhere, sending out signals and reaching for the very human contact he had hidden from.
O
f course, she was much more interested in its likely current occupant.
She parked her bike outside and pulled off her helmet, hanging it from one of the handlebars. What had seemed like a brilliant idea back in town now left her with a dry mouth and a fluttering in her stomach.
"Melchizedek?" she called softly, stepping through the doorway, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the gloom.
It was like an oven inside, hot and stuffy, smelling of faint decay. She wouldn't be able to stand it for long. She didn't think her quarry would have a problem.
"Mel?"
Two bright pinpoints of cerulean blue appeared in the lower corner of the shed, and it took all of Delilah's courage to keep herself from yelping and jumping back out of the shack.
The pinpoints swept up together in the blackness, rising to Melchizedek's height.
"How did you find me?" His voice was placid, almost normal.
Delilah stood her ground as his eyes approached through the darkness, but the cadence of her words betrayed her nervousness. "It wasn't too hard to figure out. You would have needed a place to hide during the day, and those men, the ones with the guns, would be able to find all the easy ones, like the water tower or the Spot. This place isn't far for someone as fast as you are, and nobody knows about it. Except me, I guess."
The blue sparks halted in their advance, peering down at her.
Delilah's own eyes were adjusting to the dimness. She could see the scattered debris around the floor, a ratty sleeping bag and a rusted out cook-pot, left by the shack's builder or a later inhabitant. Melchizedek, however, remained an inky shadow right in front of her.
"How did you know I hadn't left?"
"You haven't gotten what you wanted yet."
A rattle emanated from the shadow. It may have been a chuckle. "Clever girl. Why are you--"
She stumbled, almost swooning.
His thin bone-white hands emerged from shadow to catch her by the shoulders with an incredibly strong grip. "Are you okay?"
Infernal Revelation : Collected Episodes 1-4 (9781311980007) Page 7
