Black and Orange (14 page)

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.

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
.

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 31
^st
, 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.”

Sandeus
swallowed a larger gulp than intended and breathed in; the wine burnt his nostrils.

“They came into the bar wearing the same clothing and talking about the same things
Kennen
described. The woman even asked for clove cigarettes.” The Priestess brought one leg over the other. Her peach stockings had the loveliest floral lace
Sandeus’d
ever seen.

He grounded his thoughts in a hurry. “I understand
Kennen
paid dearly for this prediction. His wife of many years offered herself to the feast. Dear me.
To build the foundation of the future, you must tear down something permanent from your past
. So the Tomes read.”