The Altonevers (8 page)

“
Not really, I seduced him,
turned him against the boss and then carried out the
hit.”

“
Good work is rewarded,” he
laughs with Rebecca. Her shark eyes smiling, to Anna seeming more
like they could actually be friends.

“
So where are you from
Anna?”

“
Ahh, I don't,” she
stammers, unsure of how to answer.

“
Do you like traveling the
Altonever's,” the Raveness asks intently.

“
Yes, I like the train
rides a lot, especially the ins and outs of them,” she replies with
a spark of enthusiasm.

“
So!” Rebecca says in a
disgusted tone, “this is what you've been up to? running around
with a backwoods Alto bumpkin? did you promise her adventure away
from her little farm?”

“
No,” he barks “just
walking the girl home.”

“
Oh yeah, what’s taking so
long. We haven't heard from you for, a while, a while longer than
usual.”

“
She lives far away,” he
scoffs.

“
I'm not joking around
Cider. He's getting worried about you,” she says with seemingly
sincere worry.

“
I'm not
worried.”

“
He does speaks well of
you, sometimes anyway. But you haven’t been around for awhile, is
all, only playing these game of chance. You know it’s only a drop
of water to a thirst like yours. Examples will eventually have to
be made.”

“
Not enough excitement, so
he sends his bitch out to hound me,” he says.

“
Just do the right thing,
for everyone. Okay,” the Raveness says, brushing the hair away from
her face so that Anna can clearly see a gaping hole just above her
left ear.

“
You got it boss, cheers.
Back to the salt mines as soon as tomorrow,” he says feigning to
care.

“
Ahhhhh, holy
shit.”

“
What is it Anna?” he
asks.

“
What're you gawking at,
girl?”

“
Ah,..ah...Oh what big eyes
you have,” she stammers, pointing to the hole in the side the
Rebecca’s head. Cider looks over and laughs hysterically along with
the cackling Raveness, who nearly falls from her chair in delight
of Anna's scare.

“
Yeah, and I need a visit
from her like I need a hole in the head,” he says in squinting
laughter. Their humor of it is oddly easing Anna's strung nerves,
though her logic of life and death is still a bit perturbed.
Finding herself unable to stop her gawking at the girl’s open
wound, and noticing how beautiful she actually is. Even seeming to
possess a slight white glow around her, of the eyes of men in the
room on her whenever she isn’t looking.

“
That's her brain?” Anna
asks.

“
Why? are you reading her
mind?” He laughs.

“
How are you so...alive?”
She works up the nerve to ask.

“
Jeez I know you like ‘em
green, but this is emerald even for you. Any who,” Rebecca
snickers, settling into a wolf's smirk while touching her tongue to
her one of her fangs, “you've been running with this dope, of all
people, and you don't even know what Ravens are? I wonder why he
wouldn’t have told you something like that, or why you wouldn’t
just know it?” the Raveness says glaring at Cider while speaking,
as though trying to sear his soul through his eyes.

“
Ravenous?” Anna
asks.

“
No, Raveness.”

“
Yeah, like mommy, the
Baroness?” Cider says returning the girls shark eyes to her own
threatening glare.

“
You know, you should be
nicer to me. I mean, I only came to warn you that he's been getting
a bit worried about your whereabouts,” Rebecca says with a souring
face, “he didn’t send me. I came on my own”

“
I'll be fine, as always,”
he says straightens his stack of chips.

“
Yeah, well my hands are
tied if I get the whisper, so get back to it for you and
me...darling,” Rebecca says sarcastically.

“
Isn't that something
you’re into anyway?” he laughs.

“
Ha, always the joker huh,
please spare me the pleasure of having to slay you, will you. Take
care of yourself, you look like a mess.”

“
What's he gonna do, kill
me,” He laughs.

“
What about her?” Rebecca
snaps, he stops laughing. Instantly regretting that he's shown his
hand, and knowing that in one action, she knows that he cares, and
telling the resourceful Rebecca that, makes Anna’s life as good
leverage against his. The stone faced Cider is staring the Raveness
right in her big sharky pupils. Rebecca seems absolutely amazed by
what she's seeing, a glint of emotion in the eyes of a man whom she
knows to be a soulless savage, a slayer of men the Altos
over.

“
Anna?” he says.

“
Yeah.”

“
This here is Rebecca. A
sweet young girl who lived high on the hills in a big, nice, house.
She had everything. It was a mansion.”

“
Oh Shut up!” Rebecca says
scowling.

“
But one thing, and she
went mad for it. That eternal feeling, of a soul who's made a
terrible choice over a terrible heartache for a boy. Her heart
fluttered like the doves and cardinal's from her yard and garden,
for him only. So timid, meek even, nice this girl was. But the boy
didn’t love the girl, and she felt invisible to him. So what does
she do?”

Rebecca sighs, and breathes in a
breath of her smoke, Cider pauses for a shot, and Anna's still
gawking at her head with a hole in it.

“
She went up to the boy
countless times, but one time thinking maybe, hoping, just maybe if
I show him. Tell him how I really feel, that I love him, he'll see
that he feels what I do. As though she would be shining her soul to
him, she thought, and he'll see right through her chest. He was a
good friend of her relative, so he simply didn't see her in that
way, though to her he didn’t see her at all, that he was looking
through her as she broke down and cried, and he walked away. So she
runs home, to her house on the hills with a great lawn and marble
monuments, and a lake and woods as the backyard,” he
says.

Rebecca sits silently, not even
seeming to breath anymore, reliving her life as he tells
it.

“
It was a silent spring
day, breezeless. The lake in her yard rimmed by low branches
reaching far over its surface, outlining the still reflection of a
calm sky. Fresh green dewed grass under red and gold fall leaved
trees. Right?”

“
Continue,” Rebecca
sighs.

“
She floats in a row boat
broken hearted, rowing to the middle of the water with sorrow
soaked eyes. Crying and staining her white sun dress with tears.
Giving up rowing, she lazily floats for awhile across the still
reflection, staring to the sky. Unable to stop crying and
trembling, she eventually stands, tying a rope to her leg and a
cinder block to the rope. Lifting the cinder block with her left
and with the other hand pointing a gun, belonging to her mother, to
her head while leaning over the boat’s side. Expecting to shoot,
blow the heartache and sink to the bottom of the lake and drown out
of her misery. To disappear completely, becoming invisible to the
world, as she feels invisible to the boy.” Cider pauses, “so young,
and so naive. She doesn’t though, become invisible. Instead she
shoots herself in the head, but doesn’t die right away or even fall
in the water.

After the pop, she falls flat on her
back as dead weight to the bottom of the boat. Sadly still living,
though paralyzed. What’re the odds of that? The cement block cracks
the boat’s bottom. She stares blankly to the sky as blood gushes
from the side of her nearly brain dead head. Reddening the fresh
water slowly filling the row boat, and dying her dress to the color
that it is today. It takes an hour, for the water, by then red as a
rose, to rise to her open mouth. To spill slowly down her throat
and fill her gurgling lungs. Drowning her, edema before the fresh
red water even touches her top lip.”

“
Memories,” says Rebecca,
drowning her tongue in vodka.

“
It is a nice dress, but
how did you live if you've died?” Anna asks astonished.

“
You didn't even tell her
that?” Rebecca says, “poor girl?”

“
Because Anna, she lives
forever, forever longing for love. Just as any of the blood stained
doves of her mother’s backyard.”

“
Down, the road huh? there
was a delay on my way here,” The Raveness says.

“
Oh yeah?”

“
Yeah, there was a service
interruption. Do you know anything about it? I mean it would be
rare,” Rebecca says to a spine chilling silence.

“
What would be 'rare' about
that?” she asks.

“
Oh, nothing, he’s just not
often seen with redheads, and so clever and bright you aren’t,
usually takes to the dark haired girls. My, my, how his tastes have
changed,” Rebecca says.

Anna thinking she's referencing her
own past with Cider, leers at her as though trying to pluck at her
nerve’s. Cider looks to the dealer, waiting for the next hand to be
dealt. Knowing that this shark eyed girl is a ravenous vixen. A
captain of bartered souls, whose only real task is to bring their
boss more of them, for her to then command. And commanding legions
she does, almost everywhere an InterAlto train can stop. That she
must think he saved Anna for himself, stealing her from another
Alto because he couldn’t stand to see her die. He saved her. That
if he's keeping her close and out of sight he must care. Then
thinking how much of that string of thought was only his own
thoughts. That he may care for her, but they, the Ravens do not,
and he's sure they’ll try and use Anna as a chain , to shake his
shackles and tighten their noose.

“
What did that feel like?”
she asks.

“
What?”

“
Your head?”

“
Seeing a drop of water in
that split second it touches a rose petal. Very nice to see you
Cider, and I look forward to meeting you again Anna. It’s been
utterly delightful,” Rebecca says, standing and leaning over the
table.

“
See you around
Rebecca.”

“
I like you Cider, so, I'll
give you a hand on the way out,” The Raveness says. “Who here has
rank?” she shouts as she strolls away from the table on her long
slender legs.

“
Me, I'm the lieutenant,” a
man yells “What’s the trouble?”

“
With a working girl on his
lap. Get up,” Rebecca snaps.

“
What do you mean get up?
who do think you are?” the burly voiced man says from behind a fog
of smoke.

“
The Raven known as Cider!”
Rebecca bellows wickedly and cackles before squeezing her finger
several times. Slaying the sleazy Lieutenant and two of his
gambling buddies with a few flashes of her silver muzzle, then
practically prances away. Not one soul even looks her way as her
cardinal dress vanishes through the haze of smoke and faux
fireflies.

Half the room is struck by fear,
everyone else howls with laughter. A greedy drunk makes a grab for
an extra card, triggering a brawl that quickly sprawls into a riot
of frenzied degenerates feasting on the thrill of fighting.
Flipping tables and fighting tooth and nail, to the death, for
scattering piles of cheap plastic chips. A melee of broken bones,
and stabbings and close range gunfights between people no further
than six feet from the other with, bullets whizzing not ten feet
from Anna’s head. Disorder, desperation and free fortunes are free
to take, she swipes some chips to Cider's delight, she’s living in
the disorder he adores. The two crouch and weave through the rumble
like wading through a moving mangrove of scrambling bodies. A jolly
rolls by, lifting everything in the room off the ground and
dropping them a second, or two, later. She bruises her hip in the
drop, then keeps pushing and crawling, following him through holes
of swinging arms and legs as the rumble raging on.

The two wash out of the cat house and
the crowd, into the evening streets filled by grinding gridlock
traffic. A black limousine pulls away and speeds unchecked down the
uncongested sidewalks. The raven haired girl is sitting in the
backseat, looking into a mirror fixing her lipstick as the car
swings around the corner, and disappears. Anna looks to him, as he
carelessly looks around, and she says as calmly as she
could.

“
What the hell was all that
about!?”

“
We really should be
going,” he says.

“
Not until you tell me-”
she’s interrupted by a tide of sirens and rising gunfire erupting
from only a few blocks away. The two instinctively scramble around
and over the gridlock, caving in the roofs of cabs and passenger
cars while leaping and fleeing. Their feet carry them like wind for
a few city blocks, then slowing and weaving between bumpers and
headlights.

“
No, stay in the middle of
the streets, low, crouch between the cars. They'll see you on the
sidewalks,” he says.

“
Slow down,” she shouts. He
stops, leaning against a box truck. Lighting a smoke in waiting the
few seconds it takes for her to catch up. She’s hardly running,
with heavy breaths and an unnerved expression on her
face.