Divine_Scream (8 page)

The sight of bare, clean, unspoiled flesh gave us pause and restored our resolve. The Tenth drew the blade just to the orbit of the man’s dark red nipple. The edge rubbed there, summoning blood from below. Bae ground his teeth as the nipple lifted onto the blade. Two picked up the severed piece of flesh and licked it. He passed it on and we all took turns licking it, even the First, between his sniffs of the Gift. A steady stream of blood leaked from the wound, but Bae was brave. Through spit and teeth and burning eyes, he just wanted us to let his wife go. He had no idea the blessed things we would do before we let them both die.

And like that! The First caught the scent and put his fist up and out. He pointed it in the direction of the Gift. Somewhere to the southwest. This would guide us. Not to find Jared but to define the cage we would make for him and the banshee.

The Fourth tossed the nipple at the man and we hissed a serpent’s laugh.

We had to leave now. There was no time for further amusement. We had fantasies on the brain though; oh, pleasure, how overwhelming it might have been to skin the couple just to see how pretty their muscle fibers were. Then we could have built a bonfire and roasted the skin. Snacked. Fed it to them as well. Watched the disturbed realization of how flavorful your own flesh really was…

But we could do that with our Gift, for the next hundred years and beyond that if we hadn’t grown tired of him. He was ours forever. Ours to share and to have. He was married to us. No moving into the light, no death, no leaving the dungeons of the Deeper Unseen, only bliss with our rotten caresses. All of our Gifts had special chambers in our endless heart. It made us want to revisit the others, the passion clouding our mission.

We could hear the soft whimpers of the couple behind us. They held each other tightly, thinking we’d left them out of mercy. Stepping into this world’s dizzying sunshine, we laughed at this idiocy, nearly on the edge of tears.

Jared tried to ignore his sore legs. He wasn’t used to this much physical activity and his leg muscles weren’t the only thing reminding him of that; his heart had done those strange staccato beats a while back, which made him see snaps of light across his field of vision and brought a queasiness into his stomach that stretched to his throat and guts. He wondered if he’d make the entire trip to the beach.

The sun had ascended in the cloudless sky and the day had become ruthlessly hot. The banshee didn’t seem to perspire, despite the weather and being in a skintight jumpsuit, while Jared had to knuckle stinging pearls of sweat from his eyes almost constantly. As they passed a pet store and he spotted some aquariums, he thought back to the Kangjuns.

“So salt water hurts them?” he asked. “The Assembly? That’s why you spilled the fish bowl, wasn’t it?”

“You’ve finally caught on. Good job, sweets. And let’s say salt water slows them down, but no more. They are sensitive to it because if it is, in fact, actual sea water from the Paled Ocean, it’s beyond dangerous for them, and me.”

“It’ll kill you and them?”

“It’ll erase us from every possible reality. Even the smell of fish gets our guard up—if we were to come in contact with it, our bodies would break apart as energy and travel on, like all living things. Death for the Assembly happens almost as rarely as for banshees, and most of the time for them it’s self-inflicted. I’ve spoken with banshees that presided over the deaths of Assembly members however.” The banshee nodded with some occupational interest only she could appreciate. “Fascinating circuits of energy that release, from what I hear. I’d love to see it, but never have. Sorry, talking shop here.”

Jared smiled faintly. “That’s fine, Banch. So then, the ocean is my only safety from them?”

“Yes, if you’re submerged in it long enough they won’t want you as a Gift anymore.”

“They’ll never come back? The sea water’s effects are permanent?”

“Yes, so it is.”

“I should be good then, because I’ve been in the Pacific Ocean before, many times as a kid.”

“But you didn’t have the mark of the Gift yet,” Banch explained. “Any past contact was masked by that. You received the mark a week ago.”

“And what if I’d taken an unexpected beach trip before they got to me?”

“They knew you wouldn’t visit the beach—they’ve read the chain of events from the time of the mark until your death, and so did I…”

“Just as well, I don’t care for the beach.”

Banch lifted one of her pretty glittering eyebrows. “You don’t? You always paint the ocean though.”

Jared shrugged. “I’m good at painting the ocean.”

“And seagulls.”

He snorted. “You know me well.”

“That I do. Better than anyone.”

“Ouch!” Jared bent and rubbed his kneecap.

“Tender?”

“Doing fine.” He continued on. “Thank you for protecting the Kangjuns.”

Her eyes flitted over with tenuous caution. “I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety. I can only do my best. I have no idea what the Assembly’s next two grants could be. They could ask to kill others, they could ask for any manner of weapon from our dimension, or they could simply ask for passage through a corridor shadow and show up right here and now.”

“Why don’t they?”

“There’s no way to know they would succeed or not. The Assembly rarely does things that aren’t calculated for specific results. Right now they don’t have a firm lock on your scent, so they would need to guess where to show up and that might waste one of their grants. They won’t do that until they’re very desperate, which is why the closer we get to the beach, the more dangerous and aggressive they will become in attempting to capture us.”

“I understand… but isn’t there a way we can take their attention away from other people? I mean, this is about me. Not my friends.”

“I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I don’t see any reason for them to kill anybody.” Banch sighed darkly after another moment. “On second thought however, I had no idea they’d do it the first time. That was decidedly unexpected.”

“Thanks, I feel way better now.” Jared kicked a broken piece of concrete off the sidewalk.

“Well, take it as it comes, Mister Kare. The truth is a bomb filled with either beautiful confetti or rancid manure. And nobody has control of when the bomb explodes.”

Jared hung his head and felt even more nauseated than he did a moment ago. If something had happened to his friends, he didn’t know if his heart could take this anymore, not after learning about those people at the laundry mat. Not after losing mom. Then dad.

Banch rubbed circles in the small of his back. “I will also say this though: I haven’t sensed any changes in the death schedule.”

“So maybe the Assembly didn’t track us to the Kangjun’s apartment?”

The banshee’s mouth twisted.

Jared stopped and shook his head at her. “No, Banch, tell me.”

She caught him under the elbow. “They need to get to us quickly. I’m certain they have one focus right now. Let’s just hope for the best, okay?”

“Bae and Eun Sun…” Jared felt like a zombie as they hurried along past a cacophony of a family pizza parlor, clattering dishes, videogames, and hooting kids.

“Don’t despair until there’s a reason. Really, you have no idea. Do you know how lucky we are the Assembly hasn’t found us—”

Banch threw her arm across Jared’s chest and halted him. She studied the distance with dazzling panic in her sapphire eyes.

“What?”

“They’ve found us,” she said.

Down the street a massive pile-up of cars had occurred at the intersection. Jared was about to suggest this might only be a traffic collision, but his eyes tracked another pile-up on the western avenue. He spotted yet another pile-up to the south. He didn’t see anybody around the smoking heaps of metal however. Jared tried to second-guess the situation.
How could she be certain this was them?

“They’ve sealed off all routes to create a perimeter.” Banch searched around frantically. “I can use a Swell. Damn it to hell, but I didn’t want to have to do this so soon… later maybe, but good hell, already?” She groaned and pulled him into the graffiti adorned threshold of a long closed medical clinic.

He lowered his voice. “Use a what? A Swell?”

“It’s another scream. It’s matter-based, not dimensional, so we need to find a better position, and it’s toilsome and I therefore need a place to recover. Indoors: this bright sun will make it impossible to regain my strength afterwards. Where does your friend Kaitlin live again? To what direction?”

“I… I’m not really sure how to get there. I usually tell the bus driver the cross streets, Grand and Peyton.”

Banch scrubbed at her face and checked the streets again, watching for them. “God, Jared, you’ve known Kaitlin forever and you don’t know the damn direction?”

“I’m bad with that! Sorry!”

The banshee chewed on her thumb momentarily. “Her apartment is near that organic grocery store, right?”

He nodded. “Right.”

She stood on her toes, as though it might help her vantage over the office buildings and banks. “I believe it’s to the south then. Damn it, shit, I hope it is.”

“Wait, we can’t involve Kaitlin in this too! We have to do this Swell thing to another place? Can’t you take us to the ocean?”

“It won’t get us that far and there’d be no place for me to heal.”

“Then some other place—”

“Listen to me.” Banch touched his face, her hand like warm velvet. “We can’t take a chance with someplace random, not after a Swell. I’ll be a mess and you will need help while I regain myself. Trust me.”

“But—”

“I’ll leave something special to protect her, okay?” Just then Banch’s eyes went wide with alarm.

A group of individuals slid over the hoods of wrecked cars down the western street. There were possibly six—no, ten of them, as they emerged. All were at least over six feet tall, some nearing seven. At first sight their bare chests looked covered in red-brown camouflage, but as the sun played off their skin, it appeared to be blood, dried and fresh.

Although they were unique to each other, the Assembly felt like one organism sliding up the street. Three of them came forward, shoulder to shoulder, one with the face of a lion and dirty, stringy gray hair, another bald with pointed bat-ears and a blood saturated goatee, and the last with such emaciation his head resembled an alabaster skull with waxy red lips. Beyond them, the next had the look of a rotund Adolf Hitler marinated in gore, flanked at his sides by three others: a spiked red Mohawk man with swirling black tattoos over his lanky frame, a fierce warrior with an overgrown afro and lengthy handlebar mustache, and a man possessing crazed hazel eyes and unruly hair like chestnut stratus clouds.

“Banch?” Jared’s whole body quaked. “Is this it?”

“Hardly,” she whispered, and pulled him toward an alley.

Before he lost sight of the Assembly he spotted another three figures in the group. The first was a terrifying man with overlarge eyes and unnaturally slack skin from his jowls to his belly, the second had burn scars deforming his face into that of an angry pug, and the last swayed as he walked with the brutish body of a pro-wrestler, yet possessed the shocking facial features of an infant. All of the Assembly dressed in similar dark gray pants with suspenders, yet this one was the only whose size had snapped one of the suspenders and left it hanging.

Jared looked away and made a promise to never look in their direction again. He and the banshee fled down the alley, increasing their speed with every footfall. Out of nowhere, a chain link fence cut off their path.

“It’s a dead-end,” he said in panic. “Banch! Banch! What happens now? What will—”

She slammed her hand over his mouth and gripped his lips together. “I won’t tell you this again, okay?”

He nodded, felt like a scolded child. His eyes lowered to the ground, but he could feel
them
drawing nearer.

“You will live, my love, but not by whining. Understand?”

She released his mouth and Jared took a slow breath to calm himself. He closed his hands into fists. It was so difficult. He was so unbelievably scared. He swallowed and the dryness scratched his throat like a tumbleweed.

“Okay,” said Banch with a hurried look down the alley. “What I need you to do—”

Her head snapped back with a sickening, abnormal speed. Down the alley, a scarlet spattered figure had his arm extended. It took Jared a second to understand that the Assembly member had thrown something. A thick piece of steel, like a fishing hook to catch a whale, pulled through a shallow puddle in the storm drain, sending droplets everywhere. Banch clutched her throat, trying to pull air back into her lungs. She fell back and Jared caught her. The hook had smashed her windpipe.

More of the Assembly filled the head of the alley.

“Can you do the scream?” he asked her. “Banch?”

She retched and coughed hoarsely, drawing Jared farther back.

“Release the Gift,” all ten of the Assembly shouted, a merged gruesome voice.

Jared and Banch continued to the chain link fence. She held her throat and shook her head. Her eyes widened in pain as she tried to swallow. A wide purple bruise had already surfaced from under her jaw to her collar bone due to the impact of the large grappling hook.

They moved on, the Assembly closing the distance, mouths full of disturbing white teeth contrasted with the dried blood. The giant baby and Mohawk man dragged spiked clubs on the alley walls, and yet all shared the same playfully excited facial expression.

Jared’s back met with the fence.

“Climb,” Banch rasped.

“What about you? You can’t leave the ground.”

“Neither can they.” She grimaced, hand to throat. “Do it!”

Jared took hold of the fence and started up.

Another grappling hook thrummed down the alley. Banch threw herself in front of it, catching the brunt of the thick metal between her shoulder blades. She dropped at once to the ground.

“Banch!” he called.

“Go!” She was on her knees, fist in her back.

“We’ll tear down that fence, bitchwhore!” the Assembly yelled.