The Altonevers (43 page)

“
Sorry red, no can do,” he
shrugs.

“
Why? because of that meek
girl of yours? I’m starting to feel again,” Rebecca bellows in
laughter at him, “She isn’t like us. Your love for her is, only,
vanity.”

“
He knows about her?” Cider
says looking nervous.

“
Yeah, but he doesn't care
about that chic of yours. Actually he's happy for you, I think, but
I, I am going to blow her head off her shoulder's. Right in front
of you,” the ravenous Raveness screams through laughing
rage.

“
Now why would you go and
do a thing like that Rebecca?”Cider asks eyeing her with
hatred.

“
Because I care sweetie.
Enough to help you get back on the right track. Maybe you'll take
your place next to me as his right hand.”

“
You wouldn't,” he
says.

“
Oh I will. I’ll be sure
to, and it's because of you. She'll die because of you. You idiot,
you should've just listened when you were told. Instead you'll
break everyone’s heart for hers. I warned you the first time, now I
have to shackle your soul, you could be just another Raven you
know. That’s what he’s been saying. Your too hard to control, and
to you he is already most lenient. Do you want to be like these
ghoulish creeps,” she speaks in spitting rage.

“
You look living at least,”
says Vivian.

“
That she does,” seconds
Popper with a glare from Harley.

“
Thank you,” Rebecca
sneers.

“
Is this what you do now?
chase men for their souls and not their hearts, what a foolish girl
you are,” Vivian says to her daughter. Most of the band spills off
stage like they're abandoning a sinking ship. As an enraged
Rebecca’s face reddens, then with a rising primal growl turning
into a high pitched scream releasing her savagely wounded
heart.

“
It's all an end to a
means,” Rebecca says.

“
Ah, you said that wrong,”
Cider corrects her, snickering, though pale as a ghost. Shook to
his core by the thought of losing Anna. He is, for the first time
helpless to his empathy, suffering, in thinking how she’d feel if
death took him from her.

“
Cider I'm sorry but I
can't have more of them coming into town. Not with so much drama of
my own,” Vivian says sorrowfly.

“
I understand, no malice
Viv,” he says to his friend.

“
We'll hold them off. Go
and get your girl. She's wonderful for you, I do hope it works for
the best,” Vivian says goodbye to her good friend with a
nod.

“
Thanks, Viv,” Cider
says.

“
Harley, Popper, bring the
car around for your friend and his woman will you.”

“
You got it miss V,” Harley
says as Popper nods in agreement. Rebecca seeing that no one at her
mother’s table is paying any attention to her and feeling like a
kid waiting at the grownups table, puts a burst from her m66 into
the back of the piano player. Staining the keys and checkered floor
the of stage with his blood.

“
Rebecca! You can't kill
the piano player,” she berates the her daughter.

“
I already did,” Rebecca
says smiling a sharp lipped smile. Then unleashing a burst at their
table, that tears through the dinner plates and glasses, casting a
smattering of shards and fine china shrapnel with a clatter. The
streak of lead passing right through Daisy's empty seat.

“
Headshots! get your
headshots!” Cider shouts like a street salesman, then falls back in
his chair firing one shot before he hits the ground. The bullet is
snatched out of existence by the Raveness' red dress snapping for
it like a small solar flare just before it hits her bare
shoulder.

“
They grow up so fast,” the
Baroness says flipping the stone table to use as a shield, grabbing
an assault rifle of her own from the arsenal strapped to its bottom
for times like these.

“
HAHAHAHAAA,” Rebecca's
hysterical bellow is the last thing heard before the room erupts
into the sound of ceaseless gunfire. So much that no single buzzing
bullet can be distinguished from any other, sounding to the ear as
rushing water when standing next to a massive waterfall. The Ravens
are each leaping twenty feet into the air and start raking the
crowd with bone slaughtering bursts of lead from their assault
rifles. Jumping like lizards in and out of the protective range of
Rebecca’s cardinal red dress.
All three
tiers of the twenty seven hundred seat theater are engulfed in a
blitz of flesh ravaging red orange muzzle flames. The lead is
flying, making the room resemble the havoc of an imploding hornet’s
hive. The Raveness dominates the center stage and draws most of the
fire to herself, protecting her unkindness like a bird protects her
nest. Death, dismay, terror and the exhilaration of a savage fight
fill the Vaudev face’s throughout of the theatre battlefield.
Everything of the room aside from the walls and floor are rendered
to scrap and bits in the first few minutes of the maelstrom of
whizzing bullets. The wooden tables splinter, the glass and
dinnerware explode, tearing the blood stained tablecloths and
rendering the black, white and silver banners to shreds.

The man is bound to the bedpost,
blindfolded with his tie and gagged with her underwear. Daisy on
top roughly straddling the man, taking it how she likes it with
totally inconsideration of his needs. She stops and listens like a
wild animal hearing danger, then looking at her closed
door.

“
Is that?” she sniffs the
around the air, “is that the sweet sound of combat I hear?” she
asks herself. The man is groaning in bliss as he climax's pinned to
the bed by her thighs.

“
Shut up,” She punches the
man. “It is. In the Manor!? big V!” Daisy yells then jumps off the
bound man, taking the panties from his mouth and putting them on as
fast as she can. Quickly grabbing a Kalashnikov rifle and a drum
magazine from her umbrella stand then rummaging through her messy
closet and putting two pineapple grenades in the waistband of her
underwear. She races through the lightly rumblings halls of the
second floor, toward the deafening buzz of the ongoing onslaught of
so much gunfire the theatre resounds the sound a rushing water
fall.

Vivian is peek a boo shooting from
behind her table as Harold, the butler, is standing on the ceiling
and shooting double fisted over her shoulder. Rebecca's lead
lusting dress is more than evening the odds, even allowing her side
to easily overwhelm the crowd of combat crazy lunatics. Losing only
three of her unkindness to the cost of seven hundred rabid Vaudevs,
as the Ravens jump in and out of from the sanctuary of their
captains lead devouring red dress.

Harley has a .357 and a dead mime as
body shield, pushing through the frenzied crowd as Popper kills a
juggler for his rifle, then shoots up the stomach to a head shot
dropping a Raven from the air. Harley takes two of the Ravens out,
scoring two kills out of the three shots before she drops the mimes
body and duck walks through the dying toward the exit.

“
They have to leave the
nest sometime,” Vivian shouts to her foot soldiers, who are
viciously losing the battle. She looks back seeing her long time
butler Harold blown off the ceiling laying dead on the marbled
floor.

“
Where in the Blanks is
Daisy?” Vivian shouts after returning fire, though no one could
hear her cry over the rush of lead flying inward and
out.

Anna not hearing any of the maelstrom
over the bathroom exhaust fan and running water as she washes her
hands, is staring at herself in the mirror wondering if she's been
aging at all since she started traveling. Catching a new line in
her face, one that’s hardly visible even to her, and invisible to
anyone else. I guess I am aging, I think, I don't know, maybe not.
Cider bursts into the ladies restroom struggling to speak through
erratic breaths.

“
Ahhh!” she
yells.

“
We have to go,” he
pants.

“
Knock next time. I
could've been on the pot.”

“
What? whatever about
civilities, Rebecca’s here.”

“
That skank with the hole
in her head. Is it because she loves you or something,” Anna says
rolling her eyes.

“
She does.”

“
Dammit.”

“
I’m the guy in her story,
okay, but, I was too old and I had no interest in her in that way
anyway,” he says and she stares at him judging every line on his
face “What? nothing happened. It was a young girl’s love for a man.
That's why she killed herself. She thought I thought she was
invisible, she was a naive girl then,” he says.

“
And now she's trying to
slay you,” Anna says

“
Fate can be strange to us
all. And yeah, but she doesn't actually want to. She takes orders
from Alitser.”

“
Like you do.”

“
Exactly. Well, like I’m
supposed to. That’s why she’s here, and she seems to really, uhh.
She hates you. She wants to kill you, a little bit.”

“
A little bit, who wants to
kill someone a little bit.”

“
Alot. We have to
go.”

“
Story of our lives,” Anna
says though Cider not waiting for an answer, grabs her by the arm.
Panicking, pulling her away from the stalls into the halls toward
the lawn side of the house to meet his friend's with the ride
out.

Daisy runs to the second tier of the
embattled theatre like a marine into a war zone. Posting up next to
a pillar on the second tier overlooking and joining in the carnage
of first floor. Shooting at the leaping Ravens, picking off two in
the apex of their leap to lifelessly. She takes a grenade from her
panties and pulls the pin, waiting two seconds and throws the it.
Blowing three more of the raptor like pack of Ravens out of
existence.

“
Daisy,” says both Vivian
and Rebecca with entirely opposite inflections. Only three
unrelenting Ravens and the Raveness are left, so the carnage rages
on. Most of the room is hiding for their lives having run out of
ammunition a while back. Though the Ravens never do, their clips
are forever full, so they always keep firing. Always with
overwhelming firepower until they’re snuffed out of their soulless
vessels. A gift from Alister, for his reapers to ceaselessly bring
him more of themselves to serve him.

Cider throws a potted plant through a
window of a second floor stairwell onto the grass of the great
lawn. He drops his coat over the pieces of broken glass, thinking
himself a gentleman laying a coat over a puddle for a lady. The
sound of the Raven's gurgles and growls and their shoes spilling
down the staircase scare the color from both of their afraid
faces.

“
Tuck and roll Carrots,” he
says urgently.

“
I know how to do it,” she
flusters, though hesitates for a second taking a deep breath, then
jumps tucking and rolling nicely down the gentle slope night
darkened great green lawn. Cider falls from the window a second
later, not tucking and rolling as well as she, and flops like a
penguin flies into a thick hedge.

“
Anna. Carrots where are
you?” he grunts exactly upside down in twigs and small
branches.

“
Here, I’m right here.
Where are you?” she says walking back up the lawn toward the broken
window.

“
Over here.”

“
Where?”

“
In the bushes, pull me
out.”

“
Hahahaha, you landed in
the bushes.”

“
Just pull me out,
okay.”

“
Hahahaha you're head
first. Ha! you dove into a bush hahahaha,” she almost rolls down
the lawn laughing away her nervousness. The branches sting and
scrape as she barely manages to pull her man from the hedges. The
two run with panting breathes to the roundabout at the front of
Vivian’s ivy covered Manor. Anna can't take her eyes off the shadow
showing through the wide open peacock decorated front door. A shade
of black that's still a brighter dark than the neon lights of other
places. The two wait in fear, frantically watching the grass and
statues to be sure they’re not enemies, seeking any sight of his
friends to arrive with the ride out. Each with a loaded weapon
looking around, twitching their aim at any thought of danger.
Listening, suspiciously to the chorus of crickets chirping, not
sounding like a calm summer night, but instead filling them with a
dreadful anticipation of something in the darkness of night’s
depth. Making Anna exceedingly anxious, always thinking there must
be a bringer of death just beyond the edge of
visibility.

Far off, a beam of light appears
through the night and turns toward them, splitting into two lights.
Growing larger and coming closer to the two standing with their
guns drawn and aimed to be sure. The cracked windshield and bullet
riddled body of the cream convertible emerges into shape as flees
from the shadow of depth. Speeding, red lining the screaming engine
and swerving around the two, who stand stiff as a deer caught in
headlights. Harley jerks the wheel and the car swings around the
two, leaving an almost perfect circle of tire tracks scarring the
green lawn. Popper covers them from the passenger's seat with his
favorite gold plated AK 47.