Black and Orange by Benjamin Kane Ethridge Page B

for her to slip through from the Old Domain. Lucky for us.”
    Paul’s fingers glided to the head—the tail rattled, the snake moved.
    Gazing at the Priestess’s soft body under her semi-transparent gown, he’d understood why a woman that perfect had to be from another world.
    He caught the neck and Alexander sunk into a ropy mass . Sandeus took the snake and pinched its jaws over the foaming blood. The foam receded with little carbonated pops. A sentinel with a burlap sack stuck Alexander inside. Good riddance , thought Paul .
    Sandeus poised his lips over the amplifier cone. “Archbishop of Morning, do you hear me? Kennen , are you there, brother?”
    The needle treaded a few minutes. Paul shifted in his seat. His mouth tasted ashy, he was hungry, he was horny, and he was soaked to the bone with fatigue. Waiting made him nervous. He didn’t want to see this man go crazy, frilled at the neck and perfumed to the gills. Most of all because Paul’s mind hungered to see something exactly like that happen. But the needle treaded against the tablet. Static. Nothing.
    Then Raymond Traven’s mouth contorted around a string of unhealthy sounds. Ray’s words did not belong to a person from this world.

TEN
     
    Martin stretched his eyes to the sand shadows flowing over the town, a crumbling relic on old, broken Route 66. Crawling over the cactus, dominating the mounds of thirsty grasses, thrusting out from behind the foothills, something approached... what? He wanted to get out of the van and soak up the ambience to better understand it. Too bad they didn’t have some trout or chicken fillets. He could take out the Coleman and grill outside, listen, wait, understand, pretend it was summer and clean blue waves were crashing at his heels.
    He and Teresa had spent an involved hour practicing mantles. The game was an old one for the nomads. She’d taught it to Martin twenty years ago. He still remembered her then, a much younger and frightened Teresa, still morose from losing her last partner, David Wessing . The game’s concept was a simple distraction for them both. Mental push-ups . Each person formed a mantle and set it against the other, pushing it toward the opposition until someone grew too weary. They had quite a rally going, but Martin’s mind wandered and he took apart his ghost-matter, reshaped it. He imagined the form of a rubber ducky. Even though mantles were invisible, Teresa sensed the reshaping and frowned as her rigid block pressed into his duckbill.
    Her eyes were shut with complete seriousness. “You’re going to tire yourself out. That isn’t part—”
    “Just because you can’t shape them—” He immediately corrected his tone, knowing she’d take it as a challenge. “Look, I’m just getting bored is all.”
    “You haven’t pushed my mantle out yet,” she reminded. It was a prod at his competitive side, something she knew he did not possess, but always felt determined to unearth.
    “Can I wave the white flag now?”
    “No.”
    He let go anyway. “You need your rest.”
    He felt her mantle slip into divisions and extinguish from this world. Teresa opened her eyes and went right to her pocket for a clove. All Martin could do was sit there, back sweating against the driver’s seat, stomach gurgling for anything solid, just watching her, listening to the crackling fiberglass, smelling the cinnamon-sweet burn. How could he hate her so much and love her so much at the same time? He’d treated her so poorly these last few months. There’d been no other way to deal with her self-immolation. But come on, he thought, pushing someone away because it’s easier than losing them? Martin had to admit it was childish distancing, at best. He had no delusions about his tactics. Clove after clove though, Teresa didn’t care about breaking his heart, so why should he tend to hers? The thought was sour in his mind: Because she’s dying, you asshole .
    But should he apologize for her mistake?
    Not like