A king and a monster, p.11
A King and a Monster, page 11
“If you’re the gatekeeper,” Kazuki said, keeping his voice steady despite his trembling, “then you chose to let us through the barrier. You could have wiped our memories and sent us back, but you didn’t. Why is that?”
“Ah, now that is a perfectly reasonable question.” Minerva beamed, unclasping her hands and setting them on the arms of the chair, pushing herself back to a standing position. “I suppose I should show you rather than tell you.”
She snapped her fingers, and abruptly, the whole tower began shifting, the wood groaning as the floorboards were stripped away beneath them. Jars and instruments rattled in protest as a massive chasm formed. Alan grabbed Kazuki’s wrist and dragged him back towards the shelves as the place where they had been standing became swallowed up by a dark void.
“Rin! Get back!” Alan yelled to her, but she stayed where she was, letting the darkness spread beneath her. Strangely, she didn’t fall. She remained suspended above the space as though she were floating on an invisible platform.
“Don’t worry,” Rin said, once the movement of the structure ceased. “It’s just a glass panel. It’s a trick, an illusion. See?”
She stomped on the darkness below her and produced a knocking sound.
“Oh,” Alan squeaked.
Kazuki breathed a heavy sigh and stepped forward onto the glass platform. Alan clutched his hand tightly in case he fell. When he didn’t, Alan shuffled over to him, staring down at the empty space below them.
“You are so amusing,” Minerva said, giving another high-pitched laugh. She snapped her fingers again and the space below lit up.
The light revealed a small room furnished with a round table partially obscured by a low-hanging chandelier. Waxy candles were lit up on the black crystal arms of the light fixture. High-backed, mahogany chairs were set around the table in various states. Some were neatly tucked under the table, others pulled out, as though their occupants had stood up and left in a hurry.
“Oh, great, are we being invited to stay for dinner? I’m getting hungry,” Rin quipped with false levity. Her hands tucked into the pocket of her hoodie betrayed her true feelings. That’s where she kept her knife.
“It’s a séance room, isn’t it?” Kazuki asked. “A room for performing a ritual meant to contact the dead.”
“Why, yes, young man. Yes, it is,” Minvera confirmed. “This is where it all began. Well, I suppose it began at that first meeting in the old city archives building, and before that, on the forums of a supernatural message board. But I digress. This was the place The Order of the Golden Dawn met to hold many séances, and also subsequently destroyed District City.”
“Oh, is that all?” Rin gave an awkward giggle, her hands still shoved into her hoodie. “What’s this glass thing we’re standing on?”
“An observation deck. We needed to install it so we could have investors watch our rituals without causing a disruption by being in the room with us. An ingenious invention,” Minerva explained.
“Of course, that’s what it is.” Rin nodded, backing towards the door. “Would you mind telling us more about these rituals?”
“I suppose I should tell the whole story from the very beginning,” Minerva said, settling back down in her chair. “Once upon a time, there were a number of psychics who formed a sort of support group. Some wanted company, some wanted to confirm that they were not delusional, and some wanted to improve their practice. They called themselves The Order of the Golden Dawn.
“Over time, all the psychics got what they wanted, and they began to think of ways to improve the world around them with their gifts. They held séances for the bereaved to contact their loved ones, they healed sicknesses that were deemed incurable by modern medicine, and they helped reconcile the pasts of those who had experienced traumas by helping them to forget. They did this all-in secret at first, using the space here. However, soon enough, high-profile clients demanded their services that they could practice out in the open. They established clinics throughout the area, hired other psychics to contact the dead, alter the mind, or heal the body of anyone, and this—”
“Anyone?” Rin cut her off. “You all helped out anyone who wanted you to do psychic stuff for you?”
“Well, we did turn away some,” Minerva added. Her mouth twitched slightly—holding her smile required more effort now than it had before. “If their intentions were nefarious, or if they could not pay the fee.”
“I see.” Rin smirked. “Helping folks out of the goodness of your hearts feels so much better if you can make a profit off it, right?”
“May I continue?” Minerva continued, her smile stretching too wide, her dark eyes glinting with barely restrained contempt.
A chill passed through Alan, like a gust of wind in winter. “Something’s wrong,” he whispered to Kazuki. “We shouldn’t stay much longer.”
“Yeah, I feel it too,” Kazuki whispered back, gripping his hand. “Let’s just listen to the rest of what she has to say, and then we make a break for it.”
“As I was saying, as we expanded our operations, we learned about the limits of our abilities. You see, the energy stored within each of us can be depleted with constant use. We can also build up our reserves through…experiences.” Minerva paused, straightening her spine against the back of the chair.
“Sacrifice,” Alan said, as flashes of pooling blood and glazed eyed corpses played in his mind. “You gain power through sacrifice. A willing sacrifice gives more power than an unwilling one.”
“That is correct, my dear,” Minerva said, her fake smile relaxing into a more natural one. “We tried small things at first. We relied on animals, much like the ancient practitioners. But as we soon learned from our research, there was a more efficient source.”
“Cold-blooded murder,” Rin muttered. “Fantastic.”
“There were some more than willing volunteers,” Minerva clarified. “Hardly murder if the participant consents. Still, even these individual sacrifices proved insufficient as our small order was expanding. More and more small clinics, even whole spiritual healing centers, were being established. We needed more power—we needed a greater sacrifice.”
“Like taking out an entire city,” Kazuki said, fear edging his voice, and something else—a dampened rage. Tears welled up in his eyes. Alan clenched his shoulder, half to comfort him, half to hold him back from doing something rash. “You created the Plague. You killed all those people. You killed my mom and dad—my sister.”
Minerva laughed. “Well, not just me. There was and still is some disagreement upon who came up with the plan first. Edgar likes to take credit, as does Iris, but it was Claret who held the key to the ritual. She has ancestry going back, way back, you see, to early Celtic mystics who sought to protect themselves from invaders by casting a culling spell. A means of killing a large number of people. What a day it was when we sat at that table and performed the ritual.”
Minerva gave a pleasant sigh, as though recalling a lovely tea party. “Of course, there were some who protested killing everyone in the city, so we made a sort of compromise. We established a system of triage, coloring the auras of the citizens within District City: Yellow being those deemed essential to evacuate. If we had the time, we were to evaluate the Red, followed by the Green, the Blue, and the Violet. Since they were last, the Violet were all left in the city to die. After the ritual—”
“Wait,” Alan interrupted, his thoughts racing as he realized something. “You said Edgar takes credit. Edgar Crowley was in the Order? He was part of all this?”
“We knew him as Edgar Wilson before he took on that silly moniker, but yes. Silly me forgetting to inform you. I assumed you had already put that together; that you were aware of the members of the Order. There was Edgar, who you know as Edgar Crowley, myself, of course, Gregory Hume, Iris Verity, Claret Aligheri, and James Sydis.”
“Um, okay. Well, in order, I guess my reaction to that is: knew Edgar and Greg were trash, don’t know her but she has Amaya’s last name, so…weird. Claret was cooler than this whole thing, I thought, and lastly: what?” Rin pulled her hands out of her pockets and threw them up in the air to emphasize how overwhelmed she was at this information.
“James,” Kazuki repeated. “No, James was…how could he have anything to do with this? He came here searching for answers. He had no idea…he…”
“He led us here,” Alan whispered. “He led us here because he’s working for the Order, and the Order wants something from us. It’s a trap.”
Kazuki rushed to the door, dragging Alan behind him. He broke away, trying the doorknob, but it stuck. The door was locked. He rattled the knob again with both hands and then slammed his shoulder into the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Babe, time to burn things,” Alan said, his heart hammering against his chest like the ticking of a time bomb.
Kazuki snapped his fingers, but hardly a spark came out. He tried again. Nothing.
“Did you…run out of energy?” Alan wondered.
“No, I think it’s just…” He trailed off, his brow furrowed with concentration as he glared at his fingers and attempted to conjure flame. “I think there’s something stopping me from using my power.”
“Let us out of here,” Rin snarled, drawing her knife and closing in on the woman in the chair. Minerva stayed put, her unnerving smile looking even more painted than ever, her tiny hands folded in her lap.
Rin held the knife to her throat, but Minerva stayed where she was and calmy pried it out of Rin’s hand. She took it and stabbed it through her own eye. She didn’t even flinch, just gave another little laugh as a stream of blood ran down her cheek.
“I thought I told you before; I am not alive any longer, so it will be awfully hard for you to kill me,” Minerva said. She gripped the handle of the knife and proceeded to remove it. Alan gagged and looked away.
“Why are you keeping us here?” Rin asked, panic rising in her voice. “What do you want from us?”
“We are running low on energy,” Minerva said, as though this was an obvious conclusion. Alan dared to look up to see her eye had fully healed. She twirled the knife in her hand.
“You want us to do it again,” Alan whispered as the realization washed over him. “You want us to do the culling ritual and destroy another city.”
“Yes,” Minerva said. “Not just you three, of course. The others will be brought in soon. In the meantime, you shall have a full schedule of activities to keep you busy. Tonight, there is a dinner in your honor with the acting board of the Order, and tomorrow, you will have a special tour of one of the clinics, followed by—”
“No, no, we’re not doing this.” Rin shook her head violently, turning to Alan and Kazuki. “Or I’m not. I won’t speak for you guys.”
“I’m not killing anyone,” Kazuki declared through clenched teeth.
“I…” Alan tried, then swallowed as the dread filled his chest. “What happens if we don’t do this?”
“Ah, well, your friends will all be killed, of course,” Minerva told them, running her finger along the blade of the knife.
“Won’t that happen anyway?” Rin scoffed. “If we do the culling spell, won’t we die too?”
“Not necessarily,” Minerva said, handing Rin back her knife. “In fact, Iris and I were the only ones who passed on the night we completed the ritual, and many other survivors populated the city, as you know—yourselves among them.”
“We’ll…we’ll destroy you first,” Rin snapped, slashing at the air with her knife. “Somehow.”
“I suppose you could try. It will be difficult without your own abilities. The Order has developed a number of remedies for those who wish to suppress unwanted visions. A new experimental version can be dispersed through the air,” Minerva told them with a wave of her hand in front of her face.
“We’ve been breathing in that…that…poison this whole time?” Alan cringed, clutching his throat instinctively while Kazuki returned to trying to pry the door open.
“How long does it last?” Rin demanded through clenched teeth.
“Not long, but long enough,” Minerva said, her smile radiant as ever. “Long enough for you to be persuaded to assist with our project.”
“Not going to happen,” Rin practically growled. “I won’t kill thousands of people—not now, not ever.”
“Thousands, dear? You mean millions. An entire metropolitan area was wiped off the face of the earth. Well, nearly. Although, I must say, it was lovey how you all left behind ended up killing each other for us. Edgar helped quite a lot.” Minerva gave a small, contented sigh, as though fondly recalling all the death and destruction.
“He knew everything, didn’t he? Old Edgar Crowley,” Alan surmised. “He knew about the Color system; that’s why he came up with his theories about superiority. He knew about the triage—the hierarchy.”
“Well, yes, as did Claret and Gregory,” Minerva said. “James, poor soul, regretted the whole thing as it was happening. We wiped his memories away just like the rest of those who survived the culling.”
At the mention of James’ name, Kazuki stopped trying to bust open the door and turned around, his back against it, his face streaked in angry tears. He slid to the ground, his head in his hands. Alan joined him on the floor, an arm around his hunched shoulders.
“Is there a way to give them back?” Rin asked.
“Give what back? Their memories? Goodness, why would we ever even consider such a ridiculous idea?” Minerva laughed.
“Maybe because people deserve to know the truth,” Rin said. “Everyone in District City should know what really happened.”
“My dear, they would not understand even if we told them. They are merely little lost souls in a little ugly town that was lost so long ago now, everyone has already forgotten,” Minerva said with finality. “If you do not see that now, you will see it soon enough. Now, I believe you should wash up and get some rest before the dinner party.”
Minerva snapped her fingers, and a ladder descended from the ceiling above them.
Rin looked as though she wanted to tear the woman to pieces with her bare hands, but instead, she turned to Alan and Kazuki.
“I should—I should do what they want,” Rin hissed through her clenched teeth as she bent down next to them. “I don’t want Amaya getting hurt. I’ll…we’ll figure something out. Right?”
“Right,” Alan said as forcefully as he could manage as he got to his feet. “Something.”
Kazuki sighed, wiping his face and standing up beside him.
Rin led the way to the ladder, climbing up it two rungs at a time with such force, she threatened to pull it out of the ceiling. Kazuki followed her, looking dazed and drained.
“I shall call for you when your car arrives,” Minerva called up as they ascended into the room above.
Alan was the last, keeping his eyes on Kazuki’s feet ahead of him to avoid any further interaction with their smiling captor.
CHAPTER 16
THE ONE WHERE RAITH IS BORED
(Saturday, Noon)
“Waiting like this is seriously the worst, right?” Raith tried to make conversation with the stoic shade beside him.
While James Sydis stood stock still, a blank-faced sentry, Raith could not stay in one place for more than an instant. He restlessly glided back and forth along the edge of the barrier, testing the tether that anchored him to the site that Rin had left him. It was a shorter leash than before—he could only go about five paces before feeling the pull of the invisible binding.
“I’m getting bored,” Raith complained. “Are you sure we can’t go through the barrier? I want to see what’s going on. How long do you think they’re going to be?”
“Listen,” James spoke in a low voice, glancing around them for hidden foes as he drew in closer to Raith, “they’re not coming back. Not without our help.”
“What do you mean, our help?” Raith lowered his own voice in response, rising up to meet James’s intense, dark eyes. “Do you know who I am? I’m not exactly the ride in on the white horse and save the day kind of guy. You want me to help save my ex-boyfriend, his boyfriend, and my murderer?”
“Surely she’s more to you than that,” James retorted. “But yes. That’s what I want you to do. Will that be a problem for you?”
Raith didn’t even pause long enough to consider his reply, just shook his head.
“Good,” James said. “Now, I don’t really have time to explain everything, so…would you mind if I just restore your memories? It will cause some distress, maybe an unbearable amount, depending on what you’ve been through that’s been repressed.”
“That sounds terrible…but necessary,” Raith agreed, a nervous edge sharpening his tone. After waiting around for hours, so much was happening all at once. “I think I would be willing to try it.”
“I need a clear yes, or I won’t do this. I don’t want to hurt you, but it will hurt,” James warned, holding up his palm as though he intended to slap Raith across the face.
“Yes,” Raith answered with a clear fortitude. Remembering what happened was worth more than any discomfort the memories would cause.
He knew that now, from his time spent with the residents of the Field and their treasured collections of memories. He recalled the spirit named Jutta, who collected memories of love. She had said that she valued all kinds of love the same: tragic love, small fleeting moments of love, and epic love stories spanning decades and centuries. Jutta had given him a memory of a sweet spring day with her first love—a beautiful woman named Hilde who had magical talents that she used to see and feel things beyond her mundane life at a convent. He, in turn, gave a memory of his night with Alan, where they’d fought and Alan had nearly ended up dead. It was a terrible memory, but important, and Jutta had valued it the same as her spring day in love.
“Alright, then,” James said gravely, and touched his palm to the back of Raith’s neck.
