The Broken Sword

by Molly Cochran

  Before long the class expanded, first to weekly and then nightly sessions at Aubrey's Fifth Avenue apartment. He was rich, and Kate had gone, like many of the others, just to sample the hundred-year-old brandy he served; but there was always a core of students who followed Aubrey's every word with slavish devotion.

  Zack was one of these. He began to quote Aubrey during the course of ordinary conversation. He lost interest in his other classes, spending his days reading about magic and his evenings at Aubrey's apartment. When the Rites and Rituals course ended, Zack dropped out of school altogether and worked at menial jobs, living for the night hours when he and the other acolytes made their pilgrimage to sit at Aubrey's feet.

  "But what do you do there?" Kate asked, exasperated.

  Zack had smiled. "I'm learning to dream," he said.

  Kate was incensed. "Oh, great," she said, "that's just great. Look at where you live, Zack. This place is a hole! You were a year away from getting your degree. You could have been a teacher. Instead, you're—just what is it you're doing now, anyway? Bussing tables?"

  "It doesn't matter what I do," he said sagely. "It's what I know."

  "For God's sake, listen to yourself!"

  "Come with me, Kate. Hear him, and you'll understand."

  "I've been there, and I've heard him. Philosophy and history. You've thrown away your future for some sophomoric discussion group!"

  "It's different now. Come with me. I promise your eyes will be opened."

  And they were. What she discovered was that the group that followed Aubrey had subtly changed in its makeup from the homogeneous group of dressed-down but unmistakably middle-class college students to a strange mix of men. One was well into his fifties, his thinning hair grown long to comb over a bald spot. Another was a young man in a cheap suit who, when he spoke, exhibited an excess both of bad grammar and bad teeth. There was an elegant fop wearing jewelry, and a number of the sort of men Kate would have been afraid of on a darkened street. There was a dry, academic sort and an actor who claimed to be working in an off-Broadway play.

  Kate's first impression was one of utter confusion. What in the world did any of these men have in common?

  "What would you like most?" Aubrey said to the group at large.

  "He always starts out this way," Zack whispered.

  "Anyone? What do you want, Bill?"

  The man in the cheap suit jerked a thumb at Kate. "Her," he said. The others laughed.

  "Her hair," the elegant one said. "On the condition that her hairdresser dies a slow and painful death." He leaned toward her. "Is that actually a barrette?" Seeing that it was, he withdrew, clucking.

  "Harold, what about you?" Aubrey asked the balding man.

  "Same as always. This apartment. Or one just like it."

  Kate looked around. It was a striking apartment, all right, in a frightening kind of way. All of the surfaces were reflective—black leather furniture, glass tables, a lacquer floor polished to a high gloss, metallic wallpaper. The only items in the room with any texture were the artwork, and most of that was white plaster accented by smears of black or red the exact color of blood. In one corner stood a sculpture of a gardener with a hoe in one hand and his own disembodied head in the other.

  Suddenly, coming so swiftly that it shocked her, Kate realized what it was that bound these men together.

  They were not nice.

  Kate's first reaction to her epiphany was to be ashamed of herself. Throughout her childhood, she had heard her mother rail against people who weren't "nice." Her mother's damning criteria included dressing incorrectly, speaking loudly, espousing political views which were extreme in either direction, rejecting God or embracing Him too fervently, and a host of other innocuous offenses. Once she had finally escaped the suffocating and privileged nest of her parents' home, Kate had made a point of not judging by appearances or first impressions. Or second impressions, for that matter. Kate was determinedly open-minded, and fiercely respectful of others' individuality. Still, there was something in this group beyond bad tailoring and rough laughter that brought bile into her throat.

  They were not nice. And Kate was afraid of them.

  She saw Aubrey's eyes on her, and felt herself sweating. He smiled. It was her imagination, of course, but she was certain—no, no, she told herself, she was imagining—that Aubrey Katsuleris knew exactly what she was thinking and feeling.

  "Tell us, Miss Marshall," he asked politely, "what it is you'd like most in life."

  She shrugged disdainfully.

  "Please," Aubrey persisted. "There must be something you want so badly that you'd sell your soul for it. Isn't there?"

  Yeah, she thought, her eyes glancing at the man in the cheap suit. I'd like to see Bill get hit by a truck. "World peace," she said quickly.

  Aubrey laughed aloud. The others joined him. They laughed, she supposed, because her wish had been so predictably Pollyanna College Girl. But Aubrey had kept his eyes on her the whole time, and she understood, with a pang of shame, that his laughter had been for a different reason. Aubrey had laughed because he knew that her voiced wish was false.

  "Let's get out of here," she muttered to Zack.

  "We haven't even started," he protested.

  "Then I'll go alone." She stood up, swinging an enormous carryall onto her shoulder. "I've got a test tomorrow," she said, not caring if she sounded convincing or not.

  Zack sighed and stood up. "I'll see you home."

  "Where do you live?" Aubrey asked.

  Zack answered for her. "Near Columbia. It's not a good neighborhood."

  Kate was already out the door. "You don't have to walk me back," she said testily when he caught up with her.

  "I know. I'd just feel better if I did."

  "Suit yourself." She headed for the subway on Sixth Avenue, with Zack trailing silently behind her.

  When they got to the station, Zack put two tokens in the turnstile, then walked to the platform with his head hanging and his hands in his pockets.

  "I wish you would have given him a chance," he said quietly.

  "Those goons? Give me a break."

  "Not them, him, Aubrey. It's Aubrey I go to see. There's something special about him." He gestured with his hands, creating little imaginary clouds. "Sometimes I almost feel as if he's reading my mind."

  Kate inhaled sharply.

  The train roared in, and they boarded. It was late enough that there wasn't much of a crowd in their car, so they were able to sit together. "About reading your mind," Kate said slowly. "You don't really think Aubrey can do that, do you?"

  Zack smiled, the way he always did, like a little kid. He wasn't handsome, not by any standard, but Zack had the kind of perfectly ingenuous smile usually found only on very good-looking men who know what to do with their faces. "Well, yeah, in a way. It's funny, but he always seems to know what I'm going to say before I say it."

  "Oh," she said, relieved. "But he doesn't actually hear your thoughts or anything like that."

  "Of course not. No one can do that. I mean, we're entitled to some privacy, aren't we?"

  She hugged him. She wished then, as now, that she could love Zack. Zack was kind and sweet and generous. He would never hurt her, or anyone.

  "You don't belong there, Zack. Those men..." She shuddered. "They all gave me the creeps."

  Zack shrugged. "Jesus didn't just talk to holy people, either."

  "Aubrey Katsuleris is not Jesus," Kate said flatly.

  Zack stared out the far window of the subway car. "I don't know. It's time for something to happen. You can almost smell it in the air. All over the world, people are beginning to recognize their own inner power."

  "Oh, please. Not that again."

  "But it's true. Alternative medicine, astrology, yoga, even martial arts... They're all a part of this spiritual awakening. It's as if, after thousands of years, God has come back."

  "In the person of Aubrey Katsuleris?" Kate folded her arms in disgust. "Or was it Bil
l, that cretin whose greatest wish was to dig his dirty fingers into me?"

  "I'm sorry about that, Kate."

  She deflated, feeling her anger soften. She could never stay mad around Zack. "It's okay. The world's full of people like Bill. It's just that I can't believe you hang out with him. Or the rest of them. You talk about a spiritual awakening, but did you listen to what they were saying? I want, I want, I want. It definitely was not a spiritual discussion, Zack."

  "I know. But it could be. If you wanted the right things."

  "Come again?"

  "Aubrey tells you how to get what you want."

  "Like a self-help program? Positive attitude and that kind of thing?"

  "No. He teaches spells."

  "What?"

  "Magic, Kate. I'm talking about real magic."

  "Oh, for God's sake."

  "And it works. Harold—the older guy—he's made more than fifty thousand dollars in the stock market in the last two months. Sean, the actor, got a part in a play."

  "Those things happen. Every day somebody makes money in the stock market."

  "And Geoffrey, he's—"

  "Let me guess. Geoffrey's the one who wanted my hair. What'd he get, a season ticket to the opera?"

  Zack was quiet for a moment. "That was a joke about your hair. What he wanted was money. A million dollars, to be exact. He said that two weeks ago."

  "Well? Did he get it?"

  Zack nodded. "His uncle died and left it to him."

  "Which proves squat."

  "His uncle was only forty-five years old," he said quietly. "He died in a freak accident."

  Kate felt a shiver of unreasonable fear race down her spine. "It still doesn't mean anything, Zack. Really."

  He shrugged.

  "Well, why don't you have what you want, then? Whatever that is."

  He ran his hand through his hair and stood up. "This is your stop."

  Outside, the night air was crisp. A sheen of frost glistened off the cracked sidewalk. Zack breathed deeply. "Sometimes the city actually smells clean," he said.

  "What do you want, Zack?" she asked quietly. "I've never known."

  He laughed softly. "You," he said. "You're the only thing I've ever wanted. But I'm not going to use a spell to get you." She put her arm around him and rested her head against his chest while they walked.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Kate picked the bath towel up off the floor and dried her eyes with it. There was no point in crying. Not anymore. She opened her closet and began to get dressed.

  Oh, she wished she could have loved Zack.

  But she didn't love Zack, couldn't love him.

  She could only love men like Aubrey.

  Kate had believed that she fell in love with Aubrey the first time she'd gone to bed with him; but the truth was, it happened before that.

  It happened when she first saw him kill.

  It had seemed like an accident.

  The cab had come skidding around the corner just as Kate and Zack began to cross it. Zack threw his arms around her and pushed her back to the curb. She dropped her handbag.

  "Zack! Hey, Zack!" The cab was screeching to a stop, and the man was already halfway out the door. "Wait a second!"

  Zack narrowed his eyes to see down the dimly lit street. "It's Bill," he said.

  "Oh, great." Kate moved to pick up her bag, but Zack threw her backward again. She landed flat on her rear with a shriek as the second vehicle came by in the opposite direction.

  It was a noisy, primer-spotted Chevy half-ton with a missing headlight, doing fifty when it hit Bill. He flew up in the air like a tumbler toward the streetlamp, and for a moment the stark light captured perfectly the man's expression of utter surprise. The truck never stopped.

  When it had roared away, the street became so quiet that the squeak of the cab door opening sounded loud. Bill, wearing a trenchcoat over his clothes, lay in a weird position on the asphalt, his eyes open and crossed, trickles of blood oozing out of his mouth and ears. The cabbie got out and looked around, his arms rising in a gesture of helplessness.

  Kate's bag had been run over. Its contents—a broken lipstick, three notebooks, a CD of B. B. King, and a thick wad of assorted papers—were spilled on the street. For a second or two, nothing moved; then a gust of wind sent the papers whirling. One of the loose pieces of paper blew against Bill's body and stuck there.

  Zack was the first to venture near the corpse. He told the cabbie to call the police, talked with the officer, gathered up Kate's things and stuffed them back into her bag while the ambulance arrived, walked her to her apartment, made her a cup of tea, and kissed her on the cheek before leaving.

  All Kate could do was remember something she had thought sometime during the evening:

  I wish Bill would get hit by a truck.

  "He was hit by a truck," she had said, first to the policeman and then to Zack over her tea. It was the only sentence she'd spoken since witnessing the accident. But it hadn't been an accident. She knew that, even then.

  And when Aubrey came to her later that night she opened her door to him, staring at him with wide, unfocused eyes, her spine trembling.

  "You did it, didn't you?" she whispered hoarsely. "You weren't driving, but you did it all the same."

  Aubrey had smiled, a little crook of his lips. "What else do you want, Kate?" he asked. Then he took her in his arms and though Kate was shaking so hard that her cotton pajamas were fluttering, she pressed her lips against his and felt the wild violence of his power.

  "I hate you," she said, trying to pull away.

  "No." He pinned her arms at her sides. "No, you don't hate me. You fear me. And yourself."

  "Let me go!"

  Aubrey laughed, raising his hands in surrender. She spat in his face. He slapped her. She hit him back, so hard that her palm stung. Then he moaned softly and nuzzled his face against her neck. She wrapped her legs around him and cried out with pleasure.

  He took her on the floor with no more words, nothing but his skin soft over hard muscle, his dark hair falling over her eyes, his power, his power pumping into her like a heartbeat, pumping, shooting into her, skewering her like a bug.

  No words at all.

  When it was over, when she lay alone on the floor of her apartment, she cried.

  She didn't see Aubrey again for two weeks. For those two weeks she never left her apartment. She missed two important tests, and didn't care. She ate nothing. She forgot how to use a comb. She never changed her clothes.

  The phone rang often—it was Zack, she knew—but she didn't answer it. When Zack came by to see if she was all right, she only opened the door a crack, enough to tell him that she wanted to be left alone.

  "You don't look good, Kate," he said through the narrow opening.

  "Yeah, well, I caught a cold or something."

  "I'll bring you some soup from the deli down the street."

  "No, thanks. I just want to get some sleep."

  "Please, Kate. I know you're bothered by the accident we saw. I am, too. We should talk about it. It would be good—"

  "No, it wouldn't." She closed the door.

  Nothing would ever be good again. Because it wasn't the accident that was troubling her. That was an incident out of the past, no more real to her than an episode in a TV series. In her mind she replayed the scene over and over, seeing Bill tumbling effortlessly through the air, his cheap suit shiny in the light of the street lamp. And dubbed over it was the sound of her own voice:

  I wish Bill would get hit by a truck.

  That was the part that made her want to scream every hour of the day. That she had wished, during a wanton moment, that a man would die, and he did.

  It didn't matter that the idea obsessing her was impossible. Her reason told her that what had happened was simply a coincidence, and held no more meaning than the bald guy making money in the stock market or the actor getting a part in a show. Her reason was baffled by her reaction to an unfortunate but
patently accidental occurrence.

  But Kate's reason had not looked into Aubrey's eyes. Another part of her mind, darker, knowing, had connected with the frightening being that was Aubrey Katsuleris. Connected with him, body and soul.

  What else do you want, Kate?

  That was a tease. He knew perfectly well what she wanted, what she needed in order to keep living.

  She needed him.

  For two weeks she fought the need, but there was no point in it. During their lovemaking, Aubrey had planted a seed in her womb—not the seed of a child, but of some unnamed evil that she felt daily growing inside her like a dark flower unfolding, taking her over. It, the evil, blossoming thing, was what brought her back to Aubrey's apartment, her face flushed with shame, her body trembling with raw yearning.

  Zack was delighted to see her. Cheerfully he introduced her to a new member of the group, a young, light-haired thug whose fingers twitched nervously throughout the evening. Three times Kate caught the man glancing over at her, but as soon as her eyes met his, he averted his gaze.

  Zack left the group early. Afterward, Aubrey recited some foolish-sounding incantations which the men repeated. Kate sat silently, thinking only of the man with the twitching fingers.

  "He's the one you sent to kill Bill, isn't he?" Kate asked Aubrey later, after they had made love.

  "Hold still." He was braiding her hair, entwining rosebuds into the thick, silky brown rope that hung down her back.

  Sitting naked on a chair in front of a mirror, she spoke to his image behind her. "Is that something they have to do to enter your inner circle? Murder for you?"

  "Don't be boring." He caressed her breasts with one of the roses. "I just give them what they want."