by R. T. Lowe
A dark cloud seemed to pass over Zara’s features and a note of prickly defensiveness crept into her voice. “There are other Fortresses. We’re not exactly a high volume operation. We have a…recruiting problem. Lofton utilizes people like the Faceman—testers. They go after kids with no siblings and subject them to a test. You know about that.” She gave Felix a dour look. “It’s highly immoral but quite effective. We in the Order are not in the business of killing kids.”
Felix and Allison stared back at Zara, silent. There was obviously a rift between Zara and Kane and it made Felix uncomfortable, like the time he’d stayed at a friend’s house and walked in on the parents having a heated argument in their kitchen. He couldn’t shake his uneasiness. He didn’t trust these people, and if he couldn’t trust them, telling them he was the Belus could be a huge mistake. Felix tried to adopt a blank expression, and from the corner of his eye, he could see Allison was doing the same.
Kane laughed at them, apparently amused by their silence. “I think they’re looking for a mission statement. It’s pretty simple. We’re the Order of Belus, so the prime directive”—he made exaggerated quotation marks in the air—“is to find the Belus, the only one who can stop the Drestian from ruling the world and enslaving mankind.” His voice rose in volume, rippling with sarcasm. “The Belus—a super badass born without a father—is supposed to be around here somewhere because we’re pretty damn sure the Drestian’s Lofton Ashfield. Never mind we’ve been looking for this kid for two thousand years.” The corners of his mouth lifted in a mirthless smile. “I think he’s just shy.” Lilly laughed loudly beside him. “And we know all this because of The Warning, a Druid prophecy that found its way into Constantine’s hands, the man who founded this outfit of ours. Oh—I almost forgot. That fatherless thing isn’t in the deadbeat-dad-abandoned-at-birth sense.” He fixed his gaze on Felix. “You wouldn’t know anyone who may have been immaculately conceived, would you?”
Felix was about to deny it, but Allison spoke up before he could open his mouth. “Felix has a father,” she answered quickly, and Felix was glad she’d spared him the awkwardness of fumbling for the right words.
“Did I say he didn’t?” Kane challenged, narrowing his shadowed eyes at her.
Felix remained quiet. He knew if he trusted them this would be the time to tell them about the Cycle, a phenomenon he’d learned of in his aunt’s Journal, in which the Source, in an effort to preserve his family’s dwindling bloodline, bestowed the gift of pregnancy on all female siblings when just one sister got pregnant the traditional way. That was why, through their mothers, Felix and Lofton were first cousins. It was also the reason for Felix’s unique conception, which technically, was immaculate, since the Source had provided the seed and his mother had died a virgin, in a mental hospital, just a year after he was born. The rambling narrative from Lofton’s mother to her younger sister (Felix’s mom) was intended to prepare her for the Cycle and the birth of her son, a son destined to be the Belus, the only one who could withstand the terrible power of the Drestian. It was also a tutorial, a history of the rise and fall of the people in this room—the Order of Belus—from its founding by Constantine to its defeat at the hands of the Protectors and the armies of King Louis IX. Narrative aside, the Journal itself was imbued with the power of the Source, causing anyone who read it to feel the emotions of its author as she penned her strange tale, a deeply unsettling sensation, both hypnotic and nauseating. Felix had memorized the entire thing without even trying, every word imprinted in his brain with the permanence of a branding iron. If he wanted, he could recite all of it for them, just as he’d done for Allison on the morning of her dorm room conflagration. But he wasn’t going to. Not a single sentence.
“What Kane is trying to say,” Zara interjected smoothly, smiling at Felix, “is we’re aware your mother—Patricia—had a hysterectomy four years before you were born. We know you were adopted. We just don’t know anything about your biological parents. If Brit can’t dig it up”—she nodded down at a middle-aged woman who’d reclaimed her seat next to Anquan, thumbs flowing rapidly on her phone, apparently engrossed in a game—“then the records don’t exist.”
“Don’t get any ideas,” Kane said, and now Felix was certain he was slurring his words. “The last kid who thought he was the Belus jumped off a building to prove he could fly.” He cringed down at the floor and broke out in laughter. “Left quite a mess on the street.”
Felix had never heard anything about his mom’s hysterectomy. That was news to him. The fact Brit and the rest of them were scouring his personal information and had knowledge of things suggesting they’d been surveilling him made him trust them even less than he already did. They’d saved him at Martha’s house, which he was obviously grateful for. They’d also apparently followed him to the Cliff Walk halfway across the state. They’d hacked his life. They’d manipulated Allison’s memories. He reflected on all that for a moment and his head swam with a sudden realization. Not only did he not trust them, they didn’t trust him.
“So what are you waiting for?” Kane said to them, flashing an insincere smile. “A secret handshake? You want us to paddle your asses? You’re members now! Go forth and get yourselves killed!”
“Kane!” Zara snapped, her face crimson in anger, shooting him a withering stare. “That’s enough!” She forced a chagrined smile for Felix and Allison, but a fire was burning in her dark eyes and Felix sensed she wasn’t someone you wanted to piss off. “Back in the day, there were initiation rites and trials, but, well, that was a long time ago. Our admissions standards these days are pretty straightforward. If you’re a Sourceror and not with Lofton you’re in. I’ll be in touch when I have something for you. Until then, be safe and be careful who you trust.”
Kane and Lilly, Brit, Anquan, Zara and the others who hadn’t bothered to introduce themselves made their way for the rear exit between the lectern and the choir stalls, slipping out into the night, speaking softly.
Felix and Allison were left alone, the candles still burning and flickering, shuddering against the air currents as the door closed. They stood there for a long while, staring at each other with mirroring looks of confusion.
“I guess we should go,” Felix said finally and they retraced their steps down the aisle.
“I’m not sure I want to belong to that club,” Allison whispered to him. “Even if I am a Sourceror.”
Felix could sense the smile on her face. “No shit,” he replied quietly, speaking in a hushed tone in case someone was lingering out of sight. “Total train wreck. I didn’t think they’d be so…pathetic.”
“Hey!” a voice called out to them as they reached the vestibule. It was Professor Malone, waiting for them by the doors. “Don’t judge them too harshly,” he said, appearing to choose his words very deliberately. “It’s a hard life and they’re doing the best they can.”
“What the hell’s wrong with Kane?” Felix asked.
The professor frowned and ran a hand over his beard. “Before Zara, my wife was the Master of our Fortress. She was a wonderful woman and a brilliant Sourceror, capable of things I didn’t think possible. But she was…cautious. During her time, she instituted a rule for all members of our Fortress. If you had a child, you had to place that child up for adoption. There were no exceptions. Her reasoning was sound and her heart was in the right place. When the Protectors identify Sourcerors, they kill off their entire bloodline, children, babies—it makes no difference to those animals. Kane and his wife were forced to give up their baby girl. They were resentful. Still are. It didn’t matter my wife and I made the same sacrifice—our son, Jalen.” His eyes moved to the floor for a moment, the creases in his forehead deepening. “Your parents, Allison, refused to give you up. They fled the Order, hoping to find a more…normal life.” His eyes softened. “I’m afraid the Protectors didn’t give them an opportunity to live out their dream.” He placed a hand on her arm. “A word of warning. I see that look in your eye and I know what yo
u’re thinking. Do not seek them out. You could kill a dozen and it would not bring your parents back. We have a saying that goes back to the Dark Ages. A heart that aches for revenge is soon cut out. Do not marginalize the Protectors because they aren’t Sourcerors. They are cunning and their numbers exceed ours by a factor of thousands. My wife, with all her abilities, didn’t think they were much of a threat to her.” He paused, his voice catching in his throat. “When I found her that morning, they had taken her heart. There were no signs of struggle.” He locked eyes with Allison. “Don’t let your hatred control you.” He brought a forefinger to his temple and tapped it twice. “And never forget to make use of your greatest asset.”
“Professor,” Allison said softly, “do you know what happened to your son?”
The professor nodded, his face hard and bitter. “He’s with Lofton. My only son—the son we gave up to protect—is a Drestianite.”
Chapter 20
Morning Flight
Caitlin dragged her carry-on bag behind her, making her way along a bumpy path to 1st Street, praying the car was already there waiting for her. She’d contacted the taxi company from Downey’s lobby, afraid that a call from her room would wake Allison, though she was in a deep sleep and hadn’t stirred from the second her eyes had closed. Clutching her Louis Vuitton against her side, she repositioned her backpack, shifting the weight to ease the tension pain cramping her neck. It was a quarter till five, still dark out, and despite the announced increase in campus security and volunteer off-duty cops, she shared the path with only a squirrel, who gave her a mistrustful glance before scampering up a tree.
Caitlin was going home.
She hadn’t told her friends. They would only try to convince her to stay, and that just wasn’t an option she was willing to entertain. Her parents didn’t even know she was about to board a plane. She couldn’t tell them the truth, of course, not after Allison warned her a slip of the tongue would put her and everyone she knew in body bags, but she had an excellent selection of excuses at her disposal for wanting to go home: shooters had planned a massacre on campus; Numbered Ones had been filmed killing people in a forest not far from PC; and she could even reach back to last semester and remind them that the Faceman, the most prolific serial killer in U.S. history, had been living in a house a few miles from campus. Her parents would be begging her to get on a plane.
Caitlin was falling apart. Her mind was in shambles, she couldn’t stop shaking, and the simplest tasks, like calling her parents, seemed overwhelming. Her eyes filled with tears again at the mere thought of talking to her mom and dad and she blinked them back. Last night she’d stopped talking altogether after Allison went off in search of Felix. She couldn’t speak without crying, as if opening her mouth signaled her tear ducts to start spilling a seemingly endless reservoir of tears, so she’d opted to keep her thoughts to herself and her tears in their ducts. Lucas wanted to relive every gory moment of the terrifying affair at the quarry and Harper seemed game once she finished her second glass of wine, courtesy, once again, of Lucas’s agent (apparently a congratulatory gift for something Caitlin didn’t ask about, and if Lucas had told her she couldn’t remember the conversation). When Allison came back to the dorm in the small hours of the morning and crawled into bed, Caitlin, already unable to calm her raw nerves, watched her warily from across the room, pretending to sleep, afraid to move. She thought she knew Allison, but after yesterday…
That wasn’t the worst of it though. Not by a long shot. She’d watched a monster bite off a woman’s head. Then it stood there and grinned malevolently as it swallowed it. Swallowed it whole. The memory caused a dropping sensation in her stomach, like she was on the express elevator free-falling to street level. She felt dizzy and nauseous and tried to breathe through her nose, to slow everything down, but it had the opposite effect and she panicked, her shuddering breaths puffing rapid and smoky. It felt like the oxygen had been drained from the chilled air and she struggled to walk straight, her carry-on veering off the path, bouncing through the grass. Caitlin had watched monsters eat people and that simply wasn’t something she was meant to see. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t right. They hadn’t just eaten them either, they’d ripped them apart and reveled in the pain they inflicted on their victims. Victims. They weren’t victims at all, and that fact was also so very confusing for Caitlin. One had tried to kill Allison, threatened to remove her head with the strangest knife she’d ever seen. Allison—her wonderful roommate from a small town on the Oregon coast—smashed the man’s face through a window and knocked him nearly unconscious without breaking a sweat.
The streetlights on 1st Street flickered through the swaying branches and she squinted, searching for a parked taxi, hoping she wouldn’t have to wait for it on the sidewalk. It was dreadfully cold, and she didn’t have the capacity to suffer the elements while her world was coming untethered.
Felix, she recalled bleakly, and his name alone nearly knocked her to her knees, as if the earth and sky had altered positions, distorting her sense of balance, of right and wrong, of good and bad, of everything she thought she understood about the world. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this. Not her stable family, her loving parents, her private schooling and privileged upbringing, her Catholic faith. Nothing. She had witnessed Felix—witnessed with her own eyes—doing things that were physically impossible. He moved things—enormous things—without touching them. Fire sprang from his hand, and from wherever else he wanted it to. He’d just look at something, and then there it was—fire! Her cheeks were streaming with tears. She hadn’t realized she was crying and didn’t bother to dry her face. Why did it matter? The squirrels wouldn’t care.
Fire, she thought numbly, confused and afraid. How can that be? How can you will fire into existence? Monsters? Monsters eating people. Felix smashing them with pipes and silos. Burning off their faces. Melting them. So much blood. So much carnage and death. So much—
She glimpsed a whisper of movement from the corner of her eye and felt the softness of cloth on her face, a firm pressure covering her nose and mouth, pulling her back into something that wasn’t there a moment before. She made a move as if to feel for whatever was behind her, but her hand faltered before her elbow could even bend. Then her eyes fluttered and she felt herself tumbling into darkness.
***
Leviticus scooped her up easily in his strong hands and carried her off the path, moving noiselessly among the trees, heading for the car he’d left running on 1st Street. He paused for a moment to slip the washcloth back into his jacket pocket, zipping it shut. It was small and square and made of cotton, a purchase he’d made in the baby aisle at Target—three for $4.99. The liquid drug was similar to chloroform but much more potent. The man on the phone supplied him on request. It came in brown unmarked bottles, like a bootlegged version of hydrogen peroxide. It even fizzed a little when he moistened the cloth. Five seconds is all it took. Five seconds and she’d be out for an hour. Breathing in the drug for longer than five seconds would give you more time, but there were risks that accompanied extended exposures, like the strapping kid from Oklahoma a few years back who never woke up.
Of course he didn’t tell the man on the phone he hadn’t tested the boy he’d nabbed as he slept in his bedroom in a peaceful suburb just outside Tulsa. Even back then, the test was a secondary concern for Leviticus. He’d always been more interested in his own needs. The boy from Oklahoma wasn’t exactly stale, but it just wasn’t the same when the blood was no longer pulsing through the veins, breathing warmth and life to the flesh, giving it a certain…vitality. He lowered his face to Caitlin’s head and drew in a deep breath through his nose. He felt himself stir, and reminded himself to stay calm, to execute the plan, to carry out the little details, to make no mistakes.
The blue Honda Accord he’d stolen yesterday was unlocked, streams of white smoke billowing out from the exhaust. He placed Caitlin’s bags on the floor in back and opened the passenger door, easing her into her
seat and fastening the shoulder strap. Sliding in behind the wheel, he allowed himself a cautious smile, taking a second to appreciate the moment. The sky was just beginning to come alive, a pale pink light on the eastern horizon. A few trucks rumbled by, commercial vehicles delivering their goods across town. He looked over at Caitlin, head tilting down peacefully, comfortably at rest. Trembling with excitement, he brushed his thick fingers over her cheek, caressing the soft contours of her lovely face. So young. So stunning. So tender.
He ran a hand under his shirt, feeling the blisters, knowing they would soon recede, and the terrible pain with it, once he was done with her. Unable to resist, he leaned over and sniffed her face, letting her warm breath drift over him. Saliva dribbled over his lip and down his chin, dripping onto her leg as he imagined what it was going to feel like when he tasted her.
Chapter 21
The Talk
Allison found Felix stretched out comfortably on the long couch in the back of the room. She let out a little breath, looking slightly relieved to see him and he wondered if she thought he might not follow through with his promise to speak to their friends. She smiled at him, nodding down at a tray in her hands that hugged a pair of coffee cups and a paper bag from the Caffeine Hut. Lucas and Harper appeared a moment later, looking awkward and excited, like they’d never been to Woodrow’s Room before.
“Toasted cinnamon raisin bagel with butter on one side,” Allison announced, stepping around the huge mahogany table and between the leather chairs across from the couch.