The Tree

  Called the Jester bloodline, they are believed to originate only on the British Isles. In truth, no one knows much of these descendants. The need to cover themselves with fabric and masks comes to the bloodline later in life; a psychological need that seems universal. They have the ability to create masterpieces of costuming and makeup that can make them look like anyone, but they prefer their obvious masks and motley. Older members are rarely if ever seen uncovered. People that have caught glimpse of them unclothed tell tales of skin actually turned to fabric, and of faces that look like masks already. They can speak but rarely feel the need to. Their powers lie in the direction of misdirection, the stage, and costuming. Many go into theater work, either as stage managers, stuntmen, costumers, or makeup artists. There are a small but noticeable minority of jesters that uses their talents towards darker ends, becoming some of the most dangerous assassins in the known world. Their masks and motley change colors and designs without discernible pattern. No one knows if this is an aspect of their power or simply a matter of quick-change. Some have suggested the masks and motley serve as communications to others of their blood.

  The phone rang and Marian jumped.

  “Agent-in-Charge,” Hilarie answered.

  She watched Hilarie’s face spasm for a moment before it settled.

  “I want to send as many as we can spare. Arm them with everything we’ve got. If we let this continue without reprisal this will be the beachhead to something much larger.”

  Hilarie spoke of logistics for a while longer but Marian stopped paying attention to her ex-girlfriend’s words.

  Marian wanted to go. She wanted to fight alongside her brothers and sisters and protect the nest she had made for herself. She owed them for her own pain and for the boy who had died to buy her time. She remembered more of his death now, but still not his name. She began to wonder if that were not a form of punishment in and of itself. Marian opened her mouth to say something, though she knew the answer would have to be no in her still weakened state.

  She froze as the shadow of the raven rose in the back of her mind, the brief, intense moments of wisdom her people sometimes experienced.

  She was needed here. She closed her mouth.

  So Marian stayed with Hilarie as she worked to distract herself and they waited for news. As time dragged on, she stared at the hands of the ragdoll bodyguards—assassins really—and felt terrified, because she knew that much more blood would stain their hands before this was all done.

  MATTHIAS

  Matthias spent the days between the meeting at the Agency building and their departure introducing more independents to Erik. When he came to pick up Erik on the day of their departure, he was surprised to find his former aspirant dressed up. He had shaved the sides of his head, leaving a little of the stubble while the hair on top was still curled into a tight afro. He wore a suit of dark red with a black button down and black belt. He didn’t go as far as to wear a tie, and his shoes were Doc Martens, but it was still a very different look for Erik. It made him look older, and more mature. Matthias looked away as Erik opened the door. Erik threw his duffel bag in the back alongside Matthias’s own and slid into the passenger seat.

  “Where are Dayida and Ms. Jayl?” Matthias asked, smiling at the glimpse of the bracelets he had gifted Erik under the dark red cuffs.

  “They went in earlier. They want to spend most of each day at the building. I told them they could just work off-site most of the time, but they insisted,” Erik answered.

  Matthias nodded and pulled the car out of the driveway.

  “Are you ready for this?” He asked as he steered toward downtown.

  Erik laughed, a little too wildly. “No. Not at all, but I don’t see that we have a choice.”

  They spent the rest of the drive in companionable silence, only occasionally speaking to confirm this or that final thing.

  “Tae knows his part, right?” Matthias asked.

  “Yeah, I talked to him about it, made sure Daniel was nowhere around,” Erik confirmed.

  Erik had decided he wanted Tae and Elana on information duty, gleaning whatever they could about who on the other side might be turned to their way of thinking. Tae could use his vision and Elana’s intangibility would be useful. He had also tasked them with watching Tassi and Yonas.

  When they arrived downtown, Matthias parked in one of the long-term lots, not knowing how long they would be gone. Time seemed to move a little faster there, but still there was no telling what would happen on the other side. He could have returned the car to the Organization, but they hadn’t asked for it.

  They walked into the lobby and saw Dayida and Ms. Jayl waiting for them at the counter. They all greeted each other and Erik turned to the young woman behind the counter.

  “Hello, Zaha.”

  The woman smiled at them all and asked. “Is it time?”

  Erik nodded and Zaha took a deep breath.

  Ms. Jayl stepped up to the young woman and laid her hand on Zaha’s shoulder. “You need not worry. We will not let anything harm you while the portal is open, or afterward,” she said.

  Her soothing voice was the same one he remembered from his younger days. He watched as the stiffness left Zaha’s body so fast that he worried she would slump out of her chair.

  “Are the others here?” Matthias asked her.

  “We are.” Tae came around from one of the nooks behind the desk. Elliot was right behind his aspirant, wearing a pair of black jeans with a black leather jacket that made his skin glow and his dark hair and eyes more mysterious. Tae had opted for blue jeans and a gold shirt with a pattern that looked like thousands of tiny crowns traced across it. He also wore a black leather jacket.

  “Are we just waiting on Elana and Daya?” Matthias asked.

  Everyone nodded and Erik looked down for a moment before asking.

  “Has anyone seen or heard from them lately?”

  Everyone shook their head except for Elliot, who shrugged. They waited as the minutes ticked away. Matthias opened his phone and texted a few of his connections some last-minute information. Tae was chatting with Zaha while Elliot shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, not meeting anyone’s eyes. Then Elana floated in, followed by a scowling Daya, who nonetheless had her luggage slung over one shoulder.

  “We’re here.” Elana did not sound pleased.

  “Thank you both for coming,” Erik said.

  They both frowned at him and Matthias spoke up to break the tension.

  “Everyone ready?”

  “No, but let’s do this,” Tae answered, and they all grabbed up their bags. Out of the corner of his eye, Matthias saw Zaha roll her chair back and shock flash across her face before she could stop herself.

  Matthias knew Daniel had arrived. He did not turn and neither did Erik, though the young man had to be aware of the presence. They moved toward the golden elevators, where Erik gestured them all into one. The golden drop expanded further and further, becoming fatter to accommodate them all.

  Elana hovered outside.

  Erik looked at her and then to the left at something Matthias could not see and spoke. “Everyone inside. The elevator is the only way.”

  Matthias remembered this from his research. The way to the portal was sealed by a bloodline called The Winding Path of the Left Hand. They were never that numerous, and of the handful that remained, a few could create paths and doors through pain and blood. The Agency didn’t keep any records of what they paid for the creator’s service.

  The silence became tense as the doors closed.

  “This will be . . . uncomfortable,” Erik warned as he touched the wall.

  Matthias watched him make a complicated gesture with his thumb and pointer finger, drawing them together and apart at odd angles. Finally, he stopped, and the elevator began to rumble and the floor began to dip in the center.

  They all slid toward this center, and scrabbled to keep their footing. The walls were pushing them closer together as well. It wasn�
�t just the floor that was stretching. They were being pulled from either end, becoming taller and thinner. They were crushed together; pressed body to body. Crushed further, and deeper to the point where they should have been flattened. All groans and cries and yells were gone. The air itself was forced silent by the pressure.

  The feeling was not pain exactly. But it was on the verge of pain—the edge of it—that level of discomfort that threatens to turn into pain with one wrong move. Matthias could not tell whom he was pushed up against, but there was not an inch of his body that was not pressed against someone else.

  All of a sudden, right before it became unbearable, when Matthias started to think something had gone wrong and they would simply be stuck like this forever, it stopped. The golden bubble came to a stop and burst around them, showering the room with golden light that faded slowly. They were released and there was space and breath and air.

  Without thinking, Matthias reached forward and punched Erik on the arm, fairly hard. The man turned to him.

  “You could have warned us,” Matthias said.

  Erik shrugged. “It was better to do it without warning; less chance for anxiety to build up.”

  “More chance of a panic attack,” Tae said, voice higher and tight.

  Erik frowned but then nodded looking chagrined. “You’re right. It wasn’t for me to decide how you would all react. I apologize.” Most of the anger left their faces at his apology, but there was still some anxiousness. If the pathway to the portal was that traumatic, what kind of transition would the actual portal entail?

  Matthias turned to look around the room that held the portal. It made him think of a cell. There were no doors or windows, and no way in or out. The walls were plain gray stone but they had symbols scrawled all over them in gold and red: precise circles and stars. Symbols and letters he hadn’t bothered to learn. Erik moved forward and held his hands over the wall. Matthias turned toward the portal, which lay in the middle of the room in the center of four connected arches of black stone.

  Erik’s Agency liaisons, Tassi and Yonas, were waiting for them with bags over their shoulders. As per usual, they were wearing black suits.

  “They should be expecting us,” Erik said with a smirk. “Who wants to go first?”

  They all looked at each other. With a loud swallow, Elliot strode forward, turned to smile back at all of them, and stepped through the portal. Elana floated through right after. Then Daya crossed, with her powers turned on: her skin grey and rough and her face nearly featureless. Tae followed next, his eyes blazing brightly with power.

  Somewhere along the line, without discussing it, they had all decided to go through with their powers running on high, ready to defend themselves.

  Matthias looked at Erik who forced a smile onto his face and nodded at Tassi. She stepped through, her braid flashing around her in an invisible wind and a peaceful look on her face. Her bloodline was rare to the point of unknown. All Matthias had been able to dig up were a few sentences about mountains and being married to a wind god. Yonas followed right afterward with her face turning transparent, skin and muscles invisible, so that only her skull showed through. She was a daughter of death, the child of one of the Psychopomps, though Matthias couldn’t tell which. As they each passed into the portal they simply disappeared as if they had never been there at all.

  Matthias smiled as he looked back at Dayida and Ms. Jayl.

  “Take care Yida, Ms. Jayl. We’ll be back soon.”

  They both returned his smile and came forward to hug him. As Ms. Jayl embraced him she squeezed tight and whispered in his ear.

  “What did I tell you about calling me Hettie?”

  It wasn’t funny but still the laughter ripped out of him, a nervous release he’d needed. He called on the power in him and watched as the world turned to gray scale, heat glowing in his vision. He could almost see the portal itself.

  He dove forward and his body exploded. Everything about him that was physical, the material of his body, dissolved and he was just consciousness. He threatened to break apart as he was swept through space, tendrils of his self thinning and spreading. He struggled to keep them together. He traveled like this for days or weeks or months, spread out among the stars where time had no meaning and space was the dimension that he had somehow become.

  Finally he saw the end of the road. It was a bright, shining crack in the unremarkable space around him. He hit the crack and it held him like a web. Its sticky arms gathered all of him together, even the tiny bits he had lost and not noticed. He was spit out and landed in a crouch. His power was no longer surrounding and shielding him. It curled in his chest, pulsing, and waiting as it always was. He looked up to find the rest of his allies arranged in a semicircle in front of him, facing a group of monsters and humans.

  Like him, all their powers were inactive. They had been unable to maintain them during the journey.

  The portal behind him made a crackling sound and he moved out of the way. Erik landed fine, but then fell to the ground and began to convulse. His scream cut through the air. Matthias watched as Erik raised his hands, which were curled like claws, and began to rip at his own face. Matthias immediately reached for his wrists, pulling Erik’s hands away before he could do more than mar his cheeks with a few scratches.

  “Erik, what is it?” Matthias asked.

  But Erik just kept screaming; long drawn-out painful howls. His body wasn’t convulsing any longer, but Matthias could feel the strain as it tensed. Pink-tinted tears ran down his face and mucus ran from his nose and mouth. His lips bled from multiple bites.

  “What is wrong with him?”

  The voice was oddly accented; a mix of London and Surfer Boy that clashed and sounded a mess. Matthias knew it was no one they had brought with them. Whatever it was that was happening to Erik, the effect seemed to be lessening. His cries were softer now and he moved slowly, pushing himself off the ground. Matthias tried to help him but the other man shrugged off his hands. Matthias became aware that Tae was also crouched nearby.

  Erik rose to his feet, and Matthias could see the way he locked his knees to stay upright. They faced the assortment of Antes and humans, though he remembered they called humans ‘dants here.

  “I thought we were granted safe passage.” Erik’s voice was a growl and little drops of blood flew from his lips.

  There was a series of sounds, growls and screeches, along with bright flashes of light and scents that exploded and faded with unnatural speed. Matthias did not close his eyes, cover his ears, and pinch his nose, though he dearly wanted to. He focused on the monstrous shapes of the Angelics—no, the Antes that were all around him.

  “They have no idea what has happened. No one else has reacted this way.”

  Matthias looked at the man who had spoken, one of four humans he could spot in the crowd. The man looked like a middle-aged college professor in some Midwestern town, if the professor were wearing pristine white robes and clearly believed he was in charge. A middle-aged Midwestern college professor going to a frat’s toga party, and thinking he was still cool. Matthias hated him instantly.

  “You are?” Matthias asked.

  The man was about to respond when one of the Angelics came up and pushed the man back. It moved forward on multiple spindly legs. It had a pencil-thin torso with multiple arms sprouting from its shoulders. “I am Chayyliel, a Queen of the Ruling Courts and Head of the House of the Long Arm. Be welcome in Zebub.” Mouths on its shoulders opened and closed, echoing every word it said.

  “We don’t care—”

  A hand on his shoulder stopped what Matthias was about say. He turned to Erik, who shook his head.

  “And who are your companions?” Erik asked.

  Chayyliel gestured and another Angelic came forward. This one had legs that bent the opposite way and its entire body was covered in coarse black hair, with the exception of its neck and face, which were covered in tight skin so pale it had a yellow tint. It had no mouth or nose that he co
uld discern. Instead there were at least a dozen haphazardly placed eyes that seemed to focus on them all at once.

  “May I present Bethadi, Head of the House of the Darkening Sun.”

  The Angelic did not speak. Matthias did not think it could. At least not verbally. He saw nothing resembling a mouth. Then he remembered the burst of smells and lights as they had landed. Was that how this bloodline communicated? To their surprise the Agency hadn’t had much information on Zebub or the other side of the portal. Just vague things they’d made assumptions about.

  It continued like that, Chayyliel introducing monster after monster, giving Erik their name and title. Matthias missed a lot because he was focused on Erik, watching to make sure the man did not collapse again. Thankfully he seemed to be getting stronger not weaker as more time passed. One thing that Matthias did notice is that none of the other Angelics were introduced as Queens the way that Chayyliel had introduced itself. One of the facts the Agency was fairly certain about was that there were numerous Queens for each city. Was that wrong? Or did Chayyliel simply not invite any of the others?

  Finally, Chayyliel gestured and the four humans stepped forward. Along with the older man from before there was a younger man and two women. The two women both wore white and silver bodysuits that shone against their dark brown skin. The younger woman had one arm that was an intricate skeletal creation of silver and red. The younger man was in a shirt and pants that seemed to have a lot of unnecessary ruffles and whose stance was angled wrongly, as if his body had some injuries or stiffness that forced him into uncomfortable positions.

  Chayyliel chorus-voice-pointed at each as he introduced them.

  The older robed man. “Holder Mayer of Kandake Athenaeum.”

  The older woman. “Holder Riana of Hypatia Athenaeum.”