“No.” Erik didn’t find it that weird. It obviously hurt too much for Matthias to discuss. Even now.
“Ask Matthias.”
Erik simply nodded and watched the man go. After a few minutes, when he was sure Byron would not return, he picked up the bag with all of his stuff in it and sat on one of the stone benches. When the bell rang and students emerged to move from homeroom to hurry off to their next period, Erik joined the moving crowds. Some spotted him and stepped away to stare or let him pass, but most of them paid him no attention whatsoever and he moved with the flow of students.
Erik made it out the front of the school without speaking with anyone and ran smack into a crowd of paparazzi. A small crowd of them, to be sure—even with the current dramas he wasn’t a big enough draw to get the professionals up from LA. It was mostly the same hopeful, local amateurs as before, yelling more foul things at him as he waded through them.
Hey Erik, why you leaving? Caught sleeping with a teacher?
Is that what the fight was about?
Did you really beat up a girl? Guess we can’t expect any better from faggots.
Have you talked to Daniel? Does he hate you for getting him put away for two years?
He ignored it all and kept moving. When they blocked his way completely he closed his eyes and froze, refusing to give them a different shot until they moved from in front of him. He made his way to the car and was happy to slam the passenger door between himself and the vultures. He wasn’t really that angry at them. They had a job to do. People being callous and mean on the off chance they could turn a reaction shot into some money matched Erik’s low expectations for humanity.
Matthias slammed the car into reverse and floored it. Erik watched two paparazzi leap out of the way before they became marks on the pavement. Anyone who tried to block them as Matthias took them out of the parking lot got the same high-speed treatment. It was Matthias’s go-to answer to photographers. The first few minutes of their drive were silent.
“I have a question.”
“Okay.” Matthias sounded worried and perhaps Erik’s tone had given a clue that he expected this interaction to be awkward.
“Who did Byron kill?”
Matthias was silent, but Erik clocked his knuckles growing white on the steering wheel, the way his expression froze into a rictus. They were headed steadily away from the Balboa Park area toward downtown San Francisco and Erik watched the neighborhoods fly by, refusing to ask again.
“Byron.”
Erik turned at the name but nothing else was forthcoming so he decided to prompt the older man.
“Yeah, Byron. I get that this is hard for you and I don’t want to pressure you but we’re going into something really dangerous today and both our lives may depend on having all the information. Who did he kill?”
“Byron . . . that’s who he killed.”
“Byron killed Byron, like suicide? I saw him at the school.”
Matthias head whipped around. “What?” They began to swerve into another lane and a loud honking brought Matthias’s attention back to the road. He immediately signaled and pulled them over into one of the many tiny alleys that dotted the small bucolic side streets. “What did he say, what did he do?”
“First, what do you mean he killed himself? Is he a spirit now, like Elana?” Even as he said it he knew it wasn’t the case; though Elana could look extremely solid, there was also something ethereal about her at all times, as if only a thin thread connected her to the earth and the living. You felt as if Elana could float away any time she wanted and Byron had not had the same feel.
“No. Whatever is squatting in his body now is not Byron.”
“What?” He wanted to believe it was a joke.
“No. Tell me what happened in the school.” Erik sighed, recognizing the stubbornness in the tone. Slowly he told Matthias everything that happened, from Harry and Melissa to the last comment about asking who he had killed.
Matthias was silent, his hands rested on the steering wheel as if they lacked the strength to move. His slump spoke of a whole body that was exhausted.
“I was once with the Organization. My Counselor at the time was an older woman by the name of Ruth. She was hard as nails and taught me all the tricks of dealing with the Organization and Suits and other Blooded. She was great. She’d been separated from her family during the Japanese Internment and after she got out of the camp it turned out her parents were dead. She was thirteen. She lived on the streets until the Organization found her at fifteen.
“I’d been her aspirant for over a year, just about ready to take my vows to the Organization, when some of the Maestres contacted her. There was another one they wanted her to take on, he’d just awakened. I’d only been placed with her because of personality similarities and because I had gone through most of the other Agents available in the Bay Area.” Matthias looked down with a smile that slowly disappeared. “Byron and her, though; they shared a similar power. It’s rare but she took both of us on. Everything was fine for about a month. We all got along great.
“However, he could not learn control. They were both charmers and his power would flare out of control. It would call people in from the street who’d never even seen him. It got to the point where he had to live in a shielded Organization facility. Ruth and I stayed there with him. We all got close. She started to work with him almost 24/7 and I stayed to take care of both of them. Byron and I grew close.”
He stopped and Erik got the feeling he was editing out part of the story, the part too painful to share.
“The Organization took him for retraining. He was one of the lucky ones, one of the ones who came back. But it wasn’t Byron, I mean it was still him, not like now, but they had damaged him in some way. He would never talk about what happened and trying to force him to talk about it just sent him into a catatonic state.
“Still, he could control his power now and every once in a while I would catch him acting like his old self. I left it alone. I thought he would heal on his own.
“I should have tried harder.
“Then I started to notice changes in both Ruth and Byron. They became more secretive and would shut up when I walked into the room. I thought it was just bloodline stuff. Byron started to spend most of his time alone in one of the safe houses. I thought he was recovering. Then one night I got a call from the Organization. The safe house Byron was staying at had been sealed somehow. Ruth was inside and some buildup of power was happening. That was all they told me, but I hurried over as quickly as I could.”
Matthias was looking blankly ahead through the windshield, his hands clutching and squeezing the steering wheel desperately. Erik watched the man turn younger and younger. A broken innocence entered his face as he remembered and relived. He knew he was about to watch that innocence be shattered irrevocably.
“I remember it like yesterday. The safe house was this nondescript Victorian in the Haight district. It was painted blue and yellow but had turned a sickly green from the light spilling from the windows. Blooded were discreetly stationed all over the street. Somehow they had kept the Suits from noticing, but it sure wasn’t going to last long.
“Suddenly all the light that was spilling from the windows went dark, not off but dark, as if they were radiating shadow. The stupidest and bravest thing I ever did was go up to that door and try it. It opened for me like it had for none of the other Blooded. The dark light was hard to move through, as if the air had turned to thick blackstrap molasses.
“Byron was on the top floor, unconscious, covered with blood, and . . . other things, herb pastes, markers, cuts, human waste. There were candles all over the room and what looked like some old pieces of silver. The Organization took everything so they probably have more details, but I was focused on finding Ruth. She wasn’t there, wasn’t anywhere in the house. I carried Byron out; he woke up as I was heading down the steps.
“I knew immediately something was wrong. Whatever was staring out of Byron’s eyes wasn’t him, was
n’t even human. Then he spoke—”
Matthias broke off and the rage and pain in his face made Erik ache to reach over and comfort him, but this was not the time and it was not his place. This was not about comfort, this was about knowledge. He waited, silent and still, for Matthias to continue.
“When he spoke, we did what he said without question . . . just sat there and waited for the Suits to show up and then he just walked off with them. No answers, no nothing. That thing killed Ruth and Byron and just walked away as if they didn’t matter. The Organization was more occupied with getting him to rejoin the fold and learning about what he had done, and how his power had changed. They had no interest in the justice that that thing deserved.”
“So he couldn’t always control people like that?” It was comforting to think this wasn’t a power running rampant in the world. On the other hand, it definitely lent credence to Matthias’s deduction that whatever was in Byron wasn’t Byron.
“No. He was a charmer, like Ruth. Uncontrolled it can be dangerous because of the obsession it can kindle in someone, but they were never able to control others’ actions so directly.”
Erik nodded and thought about what he had been told. In seconds Matthias had started the car back up and had it on the road again.
“I didn’t mean to keep this from you. It’s just not something I like to talk about.”
Erik nodded. “I understand. There are things in my past I don’t like to talk about, but I need to know what we’re heading into. I don’t really trust any of the people there except you and I want as much information as I can get, so when this all turns sour we can get out alive.”
Matthias nodded and they were silent for the rest of the drive downtown. They pulled up to a building in the middle of San Francisco’s financial district. It was huge, going up at least thirty stories, a mix of modern streamline and ancient gothic. The outside was a uniform slate gray, a diminishing rectangle as it rose higher into the sky. Every ten floors there were gargoyles leaning over the edges, each unique and monstrous in different ways. Some were human but with other legs, ears, arms, and bodies grafted on; others were giant snakes with screaming faces pushing out of their skin. One that hypnotized Erik looked like a mass of tentacles rising from a frothing sea.
The main doors continued the aesthetic, done in normal metal and glass. As they exited the car and stood on the sidewalk, it seemed to Erik the glass was frosted into shapes, with hidden stories trapped in its depths.
“You ready?”
“No. There’s something I need to do first.”
Matthias raised an eyebrow at him. Erik simply returned the gesture and waited until the older man smirked at him and nodded.
“Okay, I’ll wait just inside.”
“Thanks.”
Erik watched Matthias climb the stairs and nod at the two Suits standing on either side of the door. They returned the gesture and opened the door for him.
Erik pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
“This is Daniel. If you have this number you know I might not be able to get back to you for a while. Leave a message, I’ll do what I can. Don’t text me.”
“Hey Daniel, it’s me again. I’m sorry. I should have taken the hint and stopped calling and pestering you a long time ago. I should have taken the hint when you refused my letters, and when you refused to see me on visitor’s day. I certainly shouldn’t be leaving you these voice mails. I just didn’t know how to let go, and how to say sorry. I kept trying to get in contact with you because I loved you but also because I wanted to make my own guilt go away. But I can say I’m sorry until the stars wink out and it won’t change anything that’s happened.
“Anyways, I just wanted to say I’m sorry one last time. Have a good life, Daniel.”
He hung up and ignored the feeling of his heart breaking in his chest. He ignored the pain that broke him from the inside out. He took time to lean against the borrowed car and take a deep breath.
Placing his phone back in his pocket, he climbed the stairs. The two women on either side of the door could have been sisters. Both had the same pale, freckled complexion and short white blonde bobs. Their eyes followed him in unison and the little wrinkled noses of judgment were identical as well. One of them opened the door for him but it was more reluctant than it had been for Matthias, as if they expected him to bite. He simply nodded and slipped inside.
His jaw did not drop but it was a near thing. The building was hollow. The ceiling was ten stories above, rooms and offices lining the walls all the way up. Everything was painted white and gold, like heaven as designed by mainstream Hollywood. On the ground floor in front of him was a garden crisscrossed with walkways laid out in golden brick.
“Follow the yellow brick road,” he whispered to himself.
“Yeah, it’s all a bit pretentious isn’t it?”
Erik stopped himself from screaming or attacking but he did glare at Byron as he turned.
“What can I say? Though our visitors seem to like it.”
“Mm-hmm.” Erik turned back to the garden but took a step to the side so he could keep Byron in his peripheral vision.
“Can I take you through the garden? You’re the last to arrive.”
“I think I’ll just wait here for Matthias, thanks.”
There was silence and Erik could see that Byron had gone perfectly still.
“So he actually told you.” The voice was soft and disbelieving.
Erik hummed agreement, seeing Matthias headed their way through the garden right now.
“Except it’s not the whole story is it? How could it be since he doesn’t know the whole story?”
“Are you offering to tell me what happened?” Erik didn’t believe it for a second. Why keep it a secret for years and then tell someone he barely knew?
“Maybe. For the right price.”
The conversation stopped as Matthias approached them.
“You okay?”
Erik nodded.
Byron interrupted. “Oh I’m fine too. This morning I had an egg and bacon croissan’wich and then I took a run through Golden Gate park—”
“And then you confronted my aspirant at his school, when you knew he wouldn’t be around me.” Matthias was in Byron’s face now, fists clenching, but Byron just smiled that same wide smile at him.
“Guilty. But in all honesty I knew he’d tell you. I just wanted to test him a little.” Byron moved past Matthias swiftly and to the edge of the garden. “And he did quite well. Now shall we join the others?”
He started down the path and they had little choice but to follow. A few steps in and Erik knew it wasn’t a normal garden. The colors were the first clue, flowers that bloomed a true black with dark blue centers, bright red grass that moved independent of any breeze, the shimmering silver-gray bark on most of the trees.
“Many of these are specimens brought over from Zebub but some are hybrids we cultivate right here.”
Matthias made a face at this. “Frankensteins? Really?”
Erik thought a lot of the plants looked lovely because they were so alien and odd. He liked it. The fruit that hung from the trees, for example, with colors that shifted with the breeze. Something chirruped off the trail, deep in the garden proper. Erik wondered what it was and felt a mild temptation to leave the path and explore.
“No. Contained experiments only. Nothing gets out of this facility unless we want it to.” Byron’s voice was stiff and formal.
Erik caught the threat in those words. How could he not? Also, the more he thought about this display of wealth and scientific knowledge, he wondered at the things they bred that they kept locked away. The things not for visitors’ eyes.
The first experiments. The mistakes, because there were always mistakes in science. And he imagined the mistakes from mixing magic and science were spectacular.
He shivered, and any urge to leave the piss-yellow walkway left his body. He kept pace with both Byron and Matthias until they were through the g
arden.
They passed into what Erik thought was a circle of cables at first, and then he looked up. Each cable was being clung to by a golden elevator that swayed as they rose and fell. Byron whistled and one immediately started moving down, like a golden drop of honey falling slowly to earth. As it came closer, Erik could see it wasn’t made of metal. Rather it looked like some sort of clear plastic, but there was something liquid in the way it moved.
They climbed aboard and the give of the material under his shoes put Erik even further on edge. The view from the inside was like looking through a champagne bubble; everything outside distorted to a swirl of gold. Byron signaled somehow and they began to rise. Matthias broke the uncomfortable silence.
“So what exactly is the problem you need our help with?”
“All will be revealed by our allies.”
“You mean the Angelics?” Matthias was tense and Erik was worried he might bite off a part of his lips in the process of biting off his words. Erik did not blame him. His interactions with Angelics had been anything but welcoming, and he was not thrilled to be walking into a room of gods knew how many of them with the only assurance of safety from people he didn’t trust. He wondered if this was just another setup.
“Of course. They aren’t what you think though.”
“Oh, you mean they haven’t kidnapped a bunch of human kids or killed Agents while going about their business.”
“All misunderstandings.” Byron turned and smiled at them.
Erik did not comment. He didn’t have enough history to say one way or another, but it sounded like Byron was spewing a party line.
Matthias snorted and they were all silent until the doors slid open on the top floor and they stepped out. The floor and roof were made of some glass that looked shaded black to Erik, but the light it was letting through shone a dull red. A table was situated in the center of the room. Tae, Daya, Elana, and Elliot were seated at the far end and at the near sat one human Suit and three Angelics.
They were not like the ones he’d first encountered. They resembled the inhuman monster of the way-station more than the human-shaped monsters he’d hurt. Though they were small enough to fit around the table, Erik still felt as if they were huge and towering over him. They filled the room while somehow not physically doing so.
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