by Rain Oxford
Yeah, except when you’re up against an eleven-year-old girl. That wasn’t giving Astrid enough credit. “Fine. If there is no weakness in this magic, then teach me how to use its strengths.”
“Why should I?”
“There are worse things than death, and I’m sure Dr. Martin can enact them on you. Besides, Veronica is completely showing you up.”
“I trained her myself.”
“Then you can’t do it?”
“I didn’t say that. Had I taken you as a child like I wanted to, you would have become so powerful. Veronica can’t see the future like you can. To truly master mind control as I had, you need the same training that I got.” With no warning, his power engulfed me and I was pulled forcefully into his mind.
* * *
“What is it?”
John was sitting at a metal table across from his father. The room was small with plain brick walls and nothing to look at but the challenge in front of him. His father looked young, but I knew he wasn’t. John was small, cold, and afraid.
Between John and his father was a wooden chest. Arthur knew what was in the box and was testing John, trying to make John discover it from his mind. John tried. I felt him attempting to break through Arthur’s mental barrier. John’s mind was so focused, but it was driven by desperation and fear.
“What is it?” Arthur shouted impatiently.
John flinched. “I don’t know,” he said. He was young, but I couldn’t tell his exact age when I was looking through his eyes.
Arthur sneered. “Take off your shirt.”
“Please don’t.”
“I won’t tell you twice!”
John shook as he stripped off his shirt. I felt his fear and pain. A moment later, Vincent entered. He was ten. He looked at his father with worry in his eyes. After a moment, his expression fell blank. Arthur handed him a whip and Vincent wasted no time.
“Stop!” John cried.
“Make him stop,” Arthur said coldly. “Otherwise, he’ll stop when you’re dead.” With that, Arthur left the room.
* * *
A moment later, I was in a new memory. Vincent and John were a couple of years younger. Both of the brothers were strapped to chairs as Arthur drew blood from them. On the table before them was a deck of cards.
“Queen of hearts,” Vincent said.
Arthur flipped the card and it was the queen of hearts. Vincent breathed easier. He predicted the next three cards successfully until he reached the fourth one. After a moment of hesitation, he shook his head.
“There are too many of them.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t…”
“What is it?” Arthur barked.
“Ace of… diamond?”
I heard the current that surged through Vincent. For an instant, the pain on Vincent’s face broke John’s heart. Vincent couldn’t even scream. John closed his eyes and wished he was powerful enough to fight his father.
After a while, John opened his eyes in time to see Arthur cleaning up. Vincent was unconscious. Then Arthur touched his forehead. “You will forget this.” He snapped his fingers and Vincent’s eyes opened.
“What happened?” Vincent asked, confused.
“Training.”
Vincent smiled. “Did I do well?”
“Better than last time, but you still have a long way to go.”
I knew from John’s mind that Arthur always made Vincent forget the torture he received. For that reason, Vincent was voluntarily obedient and eager to please. Arthur never made John forget; he wanted John to remember what happened when he failed.
Arthur pushed both of them to their limits every single day. Vincent remained blissfully ignorant, while John internalized that vileness. But the worst of Arthur’s training was not inflicted on John.
* * *
Two-year-old John was standing up in a crib, crying. A woman entered, shushing him. “Sei ruhig, hosenscheißer.” I didn’t know her words, but I knew her meaning from John’s mind. I also recognized her whisper as the woman who stopped Vincent from killing John.
She was a young woman with warm hazel eyes and braided sandy brown hair. She picked him up from his crib and carried him to another room, where she set him on the bed and climbed under the covers. John didn’t have coherent thoughts, but there was familiarity and comfort, telling me she had quieted him this way often.
She sang a lullaby to him in a language I didn’t recognize, but her voice was astonishing. I had never heard anything like it. When she finished, however, John wasn’t asleep.
“Mama,” he said.
“She can’t come,” the woman said. I realized then that Vincent had been wrong; the woman wasn’t his mother.
She was John and Vincent’s sister.
* * *
Time was skipping around too much to follow. John was old enough to walk and have coherent thoughts when he found his mother in her room, crying. Elizabeth was a warm person who tried very hard to protect her children without disobeying her husband.
John didn’t bother to ask her what was wrong; his mother was a servant in her own home. Arthur believed a woman’s purpose was to make babies, raise them, and serve her husband. John’s mother was not allowed to think for herself. John had seen her cry many times.
This was different, though.
John felt a strange presence near, yet he turned away. He didn’t have the intuition I did. Besides, his father insisted he not care about his mother, and he didn’t want to anger Arthur.
“I have to get out of here. I can’t take this anymore,” Elizabeth said.
John took two steps away from the door, only to stop when he heard a male’s voice. “I can help you.”
“Arthur is too powerful,” she argued.
“Not as powerful as me. I can get you away from him.”
“How?”
“I’ll make you a deal.”
John peeked through the crack. The man was standing just inside the closet, where the light couldn’t quite reach him. John thought it was strange, however, when the shadows around him moved like waves in the ocean, despite the light source remaining still.
“What deal?” John’s mother asked.
The man finally stepped forward and John saw him. He was tall with long black hair, dressed in all black clothes. Although I knew instantly that he was a demon, young John had never seen someone like him. “I cannot protect you myself, but if you’re carrying my child, his magic will protect your mind while he is inside you.”
“You want me to have your child?”
“It would benefit both of us. If you have my child, I will be able to stay in this world, and you’ll be able to escape your husband. Once the baby is born, I will have the power to hide your mind from Arthur for the rest of your life.”
John’s mother considered it for a few minutes before saying, “Okay. I’ll do it. I have two conditions, though.”
“What conditions?”
“First, I want to take my children with me. Second, if it doesn’t work, you have to kill me.”
“Your children have to agree to go with you; I cannot make them leave their father against their will, as it is against my master’s rules. I will agree to kill you if it doesn’t work, though.”
“Can you kill him without me having your baby?”
“No. Between his intuition, visions, mind reading, and mind control, he is unstoppable.”
“How can your child protect me, then?”
“He will have my power on your world; both elemental and soul magic. His mind will be protected, as you will be until he’s born.”
“Arthur has to have a weakness.”
“His pursuit of power is his weakness.”
“What do you mean?”
“He created his children with the intention of using them, so he made them as powerful as possible. However, together, they can overpower him.”
* * *
A few weeks later, John was awoken in the middle of the night
. At first, he didn’t know what woke him, until he heard the sound again; his sister was crying.
He got up and went to his sister’s room, only to pause at the door. His mother and sister were on the bed, and his mother was trying to comfort her. His sister’s name was Summer, which he always thought fit her perfectly because she was as bright and warm as a summer day. It hurt him to see her so miserable. While Elizabeth did what she could to help her children without angering Arthur, Summer regularly disobeyed him to protect John and Vincent.
“It’s okay,” Elizabeth said. “We can get out of here.”
Summer shook her head. “It’s not okay! I’ve seen what he’s going to do to me. What he plans to do to my future son. I can’t let him.”
“We’ll escape. My mind is protected now.”
Summer wiped her eyes even as tears continued spilling from them. “Mine isn’t. He’s not going to let me go, Mother.” She took a moment to get her emotions under control and swallowed hard. “But you three can go. If I stay, he won’t go after you.”
“I’m not leaving you behind. I know what a monster Arthur is. Do you think that I wanted to be his wife? That I wanted this life at all? You and your brothers are the only things important to me.”
“He wants to breed me, Mother. John and Vincent don’t have the intuition and I’m female, so we’re worthless to him. He’s already picking out humans for me. I don’t want to bring a child into this world so that Father can---”
“He has already tried,” Elizabeth interrupted.
“What?”
“When you were fifteen, he picked out a human husband for you. I told him that the man wasn’t good enough and Arthur agreed. He hates humans, so it wasn’t difficult to convince him. It has to be human, or your child would be like your brothers. For the past few years, he’s been sleeping with human women to get them pregnant, but it hasn’t worked.”
Summer started crying again.
“That’s why we have to leave before he finds you a husband. We can leave now.”
“You aren’t listening to me. He won’t let me go.”
“I’m not going to leave you.”
New resolve filled Summer’s eyes as she stopped crying and dried her eyes. “I know. So I have to make that decision for you.”
When Elizabeth left her daughter alone and everyone else in the house was asleep, Summer took her own life.
* * *
Elizabeth tried to take her sons and leave. Realizing that Arthur would want to use him, John decided not to go with his mother. He made the same sacrifice as Summer because he knew that it was the only chance his mother would get.
Vincent stayed behind as well, but John didn’t know whether it was bravery or loyalty to their father. Mere hours after their sister’s death, Arthur wiped her from Vincent’s memory completely.
Although Vincent acted like his usual self, he could tell something was missing. John was never brave or heartless enough to tell Vincent what it was, even after he killed their father.
* * *
John reached for his brother’s mind, but it was entirely blocked by Arthur. Vincent slowly pushed John under the surface and he took a deep breath at the last second. He didn’t struggle, because he knew Vincent was physically stronger than him. It wasn’t Vincent doing it, anyway.
Arthur didn’t “teach” John how to control his powers. He had to figure it out on his own, or he would die. Yet John was giving me the ability to learn from his suffering.
Because if I didn’t learn how to defeat Veronica, I would die.
John kept pushing and pushing, but Arthur’s powers were too strong. “Let me go.” Although he knew it wouldn’t work, he wanted to get through to Vincent somehow. He remembered when Arthur gave Vincent a puppy. Vincent thought it was a sincere gift and was overjoyed. John knew better.
Arthur immediately began using that puppy against him. “Tell me what is in the box or the dog gets kicked. You’ll tell me what the code is if you want the dog to eat.” This went on for so long and the puppy received so much abuse that it got sick. He couldn’t figure out why because Arthur kept making him forget. John pushed their last memory of the puppy into Vincent’s mind.
Misery overcame Vincent and he released John. John came up for air and saw Vincent crying, but Vincent was still under his father’s control. His emotional reaction was dominating his physical response. Vincent couldn’t remember it, but he hated dogs from then on.
John was tortured by his father, so he took it out on others. He threw rocks and kicked animals because he wanted to hurt his father and couldn’t. He fantasized about torturing people because he wanted them to hurt like he did. He couldn’t even fantasize about killing his father.
And then one day, while watching his brother read in the study, he considered how much better it would be if Vincent was dead. Only it wasn’t Vincent he poisoned.
He sat in front of his mirror late at night when Arthur was asleep and used his magic to embed a command into his own mind. Every day, he would make food and decide to poison Vincent, but he would put it in Arthur’s food at the last second and then immediately forget the poison altogether. It took most of two years for it to overcome Arthur, but in that time, his experiments stopped and he aged rapidly. At first, John didn’t know why his father was dying. On the last day of his father’s life, John remembered everything and he rejoiced. He was almost free.
Free to wreak havoc on the rest of the world. Twelve years in Hell had turned him into a sadistic little bastard.
Chapter 26
Finally, I was back in reality, in my own mind and body and time. I felt like it had been months. Remy, Darwin, Henry, and Dr. Martin surrounded me like they could protect me from John.
I looked at the shade of my father, standing patiently in his tiny, temporary prison. He didn’t look like a monster at that moment. “Do you understand now?” John asked.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“Understand what?” Remy asked.
“There is no secret to the mind control power,” I said. “I could do it all already.”
“Then there was no point to this?”
“There was a point— a good one. Arthur was all-powerful and on his way to immortality, but a ten-year-old kid was able to poison him to death. This wasn’t the story of a man discovering secrets and magical combinations that unlocked new powers. It was about a sick man who tortured his kids so that they had to fight to survive.”
“How does this help us?” Remy asked.
“It doesn’t help us,” Darwin answered. “It helps him. Devon has fought his mind control since he learned about John because he thought it was evil, like John was. But John wasn’t born that way.”
I shook my head. “He wasn’t. And that’s not all I learned. I may never be as powerful as Veronica in mind control, but I can get stronger with practice. However, we have to stop her before she can obtain the other powers.”
* * *
It turned out that Cy had told Darwin I was doing something dangerous in the library because Darwin had confided in him that he was worried that I put myself in danger too often. After checking on me and finding me deep in a vision, Darwin called Henry and Remy for backup in case the vision went on too long.
As we walked to the Center, I asked Darwin if he had gotten to the part about Summer in the books yet. “Yeah. Did John tell you what a pervert Arthur was towards her?”
“No, and thank fuck. I don’t want to know about that.”
“Who is Summer?” Henry asked.
“Vincent and John’s sister.” I caught them all up.
“So do we have a way to stop Veronica?” Remy asked.
“Strong emotional attacks can disrupt her control, but it’s not worth it,” I said.
“I strongly disagree,” Darwin said. “Speaking of weapons, I took a look at that answer Ahz gave you.”
“And?”
“Nada. Old as dirt, if not older, but no bloody clue what it means. It could be
a name, a magic spell, or his lunch order. I love this kid. Do you think Rita would let Amelia and me adopt him?”
“Let’s ask Ahz.”
“If he wants me to adopt him?”
“What he was trying to say.”
* * *
We found Ahz in Henry’s room with Scott. Henry had created a cardboard floor so that Scott could go wild. Ahz was painting what looked like an ancient temple on the side of a mountain while Scott painted a volcano in the mountain. Their combined work was so large that they weren’t even using paper; they were painting over the entire floor.
“What are you painting?” I asked.
Scott shook his head. “I don’t know. He started painting that and I thought it needed a volcano.” Ahz, of course, ignored us. Loki was curled up on Ahz’s back as he bent over his work.
Darwin walked right into the room, not bothered by the painting. He’d lost his shoes at one point, so he wasn’t causing any damage. He knelt in front of Ahz and pulled out the paper. “What is this?” he asked, showing it to Ahz.
Ahz whined and shied away from it. Loki must have felt Ahz’s agitation, because he crawled into Ahz’s pocket.
“Is it a weapon? A person who can help us?” Ahz scooted away from him.
“We have to stop Veronica,” I said. He stopped. I entered the room, sat on the floor in front of him, and took the paper from Darwin. “Asgard, look at me.” His eyes went to his painting. “This is important. Look at me. I need you to understand.” Reluctantly, he looked at my chest. “Veronica hurt the elementals. You know that and you didn’t like it. That’s why you came here. She’s going to do worse.”
When Ahz reached for another marker, Henry sat next to me and purred. “Asgard.” Distracted by the unusual sound, Ahz raised his eyes up to Henry’s mouth. “Tell us how to stop Veronica.”
His eyes went to the paper and then he reached out, slowly, and touched it. I hadn’t realized until then that he had been finger-painting and there was red paint on his hand. It left creepy, almost bloody prints on the paper. His hand wobbled as he reached for it, like he couldn’t see it.