The Poison of Ivy

by Jessica King

  The studio around Wilkins and Lynn went quiet.

  “So then, the group of killers you were a part of … hunt you?” Lynn asked.

  Wilkins nodded. “Isolation from your former allies and not only that, you are now being targeted for death.”

  There was murmuring in the live audience, and a new camera angle showed crowd members staring at each other in awe.

  “That’s what makes it such a flawless system,” Wilkins said. “Because even if someone is able to stop the gaming-addiction mental processes, they are kept in by the only stronger thing: fear.”

  “Kill or be killed,” Lynn said.

  Wilkins nodded. “Exactly. After that first kill, Kingsmen are considered ‘activated.’ But in reality, they’ve just been enslaved to their cause.”

  “Which is to kill people the Kingsmen think are witches.”

  “The Kingsmen believe that witches are the source of evil in the world. So that’s where you’re able to count on the radicals—people who just might be happy to kill someone who believes something different from them—to join. These people with personality types that are able to narrow in on this hive-mind group goal of eliminating evil … they are going to be the most lethal.”

  The host rose from his chair and shook hands of either of them, announcing that after a short break, they’d be bringing in another psychologist who specialized in the biological connections between serial killers’ actions and their physical brain development and hormones. Ivy decided it was best to leave it at that and began to move the furniture of her motel room. First went the dresser—heavy despite its emptiness—against the door. She set the TV onto the floor and slid the stand against the end of the dresser. Then came the armchair, and she placed the back of it against the TV stand. The bed was already against the back wall, leaving a tiny space between the conga line of motel furniture and the bed. She zipped closed her hard-shell suitcase and stuffed it between the seat of the armchair and the bed’s frame.

  Now if someone tried to open her door while she was asleep, they’d find it barricaded all the way to the wall. Impossible to open, unless her suitcase cracked under pressure, though that seemed unlikely. She’d had the thing for years, and it had withstood several unsightly attempts at zipping, stuffing, throwing, and tumbling down the stairs. She had faith in its ability to save her from a murderer.

  She laid her head back on the pillow and closed her eyes, right as her phone rang. “Hello?’

  “How’s it going?” Sandra had been asking for regular updates since the bomb debacle had been aired on all the news stations, including both her father’s highly conservative station and Sandra’s rather liberal preference.

  “Pretty good,” Ivy said, trying to find a comfortable position on the bed. The springs seemed far too close to the layer of bedding against her back, and she shifted to a side, looking down at the line of furniture barricading her motel door. She always told Sandra things were “pretty good,” even if she barricaded herself for safety and had seen two bodies at work.

  After Sandra’s reaction to the first time Ivy had recounted seeing a dead body as part of her day at work, Sandra had made Ivy a cake so she would “feel better about seeing a body.” Since then, she’d decided it was best not to tell Sandra whenever she encountered dead bodies. Sandra was the type of person who would try to send her flowers even though she hadn’t known the dead.

  “You’re in a new place, right?” Sandra asked.

  Ivy flipped over to her stomach, another spring digging into the space between her ribs. She ignored it, her hand falling over the edge of the bed. She ran her fingers across the rigid part of her gun’s grip. “Yeah, yeah,” Ivy said. “Some of my stuff is in the old place, but I’m laying low for now.”

  There was a long pause, and Ivy heard a scampering noise in the background. “You could always stay here,” Sandra said. A loud bark.

  “He let you get a dog?” Ivy asked, surprised.

  Sandra’s voice suddenly lowered, and Ivy could nearly see the conspiratorial look on her face. “Well, my friend just had a baby, and the baby seems to be allergic to dogs, so we’re fostering Frankie until my friend can find a forever home for him.” Sandra said, “forever home” like “fur-ever home,” and Ivy wondered how many dog adoption ads Sandra had been watching recently.

  “But you want to keep Frankie,” Ivy said.

  “Of course, I do! He’s a little angel.” A crash in the background. “A little angel who doesn’t realize how long his tail is,” Sandra said. “I’ve told your father to stop leaving glasses on the coffee table.” Sandra’s breathing became audible, and Ivy imagined her trying to sweep up the broken glass before her father would see. She knew her father—a hard shell on the outside that would say the “dog keeps breaking things,” but a gooey interior that would eventually crack once the dog flipped over for a belly rub.

  Ivy laughed a little, and she felt the tightness in her shoulders relax a fraction. “Just keep at it, he can’t say no to you.”

  Sandra laughed too. “Oh, I know. Frankie is as good as ours.”

  Ivy heard a scoff through the phone, though it sounded muffled by distance. “I heard that!”

  Sandra’s voice sounded like sunshine when she smiled, and Ivy thought there might be a smidge of light coming through her cell’s receiver. “Are you sure you’re all right? Do you need us to bring you anything?”

  Ivy turned to her other side, maneuvering herself into an area where the springs had spread just enough for a tall body to fit comfortably. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

  “Hmm,” Sandra said, calling her bluff. “All right. We love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  Ivy stared at the blank wall for a long time, allowing herself to finally debate her idea of using herself as bait for a Kingsmen killer. If she were to post on social media that she was doing something like hiking alone, surely, she’d be able to lure the next Kingsman assigned to her and take them in for questioning. It wasn’t a plan she particularly liked, but Andrew Wilkins’ words rang in her head: “The recruitment process is always onboarding more members, so it would be difficult for this point of giving up to eventually dry out the supply of Kingsmen entirely.”

  How many more Edward Thornes would there be—normal people turned into serial killers? Or worse, how many men who found joy in the chase like Reid Carter would be given the community they needed to find their joy in killing to be a holy outpouring, a source of creating good in the world?

  She checked the new Kingsmen site. Mason was third on the leaderboard, though Reid—“Varsity”—would likely fall off from his number one spot soon. A Kingsman named Calla was second, though it showed he or she hadn’t made a kill recently. Reid had made a more recent Kingsmen kill, with Annie Finch, since the witness from Edward’s house had not gone toward his total high score.

  She refreshed the page out of habit—she’d become too used to refreshing the page. But when she did, Mason’s alias, FreeMason, rose to the first spot.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Monday, March 13, 2017, 8:49 p.m.

  They’d decided to kill two birds with one stone. Lindsey and her crew had come by to interview Cassiopeia and some of the witches, and Mason was able to use Lindsey’s sound guy for some help on the “kill video” he was going to use to boost himself to the top of the Kingsmen leaderboard.

  Mason stood close to the man controlling the sound of Lindsey’s documentary, the two of them hovering over a video Mason had sent to the other young man. “So, I’ve memorized the pattern here,” he said, pressing play on the phone. A series of gunshots rang out, and Mason tapped his fingernail on the side of the phone in perfect unison with the gunshots.

  “Great. So, as long as my phone is turned all the way up on the speaker and you are in perfect sync like that, it should sound like the gun is actually going off,” Lorenzo said. They’d attached a remote light to the end of the pistol, the switch
attached to the trigger of the gun, and Mason pointed the empty gun toward the ground and pulled the trigger. A quick flash of light matched his movements. The sound guy smiled. “Okay, I think that’s it. You still got that pattern?” he asked.

  “Remember to fake the recoil,” Lindsey said. “You’ll get a little from the fake shot, but there’s no bullet, so amp it up a bit.”

  They placed the phone far away, facing Mason.

  Twelve of the L.A. coven volunteers sat around a lit candle surrounded by leaves and petals—a fake setup made to look like they were performing a spell or ritual. “Okay,” Mason said. “Thank you so much for doing this. I’m hoping that I’ll be a trusted member of the Kingsmen within a few days to take them down and you can get back to your regular lives.”

  The eleven witches and one wizard nodded. “So, what you’re going to need to do is, I’m going to pretend to shoot each one of you. Activate your fake blood packet when I do. You’ll be out of frame, but you’ll need to look completely dead by the time I come by to film you. There can’t be a break in the filming though, so do it quick, and then slump, you know, against any furniture, or just fall onto the floor. And scream or something until I pretend to shoot you, and make sure to cut off abruptly. I’ll then come by, and I’ll count each of you, so please don’t breathe or anything before, during, or after your number.” Mason numbered each of them off, number one being the first “shot” he planned to take.

  “Let’s do it!” Lindsey said. “I’ll stomp when we start the audio. Do you know how long the pause is?”

  Mason said that he did. It was risky, but if he could pull off a mass shooting video as opposed to twelve individual “stabbings,” he’d boost his score much more quickly—and believably. He walked over to his phone and started the video with his gun already up in one hand. Once he made sure it was recording, he walked back in front of them. Lindsey stomped, and Mason paused, ready for the audio. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Pause. Nine witches were pleading. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Pause. Five witches screamed for him to stop. Shoot. Pause. Four witches were saying they’d stop following the Prophetess. Shoot. Shoot. Pause. Two witches screamed incoherently. Shoot. Shoot. He’d memorized the moments to shoot like pieces in a melody. The room rang with eerie silence after the screaming. He walked over to his phone, picked it up, and moved toward the first person in the line of his “victims.”

  “One, two,” he said, beginning to count as he scanned the camera across each body, some with fake blood on their torso, some on their neck. “Eleven, Twelve.”

  Mason stopped filming. “Okay,” he said. Cassiopeia was crying even as her friends lifted themselves from the floor.

  “It looks so real,” Cassiopeia said. “It’s like watching my nightmares happening right in front of me.” She assured the people around her that she was fine, but it was true. Even without the bullets in the gun, he still felt like it was real. It was scary.

  Mason sent his footage to the anonymous number he’d been contacting and waited. He refreshed the Kingsmen page over and over until finally, his name was on the top. Cassiopeia’s voice was still wavering when she walked up behind him, looking over his shoulder at the website.

  “So, are you going to ask to meet with them?”

  Mason nodded. “I’m going to wait a bit, establish myself as the top of the leaderboard for a while—which shouldn’t be hard considering the other two have seemed to stop entirely, and fourth place is very far behind. Then I’ll ask if I can meet with whoever is on the other end of this,” he said, motioning to the number at the top of his phone. “It’s definitely a second number, something untraceable, but if I can see what he looks like, we’ll be in business.”

  Cassiopeia nodded. “Just be careful with some of this stuff. We had a guy on the inside. Jeremiah Ethan. He’s in jail right now awaiting trial.”

  “Did he kill anyone?”

  “No, but he was the one assigning witches and trying to make it difficult for Kingsmen to reach active status.” When we had him helping, we only had two or three Kingsmen to deal with at a time.

  “So, shouldn’t he be let go after his trial?” Mason asked. Surely, he would be released himself if he were arrested for “murder.”

  Cassiopeia shook her head. “He’s going to plead guilty.”

  “Why?”

  “The Kingsmen watch their people closely, Mason. If he gave away that he was working for us … I don’t know what would happen to him. We’re going to help him appeal after the Kingsmen are taken down. But until then, he’s staying there for his own safety.”

  Mason hoped his swallow wasn’t audible and tried to put on a fake confidence. “Well, with my help, we’ll hopefully take them down.”

  Cassiopeia nodded. “You don’t need to take them all down. You need to find their king. That’s what Jeremiah had been working on before he was arrested for his role in the first Kingsmen site.”

  “And the police don’t know this?”

  “They can’t,” Cassiopeia said. “We’re worried there’s Kingsman among the police force.”

  Mason’s eyes flickered. Had Ivy and Vince told anyone else about his plan? He made a mental note to ask them about this later.

  “Did he have any leads on the kings?”

  “Just one,” Cassiopeia said. “There was a man named Lee Patterson, who was an active Kingsmen who was arrested and charged with something like four counts of murder in the first degree. He apparently had seen the King in person—we think the King recruited him personally. But as soon as the LAPD found that out, Patterson turned up dead in his cell before they could ask.”

  Mason bit down on his tongue. “And I’m trying to find the guy who ordered that.”

  Cassiopeia pressed her lips together. “Look, I’ve never been a fan of weapons. But, if you do happen to meet the King … you better be ready to shoot first, Mason.”

  Mason felt for the gun he’d fired in a farce of a mass murder only moments before. He’d fired the thing with real bullets a few times in the shooting range. But surely, it’d feel different if he shot a real person. “I don’t know if I can shoot a person for real,” Mason said. His voice sounded small and young to his ears like his pre-teen self had just spoken instead of the man he was now.

  “Then I’d say you best prepare,” Cassiopeia said. Her eyes were kind, but her words didn’t leave any room for discussion. “No matter how much I hate whoever is running all this, it’s naïve to say that the King isn’t smart. It won’t take him long to figure out your allegiances, and when he does, you will be in a kill or be killed situation. Even if you manage to escape him, you’re on the Work in Progress list for the rest of your life. Do you understand what I mean?”

  He did. He knew coming into this position that he’d be risking his life. But he didn’t realize there were quite so many ways to risk it.

  “You’re brilliant, Mason,” Cassiopeia said. “But you need to make sure you are more brilliant than the King.”

  Mason tried to laugh to break the tension. He was smart; he knew that. But smarter than the leader of a national cult? “That’s a tall order.”

  “It is.”

  +++

  Tuesday, March 14, 2017, 8:42 p.m.

  Ivy had slept most of the day in preparation for her graveyard shift with Vince, but she still made herself two cups of coffee upon entering the station.

  Vince had his late-night snacks piled on his desk, a regular collection Ivy had seen many times during their first few months as partners when they paid their dues through night shift after night shift.

  “You’re missing the carrot sticks,” Ivy said.

  Vince waved her off. “We both know I’m not eating those.”

  “You’re also missing the Oreos.”

  “You mean you’re missing the Oreos. I won’t be bringing any of those into the station until you can control yourself around them.” Vince bit into a chip, the crunch putting an exclamation mark on his point.

  Ivy sipped he
re coffee without another word. She was notorious for stealing a certain sandwich cookie from her partner on a regular basis.

  “Love paperwork,” Vince mumbled, his fingers flying across the computer.

  Ivy had to admit, she didn’t want to do it, either. There would be a lot of paperwork in preparation for Edward Thorne’s court case, and both of their desks were stacked with witness reports from the L.A. coven fire, the Prophetess gathering shooting, as well as Marisol and Jayda’s recent reports and several files for each of the three women Reid had killed before his own death … which required more paperwork.

  “I haven’t opened a window in days because I’m scared it’ll all blow off,” Ivy said, pointing the window where she’d placed a ‘PLEASE DON’T OPEN THIS ONE IT BLOWS ON MY DESK’ sticky note. “I don’t have enough paperweights to hold all this stuff down.”

  Vince shook his head as the two of them returned to typing, and Vince returned to his munching.

  It was nearly five in the morning when they were called in. Joyce was on the other end of the line. “Senator’s wife called. She thought someone was following her. I’ve got the initial report, but she didn’t really see a whole lot. Can you two come take a look?”

  Happy to take a break from their computers, they drove to the Senatorial mansion.

  Chloe Cline was still in tears when they arrived. “Someone was following me in the house!” she said. Her husband held her close, but she waved him off. “I came downstairs to let the dogs out, and then I went to make some tea, my throat was hurting. The dogs started barking and were already at the door when I let them back in, which was odd. They usually stay out in the yard until I call them.”