The Poison of Ivy

by Jessica King

  After having her items rung up by a cashier who acted just as zombie-esque as he looked, the nighttime outside seemed comprised of warm colors—a dark brown sky, yellow streetlights, white stars rimmed with redness, orange reflections along a pink-gray road. She blinked, waiting for her eyes to adjust.

  The warm headlights of a car faced her, winking eyes against the dark night and road, and Ivy watched it as she walked. She had always been taught to drive closer the edge of the road, not the yellow lines separating lanes, but this car was nearly on top of the yellow, the left tires of the car eating away at the mustard line.

  It wasn’t until the car had crossed the line entirely, and those bright eyes were staring into her own that Ivy realized something was wrong. Training came back to her as she lifted the leg closest to the car and jumped. She made a heavy bouncing sound on the car’s hood as she cradled her head with her arms, her elbow slamming into the windshield. The car stopped, and she tumbled forward off the hood of the car, rolling down into a ditch that smelled of sun-scorched dirt and weeds. Ivy ran fingers through her hair, searching for injuries. Her hands shook, but she didn’t find any blood. Pain lanced up from her elbow to the tip of her pinky, fire running up and down her nerve. She blinked at the pain until it simmered like the heat turned down beneath a boiling pot.

  The car door slammed shut, and Ivy expected to see a staggering drunk driver coming to examine their near roadkill.

  “Ivy Hart.” A woman’s voice.

  Ivy’s stomach sank. It had to be her next Kingsman. But if this person meant to kill her, why not just finish the job? Why not just run over her while she was still down and finish the job? Surely the recording didn’t matter that much.

  Ivy stood, aware that she might have injuries that adrenaline was not yet allowing her to feel. She tried to pull from that chaotic energy, even as her arm stung from the inside out. She scraped her thumbnail against her pinky. She could hardly feel the contact, the nerves so upset from the harsh contact. She reached for her gun, but the very sober driver had run up to her, a gun already pointed at her nose.

  “I wouldn’t,” she said. The woman in front of her was both tall and strong. Pretty, but in the way Olympians were pretty, with jawlines cut from years of training and shoulders that did not slope in a feminine way but were clearly trained, strengthened.

  Ivy pulled her hands away, raising them.

  The woman walked closer, and Ivy prepared to take the gun. The woman smiled at her, shaking her head. She nodded at the angle of Ivy’s hands. “That’s a clear tell.”

  Ivy gritted her teeth. She’d underestimated the woman’s knowledge.

  “I want the gun,” the woman said, and when Ivy went to reach for it and the gun clicked. “I’ll take it, thank you.”

  Ivy turned her back to the gun, trying to keep her movements careful, precise, even though she was filled with liquid lightning. She felt the gun slip from the waistband of her pants and took one step away.

  “Running in a zigzag won’t work,” she said. “I have more training than you think I do.”

  “Army?”

  “Marine,” the woman said. “But I’ve had plenty of other training throughout my life.”

  “We’re on the same team,” Ivy said. “I’m LAPD.” She hadn’t turned around yet, her eyes glancing toward the highway. She was fast. But was she fast enough for this?

  “Just because you’re law enforcement does not make us on the same team,” the marine said. “You have been terrorizing our country for generations, Mary.”

  She suddenly didn’t want to hold herself up. All she wanted at the moment was to sit down on the edge of the highway. She was so tired. Every piece of her screamed how exhausted they were of this.

  “Except I haven’t, and I’m not Mary.”

  Ivy’s arms were still up at her sides, and she heard the slide of material. Before she could turn around, she felt the electric pinch of a taser. She grunted through her teeth as her back seized. Five seconds. It would last five seconds, though her brain refused to count. Couldn’t remember how to count. Her legs gave out beneath her, and she fell forward into the grass, hitting the dried dirt. Footsteps rushed up behind her, and she heard the signature whine of zip ties. Three zip ties. Her wrists touched behind her, and she was panting, the taser finally releasing her muscles.

  “Let’s go,” the marine said.

  Ivy went limp, trying to make herself heavy and immovable.

  The cold barrel of the gun hit the side of her face. “We can end it here,” the marine said. “Up to you.”

  Whatever came next couldn’t be good, Ivy knew that. But the engine-like tug of self-preservation had her standing, despite her still-shaking body, and walking toward the car. She stopped at the back door.

  “No,” the marine said. She used the gun to motion toward the trunk, and Ivy tilted her head to the side. “Yup.” She opened the trunk and pulled out a water bottle. “Drink up.”

  Ivy looked toward the highway.

  “You picked a real low-traveled area, Mary,” the marine said. “And besides, I put up detour signs and cones on either end of this section, so I wouldn’t expect anyone if I were you.”

  Ivy stared at the bottle. “What is it?”

  “Rohypnol.” She held the bottle up to Ivy’s lips. “Not enough to make you forget. Just don’t want you trying to open the trunk or anything.” Ivy stared at the marine, who laughed. “I wouldn’t lie. I’m not like you.” She shook the bottle. “Just enough to make you feel a bit woozy, and then it’ll go away. Easy peasy.”

  She pressed the barrel of the gun to Ivy’s forehead and began tipping the bottle.

  Ivy drank.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Thursday, March 16, 2017, 11:57 p.m.

  Mason pushed through the crowd, nodding and swaying along to the live band cramped on a stage far too small for a vocalist, pianist, guitarist, and drummer. The singer was standing at the edge of the makeshift stage, his toes hanging precariously over the edge, and the guitarist sat atop the piano, the only space left for him with the full drum set.

  Mason wondered if they sounded better after a few beers. He’d never been a fan of live music. There was always something throwing off the sound that was never an issue in a recording: the singer would hold out the microphone to a crowd that could only sing the vowels of whatever song the artist hoped they had memorized or the guitar was overpowering the vocals or every instrument was too loud and made all the sounds clash together, as they were now.

  He could hear chords as he walked, but the words were entirely muffled by their loudness, which simultaneously made Mason want to turn up the volume so he could actually hear and pull the chords to all their equipment at once.

  Slipping behind the bar and into the management office was a relief. The music was still loud, the pressure of it still confusing his heartbeat, but he could at least hear himself think again.

  “Am I first this time?” Mason asked Archer.

  “You are,” Archer said, “so you get the pick of the chairs.”

  Getting to pick his chair meant deciding which part of a broken chair bothered him the least. He went with a stool with one shorter leg than the others. At least he’d only rock a bit as opposed to possibly having the back of a chair crack entirely—the characteristic of his second choice.

  “Do we have more people?” Mason asked as Pink strode in, made a quick assessment of her options, and chose the chair with the broken back. She leaned forward.

  “You said something about a special guest in your message?” Pink said, looking at Archer.

  “I have a bit of a … business proposition for you guys,” Archer said.

  Judging by the mediocre crowd in his own bar, Mason wasn’t sure a business proposition from Archer was the best thing they could get, but he kept his opinion to himself as the StormStar and Zombie filed in. Archer closed the door behind them.

  “I think it’s fair to say that the Prophetess has caused us som
e grief when it comes to the growing number of witches that we’ve had to take care of,” Archer said, gesturing to each of them in turn. “And the more witches we have to eliminate, the larger our chances of being imprisoned become.”

  Pink swallowed audibly, clearly uncomfortable with the idea. Mason thought of all the men and women who had offered to go into hiding to help him with his ruse. He couldn’t imagine having killed that many people.

  He couldn’t imagine killing one person.

  “But I think we have a unique opportunity to bring up a fair trade that might benefit the Prophetess as well as ourselves.”

  Zombie grunted, and Archer held up a finger.

  “Hold on,” he said. Zombie crossed his arms, clearly not appreciating that he was not being referred to as the alpha in the room. “I … dabble in coding in my free time, and I made a chat feature on the Kingsmen site, I don’t know if you saw it …”

  Mason had seen it. He’d been afraid to use it, as he assumed lots of others would be, considering that anyone with a phone number associated with an active Kingsmen account had access to changing the site, writing blog posts, etc. A Kingsmen or an FBI under the guise of Kingsmen were both groups of people Mason didn’t want to encounter, and he hadn’t even killed anyone. He didn’t even know how he group in front of him had gotten his phone number, and he was too scared to ask.

  “So, I reached out to the Prophetess,” Archer said, and Mason felt Zombie tense beside him. “And I reached out to several of our younger female Kingsmen.”

  “This is going creepy fast,” StormStar said. She was wearing heavy makeup tonight—dark blue eyeshadow, silver liner, fake lashes. She pursed purple lips at the look Archer gave her.

  Archer shook his head. “What I mean is, that there’s a Prophetess gathering in Long Beach coming up, right? And there are regular Prophetess gatherings across the country, even though she can’t be there. It’s normal for them to try to stream the Prophetess in. If the Prophetess all of a sudden had some young, beautiful disciples that matched her brand, and we controlled those disciples, we could also control where these witches are meeting up across the country.”

  “So, you’re saying,” Mason said, “that if we hosted Prophetess gatherings on the same day and time as the gathering next week, then, what? Simultaneous mass witch shootings?”

  “That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Why on Earth would the Prophetess buy into this and promote a bunch of disciples we control?” Mason asked. “That makes no sense.”

  “But it does,” Archer said. “Because the Prophetess is clearly making a large profit off of these witch covens. But if we promise a sort of … financial incentive—”

  “And where do you plan to get that kind of dough?” Zombie asked.

  “Apparently, the King has some friends in high places. Wealthy places.”

  “You spoke to the King?” Pink asked. Her jaw hung low, showing off a large tongue piercing, and her eyes were wide, making her look like a fish who was surprised they’d been caught.

  “Course not,” Archer said. “I only have the anonymous number like you do. But I asked,” he opened his phone and let the others scroll through the messages. The only thing after the several paragraphs of plan that Archer sent was a simple line from the anonymous number:

  Let me check into it, and I will get back to you.

  The next message had come nearly twenty-four hours later.

  We can offer 1.7 million dollars.

  “Whoa,” StormStar said. “That’s pretty serious.”

  “But the fear that this will cause in the witches will be priceless. It’ll be an epidemic to their kind, and they’ll go underground. We get a break from hunting, any of the trend-witches will fall off the bandwagon, and we’ll be back to a smaller number of Prophetess followers and WIPs.”

  It was a good plan, Mason admitted. Simultaneous mass shootings would place the Kingsmen in history books and would likely scare any so-called witches away from their practice unless they were incredibly hardcore about it, which would likely mean that most of the witches who had heard about witchcraft from the Prophetess would simply stop practicing and burn all their witch paraphernalia in hopes of never being discovered by a Kingsman.

  “But we don’t know if the Prophetess will agree to this. Who knows how loyal she is to her brand?” StormStar said.

  “Not 1.7 million dollars’ worth of loyal, apparently,” Archer said. “She’s already agreed.”

  “And she told you this?” Zombie said.

  “She’s here to confirm,” Archer said. “Everyone promise not to strangle her?” Archer looked at each of them for a moment, then corrected it. “Everyone promise not to harm her in any way?”

  They all agreed.

  “Good,” Archer said. “I’ll get her. She’s in the parking lot.” Archer left his office.

  With one less person, Mason felt like the tiny room had space for more air, and he gulped it down to soothe his nerves.

  “Doesn’t it seem weird that he made this plan and then was able to get funds from the King so quickly?” Zombie asked as soon as the door—and its accompanying wails of too-loud music—had shut.

  “We could veto the plan,” Mason said. He wasn’t made for power politics, but maybe he could divide the group. A house divided couldn’t stand, right? Maybe he didn’t need to go for the King if the base fell apart.

  “And then get put on the WIP list when he does it anyway?” Zombie shook his head. “No. It’s a good plan; I just don’t like how it’s happening.”

  “He’s not asking, he’s telling us a plan,” Pink said, agreeing. “We should tell him that this is a democracy.”

  “Is it crazy to think that maybe he is the King?” StormStar asked. The room pulsed with distant drumbeats. “He’s essentially organized a mass shooting in a week, he added a messaging option to the website we all use to communicate, he managed to get 1.7 million dollars in that time, and I wouldn’t put it past his abilities to fake a simple phone message.”

  Pink’s eyebrows raised, and she bit on her upper lip. Mason could feel the tinge of fear in the room, and when Archer walked back in, no one spoke up to tell him that this group was meant to be a democracy. Instead, they shook hands with the Prophetess—decked in a tight black bodysuit, over the thigh emerald boots, and her signature waist-length white hair pulled back in an elaborate braid.

  “Pleasure,” she said to each of them as she shook their hands. She introduced herself as Delilah and dragged out the ends of her vowels.

  And though Mason didn’t quite label it as a valley accent, it was close. A man stood behind the Prophetess, who Delilah said was Ransom, but he did not shake hands and was not in any sort of gear that would suggest he was a performer like Delilah. And she was certainly a good little performer. Mason could nearly see Ransom’s muscles tense and noticed that his eyes darted across each killer’s face with an interrogating look. But Delilah couldn’t have seemed more at ease. She joked with Pink about how much she hated the bodysuit she was in and asked StormStar if there was lipstick on her teeth. She smiled at Zombie (who did not smile back) and made a joke about how she wished she could have platforms that made her his height.

  “Thank you so much for inviting me,” Delilah said. “Truly, this deal is going to be very helpful to Ransom and me moving forward.” She crossed one leg over the other, but Mason finally saw the chink in the armor: she was rapidly twisting a mood ring around and around her finger, so quickly it could have been a tiny wheel. She was nervous. “Now I’ll be making the announcement of my disciples in two days,” Delilah said. “And I understand you plan to scare my clientele at the gatherings.”

  “Eliminate,” Archer said. “There will be deaths, as discussed.”

  “But few,” Delilah said, as though they had discussed this point at length.

  “Few deaths. What we are hoping for is a sudden drop in witchcraft nationwide.”

  “Okay,” Delilah said.

&nb
sp; “Tell me, Prophetess,” Zombie said. “Why are you willing to give up much of your revenue. Surely our offer is a lot for a business in their first few years, but I’m wondering what’s keeping you from double-crossing us.”

  Delilah smiled at them, making eye contact. “I can see how it would be difficult to believe me,” she said, uncrossing her legs. In case she needs to run, Mason thought. Delilah was clearly an intelligent woman. She knew a promise of life in a room full of killers was no guarantee. “I think my most compelling point is that this business isn’t my dream.” She shrugged. “I’ve loved it. But if it only becomes a source of side revenue or if Ransom and I decide to sell, it will be no great heartbreak to me.”

  She sighed. “I believe people believing in magic is just as magical as there being real superpowers flowing through someone’s veins. But it’s not my goal to keep preaching that message forever from this stage.” She ran her hands along her clothes and hair, indicating they weren’t the form she wished to take forever.

  Zombie didn’t answer or nod, but he didn’t ask any more questions. Simply stared. Of course, Delilah would be considered a kill on the leaderboard, but the chance she gave them for more points obviously far outweighed what she could offer them as a dead body, so the Kingsmen stayed still.

  They discussed logistics. Major cities, where the Prophetess’s new disciples could host gatherings, how many Kingsmen would be best for each site. Security, packages, and products to be sold before people managed to leave to give a boost to Delilah’s income right before the big event. They chose a time to start. And a time to shoot.

  Mason felt ill by the time Delilah hugged each of them, her lavender perfume doing nothing to ease his nausea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Friday, March 17, 2017, 1:13 a.m.

  The trunk lid opened. Ivy blinked against the moonlight, nauseous, disoriented, and somehow pushed up against the side of the trunk after a hard turn. It hadn’t been a long drive, but it’d been a speedy one, and Ivy hadn’t been able to collect her thoughts enough to keep track of the minutes or the turns.