by Jessica King
The gun fired, and the chair jerked with Ivy’s visceral reaction to the noise.
She punched Ivy in the stomach, the air rushing out of her in a harsh breath. Every inch of her throbbed and her headache amplified. A punch to the jaw. The eye. The stomach again. Ivy dropped her body, no longer attempting to sit up straight. She wanted to lay her torso down on her knees, a moment of brief respite, but the way her arms were tied, she could only manage to slump forward.
Ivy saw flakes of blood on the woman’s knuckles, and she remembered the cut on her cheek that had never been cleaned.
A quick yank of her hair pulled Ivy back up.
“Sit up,” the woman hissed. She’d seem to become more restless, more vicious with every hour.
“Where is the L.A. coven’s new base?”
“What, you want to go shoot it up? Kill all those innocent people?”
“They are not innocent!” The woman walked away, and Ivy forced deep breaths into her lungs.
Cloth wrapped around her face, and she felt herself being tilted back. She heard her phone’s ringtone across the room, but it paled in comparison to the loud breaths of her captor. Panic filled her body, and she took in a deep breath before the water she’d wanted so badly moments before filled her airways.
+++
Friday, March 17, 2017, 10:45 p.m.
“Ivy never called me back last night,” Joyce said.
Vince was deep into a game of solitaire, his shift not officially starting for another three minutes. He moved a card and looked up at Joy.
“We had most of today off since we’re doing a graveyard shift tonight. She told me she wanted some time to unplug after Lily. Maybe her phone was off.”
Joyce shook her head. “You ever see her cut a shift so close?”
It was a good point. Ivy was usually obnoxiously early for work. By the time Vince made it to the station, Ivy was usually two cups of coffee in and had likely already started working. Vince closed his game and called Ivy’s number.
Joyce raised her eyebrows as the phone rang until Vince arrived at her voicemail. “It’s weird,” Vince admitted. “That’s weird for her.”
“Considering the people she has after her …” Joyce said.
Vince pulled up Ivy’s location, which showed her at the motel she’d said she was going to. He refreshed the page. “It says her location is unavailable.”
“That’s what mine said, too, which is why I was worried,” Joyce said. “She would never turn that off, especially after two attacks from the Kingsmen.”
“Let’s go to the motel first. To check,” Vince said. “Maybe she’s asleep or something.” His gut told him that his partner had certainly not slept in; he’d seen her drag herself into work even if she was exhausted, and fight through the nodding sleep of a sitting person for hours at her desk. Never once had she decided to just come in late instead, especially on a night shift.
Friday, March 17, 2017, 11:20 p.m.
They’d made a complete circle following the detour signs. “This detour doesn’t lead to the motel,” Vince said. Joyce was already ahead of him, driving past the detour sign.
“Bet someone put up those signs who didn’t want anyone else near the motel,” Joyce said, her voice breathy with anxiety. “And the roads look fine, no construction, so there shouldn’t have been a detour.” As they expected, the room belonging to Ivy was empty. Her things were there, and the furniture was in disarray, a zigzag line created from wall to door.
“She undid the barricade,” Vince said. “But there’s no sign of struggle, so maybe she went somewhere?”
“Her car was in the parking lot.”
“Walked somewhere?”
Joyce tapped away at her phone. “Only thing in walking distance is that gas station we passed half a mile back.”
“It’s also the only other place in this fake detour radius.”
Joyce cursed under her breath.
Friday, March 17, 2017, 11:29 p.m.
“Sorry, my shift started an hour ago,” a kid said from behind a cash register. “We have literally had no one this morning.”
“Is that normal?” Vince asked.
The kid shook his head, and his hips shifted. Vince looked over the edge of the counter to see the young man’s feet atop a skateboard behind the counter.
“No,” he said. “This store is, like, super out of the way, but also the gas is pretty cheap and, like, it’s a good place for a pit stop on longer trips or whatever.”
“What about security tapes?” Joyce asked. “If we can see her being here, that would be really helpful to us,” she said.
The kid complied, leading them into a back office. “Please don’t undo the order or anything,” he said, pointing to the stacks of videotapes. He pulled one from the top of the stack. “Boss’ll kill me. This should be last night.” He handed the tape to them, and Joyce popped it into the player.
The bell over the front door gave a little ring, and the cashier exited the room without any further commentary. Joyce held down the fast-forward button and watched people milling about the store for snacks and toiletries until finally, a familiar frame walked into the store. “There,” Vince said, pointing to Ivy wandering the aisles. “Looks about right,” he said, noting which snacks she was going for.
They watched her checkout, pay, and leave.
“Let’s walk the path from here to the motel,” Joyce said. “Maybe there’s something there.”
It didn’t take long before Joyce noted what looked like fresh skid marks on the road, and Vince found the confetti of a taser gun. He picked it up, the serial number printed in tiny letters on each piece. Joyce recognized what was in Vince’s hand immediately.
“Please, no,” she said.
Vince remembered getting tasered as part of police training vividly. It had been horrifying, his arms and legs no longer at his service.
“At least we have something to go on,” Vince said, trying not to think of how painful the shot had been for Ivy. “Let’s go run the number.”
The database turned up an ex-marine named Marsha Leeds. “Discharged honorably with an injury, failed to become a SEAL, currently lives in Rolling Hills. She received counseling upon return from active duty but discontinued care after three weeks. She’s posted pretty inflammatory stuff online in the last year.” Joyce scrolled through the woman’s online presence. “I don’t see Kingsmen information here, but she’s definitely … opinionated.” Vince stared at the woman. She was strong-looking and tall, but Ivy had taken down plenty of large officers in sparring competitions at the department before.
“I feel like Ivy could handle her.”
“Not if she got tased,” Joyce said. “I believe in her skills as much as you do. But I think we have a Kingsman on our hands.” And they had no idea where to start looking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Posted: Saturday, March 18, 2017, 9:01 a.m.
The Prophetess Has Sold Her Followers
The Kingsmen have been considered a public health crisis among health professionals across the country for weeks now. After consulting with a highly accredited psychologist who shall remain nameless for their own safety, I have determined that the reason this cult is so successful is because of the anonymity of its leader.
While the observation has shocked even myself, after going undercover in the cult for a certain amount of time and making a name for myself, I have found that anyone within the circle of Kingsmen I knew could have been considered the leader of the cult, the so-called “King.”
Normally, new cult members go through a period of loving acceptance and essential brainwashing before taking part in some of the more occult practices of their chosen group. However, as it has been confirmed, Kingsmen are required to “eliminate,” or kill, a supposed witch in order to become an active member of the Kingsmen. This is, what I believe, makes the cult successful without a specific leader. Perhaps if they knew the face of the leader, and the faces of all their fellow K
ingsmen, for that matter, they would be more likely to defect from such a terrifying initiation practice. However, without the knowledge of who might be running the cult and who might be involved, a culture of fear is easily grown.
To be clear on the Kingsmen rules: If one does not kill their assigned witch within the four day, “trial” period, they are said to be allowed to leave the group freely and are able to follow the Kingsmen news at a distance. However, several would-be Kingsmen who chose this path and did not “eliminate” a witch have said they have found threatening messages, and some family members who found out about their loved ones failed initiations have reported disappearances. It seems that once you are up for consideration, you go through with it and risk death, or you refuse, and risk death.
So, in simpler terms, if you join, you risk death if you do not continue to kill. If you do not join, you risk death for refusing to kill at all. And you don’t know what any of the other Kingsmen look like in order to avoid them successfully.
A cult with this level of strength also brings in large sources of revenue from its members. As an undercover member myself, I have paid more than $1500 in fees and “encouraged donations” since joining two months ago. While I am lucky enough to have the ability to pay these fees in order to stay under the radar, this is likely not the case for every Kingsman, resulting in stronger cultivation of fear of being attacked for not paying up. However, I’ll admit that my phone and email accounts are regularly pumped with loving, caring Kingsmen propaganda on a daily basis that, without a skeptical eye, could be taken to indicate an environment that wants your presence, but needs a certain level of, shall we call it, cooperation.
However, this explanation of the structure of the Kingsmen leads me to the point of this story that I will be releasing (and then promptly be heading undercover from my undercover life as a Kingsman): 1) the Kingsmen go along with even the most violent of ideas for fear they are contradicting the King (whose identity they do not know) and ending up dead themselves, and 2) this violence has lots of financial power backing it, making it a difficult group to destroy.
With this financial power, the Kingsmen have bought the Prophetess. In an attempt to make a lasting, horrible sweep against the population of men and women adhering to traditional witchcraft practices, Wicca practices, or simply fans of the character the Prophetess has wrapped herself in when in front of the public eye, the Kingsmen have paid off the Prophetess to not only accept Kingsmen into her own rank of “disciples” but to give locations for Prophetess gatherings in order to enact acts of violence on a scale of which our country has not seen domestically. This is unprecedented, and I plead with anyone who has planned to go to a Prophetess gathering in the next week to change their minds. There will be guns. And behind them, the most dangerous wielders of weapons: people who are terrified for their own lives.
Saturday, March 18, 2017, 9:04 a.m.
Mason had already dyed his hair, found colored contacts, and bought an entirely new wardrobe. He’d paid to break his lease agreement and apologized to his clinic for not giving a two-weeks’ notice. He’d told his parents he needed to disappear, thanked Professor Wilkins, and packed his bags. He’d deleted his social media, found an online job, and was headed for the East Coast. He was ready. He could do this.
He took a deep breath, hit send. And packed his laptop into his bag, the only bag not already loaded in the car. He tucked the key under the welcome mat he was leaving behind. Mason Gillis no longer existed.
+++
Saturday, March 18, 2017, Time Unknown
Ivy still felt like she was underwater when the woman left for food. Ivy knew there wouldn’t be any for her, and she could feel the ex-marine’s patience growing thin. Realizing that her hours were likely in the single digits was not something Ivy thought would be part of facing a Kingsman. Getting shot, attacked, and even being sent a bomb were more likely than her current situation. Was finding the new L.A. coven so important?
Maybe it was the information about her mother that the woman wanted so badly. She remembered one of her mother’s journal entries vividly. Her mother questioned whether she truly was Mary Caste. After all, it was possible that reincarnation led to forgetfulness of a past life. It’d been nonsense to Ivy, just ramblings and ideas, but her mother had been nearly convinced.
She remembered a specific line her mother had written that showed her the severity of her worry.
I went to a psychiatrist today. He told me I could believe I was reincarnated, but that I should live life as myself, as Bethany.
She signed off as she had every entry during the final months of her life.
I fear Justice. I fear Death.
Ivy feared death, and she'd be going down swinging. She screamed against the pain in her shoulder as she moved her hands, clasped and bound behind her back, to one side of the chair, bracing it against the corner of one of the chair legs. She grunted against the motion of it. Three zip ties would be nearly impossible to break without her regular amount of force, and with the shoulder, she wasn’t so sure she’d manage.
She scraped the ties up and down the chair leg. “C’mon,” she coaxed the plastic. “C’mon.”
She felt the first tie spring free and fall to the ground. Her shoulder sang in agony as she sawed against the chair faster, a warm trickle working its way beneath her bandaged arm and to the elbow.
The other two finally fell free, and she tipped her chair to the side. The impact was agony, but she dragged herself to the kitchen to get the scissors. She pushed herself up, grabbing onto cabinet handles and countertop until she managed to grasp the tool and cut herself free. She hadn’t noticed the bottles atop the counter. The drug she’d taken before she got in the trunk, as well as a series of other medications. Ivy recognized the name of Chloe Cline’s antidepressant and opened the bottle. Inside were just two gelatin capsule pills. But on the counter, a similar-looking capsule was open. Brown powder in a small bag also sat on the counter, looking like they belonged together.
Could her captor create a fake pill?
She turned the pill bottle. The bottle had Chloe’s name on it. The third out of four annual refills. She remembered the bottle in the house—the fourth out of four annual refills.
Ivy found her phone in the single bedroom and ran on sore legs back to the counter, taking a video.
“I’ve been captured by an ex-marine. She made a pill resembling Chloe Cline’s anti-depressants. I believe it was filled with this brown powder.” Ivy pointed to the bag. “I’m not going to touch it, since I don’t have gloves, and I can’t tell what it is.” She zoomed in on the powder, trying to get a clear image of it before she turned the camera to herself. “This is not the type of woman who poisons. I have been tortured and hit. There are bloodstains all over the carpet.” Ivy scanned the room with her camera. “I believe that she sold the pill to someone who might assist Mrs. Cline with her medication in the evenings. Whoever killed Chloe, it was someone close to her.”
Ivy heard the slam of a car door, and she cut off the video, her fingers shaking as she sent it to Vince. She went to stand by the back door, slowly twisting the knob. She heard the trunk slam shut. She couldn’t leave the house too soon, or the marine would see her. And she couldn’t leave too late, or the woman would know Ivy was trying to slip out the back door. She listened. Another car door slam. The sound of rustling bags. The honk of a locked car.
The sound of footsteps on the wood porch, hollow and echoing beneath the woman’s boots.
She opened and stepped out through the back door. She waited for the sound of a key in the lock and took a step out of view of the back door’s window. She waited for the creak of the hinges.
And ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Saturday, March 18, 2017, 10:15 a.m.
Delilah stared at her phone’s screen. Hundreds of thousands of shares, and it’d been up for only one hour. She paced the few feet of space they had left in the kitchen. She opened a window. The wh
ole place reeked of sage and lemon. She might vomit from it.
“Sales are going to tank, Delilah,” Ransom said. She couldn’t see him in the pile of boxes, but she knew his face was red.
Delilah looked at the boxes, shocked. “As if that’s what we should be worried about right now!” she said. “If these gatherings don’t happen like the Kingsmen want them to, we might be dead by the end of the week.”
Blood rushed in her ears, and she felt pressure around her lungs. “What if we just run?” she asked him. “Cancel everything, save a bunch of lives, tell the truth, and run?”
Ransom stood, a gopher popping out of a lime green mountain. Ransom’s face twisted like he’d tasted something sour.
“I know it’s a lot of money,” she said. “That’s lifechanging money.” She shook her head. “But is it worth it? Really?”
“We could have everything we’ve wanted,” Ransom said. “Don’t you remember what our houses were like growing up? This money means we move to New York. We can pay for a place. Electricity. Food. Water. All the clothes you could possibly want. Everything.”
Delilah hated that she and Ransom still counted things like electricity to be luxuries. But she’d navigated much of her childhood by candlelight. She’d risked the cockroaches in the school showers and filled water bottles from the school fountains before she went home. No, she didn’t want to ever return to a life remotely like that one.
“Say we went through with it, and they didn’t try to kill us,” Delilah said. “We still will be investigated by the police.” At Ransom’s eye roll, she cut him off. “No! Ransom, that is a guarantee. How do you think we’ll fair?”
“I think we’ll fair just fine. We had a business opportunity with other actresses across the country. We didn’t know they were Kingsmen. We’ve gone over this a million times.”
“I don’t want to see pictures of the people who died on social media again,” she said. “I want to pull out of this. Let’s just cancel it.”