The Poison of Ivy

by Jessica King

  People clad in witch gear and white wigs fled from the skate park, some sprinting for the beaches and others running for the nearby shops.

  Kenshin and Joyce were on his heels. “Half of ‘em are basically trapped in bowls!” Joyce yelled. If Vince’s understanding was right, there were Kingsmen perched every few feet around the skatepark, shooting down into the crowd of Prophetess followers who had been unlucky enough to decide to watch the Prophetess streaming from Long Beach. The blowup screen was deflated, and a poster of the Prophetess’s face was riddled with bullets by a Kingsmen with extra enthusiasm.

  Vince, Kenshin, and Joyce took aim, and three dead Kingsmen fell forward into the skatepark, their limp bodies flopping over the railings and into the screaming crowd below. People were begging for those who managed to get out to pull them up too. A few Kingsmen fled at the image of their fellows falling dead into a sea of supposed witches. Other officers had taken aim at those who hadn’t yet left, and several more Kingsmen fell. Vince didn’t look down into the dips of the skatepark. The Kingsmen were returning fire, and he dropped to the ground, searching.

  Pushing up, Vince took off after a Kingsman sprinting down the beach. But Vince was fast, and the Kingsman was running out of steam. “Drop your weapon!” Vince yelled. The gun fell to the sand, and the man he’d been running after turned around, his hands in the air. Vince moved forward, cuffing him. He saw a streak blur past his vision, a K-9 unit.

  “Drop the gun, and I’ll call off my dog!” his partner was yelling. The man turned, aimed at the dog, and missed. “Fass! Fass!” the officer yelled at the dog. The German Shephard’s jaws clamped around the man’s arm. He dropped the gun, and the officer sprinted forward. “You gonna shoot my dog?” he yelled. “You gonna shoot my dog?” He pinned the man to the ground, pressing his face in the sand. “No, sir, you’re not!”

  The officer handcuffed the man and grabbed his gun. “Sitz,” he said. The dog sat, tail wagging sand into his would-be killer’s eyes.

  Vince did a scan of the rest of the beach. Officers were scattered around the greenery of the park and the sand, holding down the Kingsmen that had tried to run. Vince saw a white rectangle peeking from the pocket of the man in his custody.

  He pulled out a collection of Kingsmen cards. He threw them on the sand next to the shooter’s face. “You think this gives you the right to kill those people?” he asked. The man below him didn’t answer. “No,” Vince said. He got up, pulling the shooter with him. “You realize you’re going to spending the rest of your life in prison because of this, right?” Vince asked. “Because you believed in some fairy tale?”

  “Those witches deserve death,” the man said. Sand was clinging to his short beard and mustache, and Vince wanted to smack it off of him.

  “I’m glad you feel that way right now,” Vince said. “Because one day, you’re going to realize you wasted your entire life, killing a bunch of normal people who just wanted to believe in healing rocks and sparkly eyeshadow.”

  His detainee spat on his shoe, and Vince stopped them to wipe it off on the back of the man’s calf.

  “I’d be embarrassed to be you,” Vince said. “If that’s the best you’ve got, and I have a gun in my belt.”

  “You can’t shoot me,” the man said.

  “I can’t kill you,” Vince corrected. “But if I felt you were getting too difficult to manage and shot you in the leg, I’d get a warning—maybe. You’ll still get a life sentence.”

  It was a long walk back to his police car, but the shooter said nothing else, only repeating, “I want a lawyer,” whenever Vince asked him a question. They passed the scene. Ambulances and police cars were being loaded with the injured. The screaming had stopped; the people who hadn’t been injured were either sitting numbly or crying.

  “Here we are,” Vince said. He guided the man’s head as the shooter sat in his car. “You’re going to stay here a minute while I go help the people you tried to shoot up. And you get the cage seat. Special treatment.” He closed the back door, the curses from his detainee muffled by the car door. He saluted the man through the caged window and took off.

  It was an hour before he made it back to his car. Blood was on his uniform—he’d carried so many bleeding people to ambulances, police cars, vehicles of people at the event—anything with wheels they could find to take people to the hospital.

  “Vince,” Joyce said, jogging up to him. “Do you have someone? We need people to wait with bodies for the coroner.” She looked pale, bloodstains covered in sand on her face and arms.

  “I got a Kingsman in my car,” he said, shaking his head. “You wanna take him instead? I could stay with Kenshin if you want to get home?”

  Joyce shook her head. “I really don’t want to see one of those guys right now,” she said. “There were at least thirty other shootings like this across the country. All at once. That article about the Prophetess must have been right, or someone did a mighty good job at tricking her.”

  Vince rubbed his temples. “Do we have numbers?”

  Joyce shook her head. “There’s at least forty here.”

  “That’s insane,” Vince said. “Do they not realize that they are more dangerous to the world than—”

  “They don’t,” Joyce said. “That’s the problem. They don’t think they’re the ones causing the damage. I heard one of them. ‘This wouldn’t have to happen if there weren’t witches.’” Joyce shook her head. “Whoever’s leading this thing has brainwashed these people in a way I can’t even … comprehend.” Her fingers tapped at her sides. “You take him in then. Call me if you hear anything about Ivy.”

  Vince nodded and began the walk back to his car. The Kingsman in the cage seat started yelling something about his rights as soon as Vince opened the car. “I left the AC on, dude,” Vince said. “You’re fine. You’re fine!” His voice sounded loud to his own ears, and the yelling stopped. “You’re lucky my partner isn’t here today. She’d eat you alive.”

  “Bet your partner’s a witch.”

  “Oh, she is,” Vince said, grinning into the rearview mirror.

  +++

  Ivy had barely gotten hooked up to an IV when Vince skidded to a stop inside her hospital room’s door.

  “You look awful,” he said, his eyes growing wide.

  “You’ve looked better, too, but that wasn’t going to be the first thing I told you,” Ivy said. She eyed the blood on his uniform, and he shook his head. It wasn’t his.

  Vince cracked a smile. “Are you okay?”

  Ivy swallowed. “I’m not entirely sure.”

  “Do you want to do physical first?” he asked.

  Ivy nodded, and her throat tightened. “Gunshot wound to my right shoulder. A ridiculous number of cuts on my left leg and arm. Nasty scratch on my face, apparently, but I haven’t seen it yet,” she said. “Bruised ribs, feels like a black eye.” She winked with her left eye. It felt sore, and her vision seemed restricted. But whatever pain medication they’d given her upon arrival had been doing wonders.

  “What about the rest?” Vince said.

  Ivy’s lip wavered. “Ah.” She cleared her throat. “I, um, was kidnapped by a psychopathic serial killer. I was waterboarded. A-and I think I had a panic attack, trying to help control the Long Beach shooting.”

  A dent formed between Vince’s eyebrows. “Explain.”

  “That woman who had me, would shoot all around me to scare me, and when the shooting got too close at Long Beach, I don’t know, it was like I was back in that chair. Tied up. I could smell her soap, like she was right there, waterboarding me again.”

  “Sounds like PTSD, Miss Hart,” said a new voice. A man turned the corner. Middle-aged with salt and pepper hair. He smiled down at her. She’d seen him before, but she couldn’t remember. “Forgive my intrusion, but I have a friend on the Long Beach police force who told me about your case.”

  “Officer Martin?”

  The man’s face crinkled in confused wrinkles. “No, t
hough I believe I might have heard the name before.”

  “Water, Ivy?” Vince asked, pointing toward the door.

  Ivy nodded. “Thanks.”

  Vince shut the door quietly behind him. “I hope you and your partner will forgive my intrusion, Detective,” he said. “A young colleague of mine recently died. Mason Gillis.”

  Ivy looked down at the needle in her arm. “I didn’t know he died,” she said.

  “Yes,” the man said. “He was killed by a Kingsman, I’m afraid.”

  Ivy stared numbly at the design on the blanket covering her legs, feeling her nose and eyes grow heavy. She didn’t have any words.

  “He told me a lot about your work with him and how he was trying to infiltrate the Kingsmen. Get into their inner circle.”

  “Yes,” Ivy said, finally looking up at the light eyes.

  “He’d done a pretty good job of it, apparently. I urged him not to write the article that he did.”

  “What article?” Ivy asked.

  “He warned people against the Prophetess gatherings today. Quite frankly, I feel that the death tolls today might have been much greater if he hadn’t published that information, giving up his life in exchange.”

  Ivy’s head felt too heavy, and she let her chin dip, resting against her collarbone.

  “I consider him … honorable,” the man said. “And I know you helped him. And I believe I knew your mother. She studied in my program for a while—marketing and psychology are very compatible in the academics.”

  “My mother?” Ivy asked.

  “Yes, Bethany Hart, right?” He smiled. “You look just like her. And she’d been a great student of mine. We had lots of theoretical debates when she was your age. I followed her career for a bit, and I knew she had a child at some point, but I’m afraid we lost touch after a while, but—ah! I digress. After I heard about what happened to you … I’d like to help you, as a sort of repayment to two of my most favorite students.”

  “That’s kind of you, Doctor …”

  “Wilkins,” he said.

  “Right, I remember now,” Ivy said. “But I think I’m fine.”

  “What you described is not your norm, right? Gunfire didn’t bother you before.”

  “Gunfire bothers everyone,” Ivy said.

  “You know what I mean,” the doctor said. “I can help you get past that so you don’t have flashbacks like that, should you ever find yourself in a similar situation.”

  Ivy’s head bobbed in agreement. “I appreciate the offer. Could I think about it?”

  “Of course.” He fished a card out of his jacket pocket and handed it to her.

  “Andrew Wilkins,” he said, standing from the plastic-coated cushion. “Well, on some sites, it might be listed as my full name. Justice Andrew Wilkins.”

  Ivy’s head swam. I fear Justice. I fear Death.

  She’d always understood why her mother had capitalized Death. Lots of Wicca and traditional witchcraft practices referred to darkness and death as almost humanoid ideas. But she’d thought it was strange that justice had been capitalized.

  And now, here was Justice, a ghost of her mother’s past, standing in front of her, telling her to get well soon. That he looked forward to seeing her soon. Was this the Justice she so feared?

  Ivy nodded. She would get better. And she would certainly be paying him a visit. The End

  But There is MORE to come…

  **

  Dear Reader,

  Thank you for reading my book all the way through. I hope you enjoyed it.

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