Текст книги "The Immortals"

Автор книги: J. T. Ellison

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Nineteen

Nashville

10:00 a.m.

Hillsboro High School had none of the charm of the many private schools in town. It looked like an industrial plant from the sixties, all cramped windows and metal re bar. The gymnasium was close to the road, dirty white brick with green accents; the school itself set farther back, crouching on the surrounding land.

Sadness permeated the air, everything felt empty. Even for a Saturday, things were simply vacant.

They entered the building and Taylor was immediately struck by how small everything seemed. Granted, it had been a while since she’d last been here, during an escapade with a decidedly nonprivate-school boy who attended Hillsboro. She’d attended some dance with him-a requisite papier-mache, roses and hand-lettered banners in the gym affair-and found herself so incredibly bored by the whole evening that she stopped returning his calls. Hell, all she could remember of him was his first name, Edward, and that he drove a motorcycle, which was the reason she’d agreed to a date with him in the first place.

Nothing of the school looked the same to her. She shrugged; it had been nearly twenty years since she’d last been inside. A small bundle of gray-haired energy appeared before them, stuck out her wizened hand to shake. ”Lieutenant Jackson? I’m Cornelia Landsberg, Thank you for coming.”

“Ah, you’re the principal. Excellent. It’s nice to meet you, ma’am. This is Detective Renn McKenzie. He’s going to join me in our interviews today.”

Landsberg was already ushering them toward the office. Taylor couldn’t help but feel like she’d done something wrong, saw McKenzie shoot her a glance, reading her body language-when were you last in the principal’s office? She coughed, hiding her smile behind her palm.

Landsberg led them into the quiet of the main office, which looked like a thousand other school front offices she’d been in. It didn’t smell right, though. Taylor still associated the school’s main office with the inky perfume of mimeograph machines, even though by the time she was an upperclassman at Father Ryan it had all gone to computers.

Posters of mascots hung on the walls, cheering on the student council and basketball team. A young brunette, most likely a teacher’s aide, puttered behind the desk. Landsberg ignored her, led them back through a swinging sol id-wood gate into the bowels of teenage authority.

“Gwen Wood all and Ralph Poston are meeting us– they’re our guidance counselors. They’ve pulled all the files for our problem students.” She stopped and turned, looked up at Taylor with beady, black-bird’s eyes rimmed in red. Taylor was struck by the woman’s resemblance to a small pigeon.

“We keep a close eye on our kids, Lieutenant. After Columbine, all the schools are more in tune with the troubled children. I’m sad to say we have a grief plan in place to handle just such a situation. We’ve had students come in today for comforting. They’re in the gym now, talking to grief counselors brought in specially to help. It’s good for them to be together, to share their emotions. It doesn’t lessen it, of course, but it’s helpful to know others are suffering from the same sensations. Do you think a student might be responsible for this?”

“I wish we could say definitely, ma’am. We’re just trying to get some information right now. We do have one student in particular that we need to talk about-a boy in the underclass called Thor.”

“Thor? I can’t say that I’ve heard that name. Do you have a surname?”

“No Just the fact that he’s dealing drugs to the students.”

“Drugs?” She shook her head. “They always find a way in, don’t they? In my day it was grass, and the teachers smoked it with the students. Now we have a zero-tolerance policy toward anything of the sort, but one hears rumors. It seems we can’t keep them safe anymore, can’t keep them insulated. They all have their My Space pages and Facebook, Twitter and text messages-goodness, they have their own language. Our English department had a meeting just last week to discuss whether to accept some of the linguistic vernacular shortcuts into the curriculum, since they can’t seem to get them to stop using it. We voted against that, of course, but we’re willing to do what it takes to reach the students. I have a Twitter account myself, and all the students have my phone number. They’re encouraged to text me anytime they need. But drugs..,I don’t hold with that behavior. It’s instant expulsion if we catch them at it. Oh, here we go.”

She opened the door to the teacher’s lounge. There was the faintest scent of cigarettes-Lands berg being the tiniest bit of a hippy, Taylor imagined she wouldn’t be too fussed if one of her teachers used this room for a smoke break. Better to hide it than send the offending teacher outside, where they might be seen by the students. She was sure there was some sort of regulation prohibiting tobacco on school grounds, but so long as the state representatives could sneak a smoke in the state house, she was pretty sure the odd teacher here or there could get away with it.

Do as I say, not as I do. The lesson she’d received from every adult in her life, her father most of all. She choked back the anger that rose at the thought of Win Jackson, in a federal penitentiary in West Virginia, and the current, marked absence of her mother, Kitty, still in Europe nearly a year later with some man Taylor had never met. They’d only spoken once in that time, when Taylor called to tell her that she’d arrested Win. Her mother had been in turn livid, then resigned.

It’s just so embarrassing, Taylor. What will my friends think about your behavior?

Taylor had responded hotly, What will they think about yours, Mother, gallivanting with some moneyed playboy you have no real ties to? Kitty had hung up on her, and that was that.

Landsberg was making the introductions. Taylor dragged her attention back to the room.

“Gwen Woodall, Ralph Poston, this is Lieutenant Taylor Jackson and Detective Renn McKenzie. I’m going to leave you for a bit-I want to check on the students in the gym. Call if you need anything.” She tapped her cell phone, in a plastic holder attached to her belt, then slipped out, shutting the door behind her.

“Please, have a seat,” Poston said, gesturing to the chairs opposite them. “We’ve spent the morning looking through the files and talking. This is just. ..it’s just…” He choked up, and his compatriot came to his rescue, laying a hand on his arm.

“It’s okay, Ralph. Let your feelings out.”

He began to sob and Woodall gave Taylor an apologetic smile. “It’s taken all of us hard, as you can imagine. Sit. Sit. We’ve got a list of names of some of the boys we’ve had trouble with recently.”

Taylor and McKenzie settled themselves at the table, and Taylor opened her notebook. “Please, fill us in.”

“Okay.” Woodall handed Post on a tissue. ‘There, there, Ralph. It’s going to be okay.”

He took it and blew his nose, a great honking sound, like a strangled goose. Taylor bit her lip to stop herself from laughing.

Wood all looked like she was having trouble not giggling, too. Taylor liked her. She had a wide brow and ready smile, blunt brown hair cut just below her chin, and freckles scattered across her nose. She looked more like a student than a psychologist. She passed a sheaf of papers over the table to them.

“We’ve been looking through the files, pulling all our students who’ve been identified with narcissistic and psychopathic personality traits. Unfortunately, as these are teenagers we’re talking about, that pile is quite large. I did some cross-referencing to see which of the students were in trouble for drugs and came up with about fifteen names. They’re on the second page.”

Taylor glanced through the files. Wide, furious eyes crowded her mind, faces cast in belligerence, fear or disdain. Many were black; only a few were white, and there was one Asian boy, possibly Vietnamese. They all looked lost. She handed the pages to McKenzie.

“What about threats to the school, or to other students? We’ve heard that a threat may have been made in recent weeks against the students who were killed.”

Woodall glanced down at her hands. ”You know how it is, Lieutenant. We have metal detectors at the doors, a safety officer on patrol in the halls. There’s a constant flow of bullying and intimidation among the students, almost too much to keep up with. Our student population is diverse, all races, ranging from wealthy to poor, from happy homes to foster children. Rivalries flare up, create animosity, schisms in the cliques. We’ve been having some gang-related issues lately, and I’m sure you’ve heard the rumors that the recent home invasions were by a gang from Hillsboro. But we’re doing our best.”

Taylor had heard about the ruffians-within the past month, three different families had been held hostage by a group of young black men, robbed and then forced to drive to area ATMs, withdrawing money at each stop. So far it hadn’t dropped into her purview-no assaults, and, thank goodness, no murders. Robbery was having a field day trying to track down the suspects in those cases.

Foston removed himself from his tissue. “We don’t think that it’s any of our students, but of course we always like to think the best of them.”

“Of course,” McKenzie said. “I think the person we’re looking for would be extremely shy, wouldn’t be getting into open tiffs with other students. He would be quiet, silently angry. He’d get good grades, but wouldn’t speak up a lot in class. He wouldn’t have a lot of friends, maybe one or two people that he would spend time with, girls and boys like him. He may be religious, or actively keep himself isolated from the rest of the students. Watchers. We’re looking for the watchers.”

Taylor raised an eyebrow at him. That made sense.

Poston shook his head. Taylor was reminded of one of Christopher Robin’s friends, Eeyore. “You’ve just described half the student body. The other half are the jocks, into sports and girls,” he said.

“What about the Goths?” Woodall asked. “I heard that there was a pentagram at each crime scene. That might fit.”

“A pentacle,” McKenzie corrected. “Pentagrams are a geometrical symbol, just a simple star. Pentacles are stars within a circle. Do you have any students who seem to be into the occult?”

“Well, sure. The Goths celebrate their differences, cover their notebooks in strange drawings, write bleak poetry. They’re hassled from time to time, but they manage to keep to themselves. We’ve got a strict policy against the makeup-we don’t want to encourage them to be that different from their peers. But they do congregate together, take some of the same classes.”

“Who’s in the Goth clique?” Taylor asked. “And do any of them show up in these files you pulled for us today?”

Woodall flipped through the pages, as if refreshing her memory, though Taylor got the sense she knew them backward and forward. ”Strangely enough, none of them. They’re all so sad, but not what we deem threatening. We try to get them to open up, but they hang back, don’t want to be a part of things.”

“What about a boy who may be dealing drugs to the upperclassmen, specifically to the popular crowd. He’s been described as short with blond hair, possibly named after a comic book character, like Thor.”

“Thor?” Woodall looked puzzled for a minute. “Could you mean Thorn? I’ve heard that name. But I can’t remember from where. Ralph, do you know?”

“I thought it was a code word for getting out of class. Like a thorn in my side.”

Woodall openly rolled her eyes this time, “No, I distinctly remember a conversation I heard last week about a boy named Thorn. It was two of the seniors…well, my goodness, it was Jerrold King and Brandon Scott. They were having a fight, actually. I stepped in before the fists began to fly. But for the life of me I couldn’t tell you what they were so upset about.”

“Any idea who might know?”

Woodall bit her lip. “You can ask their friends, see if they know. But after I broke it up, they scattered, and I didn’t give it another thought. Boys will be boys.”

Taylor made a note to ask around about the fight. Too much of a coincidence for her taste.

“We’d like to get a list of the kids you’d term Goth,” McKenzie said.

“Certainly. I’ll pull it together for you.”

“Thank you. Did any of the students who were killed have any problems with their classmates? More fights between them, things like that? And are you aware of drugs on campus?”

“We’re allowed to do random locker searches, and we find all kinds of things. There’s always some drugs-marijuana, Ecstasy and the like.”

Taylor leaned forward in her chair. “Can you remember whose locker had Ecstasy in it most recently?”

Woodall went to the filing cabinet and pulled out a manila folder. She flipped it open and perused, taking her time about it. Taylor was getting fidgety, felt like they weren’t getting anywhere, until Woodall turned with a smile.

“We expelled a boy just last week. He had pills. I was surprised-he’s a lovely young man. Claimed they were his mother’s and had gotten into his backpack by accident. Thinking about it, he’s one of the quiet ones, like you said.”

“What’s his name?” Taylor asked.

Woodall closed the file. “Juri Edvin.”

Twenty

Nashville

All Saints’ Day

10:00 a.m.

Raven and Fane had followed Ember, trying to stop her, but she’d been too quick for them. They couldn’t go to her house; Raven didn’t want to insert himself into the crime scene. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew if they showed up-their faces pale, their hair jet-black-the people running the investigation would see them and put it all together.

They’d driven out of downtown in silence. Maybe he could buy a baseball cap and some chinos, try to get in that way. He discarded that thought. No matter what he tried to do to look like everyone else, he was always apart, always separate. They’d pick him out as an imposter in a heartbeat. He had the shadows of the night etched across his face, as permanent as a tattoo.

They spent the rest of the night together, just the two of them. They slept late, then he dropped Fane at her house with a soulful kiss. Back home again, his house was silent, waiting. He took some milk from the fridge and went to his room.

What to do about Ember?

He went to his small altar, the one in the corner on the floor, the one he used for his darkest path work. The small table held a chalice, his athame and a lidless black box. His implements, his tools. They were waiting for him, their energy rising out of the box in waves.

These were his portable paraphernalia, something he usually carried in his car for times of extreme unction. He’d brought them last night, to the houses of his enemies, for strength. A feather for air, a piece of obsidian for earth, a match for fire and a shell for water, each imbued with spells conducted in the moonlight to give them power and anchor them to him. He didn’t need fancy things, didn’t need to be surrounded by opulence. He worshipped the earth, and his tools represented that.

He arranged the items in their appropriate spots on the altar-North, South, East and West-lit a candle scented with jasmine and ylang-ylang, then sat on the floor facing the flame, and watched. He ignored the phone when it rang, knowing it was Fane. He needed peace and quiet. Oh, how he wished it were dark out. He could concentrate so much better when there wasn’t sun and light.

He relaxed into deep contemplation, meditating on the correct path, until the flame of the candle finally guttered out in the melted wax.

He came back to himself then, knew what he needed to do. He opened his Book of Shadows, searching for the right spell to counterbalance Ember’s anger, to draw her back to them.

He found the spell. He went back to his altar, took up the poppet he’d designed two weeks earlier, just in case. As much as he hated to do it, he was going to have to punish Ember. She’d see the path after she suffered. He thought as he worked, molding the wax into a more feminine shape.

The pentacles were a masterful stroke. The police would be off chasing their tails, looking for suspects who fit their stupid profiles, combing the bushes and dark churches for Satanists and such. Satanists. What a joke. They had no power in his world-Satan didn’t exist. Dark angels, purveyors of evil, certainly, but with the right spell, the right amount of control and power from Elysium and the netherworld, they too could be cowed into work.

He sent a quick mental thank you to Azrael, felt his skin grow hot as the thought coalesced. Azrsel was with him, inside him now. He’d opened his soul to the dark angel, allowed him passage into the deepest recesses of his mind. He was becoming more powerful. Shedding the blood of the nonbelievers gave him a new gravitas. He wondered for a moment just how strong he was going to become, then set the poppet down. It was finished, and at midnight he’d go to the graveyard, speak the words that would finish Ember’s independent streak and secure her back to his side.

Raven was counting on the ignorance of the lay community to assure confusion, to buy himself time. He just needed another couple of days to get the rest of his plan in place. Thorn had dropped off the face of the earth; he assumed Ember had been in contact with him and was trying to draw them apart. Ember herself had turned off her phone, wasn’t responding. He felt the bits of his life, his world, unraveling, but assuaged himself with the knowledge of what he had left to do. He was almighty, and he had Fane. Fane would never leave his side, would never betray him. That he knew for a fact.

He opened his computer, routing himself through several servers until he was confident the originating address would lead to Japan, then pulled up You Tube. The video was gone.

He felt the fury flow through him, the dark angel^?s fury. He tapped the keys, searching, then found it again, on a sharing site called Vimeo. He glanced at the comments; they ranged from shock to admiration. He breathed a sigh of relief-the plan had worked. It was going viral, just like he wanted. He looked in a few more places-some had it, some had taken it down. That was fine. People would continue posting it in his stead, until the entire world viewed his masterpiece.

His lips pulled back in a grin and he ran his tongue over his chapped lips. Despite constant exfoliation with a tube of Fane’s Philosophy Kiss Me lip scrub, the black lipstick he liked seemed to eat away the top layer of skin on his lips, leaving them perpetually chapped. His nervous licking didn’t help, he ended up smothering his mouth in Carmex when he wasn’t in public. It was a shame, because he hated looking in the mirror when he wasn’t dressed. The makeup gave him strength, helped him hide. He turned off the desk lamp behind him so he wouldn’t see his reflection in the laptop screen.

He queued the movie, sat back in his chair and watched.

It had taken him and Fane many weeks to make the film. There had been so many little things along the way-the screen writ ing course she took at Watkins, the digital film course he’d taken last summer at The Art Institute, the expense of buying the camera and laptop that would allow him to edit the video down into cohesive footage. They’d pooled their money and made the investment-he was sure it would pay off in the long run. Movie Maker ended up being incredibly simple to use. He and Fane had written the script, taken turns filming the shots. It had taken them three weeks to get everything perfect, to shoot, edit the scenes down, storyboard the sections that weren’t flowing right, building the film frame by frame. The music had proved harder than he expected, but once he found Audacity, an online music editor, he was able to get it seamlessly integrated.

Granted, he’d been tinkering with the background music up until yesterday, but that was more an effect thing, deleting out the real names being shouted and dubbing them with the characters’. He had to admit, he’d done a brilliant job. Fane had helped too-they’d gotten so good at the software, so flawless, that when the time had come to load in the actual murder scenes, they were able to do so in less than an hour. Well, an hour and a half-they’d stopped midway through to have wild, unrelenting sex. It was the deepest joining they’d ever experienced, leaving them both breathless and trembling: their hands still covered in the blood of the nonbelievers.

Yes, the production quality was a bit off, shaky in spots, but they were filming horror, after all. The Blair Witch Project was a huge hit and their camera had bounced around through the whole film. It would be fine. Once it was picked up by a studio, a new producer might want to fill in some of the rough spots, but for the most part, Raven felt sure his genius would be appreciated. And he was right. The movie going viral would cement the first part of the plan.

He sat back in his chair. He’d always known he was meant for more. He was meant for much, much more.

Aware of his differences at an early age, Raven had done everything he could to understand himself. Philosophy gave him a respite, the burden of self-actualization allowing him to find out his true motivations. He couldn’t help but think dark thoughts-it was his nature. He couldn’t help being a natural leader-that was his role in the universe. He devoured Sartre and Nietzsche, Jung and Freud. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates. He filled his mind with great works, delved into a study of mythology, found he had a great affinity for the concepts of the pantheon, the polytheistic religions. One God did not fit all, that was readily apparent to him. He stopped watching television and devoured books. He started at the beginning, with Hesiod’s Theogony, andBullfinch’s Mythology, built from there. His library was extensive. He felt an affinity for the soil, for nature, for the moon and the cycles of the earth, and started openly practicing paganism early in his teens.

Thinking back, he fingered the spine of the Italian witchcraft book he always kept handy on his desk. He felt a true kinship with the Stregheria, the Italian version of Wicca. It was the closest to the Old Ways he could find, the closest to the origins of Mount Olympus, to the beginnings of time. He loved their practice, thought the modern versions of Wicca, the Gardnerian and Alexandrian methods, weren’t nearly as beautiful. He’d never felt it was wrong to believe in the Old Ways, never felt he should have to hide himself from the rest of the world, from the austere gaze of the older witches who practiced in Nashville. He preferred to let everyone know his joy, but the traditional covens wouldn’t accept him. Too young, too controversial. That mattered not a whit-he’d formed his own.

He was an evangelist for the Strega. Two hundred years ago he would have been burned at the stake, crisping to the merry shouts of local villagers, being damned for having prescient moments.

No more. The Strega were powerful, and he was proud to worship in their ways.

It was only natural that his dark path, his nocturnal tradition, his self-initiations strengthening his link to the divine, would show him the path to the Goths. The Gothic lifestyle-the real Gothic lifestyle, not the smearing on of makeup and black clothes because it looked cool-worked through a path of self-awareness, dedicated observation and worship, mourning for the rest of the world as it collapsed into capitalistic greed, an affinity for individual practice. It all spoke to him. He’d found his place at last.

He took the name Raven and became.

That’s when his true awakening began. He was unrelenting in his quest, his Book of Shadows filling with spells and charms, ideas and recipes. The book was a leather-bound journal he’d found at a bookstore, with a rawhide strap that tied it all together. He wound the strap lovingly around the leather, knowing that only he could understand the forces within. The shadows of the spells, the ideas glimmering on the blank parchment, that’s where his true power lay.

He researched, and continued his education. He made himself an expert in spell work, using his lyrical words to change things he wasn’t satisfied with, writing his own versions of the traditional, and not so traditional, calls. He practiced drowsing-reading minds; path work-finding his way among the ancestors, allowing them into his world.

He honestly believed that if he were open and willing, the Gods and Goddesses would make themselves known in myriad ways. And they did. Signs of his acceptance into their ways were everywhere.

Divination, ways to predict the future through sophisticated spell work, wasn’t far behind. He began to play with the thoughts of others. He attracted like-minded individua l eventually settling on the strongest of those-his three, his Immortals. He taught them the Old Ways, and they worshipped him.

The path was righteous and good. The path would lead him to greatness. The path would show him how to become as powerful as the cycles of the earth, as the rising of the moon, as the Goddess Diana.

It began so simply. He planned, and plotted, knowing he needed to spread the word, to recruit. The Immortals were only four now, but their numbers would grow. His very own army, guided by perfect love and perfect trust. Together, they would change the world. Together, they would make all those who treated them with derision and disdain pay for their sins.

He realized the movie had finished playing. He queued it up again, wanting to pay closer attention this time. It was hard to see a work of such magnificence and not get caught up in the story behind it. He wondered if he should write some sort of liner notes, something to explain what their purpose was, where their heads lay. But the letter was enough, for now.

Screams rang out from his laptop, tinny, life being taken as he stood near, feeding on the souls of the despised.

He wondered what would happen if everyone in the world died.