by Elen Chase
"I'm not alone, don't worry," I said. I had never felt lonely since the beginning; Dan was always by my side, and thanks to him I had the help of a lot of people. I wanted to go back to him as soon as possible. I ran to the station, where we were supposed to meet, but I arrived before him.
"Hey, you really rushed here," he told me when he caught up with me.
"She gave me this," I said, showing him the memory card. "It's something to listen to, but I don't want to do it alone."
"I'm not sure we should put that in our watchpads," he said, looking at it carefully.
"It's a risk, I know," I said, "but meeting that woman in the first place was way more risky and everything went well."
"Until now." His tone was cold.
"I think she's been honest with me… They wanted to help Shallie escape from that villa… They were there when she died, and they are the ones who brought her body back."
"And you think you should be thankful for that?" he asked me, looking at me with an unreadable expression. I wasn't expecting that question from him. I couldn't understand what he was thinking.
"Should I? I mean, I'm glad she didn't die surrounded by enemies, and that she had somebody who wanted to help her. But to say I'm thankful is too much."
"Because they let her die in the end."
"That's not very mature of me, is it?" I told him. "Maybe they really did their best, maybe they really risked it all… but… if I think that she's dead, and that they're alive, if I think of all the time they spent there doing nothing… it's irrational, yet I can't help it, a part of me will never forgive them."
Dan’s eyes were fixed on me as I said those words. I was waiting for him to tell me that neither Robinson, Ms. Wilson nor Hutchison were forced to risk their lives for Shallie, and that they could have ignored her, but they tried to save her anyway. But Dan had no reaction whatsoever. He stared at me for a while, saying nothing, until our train arrived. We sat in a private compartment and closed the door. "I want to listen to this thing," I said, showing him the memory card again. He nodded, and I put it in my watchpad. On it there was only an audio track named as “message received n.33,” from the 4th of February at 12.39 a.m. I put in on play, and heard a man's voice talking. I knew that voice, since I had seen many of his interviews when I had first started gathering information on Shallie’s death. It was Robinson. His voice seemed suffering, and there was the noise of something burning in the background.
“The plan failed… we have underestimated them. I found out there's many more of them that we didn't know about… The ones here are all dead, but I'm hurt pretty bad... I managed to start the fire… please… take care of the kid.”
The audio track finished there. So that was the proof they were really helping out Robinson. He believed Shallie was safe when he died. After listening to his last words, I was glad that was the case. At least he died believing he had saved her… but then why state that the plan failed? Probably because they had found them and he was injured. Also, Ms. Wilson said that his original plan was to start the fire to create the chance for Shallie to escape, but his message suggested something more. Their plan was stopped, he was injured, and the enemies were dead; yet he used up all the energy he had left to burn the villa instead of trying to escape. Why? The answer was in his message itself. He said he had found out there were more members of the sect still around; so he burned the villa to try exposing the truth to the public. Exactly like I had thought, clues on what the sect was doing were well exposed with the villa burned down. It was Robinson's last attempt to stand in their way. And I had found out so much all thanks to him. I immediately sent a message to Ms. Wilson, asking her if my deductions were correct, and she replied it was all like I had thought.
"Robinson was really a good guy," I said, trying to assimilate all the news. "I should pass this message to Lilian and let her know."
"Yeah, why not." Dan stood up to leave the compartment. Since we talked at the station he was acting weird; he wasn't looking at me at all.
"Where are you going?"
"Toilet," he said, and left me there alone. After a while he wasn't coming back, so I went to look for him. I found him at the wagon bar drinking a lemonade.
"Hey, I thought you had fallen in the toilet or something," I said, sitting next to him. He was pale, and a little sweaty. "Are you alright?"
"I feel sick. As soon as the train left the station I felt like throwing up."
"And did you?" I asked, and he nodded. "Try to resist a little longer, when we get home you'll feel better."
"Thanks," he smiled at me, yet still avoiding meeting directly my eyes.
"I thought you were angry at me for something I said. You were acting strange."
"Sorry, it was just my stomach."
"Pfff—" That sentence made me laugh. He was so endearing.
"Drew… can you stay here with me for a while?" he asked me. I was happy he needed me by his side.
"I'm not going anywhere."
Chapter 44
"We have names, finally," said Bill, showing me a list. He, Dan and I were having a meeting to summarize all the information that Tyler had finally given them, before reporting everything to Jim in the afternoon. "They're all politicians and people from the elite society of Rosedeer. It was ten of them in total, including the five that died in February. They are, or I should say were, divided into two groups that alternated in performing the ritual. The five members of a group include four priests, one for each cycle, and a Master, who is the one who consecrates the victim at the end. The Master of the first group is David Jacques, founder of the sect and Chief of the Police. The one of the second group was Robinson Senior.
“The victim is chosen by the priest in charge of the cycle, who has to provide a place for performing the ritual and organize all the technical details. Each member is bound to secrecy, and they can reveal their true role only to an assistant, who is allowed to stay close during the ritual. In fact, when the ritual takes place, any presence other than the members is strictly forbidden, as it may bring negative influences on the result of the ritual. In the case of this February, the assistants in question were two guys officially in charge of security, and the new entry Robinson Jr. The priest in charge, Colten, and the deputy mayor Laurus, hadn't chosen their assistants yet. The ex-soldier you saw at the villa, Joseph Finnick, is the right hand man and assistant of the big boss, the Chief of the Police, while Kevin Tyler, the one we have caught, is the assistant of Arnel Jones, the Minister for Intercultural Exchanges.
“The other three members still alive are: Paul Forrester, the Minister of Tourism and Art Preservation; Edmund Newman, the Dean of the Rosedeer Intercultural University; Boguslav Domme, the President of the Sunrise Foundation. Forrester doesn’t have an assistant yet. The other two have one each, but since they entered the group recently, they don't hold a fundamental role within the organization.
“As I was mentioning before, this new sect was founded thirty years ago by the Chief of the police himself, David Jacques, who at the time was a simple inspector, together with Julian Robinson, older brother of Bart Robinson Senior. After Julian died, his younger brother took his place as the new Master of the second group, while Jacques stayed in charge of the first."
No wonder they control the police, I thought. Somehow I was expecting this organization to be even bigger, while it was, as a matter of fact, quite small. Twenty people at best, counting ten members and ten assistants. Nine excluding all the ones who died already. Also, I was somehow relieved to not see the President of the City or his Small Council in the list. Many of those crazy bastards were politicians, especially the ones of the second group, but at least it wasn't the entire political party. Even though there was always a possibility that everybody in the government knew of the sect and kept quiet. At that point there was really nothing that could be done.
Now I finally knew who they were, not just the other way around.
"What do they know about me?" I asked.
"Only that you researched the material about them in the library. They didn't think of you as a threat, but that was before we kidnapped this guy and burned that library room. Now they must be on alert. We proved to them that we're smart, and having a smart enemy is never a good thing," explained Bill.
"How are they reacting for having lost half of their members?" I asked. The thought that they could be recruiting somebody else worried me a lot.
"That's where I wanted to get. They plan to recreate the second group putting their assistants in charge, but since the process to become a priest is long, they want to start preparing them next year, and choose new assistants for themselves at that time too. At that point it will be hard to find all of them, and in addition they'll have all the time to destroy the proof we've gathered until now. They won't make any false move and they'll be as good as invisible for seven years."
"How do we get them then?" I said. "I won't wait seven years."
"There is no need to wait seven years," said Bill, then he made a long pause and looked at Dan first, and again at me. "But you won't like what I am about to tell you, Drew." Of course, he hadn’t said anything yet and I didn't like it already. I had a bad feeling about it.
"I'll tell him," said Dan to Bill. "Can you leave us alone for a while?"
Again he looked at him for a few seconds, then said, "Yeah, sure," and left the room. I waited for him to get out, which seemed to take way too long.
"Dan, what's this about?" I asked, as soon as the door closed behind Bill's back.
Dan took a breath and told me, "Drew, if you compare what happened to Shallie to how the other girls were murdered, what's the first thing you notice?"
"She wasn't injured."
"Right, she was poisoned. And was never stabbed like the ritual commands."
I was starting to understand where we were going… Bill was right; I didn't like it, and I didn't want to hear any of that. "Dan, what are you trying to tell me?"
"Tyler said that the ritual is complete only when the sinner's heart gets pierced by their silver knife…"
"Dan."
"The ritual was never—"
"Bullshit! Are you fucking kidding me?" I screamed.
"Drew, calm down."
"I'm not calming down! She was murdered as a sacrifice by those fucking bastards!"
"Her death doesn't count for them!" Dan screamed even more than me, slamming his hands on the table. "She was supposed to be a sacrifice…" he lowered his tone of voice, "but then their ritual failed."
I felt completely empty. Completely. "So her death was ‘useless?’" I murmured. "She died, Dan."
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
"You didn't tell me." I was so disappointed.
"That guy confessed it only today."
"How comes you don't look surprised?"
"I suspected it."
"You… suspected it." I was so distressed. "It must be nice, looking at this from the outside. Interesting, sometimes even hilarious maybe."
"Why do you have to turn everything into an excuse to start a fight?"
"How do you expect me to react?"
"I expect you to be strong enough to bear this much. Because Shallie is dead, and you will never change that. What you can do now is do something to prevent them from killing someone else. Before the end of this year they have to complete the ritual; do you understand what that means?"
"They'll kill another girl."
"Right. Same age, same story. Do you want to stop them or not?"
"I do."
"Good," he said, "but it will be hard to find out when and who they'll choose… Are you ready for it or not?"
I calmed down. "I'm ready… Sorry, I'm really sorry." Why am I always such an asshole to him?
"It doesn't matter."
"It does," I exhaled, "I always take out my frustration on you. I don't want to, yet…"
"It's okay, if it makes you feel better."
"There's no way that's okay."
"Drew, I won't run away from you just for that." His words were like a slap in the face, but it was the best slap I had received in my entire life; despite all I’d said and done to him, he was not gonna leave me. And it made me unfairly happy. Were my sudden changes of mood a sign of a mental problem? I was going crazy.
"Do you have any idea how they'll choose the next girl to kill?" I asked him.
"The age is clear. Recently there was a lot of commotion in Rosedeer so this time they aim to go completely unnoticed; they'll choose somebody who can disappear easily and with no complaints."
"Does such a person even exist?"
"Someone like my mother. Nobody cared when she left; I barely noticed myself," he said, not without disappointment. "Downtown is full of people like that."
"Maybe more than ‘who’ we should think about ‘when,’" I said.
"You're right, and about that, there's one thing I am sure of: it won't be during the summer."
"Why?"
"This year Rosedeer is hosting the Summer City Festival. Those guys' schedule is filled up until September."
Hearing that made me burst into a half hysterical laugh.
"Is that funny?"
"No, no, it's like… This summer I have so much work to do, I can't even kill anybody. Such a pity!"
"Nice to see you still have some sense of humor."
"Yes, for the next five minutes, then I'll probably start crying desperately… I need a break."
"We can talk later, if you want."
"No, I need a vacation… Like six, seven months far away from everything and everybody."
"You'll have to do it once this is over then. Because we have just two months to find out how to stop them."
"Yeah… I'll try to talk with Ms. Wilson. Some other detail could come out."
"Good, I’m not finished with Tyler either. He might tell us something more."
"... I'm not sure this is good for you." I was honestly concerned about him. Misled by his apparent tranquility, I always ended up dumping my problems on him, although I was the one who told him he could rely on me.
"You're worrying for me?"
"Of course I worry for you, even if sometimes it doesn't seem like it," I said, wondering if concealed by the deep, blue calm in his eyes he actually had a storm ravaging inside.
He looked back at me, maybe curious, maybe surprised, as if he wanted me to say more. I wet my lips and continued, "'Cause you're like… always acting tough, like you don't care about anything. And then you smile, or cry, and I think you're the most delicate thing in the world. Until we fight, when you get all defensive and kick me down."
"I don't think I've ever kicked you down," he said, smiling.
"You kick me down emotionally," I chuckled, "when you go like ‘Mind your own business!’"
"In my defense, you know how to be annoying sometimes."
"And you know how to be bitchy," I said, beaming at him. I had no idea when we had gotten so close to each other. "And this is usually the moment when you turn away from me."
Am I flirting with him? I wasn’t able to control my heartbeat anymore at that point. And I was scared, remembering that night.
"I'm not doing it this time."
"Why?" I held my breath.
"Don't tell me you've already forgotten," he smiled. "You told me, ‘never stop looking at me.’" It was getting too hot around there.
"How can I forget? That asshole ruined the potential best kiss of my life."
"Yeah, I was a bit disappointed too."
"A bit disappointed? I could have killed him," I grinned. "I saw him kissing you that night. It hurt pretty badly, considering how you had completely ignored our first kiss that very day. Was it so bad?"
He flushed red. "You had almost gotten killed, it wasn't really the time to talk about it."
"Was it bad?" I said, just to tease him a bit.
"It wasn't bad, it was… unexpected."
"It's cute how you're g
etting all tense over it."
"It's strange that you're perfectly fine with it. You're not even into guys."
"I wish I knew what's going on with me… I get pretty depressed when I'm alone and I think about it; am I gay? Am I not? Am I still the same as before or I'll never love a woman again? Do I even want to, after Shallie?” I told him. I was finally able to speak honestly about my feelings with him. Can I go all the way? Will you accept me now, like you accepted my feelings for An when we were kids? I want to believe in you. “But then I see you and fuck everything, there's nothing else in the world except you."
"This almost sounds like a confession," he said, kidding. But at that point I had gotten pretty serious about it. None of it was a joke for me.
"You can consider it a confession. I have completely lost it, Dan. Whatever is gonna happen to me from now on, I need you by my side." Dan was startled by my words. I didn't know how the conversation had turned out that way, but I couldn't run away from my own feelings anymore; it was time to be clear. Dan looked at me for a while, dead serious.
"Can I confess something to you too? I've been wanting to tell you since the day I left for Downtown, seven years ago, at the station…" How could I forget that? I had been wanting to know how that only one sentence ended all the time. My heart was beating faster every second. "Drew, you are everything to me. Always." I felt like crying; his words were spinning through my head like a tornado, awakening all those feelings I had tried to fight or suppress up to that moment. It was better than what I could have wished for. "Are you… gonna kiss me or something?" he asked me, holding his breath, his thoughts probably as mixed and confused as mine.
"Yes, I mean, no," I said, in a dazed state, "I'm scared."
"Scared of me?"
"Scared of hurting you. Scared of what I could do to you." I moved away from him, to resist the temptation to touch him.
"What's wrong now?" he asked me with a sweet smile. I hated myself for what I did to him.
"Can you forgive me?"
"I was never really angry at you, Drew, I let you do that. I see, you know, that you’ve stopped touching me completely after the other night. You don't have to."
