“What’s she doing here?” I demanded, pointing to my mom.
“She’s your mother. Since you’re a minor, she must be present,” James, my lawyer, answered. He cringed away from my glare.
“You said they were trying me as an adult.”
“This is just the hearing, honey,” my mom cooed, reaching for my hand. I jerked away from her and she looked like she might cry.
“Oh please,” I huffed. “Don’t act like you actually care.
I’ve been in prison for almost three months and you haven’t dropped by once to say hello.”
“It’s tough to get time off, sweetie,” my mom said, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Save it for the jury,” I snapped. “You’ll need all the tears you can make to get them to believe you’re a decent mother.”
“Zac, honey…”
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“Drop it,” I said icily, surprising even myself. I had never acted so cold towards my mother. Prison, however little time I actually spent with the other inmates, had clearly hardened me.
“Mr. Bell, I think we should have a quick chat before you attend your hearing,” James said, hugging his briefcase to his chest like he had when we first met.
“I’m listening,” I sighed.
“In this hearing, they are going to decide how to try you, if the Fastners choose to try you at all. This could get settled out of court, if we’re lucky.”
“How is that even possible? It’s a murder, right?”
“Attempted,” James corrected. “If the Fastners feel their son is in no danger, they may choose not to press charges.”
“What about Mr. and Mrs. Steele? Aren’t they pressing charges against Jacob?”
“I – I don’t know anything about that case,” James stuttered. “But, I may have heard they cannot afford to take it to court. Th-there are so many variables. It’s not a cut and dry case.”
“What is it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Well, I think you should show as much remorse as you can m-muster. If you c-can, m-make it sound like y-y-you are bbeing tortured by it.”
“Why are you stuttering so much?” I asked. “Are you…
are you afraid of me?”
James’ eyes darted towards the floor and he shook his head stiffly, but I knew he was. Everyone was afraid of me after what I’d done to Eric. How could I be such a cold hearted bastard?
“Don’t worry, honey, we’ll get you out of this,” my mom said, patting my shoulder. I wasn’t sure what she meant, exactly, but her words weren’t comforting.
A few minutes later, I was led by a police officer into the courtroom. James and my mother took seats on either side of me.
We sat for a minute or two before the bailiff walked to the front of the room.
“Please stand, the honorable Judge Jones presiding,” the bailiff said. A tall, brunette female judge walked into the room
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and sat down at the stand. “You may be seated,” the bailiff said after the judge sat down.
Judge Jones was a pretty woman of about forty, I guessed. She had long, wavy hair that looked like she spent an hour placing each strand in the right spot. Her makeup was heavy and cake-y: the mark of an aging woman who still reminisced about the teen years. My mother was one of those.
“Zachary Bell, you have been accused of attempted murder. How do you plead?”
“Uh, not guilty,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. When I picked up the gun, I had the full intentions of ending his life –
but I hadn’t planned on it before that. And, of course, I was protecting Sam.
“You never planned on murdering Jacob Fastner?” the judge asked. I shook my head, and, after remembering I was probably being recorded, I said,
“No. I never planned on murdering Jacob Fastner.”
“You never conspired with anyone to murder Jacob Fastner?”
“No.”
That was pretty much the end of the hearing. I never really understood the point of hearings. I was told exactly what I was being charged with, asked “How do you plead?”, and then given another court date and the terms of my prison sentence.
My bail was set to five thousand dollars, but of course my mother didn’t have the money and didn’t have anything to pawn to get the money. So I spent another week in prison. No big.
Three days after my hearing, I had a visitor. The weird thing was that it was Tuesday, not Wednesday (visitor’s day). A guard I’d never seen before came and got me directly out of my cell.
“You have a visitor,” he said.
When I questioned who was visiting me and why it was allowed on a Tuesday, the guard ignored me and just held open my cell door. I followed him down the hall and into the main entry of the prison.
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The juvenile ward was off the left side of the prison, but the adult ward was off the right. Naturally I was a little confused when the new guard led me across the entry, behind the receptionist desk, and into the hallway on the right – the one leading to the adult ward.
But we didn’t go into the adult ward. The guard took me up a long flight of steps that stopped at a small landing with a large metal door. He punched a password into a little keypad off the left, swiped his ID card, and placed his thumb on a little scanner. A little camera popped out of the wall above the keypad and the guard leaned in close. The camera scanned his eye and then a disembodied voice said, “Accepted.”
“Security measures,” the guard said without looking at me. “Mr. Merlin’s orders.”
“Who’s Mr. Merlin?” I asked. Suddenly the door opened to reveal an extremely large room with a circular cage in the center. The guard led me up to the cage, which was on a raised platform, about three feet off the ground. It reminded me of Hannibal’s cage from Silence of the Lambs. I hated that movie.
The guard walked up a few short steps and unlocked the cage, grabbing me by the arm and pulling me into it.
“Wait here,” he said, locking me in the cage.
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Chapter Five
“Hello, mate,” someone said behind me. I turned around to see a tall, skinny guy with a lock of black hair sticking straight up. “Have a seat, please,” he said with a strong British accent, gesturing towards the table and chairs in front of me.
“What’s with the cage?” I asked.
“Atmosphere,” the guy said with a smile. “My employer and I like to be dramatic when we reveal secrets.”
“Who are you? Why are you visiting me on a Tuesday?”
“You’ve been in prison too long, mate,” the guy said, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table. He gestured to the chair in front of me. “Please, have a seat.”
Reluctantly, I pulled out the chair and sat down. The guy grinned at me like we were old pals. “Who are you?” I asked again.
“Oh, excuse me, sorry mate. I’m Mr. Merlin, but you can call me Blaise,” he answered, holding out his hand. When I didn’t take it, he folded it slowly and pulled it back to his side, giving me an awkward smile.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“Well, it’s a little complicated. Shall I jump right in?”
“Just tell me.”
“Well, I’ve been informed that the Sign has come into her powers and the Core needs you to wake the fuck up.”
I stared. Was everyone going crazy?
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Maybe it was something in the water. First Eric calls me the Seeker. Then he apologizes to a Greek god while I beat the life out of him. Then Mitch tells me his girlfriend can read minds.
So far, I was the only one retaining any sanity.
“You’re fucking crazy. Can I go now?” I asked, looking around for an exit. “Hey,” I called to the guard who brought me in, “I’m done. Visit’s over. Ready to go back to my cell now.”
> “I… don’t think so,” Blaise said slowly. The guard never even looked at me.
“Hey,” I yelled. “I’m done; get me the fuck out of here!”
The guard continued to ignore me.
“Look, this is extremely important. If the Sign discovers who you are, she will kill you.”
“I’ve already been attacked, and I survived, okay?” I said, standing up and walking towards the gate. “Now let me the hell out of here.” This guy is relentless! How’d he even get in here?
And where am I?
“You’ve already been attacked?” Blaise asked, very concerned. “How close was your brush with death?”
“Very,” I said, turning back around to look at him.
“Why?”
“You’ve recently gained weight, haven’t you?” he asked, looking me over with a critical eye.
“Muscle,” I corrected, shifting uncomfortably. His gaze was rather judgmental and I felt the strong urge to hide.
“Who attacked you?”
“My cellmate, Eric.”
Suddenly Blaise leapt up into the air and landed on the table. His eyes were wild and excited, like his hair. His sniffed the air, closed his eyes, and relaxed like he was meditating or something.
“I see you’ve met the Doberman,” Blaise said after a few moments, opening his eyes. They were glassy and his face was placid.
“Who?” I questioned, leaning against the bars of the cage to get as far away from the psycho as possible.
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“The assassin of the gods,” he said with a faint smile.
“Odd that they sent him after you. He is no match for your strength. You… ah, I see you broke his face. Literally,” he laughed. His eyes were getting glassier and glassier, to the point where they were turning white. He looked like a corpse.
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, my voice shaky. I was scared, but I didn’t want him to know it. “How did you know what I did to him?”
“He is afraid of you,” Blaise whispered, ignoring my questions. “He fears you will kill the Sign. He fears… he fears we will succeed.”
Blaise blinked a few times and his eyes cleared. He was looking at me, still squatting on top of the table. He grinned again.
“Sorry about that,” he said happily, jumping off the table and sitting down again. He shrugged. “Sometimes I can’t help it; the gift just takes over.”
My first instinct was to ask, “What gift?” but it felt like a question I should already know the answer to. I didn’t know it, but some part of me said that I should.
“I know you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Blaise said suddenly, bringing me out of my thoughts. “It’s just that…
Well, I was raised by the Core so I learned all of this at a very young age. It’s difficult to explain it all. I don’t really even know where to start. It’s like… well… I don’t know. Ask me something.”
“Who are you?” I asked again, wanting a deeper answer than his name.
“Well, like I said, I’m Blaise Merlin. I am the Soul Searcher.”
“What is that?” I asked, sitting down. I figured if I at least indulged him, he’d let me go.
“In a nutshell, I find souls. That’s what you just saw, when my eyes went all wonky. Once I find a soul, I can watch them. That’s how I knew what you did to the Doberman – uh, Eric as he’s called in this cycle.”
“And the Doberman is… the assassin of the gods?”
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“Yes. Vicious little thing. He can turn into a Doberman at will. Kind of a cool gift, to be honest. No one on our side can shapeshift. That’s a strictly Divine trait.”
“That’s impossible,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
“So is mind-reading, but the Sign can do that,” Blaise said with a wink.
Strange that he mentioned that now. Has he talked to Sam? Are they all in on something together?
“You’ve already met her, haven’t you?” Blaise whispered, his voice excited and breathy. His eyes widened and his body twitched like he was sitting on hot coals. I looked up at him with contempt. “My god, you have – you’ve experienced the rush!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I huffed, looking away.
“The intense feeling, your fight or flight responses being at war – she’s terrifying, you want to run, but she’s also beautiful, and hateful, and exists for all the wrong reasons: you want to kill her.”
“You’re fucking crazy!” I shouted, standing up so abruptly I knocked my chair over. So that’s what this was. He was trying to get me to admit I was a killer, that I had the stomach for it. The Fastners probably hired him, the stupid nut job.
“You wish I was,” he said. “You and I both know the only thing more satisfying than being around her would be to end her life.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, walking backward until I was pressed against the bars of the cage. Blaise stayed seated, grinning like a maniac. He blinked, the creepy grin slipping away. His eyes were still wild and his breathing was hard, but he began to relax. I recognized the symptoms from my last visit with Sam; the adrenaline was wearing down.
“Sorry about that,” he said, rubbing his face and swallowing. “I’ve been waiting for so many years… Just thinking about finally getting our way gets me all hyped up.”
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“Please let me go,” I whispered, trying to keep myself from whining. I didn’t like being locked in a cage with a lunatic talking about killing people.
“Ok, um…” Blaise began, still rubbing his face. “Let me start over… Let me explain the Core.
“The Core is a group of people who resist Palace rule –
the Palace is sort of like Heaven, I guess you could say. All the gods live there. They’re called Nobles. You’ve got the common ones, you know Jesus, the Greeks, the Romans, Norse gods, all them, and then you’ve got the less common ones like the Pagans and the Hindus and everyone else.
“The Core started as a small rebellion of demigods – you know, half-god, half-humans. These original rebels did not agree with the way the God and Goddess – the overall rulers, the ones who started everything, etc. – were running things. You see when the world began, there was no need for order. The dinosaurs, the tiny little things, they didn’t need organization. They weren’t capable of conscious thought or feelings. But when the God and Goddess got bored, they created humans – tiny little things with all the intelligence of a god, but with no powers.
“The problem with humans was that they could think and feel. Emotions like sadness and greed eventually arose, and Earth became nothing but a warzone. It pained the God and Goddess to see their creations fight, so they made the Signs. There were twelve of them, one for each phase of the Zodiac – which was a little ironic considering humans didn’t actually ‘invent’ the Zodiac until thousands of years later.
“The Signs each exist in cycles; when one dies, another is born. The Signs live without knowing what they are until they are truly needed: until the Seeker reaches full potential. The Seeker does not exist in every cycle, and we don’t know why. I personally think it isn’t fair that the Palace gets a protector every time and the Core has no clue when they might get the chance to take over. But, anyway, the point of a Sign is to organize the future. Everything a Sign does sets the course for someone else’s life. We sometimes call them the butterflies.”
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“Why butterflies?” I interrupted, surprising myself. I wasn’t believing a word he said, but I was kind of getting into it, like a good movie.
“You know the butterfly effect? You go back in time and a butterfly flaps its wings and there’s a tsunami in Florida? Well, because the God and Goddess invented the Signs, the butterfly effect is irrelevant. We call the Signs the butterflies because everything they do, everything they touch, sets the
course for someone else’s life.
“For example, say Scorpio orders a coffee with an extra shot. Her extra shot uses the last of the espresso beans. The woman behind her orders the same thing, but the espresso beans must be replaced. The woman doesn’t have time because she’s in a hurry to get to work, so she orders a hot chocolate instead. She has a severe addiction to caffeine, so she performs badly at work that day. Just so happens that on that day, her boss assesses everyone’s work. Because the woman was so stressed, the boss gives what would’ve been her promotion to someone else. So for another year, she’s stuck in a job she hates. Thus, the Sign has flapped her wings and changed someone’s life. In fact, she changed two people’s lives. One for the better and one for the worse.
“The Core believes the Signs should not control the future. If the Signs did not exist, then everyone would be able to choose their own paths. So we created the Seeker to seek out and end the existence of the Signs.”
“There is a flaw in your logic,” I said with a sly smile.
“Even if a… Sign hadn’t bought that coffee, someone else would have and the same thing would’ve happened. What you’re saying makes no sense; one person cannot be the perpetual butterfly.”
“You don’t understand,” Blaise said quickly, as if he was afraid I was about to unravel the entire theory he was supposedly raised on. “The Sign’s decisions are law. Once she makes a decision and someone else’s life is altered, it’s permanent. There is no going back. That’s how things stay ‘organized.’”
“Okay, so what’s wrong with that?” I asked.
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“It means we have no choice but to live the life we were given. We have no free will. Any and everything that happens to us happened because the Sign allowed it to. We might think we’re making our own choices, but she selects the options.
“If the Signs didn’t exist, everyone would be a butterfly.
Everyone would get what they want, when they wanted it. You could make any choice. If the woman wanted her extra shot, she could get it because the Sign hadn’t taken the last one. Her choice wouldn’t affect someone else’s. With the existence of the Signs, each subsequent choice is already set in stone. Without them, thousands of futures are possible.”
Night Prowler Part One Page 23
