The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 29. Chapter 29

White coats circuited the Anderson house beneath a sky that was as black and moonless as the Void. The excited barking of dogs and shouts of the search team combing the woods sounded from the woods. The flash of the strobe lights atop the Roc City Police cruisers splashed everything in neon red and blue.

For Bazzel looking into them was like having hot needles shoved into his eyes, but he didn't want to leave Kaufman. Not even for a second. The death magician faced the woods, his expression unreadable. Remote. It made Bazzel uneasy. Both were steady and regular; the wrongness he sensed had nothing to do with the body, but the mind. Just when I think I’m beginning to finally understand you, the Astorathian thought, you change the rules of the game like a seismic shift that throws everything into flux. How can I help you if you won’t let me in?

Two black-clad coroners pushed a body bag on a gurney through the front door. One of Anderson's parents from the smell of it. Bazzel's stomach rumbled audibly with mournful hunger. He shot Kaufman a guilty glance, but not even the sound had reached him. Wasn't Carlos Santino who had said he was an island unto itself? Think of a man's name and he shall appear: Here came Santino making his way up the hill towards the house right now. Towards Kaufman.

Kaufman did not see Santino until he said, "Hey Vanus. Heard what happened. Are you okay?"

Kaufman stiffened instantly, his heart shifting into overdrive as it had done back in the tunnel. "I'm fine."

Santino nodded before letting out a breath. "Van…"

"Whatever you have to say, you can swallow it and walk away Santino," Kaufman said in a voice that only promised retribution. "I can't even stand to look at you right now."

Santino flashed Bazzelthorpe a scathing, pucker-mouthed look as if to say, This is your fault. You turned him against me.

The two Theocracy agents watched Carlos walk away in silence.

Bazzel watched Kaufman draw inward once more, returning to his exile on the island he'd made for himself.

"Kaufman."

When Vanus did not look around until Bazzelthorpe touched his shoulder. Van’s head swung around like a ball on a chain; a spark of irritation flashed in his eyes that immediately died when he realized who it was. “Sorry.”

“Sorry is a word you never have to say to me.”

“I’m tired…I think. I know I need to go home and sleep, but I wouldn’t be able to. Not truly. Not after this.”

“Are you…?” The Astorathian cleared his throat. Sparks of anxiety lit up the inside of his belly like firecrackers; his tail tapped jerkily against the heel of his boot. “Are you upset with me?”

Vanus made a sputtering sound. “Bazzelthorpe, why would you think I’m mad at you? Did I say or do something to make you feel that way?”

“I just…I just don’t want you to be mad at me for not letting you go after Anderson. I know it was selfish of me. I just wanted you to stay with me. I didn’t want to be alone.”

Kaufman’s face softened. The ball of cartilage in his throat bobbed visibly. He tugged gently at the sleeve of the leather coat draped across Bazzelthorpe’s shoulders. “Let’s go. I’m done with this fucking place.” He did not say anything until they were back at the truck where they were mostly alone. “Bazzel, please don’t make my problems about you. I’m not angry at you for keeping me from going after Anderson. I let my anger get to me. I’m just glad you’re okay. Are you okay?”

I’m with you, weighed on Bazzel’s tongue. He swallowed them, unsure of how Kaufman would take them. “I’m okay.”

The death magician smiled. Tears gleamed in his eyes. One fell from the corner of his eye, trailing down his cheek. The Astorathian’s heart skipped a beat. “Kaufman, are you hurt?” He ran the pad of his thumb across Van’s flesh, smearing the tears across the ridge of his cheek bone until his milky skin glowed with perspiration.

Vanus chuckled shakily. He started to pull away, hesitated, and then stepped into Bazzelthorpe’s touch. “I’m not hurt. I’m relieved. I didn’t get mad at Anderson until he hurt you. At the end of the day knowing you are safe’s all that matters to me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes,” Bazzelthorpe rumbled breathlessly. His heart continued to do somersaults and backflips in his chest.

“Good. Don’t you forget it. And if you do forget it, let me know and I’ll remind you.”

“How?”

Kaufman bit his lip; his head was level with the broad expanse of Bazzel’s chest. “Just like this,” he said in a silky whisper. His lips felt like gossamer against the Astorathian’s own, delicate but full of passion. It took Bazzel's brain a second to catch up: This was the second time Kaufman had initiated a “makeout session” as they called it on the online forums he’d been researching on Google. He felt his cock surge from its sheath in his pants; hot pulses of desire traveled up his shaft, rekindling the flame in his belly.

"Kaufman, you're killing me," he growled.

Vanus stepped back. "Am I?"

"You are."

An unusually wicked smile played across Kaufman's lips. "Is that all it takes to rile you up? A simple little kiss? You lightweight. I wonder what would happen if I went lower." His hand trailed down the edge of Bazzel's chest, down past his belly to his pants which now stuck out like the prow of a ship. "If I unzipped your pants, what would jump out to greet me? I've heard about Astorathian cocks. Your prowess in bed. I won't deny my curiosity."

Bazzel eased Vanus back against the truck, growling. Kaufman let out a surprised little grunt that made Bazzel's cock engorge. "Right now I want to rip off your clothes, pick you up, and plow you until you scream with pleasure."

Vanus shuddered. A silver-hot point grew from a pin point to a flame, making him look wraith-like and more beautiful than ever before. And Bazzel had always thought him beautiful. When he spoke his voice came out husky, the tent of his own pants pushed out for the Astorathian's admiration. "Really? Right here? At a crime scene? In front of everyone? Right now?"

Bazzelthorpe could only let out a purr of confirmation.

Vanus surprised him with a dopey look so naked and full of desire and beauty it made Bazzel's heart ache. "Maybe you should."

"I'd hurt you. I wouldn't mean to, but I would."

"Maybe I don't care. Maybe I want you to hurt me."

"No," the Astorathian shook his head resolutely. "You've been hurt enough and I won't hurt you anymore than I already have. I will not leave a mark on your beautiful flesh. The time for us is close at hand, but it is not tonight. But mark my words magician, when I do take you and make you mine, it will be a ride you won't forget. You won't walk right for a week."

"Ugm," Vanus croaked. "I don't know if I can walk right now. Okay, I hear you. And I'm going to hold you to it." He held out the keys with another mischievous grin. "Since you have officially given me blue balls and blown my mind, you get to be the designated driver."

                  …

After two hours of searching through data - old cases that had been opened and never resolved, witness statements, and notes left by agents long before his time - Vanus found something that made him let out a cry of triumph. He stood up so fast his chair toppled over onto the floor. His heart was hammering to hear the thunder of footsteps crashing down the hallway.

The door flew open. "Kaufman!" Bazzelthorpe charged into the room with a tray of coffee in his hand. "Are you hurt?"

"No, just excited. I've found it! Finally!" Vanus came around the desk, grinning broadly. He took one of the offered coffee cups.

“The other one is for you too,” said Bazzelthorpe.

“You don’t want one?”

“I don’t like coffee.”

Vanus gave him a pointed look. “Hold your tongue.”

The Astorathian smirked. “We Astorathians don’t need coffee the way you do. I can go days without sleeping.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, rub it in.” Vanus went back to his desk. “Do you remember what Anderson had in his hands when we were in his room?”

“No,” Bazzelthorpe admitted with a toothy grin that Vanus would have found menacing a week ago. “I was too busy blasting him full of holes with a shotgun.”

“It’s a good thing you have someone like me to pay attention to the finer details. He had the same marking on him the victim at the church had. Remember when we went to the morgue to take a look at the corpse? There was a mark on his cheek from where he had been burned. Brad had it, but he also had something else…in his other hand. A lighter. I didn't get a good look at it, but…"

Face glowing in the light of the monitor, Vanus clicked his mouse a few times. "This is going to blow your mind. This is not the first time this has happened…that this lighter has popped up. It cropped up thirty years ago. The exact same thing was happening: buildings going up in flames, people dying. Eventually the man was caught by Theocracy agents in Tootulu."

"Who was it?" Bazzelthorpe tried to sit on the edge of the desk only to have it groan beneath his weight, so he stood back up.

"Jack Leonidas. Get this: he did the exact same thing he did to his mother, Elise Leonidas, that Anderson did to his parents." He swiveled his computer screen around so Bazzelthorpe could see the grisly image. "He taped her down and immolated her. Just like Brad. See his mug shot here. This is the same man I saw with Anderson at the Wishwood ruins. Or at least his spirit."

"What happened afterwards?"

Vanus frowned. “That’s where things get a little more patchy to me. This is what I’ve managed to put together. Leonidas was apprehended by Theocracy forces and forced into a facility here in Roc City. It’s an insane asylum guarded and ran by the Theocracy called the Diamond.”

“I’ve been there.” Bazzelthorpe shuddered visibly. “It’s not a pleasant place.”

“No,” the death magician agreed, “it is not.”

Bazzelthorpe’s browless forehead scrunched up. “When did you go?”

“You know when,” Vanus said in a voice that said not to ask again.

The Astorathian looked away guiltily. “Sorry…I…I’m sorry…”

“It’s okay,” the death magician reassured him with a lopsided smile that failed to hide the quiver inside his gut. “You have a right to be curious. I just…Understand it’s hard to talk about it. One day I will tell you everything. Anyway, back to the lighter. It was put in evidence. Then one day it disappeared. Poof. No one knows where it went until a few weeks later when a fourteen year old boy found it in 1993. Guess where?”

“Where?”

“Tootulu. Can you guess by who?”

“Who?”

“Brad Anderson.”

Bazzelthorpe’s face froze. He was quiet for a long time. “How…?”

“This is no coincidence, I don’t think. Anderson was sentenced to treatment at the Diamond for animal cruelty when he was found with a dead cat in his backpack. They found several dead animals buried in the woods…just like we did.” Now it was Van’s turn to shutter. “Any way they were able to stop whatever cycle he was starting again.”

“What happened to Leonidas?”

“According to the report I’m looking at…he’s still alive. In a way.”

Bazzelthorpe’s tail, which had been swinging lazily from side to side came to halt. “I…I don’t understand,” he admitted reluctantly.

“I don’t either. But I think…I think he’s being turned into an incarnate. A physical vessel…a living shell for an archon or a death angel.”

“Do you think it’s Chokmah?”

Vanus frowned, troubled. “Chokmah is a tyrant who feeds off of devotion: the religious fanatic who uses his influence to gain dominion over the brainless or the politician who refuses to give up his power and starts wars. So why not give the lighter to a politician or a preacher or, hell, even the host of a gameshow. Why a fourteen-year-old boy? A fourteen-year-old boy who was able to escape Inferno’s influence only to fall back into it thirty years later with a wife and child. A man who murdered his parents.”

“What are you thinking, Kaufman?” Bazzelthorpe’s gaze was both intent and uncomfortably forbearing.

“I don’t know,” Vanus said.

“I think you do,” the Astorathian said imploringly. “I think you’re just afraid to say.”

“What if I am? It doesn’t make a difference one way or another until we know for sure.” Vanus picked up the phone on his desk, frowning. Anderson and Leonidas. Chokmah. The conversion of a child into a monster, who later became a father and husband, only to get turned back to a monster. There were too many variables. Too many certainties. What was next? Leonidas may be comatose, he thought, but comatose isn’t the same as being dead and being dead isn’t the same as being powerless. A terrible hunch began to take form.

“I’m going to make a phone call,” he said. “I want to get extra eyes on the Diamond.”

“Do you think Anderson’s going to try and do something?”

“I do. What if he tries to spring Leonidas free?”

“Could he do that?”

Vanus cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think we should leave it up to chance?”

“No.”

“Me either.”

                               …

Vanus awoke from a dreamless sleep to the sound of his phone rattling against the bedside table. This better be good, he thought. People dying, buildings burning, a catastrophe of world-ending stakes. At this point he would have rather had someone shoot him in the head than to crawl out from the safety and warmth of the covers. He glared down at his phone, at the number he didn't recognize him. Whoever had dared to wake him up from his soul-deep slumber was going to get it. They had no idea if the wrath they'd incurred.

"I don't know who this is," he seethed into the phone through gritted teeth, "but this has better be good. People crying out in pain, maimed…"

"Kaufman," said a deep and familiar voice. "I'm standing outside your door."

Vanus made a sputtering sound. "How did you get inside?"

"I…I kind of broke the security pad trying to find the button to your apartment."

Vanus laughed. "I'll be there in a minute." He slipped on a bathrobe, climbed down the stairs, lowered the wards surrounding the apartment, and opened the door. There stood Bazzelthorpe in his usual bulky leather coat - did he wear anything else? Vanus doubted it - looking sheepish and guilty as hell.

"I'm sorry for waking you." The Astorathian started turn away.

"Giving up already? I'm disappointed. Don't walk away from me Agent Bazzelthorpe. Get your ass back here and let me look at you." Something hopeful and childlike and relieved flashed in the Astorathian's eyes. The death magician led him back into the apartment. The door closed. Security locks and wards slid into place. Once more they were alone. Gently, softly so Bazzelthorpe knew he wasn't upset Vanus asked him if he was okay.

"Yes," Bazzel said, struggling to get out what he wanted to say. "I…I just…Can I hold you and watch you while you sleep?"

Vanus laughed. He didn't mean to, but it was out before he could stop it. Bazzelthorpe shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I'm sorry, Bazz. Who would have thought you were such a romantic beneath that rough exterior?"

"I can be very romantic. I look forward to the day when I can show you just how romantic I can be."

"Let's make sure Anderson doesn't kill me first. Damn it, Bazz - think I found you a new knick name, can I call you that? - don't pout at me. I was joking. Sort of. Forgive me, I'm so tired I don't even know what I'm saying."

Carefully, slowly, silently asking permission with Vanus silently giving it, Bazz slid his arms around the death magician and lifted him into the air. He lowered himself onto the couch with Kaufman's arm resting on a pillow that rested on the hollow of his arm. He cradled the death magician, would have wrapped himself around him like a shield if he could.

"Sleep, my little death magician, sleep," he whispered and so Vanus Kaufman did.