The Theocracy - The Blackened Cross - 24. Chapter 24

Carlos was standing outside his door when Vanus arrived. “We need to talk, Van,” he said with that pinched, hard-eyed look that said he would not be denied.

“Carlos, now is really not the time. I’ve had a shit week…”

“I don’t care how shitty your week has been. The last couple of years have been pretty shitty. Full of mixed messages and secrets. Well today I want answers and I won’t leave until I get them.”

“Fine,” the death magician grumbled. He nudged past Carlos to get to the door. “But I’m taking a shower and I’m taking a long one. I need to wash the filth of Inferno out of my hair and from under my fingernails.”

He didn’t wait for Carlos to make himself at home. He stripped out of his clothes sodden with sweat and other less desirable things. He wondered how he must have smelled to Bazzelthorpe. He could still hear the Astorathian’s voice in his ear after he’d woken up screaming and clawing at the air: I’m here…You’re safe with me. I won’t let anyone hurt you. A cord of longing, unexpected and razor-sharp, tugged at his heart for the Astorathian. He looked at himself in the mirror, unable to recognize the person who stared back at him with a tortured expression. “What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time, Vanus Kaufman?” he said to the stranger in the glass.

He made good on his promise of taking his time in the shower. He scoured himself from head to toe with hot soapy water, scrubbing his arms, back, and chest raw with a shower scrubber. He let the water wash the detritus from his skin. If only he could cleanse his mind.

When he came out of the bathroom, his hair combed and fresh clothes on, he found Carlos sitting on the couch. He didn’t waste times with pleasantries. Leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest, he asked, “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” Carlos said as if the answer was obvious. “In the three years you and I were together you never told me anything about your past: Who your parents were. How you grew up. What that fucking creepy ass tattoo on your back is, what it means. Why you always stiffened up when we were in bed together, as if my touch made your skin crawl. Any time I asked you skirted around the question, changed the subject, drew the attention to something else. That’s what I want to know.”

“I had my reasons for not telling you those things!” In a single instance, Vanus was angry again. Who was Carlos to come here demanding questions of him like this?”

“Why?” Carlos sprung to his feet, matching the death magician flame for flame. “Did you think I wouldn’t be able to take it? That I wouldn’t be able to understand. I waited for you to open up to me for three years.”

“Yes!” Vanus shouted. When he opened his eyes, they glowed silver-white with unsuppressed emotion. The air crackled and popped with electricity. The lights around them began to flicker. Carlos did not step away from him or act afraid. Vanus wished he was afraid, wished he would just leave. “That’s exactly what I thought!” More softly, “And because I wanted to protect you.”

Van’s ex-lover shook his head in confusion. “Protect me from what? I don’t need you to protect me from anything.”

Vanus clenched his eyes shut, wrangling his emotions for control. Stop, he told himself. Don’t start losing your crap now. You are in control of you. Eventually he found the center of himself. He felt the air around him go still; when he opened his eyes they were back to their normal storm-gray color. “In my world, the world of a magician, when you speak of a thing you give it power. When you acknowledge its existence you give it form. That’s why I never told you about the past. Because I killed it, and I’m afraid that by speaking of it I will resurrect it. Do you want to know why I never told you about my parents? Because I never knew them. I don’t even know their names.”

Carlos’ face fell. “So who raised you?”

“Me. I raised myself. Or at least that’s the narrative I’ve fashioned for myself,” the death magician answered with a sardonic chuckle. “I spent the first years of my life in a small town on the shores of Lake Michigan called Grasinge. I don’t remember much about it except that it was always raining and cold…I was eight years old when Stamper found me. When he adopted me."

"Stamper?"

"My adopted father." My lover, my master, my jailer, he did not say. "He had a daughter named Julia who became my sister. You want to know what my childhood was like?" Vanus began to unbutton his shirt as he spoke. "Let me tell you, it was no Disney movie." He slid his shirt off and turned to face Carlos so that he could see the tattoo on his back."

"Some fathers are mechanics, construction workers, or professors. Mine was the High Priest of The Blackened Rose, a disciple of Chagidiel, the Bloodstained Patriarch, the father of perversion. This tattoo is his claim over my body. Over my soul. He gets his jolleys off by the rape and neglect of children. Their corruption. Do you want to hear about how my father and sister, people who were supposed to love me and uplift me used to shackle me up and fuck me? Sometimes at the same time."

"Vanus…" All the blood drained from Carlos' face.

Now that he'd started it was as if Pandora's Box had been opened inside him. He cut Carlos off. "My name isn't Vanus. It's Lionel. Lionel Perry. I changed it to get away from them. Do you want to hear about how my sister used to come in my room and sit on my face while my father fucked me in the ass? I hadn't even started puberty yet."

Carlos held up a hand, his face drained of all color. "Stop…I can't hear anymore."

Vanus felt his insides go cold. His ex's rejection both stung and made him feel numb. "And you wonder why we didn't work out?" he scoffed disgustedly. "You don't belong in my world. And I don't belong in yours."

"Fuck you," Carlos said.

"No," the death magician shot back icily, "fuck you. Now that I've answered all your questions you can get the fuck out of my apartment."

                                        …

The elevator doors slid open. Vanus stepped out to find Bazzelthorpe standing next to Gwendolyn’s door, leaning against the wall, his arms crossed over his jacket. As always he wore his long leather trench coat. He had the same brooding look he always did, his horns casting distorted shadows on the tiled floor…but there was a stiffness to his shoulders that wasn’t usually there. When he caught sight of the death magician he immediately straightened his posture, blushing sheepishly. Vanus felt his own heart, which had been heavy on the journey here, lift. That’s new, he thought. Guess I better just start accepting it. What that ‘it’ was he wasn’t sure he could accept, but he couldn’t deny its presence: his growing attraction to the Astorathian.

“You look nervous,” Vanus said in greeting.

“I…am,” Bazzel admitted slowly. “The bosswoman doesn’t like me.”

“Let me handle the bosswoman.”

“She’s already threatened to fire me. And we broke protocol by going into that building with authorization…which was my idea, therefore it’s my responsibility.”

Vanus dropped his hand on Bazzel’s forearm; it was like slapping stone. Anxiously, he almost pulled his hand away. Almost. He let it stay. Bazzel stared at it, eyes widening slightly with an expression of surprise that sent a ripple of pleasure through Van’s belly. “We both agreed to do it,” the death magician told him gently. “It wasn’t just you, so please stop saying it was.”

Bazzel glanced down at something before fixing Vanus with a long, calculating look. “Are you alright? You seem…upset.”

“I’m not…” he started to say, and then stopped himself. He did a mental whirlabout and course corrected. “I had a fight with my ex.”

“Carlos?”

“Hmmm-hmmm. You’re not the only one who isn’t good with relationships…who isn’t good with people.”

“Maybe he simply doesn’t understand you. Maybe he can’t.”

"And you do? You know, you never did tell me what you saw when you took my picture with the camera I gave you?"

Bazzelthorpe's expression dropped. His cheeks burned. "Not here," he said. "Not in this place. When we are alone. When no one is listening."

We are never alone, Vanus thought. Someone is always listening.

The office door opened. Captain Gwendolyn peered at them coldly from the doorway, wiping at her face with a napkin. Vanus thought he saw a hint of red on the napkin, which was quickly tucked away before he could be sure; the red flush of his cheeks confirmed his suspicions: she’d just had dinner.

“You two,” she said stiffly. “In my office.”

Vanus jumped to his feet, all too eager to dive into this conversation, get it over with. His skin buzzed with anticipation, with anger. Who was she to talk to him as if he was a little school boy?

“Sit down,” she told the both of them once she’d closed her door.

“I think I’ll stand thank you,” Vanus said before he could stop himself.

Gwen fixed him with eyes as cold and bloodless as a glacier. “You want to be very careful with how you talk to me, Vanus. I cannot tell you the amount of trouble you two are in, breaking protocol the way you did…And knowing you, Vanus, I bet I know whose idea it was, too…Certainly not yours…” She turned her glittering gaze to the Astorathian, who lowered his head, his shoulders slumping in defeat. “I told you what would happen if you fucked up again. I told you what would happen to your job, didn’t I? You’re fired! And you…” Back to Vanus now.

“If he walks, I walk,” Vanus said in a rush of words. “I will turn in my staff, my badge, empty my desk, and terminate all my cases before the sun comes up.”

“Altruism has always been your greatest weakness…”

Vanus slammed the flat of his palm against the desk hard enough to make it shake.

Bazzel and Gwen’s shocked expressions mirrored one another’s in the wake of his outburst. But he wasn’t finished yet; far from it. “In the decade that I’ve worked for the Theocracy, I’ve always done things by the book. Even when it hindered the investigation, even when it let the bad guy get away. But the Theocracy is just as much to blame for Hellen’s death as I am. For every life we save, ten more are engulfed by the Void because of the mountain of paperwork we have to fill out just to be able to do anything useful.”

He paused to take a deep breath before continuing. “A whole building full of men, women, and children just went up in smoke and now there’s a pit in the earth that goes all the way down to Inferno and the only thing you can lecture me about is fucking protocol. I’m going to catch the killer.” He glanced at Bazzelthorpe long enough to say, “We are going to catch the killer.”

Silence reigned over the room for a moment or two. Gwendolyn was the first to speak. “That was quite the speech, Van. Sure you shouldn’t have taken to stage-acting or public-speaking?”

“It wasn’t a speech. Are you going to let us handle the investigation our way or are we going to hand over our badges? Decide now.”

"And here I thought you were such a boy scout," Gwen said with a long, considering look. "Guess I was wrong."

Surprised? Vanus thought. Does it make you feel almost human? He bit back the words; it was like swallowing acid.

"I do not appreciate you using extortion against me, Vanus," said the captain. "And you've put me in a position. The department cannot afford to lose you."

The death magician could not stop the corner of his lip from curling into a smirk.

"As such I will not be firing you…either one of you. From now on, you two will be the face of this investigation, which also means you will be in charge of it. Any resources you need will be provided for you. Any requests?"

"I have some ideas," the death magician said and waited for the Astorathian's nod of approval before continuing. "I'm going to need data of every Sacred Brotherhood Activity within the last sixty years within the state."

"That can be accomplished," Gwendolyn said with a nod. "Anything else?"

"We'd like to know what will happen to the three Astorathians we rescued from Inferno."

"Of course," Gwen said more gently. "They are being treated at Genevieve Hospital. It is a hospital specifically ran by and for Astorathians."

"I am familiar with it," Bazzelthorpe rumbled with a grateful nod.

"I am trying to get them submitted into a program the Theocracy has developed: a program that slowly integrates Astorathians immigrating from Inferno into society here on the surface. It's a bit rough…and sadly there haven't been a lot of resources being allocated to the program," Gwendolyn said to Bazzelthorpe not unkindly, "but it is a step in the right direction. I can have documents about the program forwarded to you both if you'd like."

"Yes, please," Bazzel said eagerly.

"Alright then. I want you back at your desks early tomorrow morning ready to work. Now get out of my office."

"I think you went rather well," Vanus said once they'd left headquarters."

"You were impressive in there, Kaufman," Bazzel said, giving him a gentle playful boss. "I wonder who really runs things around here. You may be tiny…but fierce."

"You keep calling me that," Vanus said. "Tiny. You got some sort of size fetish you want to tell me about?"

"Indeed." Bazzel gently pushed Vanus back until he had the death magician close to the wall. “I just want to scoop you up and carry you around like a puppy. A cute little puppy.” He leaned forward, his eyes smoldering.

“Hold it.” The death magician held up a hand, his heart racing like a jackrabbit. “There’s one more things you and I need to talk about.”

The Astorathian pouted with disappointment. “I don’t want to talk any more. I just want to kiss you all over.”

“Well you can’t. Not until you tell me what you saw when you looked through the camera I gave you. You promised you would tell me, remember?”

“I remember,” Bazzel said gravely. His hands cupped both sides of Van’s face, holding him as if the death magician would break. “When I looked through the camera you were bound in chains. Your arms, your legs. You had a collar around your neck and your lips had been stitched shut. And there were spikes…hundreds of them poking out of your skin, and you were bleeding everywhere…”

“Stop! Please stop!” Vanus begged. He felt all the blood drain from his face, felt the earth try to slip out from underneath his feet. Had Bazzelthorpe not been holding him he surely would have fallen to the ground.

“Vanus! Vanus! What does it mean?”

“I know what it means,” Vanus said, wiggling out of Bazzel’s grasp, his skin crawling with invisible insects. “One day I’ll tell you, but not tonight.”