Chapter 10: Sickness Taking Over

Fear. Shame. Dread. Guilt. Confusion. They all flowed through Gwen like she’d injected them directly into her forearm, pulsed through her heart into the rest of her body, overwhelming every other feeling and sensation. Fire. Heat. Smoke. Screaming. Chaos.

She’d been led her into a trap, and now she was- now Lacy was-

And yet Gwen was still standing, thinking, breathing. Alive.

The fire wrapped around a wide circumference surrounding she and Lacy, while steam hissed on the edges of a water-shield. Their bubble, safe from the flames, was a sauna as steam poured forth against the borders of the fire. Sweat beads wormed their way out of the pores on Gwen’s brow, her armpits, her upper back. She tossed her leather jacket to the floor, and breathing became a less laborious effort.

The door to the warehouse stripped off the hinges, and the windows shredded to shrapnel. Water flowed through the door and the windows in a steady stream, gathering around Gwen and Lacy in a protective cocoon. Gwen’s chest heaved up and down as she struggled for breath amidst the heated bubble. She stared at Lacy, in the center of it all, raising her hand to the sky, her eyes singing with blue light.

Outside, a similar blue light poured out into the world. A buzz in the fabric of reality: a Destiny Star. It was the most intense, intoxicating light she’d ever seen, ever felt, ever heard. It was warm and pure and soothing, and yet far away. Inaccessible to all but its Starbound.

Lacy’s face contorted with shock and pain and rage. She gritted her teeth as the blue Starlight poured from her eyes, and she screamed as she called in more and more rainwater from outside. The wall of water and flame and steam made it impossible to find their aggressor in the chaos, but the fire was continually applied, and all from the same spot of origin.

There was hardly any Stardust left for miles around- their fight had drained it. The girl in the crow’s mask could not keep up this assault forever, not when her opponent had her own personal power battery. Through the inferno, Gwen gained sight of the mask. Their attacker kept hurling fire, screaming indecipherable noises as she did so. She was operating on pure emotion, letting every raging twist of feeling fuel her fire.

Lacy began to scream. It rose from the pit of the young woman’s stomach, filled the room, and curdled Gwen’s blood. Blue light saturated the warehouse, and a monsoon rushed in. It soared over Gwen’s head, extinguishing the flames and crashing towards their adversary, slamming into her and obliterating the metal wall behind her.

The last flickers of fire died. Steam gradually filtered out through the holes in the walls or condensed on the floor. Gwen’s heart went silent for a moment as she ran forward. Lacy kept screaming as she fell to her knees behind Gwen. Outside, the rainfall had silenced, but the skies were still covered in gray.

Lacy had stolen all the rain.

The young woman with the white hair and the crow’s mask lay flat on the ground ten feet outside the warehouse, arms limp, clothes torn, chunks of hair ripped from the scalp.

“Where’s her heartbeat?” Lacy asked from behind her. Her apprentice had stumbled forward, arms hanging limp in front of her, practically falling onto her face as she propelled herself. “Where is it? Where?!”

Lacy fell to her knees next to the dead girl, and she pressed her ear against the corpse’s chest. She put her hands over the girl’s heart and started thumping, doing chest compressions, attempting the kiss of life.

Nothing.

Lacy fell backwards, flat on the ground, and an uncontrollable laughter boiled over and released from deep inside her. The rain began to fall again, harder than ever. Blue Starlight bled from the sky, and Lacy’s mad laughter deteriorated to sobbing.

When Lacy fell onto her back and stared at the sky, when her eyes went away, Gwen removed their adversary’s mask, and saw it was as she’d feared.

It was Elaine Albrecht. Gwen’s dead sister.

***

Time bled from an opened wound.

Lacy didn’t hear anything. Lacy didn’t see anything. It was as if she’d risen from the ground and been placed back in Gwen’s car and buckled into the passenger seat, the side of her face pressed against the cold, misty glass. Then, suddenly, Gwen was back in the car, behind the wheel, and they were driving away.

The trees all looked the same as the rainfall fed them. Lacy couldn’t stop looking back, couldn’t stop listening for a third heartbeat.

“Are you okay?” Gwen asked.

“No,” Lacy said, unblinking. “Are you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“What?”

“Your heartbeat shot up as you said it.”

Silence between them.

“You knew her,” Lacy said.

Gwen said, “I-”

“You knew her. Are you gonna tell me who she was?”

Gwen’s fingers tightened around the wheel. The empty road sprawled on and on and on, and the heavy rainfall refused to wash away the world no matter how much Lacy wanted it to. Shame and anger and disgust flooded her, and she felt every hair poking through her skin, every blood cell in her body flowing through and keeping her alive despite how much she wanted to slip away.

“I don’t know why she was there,” Gwen said. Truth. “I don’t know why she was working with ghouls, or why she was trying to kill me. All I know is that something big is happening, and it looks like you and I are at the center of it.”
“Please stop the car.”

“No, Lacy, I’m not doing that.”

“Just please stop it- just let me go, I wanna get off the ride now.”

“That’s not really an option anymore, Lacy.”

“Because I murdered someone?”

Silence.

Truth.

Lacy said, “Drop me off in front of a police station so I can turn myself in.”

“No, Lacy.”

“Let me out, goddammit!” Lacy screamed. “Let me out let me out LET ME OUT!”

The world fell away, and everything was covered in darkness. There was nothing around her but empty black, no solid surface beneath her, nothing around or above or about, no light and no substance and no sound and no scent. She could make out her own hands stemming from her arms, but nothing else. There was nothing to breathe, nothing to look at, nothing at all. Nothing.

For a moment, Lacy felt a profound peace and relief, only for that to rip apart at an influx of guilt and shame and rage. She screamed, and made no sound. She cried, and the tears floated away and vanished into the black.

The Storm that wore her face, the Storm on the Horizon, stood before her, eyes all wrong. “You’ve taken your first step into a larger world,” the Storm said. “A world of beautiful silence.”

“No!” Lacy said, turning around, tripping over the complete lack of anything.

“Come back!” the Storm said.

“I WON’T BE YOU!”

“You already are. It’s just a question of if I’m you or not. I’d like to be.”

“I said no!”

“Perhaps I should change my strategy then,” the Storm said, putting a hand under her chin as she pondered their shared situation.

Lacy tried to run, but she only fell deeper into the dark.

She wasn’t sure how much time passed, how far she’d fallen, before she heard a voice: “Be not afraid.”

She turned her head, and found Drew standing behind her. His hands were shoved into his pockets, and he stood on the emptiness like it was a solid floor. He looked exactly the same as the last time she’d seen him.

“D-drew?” Lacy asked.

“You can’t run from this, Lacy,” Drew said. “It won’t let you.”

“I can’t fight it, either,” Lacy said. “It’s either run or die.”

“So die now or die later- you think those are your only options?”

“Yes!”

Drew cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh fuck off,” Lacy said, indignation hammering the inside her skull.

Drew cocked the other eyebrow.

“Oh for God’s sake-”

“Gosh. Third Commandment, Lacy. It’s one of the easy ones, come on. Now, there’s a third option that you’ve thought of but haven’t considered.”

A long silence stretched lazily across the void.

“Well?” Lacy said, breathing still haggard.

“Well what?”

“Well what’s the fucking solution, Drew?! Not-Drew; whatever you are, besides a sign that I’m apparently schizophrenic now, on top of everything else,” Lacy said, trying to bring her breathing back down to a less hurried level.

“You don’t have schizophrenia, Lacy, you have depression and anxiety.”

“Then why am I halluci- no, no, I don’t care. Just tell me the answer.”

“No,” Drew said, walking back and forth as if he were balancing on a high-beam.

“Why not?”

“Because you already know the answer. You just have to implement it.”

“Oh for fuck- Don’t do that! Don’t just suggest shit when you know I don’t know what you’re fucking talking about!”

Drew rolled his eyes.

“That- stop-”

“Lacy, I really doubt it’s as indecipherable to you as you say it is,” Drew said. “Look, my job isn’t to drag you kicking and screaming to where you’re supposed to go.”

“Then what is your job?!”

He leaned in close. Even if he still looked sixteen, he was a full foot taller than her. “To let you know when you’re being a moron! Such as right now, at this very moment-”

“I get it.”

“-Wherein you are being a moron.”

“I get it!”

“No,” Drew said, taking his arms out of his pockets and folding them behind his back. He resumed his balancing act. “You don’t get it. You think you get it. You’ve convinced yourself you get it, because in your frustration and impatience you’re not letting yourself admit that you made a mistake. You’re not letting yourself live with that fact, and it’s strangling you.”

Lacy squinted. “Since when are you a psychiatrist?”

“Never. You’re thinking of a therapist- a psychiatrist prescribes medication. And while you clearly need plenty of that, once again: not my job.”

“Then what is your job?”

“I’ve already told you that. You just don’t want to listen.”

Lacy, her heart pounding, her hands shaking, said, “Well then tell me again. Please. Just one more time.”

Drew looked down at her, breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth. “To remind you that there’s no more running from here on out. What comes next depends on how we deal with what came before.”

He snapped his fingers, and the darkness shattered.

The blood was still on the warehouse floor. It hadn’t even finished drying yet. Lacy was on her knees, staring at it, trembling hands gloved in rubber and holding a scrubbing brush. Next to her was a bucket of soapy water. Rain fell to the rhythm of death, and thunderclaps broke through the thick layer of silence all around her.

Gwen was outside burying the corpse.

Gwen knew this girl. She wouldn’t say how, but she knew this girl. She knew this girl and Lacy had killed this girl. Lacy’s hands shook so violently the scrubbing brush fell to the floor, and her vision blurred with tears.

Lighting. Thunder. Two heartbeats.

You can’t run from this, Drew said.

She scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, until the bristles began to tear off.

Footsteps. Thunder. Heartbeat. Hand raising. Hand on her shoulder.

Lacy jumped.

“I’m all done,” Gwen said.

“Okay,” Lacy said. Her eyes focused, and she saw that she’d scrubbed most of the blood. “I’m almost finished.”

She completed her task, and she and Gwen returned to the car.

Lacy pressed her face against the glass of the mirror and sat on her hands. Gwen turned the heat up full-blast, and the initial cool jolted Lacy before she was soothed by the warmth. Gwen’s heartbeat was a tempest, awash with ire and terror. They sat there in the car, unmoving, for a few minutes.

Finally, Lacy said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

Lacy sat silent for a moment, then said, “For killing her.”

“It was an accident.”

“And that makes it okay?” Lacy whispered.

“No.”

“Then why aren’t you mad at me?” she asked, still sotto voce. “Why aren’t you screaming and yelling and beating the shit out of me- for God’s sake, I murdered someone because I couldn’t control my fucking powers, because of that fucking Star. I can’t handle it- it’s too much for me, and if I try to use it again… I’ll become exactly what I’m afraid of.”

Gwen said nothing. She stared directly ahead, her grip on the steering wheel white-knuckled. Lacy stared at Gwen, unblinking, waiting for an answer, any answer.

“I forgive you,” Gwen said. “Now forgive yourself.”

Lacy balked. “What? How? Why?”

“Because you didn’t know. Not all of it. And neither did I. And because frankly, kid, this isn’t all about you. And if you’re gonna survive what’s to come, you’re gonna need to get used to that fact. Not everybody cares about you or what you’ve done.”

“... Do you care about me?”

Without hesitation, Gwen said, “I do.”

“Why? You barely know me. You met me for all of twenty minutes when I was a kid, and then you just… Showed up again, and suddenly you say you wanna help me when all those years ago you didn’t.”

“You were a child.”

“I needed help.”

“With what?”

Lacy’s hands shook and she stared out the window as she told Gwen, told her of her parents, of what they were like, and of how they had died.

Finally, Gwen said, “I didn’t know.”

“No,” Lacy said. “I didn’t tell you. That’s on me.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Neither did I,” Lacy said. “About you or where you came from or why you do this. I just… Accepted it at face value, because what I always wanted more than anything was someone to come and tell me what I’m supposed to do with my life so that I don’t have to think about it for myself. Which I guess is kind of ironic, considering it’s also the thing I’m most scared of.”

“I’m sorry,” Gwen said.

“Thanks,” Lacy said. “I’m sorry for messing this up.”

“Neither of us had all the information.”

“You knew her.”

Gwen sighed.

“Can I ask?”

Gwen said, “Not everything. Not yet. I’m not ready for that.”

“What can you tell me then?”

Gwen heaved a deep sigh. She shifted the car into reverse, and backed them out of the lot, then drove them through the dirt path in the woods back onto the main road. Lightning flashed in the sky, and a few minutes later, the remnants of a thunderclap found its way to them. “My family is a part of a group called the Sovereignty. They’re essentially the reigning council of mages, policing any and all magic users they can find since about 600 AD. House Albrecht is one of the founding houses, and we’ve always had a prominent standing in the organization. We specialize in Necromancy. There are four other main houses that make up the Ruling Council: Koenig, Kishimoto, Jimenez, and Achebe. They each run schools teaching in their specialty fields, and traditionally they scoop up any mages they can find and make them attend, usually ripping them away from their families in the process.”

“Why?”

“To keep things going,” Gwen said. “Fewer and fewer mages each generation has made them clamp down on the ones they have. And to make sure that they’re breeding.”

“Ew.”

“Yeah.”

“That a lot like eu-”

“Yeah, I know. My parents, though, both of them, were born at the top. My mother, who is dead, was the firstborn daughter of the head family of House Koenig. And my dad… Well, Mom was a princess, so she wanted to marry a prince: Alistair Albrecht. The Raven Prince. Together they had seven kids. These days, though, I’m the only one left.”

Lacy turned her head and stared at Gwen. Gwen’s hands shook as she struggled to keep her grip on the steering wheel. Finally, they pulled over and parked, and Gwen sobbed for ten minutes. Lacy stayed with her the entire time, didn’t let herself slip away, didn’t let herself get distracted by any other noises. She made herself watch and listen and try to help Gwen.

When she was ready, Lacy offered Gwen a hand, and Gwen squeezed it.

Rain fell. Lightning flashed. Thunder snapped.

Blue light hung above them, bleeding from the sky and reflecting off the raindrops as they splattered against the pavement and dirt and grass. Petrichor filtered in.

“It’s just me and my dad now,” Gwen said. “And I think he’s behind this. After everything the ghouls did to him and his family, now he’s using them for… Whatever this is, whatever he’s after now.”

“You have no idea?”

“It’s hard to tell with him. You know how growing up, your dad seems really distant and unknowable and constantly disapproving even when you’ve done nothing wrong.”

“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” Lacy exhaled.

“Now imagine that but a literal supervillain.”

“Fuck.”

“Precisely.”

The rainfall intensified.

“So what do we do?” Lacy asked.

“You still wanna be a part of this?” Gwen asked.

“I can’t run from this,” Lacy said. “Not anymore.”

“Yeah,” Gwen sighed. “I suppose not. How are you doing?”

Lacy took stock of the sensation of raw sewage pumping through her veins. “Not great.”

“It was an accident.”

Lacy blinked again. “When I was seventeen I tried to kill myself.” Lacy didn’t turn her head, but she felt Gwen’s gaze upon her.

“I… I... ,” Gwen stammered, “I’m so sorry.”

“I tried to come out to my parents the day we first met,” Lacy continued. “The day Drew died. But I got home and my parents reminded me that it was a terrible idea when my dad was sloppy drunk at two in the afternoon trying to convince me my mom had just slipped and fallen again. Drew was the only person who knew my secret, who I could talk to, and with him gone I felt… I felt alone, and I felt like I couldn’t make it. It went on like that till my junior year of high school. I got home one day, and my parents weren’t home; nothing really prompted it other than that I’d been thinking about it for a while and that it had just started to seem more and more and more appealing without me even realizing it, until suddenly I was wrapping a rope around my neck. I kicked the chair out, and then the front door to my house burst open. And Danny was there. He cut me down from the noose and stayed with me until he was convinced I wasn’t gonna try again. And then he… Kept helping me. He got me a job at his mom’s company right after we graduated, and we both moved out here so we could get away from our families. He even set it up so that I could telemarket while he did the door-to-door stuff. Honestly, it was perfect. At the time, I mean. It was what I wanted. It let me keep hiding. But I… I can’t do that anymore. Not after this. It was one thing when it was just me, but this is… This is something else.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why? None of it’s your fault.”

“I could have taken you with me.”

For a while, Lacy didn’t say anything. She’d been thinking that for years, had thought about screaming that in Gwen’s face if she ever got the chance. And now, here they were. “I’m afraid I’m gonna lose myself,” Lacy said. “I came to you and asked for your help because I wanted revenge. I’m not even sure why- I hated my parents. But I just can’t believe that they took them away from me. What the fuck is wrong with me?”

Lacy’s hands trembled, and the darkness began to come back for her.

“Nothing,” Gwen said. “Or at least not to the extent you think. After what you’ve been through, I don’t blame you. I don’t think most people would. And I think you’re not giving yourself enough credit- I think in spite of it all, on some level, you still loved your parents, and that’s why you want revenge.”

“How’s that even possible?”

“Because I still love my parents, even after everything. At least as much as I hate them.”

“That sounds really confusing.”

“It is,” Gwen nodded gravely.

“So what do we do now?”

“Same thing I’ve always done in situations like this.” Gwen clutched her necklace. “Mostly. We regroup. And we keep going, because there’s still more work to be done.”

Lacy exhaled loudly.

“Yeah, big mood, I know,” Gwen said. “Do you want me to take you home now?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Okay,” Gwen said. “We’ll regroup tomorrow at my place, alright? We’ll go over what we know, I’ll fill you in on the rest of the details, and we’ll start hammering out what’s really going on with these ghouls and my parents and our Stars.”

Lacy nodded.

The rest of the drive back was silent, but not the suffocating silence of before. Instead it was a calm, a contentment, a gentle catharsis. Grand Rapids came back into earshot, then back into eyeshot, and then finally so did Lacy’s house. It was silent beneath the onslaught of rain, all the lights off. “Are you gonna be okay?” Gwen asked.

“I think so,” Lacy said. “Thank you.”

Gwen blinked, tears in her eyes. “No problem.”

Lacy got out of the car, and went into her house and climbed into bed.