Chapter 19
An Explanation
The group sat dead-faced around the kitchen table of the safe house.
A mood had set in that seemed to poison the world.
No one wanted to eat, no one wanted to talk, no one wanted much of anything.
They had been waiting in silence for Walters to return; they’d decided the only “living” victim of the crime should probably be the first to know who’d done it.
The wait was agonizing. Fortunately, Walters returned only a few hours after they did, looking worse for wear, but pretty good for a walking corpse.
It’s surprising how easy mortal wounds are to cover up once they’ve stopped bleeding.
All Walters had needed was a new set of clothes and he seemed mostly all there, if a bit pale.
He joined them at the table and waited for Mal to begin.
“Okay, I need to explain a few things for this to make sense. First—”
“Just tell us …”
“Oh my god, who did it?”
“Say the name …”
“Kosh,” Mal said, surrendering to the chorus of demands. “It’s Kosh, he’s the killer.” Mal looked to Walters—the only one who had stayed silent—and could see that he already knew.
“What, that doesn’t make sense?”
“But he’s dead?”
“Explain how that works …”
Mal silenced the cacophony of complaints by producing a pink, plasticky device that looked like an egg timer had sex with an hourglass.
“I told you I needed to explain, so will you shut up and let me? … Thank you. He used this.” Mal set the device down on the table between them. “Walters gave it to me to help with my parental issues. It’s a spell timer.”
“Not a normal one, though,” Yu said, picking up the device.
“Nope,” Mal said. “A modified one, powerful enough to hold necro magic.”
“He used that to bring himself back?” Hala said, taking it from Yu.
“He stored his magic in that and it went off forty-eight hours later.”
“To avoid the spikes,” Des said.
“Exactly,” Mal took back the device and placed it down between them again.
“Kosh must have discovered Taran’s secret while investigating the first three murders.
Then he used Taran as a kind of makeshift bomb.
Teleporting him in to wreak destruction where he wanted.
Yu was right about a change in motive. Murray’s death was when Kosh took over. ”
“But why?” Hala said. “Why kill so many? Why fake his death? Well, he died for real, but you get my drift.”
Mal felt Walters’s eyes on him. Mal remained silent so that he could explain.
“Kosh was dying. He only told a few of us toward the end. Murray was ready and waiting to petrify his body once he’d passed. Kosh … must have changed his mind.”
“About dying?” Yu said, as if the thought were ludicrous.
“He knew if he decided to keep on living the Order would hunt him down. He was making sure that wouldn’t happen.”
“That’s why he attacked the headquarters,” Mal said. “He wanted the Order to enact a lockdown and call in the other branches. That way all the eggs were in one basket.”
“But why attack us?” Des said. “Why send the dead into the library?”
“He wanted Mal dead,” Walters said, far too plainly for Mal’s liking. “He was against Mal joining from the start. Your incident with Taran was his first attempt, then he tried to kill you at the library. He probably thought if you survived, we’d kill you just to be safe.”
“Lovely,” Des said, her tone rife with sarcasm.
“Kosh knew that we would never go into lockdown while we had another suspect,” Walters continued. “When he realized we were just holding you guys he tried again with the attack on the headquarters. Guaranteeing the lockdown.”
“Fuck,” Hala said. The team sighed collectively, as if sharing the sentiment.
There was a moment of calm as the truth settled in among them.
The reveal hadn’t been as satisfying as Mal had hoped it would be.
It was probably because putting the pieces together after the fact meant that they’d already lost. But there was something more.
He felt a deep pit in his stomach. Something about all of this was still pulling at his core.
More than the murders, more than the massacre, something within him felt betrayed.
At least they had put the pieces together; at least now they could try and get some justice for everyone.
The Order may have been a secret organization with questionable methods, but it was still made up of people; people who deserved better.
“So how did you figure it out?” Yu said.
“Well, Des was sure the dead and the murders were related; that meant a necromancer had to be behind it. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Mazino, so that left Kosh.
But Kosh was dead, so that left no one. Once Walters gave me this”—Mal pointed to the spell timer—“things clicked again. I just wished they’d clicked sooner. ”
“Why did he take Mazino?” Yu said, with intrigue.
“To guarantee the lockdown?” Mal said, questioningly.
“Maybe as insurance,” Walters said. “If he releases Mazino, it’ll be chaos. No one’s going to be looking for him if that monster is on the loose, even without the Order’s diminished numbers.”
“Is Mazino that bad?” Des said.
“Worse,” Walters said, looking grim. “I just hope he’s got enough sense about him to keep Mazino in that jar.” Walters put his head in his hands with a dejected slap.
The others looked to each other, unsure of how to feel or what to say. They were, in that moment, a single being, with a single thought: “What the fuck do we do now?”
To Mal, the obvious answer seemed to be an impossible one. Stop Kosh. He had to be stopped; the pit in Mal’s stomach seemed to demand it. But how do you stop a man who can teleport at will, control the dead, and had the equivalent of a magical dirty bomb?
“We could call the police?” Des said, with trepidation.
“And tell them what?” Yu said. “That a man they’ve declared legally dead is a murderer and on the loose?”
“Good point …” Des said.
Walters, still head in hands, started to speak. “We can’t involve the police. None of this can get out. The secrecy of the Order is paramount.”
“Wait,” Hala said. “So what have you done about, you know, what just happened?”
“I called in some stragglers and a few retirees to help sort it out.”
“What does that mean?” Mal said, looking to Walters.
“When people join we create contingency scenarios for if they die in the field. Something believable for their families that explains the absence of a body. We were contacting next of kin and letting what’s left of the other branches know what happened.”
“But what about, y’know, the bodies?” Mal said, echoing the group’s concern.
“It’s probably best you don’t …” Walters was interrupted by a collective stare that said, We’ve been through all this, and you’re not going to tell us. Walters sighed. “The headquarters has a mind of its own. It had cleaned up by the time I got back there.”
“WHAT?!” the group said in unison.
“I told you, it’s best you don’t know.”
“The place eats people?” Yu said, with more than a hint of disgust, and only a modicum of intrigue.
“No, it doesn’t eat people,” Walters said.
“It has something like a soul. The place is magic, we think. They are a part of the fabric of the place now. Where do you think all of the bodies that attacked us came from in the first place? There’s miles of catacombs down there.
The building just put them to rest for us. ”
“Oh,” Hala said, still in shock. “That’s kind of nice, I guess?”
“It is?!” Des said.
“Like a magical caretaker,” Hala replied.
“More like an undertaker,” Mal said under his breath.
“So no police?” Des said, looking to Walters. He shook his head. A silence took hold of the group once more; a ponderous silence, where the gears and plumbing of everyone’s minds filled the space of conversation.
“So us then?” Mal said.
“It’s looking like it,” Des said, looking to the others.
“I guess,” Hala said, looking around.
“How?” Yu said.
“Can you get us some tac-gear?” Des said, looking to Walters.
“Yes, some anti-jump cuffs should do the trick,” Walters said. “I also think I know where Kosh might have run off to.”
“Perfect,” Mal said. “Let’s go then.”
“Wait,” Yu said, “that’s the plan? Tac-gear and a vague location?”
“We can come up with something more solid on the way,” Mal said. “Plans haven’t exactly been our strong suit so far, and the longer we leave it, the more likely Kosh is to disappear.”
“Fine,” Yu said. “Let me compose myself.”
“I’ll get the car,” Walters said, pulling open a kitchen drawer full of keys and toy cars. “This should fit us all in.” He pulled out a black people-carrier the size of his index finger and a set of keys. “I’ll be out front when people are ready.”
The group nodded in agreement. Within seconds they’d dispersed themselves among the various rooms of the safe house.
Mal collected the things that he’d left near his sofa bed and waited for everyone to get ready in the kitchen.
Des prodded him into action a few minutes later after she’d found Hala sat motionless in the living room, staring off into the middle distance.
“I’ll see what’s up,” Mal whispered. Des gave him a simple nod, and where Mal had expected to see a look, instead he found trust. Mal smiled to her as she left, then went to sit down on the sofa next to Hala.
“You okay?” Mal said.
“I just thought,” Hala said, “that if we did the right thing, it would all be okay. But look what’s happened. Murder after murder, and then this. We didn’t see this coming, we didn’t get there in time to save anyone. What have we actually done?”
Mal couldn’t disagree. They’d gone from corpse to corpse like the world’s worst scavenger hunt, and their reward had been a massacre. It hadn’t been a success by any measure, and now their non-plan felt more like cleaning up than solving anything. Mal felt the pit in his stomach turn.
“What’s the point?” Hala said, with a long, exhausted breath.
Mal was expecting her to burst into tears, but her silence, her blankness, was somehow worse.