Chapter VIII
VIII
Orcans have worn many faces throughout the centuries.
They have been described as religious phenomena, as demons, as monsters, as the manifestations of mental dysfunction.
Cultures the globe round have sought to explain their presence.
Some assume that such creatures must belong to the natural world, hitherto undiscovered species, while many dismiss accounts of their existence entirely.
Still others view them as a blight upon the world, accursed entities sent by the heavens to punish those who violate a preordained moral code.
The Acheron Order knows that each of these explanations fails to capture the true nature of these beings. Orcans, as the name implies, originate from Orcus—the land of the dead. They are born of that world and to that world they belong.
When Orcans gain access to Earth, they have devastating effects on human populations. They revel in violence toward humans and seek them out as prey. They are ravenous beasts, endlessly roaming in search of meat and pain. When they happen upon our world, they find abundant sources of both.
—William Ruskin, A History of the Acheron Order (New York, 1935)
Vic opened the door to a rush of cold, stagnant air and knew that Henry had not come back yet.
Sarah had invited Vic to join her in the dining hall for dinner, but Vic didn’t have an appetite.
In the dim cast of the living room fire, Vic saw a stack of books alongside another handwritten note from Max.
Recommended reading, he wrote. Homework.
Since dropping out of school midway through the tenth grade, Vic had relied on reading.
Before, when learning was expected and hours of her day carved out for the task, she had taken the glut of information for granted.
But as the distance between her and the classroom widened, Vic took to research as a substitute for formal education.
Whenever something new came up that she didn’t understand, she stayed up late plugging the gaps.
Books became a lifeline, a way to pretend she fit in with everyone around her.
She felt a wave of excitement at the prospect of doing the same within the castle, and she pawed through the stack quickly.
The first two books were heavy and clearly the Order’s version of textbooks—A History of the Acheron Order by William Ruskin and Theories on Transmogrification by Terrance Vern.
Like everything else in this castle, the leather-bound books looked older than they were.
But the details gave the game away. They had the shape and faded pattern of old books, but new stitching and a rigidity in the spine that only accompanied a fresh printing.
This dissonance gnawed at Vic, and she had the odd sense that everything around her was designed, at least in part, to lie.
The other books in the stack were smaller and thinner. They bore identical leather bindings, with gilded names and dates along their spines. Archives of three separate Elders, from three seemingly random years. Vic wondered how Max had picked them.
Vic went over to the sitting area with the books under her arm and curled into the chair nearest the fire while she waited for her brother to return.
After her misadventure in the Arena, Vic had explored the castle. Sarah caught up after a few hours and told Vic more about the Order, including that most recruits joined after college, as May had said. Henry had, it seemed, come early.
Questions ricocheted in Vic’s mind as she tried to focus on the words in front of her.
Not one week ago she had lived in fear of this place, these people.
She and Henry kept their lives private, unobtrusive, for fear of witches coming to drag him away from her.
Vic had lived almost ten years worried that this place was real, and it took Henry one day to abandon all that fear in favor of trust—in their mother, in the Order, in the training process.
The speed with which his expectations had changed gave Vic a kind of whiplash.
She wasn’t sure she knew what to believe anymore.
The door to the apartment clicked open in the near darkness, and Henry jumped when he saw Vic sitting by the fire.
“Vic! You scared—What the hell happened to your face?”
“I got in a fight. It’s fine.”
“Oh my god.” Henry paced the living room. “I can’t believe you were fighting already. First with the professor, now someone else? We’ve been here one day.”
Vic waved a dismissive hand at him. He really ought to be used to this by now, given how often Vic came home from the gym bearing evidence of sparring.
“This is so embarrassing,” Henry was saying. “I’m trying to make a good impression, and my older sister is picking fights.”
“How do you know I picked it?” Vic asked.
Henry sent her a flat look, as if to say that if there was ever a conflict, he could be certain his sister sat at the front of it, egging it on.
“Fair enough,” Vic said. “But we need to talk.”
Henry raised his eyebrows in a question as he sank onto the far side of the couch.
“Apparently it’s not normal for Order members to start training at eighteen,” Vic said. “Apparently most wait until they finish college.”
Henry frowned.
“But that Elder, Nathaniel, made it sound like you were already behind,” Vic said.
“It’s fishy.” Vic eyed her brother, watching for some sign that he already knew this.
He pursed his lips in concentration but said nothing.
“Did you talk to him at any point, other than when he came to the apartment? Or anyone else from the Order?”
Vic wasn’t sure what she was asking. If Henry had conspired behind her back to come early? If Henry knew something he wasn’t telling her?
“Of course not,” Henry said with an offended look. “That guy scared the shit out of me. You heard him, he made it sound like I had no choice.”
Vic deflated with a sigh. “I just wish I understood what was going on.”
“What if,” Henry began, his mouth tight, “it’s something to do with Mom?”
It was Vic’s turn to look confused.
“Mom told me that I was destined for something great,” Henry said. “You heard her. She said that I was chosen, that was the word, that I could do what no one else could.”
Vic watched him, frowning. A part of Vic had always believed, implicitly, that her mother was telling the truth.
Of course Henry was special—Meredith had treated him that way his whole life.
And he really was a wonderful kid: kind and funny and sociable.
But another part of Vic wondered how much of it was a mother’s blind belief that her son must be special.
Apart from all the little things Vic loved about Henry, she’d never seen any evidence that he was truly exceptional.
“Maybe,” Henry went on, the words slow and careful, “I’m needed here.”
“Needed for what?”
Henry shifted on the couch. “I ate with some of the older recruits at dinner tonight,” he said. “People who’ve been in the castle longer than a few weeks.”
“And?” Vic prompted when his words trailed off.
“And they seem to think the Order is heading for something bad.”
“Bad like what, exactly?”
“Like war.”
Unease rippled down Vic’s spine. They couldn’t stay here if the Order was about to become embroiled in something deeper. Henry couldn’t be safe in a world on the brink of war.
“I don’t know how much of it to believe,” Henry said, affecting lightness. “It’s just rumors, so far. Innuendo, nobody knows for sure.”
“Henry, if something bad is about to happen, we should leave.”
He paused for a long moment. “I don’t want to leave.”
“But you don’t have to be here,” Vic said. “If Nathaniel lied about the urgency, you can wait a few years. You can come back after you’ve gone to college, like everybody else.”
Henry said nothing.
“Don’t you see?” Vic said, rising from her chair. “You can come back later, you can still have a normal life. It’s not over.”
“I don’t want to go back,” Henry said.
“Why?” Vic asked, desperate. “You haven’t finished high school, you haven’t gone to college. You know how hard I worked to make sure you had a chance to do all of that. You know how important it is to me that you graduate.”
“To you, Vic. It’s important to you.”
Vic had spent years working to ensure Henry’s life could be easier than hers—she took extra shifts so he could stay in sports, she missed sleep to help him study for classes she never took—and he was willing to leave it all behind.
“Bullshit,” Vic shot back. “It’s important in general. Do you want to be stuck working the kind of jobs that hire high school dropouts for the rest of your life?”
Henry shrugged it off, like real-world concerns couldn’t touch those blessed enough to be in the Order.
“Coming here,” he said, “it’s like skipping the line. The Order controls reality—we can do whatever we want! Order members become presidents, senators, important people.”
“Yeah, and I bet they all still went to college.”
“I would be wasting my time in school, sitting on my hands in math class. Here, I can actually do something. I have a role to play in all of this, I know I do.”
Vic stared at him, stunned and frustrated by the turn their conversation had taken. He was resolute. He spoke with the conviction of a teenage boy already convinced of his place in the world, and no one could persuade him otherwise.
“What am I supposed to do,” Vic said, “while you’re off playing your role? Where will I be?”
If she didn’t belong with her brother, where did she belong?
But Henry just looked at her, a mix of pity and uncertainty in his eyes.
“I need to take a walk,” Vic said. She stormed away from him, toward the door to the hallway, though it was nighttime and she’d been warned more than once not to wander the halls after dark.
“Vic, wait—”
But the door slammed shut behind her.