I'm standing before the altar, hooded and robed, with an obsidian blade in my hand. The victim is bound on the altar. I know my role in this ceremony. Cut her throat. Spill her blood. I know her face. It's Lily Rose.
Of course I don't want to. Of course I'm trying to stop. But my feet are bearing me onwards, and my hands are raising the blade and it's against her neck and I can see blood beading on her skin where it's touching her. I'm going to kill her. I'm going to kill Lily unless...unless...at the last moment I pull the blade away and plunge it into my own neck.
And then I'm back in my bed, screaming at the top of my lungs, and it takes me a few moments to even notice that I'm not alone. Raven, of course, sitting by the bed holding my hands, asking if I'm OK. No point being embarrassed. It's not the first time he's found me like this.
I manage to speak at last. Yes, it was a bad one. I'm almost tempted to just pour out the whole thing, but no. He'll want details, and I can't. Too much to do today. I let go of his hands, and he gets up to put the kettle on. Black coffee for both of us while I get dressed, and then he's on his way, pen twitching in his hand.
Finally I feel ready to face the world again. I've got plans for today. Plans I'm not looking forward to. I force down some toast and Marmite with the coffee, pick up my conversation-repelling headphones and take the bus to Paradise Gardens.
The name sounds nice, but the thought of setting foot in that place again makes me feel sick. A shitty 1960s tenement building, a square concrete blight on the face of London. I've got forty minutes on the bus to think about the place, and if it wasn't for the fact I'm running out of leads I doubt I could make myself go through with this. And as if someone wanted to make it easy for me, there's a spike topped fence around the place that wasn't there when I called it home.
I can't let it put me off. There's some bins around the back that give me the necessary leg up and soon I'm walking down familiar corridors once more. It's been twenty years, but it's barely changed. I'm going to start with the basement. The room where I slept at night, feeling safe knowing Lily Rose was there. Until she wasn't.
Where the hell are the stairs? I know this place. I lived here. I still visit it in my nightmares. I know where the stairs are. Why is there just a corridor where they should be? And why isn't retracing my steps working? Have I really forgotten the way? I try to focus, thinking about distinctive features to navigate by. That DIY incident, with the electrical problems. The mark on the wall that we never managed to get rid of. If I can find that, I can find the way.
I've found it. I've found the stairs. But suddenly I know I'm not alone.
I shouldn't have this gun. I don't know if I could ever use it. I sure as hell can't ever get caught with it. But Nathan thought I'd be safer with it and right now I'm very glad to have it shoved in my underarm holster. I make my way down the stairs with torch and gun, knowing there shouldn't be anyone here. I see the old dorm. My bed. Lily's bed. And there in the corner, a hunched figure. I shine the torch in its eyes as I struggle to keep my breathing steady.
It's a woman. She looks ghastly, cuts and scraches covering her skin. And then she launches herself at me. We struggle, and I feel my arm start to dislocate. I grit my teeth and tear myself out of her grasp as my shoulder clicks back into place.
She starts talking then, and most of it makes no sense until she mentions a shelter. Brighter Futures? I ask, and finally she seems to respond. She knows the name Mary. I've never been much good at this kind of thing, but at least things are calming down. She wants to walk through the place with me. Something about a broken mirror, which I don't understand, but perhaps if I go along with her I can get her to go to a hospital, or at least to the shelter.
And then we turn a corner and there's a body lying on the floor with blood dripping from the mouth.
It's Nathan, and he's not dead, just unconscious. First aid training kicks in, and with some help from the strange woman to turn him over, I manage to wake him up again. He comes round swinging, but thankfully he's still groggy enough to give me a chance to get out of the way.
He explains why he's here - looking for someone and he was given this address. I tell him why I'm there. The woman seems excited, saying that we have the knight and the squire and now we just need the maiden. Nathan has no more idea what that means than I do.
And then she finds the maiden. And it's Mary. At least her reason for being there makes some kind of sense. She's looking for her friend Janet. The one I just found in the basement.
Janet wants us all to walk around the building with her, and at this point I can't see any reason not to. There are places here I've never been to before. The inner sanctum, where only the cult's elite were allowed to go. I'm terrified of what we're going to find behind that door, and when I see Nathan's drawn his gun I draw mine too. Mary opens the door and we see...an office.
Well. This is what I came for. Time for a look around. Nothing out of the ordinary...no, that's not right. There's something wrong with my footsteps. It's a small room, but they're echoing. I ask Nathan to come in and see if he notices anything untoward.
Nathan has a card, with writing. Three words in Latin. Chaos Ex Libertate, or whatever the old cult motto was. Not good Latin, I knew that much. But why does he have a card with that on?
More importantly, why am I standing in a huge stone cathedral?
There's an altar before me, and on it is a body covered in a sheet. Oh god. Oh god. Please don't be Lily. I have to know. I walk forward to pull off the cloth. Please don't be Lily. Please don't be that nightmare again.
It's a flayed corpse with hooks driven through it, and now I'm angry because someone is messing with me and trying to scare me with this shit and all I want is to wake up again, but the corpse is sitting up now and lifting a blood smeared machete.
And I throw myself out of its reach, and I fumble for that gun which I'm going to have to actually use for the first time in my life, and I fire every bullet in the clip into this thing and still it keeps coming. And I barely know where I am now, but at least the others are with me now, and Nathan is firing and Mary is pulling me to my feet, and then I run, desperate, not even thinking about the others until we're outside and climbing back over the fence. And Nathan and Mary are with me but Janet is gone.
We all go back to my flat. It's crowded. It's a small flat and Nathan's a big guy, even now. We sit in silence for a while, until I finally have to ask. Everyone else saw that thing, right?
And we talk, about the cult, and what each of us knows. Mary's mother could be a good lead, not that Mary has any idea where to find her. I can sympathise. I haven't spoken to my parents since I was eighteen. And I'm also reminded of just how fucking naive I was back then. Nathan was 'security'. I'm literally carrying an illegal handgun he got for me. Why the fuck am I surprised to hear he's got a body count? Why am I sitting here with an actual murderer in my flat?
Eighteen year old me was just a stupid kid. The others don't seem to think that's much of an excuse, but it's all I've got.
I've still got one thing. A lead on Lily Rose. It's not much, but finding answers about Lily are probably going to be answers about the cult. And maybe I can do what I do best, tracking down missing people, and see if I can find Mary's mother. But first, food. I don't feel much like eating but Mary needs a decent meal and I don't want to show up at Raven's flat hungry either. I hope he's ready for a late night. After a day like this, the last thing I want is sleep.
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