Heretical Edge

For five seconds that felt like at least that many eternities, I did nothing. Nothing. I didn’t move, I didn’t speak, I didn’t even breathe. I just stood there, the words heard through my fox rebounding around inside my head. They certainly trust my host. They certainly trust my host. My host. My host. The Chambers child trusts me. And so do her little girlfriends. My host.

The words pounded their way through my head like a sledgehammer repeatedly hitting me, again and again. Even as the bile rose in my throat, the sense of betrayal making me physically ill, the words kept hitting me again and again. Host. Host. The woman was a Seosten. She was a Seosten, and she had been spying on me through… through one of the others. Not Shiori. Not Avalon. But any of the others. Any of them. Anyone I trusted. It could be anyone I trusted except for Shiori and Avalon. Any of them. The people I trusted. The people I’d confided in. The people I liked. One of them had been taken, puppeted by this Seosten in order to spy on me, manipulate me. She had taken over one of my friends, had stripped their freedom away and forced them to betray the rest of us. One of my friends had been enslaved by this… this… bitch.

And she… was coming this way.

Slowly, my own body turned to face back down the beach. Sand rose up around me in a thick cloud, the grains rubbing and grinding against each other as they spun to make a slight buzzing sound like an angry swarm of insects.

That was my first instinct. Attack. Fight. The Seosten was right there. She was right there. Who knew when I’d get this chance again. She didn’t know that I knew about her. She didn’t know that I’d overheard what she said. I could hit her right then and end this whole thing for good.

Except, was it even possible for me to take her down? She was a Seosten. I had no idea what they were capable of. I knew that one half-Seosten had a perfect memory and the other had been an Olympic-level gymnast since he was a child with barely any training. Were those ingrained abilities every normal Seosten had? Or was it a benefit of the half-human physiology mixing? I didn’t know. I couldn’t know. But what I did know was that they were incredibly dangerous. Dangerous enough to rule over a good portion of the universe for longer than human history. They were dangerous enough that the Fomorians, one of whom had taken several powerful Heretics to take down, couldn’t steamroll over them. So what chance did I have at taking down this Seosten before she either escaped or slapped me down and either killed me or took over my body?

Plus, even if I happened to win, I wouldn’t be ending it, would I? I’d heard what she said. There were two others involved in this besides her. At least two. There was whoever she was talking to, as well as that Manakel she’d mentioned. Even if I killed her by some miracle, there were still two others. Others whose identities would be a complete mystery to me. If I killed this Seosten, that was it. I’d have no other lead, no way of finding the others or getting any more information. The absolute best-case scenario of my starting a fight right now was throwing away any chance I had at getting more information out of her, of using this Seosten to find the others.

And there was another factor to consider: Vanessa and Tristan. What if this Seosten knew where their parents were? How… how incredibly selfish would it be for me to kill her just because I was angry, robbing those two of a potential chance to find their parents? How would I feel if I found out that someone who knew where Fossor was keeping my mother showed up and someone killed that person without even trying to get that information out of them?

So no. Attacking was a bad idea. Blinded by rage and indignation as I was, that was obvious. There was a good chance I wouldn’t kill her, and even if I did, I’d be throwing away both my chance to find out who the other Seosten were, as well as Vanessa and Tristan’s chance to find their lost parents. And considering how I felt about my mother… I couldn’t do that. I refused to.

But that left another problem. The Seosten was still coming. She wasn’t moving very fast, considering my fox could still see her from where it was sitting. Obviously, she was giving me plenty of time to get back to the school. But she was coming. And if she found me standing there, if she saw me like this… I had to assume that she’d realize what I knew. And then it wouldn’t matter if I wanted to start the fight with her. There would be one anyway.

I had to go. I had to get out of sight. My first instinct at that point was to hide and try to follow her, try to see what person she’d possessed, which of my friends she had enslaved for this. Either me or my fox, one of us should follow after her to see what she did and where she went.

Except no. If I tried to follow her, she’d sense me. I had no doubt of that. And if I sent my fox after her, she’d probably sense the attention then too. Or, if she had even the briefest glimpse of the thing, she’d know exactly whose fox it was, and what had happened. She’d know.

Worse, once she went onto the school grounds, the fox might just set off the Stranger alarms, which would force me to explain… well, a lot more than I wanted to right then. And the alert would obviously draw her attention. Which, again, would show her exactly what had happened.

No, I couldn’t follow her. I couldn’t do anything to let the Seosten know that I knew about her. The time would come. I’d get my chance. But throwing away the only advantage I had, the fact that she didn’t know that I knew about her, would be wrong. As understandable and therapeutic as it might have been to try doing something right then, it would be the wrong move. I needed to lay low and find a way to identify who she had possessed. Then I could lay a real trap for her.

But first, I had to get out of there before she got close enough to see that I had stopped for so long. Partly so that she wouldn’t realize that I had overheard, and partly because, despite every thought I’d had about what a bad idea it would be, I couldn’t guarantee that I wouldn’t attack her if she got close enough for me to do so. My logic told me one thing, but I knew that my emotions might just take over if they had a chance. So I had to get the hell out of there.

Turning on my heel, I ran not toward the school, but into the water. Splashing through the cold waves, I dove in as soon as it was deep enough before starting to swim out. I wanted to be far enough out of the way to avoid being noticed.

At the same time, I made the fox watch the Seosten gradually make her way up the beach. Cautiously, I got it to follow along through the jungle, all while trying to weave around a bit so that if she did have some way of sensing what was around her, the Seosten wouldn’t realize that the figure in the jungle was following her.

It wasn’t exactly easy, working my fox through the jungle like that while simultaneously swimming in the ocean with my clothes on. I kept flipping my attention back and forth, like trying to watch two television shows at once. Fortunately, however, I didn’t have to actually swim by myself for very long. I’d barely made it the length of a couple swimming pools from the beach before a familiar presence rose up from the depths to bump against my legs.

Quint, the ten-foot long Mako shark, rose right up to the surface before giving me what was obviously a curious look. Immediately, I reached out and grabbed onto the shark’s side, pulling myself over onto it. “Hey buddy,” I whispered despite how far out we were. “Where’s your brother, huh? Are the others okay?”

Quint swam in lazy, slow circles while the rest of his shiver gradually arrived. I let them crowd around, carefully patting each of them in turn while mostly focusing my attention on my summoned fox. Because while I had been getting myself out into the ocean with my many-toothed friends, the Seosten had kept going right toward the school grounds. I had to figure that my thought about her having a way of sensing what was around her was true, because she only slowed down when she was near the spot where a few students were playing some kind of game in the sand. Staying just out of their sight, the Seosten stood still for a moment. Then, she vanished from sight. She was gone, invisible and undetectable.

And that was that. She was gone now. Obviously, she had a way of getting onto the school grounds without being detected. Which made sense. If the Seosten themselves had been so involved with the creation of Heretic society, they would have left ways for themselves to get around the security spells undetected, backdoors into the places we thought were safe.

Would I regret letting her disappear? Would I regret not taking the opportunity I had to jump the Seosten while I’d known exactly where she was? Maybe. I couldn’t completely dismiss the possibility. Maybe I’d never get that chance again. But given every thought I’d had about why doing so would have been a bad idea, I had to go with my gut. I had to trust myself. There would be another chance, a better one. Now that I knew that she existed, that she had taken over one of the people I was supposed to be able to trust, I could work with that. We could work with it.

With that in mind, I reached into the pocket of my soaked pants while sitting on Quint’s back. Carefully, I dug out the secure phone. Thanks to Crossroads ingenuity, the phone wasn’t hurt at all by being wet. Shaking it off a little, I quickly punched in the phone number that had been magically seared into my memory. Because honestly, if this didn’t count as a big enough emergency to warrant using it, then nothing ever would. I needed help.

It rang three times before the familiar, steady voice spoke up. Even through the phone, I could hear the power and authority behind it. “Felicity, are you in immediate danger?” Despite the calm reassurance behind his voice, I could also hear the promise of imminent violence if I had been hurt. He was ready to charge straight in if I told him that I needed help.

And honestly, knowing that a man like Gabriel Prosser had my back like that helped calm me down a little bit.

“No.” Shaking my head, I answered quickly. “I mean, I’m not in immediate danger. It’s okay. I’m okay–sort of. But something happened.

“Something you should probably know about…”

******

An hour later, I was back out in the water with the sharks. This time, however, I wasn’t alone.

“Oh my God.” Shiori’s voice was quiet, hoarse and horrified. She looked about as sick as I still felt, sitting there on Sherman’s back as the bull shark lazily swam in circles. “You mean it could be–it could be anyone. Sh-she could be possessing… she could be po-possessing–” Her voice choked off then as the girl flinched, unable to finish what she had been saying.

“Porter,” Avalon finished. My roommate sat on Brody, her face knitted into a frown. “It could be Porter. Or it could be any of the others. Scout, Mason, Gerardo, either of the Moons, Fellows…” She looked to me. “All we know is that it’s someone that Chambers thinks she can trust.”

“Which doesn’t narrow it down to students,” I pointed out. “Sure, we can rule out Gaia because… uh, if she was taken over, we’d all know it. But other than that… it could be Professor Dare, Nevada, any of them. Even Klassin Roe. Who better to make me think I could trust him than the school therapist? It could even be Hisao. Maybe they got him after he showed up. We just–we don’t know. We don’t know… almost anything. Any of them could have been… taken.”

“We have to help them,” Shiori declared, looking up from the back of the shark. Her voice was still shaky and disgusted, but also resolved. “Whoever it is, whoever she enslaved, we have to free them. We have to, Flick. We have to find out who it is and… and get her the hell out.”

I nodded slowly at that, swallowing hard. “Yeah,” I murmured. “Don’t worry, Shiori. Whoever it is, we’ll save them. We’ll get that Seosten bitch out of them. We just have to do it the right way.”

There was quiet for a few seconds before Avalon spoke. “You said you talked to Prosser.” Even as she said his name, I could hear the undercurrent of admiration and awe for the man in her voice. It was like listening to any other person mention their personal hero. “What did he say?”

“Yeah,” Shiori quickly chimed in. “He’s this big, super-powerful Heretic, right? Please tell us he has a way to figure out who the Seosten’s possessing and get her the hell out of them. Please.”

Flinching a little inwardly, I shook my head. “Yes and no. Well, actually no and yes, in that order. Sort of.” Frowning at how that was coming out, I waved a hand before the others could say anything. “They have one spell, a rune that can drive a Seosten out of their host and stop them from possessing anyone else for a short time.”

Shiori brightened at that. “Perfect. That’s perfect, right? It sounds like just what we need.”

“Like I said,” I replied, “yes and no. See, the spell has to be applied directly to the host. And it… um, it’s not subtle at all. It hurts the host the entire time it’s being applied and the Seosten will know exactly what it’s for. She’ll know what we’re trying to do from the moment we start it.”

Wincing, Avalon murmured, “So there’s no way to apply it while they’re sleeping. Wonderful.”

There was no easy way to put this, so I continued. “It gets better. Apparently any Seosten would know as soon as we start using that spell. Even if we’re not using it on the right person, they’ll sense the spell being used. It’s like a big, bright beacon going off.”

Shiori actually cursed at that. “You mean even if we do find the right person and use the spell on them, the other Seosten will know what’s happening if it happens anywhere on the island?”

“That pretty much sums it up,” I confirmed with a little nod. “Oh, and because that wasn’t bad enough, apparently Seosten that are on the same mission are usually connected. Which means they can also tell when one of their own has been… uh, exorcised like that.”

Both of the other girls stared at me, Avalon grimacing. “Which means we can’t just take every person one by one and use the spell until we find the right one, even if we go away from the island to do it. Because as soon as we do find the right one, her partners will know what happened.”

“Yup,” I replied. “So we can’t identify them before using the spell, they’ll know what we’re doing as soon as we start doing it, and even if they’re not the one we’re using it on. And even if we get the right one, the other Seosten, who could be anybody, will know. And then who the hell knows what they’ll do.”

Avalon nodded slowly, frowning as she obviously thought for a moment before speaking up. “So we have to find out who this Seosten is possessing, then use her to find the others. Then use the spell on all of them at once before they hurt anyone else.”

“That’s the best plan I thought of too,” I confirmed while shrugging. “Prosser said he’d teach us how to use the spell, and–”

“Teach us?” Avalon interrupted. Her eyes were… okay, wow, her eyes were wide as she stared at me. “Us. As in meet us. As in meet him. He wants us to meet him. And talk. And–”

“Wow,” Shiori snickered despite herself, leaning closer to me. “She’s really into this Prosser guy. Are you sure she likes gi–”

That was as far as she got before Avalon’s hand caught her arm and yanked the other girl off the shark. Shiori fell into the ocean with a yelp that was punctuated by a heavy splash.

Simpson quickly swam up from below to pick her out of the water, and the Asian girl stuck her tongue out at Avalon. “We both saw you blush.”

Coughing, I gestured. “I think the point is that we know for sure it’s the Seosten that are after Avalon now. I mean, why else would they be trying to stop us from talking to Fahsteth? Plus, that definitely explains how someone was able to kill Professor Pericles without setting off the security alert. The Seosten were possessing someone.”

Avalon nodded. “Which means they’re the ones who want to get into Bosch’s vault.”

Shaking her head, Shiori pushed her hands back through her soaked hair (as I told myself not to be distracted by the sight) to clear it away from her eyes. “But why? What’s in there that’s so important?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted quietly. “But whatever it is, it’s important enough for them to go this far trying to get to it. So it’s probably something that can fuck their whole race over. Maybe even expose the truth about how they’ve manipulated the Heretics for so long.

“And honestly, that sounds just perfect to me.”