Chapter 55: 54: The Pryce You Pay

It was ten the next morning before Section 13 drove Jess and me home. We sat in silence in the back of the transit van, both of us too exhausted to speak.

I held Moorecroft's manilla folder in my hands. Of the dozen pages, at least two-thirds of the information about my father had been redacted. I wasn’t surprised by what the rest of it told me.

Victoria had mentioned the scientist at Section 13 who’d been working on an experimental serum while she was there. Henry Jefferson. That brilliant scientist was my biological father. The DNA match had been as close to Henry’s as made no difference. As a former scientist for Section 13, they had kept samples of his DNA on record.

He’d been missing for fourteen years, along with his wife, my presumed mother, Sophia. The last that anyone knew of either of them, or their son, was that there had been a huge lab fire at Section 13. They’d recovered one body, a woman’s, possibly Sophia, but the body had been too badly damaged for anything to be conclusively proved.

The report included notes on his time working at Section 13. Reading between the redacted parts, it was clear that one of his tasks had been the creation of better soldiers.

The conclusion was inevitable: My own father, Henry, had injected me with an experimental demon blood cocktail when I was less than two years old.

Then he’d abandoned me, put me up for adoption, and vanished.

The thing I wanted to know was why?

Moorecroft had no answer for that, nor did he know exactly how old I’d been when my father experimented on me.

“From what I gather, he was running hundreds of experiments before he disappeared. It seems as if you were one of them. At the time, it was suspected he’d been killed by a supernatural after the fire. Retaliation for the experiments he’d been doing. There was a breakout the same night.”

“So my father was experimenting on supernaturals just like Victoria over a decade ago?”

“Victoria and your father were working together. Section 13 shut the science wing down the next morning after the breakout. There were only three creatures being kept there, anyway. That was when the shoot-to-kill policy came into full effect.”

“Let me guess. Was one of the captured supernaturals a demon called Balthazar?” I asked.

Moorecroft looked startled. “I redacted that from your folder. How did you know?”

“Wild stab in the dark.”

Moorecroft had included a photo of my father and a woman, who I assumed was Sophia. I gazed at the faded image. It looked like they were at the beach, the pretty woman, Sophia, holding onto her hat, the man, Henry, with a slight smile on his moustached face. The photo had been taken a couple of years before I was born.

They looked happy.

I stared at the image repeatedly, but I couldn’t feel anything. So these were my biological parents. They weren’t my real parents. I had one parent, Sally.

The couple in the picture were strangers to me.

They dropped us off at my house. Jess and I were both bleary-eyed by that point, and both of us got out of the van. Realising her mistake, Jess mumbled something about crashing at my place. I wasn’t against the idea. As wiped out as we both were, she still looked like the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. We’d held each other in the van, her head on my shoulder. Or maybe it was my head on her shoulder. I forget which now.

Dee, in human form, was sitting in my house’s doorway as we spilled out of the van and Section 13 drove off. She/he’d made it back to Stroud, flying through the night in her spirit form. It had taken a few hours, flying at a speed equivalent to a jog.

As soon as I saw Dee, I knew something was wrong. Very, very wrong. There was a look of absolute despair on his face. His cheeks were wet with tears.

The door to my house was ajar. And I knew.

I knew right there and then, but I had to look.

“Don’t...” Dee said. “Ethan...”

I tore into the house.

She was sitting in the living room like she was watching television. Except the television was switched off and there was a red stain on her flowery shirt, right around her heart.

And a small, bullet sized hole in the fabric.

“Mum?” I said.

She didn’t move.

“Mum?”

*

The police said it was a burglary that had gone wrong, but I knew better.

I knew who was responsible and why. And after the shock passed, I knew exactly what I was going to do about it.

I assumed I wouldn’t hear from Victoria, but she couldn’t resist one last twist of the knife.

My phone rang just after we had put Mum’s coffin in the ground. I hadn’t cried. I’d wanted to, but I couldn’t. As much as I was able, I said a few words. Mum’s relatives and friends were at the funeral. Jess and Dee were there. Joe and Forrest too. It had been two weeks since the madness of Avebury, two weeks since Mum had been murdered in retaliation.

The call was listed as an unknown number.

“Ethan,” Victoria began.

“Victoria,” I said.

“You understand why it had to be this way.”

“I understand you’ve made a mistake.”

“Do tell,” Victoria replied.

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“I’m going to find you, Victoria. You’ll pay for this.”

“My, my, such melodramatics.”

“Just a fact,” I replied.

I had a smirking, sandy-haired killer to find, as I was sure he was the one who’d committed the actual murder.

But more importantly, I had to find the person who had ordered the hit: Victoria Pryce.

On the other end of the phone, Victoria’s voice hardened to a near hiss. The mocking tone was replaced by a fury that was still not spent despite her vicious retribution.

“You took something from me, Ethan, and I took something from you in return. My brother died because of you. This was nothing more than accounting. Think yourself lucky I didn’t take more. Now I strongly advise you to stay out of my business in the future.”

“And I strongly advise you to stay beneath whatever rock you’ve crawled under...”

“Ethan...” Victoria began, her tone mocking once more. I ignored her.

“... because make no mistake, I’m coming for you, Victoria. I’m going to find you. And then I’m going to kill you.”

My voice was ice cold calm, but I was shaking with rage, my grip so tight on my phone I was in danger of crushing it.

Victoria said nothing for a few seconds.

“Then I guess we’ll be in touch,” she replied, and the line went dead.

I threw the phone as hard as I could against the nearest tree.

“Ethan? Are you alright?”

It was Jess, a black umbrella held high to hold off the pattering raindrops that had been falling on and off all day long. She looked pale and withdrawn, like she’d looked for weeks since the power had entered her. The effort of not making a single wrong move or false step was taking its toll. All the power she’d absorbed at Avebury was part of her now - she just didn’t know how to use it.

Dee said she was looking into it, and that was the best we could do.

“I’m fine,” I replied to Jess.

“I can see you’re not, Ethan. Your eyes.”

“What about them?” I half snarled.

“They turn black now. When your anger is taking over.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Demon blood, remember?”

Jess looked at me sadly, but said nothing.

In amongst all the mourning and rage, whatever fledgling romance might have been sparking between us had flickered out, at least for now. Mum’s death had changed me. Everything that had happened had changed me, and Jess could sense it. Now here I was issuing death threats down the phone.

The worst part was, I meant it.

*

November slipped to the start of December, but I’d cut a deal with Section 13 before then.

I agreed to work with them on a part-time basis.

I still didn’t trust them, but working with them was the best way of getting to Victoria. My weekends were to be spent training at Section 13’s brand new facility. Basic combat skills. Weapons. Learning as much as I could about the world of the supernatural.

Everything I’d need to complete my new mission.

Dee wasn’t happy about me signing up with Section 13, but it was my choice. I promised her that once I’d got to Victoria, I was done with them.

“Ethan, how can you be working with the black boots?” She asked, “You know what they are, you know what they’ve done.”

“Moorecroft told me they're changing their policies, Dee. They’re stopping with the shoot-to-kill approach.”

“Yeah. right,” Dee scoffed. “And what, every soldier there is going to have a personality transplant? They’ll be back to killing indiscriminately or, worse, running experiments as soon as they’re back up and running.”

“I won’t let that happen,” I said.

“Rubbish,” Dee replied. “How are you going to stop them? This is a mistake, mate. Even part-time, this is a mistake.”

I scowled, said nothing more.

Dee paused, then added: “You aren’t really planning to go all Terminator on Victoria, are you? I can’t condone that.. I know what she did, but you can’t start killing people, Ethan. Your demon side will take over the more you give in to it.”

I shrugged and said nothing.

Dee sighed and looked at the floor.

“Okay, mate,” he said.

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