Rising Light

Chapter 11: Murder World

Kate felt as though her mind hadn't stopped racing for a long time. There was always something to think about, something new to distract her attention. Now, thoughts of her birth father swirled in her head, the tiny bits of information that she had on him were not enough to build a picture, but it gave her an idea of him. One that she didn't fancy dwelling on.
Instead, she forced herself to focus on the dance moves. The studio was oddly quiet, but she didn't mind. It just meant that there was more space for her. More space to be filled with the movements. Today, her dancing was slower, more controlled as she focused on finishing extensions, on ensuring that lines were clean before she moved onto the next. Ballet. Not quite her dance of choice most of the time, but certainly the one that required her to think the most.
The music from her headphones was loud. She felt the rhythm of it in her chest, beating out a tattoo against her chest, beside her heart. As she controlled a slow arabesque she closed her eyes, focused on the sound, on the way it made her want to move. She had no idea what was going to come next – she couldn't remember the music, just went with however she was feeling – but there was something liberating in that.
"You look like a cigarette holder."
John's gruff voice pulled her out of her dancing. Of course he chose a dip in the music to talk. She rolled her eyes but didn't open them. Instead, she focused on finishing the line, on making sure that she was steady. Then, and only then, did she carefully pull out a headphone, open her eyes, and glance towards where John was.
His attention was no longer on her, instead it was skittering around the other dancers. She recognised the glint behind his eyes: trouble. He smiled charmingly towards one of the dancers as she tied up her ballet shoes. Kate could have sworn that a light blush dusted her cheeks as she smiled back, before glancing away.
"One day," Kate murmured, noticing that already his attention was shifting towards one of the male dancers that had recently shed his shirt in preparation for hitting the showers, "someone's going to thump you." She carefully pulled herself out of the arabesque, still focusing on making the movement fluid. It didn't matter that John was there, he would wait.
"But today isn't that day, love," said John, turning back to her. "And, if anyone tried, you'd hit them right back."
Kate groaned, but didn't refute the point.
"You're good, by the way."
"How long were you watching?" she asked, carefully winding her headphones around her iPod.
John merely shrugged. She could tell that there was more to this interruption than met the eye.
"What's happened?" Cold dread gnawed at her insides. The calmness that dance had brought to her suddenly felt like a very fragile thing.
"We need to see Ritchie," he told her simply as she went to gather her things.
"You mean the Ritchie who doesn't want to see us anymore?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him. He merely nodded at her, somewhat curtly. "Why?"
"The Rising Darkness," John said, as if somehow that answered the question. "I need a fag. Don't be too long." He winked at one of the other dancers before walking away.
Kate heaved a sigh, lugged her bag over her shoulder. For all his vagueness John had a point. Between Gary and Anne-Marie they'd seen enough bad things happening to the Newcastle Crew over the past few months to mean that checking up on them wasn't such a bad idea.
She just hoped that they weren't taking the devil with them when they saw him again.
_______________
The pair snuck into Ritchie's class as the curtains were drawn and the presentation played on the projector. A whole hour of class on transcendence, the life after death. Kate had once wondered if there was a heaven or hell. Two years ago she learned her answer and where she would end up. It soured her mood a bit as it went.
Ritchie didn't even do much lecturing. He had a tape recorder playing his lecture as he sat on the stage, grading papers or researching or whatever it was he was doing. For someone who wanted to teach about the metaphysical he didn't seem to do much of it.
"'Buddhists believe it's possible to achieve a liberation from samsara, the repetitive cycle of birth and death. The idea of transcendence is found across cultures all over the world. The ability to live on after death or extend your experience beyond -'"
The tape ran out, forcing Ritchie to run to the podium and address the class as the TA flipped the lights back on and let the sunshine come back through the windows. Kate blinked at the sudden change. "Uh, all right, for, uh, next class, just read ch-chapters, um, 25 through 28. Thank you."
John raised his hands, his feet propped up on the seat in front of him. "I've got a question. In order to achieve liberation from the cycle of life and death, don't you have to fulfill your life's purpose?"
There was no denying the look in Ritchie's eyes as he saw them. Of course, there was also no denying how the pretty blonde near the front eyed John the way he did the dancers. Kate pushed his shoulder as Ritchie sighed. "Uh, liberation is the purpose. It's a state of peace. A state of peace that I-I was really, really enjoying right up until this very moment."
_______________
Kate was glad that this time they were seeing Ritchie the weather was nicer. It didn't stop her from feeling a growing sense of unease, far from it in fact. However, while it had made getting out of the car easier earlier, now some of the sunshine seemed to have soured. Ritchie's irritation had practically radiated off him as they walked to his office. His mumbled comments of irritation hadn't helped.
The way he'd forced the door open truly put it all into perspective for Kate. He was hating the fact that they were there. That all of this was following him, again.
"We had a – a deal. I help you, and you – you do what? You stay way away from me. Forever," said Ritchie, pacing up and down, pointing at John and Kate as if to accentuate the point.
John, however, lounged in his chair as if he didn't have a care in the world. As if the scrying map hadn't brought them right to Ritchie's metaphorical front door.
"And that was my every intention, Ritchie," admitted John.
Ritchie shot Kate an incredulous look.
"He really tried," she assured him.
"No magic, no demons, no John Constantine whatso-damn-ever. You swore it. You promised me," Ritchie went on, as if still unable to believe that they were really there.
John shifted forwards on the sofa. "Gary's dead, Ritchie."
Kate's heart seemed to constrict with the memory.
"W... wait. D – dead?"
"I'm sorry to spring it on you like that, mate," John said.
"We've seen Anne-Marie though," Kate put in, hoping to soften the blow slightly. "In Mexico. She's a nun! Doing well though." She watched as Ritchie took a seat behind his desk, and then turned to John. "Am I the only one seeing a pattern with the Newcastle Crew turning up at the minute?"
"You keep getting in everyone else's business!" snapped Ritchie, causing her to slump slightly.
"Actually," she said, a little ice in her voice, "the others came to us."
"Look," said John, for once trying to calm the storm, "I now have it on good authority that something ill-natured is circling you like a pack of wolves, and I'm not just gonna sit there and wait for it to attack."
"Why me? I – Have you noticed I – I teach class, I hold office hours, and I go home. And I partake of a whole lot of sedatives in between. And that's all I do," said Ritchie, his voice cracking with the effort of coming to terms with the latest bombshell.
"What about the data-mining? You found any unusual spikes in activity around the campus here?"
"The data-mining." Ritchie grabbed a bottle of pills from his drawer, threw them into the air and caught them again before unscrewing the lid as he spoke. "You know what? You gaze at the chaos long enough –" he chuckled, showing them the bottle before throwing it back into his drawer "– it can swallow you whole. I shut my program down."
"You shut it down?" asked Kate, tilting her head a little to one side.
"That's right. You know what I'm focusing on now? Solutions."
"What exactly are those solutions, Ritchie?" pressed John.
"Oh, would you like to hear some? Here's the first one." He irritably showed them the pill bottle, and Kate barely resisted the urge not to go over there and snatch them from him as his phone rang. "Solutions. Yes, Adam."
There was silence as Ritchie listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Kate looked briefly towards John, trying to work out what his current plan was... If he had one.
Ritchie stammered slightly, turning to look towards them, something like regret on his face. "I'm so sorry, Adam. What happened?"
Another pause. Kate waited, felt her nerves tingling. They'd found what John was looking for. "Well, listen, you – you just you take whatever time you need. Don't worry about your office hours, OK, Adam?"
There was another pause before he hung up. The look on his face said it all: He hated it when they were right.
_______________
Kate and Ritchie watched as John tried to hop into the ambulance to get a better look at the body. Or that was what John tried to make it look like. While Ritchie was distracted by his ex-friend making a scene, Kate saw John slip his hand into the campus cop's pocket and pick out his notepad.
John sauntered back with his prize as Ritchie rolled his eyes. "Your towering respect for law is just astounding as always, John." John held up the notepad and handed it to Kate. "Oh, I see you managed to steal from the cop as well."
"Eh, it's a campus cop, mate, big difference."
Kate skimmed over the notes. "Victim collapsed, had blue lips and extremities, sudden loss of circulation. The easiest guess here without looking at the body is cyanosis." She looked back up at the boys, who waited for a clearer explanation. "He had poor oxygen circulation. I would say he wasn't breathing. He suffocated."
John nodded, turning to Ritchie. "So how do you know this bloke?"
"He was friends with Adam, my teaching assistant."
"We need to talk to Adam," Kate concluded.
"Okay, so does that would be talking meaning talking, right? Not harassing."
She rolled her eyes at him. John smirked as sarcasm rolled off his tongue. "Oh, yeah, well, you know me. I'm well-versed in the art of pretending to be a gentleman. And we all know what a lady Kate can be."
"I do know you both that is debatable, here we go," he said with a sigh as he led the way.
_______________
The vigil was nice, as far as vigils go. In the darkness, candlelight illuminated the large group of people that had turned up to pay their respects to Carter. Little clusters of people remembered the boy, speculation rose occasionally, but mostly people tried to think on the boy that they had lost. To mourn the tragedy; there'd be time for musings later. Time for rumours to spread about what exactly had happened.
"Lily, hi. You got a sec?" Ritchie asked, spotting someone in the crowd of faces that Kate was surveying. Which of them might have had something to do with it? Who might have known something that the others didn't? One of these people had to know something.
"Um, hi, Professor Simpson," the young woman said, eyes still misty.
"Hey, have you seen Adam? I've been trying to call him all day," asked Ritchie, his voice barely more than a hushed whisper.
"Um, I left him in my dorm room. His phone's probably off," Lily explained.
"So, this, uh, chap Carter he a mate of yours as well?"
Kate hit John lightly on the arm. Subtlety really was something they needed to work on.
Ritchie, sensing the rising unease, quickly put in, "Uh, it's OK, Lily. These are my, uh colleagues, of sorts, John Constantine and Kate Bastille."
"We're just trying to piece together what happened to your mate last night," said John.
"We're sorry for your loss," Kate added, shooting the woman an apologetic smile.
"It's all right. You can answer his questions. I'm confident my associates are not gonna get you in trouble." Ritchie shot them a glare that was filled with more confidence than Kate had seen from him in a long time. Despite how he was basically scolding her, it was good to see some of that long lost confidence rearing its head.
"We were at the cemetery. Look, we were just trying to have some fun." There was something almost defensive about Lily's tone. All the hurt seemed to have gone, she was daring them to blame her for this in a way. Grief and regret seemed to be undercurrents to it all though; it was a look that Kate recognised from too long with John.
"Any others with you?" pressed John.
"My friend Miranda. And Adam. I should get back to him. He felt terrible about missing office hours. He's been taking this project of yours very seriously –"
"That's fine," soothed Ritchie. "You just tell him we'll pick back up when he's ready, all right? You take care and have a good night. Thank you."
Lily shot them a look filled with dislike before walking away. Kate couldn't help but think they must look like press, trying to pick up the scraps of the story instead of giving them all time to mourn. Her stomach squirmed uncomfortably at the thought.
"So, the cemetery, eh?" said John, moving to fill the space Lily had left.
"Got what you need, John?" Ritchie didn't even bother to look at them as he spoke, his attention skimming over the mourning students.
"No, I don't. She's hiding something and so are you. But at least I know where to start." John walked away without another word.
Kate stayed for a moment, watching Ritchie, wanting to say something but not knowing what to say. She wanted to ask him about the project Lily had spoken about, about the way he seemed eager to move her away from that line of conversation.
Instead, she heaved a sigh, patted him on the shoulder and followed John. The sooner they sorted this the sooner they could get out of Ritchie's hair. For good, if that was what he really wanted.
_______________
Kate went ahead of John, following the damning trail of crushed beer cans all the way to the mausoleum. The metal door was cold beneath her touch as she stepped inside. She swung her flashlight over the room. A shiver went up her spine, though she wasn't cold. Time felt slower in here than it did a moment before.
She knelt down when she spotted yellow marks on the ground, the symbols circling it having a faint glow to them. John came in behind her. "What did you find, love?"
Her nail scraped against the yellow. It was felt smooth. "I think its wax. Beeswax?" John held out his hand to her. She dropped the wax into his palm and then pointed at one of the symbols. "Do you know what these mean?"
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
Kate rolled her eyes. "The symbols. I know what they all say, but I can't figure out what it does."
John stared at her strangely. He dropped the wax and murmured a spell. "Fold sela levego, hogy igaz legyen reveal, te titok."
Fold the air down to be reveal, your secret
The symbols on the floor glowed more brightly than before. John looked disturbed at them, but even more so at her. "Kate, how did you see those?"
"I just do. Couldn't you?"
The fact that he stalked off without giving her an answer was all she needed to know.
_______________
"Beeswax candle, hieroglyphics and residual ash. Now, you put those three together, Ritchie, and what do you get?" asked John, the words coming out in quick succession.
He'd been oddly quiet on the way to Ritchie's office, lost in thoughts of the hieroglyphs. Or at least, that was what Kate had assumed. She couldn't stop thinking about the look that he'd shot her; the way the spell had made sense to her without really noticing it. She wanted to talk to him about it, to see if he could think of anything, but something stopped her. The look behind his eyes had been enough to make her doubt that as an option. She needed more evidence that something was happening. Needed more time with the books that she still had from the library.
"An Egyptian ritual," answered Ritchie, dropping the book on the table.
John chuckled, unscrewing the lid of the hip flask he'd been messing with. "Well, I'm glad to see it's just your courage that's wavering."
"Five points to Ravenclaw," said Kate, a small smirk on her face; one that she was glad Ritchie mirrored, if even only a little.
"Now, I found those things in the cemetery where your, uh, assistant was having a skinful last night. And by the looks of the glyphs, I'd say it was a ritual for out-of-body travel. Now, where do you think that a bunch of college students would get that balmy idea, eh?" But, even as John was speaking, Ritchie was looking through his books frantically.
"No. No, no. No, that's... Oh... It's gone," muttered Ritchie.
"What's gone?" asked Kate softly, moving around the desk in an attempt to help him look.
"It was, uh it was a private journal. It was the private journal of Jacob Shaw." Ritchie looked at the both of them, but Kate could see the panic behind his eyes, bordering on hysteria.
"Jacob Shaw. I remember that name. He was the bloke who fancied himself a traveller to alternative realms, right?" John's voice was calm, worryingly so.
"Right, right, right. The journal records his success with the Egyptian dream temple technique, but Shaw stopped writing after he shot his protégé," said Ritchie, his tone similar to that he had used in the recorded lecture.
"Ooh. Well, you know, in my opinion, the best ones are always a little bit cracked," noted John.
"And Shaw," continued Ritchie, as if John hadn't spoken, "he said it was a hunting accident. He was awaiting trial for murder when he fell into, get this... A catatonic state."
"Catatonic? Like Carter?" asked Kate, glancing briefly at John. She wasn't entirely sure 'catatonic' was how she would describe what happened to Carter, but she was willing to run with Ritchie's story for the moment.
"Yeah. Like Carter. And Shaw died a few weeks later, and –" Ritchie let out a dry laugh "– there was a theory."
"What theory? An 'Elvis lives' kind of theory?" asked John sceptically.
"They say Shaw's consciousness travelled to another dimension and stayed there to escape his fate."
"Well, that does make for a better story," admitted John.
"He's better at avoiding things than you are," teased Kate, hoping to lighten the air a little. John sneered at her, and Ritchie let out a weak scoff.
"One that sparked the imagination of your young teaching student," John said, with only a slight roll of the eyes.
"Yeah," breathed Ritchie.
John was up in an instant, and Kate folded her arms, watching him. "Well, if Adam's tried it once, he'll try it again. And it's up to us to beat him to it." John clapped Ritchie on the shoulder as he grabbed his jacket. "Us."
Ritchie stammered, glanced worriedly towards Kate. "Come on," she said, shooting him a small smile. "It'll be better than old times. We're... older now." And with that she followed John out of the room, really hoping that Ritchie was going to follow.
_______________
"If those kids actually made it into another realm, then they've opened gates that won't be easy to close. In current conditions, anyone can be pulled in through that gate, not just the four that took part in the ritual."
Kate was almost running to keep up with the guys as they headed back with Ritchie to the cemetery. She was surprised John could keep up at such a brisk pace with the way he kept up with exercising and eating well, if of course exercise was smoking and a bottle of whatever booze he had lying around could be considered food.
Ritchie shook his head. "Yeah, well, it's worse than that, John. Uh, Shaw had a theory. If-if you're killed in another dimension, your body here suffers the same form of death."
"That would explain Carter," Kate agreed.
"How the bloody hell did Adam know about Shaw's journal?" John asked.
"Uh, well, we were using we've been using Shaw's research, just -"
John let out a sarcastic laugh. "For your new pet project, I presume. And what, exactly, would that Nobel Prize-worthy effort be, eh?"
"I don't believe you would understand."
Kate rolled her eyes. "Then give us the For Dummies version, Ritch."
"Singularity. Do you understand it?" Ritchie looked between both of them. Kate vaguely remembered the term, but John didn't seem to have a clue. "Didn't think so. Singularity's the idea that when humanity and technology merge, a person's consciousness can find immortality inside a computer network."
John nodded. "Oh, it's like a bomb shelter for your brain."
"That would be the idiot version, yes."
"Well, you're practically living in one now, aren't you, Ritchie? You've done a great job of making your world really small."
"Hey, listen to me. You really think I stopped data-mining by choice? No, no, no. I got tired of crashing hard drives, man. Way too many paranormal uprisings to keep track of. The darkness is almost here, John. If we don't find Adam and close that portal now, who knows how many more are gonna fall through? And I just can't have that on my hands, John."
Kate could see the fear in Ritchie's eyes. He couldn't go through this again. Losing another kid would be reliving Newcastle all over again. With all the drugs he was taking just to make it through the day, she couldn't imagine what it would be like if he was the reason some hell on Earth was released.
She placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "We'll find him and we'll close that portal."
_______________
"Why can't these things happen in like, ice cream parlours or something? You know, somewhere that doesn't look as though it's meant to... Luca?" In the darkness, Ritchie's torch picked out who she supposed after a moment was, realistically, Adam. He was sitting upright, his forearms resting on his knees in a way that reminded her of meditation. Frank had always told her that everyone had a twin, a lookalike somewhere out in the world. She'd just never expected to be faced with one. Let alone one who was stuck in the middle of something like this, something that she would never wish upon anyone.
John and Ritchie crouched in front of the unconscious figure as Kate tried to get her head back on straight. It had been years since she'd last seen Luca, but that didn't make this any easier. Didn't make her heart believe that it wasn't him that she could see stuck in this mess. Another person she cared about pulled into the hell that was sometimes her life.
The thing that she'd tried to protect him from, in her own way.
John heaved a deep sigh. "Looks like Alice has already slipped through the looking glass."
"How do we – Ah!" Kate flinched backwards as deep cuts started appearing on Adam's arms, but he didn't seem to react at all. "What do we do?"
Panic made it impossible for her to think about the implications. She just knew that she couldn't let this happen.
"Defensive wounds," said John, running around behind Adam, grabbing his arms as if he might be able to staunch the bleeding. Slowly, Kate's mind caught up with what they needed to do, what she could do. She fumbled in her bag for supplies. "We need to wake him up now. Wake up!"
Suddenly, Adam started to gurgle, blood coming from a slit across his neck. The bandages tumbled from Kate's hands. She hastily tried to cover the wound, felt the hot blood running through her fingers, drenching the gauze that was doing nothing to stop it all. They needed more time, more equipment. They were too unprepared for something like this.
"Ah no, no, no! Not now," said John, breathing heavily. "Ah, I got you. Come on."
Kate looked at John, hoping that he had a plan, that there was something they could do. The dislike behind his eyes, all over his expression in fact, told her otherwise. There was nothing they could do, and it broke both of them. She didn't look around at Ritchie, she couldn't. 
_______________
With the coffee tray in her hand, Kate exited the store, the bell tingling as she brushed past some students coming for their own caffeine fix. She had gotten so caught up talking with the barista that she had forgotten that she left Ritchie and John to their own devices.
She scanned the open area for the guys. She spotted them amongst the trees next to each other as John smoked a Silk Cut. Kate waved at them, but stopped when she saw their faces. Ritchie didn't look annoyed nor did John have that distant cockiness. They seemed vulnerable in a way neither liked to show to anyone, even more so each other. What hurt more was the brief second they looked at. The guilt that ate them both alive was more apparent than ever.
As she went to join them, Kate thought of that night they saved Liv. How Ritchie begged her to leave John before she got sucked back into all the drama and chaos that followed their trench-coated friend around. But she couldn't, just like she couldn't leave Ritchie now. She shook her head at the memory of Ritchie's pleading face as she reached them, putting on a brave face. "This is a non-smoking campus, John."
John rolled his eyes. "No one's stopping me."
"Thanks." Ritchie took one of the coffees out. "Kate, one of the students, Miranda, is dead. They found her in the dance studio."
A pang went through her. "God, Ritch. I'm sorry."
"Let's go," Ritchie ignored her. "There's still one life left we might be able to save."
John tossed his spent cigarette into the bushes. "Bollocks."
_______________
Kate knocked gently on the door, her attention on Ritchie. Her thoughts kept going back to the crypt, to everything that had happened. She'd need to remember to call Luca when she got the chance, to check up on him. Just in case.
The door was pulled open by a frantic sounding Lily. "Professor Simpson, thank God, please, please come in." She marched back into the room, continued to fill an already stuffed suitcase with things. She was trying to outrun it all. Kate shot a quick look towards John. "Where's Adam? I need to tell him about Miranda. Did you hear what happened?"
"We just came from the gym," Ritchie told her gently.
"I – I found her body. There was so much blood. And I can't reach Adam. So..."
"Lily," said Kate softly, needing to do something.
Lily's attention shifted quickly between Kate and Ritchie, as if trying to read something from her teacher, to find out the lie. But she obviously found nothing she wanted. "No. No, n-n-no, please no."
"We tried to save him," explained John as Lily sank onto her bed, "but he was trapped in another world."
"No, I told him not to go back to that house," said Lily, her breathing failing her.
"Easy," said Kate, crouching slowly, recognising the beginnings of a panic attack. "Nice deep breaths."
"Wait, what house?" asked Ritchie, causing Kate to look at him sharply.
_______________
Ritchie and Lily couldn't stop spinning and staring as soon as they got back to the millhouse. Lily seemed much more concerned about the things she was looking at than Ritchie was. He had a childlike wonder about him that Kate hadn't seen in years. It was the same look Ben would've had.
Her voice caught for a second as she moved to the kitchen. "You guys want anything?"
"No," Lily replied. "Where are we?"
John stopped at the wheel where they kept the scrying map so he could pour himself a drink. "Oh, think of it as a spiritual safe house."
"This place is amazing, John," Ritchie said with a smile.
"Jasper did all right, didn't he?" he replied before he turned his attention on Lily. "Now, based on what you told us, Shaw's drawing your friends back into his realm through reflective surfaces. In Egyptian magic, mirrors are doorways to other spiritual planes. But lucky enough, our mate, he put protections on any and all reflective surfaces in this house."
Lily nodded. "I don't know what to make of any of this, but thank you."
Kate motioned to the leather chair near her. "We'll take care of it. Just rest. And Ritchie stop touching everything, you know better."
Ritchie set down whatever it was he was handling with a sour look. This was his ultimate dream, but if Kate had no idea what even a quarter of these things did, she sure as hell wouldn't be able to protect him if he screwed up.
"What do you two want to drink?" John asked.
Lily cut Ritchie off before he could answer. "Whiskey would be great."
"I got it," Kate said, going to grab the bottle.
"Yes, please. And my kingdom to make mine a double," Ritchie added. Kate gave him a smile. It was weird to see Ritchie with a smile on his face. She'd missed it.
Lily dropped into the chair as the others turned their attention on the drinks. "My mom was supposed to pick me up from the train station. I'm just gonna give her a quick call."
Kate's blood ran cold. Weren't phones reflective?
The boys must have had the same thought as they turned around to stop her. But it was too late. Lily's eyes widened as she was sucked into Shaw's world.