This choice: Promise anything--so you can be your brother • Go Back...Chapter #39Fireworks by: Seuzz   Frank won't be able to replace Robert until this afternoon, which means you could buy yourself some time by agreeing to play along; and Joe might show up before then. "I promise I will be very good," you say thickly. "I will do whatever you want. I'll do anything. Just promise that ... that you won't do anything horrible to my brother after ... after ..."
Frank smiles thinly, and is about to reply, when the dog barks, sharply and shrilly. "Get rid of that mutt, Prescott," he says. "Then stand by the window over there until I call you." Your replacement complies, to your own relief. His presence was creepy, and you were feeling pangs of sympathy for the dog.
Frank takes a deep breath and turns back to you. "You'll have to do more than that. Like I said, you'll have to anticipate what I want and need, and offer it up."
"Well, what are your plans?"
"Not so fast." He holds up a warning finger. "What do you think I want? What do you think I'll need?"
You shift uneasily in place. "You want to take over the Stellae? You could trick someone else into coming out, and replace them."
His face is blank. "Would that really work?"
"I don't know." You rub your arm. You have the terrible feeling that he either already knows that Joe is only pretending to be a golem--or suspects it--and wants you to give up your only ally. "I tried talking Joe into letting me go last night," you hazard, trying not to say anything too incriminating. "The golem-- It's not solidly under your control, you know. There's still a lot of the original inside." You pause. "He offered to help me out."
"Why didn't you take him up on it?"
"I thought it might be a trap you set for me?"
He snorts in amusement. "Paranoia is a terrible thing, isn't it? Yes," he sighs. "Joe is a handful. I haven't completely rewired him. I'll have to sit down with him at some point and give him ... Well, some new programming."
You mask your sense of relief--it sounds like Frank doesn't know that Joe is free of his control.
"But I will need more help from you, before I give you your new hiding place," he continues. "We need a blank mask, for your brother."
"That'll take a few days' work."
"No it won't," he says. He holds out his hand. "We don't need Lucy's face anymore. She's basically dead to the world. Lemme have that mask." You tear it off and hand it to him; he regards it with contemptuous amusement. "We won't need Jessica either, though she is cute."
He opens a drawer and pulls out the Libra, dropping it onto the desk with a thump. "I was busy last night, another reason I wanted to send a double of myself to school. Got a headache figuring out the next spell, but it was worth it." He puts the mask onto an open page. "The book has stopped giving explicit instructions, but the sigils aren't hard to read." His lips curl as he utters a string of harsh-sounding words. A hard finger of flame stabs upward out of Lucy's mask, and it hisses for a few seconds before guttering. A wisp of smoke curls out.
Frank looks up at you with a smile, but before he speaks there's a sudden thunderclap, and an arm of blinding white light, like a lightning bolt, springs from the inside of the mask. One end remains rooted in the mask while the other splits into tendrils and clutches at the air. A deep, rolling, crackling noise fills the air.
Frank gapes at the bolt and then dives aside as it swings around toward him. More stiffly, you fall forward to roll onto the floor next to him. The arm stabs at the carpet near his feet, and he scuttles under the desk, cowering. The floor where he'd been laying scorches, and then the arm swings back into the air. As you watch, it splits in two. One arm connects to one of the bookshelves high above, and with a crack of thunder disappears. The other, to your horror, latches onto the vampire cyclops-monkey. A great chittering sound fills the air, then with another great crash that arc too disappears.
The library seems very dark after the firework display, and the air seems to ring. Frank sticks his head out cautiously from under the desk. "Are you sure you read those sigils right?" you growl at him.
He snarls something unintelligible, then leaps to his feet and snatches up the mask. His expression clears without growing any more lovely, and he brandishes it triumphantly at you. "I wasn't expecting that, but it did the job." The interior of the mask is now blank. "Erased. Waste not, want not. Here's the mask we use on your brother."
"Are you mad?" you exclaim. "After what happened just now, you think you can just--" His eyes blaze, and you clam up. "Alright, you want to use it on him, I can't argue."
"I won't be using it on him," he retorts. "You will. Prescott!" he calls, and the French door swings open, admitting a very pale Will Prescott. "Clothes off," he orders the golem, and turns to you. "When he's done, take the mask off him. You'll be going to school as yourself. When you get home, take your brother's place, and put the Prescott mask onto him. Call me when you're done."
You'd refuse, but you're sure that would just land you inside that dog, so you have to comply. Removing the Prescott masks reveals the real Jonathan Straussler, and as you change Frank drags him out of the house, for a fate you can guess with a shiver.
* * * * *
The day at school is awful--it seems like the entire student body, and maybe even some of your teachers--are determined to make the school experience as horrible as possible--but you still don't want it to end, knowing what waits at the other side. You flood Joe's cell phone with gnomic texts, for you're not sure if Frank will be spying on his messages, but he doesn't get in touch with you, probably because he doesn't trust the "Will Prescott" who is badgering him. At home, you delay things as long as you dare, until your phone buzzes and you see Frank's ID appear. You ignore it, and shuffle out of your room to rap on Robert's door. "Yeah?" he peevishly calls.
You rattle the knob and peek through the crack. "I got some new porn," you murmur in a low voice. "You want to pick through some of my old stuff?"
He blinks, and his eyes narrow. "What are you up to?"
"Just trying to be nice. If you're not interested, you know, fuck you." You start to close the door, but he leaps up from his desk to follow you, watching guardedly the whole time. But his hunger for female flesh is such that he doesn't react as you close your bedroom door behind him.
"Where've you been hiding it?" he demands.
"Here," you say, pulling open the top drawer to your dresser and pulling out the mask. As he crowds close you swing around and jam it to his face. He staggers backward and falls onto the bed. With infinite loathing you disrobe and pull your mask off, and set it onto his face after his mask reappears. "Will" wakes instantly, and glares down at his clothes. "Yeah, back in my old hand-me-downs," he whines, and glowers at you. "I don't like it any more than you do, but you better get that mask on before Mom or Dad come knocking."
You don it, and the world grows larger by a few inches. "You know, you're not under Frank's control," you tell the golem. "Why are you doing what he says?"
"You were wearing this thing for a few hours," he snaps, pointing to his face. "Don't you remember what he did to-- to me the other night? When you so smartly told me to fight him?" You both shudder in tandem. "I ain't fightin' him again."
"Wuss," you mutter. "Come on, gimme my clothes."
"Gladly, you little pervert. They've got your pre-cum all in the underwear."
"Eww." But your cock stiffens as you pull the tidy whities on. Goddamned thirteen-year-old hormones and the uncontrollable erections. "Gimme the phone," you sigh. "Better call Frank back before he gets pissed."
You catch sight of yourself in the mirror as you listen to his phone buzz: lanky and gangly, with big hands; a lightly freckled face, and fearful eyes peering out from under unkempt sun-bleached hair. "I'll make it up to you, bro," you murmur. "Somehow, and soon."
"Yeah," Frank gruff voice sounds from the phone.
"I'm here," you say unhappily. "I was changing when you called. You want me and my idiot older brother to come out now?" You rub your eye with the heel of your hand.
There's a pause. "I think you want the other Frank," he says. You frown at that reply, and then at the babble of confused voices. Then Joe comes on. "Just shut up and drive," you hear him say. "Yo, is that you, Prescott?"
"Um ... One of them," you say uncertainly. "Wait, was that you who called a few minutes ago?"
"Yeah. Are you okay? You sound weird."
"It's a long story. What's going on?"
"My phone died at school, and those texts weren't making any sense." There's another babble of voices. "You have orders or something from the boss?" he asks in a strained voice.
You blink. Is he only acting in front of the fake Frank? Or is this a sign that something is wrong?  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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