The Masqueraders (previous chapter 7)
Being dragged through the streets by Jasmine, Frank had calmed himself down. He had told himself (in his mind, obviously) that it wasn’t going to be scary, or embarrassing. It was just going to be a man- Ash- talking to him. Nothing would be threatening whatsoever.
Standing in the centre of a massive circle of people, Frank regretted letting himself believe that. They were inside some other abandoned activity hall, and the early light of morning was bouncing through the windows- making the room look much larger, though it was already gargantuan. Frank was breathing heavily through his nose, his heart beating irregularly for nervousness. He circled his index finger around his thumb distractedly. Every person around was surely discussing him, who he was, what he was doing here- Frank could tell that by the way that their eyes occasionally flicked towards him in their hushed conversations.
Frank searched for his friends in the crowd; spotting Michelle with another bunch of girls, he raised his hand in a slight wave. A ripple went through his surrounding crowd- everyone dropped their conversation and turned to stare at either him or Michelle with eyes hidden by dark glasses or thick fringes. Frank’s eyes were comically wide as he twisted his head around to check if everyone- yes, absolutely everyone was watching.
“Only waved…” He muttered almost silently. Michelle pulled a face, seeming apologetic. A sudden loud slam broke the gentle undertone of gossiping girls. Frank felt his stomach collapse at the sound, knowing that every Masquerader in the world was already in the room- except for the leaders of each group. How he knew this, Frank wasn’t sure. He didn’t know it a minute ago. Feeling eyes on the back of his head, he spotted Michelle again.
“Did you…?” He mouthed to her, pointing vaguely to the door, then to his head. Was it possible that that was Michelle’s type of ‘magic’-allowing people to see what she wanted? Michelle nodded quickly, turning her face back behind Frank. She bit her lip and, as Frank watched her in confusion, he heard a loud rustling that was very similar to that of a group of people moving out of the way when security passes through a concert crowd. Frank turned his head slowly, and his heart collapsed along with his stomach with what he saw.
The four people standing before him were the most terrifying things he had ever seen. Though nothing about them would be particularly scary in context, the power, pride and strength that they exuded was enough to make Frank’s bottom lip tremble and his knees knock. Though he couldn’t bring himself to look directly into the face of any, he knew what would happen if he did- their eyes would pierce him sharper than Michelle’s had done, sharper than a thousand blades. As a deep voice broke the silence, Frank stuffed his hands in his pockets so that no one could see them shaking.
“Franklin Iero.” The voice cut into Frank, forcing him to look into the face of the speaker. It was a man, with wrinkled dark skin. He stood with his feet hidden under a long robe, but he wore no shirt underneath the robe, and so a strong-looking, ink decorated chest was exposed to the gathering. The make-up on his face was that like war paint; three gray ovals lay underneath each eye, with a delicate pattern of gold running from the left of his jaw to the top of his forehead.
“My name is Janoque, I am the leader of the North African children.” He gave a slight inclination of his head as a bow, resting a hand on a belt loaded with weapons- a cutlass curving around his thigh, daggers with intricate patterns decorating the sheaths. Frank nodded back to him, slightly confused, and watched as Janoque stepped back to allow the next leader the focus. Frank bit his lip as he took in the woman before him.
“Greetings to you, Franklin. My name is Idris; I lead the children of Antarctica.” She made the same bow as Janoque, but stayed for a moment to smile at Frank. He was very grateful; never before had he seen someone like Idris. She was wearing a fine regal gown underneath a long, luxurious looking coat of shiny fur, and her neck and fingers were weighed down with jewels that Frank thought looked like diamonds and sapphires. But her clothes were of no matter to Frank.
Idris seemed to be beautiful because of how good she was; the smile she offered was pure as the sun, her hair was long and thick, shining brown, and her voice was soft and yet strong- Frank could tell this was a person who had never wronged another in her life. As she stepped to the side, Frank shut the mouth he hadn’t realised had opened and rubbed his eyes a little. A few snickers came whispering out of the audience from the girls, but when Frank turned to look, he saw pretty much every male in the room struggling not to gawp openly like Frank had been doing.
“If I may have your attention, Franklin…” Came a voice somewhere in front of him. Frank turned his gaze and made a quick ‘oops’ noise after realising he had just been ignoring one of the leaders.
“Um, I’m really sorry sir, I got a bit, um…” The man standing there laughed deeply.
“Distracted? We all know how you feel, boy.”
Frank smiled a little weakly, picking at his nails.
“Anyhow; my name is Spencer, I care for the children of England.” Spencer announced.
Frank took in the man in front of him. He was strong looking, with broad shoulders and muscles that seemed about to burst out of the finely tailored suit he wore. Though on others it may have seemed ridiculous, Spencer wore a cape with his suit, and it seemed to fit perfectly. Though the clothes seemed expensive, they didn’t seem particularly flashy compared to the previous two leaders. Spencer followed Frank’s gaze, and rolled his eyes.
“I know, I know. Not as posh as this lot, eh? Well, I did have a fine costume ready for this event, but my darling wife managed to mix it up with my son’s prom outfit. I do hope he spills no drinks on it.” Spencer chuckled again, and Frank managed to grin. He was beginning to like Spencer. The man stepped back and saluted Frank, making him snigger a little. The laughter dropped as he faced the final leader.
“Franklin, it’s good to meet you. My name is Ash, I take the lead of the American children.” Frank inclined his head slightly. Every leader before Ash had been extremely powerful looking, and mighty; but along with Idris’ jaw-dropping good looks, Ash was clearly the leader of the leaders. His presence made all around silent; for he was intimidating, he seemed to glow with strength. He was not as pure as Idris, by any means- that was easily noticed by the wicked smile on his lips. But the sweeping blonde hair, the delicate features and the lithe, admirable body made up for that malicious streak that Frank wouldn’t even have imagined, was it not for Michelle feeding him her past experiences of Ash through her mind.
“I believe your… friends… have explained who we are to you?” He spoke in a low, velvety tone that made Frank gulp- partly in fear, partly in jealousy that he didn’t have such an awesome voice. He nodded quickly.
“Y-yeah, they… sort of. Yeah.”
“Good. Then all that is required of you is to accept the Will token, and we may leave.” Frank raised his eyebrows as Ash reached into the folds of some majestic robe. He drew out a thin gold chain, on which hung a pendant. The colour was marvellous; he could see red, green, blue, and every colour mixing constantly in that gem. It was amazing but, as he said-
“I, um, don’t wear necklaces.” He said bashfully. Ash stared blankly for a moment, before letting out a long laugh. It was rich and deep, but over quickly, to Frank’s disappointment.
“Children of us all,” he called to the room, “Please show Franklin your pendants.” There was a tinkling and rustling as every person in the room reached around- in pockets, round waists on longer chains, on rings, or as the same necklace. Frank appreciated how every pendant was completely different, yet so alike in the same instant.
“You see, Franklin. It is not a matter of wearing the pendant; it is a matter of holding the pendant. You may keep it as a shoe buckle, if you wish; but the pendant must be worn, or we will assume you have either died, or became a Stranger. Either way, the pendant will tell us.” Frank looked between every leader, noticing the pendant on each of them. Janoque had his fixed to the hilt of his cutlass, Idris wore hers as a broche, and Spencer and Ash both wore them in the original style, around the neck. Frank accepted the chain carefully, zipping it into his jacket pocket. Ash nodded appreciatively and turned to address the hall.
“Ladies, gentleman, he is one of us. We may now all leave to our separate homes, whether they be in this country, or in a different continent.” There was the sudden rise of noise like when school assemblies are dismissed; the leaders gathered their ‘children’ into groups, talking to one in each group specifically.
“Those kids can transport them back to where they need to be, in case you were wondering.” Said a voice low in Frank’s ear. He spun around and was met with Gerard’s familiar face.
“Oh my god, does that happen every time you get someone new?” Frank gasped.
“Pretty much.” Gerard nodded. “But you only come round every five years or so, which makes it a lot easier.” Frank grinned.
“I got a pretty necklathe.” He lisped. “Ith really shiny.” Gerard giggled, a sound that lifted Frank’s spirits higher still.
“You’re way too good at that, don’t do that again.” Frank raised his eyebrows innocently.
“What, thith?” He snorted.
“Yes, that. Shut up.”
Frank laughed a little, pushing up close to Gerard.
“I wanna go home. Walk me back?” He pleaded. Gerard grinned.
“Sure thing.”
“Oh, and Gerard?” Frank stopped mid-walk. Gerard looked back at him, confused by the sudden stop.
“What’s up, Frankie?”
Frank bit his lip, wondering if what he was going to say would put Gerard in a bad mood. He hoped not.
“I’m… I’m sorry for calling you a freak. And I don’t want you to keep away from me.” He felt awful again as he recalled Gerard’s face when he ran off. He felt even worse when Michelle’s devil mind showed him the tearful, broken expression Gerard wore when the girls had gone to find him. Frank wrapped his friend tightly in a hug, sighing deeply.
“I didn’t mean it.” He huffed against Gerard’s coat pocket, making it sound sort of squished.
“I know you didn’t, Frankie.” Gerard breathed against his hair. Frank felt a slight flutter of excitement in his stomach, and frowned. That was odd.
“Come on, let’s get you out of here.” Gerard slid an arm around Frank’s shoulders, and they headed for the door.
“Franklin! Wait!” he turned, surprised, when Ash called his name. The leader stormed up to him and glared.
“Franklin, do you live with your mother?” He demanded. “Jasmine told me you did. Is this true?”
Frank looked up at Gerard’s suddenly pained expression, and back up at Ash’s furious one.
“Um, yes. Is that… a problem?” he asked weakly.
Ash roared suddenly, and Frank shrank away from the sound. Every foreigner still in the room made their way out quickly, stunned into another silence by Ash’s outburst.
“So I guess that’s bad, huh.” Frank whispered in Gerard’s direction. Gerard breathed out with a grimace.
“All of our families had left us, or been killed, before we were discovered. Only two people have had family when found, and they both ended badly.” Gerard whispered back. Frank widened his eyes in alarm.
“What do you mean, ended badly? What happened to them?” He growled. Gerard looked awkward, watching Ash stomp around, ordering people over to Frank and Gerard for a moment. Then he looked down at his friend.
“Their families were killed by our enemies and they killed themselves shortly afterwards.”
Frank’s jaw dropped yet again.
****
In a flurry of movement, the American ‘children’ returned to the hall and formed another group. A boy who looked about twelve circled them, touching one point before he started, then touching the same point on his return. Had Frank been paying attention, he would have marvelled at how they all seemed to be spinning incredibly fast, how whole worlds seemed to be flying by as they travelled. But he was taking none of this in. He continued to stare blankly at Gerard’s coat pocket until the spinning stopped, at which point Gerard took his hand and tugged him forward.
“Come on Frankie, snap out of it. We’ll get your mother, just come to the kitchen.”
Dimly aware of his surroundings- dark, wide halls veering off in every direction, lit by large bubbles of light hanging seemingly without help in the air- Frank gazed up at Gerard.
“Who are our enemies?” He asked. Gerard seemed to be pleased that Frank was speaking again, and pushed him into a small room.
“Our enemies are the Strangers; I’m sure you overheard people talking about them before.” Frank nodded his head in agreement, still feeling a bit like he was dreaming.
“They aren’t any different to us, apart from one thing; they want to use their powers against the true human race, to take them over, while we just want to live alongside them.” Frank raised his eyebrows a little.
“I know, sounds a bit cartoony, huh? That’s what everyone thinks when they first find out.”
“So… they want to kill us all? Because we want to live peacefully?” Frank quizzed.
“Yup. And every time one of us- a ‘Masquerader’- pops up with remaining human family, they suddenly have a fantastic excuse to kill a human. And because all of us have ridiculously strong ties to any remaining family members when we’re found, if they get killed, we take it badly.” Gerard offered a sad smile.
“Almost half of the people here had family when they were discovered, but since the incident with the two that killed themselves, Ash has been putting an extremely close watch on both sides of the family, magical or not. He doesn’t want to have to deal with dead bodies.” Frank frowned.
“Sounds a bit insensitive, putting it like that.” He said. Gerard let out another sharp laugh- Frank realised he recognized it from the previous night, when he had been in and out of consciousness. He wondered what he had been laughing at.
“It is insensitive. Ash isn’t the kindest of human… well, isn’t the kindest of beings.” Gerard corrected himself. “You want to know why he’s the leader of the leaders? Because he has a direct bloodline to Jonathan White. Which should make him the leader of England, but he moved here with grandparents about a decade ago. We were all just a rabble at that time, banding together for similarity’s sake.”
Frank bit his lip. He seemed to be more focused, less zombie-like than before. Gerard was sure he was in a better mood, and was about to ask him if he wanted coffee, when-
“How do you know all this stuff? Do you get tutored, or something?”
Gerard closed his eyes slowly, and Frank wondered if he had said something to offend him. He raked over the last sentence in his head, trying to decipher what could have bothered him, but he could find nothing.
“Gerard? I’m sorry, if I said something I shouldn’t have…” Gerard’s eyes opened again and he smiled tightly, so Frank could just about see his oddly small, but also oddly cute teeth again.
“No, you didn’t say anything wrong. I just… the answer to that is a bit much, ah, emotionally. I’ll only tell you if you’re sure you aren’t going to make the room explode in a storm, or something.” Frank blinked.
“Why would I make the room storm?” He asked blankly.
“Because of your power? You know, the emotions linked to elements thing? It’s pretty depressing, what I’m gonna tell you, so storms seemed the most likely thing you’d… express.” Gerard explained.
“Oh. Right, yeah. Of course.” Frank shook his head about a little. It was still a bit of a stretch of his imagination, thinking that he had some sort of magical powers.
“So, um. You know I told you half the people here had family here when they were found?”
“Yup.”
“Well, I was one of them. I lived with the whole family, you know… brother, mom, dad. Seemed odd, to Ash, that Mikey- that’s my brother- didn’t have any powers too. But he did a check, and it turned out I just had some weird gene malfunction that made me pretty much directly linked to the White family. Only, like, not. If you get what I’m saying.” Gerard laughed awkwardly, and Frank assumed this was the first- or one of few- times he’d explained what had happened with him.
“I get you.” Frank assured him.
“Good. So, um… right. So, because Ash had done a check on Mikey, I had to tell him everything. Which made him extremely susceptible to an attack from the Strangers. We’ve got guards in this organization, and we have three on my family house. I’m allowed to see Mikey once a year, which sucks, but at least I get to see him. I can’t see my parents; they’d want to know what was happening. That would just put them in more danger.”
Frank nodded, processing the story in his head.
“I can’t see how you think that’s depressing. I mean, it’s sad that you can’t see your parents, but it’s not that sad.”
Gerard laughed. “You’re right. I completely missed out the point of the story, didn’t I? Well, when I first came here, I heard Ash’s talk about the Strangers. Heard what they did to the families. And, since I wasn’t allowed to see my family, I took that in another way.” Here, Frank watched in fascination as Gerard bit his lip, attempting to pull away a bit of loose skin. Wondered what he could have done. In a sudden movement, Gerard looked up with eyes that seemed to be far away.
“I thought they were already dead, and that my friends were protecting me. So I…” his voice broke, stopping speech.
“You don’t have to tell me, man.” Frank said softly. Gerard stared at him, his eyes misting over slightly.
“No, I should. It’s supposed to be good for you, right? Anyway. I thought my family was dead, I didn’t really have friends in this place, so I tried to kill myself.”
Frank’s jaw dropped. It seemed to be pretty loose lately.
“You… tried to… kill yourself?” He gasped, pushing backwards of the table. Vaguely aware of a bright flash that seemed to suit his shock, Gerard attempted to calm Frank down.
“Yes, but it didn’t work, Frank, they caught me before I could do anything, and I’m past that now… Frankie, chill.” Frank gaped at his friend, struggling to control the lightening from raining down on them both. But he couldn’t stop; he was reeling from what Gerard had told him.
“Frank, you need to calm down, or something bad is gonna happen that I don’t want to have to explain to you…” Frank could barely hear Gerard now, there was thunder booming inside the room, and inside his head like a huge pounding drum, and he swore something had just snapped inside of him because he had heard something loud and sharp and it wasn’t the lightening and nothing had broken in the room…
“Frank! I just slapped you and you didn’t even flinch!” Frank managed to focus on Gerard, and at the sight of his distress, the thunder seemed to quieten.
“Hey, good, Frankie. Just relax, okay? I need you to tell me something.” Frank nodded a little. The thunder was now a slow growl, the lightening sparks at his shoulders.
“Awesome, Frank. Okay, so come on, tell me this. If I do this, what happens?” Gerard reached out and flicked Frank on the nose. Frank recoiled, shocked slightly, and then froze.
“You did get me then, right?” He gulped. Gerard’s lip pulled down slightly.
“Pretty sure I did.” Frank looked affronted.
“You can’t have done. Look, do it again, flick my cheek.” He demanded. Gerard obliged, strained across the table, and twanged his finger across Frank’s skin. Frank grinned suddenly.
“See! I felt that, I felt you flicking me!” He exclaimed proudly. Gerard frowned.
“Okay… Frank, shut your eyes a second.” Frank looked confused, before complying. He heard a lot of rattling around in drawers, some cupboards opening, a few “want that, not that…”’s.
“Right, I’m gonna drag something across your cheek, and you have to tell me what it feels like.” Frank nodded readily. He listened as Gerard grabbed something, clambered onto the table. He felt his breath nearing his face, and gulped a little.
“Okay, test number one.” Gerard announced. Frank ‘mm-hmm’d awkwardly. He felt the sensation of some object being pulled across the skin, but couldn’t work out the texture.
“Um… that’s quite soft.” He told his tester haltingly. Gerard said nothing, and Frank heard him put the object to the side.
“Next…” Frank felt the sensation again, and got more worried when, yet again, he couldn’t get the texture. It just wasn’t there.
“Uh, that’s sort of soft, too… more rough though?” he guessed randomly. He didn’t know if there was a kitchen utensil that was ‘sort of soft but more rough’. Gerard made a soft noise of interest.
“This should be good.” He murmured. Frank was thought that he was sweating; there was something thin and slow running down his forehead, but like the previous items, he couldn’t feel anything but it being there. Something suddenly slammed into his cheek, full impact; to him, it seemed perfectly smooth, nothing to be aware of but it.
“Um, that’s, like, completely smooth. Are you just stroking my cheek now or something?” he joked. Gerard snorted, and said,
“You can get your eyes open now.” Frank did so, and looked at the table. There were three items, laying in what he presumed was test order; first, a wire cloth, then a sponge, and finally…
“A freakin’… spiky mallet? You hit me with a spiky mallet? That’s fucking rude, man!” Gerard giggled at his reaction, his face quickly falling serious again.
“Well, you just proved Jasmine’s point. You’re changing quickly.” Gerard sighed.
“Changing? What do you mean?” Frank asked.
“Your body needs time to re-adjust to all the extra energy its going to be using now- for your powers- so, without too much technicality, you’re gonna die pretty soon.”
Frank couldn’t help it. His jaw dropped once more.