Part 28
It was a very peculiar thing in Viveka's study. On the corner table
opposite the door was a small jade statue of a toad. It was a treasure
she purchased ages ago while travelling in China. However it had
curiously been moved to the corner table from the green and blue
pebbles lining the bottom of the bottom of the aquarium. Upon closer
inspection she noticed the tabletop surrounding the statue was dry,
she ran her finger along the toad's back, not a drop of water.
She picked it up and held it in her hand, strangely it was warm to the
touch. She turned it over in her hands to look at the bottom and there
she found a smiley face sticker. A peeved huff of air escaped her lips
as she began picking the sticker off with her fingernail. This was no
coincidence. Jorgen stayed clear of the study and no one was invited
in. Somehow, someone had infiltrated her home and then her study. They
had removed the statue from the bottom of the aquarium, then dried it
completely, then placed the sticker on the bottom. Not only that, but
they had been there recently enough and was there long enough for the
jade to warm from their touch.
Viveka set the toad back down on the corner table for the time being
and looked around the study carefully to see if anything else was out
of place. In the bookcase against the wall between the two windows was
a single book turned upside down on the middle shelf. She pulled the
book from the shelf and opened the cover; written in black ink in
flowing script over the blank front page were the words 'See you
soon!'
She scowled as she closed the book and put it back in its place on the
shelf. This was no freak occurrence and she knew what it meant.
Centuries earlier she had met a strange man. A man that appeared out
of thin air in the sanctity of her room one night as she preformed a
ritual to reap her enemies of their lives. He was dressed in clothing
she had never seen before, never imagined before and he used words she
didn't at the time understand. Words she would learn much later in her
life. When he appeared to her he was dressed in black, close-fitting
velvet trousers with a matching coat. His white shirt was ruffled, as
were the cuffs that hung from the sleeves of the coat. He had a mop of
black hair and bronze skin, which Viveka found quite exotic at the
time. He was so strange and so out of place that it mesmerized her and
she abandoned the ritual to study him.
Over the course of the night the two argued and debated. Viveka
scrawling her arguments on countless scraps of paper. The stranger
explained that he was a traveller and that one of her intended victims
must be spared. He refused to give an answer why, stating only that it
was of 'great importance' that they remain alive until a certain date.
Neither would he say why the date was relevant. Viveka grew annoyed
with the lack of information and informed him that his demands were
irrelevant, noting that he could not stop her.
The man smiled and said otherwise before vanishing once again, along
with every item needed for Viveka to complete the ritual. Years later,
when the date the man specified came, her items miraculously
reappeared on her bed. That night she finished the ritual started all
that time ago.
It happened again after she and Jorgen had moved to the New World. He
appeared under the same circumstances making the same demands. However
he also had not aged a day from all those years ago. When she
questioned why he explained that she would not understand. Once again
she grew irritated with him and she informed him that she had grown
stronger since those years earlier. He laughed and told her that it
was irrelevant. Once again her tools vanished only to reappear on the
date he mentioned.
Only he could have moved the toad. Only he could infiltrate their home
without her notice. Only he would dare to enter her study so brazenly.
She had already worked it out, though it had taken her several hundred
years, she knew where he was from and what he was and why he had not
aged a day in half a millenium. This time, things would work out
differently. She would finally discover his name and then he would be
at her mercy.
Her phone chirped and vibrated against her thigh, pinned in place by
the band of her stocking. She reached through the slit at the right
side of her skirt and pulled the phone from her stocking. She looked
down at the screen and discovered a text message from Eleven. The
message consisted of simply the name Teddy Pierce and three smiley
faces.
She didn't know the name, but that was nothing new. The names were
important, some sort of connection to the victim was necessary.
Unfortunately it was a rarity for Eleven to send her after people
familiar to her, she enjoyed those the most. The ones that left people
talking for days, the ones that had to undergo autopsies to discover
the cause of death. In a way she hoped there were others out there
that enjoyed the skill at which she dispatched her victims. There was
a unique creativity in it all that she felt most people would never
appreciate.
Usually Eleven preferred her to make the deaths look accidental or
natural so as not to arouse suspicion but every now and then he would
give her the three smilies. The three smilies meant that he had no
preference for how the victim should be disposed of. She had been
waiting for this, she had already formed detailed plans on how to
sacrifice this one. The time, the place, the date, the supplies she
would need for the rituals, the specific chants and hymns necessary to
do what she desired. It brought a smile to her face, in a few days she
would honor her gods.
Then she remembered the strange man and his notes and the toad statue.
Soon, he said, which Viveka found most unhelpful. Soon could be in a
minute or in a week, or even longer, most especially for the strange
man. Could it be perhaps the sacrificial victim is not the one the
strange man is coming to save from her, but someone else entirely?
That was Viveka's hope. Receiving three smilies was a very rare
occurrence she would not be so fortunate again any time soon. Such a
grand display she had planned and she was looking forward to it, but
she knew that the strange man could thwart it all with seemingly no
effort whatsoever.
Meanwhile outside Jorgen was tending to his flowers, spraying them
with water from the hose that hung in coils on the outside of the
house. He knelt down to inspect the stem of one of the daisies.
Unbeknownst to him the strange man appeared miraculously behind him
from nothingness. Jorgen looked up slightly and noticed he was
enveloped in someone's shadow. He jumped to his feet and spun around
and met eyes with the strange man.
"Mister Judge!" He cried out happily, embracing the man in a bear hug.
The man laughed and patted Jorgen's back, "Yes Jorgen, it's me. And
it's not MISTER Judge. It's just Judge. How long has it been?"
Jorgen pulled away and ran his fingers through his short brown hair,
"Oh, sorries, Judge. It's been long time I thought you wasn't comings
back."
"I told you I would be back, but since I'm here, you know what that
means," Judge said.
"Ja, I know," Jorgen said, somewhat dismayed.
"I'm going to need your help on this. Everything needs to go according
to plan, it's VERY IMPORTANT. Just do what Viveka says, she'll lead
you to me, okay?" The man said.
"But I don't want to hurts anybody," Jorgen argued.
"You won't. You'll save the day in the end, I promise," Judge explained.
"Okay, when ams I going to see you again?" Jorgen asked.
"Soon," the strange man said before vanishing.
This was not the first time Judge had appeared to Jorgen but always
for the same reasons. He would appear to Jorgen and give him orders
that would encompass his life for entire years, and Jorgen would
follow them. He knew who Judge was and why he must obey him.
In years past Jorgen had gone off to war serving as a field medic in
accordance with Judge's orders. Though he had been trained to kill
like any other soldier he still refused to take up arms, knowing he
could not be killed, only to heal the sick and the wounded for his
country and for the master plans of Judge. Each time Jorgen was called
upon the orders would culminate in a great scheme that he followed but
did not truly understand, but he knew it was of gravest importance.
He had saved children from landmines in countless countries, rescued
people from collapsed buildings, evacuated people from disaster areas,
he had been praised as a hero. He paid little notice to the attention
he received and went on about his life secure that Judge's schemes
were complete for now.
Upstairs Viveka was furiously typing on the keyboard of her phone,
oblivious to the fact that Judge had also appeared to Jorgen, not only
once, but multiple times.
"Is there anyone else?" She typed, sending the text to Eleven.
A few moments later Eleven replied in garbled text shorthand, "No,
why? Is he not good enough for you? I thought you'd be satisfied with
him."
"I am!" She texted back. "I was just curious."
"Because of the man in your room?" He asked seconds later.
"You know about him too?" She asked.
"Of course, I like to keep my eye on you, cutie pie ;)," Eleven
texted, chuckling to himself as the message sent.
"Then you know what this means, don't you?" She typed back.
"Yep, I'm buying the plane and hotel tickets now. How long will we be
there?" He replied.
Viveka rapidly typed with her thumbs, "Are we going to make a vacation
of it or are we going to treat it strictly as business?"
"May as well make a vacation out of it," he typed. "Where are we going?"
"New York City sounds good, doesn't it?" She asked, in accordance with
her plans.
"Departure?" He asked.
"Tonight," she replied. "We have to be there at midnight."
"Okay," Eleven texted back.
Viveka slipped the phone back under the band of her right stocking and
stepped over to the freestanding shelves beside her bookcase. She
began looking through the jars on the shelves filled with various
herbs and incense with labels to specify the contents. She pulled a
pouch from her belt and tugged it open, she reached up and pulled the
jar labelled 'Wormwood' she twisted open the lid and poured a small
amount of the wormwood into her pouch and screwed the lid back onto
the jar then placed it back in its place on the shelf.
She repeated this several times with several different jars, bay
leaves, garlic, hemlock, and ginger. She also selected several scents
of incense, selected by smelling several and choosing the one she
found most appropriate for the ritual. Each of them poured in careful
measurement into her pouch. She stepped over to the corner table; the
top was covered in candles, some were melted already, some were yet to
be burnt.
She selected two candles, one was black and unburnt, the second was
purple and only slightly melted; both were long and slender. She
tucked the candles between her loosely fitted belt and her hip.
Outside Jorgen was again watering his flowers that encircled the
house. Suddenly her voice called out to him, ringing inside his mind.
He secretly hated it, never being able to ignore her, no matter what
time of day her calls would be heard. They would wake him from sleep,
there was no escape. He stoically tolerated this for Viveka's sake,
it was an easier form of communication for her, as opposed to texting
him or writing down everything she had to say.
"We are leaving tonight for New York City, you should get packing,"
her voice said to him.
He sighed, knowing he had to oblige in accordance with Judge's orders
despite his personal distaste for New York City, a distaste that had
lasted nearly as long as the city had existed. He pulled his thumb
from the mouth of the hose and walked across the stone path way
leading from their doorstep to the sidewalk beyond their gates. He
stepped over to the hose coiled on the side of the house and turned
off the water.
Jorgen wiped the sweat from his brow and went inside to pack for the trip.