CHAPTER 17 - "ESCAPE"
Grell Sutcliff flinched in pain as he received an electrical shock when he gently touched the stone wall on the upper tier surrounding the amphitheatre. It was carved with ancient spirit script and used to keep all death entities who enter in, or in the same manner, out.
He was all alone. Well, not entirely. He did have the six dead bodies on the floor, saturated in their own blood, murdered by the Fallen Reapers for their own agenda. But he knew they would not be much company. In fact, no company at all.
The Fallen Reapers had left the amphitheatre a little less than a day ago, leaving him to wallow in loneliness, knowing that he would spent eternality here without a soul or Reaper to talk to. Hence, the only companion he had was his own dark thoughts and that was some very bad company.
And worse, he would never again see his sweet, adorable Bassie! The thought almost brought him to tears.
He howled with rage and pity - at how he had let himself be trapped this way, and at the danger that was about to befall the Phantomhive's, because he could neither help them nor warn them of what was about to happen. They were about to be attacked by supernatural psychopaths who would stop at nothing short of bloody murder to obtain what they wanted.
The Fallen Reapers wanted information on how to restore their bodies taken from them by the Reaper elite because they had committed unspeakable crimes that were disgraceful to Reaper-kind, allowing their own ambitions to supersede their Reaper duties. And this information on resurrection was supposedly stored deep within Lukas Phantomhive or Ciel Phantomhive's subconsciousness brain's, given to them or passed down by generations of chemical transmitters within their family history.
And their target was Lukas Phantomhive, because due to some heavy brainwashing by associates of Bryon Kelvin, an English philanthropist, his brain could very well be more easily accessible, susceptible to suggestion, if a certain code word or phrase was spoken, to lift the amnesia that the boy now suffered from - all the knowledge and everything he had experienced within the last seven years, separated from his family, kidnapped, trapped inside - to finally spew out and wash over him like a plague.
Lukas was programmed to kill his brother and usurp the family as it's only heir, to play his brother's part. But that was before the world knew of Lukas Phantomhive's existence and his story. Now the Fallen Reaper's still planned to use Lukas's programming, but for another purpose entirely. And there was absolutely no way for Grell to stop them.
This would also entail another failure on his part. He had been sent to collect the cinematic records of these dead men and take them back to the Hall of Records, but because of his entrapment he would not be able to do that. And he was surprised no one had come to check up on him after he missed his scheduled check-in.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, he pouted. He was not looking forward to spending all of eternality here. More so, because the bodies below were starting to rot, their dead flesh seeping death odors. He would sit here and watch each body and its organs decay, leaving only bones, their blood evaporating, and over the centuries, their bones turn to dust, until nothing.
Well, he could always watch each cinematic record in real-time. That would waste a few centuries…
He heard a loud, echoing rapping fill the amphitheatre, like a knock on a door.
Grell looked around. He knew for a fact there were no doors to speak of. The amphitheatre had stone archways with long stone corridors that were completely open to anyone who knew their winding pathways which lead to secret passageways and out into the real world.
"Boy, these spirit barriers are a real bugger," the voice of a young man said, his voice echoed the place. "Hey Grell, you in there? Or have you fallen asleep?"
Grell sprung to his feet, sharply gazing around, as if to locate the voice. The dancing shadows of torchlight were the only things exhibiting anything that resembled any sort of entity. Then he realized who the voice belonged to, and could not believe he would the one the Reapers would send to check-up on him. "Knox?" He was a brash, young Reaper with a bit of an over-active nature.
"In a pickle, anch'ya? Man, this spiritual barrier is a work of pure art. A beauty!"
"Get me outta here, Knox!" Grell demanded. "Stop admiring the décor!"
"Workin' on it. Some pretty, well-to-do dark magic here. Ancient. Tough to crack. When ya didn't come back as scheduled, Will sent me to bring ya back. He said, and I quote: 'What did that idiot get himself into now?' in his low, usual, brooding tone. That guy really needs to lighten up!"
Will was Grell's and other Reapers' superior. He oversaw all cinematic collection. Some said he was the ultimate subjugator for order and a real arse. His dress attire was perfect, not a black hair was out of place on his head, his spectacles were always clean and properly situated, and his deathscythe was a long staff with a snipper at the end that could cut anything. He took his job seriously.
"This is not my fault!" Grell said, fearing reprisal from Will. He was already on probation.
"We know. We caught a glimpse of the Fallen Reapers as they were fleeing the amphitheatre. Will wants a full debriefing."
"And he will have it, when I get outta here!"
"Settle down, I'm trying. It's difficult without a Triad. Those things are rare these days and apparently four have been absconded from the Treasury, we just found out. The rest are under lock and key now."
"The Fallen Reapers have them."
"How did they get them?"
"Sympathizers at the Academy."
"Ah, that would explain it. We suspected such for a while, but can't pin point who. However, we've been following these rogues for a while."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"Will: 'Need to know'. You know him. And besides, we didn't know they would be here. Even without the spiritual barrier surrounding this place, there's something wrong with this amphitheatre that prevents even Reapers to see into it from our realm."
"Wrong?"
"Explain later."
"I really hate Will, such a stickler for rules."
Knox laughed. "I agree."
There was a long pause when neither said anything. Then Grell spoke up. "What's taking so long?"
"Relax," Knox said. "There's a trick to these things. You have to find the key spell, much like a key stone in an arch. Eliminate it, and the whole thing comes crashing down."
Moments passed in silence again.
"Knox?"
"Hmm, this is a tough one…the key spell seems to be very well hidden. Whoever devised this spirit barrier never wanted it to be deactivated."
"Who do you think devised it?"
"Don't know, but I can tell you one thing: it was never activated. Reapers say this place is a gateway to Hell, perhaps that's why this script was carved into the walls. Someone might have wanted the gateway shut at one point. Or perhaps, something drawn out and kept here. The Great Death?" Knox wondered.
"Bassie?"
"Sebastian Michaelis," Knox corrected, "as Ciel Phantomhive calls it. I have a feeling that whatever transpired here that night two years ago - the night that was supposed to be Ciel Phantomhive's last - the Inner Circle were not only attempting to kill off the last of the Phantomhive's, but were conducting a sacrifice vicariously a seyance to summon a demon from the depths of Hell for them to control. Only it didn't work out that way, and it murdered them all, striking a contract with the boy. Now it resides as Ciel Phantomhive's butler waiting patiently to devour his soul at its convenience when its hunger becomes too ravenous to control."
More familiar was Sebastian's history than other Reaper's, Grell could confirm Knox's theory.
"There is something else," Knox said. "This place is evil, much like Stonehenge. Both have been used for sacrificial rituals in the past, and are gateways to the underworld. The good thing is Stonehenge was locked off centuries ago and the Druids killed off. The energy of this place, however, is so thick. It too needs to be locked off before something more powerful than Sebastian Michaelis comes through. Someone really knew what they were doing when they wrote these inscriptions, ancient as they are. All death entities must obey their spiritual affluence, unless they have a way around it."
"Like having a Triad."
"The Traid's were created for Reapers for just such occasions, because this planet has so many different spiritual energies, some so confounding that they may never be explained, and every day, Reapers are dispatched to push back dark forces that escape to this world, influencing some Reapers to even turn on our own, giving into their deepest desires - hence Fallen Reapers - for which humans are blissfully unaware. We Reapers are the human's only defense, and always the last thing they ever see when we collect their cinematic records."
Grell sighed, feeling momentarily sympathetic for humanity. "I know…"
"Ah, there we go..."
Grell suddenly heard the sound of what he could only describe as shattering glass, and almost instantly the heavy, thickening feeling he feel inside the amphitheatre dissolved when the spiritual barrier released its hold.
Knox pushed through the stone wall, like a ghostly apparition, into the torch lit amphitheatre, and put up a hand, smiling. "Hi."
Ronald Knox was a young Reaper with the equivalent appearance of a human male in his mid-twenties, but Knox was much older than that, at least two centuries older. An over-energetic Reaper, he was the kind of Reaper that charged into action and thought about the consequences later.
The embodiment of youth, Ronald Knox was all for the rules but not as strict for them as his superior Will. Knox had short, two-tone blond/black hair, was thin, wore the standard black rim Reaper glasses, and along with the standard Reaper uniform of black attire, he wore a loose-fitted tie, which was attenuative to a little rebellious streak in him. To many other Reapers, he was like a teenager and often acted like one.
"Been bored long?" Knox smirked.
"Any length of boredom is long," Grell said.
Knox came to stand next to Grell on the upper tier of the amphitheatre and looked down at the six dead bodies below. It looked like a pit of death.
"What goes around, comes around, I suppose." Knox looked around at the dancing shadows on the wall created by the torch light. "This place gives me the creeps."
Grell agreed. "This is a place of death, and I'm not just talking about the bodies down there. Mathu Kelvin, or the Fallen Reaper disguised as him, liked to talk."
"I knew that Reaper, well, but reputation anyway, before he fell. He was a brilliant Reaper. It was a shame when he, his wife and brother fell. Unfortunately, we Reapers are not immune to human-like desires like greed and ambition." Knox elbowed Grell. "Right pal?"
Grell nodded, his escapade as Madame Red's partner in the Jack the Ripper case came to mind.
"But this comes under the jurisdiction of Reaper justice affairs now," Knox said. "They're Fallen Reapers. They can handle them. We just collect cinematic records."
"But..."
"Orders, from the top."
"What if they kill someone?"
"Other than whom they already have? It's a human issue." Knox pointed at the dead men. "You've collected their cinematic records, right?" Grell nodded. "Then your task is over."
"But…I must save my sweet, lovable Bassie!" Grell declared.
"Grell, don't do anything stupid."
"Me? Never!"
Knox gave him a disbelieving stare. He sighed. "I know I'm going to regret this, but where you go - I go."
"I don't need a chaperone," Grell grumbled.
"No? Hey, Jack..." - referring to Grell's involvement in the human case of serial killer Jack the Reaper investigated by Scotland Yard, which because of its cover-up will never be solved - "I was told if you decide to get crazyand try something outlandish, like get caught up in another human affair, I'd have to accompany you, as a close observer."
Grell's shoulders slumped. "You mean to watch over me, like a mother hen, so I don't do anything stupid."
"Precisely," Knox said with a confident smile.
To be continued…