CHAPTER 20 - "MORE REVELATIONS"

After everything the Undertaker said, Lukas looked at the creepy looking man with high incredulity. He was in utter disbelief. "I-I don't believe you. You speak lies!"

"By my heart, I speak the truth, my lord," the Undertaker said. "You may believe it or not, but as a member of your father's sect, there were secrets even Tanaka, his elder butler, did not know."

Lukas held the mug almost emptied of chocolate drink in his lap, it had gone cold long ago, even before the Undertaker had gone through even half of what he had spoken. Nothing this man sounded in the realm of deception, Lukas felt. But he couldn't believe a word of it.

He sat mindful for a long moment, digesting everything that he had heard. But all that he had listened to meant nothing to him because of his amnesia, it was all merely words spun from a man who craved on the misfortune of others. What Lukas needed was to decipher truth from fiction, nothing the Undertaker said had validity yet. The Undertaker could say anything about Vincent Phantomhive and his sect of aristocrats, but as he was the only one of the sect still alive, how could Lukas prove otherwise anything he said?

"I want proof of your words, or I was brand you a lair and tell my brother of your heresy against our family. If my brother just heard what you said, he'd kill you were you stand."

The Undertaker laughed. "It's difficult to kill that which is already - " He stopped. "And you would not, my lord? If my words would offend Ciel Phantomhive, why then do you not attempt to strike me down? Even with that pistol behind you back."

Lukas mentally felt the impression of the pistol he had hidden in his belt behind his back. But how did the Undertaker know it was there, hidden within his coat? "I, unlike my brother, have…an open mind. But even this is too fantastic to be truth!"

"I speak no lies and have nothing to gain by such. You said you were hunting for answers, I have thus provided much more than you bargained for, which you have to admit? It will be up to you want you choose to do with the information."

Lukas shook his head. "Proof, Undertaker. Give me substantiation of your words! Or I will leave this shop right now, and adhere to the Phantomhive heed and have you hunted down for - "

The Undertaker raised a hand, suddenly quieting Lukas. "You are becoming more like your brother every day. Very well. Allow me to prepare something, and then all will be brought to light. But I must warn you, you may not like what you learn."

"Do it!"

The Undertaker went into the back storeroom and did not return for several minutes. When he did, he brought with him a bucket filled with a chemical concoction. Filling a coffin with water, which seemed to have no leaks, he poured the concoction evenly within across the watery surface.

"And what pray tell are you doing?" asked Lukas, sniffing the water. There was a hint of Rosemary.

"You asked for proof, my lord. I am providing it. Remove your clothes and get in."

Lukas straightened incredulously. "I will certainly not! Maybe I was wrong about you, Undertaker."

"I have poured a series of chemical compounds into the water," the Undertaker said. "They are designed to mimic relaxers and hallucinogens. The mind is like a box, someone once told me. It can store an unlimited amount of knowledge and can be assessed if properly cultivated. It can also be concealed the same way."

"But how will floating in…a box filled with water and these chemicals help me with my amnesia?"

"Because once in contact with human skin, body heat will activate the relaxers and hallucinogens to open the mind to possibilities of revelation. No need to fret, my lord. It will not harm you."

"I still don't trust you, Undertaker." Lukas sighed. "But you have been kind to me and told me much of my family that I did not know, no matter how fantastic."

Putting the mug down, he began to undress. And then stood next to the coffin in his under-garments.

"Everything, my lord. I am no pervert. The water much touch bare skin to work to its fullest. I only wish to help."

Despite his reservations, Lukas nodded and stripped bare, then stepped into the coffin and laid down. The water lifted him, floating his body, and he had the unusual feeling of being half way between life and death, and as the chemical compounds began to fizzle and bubble, much like bath salts, he was immediately soothed by their tingling properties. It was almost as if he were taking a bath.

"How long is this suppose to - "

Suddenly darkness engulfed him as the lid to the coffin slammed overhead, trapping him, and he heard a hammer nailing it shut.

"Wait! Undertaker - "

He banged on the top of the coffin, but it would not budge. He swished around inside banging on every part of what was now his coffin, but it was airtight, and there was only the Undertaker on the outside who could hear his calls. It was obvious that man had indeed lured him into a false sense of security.

He was a fool. He had allowed the Undertaker to goad him, and now it had lead him to his death!

The fizzle and bubbling of the water increased until it filled the whole inside with a incense not unlike Rosemary. While a pleasant smell, he did not want to breath it in fearing it also contained a harmful gas that would kill him, and he heard his breath. If the Undertaker could sooth headaches with embalming fluid, a known chemical that helps preserve a dead body for public showing and can kill if ingested, then he would certainly knew other compounds that can harm a human body…

Lukas continued to bang on every area of the inside of the coffin, swishing the water around in tidal waves as he did, hoping he could open a hole so he could escape, but in doing so, he created more of the Rosemary death gas, and he was quickly running out of energy, and breath.

His cheeks were puffed, but he felt air escaping unwantedly from the side of his mouth. He tried to keep it in, but the instinctive need to breath won out, and he blew out a breath.

And in that, he breathed back in, and he immediately felt a feeling of drowsiness.

And darkness took him.

He looked around, everywhere was surrounded in mist. Turning in every direction, all he see was a thin veil of angelic white, and it swirled with every movement he made. It engulfed him, it attached to his naked flesh. Had the Undertaker actually murdered him and this was the afterlife?

He laughed, what a joke. Because he had amnesia until he 'died', what could he truly remember to substantiate his life so he could recall? And where was the Grim Reaper that was suppose to meet a soul to lead him on his way to…this, nothingness?

Was this where he was going to spend eternity?

The mind's eye didn't lie. Most of his life was a blank slate. So this place was very appropriate.

Suddenly, then it happened. And in a cinematic record of some kind, like a movie film reel, his life played out in full before his eyes, as his entire twelve and half years spewed out from his chest, escaping into this void of a realm to show him what

he had forgotten, but that his mind had never.

As he watched it all, time passed like nothing, and he was both shocked and horrified at his life. From the time before he was kidnapped and to the seven years after…

"Why? Why? Why?" he screamed out into the nothingness, enraged at what he was seeing, hoping for some sort of an answer. But he knew he would not get one.

But from within the reel that spun every which way encircling him, a voice echoed from the void. It was a voice both anonymous and yet familiar at the same time. He did not recall hearing it before, and yet its tone resonated a proverbial knowledge inside him.

It was the voice of his father.

"Lukas, my son. Apologies, from you mother and I." The voice came from everywhere. "We did not mean to hurt you. We did not know…but we should have known about Bryon Kelvin."

Lukas furrowed his brow. Was this his actual father speaking to him from beyond the grave or was it his own imagination, a sign of oxygen depravity as he was trapped in the coffin?

He answered the voice. "I didn't want to believe it, but history can not lie. My history! The life - the life I could have lead - you stole it from me! I was cast away, my face altered, I was brainwashed and trained to do horrible things…trained to kill, for which I even went after a friend of yours in Rome, Italy, on orders from 'father', Bryon Kelvin. And for what?" He felt the curve of his face, he was the twin reflection of his fraternal brother Ciel, and he wanted more than anything to rip his face off. "An accident? You may have been deceived, father, but in the end, it cost you dearly! And it cost me everything!"

The voice did not say anything.

The truth felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders and to actually say it brought it validity.

"I know what I must do, what must be done - it is all so clear to me. I know now why I have returned from the brink of obscurity. I remember everything. And thus, it ends here!"

"No, son!" the voice of his father said pleading, booming through the mist. "You are mistaken!"

"I will not listen anymore, I will not relent in my mission. You will wrought what you have sowed, father. You sought to destroy me, and now it will be your undoing!"

Ciel awoke startled to a loud crash, or rather a large explosion when he fully awoke. The mansion shook when the explosions continued in rapid succession, like cannonballs hitting the ground. It reminded him of the battle the servants had had with the invaders by the Inner Circle when they wanted to retrieve Lukas.

He clammered out of bed, and looked out the window to the back courtyard, but he did not see an army of hired thugs and mercenaries attacking the mansion. Another explosion hit the mansion, or close to it.

Then his eyes widened in horror when he saw Sasha and Samual Ironstadt, as they backed into sight of the window, and each of them held several small objects in hand, looking like a small viles with liquid inside. He gasped, as he realized what they were. And Sebastian within throwing distance, obviously forting them off, avoiding the explosive concoctions of liquid nitroglycerin. It was a powerful and highly unstable explosive used to destroy hard rock, and the twins were wiping it around as if it were merely water.

"Sabastian!" he cried out, slamming his fists against the window.

Sebastian had heard him and briefly looked up. But so had one of the twins.

Sasha or Samuel, which ever one it was - they were so identical it was difficult to tell them apart, more so than he and Lukas - raised his arm and threw thrown one of the viles towards Ciel's bedroom window before Sebastian could intercept it. Ciel saw it, and quickly jumped out of the away as the object blew his window inwards, destroying the large bay window and scattering debris and glass everywhere.

Ciel looked about his bed chambers and the destruction the explosive vile had caused, and he momentarily cursed Sebastian for not preventing it. But he had not been hurt by the blast, although he did have a slight ringing in his ears. A similar thing happened to Lukas only a week before to his bed chambers, in one of the visitor's quarters on the main floor, and the twins were responsible for that destruction as well. Ironic, Ciel thought. That the same thing would happen to both of them.

And for a split moment, he wondered where his brother was. They were obviously back for a second attempt at retrieving him.

Moving very carefully across the floor on his hands and knees, he reached his bedside table and yanked his eye patch off and put it on, to cover the covenant in his right eye, then they made his way out into the hall the same way, and got to his feet. He was lucky he didn't cut himself on any glass.

"Sebastian!" he yelled out, as if to summon the butler by order. He had reached the top vestibule of the main staircase, when he was stopped in his tracks.

A thin, well dressed man, with glasses and a ponytail, and a gypsy woman in typical such attire, stood at the foot of the staircase. At their feet, lain Finny, Mey-Rin, and Bardroy, the servants, all immobile and incapacitated somehow. But unlike the twins outside, nothing inside was hit with explosions or damaged in the main hall. They stood looking up at him as if they had been welcomed.

Ciel wore his bed shirt that covered him down to his knees, but he was not concerned with his dress attire at the moment. He stepped to the elongated plateau that branched the vestibule of the staircase and glared down at these two intruders.

"Who are you people? How dare you invade my mansion! Sebastian!"

"He can't help you, lord Phantomhive," the man said. "He's preoccupied at the moment." The held up a small vile of explosives.

Ciel didn't need it spelled out for him, these two and the twins were working together.

And then he recognized the man's face. And he blinked twice just to make sure. He clenched a fist at his side, but held straight-faced. He didn't want to give away that he knew who the man was. The woman, he didn't know. But if she was helping Mathu Kelvin, nephew of Bryon Kelvin, then the Inner Circle had to be involved, and they were here to retrieve his brother once more.

But how did these two get past his servants? And where was Tanaka? He was not among them.

"What did you do to my servants?" He demanded, pointing. "Are they dead?"

"No, merely asleep." The woman turned one of them over, Finny, and showed a dart sticking out from the side of his neck, like the others. In her hand was a long tube like a flute, but with both ends open. It was a blowgun, the same African tribesmen used to hunt game and incapacitate enemies. The darts could either be filled with sleep serum or something deadly that stops all nerve activity in the body, rendering the person inert. "We wanted to halt any bloodshed before it began," Mathu Kelvin finished.

"Is that why you're setting off explosions around my mansion, your hired mercenaries - those sick and twisted twins - set to kill my butler?"

"A distraction," Mathu said. "And we both know Sebastian Michaelis is no mere butler, Ciel Phantomhive. He is a product of your sinister intent, to hunt down those who murdered your parents. A demon."

Ciel's eyes widened with disbelief. "W-what are you talking about?"

"Come, my lord Phantomhive, we don't have time for lies. We know you and Sebastian Michaelis are bond by contract for your soul. You summoned him in the amphitheatre the Inner Circle used - and I am speaking about them in the past tense because they are all extinct now, I killed them all - when you were at death's door. In exchange for your soul, he would serve you until all those who did you wrong were murdered. How do I know this? Because I was there. I am a Fallen Reaper."

Ciel looked at him with impunity. "Explain."

And Mathu Kelvin, or the thing masquerading as Bryon Kelvin's nephew, told the whole story about how all four of them - he, his wife (the gypsy woman), and the twins (his brother) - were at the ceremony to sacrifice innocent children to demonic forces for knowledge from the great beyond. Only it didn't happen as planned, and when a gateway was opened inside the amphitheatre, a demon came through and slaughtered everyone. It was then that the Fallen Reapers inhabited the bodies of four humans before the Reapers came.

Ciel gritted him teeth in utter rage. "You murdered my parents, had me kidnapped and tortured, my twin brother torn asunder from my family, all for personal gain! You are the cause of my family befall! I will have you all killed for your sadistic intent! Sebastian!"

"I'm afraid he's still indisposed," a new voice said.

Ciel looked off beyond Mathu Kelvin and the woman, at a new pair of intruders. But one intruder he knew all too well. Once his aunt's inept butler, Grell Sutcliff, a Reaper - and the man who killed his aunt because she couldn't murder her nephew when Ciel found out she was "Jack the Ripper" - stood next to another man, his younger, with blond/black hair, wearing black Reaper attire, and the standard Reaper glasses. Grell Sutcliff wore his flamboyant blood suit, with jacket, as always, that adjoined to the color of his hair.

"Are we too late to the party?" this new Reaper said jokingly.

"Who the hell let you out of your cage?" Mathu Kelvin scorned. "Oh, you…"

The younger Reaper did a small bow. "Ronald Knox, at your service. You must be Mathu Kelvin, and his lovely significant other, Savannah, the gypsy fortune-teller. Guess you never saw us coming, didj'ya?"

Ciel lifted his chin and composed himself. "Grell," he said calmly. "Kill them, and you can do whatever you like with Sebastian."

Grell's eyes opened wide. "Oh?" He hugged himself in utter delight. "Even kissing?"

Ronald Knox stuck his tongue out repulsed.

"If you wish it," Ciel said. "Murder these fiends, and whatever you heart desires will be yours. I will expect nothing less than complete bloodshed like those prostitutes in White Chapel. Whatever it takes. Do it now!"

Knox held steadfast, holding Grell back. "Can't, your worship," he said to Ciel. "Grell, remember, you're on probation. Anymore slip-ups and you'll end up a Fallen Reaper yourself. You really want that? Observe only. Nothing else. This is a human affair."

"What?" Grell slumped his shoulders. "Oh, yeah…that's right. Will's directive. Sorry."

Mathu laughed. "You Reapers and your rules, it's no wonder why we rebelled."

"You rebelled because you don't believe in the order of things," Knox said. "We Reapers are go-betweens for life and death, to help humans pass on…we can't interfere with their lives and alter things."

"Pish," Mathu waved him off. "I merely helped humanity advance their knowledge when Atlantis arose from the stone age." He then turned back to Ciel. "Now, without anymore interference, where is your brother? Where is Lukas Phantomhive?"

"Answer me this. What did you do to him? Who took him, and why?"

Mathu shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. That wasn't my forte. You'd have to ask my uncle."

"And where is Bryon Kelvin?"

Again Mathu shrugged. "Disappeared. Alive or dead, I don't know."

"You're lying! I want him dead!"

"I would be happy to do that for you sir." Sebastian entered the main doorway with the bodies of Sasha and Samuel Ironstadt being dragged by their collars in each hand. Both were unconscious, and their clothes were half burnt, along with their bodies bloodied. But they were still alive. "Finding him will be problematic, however. He has so many influential friends that will aid in his hiding." Sebastian dropped them to the floor in a heap and brushed off dirt from his white gloves. "They were worthy opponents, but a far cry from beating me, I'm afraid."

With all the activity here, Ciel had not noticed that the explosions had stopped. He did not know how Sebastian defeated the twins, but that would have to wait until later.

"My sweet Bassie!" Grell cried, holding out his arms and running to him for an embrace.

Sebastian held out a hand, stopping Grell in his tracks. "We'll have none of that, Grell." Sebastian then looked at those that had gathered at the foot of the staircase. "What's all this then? We have guests? I'm sorry, Master. I was unable to accept them properly into the mansion."

Ciel smirked, safe in the knowledge Sebastian would dispose of the Fallen Reapers. "Don't let it happen again."

Sebastian bowed slightly. "Of course. Shall I escort them out?"

"No, kill them," Ciel said. "They murdered my parents. They are the last."

"The last, my lord?" Sebastian smirked. "I understand."

Mathu Kelvin held up his hands. "No, kid. We didn't murder your parents. And I don't know who did."

"And you can't kill them, anyhow," Knox said. "They are Fallen Reapers."

Sebastian nodded. Then he mused out loud. "I believe I am missing a few pieces to this puzzle. Would something please explain this impromptu gathering of sorts?"

Mathu stepped forward. "We are here to collect Lukas Phantomhive," he began. "We have been lead to believe his mind is in possession of certain information we need to restore our bodies back to us for which the Reapers removed after we fell from grace, information stored in his chemical make-up thousands of years old, that descendants of the Phantomhive's may have come into contact with."

"As my master often says, once something is truly gone, you can never get it back again," Sebastian said, "and that, I would muse, bodies that have turned to dust ages ago."

"These are Reaper bodies. The mere remembrance of their images can restore them back to solid form. Once that occurs, we will leave these bodies and leave you all in peace."

"No, we'll never let that happen!' Knox said. "You wont go in peace, you'll just continue your rampage and destruction on humanity and destroy everything insight, just like you did when you fell."

"A person can do a lot of soul searching in ten thousands years, young Reaper," Mathu said, as if he were speaking to an apprentice in training.

"Enough of this foolishness!" Ciel interrupted. This was his mansion, he was master here. If these people would not tell him who murdered his parents, then they would pay. He ripped off the eye patch that covered the covenant. His right eye glowed. "Sebastian, I order you…kill them! Kill them now!"

Sebastian sighed. "While it saddens my black heart to say, my lord, I'm afraid I can not obey that order."

"Pardon?" Ciel sneered.

"They are Reapers, my lord. Dark spirits. Albeit them inhabiting human bodies at the moment, killing the vessel would not serve any purpose. They would just move into another body and possess it, and I am afraid they would pick you."

"Very true," Knox confirmed, "as he is the only conscious human at the moment, and I doubt they would want to possess any of them." Knox pointed at the servants laying motionless on the floor. "Cast from their original bodies, they may be, they won't just steal any human body. Dark spirits desire dark souls."

Sebastian agreed. "Therefore, there is only one recourse to ending all of this."

"Then you will help us then?" Mathu said. "We get what we want, and your master will be spared."

"That is not what I am thinking, but sparing my master is my top priority."

Ciel shook his head, his eyes widened with implication. "No, Sebastian…you're not saying…"

"To alleviate all concerns involved…" Sebastian looked at both Grell and Knox, "…and in addition to any potential threats," he said, gazing at Ciel. "I will find Lukas Phantomhive. And sad as it may be, even though my master and he have just been reunited after so many years apart." Sebastian's eyes glowed. "Lukas Phantomhive must die."

to be continued...