The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)

Gemini Falls

Previously: "Strategery" 

The next morning, even as the boys are still tiptoeing in the hallway, like elephants trying to do ballet, Victor wakes you rudely, rolls himself atop you, and shoves aside the fabric of your night gown. His cock, hard as a clenched fist, rams itself home without so much as a by-your-leave.

You take that as a sign that Sydney got comfortable with her new body during the night.

* * * * *

Unlike most mornings, on this one you take the meal in the kitchen, your plates on the countertop, standing and picking at your food while raking your gazes over each other. Victor is showered, shaved, and dressed in fresh fatigues, and with his cap pulled low over his eyes and his booted feet planted widely apart, he is the picture of rude, military health and confidence; the tendons in his forearm pop and flex when he reaches out to rub and pull at the side of your neck. "It needed shaking up, this marriage," he murmurs. "This'll be good for all of us."

You feel your nostrils flare. "It wasn't so bad before, was it?"

"It was comfortable," he says, and "comfortable" as he says it sounds like "soul-killing." "It was jammies and sweatpants and his-and-her shelves in the medicine cabinet."

"I didn't know you were so unhappy, sweetheart."

His dark eyes are hard, unwinking, but bright with ... adrenaline? "I wasn't unhappy," he says. "But I've been craving a mission."

"Well, now you've got one." You cup your hand over his as it kneads your neck. He crushes you inside his arms, and you press your torso into his. He smells clean, of unscented soap and mild shampoo, and you bury your nose in his neck to snuffle his scent up.

"What's that?" he says, for you mumbled something at him.

"I said, now you've got a mission. And when you get home you'll have four bright, strong, clever boys to help you put it into effect."

You feel him stiffen. "You're going to add the twins this afternoon?"

"Planning on it. Almost took them yesterday, but I decided to wait for you to get home. You, Sydney," you clarify. "But then you were late and—"

"Wait for me," he says. "I'll come home early, get Eric and Alec home early too. The three of us can do it."

"I can handle it," you assure him, but he shakes his head.

"Like you told me up in Eric's room, let's not risk screwing anything up, not here at the end. It'll be three to two," he says. "They won't stand a chance against me and their brothers."

"Well, alright, if that's the way you want to do it." You give him a quick squeeze. "Father knows best."

He pulls back. "Who are you and what did you do with the colonel?"

"Smart-aleck." You clap him in the small of the back and push him away. "Go conquer the world, honey."

"Starting with the boys. I'll have Eric email you the plans I worked on yesterday, while I was being him. Oh," he adds. "It's lucky we didn't take the major over the weekend. He had to take a blood test yesterday."

"A blood test? What for?"

"I don't know. He just had orders to have blood taken." A shadow crosses his brow. "The base might be someplace to look for the rest of our Brotherhood. It's a research base, did you know that?"

"I didn't, but Heather sort of did."

He nods. "There might be some stuff out there worth snooping into. Well, we'll talk about it later." He pulls off his cap, runs his hand over his thick buzz-cut, then snaps the cap back into place. "Anyway, lucky it was still the real him when they took the blood."

"Why's that?"

"Because what would the lab technicians think when his blood evaporated, like Blake's did? Mm." His gaze crawls over your bosom. "Now that I think about it, we can stop using protection, babe, now that I'm shooting blanks."

"That's nothing to brag about, honey." You nod at the door. "Now, you don't wanna be late, do you?"

"I'll be home early," he reminds you. He gives you one last, long look from inside the doorway, then pulls it shut after him.

You sag back against the refrigerator. It's like he took all your electrical chemistry with him.

* * * * *

The day passes in something of a haze. At the gym, your instructor reprimands you a couple of times for not keeping up, and when running errands you twice miss your turnoff and have to take the long way to the post office and to the box store. You even have to return to the grocery store after getting home with supplies for the next couple of days, for you somehow contrived to not look at the back of the shopping list for the rest of the items.

But the worst part comes when you face up to the fact that today is Heather's day to clean up the twins' bedroom. You stand in the hallway for a solid minute, trying to work up the nerve to go in, before crumpling and slinking back downstairs.

Are you really going to do this to them? Are you really going to turn them into a couple of magical robots that you can inhabit when it's convenient? When you desire?

They're only twelve years old, for God's sake, they've just started seventh grade. They're younger than your own brother back home in Acheson.

Are you really going to do to them what you did to their brothers, and to their parents, all because your girlfriend wants a house full of innocent faces to hide behind while she (and you) study and practice black magical rites? Do you want the twins—or their duplicates—right there with you—sometimes it will be you, as them!—waving those phallic wands around and summoning demons or whatever?

The mood build on you during the afternoon, so that you almost wish Heather drank. Very nearly you resolve to tell Sydney that you're not going to go through with it, that the rest of the family can stay converted but the twins cannot. You know what she'll say, that it's not safe for you to leave them as themselves. But you'll say—

But you don't know what you'd say.

Ultimately, though, it's the memory of yesterday's incident at school that pulls you over the hump of your doubts and discretions. They really are not so innocent, perhaps. Were Carter and Eric and Alec so inclined to push friends and classmates around when they were that age? None of Heather's memories suggest that they were. (But then, Sydney tells you that Heather doesn't know a tenth of what her boys get up to.) The part of you that is channeling Heather Brown's own thoughts and intuitions (and insecurities) wonders if you—that is, she—has unconsciously been spoiling them.

And it's that thought—Heather's own worries about her twins—that suffocates the last of your lingering doubts. You've been playing Heather too long, you tell yourself. Even if you haven't got her converted, you need to get out of her head before she converts you!

* * * * *

Ten minutes before the twins come barreling in, you get a text from the major telling you that he's on his way home, and that Eric and Alec will be rendezvousing at the house at about the same time. So when Riker and Micah come scrambling into the kitchen after depositing their school bags upstairs, you let them get their snacks and drinks, but stop them before can scuttle out: "Take your stuff upstairs and wait there in your bedroom," you tell them. "Your dad'll be home in ten, and he wants to talk to you."

They stop and pale and look at each other, and ask you what it's about. "It's about yesterday," you tell them. "Your dad only had enough energy to deal with your brothers. Today it's your turn."

"Are we going to the work shed?" Riker asks. Dread mixes with hope in his countenance. To be taken to the work shed is a sign of serious trouble, but also of serious respect.

"That's up to him. Upstairs, and finish off what you're eating before your dad comes in."

"Yes'm," they gulp, and tear out of the kitchen. You sag back against a countertop with a beating heart.

Fifteen minutes later, Victor parks in the driveway and comes around through the side door. As you approach him, he stops you with an upraised finger and a quizzical smile. A minute later, the roar of a motor augurs the arrival of Eric and Alec. This time it's the front door that bangs open, and they stride into and through the living room without a word; you flinch a little when you see the masks they are openly carrying in their meaty hands.

They vanish up the stairs with a thundering of footfalls. From above comes the sound of a door banging open; there's a crash and one loud, sharp squawk of surprise.

Then silence.

Victor takes your hand and grips it tightly.

Footsteps again sound on the stairs, this time slower and more softly. Eric appears at their foot. "Gemini has fallen," he smirks.

* * * * *

The time has come to decide how to divide the twins between you. It makes most sense for you to take one and Sydney the other. But maybe you should take both—they're practically identical—so as to balance the family split more evenly.

And yet ... Heather Brown by herself outweighs all the men. Maybe you should let Sydney take both. You'll get your other four outside the Brown family.

You're about to tell Sydney your choice when a wicked thought comes to you. Maybe you shouldn't convert the twins at all. Maybe you should subject them to a body swap—put them in masks of their schoolmates, and their schoolmates into masks of them. That schoolboy they were bullying, maybe.

Next: "Bare Moments Between Masks" 

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"Table of Contents (Vol. 4)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 4)"