Put That Kid Down

Chapter Nineteen

It would make all of the... all the death on his soul, the blood on his hands, be for nothing.

No, David was not going to let any of them die on his watch. Not his campers. Not his- his whatever Max was to him. No matter what. He'd have to give them as much truth as he could manage for now, even if they might draw some unfortunate, correct assumptions from what he had to say.

Taking in the simmering, impotent fury in Max's hunched form, David wondered if that made Max right.

Maybe in the end, he was just selfish.

"For a long while now, people have... wanted the kids here... gone," David said carefully, "And some of them were willing to- well, to do it themselves. They said the kids were marked, and that meant they were stressing a seal that would let in something evil and powerful."

"What? David, when did this happen?" Gwen took a step forward, putting herself thoughtlessly between David the three conscious kids nearest her, "And why didn't you tell me when it started?"

"It's been happening for six years," Max put in unexpectedly, scuffing a foot in the dirt like the forest floor had offended him with its unmoving apathy, "Little before your time, Gwen."

Ignoring this with the ease of practice, Gwen didn't let up on the main suspect. She narrowed her eyes at David, "And what does Max have to do with it?"

"He found out," David said simply, one hand making a tired gesture to encompass how very little control David had had over that turn of events. "I didn't want any of the campers to be afraid, and the camp couldn't afford to lose any more staff, so I kept it all to myself, but now it seems like they had something to do with these... Kronics." A deep breath, "And here's what I know." A heavily edited version of the truth spilled out of him. The things Georgio had said and done, but not how he'd stopped him. What he'd extracted from various attackers over the years, but now how he'd done it. And lastly, the half-remembered way Daniel had elaborated on these points.

"It's not... clear," David explained, one hand going almost subconsciously to his head.

Grudgingly, Max picked up the lead, "The cultist said he was high priest of an enemy of the Kronics, and that if he killed us while we were 'cleansed,' it wouldn't let them in."

"Wait," Harrison cut in, "Daniel said if he killed us it wouldn't let them in - if we were cleansed of being marked, first? And this George person and the rest of the... other people who wanted us gone said we had to be killed because we were marked, so we wouldn't let them in?" At Max's nod, he muttered a little to himself, pointing one way and then the other, producing a spray of glitter at one particularly strong wave of the hand that he ignored settling onto him and the ground at his feet in favor of whatever he was thinking through. Snippets of words escaped the strange black hole of thought he'd become. "Enemies...but if he...so what...of the two...alright."

He clapped his hands together, a small bouquet springing into existence very close to his face. At this, the illusionist startled slightly, dropping the flowers and blinking at them perplexedly for a moment.

With a shake of the head, Harrison said in a more audible tone, "If we have to pick one of them to believe, it should be Daniel. He was already going to kill us before he knew about the marks you mentioned, and he claimed to be an enemy of the Kronics more than once. He would not want them to escape any more than we would. And from what you said about the other people, David, he seemed more... present." It was clear from the expression of distaste on the magician's face that he would prefer not to think of the man that might have killed him as anything approaching sane, but couldn't find a better way to phrase it. "So we should assume that our deaths will actually break the seal, if we regain our marks."