Inked: The Reaper Chronicles

Thirteen

"So, you expect me to believe that the Bleaks have another modus operandi for the attacks carried out on the top-ranking Reapers in the world? There's someone else pulling their strings?" 


Ethan shifted under her burning gaze. 


It was Alice who had enough sense to interject. 


"I can assure you, that we have collected sufficient enough evidence to prove the existence of a higher power in this operation-" 

It was Sweet that rammed down her diminutive hand on the table. Even though it was the size of a five year old, and an unusually small one at that, it was enough to shake the table to it's very foundations. 

"We've already compromised our position here after a newly activated shifter goes on the loose in the middle of one of the most populated urban metropolises in the world, but this-?!"

Grimm outlaid a bony hand on her rapidly rising and falling shoulder. The tiny woman had actually gone red in the face from the force of her yelling.  But at Grimm's touch, she shrank back into her specially adjusted seat. 

"What I'm saying is that this could change our whole outlook of this situation. If you have the proof to back it up." 

Ethan stood up, facing the small tribunal with all the strength he could muster. 

"I know what I saw." he affirmed, "I accessed their trace ...psychically. I can't really recall most of it, but I know I came across something. "

It was the formidable figure of Honour Riley who intervened, dangerously twisting a talon-like finger into her palm in almost teasing circles, her palm bloodlessly sealing up and being torn open simultaneously with each touch. It was enough to make Ethan swallow, his mouth too dry with anxiety. 

"You've already compromised the safety of every Reaper in the Eastern Continent," she growled, "if you're wrong in your suspicions, you will pay for it, boy. And I promise, I will make you myself if I have to..." 

Alice noticed him almost cautiously before deciding to intervene. 

"Please excuse Ethan's recklessness, Ms. Sweet." she interjected calmly into the conversation, "We have reason to believe that the Bleaks are planning something on a considerably more destructive scale than the Seoul attack."

At the interference of Alice, the teachers' expressions all softened, looking at each other and then at Ethan, who turned his head gratefully back to Alice, whose face remained permanently expressionless. 

He hollowed his cheeks while swallowing, before speaking. 

"There have been missing Reapers reported all over the world, right?It's not just in South Korea.  High-ranking ones, ones that are really powerful. And...they're connected in some way. By blood, I think. Symbiosis link through Bleak's minion and their trail. "

Honour Riley's anger morphed into a shock as her head whipped around to Grimm and Sweet, whose faces seemed to exaggerate the expression of realization that the dark-skinned woman held on her face. 

"Nego." she hissed wordlessly, her eyes darting back and forth to a watching Ethan. 

"The Bleaks are behind it," Ethan went on, "they're planning something with them. Something terrible, they're using their powers for something. It involves someone else.... a 'mother' of some kind." 

It was the imposing, bony hand of Grimm that was outlaid on his shoulder and Ethan's gaze was forced to meet those void, pupil-less black eyes that seemed to firmly fixed on the movements on his face. 

"You're absolutely sure of what you've seen?" he asked him. 

Ethan, remembering Alice's demeanor, tried to remain stoic as he faced the unnerving face in front of him. 

"Not exactly. But I know it's something big." he replied back. "If I follow them, the memories will get stronger and maybe-"

"The Bleaks are some of the most dangerous individuals who have ever graced the face of this planet," Honour Riley sharply interjected, jabbing a hand into Ethan's shins, "it would be nothing short of suicide to rely on the beginner instinct of a boy who is only just becoming aware of what he's capable of-" 

"That will be enough, Riley." 

Riley breathed an angry sigh through her gritted teeth, shrinking backwards to let the short form of Miss Sweet pass through. 

She faced Ethan as she looked up at him, despite being half his size and dressed in a frilly yellow dress and short white lace socks,  he felt  intimidated by her.  She looked no more than five years old physically, her eyes narrowed the way only a grown woman could. 

"Riley is right." she said, "It would be a foolish maneuver to rely solely on a vague memory of symbiosis. Perhaps your memories will resurface in time." 

Ethan's lips pursed to say something, but he faltered before a single syllable could leave his mouth, his brain recognizing the futility of his task. But he was torn by a newfound obligation to stop whatever the Bleaks had in mind, one that almost verged on fear. 

Sweet raised a diminutive hand, as to dismiss the tribunal. 

"Whatever you've stumbled on, if you're correct in your presumptions," she told Ethan, "then it could change everything." 

She breathed. "But you must rest. You've been through a lot lately." 

Understatement .

of.  

the.

millennium. 

But Ethan kept that particular thought to himself. Now was not the time for that brand of adolescent sarcasm.


**************

Alice was by his side when he left for his dormitory, still nursing a throbbing headache that had resurfaced under his forehead, but he was unsure whether it was due to stress or an ebbing psychic connection with a supernatural creature. She seemed to sense it and was walking especially close to him that in the case he fainted, she could use her shorter frame as a levy. 

"Miss Sweet was correct in her presumptions." 

He blinked at the sudden addition of her voice.

"Thanks for the sudden vote of confidence," he retorted back sarcastically before realizing the sudden sharpness of his words. He felt the sudden need to apologize before he remembered that this was Alice he was talking to. 

"If you really have experienced what you have claimed to experience, then you are an essential pawn in a much grander scheme." 

The weight of Alice's words sent any illusion of safety crashing deep into the ground below his feet. 

"Hey," Julie's voice broke through the masque of desperation that had fallen over him, her firm hand grasping his shoulder, "you okay?" 

He looked back up into her earnest blue eyes, his mouth falling open dumbly.

She shrugged. "Just got an ETA on the whole Bleak situation. Don't ask how, I don't exactly want you-know-who snarling down my back. "

Ethan smiled helplessly up at her.

"So, you okay?" she asked, "symbiosis isn't exactly a walk in the park. You're probably one of the stronger ones who have gone through it. When I tried it on this possessed guy in London, I threw up for basically an hour. Jesus, I can't even imagine getting inside a Bleak's head with it...." 

"Aside from the constant nausea and nightmarish hallucinations, yeah." he quipped with a humorless laugh.

She smiled, towering over Alice. 

"It looks like you're one of us now."  she told him with a uncertain smile playing on her face.

Yeah, he wanted to say, looking at both the small pale emotionless girl and the attractive blonde stocky one, remembering their inhuman violence, the thing is, I don't even know if I want to yet. 

The image of his blood-soaked mother's face still lurked in the darker corners of his mind, her shrunken pupils and matted hair as her corpse lay sprawled across the kitchen floor. How her breathing slowed to a bloody gurgle in little less than a millisecond. The shock soaked into every crevice of her face...

"Heeeey, party people." 

The familiar faux -Southern drawl snapped Ethan from his darker thoughts. Julie turned around to the smug figure shadowed against the bright open doorway. 

"And what do you want?" Julie asked disgustedly as Hale suddenly materialized behind her, attempting to snake an arm around her from behind. 

" What? I don't know exactly what. Pretty sure it's some indefinable quality life had to offer?" he mused into her ear, " Je nais se quoi?" 

"Well in your case Hale, it's going to mort if you don't remove your hand from me now."