1,156CHAPTER 1: Bad Moon Rising
It had been a slow night for Leo at the pub. It was a Tuesday, after all, which meant fewer people were eager to stay out late for drinks and wake up a few hours later, tired, hungover, and regretting their night over the next eight hours as they dealt with their respective piles of work. This was still Britain, though, which meant that the place was still full enough that Leo had been on his feet the entire night. Wesley, Piper, and Lyla hated it when he complained about it. "You're not the one having to move around the place all night," they'd remind him, almost haughtily, as if that was something to be proud of. It didn't make standing in place and serving the actual drinks the customers wanted any less exhausting. His classes didn't start until noon the next day, and there was Karl, the German exchange student who showed him the ropes of bartending when he first got there, and who made the job so much more bearable. Even still, Leo was itching for the last fifteen minutes to go by so that they could close the place up and call it a night.
The place was quiet, almost melancholy, you could hear the soft rain pattering against the roof. Beyond the whispers and glasses clinking and the occasional laugh from the patrons, the TV was by far the loudest thing in the room. The football games had ended long ago, even Sky Sports' post-match analysis had come and wrapped up. Instead, they were left with the coverage of the midnight news. It was always depressing listening to them at the end of his shifts, especially since the stories had only got more dreary over the past couple of weeks. Disappearances, murders, and even a few small-scale terrorist attacks have been reported happening all over the country. It was inescapable hearing that nowadays, there was always some channel or another covering it, but it wasn't the most uplifting thing to listen to minutes before having to walk over a mile to the nearest bus station.
Only a few people were loitering around. A couple sitting in a corner booth, the woman practically mounting the guy as the two snogged. Jeremy, the freshman from Crawley who hadn't been able to make any friends over the year and had started frequenting the pub after a night of bonding with Karl. A group of regulars who had struck out with a few girls earlier in the night and had been bitching about it ever since. And of course, Zach was still there.
Up until a month ago, it was weird seeing Zach hanging around the place. He'd come maybe once every three weeks, surrounded by five or six of what Leo had always assumed were his coworkers. They all looked to be around their late twenties, all wearing suits and ties - and not the cheap ones. They were everything those finance and business majors Leo couldn't stand from ARU feigned to be. Every night they'd come, they'd each order no less than seven drinks, mixing and switching with everyone, and by the end of the night, Karl had to practically kick them all out so that they could close up and go home. All but Zach, that was. Unlike the others, Zach would buy two or three beers at most, and by nine he was usually gone. Everyone would egg him to stay, but he never gave in.
When he first showed up on his own a little over a month ago, Leo didn't question it. Sometimes people had rough days. It wasn't unusual for him and Karl to watch customers drink their sorrows away or listen to them vent about how their wife cheated on them or how their business venture went belly up. It definitely looked like that was the case. His shirt was dirty and wrinkly, with dark spots of sweat around his armpits. He wasn't wearing a suit, his blond hair was ruffled and greasy. But most noticeable was how erratic he'd become. He was eying the door as much as he could. The only time he tore his eyes away from it was when he'd hunch over and write on his notebooks or use a red marker to circle or highlight phrases on the dozens of newspapers he carried with him. He stayed there for hours, finishing a beer every thirty or so minutes and immediately ordering another one.
He became a regular after that night. As the days passed, he began looking worse and worse. The bags under his eyes got darker, he went from dress shirts and suits to T-shirts and hoodies. He stopped showering, stopped taking care of himself, and a couple of weeks in, he even stopped going to work and started coming into the pub earlier every day. It didn't take long for his coworkers to come in looking for him.
"Just stop it already," Caleb, a tall, bulky bloke with a crooked nose, yelled as he slammed his fist on the counter. "Can't you see what you're doing? Disappearing on Angelica - on William. Quitting at Meridian, coming here, and getting wasted every day. Everything you worked for all those years, you're throwing it all to hell!"
"None of that matters, it's all fake!" Zach slurred, his eyes looking past the group and at the door behind them. "It's not real, none of it. They're changing our brains, wiping our minds, razing cities, and building them up again and again without us noticing. They're out there controlling everything and making us their slaves."
"Not this shit again," Harvey, another one of Zach's coworkers, scoffed.
"They're real! Everything I told you, it's all fucking real. If you had been there- if people would just fucking remember."
"He's lost it," Max said with disgust. "He's gone proper mad."
"I'm not the one living in a fantasy," Zach said darkly.
Occasionally, another coworker or a small group of them would come by and try to convince him to stop. But Zach remained adamant, continuing spouting those crazy stories of people controlling them, plotting to take over the world, and killing those who stood in their way. Less and less would come back to help him, and the ones who did left looking more heartbroken every time. It got to the point where even Leo and Piper had tried to talk to him. If their boss ever found out they were actively discouraging a customer from continuing drinking here, they would have been thrown on the street and banned from ever showing their faces on that street again. But they could only watch Zach slowly lose everything and drink his life away for so long. But like all other attempts, they only succeeded at getting Zach to threaten he'd find another pub if they kept trying to meddle with his personal life.
Once midnight came, Lyla and Wesley spread around the place and began shooing the customers out. Leo's eyes fell on Zach, who was hunched over the counter, passed out, with the only signs of life being the occasional jerks and twitches from his body. Leo had never seen Zach drink as much as he had tonight. He was in no state to make it back to his place, not without help, and now it would be up to them to figure out how they would make that happen. It wasn't until Karl finished cleaning up the last few glasses and Piper finished up with the paperwork for the day that all the attention finally turned to Zach.
"Shit," Wesley sighed. "Now what?"
"I don't know," Lyla said.
"What do you mean you don't know? Hasn't this ever happened before?"
"Not to me," Leo said.
"Nor me." Karl joined in.
"I think it's a first for all of us, mate," Piper said.
"Well, we can't just leave him in the street." Lyla pointed out.
"Why not?" Karl asked.
"He could get robbed!" Lyla cried out. "Kidnapped. Someone could cut into him and harvest his organs. Or sell him into slavery."
"Well, that would be on him, yes? No one forced him to get this drunk." Karl said bluntly.
"Not really how it works, mate," Leo sighed. "Does he have any money left?"
"Considering how much he spends a night, I'd say so," Wesley said.
Piper patted the pockets of his hoodie and trousers before reaching in and pulling out a large, brown wallet that was nearly bursting with pounds. "There's an inn a couple streets away. We could get him a room there."
"We'd have to drag him there, though," Wesley pointed out.
"I'll take him," Leo offered before turning to Karl. "Just give me a hand with carrying him, will you."
Karl looked at Zach and then back up at Leo. "I, uh, I have an exam in the morning, I really need to get going."
"It's only a couple of blocks."
"I haven't done any studying."
"I'll help you with him," Piper interjected, glaring at Karl as she moved to stand by Leo's side.
"Much appreciated," Karl gave her a cocky smile.
"Twat."
They shoved as many notebooks and newspapers they could into the small laptop bag Zach had with him, and with one of Zach's arms slung over each of their shoulders, and the rest of his stuff nearly falling from their arms, Leo and Piper exited the pub and let the other three guys close the place up. The cold air from the outside hit them as soon as they left the pub, followed by the slow stream of raindrops falling from the sky. For weeks now, the sun has been hidden behind an endless stream of dark gray clouds. The streets got foggier every day, and the temperature kept dropping even as they entered summer. The forecasters kept saying that any day now the sky should clear and the warm temperatures they were expecting should start coming in, but people stopped believing once they realised they kept getting it wrong. It rained almost every day now, and with how cold the nights were getting, Leo was dreading the winter that was to come.
"Do you know where the place is?" Leo asked after a couple of blocks.
"It's not far. We're nearly there."
It was a curt answer, Piper didn't seem to be much in the mood for talking. But Zach was heavy, and the silence was becoming so unbearable. Leo was even beginning to feel as if someone was watching them from within the shadows.
"So how is this place? Have you ever stayed in it or…"
"Why? Are you asking me to?"
"No! I wasn't- I didn't-" Leo rushed his words, but when he noticed Piper laughing at him, he stopped.
"I know what you meant," she said. "I've just seen it from outside, it's on my way from the tube to the pub. It looks well enough. Plus, beggars can't be choosers, right?"
"Yeah. No, it's just… with everything that's happening, I don't know. I kind of feel responsible for him, you know? We're the ones who got him drunk, after all."
"He's the one who kept ordering the drinks," Piper pointed out. "You can't blame yourself if this guy wants to throw his life away. He'd do it somewhere else if you tried to stop him, he said so himself."
"I know."
"Then stop it, alright? You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved. If you keep on trying, they'll only pull you down the cliff with them, and who will that help?"
There were only a couple of private rooms left by the time they got to the motel. All of them made for at least four or five people, but since it wasn't their own money they were spending, and they weren't eager to carry Zach a few more blocks in search of another inn nearby, they decided to go for it anyway. It was unnerving how little questions the lady at the front desk asked them. She barely glanced at them when they dropped all of Zach's bag and notebooks and newspapers on the desk, or when they fished out the wallet from his trousers and used the money to pay for it.
"Room's 417, stairs to the right," was all she said to them.
With the lift out of commission and the room on the highest floor, they spent nearly five minutes struggling with lifting Zach up the stairs along with all his stuff. Thankfully, the room wasn't far from the stairs and soon enough, they were throwing Zach on the bed and the rest of his stuff on the floor beside it. Piper looked tired but ready to go as she was turning to leave already, but Leo was having trouble taking his eyes away from Zach. It was hard to imagine how a guy who had the seemingly perfect life could throw it all away and end up drunk and passed out at a sleazy motel in the span of a few weeks.
"Let's go," Piper called out.
"Just… give me a sec."
"Leo," she warned him, but he ignored him as he knelt down and began looking through all the newspapers. It wasn't just one newspaper or a couple of them, but nearly dozens of singular pages from papers dating over the past two months. Words like FAKE, LIAR, and WIZARD written down in almost every single one of them. People were circled, fragments of articles boxed in as if they were meant to be important. All articles were completely different from one another, innocuous and normal to Leo's eyes, ranging from business and politics to crime and obituaries and even entertainment and editorials - all types of articles singled out as if they were critical elements in a police investigation.
"What are you doing?" Piper demanded, lightly kicking him on the back. "Let's just go already."
"Look at this," Leo said, moving out of the way so that Piper could have space to sit down. He threw the papers on the ground and snatched the bag from the floor, pulling out the laptop and notebooks they had jammed inside.
"Zach's mad ramblings?"
"You remember what Zach used to be like."
"We served him drinks, we weren't exactly his friends," Piper argued.
"No, but we saw the type of guy he was, yeah? Doesn't it seem weird for him to suddenly just change and start acting like all the other conspiracy nuts out there?"
"People just snap sometimes, Leo. Maybe he was already messed up in the head, and he's only showing it now."
"I don't believe that."
He sifted through the notebooks, skimming over stories of armies of cloaked figures with magical sticks. Tellings of gigantic fire beasts that destroyed London, a war where people used sticks to cause unimaginable pain and destruction. Then came the conspiracy theories, singling out politicians, celebrities, businessmen, and even members of the royal family, calling them witches and wizards or supporters of these groups, people who are trying to hide and cover up these things. Blaming any theft, break-in, murder, or anything else going wrong inside the country to these people with magical powers.
All four notebooks are filled with conspiracy theories, interviews about people's encounters with these dark figures, and stories about families remembering things differently. The deeper he dove into the notebooks, the more concerning the ramblings became as Zach detailed plans of infiltrating government offices to retrieve satellite images, or even worse, kidnapping one of the many supposedly confirmed wizards. And through all these pages, there were four words constantly repeated. Always together, and popping up more and more as the journals went on.
The Children of Hopkins.
"Leo," Piper said, her tone holding the slightest hint of fear. "I think we should go."
She was asking him, her eyes almost begging. The room felt colder, and Leo was filled with the feeling that he wasn't meant to be here, but he couldn't stop now. He stretched himself over the floor and reached for the laptop beside Piper. "Zach, did you… umm… did you ever see him with a laptop before?"
"What do you mean?"
"Before everything," he opened the computer, his voice was rising. "When he only used to come in with those guys, did you ever see him with a laptop?"
"No- Leo, what is the point of this?"
"Did you ever see any of them with a laptop?"
"I- I don't remember, okay," she snapped.
The laptop turned on, but it was password-protected. He tried writing down all the words he'd seen written in the newspapers, even tried putting in The Children of Hopkins, but none of it worked. He tried the names of his wife and son, the names of his friends, his name, everything he could think of, but none of it worked. There was something in this laptop, something Zach wanted to keep secret. All those times he saw him come in before, he never had a laptop. Even when he started becoming a regular, he didn't bring one. It wasn't until these past couple of weeks that Leo had first seen it. And for some reason, Leo knew it had something to do with all of this.
"Can you just tell me what's going on?" Piper asked.
The lights of the motel suddenly started flickering, and just as Leo started thinking it was the place's faulty wiring, faint cracks started sounding all around them. He turned to Piper, watching the colour slightly drain from his face, and he knew she heard it too.
"Let's go," he said.
Leo stood up, his feet over the newspapers, and pulled up Piper, but the moment he turned toward the door it exploded towards them. It crashed against the wall, detaching from the hinges and tumbling down onto the ground. A mass of figures wearing purple cloaks rushed into the room. Leo grabbed Piper and tried to shield her, but he was thrown across the room and slammed against the wall before he could get a good grip on her. He tried moving, but he was stuck. His body was unable to move, unable to fight or yell or even blink as it clung to the wall. Piper let out a terror-stricken scream, but it would only last a moment, as one of the figures pulled out a wooden stick and slashed it in the air.
"Lock down the building. Obliviate everyone inside," one of the figures ordered, his voice was cold and deep, sounding human but not quite so.
"We don't have time for that," another one argued with the same voice. "There are still a lot on our list for tonight."
"That girl's screams could have woken up half the place by now. Unless you want to explain to the director why the leaks keep popping up, we're doing this thoroughly."
"Yes, sir."
"Take the drunk back to Headquarters, his obliviation requires a more thorough approach. And take his stuff there as well."
"What about these two?" Another one of the figures asked.
"They'll be easily fixed."
The leader stepped forward, and before Leo could even figure out what was going on, he raised his wand and blasted a white light that consumed everything around him.
Welcome to the start of Book 2 titled Dance With The Devil! Hope you enjoy the ride :)
By the time I'm posting this, I'm THIRTEEN chapters ahead, and I just finished the second arc of this book! If you are interested in learning how to get early access to them, join my discord server using the following link: discord . gg / jyPfbGqhJT
As always, thank you for reading, favouriting, and commenting! I appreciate all of you! :)