SCENE 5: BLOOD
— or —
The ritual; the face of evil; and the end of fantasy.

RHODES DIDN'T PERMIT them entry to his family's mansion once they were done at Town Hall, so while he retreated in his range rover back up through the woods to the luxurious Rhodes Estate, they trekked over to their room at the motel. Some of their homes were now crime scenes. Some just didn't want to go home, for fear of getting caught by the police before they had a chance to transcend mortality. They hid in the motel for the rest of the next day, wearily flipping between the channels on their box TV, pausing whenever they lucked upon a news broadcast. The police didn't appear to have linked them to the murders yet, but it was only a matter of time.

"I'm hungry," Jean groaned. It was three o'clock and the sun wasn't due to set until five. They'd already cleaned out all the cookies and pretzels and nuts in the in-room snack bar, with no intention of paying for them, and Kerensa had made it a strict rule that they weren't to go outside until dark.

"Two more hours, Jean." There was a wildlife documentary playing on the TV. Kerensa didn't know how much longer she could stand watching pandas eating grass.

"But there's a vending machine just downstairs. We can send one person. No one will even see them."

"And if someone does see them?"

"So what? It's not like our faces are on the news."

"They aren't yet. But what if they release our faces in the next few hours, and the person who spotted you at the vending machine loading up on chips and chocolate bars remembers you and decides to call the cops?"

"I don't know, Kerensa," Tallis said, "sounds a bit unlikely to me."

"But it is possible. We can't take any chances."

Jean let out a frustrated growl and flopped back on the bed, arms spread wide. "This sucks."

"Why don't you go for a smoke if you're bored?"

"And get the munchies without any food to munch on? I think I'll pass."

Tallis changed the channel. Some day-time sitcom came on. It was even worse than the documentary. Kerensa wished he'd switch it back.

"What do you think Rhodes is doing right about now?" Harlow mused.

"Probably wanking," Tallis said.

Jean chucked a pillow at him. "Don't be vulgar. He'd be prepping for tonight, obviously."

"He certainly wouldn't be watching this crap," Kerensa said.

Tallis turned to her, offended. "Oh, I'm sorry. Would you prefer to watch pandas mate with each other?"

"Just change it something else. Please."

Tallis obliged, and the news came on. Instantly, everyone was sitting forward in their seats.

"We have with us the father of one of the deceased, who narrowly escaped with his life in what is being considered the worst massacre this county has seen in decades. Mr Tobias Ellis," the news presenter said, turning towards the red-haired man standing beside him. "from all of us at the studio and everyone at home, we sincerely apologise for your loss."

"Thank you," he replied solemnly, eyes cast downward.

"Can you describe what happened last night?"

Mr Ellis pushed up his thick-framed glasses. "It was a little after six. There was a knock at the door. My - my son was busy doing homework so I answered the door myself. There was - five of them. Teenagers. I thought maybe they were my sons friends-" Here he choked, blinking back tears.

"What happened after that, Mr Ellis?" the reporter asked gently.

"One of the boys - he was tall, brunet, expensive-lookin' - he asked me to step outside. I was in the middle of asking why when, well, I don't know. Everything just went black. When I woke up, my son was - he was-"

The reporter nodded solemnly. Giving Mr Ellis' shoulder a squeeze, he turned back to the camera while the man shuffled off. "The only witness to this truly horrific crime, Mr Ellis has proved invaluable to the authorities. While police are still gathering evidence as to the identities of the other four perpetrators, thanks to Mr Ellis' eye-witness account, they have now identified the lead suspect as Mr John Rhodes, the youngest son of the influential Rhodes family. The Rhodes' are the wealthiest family in the state, with a property on Lanis Hill that's reportedly valued at over 43 million dollars, and are well-known for their reclusive nature. Police are at the estate as we speak, and expect to make an arrest shortly. With Mr Rhodes in custody, the hope is that justice will be swift and the other perpetrators of this massacre will be caught soon thereafter."

The live stream cycled back to the news room, where they began a recount of the story so far, showing pictures of houses cordoned off by police tape, of stretchers rolling into the backs of ambulances, of Town Hall's now infamous blood message. They flashed Rhodes face - a school yearbook photo. He sat against a green-blue background and stared straight ahead. No smile.

Jean was the first to recover from the news. "Oh my god," she said. "We have to warn him."

"It's too late for that," Tallis said. "If he hasn't gotten out of there by now, he's done for."

"I knew that damn graffiti would come back to bite us in the arse," Kerensa muttered. "I told him not to do it."

Harlow looked up from his spot on the carpet. He'd been sitting cross-legged in the corner since noon, eyes closed like he was meditating, or maybe even praying. "I think blood-message or no, a massacre was always going to be big news. Rhodes would have seen this coming. But even if he didn't, he's a wise man. A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it. He'll be fine."

Tallis blinked at him. Then he declared, "I agree with sensei over here."

"You're only agreeing with him because you're scared shitless he's wrong."

"God, you're so negative, Kerensa. You have start looking on the bright side."

"Pray tell, what's the bright side of our current situation?"

"Well, for starters, the police don't know it was us yet-"

"They will soon. We left our DNA all over those crime scenes-"

"Secondly," Tallis continued loudly, "we still have a pretty good shot at immortality - but than anyone else has, or has ever had."

"Only if Rhodes made it out of there with the formula. Otherwise we'll each get a mortal lifetime in prison."

He rolled his eyes. "And thirdly, now that we're fugitives, we can't be expected any longer to drag the rest of the people on our little list into this thing. Which means we won't have to spend eternity with Ben butt-fucking Hendricks - thank you Lord." Tallis sent a look skyward, bringing both his hands together as if in prayer. He knew Harlow could hear him. In one sentence, he'd mocked both Harlow's religion and his choice of sexual partner. Another person would have glared, but Harlow watched on blankly, unaffected by Tallis' insults.

Jean abruptly shoved Tallis from his perch on the end of the bed. She spat at his body on the floor. "Fucking homophobe."

But Tallis was screeching with laughter, rolling about on the carpet, clutching his stomach with both hands. The other three stared at him in silence. The boy could laugh at anything; you could chop off his hand and he'd still be cackling, like watching his blood spurt from his arm was the greatest joke of all time.

All of a sudden, there was a knock at the door, half-drowned-out by Tallis' laughter. Kerensa jumped to her feet. "Tallis, shut up."

But he kept going, the volume of his amusement increasing, the pitch careening higher and higher, until it sounded less like laughter and more like screams.

"Tallis," Kerensa hissed.

Harlow leapt from his spot in the corner and grabbed the boy from behind, slamming his hand over his mouth. Tallis screamed into Harlow's hand, wrigglingly to get free, but Harlow was stronger by far and he quickly gave up, falling silent.

The knock came again. Slowly, cautiously, Kerensa made her way over to the door. She placed an ear to it, then looked over her shoulder at the room. Jean stared at her with big, round eyes, frozen where she sat in the centre of the bed. Everyone was quiet, holding their breath.

Well. If it is the police, Kerensa though dully, there sure as hell isn't anything we can do about it now.

She opened the door.

It was Rhodes.

— : —

THEY LEFT THE motel just after five, a full six hours earlier than planned. Rhodes had wanted to do the ritual at precisely midnight, but with cops on their heels and their faces smiling out from every TV in the state, it was too risky to stay in the motel any longer. The sun had set and the blue sky had melted to a pale violet, small clouds tinged a faint peach-pink. The group scurried across the road, a lonely stretch of gravel that lead both in and out of town, and into the tree-line. Night fell swiftly in the thickets of the woods, and animals stared from the dark with glowing, fearful eyes.

Rhodes lead the way, the rest following with blind trust. Kerensa kept staring at the back of his head, as if hoping she'd eventually see through it and into his mind. He carried nothing with him - nothing that she could see. All those days and weeks they spent waiting for this night, he said he'd spent preparing. But preparing for what? Not for the first time, it occurred to her that they knew nothing about this so-called formula. Kerensa had never even glimpsed the sheet it was written on.

What in the world could possibly grant immortality?

They trekked on, deeper into the woods than any of them had ever gone. Soon the patches of sky above them were black, and the foliage became a canopy of seething shadows, whispering in the breeze. Everything smelt dark and heavy, earthy, like they were wandering in some long-forgotten tunnel buried hundreds of metres below the surface. The forest demanded a silence none of them dared break, even Tallis, whose face was tight and scrunched up, as though not-speaking was killing him.

Eventually they came across a small clearing, the full moon bathing it in luminescent light like the beam of a UFO, a spotlight on the Earth. A broad circle had been drawn in the dirt and Rhodes instructed them to stand around it, equidistant from one another. Blood pounding, they obeyed, leaving enough space for him to claim the final spot.

He stopped. "What is time?" he said, shattering the quiet of the woods with his booming voice. The words seemed to catch on the wind and disperse endlessly through the trees, across the broad night-time plane. "What is death?" He glanced at each of them briefly, knowingly. When his eyes passed over Kerensa, she swore she caught something of darkness in them, a touch of the unnatural, the likes of which she had seen the night before on Harlow's front porch. So he hadn't forgiven her for what she'd said. Even after all the blood she'd waded through to atone, he remembered.

"Why should we know death?" Rhodes continued. "Why should we crumble at the hands of time? What creation of the universe could be more cruel than mortality? Time could bear us through all of eternity if we could only relinquish our human ageing and weakening and dying, strip it from our flesh, our bones. It is written into our hearts at birth, it is carved into our minds: that we cannot go on forever. We are born from nothing, and we must return to the same. But I ask you, why must that be?"

He took a step back, breaking the circle. Slowly he began to walk around them, the dirt crunching under the soles of his genuine leather boots. "Tonight, we wind back to the truth the ancients understood. They knew not time, but timefire, the primordial force which forged and cleansed, remade, and created ashes from men. Timefire is the only thing humanity should fear. It is the only god. It is the only enemy. And are gods and enemies not the same?

"To live forever, one must conquer ones enemies. All ones enemies. So let us conquer. Let us become not ash, but fire. Not dust, but the eternity which crumbles stone. I have with me the key. We alone can open the lock. Let us walk through the flaming gates of time and emerge reborn, renewed, eternal."

When he passed behind Kerensa, she held her breath, her eyes swivelling to catch sight of him once more. "Life and death," he said, and she saw him, and she breathed. "Beginning and end. To timefire we owe our thanks, and with timefire we must contend. Non omnis moriar."

"Non omnis moriar," Kerensa repeated in unison with her friends.

Rhodes came to a stop behind Harlow. Calmly, gently, he placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. Harlow didn't even blink. Then Rhodes moved on, continuing around in silence. His circling was starting to make Kerensa dizzy.

"So how is this gonna work?" Tallis asked, growing visibly impatient. As Rhodes passed behind him, he threw a look over his shoulder. "Do we chant some magic words? Make a sacrifice? Drink the blood of a virgin?"

"No," Rhodes replied.

"What then?"

Rhodes made another trip around the circle. Kerensa had counted three now. "I bet you're all wondering why we must be here, in these woods, in this clearing."

"Kinda figured it was to escape the cops," Tallis said.

Ignoring Tallis, Rhodes said, "I first came to this clearing when I was a boy of about seven. My father had discovered it on one of his many hunting trips. Hunting, as you all know, is illegal in these woods, but being the wealthiest family in the state has its perks. With enough money, anyone - including small-town law enforcement - can be made to turn a blind eye.

"When I was old enough to shoot a gun - in my father's opinion, that is - he started to bring me along on these trips. He taught me how to shoot, how to kill, how to skin animals and cook them on the fire. Sometimes, we would even camp out in the forest. When we did, it was here.

"My father taught me about many things here. We'd sit by the campfire and he'd tell me stories that seemed to come straight off the pages of history books, only he'd tell them as if they were his own. The legend of Merlin. The samurai of medieval Japan. The death camps in Hitler's Germany. Specifically, he'd talk about death: noble death, sacrificial death, untimely death. You see, he was obsessed with finding the cure for death. My whole family is.

"For centuries, every generation on my father's side has devoted their life to finding the cure, each believing they would not die, and each perishing in the inevitable flames of time. We have a library on the second floor of our house that's devoted to immortality, filled with texts on death, on rituals, on ancient legends, on science both modern and arcane, on black magic. You wouldn't believe the things I've grown up reading." He paused, but didn't stop moving. Kerensa had counted six laps by this point. He was weaving around and around like he was casting a spell with his feet, something beyond her understanding, something dark. A sense of foreboding came sliding upon her, like a creature that had just crawled out of the dark and slithered up her spine.

"When I turned thirteen," Rhodes continued, "the hunting trips stopped. And a few months later my father disappeared. My mother and grandparents decided not to report it, and we've been pretending he's still here, a recluse unwilling to leave the estate, for the past four years." He laughed. "I've become awful good at forging his signature."

After a brief pause, he went on. "At the time my family wouldn't tell me why they wanted to keep it a secret. I couldn't comprehend it. But the more texts I borrowed from our library, the more I read, the more I understood. My father's disappearance wasn't an accident. He hadn't taken a walk through the woods and gotten lost. He hadn't been hurt, or killed. He had followed the path his father had laid out for him, and his father before him, and his father before him, and so on. Each one would get a little further, pave a few extra tiles in the path for the next generation.

"Whatever tiles my grandfather added to the path, when my father followed them, he disappeared. And as the next in my line, it was my duty to follow in his footsteps. Which is exactly what I did.

"I scoured his study floor to ceiling, wall to wall, for clues. I dug through the attic for his boxed belongings. I went through his old laptop, his files, his browser history. I put together a good picture of his last weeks, his last days. Before I knew it, I, too, was walking the path, a long winding trail that lead me, of all places, right here.

"I hadn't been out here since the last hunting trip with my father, you understand. I had no reason to. It was just a patch of dirt buried deep in the woods. But the night I followed the trail my father left for me, it was something else entirely."

Rhodes didn't speak for a moment. Kerensa realised she was hanging on to his every word. Her heart was in her ears, drumming strong and slow.

"I found my father's body in this clearing," he said matter-of-factly. "It had been rotting here for years, at the centre of this very circle. The stench by this point had subsided to a faint odour, barely perceptible under the scent of the pines. I buried him right where he died."

Now everyone stared down at the centre of the clearing, a patch of dirt that was for all intents and purposes innocuous, but that suddenly took on a ghastly appearance in their eyes. Was it just Kerensa's imagination or was the earth darker there than everywhere else? Was it really the stench of human decay that suddenly entered her nose?

Rhodes smiled. It was both amused and grim - a sadist's smile. "I found the knife when I was burying him. His slumped body had been covering it, so it only became visible once I'd rolled him into his grave. There was still blood on the blade, dried and cracked. You could almost mistake it for rust.

"It was then that I realised the truth. For generations my ancestors had wasted their lives searching for the cure, each dying old and withered, husks of their former selves, skin so brittle you'd think they would crumble to dust with a mere touch. But not my father. My father was the first."

Kerensa stared at him, a horrible understanding taking shape in her mind. Her hands were shaking. She prayed to whatever gods may be that she was wrong. "The first?"

Rhodes drifted to a stop near Jean. He looked at Kerensa like he knew exactly what she was thinking, like he couldn't wait to confirm her darkest thoughts. He said, "The first to find the cure."

Then, in the night, in the dark, in the bitter depths of the woods, Rhodes reached under his jacket, behind his back, and produced a knife. The blade glinted, reflected the moon silver-white and fractured. Before Kerensa could even open her mouth to shout, he reached up from behind Jean and dragged the blade across her throat.

As Jean fell to her knees, choking, Kerensa heard herself scream. Tallis stumbled back in shock. Harlow stared and stared and stared. Blood spurted down the front of Jean's white sweater. Her eyes bulged. The earth beneath her ran as dark as they had all previously imagined it. She collapsed, dead. 

"What are you doing?" Kerensa cried, even though she knew exactly what he was doing. "What is this?"

Rhodes continued around the circle, stopping behind Harlow. Harlow, staring blankly, dropped to his knees. The smell of Jean's blood wafted across the clearing and into Kerensa's nose, metallic and pungent, the sickly sweet scent of death.

"Immortality," Rhodes answered. Then he slit Harlow's throat.

As blood cascaded down his neck, Harlow's head tipped back, his eyes shooting skyward - a final prayer. He dropped like a rock to the ground, his body twitching as he died.

Kerensa and Tallis exchanged a glance. He was next.

Rhodes started towards him, the knife dripping a trail of blood across the clearing. Tallis stumbled back another few steps. "No," he said. "No way. I will not be part of your fucked-up blood ritual." Rhodes reached for him and Tallis swatted away his hand. "I am not fucking doing this!"

"Tallis," Rhodes said, and he sounded disappointed. "Don't be like this." He reached for him again.

Tallis punched him once, hard. Rhodes tripped back a step, holding a hand to his face. When he looked back up, his eyes were black. Kerensa felt the light leave the world. She needed to leave - she needed to leave now - but she found she was rooted to the spot, her fear so intense it short-circuited the part of her brain linked to action, to flight.

Working his jaw, Rhodes started for Tallis once more. This time he was not gentle. He leapt forward and roughly grabbed the boy's forearm, dragging him kicking and screaming back to the circle. "Let me go!" he screeched. "Let me go! LET ME GO!"

Tallis looked back over his shoulder. "Kerensa!" he screamed. "Kerensa, help me!"

But she didn't move. She only stared, her breath coming short and fast, her heart a wild animal trapped behind the cage of her ribs.

They reached the circle. Tallis fought wildly to get away, but Rhodes was stronger. He wrapped an arm around Tallis from behind, pinning down his arms, and with the other he slashed his knife across Tallis' throat. At once, the boy began spluttering, his screams turning to gurgles.

Rhodes let go and Tallis fell to the dirt, both hands clutching at his neck while his lifeforce slowly seeped away.

Kerensa found her voice at last. "I - I don't understand," she said, stumbling over the words. "The formula."

Rhodes reached into his back pocket and slipped out a folded piece of paper, his fingertips smearing crimson across it. "You mean this?" He extended it to her. She reached out and snatched it from him, hurriedly unfolding it. What confronted her shook her to the core.

"It's blank," she breathed. No writing. No diagrams. No formula. She lifted her eyes. "You - you tricked us. You're a psychopath!"

"Newsflash, Kerensa," he said, moving closer. "We're all psychopaths."

Kerensa swallowed hard and remained where she stood. Even in her current petrified state, she knew there was nothing she could do. Rhodes was too strong and she was too close. She'd left it too late. The trees shook around her, waving their wooden arms in terror. There was no escaping now.

Rhodes took another step. And then another. He was almost upon her.

"Please, don't," she begged weakly.

"So ungrateful," he said, dismayed. "I'm doing you a favour-"

All of a sudden, a hand shot out from the dark and clamped down on his ankle. Kerensa jumped. Rhodes' eyes widened in surprise as he stumbled. Tallis, bloody and only half-alive, emerging from the night like a ghoul from the underworld, lifted his head. "Run, Kerensa," he wheezed, blood coating his lips, spilling over his chin. "Run!"

She didn't need to be told again. She dashed out of the clearing and into the trees as fast as her legs would take her, blood pounding throughout her body, thundering in her ears. Branches slapped at her face, and she tripped over dirt and rocks and bushes. No matter what, she kept running. Her breath was coming fast and her lungs burned. She thought she could hear Rhodes behind her, crashing through the underbrush, but she didn't dare look. The forest winded on and on before her, an endless sea of gaunt, unfriendly trees, leaning down like they wished to snap her up in their twisted wooden hands. The darkness clogged her throat. Tears stung her eyes. Even when she felt she could run no further, she didn't stop. She couldn't stop. The bitter winter wind bit at her cheeks and cut through her clothes. She didn't even know where she was running to. Her family was dead. Her house was a crime scene. Her town wanted her thrown in jail. Her life was in tatters, in ruins, and all of it was smeared with blood.

Before she let him fall to his death, Matthew had said she wasn't like the others; he'd said she was worse, because she knew right from wrong, and yet she chose wrong anyway. Jean, Harlow, Tallis, Rhodes - they didn't believe themselves to be bad people. They thought, no matter what grisly crimes they committed, that their actions were justified. But according to Matthew, Kerensa knew better. She'd denied it to herself at the time, and a million times since, but she couldn't any longer. For the first time, she could feel the corrupted blood in her body, burning like poison. She let Tallis die. She murdered her parents. She had a moral compass and it was pointing down, down, down, all the way into hell.

And as she ran, all she could think was, He was right, he was right, he was right.

They were crazy. And she was the worst of them all.