crowdog66 ◾ ◾ Excerpts from "The Four Kings", a Real Ghostbusters slashfic

Going through old archived fanfic files, I found a whole cache of my own writing from years past -- including the following. "The Four Kings" was a never-completed piece of Real Ghostbusters NC-17 slash that basically set out to get the whole team together at the same time, and used the breaking of a curse as the operative excuse to do just that.

Personally, I'm rather pleased with how parts of it turned out. I think it captures the wit and humor as well as the darkness of the series; hence my posting it here for the enjoyment of anyone who's interested. These particular bits are NOT NC-17, but rather set-up for what was to come.

I'll be posting more bits and pieces from my archives over the next few days, just because there are pieces in there that I am very proud of even years later. But for now, without further ado...

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Excerpts from "The Curse of the Four Kings",
a Real Ghostbusters slashfic
by Laurie E. Smith

Once upon a time, on an autumn afternoon in New York City, an extremely bitter man went to see a wise woman. He had been told that she would know when he was coming, but he still was not prepared when the door to the little house opened before he had fully come up the walk and she stepped out to meet him, smiling like a cat.

She was short, and dark, and middlingly pretty -- a fact he appreciated, because although he was more than a little mad, he was not quite utterly blinded by his obsession. She wore a long skirt and a heavy sweater against the cold, and she looked disturbingly normal.

"Welcome," she said, and clasped his hand when he reached the top of the stairs. Her eyes searched his face, and he suddenly knew how a book must feel as it is skimmed by an expert reader. "Come in, and let's get the matter of payment over with."

The man had also been told about this, and as soon as they crossed the threshold he pushed up the sleeve of his jacket. The woman drew a small knife out of her hip pocket and sliced the skin of his wrist a very little; then, with a tiny vial she produced seemingly out of nowhere, she neatly caught a few drops and sealed them up. She handed him a kleenex to stop the flow, and by the time he thought to notice again the vial had disappeared.

"There are only two real sources of power in magic," she told him as she led him up the dark hallway. "Love -- and hate. Your hatred is strong indeed, but their love is much stronger."

"Are you saying you can't help me?" Panic began to flutter under his heart. "But, the price --"

She chuckled. "I wouldn't have accepted payment if I couldn't do the job. No, what I meant is that such powerful devotion can be reversed and used against them, especially this sort of love. Old. Mostly unspoken. And, at least in part, sexually sublimated."

They stopped at a heavy door, which she unlocked with a key and opened to reveal a small wood-panelled room with a round table in its center. There were bookshelves and cabinets on every wall, but no pictures, and no mirrors. Heavy sunlight seeped through the white linen curtains and fell everywhere like thick dust; there was something odd about the light, something wrong, but he couldn't lay his finger on it.

The woman sat down at the table, reaching for a silk-wrapped bundle sitting at the center of the circle of polished dark wood. Taking his seat opposite her -- there were two chairs at the table, no more -- he saw as she folded back the fabric that the bundle contained a deck of tarot cards. She deftly shuffled them, first one way, then the other, the brightly colored faces a blur against the flat black of their backs. And then, without pausing, she snapped off the top four and laid them in a cross formation in the table's center, their heads facing inward, their top corners touching.

"Auspicious," she said immediately. "The four Kings. Your four enemies. See?"

He nodded eagerly. He did see. Even though he didn't understand what she was doing, or how, something in the arrangement spoke clearly to him. He hated those cards. If he could, he would have snatched them up and ripped them savagely into pieces, but he was afraid of offending the witch.

For a moment the woman was silent. She simply looked at the cards. He felt that perhaps she was speaking to them, and perhaps he was not entirely mistaken.

At last she leaned forward and laid the tip of her right forefinger on one of the cards. It portrayed a smiling lord in rich robes upon an ornate throne, surrounded by all manner of bounty. In his right hand was a golden disk inscribed with a pentacle; in his left, a golden scepter. The sky above him was clear and bright with laughing sunlight.

"The King of Coins," she told her visitor. "Materialism. Money. The currency of feelings and ideas. Everything is a transaction, and every exchange is a game that he must win. Dark haired, pale skinned, with eyes as green and shifting as the summer sea."

She looked up. "Do you know this man?"

"Peter Venkman." The name came without hesitation, on a whisper of grim hate. Some of the madness that had been glittering behind the man's gaze leaped forward and writhed in his eyes.

The witched nodded once, and moved clockwise around the circle. This card portrayed a lord in bright robes, noble of aspect, sitting upon an austere and regal throne. In his right hand he held a sword; in his left, a jewel like a ruby. His gaze was stern and piercing, and made the witch's visitor uncomfortable. The sky above him was the wounded red of sunset.

"The King of Swords," she said. "Passion. War. The clash of cultures and goals. Everything is a challenge, and he is the warrior who vanquishes them all. Dark haired, dark skinned, with eyes as lambent as the deepest secrets of autumn's fire. Do you know this man?"

"Winston Zeddemore."

Again she quartered clockwise. This time, an elegant lord in an ermine cloak sat forward upon his tall throne, as if gazing at something beyond the card's borders. In his right hand was a wooden staff bursting into leaf and flower; in his left, the symbol of infinity. The dark sky above him was full of stars in dire constellations.

"The King of Staves. Inspiration. Genius. The mastery of mind and matter. Everything is a puzzle, and he is the observer who discerns all solutions. Pale haired, pale skinned, with eyes as deep and blue as the winter sky. Do you know this man?"

"Egon Spengler."

And then to the last card: a merry lord upon a rounded throne, about whose base surges of water played and dolphins cavorted. In his right hand he bore a beautiful cup; and in his left, a pure white feather. The sky above him was rosy with the promise of a fair dawn.

"The King of Cups. Sentiment. Emotion. The wisdom of the eager heart. Everthing is new, and every mystery is an adventure to be explored. Fire haired, warm skinned, with eyes as dark and joyful as the new earth of spring. Do you know this man?"

"Ray Stanz."

"Yes." She studied the layout again, and her voice held a lilt not unlike a song. "The King of Summer and the King of Winter clasp hands across the void that separates them. Their love was first, and strongest, although it was not complete until the King of Spring and the King of Autumn came to join them. These four tread the measure of a dance they cannot see, to music they cannot hear but can only feel deep in their bones and blood -- correspondances, archetypes, stories a hundred times hundred thousand throats have told down firelit nights through the span of millenia." Her eyes rose to the visitor's face, and he felt the sudden weight of her scorn. "They are heroes. And you would slay them?"

"I don't want to kill them," he protested. "That would be too easy! I want them to suffer first. I want to destroy this -- this thing that they share, this thing that makes them..."

"Brothers," she suggested.

He nodded eagerly. "Exactly! I want them to have to go on living -- but alone. Understand?"

"I do. And it can be done. But this one," and she stroked the King of Cups tenderly on his painted cheek, "has some knowledge of these things. He might see what is happening, and if he does he might find the counterspell."

"What? You didn't say anything about a counterspell!"

The witch smiled, and shrugged. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Every spell has a counterspell. It's how the universe works."

"So what is it?"

"The spell will take effect three days after it is cast. In that time, the four must prove their love upon each other's bodies, in the presence of all."

For the span of a full minute, the room was silent.

"Let me get this straight," the visitor said at last. "You're telling me that they'd all have to..."

"Yes."

"Together?"

"I believe it's called an orgy." Her eyes sparkled, but he did not appreciate the humor. A smile was slowly spreading across his face, unconscious and utterly gloating, as he gazed into the middle distance without seeing anything.

"They'd never do it," he whispered, breaking into a full grin. "Never, never..."

"Sure of that, are you?"

"What?" His eyes snapped back to focus on her mildly amused face. "Come on! Even if Stanz figures out what the spell is in time, he'd never --" He sputtered, unable to get his mouth around the words.

The witch raised her hand. "All right. It's none of my concern anyway. You've paid the price. Now leave the rest to me."

She stood, and he rose uncertainly to follow her. "So what do I do?"

"Nothing. Stay away from them. Tonight I see to the casting of the spell. The magic will do the rest."

"And in three days, no more Ghostbusters." He couldn't contain himself at the thought; he grabbed her in an enthusiastic hug and kissed her dark cheek, then pushed her away, grinning hugely. "Yes! Thank you *so* much!"

She watched him go, wiping her cheek as if she had just been touched by something vaguely repulsive. Then she turned and walked back to the table. In the thick yellow light she gazed at the cards one last time, and her own smile blossomed and bloomed. It was not unkind.

Kissing the fingertips of her right hand, she extended it toward the cards as if in salute, and then left the room and locked the door behind her.

******************
Peter stuck his head around the corner into the TV room. "Hey, Winston, I managed to pry the Mad Scientist out of his laboratory long enough to join us for dinner. You coming?"

"Are you kidding? And miss a sighting of the Loch Ness Egon?" Grinning, he marked his place and put Dostoyevsky aside for later. "I'm in."

For the last four days Egon had been sequestered in the third floor lab, often for sixteen hours or more at a stretch. It was a pattern that his fellow Ghostbusters had seen before -- in this mode of obsessive concentration, Egon could accomplish unbelievable intellectual feats -- and one that they accepted with good-natured resignation, since it effectively meant that Egon was absent for up to a week at a time.

Currently, Peter was running the betting pool on how long this particular fit of work would last. Winston was getting a little nervous, because his bet came up at midnight tonight -- less than five hours away. Peter had tomorrow pegged, and Ray the following day, which meant that Winston's next chance to win came up on Monday... and he was extremely dubious that even Egon could hold out that long.

[MISSING PORTION: Egon comes to the table, but apparently hasn't left work behind him...]

Winston promptly plucked the notebook out of his hand, while Ray shook his head and sighed.

"Bad Egon!" Peter said sternly. "Bad scientist! He pointed at one of the chairs. "Sit! Stay!"

[MISSION PORTION: A bit of banter as they boys get down to eating...]

Using his chopsticks, Egon deftly scooped large amounts of food from various cartons onto his plate, then tore into the Kung Pao chicken on top like a starving man.

"Somebody skipped breakfast again," Winston observed, scraping the last scraps of Kung Pao chicken from the bottom of the carton onto his own plate.

"Somebody has perfectly functional ears," Egon grumbled through the mouthful of food he was chewing. He fixed Winston with a stern gaze, swallowed, and continued in a much clearer voice. "You saw me have a bagel this morning."

"Correction -- I saw you walk through the kitchen past the bag of bagels. I never actually saw you eat one."

"Besides," Peter piped up cheerfully, "even if he did grab one, ole Spengs probably ended up using it in some wacky experiment."

Egon looked across the table at the psychologist, his mouth quirking into one of his subtle smiles. "If I need an experimental subject, Peter, I know exactly where to find you."

"On a date with Susan McIvor," Ray grinned, helping himself to more Szechuan beef.

"Hey!" Peter pressed a hand to his heart, looking wounded -- except for the twinkle in his eyes. "Can I help it if the women keep falling for me?"

Winston snorted. "Only after you chase them down and knock them over with a bola."

Peter put on his smuggest expression. "Some-body's jeal-ous!" he singsinged.

"Hey, hey, I get my share of female attention! I'm just a little -- no, make that a lot more particular than you are." Winston gestured for the rice, which Peter immediately passed to him.

"Come on, Winston," Peter teased, "when's the last time you went on a date?"

Ray looked up from his plate. "Wasn't that Carrie van something-or-other, a couple of months back?"

"Carrie van Hosen," Egon supplied absently. He had pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket and was scribbling equations on a napkin. "July 13th, at one-fifteen in the afternoon."

"Since when --" Winston started, but shut himself up when he remembered what it was all too easy to forget sometimes: Egon remembered everything. This was the guy who only brought a notebook to his university physics classes because it made the professors nervous if he never wrote anything down. Was it so surprising that he'd remember Winston's only date in the last six months?

Not that Carrie had been particularly worth remembering. They'd gone to Central Park, where she'd hung on his arm being cute and giggly, obviously acutely aware that she was on a date with one of the Ghostbusters... and that had pretty much killed it dead for him. It wasn't him she admired: it was the uniform and the job, and the prestige that went with it.

Not that it ever seemed to bother Peter, when he went cruising around town with various beautiful women. Hell, Peter revelled in the glamour of his position, and used it to his romantic advantage whenever possible -- and that was a lot. Winston couldn't begin to count the number of times Peter had come stumbling into the bunkroom in the wee hours of the morning after a night of catting around. No wonder the psychologist spent most of his time being lazy; he needed all his energy just to keep up with his nightlife.

"Weren't you going out with Susan tonight?" Ray asked Peter.

"I changed it to tomorrow." Peter shrugged. "I just felt like spending some time hanging out with you guys."

Ray's eyes widened. He looked at Winston. "Peter chose us over a girl? Wow!"

"I'm -- uck!" Winston clutched at his heart and pretended to almost fall out of his chair. "Amazement -- too much! Can't -- take -- the stress!"

While Ray burst into peals of laughter, and Peter glared dramatically, Egon continued to eat with swift efficiency and jot mathmatical formulae on his napkin. His normally clear blue eyes were distant and preoccupied, and Winston would have bet any money that he wasn't even tasting his dinner, he was so absorbed in his calculations. With regret, Winston decided that he probably wasn't going to win this month's how-long-can-Egon-last bet, because the physicist looked like he was good for another twenty-four hours at least.

"Hey, what's this?"

Ray, digging in the fortune cookie carton, had pulled out something that was definitely not a crispy baked treat. He stared in absolute perplexity at the object in his fingers -- a round lambent ruby, finely facetted, about the size and shape of a golf ball.

Peter, who had been slurping up the last of his rice, had to set down his plate -- which was all the time Winston needed to get the jump on him and pluck the object out of Ray's hand. "Let me see! Wow," he exclaimed, holding the jewel up to the light admiringly, "do you think it's real?"

"Real what?" Peter snatched it from him and weighed it in his palm, peering at it intently. "Real gold? Sure feels heavy enough..."

"*Gold*?" Ray and Winston protested in the same breath.

"Peter, it's a feather," Ray pointed out.

"What?" Winston tried to grab it back, but Peter held it out of range. "Look at it! It's a ruby."

"A what?" Peter and Ray chorused.

"Excuse me." Egon's even voice interrupted their lively debate as he leaned forward and extricated the object from Peter's sheltering fingers. "Don't be ridiculous, it's a --"

The instant he had it in the palm of his hand and turned his full attention to it, the object that looked like a ruby twisted inward upon itself. For a split second Winston thought he could see its true shape -- a tiny pale cloth bag, tied shut with red cord and adorned with beads of four different colors.

And then it vanished in a blinding flash of white light.

They all sat there blinking, trying to clear their vision.

"Egon?" Even before he could see, Winston heard Peter's chair scrape backwards across the floor.

"I'm all right, I think."

Winston squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. When he opened them again his vision was still dark, but he could see that Peter was halfway out of his chair, looking at Egon, who was busy examining the apparently undamaged palm of his hand.

"Fascinating," he remarked.

"What the hell was that?" Winston demanded of no one in particular.

"I don't know," Peter said, "but personally I'm never ordering food from these guys ever --"

"I do."

The tone of Ray's voice made them all turn toward him at once. The occultist had gone pale, and his normally bright eyes were bleak and frightened. Suddenly, Winston wasn't so sure he wanted to know the answer to his own question.

"Well... I think I do. I hope I'm wrong." He looked at Peter. "What did you see?"

"A little gold sceptre, about," and he held his thumb and forefinger a couple of inches apart, "yea big."

"And I saw a white feather," Ray added, "approximately three inches long. Winston?"

"A ruby. Round, about that wide." He demonstrated with his two forefingers held apart.

Egon spoke without being prompted. "The symbol for infinity, cast in silver."

Ray's pale face went dead white. Winston had only ever seen that look in Veitnam, on the faces of men who knew they were about to die. "Oh, geez," he said in a faint voice.

"Geez?" Peter leaned toward him. "And what does geez mean, Ray, exactly?"

Ray looked up at him desperately. "I think somebody just cursed us."

"Cursed?" Ray's expression had frightened Winston more than he cared to admit. "Wait a second. What kind of curse?"

"I..." The smaller man hesitated, visibly upset. "I don't want to say until I'm sure."

"That bad," Egon said grimly.

Ray simply nodded.

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And I've got more, if anyone's remotely interested. ;-)