Initiate

by Bill Bennett

  What illicit business were they conducting? Was Angela Lennox a part of Baphomet herself? Had she fallen foul of their hardline rules, and were they now meting out their own form of punishment? And where was Kritta Kredlich now? Had she followed the girl to Santa Fe? Marley was deeply worried that she had, and that Lily could be in very real danger.

  It was late, she was tired, and the squad room was all but empty. Soon it would be time for her to call Olivier. They video-chatted almost every day, and seeing his grizzled, exhausted and uniquely French face surrounded by that putrid cigarette smoke was the highlight of her day. Or night.

  She had a lot to tell him.

  The next morning Lily got up early and did an hour of aikido before the sun rose. She needed to centre herself, find her breath. She needed to release the tension that had been building like a summer thunderhead these last several days. A series of swift tumble rolls across her vast bedroom floor did the trick. Soon she was sweating freely, and all her worries disappeared as she concentrated on battling imaginary opponents.

  With everything that had happened since her mother had disappeared, Lily had lost her appetite, and some weight. But she felt stronger and tougher, mentally. At a time in her life when she should have been terrified, she felt strangely calm and ready for whatever lay ahead.

  It still felt like she was walking through someone else’s dream, though. She still found it hard to believe that her mom was not only a witch, but the leader of a secret organisation of witches. White witches, but witches nonetheless. It was bizarre, but every day this crazy dream became more real, and it was making her totally rethink the world around her – like Freddie saying that black witches had infiltrated all aspects of society; government, police, law enforcement, big business, even the media. It was like something you’d see on the sci-fi channel.

  But there were a few undeniable facts: her mother had been abducted and the police didn’t have a clue where she was or how to find her; Lily had been attacked and put into some kind of suspended animation with what her uncle said was a witch’s brew; she was related to a woman in Ireland who, centuries earlier, had supposedly made a pact with Satan; and her father had been killed in circumstances that now appeared to be suspicious. These were facts that she couldn’t ignore.

  She believed her uncle. He had no reason to lie to her, to create an elaborate deception. He wanted his sister back as much as she wanted her mom back. And the professor, too, had been credible. He spoke passionately and with a clear conviction. The computer printout of her family tree with all the names of the eldest daughters in red also seemed legitimate. Again, why would this highly respected academic go to all that trouble of trying to explain her terrible legacy unless it were true?

  Lily went to the bathroom, stood under the shower. She let the water play on her shoulders the same way she had that last morning at the farmhouse, the morning they went to the farmers’ market. The last morning of her childhood. It seemed another lifetime ago.

  She ducked back to her room with a towel wrapped around her lean body and dressed for the day; her usual uniform of dark jeans, dark t-shirt, tan leather jacket and Blundstone boots. She spiked her hair with product again, in defiance of what the day would present to her. She wanted to hang onto the last vestiges of what she thought she was until the very end.

  She clomped along the stone-tiled hallway into the kitchen and then stopped dead in her tracks. Because sitting at the table talking quietly to Freddie was Skyhawk. He looked up at her with his dark moon eyes and smiled that devastating smile.

  Oh my god, she thought. Skyhawk. He looks so . . . beautiful. And I look such a mess.

  Freddie read the shock on her face. ‘Lily, Skyhawk is going to drive you up to the Chalk Mountains and he’ll stay with you while you work with Luna. It might be handy to have him around. I hope that’s all right with you.’

  Lily tried hard not to break out into a huge grin.

  Freddie led them out to the front of the house where Skyhawk’s beat-up Cadillac was parked within the gated forecourt. Joe appeared from the garage, carrying the old Samsonite suitcase. He placed it in the car’s cavernous trunk. Freddie produced a large green Sprite bottle, then walked around the car sprinkling the bottle’s contents over its roof and incanting words that Lily guessed were a spell of some kind. She watched, amused, wondering if he seriously thought that sprinkling flat lemonade on the car was going to keep those black witches away.

  She looked across at Skyhawk, who had walked over to Joe. They were deep in conversation, and then they laughed and did an elaborate handshake which involved finger twisting and knuckle punching and ended with a headbutt hard enough for her to hear a ker-thunk as their two skulls hit.

  Freddie walked up to Lily, screwing the plastic top back on the bottle.

  ‘What is that?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a special dew, sugar pie, collected off sunflowers at the exact moment they’re touched by the first rays of dawn. We keep it in this bottle because the green plastic keeps its potency – shields it from the ultraviolets.’

  ‘And was that some kind of spell?’

  ‘Yes. I created a protective energetic cone over the car, that’s all. White light. Because the car will be in motion it requires something special. I did a universal version because I’m not quite sure what they might throw at you, if anything, which is kind of like giving someone a broad-spectrum antibiotic. It’s not quite as powerful as a specific drug to combat a particular ailment, but then again it’s better than nothing. Sorry if that doesn’t sound all that encouraging, but broad-spectrum antibiotics do work most of the time.’

  ‘My mom used to walk around the house at sunrise or whatever with a bunch of smoking sagebrush or something, chanting some kind of loopy song. Was that the same thing?’

  ‘Yes, Lils. She was refreshing a white-light cone around the house, to give you protection.’

  ‘Yeah, well it didn’t work.’

  ‘Remember, she was attacked away from the house, under a tree in your front yard, if I recall correctly. Outside of the range of the cone shield. The cones do work, but like any form of protection, they have their limitations. Their field of potency is shallow, for starters. They don’t extend far. And they usually need to be re-energised every twenty-four hours or so. What I’ve done with Skyhawk’s car here should get you safely up to Luna’s, but that’s about all.’

  Lily took a deep breath. ‘That gives me a lot of confidence.’ She smiled, and hugged her uncle. ‘I wish you were coming with us.’

  ‘Me too, Lils. But I can’t, I’m sorry. There’s activity on the Baphomet front in New York, and I have to stay here and monitor what they’re up to. I’m going to need Joe too. But say hello to Luna for me, won’t you? She’s an extraordinary woman. One of a kind. She’ll look after you.’

  Skyhawk walked around and hopped in behind the wheel. Lily sat beside him on the Cadillac’s bench seat. She looked up at her uncle as he bent down to her window.

  ‘Next time I see you, Lils,’ he said, ‘you’ll be a fully fledged white witch. Won’t that be something?’

  ‘I hope next time you see me I’ll be with Mom.’

  She suddenly felt very emotional. She wasn’t sure why – perhaps because she was driving off into such uncertainty, leaving behind the only person who could provide her with any real surety. But also she felt that her life was about to change forever in ways she could not foresee. It was as though she was not really saying goodbye to her uncle, but saying goodbye to the Lily she had once known. There was a new Lily waiting for her somewhere up ahead, somewhere up in the Chalk Mountains, and she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to meet that Lily.

  ‘Look after her, Skyhawk,’ Freddie said. ‘Keep an eye out, all right?’

  He nodded and drove off, growling his car slowly towards two large metal gates that whirred open as he approached. He drove through, and swung out onto the street. Lily turned and looked back at Freddie standing in the driveway, waving goo
dbye. There was something hesitant in the wave, and his face was etched with concern. It was as though with her leaving, he no longer needed to pretend to be cheerful. He could now show his true feelings of unease.

  Beside him stood Joe, like a brown-suited stone statue complete with shades and sneakers, watching implacably, hands once again clasped in front like a presidential secret service agent.

  As they drove away, Lily sat back in her seat and felt her stomach knot into a tight ball of tension. She wondered whether she would ever see her uncle again.

  Kritta watched as the car drove away from the high-walled mansion. The Hag stared too, her sharp eyes missing nothing. ‘It’s just the two of them,’ she said. ‘Good. We have a chance.’

  Kritta turned to Andi. ‘Follow them.’

  Andi got out of the car. Kritta quickly intoned the spell that turned her into her golden eagle form. The massive bird flapped its wings, stirring dust through the back window into Bess’s face. She coughed.

  ‘Hope you don’t hit any powerlines, bitch,’ Bess yelled, as Andi took to the air with two thrusts of her wings.

  She climbed high, tracking the Cadillac as it wound its way back along the Santa Fe Trail, heading out of town. Keeping her eye on the bird, Kritta started up the Toyota, and followed.

  Skyhawk drove north, up into the high country where sandblasted hills were dotted with trees stunted and deformed by the wind. There were no towns along their route, only the occasional dusty gas station or general store.

  Lily noticed that he seemed to know the way. Without the use of a map or GPS, he drove deftly along a wide tar road that soon narrowed to a dirt track, until finally they were bumping along little more than a goat trail that led inexorably up into the mountains.

  ‘That’s where I was born,’ he said, nodding out the window to a distant pillar of rock rising up out of the desert plain like a gigantic finger pointing to the heavens. ‘The Needle. My ancestral home.’

  Lily stared in amazement at the huge vertical column of rock. She remembered him telling her about his village atop that rock the night he picked her up from the police station. Even from a distance, the column emanated a palpable energy. Something very ancient. And sacred.

  ‘My family has lived there for generations,’ Skyhawk said. ‘My father, and his father before him, were the wise men of the village.’

  ‘Wise men?’ Lily asked. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘They could see things. They knew things. They could walk on the other side.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He hesitated. ‘It’s a term we use.’ He looked away, and she didn’t ask any more questions.

  They stopped for lunch on top of a rock-studded hill that looked out across a vast plain. A cool breeze swept down from the high mountains, and gently stirred shady trees that stood among slabs of stone. Skyhawk laid out a hand-woven mat underneath one of the trees, and Lily sat as he made her a tortilla roll full of spicy chicken and guacamole. In the distance, several large birds rode the high thermals coming up from the plain. The breeze made a whistling sound as it wrapped around the rocks. Near the parked car, a lizard lazily licked the air with its tongue, and stared at them defiantly.

  Lily watched Skyhawk carefully wrap her roll. ‘Freddie said you risked your life the other night trying to save me. Thank you.’

  ‘I should have been more vigilant.’ He looked up at her and smiled regretfully.

  ‘I didn’t know who you were,’ Lily said. ‘I didn’t trust you. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You trust me now?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘Good,’ he said, and handed her the roll.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked. ‘Looking after me like this?’

  ‘Like I said, I owe your uncle my life. Anything he asks of me, I’ll do. But also, I like what you guys are doing. Cygnet. Kicking black-witch butt. That’s cool.’

  Lily shook her head. ‘I’m not part of Cygnet.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Not ever.’

  Skyhawk laughed. ‘Lily, your mother is Cygnet. So it’s in your genes. It’s part of your heritage.’

  ‘I don’t have a heritage!’ she snapped. She immediately realised she’d been rude to him. Her face flushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just that this is all happening so fast. I’m finding it really hard to . . . I don’t know . . . accept it all, I guess. I mean, this time last week, I was at school and my mom was at home working in the gardens, and I had no idea she was a witch, or that there was even something called Cygnet or the Golden Order or whatever. And now, a week later, everything is just so . . . different.’

  She stared out over the dusty plain. Way below, whorls of sand danced across the desert floor. Around them, the wind whistled a lonely eerie tune.

  ‘I don’t even know what it means to become an initiated witch,’ she said. ‘Do I grow warts on my nose? Get to ride a broomstick? How’s it going to help me find Mom?’ She picked up a stone, threw it down the hill.

  Skyhawk looked across at her. ‘Didn’t Freddie explain it to you?’

  ‘Explain what?’

  ‘That if you become an initiate, you’re basically becoming a soldier. A warrior. A guerrilla fighter for Cygnet.’

  ‘A fighter?’

  ‘Sure. Once you’re initiated, that’s your life. And the Golden Order will come after you, just like they did with your pop, and your mom, and like they’ve done with all your family for hundreds of years. They’re relentless, and they won’t stop until they’ve killed you all. And Lily, these dudes are scary. Like I mean really scary. This is way bigger than you think.’

  Lily watched a tiny whirlwind of dust scurry up the track. She felt as confused as the grit and twigs caught in the swirling vortex. She remembered what Freddie had told her, that if she underwent this initiation then she had to be a witch for life, but at the time she really didn’t want to think about the longer-term consequences of becoming a white witch. She had to keep her focus on getting her mom back safely, and as quickly as possible. She had to trust that Freddie knew the best way to handle things. What else could she do?

  ‘I don’t care what I become,’ Lily said, ‘or what my life becomes. I won’t have a life if my mom is killed. It’s just as simple as that.’

  A shadow passed over her. She felt a sudden icy chill. The fingers in her hand started to tingle. She looked up. A giant golden eagle was circling high above them. The same eagle she saw at the farm. The bird spotted them and began to dive.

  ‘Come on, quick!’ she said, and grabbed Skyhawk’s hand. They raced to the car. As they ran she looked back over her shoulder and saw the massive bird dropping fast, heading straight for them. Its beady eyes glinted in the sun. It opened its gigantic beak and thrust out its talons.

  Lily stumbled over some rocks and fell. In one swift movement Skyhawk picked her up and they kept running. Behind her she could hear the sound of the bird’s powerful wings like two giant whiplashes cracking at her heels. The ground at their feet turned black from its massive shadow as the eagle swooped down, almost upon them.

  They got to the car, bundled in, slammed the door shut. And then a loud raucous screech. They turned and looked out the window as the bird ricocheted off an invisible barrier above the car. It skittered off back up into the sky.

  ‘Freddie’s white-light cone,’ Skyhawk said.

  They watched as the eagle began to fly away, its movements erratic, as though it was injured.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ Lily said. ‘Since when do eagles attack like that?’

  ‘It wasn’t an eagle,’ Skyhawk said. Lily looked across at him. ‘It was a spirit. A bad spirit. It was after you.’

  They watched as the giant bird disappeared into the haze above the plains.

  Lily suddenly realised that she and Skyhawk were still holding hands. She remembered how she’d fallen, how he’d picked her up and helped her to the car. She had to be stronger, she thought, more resilient, more in
control. She couldn’t always rely on this beautiful boy coming to her rescue. But it was sweet, what he did. She smiled to herself. And removed her hand from his – reluctantly.

  ‘I’ve seen that bird before,’ she said, watching through the car’s window as the bird became merely a black dot in the haze.

  ‘You have? When?’

  ‘At our farm. I’m pretty sure it’s the same one. I felt the same weird sensation as when I saw it the first time. It’s following us.’

  ‘Not anymore,’ Skyhawk said, watching as the eagle disappeared over some distant hills. ‘It’s injured, from the white-light shield around the car. It’ll take a while to recover. By then we should be at Luna’s and we’ll be safe there.’

  The eagle landed in a flurry of sand and stones, and Kritta immediately changed her back into her human form. They were parked under a large tree at the foothills of the mountains.

  Kritta had watched Andi’s aborted attack from on top of a hill, through her binoculars. She’d been following the eagle all morning. The plan had been for Andi to try and grab the girl and carry her off in her talons. She was small and light enough. The lunch stop had been the first opportunity for Andi to pounce, but she’d blown it. Now the boy and the girl would know they were being chased. They’d be on guard. It was a disaster. If Andi hadn’t been her familiar, Kritta would have sliced her to pieces.

  Andi crouched down on her haunches and put her head in her hands. She breathed deeply, trying to fight off waves of nausea. ‘There’s a white-light cone around the car, and it’s putrid. If they’re anywhere near it, we got no hope.’

  The Hag grabbed the binoculars roughly off Kritta, and walked away so she could get a clear view of the old Cadillac as it drove off. They were heading to a cluster of white mountains that rose majestically up to the heavens, disappearing into cloud. Of course, the Hag thought, lowering the glasses. That’s where they’re taking her. Why hadn’t it occurred to her before? The Chalk Witch.