Initiate

by Bill Bennett

  She walked back to Lily and put her arms around her. Her mom felt cold. Very cold.

  ‘I’m just trying to do everything I can to save you, Mom,’ Lily said, and tears began to well in her eyes.

  ‘The most important thing you can do for me, Lily, is to stay alive. At all costs. Don’t worry about me. If they take me, if they take my soul, it doesn’t matter as long as they don’t get you and take your soul. You have to survive, Lily. To keep the Maguire bloodline alive. To keep the fight alive. If you die, then they’ve won. The fight is over. And God help us all.’

  Lily looked at her mother, searched her face. ‘Freddie said that if I become an initiated witch . . .’

  ‘Freddie said. Freddie said. Listen to me, Lily. Your mother. You’re too young to become an initiate. You might have talent but you don’t have the strength yet. It’s like asking a sixteen year old to pitch in the major league. Don’t you understand? You’ll fail. And they’ll kill you.’

  Lily was confused, and scared. She’d always been reluctant to do this whole initiation thing. What her mom was saying made a lot of sense.

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You have to get out of here fast,’ Angela said, ‘because they’re on their way and soon they’ll be here. You won’t be able to protect yourself. And Luna put no protections here for you either. They have me already, Lily, you cannot let them get you too. Go back to Luna’s and stay there until Freddie comes to collect you. That’s what you have to do. But you have to go now. Straight away. You don’t have much time.’

  Lily hesitated. She looked over to the spring. To the tumbling water filled with light. What if this is a trick? she wondered. What if my mom is actually just a manifestation of all my fears, sent to test me? Or what if she’s been sent by dark energies to pull me out of the cave so that I fail, and never become an initiate? But then again, what if she is for real? What if she is actually my mom, and she’s come to me in my meditation to stop me from doing something really stupid and getting myself killed?

  She walked over to the spring, picked up the tin cup that was lying by the side of the rock pool, filled it with dancing-light water.

  ‘Lily?’ her mother called out to her. ‘Did you hear what I said? You have to leave now.’

  Lily walked back to her mom. And threw the cup of water all over her. Angela shrieked. And exploded into a shower of sparks that turned into thousands of tiny spiders, black spiders, that quickly scurried out of the cave.

  She was right, Lily thought. A test. It almost had her convinced. She had to be more on guard.

  Later, Lily thought about all the lies her parents had told her. Like her sister, Lisbeth. That was a lie, not telling her she had a sister. So what if they were depressed and in denial? So what if it happened at birth? They still had an obligation to tell her. Not telling her was a lie. A big fat lie.

  Then there was her father’s death. His murder. Why hadn’t her mom told her he’d been murdered, instead of letting her believe all these years it had been an accident? That was a lie too. And aikido. Another lie. Why hadn’t her dad been upfront and said she needed to be skilled in martial arts because one day she might have to fight for her life? It would have been nice to know. She would have taken it a bit more seriously.

  And he also should have been transparent about developing her photographic memory. Her photo brain. Those walks, and the Q&As after, hadn’t been a game. They hadn’t even been a clever way for her to develop a skill that could get her top grades at school. Her father had honed her ability to recall in case one day, she might need it in a life-and-death situation. Lie lie lie.

  But the biggest lie of all was keeping her family history from her. Not telling her about her heritage, her bloodline link to a woman who reneged on a pact with Satan three hundred years ago. Not telling her that she had a mother who was a witch, and that she herself was going to become a witch too. That was the biggest lie of all.

  Okay, sure, her parents wanted her to lead a normal life until she was eighteen, but then what? Were they going to sit her down after blowing out the candles on her birthday cake and tell her that the last eighteen years of her life had been total crap? Would she have thanked them? Would she have been grateful? No, she probably would have thrown the cake in their faces.

  She let the anger consume her like a white-hot fire. Every memory she had of herself, of growing up, her childhood, her teenage years, her parents – they were all now tainted. They were a forgery. A fake. They weren’t real.

  After her dad’s death . . . his murder . . . selling the house, moving out, driving mindlessly all over the country, staying in all the backstreet motels and the out-of-the-way farms, her mother’s anguish and grief; it had all been a lie too. Her mom hadn’t been running away from the demons of depression, she’d been hiding from witches – black witches that wanted them both dead.

  Lily thought back on things her mom had said. I just get panic attacks, Lils . . . I really should go see a shrink, shouldn’t I . . . They just had a foul energy . . . I thought we should leave . . . The harmonics in this soil are all gone . . .

  Lies. All lies.

  Lily breathed deeply.

  Her body’s metabolism was slow. She felt cold. But her mind was sharp. And she saw clearly that this kind of thinking was destructive. Anger and recrimination would only get in her way, corrupt her resolve, weaken her, make her vulnerable. She had to stay strong. She had to shift that anger across to love. They hadn’t meant to lie to her, they loved her and they only wanted the best for her. They wanted to protect her.

  Lily let the soft velvet darkness seep into her. This morning, the dark had been her enemy, her barrier, something she’d had to fight to overcome. Now it was her ally, her dear and closest friend, her intimate confidant. She’d once feared darkness. Now she embraced it. She let it soothe her. Cleanse her. Wash away her anger. She let it purify her. She fell asleep by the spring, and she didn’t dream.

  The next morning, they came for her.

  Her eyes snapped open. They stood in stark silhouette at the mouth of the cave – the tiny one in the middle, the heavy girl on one side, the tall one on the other side. They peered into the darkness, their bodies tight with the expectation of violence. They couldn’t see her. She was too far back, wrapped in darkness.

  They stepped quietly into the cave. The one the detective had called Kritta drew a large glinting blade from a pouch on her belt. The stinging bees surged up Lily’s arm into her body, throbbing in her chest like the whoop whoop whoop of a security alarm. She was in no state to fight. She was light-headed and weak from lack of food. She wasn’t sure she could run without falling. The only thing she could do was stay absolutely still, and hope they didn’t see her.

  They edged further into the cave.

  Lily suddenly felt angry. Why hadn’t Luna protected the cave with a white-light cone, like she’d done with her house? Why had she left her so vulnerable? With her diminished powers, had she lost the ability? Or was this part of the test – to have to fight for her life?

  Surely not?

  ‘Come on out, little girl, your mama’s waiting,’ the tiny one taunted in her high-pitched voice. She stared into the blackness, hoping to detect a movement.

  They may not be able to see me right now, Lily thought, having just come into the dark from outside. But what about when their eyes adjust? They’re sure to see me then.

  The three witches stepped in further and spread out – the heavy one moving towards one wall, the tall one towards the other, Kritta walking straight ahead towards Lily. And then Kritta stopped, and looked right at her. Lily froze. She dared not breathe. The two other biker girls looked to where Kritta was staring. All of them were now looking at Lily.

  Can they see me? she thought. Or are their eyes still adjusting to the darkness?

  She thought about jumping to her feet and rushing them, knocking them over, making a run for the entrance. But she’d probably stumble and they’d catch her,
and she had no strength to fight. They were getting closer now, almost upon her. She could feel their foul energy thrumming through her fingers up into her body. She had to do something, and quickly. But what could she do?

  She closed her eyes, found her breath, and went inside herself to find an answer. In her mind’s eye she saw the two paintings of the Goddess Artemis – the one above the mantelpiece, holding the torch and the sword, and the private one in Luna’s bedroom, standing amid the carnage of battle – the goddess holding a severed head, her sword dripping with blood.

  Lily focused her attention, placed her bare feet firmly on the floor of the cave and imagined them forming into roots, digging down and pulling up all the energy of Mother Earth, and thought: Goddess Artemis, I worship you. I adore you. Please protect me.

  And then she heard it –

  The corn husks.

  The death rattle.

  She opened her eyes. The rattlesnake was sliding and slithering towards the three witches, its head raised and swaying, tongue flicking, its tail shaking its percussive song of death.

  And then it struck, leaping up and biting the tiny one on the leg, its fangs digging deep into her leather-clad thigh. Kritta screamed and flayed at the rattler, but it held on. She grabbed it by the tail and flung it off, then she turned and rushed out, stumbling, while her two familiars stood there confused. The snake raised up, turned and directed its two glittering eyes first at Bess, then at Andi. Its tongue licked the air. Its tail rattled furiously. It began to slither sideways towards them.

  Andi and Bess turned and fled, tearing past the snake that struck vainly at them as they scuttled out into the sunlight where Kritta was pacing, clutching at her wound, yammering in panic.

  The snake stopped, and turned and looked back at Lily, its yellow eyes glowing poisonously in the darkness. It had terrified her the previous night by sleeping in her lap, but now she knew it had been there to protect her. It was her guardian.

  At that moment Lily realised why Luna had not put a white-light shield on the cave. She smiled at the cleverness of the Chalk Witch. She hadn’t left her unprotected; she’d forced Lily to manifest her own protection. Because part of her test, her purification in the cave, was to find a strength and a belief to battle whatever stepped into the darkness. She’d found the Goddess Artemis. She’d found a way to speak to her, to call her, and she’d found prayer.

  She was getting stronger.

  Marley mingled among the crowd at the arrivals gate at Albuquerque airport. After twenty hours flying from Lyon, Olivier would be exhausted. She’d managed to find some French cheese – imported Camembert and Rocamadour goat cheese from a delicatessen down near Fisherman’s Wharf – and she’d gone to great lengths to keep it refrigerated during the long drive from the west coast. But she was certain he would turn his nose up at it. It wouldn’t be ripe enough, and it wouldn’t taste like the cheese he bought from his local fromagerie. But at least she’d tried, and he would appreciate that.

  They caught her eye immediately.

  They were dressed in identical shiny grey suits, tailored perfectly to fit their lean, supple bodies. They moved in unison as if one was the shadow of the other. Graceful, elegant, and catwalk beautiful they were. The Twins.

  Following almost at their heel was Olivier. He walked swiftly, with purpose, fixed on his quarry. But a traveller with a large trolley of luggage suddenly cut him off. Olivier stumbled, bumped into the trolley, and the luggage spilled everywhere. The traveller shouted at him, Olivier apologised, Marley took her eye off the Twins for a moment and watched as Olivier quickly regained his balance, sashaying around the trolley to keep his tail on the Twins, but they’d disappeared.

  Marley looked to the exit, but couldn’t see them anywhere. She ran over, Olivier was running too – they almost bumped into each other as they frantically searched for them. He saw her and smiled, distracted.

  ‘Did you see them? I’ve followed them all the way from Amsterdam. I’m not going to lose them now.’

  They ran outside onto the kerb, looked up and down the drop-off area, but there was no sign of the two men. Olivier rushed over to the taxi supervisor, asked if he’d seen two adult males, twins. The supervisor shook his head. They raced over to the carpark and to the rental cars, going from office to office, asking questions, but no one had seen them. They ran back to the terminal, did a thorough search, but again they found nothing.

  Olivier shook his head, flummoxed, looking around the arrivals hall, which was now almost empty.

  ‘How could they just vanish like that?’

  He pushed his hands through his black curly hair, dark circles under his eyes. Then he looked over at Marley as if seeing her for the first time. His face lit up. He smiled. ‘Bonjour Marls.’ And he kissed her.

  They didn’t notice two small identical Pekinese dogs watching them from across the other side of the terminal, sitting unattended outside a newsstand.

  In unison, they both licked their testicles.

  Freddie sat on his terrace holding a tumbler of Gran Patrón tequila, watching a coyote stalk its way through the gully at the foot of his walled garden. Predator looking for prey, he thought. And so the world turns. Right at that moment, thinking of a wild dog running down a rabbit or squirrel made Freddie’s stomach turn.

  He’d just received an email from a Cygnet agent in Brussels. Baphomet obviously hadn’t wanted Henri Duprey to speak at that conference in Paris, because they’d killed him. Executed him. Two ferocious dogs, identical Doberman pinschers, had torn him to pieces. Freddie didn’t wish to imagine how horrific his death must have been.

  It was the Twins. He knew their signature. They could transmogrify into any creature they wished and use those guises to carry out their assassinations. Impossible for law enforcement to ever pin it on them. On the coroner’s report, Henri Duprey would have died from injuries sustained in a dog attack. Never would it be recorded that he was the victim of a merciless and cold-blooded execution staged by two elite black witches.

  He sloshed the silken alcohol around in his glass, then took a swill. Felt it bite his throat, warm his insides, loosen his thoughts. Freddie rarely drank, but this afternoon he needed that bite, that warmth, that disconnect.

  He was also deeply concerned about Lily. It was a long shot, sending her to Luna. She was a strong kid, she got that from her mother, but he knew of stronger people than she who had buckled under purification and bailed before their initiation.

  It was risky sending her to the Chalk Mountains. If she was attacked again, Skyhawk didn’t have Joe this time to back him up. He’d have to deal with it himself, and Freddie knew that the boy didn’t yet have the energetic weaponry to stave off a full-blown Baphomet offensive.

  He didn’t even know if this scheme of his would work – making Lily a white witch in the hope of establishing a connection with Angela. Yes, mother and daughter had a unique bond. A cosmic connection. But that was assuming Angela was capable of calling out to her, sending out a signal. If she was already dead, or if she’d been drugged so heavily that she couldn’t communicate at all, then Lily’s initiation would be a complete waste of time.

  Freddie took another shot of tequila. Shortly, two cops would be arriving – a detective from San Francisco, and a special agent from Interpol. He would speak to them, but he’d tell them nothing. Nothing of use. They could be Baphomet, after all.

  Martha led the two police officers out onto the terrace. The sun had now set, there was smoke on the air from evening fires, and stars were beginning to wink in the darkening sky.

  Marley did the introductions. Freddie checked their credentials, then looked at them both, amused.

  ‘So the SFPD has sent you all the way out here to question me, have they, detective?’ he asked, handing back her ID. Then he turned to Olivier. ‘And Interpol? That seems a bit excessive?’

  ‘We’re here unofficially, doctor,’ Marley said. ‘We’ve both taken a personal interest in this case, and we were wo
ndering if you’d cooperate on that basis.’

  Freddie gave Olivier back his ID, then offered them a chair. They sat. ‘Drink?’ he asked.

  Marley shook her head, but Olivier nodded. ‘Yes, thank you. Scotch. With the ice.’

  Freddie walked over to a liquor cabinet. ‘I don’t understand. Aren’t there more pressing cases that require your attention?’ he said, as he clinked ice into a glass. ‘Why come all the way out here, on your own dime I presume, to chase down a missing person? You must get dozens of those a week.’

  Freddie walked back and handed Olivier the glass.

  ‘I think you know, doctor, and let’s not be coy about it.’

  ‘Coy about what?’ Freddie looked at him blankly.

  Olivier stared at him. Let the moment hang.

  ‘Can we speak to your niece?’ Marley asked.

  ‘Sure, but she’s with her great-aunt at the moment.’

  ‘She’s not here?’

  ‘That’s what I just told you.’

  ‘We entrusted her in your care,’ Marley said. She didn’t like the doctor’s attitude. His arrogance.

  ‘And I have duly entrusted her in the care of her great-aunt,’ Freddie said. ‘She too is a legal guardian.’

  ‘Where does this great-aunt reside?’ Marley took out her notebook.

  ‘The Chalk Mountains.’

  Marley looked up at him. ‘And where are the Chalk Mountains, doctor?’

  ‘North of here. It’s a long drive, and tough terrain.’

  Marley took notes. ‘And when do you expect her back?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  Marley looked up at him. ‘You refuse to, or you don’t know?’

  ‘I would tell you if I knew.’

  ‘Would you?’