Neophyte

by T. D. McMichael

  “I’m a... I’m... I think I’m...”

  I watched him tap his foot. When did this happen?

  “I think I might be a... well, a...”

  “I’ve never met a well a before,” he said, being all annoying and good-looking.

  “A witch,” I said.

  “I know,” he said.

  He was superiorly smug. “I’ve known for ages. I even saw you float.”

  “I what?”

  “You know? Up in the air? It was a dead giveaway, by the way. People are usually uncomfortable when they find out they are dating the undead, but not you.”

  “That’s only because, well, I knew what you were, before you told me,” I said.

  “That makes two of us,” said Lennox. He had that smug smirk on his face. I either wanted to punch it off or cover it in kisses. But why was he being so nonchalant?

  “So you don’t mind? That I’m a... witch?” I said.

  “Believe me, you are. And not at all. In fact, I think I love you.”

  It was the first time he had used the L-word. I blushed for a third time. Suddenly he was coming toward me and I was surrounded by his skin scent. “But we have to go back to your Powers,” I said. I had seen his strength and invulnerability––and, of course, he could devastate me with a single look, but if these Agonies were anything like what they sounded like, not every Immortal could claim that superpower. I didn’t mind if I died. But I wouldn’t let Lennox. I needed him too much.

  “There’s thrall, which is a major one,” he said. “It’s a power of convincing. But there’s also other ones, and they range from the mundane to the supercomplex. And they’re developed to such an extent that some vampires are more powerful than other ones. And age is important.”

  “When you say you’re worried about Marek talking––”

  “The Lenoir have mind readers, very powerful vampires who can tear confessions out of even the most tight-lipped vampires out there.”

  “What about humans?” I asked. I noticed my faux pas immediately. Lennox did not.

  I was glad, because I wanted him to know that I thought of him as a person: even if he drank blood, it didn’t mean that he had lost his soul. Besides, Lennox didn’t do that sort of thing. He didn’t kill human beings. If I was looking for proof of his humanity, I didn’t have to look any further. But he could slip. With me, for instance. When he got that look.

  But we had not been intimate. Not yet. Not in that way.

  “They don’t need any upgrades, vampires. They can do anything they want to you people.”

  Warning me again. I flinched involuntarily

  “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” he said.

  But something had occurred to me. “It’s like discovering you have gifts. Like... puberty, almost, isn’t it? Like your voice is changing, and stuff. You’re growing in your wisdom teeth. Lennox,” I said, “you’re coming into your Powers!”

  “Only if I survive the Agonies,” he said. “Then, yes, I suppose I will have new Powers.”

  I suddenly had a million questions I wanted to have answered. Particularly about his family. For hadn’t all of the Venice vampires passed the Agonies.

  “There are only two of them,” said Lennox. “Dallace and Camille.”

  That didn’t answer my question.

  “I suppose Dallace would be perceptive. Camille is, well, you’ll see what I mean.”

  So we were going to meet them? “And soon,” said Lennox. “But I still want you here to myself. At least for one day more.”

  Nervousness and excitement battled within my breast. Nervousness that the two vampires Lennox was closest to might not like me. Excited because it meant we were taking our relationship to the next level.

  “What is it?” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “It’s just––I’ll never get to take you home to meet my family,” I said.

  He nodded, sad for a moment, and then his face brightened.

  “So, Halsey Rookmaaker. Tell me everything,” he said.

  We talked all day. One of the things I liked about Lennox was that in his immortal wanderings he had learned how to listen. This also meant that I could be assured he heard everything I said, which helped when he tried to evade my questions.

  We got talking about vampires again. I got the sense he had led me down this avenue––as if he was my supernatural guide.

  The fact of the matter was, I told him, vampires couldn’t exist. It was a matter of numbers, I said. One vampire makes more vampires––pretty soon the world is overrun with bloodsuckers. I didn’t say it just like that.

  It was mathematically impossible for vampires to be real.

  “Unless...” said Lennox, “...we die.”

  I didn’t want to hear any more.

  “The thought of someone hurting you...” I said.

  I suddenly wanted to know everything. What kills vampires? What can they do? What can’t they do? Because that way I would be more prepared––if the day ever came––if I ever needed to defend him...

  “Have you ever considered who is protecting whom?” he said.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  It was pointless; I couldn’t get any more out of him. That night I confided in my diary, scribbling furiously, trying to figure things out. When I fell asleep, I had a terrible dream.

  Ballard was chasing me. I had had these moments of precognition before. Somehow I knew... that it was real; or almost real... It was definitely going to come to pass. He wasn’t on his motorcycle; that had been destroyed; and he wasn’t chasing after me on foot.

  He was chasing after me on feet.

  I heard Ballard pounding after me––which was unusual, because in his transformation, I imagined Ballard prowling and impossible to detect. Something else was thrashing after me.

  Ballard was trying to save me. But no matter how fast I went, I couldn’t escape it.

  I could feel the wind on my body as I ran, my hair, half-wild, trailing along my back, whipped up, like the flames of a fire, and I so fast; but I couldn’t get away.

  I heard it tread upon my path––deliberate with an incalculable cunning. I whipped through the trees, my feet like comets, faster, until I broke into a clearing. The stars wheeled overhead. There; a bright orb. Suddenly, we were not alone.

  I came out of it, but I remembered a pair of dark eyes; the light swam in them. A million pinpricks of light, like diamonds buried in a sea of night. And the voices caught up, and I howled. I leapt out of bed.

  I was standing, half-naked, with my toes pressing into the hardwood floors––the small window thrown open, with the moonlight dancing across my frail body. A wisp of wind came in, tossing my hair.

  Somewhere a foghorn sounded, low and mournful, like the baying of a wolf.

  I had lost Ballard temporarily; I couldn’t imagine how that could be. Quickly, I moved to go to him, but then I remembered where I was. Lennox was in the room across the way. I couldn’t disturb him with this.

  Something had been after me. Something supernatural. Something I had seen, night upon night, every night for the last three weeks; the thing which was stalking me in my dreams, I couldn’t defend myself against.

  I remembered Lennox, and how he had accepted me, absolutely, for who I was. There had been no censure in his eyes––only a kind of desperateness. He knew who I was! And... he loved me.

  I went to him; I threw something on, something silken, and moved quietly through the small dark shack. “Lennox,” I said, “Lennox.” His door was wide open. Instead I went out through the small kitchen. I had to duck to go out the door, it was so tiny. I found him, standing there, on a large stone that fingered out into the docile lagoon water. He was holding an old kerosene lamp. It burned like a beacon. He was staring off into the distance, an outline in the preternatural fog. And I came to him.

  I could see the lamp turning. It bobbed to me, along the fing
er of rock. I started to run, and he put it down. “Oh, Lennox,” I said.

  “Listen to me,” he said, sometime later. He had insisted we go inside; I think he carried me. The rocks were sharp. “From what Dallace has told me, each Power has its opposite, a natural twofold force. The light and the dark, equal yet opposite. Thrall and anti-thrall; attack and defense.”

  I told him about my dreams. “And it was chasing me,” I said. “I think it’s after me. This isn’t the first night...”

  “It’s happened before?” he said.

  Mutely, I nodded. It was utterly dark. His eyes swam in and out of focus. My remembrances took me back.

  “Was there anything else?” he said. “You can remember.”

  “I can’t... I can’t...” I said.

  “You must try.”

  “A voice! A voice! I can’t remember the words,” I said.

  I felt him shift; everything was more real. We weren’t in trouble, were we? Why was he looking around us? What had he been up to, out on that finger of rock, alone, late at night?

  “She will meet a vampire... His strength will protect her from death... They will have a Power... of Sight...” Could this be? Was I her? I repeated Infester’s words. “...And he showed me these symbols,” I told Lennox. “I think I’m her, this witch, whoever she is. It’s like there’s somebody else here. Like there’s two of me: who I am, whoever that is, and this new person, and she... or I... is super powerful––or could be. I don’t know. Promise you won’t leave me. I must stay strong. Whoever is looking for me, they’re going to try and take me. Lennox... When Marek gashed me, my wound healed overnight. Yet this magic, if that is what it is, is immature. I think I may be, strange as this may sound, connected, somehow, to others... like me––but they’re different. I feel them calling to me.”

  “What do they say?” said Lennox.

  “‘Come... Find us...’ But what us?” I said. “In my diary... it’s all in... my diary.”

  “Diary? What diary?” said Lennox.

  Chapter 2 – Venice

  The water was gentle. I could hear the oars working. The wooden hull creaked beneath my body, through which I could feel the current; it tore secretly beneath us, guiding he and I.

  The two of us... together.

  When I opened my eyes, Lennox was rowing: the muscles of his upper chest flexed; the veins stood out on his arms––

  Like wires, like blood-filled ropes.

  We were leaving Rat Rock. The stars reflected in the water. His eyes were like two Northern Lights: mysterious and elusive and ever-changing. I realized it was the lagoon algae glowing on the surface of the water, and not any fickleness in my love. His gaze penetrated to where I lay, and then he looked off, to Venice––We were drawing nearer.

  It was past Midnight, a word, somehow, that should always be capitalized. Venice’s green-tinged silhouette lay before us like a collection of huge jagged rocks, thrust from nowhere. Its ancient edifices rose from the lagoon like bewitched stone. I could see towers and tunnels, and secret, hidden places, where no one should go; which was precisely where we were headed. To the vampires who made it their home.

  Nervousness had been replaced by uncertainty; both for myself and for the world I had imagined and our place within it. Suddenly everything was being jeopardized. I didn’t like it. It pissed me off. As for Lennox, I could see him steel himself; there was something going on with him more than just our Fate.

  I had never before seen him so contemplative and like a statue. Like the mysteries of the world somehow came down and sat upon his brow. He was encumbered with more thoughts than I could count. Plus there was the Agonies.

  Our little boat battled along. We avoided the main artery, the Grand Canal, that snaked through the impossibly-constructed city.

  Beautiful, delicate ribbonworks of orange glass stood out from false balconies, as we navigated the minute chambers of water. Footpaths ran alongside the canals we were in, and storybook bridges shot above us like rainbows. There were strange openings, many of which were concealed behind rusted iron bars, in the sides of the buildings; they leaned this way and that. There were small gardens in the air. They threw out leafy vines, that crawled along the rosy bricks and crumbling plaster. Towering campaniles with lighted rooftops, festooned with gargoyles and other Renaissance architectural flourishes, soared above us.

  The moon disappeared and reappeared. We were traveling deeper into the heart of Venice. It was quiet out. Lennox and I could hear crowds of people, but they were far away, in some other, more populace, part of Venice.

  Empty gondolas and other boats were lashed to wooden piles that broke from the murky depths of the canal we were in; they bobbed in the current, making small bumps and scraping noises as they hit one another and the sides of the buildings.

  The canal would open up, and then it was like we were in a fishing village, with a myriad multicolor lights dancing on the surface of the water, and then it would close in, and the fog would obscure us.

  I had seen supertankers on the outskirts of the city; we were comparatively insignificant.

  That was exactly how I liked it.

  Lennox worked, taking us deeper into Venice.

  Everywhere I looked were the most interesting sculptures: cherubs, and angels fallen from grace, and lions, men on horseback, battling hydras; flowers marked some sculptures like they were graves; there was even a giant alligator. It was Lennox himself who was the most impressive.

  Time would not age him. I saw him sitting there, a beautiful angel, not cracked and crumbling like the other sculptures around him, but eternal, crafted by the hand of an artist, and I so ephemeral; he would outlive me by lifetimes; by lifetimes of lifetimes, so far into the future that countless new lives would replace the memory of the one he and I had shared together.

  “What are you looking at?” he said.

  “You.”

  I saw my diary, then, sitting at his feet. We had taken nothing else. He sat in the bow, looking at it. I grabbed it in my panic. “You’re not reading that, are you?” I said.

  “No,” he said.

  I relaxed. “I feel different, somehow. Like I’m changing,” I said. I flipped through my diary. There was a drawing in there. Of a monster, the one that was hunting me.

  I had executed it with a thick charcoal pencil, extracting the form from the negative space: a pair of watchful dark eyes.

  “We take very little to Rat Rock,” said Lennox. “And take nothing when we leave.”

  I assumed he meant Dallace and Camille and himself.

  “Do they know we’re coming?” I asked.

  “Camille can sense it,” said Lennox.

  “That’s something that might be called a power,” I said. “You know, what you’re so reticent about describing to me.”

  He laughed. “The last thing I want is for you to get too comfortable with vampires,” he said.

  “Never!” I said as dramatically as possible.

  We were there. The stones were slick from the mist and fog. An expensive-looking motor boat with wooden panels sat docked at the bulwark. A tarpaulin covered it. I could just make out the name. Bellezza Immortale.

  Immortal Beauty.

  A set of steps crawled from the water. Dark angles cut the grid of canals––leaving this place suspended in a world unto itself, between time. Anything well-aged and useful merited my respect; which translated to a love of Italian doors. They were so solid and beautiful, and they often contained little hints as to what lay inside.

  This one had a quatrefoil carved into the black and aged wood, a simple series of four rings, I took to be symbolical, and a knocker, in the shape of a lion’s head.

  The building itself was imposing. Two towers rose behind a large stone wall, through which a set of rusty iron gates sat, either inviting or imperious, I couldn’t be sure, on their half-closed hinges. It was a kind of throughway to the bright lights that shone from the large panes of arched glass. Stone columns led from
a kind of inner garden. Over everything a leafy green glow manifested itself. Even in the middle of the night.

  It felt alive, yet sacred; the fusing of two fundamentally distinct concepts: the eternal and the now; the old and the new.

  “We’re here.”

  I didn’t know if it was my heart knocking, or else Lennox hitting the side of the bulwark, with our little boat. He lashed it to the bollard.

  “Are you nervous?” he said. “Don’t be.”

  I gulped in response.

  You’re okay, you can do this, I told myself. I watched Lennox, lost inside himself; then he came out of it. Two vampires were standing at the iron gates.

  My first impression was that they were identical, almost brother and sister––the same, yet different––so completely did they complement the other.

  It was only when I got over the awe of their sudden arrival, that I noticed the differences.

  They were both predatory––that was evident immediately; but their stillness suggested they were on their very best behavior. The man––if you could call him that––was almost identical to the classic male models in any glamor magazine. He had a perfect shaped jaw, and high chiseled cheeks. His eyes were comely and aloof, belying an intense speculative interest. And of course he was perfectly featured throughout.

  The woman was extravagant. She exuded a kind of dangerous sensuality; if he was manicured, she was jagged. Her flaws a counterpoint to his own self-perfection.

  Her first words to me were an excitement of thrills, like poisoned petals, opening to ensnare, I was to realize were the pursuit of her endless existence. Which is to say that she thrilled me.

  There are people that you meet whom you know will give you beautiful experiences. Such associations are never fated to last. But that was exactly what she was offering. The opportunity to come be with her. With them. I only had to choose.

  The rusty iron gates opened inwardly. Something I thought was important. Like an invitation almost, I would be fool to refuse. I saw my past, and everything in it, vanish.

  Lennox introduced us. He seemed to put no significance on greeting Dallace and Camille, himself. I thought I saw a sparkle of something in Dallace’s eye; but then he turned to look at me.