Neophyte

by T. D. McMichael

  If he thought I could just hear this and just shirk it off––

  “But my parents would want me to figure this out,” I said. “I know they would.”

  Even Mistress Genevieve had said so. “Halsey has certain things she needs to figure out for herself,” she had said. There, I thought. That settled it. I was bound to go in. By the bindings of my blood, and filial obligation, I was determined to go inside.

  Selwyn removed one of the boards. He ripped it out. Our way inside was clear.

  “Do you think you could make one of your lights?” he said to me. It was pretty dark.

  I was only too happy to oblige. I didn’t exactly know how, though. I was unschooled too. Psuedo-eclectic. A real moron.

  “I think I think it into existence,” I said. “I don’t know precisely. The aether is a mystery to me. But if I try...”

  My Light popped on. Selwyn’s eyes sparkled like sapphires, rippling gloriously in the gloom.

  One by one, we slipped through the opening in the boards, into the abandoned movie theater. I couldn’t help thinking of Volt and Pouch. Two fourteen-year-old boys who were in the hospital, even still. Something waited inside, and I had to meet it. They had. And it had nearly destroyed them. But I had magic. And Selwyn was with me.

  “Selwyn... I think you should become a cat again,” I whispered. “But first...”

  He looked at me. “Yes?” he said.

  “Shh. I think I hear something,” I said. We stopped and waited but it must have been my imagination; or my ball of Light. It hummed like energy. “Never mind,” I said. “Let’s go. Come on.”

  We walked deeper into the lobby of the old theater. Chairs were upended, old posters hung pell-mell from the walls. No wonder the Dioscuri loved it. Nothing had been here in years. The dust was an inch thick.

  Something was bothering me.

  “Maybe the Dioscuri left already,” I said. “No, listen to this. When they found Pendderwenn, I was there. Along with the twins.”

  Selwyn had transformed by this time into the panther, so he couldn’t interrupt me.

  “Gaven was really upset,” I said. “So I guess that means he doesn’t like them any more than you do. The twins, I mean. He seemed furious at them. He told them to get their things out of Rome. He must’ve meant the Dioscuri. I’m certain of it....

  “Ballard showed me this place,” I went on. “It must’ve been months ago. But the werewolves were spread thin. That’s why Volt and Pouch had to stand guard. And then... have you noticed how busy the werewolves have been lately? It’s like they haven’t even been at the Gathering at all. They must all have been here. Watching over things. These things. The Dioscuri.”

  Selwyn had an itch and had to scratch it real quick. I didn’t know what I was doing. But I was missing something. Something important.

  I shot the ball of Light and followed after it. But no matter where I went––what hallway or whatever––Selwyn and I never encountered anything, or anyone. The place was abandoned. Empty.

  It came back again––the pulse in my stomach. Now it was in my throat. It interfered with my ability to breathe. Finally, it rushed into my head.

  Selwyn was panting slightly from the exertion of having run everywhere. We had searched the movie theater from top to toe, finding nothing.

  “I’m not the one they’re after,” I said. “It’s Lia.”

  Chapter 27 – Misdirection

  Selwyn bounded out of the theater. I rushed to keep up. I needed to get to my Gambalunga. I had been so stupid. Lia. They were going to kill her.

  By the time I found my way out, Selwyn was nowhere to be found. It seemed like a very cruel trick, being called away from the Gathering. This was the Dioscuri’s last opportunity. It was finished tomorrow. The Gathering was fracturing. Like the symbol for the Wiccan wheel, the eight Virtues. Magic was split. We were splitting. “Lia...” I said. The Dioscuri were going to kill her. But why did they even want her––?

  I found my way to my Gambalunga and started it up. The throttle stuck. It almost didn’t work. I had to take five seconds to fix it, but finally I got it figured out.

  Gripping it by the handlebars, I flipped my wrist, and the Gambalunga spun about, the tires caught, and I laid a trail of thick rubber, as I peeled out, heading for the Gatheringplace and away from Rome.

  I raced the moon over the countryside. I opened the Gambalunga full-throttle and headed toward the Gathering.

  If I were writing in my diary, I would have said the following: That there was a faction within the Gathering that wanted all-out war, conflagration, the vibe of coming hardship. The unease Lia and I had felt was growing in my stomach.

  How could I have been so stupid? I listened for any sounds of other motorcycles, but there were none. The wolves were all at the Gathering. Of course. That’s where the danger was. It was lucky I had such an awesome bike.

  With a shifting of gears, I navigated the terrain, passed through the Roman countryside, coming to the invisible barrier––

  There was fire, smoke, shouting, when I broke through. The Wiccans were squaring off against the werewolves. They had their Marks out. My Gambalunga backfired loudly. Ballard found me. But I had no time. “Lia,” I shouted. I raced past him. He had his hands full. Stavros and Gisela were telling the Wiccans to back off. “Bring out the cat!” shouted one of them.

  I made my way down the hall. I had to get to Lia, fast. Months traipsing through the place had taught me the ins and outs of the Gatheringplace. I knew that if I went down this hall––and then that one there––and then through that foyer––

  I used a secret passageway Asher had shown me.

  It brought me to my dormitory. But Lia wasn’t there. She wasn’t anywhere.

  “Lia... Lia...” I shouted hoarsely. The smoke had started to fill my lungs. My eyes. I could hardly see.

  A distraction. For something else. It had to be. The sandpit. I didn’t know where else to go.

  I raced from our dormitory, down the familiar passageways Lia and I had taken every day to get to the Star Room. But what good would my Wiccan Mark be against all of them––the Dioscuri? I had yet to levitate a grain of sand. Much less fight. I was totally unprepared. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to. Lia needed me. I needed to save her––

  A wave of nausea hit me––the feeling compounded by a whole host of figures, I saw, as I entered the Star Room. Lia was there with them. But they weren’t people, they weren’t even ghosts.

  Chapter 28 – Last Rites

  The Dioscuri were vampires. But unlike any vampires I had ever seen before. They were like smoke––roiling incorporeal forms, that rushed in and out of each other. I felt my mind grind like rusted gears.

  Lia was prostrate, red leather jacket covering her Wiccan Mark, over by the obelisk, so she must have gotten out of bed. Something must have called to her. The Dioscuri. Like they had been calling to me for the past four months. Like I was her. The One. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. It was Lia... She was the reason they were all here. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

  The Dioscuri hovered in mid-air and flew at me. Time seemed to stand still. I remembered a conversation I had had with Lia––before all this. It was the night she and I had gone out with the Initiates, what seemed ages ago. Roast chestnuts, I told myself....

  Lia had said, “Remember what Veruschka was going on about, Initiation and so forth, and how it’s supposed to be lineaged?” She quoted from the Head of House Ravenseal. ‘There remains an unbroken link of every adherent back to the beginning,’” she said.

  I made a face. “So what, Lia?” I said. I wasn’t exactly anxious to relive our time in the sandpit together, now that we were on our way to becoming fledged.

  “So––you’re linked, silly, to your mom and dad,” said Lia. She made her Wiccan W and ordered three more chestnuts. We took them with us and went for a walk around the fountain.

  “But who taught them?” I said, munching on mine, and walking
through the stalls with her. The rain was coming down harder now, but we didn’t care. I let it soak my hair. Being underground for so long had made me claustrophobic. I needed to get out.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Lia, dismissing this line of questioning. “It’s like this One business. We’re all one Wicca. That’s what these people don’t seem to get–– Wiccans, the Mistresses, and so forth. At least the ones I talked to. They’re in charge, but they have no courage. It’s no wonder there have been wars. We don’t listen to each other. And I thought women were supposed to be all intuitive and good at that stuff. With the Mistresses in charge, I think we’re on our way to war, especially given this Chosen One business. See––everyone wants to find her, for her powers...”

  “Which are?” I said.

  “No different than yours or mine. Light and Dark magic. Coexisting together,” said Lia, “like the aether itself. Like this ball of Light,” she said, popping it on. “I have been studying it, studying it, and I think it is this aetherical two-ness, this dichotomy, in all of us. The Prime Mover may be able to manipulate the Wiccan World in weird and wonderful ways, but so can we. Don’t you get it? We are her. You and I. Whether we want to be or not, Halsey Rookmaaker. Which––funnily enough, I almost said witch––I suppose makes us dark. Perhaps we are at Oneness with the aether. In which case, we are the One? Or something.”

  Her Zen-ness was on fire. She was my little buddha. My Liapooh. I didn’t understand a thing she was saying. But I sort of did. One of those rare occasions where the words were above my head but they made sense anyway.

  “Oh, and be careful of Julius Pendderwenn,” she said. She shot her leather biker cuffs. “He’s got manica langas, you know, long sleeves. He may try and grab you for his own.”

  She popped a roast chestnut in her mouth and I came out of it.

  The starlight overhead vanished. They rushed at me, the Dioscuri. Where they went, they seemed to cut out the light. I was all alone in a sandpit with them––but I had my Wicca. Their hands grasping out for me were like claws, which broke upon me as they rushed to attack. I could see bits of things. Body parts. A head there; a limb; a torso. Suddenly, I was caught up in a huge mass of them. Was this what happened to vampires when they got too old? They were like ash. And they were crawling inside of me. I could see the remnants of their fangs.

  Lennox had said something to me, but it was so long ago, I had almost forgotten it. What was it? It was a different place. A different time. I was changed now. So was he––if Lennox was even coming back. When I thought about him, I wanted him to, but I didn’t know. I hoped he did. What could he really want with me, if he had left me so quickly, though?

  I didn’t know if he still loved me or not. If I ever made it out of this, I would put it to the test, though. I would put him to the test.

  I saw Lennox’s moonlit eyes, from the balcony of my open French doors, staring in at me, to a place so long ago, it felt like another me. Like there were lots of mes, which was something Veruschka Ravenseal had said.

  I mentally stuck her in a big fat rota. I didn’t want to think about her ever again.

  We had lit a candle, Lennox and I. Two tapers. The Iron Roses. He had been like iron, cold and aloof. Part of me realized it was for my own protection. That he was looking out for me. That he really did care about me. He was my Protector. “I am a vampire,” he seemed to say.

  It felt like memories were what I wished them to be. That they could alter, change. I colored them with my dreams. “I cannot be good for you,” he said to me.

  Something primal called to me. He was my light, my love. I realized––I think I had always realized––that vulnerability.

  “Halsey...” he said. “The only thing that can hurt me is you––if something happened to you.” It was like he was really there, standing in front of me, whispering softly into my ear.

  “Don’t you get it?” I said. “That is my fear, Lennox. There are things. Terrible things, that you don’t know about me. I did not come directly to Rome. I have secrets. A past. Like you. But worse. Besides. Even if we have centuries, I will die. And you will live... Forever.”

  “A forever without you isn’t living,” he said. “It’s a slow, torturous existence, un-overcome by any formal expiring. I want no part of it. You are my life, now. Without you, I would cease to be. I would be one of them.” He pointed to the Dioscuri. “Living death. Old as forever. That is what happens to vampires when they get too old.”

  I looked. They were floating there, on the fringes of my awareness, waiting for me––like huge towering specters. But I was still too busy with Lennoxlove.

  “You don’t ever feel that way, do you?” I said. “That life isn’t worth living?” I caressed his face with my fingertips, forcing him to look into my eyes.

  I didn’t want Lennox to leave me, to abandon me, or to stuff me down the rota. I wanted him to come back, so we could be together.

  I could feel it suddenly––the same dull ache, and then the wave of aether, like I was going to be sick.

  Perhaps we had been on an accelerated clock, the Initiates and I. Lux must’ve known the Dioscuri were in town. He had prepared us to meet them. Otherwise, I told myself, he wouldn’t have shown us the dark aether.

  And even Lennox, it came back to me, had been preparing for the Dioscuri. It was them. They were on his mind, when he said he was worried about me, and that age mattered in vampires, way back at the finger of rock, when he secretly revealed to me what they were. Lennox had called the Dioscuri mind readers. This must’ve been what he meant by that, because they were making me recall all sorts of things––but it was like the perspective had changed, like I was experiencing these visions anew, or for the first time––yes, for the first time.

  But what, I asked myself, were the Dioscuri doing working for the Master House? The Lenoir couldn’t possibly be in league with the Master House, could they?

  One thing was certain. The Lenoir didn’t purge their numbers. When vampires got too old, they became Dioscuri. I felt like I knew a great secret. One which could get me killed.

  But what did they drink, what did the Dioscuri feed upon?

  I wanted to see what the Dioscuri knew.

  They were at my Wiccaning. My true Wiccaning, when I was a baby, and brought into this world. They must have seen what had happened to my parents. If so, my only way of figuring it out was through them. I had to know, to look inside of them, to scry the Dioscuri. But it would be dangerous.

  Certain questions should not be asked, I told myself.

  “They equivocate,” said Lux. “Being untouchable, what do they fear? And, as they cannot touch, their only resource for manipulating us, is us. The Dioscuri lie.”

  The total omniscience of the Dioscuri terrified me. But that still didn’t explain what equivocation was.

  “Using distortion to arrange something desirable to the Dioscuri, which can only be fatal to us,” said Lux, “often by suggesting it in a roundabout way. War, for instance.”

  Vittoria had been listening. She clawed the air with her Wiccan W, when she saw me looking at her. She was not a wilting flower, or a shrinking violet. Vittoria was deadly nightshade. Belladonna. We broke into partners and the memory was gone. A new one had replaced it.

  This time, Camille, who was talking to me about being immortal. But she had never visited the sandpit, had she? My mind was all over the place. “When you live for so long,” she said, “where is the joy in living, that you once knew as a child?” Lennox had said something similar. We were on their boat, the Bellezza Immortale, which had a kind of painful poetry to its name. Except Lennox equated it to artists, the vampire death, that was like living forever.

  There are no Rembrandts, or Picasso vampires, he had said.

  I sighed. “I should think not,” I said. “Could you imagine sitting for one of them? After they painted you, they would eat your soul.”

  I hated listening to two vampires I cared about talking about the sho
rtcomings of vampires. Or of dying.

  Life was what you made of it. I had always thought so.

  It wasn’t an endless, mindless existence. Surely they saw that?

  But Lennox, instead of seizing upon it, withdrew from my rationale. His rakish hair was all over the place, blown about by the cool wind off the Lido. We were at Rat Rock. He was out, on the Finger of Rock, the cool line of stones that snaked into the lagoon water. It was Midnight. The serenity of the place haunted me.

  I realized that, in a way, I was scrying myself. Reading my past. But these were the rooms that were opened to me, full of light, and the people I loved. And Lennox was a person. Perhaps I could help him renew his love of living, in being loved? If only he would love me back.

  I asked him what he was doing, but he shook me off. It was obvious he was protecting me, keeping a lookout there on the Rock at night, with his light, hiding me from the Dioscuri. But there could be no preventing them from crawling into me. I knew that now. The sensation was like the blood draining from my veins. This coldness, followed by a numb disconnect.

  I knew that Lia was on the fringes. I knew that they had tried to read her. But I also knew that she had resisted them. It was me. I was the weak one. I could hear her stirring. But it was too far away. I was too far away. It was me they were after. They were taking me away.

  I felt like I was on the outskirts of a familiar dream––... That my future-seeing had been preparing me for this moment––

  But the Dioscuri seemed to squeeze in tighter, becoming more and more One, a single entity. They formed a circle about me. I could feel them, like the aether itself, crawling into me. Somehow the Dioscuri were the dark aether. But it was bigger, more powerful, than they were.