San Francisco Covens: Crucible

by Manuel Tiger

  “I know a witch who can help you out.”

  “I would be grateful to you then. Even more so if you could have said witch come over before my parents close up.”

  “Can do,” I said lighting my cigarette with my lighter which I returned to the messenger bag to exchange it for my cell phone. “What’s your name by the way? I’m Henry O…Henry Sullivan.”

  “Ying Yue Gao.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  “Thank you.”

  We continued walking back toward Chinatown as I dialed Heather’s number. She picked up on the first ring. “Heather? Are you busy? No? I have a favor to ask you,” I said as I told her the whole story from beginning to end.

  Chapter Four

  “You really did well tonight, Henry.”

  I looked up and over my shoulder to see Heather coming down the stairs that led up to the Gao’s apartment. I flicked the cigarette I had been smoking into a puddle and stood up, shifting the strap of my messenger bag up onto my shoulder.

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  She frowned and motioned for us to start walking.

  “You did do well,” she said as we began walking down the sidewalk in step with one another. “Though? If it was me? I would have killed the bitch.”

  “Would you?” I asked looking at her.

  “No,” she said shaking her head and shoving her hands into the pockets of her purple rain jacket. The rain had let up, but it was still overcast with the occasional rumble of thunder. “I would have knocked her out with a spell and let the witch’s council handle her.”

  “She’s going to be a mindless woman from now on,” I said as we exited through the Dragons Gate entrance and turned left. “I can’t imagine anything worse than that, but it doesn’t seem to fit properly since she killed so many.”

  “As far as cruel punishments go? It is a very fitting punishment for her.”

  I was quiet for a moment as we walked. The evening was at least fifty degrees out, but with the wind blowing now it felt slightly cooler than that. My clothes were still damp yet despite not feeling the cold I still wrapped my arms around myself, my hands briskly rubbing them.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” I said keeping my eyes on the ground before us, then, after a moment, I looked up. “The Craving was whispering when I went to confront her, Heather. It was whispering so loud for me to simply tear her apart, to drink her blood. But I didn’t give into it, to obeying what it was telling me.”

  “It means you’re getting a better control over it.”

  I hadn’t thought of that. “It…it does doesn’t it?”

  “Didn’t the one who sired you tell you about any of this?”

  I snorted, shaking my head. “That’s a topic I don’t want to talk about.”

  Her eyes widened. “You were abandoned?” she said shocked.

  “Next question please.”

  She held her eyes on me for a minute then looked away. “So, after we grab the artifact from the museum tomorrow night? I figure we can have pizza night back at my place. We’ll make it a girl’s night.”

  “Will I get to curl your hair and let you put mine in pig tails?”

  “As short as you keep yours at the moment?” she looked thoughtful for a moment. “We can put one of my wigs on you and it will all be good.”

  I laughed softly. “I can walk the rest of the way home,” I said as we came to the end of the block.

  “I left my car in overnight parking and can get it tomorrow morning,” she said gesturing over to a parking garage across the street. “I didn’t know how long it would take me to do the spell.”

  “Speaking of? What did you do?” I asked turning to face her.

  “Dust to Dust spell,” she replied. “It does as the name suggest. After that? I did a spell on the ripped up floorboards and the room is now as it was before. No one will ever know that the body of a little girl once resided beneath the floor.”

  “And I came there to take photos of a ghost and ended up avenging a murder,” I said rubbing my chin. “Shit!” I exclaimed remembering the reason for going there in the first place. I opened the flap on my messenger bag to see that my camera was not in there. “Fuck! My camera! I left it back there!”

  Heather withdrew her hand from her jacket pocket to hold up my small digital camera. It was the first thing I bought with what passed as a pay check from Scott.

  “Oh thank god,” I said taking it and slipping it into my messenger bag. “I don’t even have enough in my savings to afford another one at the moment.”

  “Thank you Heather, you’re the best friend in the whole wide world,” Heather said.

  “Thank you Heather, you’re the very best friend in the whole wide world.” I kissed her on the cheek as we began walking again with Heather threading her arm through the crook of mine. “I really don’t have many friends you know.”

  “I know, but let’s not ruin the warm fuzzy moment eh?”

  I laughed softly, but it was true. Scott, Heather, Madame Maddie and aside from The Voice – as I referred to the person that was like my check in support from time to time – I really didn’t have many friends. In another lifetime before this one I had had them for a short will till I was fifteen. After that? Everything was stripped away from me, taken, but I really didn’t care at that particular time. I was free, free to be myself without having to worry and live in fear.

  The reason for my lack of a large circle of friends was a very simple reason.

  I was immortal, for however long I wished to be, but my friends were not.

  Eventually the day would come where I would have to see them age, to attend their funerals and watch their casket be lowered into the earth.

  I had been told once by someone that that was the cruel fate of being a vampire – you watch all those you love fade slowly over time from your life till no one is around to remember you.

  If things had turned out differently, if things had not gone the way they had for me when this vampirism was “gifted” to me? I might have had no issue with that for I would have been with the one that I had wanted to be with.

  But they had left me.

  I’m sure that qualified as irony in some way.

  No, I wouldn’t have those thoughts of losing friends tonight when I felt that I had done something good that gave me a little lift in my spirts. I just wanted to enjoy this feeling, however brief it would last.

  When Heather and I reached my apartment building, and before she could turn to leave, I reached out and hugged her tightly. She seemed surprised by the act, but returned the hug back.

  “You okay, Henry?” she asked leaning back to look at me.

  “Better than I have been in a while,” I admitted releasing her from the hug. My hands went to the strap of my messenger bag wrapping around it firmly. “In a long while.”

  She reached up and cupped my cheek. “You did very well tonight, Henry. Don’t forget that.” She kissed my cheek. “I’ll be by tomorrow night after my shift at the library is over. Then we’ll head for the museum.” She squeezed my arm then slipped away into the night to head home.

  After a moment I myself slipped up to my apartment, hoping this feeling would last for a very long time.

  Chapter Five

  “Scott was acting very weird today at work.”

  “It’s Scott. What qualifies as weird?”

  I dropped the towel from around my waist and stepped behind the dressing screen – an antique store find – and began to dress. I heard Heather shift on my bed, the springs squeaking beneath her and looked through the top portion of the screen at her.

  She was dressed in a dark purple knee length gown with a very low neckline that would have made Scott a blubbering fool. Around her neck was an amethyst necklace that sparkled when her fingers moved across the stones. She had changed her hair to fire engine red with subtle purple highlights for the evening, pinning it back into an upswept nineteen forties style held in place
by glittering star shaped hairpins which I was pretty sure had real diamonds.

  “You’ve been hitting the gym more haven’t you?” she asked picking up the lone magazine from the bedside table and began to leaf through it.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked being extremely careful in pulling the tux pants on. The tux that she had brought over was a Dolce and Gabbana fitted gray jacquard tux. I was surprised she had known my size though it was a little loose around the waist, but nothing a belt couldn’t fix.

  “You have firmer ass cheeks than the last time I saw you naked,” she said not looking up from the magazine.

  I blushed then laughed softly shaking my head. I had no issue in being naked around Heather. Actually the first time I was naked around her was not due to willingness on my part.

  I had gone with her to deliver a summons from the witch’s council to a witch who had been improperly using magic. The witch in question had been none too pleased to have received a summons to come before the council and had attacked us with a fireball. I had pulled Heather out of the way just as the witch flung the fireball at us. My clothing caught fire and I had to rapidly pull them off. By the time I was done I was naked as the day I came into this world. Heather simply titled her head, placed her hands on her hips and said she envied whoever I ended up with.

  Whenever she tended to drop in unexpectedly I was most often in the shower and sometimes neglectful in hanging up fresh towels. She told me once when I came out from a shower and she was sitting on my couch and I had given her another unintended eyeful that the human body was nothing to hide as I stood there holding a paper plate to cover myself with.

  I took her at her word.

  But I began to make sure that I always had clean towels in the bathroom.

  “Well, yeah,” I said. “Scott has been wanting to hit the gym more and he only will go if I go.” I pulled on the gray silk dress shirt and remembered that I didn’t have any cufflinks.

  “I have cufflinks,” she said not looking up from the magazine. She grabbed her clutch purse beside her and shook it about in the air.

  “Well, then,” I said coming out from behind the dressing screen and slipping on the tux jacket. “I’m ready I believe. How do I look?”

  She looked up and her eyes widened. “Like a million fucking dollars, Henny.” She got of the bed and walked over toward me. “Tie is a little crooked,” she said reaching up and adjusting it for me.

  “It’s been a while since I had reason to dress up,” I replied as she tilted my head back and began to redo my tie for me. “Do I really look good?”

  “Didn’t I say you looked like a million fucking dollars?” she stepped back, opened her clutch and withdrew out a pair of onyx and diamond cufflinks.

  “Oh wow, no,” I said. “Don’t tell me you bought those too.”

  “My money,” she said taking my arm. “Therefore? I can do what I want with it,” she grinned as she attached the cufflinks. “And I know it’s been a while since you dressed up judging by the tux you wanted to wear.”

  We both eyed the brown number resting on the solitary chair in my rather sparse bedroom.

  Compared to the tux I had on now my old tux was a rag for the trash dumpster.

  “And why was Scott acting weird? Or weirder?” she asked moving on to my other arm.

  “He was just acting very evasive today, sneaky or sneakier,” I replied. “I think I even heard him making a tux rental or purchase over the phone. When I came over to his desk he got up and headed to the backroom.”

  “Maybe he has a date tonight and didn’t want you to know in case it went badly.”

  Hm, I hadn’t thought of that. “Maybe so,” I said once she finished. “He was talking about this girl that looked like the princess from the Star Wars movie he met at a comic book store last week.”

  “There you go,” she said. “He has gotten cuter since he began working out.”

  “You think so?” I asked arching a brow.

  She looked up at me. “Well, he was cute before in that furry bear way. Now he’s like Smoking Hot the Bear.”

  I grinned. “Maybe you should invite him over to one of our girl’s nights then?”

  “I’ll think about it,” she said as she motioned for me to turn around and led me over to the full length mirror hanging on the wall. “Have I ever told you that you remind me a bit of the model Garrett Neff?”

  I stared and blinked. I didn’t recognize myself at all in this tux. I looked… I looked good. As in I would possibly even have sex with myself good.

  “Is…is he good looking?” I asked as she reached around me and ran her fingers through my still damp hair, slicking it back.

  “I think he is, and you’re just as good looking as he is. Why? You don’t think you are?”

  “I think if I was I wouldn’t have been abandoned,” I said and regretted the words. “Sorry, slip of the tongue.”

  She turned me around and rested a hand on my chest. “I don’t know your full story Henny, nor have I ever pried into your life or snooped around or even did a spell to find out?”

  I arched a brow. “You can do that?”

  “Most witches can,” she said. “But back on topic eh?”

  I nodded my head.

  “But you are attractive, beautiful and after last night? You have a kind soul. Still an asshole at times, but you have a kind soul.”

  “Thank you Heath – ”

  She didn’t let me finish for she placed a finger to my lips. “Whoever this other vampire was that sired you and left you? It’s time to forget them,” she said. “I won’t ask for details, but I think you spent long enough in mourning the end of that relationship. If they could so easily toss you away like they did? Then they were never worthy of you.”

  Or maybe I was never worthy of them.

  But I wouldn’t ruin this moment as I think I had met my quota for the week last night in ruining moments.

  I smiled faintly and looked away, feeling a tear trying to emerge from my eye. I blinked it away and looked down at my hands as my fingers laced together.

  “I…,” my voice was thick with emotion. I cleared my throat and tried again, succeeding in speaking clearly as I looked up. “Thank you Heather,” I said in a soft whisper. “I know you and Scott don’t know what my life was like before I came here to San Francisco? But maybe tonight? Maybe tonight I will tell you about it, all of it.”

  “Only if you want too,” she said reaching up and cupping my cheek gently. “Now, slip those shoes on those paddle sized feet of yours.”

  “My feet aren’t that big!” I protested. “Only a size ten and a half.”

  “Which proves the saying about men with big feet.”

  “That they wear big shoes?”

  She laughed and shook her head as she dropped her hand from my cheek. “Get them on so we can get going Henny.”

  II

  The event, Treasures of the Mayans, was being held in the San Francisco Museum of Ancient and Modern History. It was a three story building that had once been a high end hotel back in the twenties. It still had an art deco façade but had modern embellishments here and there.

  And the place was highly guarded this evening.

  “Are you sure you can pull this off?” I whispered to Heather as we started up the red carpeted steps, my eyes moving over the guards that stood in a row to either side of the front entrance. There had to be at least twelve and that wasn’t counting the ones I saw patrolling the perimeter of the museum.

  Despite the still rainy weather, which was falling in a fine mist, there was also press from the various newspapers in the city running about, cameras going off every few seconds and several local news stations were giving live reports near the front entrance to the museum.

  “There’s a lot of people here tonight,” I said smoothing out the front of the tux jacket.

  “Just follow my lead, Henny,” she whispered back as we approached the front doors. She dug out the invites from her c
lutch and handed them to security guard at the doors. “Heather Oakdale, party of two,” she said glancing at me.

  The guard grunted then asked for our IDs. I retrieved mine from the front pocket of the tux and handed it over as Heather handed over hers. He barely gave them a thorough glance before handing them back.

  We proceeded into the museum.

  It was quite spacious, more than I thought it would be. The interior had been remodeled to look like the inside of ancient Greek temple. The ceiling here had to have raised at least twenty feet above us and became a circular dome looking exactly like the Parthenon in Rome. Here and there, as if to further that impression of a temple, were statues of half-naked or fully naked gods and goddesses upon marble pedestals that were taller than me that lined either side of the entrance way. On the walls near the check-in for coats, hats and such were works by classical artists and local artists. Several glass display cases were set up in a row in the middle of the entrance to lead the way further into the bowels of the museum.

  “What we need is on the second floor, kept in a side room,” Heather said leading me toward a set of curving double staircases that led up to the aforementioned second floor. “This should take no more than five minutes, ten at most.”

  “I kinda wanted to look around,” I said spotting several Hollywood actors nearby that was talking to the press. “Oh my god! Is that Brad Pitt?” I whispered excitedly as I pulled out my cell phone to snap a quick photo.

  Heather reached up and lowered my arm back down to my side. “We can come back later and do such,” she replied. “Right now we need to get the artifact and quickly get our asses out here.”

  “What is so important about this artifact anyway? Why is the witch’s council sending you to get it?”

  “Remember the witch that died? The one in the marina?”

  “Yes, just yesterday.”

  “Yes, well, the witch’s council believes this artifact may hold an answer to her death and the deaths of the other witches,” she said as we started up the left hand staircase. “As well as the mass migration of the supernatural leaving San Francisco or going underground.”