They followed and were incinerated, although it was a near thing since we startled the soldiers there—whoops, that’s an excellent way to get shot—and the ward flickered ominously before finally sizzling the last one. It was finally out of juice and would need to be recharged before the ward would function again. The soldiers gave us the stink eye because we had given them mini-heart attacks, so we promised that we wouldn’t charge in there again without announcing ourselves first.
We went back to the now free-of-familiars supply closet, and sure enough, there was a box of student mirrors in the supplies for Summoning Theory. Gypcie picked one up that was the size of a small picture and tucked it under her arm.
By that time, the spectrometer was fully warmed up, so I turned the wavelength to the middle of the occult spectrum, and adjusted the transmittance to read zero percent. Almost immediately it gave out a knocking shrill like twenty mad woodpeckers were trapped inside, and a blue circular beam shot out pointing toward the eastern yard. I fiddled a little with the wavelength to try to intensify it and gave Gypcie a thumbs up.
“Do we follow it?” she asked.
“I guess so.”
We left the closet and headed out the front door of the hall and down the stairs. The yard still seemed mostly deserted, but instead of heading down the front path to the gates, we turned left around a patch of trees and shrubs and then cut back east. The woodpeckers in the spectrometer continued to chirp madly all the way up to the middle of the eastern wall.
“This seems like the spot.” I said.
She nodded and placed the mirror on the ground. Then she opened the cap on the vial of Montag’s blood. “Are you ready?”
I set the spectrometer on the ground a few feet down the wall where I hoped it would be safe. The afternoon light was starting to fade. Time had zipped by, and once again twilight was approaching. This made me nervous, and I looked around the yard for any sign of things that might sneak up on us. Seeing nothing that posed an immediate danger, I got out my chaos focus and cleared my mind. I blew out a big breath. “Ready as I’ll ever be for this job.”
She nodded weakly, bit her lip, and poured the blood out into a small puddle on the rocky walkway in front of the wall. At first, nothing happened. Then, the section of wall appeared to move as occult particles began to coalesce. We both startled, and I backed up, hitting my calf against a park bench behind us. As before, a streamer of neon yellow energy rolled out from the wall, and I wrinkled my nose at the intense smell of sulfur that filled the air. The energy shimmered and the gaunt figure robed in black and carrying a bloody scythe manifested in front of us.
“YOU DARE,” it said in a deep bass voice that rumbled like thunder and turned my insides to jelly. “YOU DARE SUMMON MAL’UN WITH THE FALSE ONE’S BLOOD.”
It lifted the scythe over its right shoulder and swung it in a wicked circle in front of its body, its robes whirling.
Gypcie and I both dodged back out of range, then I rolled forward to close with the wraith, fracturing reality as I did. Greenish purple cracks appeared on the ground, and the wraith grunted as it worked to maintain manifestation, its body phasing out briefly. With a swirl of the scythe, it rolled the cracks of reality back into time and reappeared fully.
“WHERE IS HE?” it demanded. WHY DOES HE SEND CHILDREN TO BEAR HIS PUNISHMENT?”
The wraith took a deep breath and blew out the bone-chilling cold of the grave. I fought to stand my ground.
“I need a fear check!” I stammered, trying to inject in random humor to keep myself from running away in terror.
“Inappropriate timing, Wedd” Gypcie muttered, as she pitched a fireball at its robes. It passed by the wraith harmlessly.
“WHERE IS HE?” it demanded again, slicing through time with its scythe, causing the light in the area to darken and lighten madly, warping around us in the blink of an eye. An afterglow of purple tracers made tracking its movements hard.
I cast chaos distortion to try to give it a taste of its own medicine, but to no apparent effect. Gypcie continued her barrage of fireballs, but they moved past it harmlessly. She pulled out her Harmonizers and attempted a trick shot. The bullets swirled into its body and exploded on impact, but it kept stalking forward. Gypcie continued to unload bullet after bullet at it.
Time for me to go for the big spell. I unfurled pandemonium, surrounding the wraith in purple-green energy and throwing it to the ground. It got back to its feet and let out a hellish shriek that caused both of us to cover our ears.
“ENOUGH OF THIS!” it said and blew out the death cold again, only deeper and colder this time. It reared back over its shoulder with the scythe. My feet were frozen in place. I looked over at Gypcie in fear. She looked terrified. I couldn’t move, and I struggled in place as the scythe swung forward toward us.
I shrieked in terror as that black blade scythed through Gypcie’s body like she was a sheath of wheat, cutting her in two. Her top half flopped to the ground like some weird cut of ham, pistols still smoking in her outstretched arms. The scythe, glinting with fresh blood continued to swing down in slow motion toward me, but I was helpless, unable to move. It reached my legs just below the knee, and I felt a deep cold sting, then I toppled over onto my side.
I lay there on the ground, stunned and struggled to breathe. My mind and heart raced as I tried to make sense of what had happened. The wraith was no longer paying me any attention. It moved atop the mirror on the ground, grew smaller and smaller, then disincorporated entirely.
I looked down my body at my legs, which were no longer attached, and at the growing pool of blood there. I was confused. That wasn’t right. What was happening? Weakness flooded my body as the sides of my vision narrowed. The pain overwhelmed me as I laid back on the rocky path and then there was darkness.
“Blodwedd, Blodwedd,” I heard my mother’s voice. “Wake up, honey. It’s time to get ready to leave for the Academy.”
I looked down at my body, which was clothed in my old sleeping T-shirt. I lay in my bed in my mother’s house in my old bedroom. The pastel-colored sheets and pink satin comforter. The dove-gray bookshelves and dresser with the black knobs sat along the wall to my right. My closet with the white accordion doors stood open, and posters of my pre-teen crushes lined the walls.
“What’s happening, Mom?’ I asked her, pitching my voice so she could hear me from outside the door.
She knocked gently and made her way inside my room, walking over to the corner of the bed and sitting down.
My eyes filled with tears as I looked at her, her short auburn hair curling around her ears. She had beautiful hair but refused to wear it long or get a professional haircut, preferring instead to cut it herself into a short style. This was so real—was I dreaming?
She reached a hand out and patted my leg. “What’s wrong, dear? Why are you sad? I thought you were excited to enroll in Innsmouth Academy?”
“I was, I mean…I am,” I responded. “I’m just so confused right now.”
She nodded with understanding. “Dame Julia said that was to be expected after swallowing one of Gaia’s bees. You are undergoing a lot of changes. I am so proud of you. I had hoped, but to have you chosen so young. It’s wonderful and daunting at the same time. That’s why you’re going to the Academy. They can teach you about your magical legacy and help you train your powers more effectively than I can.”
Shame filled me. I had not been focused on learning about my mother’s blood magic legacy. I had been doing everything, in fact, to avoid it. I looked at her hands, covered in the small nicks and scars from her years with the Templars as a blood mage, and drew a sobbing breath, as I realized how much I missed her and how ashamed I was that I hadn’t worked harder to master the talents that she gave me.
“I’m so sorry, Mom.” I choked out, burrowing my face in my hands. “I…I didn’t realize.”
She started to say something else, but her voice drifted away.
The scene changed slightly. I was still in my
room, but this time I was watching my younger self sleep. The window above my old bed was cracked open, and as I watched, a small bee landed on the sill and flew toward my sleeping body. It landed on the mouth of the younger me and crawled inside, while I looked on. I could feel something crawling in my mouth. I felt tiny legs on the back of my tongue and swallowed by pure reflex as I watched my dreaming body do the same.
I was reliving the night I swallowed Gaia’s bee.
The scene went black, and I heard a great, deep voice that filled me with apprehension start to speak.
“You will see the end of days. You will see the dawning of a new age. To be a monarch or a beggar. To lose everything, or become a god. To stand with us, or against us. The choice is yours. Remember this.”
I found myself standing on the rocky shore of a strange lake bathed in moonlight. Small asteroids floated through the sky, which had a vivid hue, despite the darkness. The bright moon in the sky appeared to have roots growing from it, reaching down in tentacles toward the water. Two imposing figures stood next to me. One, a beautiful woman, was dressed all in white with startling long white hair, the other, an equally handsome man, was dressed in black, with dark eyebrows and piercing blue eyes. They were saying things. Important things, but they were talking over one another, and I couldn’t figure out who to listen to first.
“Be mindful of the voices. They will whisper in your sleep,” the woman said, while simultaneously the man said, “Listen to the voices that whisper in your sleep.”
“You are with the chosen, but you must choose for yourself.”
“You are with the chosen, but you must make the right choices.”
They paused and said together, “You are cursed with free will.” Or at least I thought they both said cursed. Maybe the woman said “blessed.” I wasn’t sure.
“It's not my place to intervene, but then...this is merely a dream.”
“We are here to guide you to the light. Even if this is merely a dream.”
“Make the right choices,” they spoke together.
“And be mindful of the voices. They corrupt.”
“And be mindful of the voices, for they speak the truth.”
Hundreds of bees flew from their hands in a swarm. They surrounded me, lifting my body up from the rocky shore as I panicked, the buzzing filling my ears like a chainsaw. I opened my mouth to scream, and the swarm flew into my mouth like a flood.
I clasped my hands over my throat in terror as I was drowning in bees.
And suddenly, I was back in my old room. I watched as my younger self sat up in my bed, coughing and choking.
The scene in my old room faded as a rough whisper said, “Wake up.”
And I woke up.
I gasped and reached for my throat. The feeling of having swallowed a swarm of bees was real again, even as the dream faded.
I remembered what had happened next that night I had swallowed that bee. Fearfully, I had decided to run and ask my mother what to do. As I reached for my robe on a chair near my bed and a burst of chaos energy flew from my hand and disintegrated it. For three days I had struggled with terror and despair as I began to manifest powers I had never had before, despite my mother’s attempts to console me. On the fourth day, a messenger from the Templars had appeared at our front door with a letter of invitation for me to come to London once I had begun to master my new powers.
That had been the catalyst to come to Innsmouth Academy, where I had joined the students who were born with magic as well as those few of us who gained it from Gaia.
But where was I now? Was I dead? It didn’t feel like it.
I stood in a dreary landscape, all gray and black, with a ghostly fog permeating everything. Terror pounded through my ephemeral body until I calmed myself enough to look more closely.
I could see the outline of the large Mountain Ash lining the berm on the familiar driveway up to the Innsmouth Academy gates. Incorporeal bees floated through the air beside me, their bodies dipping and turning in streams of white twisting energy that appeared to have a honeycomb shape. I looked down and saw my leggings and my high tops reflected in the dark light.
Relief filled me. At least in this reality, my legs were back where they were supposed to be.
I could see I was standing in the anima well, just outside the Academy walls, but all the gold had been leeched out in this stark landscape. My anima must have been drawn to the nearest well.
To the side, the bricks of the Innsmouth Academy front walls, and the twisted ornate wreck of the iron gates revealed themselves in shades of gray. A deep droning buzz resonated in the background, like an angry hive.
I took a careful step forward and felt more relief that my legs seemed to be working. I stepped completely out of the well and turned around to look at it. There was a sudden flash of light. When my eyes adjusted, I could clearly make out Gypcie’s ghostly form standing in the well, although her eyes were shut and her chest was not moving. I whispered a prayer of thanks as I realized she was in one piece—her body lying in two halves on the rock-covered path was a memory I would never rid myself of. I felt bile creep up into my throat just recalling it.
Gypcie jolted, and her eyes popped open, wide and frightened. I reached toward her but stopped myself before I touched her. I wasn’t ready to discover that we were both incorporeal spirits yet. This felt like being phased out of time, but not quite the same. Wherever we were, it wasn’t a place I had touched with my chaos magic.
“I’m here.”
“Oh my gods. I had the most terrible dreams,” she cried. “Did that happen? Are we dead?”
“I think this is what it means to be chosen,” I said carefully. “We don’t actually die anymore. But we’re not phased into normal reality…it seems like we’re in a kind of outer darkness.”
I pointed to the wall beside us. “See? We’re in the anima well just outside the gates of the Academy”
“But how to do we get back,” she wailed. “I don’t want to spend eternity in a spectral half-life.”
That gave me pause. I hadn’t considered that we might not be able to make it back. “Let’s go around to the other the wall and look for our…let’s see what’s left there.”
We rested for a few more moments by the well as Gypcie rubbed her middle and twisted left and right to assure herself that everything was back in order. Then we looped around the wall through the gates, the academy ward gleaming in blacklight as we passed.
I paused at the gate to look down the tree-lined driveway leading up to the academy. In the far distance, the ghostly outline of an ancient Ferris wheel poked over the tops of the trees. I shivered and turned to follow Gypcie around the corner. We followed the line of the brick wall until we reached the area where we’d fought the wraith. I could see the spectrometer sitting where I’d left it, its boxy square shape visible in tones of gray.
We got to the area where our bodies lay, the details thankfully muted by the lack of color. How had our physical bodies been reassembled? This must have been the bees’ magic, to bring our bodies back together to house our spirit, I speculated, but for now, we were still phased outside of reality; here, but not here.
Gypcie approached hers and, as she bent over it, in a brilliant flash of light, she disappeared from the gloom. I hurried to approach my own. With a similar flash and a rush of sound, I found myself back in reality, the yard area fully dark with the night that had fallen, but filled nonetheless with beautiful color and sound: The light of the night lanterns falling in round circles on the path. The glow from the windows in the Main Hall. I could hear the whippoorwills calling, the trees creaking, and the wind ruffling the leaves on the ground. The smell of late fall permeated my senses, the cold damp of the sea air mixed with the musty scent of decaying plant matter. It had never smelled better. We looked at one another and flung ourselves into a hug.
“Renteaub didn’t teach that in defensive magic,” Gypcie sniffled, wiping her nose. “Neither did Montag.”
&
nbsp; I choked on a laugh, as I wiped a tear stain from my face. “I don’t think Montag meant for us to die, or almost die, whatever you’d call what happened.”
Gypcie shuddered. “Did you dream… in there, Wedd?”
I shared what my experience had been. She seemed melancholy for a moment then said, “I dreamed of my parent’s death. I saw them driving and I was in the back seat of the car.”
She started to cry in earnest and wiped tears from her eyes. “I wasn’t in the back seat of the car when it really happened, Wedd. But somehow in the dream, I was there and I saw. They were on an old two-lane highway headed cross country, my dad driving his black Lexus, my mom beside him in the front seat. As they broached a small hill, a fuel tanker pulled out in front of them from a dirt side road. My dad slammed on his brakes and turned the wheel to try to avoid the collision, but it was too late. They hit the tanker at highway speed, and the impact crushed them both in the front seat. I saw….”
Gypcie gulped in a deep breath and bowed her head in sorrow. I put my arm around her shoulder.
“I’m so sorry, Gypcie. That is terrible.”
She gave a laugh-sob. “The awful part is how badly it clashes with my memory at the time. I was only seven, but I remember trying to comfort my gran at their wake. She was beside herself, and I kept telling her it would be all right, that I was sad to lose them, but that I was glad to have had them as long as I did.”
“‘Maybe you can’t always keep all the people in your life that you love as long as you’d like, Gran, we just have to enjoy them while they’re here.’” Gypcie’s voice mimicked her younger self. “Gran was stunned at the time. I… I didn’t realize. I was only seven.”
Gypcie looked up and grabbed the sleeve of my jacket tightly. “It wasn’t all right, Wedd. It wasn’t.”
I hugged her and shook my head solemnly. “It wasn’t all right, Gypcie. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
To Sir, with Love: An Unofficial Legend of The Secret World (Unofficial Legends of The Secret World Book 1) Page 9