by J. R. Rain
Although the Librarian had returned it from whence it came, I suspected an aspect of it—a tendril of it, a whiff of it perhaps—had found its way into my son. I hadn’t been able to confirm this, mostly because I’d never been able to read my own children’s auras. But more than once, I’d seen my son sitting up in bed in the middle of the night, staring at nothing, enough to creep me out and worry me to no end. Other than his late-night staring sessions, I hadn’t seen much else to be alarmed about. So, for now, I let it go.
Other than loosing demonic dragons into the world, the Occult Reading Room was the place for all things dark and evil. As such, Archibald Maximus, the young man who oversaw this room, did just that: he oversaw who had access to these books. He was, in a sense, their custodian. The room itself was enchanted; as in, only those who had a need to find the room could find the room. Whether or not there was a vetting process, I didn’t know. Whether or not Max turned some seekers away, I didn’t know that either. And those he did turn away... did they go willingly, or put up a fight?
So many questions, I thought, as I rang the bell at the help counter. The small ding echoed in the medium-sized room, half of which was filled with tomes and diaries and grimoires and parchments and scrolls and tablets, books bound with leather and sheepskin and human skin. They filled the overburdened shelves from floor to ceiling, in row after row. Granted, not quite as long as rows in the library at large, but, trust me, there were more than enough books here to summon Lord Voldemort many times over. Amazingly, the other half of the room was outfitted with reading chairs and lamps and tables.
“Your mind is busy, Samantha Moon,” said a voice from down the hallway. To where the hallway led, I did not know.
“Wouldn’t yours be, too,” I asked the Librarian, “if you were me?”
“Perhaps,” he said, appearing from the shadows, eyes gleaming bright, and coming around the simple help desk. He clasped me warmly on the shoulder. Not quite a hug, but warmer than a handshake. He nodded, or actually, bowed. A small gesture, but it looked good on him. “But I would shield my thoughts more often than not. You never know what’s lurking in the shadows.”
“Like an alchemist who can read minds?”
“Or a vampire mama who can read minds, too.”
Hearing him say ‘vampire mama’ made me snort. “Well, shielding my thoughts is a drag,” I said.
“It’s work, I know,” he said. “But it’s worth it in the end.”
“Is there a way to permanently shield my thoughts?” I asked.
The Librarian said, “There is a way to summon a semi-permanent wall, but it involves some darker magic.”
“And you know this, how?”
“I believe my mother might have invented the spell.”
“Then I need only to ask her.”
“In short, yes.”
“But asking her requires me to summon her.”
“It would, Sam. And it would also mean something else.”
“She would bargain with me.”
Maximus nodded gravely. “I imagine so. People like my mother do not give willingly, if ever. And when they do, they always benefit. Always. Remember that.”
“Oh, I will. Which is why she is stuffed as far down as I can keep her. Life is easier that way.”
“I imagine so,” he said, and I detected a very odd tone to his voice. Sadness? Regret?
“Perhaps a little bit of both, Sam,” said Max, picking up on my thoughts a little too easily. “She was, after all, once my mother.”
We were both silent, and I honestly didn’t know what to say to the guy. That he’d had the world’s most dysfunctional childhood, I didn’t doubt. At what point she had quit being his mother and had taken on the role of Queen Bitch of Darkness, I didn’t know. Max had hinted at seeing terrible things—strange rituals, human and animal sacrifices, and, I suspected, all manner of things that go bump in the night, including real demons and God knows what else these self-proclaimed highly evolved dark masters had summoned from, I imagined, Hell itself.
An air conditioning unit clicked on inside the room, and I wondered who the hell had installed an AC unit in the Occult Reading Room. Max grinned, still following my thoughts. “It hasn’t always been the Occult Reading Room, Sam. It was once a special collections room for the university.”
“So, you hijacked it?”
“You could say that.”
“And put some sort of spell on it.”
“You could say that, too.”
He held my gaze, and I knew our connection was strong, and even though I couldn’t see a lick into his mind, I knew he was in mine now, probing deeply, I suspected. I supposed I could have told him to stop or thrown up one of my better walls or, well, kicked his ass. But I liked the Alchemist. A lot. Had things been different and Mad Max had been, say, a little less serious, I could have seen myself having a drink with him. But I let that thought slip by, knowing that he had undoubtedly seen it.
But the Alchemist had to know that he was kind of my hero, too. Not only had he saved Anthony from a life of vampirism, his advice in all things had saved my ass time and again. That his mother had been a dark master was something else. Max’s early career had taken a decidedly different course, one in which he had devoted his life to fighting the very darkness his mother represented. Fighting and, I suspected, winning. Indeed, Max had been instrumental in sealing his mother—and others like her—away. Removing them from the earth plane. I don’t usually use words like “earth plane,” but Max did. And he knew more about this stuff than anyone did. Even if he did only look twenty-two. Someday, I would ask him how, exactly, he and others like him defeated the dark masters.
“Yes, a very active mind. And thank you. It’s always nice to be called a hero.”
I shrugged and would have blushed, except blushing required movement of blood, the pumping of blood. My blood, I suspected, moved like molasses through my veins.
“Very, very active,” murmured Max.
I tried to quiet my mind, to give him better access. I trusted him. He was in there for a reason. Soon, I found myself looking deep into his bright blue eyes and I thought there was a small chance we had a moment; that was, until he blinked and cut our connection, and I realized that I was the only dope who’d had a moment. Or two.
“The boy in your thoughts, the boy who is missing...”
“Luke?”
He nodded. “Yes, Luke. I see him there, but he’s faint, almost blurry. Is he...”
I nodded, following his drift. “He’s a memory of a memory.”
“Ah, that explains why I can’t connect his name and why he seems so phantasmagorical.”
I nodded, impressed. “Phantasmagorical is my new word of the week. Hell, the year.”
He smiled politely. Max wasn’t as silly as I sometimes thought he was. Or hoped he was. All it took was for me to remember he wasn’t a 22-year-old guy, but a 500-year-old man. I mentally walked Max through how I came across the memory of Luke, culled from the mind of Raul, the old Mexican brujo. A witch.
“Raul is a good man. He’s one of us.”
“Not to be rude, but he’s old,” I said. “And you look so young.”
“Not all are alchemists, and not all choose to be immortal, Sam. It takes... great effort to do what I do.”
“You mean, to stay young?”
He nodded. “Indeed.”
“You don’t sacrifice kittens and/or puppies, do you?”
“No. But I do spend a considerable amount of each day, sometimes hours, in deep meditation, silently reciting powerful and dangerous incantations.”
“How dangerous?”
“One mistake would be the end of me.”
“Yikes.”
“And not just the end of me, Sam. It would banish me to the same plane as the dark masters.”
“I want to know more about that plane.”
“Another day, Sam. When you are ready.”
“Fine,” I said, a little miffed. I was
a grown-ass woman. Who said I wasn’t ready?
“Perhaps I misspoke, Sam. When I am ready, might be more accurate.”
Okay, feathers officially unruffled. I said, “Well, a few memorized incantations seem a small price to pay to live forever.”
“I thought so, too.”
I didn’t have to be a mind reader to know where he was going with it. “It limits you,” I said. “It binds you to your rituals or whatever you call it. Hard to be-bop around when you are forced to spend a few hours a day in what I assume is isolation.”
“You assume correctly.”
“And you probably have your potions and crap everywhere. All bubbling and frothing.”
“Not quite, but close. I do carry a travel bag of, as you say, potions and crap.” He nodded and winked.
“And if I had to guess, I would say it all takes place back there,” I said, pointing down the dark hallway.
“A good guess,” said the Librarian, this time offering me a smile. Then he smiled sadly and looked away. “It’s not easy being us.”
“Being sexy? I agree.”
He grinned again. “We defy natural laws. In doing so, there’s a price to pay, so to speak. With you, it’s the routine consumption of blood. With me, it’s spending hours in solitude each day, without fail.”
“And if you did fail?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
I did, yes. Death and banishment. “I can see why you hang around this dusty old place. You need peace and quiet.”
“Oh, I’m only here for a few hours a day, Sam. Often, I can be found elsewhere.”
“I sense you are seguing into something.”
“Your intuition is as strong as ever, Sam. Indeed, I run a school of sorts.”
“And what, pray tell, is a ‘school of sorts’?”
“Myself and a few others like me teach the ways of alchemy.”
“My God, so Hogwarts is real?”
He smiled. “Close, but not quite. It is a school, yes, and we do teach the children a wide variety of subjects. But that’s where the similarities end. The kids we teach go on to become what we call Light Warriors.”
“Are we really having this conversation?”
“We are, Sam. In a secret room here at Cal State Fullerton, surrounded by enough books to bring Voldemort back many times over.”
“Geez, you’re good.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice.”
“Fine,” I said. “So what, exactly, is a Light Warrior?”
“We give balance to the world of darkness, Sam.”
“I take it I’m no Light Warrior.”
“I’m sorry, Sam. But no.”
“I’m trying not to take offense.”
“Put it this way: I still consider you an ally.”
I shrugged, but I was still kind of butt-hurt. “That’s good enough, I suppose.”
“Remember, Sam, you are a vessel for the darkest of them all.”
“I get it, I get it. So, who selects the children?”
“We don’t select them, Sam. They are born into this business, so to speak.”
“What do you mean born...?” But my voice trailed off as I thought back to the memory Luke’s aura, as seen by Raul, and just recently by Maximus; in particular, the beautiful silver serpent.
“Exactly, Sam. The boy, Luke, is marked.”
“Marked for what?”
“In his case, I fear, death. Had we gotten to him first, it might have been a different story.”
“I really, really don’t understand.” I was also feeling really, really sick to my stomach.
“Luke, as you might have guessed, is from Hermes Trismegistus’s bloodline. As am I. As are you. As are all alchemists or potential alchemists. You, of course, were destined to be on a different path. A witchy path.”
“And you know this how?”
“A little angel told me.”
“Ishmael?”
Max nodded. “You have lived many lives, Samantha Moon. In each, you have gravitated toward the earth arts.”
“Witchcraft.”
He nodded. “Yes. This incarnation was to be different, Sam. In this current and, I regret to say, last incarnation, you were born into the great alchemist’s bloodline.”
“I wasn’t before?”
He shook his head. “Few are reborn into the same bloodline, Sam. A grandfather will rarely return as the grandson, for instance. No, your birth, in this current and last incarnation, is what truly interested the dark masters. Now, for the first time, they had a witchy soul reborn into an alchemy bloodline, and they were veritably licking their lips.”
“So, you’re saying I didn’t have a prayer.”
“You had all the protection we could give you, Sam.”
“We?”
“Myself and others.”
“Other Light Warriors?”
He nodded. “And your guardian angel. His betrayal, you could say, came as quite a shock to myself and my fellow warriors.”
My angel had done it out of love, he claimed. He had done it so that he would be released from his service to me. Until now, I had not known the depth of his betrayal. The bastard had really set me up.
“Yes, Sam. It is true. Had I not put all my trust in him, you would, quite possibly, be one of us.”
“Or a witch.”
“Or both.”
I nodded. “Like Raul.”
“Indeed, Sam. He is both brujo and a Light Warrior.”
He waited until most of this sank in. And, of course, he would know the moment it all sank, the moment it all fell into place for me, since the cute little bastard was right there inside my head with me. A moment or two later, he went on: “All those in the Hermetic bloodline boast the silver marker, available for all to see. At least all those with eyes to see. It is, unfortunately, our calling card.”
“But I can’t see your aura.”
“Indeed. Most immortals can’t see each other’s auras. Or read each other’s minds. I suspect it’s for self-preservation. Most of the dark masters were scheming against each other. Most have a built-in shield, so to speak. The moment I became a master, my own aura disappeared from the eyes of other immortals.”
“You hid it.”
“In a way, yes. Truth is, when one reaches the immortal status, there is no longer soul leakage.”
“That sounds terrible.”
“But accurate. When one becomes an immortal, one’s soul is forever sealed in one’s earthly vessel.”
“Wait for it...” I said, and then mimicked my head exploding.
He laughed, perhaps for the first time. Damn, it was a nice laugh. I said, “But you can read my mind. I can’t read yours or Kingsley’s or any other immortals’ mind.”
“To do so took nearly a century of alchemical mastery. To read a vampire’s mind—or a werewolf’s or those things in-between—takes considerable practice and diligence.”
“Let’s put a pin in the ‘those things in-between’ part. So, those born with the Hermetic mark are, well, marked. By both good and evil forces?”
“Indeed.”
“So, that would mean my own parents—”
“Your mother, to be exact. And, yes, she was protected by one of us.”
I gasped. “The cross she wears...” I don’t often see my mother, but she’s out there, living her mundane life in Las Vegas. Anyway, I had seen the same cross in every picture. I mean, in every freakin picture, from ages five and up.
“Yes, Sam. One of my own talismans. It renders the silver cord invisible. And, yes, she’s been wearing it ever since our first meeting when she was, I want to say, five years old.”
“So you saved her life.”
“Indeed. And others like her. Keep in mind, some aren’t so lucky.”
“Was she a witch, too?”
He shook his head. “No. And neither was she an ideal candidate for alchemy school.”
I snorted. And then I laughed. Hard. Right there in t
he Occult Reading Room. The thought of my nagging but sweet mother, working secretly as a Light Warrior was just, well, too unreal. And too damn funny. Wait until Mary Lou heard this one.
“Wait, my sister. Her opal ring—”
The Librarian nodded. “Another talisman.”
“Jesus, you’ve been here with us, all along.”
“Yes, Sam.”
“And my daughter?”
“I have not approached your daughter. We figure she is well protected by you, at present. As is your son.”
And as he spoke those words, he held my gaze, perhaps longer than he had intended to... or exactly as long as he had intended to. But the meaning was damn clear to me.
“Oh no,” I said. “You can’t have him.”
“We don’t want him now, Sam, but Anthony would make a very, very fine Light Warrior.”
I protested some more, shaking my head and mostly mumbling to myself, but I couldn’t deny the obvious: my son would, undoubtedly, make the best Light Warrior ever.
“Can we change the subject?” I asked.
“To whatever you want, Sam.”
“Fine. Okay. Let me catch my breath. You know, so to speak.”
“So to speak,” he repeated, nodding.
“Okay, so if I was marked by the baddies from an early age, why did they wait so long to turn me?”
“I imagine they waited for you to reach peak age.”
“Peak age?”
“The age my mother would have wanted to be again. An age when you were fully mature, and naturally at your strongest. Her own supernatural propensities would only make you stronger.”
I found myself pacing the small area in front of the help desk. As I did so, I ignored the hissing from the books, the beckoning calls. There was something else pulling at me, something from my unconscious mind that was itching to rise to the surface. As I paced, Max continued, “Unfortunately, the young ones are an obvious target for the dark masters, too. Many do not make it to our schools. Many do not make it to their teens. Most perish, murdered, and often slowly.”
Now, I was really sick. “What do you mean, slowly?”