“Six days!” I yelled.
“—from six in the morning until six at night,” Ceinwyn Dale finished with a special smile just for that cruel little fact.
Twelve hours. Fourteen-year-old-me almost threw himself out the window.
Yes, twelve hours, five morning classes, three afternoon classes. So much work and pressure. It’s named the Asylum for a reason and the teachers and faculty are masters at learning just how far to push us before giving a break. It’s difficult . . . but at the same time I occasionally find myself missing the place—and comparing it against a normal high school experience . . . a little crazy is good, ain’t it? It better be . . . every mancer is . . . some more than others.
If Ceinwyn Dale really uses this tape for new recruits and that’s who you are listening to me . . . don’t worry, if I survived, you’ll survive. God damn it . . . Why the fuck am I doing this? Fucking Plutarch . . .
[CLICK]
We didn’t stop our trip until we were up in the mountains. I didn’t know it at the time, but Ceinwyn Dale took a roundabout way to the Asylum. Who knows why? Perhaps she liked the view or, looking back on it, she could have decided I needed the extra day with her to accept the changes I was about to go through.
We took the long way and I passed the mountains that would become my home for seven years. Ceinwyn Dale might not have wanted fourteen-year-old-me to get ahead of himself, but I’m as Ultra as you get. And what better place to teach a geomancer than surrounded by all that good soil and granite, hills and peaks flowing with minerals?
We had a late lunch at one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. Picking up burgers and fries from another Mom-and-Pop shack by the road we’d used as a restroom stop, Ceinwyn Dale held back until we found a lake, where we parked and ate right near the miniature, wind-borne waves. Silver Lake, a little hidden treasure that reflects blue sky and is surrounding by green fields. It’s quiet, peaceful. I barely even tasted the burger it was so enchanting. There’s not even much traffic, just the occasional car when you forget the road exists a few yards away from you.
I grew up in a city. Noise is what I’m used to. Silence was different.
“Badass,” I whispered.
Ceinwyn Dale smiled a bit more than usual. “Sometimes a water fairy forms at the bottom of it.”
“Really?”
She nodded, crumpling her wrapper and tucking it away in a plastic bag she’d brought along. “Most lakes form one from time to time. Tahoe has a number that jockey for the favored spots . . . some live for years. A great deal of anima has collected there . . . time and nature will do that.”
“Anima? You’ve said that before too.”
She took my wrappers away from me and added them to the bag. With my hands free, I dug through my pocket, found my packet, and I lit up a cigarette. Blessed relief.
Ceinwyn Dale looked out over the lake, ignoring my puffing. “Think of anima as a power source with thirteen colors. Both in nature and inside of humans. When you use the Mancy, it’s from you focusing anima within you and then letting it out on the world. Legend says that the elves—before they died—tapped into the natural world . . . but we can’t. Only what’s inside of humanity. We can store it in items called artifacts for specific uses, but we can’t pull it from other places. As you train, you’ll learn to feel it inside of you and to control it and then use it with meaning instead of on instinct.”
“So, the Force meets some crazy Japanese Anime?”
“Something like that . . . just remember: it’s easier to imagine something happening than to actually do it.”
A flock of ducks circled the lake. First time I’d ever seen a duck in the wild. I remember watching them skim the water and go back up, only to do it again. They weren’t fishing, hell if I knew what they were doing though. Maybe it was futile avoidance of a predator that’s not there. I like futility.
I took a long drag, a bit full of myself. “I broke the child-lock just fine. Didn’t seem that hard.”
“Wasn’t it?”
“I did it the moment I knew you had me locked up like a kid,” I muttered around the cigarette, the smoldering end swaying.
“Did you?”
“Are you trying to piss me off again? I stopped the ‘fuck you, bitch’ stuff but I can go back to it if you want.”
“Think about it, King Henry. When did you first want to break something?”
I thought about it. “Oh . . .”
“Yes.” Ceinwyn Dale wasn’t watching the ducks but the clouds. Winddancer, that’s what aeromancer Ultras are called. I’ve never found out if they can actually fly or not. But Ceinwyn Dale’s expression said she thought about trying it over the lake that day. “Not as easy now, is it?”
The ducks landed, flapping water all over themselves with their wings and making little quacks. Even animals only have so much room for futility. “I got mad when the music stopped.”
“Yes,” she repeated.
“But that was like five minutes before I broke the child-lock.”
“Correct.” Ceinwyn Dale reached out to touch my shoulder, forgetting the clouds. “What we do isn’t easy. It might get easier, but it will always take effort. Five minutes for one little tiny child-lock. You have to fight for it.”
“For what?”
“That . . . is the wisest question you’ve asked.”
Her phone rang. Damn good reception I must say. Wonder what plan she was on . . . She answered it and I listened in since I’m pretty nosy to begin with and every word Ceinwyn Dale spoke was gospel at that point in my life.
“Dale . . . Yes, I have him . . . yes, like I expected . . . I’d put money on it.” A ‘ha!’. “Tomorrow . . . he’s rough but smart . . . Any problems? He’s a Welf, it’s expected . . . did the Mabanaagan girl arrive yet? Good . . . and Reti? Very good. You’re doing fine, Russell, stop hyperventilating . . . she’s a Firestarter, deal with it . . . well, keep her calm, once she learns control in a few months you can put away the extinguisher . . . I know you’re busy. I know four-hundred new students. I owe you one . . . I need to go, tell the Lady she can come for breakfast tomorrow and meet him. Yes, Russell . . .”
He was still talking when she hung up.
“My girlfriend would never shut up either,” I said.
Ceinwyn Dale’s smile got a bit frosty. “That was Russell Quilt; he’ll be testing you for placement tomorrow.”
“So you think I’m smart, huh?” I teased her.
“I couldn’t say you are a thief, vulgar, barely look like you’re twelve, have a problem with authority, and represent the worst aspects of the Scots-Irish borderman American after I spent this time finding you, could I?”
“Ouch . . . well, at least I’m a smart thief . . .”
“Get in the car, King Henry.”
I did.
Heading deeper into the mountains for a swing around Carson City, Nevada and towards the Institution of Elements, it would take us a few more hours to get there. Ceinwyn Dale and I didn’t talk much for the next hour.
I was pretty shocked when she up and stabbed me in the neck with a giant needle.
“You fucking bitch!” Yeah, probably predictable.
“Sorry, King Henry. It’s a policy to keep you from finding the school until you’re graduated. Most come inside of buses where they can’t see outside,” Ceinwyn Dale explained, acting like it wasn’t a big deal.
“You fucking bitch! You just stabbed me with a giant needle!”
“Go to sleep, King Henry.”
I did. I didn’t have much choice. Can’t blame her though. I keep telling you, fourteen-year-old-me was a little shit. But he was a smart little shit. Ceinwyn Dale said so.
Session 107
It’s a damn shame that I’ve made it to twenty-two and still haven’t broken a car axle. And the sad fact is: I wasn’t going to that night either.
I woke up in a trunk. Which ain’t exactly the place you want to be when you’re enduring a car crash. Car
companies don’t design around protecting grocery bags, they design around protecting the driver. If I’d broken the axle, King Henry Price would have been smashed into King Henry Pulp.
These thoughts came long after I realized where I was. At first . . . it was pathetic. I went from unconscious to conscious with a whimper, a slow rise from the dark of sleep into a different dark. My eyes opened to nothing. Sight had no use to me. Car companies also don’t care if your grocery bags can see.
Feel worked best to reorient me. First my body. The pains where Annie B had punched and kicked and thrown me. My back ached down the entire length of my spine. I was on my side, thrown in like a test dummy, no care taken for how I was lying or what would happen to my muscles if I stayed in a cramped position until I woke.
I let out a breath, eyes adjusting some more but revealing only more dark. Underneath me, I felt the soft vibration of highway driving—that straight ahead, no stoplight speed. My hands reached up to run along the unforgiving metal of a trunk top and my feet banged against the sides. Being short worked to my advantage, keeping me from being cramped into a vice. I could just barely move if I pulled my body in tight. Shift to one side, shift to the other side. Feeling my prison.
My neck and throat hurt the worst of anything. I’d been choked out by super-condensed blood formed into a noose. That took a special kind of idiot. My own Cold Cuffs had probably even helped her do it.
Cold Cuffs, I thought with a sudden spike of realization.
My hands went from pushing against the metal of my prison to feeling my person. Jeans, shirt, and my geomancer coat were still on me. Static ring—gone . . . shit. The cuffs too. Double shit . . .
I felt my pockets, found my wallet with the same contents I always had: about forty dollars in cash, my California ID, my mancer ID, and the key to my motorcycle . . . which was probably getting stolen outside of my shop right about now.
My other jean pocket was empty, like it always was. But in my coat pocket I found the anima vial T-Bone donated earlier in the day. Pulling it out, I ran my hands over it. Triple shit.
Oh, I could use it as a weapon. Not like an electromancer could, shaping the bolt into to something lethal, but I could break the seal and unleash pure anima into the bitch, which would be the anima burn to end all anima burns. Wouldn’t kill her, but it might buy me the time to escape. Only . . . the vial was worth about five-thousand dollars. I had a hard time convincing myself my life is worth five-thousand dollars. The poor kid with the hand-me-downs didn’t like it.
In the darkness, I had time to let my brain work. I had time to let the lateral thinking come out. In the near-silence, I outlined my plan of attack. Inside my body, I built anima. Best of all, I had time to remember what my teachers taught me about vampires.
[CLICK]
Hello, a bit of out-of-character here with some information from the old and experienced King Henry, not the idiot in the trunk who’s been kidnapped.
Just about when I entered into the Asylum in late 2009 there was a vampire fad hitting the United States at full tilt. Vampires were everywhere and in everything. Movies, comics, literature, television shows. Everyone wanted stories about vampires and every kind of vampire too. You got your regular, everyday vampire myths thrown into this whirlwind: fangs, silver, garlic, daylight—all the classic bits of weaknesses and strengths. But the most popular of the fad was vampires who could go out in the day . . . that sparkled in the sun.
Good vampires.
The first thing Fines Samson told my class when we started studying them was to throw all the bullshit we thought we knew in the garbage, that’s essentially what our conception of a vampire was worth. My first fight with Anne proves this to be true. I knew better, I’d been told they weren’t the boogeyman I expected, and I still got beat up.
To get his point across, the first book Samson had us read on vampires didn’t have a thing to do with them. It was Marco Polo, the famous explorer, and his account of his travels. He also told us the story of the Kingdom of Prester John. Samson got his point across fast: people love to make stories up. I’d also add that even more people love to believe in the make-believe. Fangs, silver, garlic, and daylight . . . it’s all made up to enchant us with its exotic flare. Only two of these myths even have a basis in reality. As far as the sparkly good vampires . . . did Anne seem very sparkly to you?
What a vampire really is . . . is a creature of blood living inside a human body. Think of them as a hermit crab with a shell. It’s the best analogy I have for you. The body is just the shell, the actual vampire, the actual creature, is the blood inside the shell, flowing all throughout the human circulatory system. Their strength is that they can control the body to levels humans can’t. They can heal wounds, they can speed up the heart, they can rebuild bones so their fibers are stronger than some metals. You realize the advantage? A vampire is a lethal creature.
Since they’re nothing but blood, they like the cold. Which is where the partial myth of sunlight comes into play. They don’t mind sunlight, what they don’t like is heat. They’re like supercomputers running on human hearts. The hotter it gets, the slower the beat. They like the cold. Which is why Fresno during the winter is such a big hunting ground for them. Nice and cool but not too cold. After all, blood needs to be fluid to flow. There’s a small range of temperature where a vampire can function at one-hundred percent efficiency. This makes them move around a lot chasing temperatures.
The other myth which has some truth to it is silver. Not that silver hurts the vampire—notice Anne’s choker is silver and her neck ain’t being burnt in half—but that vampires will often keep silver knives on their person when they feed. Vamps don’t really have fangs, so what they’ll do is a slice job on themselves and then a slice job on their victim and there is the opening they need to slide into.
This is about to get even grosser than it already was. They don’t drink the blood with their mouths. To use another sea example, like a starfish, they extend themselves out of their shell and enter into your body to digest your blood there.
It gets grosser. People threw up during this class, trust me. Big tough Jason Jackson was spewing all over the place when the slideshow started. Fines Samson wanted to get his point across. Sea examples continue to be what works best for them, since they’re really nothing but a blood amoeba. Besides exiting their shell to feed, as they get older they learn to multiply, and the way they do this is to drain a victim of the majority of their blood, causing death, then they spread themselves between the two shells and split in two. Just like a simple cell.
The original half goes back into the old shell, same memories as it had before. The new half crawls into its new body and races up into the brain, digesting memories in some way I’ve never had an accurate explanation given, but apparently it happens. Thus awakes a new vampire, with the memories and thoughts of the human prey, even the name of the human prey, with all those defenses built in and prepared in seconds. For a time, they struggle with not being human, but they ain’t, trust me. They’re vampires. The body is just a shell to live in, don’t be fooled otherwise. They don’t sparkle. But they will kill you and then wear what you leave behind, so nice and comfy.
How do you kill one? Stake it through the heart, then burn the body. The only myth that’s right on the money. Stop the heart and then the majority of vampires can’t function for long. They’re trapped, unable to mount any defense as you find the kerosene to toast their shell. The older ones start to do like Anne did. They learn to exist outside their shell. But with the heart down, most are finished.
You have to stab them through the heart . . . it’s the only sure way.
Back to the idiot in the car trunk.
[CLICK]
I drowsed in the trunk for probably an hour . . . time is strange in the dark. It can be longer or shorter than you think. You’re left with guessing. With nothing but yourself for your reckoning and as we all know: humans are shit at dealing with their own reckonings. Maybe me
ditate is a word for what I did, but I’m not very Buddha. What I did is pool anima to levels I’d never even bothered to try before.
At the Asylum, they teach you to look ahead, pool what you’re going to need, and then use it. Don’t hold on, especially don’t try to see how big you can go. They never said why. Just looks and ‘it’s dangerous’. Which, maybe it is. Anima saturation is what drove my mother mad. It’s driven more than her mad and killed a great many people too. Maybe pooling big speeds it all up, starts to affect a normal mancer too.
The Asylum is more concerned about control than power. Ultras know they can pool faster and longer and probably more than an Intra, but we never get the chance. We were trained in one-minute and five-minute pools, nothing more. We were trained in the number of five-minute pools we could make in a row: pooling, using the anima on a conjuration, and then pooling again. The amount of consecutive pools varied per person and we took it as our power levels. More than once, I wondered if it wasn’t one big scam to sidetrack us from the real game. But I never looked into it.
Not until my life was on the line.
Not until that car trunk.
I pooled for an hour straight.
Forget the axle. I could have cracked the car in half.
That much anima is euphoric. A beast of its own making, like some kind of hurricane that’s gotten so big it builds on itself. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to sit in the warm water and get bigger. I didn’t want to open my eyes more than slits, despite that they saw nothing. Seeing nothing was too much for me.
This is some of what Mom felt, I remember thinking. This is what it feels like to be saturated with anima. To be a walking, talking anima vial.
One hour and I could have held more, but I stopped myself. An iron will of restraint, believe me. Stopping in the middle of sex. Putting a candy bar down halfway through. Just one chip. Smelling coffee, but not drinking it. Not clicking a link on Wikipedia.
One hour of anima . . . I had trouble conceptualize the amount. Sixty minutes divided by five . . . okay, twelve five-minute pools. All lumped together.
The Foul Mouth and the Fanged Lady (The King Henry Tapes Book 1) Page 9