The Initiate

by Holly Lujah

  “But, please, don’t think about me. Breanna tells me that you managed to score a hit on Mary Sue during your task today. Is it true?”

  Biffy nodded, noticing that several other nearby nuns had leant forward when they’d heard this. She had the attention of the room as silence rippled out from her.

  “You actually managed it?” the sister asked again, her voice rising several notes.

  “Yes. Just the once. But not hard, and not with any fancy technique.” Biffy shrugged.

  “Oh my. You must be very good at hand-to-hand,” she replied, putting her hand on her heart like it was racing.

  “It’s my weakest, I think. I prefer ranged. And swords at least put distance between you and the enemy.”

  This response seemed to cause a stir as the room began talking quickly, whisperings and conversations almost all beginning at once. Biffy looked around, quick to notice all the glances coming her way. Had she really done something so special?

  Breanna grinned at her. For the first time since arriving at the academy, Biffy found herself wanting to fall into some hole, or have Hairwig swoop down, catch her and carry her away, but it didn’t happen. Instead, Boo chose that moment to get bored. He scurried off the end of the table, onto the floor and straight for the kitchens.

  “Boo, come back here at once, you son of a nutcracker,” Breanna said, hurrying to her feet. Hairwig also leapt up from her perch on the table and took to flight, heading in the same direction.

  Wondering what had attracted her familiar’s attention, Biffy got to her feet and found herself sprinting after the other three. Before Breanna or she could reach them, Hairwig caught up to Boo and swooped down. The rodent let out a squeak as Hairwig’s powerful talons closed around his middle and lifted him clean into the air.

  Banking sharply so she didn’t crash into the far wall, Hairwig brought the pair of them around.

  “Boo. Are you all right, Boo?” Breanna asked, her voice full of concern. Hairwig, however, seemed to have good intentions. She flew to Breanna and dropped the guinea pig into her outstretched hands before coming back to Biffy and landing on her shoulder.

  “Hoot,” she said, more than a little pleased with herself.

  Biffy wanted to laugh, but Boo seemed frozen to the spot, silent, shaking slightly.

  “Boo, are you all right?” Breanna asked, stroking the small creature, her eyes wide. Biffy took a step closer, her heart in her mouth. What had Hairwig done?

  Not daring to breathe, Biffy tried to think of something she might be able to do to help, but nothing came to mind. A quick squeak from Boo as he unfroze and nuzzled into Breanna’s face made her exhale, relief removing the tension from her body.

  “Oh, Boo, you worried me for a moment there. You must not run off. See what happens if you do? Other, better-behaved familiars try to help. I bet you wish you had not gone rushing away now.”

  The animal squeaked again and climbed onto Breanna’s shoulder.

  “Hoot,” said Hairwig, sounding more than a little indignant.

  “I know you didn’t mean to scare him,” Biffy replied. “But perhaps you could be a little gentler next time. Or save it for when he might be in danger. I doubt he’d come to any harm in the kitchen.”

  Hairwig hooted again, lowering her head in apology.

  “Hairwig says sorry,” Biffy said as she came closer, noticing the rodent was eyeing her owl warily.

  “Oh, she does not have to be sorry,” Breanna replied. “Boo should know better. Perhaps he will learn his lesson now.”

  Biffy nodded, not sure what else to say. There seemed to be an awkward silence. The entire hall of people had been staring once more. Thankfully, the attention was shared between her, Breanna and the two familiars.

  As they went back to their lunch, the topic of conversation moved on to the patrol the previous evening.

  “Did you hear that one of the sisters is in the infirmary?” Annabelle asked a moment later, leaning over her soup to say the words quieter.

  Biffy raised her eyebrows as Breanna looked horrified.

  “I heard that there was a ruckus on the third watch but not what happened.”

  “There was more than a ruckus,” another sister said, one Biffy didn’t know very well. She sat down on the other side of Breanna, clutching a bowl of soup and a piece of bread.

  “Do you know what happened?” Annabelle leaned in even closer, in danger of knocking her drink over.

  “Only that the patrol were ambushed. Bunch of werewolves and vampires working together.”

  “What, like allies?” a fourth sister asked, sitting beside Biffy without so much as looking at anyone but their storyteller.

  As the nun recounted what she knew, more and more of the sisters gathered around, until Biffy was off-centre in a massive black-and-white group reminiscent of the great penguin huddles the birds used to keep warm on the ice.

  “Does anyone know if Sister Helena will survive?” Sister Annabelle asked. There was a pause as everyone looked to the only source they had.

  “No one mentioned either way. But she’s lost a lot of blood. If she pulls through, it’s going to take a long time. And she wasn’t the only one hurt. There’s three more in the infirmary with her. Sister Agnes, Sister Lucille, and Sister Clarity are also hurt.”

  “How are we going to fill the patrol teams with four sisters out of action at once?” Annabelle asked, fear making her eyes wider and giving her a slightly bug-eyed look.

  Was this why they moved up my task? Biffy thought. To have another nun to place on a team? Am I about to be thrown in the deep end?

  There was no way to know for sure, but it would explain the hurry that had brought her task forward in time. If four nuns on the patrol teams were suddenly unavailable for duty, then the academy would definitely feel it.

  Biffy found herself zoning out of the conversations happening around her. It was interesting to talk about what might have happened, but they didn’t know for sure, and her thoughts were delving through her own memories.

  While she trained that morning and took the tests to comprise her next task, the three Marys and the mother superior would have known what had happened. Yet none of them had said anything or given any emotional indication that something was wrong. Were they being callous, or had they agreed to keep it from her so as not to distract her? But if the latter was the case, surely they’d have told her afterwards or something.

  There was no way to know any more, and Biffy had never been one to enjoy gossip, so she focused on finishing her meal and then made her excuses. Thankfully, Breanna hadn’t picked up on how much she ate and no one seemed to truly register that she was leaving the group.

  More than a little worried but with no idea what to do about it, Biffy wandered slowly along the corridors, trying to decide if she should go to the infirmaries or not and pay her respects to the injured. What ought a nun to do? What did she have the capacity for?

  Unable to remember where the infirmary was anyway, Biffy found her feet taking her to the massive library. She’d only been in there once in the last few weeks, and on that occasion she had noticed it was kept almost perfectly clean.

  Rows and rows of books on all sorts of topics lined the walls. The older ones focused almost entirely on God, faith and the history of the academy before the vampires arrived. The next dealt with the sudden rise of not just the undead, but the werewolf packs as well. There was a final section that she had visited the last time she was there. It was crammed full of books that were much more recent.

  There were pamphlets and tomes on everything from tested methods to fight the new enemies of humankind to theories, myths and all sorts of other related things. There were even psychological profiles done. A lot of the books seemed to be full of people waffling, trying to sound like they knew what they were talking about, but in truth, few did.

  To be fair, no one really got up close to a vampire or werewolf and was allowed to conduct experiments. And the last thing any of them
wanted to do was talk about their weaknesses and why they were created.

  This section had told Biffy all she thought it could for now. Instead she headed for the middle section. She was curious. Just how long had vampires and werewolves been roaming the earth? And what had made them so tough to beat?

  As she walked past the first set of shelves, she noticed a lot of these books were older than her, the spines leather-bound and embossed in gold lettering. Lined up in such neat rows, they looked beautiful, but their contents were anything but benign. Once more she noticed several titles with the word ’theory’ or variations of it in the title.

  This important person’s theory on why vampires had been made. Another important person’s theory about what might have caused wolves to mutate and meld with human DNA and then hide among us.

  Then there was a book about when they might have first arisen, and how long they might have hidden under humanity’s nose. Beside that was a book suggesting such beasts had been there all along. And then a book suggesting so many fictional stories about them had created them, as if fiction had the power to bleed thoughts focused on strongly enough into the world.

  Better be careful what I imagine, Biffy thought as she carried on walking, a small grin sliding across her face as she thought of the absurdity of it all. It suggested very strongly that no one knew exactly why or how vampires and werewolves had come about, just that they had and it had seemed sudden.

  As Biffy came to the end of the aisle, she heard a small cough and realised she wasn’t alone. Warily, she walked as softly as she could down the next section. At the next junction she spotted Sister Gelina standing by yet another bookshelf. Open in her hands was a large book.

  While she watched, Sister Gelina turned a page, kicking up dust that made the nun cough several more times. Biffy tried to turn and leave, giving the sister some privacy, but she caught her foot, instead drawing the attention towards her.

  “Ah, Biffy, I didn’t expect to see you in here. I wouldn’t have expected books to be a refuge of yours,” Sister Gelina said, speaking more matter-of-factly than containing any judgement. Her eyes never left the pages open in front of her.

  Emboldened by the gentle greeting, Biffy came closer, noticing the section the nun stood before. All the books here made reference to a chosen one or a slayer. A few even mentioned some kind of saviour, or prophecies about one.

  “Interesting subject,” Biffy replied, no idea what else to say but wishing to be polite. Gelina suddenly looked at her.

  “Do you believe the stories?” she asked.

  Biffy tilted her head to the side. “Not sure. I’ve not heard many.”

  “I wasn’t sure I did. I thought a slayer of some kind would be obvious. But I’m starting to wonder.”

  “It’s a nice thing to hope for. That someone might come rescue us all. But father said we all needed to do our bit. He said that even if there was a chosen slayer to combat the darkness, they’d still just be one person. The whole world can’t be saved by just one person. They wouldn’t be Jesus.”

  “Your father sounds like he is a very sensible man.”

  “Mostly. But the vampires still took him.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? I don’t know a single person who hasn’t lost a relative or loved one,” Biffy replied, hearing how hopeless her own voice sounded.

  Sister Gelina sighed and nodded before looking back to the book. A couple of times she read a small chunk and then looked up at Biffy. This seemed like bizarre behaviour, but before Biffy could ask what had made the sister so interested she snapped the book shut and tucked it under her arm.

  “I’m glad I saw you here,” Sister Gelina said. “It’s always good to learn something new. To test one’s knowledge, so to speak. I hope you’ll be as enlightened as I today, even if you merely pick a book at random.”

  The words seemed odd to Biffy, and the suggestion even more so, but Gelina smiled and walked away, giving her no recourse to question what had sounded like a strange prayer as well as advice.

  With no desire to go back to her duties, Biffy continued to walk the aisles. As she reached a section on the vampiric nature and what commonalities they had with humans, she stopped. Almost blindly, she picked a book. The title was, What vampires sound like.

  Not sure she believed she’d learn something new from reading it, she placed the book on the convenient height shelf that extended at the bottom of the case and pulled the hard coverings apart to let the pages fall as they might. It opened on a section about the vampires’ speech, and how they possessed similar mental traits to humans still.

  The section detailed how the vampires used their modified DNA to enhance the normal human ability to manipulate, coming across as incredibly charming when they wished to be. It even mentioned a theory on how they could control their own pheromones to a far greater and subtle degree in comparison to humans. It enabled them to manipulate unguarded humans to do their bidding. Some humans were, of course, more susceptible than others.

  Biffy raised her eyebrows but didn’t keep reading. She was tired of theories and tired of not having any concrete answers. Either they could do something or they couldn’t. Sighing, she put the book back. Maybe Gelina hadn’t known what she was talking about.

  Or maybe Biffy just wasn’t that great with books. After all, she was more of a fight-now-talk-later kind of person.

  Chapter 14

  Several days had passed since Biffy had completed her fifth task. Since then she’d had a relatively light schedule. The nuns were often too busy to teach her, and she hadn’t seen anyone but Breanna not bustling from here to there, especially as dusk approached and the night’s watch began. The sisters had made a solemn vow to guard the city, and it was clear they were taking that vow seriously.

  Biffy, on the other hand, was still in the awkward situation of not being allowed to help. She already felt more than qualified in a lot of ways. She’d fought the undead evil before. Admittedly, not the kind of vampires and werewolves that haunted Sunnyvale, but she was no stranger to difficulty.

  Most of the time she found tasks to occupy her, or trained with Breanna, now that she and Boo had been told they would need to rejoin a patrol. It was clear that the duo weren’t yet truly ready. Every time Sister Gelina brought the subject up, Boo would scurry around in circles and squeak loudly, rush off to pinch something from another sister, or simply bite something or someone.

  Although Breanna was quick to admonish Boo for this, Biffy suspected Breanna was grateful for the delay. It must have hurt to lose a close ally in battle. Even thinking about it made Biffy feel sad.

  And this was exactly how she felt as she put her crossbow back in the armoury, having just finished a quick shooting practice with Breanna and Boo. Hairwig sat on her shoulder, hooting happily, the back half of a mouse held in one claw. Now and then the bird raised the carcass to her beak and tore off small pieces. More than once she held it out towards Biffy’s mouth.

  “No, thank you,” she replied when this happened for the fourth time. “I don’t eat mouse, remember.”

  “Hoot,” Hairwig replied.

  “No, it wouldn’t help if it was cooked. But thank you for the offer.”

  Before Hairwig could offer another alternative, Biffy stopped, her feet automatically doing something her brain would have ordered had it known it wanted it. Up ahead Mary Beth was carrying a tray, heading straight for the door to the under-croft.

  It still wasn’t guarded, although Biffy noticed the similar green sheen ripple across the entrance as Mary Beth pushed through. The barrier to keep things quiet was at least still in place.

  Several times she’d thought about Spoke, but after the close call last time, she’d not dared to go to see him again. Not to mention the possibility of it being dangerous. The other nuns had warned her. And she didn’t want to get into trouble.

  But as the conversation Mary Beth had had with Spoke the last time popped into her head, Biffy knew there would
be no walking away or avoiding the topic this time. What if Mary Beth said something that might explain why he was there, or what had been done to catch him? Maybe she could learn something from it all.

  After checking no one else could see the door, Biffy eased through. She needed to be careful not to make a sound, but she had the advantage of having walked that way several times now. It shouldn’t be too difficult to get down the stairs.

  Hoping that Mary Beth’s visit wasn’t very short, she tiptoed herself down the steps as they wound around. Before she could get to the bottom, she noticed several other storage rooms she’d not taken in before. Most were empty, but one contained a bed and other items. It made it look like someone had slept there recently.

  Frowning, Biffy continued on down, stopping once she heard voices. They were still faint, so she carried on until she could make out the words.

  “What do you mean, I can’t have what I need?” Spoke asked, evidently disgusted by something.

  “We both know you don’t need it like that. It’s not as if you can die.”

  “That doesn’t stop me being hungry.”

  “Well, it will do you good to be denied. Hunger never hurt anyone.”

  “You obviously don’t understand what it is to be under the curse of the vampiric.”

  “Really?” Mary Beth replied. Biffy could imagine her rolling her eyes. “I’m sure it must be so tragic for you.”

  “Piss off,” Spoke said, rattling his chains as he must have lunged or moved away from Mary Beth.

  “Language.” She laughed, and then Biffy heard her steps as she came towards the bottom of the steps.

  “Come on, you’re not really going to leave me like this, are you? I can’t live like this. Why don’t you do what you do best already? Kill me. End this.”

  “You know we can’t do that. We’re not done with you.”

  “You’re never done.”

  “Because your kind still exist,” Mary Beth replied, seeming to end the conversation. Her feet clacked on the stone once more, making it clear she was coming back up the stairs. Unable to get back to the top quickly while going quietly, Biffy tucked herself into a small alcove behind a statue, relying on the darkness to hide her body from plain view.