by T. Mikita
“We need to follow the plan!” Oliver said, and then more gently, “We won’t know anything definite until we get back to Whitehall. Anyway, we are much closer to Whitehall than to the hospital now. It would take us hours to get back. My power is in no way equal to Lady Pendragon’s, and I will not disobey her.”
Asher looked at the man with worry in his eyes.
“Dame Winifred will protect your aunt if she can. They were a team back in the day, and she won’t want to lose another one.”
“Another?” Asher said.
“After Sir Merrick, Dame Vanessa, and now Lord Pendragon,” Oliver said. “Didn’t your father ever tell you?”
“No,” said Asher. Thinking that there was a lot that his father didn’t tell him.
“They were several years above me at Whitehall, but they were the stuff of legends. We all wanted to be like them.”
“But if something happened to Winifred, my aunt…” said Asher.
“No, the likely reason is that they decided to let the spell go.” Oliver said. “Or they could be unconscious. That would also disrupt the spell.”
“But the necromancer,” said Asher. “I felt him.” He was unable to really put the feeling into words, but he knew he was right. The necromancer had been in the ambulance. “He was in Jules somehow,” Asher said.
“Good to know,” said Oliver uneasily
No, it wasn’t good. Nothing was good about this. Asher wanted to scream. A nagging voice said just because the necromancer left Jules, did not mean that he was gone. He couldn’t relax.
Asher smoothed Jules’ hair. It was clear she didn’t know what she had done. He didn’t know if she would ever come back to herself. What if she had been bitten? What did that mean? And what had happened to his aunt? He shoved the thoughts away. One thing at a time.
31
The Will to Fight
When Asher and Oliver arrived back at Whitehall, several of what Asher had now come to think of his aunt’s personal guard met them at the gate. They were rushed toward the Healer’s Wing. Jules was carried on a stretcher, still unconscious. Asher followed, feeling like he had been wrung out and hung up to dry. Oliver brought up the rear with a worried look in his eye.
Both his Aunt Evelyn and Dame Winifred met Asher at the Healer’s Wing. Proving Oliver was correct, the women had teleported ahead and were prepared to receive the injured. The whole place was in a flurry.
“We need to finish what we started,” his aunt said to Asher without preamble. She looked even more wrung out than Asher, but unhurt.
Asher nodded. He knew that the Order of Basilisk had interrupted them at the hospital, but Jules’ behavior was more troubling. What had been done to her? How could she be controlled like that? Asher shared what happened in the ambulance with his aunt who nodded seriously.
“I thought as much,” she said
“So, it was the necromancer, then?” Oliver asked.
Winifred nodded. “He attacked me first,” she said. “He wanted to taunt Evelyn with my death….or with yours,” Winifred said softly as she looked at Asher. “Of course, it would have been much worse if he had been present physically. When he turned his attack on you, Evelyn followed to find out who it was.”
“You knew I was attacked?” Asher asked his aunt.
She nodded. “I felt the necromancer reach out to you through your friend. I managed to block it somewhat.”
How, Asher wondered? He shuddered. If that attack was blocked, he would have hated to see the full force of the necromancer’s power.
“He is out of his element and he is weakened. We must act quickly.”
“Weakened? He made Jules into a puppet and he nearly killed me,” Asher argued.
His aunt nodded. “Nonetheless, he is much stronger working with dead things. Julianna is not dead, as he undoubtedly planned.”
Asher paled. “He wanted to kill her?”
“Most likely to get to you, but we can drive him out,” his aunt said as some of her assistants made preparations for the ritual cleansing. “Dead she could not fight him. Alive there is still a chance. The magic here at Whitehall is conducive to healing and life. It will add strength to the ritual.”
“And what about Basilisk?” Oliver asked Winifred. “Their numbers were unexpected.”
“Yes,” Winifred agreed. “The cavalry arrived just in time to open the path for us to regather our magic to escape,” said Winifred. “I’m sure they will do what they can with the snakes, but it is a public place.”
“Oliver if you would send a cleanup crew to the hospital? Attempt to contain the incident.” Evelyn said.
“Consider it done, my lady.” Oliver replied.
Evelyn nodded as she saw to the orientation of the room. Jules was laid carefully on a bed. She had a bump on the side of her head from when Oliver had braked. It was red and a little swollen, but for the most part, she just looked pale. She could almost be sleeping. Asher shivered remembering her unnaturally strong hands around his neck. He wondered how he would have restrained her if the weaving of the car, or whatever his aunt had done had not knocked her out. He could not believe that Jules wanted to kill him. It wasn’t really Jules, he reminded himself, and yet, looking at her, he saw only his friend. How would he have stopped her? He could never hurt her.
“Come, stand here,” his aunt indicated, pulling Asher from his thoughts. “Place your hands on her skin, and think of your friend. Strong shared memories are best.”
Asher closed his eyes and concentrated. He tried to push away his fears. He focused on good memories with Jules. He had lots of memories: Late night discussions about movies and books and television shows. Long arguments about Tolkien inspired philosophy about race and freedom. Asher let himself fall deep into the past. There was nothing but the remembrances, all the good times he had with her.
He gave it all of his attention, hoping that somehow, Jules would come and join him there, that she would be alright. He was deep in the shared recollection when he realized that something was wrong. There was something else here, pushing back against his memories, invading Jules’ mind.
For just an instant, Asher’s thoughts were driven back to the ambulance, when Jules tried to choke him. An instant was all it took. The calm of the shared memories shattered like sugar glass, melting all around him, and Asher heard the sound of low laughter.
“You are weak, boy,” came the words. “Weak like your father.”
Fear filled him, but hot rage followed immediately on its heels. Lacey had called him weak too, but Asher was done listening. He wasn’t weak. And neither was his father. He tried to reset his concentration. To find the memories again, but it was too late. There was only one shared memory now – Jules’ hands around his neck, squeezing the life from him.
Asher felt his air restricted, even though no one was touching him. He was touching Jules. Should he let go, he wondered? Then what would happen to Jules? Asher looked down at her, awake now and staring, but he knew that it wasn’t Jules looking back at him. There was a malevolence in her eyes.
Asher tried to find happy memories again, but he couldn’t. All the while, his aunt kept chanting in a low mournful tone. Asher’s fingers tightened on Jules’ shoulders, praying for her to fight her way free. She was not dead. His aunt said she could fight. Jules was strong. She would beat this. He knew she could.
Asher switched the memories, from the pleasant sharing to the time when they were both ten and he had accidentally smacked her in the face with a fencing foil and chipped her tooth. She had retaliated by blackening his eye. At a party after a school game when some jerk thought goth meant easy and Jules broke his fingers. The time when they went camping and had slipped down into a ravine. Bruised and cold and exhausted, they had pulled each other up and supported one another until Dad had come to find them. Dad. Bleeding out on the floor of his bedroom. That memory was not one Asher chose, but Jules was there all the same, stuffing bullets into his dad’s gun.
“Jul
es now!” Asher yelled and the spray of blood and ichor that was so embedded in his memory came to the forefront of his mind. In that instant, he saw Jules open her eyes, and suck in a breath. She was there. It was her. She was in there! It worked. The moment of elation was quickly squelched.
“Asher!” His aunt cried, stepping between them, even though she had not been there in the original memory. She was here now, like a golden beacon of light, a shield, he realized. A shield from what?
In the next moment, pain shattered through him like he had been hit with a thousand blows simultaneously. Then his aunt was there, wrapping her arms around them both, shielding them from the assault. But it was too late, much too late. The pain had already washed over him, through him, in him. Asher dropped like a stone through the darkness, the necromancer’s laughter ringing in his ears. He wondered for a freakishly long moment if it was his head that had exploded and then he wondered nothing at all.
32
The Blessing
When Asher woke, Winifred was sitting by his bedside. “You did it,” she said. “You drove out the necromancer and saved your friend.”
“I didn’t,” Asher croaked. He had been in some vulnerable mental place. He wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but he had gotten in touch with Jules. He had managed to make her see that the sorcerer held her captive, and then in that moment, the sorcerer had turned his power on Asher. “He would have crushed me.”
“He tried to,” Winifred said.
Then it all came back to Asher in a rush. His aunt had stepped between them. His aunt had been his shield. She took the full brunt of that magic. “Aunt Evelyn?” he asked, trying to rise.
Winifred grasped his shoulder slowing him down.
“Is she…?” he began and then he stopped. Asher knew his aunt could not be well. The question was: was she alive? But he could not ask that. The words stuck in his throat. His aunt was his only remaining family. He hadn’t realized until now how much that meant.
“Your aunt has been hurt,” Winifred said. “The healers are seeing to her now.”
Asher felt a monumental wave of relief. At least she was alive.
“Can I help?” he said, and Winifred smiled.
Asher was brought to a room where his aunt was laid on the bed as if it was a casket. Flowers were placed at her head and feet. She was pale as death. A salt circle surrounded the bed.
Asher felt a spark of terror. She looked dead. She couldn’t die. He didn’t get along all that well with his aunt, she was stuffy, pushy and uptight, but she couldn’t die. Not like this. Not now.
A Guardian was called to do another cleansing ritual, but no one was here yet. Winifred moved toward Evelyn and knelt by the bed. Asher followed and knelt beside her. He bowed his head letting good thoughts fill him, mentally listing every healing blessing he knew. He projected thoughts of healing and light.
A disturbance in the hall broke his concentration. Someone was arguing. He rose to see what the commotion was about.
“You are not going in that room,” said Winifred, standing with her wand drawn before the door.
Asher peered around the doorjamb to see who she was talking to and was surprised to find that it was Niles.
“Now Freddy,” he said softly.
“No. Don’t you Freddy me. You are not my friend. My friend is dead.”
“I told you what really happened.”
“No. For all I know, you are in league with the damned necromancer who put her here. You are not going anywhere near her. The Council has ordered you confined to your quarters. I suggest you stay there or I will have them shackle you.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“Watch me.” Winifred snapped. Her eyes flashed fire and Asher found he liked the woman.
“Fine,” Niles growled. “But if she dies, I will hold you personally responsible.”
“The same goes for you,” said Winifred.
Niles stormed down the hallway in a huff. Asher watched him go. Good riddance, he thought.
“Ah,” said a man in black robes as he came down the corridor from the opposite direction. He was in at least his mid-fifties, with a head of curly grey hair and a full beard to match. He greeted Asher with a smile. “You are Lady Pendragon’s nephew?”
“Yes, um… Father?” Asher replied, noting the man’s black robes. Was he a priest?
“Sentinel Isaac Silver,” said the man introducing himself. “You will stand at her head. We should get started.”
“I thought it was the necromancer,” Asher said. “But she pushed him out once. Why was she so badly hurt the second time?” Asher thought of the necromancer in the ambulance when he had taken over Jules. The guy was powerful sure but nothing like the all-consuming darkness that had struck his aunt in the end. “It didn’t feel the same, at all.”
“No, it is not,” the healer agreed. “The necromancer was subject to a greater force. Something from beyond the Gate. Your aunt tried to see,” he said. “To discern the identity of the controller. That entity did not want to be seen.”
“Will she be alright?”
“As long as I can release her from the darkness that holds her, then yes. She will be fine.”
“And you can do that?”
“We shall try.” Isaac gestured Asher to the head of the bed.
“What are we going to do?” Asher said.
“It is an ancient blessing,” the healer said. “Based in the Kabbalah. It is simple, but powerful.”
Asher nodded. The Sentinel Chronicles listed such blessings, but this wasn’t simple homework. If he got it wrong, his aunt could die. “I’ve read about it,” he admitted. “But I have never done anything like this before.”
“Pray in your own way in your heart,” Winifred said as she took her place at his aunt’s feet. “Magic is fueled by emotion. Your good wishes are all that are needed.”
“Well, she has that,” Asher said as he looked at his aunt’s pale face.
The healer priest, Sentinel Isaac, stood in the center of the circle and looked at the two of them. “Remain inside the salt circle,” he cautioned.
Asher glanced at his feet to be sure he was compliant with that order. He didn’t want to let anything go wrong.
The healer began by raising his hands. Silence filled the bed chamber as if the world had somehow slipped away and a void had taken its place, devoid of sound and everything normal that people take for granted. There was a taste in the air, like copper pennies, and Asher realized it was blood.
Isaac closed his eyes and Asher tried to concentrate as he was taught. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the healer seemed to glow. His astral-self presented as a huge being of light, his presence dwarfing everything in the room. As Sentinel Isaac grew in his astral form, Asher felt power flood into the room. A shaft of brilliant white light flashed from the heavens and fell straight through the roof, crashing into the top of the healer’s head. Isaac reached up as if he could touch the light and pulled the beam down, bending it toward his Aunt Evelyn.
“Aaaaaaaah” he intoned. Humming the note, moving his hand from over Evelyn’s head to her chest, and pulling the light all around her.
Asher’s heart began to beat faster in his chest as he watched Isaac’s face. The old priest seemed to suddenly drop years from his visage as he spoke the sacred words. He touched his aunt’s right shoulder, connecting the beam of light as he in toned the words, drawing in articulate sounds out in a chant and crossing his hands over to her left shoulder. The air in the room seemed to move now as if a breeze were entering the room from an open window
The healer continued the ritual, his eyes flicking to Asher. The power of the magic was frightening, and yet thrilling. Asher prayed that his aunt would be alright, concentrating his energy to aid Isaac however he was able. He could not lose another family member.
The healer then called upon the holy entities to come and stand against the darkness and to cleanse the ritual chamber. Asher was not expecting to actually s
ee anything, but suddenly there were more streams of white light wrapping themselves around his aunt and Winifred as well as Isaac. Asher looked down to see them around himself too.
Isaac drew a banishing pentagram in the air to the East, its lines showing up as thin trails of blueish light.
A breath of cold air, tickled Asher’s right ear and he sucked in his breath as a sliver of uncertainty came over him. Faint sounds, like the whispers of a woman’s voice, teased his ears as he tried to discern if he even truly heard anything or if he was just caught up in the moment. His fingers sought his talisman automatically, seeking the comfort of the metal.
Now Winifred was looking around the chamber as well. Asher saw it and wondered if she had heard what he thought he heard or if she was just responding to the drop in temperature within the room. The air turned chilly, and then cold.
The healer had finished forming the Kabalistic cross over his aunt. He continued chanting.
Surely, he feels the difference in the room...but he knows what he’s doing, Asher thought. Asher wrapped his fingers around the coin that Professor Stellanovich had given him. It felt nearly hot to the touch. He jerked his hand away, and folded his fingers together in front of him.
Isaac turned and sealed the other four corners with pentagrams, barring any malevolent entity from entering the circle.
Asher startled as words were whispered in his ear and he turned his head automatically to see who it was. But there was no one there. A sliver of confusion slipped into his mind and he looked around the room to make sure everyone was still where they started and that it was just his mind playing tricks on him. To his eyes, all was normal and it was a sunny spring morning. Then goose flesh covered him as a fierce cold seemed to wash over him.
When Asher looked at Isaac, the old man’s eyes were slowly moving about the room around them. Searching. Clearly, he felt something as well. The room became frigid, as if something were sucking the heat energy from the air around them. Asher could see his breath and fear slipped into him, but it seemed too late to stop. How did one retrace their steps in the middle of such a ritual? It was only supposed to be a blessing, he reminded himself, but whatever it was, Isaac was committed now, and everyone in the room along with him.