Authors: T.D. McMichael
Neophyte / Adept (31 page)
Selwyn bounded out of the theater. I rushed to keep up. I
needed to get to my Gambalunga. I had been so stupid.
Lia.
They were going to kill her.
By the time I found my way out, Selwyn was nowhere to be
found. It seemed like a very cruel trick, being called away from the Gathering.
This was the Dioscuri’s last opportunity. It was finished tomorrow. The
Gathering was fracturing. Like the symbol for the Wiccan wheel, the eight
Virtues. Magic was split.
We
were
splitting. “Lia...” I said. The Dioscuri were going to kill her. But why did
they even want her––?
I found my way to my Gambalunga and started it up. The
throttle stuck. It almost didn’t work. I had to take five seconds to fix it,
but finally I got it figured out.
Gripping it by the handlebars, I flipped my wrist, and the
Gambalunga spun about, the tires caught, and I laid a trail of thick rubber, as
I peeled out, heading for the Gatheringplace and away from Rome.
I raced the moon over the countryside. I opened the
Gambalunga full-throttle and headed toward the Gathering.
If I were writing in my diary, I would have said the
following: That there was a faction within the Gathering that wanted all-out
war, conflagration, the vibe of coming hardship. The unease Lia and I had felt
was growing in my stomach.
How could I have been so stupid? I listened for any sounds
of other motorcycles, but there were none. The wolves were all at the
Gathering.
Of course.
That’s where
the danger was. It was lucky I had such an awesome bike.
With a shifting of gears, I navigated the terrain, passed
through the Roman countryside, coming to the invisible barrier––
There was fire, smoke, shouting, when I broke through. The
Wiccans were squaring off against the werewolves. They had their Marks out. My
Gambalunga backfired loudly. Ballard found me. But I had no time. “Lia,” I
shouted. I raced past him. He had his hands full. Stavros and Gisela were
telling the Wiccans to back off. “Bring out the cat!” shouted one of them.
I made my way down the hall. I had to get to Lia, fast.
Months traipsing through the place had taught me the ins and outs of the
Gatheringplace. I knew that if I went down this hall––and then that
one there––and then through that foyer––
I used a secret passageway Asher had shown me.
It brought me to my dormitory. But Lia wasn’t there. She
wasn’t anywhere.
“Lia... Lia...” I shouted hoarsely. The smoke had started to
fill my lungs. My eyes. I could hardly see.
A distraction. For something
else
. It had to be. The sandpit. I didn’t know where else to go.
I raced from our dormitory, down the familiar passageways
Lia and I had taken every day to get to the Star Room. But what good would my
Wiccan Mark be against all of
them
––the
Dioscuri? I had yet to levitate a grain of sand. Much less fight. I was totally
unprepared. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t afford to. Lia needed me. I needed to
save her––
A wave of nausea hit me––the feeling compounded
by a whole host of figures, I saw, as I entered the Star Room. Lia was there
with them. But they weren’t people, they weren’t even ghosts.
The Dioscuri were vampires. But unlike any vampires I had
ever seen before. They were like smoke––roiling incorporeal forms,
that rushed in and out of each other. I felt my mind grind like rusted gears.
Lia was prostrate, red leather jacket covering her Wiccan
Mark, over by the obelisk, so she must have gotten out of bed. Something must
have called to her. The Dioscuri. Like they had been calling to me for the past
four months. Like I was her. The One. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t be. It was
Lia... She was the reason they were all here. Hundreds and hundreds of them.
The Dioscuri hovered in mid-air and flew at me. Time seemed
to stand still. I remembered a conversation I had had with
Lia––before all this. It was the night she and I had gone out with
the Initiates, what seemed ages ago.
Roast
chestnuts
, I told myself....
Lia had said, “Remember what Veruschka was going on about,
Initiation and so forth, and how it’s supposed to be
lineaged
?” She quoted from the Head of House Ravenseal.
‘There remains an unbroken link of every
adherent back to the beginning,’”
she said.
I made a face. “So what, Lia?” I said. I wasn’t exactly
anxious to relive our time in the sandpit together, now that we were on our way
to becoming fledged.
“So
––you’re
linked, silly, to your mom and dad,” said Lia. She made her Wiccan W and
ordered three more chestnuts. We took them with us and went for a walk around
the fountain.
“But who taught them?” I said, munching on mine, and walking
through the stalls with her. The rain was coming down harder now, but we didn’t
care. I let it soak my hair. Being underground for so long had made me
claustrophobic. I needed to get out.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Lia, dismissing this line of
questioning. “It’s like this One business. We’re all one Wicca. That’s what
these people don’t seem to get–– Wiccans, the Mistresses, and so
forth. At least the ones I talked to. They’re in charge, but they have no courage.
It’s no wonder there have been wars. We don’t listen to each other. And I
thought women were supposed to be all intuitive and good at that stuff. With
the Mistresses in charge, I think we’re on our
way
to war, especially given this Chosen One business.
See––everyone wants to find her, for her powers...”
“Which are?” I said.
“No different than yours or mine. Light
and
Dark magic. Coexisting together,” said Lia, “like the aether
itself. Like this ball of Light,” she said, popping it on. “I have been
studying it, studying it, and I think it is this aetherical two-
ness
, this dichotomy, in all of us. The
Prime Mover may be able to manipulate the Wiccan World in weird and wonderful
ways, but so can we. Don’t you get it? We
are
her. You and I. Whether we want to be or not, Halsey Rookmaaker.
Which––funnily enough, I almost said
witch
––I suppose makes us dark. Perhaps we are at
Oneness with the aether. In which case, we are the One? Or something.”
Her Zen-ness was on fire. She was my little buddha. My
Liapooh. I didn’t understand a thing she was saying. But I sort of did. One of
those rare occasions where the words were above my head but they made sense
anyway.
“Oh, and be careful of Julius Pendderwenn,” she said. She
shot her leather biker cuffs. “He’s got manica langas, you know, long sleeves.
He may try and grab you for his own.”
She popped a roast chestnut in her mouth and I came out of
it.
The starlight overhead vanished. They rushed at me, the
Dioscuri. Where they went, they seemed to cut out the light. I was all alone in
a sandpit with them––but I had my Wicca. Their hands grasping out
for me were like claws, which broke upon me as they rushed to attack. I could
see bits of things. Body parts. A head there; a limb; a torso. Suddenly, I was
caught up in a huge mass of them. Was
this
what happened to vampires when they got too old? They were like ash. And they
were crawling inside of me. I could see the remnants of their fangs.
Lennox had said something to me, but it was so long ago, I
had almost forgotten it. What was it? It was a different place. A different
time. I was changed now. So was he––if Lennox was even coming back.
When I thought about him, I wanted him to, but I didn’t know. I hoped he did.
What could he really want with me, if he had left me so quickly, though?
I didn’t know if he still loved me or not. If I ever made it
out of this, I would put it to the test, though. I would put him to the test.
I saw Lennox’s moonlit eyes, from the balcony of my open
French doors, staring in at me, to a place so long ago, it felt like another
me. Like there were lots of
mes
,
which was something Veruschka Ravenseal had said.
I mentally stuck her in a big fat rota. I didn’t want to
think about her ever again.
We had lit a candle, Lennox and I. Two tapers. The Iron
Roses. He had been like iron, cold and aloof. Part of me realized it was for my
own protection. That he was looking out for me. That he really did care about
me. He was my Protector. “I am a vampire,
”
he seemed to say.
It felt like memories were what I
wished
them to be. That they could alter, change. I colored them
with my dreams. “I
cannot
be good for
you,” he said to me.
Something primal called to me. He was my light, my love. I
realized––I think I had always realized––that
vulnerability.
“Halsey...” he said. “The only thing that can hurt me is
you––if something
happened
to you.” It was like he was really there, standing in front of me, whispering
softly into my ear.
“Don’t you get it?” I said. “That is my fear, Lennox. There
are
things
. Terrible things, that you
don’t know about me. I did not come directly to Rome. I have secrets. A past.
Like you. But worse. Besides. Even if we have centuries, I
will
die. And you will live... Forever.”
“A forever without you isn’t living,” he said. “It’s a slow,
torturous existence, un-overcome by any formal expiring. I want no part of it.
You are my life, now. Without you, I would cease to be. I would be one of
them.” He pointed to the Dioscuri. “Living death. Old as forever.
That
is what happens to vampires when
they get too old.”
I looked. They were floating there, on the fringes of my
awareness, waiting for me––like huge towering specters. But I was
still too busy with Lennoxlove.
“You don’t ever feel that way, do you?” I said. “That life
isn’t worth living?” I caressed his face with my fingertips, forcing him to
look into my eyes.
I didn’t want Lennox to leave me, to abandon me, or to stuff
me down the rota. I wanted him to come back, so we could be together.
I could feel it suddenly––the same dull ache,
and then the wave of aether, like I was going to be sick.
Perhaps we had been on an accelerated clock, the Initiates
and I. Lux must’ve known the Dioscuri were in town. He had prepared us to meet
them. Otherwise, I told myself, he wouldn’t have shown us the dark aether.
And even Lennox, it came back to me, had been preparing for
the Dioscuri. It was them. They were on his mind, when he said he was worried
about me, and that
age
mattered in
vampires, way back at the finger of rock, when he secretly revealed to me what
they were. Lennox had called the Dioscuri mind readers. This must’ve been what
he meant by that, because they were making me recall all sorts of
things––but it was like the perspective had changed, like I was
experiencing these visions anew, or for the first time––yes, for
the first time.
But what, I asked myself, were the Dioscuri
doing
working for the Master House? The
Lenoir couldn’t possibly be in league with the Master House, could they?
One thing was certain. The Lenoir didn’t purge their
numbers. When vampires got too old, they became Dioscuri. I felt like I knew a
great secret. One which could get me killed.
But what did they drink, what did the Dioscuri feed upon?
I wanted to see what the Dioscuri knew.
They were at my Wiccaning. My true Wiccaning, when I was a
baby, and brought into this world. They must have seen what had happened to my
parents. If so, my only way of figuring it out was through them. I had to know,
to look inside of them, to scry the Dioscuri. But it would be dangerous.
Certain questions
should not be asked
, I told myself.
“They equivocate,”
said Lux. “Being untouchable, what do they fear? And, as they cannot touch,
their only resource for manipulating us,
is
us. The Dioscuri lie.”
The total omniscience of the Dioscuri terrified me. But that
still didn’t explain what equivocation was.
“Using distortion to arrange something desirable to the
Dioscuri, which can only be fatal to us,” said Lux, “often by suggesting it in
a roundabout way. War, for instance.”
Vittoria had been listening. She clawed the air with her
Wiccan W, when she saw me looking at her. She was not a wilting flower, or a
shrinking violet. Vittoria was deadly nightshade. Belladonna. We broke into
partners and the memory was gone. A new one had replaced it.
This time, Camille, who was talking to me about being
immortal. But she had never visited the sandpit, had she? My mind was all over
the place. “When you live for so long,” she said, “where is the joy in living,
that you once knew as a child?” Lennox had said something similar. We were on
their boat, the
Bellezza Immortale
,
which had a kind of painful poetry to its name. Except Lennox equated it to
artists, the vampire death, that was like living forever.
There are no
Rembrandts, or Picasso vampires
, he had said.
I sighed. “I should think not,” I said. “Could you imagine
sitting
for one of them? After they
painted you, they would eat your soul.”
I hated listening to two vampires I cared about talking
about the shortcomings of vampires. Or of dying.
Life was what you made of it. I had always thought so.
It wasn’t an endless, mindless existence. Surely they saw
that?
But Lennox, instead of seizing upon it, withdrew from my
rationale. His rakish hair was all over the place, blown about by the cool wind
off the Lido. We were at Rat Rock. He was out, on the Finger of Rock, the cool
line of stones that snaked into the lagoon water. It was Midnight. The serenity
of the place haunted me.
I realized that, in a way, I was scrying myself. Reading my
past. But these were the rooms that were opened to me, full of light, and the
people I loved. And Lennox
was
a
person. Perhaps I could help him renew his love of living, in being loved? If
only he would love me back.
I asked him what he was doing, but he shook me off. It was
obvious he was protecting me, keeping a lookout there on the Rock at night,
with his light, hiding me from the Dioscuri. But there could be no preventing
them from crawling into me. I knew that now. The sensation was like the blood
draining from my veins. This coldness, followed by a numb disconnect.
I knew that Lia was on the fringes. I knew that they had
tried to
read
her. But I also knew
that she had resisted them. It was me. I was the weak one. I could hear her
stirring. But it was too far away.
I
was too far away. It was me they were after. They were taking me away.
I felt like I was on the outskirts of a familiar
dream––... That my future-seeing had been preparing me for this
moment––
But the Dioscuri seemed to squeeze in tighter, becoming more
and more One, a single entity. They formed a circle about me. I could feel
them, like the aether itself, crawling into me. Somehow the Dioscuri
were
the dark aether. But it was bigger,
more powerful, than they were.
Looking down at my Mark, I saw it writhe in pain. My flower
was tearing from my skin. It felt like I was going to die or pass out. I didn’t
know. Almost like I was connected somehow to the Dioscuri, in a way I didn’t
fully comprehend. They floated before me and I saw into their eyes. Somewhere I
heard Lia shout, but it meant nothing to me. I had to look. To know. I felt the
many-fingered intelligence hover on the precipice and then enter my soul.
“You have darkness in you. We feel it. You could be Her. The
One. It hurts us to look at you,” they said.
The Dioscuri were subtle, mysterious, complex.
“Why? What am I?”
The voices hissed at me. “We cannot tell you that.”
Listening to them made my spine chill.
“What do you know of my mother and father?”
“They were Rookmaakers––
yes
...” said the Dioscuri.
“Am I the last Rookmaaker?” I asked.
“We see into you. We see––
St. Martley’s
.”
I saw Ballard again, leading an army. Except he was older.
He had that scar on his face.
... It went down his neck, disappearing into his clothing.
He looked scared. Gone was the curly head of hair, the happy smile.
“What have you to do with the Master House?” I asked.
It was imperative I get back to Ballard––to Lia
and Gaven––to House Rookmaaker. I had to find it. Maybe I
could––I don’t know––rebuild it or something.
“You are not who you think you are,” they said. “You are not
Grace or Goodwill. You are the One. Join with us. Seek
them
out. Otherwise, you will suffer the fate of your parents. And
everyone you care about will
die
.”
My Wiccan Mark flashed like quicksilver. It was conjuring
the Light of its own free will. Lia’s quickly joined it. I could see her there,
on the outskirts, trying to get inside. She was not alone. Selwyn was with her.
It made my soul lift. They were trying to
save
me.